No, Virginia, in this column there is no Santa Claus.

In this column, a whistleblower tip from some disgruntled elves led to the Board of Directors for North Pole, Inc., learning that Santa was way over the mandatory retirement age. So Santa was forcibly retired. Worse, the Board had the Winter Warlock give him the word.

Like I said, none of that happy-happy Santa stuff here.

As recompense, though, we do have some audience participation. 

Here’s your bit: while out shopping this yuletide season, pick up any toy in your basket (especially if it is a limited edition Turbo-Man action figure—might as well get a Schwarzenegger-the-actor reference in) and then through the magic of CityBeat Pixie Dust (patent pending) feel yourself transported to a faraway land—a place we’ll call Toyland.


In this column, Toyland is where the elves moved after ousting the old man. Turns out North Pole, Inc. had a couple hundred billion dollars hunkered away and just up and bought a small country in a warmer Pacific island climate. Turns out elves really don’t like snow.

Now, for the sake of this column, Toyland is where most of the toys in the entire world are made. In this land of make believe, magic elves toil happily all day to create bundles of Christmas cheer like the Turboman action figures, which are then individually wrapped, placed in cartons of 24, stacked on pallets of 512 and then whisked away by the forklift elves to waiting sleighs.

The sleighs in Toyland, however, while being no less magic, are a bit different than those used during the “Santa” years. They are steel behemoths roughly 8 feet square and 40 feet long. The magic elves, awed by the sleighs' seemingly more powerful magic of teleportation, refer to them in hushed tones only as "containers."

Now packed with more than 61,000 Turboman action figures, the container begins its magical journey on a truck that then stops at the Toyland Train Station, where the container is loaded on a rail car chassis. This car is then coupled to about 100 identical cars to form a mile long train. Within a couple hours, the containers have reached the Port of Toyland, which only ten years ago was the simple Toyland Fishing Village.

Over the next 24 hours, Port of Toyland robots guided by non-union elves load all the containers, and about 3,400 more, onto the Toyland Express, an ocean-going container vessel.

Steaming out of Toyland Harbor, the small 20-elf crew of the Toyland Express heads for the West Coast of the United States, arriving about two weeks later at the Port of Long Beach.

Back in the real world at a Long Beach terminal, the containers are unloaded by gangs of union dockworkers and made ready for truck drivers to pick up. About half of the unloaded containers get a truck trip, while the remainder get a trip on a train.

Each container destined for rail makes its way to a port rail yard, either at the terminal docks or slightly inland after a short trip by truck. They are then nestled, one on top of the other, in a double-stack rail car. The rail car, now holding more than 122,000 Turboman action figures, then links up with more than 100 additional cars, making for a theoretical "all Turboman" train containing 1.22 million of the desirable action figures.

In this case, however, our original container is loaded on a truck and after a short hour-long trip arrives at a warehouse for Mega Toystores Inc. At the Mega Toystores' warehouse the container is opened and the individual pallets are then sent to other regional warehouses throughout the area via truck. Some pallets are further broken down in to groups of cartons and sent directly to the local Mega Toystores outlets, where they are opened and the individual Turboman packages are placed on the shelf just hours before you picked one up.

Sounds easier than getting off the Island of Misfit Toys, right?

Well, here's a bit of a sticky wicket. Elves have to eat, and union dockworkers have to eat, and truck drivers, and warehouse workers and store employees. They all have to make a buck. And in this elaborate and global Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, everyone wants a nice helping of sugar plum sweetness. Some of the players in this dance are even willing to cut costs to the bare minimum to make sure their serving is as big as can be. Note: These are really good sugar plums.

For example, the elves running the Toyland Express might look around at different West Coast ports to obtain the best rates for docking and berthing the Toyland vessel. Lower costs, no matter how achieved, mean a bigger helping of sugar plums. Or they might look at which port is closest and thus costs less fuel to reach. Or they might look at the facilities at each port to determine which offers the best services and most efficient terminal, thus allowing the Toyland Express owners to save a few dollars more and charge more of the cargo recipients.

A point that has kept Long Beach and the neighboring Port of Los Angeles at the top of the heap is that until about five years ago, both ports had two of these three things to offer. The two ports are by no means the closest geographically to Toyland, but the ports had been offering good rates on dockage and berthing as well as new and efficient terminals.

But the ports have spent more than five years battling social and environmental justice groups over building anything new. During this lull, the ports' facilities have outgrown their original designs and are no longer the most efficient around. So much so that the Port of Long Beach alone estimates that it will take at least $2.5 billion to achieve the development it needs over the coming years.

While new construction and redevelopment at the ports still faces outside pressure, the solution is simple for both harbor administrations: spend money. And both ports have plenty to spend, and at least now, some willingness to move forward with spending it. Since 1990, the Port of Long Beach alone has made an average of about $70 million to $100 million in profits each year--monies that until about five years ago were immediately reinvested to keep the port operating at a level that attracted the most customers—fuel, so to speak, to keep the cycle going.

Now however, the folks at City Hall are thinking of changing that (told you we would get back to that).

There are rumblings again of changing the city charter to get more than the currently codified 10 percent annual tithe that City Hall skims off the port profits.

Some at City Hall are talking about raising the tithe to 15 percent, maybe 20 percent.

The problem is that City Hall is like the Cookie Monster when it comes to money—it knows no restraint. You can almost be guaranteed that if the city received an additional 10 percent of port profits each year, City Hall would soon find a way to spend every penny before they even cash the port check. And then what? Knowing City Hall methods, that would be the time to go back to the voters to ask for another 10 percent from the port, and a few years later, 10 percent more.

It is a slippery slope that is already greased with the fiscal mismanagement that plagues this city. Greased by the same folks that already brought you “financially challenged” city icons like the Queen Mary and the Aquarium.

At some point in this downward slide, the remaining port profits will no longer be able to maintain the port facilities as the attractive destination for Toyland that it is today. Then the Toyland Express will start visiting other ports and the Long Beach port profits will drop even further in an ever descending spiral.

Certainly the city deserves to receive some compensation for the wear and tear on the fabric of our community brought by being host to the second busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere. However, keep in mind that port dollars have supported nearly all city-owned projects built below Ocean Boulevard in the past 20-plus years. In addition, since 1990 the current 10 percent tithe from the port has translated into somewhere between $140 million and $160 million in direct cash transfers from the port to the city. And we won't even mention the nearly $2 billion spent each year in Long Beach by foreign shipping and transportation companies.

So keep in mind that as goes the port, so can easily go the fortunes of the city. The port is by far the largest single supporter of jobs in the city, with upwards of 30,000 jobs directly connected to trade moving through the port.

Remember all those drivers, dockworkers, warehouse workers, store clerks and hundreds of others that touched that Turboman doll in your hand this Christmas when somewhere down the road City Hall asks you to take more money from the port.

And don't worry about the elves. Toyland will keep making toys, Toyland Station will keep sending trains and the Toyland Express will still be docking somewhere. The real choice that may be before us all in the near future is whether it will be calling in Long Beach and supporting Long Beach jobs, or doing the same at some other port town.

The only real answer for City Hall when it comes to using the port like a piggy bank is the same answer that the WOPR computer came to at the end of the movie War Games: The only winning move is not to play.

Anyone for a nice game of chess?

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