December 22, 2020
via email sbhsredcarmuseum@gmail.com and U.S. Mail
Mrs. Marie Antos
Mr. Charles Antos
Seal Beach Historical Society/Red Car Museum
P.O. Box 152
Seal Beach, California 90740
RE: Lease with the City of Seal Beach
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Antos:
This responds to your recent letter dated December 7, 2020. While the City appreciates the timely response to our letter, the request for further delays is not productive. We understand that pandemic closures and the holidays may make it more time consuming to actually implement one of the solutions we proposed in our earlier letter. But there is no reason why your organization could not have agreed
to one or the other proposals, so that the parties could have worked out a reasonable schedule for implementation.
Instead, your letter simply asks for a further delay, with no specific response to any proposal the City made. As the Red Car deteriorates, there simply is no time left for additional delays without the organization’s acceptance of one of the City’s proposals. At this point, without a substantive response, we plan to place an item on the January 11, 2021City Council agenda for consideration of whether to give the required notice to terminate the agreement for location of the Red Car on City property. The City does not want to follow that path. We would much prefer to implement a mutually-beneficial solution to preserve the Red Car, and we hope you will provide an affirmative response to our proposals prior to that date.
Although you did not substantively respond to our previous suggestion that the City should purchase the Red Car, please consider the following more specific offer: The City of Seal Beach hereby offers to purchase the Red Car from the Seal Beach Historical Society/Red Car Museum in an as is/where is condition for the total sum of $10,000 to be paid to the Seal Beach Historical Society/Red Car Museum, subject to a standard purchase agreement and release. This agreement would, of course, require that the organization remove “Red Car Museum” from its name.
We would welcome a positive response prior to the January 11, 2020 City Council meeting and would, of course, allow additional time to implement one of the options we have proposed. Absent some agreement by that time, however, we have no choice but to recommend that the City Council take action to remove the Red Car from City property.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your positive and timely response.
Sincerely,
Jill R. Ingram
City Manager
cc: City Council
