If there are any members of the public in zoom that would like to speak on items not listed
on the agenda, please use the ra raise hand feature. If dialing
in, please press star nine. Now. First public comment is limited to
a total of 10 speakers, combining both in person and zoom participants.
if there are any members of the public in zoom that would like to speak on the consent calendar,
items on the agenda or second public comment, please use a raise hand
feature. If dialing in, please press star nine now.
all right, we're gonna go ahead and call the meeting of the city council to order roll call please.
councilwoman zendejas present, councilwoman allen.
councilman allen, present? Council member duggan.
here. Councilman super. Now here, councilwoman kerr. Present councilwoman
sorrow. Present vice mayor uranga. Present. Councilwoman
thresh ook. Council member rick sodi. Here.
mayor richardson. I am here. We have a quorum. Alright, thank you. We're gonna go to
council member duggan for the, uh, moment of silence of the pledge and the pledge of allegiance.
please take a moment of silence now in remembrance of someone
you have lost over the past few years,
we're now going to have the pledge of allegiance rise. If you are able, put
your right hand over your heart.
alright, thank you. Well, welcome back folks. We are, uh,
in our mid-summer season, so I hope you're off to a good and a fun and
a safe season. We've got baseball this season. They've been playing five nights a week.
the long beach coast has been doing pretty good. We just wrapped up the world cup. I saw many
of you out there for our fan experiences. The concerts in the park
are going, the movies in the park are going, it is full swing of summer,
but it's good to see you all. Uh, tonight, uh, we're gonna be testing out
a slight change in how we run our meetings to transition to align with
sb 7 0 7. Uh, these are new state guidelines to allow remote
participation. So I'm gonna pass it to our city clerk, monique de la garza, to walk us through
what to expect this evening. So, good evening mayor. Members of the city council
and the public. I'd like to introduce the sb 7 0 7 requirement that enhances
our public comment process. Tonight is the first meeting of the long beach city council
where we are implementing zoom based public comment. In addition to in
person, I will read names of individuals who've requested to speak.
please forgive me in advance if I mispronounce your name to speak on
an item. You may submit a physical signup slip in person or of joining
by zoom. Use the raise hand function. If you're dialing
in, please dial star nine. When you use the raise hand
feature. A city clerk staff member will temporarily move you into a
breakout room to provide further instruction for those speaking in person.
when your name is called, please proceed to the center aisle and line up at the lectern
to deliver your public comment. For remote or zoom
callers, we will announce your name when it is your turn to speak. You'll be
heard live through our chamber audio system. For a
full list of guidelines and instructions, please visit city clerk website@longbeach.gov
slash city clerk. Thank you. All right, thank you. Monique.
we have two presentations this evening. Uh, both will be five minutes.
uh, first is park parks make life better month. We'll pass
it to our city manager to kick it off.
all right, I will introduce steve scott, our director of parks, recreation, and marine.
okay,
good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. Thank you so much for
the opportunity, uh, this evening. Uh, as we are
here to celebrate parks make life better month.
uh, each july, we participate in a statewide recognition that
showcases how agencies like your parks, recreation, and marine department
create community through people, places, and
programs. Presentations led by the california parks and recreation society
or cprs. This month long recognition
raises awareness of the benefits of the over 500 parks
and recreation organizations across the state.
and their role in providing vital community services
guided by our own parks make long beach strategic plan.
our work is deeply rooted in advancing equity and inclusion
to ensure our spaces and programs are accessible.
we take pride in ensuring our parks, beaches, and
facilities remain safe, clean, and welcoming
for all as we activate them with fun and
engaging programming fit for all ages, interests
and abilities. We offer places where
families gather. We offer places where children and teens can
come together and socialize and learn and
explore. We offer places where our seniors can come
and engage with each other and remain active.
we foster not just recreation though, but health and
wellness, personal enrichment, environmental stewardship,
and community connection. This vital work is
only made possible by our dedicated and hardworking staff.
I am so proud of the incredible work our team does every single
day in all corners of this city and the impact that our
department has on our community. I wanna take this moment right
now to thank our department team for their efforts. We have a number of people
here, uh, attending with us, uh, in the audience today, but
we also have a lot of people still out in our parks either wrapping up the daily programs
or getting ready for some of our evening programs like be safe or municipal
band. And so if I could just get our team to stand up those that are in
attendance, I wanna make sure we recognize them for their hard
work and leadership.
very well deserved. Uh, they do great work. I also wanna recognize we have
two commissioners, uh, parks and rec commissioners in attendance today.
uh, commissioners allen and redfield. I wanna thank them for their leadership, um,
for our department.
so in conclusion, uh, parks absolutely
make life better and parks absolutely
make long beach better. And so, uh, thank you
so much for allowing us this opportunity to present to you. Thank you
for all of your support and ongoing leadership. Uh,
we appreciate everything that we do together to provide the very
best in park and recreation services to the community. So that
concludes my comments. Uh, but we do have a very brief, uh, video that
I'd like to show, uh, to wrap up our presentation. Thank you.
better. Once
long beach parks recreation and marine connects our community to people,
places, and possibilities across our city.
with 166 parks, 81 playgrounds, sports fields,
skate parks, golf courses, and nature centers, there's a
space for everyone. Our programs
support every age from youth camps, sports leagues to older
adult activities, helping our residents stay active and healthy
year round. We care for over six miles
of beaches and our marina system so visitors can enjoy the coastline.
our animal care services helps build a more compassionate community
with services for both people and pets.
every park program and partnership helps create a long beach
where everyone feels at home and memories that last a
lifetime.
explore all we offer and discover how long beach parks
make life better.
all right, well, well, thank you. I think we have a certificate for you. Uh,
we'll take a come down and take a quick photo.
can we get our team come
and, and commissioners too. And commissioners should go. .
all right. So we thank parks, recreation, uh, and marine
parks make life better. Parks make long beach parks make
lb and that was very clear at bixby park. Congratulations to
the councilwomen, um, district two, district one on beach streets this past
sunday. Incredible. And the final at bixby park. So
great work to the parks and rec team and special events. You did a great job. Thank you. Let's here for
our parks team one more time. Alright. Alright,
our next presentation, harvey milk plaza. Inductees, uh,
we want to pass it now to councilwoman and dejas. Thank you.
um, thank you mayor. Our city is known for being a
safe, inclusive, and welcoming place for all. We take
pride in being home to a strong, rich,
lgbtqia plus community, and we remain and will
remain proud and loud always and forever.
that is why it is one of my greatest honors to represent the
district that houses our beloved harvey milk pomade park,
the first public park to carry his name's sake.
for the past couple of years, I have gladly and
strongly supported this annual harvey milk equality plaza
plaque recognition. It is important to me that we
continue to honor leaders and activists who contribute immensely
to protecting the rights and lives of our l-g-b-t-q-I
plus community. And I am in full support
of installing the names of these incredible long beach leaders
onto our harvey milk wall of equality. And I would like to
welcome the committee and pass it over to corey allen. And
thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. Councilwoman, uh, mayor, members
of the council, corey allen. I get the great privilege of serving as one of the co-chairs, um,
for this organization. And we're very proud to also, as you may see
on the flyer, that we have reformed and reorganized, uh, with our friends
at partners of parks to become the friends of harvey milk promenade park. As much
as we loved our long name before, we thought this was much more, um, appropriate
opportunity to not only, uh, continue to honor lgbt
leaders and community members, but to also fundraise and support the work that's happening,
um, at this, like this art lgbt established park, um, in recognition
of them. So you'll hear from us. Uh, we're gonna read some bios to you about the amazing
honorees. I want to say that we get dozens of, um,
nominations every single year, um, and we are limited to to honor
four people. And so these four take a two thirds majority of our volunteer
group of 15 people, um, to, to get the recognition each
year. And so, um, as we go through those, those recognitions that, uh, know
that these are, um, really, really standouts and we have some incredible
folks that continue to get nominated and we look forward to continuing to recognize folks
each year. Um, so the two that I have, uh, the privilege of, of sharing
some information about, um, is honey hatch, who couldn't be with us today,
um, but is known as dj honey to many and is a second generation cambodian
american, born in san diego and raised here in long beach. She's a dj, entrepreneur,
and certified phlebotomist, um, who has spun music from hollywood to
cambodia, all while running a family restaurant here in long beach. She has poured
her work into her grassroots community, uh, and things like the cambodian
town film festival, the cambodian youth institute, united cambodian
community, and creating kamai.org with a q to celebrate
and honor the work of btq cambodians in our community.
uh, and she will now be the very first cambodian woman to ever be
recognized and placed on our wall, um, at harvey milk park.
the second person who you'll hear from in just a second. Paul. Lovely. Uh, for nearly 30
years, paul has turned his personal journey as a gay man living with hiv
and in recovery, into a lifelong commitment of helping others from his early volunteer
work. As a director of the long beach l-g-b-t-q center to his leadership,
uh, as the executive director at the care center at st. Mary's medical center,
he has helped create affirming stigma free health care for our community.
paul pioneered hiv peer support and prevention programs
advanced lgbtq plus health equity, and led the development of a new $2.3 million
care medical center. Paul truly embodies harvey milk's belief that
living authentically and serving others can create hope and change.
and then we're gonna bring up some of our other committee members to hear from the other honorees as well.
uh, good evening. I get to represent heidi hoffman,
who I knew personally from the day from the hood. Um, she
is a pioneer for the l-g-b-t-q committee back in the eighties and nineties.
she was one of the owners of the, uh, paradise bar. Once upon a time with her
lovey cheryl labatte, she was, uh, very instrumental
in starting the long beach teams project, which patrolled broadway back in the day when there
was a whole lot of hate crimes. She was also a pi, she also was part of the,
uh, lambda democratic club. And the, one of the biggest things that she did
was she helped, um, bird dog and to pass the
city's same sex domestic partnership ordinance. We would believe that it was kind
of torpedoed when one of the council members, uh, did a 17 minute
tirade about how gay and lesbian people were, uh, linked to, uh,
bizarre sex acts and immoral behaviors. And as of
september 1st, it looked like it was dead in the water. And with, uh,
actually at the time, my partners passing by, killed by a drunk driver on september
13, it came back and got passed in 1996. So it was kind of one,
one of those big deal things. And heidi hoffman was very, um, instrumental
in getting those things done. She was a larger than life person. She was a
big redheaded tomato, and, and you didn't mess with her. So she was president of
the, uh, uh, well, at the time it was the long beach, um,
uh, sorry chamber. Uh, it's the community
business network. She started that. Now it's the long beach gay chamber. She was instrumental in
starting that, and she was also president of that. So she well deserves this honor. And thank
you guys for recognizing her.
good evening. Uh, it is my pleasure tonight to recognize a long beach
artist, um, who is a multimedia artist, um, with
various, uh, illustrations. And, uh, these illustrations give
voice to queer and immigrant communities. Um, he
is proud to state through his artwork and through his work that
he is queer and formerly undocumented immigrant himself. Um,
he has developed his craft locally here in long beach through jordan high school,
all the way to long beach state. Mm-hmm . Um, and through
his undocu un undocuqueer series and
ali times comic stripped, good immigrant, bad immigrant,
he has earned national recognition from san francisco
moma to a short documentary documenting
his journey to the smithsonian in washington dc and
honors from princeton, princeton university. His murals, grace,
our city now, and his posters are at various
businesses, um, supporting immigrant rights in long beach.
and without further ado, I would like to introduce julio salgado.
yay, julio.
um, good afternoon, uh, mayor, members of city council. My
name is julio salgado, and I'm an artist who calls long beach home. I'm
standing here today as a proud member of the long beach community, a
city that adopted me and my immigrant family when we first moved here back in 1996.
long beach has seen me grow into the proud queer immigrant men that you see standing before
you. I want to thank the friends of harvey milk promenade park committee for hooting
me as one of this year's honorees. The last couple of days have been
tough for the immigrant community, of which many lgbtqi plus individuals
like myself are part of. In recent days, we've seen how the powers that be
have been attacking people who look like me just for having been born in a different place.
today, I wanna dedicate this honor to the queer and straight immigrants that
continue to feed, build, and contribute to this city and this country,
despite not always being treated with respect. May we one day live
without the fear of losing our loved ones at the hands of those who are supposed to protect
us. Thank you so much. Yeah.
all right. Good evening, mayor richardson and members of the city
council. Uh, my name is paul lovely, and I'm so happy to be here with you
tonight. And I just wanna say thank you and thank you, um,
uh, thank you to the, the council, the committee that selected us.
and it's really important and meaningful to me to be part of this amazing
group. Um, and I think the honor is especially amazing to me because
of really how far we've come in the lgbt community in, in,
uh, in my life. Uh, I grew up in orange county in the seventies and
eighties, and what it means to be gay and to be seen has changed
enormously since then. Long beach has been a huge part of that change
for me. And I love this city. The fact that long
beach has a harvey milk park is just one of the reasons I,
I love it so much. Uh, I don't think of myself as exceptional.
I'm, I'm not an activist who made one big defining mark.
my experience is that over almost 30 years working at
the care center at st. Mary's, uh, is that I, I show
up every day. Uh, I always, and I, that when I
show up every day, I can always do at least one thing to bring a little healing
to a person's life. And I think it's those small things that add
up over time to make a difference. And I feel so lucky that I
am a part of a community where I'm able to do that. So,
uh, thank you again. This really is a, a special honor.
thank you. Uh, we hope you will all join us on saturday, august 1st at 10:00 am
uh, and then go to the jazz festival. We did it early just to make sure that there were no
conflicts, but , please join us at 10:00 am at harvey milk park on the first. Thank you. Alright,
let's hear it for our harvey milk promenade park, friends of harvey
milk promenade park. Uh, thank you for continuing this tradition
and creating a space for previous leaders and
emerging leaders to be recognized for their contributions to our city. Congratulations.
and we have a certificate for you and the committee and the honorees. And
let's hear it for the honorees. One more time. Yes. Woo.
yes. Let's come down.
do you want everyone to come down? Come on.
thanks to you. Congratulations.
all right. Thank you. Congratulations. That concludes our
presentations. Uh, we will now move on. Let's have our report out from closed
session, please. Thank you, mayor. We have no report from closed session. Best
kind of report. Next, uh, consent calendar, please.
is is there any public comment on consent? Oh, I'm gonna hand it to our clerk.
now to facilitate public comment, there are two speakers for consent, for
speaker need for transparency. And after that is x,
you were in the building. Need for transparency?
good afternoon. Uh, need for consent right here. Need
for transparency? Um, I wanna talk about a couple items, a few items that we have. Number
14. So 26 dash 5 55 92. Um, everything's
lumped into one giant paragraph. Uh, I think we need more
transparency before somebody wants to request $4.5 million.
uh, that's the first one. Second one is, and there's a lot of
them here. Uh, the second one is towards the end. Item
number 25. Kind of ditto as well. We need a little more transparency
on why we're having collecting, um, uh, using
these technologies data to electronic citation, data collection system.
um, also we need transparency for that. Um, all I can say is
before items are presented here, the public would like to see a
little more breakdown of where these funds and these monies, these
dollars are going to and why, and how are they benefiting the city. Thank
you. Thank you. Next speaker, please.
dito, what the previous, uh, speaker said. I wasn't really
planning on speaking today, but I just quickly glanced at the agenda and looked at some of the
stuff in there. And it's, uh, almost
every time I come here, I see money
for cops, money for cops, money for cops. How many, like four or five
items at this, uh, particular meeting that, that is, uh, looking to be approved.
um, and then when I was out there,
I was talking to, uh, a, uh, representative of, um, parks, recreation,
and marine. And I was asking why is it that,
uh, what, what percentage of the city's budget goes to parks and recreation?
well, it's been cut. Well, it's been cut, but why is there so such
a disproportionate, uh, number of funds going to
the east side parks? Mm-hmm . Um, and
so we have our, our, our police budget keeps increasing. I think we're
like, what 60%? Does somebody know? Um,
and our parks budget gets reduced and our library's budget gets reduced.
everything gets reduced except the cops
and the cops don't provide safety. Um,
time and again, uh, communities that have
greater resources are safer than
communities with more cops, right? I mean,
look at the statistics, guys. You know, I don't know. I
don't know what informs your decisions.
and now there's money for additional surveillance that was,
uh, getting pushed by, um, your former colleague, uh,
state senator lena gonzalez. Surveillance jesus
christ. I mean, we're losing our freedoms.
and for what you know, well, for public safety,
well, um, there
are a million ways to reduce traffic fatalities
that do not involve additional surveillance. Again,
look it up, guys. You
know, you make decisions in a vacuum. None of you,
uh, are apparently, uh, experts at anything, but
you can google it or you can ask your staff to look it
up. So, uh, I know it
doesn't matter. You guys are still gonna spend money on cops, and you're
gonna spend a disproportionate amount of, uh, the city's budget on the
east side, particularly when it comes to parks and recreation. And those of us
who live on the west side of long beach and on the north side of long beach,
nothing. So thank you for that.
that concludes public comment. Alright. And you, you did virtual.
all good. Alright. Okay, let's keep going. General public
comment number one, madam clerk, please facilitate public comment. Oh,
mayor, you need to actually vote on the consent. We have to vote on the consent. Oh, yeah. We need to vote. Members, please cast your
vote getting used to this new system here.
motion is carried. Thank you. Alright, general public comment, please
facilitate.
there are seven speakers for a non agenda, public comment. Maria rios
gray, carolyn essex, free palestine,
anthony, bryson, and tony. Can I get those
in person speakers to line up at the lectern? Maria rios
and then gray, and then carolyn essex,
who first maria rios.
yes. Present, please come to the lectern. Thank you.
good evening. Rex richardson. Uh, mayor rex richardson,
I admire you because you dressed so quickly. I saw you with a white jacket, and then I
saw you and I said, how did he do that? What, what, what happened? I didn't know. I am sitting in front and
I didn't notice that. Okay. To a serious note. Um,
I am here because I happen to witness firsthand one
of the so-called street racing where
kids go and they, uh,
let each other know via instagram or whatever platform.
and I happened to be there, and I saw it firsthand,
and it was very, very scary because there was a car burning
and there were like three, four cars in front of me, me. And it was,
it was terrible. It could have been a, um,
nation tragic or something because chevron gas station is like
50 yards or something. Then there is union 76, another 50 yards.
and I'm like, where's the, where are the cops? What's going on? They know about
this. Don't they have surveillance? Haven't they study all of this? Isn't there some
record already? So I called the police and they said, where are
you, ma'am? And I said, I'm on, uh, del lamo and santa
fe. And they said, no, you're not. There you are at del lamo and wa santa fe and waterlow. And I said, I'm so
scary. I don't know where I am. And, but I'm glad you know where I am. So yes, there's
a car, there's three cars in front of me, and then the one right, right in
the middle of the street racing, someone put it on fire and I could see the flames.
it was very pan, it was terrible. So I went to the police the other day and
they said, the best thing for you to do is go to the city council, tell them who do
I go to? Find out the status, who who's doing the, the research, the
study, the, what's the follow up on this? Because it's very serious. There's
been teenagers that have been killed. And so I just wanna know, who do
I contact with in long beach? Who knows how they're conducting
the surveillance and what's, what's going on? Can the police
answer that question? And if not right now, maybe later in the next week or so. And I
have no clue. But I think it's something very serious. Very serious. And
it's happening not only in long beach happening in other cities here, but I also
did some research and it started happening back east new york and new jersey.
and there's, so it's not just here, it's, it's, it's happening in the country.
so I wanna know what is long beach doing about it? And I believe what long beach police
department fire department are the ones who are surveilling,
uh, learning about it and trying to find out how to stop this
tragic things happening. Please, can you tell me? That's
it. Thank you.
monique, you gonna call the next person? Is this gray?
yes, please proceed. Uh, first things first,
you're gonna hear us say, free palestine until palestine is free. And
also, f**k ice. Get ice the f**k out of our city. It's quieter now, but
we know that they're still taking our f*****g immigrant neighbors. So can you please f*****g stop that s**t?
uh, last time we were here, cancel, tried to impinge on our first amendment right by
critically limiting public comment. After severe public backlash, the council largely
voted against that agenda. I'm very proud of the public for holding the line
and keeping the council from making a horrible mistake. That being said, some
members still voted yes on infringing our first amendment, including the only
two black women on our city council. Very disappointing ladies.
I'd say it's ironic, but you guys are democrats, right? So sadly, that s**t is just on
brand. Uh, you, you're happy to use your tokenism, but you're also
happy to uphold and perpetuate white supremacy. Moving on.
f**k andrew industries. F**k divergent, f**k flock, f**k. General
dynamics it f**k lexus nexus and f**k chevron.
have you noticed the pattern? And no, I don't mean my fabulous strings of f-bombs just now.
the pattern is war and weapons manufacturing. The pattern is mass surveillance
straight out of the most disturbing, dystopian fantasy that you ever watched or read. And why
should these companies care about marrying, marrying dark fantasy? They're doing this s**t on purpose and will,
are you f*****g kidding me? I f*****g hate palantir and peter
theo. But at least that s**t is accurately named after an object of evil. But andrew
industries, palmer lucky, trey stevens, matt graham, joe chen,
and brian schiff can f**k off and die for naming their death cult
company after aor sword. Andrew was supposed to be a sword reforged
after being broken during the battle against sour on the dark lord, who rules over mordor
and attempts to conquer all of middle earth cio, which is the broken sword.
and andrew was forged from, became a symbol of kinship and was passed down through generations. It was
reforged by elvin smith in dale so that aragorn could use this
sword to protect the entire realm. Aragorn was of the mortal realm,
but he was also, uh, an ancestor of a half elf, making him a mixed race. And did
he use that sword just to fight for the mortals or the elves? No, he protected
everybody, the hobbits, the ds, and the elves and
the ants, which were the tree people and the great eagles.
so I really take umbrage as a nerd that these f*****g people have
named this company after error going sword. And honestly, f**k you, rex
richardson for being the f*****g cheerleader of this company. We know they're breaking ground
right now. We do not want that f*****g company in this f*****g city. We don't want
them f*****g anywhere, but at the very least, we don't want that f*****g building by the long beach
airport. So please stop f*****g championing them and please get them the f**k outta here.
do you know what they announced yesterday and thunder? Autonomous hybrid
ev try rotor again. Another f*****g horrible demonic weapon.
and that's what you're bringing to this f*****g city. So again, f**k
ice, f**k israel free palestine and get andrew industries
the f**k out of this city.
next speaker, please. Carolyn essex. And then free palestine and anthony bryson,
all
woo saw. Um,
good evening mayor and members of city council. Welcome back everyone.
uh, carolyn hass six here tonight. I'm standing with community members
who have asked for greater attention to unsafe streets,
um, speeding and pedestrian safety throughout long beach.
um, I am pretty much a public figure now after getting over 26,000
votes in the primary for state assembly. So in
north pine neighborhood and I, I, um, experience these
concerns. I'm especially concerned about our seniors and other vulnerable
residents who must navigate these streets every day. But there is
one, um, one issue I'm particularly interested in tonight, and that's
the, the data, um, asking city staff to provide
residents with the most current pedestrian fatality and serious injury data
broken down by council district, neighborhood corridor and intersection.
we need to know where people are being unloved and seriously injured. For our own
safety, we need to know which communities are experiencing the greatest
concentration of harm, which streets and intersection intersections
have already been identified as high risk, uh, and,
and what safety improvements have been recommended. And whether those improvements
are currently funded. I am asking every member of the city council
to please take the distribution of this information seriously,
please get this information directly into the hands of the people
who live in these identified, uh, corridors and neighborhoods.
residents shouldn't have to be policy analysts or search through multiple city reports
and databases to discover the street they walk across every day
has already been identified as dangerous. Give people information,
give them a pathway to, to participate and give the residents
living along these corridors of concern, more peace of mind by letting them
know what is being done to keep them safe. I would
also like to know where residents can follow this work publicly. Okay.
what commissions committee hearing or community process? So please,
I'm asking, um, that, uh, I be directed towards a
staff member today so that I can, um, answer people that
are asking me about public safety. I've asked people to come down here,
they're at work, and I said, well, I'm here pretty much every week,
so I will ask for you because I'm concerned about
that as well. So if someone could please point me to the staff person that can
help me get the information for the constituents, that
would be great. I would be more than glad to do that. Thank you.
next speaker is free palestine, and then anthony bryson.
I f*****g love my first amendment.
good evening, white supremacists. Since our last city council
meeting, ice has killed three more individuals. Israel is
building a concentration camp in gaza. While the genocide of palestinians
continues, a rocket motor exploded during a test firing at
the andel facility in mchenry, mississippi
to the good people of long beach. Do you see what is happening? America
has already become a fascist country. Take a look around you. Ice
is murdering citizens and immigrants. The police is murdering our loved ones
and neighbors here in long beach and all over the country. Homelessness
is at an all time high and no one can afford to pay their rent,
groceries, gas, and the list continues. Some might argue
that america has always been a fascist country, by the way. It has
treated its black people by enslaving, raping,
segregating, murdering, and incarcerating them. I tend to agree with
this argument. George washington and thomas jefferson would be
considered fascist by today's standards to name a few of our most
beloved forefathers. Of course, none of these white supremacists are looking at me.
the constituent, our dishonorable mayor and city manager,
tom moca, continue to extend contracts to companies that hold contracts with
dhs and ice. I will repeat some of the names of these
companies for you all. Lexisnexis, general dynamics information technology,
cdw, government and gov, inc. Connection. Why does the city
of long beach insist on extending contracts with bad faith actors
that assist dhs and ice in the killings and kidnappings
of our citizens and immigrant community? Why is the city of long beach
allowing weapons of mass destruction companies such as andel to be
built in our backyard by the airport? Specifically?
look at, look what happened in garden grove a few months ago.
50,000 people were evacuated due to the chemical spill and still
have yet to recover from the loss while surveillance companies keep tabs on
us ice connect concentration camps continue being built weapons
of mass destructions literally in our backyard and country. It is safe to say that
long beach mayor, city council members and the city manager tom moca
are aiding in the fascist state that we are currently in, in this country.
our earth is heating up, our food and water supply are being poisoned. Cost
of living and healthcare as unaffordable education defunded
wake up people. They are trying to kill us with our own tax dollars.
gaza is the blueprint. Act accordingly. Free palestine,
sudan, congo, lebanon, syria, iran, yemen, and all
who are oppressed by our white handlers protect black workers.
f**k ice, f**k israel, f**k all of you, and especially you rex and tom moca free
palestine. Go f**k yourselves. Oh
yeah. Next speaker is anthony bryson. And then we have
tony and ellie rose. Uh, good evening, councilmen
and women. Uh, I am gonna come back up for item number 32
to go ahead and give my, uh, concession speech. But I do want to thank
all those, uh, councilmen and women who did a phenomenal job in
their election, won in the landslide. Of course, mary, you, you
did win, but you didn't win in the landslide. And I want to talk to you about that
today. Um, three people have been kidnapped by ice
in our city in the last week. One of them was in our district, district one.
what are you doing about that? Also, we've experienced a shooting on cedar and
anaheim did the same neighborhood I live in, and I ha
I have yet to hear you reassure us residents that you're
working on safety plans, you're working on initiatives to keep us safe in this city.
as I continue to be a resident in this city, I'm not gonna be in opposition against just mary's
and deha, but I'm gonna be a opposition against any lack of liberation
for any resident in the city of long beach. Rents will continue
to rise eight by 8% each year until you act as a body
to do something. I brought progressive platforms
that I'm gonna continue to push for as an activist in this city because
the city deserves it. I
want to thank all of you for giving me this opportunity to learn from the city
and to learn from each and every one of you. The city showed
us. I came in last candidate very last and
still, you know, almost forced you to run off by 22 votes.
there's about 22 people in here right now, so that's not much.
so as an elected official, I would've loved to see you say, this is why democracy
matters. You see, this is why every vote matters. This
is what people need in our city is leadership that they can look towards
to encourage them for change leadership that's about the
change and the accessibility of their community, their residents,
not about their clout, their pathway to any other seat, but
the seat that they're on. I'm telling you now, your political
career is over. You've taken money from los angeles sheriffs
and from lbpd, these are the same entities working to
kidnap people with ice. And you are not doing
a service to the city of long beach or to the hispanic community, which you
represent. Shame on you marries zendejas. Dejas.
thank you. And I'll be back. Thank you.
next speaker is tony and zoom. We have tony on
zoom. You are now unmuted your time starts now.
all hi. Thank you. Thank you to the city of long
beach. I appreciate having this option of zoom. Now, uh, similarly
like la county does for their council meetings for
the board of supervisors, uh, I'm a constituent of district seven. Uh, two items
I want to uh, kind of discuss. Uh, one is about, uh,
the money that we're putting for police patrols. Um, we spend
all this money for the police. However, uh, we're having,
uh, catalytic converters having an uptick in, uh,
people that are stealing them. Uh, I would appreciate if we had
police enforcement on the actual neighborhood streets, uh, during their
overnight hours to prevent that. Uh, specifically, uh,
I'm in the, the wrigley area between hours of two to seven in
the morning as we're getting a lot of catalytic converters stole. Uh,
the second item that I wanted to touch upon, uh, and I'm
glad carolyn kind of brought up, is, uh, the traffic engineering department, uh,
for the city of long beach. Uh, it's kind of disappointed. I
sent multiple emails and calls, uh, regarding different elements
as I myself, uh, am a senior civil engineering assistant,
uh, for traffic, uh, engineering for the county.
and there's no way to get follow up on items when we do submit,
uh, for different issues. Um, I'm still waiting on
responses from stuff that I've called and emailed prior and still
no follow up months later. Uh, sophie can please work
on that. I would greatly appreciate it, uh, between some of the signage
issues I'm seeing on our roadway signal issues, and then, uh, for a
driveway application to prevent people parking and blocking driveways. And thank
you so much and have a great evening. Thank
you. Our last speaker is ellie rose.
hello. Good evening. Um, it's good to be back. I'm not
gonna be saying anything that we haven't heard before, but we've, uh, come back from
a recess. We're in a, a new year and we're still seeing,
um, issues with, uh, with our community. So just
gotta keep bringing them up. Um, first of all, um,
love to see the ethical investment screening policy passed,
uh, that the equity and human relations commission recommended over nine months
ago. Now, uh, the people of long beach have a right to know that our tax dollars are
not being invested in companies which are complicit in war crimes abroad, especially
with american companies continuing to supply arms to the israeli
military while they commit genocide against the palestinian people.
the equity and human relations commission, as I said, made this recommendation,
uh, nearly nine months ago. Uh, the creation of this commission was more
or less the only tangible change made by the city in the wake of george floyd's
murder in 2020 and the protest that followed. Um,
we certainly didn't reduce the budget for the lbpd and
it's disheartening to see that the council seems to not take interest in following the
guidance of this commission whose goal is to
commit to human rights for the city of long beach. Uh, speaking of companies that are
complicit in war crimes, uh, andel is still planning on opening
a facility in long beach. As my comrades have already mentioned. Uh, this
company creates autonomous weapons systems that raise serious ethical concerns,
especially as we see the frequency with which us military equipment is being sold
back to local police departments, including the lbpd
and used against our own people, especially immigrants and communities of color
in collaboration with ice. Uh, we saw the consequences,
uh, recently in garden grove of welcoming defense contractors
into our cities. Um, there's currently no publicly available
environmental impact report for this project on the city's website,
and there's been no public opportunity for the community to provide input
on whether or not this project is something we want. The people of long beach overwhelmingly
don't want this facility to be built. We demand transparency, a thorough
environmental impact report, and a public opportunity to make our voices heard
specifically on this project. Uh, lastly, we'd love to see the city close
the substantial remodel loophole for evictions. Um, as has
been brought up at city council meetings for close to two years now, the city
council has a duty to protect the renters that make
up over 60% of the city. Thank you very much.
alright, thank you for your public comment. Thank you, monique. Uh, item 30,
please
report from city manager recommendation
to receive supporting documentation into the record. Con concluded the public hearing and adopt
a resolution amending the master fee and charges schedule to add a rental
fee for the newly acquired mobile screen to be utilized for citywide activities
and activations citywide. All right, there's no oath required. We'll
go right into the hearing. Uh, city staff, yes,
I will handle this one on behalf of the city manager's office. So, brief
overview. On january 13th, 26, the city council approved the
purchase of a mobile trailer, led screen. The screen was acquired to
enhance emergency response citywide activations, community gatherings,
and regional events. Most recently, you saw the city deploy the mobile
trailer led screen across the city to support soccer and the lbc.
since acquisitions staff have received inquiries from outside organizations and
agencies regarding the feasibility of renting this asset. Uh, this
item here tonight establishes a fee structure to allow for future rental opportunities
and revenue generation. The proposed fee will recover costs
associated with transport, technical setup, operational staffing,
and long-term asset maintenance, ensuring the screen remains self-sustaining while
remaining available for emergency response and community community utilization
here in long beach. All right, we'll go to public
comment. There is no public comment on this item. Alright,
are there any questions, uh, from the council? Okay, if not members, please
cast your vote
mary. Motion is carried. Alright, and
that screen was a hit for the world cup final. We gotta give this
out into the movies in the park. Not saying that we don't like the blow up, we appreciate
the blow up, but it's a whole different experience with the screen. So as an
advocate for the kids, we need the screen in the movies in the park. Thanks a lot.
item 31, please. Communication from council
member duggan councilwoman allen, councilman thresh enuk recommendation to within
30 days draft a letter expressing the city of long beach's support for
the city of los angeles. Request for the los angeles regional water quality control
board to issue a cleanup and abatement order related to toxic runoff from
the lineage warehouse, fire and boyle heights. Alright, council
member duggan. Alright, thank you mayor. Um,
well this, I I wanna start by recognizing the impacts
that this boyle heights, um, lineage warehouse fire has
had on the boyle heights community. We recognize the scale of
the emergency and the difficult work performed by firefighters, emergency
responders, and public agencies. At the same time,
we need to recognize that the impacts of this fire do not stop at
the los angeles city boundary. Millions of gallons of firefighting
runoff entered storm drain channels and the los angeles river system, which
ultimately flows into long beach. I'm bringing this item forward
because protecting long beach's water quality and the water quality of
the entire region requires stronger regional coordination, more
timely information and accountability when a major
incident sends potentially hazardous runoff into our
shared waterways. On june 17, the lineage
warehouse fire started june 20. The city of los angeles
declared a local emergency stating that this was not a typical fire
because of the presence of solar panels, refrigeration, insulation,
hazardous material, and approximately 85 million pounds of
decaying food, the declaration acknowledged that traditional
firefighting methods would not be sufficient to address this
incident. On june 22, dead fish were reported in the los
angeles river and the dominguez gap wetlands and the
firefighting runoff was suspected to be the cause.
on june 24, the city of long beach de detected elevated
bacteria levels likely associated with runoff from the decaying food
and issued a water quality advisory. Then
on june 25th, eight days after the fire started, the city of long
beach received its first notification that the fire related runoff may affect
our water quality. During the first seven days after the fire started,
people were fishing, boating, and jet skiing. And the long
los angeles river estuary families were also swimming in
our coastal waters. Without knowing that runoff from a major industrial
fire may have affected water quality, that just isn't
acceptable. It's now been more than a month since the
fire started and our health department just today
received testing results back from the county.
now, this isn't about assigning blame or criticizing any
agency. From everything I've learned, the responding agencies
actually followed the existing regulations. I understand
that firefighting runoff is ex, it's generally exempt from municipal
stormwater permit requirements. Firefighters must be able
to act quickly to pro protect lives, and property
and emergency response can't be delayed by permitting requirements.
however, this incident highlights an important gap.
unlike sewage spills, oil spills, or even rainwater
events, there's no clear protocol requiring downstream communities
to be notified when firefighting runoff from a major industrial incident
may affect our public waterways. I've also heard
that incidents like this are rare, even though we've experienced several
of these significant type of events across southern california
over the past year. So whether these events incidents are common
or rare, it's not really the point when
any significant, any event that significantly impacts
our water quality and puts the public at risk, it should trigger
notification, protocol monitoring and coordination.
long beach needs timely notification. Whenever there is reasonable,
there's a reasonable possibility that hazardous materials
or significance pollution may enter waterways flowing towards our
city. This item asks the city to send a
letter to the appropriate agency's requesting improved emergency notification
and coordination protocols to protect our downstream communities.
this item also requests that the city support mayor karen bass's request
for the los angeles regional water quality control board to issue
a cleanup and abatement order related to the lineage fire.
if a cleanup and abatement order is issued, it must include
long beach. Any remediation plan, environmental monitoring
program, or regulatory action should evaluate the entire
downstream system, including the los angeles river estuary,
the dominguez gap wetlands, and the long and long beach's coastal
waters. Pollution doesn't stop at jurisdictional boundaries
and neither should the regulatory response long beach
serves as southeast los angeles's beachfront
families from from throughout the region rely on our beaches,
bays, wetlands, and the estuary for recreation and
access to the coast. We have a responsibility to protect that access
and to make certain our public health professionals have the information they
need to keep our community safe. I respectfully
ask for your support. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman
rowland. Thank you mayor. Um, first of all, I wanna say thank you to councilman duggan for asking
me to sign on to this important item and for bringing the attention
to the downstream impacts of the lineage warehouse fire.
what happens upstream plays a huge part in the health and safety of our beaches,
wetlands, and coastal waters right here in long beach. And it's
important that long beach is included in every single conversation of about testing,
cleanup, remediation, and accountability
with, uh, pollution that enters into the los angeles river system.
we need our regional partners and neighbors
agencies to provide timely notification and coordinate with us
so that our residents are informed and our public health teams
can act quickly. Is also part of a larger conversation
about regional responsibility and ensuring that
long beach is not left to bear the environmental and financial
impacts of pollution originating outside of our city.
because protecting our coastline cannot fall on long
beach alone. This is a shared regional responsibility
from the source of the pollution all the way to
ultimately where it ends up. Thank you.
alright, is there any public comment? No public comment on this item. Members please
cash your vote.
motion is carried. All right. 32. Please
report from city clerk recommendation to adopt a resolution declaring the official results
of the city of long beach primary nominating election held on tuesday, june 2nd, 2026.
alright, madam clerk, there's no official staff report. Just
congratulations to all the candidates who participated in the primary nominating election.
26 candidates ran for long beach offices and five for l-b-u-s-d.
running for office is no easy feat. I wanna extend my congratulations to everybody who
participated. End of report. Alright, so I, I'll, uh,
concur with that. Congratulations to and thank you to everyone who participated
in the civic process, uh, this election cycle. Uh, there will be no
general election which produces some savings. We don't have to facilitate an election this
november. Uh, and that gives us some opportunities in this upcoming budget. So, uh, congratulations
and thank you. And, uh, we'll now go to public comment. Oh, actually
I have, it looks like,
uh, council member kerr, anything, council member sorrow, anything? Yeah, I too wanna add
my congratulations to those who have been elected and reelected.
I also wanna add that, you know, it takes a lot of courage
to run, uh, whether you're a new candidate, uh, you know, running for
reelection, it takes a lot of, uh, energy as well as, um,
I think, you know, uh, uh, resource as well. So wanna
commend all the voters for making sure to exercise there. Uh, civic
duty. Uh, I think that it's very important more than ever that we
continue to do so. So thank you. Thanks for those comments. Council member allen?
yes, I just wanna say congratulations to mayor ricks richardson and council members
in dejas and megan kerr and joni ricks oti
on, um, winning your election. That's an interruption to the council meeting. Congratulations.
and, um, I know that each of you, um, have shown a strong commitment to long
beach and to the residents, and I have to say it's absolutely an honor and
a privilege to work beside each and every one of you. And so congratulations
again. And I also wanna say thank you for those that that ran, um,
and those, um, that, uh, showed up to vote. So thank you very much for participating
and congratulations to everyone. Thank you. Uh, we'll now
go to public comment. There's three speakers, anthony, bryson, free
palestine and x. If you can line up at the lectern, anthony bryson, free palestine,
and then x. Hello again,
counsel. Um, you're absolutely right. Sorrow. It does take courage
to run for office, especially against the establishment like I did.
I took the fight for what the people say matter in district one, one of the
most covenant districts in our city. And the city showed us that
they weren't ready for an activist. It's unfortunate that we're celebrating
a general election being canceled when this means so many residents will not
be participating in civil engagement. What a
runoff would've done was, would have forced the first general
election in district one in 12 years. This means more
residents would've been able to participate in civil engagement and
bettering the city. We should not be happy when we're saving
funds by minimizing the voices of residents in this city.
I am so glad for the opportunity, and I do concede I lost the race,
but I will continue to fight until liberation is won in this
city. There is so much work to be done. And you're right,
you sit on a panel with wonderful resumes, including people
like you, cindy allen, who shot an unarmed black man while you were a police officer.
I see that the trueness of these council members during
this election cycle and what they have to offer. It's
unfortunate that status quo is the direction as the city will
continue to go in. I want to see growth. I want to see development from
our city council members. I want to know that constituents are being heard,
not council members looking at their devices. When residents
are up here talking about things that may seem mundane to you but are
monumental for the resident. You have to understand that you wanted this job,
nobody gave it to you. When I was out there door knocking and knocking,
uh, and meeting residents, that's what I was hearing is that level of
disconnect between council and residents. We saw in
district three, in district five, in district seven, in district
nine, we saw voter turnout was
phenomenal because those council members are engaging with their
residents. What's happening in district one? No one sees you.
no one hears you. We need our voice to be amplified. We
need you to represent us since you're the one in the job
and f**k what a terrible concession speech. But I want you
to know, I'm still gonna be out here fighting. I love long beach,
and long beach deserves so much better
than what we've given in it. We have to change our voting system, maybe rank
choice voting or something that guarantees an option so that we do have
a general election and so that residents voices are being heard. Thank you
and have a great f*****g night.
next speaker, free palestine.
hello again. White supremacists. And I just wanna express
the fact that you don't have to be white to be a white
supremacist. I wanna
thank anthony bryson for running in district one,
a community leader, an activist and humanitarian,
and has done a lot for the city of long beach, which I cannot
say you all have done. You're despicable,
you discuss this all, and you're not doing your job. I'm actually pretty
disappointed in the outcome of this election. Um, unfortunately,
mary zendejas, who has taken money from the lapd
and lbpd, shame on you, mary. Yeah, you're smiling
and I wanna say whoever's taking the, um, the video
of city council live, you don't have to put my face on there.
people can hear me. I saw what you guys are doing. I don't care for
it. People can hear my voice. People can hear
our voice, okay? So, uh,
we just want our city council members to do right by
us. Very disappointed in the outcome. Uh,
rex is not even looking. He, none of you. Look at the residents that come
and maybe perhaps give you ideas of how to be better,
uh, members of city council or a mayor or
tom malika, who you keep doing
what you're doing as a white supremacist. I don't know if that's
what you do. Um, this is just as
the reality here in long beach, unfortunately. And
we're not afraid of you. We're not afraid of you because
the truth is on our side. The truth is on our side. Anthony
bryson is still here and he's going to fight for us. And
hopefully, mary zendejas, when you do retire, you can reflect on your
horrible career as city council member. Go f**k yourself.
woo. Amen. Last
speaker is x
um, democracy. What a,
what a concept, right? I mean, um, the rule of the people.
I I love the old city hall because we got to sit above
you guys as opposed to you sitting above us because that
reflected the actual meaning of the word democracy.
um, we don't have that anymore. You know, we used to be in a city
hall chambers where if the drapes were open,
people in the plaza could look down on the public
servants as opposed to the public servants looking down on us.
it was real easy back then for me to sit there on the stands and
videotape you guys, uh, you know, chatting away on your phones like
this and, uh, you know, doing other stuff and chit-chatting and,
and laughing and smirking at the rest of it. So it's a little more difficult now,
and I could see why, you know, you guys, um, or many
of you, uh, went ahead and changed, um, you know, created this, this
city hall that we don't own. Um, the private
company owns it anyway, congratulating
mary's and they is like, that's got gotta be the funniest thing I've ever heard. I
mean, as, as if mary had won
the election. I mean, mary, I, I, I know a lot of people who know you
and you're a nice woman and whatever, but this
isn't about, this isn't a popularity contest. You know, you're supposed to
be doing a job, but you're doing a job for the people who
own you. And that goes to all of you. You're,
you're owned by the cops or you're owned by the developers, or you're
owned by, um, the military industrial complex.
yep. Uh, and in this case, I mean, my god,
the long beach police department is the lowest ranked
police department in all of california, the fourth lowest ranked
police department in the united states.
the, the former police chief robert luna, who was
convicted of conduct on becoming an officer, and the, and the city
manager, oops. He let it slide. And then he was able to be elected
as a police chief of the worst
ranked sheriff's department in all of california
. So, and both of these end up, you know, electing
you, I mean, $34 a vote for you
versus, what is it, $2 and 38 cents
for anthony. I mean, jesus,
that concludes public comment on this item. All right. Uh, thank you, uh,
for your comments and thank you to the council members for your comments as well. You
know, I'll also say, I remember when long beach had april
primaries and our participation was incredibly low, uh,
in april. And we had our generals in june, and it was
even more difficult to have representation in our city back then.
we never had a, um, we never had a citywide elected official
anywhere from anywhere outside of like one or two neighborhoods. And then a few years
ago, I think 2020 was when we finally changed that and we saw
participation in our city quadruple in primaries. We elected
our first citywide elected officials out of those very few neighborhoods.
um, and you ended up with a more reflective
council, uh, that looks like this council here. Um, I also wanna
say it's harder to close out a race in a higher turnout
scenario. Uh, there was commonly no runoff back when elections
were in april, but when it moved to june, where people pay attention, more people
run and it's more difficult. And in fact, um,
you know, nationwide, this was a very difficult electorate. A lot
of people wanna see, see change at every level of government. They wanna see more out
of their government, more outta their, their public officials. And there's a lack of trust
really stemming from the very top. And that permeated to every
race on the ballot from school board races where national politics were
being discussed in school board races, all the way through all the city council
races. I say all that to say in a survey of the cities
with a top 100 population nationally, only one city stood
out without having a runoff. Meaning there was enough consensus,
more than 50% in every district. And in the mayor's race did
not trigger a runoff. The only city of the top 100 in america was long
beach. And that should say a lot about the way we are navigating our
challenges and building consensus with our communities. The other thing that I'll say
is that there's healing to do, there's certainly healing to do in our communities.
the election brought out a lot. Sure, a lot of anxiety, a lot of feelings, a lot of emotion.
also a lot of like, you know, you know, uh,
sentiment of don't trust data or don't trust the facts. I don't, I don't ever
remember an election where people said, I don't trust that there are that few homicides in our
city or that few shootings in our city. There's more
we have to do to build that trust. 'cause people should be able to trust the local data. And
over the next few months, we should do all that we can to build more trust and heal in our
communities after a very divisive but very successful election season.
so, offer congratulations to long beach and to everyone who's reelected
for the work that you've done, but there's still a lot more work to do. Uh, the role of local
government is elevating. There's more people expect from the local government. They did
not use to ask this much of local government because the federal government used to step up
on homelessness, workforce, all those elements. And we were simply a front door
on those services. But now all the inv, all the innovation, all
the sort of solving societal issues are now being placed on local government,
but the resources are not given to local government to actually do that work. And so
there is more work for us to do, but congratulations to all of the all,
all of you and to the city of long beach. We're still committed. We're very
much so committed to overcoming those challenges and continue to bring our community
together. Uh, members, please cast your vote.
motion is carried. Alright, now we will go to
item 33. Please report from financial management
recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the annual comprehensive financial
report for the fiscal year ended september 30th, 2025 citywide.
thank you. We have a, a staff presentation. Yes, we do. Uh,
so this was an item that came to the mayor and city council, uh, about two months ago.
and, uh, there was a motion on the floor asking us to, uh, come back, uh,
with a fairly detailed presentation of the annual comprehensive financial report
report. Uh, so we'll be, uh, turning to our city controller, uh, ruby carrillo to go through,
uh, those numbers. And then, uh, we'll also have, um, some ability to hear from police,
fire and, uh, public works. Uh, 'cause there was some specific questions about some of
the performance metrics, uh, in the ac fee, um, or in the act for that.
um, uh, that was, uh, the, the reason that this was asked for. So I will turn
it over to our financial management director, kevin riper.
good evening mayor. Members of the city council. I'm ruby rio quincy city controller,
and I'm here with kevin riper, director of financial management. We will be presenting
the financial results, results as reported in the annual comprehensive financial
report for fiscal year ended september 30th, 2025.
this is not it. Here we go. In providing an
overview of the city's financial position, we will cover the government wide financial statements,
then provide an overview of the general fund revenues, expenditures, and fund balance,
and conclude with performance measures of the police, fire, and public works
departments that were included in the report. The government-wide statements
report city's financial results at a consolidated level by reporting activities
as governmental and business type for governmental activities.
we include governmental funds such as the general fund capital projects
funds, and we also include internal service funds like fleet
services and workers' compensation for business type activities. We include enterprise
funds, which are funds that operate like a business. And examples of those are
thailands operating airport and harbor.
the statement of net position reports the city's assets, liabilities, and net position.
the largest asset is capital assets totaling 6.6 billion in this
category. Accounts for investments in equipment and vehicles, building and land and infrastructure.
these assets normally require significant investment of city resources and are used
to provide services to the community like recreation facilities, fire
engines, the convention center, these council chambers,
the amount reported as capital assets does not represent available financial resources,
meaning these are not liquid assets and therefore cannot be used to fund current services
or programs. The second highest asset reported is cash
and investments at $2.6 billion. A way to measure if
the city has adequate levels of cash to pay its bills is to look at the liquidity
ratio. This ratio, if
we see a result of less than 100%, would indicate that the city does not have
sufficient cash to meet its short term or current obligations based on
financial results. At september 30th, 2025, the city's
ratio for governmental activities was 193%. And for the city
as a whole, it was 366%. Indicating the city
has cash and investments in an amount that exceeds its short-term obligations, which
is a good financial position to be in when compared to fiscal year
24, the ratio of fiscal year 25 decrease for both governmental and
business type. The decrease in the ratio is mostly due to a
decrease in cash in governmental activities, specifically in the general fund.
and this is very much in line with financial results previously presented.
uh, in the fiscal year 25 yearend performance report where we communicated
the city did use, uh, cash reserves in the general fund to fund operations
due to underperforming revenues and higher operating expenses.
now we will shift to liabilities with a focus on long-term debt, and I will turn
it over to kevin reaper. Thank you, ms. Carillo.
quincy, um, slide five that ruby showed
is the, is a good short term measure of city financial
health and liquidity. And the next three slides that I'm gonna talk about look at a much longer
picture, uh, a much further out in the future picture
of city liabilities. So the, um, slide six,
the top row shows, uh, $1.6 billion of
bonds payable at the end of fiscal year 2025, and then another
$900,000 of long-term debt. $900 million of long-term debt
obligation. Long beach has an airport and
a port and a water utility, and a gas utility,
and a sewer utility. So long beach has a lot of capital intensive
operations. And so it's not surprising that we have a billion and a, uh, that we have
1,000,000,006 of outstanding bonds because, as you've been
hearing me, uh, advocate for five years,
it is appropriate to finance long-term capital assets
with long-term debt so that the payment for those assets matches the life of those
assets. Um, and yet if you've, if you,
uh, flip your eyesight down to the bottom of the graph
of, of, um, slide six, um,
our per capita debt for all kinds of debt. In
other words, the total of $2.4 billion of long-term debt obligations
on a per capita basis for all city residents is
only five and a quarter thousand dollars. That's in the fiscal, in the 2025
column. Uh, that, um, there's a bar drawn around five
$5,267,000 per capita. And it hasn't moved much
in the last couple years. Um, a survey of local governments across
the country showed the average local government has twice that debt,
uh, per capita, which is total debt divided by our number of residents.
so that leads to the a point I wanna make about the middle line, the middle
row in this slide, which is, um,
debt service, that's annual principle and interest payments as
a percentage of total spending on, on in our
governmental funds. And ruby described those, that's mostly the general
fund, but it's also the health fund and the internal service funds and
our governmental funds. Debt service for fiscal year 2025 was only
2.1%. Well, the bond rating agencies, right? You've heard of moody's and
you've heard of fitch and s and p global. The bond rating agencies
only get nervous about a city's, uh, governmental debt when that
ratio approaches 10%. So we have a substantial amount
of remaining debt capacity with respect to an ability to
issue bonds and have investors buy them. But the caution to
that is, well, great issuing debt is wonderful, but you have to come up
with a revenue source to pay the principal and the interest each year.
so, and that's what we did with our 2023, um, lease
revenue bonds. And what we are proposing, we will come back to you in a couple of months for
another issue of lease revenue bonds with a whole bunch of, uh, revenue sources
identified to pay for the annual debt service on those bonds. But the point
of that middle slide, that middle row of slide, uh, six, is we
have debt capacity. Uh, turning to slide
seven, uh, this is the long term liability of
the city for what's called in accounting speak, other post-employment benefits,
and that's mostly, uh, retiree healthcare. And the numbers
here for long beach are quite striking because we have a, because long beach for some
decades has had a relatively modest retiree healthcare
program. Um, in the lower right in the bar on the far
right, you can see that at the end of last year long beach's
other post-employment benefits were capita were only a, was only $102.
compare that with our school district, the row above $739
and the county as a whole, like 20 times our number at $2,284.
so from a perspective of other post-employment benefits,
long beach is in very good shape for the short term, the
medium term, and the long term because of this relatively small liability.
now let's get to the big liability, and that, of course is pensions. So slide
eight shows the remaining net pension liability.
this is what we owe in the long term to calpers of $1.3 billion
split about equally between, uh, the public safety
pension program with calpers, which is for sworn police and fire
employees. And then the miscellaneous calpers pension plan, which is for everybody
else, all other employees in the city. Uh, and you say, oh my
god, $1.3 billion. How are we ever gonna pay that off? Well,
uh, per calpers regulations and state law, we are
paying that off starting this month, for example. Um,
the city from, from all funds put together will be paying
$160 million this coming 12 month period
to calpers to eat into that $1.3 billion amount.
and we have about 15 more years before that will ultimately be paid off if all
the actuarial assumptions come true. So yes, it's a big number, but there's
a long time in which the city has to pay it off and there's a plan to pay
it off and we should be fine. And a measure of that is in the bottom
half of slide eight. Um, these five cities are
the five largest cities by population in calpers. We're the second most
populous city in the calpers retirement system. Only sacramento,
uh, in calpers has more residents than we do. And
look at those funding ratios, especially for safety.
the city of long beach safety plan is 76% funded.
and in my career, for all the actuaries I've worked with,
uh, 80% funding ratio is a pretty good target.
ideally, you want to get to 90 or even a hundred, but 80%
is a, is a very healthy place to be. And in our safety program or
safety, uh, calpers pension plan, we're within four
percentage points of reaching the 80% funded level. That also bodes
well. And you can see how much higher our percentage is in long beach
compared with the other four cities closest to us in population.
uh, on the miscellaneous side, yeah, we're still the highest almo almost 75%,
but only a couple percentage points higher than the other four cities that are
close to us in population. So that's all that's reported in the annual comprehensive
financial report. That's what investors look at when they consider buying
our bonds. How healthy is the city going forward on a long-term basis?
and now I'll turn it back to ms. Creo quincy.
okay. So after covering assets and liabilities, we're gonna shift to the statement of activities
that summarizes revenues and expenses. I will not spend a lot of time on the
statements since we normally analyze revenues and expenses at a much more detailed level like fund,
group or department. But a key point here is that the largest revenue sources for governmental
activities were taxes and operating grants and contributions. These two sources
accounted for over 68% of revenue in terms of
expenses for governmental activities. The largest category was public safety reporting,
42.2%, followed by community and cultural reporting at 21.4%.
and this category includes library and parks, recreation and marine services.
in summarizing the net change in revenue and expense activity for governmental activities,
we can see a decrease in that position of 71.8 million at the very bottom of
that table with a decrease mostly attributed to the general fund. As
previously mentioned, for business type activities, the city reported an increase of
301 million resulting from revenue exceeding expenses in various funds, including
water, utility and thailands. But the majority was attributed to the harbor
fund.
the next few slides report the financial results of the general fund. We began with, uh,
general fund revenues and other financing sources with the largest revenue category
being taxes, and that includes property sales and use tax utility users,
tot and business license taxes. Compared to fiscal year 24, this
category increased 11 million or a modest 2.3%. Property tax
revenue increased 8.2 million due to citywide valuation increases
from new development. Although this was a slight increase from the prior year, the city
did anticipate a higher increase in these revenues that did not material material materialize
due to deferred property tax amendments by la county. Um, this
was due to fire events and also higher delinquency rates than prior years.
a modest increase was also reported in sales taxes of 3.4 million attributed
to growth in restaurants and hotels along with steady performance and revenue generated from one
time use tax from development projects. However, declines were also
noted in consumer goods and autos and transportation due to shifts in customer
behavior. The city's sales tax performance mirrored a broader lower growth growth
trend observed across the region. Use of money and property decreased
by 16.7 million. And there were two main reasons for that. The general fund earned
5.4 million less in interest income, and this was due to lower cash balances
resulting from the use of reserves to fund operations.
um, it also saw a decline in interest income due to a change in the way we
allocate interest to the employee benefit and fleet services funds. The
second reason was a lower fair market value of investments of 10.7 million,
which is an unrealized loss. The city is required to report at the end of the fiscal
year. However, it is not likely to materialize since the normally,
normally the city holds investments until maturity
for general fund expenditures and other financing uses. There was an increase of 34 million
when compared to the prior year. Significant changes were noted in the general
government category reporting an increase of 8.3 million. This was due
to a lower rate derived from the city's cost allocation plan. The general fund recouped
11.3 million less from indirect charges to capital projects, which
is a reimbursement for support provided by central departments.
the largest increase of 39.2 million was reported in public safety
and was due to increased wages and benefit costs, including higher pension costs
from an increase in the calpers unfunded liability payment that kevin just spoke
about. It was also due to higher operational costs for investments in
communications technology and related support and for digital evidence storage
also noted as a decrease of 16.7 million in other financing uses.
this was due to lower transfers of $20 million from the general fund to the general
capital projects fund, which is partially offset by an increase in transfers
to the health fund, rising personnel costs, expanding technology needs
and greater overhead costs led to an operating operating deficit in the health fund,
requiring the general fund to provide additional funding to support public health services.
in summary, the general fund revenues total 722,703,000
and expenses total 793,686,000 resulting
in a net deficit of just under 71 million of this deficit. 31 million
was funded from planned fiscal year, 24 year end leases of reserves
and fiscal year 25 midyear actions. The remaining 40 million
that was not anticipated was funded with the use of reserves established
in previous years that included remaining long beach recovery act funds of
15.9 million cares act funding of 5.4 million and
operating reserves of 7.8 million. Now we will look
at ending fund balance and how that 185 million breaks down
fund balance is an indicator of the financial strength of a fund
and is the difference between the assets and the liabilities of the fund.
it is not the same as budgetary funds available, which is used to determine
actual available resources that can be appropriated or program for services and
projects. This table reports general fund fund balance by
various categories with three years of data for comparison purposes.
in looking at total fund balance, we can see declining balances over the past
few years from fiscal year 24 to fiscal year 23. Much of the decline
was due to the use of funding to carry out programs under the long beach recovery
act for the decline that occurred in fiscal
year 25 when compared to fiscal year 24. We already summarized the general funds
net change and fund balance of negative 71 million, which
was largely driven by continued underperformance of key tax and fee revenues,
increased cost pressures across multiple departments, and the need to
continue for continuing transfers to the health fund to support operations.
to further evaluate the general fund's financial position,
we can look at whether the city has sufficient reserves to maintain levels of service to the community
during revenue shortfalls or unanticipated expenditure increases.
and at the end of the fiscal year, the general fund reported sufficient reserves to fund expenditures
for one and a half months. The city council's financial policy is
to maintain no less than two months of emergency and operating reserves in the general
fund. And as of last september, the city is reporting on an accounting
basis less than the recommendation. One last point on general
fund reserves, emergency reserves were not impacted in fiscal year 25
and remained at 50.1 million. And operating re reserves were just under
8 million.
now we're gonna shift to performance measures that were brought up by council member duggan. At the
previous meeting, we began with the police department and the measure of priority
one response time. This measure accounts for calls that are potentially life-threatening
emergencies such as shooting, shooting domestic violence calls or a robbery and
progress. These high priority calls received the police department's fastest
response time in 2016. The average response time was 4.6 minutes
per call. Despite, despite a troubling vacancy rate in staffing levels,
which have contributed to the most significant shortages in decades, the police department
worked mandatory overtime in patrol and other critical assignments to ensure
priority one response times remain within the national average of five to
six minutes for major city police departments.
and currently that response time is averaging 5.6 minutes for long beach
on the measure of violent crimes per 1000 residents, the police department
noted the numbers reported in the financial report were using the national incident based reporting
system standard for 2025, which is a different reporting method than was
used in 2016 and often includes higher numbers in some
crime categories. However, for a more comprehensive view, we
can look at the chart on the slide showing violent crime trends in the past 20 years,
which is a more comprehensive summary of total violent crimes and reports
a decrease of 18% since 2005.
central police services require an increased investment to match rising costs of operational
law enforcement demands. As can be seen in the fully loaded cost per officer.
since 2016, public safety costs have grown and reflect broader inflationary
and fiscal challenges which have contributed to broader fiscal pressures.
on the general fund
for the fire department, we are looking at the performance measure of on-scene arrival
for emergency calls within six minutes. The fire department noted that increasing
call demand, which we can see increased by 16.6% from fiscal year 16
to fiscal year 25 in re resource commitment levels, have reduced
operational flexibility and increase the frequency with which
incidents are handled by units responding from outside their primary service areas.
this has resulted in longer traveling distances that has led to an increase in response times
with the average response time in fiscal year 25 being six minutes and 45
seconds. The fire department noted that absent additional
system capacity or reductions in demand, these factors are expected
to continue placing upward pressure on response times.
this next slide reports public works measures. The first performance measure is
number of trees trimmed and we see a decrease of 23% when comparing fiscal year
16 to fiscal year 25. Even though fewer trees were trimmed in fiscal year
25 expenses increased by 61% over the 10 year period.
on the personnel side, we only see a 5% increase in costs. This is a direct
result of public works experience in per experiencing persistent vacancies.
that has led to the loss of loss of experienced personnel contributing to lower production
levels for contract costs. However, we reported an
increase of 159% over the past 10 years, averaging an
increase of 5.5% per year. Although the city increased funding for tree trimming
services over time, fewer trees were trimmed due to contract rates increasing
substantially contributing to the average cost per tree trim increasing
from $142 to $298 per tree.
on the measure of sidewalk repairs in square feet, the fiscal year 25 amount
was less than the 10 year average due to various factors including higher than
average inflation, similar to tree trimming. Due to increased contract rates,
the city is seeing fewer sidewalk repairs completed within
existing funding levels. Additionally, contractors recently experienced workforce
workforce issues and the city too has seen staff turnover within the
sidewalk program impacting productivity.
this concludes our presentation on the fiscal year 25 annual comprehensive financial
report and we are available to answer questions at this time. Thank you.
alright, thank you very much for that presentation. We'll take
it back behind the rail. Let's see. Council member allen,
uh, yes. Uh, just thank you. I wanna thank financial management for, uh, for those reports,
so I appreciate that. Um, you know, you talk about our, our liquidity
ratio and um, our short term and current obligations at 360 6.
um, that looks really good. I do have some questions, um,
with regards to, uh, calpers and um,
so I know there's a lot of, uh, assumptions. Is there, is there, um,
is there any, uh, do we have a plan to get to 80 or 90%
with that? Is that possible? Uh, yes, it's possible.
uh, if the, um, actuarial assumptions about the economy
and about wage rate increases and hiring levels,
um, come true, you know, with, and
it's a whole bunch of assumptions. So one can never be sure
they're going to come, they're the actuaries will be correct in their projections. Uh, we should
get to 80% and I'd have to go back and look as to when.
alright, thank you. And then with our reserves, um, with two months in the
general fund is, can you, um, speak like in comparison to other big cities? Are
we kind of in this, are they in the same ballpark? Uh,
in my experience, most cities have the same, um,
reserve policy that long beach has, which is aimed for two
months of reserves in their general fund. Um,
and certainly here in california, uh, a lot of cities
are not meeting that goal right now because of the, uh,
shortfall in revenue and the pressure on costs that ruby described.
so yeah, uh, a two month goal that city council established
some years back. That's quite reasonable. Well, thank you for answering
my questions. That's it, that's all I have. Thank you. Council member duggan.
alright. Thank you so much for this, um, overview
of the city's annual financial report. This is typically
an item that passes without much discussion and that
was a very big, that was an extensive report, so I appreciate
that we took the time today to review it in greater detail.
I wanna focus on what this report tells us about the delivery of basic
city services. Am concerned that we're
not investing enough to maintain the services our community relies on
every single day. We can launch new projects
programs, but they aren't going to matter if we don't keep people safe, collect
their trash and maintain basic infrastructure such as
our streets, sidewalks, medians, and trees.
so I wanna start with emergency response. Slide
14 states that lbpd priority one response time in fiscal
year 2025 was 5.6 minutes. However,
the official, uh, annual comprehensive
financial report that was approved by city
council listed the response time as six minutes.
and the presentation also states that violent crime was 7.4 incidents
per thousand residents while the report approved by council listed at 7.9.
um, can you just explain why the numbers differ?
yes, good evening, council member, I'm actually gonna defer to financial management. That's a systems
issue, um, in, in how their systems record and round up
on certain, um, response times or numbers. And so maybe they could provide
a more intelligent response to that.
the information was compiled when the report was prepared, um, about six months ago.
so when we received, um, the most newest recent information
from the police department, they did indicate that, um,
the reporting had been revised. And so that is a difference.
um, and again, there's a difference between just the reporting
standards from fiscal year 25 to fiscal year 16 because it was a different
methodology with that was used back in fiscal year 16.
so we approved a report that was inaccurate. I think that
data is really important, our response times,
that's something that I would hope that we can look at and get accurate
as our city council approving that 'cause that's, uh,
public information. Okay.
um, I know that we are
making progress with hiring more officers, um,
but I would like to know if the current academy classes and hiring
efforts, are they sufficient to bringing response times back
down or are we looking at an error here?
no, I don't think you're looking at an error. Um, when you have more police officers that can
impact response times, uh, the hiring efforts have been significant and successful.
that's why we have our largest class ever out on the street being trained. Those 85
officers won't be deployable for 18 to 24 months from date of hire. But
when they are, that significantly impacts response time. If you're going
back to 2016, there's a variety of of contributing factors, um,
including, uh, the fact that we had more officers. And when you have more officers, you
have the ability to have an increased buffer over your base staffing,
which means more officers in certain areas can pick up calls quicker. Um,
the other thing of note is that in 2022 when we recognized that
we had a staffing issue and a staffing crisis, we invested heavily as a city.
all of you were involved in this, in hiring and recruiting and retaining. And
so, um, since 2022, I've consistently had officers out
in the field whether they were new police officers or lateral officers being trained. And that
can contribute to taking more time on each call as well. In addition,
um, there's been changes in, in legislation, the types of calls we go to and
emphasis on community policing and spending time explaining, um,
certain calls, uh, uh, when you can. Um, and it's, it, there
are so many factors that are contributing to whether response time has
gone up or gone down. Uh, what I will say is I'm, I'm proud that our response time
remains between the five to six minute national average. Um, and we've been there for over three
decades aids and I do recognize that and
that officers are doing a good job with,
uh, with responding and I'm very happy about our academy graduating
85 more officers. My second question relates to the fire department.
uh, 10 years ago the fire department arrived at emergency
calls within six minutes, 43% of the time.
uh, in fiscal year 2025, the fire department arrived at
emergency calls within six minutes, just 25.6% of the time.
I understand that call volume and operating costs have increased significantly.
thank you chief for coming up. Um, but responding
to a fire or a medical call, uh, is one
of the most fundamental services that the city provides.
what is the city doing to reverse that trend of longer fire
department response times and what additional resources would be
needed to make that measurable progress?
thank you councilwoman. Further question before I answer it. We, we utilize the
national fire protection association standard. That's a 1710 standard that that sets
uh, the standards for response times. And our goal is always to have a, a
fire unit on scene at a structure fire within four minutes or less.
um, and then on ems calls, they don't have exact time on the ems calls, but
I always look at it in regards to if a community member is in cardiac arrest,
uh, and biological death starts occurring within four to six minutes after that heart stops. So we want to have
paramedics on scene. Um, it is our goal to reduce that response
time since 2016. Uh, just recently we added paramedic
rescue 13, which is a peak low unit and we also added, uh, rescue two this
year. And that has really reduced our response time. So we'll continue to do, address their
ems calls on fires. Um, yeah, our goal is to
make sure that we have a full first alarm assignment within eight minutes, the time of
dispatch. Um, and that is our goal, uh, to make sure that we are able
to contain that fire to the room of origin on a weekly basis. You do get a, a
notification that most of our fires were able to contain to that room of origin to make sure
that we protect life and property. Alright,
council member, that is time all I gonna move the next councilperson all
oti. Uh, thank you mayor. Um, I wanna thank staff. Uh, that was an excellent presentation. Um,
I, uh, believe it or not, you answered almost all of my questions
that I had when I looked at the presentation. So, nice job. Um, I also
really appreciated the presentation 'cause I know as we talk about the budget year to year, um,
it's different when you look at the financial health of a city over time, right?
and it macro. And so oftentimes I think even in a, a budget constraints
like we're in this year, right? It's kind of, you kind of get a little myopic and think about, okay, well what are we
doing right now? You know, are we being fiscally responsible? You hear all the things
kind of conversations that are out there. And so I think it's really important for us to also take a step
back and look at the overall financial health of the city, um, as it pertains
to all of our liabilities, all of our expenses and our revenues, and think about those things,
um, year to year. And also really appreciated the comparisons, right? To allow
us to kind of benchmark ourselves for those of us who aren't, you know, we're not financial
management folks, right? I'm not an accountant. So this allows us to think about, okay,
overall what is the health of our city? And so that helped me a lot to kind of think about our budget more
broadly. Uh, and so thank you again for that. Uh, and so I just actually had, uh,
two questions. 'cause I'll admit, when I originally read the,
the annual comprehensive financial report, I thought it was interesting that it included these
performance measures. Um, and so the two questions I had was,
why do we include performance measures specifically? Are those required as
part of this annual report? Um, and then second, who chooses
what performance measures are included in the annual report.
so we apply for an award every year to the government finance officers
association that, um, that is awarded
to cities that are fully transparent, provide a
lot of financial disclosures, performance measures, and they also
provide guidelines of what that means. And so these, um, disclosures,
these performance measures are those that are suggested by this award program.
and we do receive the award every year. We like to keep it. And so we, we do
try to compile that information and include it in the, in the act for every year.
understood. So this is a, we applied for this grant from this agency and then basically
they kind of set out as it pertains to the transparency related to reports,
a set of kind of, I don't wanna say expectations, but suggestions around
what a city that is being, trying to be transparent about their finances would present. And
then we adhere to that so that we're eligible for the award every single year. Yes. Okay.
that's fantastic. I think, you know, we often hear it public comment a lot about just the
need for transparency. And so I think it's really important for us to uplift as a city
the fact that we actually, we, we are not only attempting to do it, we are
actually being, um, transparent about our finances, the fiscal health, um,
in the current and also a long term. So again, thank you again staff for this, uh, great presentation.
thank you. Council member duggan.
alright, the last item I just wanna point out, uh, it, I wanna
address tree trimming and um, I do
consider tree trimming basic core services. It protects public
safety, preserves our urban forest, and reduces
hazards and claims that we see against our city.
so the re the report shows that the cost of tree trimming has increased substantially
while the number of trees being trimmed has declined
drastically. If the cost of providing this essential service
increases, then the budget supporting it should also keep
pace. Um, residents are less likely to support replacing
or planting street trees if they don't believe that the city is
going to be able to maintain them, which means less
tree cover for our city. Um, I, the city
needs to protect our basic services and this is going
to be a major focus of mine as we begin the budget process.
so during the upcoming budget discussions, unlike our
departments to clearly present the funding and service levels for core
services such as street and sidewalk maintenance, tree trimming,
median and park maintenance and other basic infrastructure
needs, um, I think it's important that we have this, this discussion
now so we can reach a point where residents, um,
we don't want residents to no longer rely on
the essential services that the city is responsible for providing. So
thank you. Thank you council member.
super. Um, I'd just like to go back to, uh, some
of the response time statistics for the fire department. If the chief can,
um, uh, provide just a
little more background on this. Um, are,
can you give us a few of the variables between 2016 and today? Why
that response time might be a little longer? I don't think we really have
apples to apples here in in in that amount of time. Are there a few variables that you'd
like to point out? Uh, the, the difference between those years?
yes. Uh, thank you for that question. Council member superal. Yeah, some of the variables,
the biggest one is every year we're seeing an increase around approximately a thousand emergency
incidents. So when you look at 2016 to 2025,
you're seeing approximately around 9,000 more incidents. And
what occurs is, uh, when a unit is on a incident, for example,
here we're in downtown long beach, next door we have our engine one and
truck one and rescue one. If they're on an incident and another incident comes in
downtown, you have a unit that's responding from a distance. And so now
you have a longer trial of time, which is increases of response times and that's
where you're gonna see an increase in, in the response times citywide.
okay, thank you. Appreciate the explanation. Alright,
well, uh, thank you for the report and the 20 minute presentation. Oh,
oh, I just saw you. Okay. Council member kerr. No worries. Just, um, just
one quick comment on all of it. I wanna thank the, uh, the team for a really detailed and extensive
report. Um, you talked about,
I'm gonna pick on this one thing because I think it illustrates a larger point. You talked about tree trimming
and that there's a significant cost increase to the contractors, so the cost
per tree has increased, but you also mentioned that those contractors
are experiencing significant staffing shortages. And I just
wanna bring attention to the larger context of all of the things that we're
talking about. That there are forces that are impacting all of the things in
our budget that are out of our control. They very well may be experiencing staffing
shortages because we know that landscaping companies often
work with immigrant communities. We know that their immigrant community has been under attack
from the federal administration. People aren't going to work. Um,
so when we talk about the minutiae for me, we get
in the weeds and we get in our long beach bubble. But it's important, I think as we enter
budget season to acknowledge that there are really big forces happening
that impact us in, in significant ways that
might have nothing to do with the work that we're doing here in long beach or the way that
we're trying to do the work in long beach. Um, so I just wanted to take a moment because
that was really caught me in a different way tonight.
so, um, thank you for the report. That's just my comments. Thank
you. Alright, great perspective, great context.
and I wanna thank you all for the presentation. Now, I know that
normally we wouldn't go in deep on this annual report and it's my hope that we
don't do this annually. My hope is that
I know we have a study session early in the budget development
process. And I think from what I've heard from most of the council
members, they want to hear and they want it stated publicly. Some of the
statements around, are we doing the right things about our pensions? Are
we make doing the right things about our fiscal policies and our
reserves? Where do we compare to other california cities
as it relates to planning for the future? How's our credit and how
are we evaluated compared to other cities of our jurisdiction? And I think
if we make sure that in our early council presentation
that we do in like january, february, whenever we do that, we touch
on those things just so there's a little bit of assurance publicly that council members
can point to, to say, yeah, we may have, uh, short term
fiscal challenges with this upcoming budget, but we're maintaining our commitment
of fidelity. So our long-term financial fiscal practices, here's where you rank and compare
to other cities. I think that might be a, an efficient way to have this conversation
in context. And we can prepare for it every year to show are we changing course? Are we still
on course? And then maybe every few years we take a deeper dive.
the other part, uh, that I would mention is I think it's important.
I know it's very easy and we hear it in the community all the time to say
we're not as safe as we were 20 years ago or 40 years ago,
or we are not, we don't have the services. I remember the good old days, things
have changed. Number one, the way we calculate our data changes
all the time and we don't calculate our data the same way as we did years ago.
and then the cost of doing business and providing services has grown
significantly and dramatically. I think it's important for folks to understand that.
and we're seeing the long term effects of proposition 13 in california
where other states have the ability to their property taxes grow
and ours do not. Not at the same rate on, um, residential,
uh, businesses and properties, which majority of our revenue comes from
property taxes. And we we're not apples to apples. I hear it all the time. Hey
mayor ami balances budget passed, taxes on the rich and didn't pass the poor.
we don't even have that bill in california to just levy attacks by city council. Action. Everything
goes to the voters. So it's important to put in context,
um, and in perspective that yeah, it's different now.
policies that were passed 20 years ago restricted our hands and you cannot grow your
services to keep pace with your expectations for 20 years ago, which forces us
to have long-term revenue growth plans and strategies of embracing
new industries and finding new ways to maximize revenue. So I
say all that to say this was a good presentation. These questions are not gonna stop.
I think we should plan for it. And this is less to financial management 'cause you don't
set the agenda for the city council. This is me looking at you, but really talking to
the council members. We should talk about this in context,
not when we see some statistics stand out in the budget because
we're no, the media isn't gonna tell the story for us and we gotta be really responsible and
how we have this conversation responsibly, thoughtfully, and within context
so that we can actually make smart decisions as a body within the context of
everything that's happening globally and how it impacts our, our revenue.
so those are my perspectives on this as council. Thank you for the discussion. Is there any
public comment? There's no public comment on this item. Members,
please cast your vote.
motion is carried. You know, no disrespect to my fellow mayor ami, but, you know, long
beach and new york are not the same. Alright, now we're gonna go to 34. Please
report from financial management recommendation to receive and file the fy 26
midyear budget performance report, providing an update on the city
of long beach's fy 26 financial status and projections citywide.
all right, financial management wasn't gone for long. They are back. Uh,
okay, so I, I just wanna remind the council like this is really, uh,
uh, update on the, on how we closed out fy 26, but this isn't the
fy 27. Um, and really remind the public this is not the fy 27 budget
discussion. We're getting to that in the next, um, you know, just shy of two
weeks, we'll be introducing the upcoming budget and recommendations and we'll have a full conversation there.
this is, uh, uh, the way we close out fy 26
and a preview of some of the impacts that will impact our upcoming budget.
tom. Thank you mr. Mayor. Uh, yeah. So, uh, exactly
right. So this is about, um, kind of an indication of how the current year is going. Uh, we've
had, uh, several discussions, uh, uh, about the budget over the last year. Uh, and so
this is kind of as we get close to the end of fy 26, what we are experiencing.
uh, and, uh, I think, uh, council member ker said it well. There's a lot of external,
uh, things that happen elsewhere that has pressure on our budget. It affects our residents. When
it affects our resident, it affects the city. And so we're gonna talk about some of those things, uh, tonight.
uh, first of all, where does the revenue come from? Um, so we always like to do a little bit
of grounding. Uh, so we do have, as you see that, that pie, lots of different
types of revenue. We're a pretty diversified, uh, city. If you were an east coast
city, that, um, bar, uh, chart would look like 90% property tax. Uh,
and, uh, and so in california, because of a lot of things that have happened with prop
13 and all these other, uh, uh, restricted restrictions on revenue that, uh,
cities have had to adapt and look at all different ways to fund government services.
uh, but, uh, our top three are property tax, sales tax and utility users and franchise
fees. Uh, so you can see the percentage there. And then taxes in general make up about
72% of our general fund revenue. So what's been going
on in fy 26? Um, we have seen, uh, pretty dramatic drop in
key revenues. Uh, we experienced that for the fy 25 budget just
a little while ago. And, uh, uh, it's not a secret that there's some very turbulent financial
times out there that our residents are feeling and, uh, and our employees are
feeling. And also, uh, our, our budget feels. So, uh, we've had
a 14, almost $15 million drop in utility users tax.
uh, we've had about a $10 million drop in interest earnings, uh, which is related to,
uh, national policy as well as us. Um, you know, having less cash to
invest, uh, uh, property tax has not come in, uh, as strongly as
as we had hoped. Uh, and the same thing with sales tax has been, uh, non mesure
not coming in quite as strongly as we had hoped. Uh, where do
the funds go? Um, uh, 65% of our funds go to public safety. So,
and, uh, something like 80% of our funds go to people. So, uh,
the the dollars are really there for people who provide services, uh, and
help our community. And so 65% is public safety, and you can see the
other sections of community service, public works and legislative and, and general government.
and so what's been driving, uh, on the expense side, um, it is really the increased
cost of the existing services. So it's not that we have been spending new programs
and adding new staff and, and going into new areas that we haven't before.
it is, uh, the discussion that we just had, which is how do we keep pace with
all those increased costs with, um, with providing those existing
services. So think of it this way, if you're providing a service and the cost went
up 10%, you either need to reduce the service by 10%, or
you need to go find 10% of additional revenue to keep the same amount of service.
so even though the amount of dollars in that program has gone up, you haven't received any more
service. You're basically paying for that cost of, of the existing service. And that's what we're seeing.
one of the big areas that is driving cost is, is actually a very good area, which
is we've been investing, uh, in our public safety, uh, in bringing in additional,
uh, graduates into our academy. It's been about 235
people who have graduated from our academy, uh, over the past four years,
uh, on the police side. And then you can see the numbers there. Um, it's, uh, close
to, you know, close to a hundred on the fire side. And so that's been
very deliberate. Uh, mayor and council heard from our community that we need, uh, to reduce
our vacancies and police and fire. And so, uh, we have, uh, uh, made
a lot of efforts at that and it's worked. Um, we are on the
right path. Our police, uh, sworn vacancy rate last year was 26%
happy to report now it is 13%, uh, within those,
I'm sorry, can you say that one more time, tom? I, we cut it in half like I've heard you. Okay. Yes.
alright, we cut police, uh, uh, uh, police vacancy rate in half. Alright,
just checking. Uh, the chief mentioned this too. The, uh, part of those are our 85 brand new officers,
um, who we've, we've graduated the largest academy class in our generation. Uh,
and they're still in training even though they have completed the academy, they're still partnered
up. They're not a fully fledged, um, uh, deployable police officer, but they're out
there, they're doing the work, uh, and getting trained, uh, on the fire side.
that percent is now 3.2%. Uh, it's one of the lowest in the city for
a vacancy rate. Uh, as we've been staffing up in our, in our firehouses, there's
a cost to that. Um, and so, um, we recently did some, uh, agreements with
our, our two, uh, associations. And, uh, we heard very clearly from the members
that they needed extra ability to bring in people and to retain the
officers we had. So we had to slow the, uh, uh, officers leaving, and
we needed to also have, uh, the resources to bring on additional officers.
so that has been a key area of focus. And the third is in the,
the health department. So we've talked about revenue, we've talked about police and fire hiring and hiring
throughout the city. Uh, and the third is the health department. Uh, it's
also not a secret that we have had a lot of lost revenue coming from the federal government
and state and county into our health department, but also very little additional
support for the general cost it takes to run health programs. And
so, uh, those costs continue to rise. It is about an $11 million now,
subsidy from the general fund, what used to be about zero or $1 million, then
grew to two to three, then you know, five to six and is now 11.
uh, and again, those aren't because new services were provided, it's the cost of
the existing services, uh, now requires that level of general fund support.
so what was our strategy? What have we done about did about this? Uh, we started early last year.
uh, we started, as we started to see this, uh, real change in
the economy, uh, and these outside pressures, we started a general fund
savings target. So that started at 1% and it was, uh, bumped up to 3%.
and that means we're actively managing our vacant positions. We're limiting fills,
um, uh, filling to essential operations. Uh, in some areas we're,
uh, reducing overtime and other areas we're relying more on overtime as we're not
filling positions. So each department had the ability to, um, meet
that 3% savings target. Um, the, there were no significant
disruptions during, uh, during this time. Uh, it, uh, it is basically
a way to slow down spending. And so these weren't budget cuts, but it was a way to manage
those costs. Uh, but we knew it was not going to fully cover the fy
20 cent six, uh, deficit that we were looking at.
I'm proud to report that when we called on every single department to try to hit
that 3% savings, uh, we met our goal. So, uh, we either met
or exceeded in just about every department. Uh, again, this was
active management. There were some departments that if we had done that, we would've seen, uh, the full 3%.
we would've seen a huge impact to the community. And so some of those are 2.7%
or 2.5. Some were even more. Some went all the way up to six and 7%.
uh, I am very grateful also to the mayor and city council who hit their 3%
savings target as well. So, uh, every single one of you took part in that. And
so, uh, that has been achieved. And so
again, we were able to do this without any major program cuts. But it doesn't mean it
wasn't stress on the organization. It wasn't, uh, there were things that came in where
community would ask, well, can't you do this and spend some overtime? Or, you know, can't you add
to the budget on this? And the answer this year was, no, we need to manage to that 3%.
and so there was less ability and flexibility, especially for unbudgeted
requests. And we also, you know, uh, use, uh, less outside contract
support, which we sometimes use to supplement services.
so there's some balancing solutions, uh, that we need to close fy 26. Um,
and so even with that, uh, we, uh, are transitioning and,
uh, from in our fleet we are funded, uh, we have a lot of cash set aside in our fleet.
uh, we set aside money every single year to fund, uh, our fleet replacement,
which is approximately every five years we're funding, uh, our fleet. And so this year
we're looking at actually using a lease financing approach, uh, which will free up about $15 million.
uh, you'll see a little bit more of this, and we'll get into this in the next year budget, uh,
about what this could look like in the future. Um, and so, uh, kevin ryer
can answer some questions on that. Most importantly, this won't have any impact on our fleet. Our
vehicles, uh, will still be maintained. They'll still be, uh, replaced. Um,
uh, but it does, uh, help with some additional, uh, cash to help in this year.
uh, same thing with, uh, interest earnings and the internal service funds, and also,
uh, uh, not setting aside about a million dollars worth of oil abandonment.
so even with that, uh, we, with our 3% savings, uh, and, and departments all
saving money, uh, and those, those solutions, we still had about a $27 million
use of reserves, uh, that were projected to need by the end of this
fiscal year. That's what reserves are for. Uh, you set aside dollars to, uh,
when you have these unexpected issues come up throughout the year, you can rely on your reserves,
but what's important is that you also create a plan to replace them. Uh,
and so I'll get to that in a second, but, uh, we're using our operating reserve, uh, 4.6 million.
we have a rainy day fund, um, measure b, that's 3.5 million.
we have an unfunded liability reserve of 2.8 million. And then ultimately this
year, we do need to, uh, rely on the emergency reserve, about 16.5 million
of the $50 million. And
so, again, um, use of reserves is not necessarily a bad thing, uh, but it
can't be done year after year after year. And so, uh, they're really there for temporary
support when revenue softened or expenditures, uh, increase. And so, um,
it is strongly encouraged that we, uh, create a plan through the fy
27 budget to restore those levels. And so I will be presenting a structurally
balanced budget to you to address these issues and a plan to replenish the reserves.
so there are some other key highlights out there. Um, in measure a, um, uh, we do
have a $66.7 million, um, adopted budget target. And that
actually came in, um, a little bit over. So it's $67 million.
and so we've got a contingency reserve set aside, a measure a, there were no impacts to
measure a funded projects. Um, those were all infrastructure or public safety. And that
continues in tidelands. We've actually seen a little bit better financial
performance than we had expected. Uh, the harbor transfer has actually grown, um,
and is expected to grow more in the, in the coming year. Uh, we continue
to see some transfer from oil revenue, and we'll have some, uh, tidelands
dollars that we're expecting to this year, end the year. With that, we can propose in
the fy 27 budget, but we're still seeing impacts, um, on, on
oil production from senate bill 1137. Uh, and, uh, continue
to see some, uh, some cost pressures at our convention center
in the special advertising and promotions fund. This is, uh, the special fund that can
only fund things related to, uh, promotions of the city. Uh,
and so that was voted on by voters decades ago. Uh, transit occupancy tax,
uh, our hotel bed tax is still doing very well. Uh, we're one of the leading cities
in california in the area of tourism. So we are leading, uh, san diego
and anaheim and phoenix and san and, uh, los angeles and san francisco.
and so, uh, we are continuing to see those revenues where others are, are seeing, uh, lower
revenues. Uh, in our marina fund, we're projecting a surplus this year of about 2.8 million.
and in the queen mary fund, uh, the queen mary continues to, to, uh,
meet its, uh, its, uh, goals. And so there is a, uh, $1.25 million
surplus and a $200,000 positive balance. Uh, even with, uh, the new
addition of the amphitheater and the ship operations are covering their cost right now, and they're looking at
new ways to, uh, continue to increase revenue.
so this presentation's almost done, but I do wanna do a little bit of mythbusters just to
help us all remind ourselves of some of the things we hear out there. Um, uh,
governments, uh, finance is complex. Uh, we don't just have one fund called the general
fund that everything goes into. Most of our funds are actually
in special funds. They're in funds that are restricted by state law. California
is unique. And then we have a lot of voter referendums that says exactly
certain funds can only be spent for certain items. And so
I do wanna talk a little bit about some of the mythbusters that we hear out there. I hear from time to time,
how can we build bike lanes when we have a deficit? Uh, I don't like bike lanes.
you know, I don't think they're needed. Bike lanes are almost all completely grant
funded. They come from state and federal government, and you cannot use bike
lane funding to fund police or fire or potholes or those other things.
so, um, that goes for a lot of our infrastructure projects. We still
build infrastructure even when we have these shortfalls, those are restricted funds.
we hear this one a lot too. Why is the city spending money on an amphitheater when
we have a deficit? Uh, very similarly, completely different funding
sources cannot be used in the general fund. So the money that was used to
build the amphitheater, uh, it is $27 million. And we
see that people say, you have a $27 million, uh, shortfall and you spent 27
on the amphitheater. That's basic math. It actually isn't. Uh, that is,
those are not comparable. And so the amphitheater is actually a way to grow
revenues in the general fund. So we fund it out of a special fund that can only be used
by the beach, and therefore it can also help create economic activity in our city.
we hear this too, about our either refuse or the port or the airport. Um,
why do we not tax those things or bring that money into the general fund?
again, we are legally prohibited and restricted from doing that. That is not allowed in california.
we hear that, you know, the deficits due to overspending, that the council has authorized all
these new positions and programs and things that are not priorities. That is not
true. Uh, we have stayed, uh, uh, pretty, um, focused on what
those core services are, but the cost of the core services are more expensive.
so it is, uh, an increase in the cost of providing those services, not an
increase in overspending. We also hear, isn't the current deficit the worst
it's ever been? Uh, no. Uh, definitely not. During the great recession. Uh,
we had year after year of major reductions, and even before that, uh, back in the,
uh, after september 11th as a percentage, we were looking at about 30 to
40% of the general fund had to be, uh, reduced back then, which is, uh, much, much different
than where we are today. And then finally, um, what are we doing
to grow revenue? Why aren't there more things to do to grow revenue? We have a lot of, uh,
economic development underway. We have programs like space beach and grow long beach, uh,
to really grow our economy into new, uh, areas and to bring additional tax
revenue into the city. So, uh, just in
summary, looking forward, uh, we do have to use reserves this year, um, and including
the reserving, uh, the emergency reserve, which is a concern, but we
must address it going forward. So, uh, reserves are there, again, to
temporarily address these issues. And, uh, we will be presenting a proposed
structurally balanced budget to you to address these. Uh, it'll be difficult,
but it is the right thing to do. And, uh, I have every faith that the council will consider
that and do whatever you need to do to make, uh, modifications and pass a structurally
balanced budget. Uh, and then to create a plan over the next several years
to continue to replace our reserves and grow our reserves. 'cause there will be times in the future
where we're gonna need to, to rely on reserves again. So
with that, um, the team is here as well to help me answer any questions. Uh, and I really appreciate,
uh, the chance to present this to you tonight. All right. Thank
you for that, uh, presentation we're gonna take. We're
public comment. Is there any public comment here?
no public comment on this item. All right. Now we'll go to council questions. Council member
rick oti. Also, nobody, nobody in the public cares about the budget
as much as we do. That's too bad. That's all right. We love it.
um, thank you for that. It was a great presentation. Um, and again, I think it's just a sobering
reminder of where we're at, right? But also where we're going. Um, and I think you
all are putting forward and I'm, um, looking forward to seeing the budget and the
plan moving forward around, uh, replacing, you know, our emergency revenues,
um, and, you know, how we're, you know, the balanced budget, um, and how
we are going to continue to, uh, deliver services, um, but also
be responsible about our current fi um, financial position as a city. Uh, just
a couple of just clarifying questions. Um, I often get a lot of people who ask, when
I look at, say, slide three, where I say key revenue shortfalls, and they're just like, well,
why, you know, why was the city, you know, why were we, uh, so off,
uh, on our utility users tax or, you know, our estimates around property tax. Um,
can you just talk a little bit about just the, the general kind of macro economy, um, and
why we're seeing some of these decreases in revenue? Just to remind the public.
sure. Let me go by, um, size of revenue on the, and, uh,
highest to lowest. So property tax, uh, it's, it's
1,000,001 short on a $200 million base. So that's half a percent.
interestingly. Um, fy 26 property tax revenue for
us and every other taxing jurisdiction in los angeles county,
um, is experiencing slightly lower property tax because of,
uh, the january, 2025, uh, wildfires, um,
that affected property tax payments in altadena and
um, um, pacific
palisades. Yeah, pacific palisades, I almost said pacific heights 'cause I'm from san francisco. Um,
that shortfall in property tax payments gets spread amongst
all taxing jurisdictions in los angeles county. We'll
eventually make it up. Um, but for now, there's a slight decline
in property tax. Uh, second largest is sales tax. Um,
that's on a base of about 90 million. So it's only half a percent
off, less than half a, about a half a percent off. But I've made much bigger
forecast errors than that, uh, even, even here in my time in
long beach. And that's because forecasting consumer
behavior on taxable goods is very difficult.
um, if, if I might be indulged for a moment of humor, um,
in, uh, the 1930 nobel prize
winner for physics was a danish physicist by the name of neils
bohr, bohr. And he's famous for saying
prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.
and that's the difficulty with sales tax forecasting. It's really
hard to know what's gonna happen with consumer behavior. Um,
so we're not that far off. Uh, interest earnings, the
city manager explained, um, that we have less cash to
invest on behalf of the general fund because we're using reserves.
but the big miss is then the utility user tax. That's the big miss that I made. Mm-hmm
. And that's, uh, largely down to measure lb not
coming in anywhere near where I and southern cal
edison thought it would be. And we have the city auditor
doing a formal audit of socal gas and the underlying
utility gas, um, utility users, tax, gas paying
accounts to figure out why, because I couldn't get anywhere with
socal gas because I don't have the audit power. So understood. That's
a big miss. Understood. Okay. And that's helpful for me 'cause I know we've talked about, um,
having the city audit to do that investigation, so it sounds like that is still underway for us to
determine the underlying factors related to that. Yeah. Confirm today, uh, she and
I spoke and they're working very hard on this, so, uh, but it does take a lot to go and get all the records
we need to be able to do that. Understood. Uh, and then two additional questions. So one
was, uh, looking at slide 10 around the year end savings averages, obviously, uh,
you um, you all did a uh, and we've been talking about the ongoing issues
with our, um, our health department, unfortunately. Um, can you talk a little bit about,
um, economic development opportunity? 'cause it looks like they had, um, overages
and I just wanted to know why. Yeah, so, um, that has been, uh, chronic that
it happens, uh, um, uh, over and over again. And it's really because of where we record
the expenses. So they have a pretty small general fund budget for their,
um, for their economic development opportunity, um, work. But they
also are the repository for any time that we buy a building. Um, then if
we buy a building midyear, they have the ability they have to fund the operating
and the security and the utilities, none of which they have budget
for. And so, uh, they essentially absorb those expenses and do whatever they can to
manage within that. And then, uh, we give a budget correction at the end of the year. So,
uh, this was all telegraphed, this wasn't a surprise. Um, uh, these are things
that, you know, they get, you know, given during the year that then they have to, uh, address
and some of these projects, you know, they'll carry for two or three or four years while
we work on the, um, the, uh, you know, the infrastructure project to
formally turn it over, uh, to the operating department. Understood. Um, mayor,
can I ask one more question? Um, and the last question is for slide
12, uh, talking about the one-time balancing solutions, um, we talked about fleet
financing and it talks about transitioning from a cash funded fleet replacement model to a lease
financing approach for, uh, for your all general fund vehicles. I'm
assuming this has to do with our ongoing conversation, uh, kevin, about long
kind of longer, these longer term assets and then spreading that kind of rev, that kind
of expense and cost over time. I'm assuming that's related to this? Yes,
it is related to that. That's correct. Yeah. And if you think about in your own, uh,
personal life, most people, uh, get a short term car loan to pay pay for a car. So
even if you had 50, $60,000, you know, to set, you know, to, to
buy a new car, um, you might not, you know, choose to use all your cash at
once. And so you would then spread that out over five years. That's essentially what this is,
is we would then, we're currently setting aside this money in cash every year
for five years, and then we collect the cash and pay for it. Uh, this allows us to basically
use some, uh, very low, um, financing 'cause we are a government, uh, to
be able to, uh, use this cash for other purposes while we continue to fund
our fleet. Understood. Alright, thank you so much,
council member allen. Yes. Uh, thank you and thank you financial management and
all the departments, uh, for providing this, uh, mid-year update
and for being so, uh, transparent about the challenges that
we have ahead of us. Um, I also appreciate tom, um, you explaining
how we're funded because we'll, we'll have to continue
to talk to the public and help them to understand that, um, you
know, we hear the same thing, I'm sure all of our offices do. Like, why are you spending money here?
we should be doing this. And so I think us continuing to educate,
uh, the public, um, it was really great and I do appreciate you did a great job at explaining
that. Um, I think this, uh, report makes it clear that the city
is facing both, um, lower than expected revenues and,
um, higher costs for, uh, maintaining, uh, those services.
um, I do appreciate that reserves and other one-time solutions are
helping us avoid immediate service reductions, but
we also know that those are, uh, just, uh, temporary, uh,
solutions, um, as we begin fy 2027
budget process. Um, and I look forward to serving, uh, with the chair
on the boc. I think it's important, um, that we receive clear information,
um, and about the proposed, uh, reductions, which I know we
will. And then how the services employees are being affected and how,
um, the city plans to, uh, to build those reserves.
and our goal must be to protect essential services while developing
a responsible, sustainable plan that reflects the revenue
the city can realist, realistically expect and depend on.
so, uh, thank you again, um, for, uh, your presentation.
thank you. Council member sorrow. Yes. To add to my
colleagues' comments, I appreciate this presentation. It's a little bit more digestible
in general to have visuals and you know, one of my favorite shows
is mythbusters. I love that show, and
I think it's, uh, one of my requests was how do we make it digestible to the public
who doesn't understand, um, the, the ways
that budget works for a public entity versus a small business
or, uh, even individual budgets, home budgets.
I think it's hard to understand that you get other source of revenue that's
restricted. I think nonprofits understand that because you have restricted
grants to spend it for specific things. But I think that
one of the areas, because I'm not going to be here on august 4th and
we're gonna be doing a due to work, my other jobs,
uh, travel , uh, I would like to be here for it, but, um,
I know there's gonna be health and human service presentation, but one of the areas I think
would require a lot of myth busting is around how we're spending
our homeless services dollars. I think that there's a, because
it's such, uh, an important issue to all of our residents
and businesses, it would be great if there's a way we can make sure we're
lifting out, um, uh, facts about
wh why certain dollars are being spent a certain way.
um, because as we have our, uh, homeless time count come
out, it's important we share well what, where those
dollars came from and how they're spent in a myth busting way. It also
makes it more entertaining, right? It's like, oh, that's a myth. What,
I gotta check this out, right? So anyway, thank you very much. Um, look
forward to hearing more from the team on, um, how we're gonna close
the deficit, but also make sure we're responsibly,
uh, preparing for our future, uh, budget and, um,
and our expenses as well. Thank you. Thank you. And, uh, just, uh, to help share,
we have been starting to do actual myth busters. We've been carrying that in our presentations
and we have a, a, I think it's one page, you know, both sides. Um,
myth busters very simply broken down. Can you do this? No, you can't. Can you know,
did this this happen? No, it didn't. Um, those are more about general budget things
that at long beach.gov/budget, um, but we can start looking at that
for some other things as well. And I hope we don't get copyright infringement for mythbusters.
so, well, as a, just quick, if there's a way to make sure the
science researcher in me ask if we can reference where that information
comes from so that people know that we're drawing from facts
and not city, um, you know, city,
uh, expertise, knowledge, ,
uh, I think it might be worth paying for the license. Just get ahead of it. It's gonna be a lot more myth
busting. Long beach myth buster. And we don't need to get a line
myth, myth, figure out if we can do a lb in there somehow.
uh, council member duggan.
um, alright. Yes, the myth busters are great. I think it's important for
people to understand what is the truth and what perception
is. So, but I also think it's important that, uh, council
clearly understands what services are being reduced
or deprioritized in order for departments to hit their
3% goal. So my office has heard, ex
heard this over and over, and we hear from residents. We, by happenstance,
I have three examples. Uh, we heard from examples
of things that were cut as part of the 3%
reduction or savings. First of all, we heard that from a community member that
the long beach police department was no longer supporting county led cleanups
along our waterway. We didn't know that we were struggling
with it. That can become a public safety concern,
but it was part of that 3% savings. Um,
we also heard that the city isn't removing tree stumps
to save money and, um,
because funding has been exhausted, but when
a tree stump isn't removed, people aren't going to be able to replace the
tree. It doesn't look very good when you're driving down the street.
the third example is, uh, we were told that tree trimming that
would be a, a, a safety measure to,
um, widen, uh, visibility around
crosswalks, traffic signs that
may not be a priority. And tree trimming is important
in these situations, uh, and potential
reduction in these services that my
office isn't learning about. We're learning, again by happenstance through
residents, um, that makes it more difficult
for us to be blindsided when residents are hearing it before
us. So can staff provide more details
on which services have been reduced, paused,
delayed deprioritized, um, as part of this
3% target savings? And if it,
it's a lot. So if we can have a tff on that, unless
you can go through more of those three percents, the tff would
be great. So we have it in writing and we can share with our residents.
yes. Um, so those have been in some of our financial reports, uh, so we can pull that part
out and give you some of that information. So yeah, a 3% savings and saving $20 million
out of the budget doesn't come without any sort of impact. So we were pretty
clear early on when we did these savings that there will be impacts, but we're going
to minimize the effect on the public as much as possible. So first we looked internally,
uh, and said, what can we do if we're not gonna fill certain admin positions and others? Um,
there's not a list where we say cut these things. This was really budget management
that each individual department, uh, needed to come up with. And so for
those three examples, I can give good examples on those. We've heard some of that too.
uh, quality of life, um, was not cut in the budget. Uh, we still have the exact same amount
of quality of life officers. What we don't have is their extra overtime that
they were doing. So the police department to save, I believe their, it was in the,
you know, $10 million range needed to basically say, I can own, I'm
gonna prioritize our overtime for our patrols call for spon or
call for service. So, uh, that's where their overtime went. Uh, we had set aside
over several years money to do additional work in the, um, riverbeds
that the county's not doing. Um, and so that was funding, uh, our ability of quality
of life to go above and beyond when that account is exhausted and
they didn't have any other additional overtime to draw on. They had to basically do it within
their existing services. So, uh, that just meant we couldn't go above and beyond
and do more. Uh, same thing with tree trumps or tree stumps. Uh, we don't
really have a very large budget for tree stumps. And so, uh, in the past, uh, public
service would just try to get it done. If more requests came in than funded, they'd try
to save somewhere else. But when we take their ability to, um, to
save somewhere else by taking that 3%, they have nowhere else to put those expenses.
and so they would essentially get to their budget and then say, we're gonna have to wait until we get
more budget. And so again, we didn't cut the program tree trimming and tree
stumps are still there, but we ran out of capacity to do extra. Um,
and then on the tree trimming as well, so we have our grid tree trimming and that continued.
uh, but then, um, same thing. A lot of about those extra limbs and things are
done on overtime and so, uh, they still go out and do those and we can still prioritize
safety. Uh, but uh, we don't have as many resources to do those, especially
the, the alternative ones. Uh, so there's a, you know, basically every department had
to make those kind of funding decisions. Some chose to reduce
overtime, some chose to not fill positions and increase overtime. And so I give
each department director that flexibility to manage that 3%.
I just think when safety concerns are a part of these budget
savings, we really need to look at our
basic services related to safety. Yeah.
and so that is the difference between the, the budget management and the budget, you know,
reductions this year and trying to reduce the 3%. It's really not a good strategy long term
to do this by percentages. So, um, it's sometimes tempting that,
um, you know, the residents will say, well just reduce everyone's budget by two, five, 7%
and you're done. It's really important in the budget process to outline what those
specific impacts are gonna be and have a public policy debate and have your
your council be able to make those decisions. So that is what you get to do in,
in august. Um, it won't be an easy task. It'll be some, some difficult choices,
but that those are actual budget reductions as opposed to budget management. We will
spell out this is what we are gonna have to reduce and then there'll be, there'll
be clear, you know, um, understanding of what those service impacts
will be and that's what the council will have to vote on and either accept or reject or give an
alternative and figure out something else.
alright, thank you. Councilman carr. Yeah, I wanna thank the team for a presentation.
um, and the rec only question I had, uh, dr. Ricks odi asked, which
was, um, how do we make the projections for the budget on taxes? And
I appreciate you giving us a really straightforward, honest answer
that is shareable. Um, the piece about the property taxes, I don't
think a lot of people understood that there is kind of a sharing of the pain on that.
um, and also that you have engaged the auditor's office to see how,
um, that projection was so off and making sure that everything, um,
is happening the way that it should be. So, um, I appreciate the straightforward
responses. Thank you. Alright, well, uh, good
budget management. We wish the circumstances were different. I think, uh, we have to
continue our focus on revenue growth and diversification, and we need to figure out what happened with measure
lb. We projected $15 million in general fund
revenue from that measure. Uh, I think the number was like 90 million
between now and 23rd. Some crazy number like that. It's crazy. Seems crazy now, but it
was, you know, voters voted for that at 80%, right? So I think there's
an expectation. So we'll be, you know, we'll be asking the auditor to make their
her number one focus, um, on ensuring that we are getting, uh,
our fair share and that, uh, our, our, you know, every resident in long beach
pays the utility users tax and show should the power plants, we put it on the ballot, people
voted for it, that's $15 million in restorations that could potentially be there. Uh,
so that needs to be our focus more to come, uh, in the upcoming budget presentation.
uh, that said, did we already do public comment here? Okay. Members, please cast
your vote.
motion is carried. 35 report
from public works recommendation to adopt a resolution to execute a contract and any necessary
documents, including any necessary subsequent amendments with landscape
structures for providing outdoor fitness equipment, playground equipment, water play
equipment, installation, servicing, site furnishing and related products,
accessories and services on an as needed basis in a total contract amount,
not to exceed $5 million citywide. Thank you. Is there any public
comment? Yes, there is
one public comment, speaker need for transparency. If you're still in the
audience, please come forward.
that concludes public comment. Members, please cast your vote.
motion is carried. Thank you. Now we'll go to our final public comment.
there are six speakers signed up. Need for transparency,
long beach, gray panthers, and zoom, russell c. Waters,
fred veto, and jackson martin,
if I can have need for transparency, who is no, no longer in the audience. Next,
if you heard your name, please come forward.
next speaker is long beach, gray panthers and zoom. We have
long beach gray panthers on zoom. You are now unmuted.
your time starts now.
long beach gray panthers, your time starts.
we're gonna move on to the next public speaker, russell c. Water.
hi, how are you? Uh, you may remember me a a few years
ago I was in there crying with my child who had been taken from
d by dcfs at the behest of your deputy
city attorney. Today I want to talk about the crown
act. And specifically I want talk about the
occupational provisions of the crown act. Now,
the crown act passed in 2019, in june, I think it
was in july. It went into effect in january
of 2020. We had a pandemic. Nobody
realized what was going on. We came out in 21, 20 21,
and we went and we began to conduct ourselves freely based on the crown
act. And immediately we were attacked by the city,
but not just any attack. It was a multi-agency
task force to take us down. It was so bad
that sergeant sono had to stop the illegal
raid that lets you know that it was a federal
crime. Do you know when the last time it's been
since law enforcement had to
stop the city attorney's office from
attacking black people for their civil rights? It was reconstruction
the first time that it's happened in our history since reconstruction.
now the ticket came in, we went to court, I won.
you've never found out about it. You didn't know that the occupational provisions of
the crown act were the law of long beach. You know why? We know you didn't know? Because
you never made any changes to the protocols. You never made
any changes to the licensing. You never made any changes
to the enforcement. The police were still out there giving people tickets
and you passed laws to un to undermine, to nullify
the law. You are in what they call monell
territory like ferguson. That's where you are right now because
you had a chance to adjust. You didn't, it went to court, you lost,
you didn't acknowledge it. And then you went on to pass all
kinds of ordinances that undermined it. And then on top of that, you
gotta add the corruption. So now let me tell you where we are.
you have 30 days to meet our demands. If you do
not meet our demands, we are filing any a motion
for summary judgment. One phone call. It's over.
as soon as sergeant solorzano admits that he had to call off
the entire operation led by your deputy
city attorney, it's over. I'm letting you know
here. The affidavit is right here. Each of you will have a copy.
next speaker, please. Fred,
is there fred in the audience? Yes. ? Yes.
okay.
hello. Uh, I'm here tonight to, to ask you why
the city of long beach okayed a hauling contract with
republic services. We called you because
we had some trash in our yard, building trash that needed to be disposed. We
were told we needed to use a private holder hauler. We were given the
name of republic services and it's been a nightmarish experience.
the bill has been $1,800 instead of $1,800. And we've
had all sorts of problems with communication, failure to
act lies, overcharging, et cetera. Now
anybody who, who did their due diligence would know that this is
a horrible company. If you go online like I did within
an hour, I found out that all of the major services
that evaluate the, uh, competency of a company
give this company 1.1 out
of a lowest score of one. 90% of people who deal
with this company give it the worst possible rating. And
yet, your city has signed a contract with this organization.
this organization is the second biggest hauler in the united states.
it's 35% owned by bill gates, and they have,
uh, all sorts. They have $177 million
in, in, in, uh, judgments against them. They've had
a garbage strike in our neighboring seal beach. They've had two
huge lawsuits in huntington beach. And it goes on and
on and on. And I'm confused how
a competent, uh, city could have signed a
contract with this, this predatory company. This company
goes after people and tries to take their homes in,
in when they, when they, uh, uh, protest the, uh, false
charges that have been, uh, put into their bills.
uh, and I hope there's a newspaper reporter around because there's a, there's an
interesting story. Uh, we need to find out how the city of long
beach signed this company. Who evaluated the contract, who
did their due diligence, uh, who signed off on it, city council members,
uh, city managers, mayors, et cetera. What about the city lawyers who evaluated
this contract? Uh, there's something rotten, uh, with
this, this process. Uh, the city, when we called the
city, they gave us this, they gave us three names, but this
was the name on the top of the list. Uh, and we followed the advice and
got stung badly. Thank you very much.
next speaker is v two and then jackson.
hi, my name is vitu. I am a resident of long beach. I live
in the third district. I am a rising senior at wilson high
school. I come here today because I'm passionate about the environment.
I'm passionate about, uh, trees and expanding access to
our green spaces and preserving those green spaces here in long beach. I believe trees
are essential. They're essential to our wellbeing. They're essential to our health. They're essential
to making our neighborhoods look, um, like places that you want to live in.
they are, they're proven to help,
um, combat climate change, reduce,
uh, um, the prevalence of heat islands and
also, strangely enough, reduce speeding in our, in our neighborhoods.
the forest service recommends that 30% of cities
should be covered in tree canopy. Uh, in long
beach. Only 15% on average is covered by trees
in some areas as low as 5% in some areas as low as 9%.
of course, I know. Um, I've done some research efforts are being made
in, uh, the upcoming budget in past budgets to address this demand,
uh, for trees. But I believe, um,
one section of our, of long beach that should be, uh,
looked into for, um, planting trees is the stretch
from, um, anaheim to pch
on examine that corridor could really use some trees.
um, I personally go down, um, that street, uh, going to school.
um, and I would really appreciate if city council could look into
maybe, um, in the upcoming budget, uh, ways to,
um, expand that. Um, tree canopy. Uh,
thank you very much everyone. Have a great evening. All right. V two, hang
on. It's a good issue. Uh, good to see you.
you're still, so you're interning in cd three now? Yes. Good. So v two,
his first internship with the city was in my office last year as mayor. And
the good news is, it is budget season. I hope you're talking with your, your
boss, your new boss, uh, council member duggan about trees. Um, and I'm
glad to see that you're, you're um, continuing uh, your service with the city.
and what are you senior now? I'm gonna be a senior. Gonna be a senior. Congratulations. Thanks for coming down.
thank you. Alright, next speaker is jackson.
hello everyone. My name is jackson and um, I also live in city council
district three and like v two. I'm also an upcoming senior at wilson high school.
um, I have recently been recently been noticing a lot more flooding
near the marina where I live. Um, and
on high tides, the water is getting dangerously close to, or if not
like, just close to outright flooding the areas near the marina.
um, the reason I've decided to speak about this though is because even though I've
noticed this my entire life, it's been getting a lot worse recently. Um,
for example, near the um, like marine stadium launch
ramp, there's a parking lot and usually on high tides the
water can come kind of close, like maybe a foot underneath like
the surface of like where the street is or in like the beach coming up to
it. Um, recently it's been outright flooding the parking lot, like
water when it's been high tides. I've been noticing this a lot recently. High tides are just
completely like over like flooding the parking lot and making it so
water is intersecting the area. Um,
I worry about the trajectory of the this problem
and I worry that eventually it's gonna become such an
issue that even if we put a lot of resources to it, it's gonna be really hard to solve.
so I advocate for a reallocation, some, some reallocation of the
city's budget in order to try to fix these problems near the waterfront areas
in marine stadium, naples and the beach areas in long beach.
thank you city council and thank you mayor for your time. I appreciate it. Alright,
thank you. Another budget request. Council member duggan. Thank you.
alright, that concludes public comment. Alright, thank you so
much. Um, uh, I'm tempted to
make a joke about this. I'm not gonna do it right now. Time council member, we wait
until we, we get in the budget discussions and then we're gonna break out the button. , I've
heard it. All right. Uh, okay, so now we're getting into
closing comments and adjournment. Queue up now.
alright, I think people ready to go home. Oh, here we go. Council member sorrow.
yes. Um, there's several great events happening uh,
this weekend. Uh, I wanted to invite, uh, everyone
or um, to the everyone's coast zone in update
and mobility plan meeting to learn more about the potential transportation
and mobility improvements that will make it easier, safer, and more comfortable
to travel to the coast. And this is gonna be saturday, uh,
july 25th from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm at macarthur park. And
then also the same day there's a neighborhood
leadership program rise through learning. Um, it's an education
resource fair happening at macarthur park, so you can do
two events in one place. The other uh, is that we have
a movies in the park this friday, july 24th at six 30 showing
hoppers at mlk, uh, uh, junior park. And on
monday, july 27th at 6:30 pm there's gonna be
a showing of super mario galaxy movie at mcbride
park. So we'll see you at one of those events. Thank you.
alright, thank you. Council member carr. Yes. Thank you mr. Mayor. This weekend in honor
of national adoption week, I invite residents to consider adopting a kitten
in need of a forever home. Our local nonprofit, the little lion foundation, is hosting
a summer is cooler with kitten's adoption event this saturday, july 25th
from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm at signal hill petsmart at 2 5 5
oh cherry this saturday, july 25th. You can also bring the whole family to
the hangar at lbx. No, no
I, sorry, I asked him. You asked him to push the button. We're just trying
to talk about lilo and stitch. Come on. So at the hangar at long beach exchange, you can
go to a lilo and stitch themed to market from noon to five following the market stick
around the hangar for a free showing of the lilo and stitch movie on the hangar lawn,
starting at six 30 that same evening. You can stop by ambitious ails
for their next ambitious records fair from four to 9:00 pm where you can shop and swap records while
supporting local businesses. And finally, I'd like to invite all of you to my office's next
cd five community meeting on thursday, july 30th from six to 7:00 pm
at wardlow park community center. We will have the city manager's office
there to learn more about the ongoing preparations for the upcoming olympic games. So
get the latest and greatest on how that's going. And our city clerk will join us to talk about the
new hybrid city council meeting format and answer your questions. Uh, so
join us for more information and to learn more. Thanks.
thank you. Council member allen. Yes. This saturday, july 25th at zacharia
heights neighborhood association will host its monthly community cleanup
from 8:00 am to noon at or zba park. And that's at
1435 or zaba avenue on sunday, july 26th.
um, I hope that you come and join the carroll park association for its next
summer concert featuring distracted by dogs performing
classic rock. The free concert will take place from five to
6:00 pm in the south parklet. Thank you.
thank you. Council members zendejas. Thank you. Um,
exciting times in the washington neighborhood. The washington banner
unveiling celebration will take place saturday, august 1st
at 14th street park at 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
and then we're gonna be headed up to uptown for the jazz festival and
hope to see everybody there. Um, the craftsman's village
national night out will be on tuesday, august 4th from 5:00 pm
to 8:00 pm thank you to the craftsman's village, um, community
for always hosting a national night out. It's always a great time. Hope
to see you there and like always please subscribe to my newsletter
to make sure that you receive all the updates and everything that's going on
here in the first district as well. I want to say thank you to
everybody who participated in beach streets this weekend.
I want to say thank you to councilwoman allen for making
sure that we all had a great time in the second district. So
thank you very much for doing so. And also I want,
um, I want to say that district one proudly
hosted the world cup champions in our district.
um, spain was housed in, um, the west end
here in long beach. So big, big props to us, um, the
world. Um, the world has seen long beach and we'll continue seeing
long beach, so thank you everyone. That's right.
I think because of that, uh, high quality rest that they got at the
west end, they were prepared to go the all the way. Uh, council
member brite, clearly, clearly that is true, mayor. Thank you. We should
actually put that on like a t-shirt or a banner or something. . Um, thank you council
members zendejas for the shout out. Uh, yes. I'd like to invite everyone out to the 15th annual
uptown jazz festival next saturday, august 1st from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm
at houghton park in north long beach. Uh, this is a free family event featuring
headliner morris day in the time. So if you are a prince fan, we are
gonna have a great, we're gonna have a great time. So more for more information, please contact my office at
district9@longbeach.gov. Um, I also would like to thank everyone who
came out to our third annual fire and ice cream event with the long beach fire department
last weekend. We had a wonderful time, uh, turnout with ice cream from la katrina,
miss yana. We had hot dogs served up by our long beach firefighters association,
great family event. Uh, if you haven't been, I'd encourage you to come next year. We do it every year.
um, and lastly, I'd like to invite everybody out to participate in this year's, uh, fiscal year 26 27
budget cycle, beginning tuesday, uh, july 28th. You can come and
hang out with me, uh, and council member, uh, vice mayor aranga and council
member allen at our boc meeting. It's tons of fun. Uh, that will
be on tuesday. Um, and for more information about meeting details and more information about
our budget, you can go to long beach.gov/fy 27.
all right, well, good job everyone. Uh, and welcome back from,
uh, your retreat. I hope you got to spend some time with your, or
your recess rather. Got, hope you got some time. Got to spend some time with your loved ones and
your family and got a break. Uh, our next meeting, we are diving into the budget,
so be ready. Uh, and I hope our staff was able to, all of our city
staff were able to actually check out a little bit too. Uh, 'cause we got a lot of work to do. Thanks
everyone. This meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.