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The long beach city council roll call.
in the moment of silence and the pledge of allegiance.
Thank you.
Please join us as we observe a moment of silence.
Thank you.
Please rise if you're able.
As we do the pledge of allegiance.
Ready?
Begin.
I pledge allegiance.
All right.
Well, thank you, Councilman.
And welcome everyone to the August 4th meeting of the city council.
We have a report out from closed session.
Thank you, Mayor.
We have no report from closed session.
All right. Thank you so much. And we have no presentations so we get to jump right into the meeting.
We're going to start off with our budget hearing. Let's read item number 18, please.
Report from financial management recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an
overview of the city manager proposed FY27 budget and human resources department, citywide.
All right. Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining us for the budget hearing today.
We have a significant number of public comment today, so we're going to jump right into the presentation.
Then we're going to go to public comment before Council deliberation.
So I'll just open up with some remarks.
We introduced the budget last week here in the Civic Chambers.
This is the Bob Foster Civic Chambers.
And it's important that we recognize that.
Because when Mayor Foster was here, we went through some significant structural deficits in
years and it forced our community through some difficult trade-offs. The deficits were
consecutive. I remember when it was a three-year plan to solve the deficit that
turned into a four-year and a five-year plan to solve the deficit. And it was a very
difficult time but we made it through and we focused on fiscal responsibility and
making some hard choices. But also our circumstances is very different than the
recession. Sure we're facing some financial, some difficult financial headwinds and saw every major
budget public agency in California. Of the top 10 by population, eight of the top 10 cities in
California by population are facing the same headwinds facing uncertainty, uncertain federal landscape,
funding landscape, this impacting cities like Long Beach, this very unique in that we have a health
department, one of only three cities in the whole state, but we are in a position also to
address not through a three-year plan or a five-year plan to address our deficit in about
one, one-to-two-year span, to be able to give the kind of fiscal stability that our workers
deserve, that our residents deserve, that is consistent. And if we follow through with the plan
as outlined, we'll deliver the first sustained structural surplus, meaning sustained like
over multiple year surplus that we'll have that we haven't seen
more than a decade here in our city.
So we want to remind ourselves just a little bit of that history,
but also we know that a budget is a statement of values
and what we choose to save and what we've just used to cut
all reflect the values of the current moment.
So you'll see some of that reflected in the budget proposal,
the mayor's recommendations, and the ongoing deliberation
as we begin this process.
So that said, our challenge, we have to solve, we have to solve, I think it's 58 million dollar
structural surplus in this budget, is what we need to solve.
The student deficit, wish it was a surplus.
Structural deficit is what needs to be solved.
The majority of the rest of our funds are actually in pretty good shape, tightlands, this
year is in pretty good shape, port, our other enterprises, our in pretty good shape is really
general fund or 80% of our workforce is funded and that's why you'll see a lot of conversations
around the workforce in this budget. So that said, I want to thank our city manager and
our financial management team for the work that they've done to help get us here and everyone
who's been involved and let's go ahead and kick off our budget presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor,
for that good introduction. So I'm going to go through a presentation. This is designed to be a summary
kind of how we're addressing the budget. We're actually going to talk a lot about what's happened
over the last, you know, year or two years. We're also going to go through a number of things
that we hear out there that are actually not correct and try to provide some facts. And then we'll
go through kind of our approach to addressing this structural deficit. You know, these are some
difficult times, but we do have a plan and we are going to recommend fully solving that deficit this
year and also rebuilding our reserves at the same time.
So first, budgets about results.
So when we pass the financial document, you're laying out resources for your city team to
accomplish things on your behalf.
And so we will talk a little bit about last year's results as a reminder.
One, in public safety, and these are going to be the four categories that the Council
has put at the very top of their list.
Public safety is one of those.
We have a 34% reduction in murder, zero over year, and a 35% reduction in shootings.
Our overall crime rate reduction last year was 17.4% reduction, one of the largest that we've seen.
We maintain police emergency response times at or near the at or faster than national average.
We also launch new tools for residents to see what is going on in their neighborhoods in almost real time
access instead of waiting for quarterly or monthly or even yearly crime data.
We have our fire department.
We enhance emergency medical services last year, resulting in ambulance availability, being
increased and also in response times in some areas as much as 30 seconds.
In the next category of homelessness housing and neighborhood programs, we continue to open
more shelter beds.
We've been opening shelter beds basically year after year over the last four years.
It was a 12% increase in shelter beds last year with 78 new housing units.
We secured $11 million.
The largest so far from the state to address housing along the LA River. We launched our youth functional zero strategic plan. Our clean team is responded to over 160,000 legally dumped items and collected 1100 tons of litter. We awarded 25 grants through our neighborhood mini grant program and we advanced the west side promise.
In the area of economic development, we've elevated the city's profile by launching the
Vide City brand, the F&M Bank amphitheater opened and our Long Beach Coast Pro Baseball
team arrived in Long Beach. Tourism continues to be a strong sector for us. We're
outpacing most of our regional neighbors San Diego, Phoenix, Anaheim, LA and San
Francisco with over $2 billion in impact. And we space beach is raging. We have
jobs, thousands and thousands of jobs were able to announce that are coming into Long Beach
and that's 6,500 new jobs in space and advanced manufacturing. And we continue to work
with our local businesses as well and grow them and also do business with the city. So we added
91 new local vendors in Long Beach buys and 35 new contracts with local businesses.
And in the fourth area of infrastructure, we've completed now the fourth year of our five-year
We announced the largest jump in our pavement condition index, the status of our roads in our history was a 9% jump from an average of 56 to 61 and our goal was 60 and we surpassed that.
We began construction of the Stutabaker Road Transformation Project, our largest corridor project to date and completed our Teja Great Boulevard and broke ground on the Belmont pool in May of 2026.
So, let's do a little bit of budget grounding about where the dollars come from, and kind of the complexity of local government.
We have a $4 billion budget of all of our different enterprise funds and units, but the fun that most people think of as government services fall in the general fund.
And that's only 18% of that 4 billion.
We're to the revenues come from in California and especially in Long Beach, they're very diversified.
You'll see that that pie has many different slices.
If you were an East Coast city, for example, 90% of that pie would be property tax.
That's really how it's funded on the East Coast.
On the West Coast we have to diversify and we look at everything from hotel taxes to sales taxes to utility taxes and property tax.
Our largest sources are property tax, sales tax, and utility tax, all three of which are being impacted in the very uncertain economy that we are in today.
And so where do the dollars go? Our biggest expense are people. So we provide services to our community with our people, with our employees. And so 79% of our expenditures are in the general funder of personnel.
And what's the breakdown of where we spend the vast majority of our resources?
Public safety is by far the greatest investment at 66% public works and community services and
legislative and general government are all kind of equal slices after that.
Sorry, this is not moving ahead.
There it goes.
All right.
So what is a structural deficit, basically speaking, it's when you're on going revenues and
ongoing expenses are not matching that there's an imbalance. And so you must either increase
your revenues, which is pretty difficult to do in California, or you reduce your expenditures,
or you do both. So what's been happening? What are the deficit drivers? Well, one is the increase
cost of existing services. And I'm going to show you some examples of that. This isn't that a whole
bunch of new services were added, but that the services that we rely on as a community are costing
more every year, especially as we bring on additional police and bring on additional fire and
those vacant positions and do that hiring, that cost of that service has gone up.
We're also experiencing a pretty large revenue loss from the very turbulent economic
climate that has been created, the federal level and spills down to the state and spills
down to the local level. And then things like our health department, which used to be pretty
self-sustaining, has lost a lot of resources or has not grown at the rate that we need to
grow to pay for the services that we rely on, and so there is support that needs to come from the general fund to support that.
So, let's look at some examples of services of rising cost, graffiti abatement.
We continue to do great graffiti abatement.
We basically get over 90% in 24 hours or less.
Four years ago, that was a million dollars.
It is now 20% higher, 1.2 million.
Grounds maintenance was about 3.9 million.
We didn't add any new services, but that's same amount of service, now cost 5 million.
And our street lights, we didn't add new straight lights, we didn't have a massive new program to put new street lights in,
but the cost of the existing program went from about a million one to two million dollars to provide that same level of service.
Same thing in our area of public safety, so for the fully loaded cost of a police officer for all the things it takes to bring that police officer on.
That was in 2022, about 211,000, and today it's about 270, same thing on our firefighters from 202 to 269.
A lot of cities have the same types of revenue, most of them are similar, but it doesn't mean all cities generate the same amount of revenue from those sources.
Tax bases can be very, very different, geography plays a big role.
And so Long Beach is not a wealthy city, we're a city of many different neighborhoods, we have, you know, wealthier neighborhoods, we also have a lot of poverty, and we have a lot of renters, and so our mix of how we generate revenue is different.
And if you look at this slide, you'll see cities like San Diego, Long Beach, and Torrance, and San Jose are generating per capita significantly less than a Santa Monica, Newport Beach, Signal Hill, Pasadena.
As Mayor mentioned, we're not the only one facing this about eight of the 10 largest cities
in last 12 months.
I have experienced a deficit, including LA San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento,
and Oakland.
We get asked often times, what about Measure A?
Wasn't that supposed to solve all financial difficulties?
What did Measure A do?
Did exactly what we promised voters it would do?
The first thing that Measure A was going to do was stop public safety cuts.
Back in 2014, we were looking at major major public safety cuts.
Measure A has saved 155 sworn positions.
Then after we stopped those cuts, we were able to invest.
And so there are about 48 new positions that were added over the years for sworn and five non sworn.
And then it created a dedicated infrastructure funding source,
404 million the largest in our generation.
And so Measure A, this is something that the auditor helped publish for us.
It's basically shows where all of that goes.
We encourage you to come look at that, measure A,
and spend about 60% on public safety
and about 40% on public infrastructure.
So before we get to the reductions,
I want to talk a little bit about some of the myth busters
that we hear in the community.
We often hear like, you know,
why do you continue to build infrastructure projects
if you have a deficit?
Again, we have all these varied funding sources,
many of which are restricted and cannot be used
for ongoing expenses.
And infrastructure and project, you build once,
paying for somebody's salary, for example, you have to pay for every single year.
And so those are different funding sources.
I hear this sometimes. Why do we build bike lanes instead of giving that money to police and fire?
Again, those are restricted funds that can only be spent on transportation mobility.
If you don't use it for that, you cannot use it for anything else.
We get asked, why can't we use refuse money, or the money at the port, or the money at the airport,
for, you know, those general fund services, same thing. All three of those are restricted sources
can only be used for those purposes, not for general fund services. We often get asked
what, why did you build an amphitheater in the last 12 months if we had a deficit? It's because,
again, it is a funding that can only be used on the beach. And it's also a part of an economic
development strategy where if we can bring people down to the beach with money that can only
used at the beach. It can generate sales in our restaurants, in our businesses, in our hotels,
and those actually can be used to support general fund services. We get asked a lot. Why did
we switch out the green cards and switched how to our purple cards and didn't that save a
cost you a lot of money? That was all a state mandate and again has nothing to do with the general
fund. So that didn't impact police or fire or sidewalk or street repairs, but it was something
that we were required to do.
The deficit is not due to overspending.
This is not a whole bunch of new programs
we're at in the last four years.
This was about a sharp downturn in revenue
and the increased cost of providing those core services.
We didn't have surpluses that got spent on other things.
Again, those were some one-time dollars
that came primarily from the federal government
as we were coming out of COVID.
And we did not use additional surpluses.
We get asked, isn't this the worst deficit?
It's ever been, actually know, the Great Recession
had year after year of major reductions,
and right now we're projecting about one to two years of deficits.
We hear this all the time,
doesn't Long Beach have the highest sales tax in the nation.
And shouldn't that have covered everything?
In fact, only 34 of the 88 cities in California
have a lower sales tax in Long Beach.
And there are a number that are actually higher
than us, including Lancaster, Palmdale, Azusa, Glendora,
Orwindale, and South Amante.
And then finally, why aren't there other revenues or efforts to grow revenue?
There are.
There's a number of economic development opportunities underway.
We've got grow long beach, space beach, all designed in the long-term, bring in more
revenue.
So we look back in history, a lot of these things come in cycles.
The economy goes up and down, and so going all the way back to 2004, we were seeing some major
reductions that led into the Great Recession.
Then during 2014 to 2018, that's where Measure A kicked in.
we didn't have any major reductions there.
Then COVID hit, and we all know what happened there,
and then for the last four to five years,
we basically had no reduction scenarios,
the longest in our history, and now with the downturn
in the economy, we are seeing those reductions.
So let's start to get into some numbers.
So the deficit has improved a little bit.
If you remember earlier this year,
we said it was in the $60 to $80 million range,
then we refined that down to about $61.3 million,
And now, a couple months later, it's 58.2 million.
Again, one of those drivers, the revenue impacts we talked about, the rising costs, federal funding loss.
We've lost about $300 million in the grants or support or other things that have happened from the federal government.
We've gone five years without any reductions.
We've talked about how it's dropped to 58.2 million, and then we do need to take an action to bring it back into balance.
One of the areas that we've been successful in growing has been in hiring public safety.
So over the last four years we've continued to do academies and we have had graduates,
235 graduates of our academies over the last four years for a police and fire,
including our largest in our history last year at 85.
I'm sorry in police and then in fire it's 87 over the last three years.
And so we've invested in trying to bring in more employees in that area, and it's been successful.
Police has moved from a 26% vacancy rate down to a 13% vacancy rate cut in half.
Not all of those are deployable. Some of those just came out of the academy, but that is a notable shift.
And in the area of fire, it's a 3.2% vacancy rate, and we were able to add some resources to help, especially in the area of paramedic response.
But those also are costs, those are costs that come out of the general fund.
That's about a $38 million three-year agreement that is generating some of those costs.
And that federal funding loss, we've lost about 300 million as I mentioned.
Here are some of the areas, disaster prep, health and human services, airport, and a lot of it in our public works projects.
And so as we look at our priorities, we've got to leverage the strength of all of our different funding sources
to continue to do the things that residents want while also balancing the budget.
We've got to navigate those challenges and we've got a shape of budget that reflects our values.
So our approach is multi-fold. It's to, you're going to have to look at reductions across
the organization, including what we call related funds, things that help support the general fund.
It's important that all departments participate in this strategy that we focus on priority-based
approach to protect those core services that we look at alternative service models,
the value weight subsidies and also to both protect and also increase our reserves.
And so essentially the budget I'm proposing is balanced.
It has about $56 million worth of budget balancing solutions and ends in balance completely
balanced.
What does it look like going forward?
If we balance this year, then we have one more year that's difficult and FY28, that's
$27 million but then you can see we're actually back into into the black and so this
has some assumptions in it and it's harder to predict as you go out but this is different
than what we've seen in the past where it's 3, 4, 5 years of deficits.
But during next year, the 28 we actually get some additional resources so measure A will
be coming in, voters have already approved that and so the council will have some decisions
to make.
Whether we invest that in public safety or infrastructure or those are the two areas we can
that. If you were using that money to avoid additional public safety impacts, for example,
then the next four or five years are essentially balanced. So just something to look at for
next year. For our strategic vision, we always look back to that and we take community input.
We did a lot of community input in January and so the top three themes that we heard. We're public
safety, housing, and homelessness, and education in the January and February meetings.
So now let's get to how are we going to solve this?
So there's an eight point strategy to address the deficit.
Number one is first look at reduction of management and supervision.
We're going to look at shifting cost to other funding sources.
We're going to look at internal reductions in loss of admin capacity.
Then we look at enhancing certain areas.
We're going to look at investments in our police department facilities, technology and administration,
and some contracting out opportunities.
And after all those first six get done, then there's still about half way to go and that's
where then we have to look at some targeted services reductions and then plan to replenish our reserves.
So I want to go briefly through these categories. There are hundreds of items that make up these categories.
And so what I'm going to be mentioning are just some examples to give you a sense of the strategy.
And then over the next two months or so a month and a half we're going to be going deeper into our budget hearings.
Thanks for watching, see you in the next one, see you in the next one, see you in the next one.
First is in reduction of management and supervision. That's this saves about seven million dollars and reduces 17 full-time equivalents or FTEs. For example, public works had to consolidate functions in its business operations bureau, eliminating the people in culture, bureau, or division into a person out of vision. In parks, we're eliminating a management position and recreation superintendent, health is merging two bureaus and lining him into a community health bureau.
Tech and innovation has merged two bureaus and police and fire have eliminated Captain Battalion Chief and Lieutenant level positions all high level supervisors
Then we looked to shift and cost other funding sources, so this saves up to $14 million in the general fund and about
16 17 positions get shifted out
For example engine 17 the promise was that when the federal grants run out for engine 17
We've been planning to move that to measure a and so that's happening this year
We also have some emergency dispatchers and jail transport positions that would have been lost.
Had we not been able to transfer those to Measure A.
And we are going to be proposing funding the new police at Recruit Academy.
That's a $7 million investment that Measure A will help with as well as this funding some real-time crime analysts.
We also have some ability to shift some of our infrastructure work to our CIP plan and infrastructure funds.
The port is really helping out by getting us to full cost recovery.
and you'll hear more about that as they offset the full cost of what it takes to run
fire services over in the port.
We are going to have to look at some environmental health fees to increase to support our
health department for full cost recovery as well as some shifting some cost to park maintenance
money.
And we're getting a new crew that can help replace traffic sign replacements throughout our
city.
It's about a $78 million investment and that comes from cow trance.
The next category you looked at before we get to service reductions is cutting our own
internal support and loss of administrative capacity.
It doesn't mean these aren't very important services.
They're the ones who answer a lot of the phones.
They're the ones who do a lot of the planning and oversight and analysis.
But that is an area that we look at before we start looking at service reductions.
And so the police department had to cut back a number of their overtime.
Citywide savings are realized by reductions in fleet and are cost to run our own technology.
We have the Cannabis Tax Credit Program that the Council put forward as a way to help with cannabis tax rebates but we've only had one person actually qualified for that one business and so they would be grandfathered in and we would recommend sunset in the program.
And then every department took reductions from the mayor and city council and their offices to city managers office to auditor and prosecutor and city attorney is was all the other departments you see here are all cutting admin positions.
that together save about $22 million and $74 or $73 FTE.
Then we do look at some areas that are in need of some additional resources.
Our median program is woefully underfunded and the cost keeping increasing there, and so
public works took some pretty significant internal admin reductions in order to shift some
money into the median program, as well as some supplemented revenues coming from new parking
So, both increase in the rate of parking meters to $3 and also adding parking meters in
some areas where they don't exist.
Those funds will also help us with our street light program.
This council has made that a big priority.
We need new crews to help keep the street lights maintained.
We are also funding our park homeless encampment cleanup services that have been funded with
1 times.
How do we not done this?
We would have lost about 600 clean-ups a year in our parks.
We will have a new traffic safety division coming from the automated speed enforcement cameras
Money and we'll talk about that in a little bit.
And we're also shifting our noise ordinance from the health department over into community development.
You'll see in a little bit we're going to have to make some reductions in our police department.
And so it's important if we're making those reductions for crime that we continue to invest in things like their facilities,
their technology and continuing our hiring in our police department.
And so the next police academy will move forward.
They will be able to replace their helicopter, which is 23 years old with grant funding.
The real-time crime center and the department's digital forensics capabilities are being expanded.
The high crime focus team, which has been really impactful in reducing our violent crime rate.
In particular, we'll become permanent as they shift officers into that.
And these are all primarily funded through either measure A grant or other sources rather than general fund, and that's $14 million.
Now we're at the section about contracting out to see in a couple of areas.
Can the private sector do the service that we're providing at a lower cost?
And so there's three that we're recommending.
One is parking services and collection and billing.
We would actually move our team that does that currently over to help with our automated traffic camera
So they wouldn't lose their job, but they would do a different function and have the contractor vendor data ticket take over
Both the issuance of tickets and the collection and billing
we would
Look to contract our re-prographic office. We do that in-house. We have an in-house printing shop
We're about 40% of that work is currently contracted out and 60% is in-house
And then crossing guard services, we do that in house, but we have a lot, it's a very hard part for us to hire and to maintain people in our service doing that.
This would allow us to have more flexibility and draw from a very large kind of services that provide these similar cities.
And each one of these needs to go through a propel analysis and a meeting confer.
So, after all those actions that we took, now we still have about $33 million to go in the area of service reductions.
And so I will summarize some of the bigger ones.
This is an area where we would save $33 million and it would affect about $200 FTE.
Fire station 14 is proposed for elimination while the station would remain open.
And so it is a station that currently has about 2,000 calls a year where some of our other stations in other areas of the city serve about 6,000 calls a year.
87% of their calls are medical and so the idea would be that the engine would no longer be there, but we would put both a rescue and a BLS ambulance in that area and the fire units would come from the surroundings resources.
In my proposal, we would have to close another engine on a rotating basis.
You're going to hear about that.
It's going to be one of the recommendations the mayor is finding some resources to restore.
We would convert one engine from permanent staff into overtime.
That would have no impact on service levels, but it would have employees doing that
on overtime rather than as their regular job.
We'd have to eliminate vacant patrol officer positions.
We would not eliminate the beats, but we would have about 17 positions that would be eliminated and some of this would be restored in the mayor's recommendations.
We'd be scaling back or quality of life and motor detail officers.
You'll hear about that a little later too.
We would need to consolidate some of our financial crime investigations and reduce about 18 FTEs and investigations
and eliminate those vacant positions and also reduce our structural police over time funding by 2.7 million.
In the area of libraries, we had an enhancement over the last couple of years in libraries where we went for five libraries up to six days of service.
Now, we would go back instead of closing any regional libraries, we would all all neighbourhood libraries would be at at five days of service saving 1.3 million.
Parks and Rec had to make some very difficult choices between animal care, maintenance in their parks, or recreational programming.
and so they're reducing in both maintenance a little bit but also in the recreation side
so that they can maintain really good clean safe parks but with some less programming.
Be safe sites would go from three hours to two hours and we save about $1.091,000 and you'll hear
more about that from the mayor. Chavez Park is proposed for elimination that is also
you hear about that. Homeland Cultural Center, same thing. Lincoln Park would go down.
of Nature Center would close on Tuesdays, summer swim,
would be reduced, and then the RAP program
would be continued by other providers.
This would have no impact on the kids,
but we would not provide that service anymore.
And then some reduced maintenance,
or Rancho Los Alamedos, and low-series.
In the area of neighborhood services,
we'd lose some neighborhood service specialist positions,
and we would reduce two code enforcement officers
that eliminate three FTE.
In the city manager's office, we would eliminate a position
that does in the Office of Equity, that includes structural support for the Justice Fund, the Equity Commission and Language Access.
In the Health Fund, we would eliminate a number of vacant positions
about 4.2 million and 47 FTE.
We'd reduce capacity in the Office of Veterans Affairs.
We would reduce capacity for a homeless outreach team,
as well as maternal child and adolescent youth support
and childhood lead poisoning prevention programs.
And then finally, as a part of this plan, I am recommending that we create a plan over the next several years starting with this year to replenish our reserves.
We've had to hit some of our reserves. That's what they're there for.
And it is part of our fiscal policy to be able to use those reserves, but then you need to have a plan to replace it.
So I have put forward a plan of $9.8 million to put back into our city reserves.
And so this is getting close to the end of summing all this up, but we do have some loss of
grant funding as well and the area of homelessness.
We've lost a lot in the county measure A about a 32% drop with another 43% coming in the
next year and a state funding has been not very clear.
It looked like it was going to be cut then it was restored and we're looking at some major
cuts on the federal level.
And so we're looking roughly from all those sources together,
probably losing about $11 million over the next 12 months.
And had we not take an action that would have meant hundreds of beds would have had to close.
And so we created a plan so that those beds are not closing,
but it is going to impact some of our staffing.
So our outreach will go from two shuttle services, two vehicles to one.
Most outreach would be eliminated.
Mobile access centers would go from two to one.
We would lose some of our prevention program dollars and our employment and workforce funding.
Our motel vouchers would be cut from 40 to 15.
We'd have fewer rapid rehousing assistance and all and all we'd lose about eight positions at a homeless services.
There is some good news in some areas of the budget.
Again, there are restricted funds that cannot help the general fund, but they are still nonetheless important.
We do have a plan for tidelines for about a $12 million investment.
And so that would be in the area of transportation and mobility, public safety and operational enhancements and infrastructure.
And additionally, of those police officers we're losing, we're able to move five officers to Thailand to have a dedicated patrol calls for response in our beach areas, which is going to help the entire city.
So if we have officers responding there, other officers can be responding to other areas of the city.
We're also in with a new revenue coming in that's dedicated for traffic going to be expanding our traffic operations by seven positions and then five additional customer service support rolls and really respond to the ability to get quicker neighborhood traffic calming quick build improvements.
You'll hear later in our presentation in a couple of weeks.
We're going to talk about our infrastructure and so our infrastructure plan is about 1.24 billion dollars now,
180 projects against these eight funding categories.
And we've released new maps for the next five years for our streets.
Those just came out and you can see them on our website.
And it's about a $250 million investment in streets.
This is what it would look like for the next five years.
And when you overlay it over the past five years,
these are all the streets that have been done and you can go and check out this map and
drill down to each individual level. So as I wrap up and turn into the mayor, I do want us to
all be cognizant of the human impact of all these reductions we talk about FTEs and positions,
but ultimately these are people. We provide human, we provide support to our community with our
employees. They are by definition our greatest asset and it's been a very tough day. It was a very
week last week as we communicated this to our workforce. Ultimately, I am recommending 483
positions be eliminated and 263 of those are filled. You're going to hear from the mayor. He has
certain recommendations that would restore about 70 of those positions. And so the net total would
be about 413 and about 237 of those are filled. And so I want us to all bear in mind the human
impact that budget reductions take. These are people that rely on their employment to put food on
the table to support their families and we're going to do everything we can to help support them
and move them to vacant positions wherever we can as allowed by the Civil Service rules.
And so next steps we do need to stay the financial course. This is a responsible budget even though
it is in certain areas very difficult. We are going to take this out in the community and do a number
of different meetings throughout the city where we take input and answer questions and ask
people to fill out some information to get to the council by a Friday October 4th August
14th and then we're going to hold very in-depth discussions with the City Council over the next
six weeks. And so these are all the areas you can get involved. We have all this on our website
Long Beach.gov backslash budget for you to get involved and we have digital comment cards that
everyone can fill out and all of those will go straight to the City Council and management as well
to read. And so find out more, there's lots of documents where you can search and find the
program that you are most concerned about under Long Beach.gov.gov. And with that, I will
turn it over to the mayor to go through his recommendations.
All right. Thank you Tom. So before I outline these recommendations, I want to acknowledge a few
So one, this is the process, the manager puts forward a budget that is balanced as required by the charter.
It has either rebalanced by cuts, or if you have reserves you can draw a fund, you can do that,
but you have to adopt the balanced budget per charter every year.
The city manager goes through that budget development process from January through May.
And then that proposal is submitted to the mayor. To review, to talk through, it's a collaborative process.
And sometimes there are new resources that become available. They're not available in January.
February when the budget was being developed. That sometimes can be used on restorations.
So as my responsibility in a charter to go through and give my pass and give my recommendations, both are submitted to the city council.
They go through their budget process, which is largely driven by these hearings.
and the budget oversight committee meeting.
You don't have to solve everything in this budget meeting tonight.
Each of these major departments will have a night
where we can take a deeper dive into impacts
and all of that through that process.
Also, the budget oversight committee
will come with a set of recommendations
as they do every single year,
which also are adopted by the full council.
So, let's get into my recommendations.
I want to start by explaining how I'm paying for
these recommendations, these recommendations
have a number of restorations and enhancements.
Every one of these recommendations is structurally funded and sustainable without expanding our deficit is incredibly important to note.
They're funded by redirecting one-time savings, improving cost recovery, or maximizing outside funding so we can protect services without placing additional structural pressure.
So, here are four of the main categories, first, because the citywide elected officials and the Long Beach City Council closed out their election in June, there is no election for our city clerk to administer.
We normally set aside about one and a half million dollars to run an election. There's no election in November.
So, I'm recommending that we take those dollars that have been set aside for a possible election and redirect those to one-time savings on important,
one-time community priorities and one-time service restorations.
Secondly, this was alluded to in the City Manager's proposal that the Longleash Fire Department
provides significant protection services that support port operations.
They've been subsidized for the general fund, so the general fund has supported those services.
That MOU had not been updated many years, so we've gone to the Harvard Commission
and the Port Department to update their MOU for full cost recovery.
that has generated about 5.9 million in ongoing general-front structural support.
That can be used to restore essential services, so I want to thank the Board of
Harbor Commissioners and Port CEO, Nora Pasagabba for their partnership on this
timely update.
Next, we've been engaged regionally and nationally and statewide because we knew this
moment was coming.
we project out five years out, we've seen that there have been cuts to public health and other things
regionally.
So we got involved regionally to identify new funding sources to support us in this moment.
So the first is through advocacy with the California Big City Mayor's Coalition, the state
restored a portion, significant portion of the homeless housing assistance and prevention program
called HAP.
It was cut statewide from a billion to 500 million recently in a state budget.
thanks to the advocacy it was restored up to 900 million so almost fully restored that helps us
with some of the impacts to our homeless outreach and our engagement here in the city. The second piece
through our budget conversations throughout the years typically community requests have been more focused on
how do we support renters and tenants and that placed additional pressure on the general fund of the past two years
through our work and our partnership with LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency
We now have dedicated funds for things like tenant assistance, rental assistance, they don't put pressure on the general fund anymore.
It is a separate fund.
So we receive about 10.7 million in this upcoming fiscal year to support those services so it does not place additional pressure.
One time or structural on our general fund.
And so that will help us preserve rental subsidies, housing navigation and housing location services.
And then finally, probably the biggest impact that biggest addition that we did not have before was LA County Measure ER.
I want to thank the City Council for supporting me, Measure ER.
Our labor partners for supporting Measure ER and the voters for ultimately adopting Measure ER on the ballot county.
This is a temporary measure that supports public health and our clinics for the next five years due to the uncertain federal landscape and the cuts coming from the federal government that are impacting state
County and local and so as a result of that 1% of that measure county wide is going to support the two jurisdictions that have public public public public
health departments that is long beach in Pasadena.
So we have new dollars about seven to eight million
and structural dollars over the next five years
to go directly into our health department.
So that's our pan for these recommendations.
So let's jump right in.
They're organized into four categories.
The first is protecting jobs and essential public safety
services.
The second is preserving public health
in the face of federal cuts.
After that, it's advanced in mobility and safety
for all road users and then continuing to invest
and our thriving neighborhoods.
So to start with public safety,
this budget already continues our focus on hiring.
We know that we've done consecutive academies.
We've cut our vacancy rate and have
in our police department coming out of COVID.
We saw vacancies across all of our departments.
One tough budget year should not stop our progress
toward that strategic goal of hiring.
So we're continuing.
We will have a cadmium class 101 that is there.
We also know that high crime focused teams played a big role.
We've seen five years consecutive reductions in shootings,
in violent crime and homicides in our city.
So that's now structurally funded.
But there are some recommendations to restore some of the cuts
that have been impacted in this budget.
First, there was originally a plan to eliminate engine,
14, and a rotating engine closure.
So every two weeks, a different fire station
have to take an engine out of service. It's incredibly impactful and disruptive cut.
And so we are leveraging the port dollars to eliminate the rotating engine closure by restoring
12 FTEs in the fire department, ensuring emergency medical and fire suppression capacity
remains strong. The other part, this budget, over the last few years, we've placed an emphasis
on shifting to meet the evolving needs.
We know that medical calls are the emerging and majority of calls.
So we've added additional rescues and previous budgets.
None of the paramedic rescues are being cut.
They're being maintained in this budget.
That is important that we continue that focus
because the most recent report showed that we are meeting
emergencies the response time is declining
and we want to continue to see the response time continue to decline.
In terms of the police department, there are, I'm recommending four FTEs be restored across
east, north, south and west patrol divisions, so four additional patrol restaurants.
I'm recommending two additional quality life officers to bring the total of quality life
to four, one in each division, LA River Cleanups.
we're recommending funding to provide overtime to support weekly clean up operations in our rivers.
We also recommending overtime funding for the Police Department's High Crime Task Force
and increase traffic enforcement support as a part of our comprehensive effort to address some
of the challenges with pedestrian and vehicle incidents in our city. Next, community safety can't be
It's not the fine only by what happens when someone calls 9, when one we have to continue our focus on upstream and making sure that people know and understand and believe and trust that we can prevent crime and make sure that all our communities feel safe.
We know that over the past year and a half, two years we've seen significantly impact significant impacts to our undocumented community and Long Beach and it's fortunate that we have a Long Beach Justice Fund.
There is some structural funding for the justice fund, but it's not enough to get through when you look at the average spend over the past two years.
It's not enough to make it through this next year.
Our hope is that the administration stops this attack, but it is unlikely.
So we need to be prepared.
So I'm recommending that one, we restore the one FTE in the Office of Equity and Sure.
Structural funding is dedicated to the Long Beach Justice Fund, so that position was cut.
I'm recommending we restore that.
Furthermore, I'm recommending adding structural one-time general fund dollars to match the current
budget allocation to bring the total for the Justice Fund in this year to $1 million.
That is the average between last year's spend and this year's spend to ensure community has
access to those protections over the course of the next year.
Secondly, be safe summer program was proposed to be cut to reduce from three hours to two hours
In the summer, this is an incredibly important program.
So I'm recommending we restore 5.72 FTEs
and part some recreation marine to preserve programming
at the three hour level.
Next, we're continuing to invest in youth opportunity,
and supportive community services.
We know that we're still continuing
with our just with our youth fund
and the office of youth development, a lot of that work,
but we're going to restore some cuts here.
So the office of Veterans Affairs,
we want to continue to commission.
So, restoring a half-time FTE and the Health and Human Services Department for a public health
professional 3 and Office of Veterans Affairs, the Commission was run at half-time for many
years.
Then it went up to full-time.
It's going to scale back to the way it operated for a number of years.
Homeland Cultural Center, Programming with Schedule to Be Cut, we're restoring that with
25,000 Chavez Park Team Programming, we're restoring 1.5,5,5,4 FTE's and
So we want to make sure that those resources are there.
Next, let's focus on now the health department.
So again, we're one of the few cities of the public health department
and there's facing impacts on all sides.
It's been a focus of ours to shift to more structural funding
for our health department in the past and to invest
in the administrative work that it requires
in order to keep up with grants and go after more grants
and things like that.
Right now it's being impacted, but thanks to measure ER,
we do have a unique opportunity to focus on three priorities.
One, restoring a set number of proposed reductions,
a 1.7 million to restore 12 FTEs.
This is foundational health and human services positions.
They help support everything that happens.
Secondly, sustain existing services that expect
to lose funding.
As mentioned, there's about $300 million across the city
that's potentially at risk from federal government.
We want to sustain existing services
that we want me to expect to lose funding and their cuts from the county as well.
So that's 3.2 million and 14 FTEs to protect successful programs that are losing temporary
state or federal grant funding.
And then three new positions in program enhancements about 2 million and that's 12 FTEs expand
our capacity and communicable disease prevention, lab work, and community outreach.
So in total, this restores 12 positions as about 26 positions to ensure that our public health
Department can continue to meet its mission and be responsible about the limited revenues that we do have.
Next, advanced mobility and traffic safety for all road users.
We know that traffic safety and our ability to move around our city, take people to school, go to a park, drop your kids off,
all of that is incredibly important in our community.
We also know that post COVID, we've seen a significant rise in incidents of pedestrian safety,
accidents in our community.
And we know that over the next two years, this isn't, we need to place a big focus on that.
Not for the two, you know, the millions of people who will come here for the Olympics, but to leave a better system in place for our residents who will continue to live here.
So we support the creation of the new traffic safety division in public works.
We support that with the 12 new positions and focus on vision zero implementation,
say for street design, follow up on the, you know, the stop sign studies and all the different
studies that have a backlog and focus on collision reductions. But we have an opportunity
to go further in the mayor's recommendations. I was recently elected to the Metro
Board, so I'm leaving my focus on La Casa. It's brought a lot of real dollars,
$10.5 million dollars for housing. Now we're going to shift to pedestrian safety and
ability. Two pieces. One Metro is now supporting a position in the mayor's office to focus on
a stronger transit investment, safer streets, meaningful infrastructure upgrades. And so we will
have a new role dedicated to the mayor's office to go after outside transportation dollars.
Leverage what we have to create a bigger impact and advocate for regional or local priorities.
And secondly, Long Beach has not been a part of a broader conversation around Metro Lincoln
high-speed rail in this upcoming year, this team will also focus on beginning to formally evaluate
a metro link connection in Long Beach.
Not light rail, a line, but be able to buy a ticket in Long Beach and get on a real train
with, you know, with luggage and end up in Sacramento through high-speed rail or Las Vegas.
It doesn't connect to Long Beach and so we have to begin this discussion over the next decade
if we're going to be tapped into this broader regional economy.
Next, our neighborhoods.
So there are a lot of things that City Manager put forward from improving our meetings and addressing
street light challenges despite the budget circumstance.
But there are impacts in the budget that we do need to address.
So in talking with libraries, we went to a six day schedule back in 2022.
There was no structural funding for it in the past.
That had to be fixed.
Well now we're in a moment where we have to address that there was not restored in a way
that it had the structural funding.
We're returning back to five days,
but in talking with some of the leadership
and library services,
what they've asked for is more flexible
dollars for programming.
So make sure they have the resources to do
what they need to do with our youth
and our community while they're there.
So we're adding additional support
for programming libraries.
Secondly, there's a proposed cut to funding
for both ranchos, both of our ranchos,
and El Dorado Nature Center.
I'm recommending we preserve funding
and both of those in a way that does not impact our general fund.
And so we're going to be part of the part of the parks on El Dorado,
nature centered on the red shirt, ranchos,
we're going to be leveraging measure B,
which is for arts and culture.
Nature, let's see, west side promise.
We're continuing to recommend funding to continue, rest-side promise focus on, you know, we know that the
west side, this is a dedicated strategy to deliver infrastructure, economic opportunity, environmental
improvements over a long term. So a short but a difficult budget year should not change your long-term
focus. Your 10-year focus on improving the west side. And then the other thing we'll note here is that in
terms of small business and business improvement districts and business corridors, we funded this last year.
So the $8.7 million back to business plan was a two-year plan because we anticipated that this will be a difficult year.
So the support for the business improvement districts, the support to do rapid response and a lot of the activity in our business corridors have been helpful.
We funded that last year, so we want to remind folks those resources are available for this year.
So now looking ahead, this budget is addressing a structural deficit and we project out and do five-year forecasts.
We see that our deficit narrows if we follow this plan over the next two years.
With next year, there's new resources, local measure $8 coming in.
If the council chooses, that could cover significantly the most, if not all of the deficit
for next year.
Which means this year is really the year to think about the structural deficit.
If we solve this year, we will leave balance.
The balance that our employees deserve, the stability that our employees deserve and the stability that our residents deserve,
the first time that we've had since pre-COVID, because it's been uncertain since the COVID era.
So, I'm recommending the number of things that we do to continue to focus on a long-term stability and address critical priorities.
So, one, reserve replenishment, replenishment.
I'm recommending $200,000 in addition to the City Manager's recommendations to bring reserve replenishment to $10 million in this budget.
And additionally, look forward to where each year we have a year in performance that produces a general fund surplus,
continue to act to the reserves.
This is what we need to do to make sure we have that stability moving forward.
We also have passed on to the council for $303,000 in one time dollars for utilization of the budget oversight,
committing the city council to explore further community priorities on a one time basis.
So that is also a mayor's recommendation.
Additionally, we have to continue our focus on growth and accelerate our growth in the next few years.
So we can have a more stable budget in the future, really two things.
One, there are a number of things that need to be delivered by 2028.
And it's going to require a lot of focus from our city manager.
Infrastructure projects, economic development projects.
So we're asked in our city manager to launch an accelerate 2018 and accelerate the planning for those projects to make sure we can leverage the 2020 opportunity to create as much.
economic value, long term economic value is possible, and to also accelerate the timing for
a public solicitation for the future development of peer age, shoreline drive, make sure
that we have all that figured out in the next two years.
The last thing I'll mention here is I'm recommending adding $150,000 structurally to the
general fund group to support city clerk department to further support SB 707 implementation.
This was not originally in the city manager's budget because the council was going through
process to make the council meetings run more efficiently.
The city council made a decision to go a different direction until we figure out how to achieve that.
We have to pay for additional staff to stay through the end of council meetings, which is fine, but we have to make sure we pay for it.
That can be freed up for additional job restorations or service restorations.
If the city council figures out a compromise or figures out how to address SB 707 in a way that is less costly and
in less costly and can prioritize service and enhancements
or service restorations and said.
So these recommendations in total,
they restore about 70 critical positions
and at 38 roles within our health department.
So this is the hardest part of the plan
is the workforce impacts.
This eliminates of the fill positions
about 180 to 200 fill positions.
The number is still being sorted out,
but there are impacts in this budget.
And we know that these are colleagues,
these are neighbors, we know some of these
Folks, we know that they are dedicated public servants, them and their families have dedicated
their careers to serving the city of Long Beach.
So we do not take this lightly, but that is even more reason why we have to think about
the long-term structural stability of our budget for the 6,000 employees who are here.
We don't want them to look over their shoulders every single budget to find out if we're
being cut or not.
Taking cuts is very significant.
We haven't had to do this since pandemic era.
this is not something that we want to do, which is why it's important that we stay the course.
If we make us make a restoration, it needs to be supported through structural funding.
If it's a one-time enhancement, pay for it one-time funding, this is more than a budgeting
philosophy. This is how we provide that long-term stability and an environment where the federal
government is not stable and the economy is not stable. But if we stick to this strategy, we can
deliver that long-term stability that is needed. So that said, we submit this now back to the city council
and the Budget Oversight Committee for deliberation.
Again, every meeting will have a deeper dive in each department,
so you don't have to get everything out now,
but this is the beginning of that discussion.
So now, that is the budget presentation.
We're now going to go to the public and begin our public comment
process.
And again, under SB 707 rules, the Clerk will
administer public comment.
We'll have in-person and we'll have online.
And because they're more than 10, this is 90 seconds on each speaker.
So, clerk, please facilitate public comment.
There are 12 members of the public sign-up to speak.
The speaking time will be 90 seconds.
When your name is called, please come forward and line up at the podium.
Ashley Gunkel, Netties Schuster, Brandon Nottingham, Nate Kim,
Kat Kay,
Ken Osborn, Emily Quest, Gus Orozco, Elizabeth Spulglio, Denise Sapia,
Cat, May, Diego, Mayan.
Hello, Mayor and Council members.
My name is Ashley Gunkle
and the International Representative
and Chief Negotiator for the IM Union.
We represent about 3,500 members here
in the city of Long Beach
and about 45% of our members actually live here
in this great city as well.
The IM represents workers and many industries,
but tonight I wanna share some wisdom
from a carpenter.
Measure twice, cut once.
A carpenter knows that once you make the cut, you don't get that piece of wood back, and when you're deciding what to cut, the question isn't just what you can remove, it's what you're destroying in the process.
Our members understand the city is facing difficult financial circumstances, but these aren't just physicians on a spreadsheet.
They're people, their families, their neighbors, and they're the people who provide the services
to your residents and the residents depend on.
Cut one city employee and you may cut an entire household income in half.
Cut both employees in a household and you may take away that family's ability to stay in
the community that they serve.
You can move the pieces of a puzzle around but eventually you have to ask, are you still
creating a picture, or are you creating a mess with the pieces
that you can ever put back?
A fence can't answer a resident who needs help.
A new vehicle can't replace the employee
who knows that resident by name.
So before you make these cuts,
measured twice cut once, because once these people
and their experience are gone, you may find
that what you cut was far more valuable
than the time they concluded.
Good afternoon.
My name is the Dischoster, and I work at the Housing Authority.
And I'm a proud I am member and shop steward.
Every budget is a statement of city's values that is how the mayor described this year's
budget in the recent FAFSA post.
He said it reflects years of preparation and fiscal responsibility, respectfully disagree.
For years the city has depended on federal grounds to fund our health department grants that
are never guaranteed.
Yet the city failed to build a sustainable plan year after year, Long Beach is one of only
three California cities with its own health department.
During the pandemic, it became a national model for testing and
best vaccinations.
Today, the same department is being dismantled one program at a time.
This is not the result of preparation.
It's the result of years of under-investment.
This budget reflects our values, let's examine those values.
In June, $800,000 was approved by the City Council for World Cup Watch parties,
well employees, face layoffs, and programs utilized by the public.
Work at City Leaders, City Leaders,
spent millions on a temporary amphitheater, not a permanent one.
Yes, Thailand funds were used, as opposed to general funds, but it still taxpayer money being
mismanaged.
Homeless services bureau managers remain employed, despite document management by a city manager,
while frontline staff and public health nurses have been laid off.
The city manager continues to receive compensation exceeds 400,000 during a budget crisis
as well as receiving a pay rate this year.
But he donated his raise, so I guess that's cool.
So those aren't just difficult choices, their choices about priorities.
City employees and the residents of Long Beach deserve and the mayor and the mayor.
Good afternoon Mayor. Council members, my name is Brandon Nottingham, Vice President of the Association of
Confidential Employees or AES for short. Thank you for the stop to speak today.
As you consider the upcoming order lay off, I want to highlight the essential work performed by the members of AES,
bargaining unit and the very real consequences that the city will face if these positions are lost.
AES is often viewed as a human resource center group,
But we are, our members support and stabilize operations across economic development, financial management,
police, public works and TID, where the professionals that administer benefits programs
from more than 6,000 employees, conductsensitive workplace investigations, carry out the recruitment
outreach and labor relations, and also maintain countless functions that keep the organization functioning
safely, legally and efficiently.
Now, despite this breadth of responsibility, Acerus means small and in many areas severely
we understand.
Consider a few of the examples of our reality.
We have three professionals that manage all the complaints from employees, contractors,
and members of the public, three analysts maintaining the classification and compensation
system that spans over 300 classified titles and over 800 titles, Citywide.
Two professionals in the return to work program that cover non-occupational and occupational
leaves, ADA accommodations, and much more.
These functions cannot be automated outsourced or siloed.
They require collaboration, specialized expertise, and deep understanding and complex city systems.
And when AVD's positions are vacant, or eliminated, the impact reverberates across every
department, employee, and every city resident who depends on timely, lawful, efficient city
services.
We support...
Your time has concluded.
Thank you.
Nade Kim?
My name is Nade Kim.
I'm a district resident and nurse with the city's health department.
I am also an IAM student and a member of our current negotiations team.
I am fortunate to grant that funds my position has been renewed, but many of my colleagues have not been as fortunate.
Many have been laid off already.
Now we are faced with the proposed budget that seeks to eliminate even more of my colleagues, not only in health but citywide.
We as the city stand to lose many vital positions, including nurses in our immunization clinic.
In the proposed budget, there are conversations around the millions of investments in city plans and has already spent in business expenditures.
I recognize different funding has different requirements, but I'd be remiss not to recognize
the city lacks the same willingness to invest in its greatest asset.
It's employees.
Last contract I am was able to negotiate one of the most economically robust contracts for
its members.
The new one to this is decades of low wages, low vacancies, high vacancies, high vacancies and
high turnover.
In reality, these were changes that needed to happen for long beach to finally be a competitive
employer.
Now we're in negotiating our contract again and we have already been warned that
the budget will have a negative impact on our demands.
Still, the city insisted there will be prosperity soon.
It's expected that the economic outlook may improve
in as little as six months.
Yet, the city wants to cut jobs now.
40% of IMC employees are city residents.
That can mean hundreds of city residents
with no livelihood.
We want a city that wants to invest in its employees
and protect all its assets.
We want to fair contract, protect IM jobs.
Thank you.
Hello, Mayor and Council members. My name is Cataclyce and I work in disaster preparedness as a public safety dispatcher for fire department. I urge you to reject these proposed budget cuts of my office. A budget reflects priorities and this proposal tells the people along the edge of the essential services and the employees who provide them are not in public safety priority cutting vital public safety resources such as police and fire services.
We'll not only impact the safety and well-being of our residents, but also place a greater burden on the employees who remain.
It also means 91 dispatchers will spend more time on emergency calls while waiting for police officers and firefighters.
Sorry.
From farther away, delaying our ability to answer the next person calling for help.
At the same time, we've seen hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on unnecessary items
and the city is continuing to fund those items while essential services are asked to be
cut.
Long Beach deserves leadership that puts public safety, essential city services, and the employees
provide them first.
I ask you to reconsider this budget, provide frontline services, protect frontline services,
and invest in what matters the most, the safety of residents.
Thank you.
Can I ask, Warren?
Good evening, my name's Ken Osborne.
I'm a veterans commissioner, but I am here as a private
citizen today.
Today I'm advocating for the full restoration
of the Office of Veterans Affairs.
We are last year we supported the Memorial Day event
with the Frankie Evans Organization,
managed the veterans' better program,
including recruiting applicants, choosing memories,
better design and installation.
We also managed the programming of the Veterans Day event, none of this was listed by the health department in their accomplishments.
We are more active that we were in early years, so only having a part-time person doesn't allow us to do this.
The first budget commission, we were the first, we were the only person that I saw on the budget page 70 to be caught in the original budget. It said, sunset, it did not continue. So that's where I was, that hit me pretty hard. And I appreciate the mayor's bringing us back as a part-time position. But I think we do need the full-time position to support all that we're doing. We're doing a lot more than we used to, and we've got a lot more than we could be doing, incordinating with the VA, instead of us doing events on our cells.
Maybe we work more with the VA partner.
Also, the Vanners program, if you look around other studies,
they have that same program that's been by sponsorship.
Maybe we could look at doing it as sponsorship rather than just
delimiting it.
So my ask is that we restore that position to full time so we can continue
to do good work for our veterans in the city of Long Beach.
Thank you.
Emily Quest.
Hey everybody, this is a tough one.
I work at, I go to the studio at in the library and I'm just asking, can you please
don't cut our hours and don't cut our employees?
My friend is gay and autistic and he was beaten on the metro and he came in and he was
able to sit with us in our son group and we all supported him and he doesn't have a lot
people to talk to and I can't understand that this is going to happen. I know I know I have
to happen. I'm calling on the LGBTQ Center of Long Beach, the Arts Council of Long Beach, stand
up for us. Stand up for our safe spaces. I don't need as much art to the city for free, not
can anything. I work on this paper that they give me and I'm making a quilt plan and I draw
the drawings up and I use donated fabric that they give us the 30s, 40 years old from
people that had died. We're not asking for a lot. Please leave that space for me to be the
for the community.
Thank
you.
That's a lot of fun.
Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor.
Members of City Council, City Manager, staff.
Thank you for the opportunity for me to speak today.
My name is Gus and I am here
as a proud residents of Council District 9
and an Army Combat Veteran grateful to call
the City of Long Beach, my home.
Our community has long demonstrated its commitment
to those who have served onation.
Veterans like me have returned to Long Beach
with valuable experience commitment to duty
a desire to continue serving. Many also face challenges navigating benefits, accessing resources
and transitioning to civilian life. The Office of Veterans Services was established several
years ago, a few years ago, to play an important role in connecting veterans and their
families to the assistance that they deserve. Likewise, the City's Veterans Commission provides
an important forum for community, for communication between veterans, our community organizations,
in our local government.
It has helped ensure that our perspectives are heard, it encourages civic engagement, and
it supports events and initiatives that honor military service and our veterans.
The city of Long Beach continues to honor veterans and service members through amazing events
and spaces like the Long Beach Veterans Day celebration, which is my personal favorite, but
Also the Long Beach Memorial Day Sunset Ceremony in Council District 1, the Veterans Peer in Council District 3, and Veterans Park in Council District 7.
As our city looks to the future, I encourage our continued investment in programs that strengthen support in veterans.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
I live the best.
Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council.
My name is Elizabeth Sospiglio and I have proudly served the City of Long Beach for more than 10 years.
as a librarian and a proud I am shop steward.
I have dedicated my career to public service because I believe
our residents deserve strong, accessible public services.
Today this budget is deeply personal.
My partner and I both live and work for the city
and under the proposed budgets are jobs are at stake.
We aren't the only ones facing this uncertainty.
The proposed budget looks to cut over 200 union jobs.
Behind every one of those positions is a person, a family,
years of experience serving the people of Long Beach. But this isn't just about city employees,
it's about our community. I can only speak to my own experiences, but every day I see children,
teens, seniors, job seekers, and families who depend on our libraries. Libraries provide safe spaces
as we just heard. Internet access, literacy programs, educational opportunities, and connections
to critical resources. When you eliminate library positions, reduce hours or cut services,
those residents lose access to opportunities they cannot always find elsewhere.
We still have never been fully restored from the 2012 layoffs.
Removing one day a week removes more than just those open hours.
It removes positions that help keep staff and the public safe.
Part of their proposal is a removal of our only team mental health advocate in the city.
And we know that Elinkin Park in downtown has seen a continued rise in violence,
trafficking and drug use amongst teens taking that position away only demonstrates that
staff. Thank you. Your time has concluded.
Dany.
Hello. My name is Denise. I am a community organizer with OdaLay live in District 2.
I come here today to advocate for the Long Beach Justice Fund. I want to thank the mayor
for including the Justice Fund and your recommendations and your recommendation to restore
the LBJ of position in the equity department. Even so I still want to share what
We're advocating for, which is $3 million for the Justice Fund.
This is not taking into account the fiscal hardships that the city is going through, but I want
to share this number because despite what's happening, our community is still facing threat
from ICE.
And we're also facing a 64 billion budget going to DHS.
That's what we're prepping for, or it is prepping for our communities prepping for.
So it's really important that I share that $3 million, and I hope that we can get as close
as we can because this is a fund that is really essential for folks. It's really helped people
be able to navigate this system. I know Y'all have heard about our community member who spent
six months in the Adalanto Center and was able to come home through the Justice Fund. So these are
real lives real impact. We know that people are dying in these detention centers. So this is truly
life or death. And so I really want to encourage y'all to continue advocating for funds to go to
this Justice Fund because it truly is really important. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Pat Mays?
Hi, guess what you need I'm with. I'm going to tell you a couple of things.
The first time I'm sure you're aware of nobody works for the city of Long Beach because we plan on being rich. None of us.
We work for the city because we love it.
I'm also going to tell you what I told Mr. Hickman on September
25th. The Long Beach City has had a long reputation for at least a decade now of being
the kind of city where it's easy to get hired and it's easy to get trained from the
ground up, which is amazing. But it will overwork you and underpay you. And so when I first
got here eight years ago, I was told, get your training, go through the step increases, and then
go to any other city that will pay you at least 15% more for 20% less work. And I will tell you right
now, our members, the people who are on the ground doing 80% of the work that actually goes
in the city. They are overworked and overwhelmed, underpaid, under-supported, underfunded, under-equipped,
under-supplied. And did I emphasize overwhelmed? Like, I can't tell you how frustrating it is.
I work for the traffic operations division. We have one tech for street lights for every 20,000 street lights.
Los Angeles has one for every 2,000. They're asked on a daily basis to do the work of 10 people.
So I just want to point out to you that we're here because we love the city, not because we plan on being rich.
And to have our love and devotion possibly rewarded with being laid off is a huge slap in the face.
Thank you.
Diego is the last speaker.
Hello everyone. My name is Diego. I'm the Rapid Response Organizer with Orale.
I want to start off by thinking the mayor and city council for all your efforts with the budget.
But as you've heard from today, there's still some things that need to be improved.
One of them being the Lombie Justice Fund,
like I mentioned and my partner and co-worker had mentioned previously,
coming up here we wanted to ask for an increase to up to $3 million.
There's close to weekend to get to that number just because you mentioned at the beginning.
we know we are still seeing a big attack in like onslaught from the federal government on
to not only Long Beach communities, we're also surrounding L.A. communities and in terms of
the justice fund for the organization that I work with, I am the one that is responsible for
doing the referrals of the justice fund. So for some context we've referred over to 130 people
to the justice fund so that includes Long Beach residents and people who have some connection to Long Beach
who have either been detained by ICE,
are scared of being targeted by ICE,
have had some sort of run-in with the legal and immigration system,
and the Lumbish Justice Vanessa just such an amazing tool
for residents of Lumbish to be able to get at least a starting point.
And also get vetted legal help,
because as right now, I've heard a lot of families have been getting scammed,
upwards between like 10,000 to 30,000,
just for some legal fees or just for a lawyer to even look at their case.
And a lot of the times is people end up not even being lawyers, so the Justice Fund also helps as a resource for that, to help people not.
Your time has concluded, thank you.
Thank you.
Well, we want to thank everyone for participating in this first hearing.
Again, this is the beginning of the process, not the end.
There will be a number of times to continue engaged, including our community budget process.
We now will take it back to the council.
again this is this is just the opening volley we'll have time for deeper questions we'll have the
departments there to answer more specifics but we just have two council members council member
Thresh into anything I just want to take the time to thank the city staff the city manager you
mayor as well as our finance department Rebecca was there with you last week as we presented
this proposal to the public this we've already seen what a difficult time we're having even
this month, looking at the impacts on so many of our workers and public servants, as we try
to attempt to ensure that we have a level of service. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness
around what the plans have been so far to make sure that we are solving our deficit, replenishing
our reserves, and continue to make progress to make sure that we're able to attract top
talent. As far as as a council member, I'm concerned, I appreciate the public for being
here this evening. I think it's important that we had a chance to hear from you, but understand
that this is just the first step. We have a series of budget hearings as well as at least six
opportunities for the community to share perspectives. And I know I'll be at those events to be able
to hear how we might address this budget accordingly. So with that, I am pleased to have so many people
out today to be able to hear from the public and look forward to future conversations.
Thank you, Councilmember Allen.
Yes, I'm thank you for the presentation and I appreciate the look back over the fiscal
years because I think it clearly highlights how we reached our current financial position
and just the challenges that we face ahead.
Yeah, this was a really tough week and a lot of employees had to be reassigned or lost their job and that's heavy 237 people, highly effective.
So our workforce impacts were huge and like the mayor said, none of us take that lightly.
I think it's important that we also protect our reserves, as you discuss the multi-year replenishment plan to restore the emergency and operating reserves or huge.
I'm glad to hear that none of our rescues are mayor and you're taking out.
I mean, the community was very loud and clear and how important that was.
So that's good, also using your one-time and outside funds like measure A and measure
ER and the county and state grants could help we start some of those services without
putting that structural pressure on our general fund.
Just want to note, I know that the LBPD's fourth annual year in review and accountability
report shared that the officer has responded to more than 187,000 calls for service with an
priority one response of 5.5 minutes. So I think we've made really good progress over the
last four years. I had 235 new police graduates and our police vacancy did fall.
Now in this
proposed budget will any any patrol officers be reduced city manager? Yes, so one of the proposals
and you're going to hear more about this from the police chief next week when we do public safety,
but 17 of the vacant patrol officers will be reduced.
We're not reducing the beats.
We're not changing how we're structured in response,
but we will have fewer positions that will be able to provide some of that coverage.
And he'll be able to talk more about that next week.
Okay, and I just have a couple of questions that I'm going to make this quick,
because I know we're going to dive into this, and I'm also one budget.
So, but I do have a question with regard...
Members to the vacancy for the Police Department budget. Well, that effect any of our planning or preparation for the Olympics with any of those eliminating any of those vacancy positions.
Well, I didn't tell you we're due to a position. You don't have that available tire, but you'll hear from the chief next week.
So our plan is, while we have to reduce some of those vacancies, those vacancies have been with us for several years, and so we have not been able to keep them filled, even though we've been hiring.
We will, at the same time, reduce some of those vacancies, but we're also going to immediately
be bringing on another academy that will bring on 70 additional police officers that's
what's estimated right now, and with the combination of those two, by the time we reach
the Olympics, we should be fully staffed, which we haven't been for several years.
All right, just a couple more comments.
I also want to say I'm excited to hear about the traffic safety division.
I think that's a huge one.
We've heard, that's one of our biggest issues
that I continue to hear is traffic safety
and are making sure that we can meet our vision zero goals.
So that's huge.
And then also I want to congratulate the mayor
on his representation on the metro board
and the additional transportation opportunities
that this can create for Long Beach.
So congratulations, mayor.
And also just everyone check out those maps that we're showing your presentation, I think, so that everyone can see what the infrastructure that's happening in the city and then also don't forget to participate in the budget process.
We have budget hearings before council meetings on Tuesdays and there's a lot of ways that you can leave your comments on survey.
So just make sure you participate in these processes so we can hear what's important to you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Respectfully, this is not public comment. We're not going to tolerate disruptions from the public in this hearing.
We're going to get through this budget hearing in a timely and orderly fashion.
You will have your opportunity to do public comment every single meeting.
Thank you. Next is Councilmember Dougan.
All right. Thank you for the presentation and the work that went into developing this budget.
Having run businesses throughout my life understand that every position eliminated represents
a person whose life is being changed.
These reductions affect the employees, their families, and the services that they provide,
so I feel for the hundreds of employees who are being their lives are being impacted.
At the same time, we are responsible for carefully and effectively managing the public's
money.
And my greatest concern is the proposed
proposed reduction in public services at a time
when many of those services are already declining.
Police response to emergency calls
is more than a minute slower than it was five years ago.
Fire department response times have also increased
with our firefighters getting to emergencies
within six minutes, just 25% of the time.
trees are being trimmed less frequently. Residents are waiting longer for repairs to
their sidewalks, curbs, streets and the pot holes in our streets. These are the
core responsibilities of our city and they were consistently identified as
priorities through the city's community budget process. I do understand that we
have to close a $58.2 million structural deficit and that difficult decision, difficult decisions
have to be made. However, I'm also concerned that we're continuing to reduce investment
in the basic services residents rely on every single day. So I want to begin at a high level
and then I'll move to several specific areas. Can you walk me through how the city determine the
as a sign to each department was every department expected to meet the same percentage reductions
or were the reductions based on the city's priorities and the consequences for service delivery.
Yes, so we took a multi step approach.
So we had a large deficit to reduce and so we asked everyone to generate ideas.
So those ideas get generated and we asked all departments to contribute.
and then every single one goes through a review process, about what is the impact we listen to,
you know, the input that we get back in January from the community, we look at the response profile,
and so at the end of the day, departments don't all have the cross-the-board cuts, they're not exactly the same.
Some are going to be higher, some are going to be lower, some are able to shift to different funding sources within the department.
Some are maybe able to be eligible, like police and fire to go to measure A while others are not.
And so it is a deliberate approach that we look at, we were not able given the size of the deficit to just say police and fires shouldn't be on the table if we had done that then the cuts to everybody else would have tripled.
And so we are at that level where we needed to look at everything. If you look at the way that we laid it out of the $58 million, about half were taken more in other non-service reduction reductions.
And then about half of them, about $33 million of the $58 million
are service level reductions.
That's my time.
I'll keep going here.
As chair of the GOE, the government operations and efficiencies committee,
I see how much the city pays each year for property damage and injuries
caused by maintenance issues, including fallen trees and branches.
Investing in preventative maintenance can reduce the city's liability costs
us on the back end and that same principle applies to pot holes, sidewalks and curbs.
The approximate $17 million the city paid in one pot hole related case could have funded
an additional pot hole in crew for a decade and repaired a hundred and twenty thousand
pot holes. Reducing maintenance may create savings in this year's budget when we have a problem,
but it can also create much longer term costs in future years. So I would like staff to provide
through the written budget response process. The past five years of budgeted funding for street
tree and park tree trimming, stump removal, park maintenance, and landscaping maintenance within
parks recreation and marine, as well as public works.
And please also include the funding for curb and sidewalk repairs, excluding the expenditures
for the ADA settlement, the Ochoa settlement, along with any other major maintenance-related
budget categories. With that, I've hit my five minutes, shall I queue up again?
No.
We're going to go to Council Member Kirk.
Thank you. I want to thank the team and the departments for being so thoughtful in this process,
and a hard process, and a painful process for all of us, and some, especially more than others, over the last several months.
I want to thank the mayor for looking at ways to provide restorations that also don't increase
the deficit and pull on other funding that we can find from other sources.
Thank you for the presentation.
I have specific, I made my notes about specific departments and things that were brought
up that I will bring during the specific hearings of those departments.
But I just want to remember that when we talk about library cuts or park programming cuts
or homeless services or mental health cuts,
that many jobs overlap multiple disciplines.
And so, Park, someone who works in a park,
especially our library staff,
are providing elements of public safety
and mental health and homeless services.
And that as we look at the cumulative impact
of the reductions that need to be made,
that we keep in mind the unintended, unintended,
potential impacts from one position possibly more than others because of the multiple roles
they may play in addressing the needs of our resident. So again I will I have a rolling list
of questions to talk to our departments about over the next couple of weeks. I want to thank the
public for coming out tonight for those who have already contacted our office to share encouraging
people to be part of the formal budget process, but also sharing those with our office as well.
So we can ask those questions that are most pressing for all of you over the next several weeks
and pose them to the Budget Oversight Committee if that is the appropriate place. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Councilmember Supno. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be way into the weeds here,
instead of general statements. Our into the water, as the case may be. So the Mayor referenced
the Los Angeles River and all the challenges there. I just wanted to put on the record that
the fourth council of district has four waterways that are under county jurisdiction saying
gave real river. I already creek. The Los, yeah, three does channel and bouton Creek. So I want
to make sure we acknowledge those and that they need some love to. If I could just respond to it
quickly, when I said the Los Angeles rivers, I mean, the rivers under the control of LA County,
just so we're clear, not just the LA River.
Mr. Mayor, we're on the same page.
All right.
All right, before we go back, okay.
So before we go back to Councilmember Doug and I want you
time to be able to address, there were some claims out there.
I think you need to opportunity to address the claim,
the one that stood out to me was about like,
lawsuits, pervignorability, or the equivalent to how many
we could have filled. I personally know that that's not how our fund for
settlement works, but I would like for you to address that before it becomes
a narrative.
Yes, so as a large organization we get hit with lots of lawsuits
all the time. There are a lot that are dismissed. There are some that we choose to
settle and there is some that we end up being liable for through through court cases
and our city attorney can speak to that work. There are some things that we have to
of not had an issue, but it's a business decision about how do you continue to pay money
for lawyers, or do you continue to eliminate that liability?
In the idea, and we would all love to have less of those lawsuits, we'd love to have less
of people with claims against pot holes.
It's one of the reasons we did not cut a pot hole crew, those were some of the early suggestions
early on.
When public works had to look at this, we said, no, we can't really cut back on pot holes.
They instead took some pretty deep productions on their administrative and support staff,
because those funding need to come from somewhere.
The real issue is not really filling the pot holes.
It's fixing all of the streets and all of the sidewalks.
So the amount that we pay in claims is fair amount.
But in order to actually repair the PMP or repair all the streets,
it's about $150 million a year just to stay even.
And then if we were looking to get all of our streets done
where we don't have those issues, it's about a billion dollars.
And so these aren't small amounts, you can't really
equate it to just taking 2 million of this lawsuit
and 3 million of that lawsuit.
The issue is funding our infrastructure, you know,
it wholly over the next five, 10, 15 years.
That is what would help produce some of our liabilities.
All right, thank you, Councilmember Dougan.
I appreciate your explanation, Tom.
I do see all of the cases that come through
And basic services are what our residents expect us to provide.
That is why I'm bringing things up like this.
That is so important for our budget.
All right.
Moving on, I do appreciate several important investments
in the proposed budget, including funding for the police
academy.
So important for our city.
but I do believe that communities will feel the effects of the public safety cuts.
Vacant patrol positions are currently being filled through over time.
If those positions are eliminated and over time capacity is reduced, fewer officers will be able to respond to emergency calls.
I would like an analysis of how the proposed reductions to patrol and investigations.
Patrol and investigations are expected to affect priority one priority two and priority three response times as well as
how it is going to affect the departments capacity to investigate crimes.
That analysis, again, can be provided as part of the written budget response.
And finally I wouldn't like the AB691C level rise assessment to be included in the budget as an unfunded liability.
The city submitted a report in 2019 to the state showing that we have hundreds of millions of dollars of city infrastructure at risk over the next 20 years,
but it isn't reflected in any of the city's budgeting documents.
And I think we need to start recognizing these types of liabilities.
Now, turning to the fire department, emergency response has slowed over the past five years,
and eliminating engine 14 would reduce the response capacity, city wide.
City wide not just on the east side, but at the same time, the need for emergency response
capacity in Southeast Long Beach is still growing.
AES is expanding their battery storage facility next to its natural gas powered plant.
1,200 units, the equivalent of maybe 5,000 people, are these units are under construction
and expected to begin opening by the end of 2027.
An additional industrial facility is also moving through the planning process.
In District 3, nearest station 14, and the elimination of engine 14 is going to affect this. Again, citywide, it's going to affect our response times.
So I understand that we need to balance the budget, but the safety of our communities must come first.
Fire response has consistently been the top priority identified through the city's community budget engagement since I took office.
When someone calls 911, the city needs to be able to respond in a timely manner.
That's one of the most fundamental services residents pay the city to provide.
I would ask the City Manager to return with an alternative funding strategy that would keep
engine-14 operating.
I think our communities deserve to weigh the cuts and offsets before we reduce our
city-wide emergency response to potentially life-threatening incidents.
Finally, I am concerned about the increasingly creative ways we are proposing to use the restricted
Thailand's fund.
We should be clear that these proposals carry risk. Our budget
proposals using Thailand's funding to repave ocean boulevard, while also
installing parking meters whose revenue will go to the general fund. With the
economic development department the proposals shifts funding away from a
position dedicated to Thailand's work and spreads the Thailand's allocation
across several administrative positions, including portions of the director, deputy director,
and support staff. I'd like to see the methodology used to determine what portion of each of
these employees' salaries and benefits can appropriately be charged to the Tideland's Fund.
I think it's important we understand the risk we are taking on what when we're using restricted funds
in these ways. I'd also like additional detail on how the police department intends to implement the proposed
Thailand's patrol for officers one sergeant. I participated in right alongs and members of my
team have also joined officers in the field in right alongs. An officer may be assigned to
park and spend a significant portion of their time responding to calls near the pyramid
nowhere near Bluff Park. They're doing that as backup. So if a position is structurally funded
by the Titans Fund but the officers' actual work is not tracked and reconciled, we risk
blurring the line between restricted Titans expenditures and general fund responsibilities.
I think it's important for this council, all of us to understand the risk we are taking with
these proposals before we approve a budget that includes those options.
So to summarize, I'm requesting that staff return through the written budget response process with the following.
Five years of budgeted funding for street tree and park tree trimmings, stump removal, park maintenance and landscaping maintenance within parks recreation and marine and public works.
Five works of funding for curve and sidewalk repairs, excluding expenditures required under the ADA Ochoa settlement, along with other right-of-way maintenance related budget categories.
An analysis of how the proposed reductions to police patrol and investigations are expected to affect priority 1, priority 2, and priority 3 response times and the department's ability to investigate crimes.
of funding strategy to keep engine-14 operating so the council can evaluate an alternative to completely eliminating that engine that would increase city-wide response times.
I'd like to see the methodology used to determine what portions of economic development positions may appropriately be charged to the Titans Fund.
And the police departments implementation plan for the proposed
tidelines patrol to make sure we aren't blurring lines of municipal work and tidelines work.
Thank you.
All right, that concludes City Council comment and public comment.
Thank you so much.
We'll continue this hearing.
Members, please.
And Mayor, if I may, we did have human resources originally scheduled for today, but it is getting
kind of close to the five o'clock. If we would like to move that maybe
weeks. So next week we're really going to focus on police and
fire and dispatch and then we would recommend doing HR at the same time with
the I think
helping community development. So what do you help HR
and community development in two weeks? Great. Sounds good to me.
Members please cash your vote.
Motion is carried.
All right. Now we'll take the consent calendar.
Let's do public comment on
Okay, so I'm basically going to talk about number 10 and not number 9, okay, so the landfield gas and methane is
primarily in the explosion, fire, and oxygen displacement hazard when it accumulates in enclosed
spaces.
That's the definition that I got.
Then the landfill gas can also contain smaller quantities of volatile organic compounds
in hydrogen sulfide, which may contribute to odors, headaches, nausea, eye or throat irritation
and respiratory symptoms, depending on concentration and duration of exposure and so the reason
why I bring this up is because many of my neighbors and around Long Beach were suffering from
respiratory issues that we don't know where these are coming from. Myself and in the last few
years have suffered from respiratory issues, pneumonia that won't go away, probably walking
around with a little bit of it right now.
So the sensitive populations are children, seniors, people with asthma, and people with
existing heart or lung disease can be more susceptible to air pollution related respiratory
distress, the South Coast ACOMD identifies
particular matter and nitrogen dioxide as pollutants.
So I just want to make sure that the
community has information on the health risk that are happening in our communities.
Where we're supposed to get that information from, it's just really difficult for the general public to find these things and so that's why I come up here because I really would like to know and I really like to help others understand what is being done by the city to keep us safe and not have a public health issue that is swept under the rug.
We have people automatically getting CLPD and wondering where that comes from, adult, asthma,
wondering where that comes from, pneumonia that won't go away.
So that's my whole issue.
Thank you, and that's all I really wanted to talk about.
Thank you.
All right, that concludes consent calendar.
Members, please cast your vote.
Councilwoman Dagan, Councilman Sabrina, make it a vote.
Motion is carried.
All right.
Thank you.
Next, we'll go to general public comment.
Please administer public comment, please.
We have four speakers signed up to speak for first-not-a-gener public comment.
Kenneth Williams, Derek, Eddie, A. Holmes, please line up at the podium.
Kenneth Williams.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Refuse Operator, SCIU-721 member, and the famous words of Eruqa Franklin, of Eruqa Franklin,
all we need is a little respect.
We deserve it. Respect is in just something you say.
Respect means recognizing the essential work we perform every day. Respect means listening to the people
doing the job. Respects me providing safe, working conditions, competitive pay and the resources we need to serve the city.
We're proud to wear the city of Long Beach logo.
We simply want the city to show that they value the people behind the logo.
Thank you.
Good
evening, my name is Derek Bevinz and I'm a refuse operator for the City of On Beach.
Most people think about trash collection on pickup day.
For most of us it's everyday.
We help prevent disease, keep neighborhoods clean, protect the environment and provide
one of the most essential public service the city offers.
When disasters happen, illegal dumping increases, our neighborhoods need us where they're.
We are proud of what we do.
We simply want to contract and recognize our value, respect this, protect this.
Every day, we show up to where it brings new risk.
We work around hazardous waste, by all hazards, overflowing trash, homeless and contaminants,
and materials that can expose us to serious illness.
Many people don't realize what gets thrown away and the trash doesn't disappear, it becomes our responsibility.
We willingly do this work because our community depends on us, but those risk deserves to be recognized in stronger safety protections and contracts that reflects the reality of our job.
Thank you.
Peter please.
Oh, Eddie Carbohon here.
Lumiche has talents and reviews operator.
The ranges from Yon to Senior Ages, with pool of multiple skills.
Some skills are formed over time and some of the born naturally in there.
But when nearby CDs offer better wages and benefits, experience and employees leave.
Every time they happen, the CD losses valuable knowledge and experience.
I have to that, the city losses valuable investment pour into employees. Recruiting and retaining
a skilled workers should be a priority because a stable workforce means better service
for a Long Beach residence. Investment in employees is an investment in the community.
Thank you, A. Home.
We've been negotiating for five months. The negotiation is not going anywhere.
That's why we hear tonight.
Every one of us shows this profession because we believe in serving our community.
We don't expect our jobs to be easy, but we do expect to be treated fairly.
Tonight we're asking our management in the city leadership to stand with us, the workers who
keep low on these clean, protect public health and serve this community every day.
our message is simple and clear. Respect us, protect us, and pay us. You have a blessed day.
Thank you. Second please, public comment.
All right. Well, thanks for coming down and sharing and you know,
encourage us to stay at the table and figure it out. Thanks a lot.
All right. Okay. So that concludes general public comment.
We're now going to go to item 19 in ordinances.
Report from financial management. Recommendation to execute all documents necessary to amend
units contracts with various contractors for providing as needed light and medium duty
vehicle towing services for a revised total annual aggregated contract amount not to exceed
$350,000 and declare proposition out ordinance read the first time and laid over to the next
regular meeting of the City Council for final reading, City White.
Thank you. Is there any public comment here?
There's no public comment, please cast your vote.
Motion is carry.
Thank you, item 20, please.
Communication from Councilwoman Sorrow, recommendation to increase appropriations in the general fund group in the city manager department by 1,550.
Offset by the six council district, one-time district priority funds, transfer from the city-wide activities department to provide contributions of
$300 to public corporation for the arts for the city of Long Beach in support of Arts Council
for Long Beach State of the Arts 50th Anniversary Gala.
$500 to peer education community center to support
Sunny Central's National Night Out.
$250 to one in Long Beach Incorporated and support
of the LGBTQ Center for Long Beach's 33rd Annual Cue Film Festival.
and $500 to what I let in support of their 5K Liberation Walk.
All right, thank you, is there any public comment?
No, public. No public.
Members, please cast your vote.
Council member Daniel, I'm not sure it's not here.
Motion is carried.
Thank you. We'll now move to our closing public comment, please.
We have six speakers.
Tony on Zoom, Dave Schouplea on Zoom, Dave Mael,
to Mara, Cornelius, FB,
and Lyle T. Peterson. So Tony, if you can unmute yourself?
We have Tony on Zoom. Please unmute yourself. Your time starts now.
Hi, I'm here to address an issue that I'm seeing.
I appreciate that with the budget that we're putting more funding for the topic engineering department.
However, looking at issues nearby, I don't think we're having to
traffic engineering department looking at the traffic control plans of
different construction agencies as they're doing projects here in
Long Beach as during the closure of shoreline for the vans of that.
There was two additional construction closers nearby causing chaos with
people, we get a few of the work to go, because science
we're directing them to conflicting detour routes.
So I would just encourage that we fill those new traffic
engineering roles as soon as possible, because we definitely
need some better coordination.
So we can safely traverse our community.
Thank you.
Dave Schukele.
Please unmute yourself for your time starts now.
Hello.
Can you hear me?
Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Mayor, City Council.
I suppose the first thing I should say is to also thank you for implementing SB 707,
so that I could speak to you today via the online Zoom interface.
I am very, very sick and couldn't possibly make it to the meeting in person,
let alone sit through it with a mask on thank you also Mr. Mayor for including
additional funding to staff the changes associated with SB 707 and this online
and telephonic interfaces. It wasn't my intention to speak on anything but you
know budget season being what it is I was struck by how many people and how
different departments, different divisions, different job titles. We're coming up and saying please don't cut our jobs.
It's a very, very difficult task that the council and the mayor have before them and you certainly have much sympathy.
I'd like to speak very briefly on part of the reason why we're in this situation.
I don't think, I mean, you can quibble about some of the business decisions, some of the industrial policy, but I don't think you can fully understand what has happened with city without understanding the tremendous pressures that have been put on it unfairly by changes made by the current federal regime.
I'd like to recommend, it's not like reading, it won't make you happy, but I think it's necessary.
I'd like to recommend an article that came out yesterday in New Yorker.
The future made in China by Evan Osnos.
That kind of details how this country has over time betrayed its population and betrayed working people by
meeting a lot of the new industries that we should have and my generation in specific could
have been building for our collective benefit, such as batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels,
clean energy generally, but also because this article mentions how in Beijing think tank at
renmin University recently published an assessment titled
Thank Trump, which Riley Hale says efforts to
hasten the twilight of an empire by and I quote,
undermining America's alliances, civil servants,
scientific institutions and democratic credibility.
In the past two years, the international approval rating of the U.S. has
dropped nearly 40 points, according to Worldwide Survey.
your time has concluded. Thank you. Okay.
David.
David. Mail.
You can purchase the podium.
This is, I didn't realize I could have done this online, but so be it. Mayor and city council.
I wanted to start by congratulating you on the beach streets event. It was well managed, well
organized an awful lot of fun and it also encouraged me in what I'm about to say because it showed
me that the City of Long Beach is in fact capable of complex management and events. What I
here, I'm here to talk about is actually much, much simpler. It's not only simpler, it's easy to
implement and it provides a revenue source. So I think that's the sort of thing we can all look
over to. Unsurprisingly, as a resident of Syndry district, I live in Alameda's Beach, I live
near the corner of Florida Street and her most street in what is known as a parking
impact district. And I'm here to talk about parking. So I'll try to make it as brief as
possible. Essentially, we have a problem that all of my neighbors, not I'm retired, but
I get to watch this happen every evening at about five,
cannot find places to park.
This is not something that cannot be overcome.
Various policies such as Santa Monica
and San Francisco, which are not known generally
as bastions of corporate subservience,
have managed quite easily to solve this.
I think you all know what I'm talking about.
We are talking about street parking.
We are talking about permit parking, and we are talking about paid permit parking.
For those of you with economic background, you'll know this is known as the tragedy of
the comments in our neighborhood, it's known as the tragedy of elite auto repair.
Because there is no charge for parking, various companies such as elite will put anywhere
from 12 to 20 cars on the street constantly.
They have an entire team of people who go out and move those cars on Mondays and Thursdays for street cleaning.
I don't think that's right, the people who can't find parking don't think that's right.
And if you lead auto repair and knew that they would have to pay probably $20,000 a year for that,
I suspect they would find parking elsewhere.
I know that if I were in their position, I would.
Again, this is not complicated.
People who live here get a right to buy a permit.
They pay for permit parking and they make their accommodations accordingly.
So I will look forward to seeing something either published here or at one of these meetings
in which we discuss why is it other places, including Lakewood right up the street, can
do this and sent and Long Beach cannot.
I look forward to hearing from all of you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Tamara Carneelius.
Hello, city officials, Mayor.
My name is Tamara Carneelius.
I am with the City of Long Beach Parking Control,
street sweeping side, but I represent parking enforcement as well.
I'm here to speak on behalf of Parking Control.
We're here to say that some of us are the lowest paid,
and last year we brought in 10 million alone,
and short staff.
The city has gotten more dangerous and we feel deeply under value.
We need to money.
Things are very expensive.
We are the boots on the ground, risking our lives,
and fast food workers make more money than us.
It's every day we go out there
and the citizens of this city threaten us.
We have co-workers that are off because either they're injured
they got threatened, hit, stuff, slapped, punched. It's not fair and we deserve to get a raise.
A raise that will let us live survive. Everybody wants to be able to afford what they need to
basic items that we need and if we don't get this raise, it's just, you're slapping us in a face.
We're here to serve the community. We're here to serve the city and like I said before,
we made $10 million short staff and we're still short staff and we deserve that raise please keep us in your
in consideration for that. Thank you. Thank you.
FB.
FB. Okay, moving on. Lyle T. Peterson. That's the last speaker.
Contact the better business bureau is impossible. It's just impossible. There is more than one manager
that is adding on the tax for the tip, Christine or Cindy Allen is my representative.
So I would like to have someone come out here and remedy this problem.
You know, there is more than one manager that is adding on the tax for the tip.
So, could I get a representative out here?
Yes, I'm your district too, and I'll have someone come out and talk to you.
Thank you.
That concludes the public comment.
All right.
We'll thank you to all of you both online and in person who participate in the public comment.
We are now.
This is it.
It's National Night Out.
I know that neighborhood association throughout the police departments out
and they're doing community building.
This summer, it's a great program.
The council meeting in early enough
for council members to be able to get out
and meet and greet with their communities.
And what a great summer it has been so far
with all the concerts in the park
and the movies in the park and World Cup soccer
in the park and movies on the beach
and baseball and Blair Field
and all the things that are happening.
So we wish you a happy and a safe summer night
national night out and a great summer.
Are there any closing comments from the council?
Okay, Councilmember Kirk?
Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor.
This Friday, August 7th is first Friday of the month.
Meaning, you can join the BKBA for their monthly art walk.
This time with Summer Block Party theme from 630 to 930.
Find art music and community at the shops and businesses up and down Atlantic.
While you're there, I invite you to stop by the Expo Art Center at 432 on Atlantic for
the opening night of the African American Cultural Center of Long Beach's newest exhibit.
Black Cowboys, more than a myth, which will run from August 7th to August 24th.
Then this Saturday is second Saturday of the month, in the fifth district, so that means
you can volunteer with a local clean streets team from 830-930 at two locations at 4-5-5-5-5-1,
or 12-40 East Carson Street. You can also spend the afternoon and part of the village for
their summer-fest themed monthly block party from 11 to 3.
I also encourage you any performing arts fans to support students at LBCC by attending their
show of Shakespeare's 12th night running now through Sunday August 9th.
You can visit lcc.com slash calendar to find showtimes and tickets and lastly if you have
not had enough music in the park on the beach and all of those places I invite you to attend
the BKBA's final concert in the parking lot.
on Monday, August 10th at 6.30 p.m. in the Howard CDM parking lot, which is located across from
Steelcraft, on Long Beach Boulevard in Bixby. This time featuring the western standard time Scott
Orchestra. Thank you so much and we'll see you out in the community.
Thank you, Councilmember, with the Russian food.
Thank you so much, Mayor. Well, this past weekend, I had a great time and I think several of you did
too at the Abtown Jazz Festival. I wanted to...
Take a moment to congratulate Councilwoman Joni Rick's Odie for yet another amazing event.
I was also thrilled today to join the National Capacity. This is the National Asian Pacific Islander Community Development
Organization as they held their convention here in Long Beach. It's a coalition empowering Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders throughout the nation.
Following the opening by Councilwoman Suley Sorrow yesterday, I had a chance to welcome the attendees today too.
And so happy that local partners, like the United Cambodian community and Filipino migrant center, were on hand to make sure that Long Beach was well represented there.
With the budget process underway, I'd like to invite the public to come out to one of the community budgeting meetings.
The next one that will be held at least in the north will be August 6 from 6 to 730 p.m. at Lynn bird middle school.
Your voice is essential and we look forward to hearing how we can build a sustainable financial future together.
And this Saturday 8 by 8, this Saturday is August 8 and my office will be hosting a district wide cleanup on Saturday August 8 at 8 a.m.
This will be an opportunity for various neighborhood associations to come together and elevate here on the eighth district.
And then finally, we're excited about our backpack giveaway that'll be Saturday August 15th.
That'll be here from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at sheer park.
We hope you'll come out at 4,600 long beach boulevard,
making sure that our students are prepared as they go back to school for the fall in 2026.
I hope to see you there. Have a good night.
Thank you for those council districts where there is no in person meeting tomorrow night. We have a virtual budget meeting at 6 p.m. to 730 p.m. City Manager can verify this that's long beach.gov f.y.
27 will let you to the site. That's just go to Long Beach.gov backslash budget made it simple.
Okay. Thank you. All right. Yes. Go there to follow the budget. Thank you. Have a good night meeting adjourn.