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Long Beach Budget Meeting Could Prove Crucial by Ryan ZumMallen | Archive | 08.23.10 |
+ 1:20pm | The three-member Budget Oversight Committee will meet today to discuss possible solutions to a massive budget deficit by reviewing several items such as possible cuts to public libraries, community parades and performances by the Junior Concert Band. The Budget Oversight Committee is made up of councilmembers Gary DeLong and Patrick O'Donnell as well as Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal. Their purpose is to examine possible methods to save money, by which I mean cut programs and services, because Long Beach faces an $18.5 million deficit that must be balanced and approved by the City Council on September 15. The meeting is public and will be held at 4:00pm in City Hall. The committee will also review plans to fund debt owed by the Aquarium of the Pacific, which has fallen to the City, as well as updates on public safety and the process of renegotiating labor contracts and pensions with City employees. These items carry considerably more weight in budget talks because much more money is at stake. However, it is community benefits such as libraries, parades and free concerts that are more likely to be cut or eliminated because renegotiating employee terms can prove lengthy and difficult. Last week, the City Council committed to providing a reduced sum to keep the Long Beach Municipal Band performances running next year and the committee today has asked to review alternatives to cutting library hours, but these services remain on the chopping block even though they represent a drop in the bucket of the City's total deficit. The LBPOST.com last week published an editorial from a local high school teacher who explained why cutting library services will damage the students who need the most help. The full City Council will also hold a special budget hearing tomorrow to discuss the 2011 budgets of the Harbor Department, Water Department and City Prosecutor's office, like to look for opportunities to lessen their financial load. With just a few weeks remaining before the City Council must approve a balanced budget and few options revealed so far, today's committee meeting could provide insight into where the savings will come from and which services, departments and other expenditures will get the boot. Click here to read our policy on covering the Long Beach City Council.
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15 Comments so far.
GT Parades, libraries, junior concerts, PENSIONS!!!! First we should start using our police for actual crime fighting, not cell phone tickets and kids j-walking. No public servant should be earning 6 figures a year period. These people have job security, unlike the rest of the population, and job security was the trade off for lower salaries. Today our public employees have job security, massive ridiculous pensions, and wages that far exceed the public sector. Time for change people, and not the change we received from the self proclaimed savior Obama! CHARLIE Everything that pertains to the cities public safety such as police & fire, education such as the library's & schools, services to maintain parks, road ways, side walks & trees, water, sewage & gas - need to have first priority's, and of course anything that provides income to the city's coffers. Any items like parades, music in the parks should be temporarly suspended until such time we can afford to enjoy them again...Thus is all in my humble opinion and in not knowing all the facts. sheri russell Bottom line - to continue to offer quality of life activities the council needs to get creative on other areas to help pay for these items - so discussions should focus on privatization of city functions - towing, fleet services, trash, water - none of these are sacred - when our Water GM takes a salary increase what does that tell you of the mentality of a manager at city hall - you would think that Wattier would learn from Bell. I am all for libraries, etc. but paying for it starts up top with setting the tone - Mayor and council should cut their own salaries by 10% - show some leadership; city council budgets should all be the same amount; the problem is that none of these councilmembers have ever been involved with a budget other than maybe Gary who runs a business - rest of them are public sector types - teachers, gov't employees, union employees, what the heck would they know about balancing anything!!! Barbara Some people can't leave Obama out of anything - every bad thing that is happening is his fault, right? He even created the mess he walked into on day one as pres..hello Back to the budget issues, surely there are ways that city expenditures can be reined in, given implementation of good common sense changes, such as, centralizing department functions instead of creating and re-creating separate hierarchies within city government. And the huge expense of the Street Sweeping operation - for one thing, those vehicles do very little but dirty up the sidewalks by mucshing the dirt around to another part of the road - and the wire brushes on the vehicles must also be deteriorating the blacktop as well. And, they have not one but two parking enforcement vehicles following behind, day in and day out. Another big bad issue is the overly aggresive ticketing of citizens by uniformed officers lurking around in unmarked cars raking in hundreds of dollars each day - don't you know they are surely motivated to write enough citations for any infraction whatsoever to bring in enough money to pay their own salaries. In doing so, they are turning like rabid pit bulls on private citizens who cannot even breathe wrong or they will be written up - a healthy society this does not make! Also, this is hurting the economy at all levels because when you get one of these hefty tickets, you are sure not going to be out in the stores shopping anytime soon or for some time in the future (like Christmas for instance). Barbara Ryan M I didn't see anything on here about tearing down the breakwater and getting retail back in downtown... Sheri russell Ryan M while Tearing down the breakwater is an admirable idea it is so far down the calendar road it is not even worth discussion as to what that would mean to development activity / anyone who has worked in government will tell you that receiving approvals and allocation of dollars for actually tearing down or reconfiguring the breakwater is 8 years away from ever happening SELB Oh wow. Please everyone, "you know what" rolls downhill. The budget problems come from the state level and the've raided taxes that used to fund a lot of things for cities...blame the state legislature, vote for better candidates next time, make the legislature part time (google it). Yes, cities could make a better effort to cut down on some waste it's true. But your real problem is the state legislature. And no state, county or city worker has job security anymore, that is a thing of the past. The top administrators need to work for free, they make the low paid workers pay the most for their mistakes. It's all messed up... Mike Sorry to be a distraction from the headline, but in attempting to read the posts, it became almost impossible due to spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. Egads, the entry before mine didn't have a single punctuation mark. There wasn't even a period at the end of the last sentence, and no capital letters were used. Somebody used the word "priority's"! If you meant to pluralize "priority", feel free to add an "s", and maybe even replace the "y" with an "ie", but can people STOP using apostrophes before the pluralizing "s"? When did that start?! I know that the content is paramount, but why throw grammar, punctuation, and spelling out the window? I want to understand what you are trying to say! LBNative You are exactly right Sheri Russell! You too GT, I could not agree with you more on public servant salaries and pensions. LF Not enough money for these services that benefit a large cross section of the city and our youth, but they can approve a multi-million dollar expansion of the aquarium ! The inmates are running the asylum ! CHARLIE to MIKE You got that right, Mike, and I've tried to get Ryan to go back to the original copy layout of the lbpost margins that fits the screen without having to keep bouncing left to right to read each line; It breaks the thought flow and takes four times as long to understand the message, but, no responce, not to mention mixing the ads in with the message copy... Devon Day Where were you people? I attended the budget oversight committee at City Hall today. It was very emotional. The brilliant piece was from Lori Ann Farrell, Director of Financial Management. She collected the data for 44 cities and how they have cut costs. Little ol' Colorado Springs with a population of 380,307 came up with an innovative solution for saving pet projects like libraries and Junior Concert Bands and Municipal Bands. Ordinary citizens bought a street light for say $300. and then designated where that money would go. What if I were able to get 310 people to buy a stop sign in Long Beach. That would replace the money being cut (approxiamately $90,000). Do the math folks, the Junior Concert Band needs about the same amount. The Municipal Band needs 1,300 donors. Seriously, this could work. It could be two families, four families that go in on one stop light. I like Colorado Springs kind of thinking. Together this city can do anything. Would it be too much to ask that you join in the discussion where it counts? The next Budget Oversite Meeting is on September 8th at 4 PM. If you really care about what the city is doing, be there and when they ask for comments, be prepared, be willing to say what needs to be done. Pay for what you want. I am willing to do this. I want kids who have no computers to have a place to do their homework so they can graduate with a decent grade point average and go on to college. My kid got to do this. I paid a lot of money for that. I can pay $300 for another kid to have equal access to educational tools. How many of you feel you could keep kids from dropping out of school by keeping public libraries and Family Learning Centers open by buying a street light? CHARLIE to Devon Than You, Devon, for your report and really look forward to your next Budget Meeting report. Your suggestions make a lot of sence! In the Know Sheri, there has been a clarification made of Kevin Wattier's apparent salary increase. Last year, when furloughs were implemented, Kevin chose to rather have a decrease in salary and keep working. The salary "increase" was just reverting his salary to his old level and no higher as furloughs were eliminated for the workforce. kathy ryan Devon: You and most Long Beach taxpayers still don't get it. The City needs to get the unions to the table to negotiate pensions. Budgets for our quality of life issues are being depleted, because City Hall failed to re-negotiate pension during last years labor negotiations. The cost to the taxpayers for pensiona has risen from $8M to $48M in 10 years, a 700% incrase. Revenues for the General Fund have increased 17%. If you keep going after the crumbs, that is what the citizens will be left with. Start studying the real problem in Long Beach and speak to that at the next Budget meeting.
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LBPOST.com Managing Editor Ryan ZumMallen keeps up on all the current and breaking Long Beach news.
Ryan ZumMallen has served as the managing editor of the LBPOST.com since 2007. He graduated from CSULB with a degree in Print Journalism in 2008 and is a member of the 2009 class of Leadership Long Beach. You can find him on various basketball courts around the city.
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