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Robert Garcia For Mayor


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Garcia saysLBREPORT.com says
"...He created the "Go Long Beach" smart phone application, greatly improving code enforcement in the city. [Source: Garcia for Mayor mailer]On Jan. 19, 2010, Garcia, joined by Councilmembers DeLong and O'Donnell, recommended that city management "facilitate the creation of a Long Beach City Smartphone Application, and report back to the City Council in 60 days on the progress and costs of implementation." The Jan. 19, 2010 Council item carried 8-0 (Andrews absent) and city management did what the City Council directed...and indicated such an app had already been developed by an outside firm.
"...Wrote city's first open government policy, which put city contracts online and increased transparency."On April 16, 2013, Vice Mayor Garcia was among seven Councilmembers who refused to second a motion by Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske to discuss enabling public access to Councilmembers' messages on city business -- that currently evade public disclosure -- when Councilmembers communicate on city business via a social network or private email. Retired Deputy City Attorney Jim McCabe came to the Council podium and commended Councilwoman Schipske for bringing the item forward. To hear what took place (total time under six minutes), click here

In August 2009, First Amendment Coalition Executive Director Peter Scheer wrote in an essay titled "Government officials use personal email and texting to avoid public access laws..." [article text] "The latest device for openness avoidance is the use of personal email accounts (and, increasingly, text messaging too) for government communications. Mayors, city council members, agency executives and school superintendents have been told that if they do government business on their gmail or yahoo accounts -- anything but their official .gov email -- their communications, no matter how focused on government matters, will never see the light of day..."

Councilwoman Schipske says she makes all communications on city business on her blog public records by cc'ing them to the city's "longbeach.gov" domain.

LB's current contract policy prevents public and press access to contracts as proposed. A number of other cities attach proposed contracts to agenda items, automatically making them public. Putting contracts online after the Council votes on them only shows the deals after they're done. The most recent example of this was the public's inability to see the proposed consultant contract to prepare an RFP for the new Civic Center until after its approval, to spend over $1 million to a City Hall offered Request for Proposals for a new Civic Center.

"Balancing Budgets and Standing Up For Taxpayers...During the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Vice Mayor Garcia teamed up with Mayor Bob Foster to make city government leaner, more frugal, and effective by enacting historic pension reforms that will save taxpayers more than $250 million over 10 years. Thanks to these efforts, Long Beach is enjoying its first budget surplus in years." [Source: Garcia campaign mailer]The one-year surplus resulted from Sacramento's dissolution of Redevelopment (that Mayor Foster opposed) which produced a windfall in property tax revenue. Without that windfall, Long Beach City Hall would have a deficit (spending exceeding revenue) despite reducing taxpayer services and enacting belated pension changes. It is true that the one year surplus might be smaller, or might not have resulted at all, without the Council's actions (not Garcia's alone) but there'd be no temporary surplus without the Redevelopment windfall. City management predicts deficits will return after the current election in upcoming years and there are no publicly announced plans (by management or elected officials) to restore core services that LB taxayers previously received.
"As chair of the Public Safety Committee Vice Mayor Garcia worked with our Long Beach police officers to keep us safe!...The Council's Public Safety Committee doesn't work with police officers. It hears testimony and makes recommendations to the full Council. With Garcia as chair, the Committee invited city management and LBPD brass to give presentations, but didn't give equal time to neighborhood and business groups impacted by budget reductions; taxpayers got three minimal minutes at the Council podium.

Mayor Foster appointed Councilman Garcia to chair the Public Safety Committee in the second half of 2010 and for the past two years Garcia has failed to hold meetings of the Public Safety Committee to discuss and make recommendations to the Council on the public safety impacts of the budgets Foster recommended each August. That includes the infamous Foster recommended budget that would have entirely eliminated LBPD's field anti-gang unit. Other Councilmembers moved to give the Chief funds to budget at his discretion up to half of those officers for one year; Garcia went along with the rest of the Council on this. In Aug. 2013, another Committee (chaired by DeLong) extracted an admission from LBPD management that nearly half of the halved anti-gang officers were no longer in the anti-gang unit. As of mid-March 2014, there's been no Council discussion of how many anti-gang field officers remain today, in part because Garcia hasn't chosen to find out in his Public Safety Committee.

As Chair of the public Safety committee, Vice Mayor Robert Garcia has:
  • Brought our crime rate to a historic 41 year low.
  • Modernized our Police and Fire Departments with new crime fighting technology and equipment.
  • Worked to build a new Eastside Police Station and North Long Beach Fire Station..."
  • While LB has seen crime decreases. including some citywide categories now at or near historic lows, other cities have also experienced crime drops. However residents and businesses in some parts of Long Beach, including some parts of Garcia's 1st Council district, continue to experience higher violent crime than other parts of Long Beach. In addition, ELB areas which have thus far been spared most of the city's violent crime, now experience residential burglaries at an alarming rates.
  • Garcia initially voted to budget, but a year later voted to remove budgeted funding for, a "ShotSpotter" gunfire location system that was never deployed (action by full Council.) Three Long Beach fire stations no longer have fire engines capable of extinguishing fires as a result of budgets Garcia and Council majorities enacted. North LB no longer has Paramedic Rescue unit 12 as a result of budgets approved by Garcia with a Council majority.
  • The Eastside Police Station and a new North Long Beach Fire Station weren't built with Council-budgeted General Funds but by what were supposed to be blight-fighting Redevelopment funds (allocated by the former Redevelopment agency.)
  • "From the Desk of Mayor Bob Foster...We have accomplished great things together in spite of the worst economic times since the Great Depression. We made tough decisions and took bold actions, even when it was politically unpopular. Because of this, our city is stronger..."Other cities faced the same "Great Recession" but didn't do what Mayor Foster and his Council majority did. Long Beach taxpayers today have the thinnest thin blue line since Mayor Beverly O'Neill took office in 1994. Virtually all of the police officers hired during the O'Neill administration, in part using federal grant money obtained by telling the U.S. Justice Dept. that the City was committed to increasing its police force, are now gone. Long Beach City Hall currently provides a citywide deployable per capita police level roughly equivalent to what Los Angeles would have if it cut over 25% of LAPD's police officers. In February 2014, residents across the street from a LB Fire Station watched as their home burn because the Council majority approved a budget that left that fire station had no fire engine to douse the flames (requiring an engine to race from elsewhere.)
    As the City Councilman representing the Harbor, Robert Garcia has worked with the Port of Long Beach to [cites modernize Port, create 5,000 new construction and permanent jobs, increase port capacity, reduce port pollution by 85%, create the landmark Clean Trucks programn, grow the Port...]The Port is governed by a non-elected board of Harbor Commissioners, not by the Council. The Port's staff and Harbor Commission did what Councilman Garcia's mailer claims he did (says "worked with" the Port to do.) The Council collectively approves the Port's budget and hears appeals to Environmental Impact Reports on Port projects.


    LBREPORT.com's Fact Check is a work in progress. With the tsunami of mail that has arrived from some candidates (some more than others), we analyze and comment on some of the more conspicuous claims we've seen. We can't possibly examine everything, and some candidates send more mail and say more noteworthy things than others. We're starting with mail from Mayoral candidates but we hope to expand to others. We invite you to help us by providing examples of campaign materials you believe deserve merit fact check attention. Scan or attach the material, cite what you believe deserves attention and why, and email them to us at mail@LBReport.com or via our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lbreport.



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