(Mar. 20, 2014) -- The official election pamphlet sent to every Long Beach registered voter includes an embarrassing English-language error by Mayoral candidate Robert Garcia as it introduces two major substantive contentions. We focus mainly on the substantive contentions below.
The English language error, which was part of Garcia's submitted text, follows goofs by other campaigns, including a consultant's error that put a photo of San Diego's skyline on a Bonnie Lowenthal mailer; a Gerrie Schipske mailer referring to her three children as "tree" children and a LB Police Officers Ass'n mailer refers to Firefighters' Ass'n President Rex Pritchard as Rex Richardson (when Richardson is a 9th dist. Council candidate endorsed by LBPOA's PAC.)
Garcia leaped on the Lowenthal campaign error, using Twitter to tweet a jab that he likes Long Beach's skyline.
Garcia's officially filed campaign statement includes the following text:
As your Vice Mayor I have lead [sic] the fight to:
Pass historic pension reforms that will save taxpayers $250 million over the next 10 years;
As Chair of the Public Safety Committee, I have worked with our Police Officers to achieve the lowest crime rate in over 40 years. ...
We presume Garcia was attempting to use the word "led," the past tense of the verb meaning to bring someone with you. Instead, he used the word "lead," which is a metal (unless used in the present tense.)
With respect to the substance of the text Garcia submitted for inclusion in the official election pamphlet:
Re pension reforms: In 2007 and 2008, Mayor Foster recommended Council approval of contracts without pension reforms. They included raises for the three major city employee unions that endorsed him in 2006. After the economy soured, Foster insisted that the unions re-open the contracts and use their raises to pay the full share of their employee pension shares, which they ultimately did. This came after years of taxpayer advocacy [which Foster has acknowledged on occasion] by Kathy Ryan, Tom Stout and Larry Boland who had urged the pension change but at the time were mainly ignored by LB's establishment.
To our knowledge, Council publicly voted approval of the pension changes was unanimous or nearly so. In one case, Councilman DeLong indicated the contractual changes didn't go far enough. Councilman James Johnson also dissented on a new contract for city managers, calling it a raise and not pension reform. But for the most part on votes for what Mayor Foster cites as pension reform, Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske has the same publicly voted record as Garcia.
Re the Council's Public Safety Committee: 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 or opportunity to neighborhood and business groups impacted by the proposed budget reductions to discuss their public safety impacts. 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.
Further matters re public safety (not limited to Garcia): In December 2008, Garcia told voters his first priority would be clean and safe streets. After taking office in May 2009, he joined four other current Council incumbents (Lowenthal, DeLong, O'Donnell and Andrews) in voting for budgets that caused the largest reductions in Long Beach police officers for taxpayers within a four year period in LB's 100+ year history. Councilman Johnson joined them in 2010. Councilmembers Schipske, Neal and now-retired Gabelich dissented in 2011 and proposed an alternative budget opposed by Foster and rejected in a vote action by Councilmembers Garcia, Lowenthal, DeLong, O'Donnell, Andrews and Johnson.
Additional public safety background (not limited to Garcia):
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 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.
In both his final State of the City speech in January 2014 and in endorsing Garcia a month later, Mayor Foster said Long Beach is stronger today than when he took office. Long Beach is likely as strong or stronger than it once was as measured by some Wall Street bond houses, but in our view Long Beach is clearly not stronger in terms of police or firefighting resources that taxpaying Long Beach residents and businesses used to receive and no longer receive.
Long Beach City Hall currently provides a citywide deployable [not counting officers contracted to/paid by the Port, LGB, LBCC, LBUSD and LB Transit who aren't routinely available citywide and haven't been cut] 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.)
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.
LB Police Chief Jim McDonnell has cited Sacramento's "realignment" (that sent some state incarcerated convicted felons back to counties which in some cases led to their release) as a factor in local property crime increases.
Additional budget spending background (not limited to Garcia):
A Council majority, with Schipske dissenting, voted (October and December 2013) to incur roughly $1-$3 million in expenses to fast-track proposals for a new Civic Center without first seeking bids/proposals to determine the marketplace cost to seismically retrofit LB's less than 40 year old City Hall.
In October 2013, the Council also approved unbudgeted roughly 15% raises over two years for city management while telling taxpayers on the same night that the City couldn't restore a previously NLB paramedic unit without making other cuts or raising taxes. The Council approved the raises without seeking or receiving specifics on how to pay for them beyond a management assurance that they could be paid in FY14. On March 4, 2014 city management informed the Council and taxpayers that the City now expects a deficit to return (after the election cycle) which it attributes to PERS contribution changes that had been widely anticipated for months.
Whether Long Beach will continue on this path under a new Mayor and a new incoming Council majority is being decided by voters right now.
