(Sept. 5, 2015) -- Tuesday September 8 is a moment of great opportunity. Long Beach City Councilmembers can vote either to approve a FY16 budget spoonfed to them by non-elected management and LB's non-voting Mayor...or use their voting power to make motions (recorded votes, win or lose) and seek overdue changes for taxpayers.

We approach the City Council's budget actions differently than others. Others repeat what management shows and tells them via charts and power point slides, and management's presentations understandably justify the way City Hall currently does business. Of course we report City Hall's figures, but we view the budget from the standpoint of taxpayers -- the consumers -- in terms of what taxpayers receive from Council budget and spending actions. Thus, we ask threshold questions that others don't.

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In terms of budgeted police per capita, the Long Beach City Council barely budgets 1.6 budgeted sworn citywide deployable officers per thousand residents. Los Angeles provides roughly 2.5 officers per thousand; Signal Hill about 3.0. To fall per capita to LB's budgeted police level, L.A. Mayor Garcetti and L.A.'s Council would have to cut roughly 35% of LAPD's officers. If L.A.'s Mayor and Council tried to do what LB's Mayor and Council are getting away with here, they'd be run out of town.

LB city officials have tried endless excuses to defend this. They've tried to blame a bad economy, and pensions, but other CA cities faced the same bad economy and have pensions and didn't do to their taxpayers what LB City Hall has done and continues to do. The truth is, Long Beach is where we are today as a result of current and previous Mayor-recommended actions approved by current and previous Council majority voted actions.

The Council no longer budgets roughly 200 officers (over 20% fewer) for citywide deployment that the City provided in 2008. Councilmembers no longer fund LBPD's former field anti-gang unit that deployed 20 officers + 2 sergeants directly in gang impacted areas. Councilmembers no longer provide the level of visible officers LBPD once had to deter the now-epidemic of residential burglaries. When some LB Councilmembers boast that the proposed budget will leave things basically as is, THAT's what they're proposing to leave as is.

In terms of firefighter resources, the management/Mayor FY16 budget proposes to leave taxpayers with (again) three "ghost" fire stations (station 8 on 2nd St./Belmont Shore), station 17 in the 2200 block Argonne in ELB) and station 18 (Palo Verde/Wardlow)) without staffed fire engines capable of putting out fires. In January 2014, someone's house burned across the street from station 17 until a further engine arrived (LBREPORT.com coverage here.) Meanwhile, station 1 (Magnolia b/w Broadway-Ocean) no longer has a staffed second engine to deal with high rise fires in the densely populated downtown core.

In addition, the Council (with a County agency's approval as a test) used its FY14 budget to experiment on residents with a less expensive paramedic response system, that LB's Fire Chief implemented in response to Council ordered budget reductions. (As we've previously noted, Chief DuRee didn't ask the Council to cut his budget; they did it and he had to deal with it, and did so by created the test paramedic system as an alternative to cutting the number of firefighters on a responding apparatus, which he opposes.) In August 2015, after reviewing LB's medical data, the County agency concluded that the data [its words] "pose an immediate threat to patient safety" (a conclusion disputed by LBFD management) and ordered Long Beach to return to its previous system. That requirement has now drilled a hole in the proposed budget that management will have to patch, by simply requiring paramedic levels that every other jurisdiction in Los Angeles and Orange Counties currently provides.

At the same time, if the management/Mayor FY16 budget proposes to steer LB taxpayers into two years of roughly $7+ million deficits (spending exceeding revenue.) No responsibly run responsibly run business or family would operate this way.

Yes, City Hall says it's been frugal, and in some ways it has, but consider:

• November 2013: the Council voted 7-2 (DeLong and Johnson dissenting) to give management double-digit raises over three years. That Council action now drains $1.5+ million every year from LB taxpayers that could be used to fund police, fire, parks, libraries or infrastructure. (For related behavior,see the Long Beach Business Journal coverage of City Hall's six figure salaries, now into a $200,000 club at this link.) [The LBBJ's facts speak for themselves; we don't imply or invite the inference of its support for our editorial views here.]

• In December 2014: the Council voted 8-0 (4th dist. vacant) to rebuild LB's Civic Center without inviting any expert presentations on alternatives (independent of management) including a less costly City Hall seismic retrofit and will leave LB with a seismically dubious City Hall until (by management's latest timeline) late 2019. In addition, management recently disclosed that if Sacramento doesn't pass a bill that it may not pass, the Council will ve asked to make LB taxpayers pay almost $15 million not previously assumed to demolish LB's former courthouse, draining $3 million from taxpayers' surplus with the rest from a debt bond draining $1.3 million more each year for ten years (money that could provide taxpayers with police, fire, parks and libraries.) Small wonder that some city officials boast that these profligate actions don't require voter approval.

In our opinion, it's unjustifiable to defend treating taxpayers this way. What's needed now are Councilmembers willing to go where the truth leads and make motions requiring recorded votes, win or lose, to change the prevailing attitude that it's OK to leave the City they govern unable or unwilling to provide taxpayers with police and fire services at levels that other cities provide.

Yes, we'll offer some suggested budget actions separately. No, we're not offering answers in this editorial on the multiple reasons why we believe the City of LB can't or won't or hasn't provided taxpayers with public safety levels that other cities do. You'll see those cited separately, coming shortly.

We view this coming Tuesday is a real opportunity. Long Beach can have overdue changes and reforms, if the public grasps that what their Council incumbents do, or fail to do, on Tuesday Sept. 8 could prompt political change and put taxpayers first on Tuesday April 12, 2016...and thereafter.

Further to follow.

Note: Our sources for police ratios cited are as follows:

LB's proposed FY16 LBPD budgeted level of 806 sworn officers (source: FY16 proposed budget) minus roughly 60 "contracted" officers not available for citywide deployment since they're contracted to and paid by the Port, Airport, LBCC, LBTransit, LBUSD (City pays 25% of school officers) to handle policing at their locations. 806 budgeted - 60 contracted = 746 budgeted sworn officers deployable citywide. That figure is divided by the most recently updated population for LB (472.779) by the CA Dept. of Finance, Report E-1, May 2015. Thus: 474.779 / 746 = 1.58. LA's most recently updated sworn staffing level information provided by responding LAPD PIO (week ending Aug 28, 2015.) Signal Hill's total budgeted sworn officer figure provided by city's Finance Director; LB and Signal Hill. Ratios for those cities also derived using most recently updated CA Dept. of Finance population figures.

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