Is That All There Is? By The Numbers On "More Police" Under "Measure A" Sales Tax Hike

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(June 5, 2016) -- We now know what city management plans if 50%+1 LB voters vote for Measure A (City Hall-sought sales tax increase to 10%), after being misled by LB's Mayor and Councilmembers. amplified by the usual suspects (including the LB Police Officers Association's leadership) into thinking the measure will produce some meaningful increase in police levels for taxpayers.

City management has given us a rough indication (coverage here) of what it plans at this point if the measure passes. With the appropriate caveats that what management recommends may be less or more than the Mayor may recommend and a Council majority may approve, at this point management indicates it's aiming to prepare a budget for Council consideration that would add 8-10 police officers.

By way of context, 8-10 officers would amount to fewer than half of LBPD's now-erased field anti-gang unit. LB taxpayers previously had 20 officers + 2 sergeants deployed on the streets in gang infested neighborhoods. They were part of about 200 citywide deployable officers (about 20%) that LB taxpayers had only a few years ago but no longer have since Mayors Foster and Garcia and their respective Councils have been handling City spending.

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Long Beach also now has more crime, which the incumbent Mayor and Council now predictably try to blame on all sorts of other things without taking responsibility for their own contributory actions...that we believe probably made a bad situation worse and certainly didn't make it any better.

So how much would adding 8-10 officers cost? We very roughly and unofficially estimate that in round numbers the cost of one officer these days is now about $150,000/year "fully turned out" (with equipment and all needed items.) So...for 10 officers, using our assumed cost figure, it would cost about $1.5 million/year.

That's LESS than the continuing annual taxpayer cost (roughly $1.7+ million to General Fund) of double-digit city management pay raises that then-Councilman Garcia, plus incumbents Austin, Andrews and soon-to-exit Lowenthal voted to approve in November 2013. (Vote was 7-2, DeLong and Johnson dissenting.)

It's LESS than the roughly $1.7 million cost of the debt bond that the current Council imposed on LB taxpayers last year that will drain taxpayer funds for the next ten years because city officialdom didn't include the cost of tearing down the old courthouse and some Civic Center drain pipes in what the City's chosen Civic Center developer/operator ought to pay over 40+ years from its own profit for running our Civic Center and getting part of the land permanently for private development.

As the late Leona Helmsley once contemptuously put it, "Only the little people pay taxes." So it will be in Long Beach if Measure A passes: Serf City.

LBREPORT.com provides our Editorial reasons on the merits to vote NO on the Measure A sales tax hike -- to build a better Long Beach -- at this link.

LBREPORT.com will provide LIVE coverage election returns starting shortly after 8:00 p.m. on June 7.

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