A Responsible Budget -- That Restores Public Safety

LBReport.com

Counter-Point

Text from mass emailing sent by Mayor Robert Garcia

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The text below is from a mass emailing sent using the personal (non-.gov) email domain regularly used by Robert Garcia to send mass emailings signed in his capacity as Mayor. It arrived a little over two hours after we published an Editorial that criticized the budget Mayor Garcia proposed. LBREPORT.com publishes Mayor Garcia's emailed text in full below as a counter-point.

(August 2, 2016, 11:57 a.m. ) -- Yesterday, along with City Manager Pat West, I presented my proposed budget for fiscal year 2017. Tonight, the City Council will begin deliberating the budget, which must be adopted by September 15.

This is my third budget as Mayor and, like the previous two, it is balanced and responsible. We continue to fund Long Beach Police and Fire Academies, investments in technology, expanded Library services, and programs in our parks and community centers. We also strengthen our public works and clean team operations and grow our economic development efforts. And Long Beach continues to live within its means by facing challenges in a responsible and fiscally prudent manner, paying down our pension liabilities, and working to bring additional reforms in the future.

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This June, voters demonstrated their optimism about the future of Long Beach and approved the biggest investment in our City in more than a generation, and that means we can also make historic investments in public safety and infrastructure.

Measure A will make a $384 million investment over the next decade, and the 2017 Budget proposal shows exactly how the City will put new revenue from Measure A to use: repairing our aging infrastructure, restoring the South Police Division, and expanding fire services.

That was my commitment to you when this Measure was proposed, and you will find the City is keeping its promise in this budget: Measure A funds will only be used for investments in infrastructure and public safety.

We now have the opportunity to make our city safer, to pave more streets and alleys, to care for our parks and to improve 911 emergency response times.

The new revenue will not solve all our fiscal challenges, but it will help a great deal.

The proposed budget can be viewed here, and a map of the Infrastructure Investment Plan is included.

I want to thank the City Manager’s office and the Department of Financial Management for their hard work on this budget. I also want to thank residents for supporting Measure A, which was crucial to ensuring a strong future for Long Beach.

We will continue to practice fiscal responsibility and balance our budget, and now, with the new voter-approved revenue, we will be able to make significant needed investments in our city for the first time in decades.

Go Long Beach!

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