#5 Mayor Garcia lauds plan in latest "Go Long Beach!" email.
#6 Three "core zone" property owners submit development plans. Each includes a 13-story tower.
#7 Step #1 (but with 13 stories in place of 7) is repeated for each of the submitted plans.
#8 Planning Commission mandates amendment of plans to restrict towers to 12 stories, and then approves the amended plans.
#9 Step #3 is repeated for each of the submitted plans.
#10 Council unanimously approves all three plans.
#11 Developers raze all existing trees during bird nesting season.
#12 Development Department, after being alerted by environmentalists, solemnly warns each developer that step #11 must not recur during their construction.
#14 Development #1 is built per plan. Development #2 is built in reverse (mirror image) of submitted drawings. Development #3 excavates 300-foot-square plot down twenty feet, then quits when developer files for bankruptcy.
#15 King tides fill the excavated hole from Development #3. Likelihood of such tides, from accelerating sea-level rise owing to greenhouse-gas emissions and resulting global warming, was noted already in 2012 and earlier by California state government in advisories to local planning departments. Some hint of sea-level-rise impact is noted, albeit presented as of scant consequence, even in the SEASP. Various LB city officials and departments, however, express shock and surprise.
#16 US Army Corps of Engineers LB Breakwater reconfiguration study report is delivered, presents plan to breach and lower breakwater.
#17 LB Chamber of Commerce, LB Convention and Visitors Bureau, and various city departments (including Development, Parks-Rec-Marine and Public Works) all predict $500 million annual boost to city economy from tourism to restored LB beaches if the Corps' breakwater plan is implemented. The City Manager, with unanimous Council approval, authorizes a $3.8 million consultant study into the feasibility of a shuttle service from LGB to the wondrously restored beaches.
#18 LB Council votes $55 million to implement the first stage of the multi-stage breach-and-lower-breakwater plan, with $10 million bonus if this stage is completed within twelve months.
#19 Trans-Pacific-Partnership, which now includes China as premier member, announces banner year for global trade, including emission of a record amount of greenhouse gases owing to Asian industrial production and to fueling of global shipping.
#20 Port of Long Beach receives two ‘world-leader port' awards: (1) as biggest exporter of coal and fossil fuels and (2) as "greenest": least in-port greenhouse gas emissions per ton of cargo.
#21 The successful first-stage breakwater-breach bidder is Breakwater Solutions -- a newly created joint venture of Koch-Trump Industries and Mitsubishi. BS completes the first-stage breakwater breaches ahead of schedule and wins the $10 million bonus.
#22 However, BS loses $60 million overall on the project (thanks to built-in required BS "franchise" payments of $20 million to each of the parent corporations, Koch-Trump and Mitsubishi) and declares bankruptcy.
#23 City Council votes unanimously for a BS bailout. The bailout takes the form of a $100 million contract with "the Aquarium" (i.e. with nLBa AoP) (the acronym of course stands for "not-Long-Beach-affiliated Aquarium-of-the-Pacific") for "support services": after retaining $20 million overhead, nLBa AoP subcontracts to BS for $80 million of "support services."
#24 Yet higher king tides wash over roadways to and surrounding all developments near 2d&PCH as well as beachside and some inland areas in Belmont shore and Naples island.
#25 Low-elevation-property owners demand City Council action to create a defensive dike against the rising sea.
#26 LB Council allocates $155 million to selected consultants to create a plan for building a defensive dike, as part of a "Re-envisioning Belmont Shore" initiative.
#27 Ex-mayors O'Neill, Foster and Garcia join newly elected "comeback kids" - including Mayor James Johnson and City Attorney Laura Richardson - in urging that LB voters pass a new package of sales, parcel, income and excise taxes in order to fund "critical infrastructure needs." Noted needs prominently include: completing the lowering of the breakwater; beginning construction of the defensive dike; raising up to new heights the newly-rebuilt and continually-sinking Belmont Olympic pool; upgrading of bluff-retaining shotcrete to the latest available astroturf-shotcrete blend; and seismic safety upgrades for the new City Hall.
#28 At a special rally, in response to supporters' repeated cheers "Go Long Beach," Garcia enthuses that the proposed taxes would give Long Beach unquestionably the nation's sole highest per-resident overall municipal tax rate -- so that Long Beach will thereby "lead the nation's cities in infrastructure investment."