(If we missed a location in your neighborhood, please let us know and we'll add it: mail@LBReport.com or message via Facebook (www.facebook.com/lbreport.)

Wearing the sign is important because getting together with neighbors is fine...but there's no serious substitute for having enough cops. Los Angeles (L.A. County's largest city) and Signal Hill (one of the County's smallest) provide their taxpayers with much higher per capita police levels than does Long Beach (L.A. County's second largest city.)

The good news is we have an opportunity to begin correcting this in the coming weeks. LB's new City Council (five new members plus four continuing) will begin discussing a new budget that will determine how City Hall spends our money for the next year.

LBREPORT.com favors allocating our tax dollars to begin restoring police, fire and paramedic services for taxpayers that prior Councils allowed to fall to alarmingly low levels. To LBREPORT.com, the status quo is unacceptable. We know Long Beach can do better. We reject the negative "can't do" attitude we've heard elsewhere. We've watched as a former Council spent our tax dollars on unbudgeted management raises and has pursued a lavish Civic Center rebuild. There's money. It's being unwisely spent.

Wearing the sign at your neighborhood's Nat'l Nite Out event lets you speak your mind without saying a word. It says you want our Councilmembers to spend our money to provide our neighborhoods with police, fire and paramedic levels that will make Long Beach safer for families, more attractive to new homebuyers and more competitive for new businesses.

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