Editorial: Unaffordable

(June 1, 2014, 10:15 a.m.) -- On May 27, Mayoral candidates Robert Garcia and Damon Dunn were asked about public safety at a meeting of the East Anaheim Street Business Association. LBREPORT.com reported what they said, including (as we often do) audio so there's no doubt as to what they said. To hear it, click here.

Mayoral candidate Garcia said adding 100 more police officers isn't affordable. His assertion is provably false. Prove this yourself. Just look across Long Beach's borders. Other cities, including Los Angeles and Signal Hill, provide their taxpayers with police levels that Robert Garcia said are unaffordable. If other cities can afford them, why can't Long Beach?

Garcia voted for budgets that erased roughly 200 police officers taxpayers previously received...but he voted for unbudgeted management raises and is a major cheerleader in pursuing a lavish new Civic Center without seeking bids for an economical City Hall retrofit. If providing taxpayers with police that were affordable before Mayor Foster arrived is unaffordable now, then Foster's claim to be leaving the city in better shape than he found it is on this matter clearly false. Foster's attempt to blame the "Great Recession" is also false because other cities faced the same economic downturn and didn't decimate (Chief McDonnell's verb) their police services.

Even more alarming, Garcia has offered no plan to change this. He told the audience the opposite. He said he expects police levels will remain basically as they are, possibly with small increases. This was just days after LB ran out of available cops to handle routine calls for service in a timely manner when two major incidents happened (LBREPORT.com coverage here.)

As for firefighter services, LB taxpayers now have three ghost fire stations without fire engines to put out fires. In late January, an ELB family watched as their residence burned -- across the street from one of those fire stations -- until an engine raced from elsewhere. (LBREPORT.com coverage here.)

Garcia offered no plan to fix this either. On the contrary, he voted for a budget last year that assumes LB can't even maintain its degraded fire service level without implementing a cheaper, experimental paramedic deployment system that management says will be better and firefighters and paramedics say will be worse for patients.

Why isn't experimenting with families' health and safety unaffordable? Because Foster, Garcia and others have treated items including unbudgeted management raises and a Taj Mahal Civic Center as affordable.

Damon Dunn could have said this. He could have said Long Beach can't afford four more years of "can't-do" attitudes on public safety for taxpayers from Robert Garcia.

Mr. Dunn said none of this. He let Garcia's arguments go unchallenged. He let him skate on his record. Dunn didn't offer any firm plan (beyond cliches about increasing revenue) to restore public safety services that Garcia had decimated. He said new union contracts should be negotiated that will cost less, which is very nice but nearly never happens. And he continued to equivocate on whether he'd move to reverse the vainglorious proposed Civic Center rebuild.

We don't get it...but the net result is now inescapable. Under either of these Mayoral candidates, the only hope taxpayers have to restore their police and fire services and halt the insane Civic Center rebuild will have to come from a new Council majority.

Two races remain to be decided. In the 5th Council district, we were very disappointed when Stacy Mungo (who recently received Foster's endorsement) told a televised forum that restoring public safety services would have to wait because management claims deficits (spending exceeding revenue) will continue until roughly 2017. We say that's a false choice because the Council controls spending, not management. Continuing to shortchange the public on public safety is a version of the "unaffordable" attitude toward taxpayers that we reject.

It's the opposite of what outgoing Councilwoman Schipske sought to do and Ms. Mungo's opponent, Carl Kemp, has proposed to do: adjust the city's now budgeted low-ball expected price of oil revenue. That could free up millions of dollars for taxpayer services. When Councilmembers Schipske, Gabelich and Neal proposed to do this 2011, they were just two votes short of prevailing, blocked by Foster, Garcia and a now-exiting Council majority.

In the 1st Council district, we don't know what the runoff candidates, Lena Gonzalez vs. Misi Tagaloa, will do. We're quite sure neither one of them could be any worse on budgeting police and fire for taxpayers than Garcia has been, although we hope whoever wins will be better.

The good news is that in just weeks, a misguided civic doctor and his students who thought it was smart to bleed their patients will be gone. Their treatments have left Long Beach less able to resist crime, to fight fires and to provide life saving medical care.

Patients ultimately decide what to let their doctors do to them. In civic terms, that's what elections are for. Of course some out of town well-funded leeches have surfaced in our election, hoping to ensure the bleeding continues. We recommend ignoring their advice regardless of the candidates.

To candidates who claim restoring police and fire levels for taxpayers isn't affordable, we ask why not, when other cities provide their taxpayers with higher levels. For Long Beach taxpayers, accepting the status quo should be unaffordable.

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