All four candidates took part: Steve Neal, Dan Pressburg, Brad Shore and Vice Mayor Val Lerch (the latter, the incumbent waging a write-in campaign under the term limits.

The event was moderated by Laurie Angel, President of NLB CAG. LBReport.com provides extended on-demand audio of today's event below. At today's forum, the candidates reiterated several themes:

• Dan Pressburg supported immediately starting the process of scheduling replenishment police and fire academy classes to fill police and firefighter vacancies. (In Sept. 2009, the Council voted to balance City Hall's current FY10 budget by not funding PD/FD replenishment classes and cutting budgeted police levels). "Considering the first homicide of the year was less than 35 yards away from my front doorstep...it affects you, it affects the community."

  Shore said LB police staffing under the current Council (i.e. under Lerch) has fallen below two officers per thousand residents, said he supports increasing the level to at least two sworn officers per thousand residents...and cited increases in rape and aggravated assault. Neal said that while two officers "per car" [uncertain if he meant two officers per thousand residents] is reasonable, "everything that we're faced with ultimately comes back to the budget deficit...in light of where the city stands financially, is it really something we can do at this current time?" [and didn't answer his rhetorical question]. Vice Mayor Lerch said that he considers public safety his top priority and said LB needs more boots on the streets.

  [Ed. note: As separately reported (exclusively to date by LBReport.com) city management sent Councilmembers a secret (non-public) memo in February urging a decision on police and fire academies be withheld until FY11 budget discussions (Aug-Sept 2010). Vice Mayor Lerch has agendized an item for the March 9, 2010 City Council meeting, proposing to begin the process of starting a firefighter replenishment academy class now.]

• Shore hammered Lerch for voting to allocate over $400,000 in street repair money to the 8th Council district instead of keeping it in the 9th; Shore acknowledged that there might be times to do so, but said under current circumstances he'd fight to keep the money in the 9th district. Lerch responded that adjacent 8th district areas are part of NLB and thus his vote did support NLB.

  Shore also hit Lerch for the absence of a bank in the 9th district, noting the departure of F&M Bank; Lerch replied that NLB has a bank a block or so across the 9th district line in the 8th district.

• Neal said he favors a Project Labor Agreement as a way to bring jobs and attract businesses. That drew return fire from Pressburg who said big businesses might absorb PLAs as a cost of doing business while small businesses would be hurt, and from Lerch also opposed PLAs. Neal replied that he doesn't believe PLA's will hurt small businesses because City Hall has the ability to set the PLA at a level that won't hurt small businesses.

  Neal also indicated that although he knows it isn't popular, he would support adding an elevated truck lane as part of 710 freeway expansion plans. Shore and Pressburg both said they oppose elevated truck lanes. Lerch said that the City has adopted a preferred strategy that saved homes from being taken in the 710 project.

  In response to a question about whether unions have too much power in LB, Neal -- who is Director of the AFL-CIO Community Service Department at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor -- said that without unions many people couldn't have entered the middle class...and employee unions are doing what they've been formed to do: collectively bargain. Lerch responded that unions do have an impact...and said the public needs to vote and voice its opinion.

• Lerch stressed that he wants to continue and finish projects currently underway, including annexation of roughly 800 acres of additional industrial land into NLB (Dominguez area north of Del Amo; Carson is trying to annex the same area).

• Regarding budgeting, Pressburg urged examining how City Hall got to where it is...and said he believes the City could be headed toward bankruptcy unless it changes its current practices; he said all proposed contracts should be closed examined and advocated a needs-based (zero based) budget. Shore advocated privatizing non-core services and looking at duplication of services (noting that some city departments have separate people to handle their departmental payrolls). Lerch noted that the Council has already cut over $100 million from budgets, is at core service level now, and now has to prevent Sacramento from taking funds. Neal also supported getting rid of unspecified waste and duplication.

LBReport.com's extended audio begins just a few minutes into the event in progress [an event advisory listed an inaccurate address and we arrived a few minutes late, our apologies] as Vice Mayor Lerch completed his response to a question about public safety. Our audio is minimally edited; pauses, digressions, and requests to repeat questions are removed, as well as a mention of a constituent's address).

To launch audio, click here [Large MP3 file, approx. 60 MB, means a bit longer than usual download time even on high speed line]

LBReport.com welcomes our readers' comments below. Remember: whoever prevails in the 9th district election will, like all Councilmembers, have a vote on issues citywide.