Two Belmont Shore Armed Robberies Within Ten Minutes Within About A Block, Vicinity 2nd St./Argonne</small>

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Two Belmont Shore Armed Robberies Within Ten Minutes Within About A Block, Vicinity 2nd St./Argonne

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(Mar. 15, 2016, 7:05 a.m.) -- Two people became crime victims -- apparently at gunpoint -- on Monday night (Mar. 14) along fashionable 2nd St. in Belmont Shore in two armed robberies within less than ten minutes within about a block of each other.

LBPD overnight Watch Commander Lt. Paul Baum tells LBREPORT.com that officers were dispatched at roughly 10:12 p.m. to an armed robbery in the 100 block of Argonne Ave...and seven minutes later at 10:19 p.m. were dispatched to a second armed robbery in the 4900 block of E. 2nd St. (Argonne/St. Joseph area.)

LBPD will now investigate to determine if the crimes are related.

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In Council votes in February and early March 2016, Councilmembers voted without dissent to put a measure on the June ballot that would raise LB's sales tax to 10% (currently 9% in Lakewood/Signal Hill and 8% in most OC cities) for a general tax that the current and future Councils can legally spend for any general fund purposes.

Council approval for the general tax ballot measure came after Mayor Garcia released the results of a survey purporting to show public support for increasing the sales tax for specific purposes including increasing police and fire services and funding neighborhood infrastructure items. The Council could have allocated the measure's revenue to those specific purposes, which under Prop 13 and Prop 218 would require 2/3 voter approval, but didn't do so. Instead, the Council approved a non-legally binding statement of its current "intent" to "prioritize" the tax revenue (at no stated levels) for police, fire and infrastructure and approved creating an "oversight" committee -- to be chosen by the Mayor and approved by the Council -- without legal power to change Council spending of the tax.

As previously reported (first (again) by LBREPORT.com), the survey was quietly funded by Garcia using his officeholder (contributor funded) account with assistance, his office has acknowledged, from the LB police and firefighter unions. Those unions, plus LB's non-public safety public employee union contracts, come up for renegotiation in the coming months.

In February, LBREPORT.com made a request under the CA Public Records Act seeking release of the full survey -- including all questions and answers and detailed results. To date, those materials hasn't been received. The City says told LBREPORT.com that it has provided all documents that it has in its files on the matter.