It includes multiple supportive letters and petitions and a letter dated July 3 addressed to Mayor Garcia and LB Councilmembers, personally signed by Ms. King, stating in pertinent part:

...[A]s a child growing up in the Wrigley Heights neighborhood of Long Beach, our family regularly visited the Dana Neighborhood Library, the Bret Harte Neighborhood Library, and Burnett Neighborhood Library. I have always loved reading and was also fond of each of the libraries at Los Cerritos Elementary School, John Evans Hughes Junior High School, and at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, home of the Jack Rabbits.

It is deeply humbling to have my name in consideration for the naming of the Main Library. This honor would represent my life coming full circle, and my complete belief of having a commonplace for the community, where all are equally welcome and have access to visit, learn, and grow.

Each and every day, I feel grateful to have been born and raised in Long Beach and have always been so proud to call it my hometown. Without the support of the Long Beach Tennis Patrons, the Long Beach Century Club, and the city's public service offerings, I wouldn't be who I am today. Long Beach fostered my dreams. I hope to help foster the dreams of many more in Long Beach, by giving back to the library and engaging many in learning about courage and equality...

[Scroll down for further.]

Three of the four agendizers (Pearce, Andrews and Austin) are facing re-election challenges in March 2020. In their agendizing memo, all four co-agendizers write:

...Councilwoman Pearce asked the community members to share their naming suggestions via email and social media. Over 1,200 people sent suggestions, but one name surpassed all the rest, Billie Jean King. It's clear from reading the list, Long Beach has many community leaders deserving of recognition in the community.

The diversity in support given to the world-famous tennis player, Billie Jean King, represents an array of values to our City, all which will continue to inspire those who come through our library doors. Her leadership in sports, the LGBTQ community, fighting for equality for everyone regardless of their race, class, or orientation has changed the World, making many in Long Beach extremely proud...

The Council motion seeks to send the proposal to the Council's Housing and Neighborhoods Committee (for public input and a recommendation back to the Council, with the full Council making the ultimate decision.)

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In May 2011, Long Beach's then-Mayoral First Lady Nancy Foster volunteered that she favored naming LB's 3rd/Promenade Plaza area for former LB resident Billie Jean King. She did so in response to a proposal made by then-Councilman Robert Garcia, joined by then-Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, to name an area along Third St. near the Promenade "Harvey Milk Park" to honor the slain San Francisco Supervisor who was CA's first openly elected gay official. But SF Supervisor Milk had no visible connections to Long Beach, and Ms. Foster wrote on Councilman Garcia's Facebook page (May 14, 2011):

Closer to home...Billy Jean King was born in Long Beach, realized her love of tennis, trained in Long Beach. Besides being an excellent athlete she has made civil contributions. With some research I found that ... President Obama awarded Billy Jean with the Medal of Freedom in 2009 along with Harvey Milk. A champion for social change and equality, she has continued to help the underserved. She is a director of the Elton John AIDS Foundation (he wrote "Philadelphia Freedom" for her,) on the Board of Trustees of the Women's Sports Foundation. Although King says coming out publicly as a lesbian was her "longest, hardest journey," she has become an international leader in seeking recognition and equal rights for gays and lesbians.

Life magazine named her one of the 100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century in 1990. In August 2006, the National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open, was renamed the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in honor of her contributions to both tennis and society. The Sports Museum of America, which opened in New York earlier this year, contains the Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center, the nation's first permanent women's sports hall of fame and exhibit.

In her every action, Billie Jean has been a positive role model in sports and in life and she has continued to be an outspoken advocate of the LGBT community. I believe that she is another person to consider in naming for the plaza. Harvey Milk naming of plaza's, schools, I found to be in San Francisco...I only found one school in New York.

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Ms. Foster's views were independently shared by others; Ms. King is widely respected locally with a Long Beach tennis center already named for her in Recreation Park. But Councilman Garcia aimed for the permanent verbal prize that he had "created the first park in America named for Harvey Milk" and Mrs. Foster diplomatically let her suggestion of Billie Jean King disappear. (Most reporters attending the opening didn't mention that the grassless concrete area next to a parking structure was more accurately a plaza and not a park.)

Roughly a half decade later, Vice-Mayor Rex Richardson proposed naming LB's new North Long Beach library the "Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library," saying the idea originated with Jordan High students. Others preferred names with LB connections including Judge Marcus Tucker (first African American Municipal Court judge, later rose to Superior Court), former Redevelopment Agency chair Bill Baker (both deceased) and retired Long Beach Librarian Eleanore Schmidt (very much alive) who led and championed LB's Public Libraries for years. But a number of area elected officials (all Democrats) submitted letters supporting naming the library for Michelle Obama: Congressmembers Alan Lowenthal and Janich Hahn, Assemblymembers Patrick O'Donnell, Mike Gipson, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and the Council approved it 6-0 (with Councilwoman Mungo exiting before the vote and returning thereafter.) .

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The Council directed city management to "work with the White House to invite the First Lady to the City of Long Beach for a naming dedication ceremony" but at the September 10, 2016 grand opening (attending by over a thousand people), Ms. Obama wasn't visible. LBREPORT.com became curious about her absence when no officials at the event read any statement or response on her behalf at the event.

Within a few hours, LBREPORT.com learned that KESQ-TV, Palm Springs was reporting that First Lady Obama was on that day in the Coachella Valley, barely 120 miles from Long Beach and only minutes away via the First Lady's White House jet which was visible at a Palm Springs area airport.

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Using the Public Records Act, LBREPORT.com subsequently accessed a letter dated March 21, 2016 on the letterhead of Mayor Garcia, co-signed by then-Councilman (after July 15 Vice Mayor) Richardson, inviting Ms. Obama to "a dedication ceremony to the Long Beach Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library in north Long Beach." It left the date open and indicated that Long Beach [city representatives] "will be in Washington, D.C. this April and would like the opportunity to meet with your staff to discuss the event, and explore a timeframe during the fall that would work with your schedule." Their invitation continued in pertinent part:

After hearing countless testimony, especially testimony from children who have shared their admiration of you and the President, the Long Beach City Council voted to name the new library in north Long Beach after you on December 22, 2015. Our purpose is to inspire a new generation of leaders to read, learn and grow into the positive potential that we know is in each one of our young people.

...It is our sincerest hope that you will be able to visit and read to a few of our neighborhood kids. North Long Beach is a diverse community where the median age is just 29 years old, and the majority of the population is a vibrant mix of African American, and Latino families. We would be honored to welcome you to our great City.

By late July 2016, the City was reduced to sending a White House staffer (a "Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs") a letter listing a specific date/time for the ceremony (Sept. 10, 10:00 a.m.).and inviting the staffer or "a representative from the White House" to attend.

It didn't happen. And in contrast to Ms. King -- who sent LB's Mayor and Council a gracious personally signed letter thanking them for considering naming the City's new Main Library in her honor -- the City didn't provide any records indicating that Ms. Obama (who had a sizable taxpayer paid White House staff to handle such matters) sent an appreciative letter or the like in response to the City naming a library for her.

One final naming incident merits momentary attention. In January 2010, then 1st dist. Councilman Garcia held a press event to announcing renaming a block of Oregon Ave. at Anaheim St. as "West Coast Choppers Place" referencing a business operated by the then-husband of actress Sandra Bullock.

LBReport.com video screen save

LBReport.com video screen save

Mr. James and Ms. Bullock later split up; the business closed; and the street name was quietly restored to Oregon Ave.

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