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| (May 19. 2020, 8:10 a.m.) -- At 5:30 p.m. today (May 19), Long Beach city management has scheduled what it calls a "study session":on the City's "fiscal outlet.". As of dawn today on the day of the "study session," city management has failed to provide the public (and the press) with access to the information to be studied.
Withholding public and press access to agendized "study session" material (whose content we presume the Mayor and several Councilmembers already know) is basically a press management technique. Preventing the public and the press from seeing material to be "studied" until after it's unveiled prevents the public and the press from studying it...and prevents pesky questions or challenges to its assertions. It becomes "news" only when unveiled, effectively spoon fed as fact without study and review (until afterward when, for some,. it's "old news" and the news cycle has moved on.). . As LBREPORT.com has done in the past, we will request a copy of the material to be "studied" under a section of the Brown (open meetings) Act prior to the meeting. As LB city management has done in the past, we expect it will contend that (a) there is no written material for the study session or (b) the material is still being prepared or (c) encompassing both (a) and (b) with a Power Point being prepared.. On at least one prior occasion, LB city management used a "study session" to unveil Power Point slides that first floated a budget solution with a tax increase ballot measure. In mid-April, city management [presented LB's decisionmaking (and spending-deciding) City Council with a detailed memo on the City Hall budgetary impacts (in the multiple millions) of COVID0-19. LBREPORY.com coverage here. Tonight's "study session" is effectively a follow-up to presumably do something(s) about it. [Scroll down for further.] |
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On the same night as tonight's "study session" on the City's fiscal outlet, the Council will consider granting the private Civic Center operator a delay of up to a year to pay a roughly $7.3 million sum previously advanced by the City early in the Civic Center transaction. Among other things, the Civic Center operator cites less than optimal econimic conditions for its development of a portion of Civic Center land to be conveyed to the operator for its private development and profit. (The agenda item doesn't include any delay or forbearance in the City paying its annual "service fee" to the Civic Center operator (we estimate it's now reached about $17 million). LBREPORT.com coverage here.
Tonight's items come exactly two weeks after the Council voted without dissent to give the Aquarium operator (a privately run non-profit) a "loan" an up to $2,1 million from LB's Tidelands to pay a sum due City Hall this fall; (The Aquarium operator cites the impacts of COVID-19.) No LB Council incumbents questioned the six figure salaries of the Aquarium's top management or required the operator to allow public and press access to meetings of the Aquarium's governing board (whose members currently include on an unpaid basis John Molina, Dr. J. Mario Molina, and former LB Mayor Bob Foster.) LNREPORT.com >coverage here.)
Will tonight's "study session" include a proposed November ballot measure seeking some type of tax increase and if so in what amounts and from whom? What reductions in City Hall spending (including the Mayor's bloated office staff and Council perks) will management propose and Councilmembers support before threatening cuts to taxpayer services? LBREPORT.com will stream the scheduled 5:30 p.m. "study session" liver (as part of the Council's regularly scheduled meeting.
Contact us: mail@LBReport.com |
  
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