Letters to the Editor

The Gate is Down

Thank you, Stephen, for this excellent article [Page 5, this issue]. The other city news media concentrated on how much it will cost the city to repay the Water Dept., not on how the mayor, city attorney and coherts ignored the law and lied in their campaign flyers. They should be the ones liable for paying back the ill-gotten funds.

Ann Cantrell

This is an excellent reason to not vote for our mayor to become our US Congressman. Vote for Christina Garcia instead, or any other candidate, just not Bobbie.

Richard Lindemann

Thank you, Steve Downing, for your brilliant expose on this egregious faux pas by the players at City Hall.

I also want to thank Angela Kimball, a Los Angeles County island in Long Beach resident, who joined me as a plaintiff in the 2nd case. Her standing was of great import in that she was not considered eligible to even vote on Measure M but was “taxed” regardless.

Diana Lejins

As a co-plaintiff in this lawsuit, I am proud to stand up for the ratepayers of my community. We saw water rates rise almost 30% due to the city’s reckless spending with this illegal Measure M shakedown.

The other provision of the measure found illegal was the taxing of nonresidents in the unincorporated county island Long Beach neighborhood.

The City of Long Beach settled a previous lawsuit on the issue, which was also filed by Diana Lejins, in November 2017. It should come as no surprise their illegal ballot Measure M would see the same fate.

Repeating the City Hall dogma of “the city has charged its own water department fees for decades” still didn’t make Measure M legal. You can’t enforce an illegal ballot proposition by putting it to the voters and seek relief from the courts.

Angela Kimball

The city will just pay the $9 million per year out of the police misconduct fund. Oops, forgot. There is no police misconduct fund. It all comes out of the General Fund and no matter what, is paid by Long Beach taxpayers.

Mike Ruehle

Fuel Rebates

Newsome is proposing to give taxpayer’s a rebate of $400 for one vehicle and $800 for two vehicles as a way to ease the expense of fuel. What about those that don’t have enough income to pay taxes? For instance, those on SSI, disability, welfare and seniors on social security. These people also drive vehicles and pay gas taxes. Since they are low income it would only be fair and make sense to give them the rebates also.

Leo Mitchel

Streets of Shame

You have the good section on Streets of Shame. I suggest a companion piece “Shameful City Expenses” instead of reducing debt/pensions.

For example: Queen Mary; unneeded road diets; unneeded bike lanes in dangerous areas; higher cost painted crosswalks and lifeguard stations; city purchased expensive VIP records signs; added red curbs reducing needed parking; Atlantic Avenue homeless camp by 91 Freeway purchased 3 or 4 times price of its recent sale; city reduced giveaway prices on RDA properties to special developers that support the incumbents; and the Community Hospital conundrum.

I bet the readers would contribute many additional good ideas.

Tom Swanner

Books Being Trashed

I have lived near the Long Beach City College-LAC for the past 30 years. We in Lakewood Village have put up with a lot of different type of annoyances that come out of that campus. But this latest one really has really “got my goat”.

Over the past few years, several buildings on LAC including the library have seen new construction or some sort of remodeling. On a daily basis I walk my dogs through the campus. While strolling by the library (building L) I’ve noticed a trash dumpster sitting outside of the library entrance for the past month or so. I just figured it was being used for left over waste material from remodeling, now I know different.

On Monday, March 4, I was on my usual walk through the campus. As I was passing the library (the dumpster was still there) I overheard two students talking about the library throwing away books into that dumpster at the front entrance to the library. I thought to myself, no, they wouldn’t throw away perfectly good books, would they?

So, I decided to take a look for myself and to my surprise the dumpster had bags and bags of perfectly good books. I pulled a few books from the dumpster just to see what type of condition they were in and they were just fine. I now wonder how many dumpsters have come and gone filled with books?

I write you this letter with the hope you might contact LBCC and find out why in the world would they be throwing away perfectly good books. I’m very angry that they didn’t donate those books to some organization or group instead of sending them to a land fill. These days, I guess throwing away books is way better than burning them.

Gary Files