Letters to the Editor

Council Office Budgets

I am questioning the council office budget numbers that appeared in Jay Beeler’s Beachcombing article on Nov. 3. The quote read, “… our city councilmembers have had their budgets doubled from $290,000 to $588,000.”

For the record, my office operating budget has averaged $465,031 for each of the seven full years I’ve been in office. More important is the fact that we don’t spend all that money on running our office. On average, I save over 46% of my budget or $217,000 each year. That’s more than $1.5 million in savings for the last seven years. That money goes directly back into the council district for infrastructure repairs (sidewalks, curbs, potholes, etc.), tree trimming, neighborhood clean-ups and community events.

We are very proud of our office operating efficiency for two reasons: we still provide a customer service level second to none, and we are able fund CD4 projects and repairs that would otherwise go unaddressed.

Daryl Supernaw
Councilman, Fourth District

Speed Cameras

Long Beach doesn’t need speed cameras [11/3/23 issue] along with the Orwellian license plate scanners, it just needs the Long Beach Police to come out of hiding and write speeding tickets like the old days, that is, before the pandemic. Long Beach Police are nowhere to be found now! Wardlow Road, as an example, has become a freeway with a speed limit of 35 MPH, most drivers are zooming along at 50-70 MPH and there are no police anywhere.

The city installed speed displays conveniently don’t display above 55 MPH but just blink. If you stand on the sidewalk and watch the display it is usually blinking continuously. And then there are the motorcycles and muscle cars with illegal, ear blasting exhaust systems racing at all hours of the night again with no police presence. Governor Newsom’s ruling is a windfall for the data harvesters that store our license plate and location data violating our constitutional rights and the digital data will live in corporate databases like Google forever.

P. Kirsten