Letters to the Editor

Tax and Spend

Our Chicago-by-the-Sea government machine, Los Angeles County (LAC) and  the Long Beach City College (LBCC) School Board officials are at it again. Raising taxes and spending your hard-earned money like drunken sailors is their favorite pastime.

Of course, they will threaten voters with loss of core services if they refuse to adhere to their agenda. This includes funding police, fire, libraries, parks, children, seniors and the homeless.

Don’t be fooled! The City of Long Beach (CLB) has plenty of money – $4.7 billion budgeted for 2025 to be exact. And they even claim that this will have a deficit of $28 million. Take a look at some of their frivolous spending:

• $50,000 for a parade that targeted a relatively small group of campaign supporters while canceling the long-established Veterans Parade that reached out to the entire city.
• $1.4 million in legal funds for undocumented noncitizens facing deportation.
• Rainbow crosswalks and lifeguard stands.
• $1 million plus for an oversized fancy City Hall lobby television.
• All-inclusive $$$ trips to the Paris Olympics and Washington DC.
• Continuation and creation of even more expensive buffering advisory-only commissions. (In other words, the council can claim innocence and hold them to blame for anything not palatable to the voters.)
• Bicycle lanes and bollards that are rarely used and expensive to maintain.
• Artificial grass soccer fields that are toxic and dangerous for our children. 
• An aquatic park that only accommodates a very privileged few.
• Two new positions of deputy mayor adding to an already bloated mayoral staff.
• CLB employs over 6,000 people today but employed only 5,493 in 2015. The population plummeted from 473,577 in 2015 to 444,095 in 2024.

The list is long, extensive and way too lengthy to complete here.

These items are not necessities, but safety and basics are!

CLB is touting a new tax to “help the homeless.” They failed miserably with their millions of dollars in homeless funds raised by Measure H. Now they want more. The city will also garner some of those funds.

As for LBCC, they recently received a $30 million no-strings-attached endowment from MacKenzie Scott [divorced from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos].

And they suckered the voters into handing them an $850 million bond in 2016 and now they want $990 million more. No amount will ever be enough as long as there are sheeple willing to be led to the slaughter. As for credibility, the LBCC Board President (Chico) incorrectly claimed to be the college president on the 4th District Council ballot.

When you go home at night do you feed your children or spend your wages on frivolities? Of course, the children should come first and so should the taxpayers.

The only way to stop this tax-spend mentality is for you to vote no on any new taxes or bonds. It’s in your hands. Don’t be suckered in: Vote no on any tax or bond measures and  vote yes on the honest 4th District incumbent, Daryl Supernaw.

Diana Lejins
Greater LB Area Taxpayers Union

‘Old’ Aversion

So, tell me, what is it about Long Beach’s aversion to anything “old” – including me?

This city has lost its identity as a charming, historically preserved town and is futilely trying to become “cool” by destroying its charm. Just let some smooth-talking (or not-so-smooth-talking) developer show up waving a fistful of dollars in front of our city officials and  there goes another “old” building in favor of yet another generic, modern eyesore that we suddenly just can’t do without.

This is the same thing the city is in the process of foisting on to Fountain Street, in the form of a four-story building plunked down in the middle of (and thereby destroying) a charming “old” residential neighborhood – and likely coming soon to a neighborhood near you. I’m sure you can’t wait.

And the trees? Well, these “old” trees are a hazard: they keep dropping those messy leaves, are just too big, are in the way of development and  have the nerve to push up the sidewalk – the cardinal sin. Never mind that they create much-needed shade, reduce the air temperature, provide the oxygen that we need in order to survive and  increase the value of our neighborhoods. The city attempts to justify their destruction by (occasionally) replacing them at taxpayer expense with smaller, more controllable “lollipop” trees which do far less for the environment.

Of course, the city has a Sustainability Department, though one must wonder what exactly is being sustained, other than the exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars burning a hole in the city officials’ pockets. But naming it at least gives them the ability to keep up appearances and perform the implication of doing something.

Not to be overlooked in this accounting of our city’s disdain for anything “old” is the “old” people. Happily, they don’t bulldoze us down or chainsaw us into smaller, more manageable pieces – but they’re oh so eager to see us replaced by people who ride bikes, so they can continue in their obsession with bike paths and can keep garnering government funds to become “the bike-friendly city,” even when these bike lanes clearly privilege the young and able-bodied by limiting wheelchair and emergency vehicle access to a nursing facility (case in point: Broadway by the Sea).

But of course, we do have the Senior Center, which again implies support and interest by its name, even if this also implies that “old” people need to be separated from the rest of society.

It’s a sad legacy that this city has carved out for itself. The loss of history never bodes well, but the lure of the new and the developers’ siren song – and money offered – is apparently difficult for our city officials to ignore.

Hey “old” people, let’s go push up the sidewalk!

Merry Colvin