This week’s City Council meeting was all about solving problems.
First, though I don’t remember the perp walk, apparently crime in Long Beach has been afforded such a Lex Luthor-sent-to-jail type of blow that the city no longer requires input from the community on public safety.
I say evidently because Mayor Foster on Tuesday proffered, and the council passed, a motion to suspend the Public Safety Advisory Commission for the next year.
This commission, at one time made up of public representatives from each district, has according to the Mayor’s office, not met since September 2008 and now consists of one sitting member because the other three current members have not completed their ethics training.
“It’s getting very difficult to find folks who want to serve on commissions,” said Foster. “Frankly, there is not much [for the commission] to do, if anything.”
Created in 1984 by a city ordinance, the commission was charged with making “advisory policy recommendations to the City Council on public safety issues, to serve as a forum for community discussion of these public safety issues, and to encourage input and participation from all sectors of the community.” According to City Hall, the commission is limited to considering “public safety policy matters over which the City Council has control that are related to police service.”
The panel was supposed to focus on such specific things as Neighborhood Watch Programs, public safety awareness, traffic flow, community relations of the City’s public safety department, and special projects, including those directed by the City Council.
“There was distrust within the Police Department, there was distrust within the various communities,” said Long Beach resident Ron Nelson who was appointed by Mayor Tom Clark to the panel in 1983, a year before the Public Safety Advisory Committee was made into a full commission. Nelson, who eventually served nine years on the commission, said that the panel was a forum for public discussion regarding public safety issues, encouraging and receiving input from the various communities.
“Our task was to serve you,” Nelson told the seven council members on the dais Tuesday. He mentioned several issues that the commission made recommendations on during his tenure including: police coverage during incidents such as pursuits that required officers to leave the city, discrimination at the Police Academy, the mishandling of evidence in rape cases, abuse of arrestees in Police Department custody, and the cumulative cost of city payments in cases of mishandling. He also pointed out how the Civilian Police Complaint Commission, which still offers public review of complaints against the police, grew directly from the work of the Public Safety Advisory Commission.
Ironically on Tuesday, Nelson, who came to the dais to offer his public input on the issue of doing away with the commission was politely chided for taking more than his three minutes of public time at the podium.
“I think there will come a day, Mayor, when you will really want this commission,” Nelson said. “I ask you to withdraw this recommendation and I ask each of you [on the Council] to find one good person to serve on this commission.”
Foster applauded Nelson for his service and the “great work” that the commission has done, but responded that there were “four or five districts where I have no one to serve on the commission. The problem is, how can I ask someone to serve on a body that has no business before it?”
Long Beach resident John Deats, who also served on the PSAC for ten years starting in the early 1990s, said that while the commission began with the ability to take on issues on their own, former Mayor Beverly O’Neill changed the attitude of City Hall toward the PSAC to one of “don’t speak until spoken to.”
Deats supported the recommendation, asking the Council to put the commission out of its misery “given what it has devolved into.”
Councilmembers Reyes Uranga and Gabelich asked that the commission not be permanently eliminated and that in a year’s time the possibility of restarting it be revisited by the Council. Mayor Foster agreed, but opposed a move by Councilmember Schipske to table the issue of suspending the commission until the Mayor’s Task Force looking at the efficacy of the various city commissions is completed.
And don’t think this is just a simple matter of doing away with redundancy or a lack of City Hall ability to recruit members. The fiduciary gods at City Hall noted that eliminating the only codified plebian body offering input into the public safety issue will save the city a whopping $5,000 a year in police staffing.
Only 3,999 more cuts like this and City Hall will have this year’s deficit problem close to licked.
Another problem solved with the same rapidity on Tuesday was what to do with all of the public art that City Hall is apparently awash in.
Now I am personally very appreciative of public art, so don’t get me wrong here. But when the Redevelopment Agency makes the claim that “the Agency’s investment in public art has been instrumental in leveraging other redevelopment projects, decreasing blight and contributing to positive neighborhood transformations,” red flags literally burst out of my head.
I wonder who these art-loving developers are that have been swayed to invest millions in Long Beach simply because they like the public art? Or what exactly are the magical blight-reducing and transformative properties of this public art? Let’s hope that when Lex Luthor finally gets out of lockup he doesn’t find out about this powerful tool. Otherwise, Supes is doomed.
Now I know this sounds like its right out of the little known Harry Potter and the Wizard of Pine Avenue, but the RDA says “vacant lots and empty storefronts awaiting development are also enhanced through temporary public art installation.”
I don’t profess to be a great connoisseur of art or even an expert on city planning, but I’m thinking that dressing up empty windows where local workers used to earn a paycheck is a bit like distracting a baby with a shiny object.
But, heck, I guess a problem identified is a problem solved. I just wish I had known it was that simple. Pine Avenue evidently doesn’t need businesses filling the empty storefronts. It just needs more of this magical public art. Kiss blight goodbye and fire up the trumpets as Long Beach becomes the Magic Kingdom West (didn’t we try to go that route many years ago).
A few well-placed Warhol-esque displays and the clouds just may part with cries of Hosanna.
Certainly there are few people who would argue that public art is not a good thing. But when City Hall sees this art as having nigh-magical powers, it only goes to reinforce the disconnect that city officials have with the communities they serve.
Perhaps we should worry about getting businesses back into the storefronts and relaxing the stifling City Hall regulations placed on such businesses before we go turning the City into an open-air art museum.