9:30am | The Long Beach City Council covered a wide range of topics Tuesday including sidewalk patio permits, changes to city employee health care and landscaping requirements for new residential and commercial buildings.
The Council moved quickly through a fairly routine Consent Calendar that contained no major items.
The first item that drew any length of discussion was an Unfinished Business item adopting a new procedure for citizens wishing to file complaints about sidewalk patios at Belmont Shore eateries.
The change, approved unanimously by the Council, will allow citizens to file complaints, such as for loud noises, with Public Works. The director of Public Works would then rule on the complaint and decide whether the Belmont Shore business in question should have hours of operation or other restrictions placed on their sidewalk patio area.
Any recommended changes or restrictions would be applied when the business renewed the public walkway occupancy permit required from the city to operate a sidewalk patio. The business, if ruled against by Public Works, could appeal to the full City Council.
In the past, such citizen complaints were taken directly to the City Council for action.
A second item that drew a great deal of discussion was over heath coverage changes for city employees.
The city’s Health Insurance Advisory Committee was given a goal to reduce $3 million in what City Hall spends on medical coverage for city employees. The HIAC came back with suggested actions that cut a total of just under $2.2 million, including increased premiums for city employees.
The City Manager added two additional actions to make up the roughly $800,000. These included: raising the employees with Great West 90 (the most popular with city employees) medical plan deductible from $100 to $150; and instituting a $10 office co-pay for city employees using Pacific Care.
Representatives from the police and fire employees unions both argued that the additional changes were not actual savings but merely a cost shift from City Hall to employees that will see reduced coverage.
During the discussion Councilmember Gerrie Schipske pointed out that Pacific Care appeared to be one of the higher priced plans in the industry and suggested that the city should go out to bid for the services—a move city staff said had not occurred since 2004 or 2005.
Councilmember Schipske also raised the issue of a one-year renewal of a $235,000 contract with the city’s health care benefits consultant Alliant Insurance Services, and why this contract hadn’t been sent out to bid.
Staff responded that City Hall had found Alliant to be very responsive. Councilmember Schipske said that when she sat on the HIAC for the Long Beach Unified School District, the district replaced Alliant due to issues about getting data in a timely fashion—a concern raised about Alliant only moments before by the Police Officers Association’s Steve James.
Councilmember Rae Gabelich also asked staff several questions that revealed that City Hall’s cost to provide medical coverage to their employees will rise by $6 million in 2010—double of City Hall’s goal of $3 million in savings.
Despite the concerns, the item, including the City manager’s additional changes, passed by a unanimous vote.
The Council then turned to spending some money.
In rapid succession, and with almost no discussion, the Council unanimously approved: a nearly $180,000 contract for the development of the Termino Avenue Green Belt Restoration; a $500,000 contract with two Long Beach firms for stormwater runoff and dry weather water quality monitoring; and a $766,000 contract to rehabilitate and upgrade the Mothers Beach restrooms.
The last major item before the Council was the adoption of an ordinance setting new landscaping requirements for new residential, commercial and industrial buildings with landscaping of more than 2,500 square feet.
The requirements include: 90 percent of all plants must be in the “low” to “very low” water use categories; use of water efficient and low-use watering systems; and, allowances for non-potable or reclaimed water must be built in.
Exemptions were provided for special landscapes areas such as playgrounds, golf courses and sports fields.
And that valiant readers, was Tuesday’s Council meeting in a nutshell.
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