5:00am | Every week this column attempts to highlight some of the City Council actions that fall through the cracks of media coverage. It would be easy to re-cover the big issues that come out of the chambers each week, but this would leave unmentioned the more than two dozen or so other items that are typically agendized and discussed.
While most of these lesser known items will never gain the spotlight and hours upon hours of discussion that issues like medical marijuana or lobbying have, they are equally important. Perhaps not in consequences, but important in the insight they offer about how your City Council comes to their decisions.
For example, nearly every week the Council races through several alcohol or entertainment license requests for area bars, restaurants and eateries. In this column your intrepid writer has shown how in some cases such licenses in affluent homeowner areas like Naples are rejected, while in less affluent apartment-thick areas of the city, the licenses go through with no discussion, despite similar complaints being lodged against the licenses by residences in both cases.
These little things offer a small view through the paper-thin veneer of leadership afforded by the Council and in many cases clarify what all too often guides decisions from the dais–not equality, not equity, not Long Beach as community.
No, in the end, what these things show us is that elitism, careerism, and self-preservation are more often the motivation behind Council decisions. And I am not talking about just the current Council, I am talking about the Council in general, because for whatever reason, it seems that the chambers attract the same type of people term after term. Like little light bulbs sitting at the dais. One goes out, a replacement of the exact same strength is plugged in.
We all remember the West Side neighborhood that was repeatedly flooded over the course of many years. Not once, not twice, but nearly year after year. And when it happened again, most of the current Council acted shocked that this situation had gone unresolved for so long.
Oddly enough, during the same heavy rains, an East Side area that was severely flooded saw the forces of the city attack the problem with all the aggressiveness of a D-Day landing, replete with the promises of “Never Again.” Compare the two scenarios–one takes more than a decade, one takes days.
In another example, the city undertook a project about a year ago, where nearly every house in the East Side Rancho neighborhood–maybe 400-plus homes–were treated to sidewalk repairs. In many cases the “repairs” were performed where cracks had appeared in the sidewalks or where trees had lifted the sidewalks only slightly.
I have no idea how much this whole project cost, and I should state that a small number of the repairs were badly needed. However, in many cases these small cracks or slight uplifts resulted in the replacement of full sidewalk sections, sometimes dozens per block.
On the other hand, go to some of the older neighborhoods in the West Side or Central Long Beach and you will find horrible sidewalks that seem to remain unrepaired year after year.
Maybe people tripping on cracked sidewalks in less affluent areas just don’t sue often enough.
Speaking of the recent heavy rains, in many areas the rainfall dripping off of the trees (then hammered by the traffic) created a strip of broken asphalt in many of the tree-lined main and arterial streets right beneath the edge of the tree canopy. On the East Side it took less than two weeks for the worst of these potholes to be repaired by city crews (though some small problems still remain). The same damage, on the West Side and in Central Long Beach, remained unrepaired for much longer and in some cases remains unrepaired.
So that brings us to this week’s Council meeting where the Council spent seven of the meeting’s more than 195-minute length to unanimously approve five road refurbishment projects:
— Rehabilitation of Pacific Avenue between Ocean Boulevard and 7th Street – $885,985.
— Rehabilitation of Colorado Street between Havana Avenue and Bellflower Boulevard – $315,104.
— Rehabilitation of Broadway between Livingston Drive and Bay Shore Avenue – $310,099.
— Rehabilitation of Los Coyotes Diagonal between Outer Traffic Circle and Studebaker Road – $4,154,260.
— Rehabilitation of Atlantic Avenue between San Antonio Drive and 52nd Street – $1,721,871.
It is interesting to note that the Pacific Avenue project only covers a stretch that is used mainly as entrance and exit routes for downtown residents and workers to the I-710 Freeway, including City Hall workers.
The Colorado Street, Broadway, and Los Coyotes Diagonal projects all cut through more affluent East Side and Belmont Shore areas, while the Atlantic Avenue project overlays one of the main business stretches of Bixby Knolls (extending slightly into a business section of southern North Long Beach).
So you have nearly $7.5 million in street repair projects and not a single dime going to rehabilitate any but the more affluent areas of town.
Anyone that has driven the stretch of Los Coyotes Diagonal set to be refurbished will tell you that it is no worse than, say, Santa Fe Avenue on the West Side, or God forbid, the car-rattling Seventh Street where it heads east from Alamitos Ave.
Does Los Coyotes Diagonal have some problems? Certainly. But nothing that can not be fixed in a more scaled down way that might afford more funds to go toward other areas of the city.
City Hall will tell you, however, in this case, that they had no choice in the matter. You see, the funds for these projects came from the federal stimulus American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. When the city submitted applications for the grant money last year, they had to go with projects that were “shovel-ready.” In other words, those projects that had already moved through all the paperwork and design phases and were just waiting for money to begin construction.
All together the City applied for ten projects and received just over $14 million.
In addition to those Phase Two projects mentioned above, five other Phase One projects were previously funded through ARRA. These included the rehabilitation of: California Avenue from Harding Street to Artesia Boulevard; Harding Street from DeForest Avenue to Atlantic Avenue; Carson Street from Long Beach Boulevard to Atlantic Avenue; Wardlow Road from Clark Avenue to Woodruff Avenue; and, Spring Street from Clark Avenue to the eastern city limits.
Again, look at the pattern. All but the California Avenue and Harding Street projects, both small in comparison to some of the others, are located in either Bixby Knolls or in the East Side.
While calling the projects fantastic, Council member Tonia Reyes-Uranga rightly expressed concerns about the Phase Two projects that were submitted to the federal government for ARRA funding consideration.
“The Sixth District, the Seventh District and the Ninth District were not represented and I believe that Spring, Wardlow, and the portion of Atlantic in my district should have been shovel-ready, because they have been on the list [of needed city repairs] for a very long time,” she said.
The question remains, why were these ten projects–with nearly 80 percent of the work falling in Bixby Knolls, the East Side and Belmont Shore–ready to go when the federal government offered funding? Why was not a single project on the West Side included? Why was not a single project in Central Long Beach included?
If you remember back to when the Mayor did his best to convince everyone that the $575 million Measure I parcel tax was the salvation of Long Beach infrastructure, you may recall that proponents of the measure had tons of data showing how every corner of Long Beach was falling apart.
Ironically, according to the Public Works Department, the reason the above ten projects were shovel-ready when the ARRA funds became available was because the preliminary work had been done on each in anticipation of Measure I passing. This gives a perspective on what the priorities were at a City Hall that thought they were sure to get $575 million in taxes–you know, from every single homeowner in Long Beach.
Man, democracy just suffers more and more the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Long Beach is a huge city, covered by many different types of neighborhoods, but we are all in this together. And as citizens, we should all be treated equally by the City Council–regardless of where we live in the city.
If that crack in an East Side sidewalk has to go unrepaired for a few years so that the quality of life on the West Side or Central Long Beach can be brought up to snuff–well, the East Side should learn to live with that crack for another couple of years. The same with having potholes filled as needed as opposed to refurbishing the whole length of roads.
Long Beach, as a community, can only sink or swim collectively. If we choose to swim, it can only be as high as the most neglected of our neighborhoods.
Surely we can pretend that we are all little isolated islands of affluence, each with our imaginary neighborhood walls dividing us from other parts of the city, but what does this really get us? Nothing more than the illusion of prosperity.
Does anyone living in College Park Estates not realize deep down that they are as much a part of Long Beach as the neighborhoods of the West Side? I would recommend checking your address. It says Long Beach, just like the rest of our mail. Or can those citizens fortunate enough to live near the Virginia Country Club fool themselves into believing that when they drive out of their neighborhood that they are somehow from a different world than the less affluent areas around them?
This is Long Beach. And to live in Long Beach is to realize that every socio-economic strata is represented within its borders and we are all part of the same larger community.
Only when we accept our neighbors as fellow citizens, no matter who they are and what their circumstances, can we all come together to work toward a better city as a whole.
And, a first precursory step in this direction is equity in treatment from the City Council.
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