Start your bickering: Budget season is here

You’d think I was lying if I told you that the Long Beach city budget season is the most wonderful time of the year. And you’d be right, but it is one of the most fantastical times of the year, when everyone (see: Democracy) has the right to tell the city government what’s wrong with the proposed budget in community meetings and public comment.

It shouldn’t be any other way, of course. You can’t not let the public speak in America, nor is it advisable to even moderate, short of a time limit, what the public chooses to opine over.

Public comment takes up a fair slice of the pie chart of “What Makes America Great,” but  it eats up almost the entire pie when the chart is re-titled “Why You Don’t Want to Be a Public Official.”

A few years ago I fake-ran for a 5th District council seat, chiefly because running the 5th is easier than sitting on a rug playing Candy Land with a 4-year-old, but also because the chances were good that I could get an electric scooter to ride around on and an office in the park. But I backed out of my pseudo-candidacy because what if I accidentally won, like your current president did, and I’d have to sit through public comment most Tuesday evenings when I should be in the backyard enjoying a cocktail?

Budgets bring out the best in public opinion, with big swaths of the citizenry taking up the civic hobby of backseat driving. I’m not cheerleading for the 2019 budget that was just delivered, chiefly because I can’t grapple with the math, plus there’s my own hilarious attempts at a household budget, which basically entails dropping HBO, before deciding that’s too complicated and going back to the simple method of just buying whatever I want.

The city does do that to a certain extent, and we’re thinking now about the Belmont Beach and Aquatics Center, which is elegant in its financial simplicity: Spend $100 million on a swimming pool and build it where, in about 14 years, the aqua complex will be literally and perhaps figuratively underwater (I know it’s projected to be a lot longer than 14 years for that calamity to happen, but your president has put sea-level-rising on a fast track. Do not underestimate your president’s ability to get horrible things done quickly).

And that’s to say nothing about the fact that the $100 million estimate is now three or four years old, and anyone who follows what things cost knows that the days of $100-million swimming pools are now long gone. It costs that much just to put a koi pond in your backyard.

Look, now we’re doing it! Bickering about how the city spends its money.

We don’t even want to revisit the headache and astronomical costs associated with getting the Queen Mary gussied up.

What about police? We need a lot more of them. You’ll hear this in the coming weeks. The 5th District alone could use all the cops we have now citywide just to make sure residents don’t get more lawn gnomes stolen and to chase suspicious pedestrians out of the district to one of the lesser districts, where they belong.

Schools? My kids are out of school. Cut that budget.

My kids are starting school; we need more funds. Bring back music and auto shop.

Do a lot of driving in town? We need more money to fix potholes.

Live where parking’s bad? Devote more dollars to fixing the parking problem.

Live where parking’s cake? There is no parking problem. Use the money for watering parks.

Sick of homeless people? Set aside a few million dollars to come up and execute exciting and creative methods of relocating them (hint: Texas and Florida are always looking to lure Californians to their sunny states).

Have a certain amount of compassion for homeless people? Get more money for dull-but-helpful mental health programs and more-than-merely “affordable” housing.

What about rainy days? There are no rainy days. Drought is the new rainstorm. But what about the figurative rainy day, like the next crippling Great Recession, which could come as early as a week from Thursday? Should the city be socking more away behind picture frames rather than, say, shoveling millions madly into a sinking ship?

And how to increase revenue? Higher sales tax? Long Beach has run that exhaustion.

Parcel tax, the favored method from the majority of citizens who don’t own parcels? Homeowners (and parcel-havers) will vote you out of office if you go to that well too often.

Cut pensions? Again, a favored method among those who aren’t going to get one, but they’re a method of luring talent to the city; a form of gratitude for service. Maybe I could make a case for cutting pensions if I wasn’t married to a woman who will one day be getting one, which allows me to fritter my life away in all but indentured servitude, so, yeah, I say pensions stay the same.

All this back-and-forth, and much, much more speechifying that’s far afield from the matter at hand will be brought out in the coming weeks as people check in to lobby, often loudly, for more money for their favorite things and less for the things they have no interest in.

I’m all for it. Open and public comment is an important part of the process and everyone deserves to be heard. So, go ahead and air your concerns, your preferences, your opinions.

I’ll be out back if you need me.