Nearly four years after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the city of Long Beach is back in many ways.
In the first six months of 2024, Long Beach has kept its unemployment rate at or around 5%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tourism rebounded, with a record level of visitors to the city’s Convention Center last year and the Queen Mary ocean liner is officially profitable. Property values continue to rise, in chipper contrast to the city’s dwindling oil revenues.
All of this and more — the recovery of Long Beach’s economy and social fortitude — was possible through the pandemic-era programs that saved shuttered businesses with federal cash.
But all things must pass, officials announced Thursday: Nearly 70 of the 85 programs funded through the $297 million Long Beach Recovery Act will wind down by the end of 2024.
In a presentation of the 2025 fiscal budget, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson and City Manager Tom Modica outlined how they propose spending $3.6 billion through the coming year.
Investments were packaged around the city’s Long Beach Strategic Vision 2030, a wishlist of where the city wants to be in five years time: a tourism titan, with the venues, restaurants and infrastructure to host global competitions, on a budget that no longer relies on the production of crude oil.
It is a transitional document, moving toward that envisioned future and away from the demands of the pandemic. Since 2021, the Long Beach Recovery Act has allocated $297 million across 85 programs divided into the top three priorities at the time: economic recovery, building a healthy and safe community, and securing the city’s future.
It came as the coronavirus pandemic inflicted an economic battering on Long Beach and California governments, shrinking tax receipts and shuttering businesses. In response, federal aid barnstormed the state with $43 billion, leading to newly funded programs statewide that kept people housed, children fed and businesses afloat.
About half of the Recovery Act funding came either from the federal American Rescue Plan Act or through funding freed up because of it, along with additional state and federal grants.
“We couldn’t have gotten through the last few years without support from the Biden-Harris Administration, from the federal support,” Richardson said. “Cities were dealing with lost revenue from closing-down businesses and all those things, … and revenue, while it’s coming back strong, it still isn’t what it would have been if we didn’t have a pandemic.”
But the city’s priorities are shifting, Richardson said, toward finding new sources of revenue and preparation for the 2028 Summer Olympics. At least eight events have been confirmed in Long Beach, the largest host outside of Los Angeles.
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“We have to focus on what we’re focusing on today,” Richardson said. “Which is growing more revenue and preparing for the future, which means we have to identify new revenue sources.”
Long Beach will soon consider asking local voters to raise taxes on the power plants within the city’s limits, and leaders hope a county sales tax measure funding homeless services will pass, helping stave off projected deficits in coming years.
Luckily this year, many of the Recovery Act programs were designed to end in 2024, Modica explained. Some were created in direct response to the coronavirus pandemic — free rapid testing, epidemiology support, contact tracing — and ended well before the budget unveiling. Other funding was sent to reserves, to pay off the city’s deficit or eliminate furloughs in City Hall.
But as of Thursday, 52 programs remain in operation. Eight of those programs, which proved to be the “most impactful and most needed,” are proposed to be absorbed into the city’s budget in 2025.
These include the city’s BeSAFE Program, BizCare Program, re-entry services for former inmates, sidewalk vending, and others. These programs will be budgeted next year but at a reduced rate, Deputy City Manager Meredith Reynolds explained, adding they don’t expect any layoffs or impacts to the quality of the programs.
Another ten will continue through 2024 but will be shuttered in 2025 unless the City Council approves new funding for them. As of Thursday, there is about $52 million in unspent funds.
“It’ll be part of the budget process,” Reynolds said. “If the City Council does agree that these 10 programs should be funded in the way that the city manager’s proposed budget is indiciating, then any remaining funds at the end of the year will roll over into 2025 and they’ll be able to have no gap in service and be able to fulfill whatever that scope of work was.”
These include down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, youth mentoring, subsidies for street vendors and the city’s mobile market program, which brings produce to underserved neighborhoods.
With the recommendations made Thursday, the proposed 2025 budget will next go before the City Council on Aug. 6, in the first of several budget hearings until its adoption on Sept. 10.