A city memo published last week shows the condition of local roadways has continued to decline since voters passed a sales tax increase to fund infrastructure and public safety.
LBUSD enrollment remains steadily shrinking, with a longtime decline of 2% annually reaching 3% each of the last two years. Each percentage drop represents a loss of $7-8 million in funding from the state.
Lower-than-expected attendance, declining enrollment and protracted labor negotiations may lead to budgetary challenges in the future for the Long Beach Unified school district, officials said this week.
Long Beach Unified expects to rely heavily on its reserves in the next few years as declining enrollment and lower attendance hurt its bottom line.
The citywide pavement condition score is 58 with just 13% of streets being considered “excellent” and 53% of the city’s streets being rated “fair to marginal” or worse.
The largest reductions came from funding set aside to help businesses, with those funds being reduced by nearly $4.5 million.
As the end of a strenuous fiscal year nears, city leaders are proposing a new budget with upward of $30 million in cutbacks to multiple departments and funds, including the Tidelands Fund. City staff utilized creative solutions to minimize the impacts on the Tidelands but the future of coastal-area funding and its revenue streams is in question.
The union representing local police officers says it conducted a survey that shows Long Beach voters broadly approve of the Black Lives Matter movement but don’t support for the group’s core goal of shrinking the police department.
“We actually have about $3.3 million going to the arts in FY21, as compared to $1.2 million last year.”
Long Beach is in for much more economic pain than originally anticipated as the city’s projected economic shortfalls were adjusted Tuesday night to reveal a hole in the annual budget that could be as much as $41 million.
