Good morning and welcome to Monday Morning Coffee! It’s time to find out what this week will bring — grab your coffee and let’s get to it. Get this in your inbox every week by signing up at LBPost.com/newsletters.

City meetings

The Long Beach City Council is off this week, but that doesn’t mean you get the same reprieve. 

An important draft will come before the eyes of the 14-member Equity and Human Relations Commission on Wednesday, one that will ask the city to divest its portfolio away from companies and countries complicit in war crimes, genocide, illegal hiring tactics and other unethical forms of conduct.

Titled the Civil and Human Rights Investment Screening, it’s a draft framework meant to ensure the city’s investments would not contribute toward civil and human rights abuses, even indirectly. This means companies doing business with violating nations, governments or corporations that contribute toward any form of humanitarian crises. 

It was not immediately clear whether Long Beach is involved with or holds any bonds or equities with these types of companies. Many have scrutinized the City Council over contracts between the city harbor commission and SpaceX, which leases office and rocket recovery space at the Port. A list of potential companies to boycott was not included in the agenda item.

It’s unclear the scale of the overhaul that could come with the law’s passage; a previous draft portended an $80 million loss in city revenue and a $2 million expense for the dozen workers needed to carry out the changes, according to a Sept. 19 letter by Kevin Riper with the city’s financial department. 

“The six broad categories of disqualifying violations proposed—ranging from corporate complicity in state violence and displacement, to labor violations and environmental harm—are so broadly defined and open to such a wide range of interpretation that likely every company in the country that the California Government Code permits cities to invest in could be interpreted to have committed at least one or several of the listed violations,” the letter read. “This could effectively disqualify the entire private sector from being invested in by the City Treasurer. Even the U.S. government could be found to have committed one or more of the disqualifying violations.”

Regardless, expect the commission to go over the draft and, depending on the vote, kick it up to the City Council for further discourse or even a vote. 

Business events and information

  • Tuesday marks the final day for the Long Beach Resource (Phone) Line, a COVID-era city program that since 2020 paired more than 9,400 callers to food and housing assistance, physical and mental health programs, legal aid and more. The program, like many paid for by federal assistance money, is ending as the one-time funds have been depleted. According to a release, the city will not lay anyone off; workers will be reassigned elsewhere in the Health Department. For those in need of help, whether it’s food, employment, health care or something else, countywide nonprofits like 2-1-1 LA offer some of the same assistance. The city Health Department also runs a webpage with many of the same amenities here.
  • Is your business compliant with federal accessibility regulations? If you’re unsure, you should probably check out the first of two city workshops on ADA compliance this Tuesday, Sept. 30, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Billie Jean King Library (200 W. Broadway). A second workshop will take place at the same time on Oct. 15 at the Recreation Park Social Hall (4900 E. 7th St.). Those interested can RSVP here. (In case you missed it, we recently wrote about a wave of ADA lawsuits hitting local bars.)
  • The city is offering paid internships for urban planning and design through its Economic Development Department. As an eight-month course, interns will earn $22 an hour from November to June 2026 and get invaluable experience in the field with a hand in creating a city they can be proud of. The deadline to apply is Oct. 2. For more information, visit here.

ICYMI — California and national news

  • Starbucks plans to close hundreds of stores and lay off close to 1,000 people (Los Angeles Times)
  • How bad is California’s housing shortage? It depends on who’s doing the counting (CalMatters)
  • Long Beach has sent cease-and-desist letters to 161 street vendors, seized food dozens of times (Long Beach Post)
  • LAHSA adopts conflict of interest policy after LAist exposes ethics gaps (LAist)