Good morning, Long Beach. It’s Monday, May 11. Here’s what you need to know to start your day. Get this in your inbox each week by signing up at LBPost.com/newsletters.
City meetings
Pressed by state legislation, the city of Long Beach will soon restore a COVID-era system of taking real-time, remote calls during government meetings to increase public participation and access. That means you’ll be able to dial in to tell the City Council what you think on any given Tuesday instead of making the trek to the Civic Center.
Remote access was first offered to the public in June 2020, three months after the initial onset of the coronavirus forced the closure of City Hall. The service was halted in late 2021, reinstated in January 2022 amid the Omicron surge, and finally shut down in September 2022.
But now it seems it might be required for good. The city is compelled by state Senate Bill 707, a 2025 law enshrined last October, to have a system set up by July 1 that offers a real-time, two-way remote access phone or video calls for public comment. The City Council on Tuesday will discuss how it plans to meet those requirements.
It’s a rare benefit from the outbreak, allowing more access to members of the public who live in far-flung areas of the city, or who can’t otherwise make it to City Hall during daytime hours without fighting traffic, finding a babysitter or taking off work.
As part of the city’s rollout, it conducted a community survey of nearly 500 people and found that more than half hadn’t attended a meeting in the past year. Many were unaware that meetings are livestreamed and recorded. Many found the meetings to be inconveniently timed or that they failed to address the issues they found most important. Some felt their fears and frustrations were often ignored.
A majority said that remote access was at least “very important.”
There will be an offset to this change. Public comment will be capped at 90 minutes, moving away from the open-ended, ‘as long as it takes’ approach. If there are so many speakers that they might exceed the 90-minute window, the mayor will have the discretion to reduce everyone’s time to 60 seconds.
Otherwise, the amount of time each person gets on agendized items is based on the number of those speaking: three minutes for under ten people, 90 seconds for 11 to 20 people and one minute each for more than 20 people. Non-agenda items will be one minute.
The law also requires that meetings must be translated into Spanish, start earlier, and hold a consolidated public comment period at the start of the session for all topics, regardless of what’s agendized. Supplemental agendas are to be published a day earlier — on Thursday instead of Friday — to give the public more time to review.
And the city says it will offer more stand-alone study sessions for complex topics to prevent meetings from running too late. While not providing a final price tag, the city noted it’s seen a dramatic increase in overtime costs due to the late-running meetings, with costs jumping from $5,500 in 2021 to more than $50,000 last year.
Here’s what else you should know about this week:
- Weeks after closing for needed repairs to its roof and walls, the city’s Multi-Service Center — its hub for homelessness services — is expected to get additional improvements, including a new fence, electric sliding gate, swing gate, sidewalk extension and other accessibility upgrades. The item will come up at the Harbor Commission meeting today at 1:30 p.m.
- The city’s Homeless Services Policy Subcommittee will meet at 2 p.m. today to discuss, among other matters, the city’s new fence placed around the Billie Jean King Library in downtown. The conversation could result in recommended changes to the city policy.
- The Project Homekey homeless shelter site at 1725 Long Beach Blvd. is in the final stages of its $5.1 million renovation, according to a federally required staff report up for discussion at the Continuum of Care Board on Tuesday. Although construction is “substantially” finished, plumbing issues and rising material costs have delayed its completion until this month. Once open, the city’s homelessness bureau says it will find an organization to run it.
- At the Marine Advisory Commission meeting on Thursday, there will be updates on the Long Beach Amphitheater and the effort to place advertisements on lifeguard stations.
Business events and information
- The “Biggest Small Business Expo and Networking Event” is set to take place Thursday at the Sports Basement. Tickets start at $15 for Long Beach Chamber of Commerce members and $30 for non-members, while those looking to showcase their services can snag an exhibit space starting at $175. For more information or to register, visit here.
- Attention, voters: two important candidate forums are coming up this week. The first, sponsored by the Lakewood Village Neighborhood Association, will focus on the 5th District City Council race between incumbent Megan Kerr and challenger Tara Riggi. That will take place Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Long Beach City College Room W-201. It will run simultaneously with the mayoral candidate forum at The Grand Long Beach. It’s free but requires an RSVP here.
ICYMI — California and national news
- How a sales tax hike to protect healthcare would affect Long Beach (Long Beach Post)
- Alaska Airlines restores daily flights between Long Beach and Seattle after 17 years (Long Beach Post)
- Ships at L.A.’s ports face a fuel shock that’s shaking the economy (L.A. Times)
- Did Newsom’s $3.8 billion hotels-to-housing program pay off? (CalMatters)