Please pardon our dust

The revolution commission meetings will not be televised

I’ll be the first to tell you that the sound in the new Long Beach Civic Chambers is a far cry from the quality that old, dilapidated council chambers provided before it was demolished to make way for a housing project that has seemingly dissipated like the voice of someone speaking during public comment. 

Old City Hall now is an endearing pit in the ground that nature has started to reclaim. I pass it when I walk into the new building and I’ll miss my pit over the next few weeks while the new council chambers are closed to get an upgraded audio-visual system.

The old room had its issues. It wasn’t nearly as ADA accessible as the new room, and in its latter years, you had to make sure that the seat you were about to sit in was still functional or risk falling to the floor. But the stadium seating — and the speakers in the armrests — never left anyone wondering what had been said. 

Audio issues are something that I noticed at the first meeting I attended in the new building, which the city won’t technically own until the 40-year lease term is up. 

And despite the city paying over $14 million in rent annually, it’s not allowed to do much to the building. That includes even minor changes like hanging things on the walls, as many city hall employees have lamented to me over the years. 

That’s why I thought it was weird this week when the city announced it was paying $158,000 out of its own pocket to improve the sound and video capabilities of the room.

For the past four years, the chamber has largely depended on the type of PA speakers that a local band would play out of — I know, I used to do it — but now the city will install (hopefully) proper speakers to enhance the experience for people in the audience and at home. 

I questioned why the city should have to pay, given it’s a tenant, and I was told that the building’s developer (Plenary) was only on the hook for the original design agreed to by the city. This was considered an “extra,” like guacamole.

Because of the closure, all city bodies that use that space for meetings will have to find a new place to conduct their business. 

For the City Council, not much will change during the next few weeks. 

It will meet at the Long Beach City College Liberal Arts Campus in the same room where the college’s board of trustees meets. You won’t have to change your itinerary because those meetings will be broadcast as usual and you can watch remotely. 

However, the rest of the meetings will be on tape delay unless you attend them in person. 

This was something that dawned on me Thursday as I was arranging my day and realized there wasn’t a Zoom link for the meeting I planned to attend like there typically is. There wasn’t a streaming option for any non-City Council meeting for the next month. 

I thought this was odd given that LBCC can broadcast its meetings in real-time, and the council meetings will take advantage of that technology. And all but a handful of city commission meetings over the next month are scheduled to be held at LBCC.  

The city says the decision not to broadcast them was made due to a lack of staffing and resources needed to do offsite streaming for commission meetings. The city and the college reached an agreement to have more people on hand for council meetings but not the others. 

It seems out of step with the city’s focus on equity and accessibility, something it mentions when discussing most of its programs. This decision could exclude some people from potentially important decisions made over the next few weeks if they can’t make it to East Long Beach.

I will be there because it’s my job to keep my ear to the ground on issues before they get to the council level and let you know about them. 

But if you want to be part of your local democracy over the next month, you better try to make your way down to the corner of Clark Avenue and E. Lew Davis Street. 

I’ll save you a space in the parking structure.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS WEEK:

The council has been looking at ways to reduce cannabis taxes and so far has offered breaks to just about every sector of the industry other than retailers. Tuesday that could change as the council prepares to ask the City Attorney to draft a revision to the city’s tax plan to help ailing dispensary owners who have said for years that the combination of state and city taxes and a still thriving illicit market are undercutting legal operators’ ability to survive. I’ve already been told by one retailer that the proposed plan that I wrote about last month would make the tax benefits out of reach for them. Ironically, to qualify for the city’s tax break plan retailers can’t have any outstanding tax bills. Let’s see if that changes at all after Tuesday night’s discussion. 

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS NEXT WEEK:

The City Council will vote on whether Fire Station 9 in the Los Cerritos neighborhood should be declared historic Tuesday night. The fire station is roughly 90 years old but has sat vacant for years after the city determined that mold issues made it unsafe for firefighters. At one point it faced potential demolition before the city tried to sell the building for development. Now, the council could declare the exterior of the building (and some of its insides) as historic. While it might take away from its marketability in the real estate world, remember, we wrote back in November that Gemmae Bake Shop is looking to take over the site to expand its operations.