May 2011 Archives

If you drive a car or walk on a sidewalk in Long Beach, it's hard not to notice the potholes, the rough roadways, the cracks and the uneven sidewalks. As I wrote about Sunday, city officials are struggling to figure out how to pay for Long Beach's infrastructure upkeep.

If that article wasn't enough for you and you want to learn more, click on the link below to see the presentation that was given to the City Council last week.

Infrastructure presentation.PDF

if you live in North Long Beach's 9th District, and you care at all about having your voice heard at City Hall, you might want to go to the redistricting town hall tonight.

The City Council is preparing to redraw Long Beach's nine council districts to fit its new population distribution, and Councilman Steve Neal is seeking the public's input in the 9th District. That district has the fewest options of any. It has become the most dense district, population-wise, in the city, so it must shrink. Yet, it is only bordered by one other district to the south, so that's the only area where it can change shape.

The town hall takes place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Ramona Park, 3301 E. 65th St.

Get all the information you need on the city's redistricting process here.

If you're planning on attending TEDxSoCal, a conference on innovation, creativity and sustainability, on July 16, or if you're still considering it, check out the video below to see what's in store. The conference is an independently organized event based on the exclusive international TED Conference - TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design." Long Beach has played host to the national event for the past three years, but unlike the national conference, the local one is open to the public.

Read my article about the event and the speakers who will be attending here.

Get more information and buy tickets at www.TEDxSoCal.org.

The City Council heard representatives of several wireless companies loud and clear Tuesday -- at least clear enough not to rush ahead on new regulations for all wireless telecommunications facilities that are installed in the future.

Some residents had pushed for the city to control new wireless antennas and similar facilities that were going up in residential areas, on top of apartment buildings and in other locations. The Planning Commission held hearings on the matter and sent its recommendation to the council Tuesday.

Although Long Beach can't legally ban wireless transmission sites, the proposed provisions would encourage companies to place the wireless facilities away from residential areas, would set stricter design standards, and would create a process to allow the sites on public rights of way and in city parks.

However, representatives from the wireless companies had a long list of concerns, such as just how restricted from locating in residential areas they would be, the real-world application of what they considered some vague language in the law, and whether they would be able to make minor changes to existing sites without having to completely redo them to meet the requirements of the ordinance.

The council voted unanimously to delay the matter so that city staff could address some of the concerns and return to the council with responses and any changes to the regulations.

Fifth District City Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske is taking issue with some of the media coverage -- not mine, I don't believe, but that of area television news stations -- of her opposition to naming a downtown park after gay rights advocate Harvey Milk.

Among the many issues she tackles in her latest blog post is the answer to the questions at the top of my blog. Here is one of her responses:

I subscribe to the Harvey Milk theory of being gay and a public official: Milk was quoted about his work on non-gay issues: "All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job."

Schipske had previously criticized the park naming on her blog, suggesting that it should be named for a local gay leader. Read about my story about that here. The council voted to send the park naming to a committee and a commission, as you can read here.

What do you think? Should the park be named for Harvey Milk? Did Schipske have a point?

Talk about phoning home.

Congresswoman Linda Sánchez, D-Lakewood, on Tuesday took part in a telephone town hall meeting with constituents from Cerritos, Lakewood, Whittier, Southgate, La Mirada, and Paramount.

Sánchez, who plans to hold more telephone town halls throughout the year, answered 11 constituent questions about Medicare, Social Security, health care, jobs and the economy during the hour-long phone call.  Sánchez also plans to answer voicemail questions left by 75 constituents who participated in the telephone town hall.

"Listening to constituents is the most important part of my job," Sanchez said. "There are some huge budget cuts being proposed in this Congress, and people want to know how these cuts will affect their day-to-day lives.  They want to know if they will lose Social Security benefits and whether they'll have to pay more for Medicare coverage. Having the chance to hear from constituents and their serious concerns strengthens my resolve to fight the reckless cuts Republicans are proposing."  

 

The Long Beach City Council tonight unanimously approved a proposal by Councilman Patrick O'Donnell to create a "sliding-scale" cost schedule for conditional use permits, or CUPs. The permits are required for businesses that want to locate in areas not zoned for that use.

When a business wants to move to one of these areas, it must get a conditional use permit, known as a CUP, which costs a flat fee of about $11,000.

O'Donnell says this is more expensive than neighboring cities' CUP fees and that Long Beach's fee should be based on a sliding scale, depending on how much city staff time is spent on putting the permit in place.

As I wrote about Sunday in this article, two Long Beach natives, the late state Sen. Jenny Oropeza and banda singer Jenni Rivera are being honored today with Latino Spirit Awards from the California Latino Legislative Caucus at the State Capitol.

So, in memory of Oropeza, who will receive her award posthumously, and for those of you who may not have heard Rivera's music (she's a huge, breakout artist in this genre, by the way), check out the two videos below. Rivera is even wearing an "LB" hat in the video! Pretty cool.

Long Beach Congresswoman Laura Richardson's campaign committee owes $454,098 -- about a fourth of all of the campaign debt owed by 22 House members, Politico.com reported last week.

As the article points out, the Democrat who once served on Long Beach City Council has a history of money troubles -- her foreclosed home and other home loan defaults in 2008 among them. From the article:

About half of Richardson's debt, $217,500, is owed to California political consultant John Shallman. Richardson, who had to defend herself against ethics charges related to a defaulted home mortgage, is also in hock for nearly $100,000 to Perkins Coie, a firm that handles legal and campaign finance issues for many Democrats. The ethics case was dismissed in July.

And Mike Fraioli, a longtime Democratic fundraiser, is owed an additional $74,000-plus by Richardson's campaign, according to her latest filing with the Federal Election Commission. Richardson for Congress had only $36,128 in the bank as of March 31.

Continue Reading

Richardson isn't alone, the article points out. Twenty-two House members owe a total of $1.7 million to various vendors for campaign costs.

As I reported last week, Long Beach's western half is likely to see some major changes to its City Council districts. The population is especially growing in the 8th and 9th districts in the northern part of the city, while neighboring districts have lower populations..

Get all of the information you need about the redistricting process, including new Census data by council district, maps and how to give input to the city, here. I've included one of those maps below that shows each district's population and by what percentage it deviates from the ideal amount to have balance among the nine districts. Any population that is more than 5 percent above or below must be changed under standard city policy.

COUNCIL REDISTRICTING MAP.PDF

Long Beach Harbor Commissioner Mario Cordero was recently interviewed for the Air Quality Management District's news program, "On the Air." Cordero will soon depart Long Beach to serve on the Federal Maritime Commission as an appointment by Pres. Barack Obama. Check out the video below.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, who represents part of Long Beach, released the following statement last night after the news of Osama bin Laden's death:

Congratulations to our U.S. special forces teams and intelligence community who were able to carry out this mission to kill Osama Bin Laden successfully. Better late than never.

This doesn't mean the War on Terror is over. What it does mean is that no one can kill scores of Americans and think they can get away with it.

Tonight, America is celebrating while Osama bin Laden burns in hell.