Spend $18 Million Budget 'Extra' on One-Time Costs

Editor's Note: The Long Beach City Council will hold a 3:30 p.m. session its in the Council chambers (330 W. Broadway) on whether to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss the Proposed Fiscal Year 2012 Budgets for various departments. It will be followed by the Council's regularly scheduled 5 p.m. meeting, which should see discussion on how the Council should spend the $18 million in unbudgeted oil revenue. The Council may vote on the budget, or it may be voted on in two weeks.

Patch invited the councilman from our Belmont Shore district, and one of the threee councilmembers that favor restoring some of the cut police, fire, park and library services.

The City of Long Beach needs to make systemic changes to our current organization.  Due to ever increasing labor costs – both compensation and pension – we will be reducing services for at least the next several years.  The City will be reducing the number of police officers and firefighters, Parks & Rec services, Library services and other services to our residents.  This will continue until revenues grow faster than labor costs, which will not happen until 2014 at the earliest.

To address our labor cost problem, our City’s labor organizations need to agree to reduced pension benefits for new employees, and to forego any raises at least until they pay their full share of the pension costs.  While employees in the City Attorney’s office and City Auditor’s office have agreed to this request, most of the other labor groups haven’t.

For many years, the City of Long Beach has not budgeted a sufficient amount to address our infrastructure problems.  We don’t provide enough funding to maintain our streets, sidewalks, buildings, etc.  Instead, rather than properly manage the cost of day to day government operations, the City allows these operating costs to absorb too much of our revenues.

There is currently a proposal to use “excess” oil revenue to restore some of the services being cut in the proposed 2012 budget.  One of the problems with this proposal is it only postpones the inevitable.  If we use this funding to restore these services, we will not only have to eliminate the services the following year in 2013, but we will have to simultaneously eliminate even more services in 2013 due to projected labor cost increases.  I strongly believe we should use “excess” oil revenues for one time investments that bring long-term benefits to our community, or increase our reserves in case our financial situation deteriorates in the future.

Do we want to “spend” every penny we have on things that make us feel good now?  Or, “invest” these dollars in long-term community benefits?  Or “save” the money in a reserve account to create a more financially stable future?