A dozen shootings, incomplete hospital and homeless campus, huge deficit, bad credit and a pandemic, Long Beach Mayor says City is “strong”.
OPINION - Over 400 Facebook users tuned in to the Mayor’s annual State of the City address yesterday. But moments before the Mayor declared that the state of the City was “strong”, two cars exchanged gunfire along Cherry Ave. Just twelve days into the new year, and already there have been at least a dozen shootings in working class Long Beach neighborhoods.
Public safety, however, was hardly referenced in the Mayor’s half-hour Powerpoint presentation. Although the Mayor’s seventh State of the City address was the shortest os his career, the lower word count didn’t mean the speech was any more truthful.
Holding Mayor Garcia accountable, we took the time to fact check a few of the Mayor’s bigger points.
Community Hospital in Open
A year ago Mayor Garcia announced that Community Hospital was reopening in his 2020 State of the City Address. The Mayor didn’t keep his word last year. The Hospital did not open.
This year Mayor Garcia claimed that Community Hospital has reopened. This isn’t true either.
Two thirds of Community Hospital remains closed. As reported by LB Report's Bill Pearl, there are over six outstanding suspensions on Community Hospital's license. To make matters worst, the temporary license allowing only a third of the hospital to open expires in April.
In fact, the day Community Hospital “re-opened” it did not receive even one patient. This after Mayor Garcia said in a statement that the hospital would provide “immediate relief”. It was more than 24 hours later that Community Hospital received a single patient from a psychiatric hospital.
Truthful information regarding hospital beds is important anytime but especially when addressing the entire city during a pandemic.
Housing Crisis
Mayor Garcia was also less than truthful when he updated residents on our city’s housing crisis.
"We must also confront the housing crisis that has only grown worst due to Covid-19" said the Mayor. While the coronavirus may be a convenient scapegoat, the Mayor’s Downtown Plan did more to displace and gentrify the city years before COVID-19.
As reported by FORTHE's Andrew Carrol, "Far from helping to build thousands of working-class homes, Garcia has helped take enough homes away that the city has roughly the same housing capacity now as it did a decade ago."
There were two specific instances, however, where the Mayor omitted facts related to affordable housing. First, the Mayor claimed that City Council approved a policy that set aside affordable housing in new city developments. What the Mayor didn’t mention was that under the city's definition of “affordable" housing, a “low income” renter makes $83,500 annually while a “moderate income” renter makes $125,000 annually. Quite a high bar for a policy intended to help solve affordability and homelessness.
Another important nugget is that developers can opt out of designating units for affordable housing by paying the city a fee. This is often the more lucrative option since the fee is far less than the market rate a developer can earn renting the unit.
Another aspect of our housing crisis is homelessness. Here the Mayor says he "opened our first municipal shelter and bridge housing campus."
The truth is that there is no campus. Our reporters recently visited the site. It is clearly a back parking lot full of FEMA-like mobile trailers. The vision for a comprehensive campus is far from being realized since the large existing building must be either demolished or greatly remodeled.
Like Community Hospital, the homeless campus is another one of the Mayor’s incomplete projects.
Black Lives Matter
Mayor Garcia closed his speech explaining how residents took to the streets demanding change after the murder of George Floyd. In response, the Mayor pledged to reform the Citizens Complaint Police Commission.
Sure, the toothless CCPC needs reform. But the first order of reform is with the Mayor and not the commission. It is the Mayor’s conflict of interest with police that is at the center of why police misconduct goes unpunished and cost residents tens of millions in civil rights lawsuits.
While pandering to Black Lives Matter, the Mayor failed to pledge that he would restore equity to his own office by refusing to accept campaign dollars from the police union.
“The State of the City is Strong”
The Mayor’s claim that the state of the city is strong defies logic.
Last year he claimed the state of the City was strong. For arguments sake let’s assume that it was. It seems plausible. 2019 was rather tame compared to 2020. There was no world wide pandemic. Children still attended school in person. Small businesses weren’t shuttered for most of the year. Compared to 2020, 2019 was a walk in the park.
But given the fact that the Mayor began his speech saying that nearly 500 residents had died of coronavirus, its hard to imagine how he looked at the city today and concluded it is strong.
Never mind the fact that just moments before the Mayor’s speech two cars exchanged shots while driving near Cherry and 56th Street. Making that the latest of a dozen or more shootings that have taken place in the city since the start of the year.
Putting public safety aside, perhaps the Mayor’s speech writers forgot about our City’s $30 million budget shortfall or that days before Christmas our city’s bond rating went from “stable” to “negative”.
It’s been a hell of a year. So perhaps we can forgive the Mayor for being optimistic. What we can’t forgive, however, is a leader who won’t tell us the truth during a crisis.
There’s an old saying that “a half truth is a whole lie.” With escalating gang violence, and incomplete hospital and homeless campus, a huge deficit, bad credit and a pandemic raging our City isn’t strong.
We are unsafe and financially insecure.
The trouble is we don’t have a Mayor with enough leadership to look us in the eye and tell us the truth.