With a scenic bay literally in the background setting the mood, the Boathouse on the Bay restaurant served as the scene for the full house of attendees who were interested in hearing about pressing matters that involve the state of California, the Long Beach 3rd council district and education.
The Coffee and Conversation event on March 5 featured this discussion with 70th District Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, 3rd District Councilmember Suzie Price and LBUSD Area 4 Board Member Jon Meyer.
O’Donnell sparked the conversation with community members by first bringing up the state budget.
“We live and die off our budget in California,” the assemblymember told the group of individuals last Saturday. “It’s because our money is so fluid that we have to be careful with how we spend it.”
O’Donnell went into further detail about the budget with the Signal Tribune after the event.
“These are good times, but good times don’t last,” O’Donnell said. “We need to be careful with our dollars. I’ve shared that I’m a Jerry Brown Democrat. What does that mean? It means to be fiscally prudent. Don’t spend it all today. Let’s save a little bit for tomorrow when the economy turns down and so to does our budget situation.”
He also added that teacher shortages in the state are impacting schools and classrooms. There needs to be a concerted effort to make the profession more “attractive,” he told community members during the discussion.
“What’s happening to teachers— I’ve lived that war,” said O’Donnell, who is a former instructor in his own right. “We need to have faith in our teachers and not beat them up. We need to show how they shine and get more teachers in the door.”
The assemblymember also mentioned there is a proposed $9-billion statewide school bond for the November ballot. The bond was put in by signatures collected across the state from voters.
“There has to be a triggerhead by the individuals who gather the signatures,” O’Donnell said in an interview with the Signal Tribune. “They haven’t hit that trigger yet, but they have until late June to hit that trigger. It’s very likely they will, and there will be a $9-billion bond on the November ballot.”
Those bond dollars will go to K-12 schools and community colleges. The bond will also serve as a match for local districts. O’Donnell said local districts will most likely pass their own bonds, and what they will get is a dollar-for-dollar match from the state out of that $9-billion proposed bond. That means those districts can apply to match their own dollars to the state dollars.
O’Donnell also brought up Prop 47 and its impact on crime. Prop 47 is a comprehensive proposition that was passed by voters about two years ago.
O’Donnell said the proposition does a number of things, but his concern is its restrictions on a judge’s ability to get individuals treatments for certain addictions.
“There are parts of Prop 47 that are great and will actually end up saving us money and end up saving us lives and improving people’s lives,” he said. “But there is a part of Prop 47 which is pretty restrictive on a judge’s ability to make a decision that will impact an individual’s life on a positive manner, such as directing people to drug treatment on a court order. It’s much more difficult now.”
The assemblymember hopes to find a solution to this situation with his other officials.
Price shared the status of her third council district. Her presentation primarily focused on that of traffic and public safety, homelessness and the necessity for more infrastructure money.
The 3rd-district councilmember touted traffic safety as the least appealing topic for the public but that it still remains as one of the most important issues in the area.
“It’s not an exciting or sexy topic like public safety, infrastructure or pollution, that are interesting to the general masses,” Price said in an interview with the Signal Tribune. “Traffic-safety projects only really impact the people who travel in those areas. They are important to them, so we’ve focused on them.”
She said turn signals, dedicated turn arrows, crosswalks, flashing beacons and road diets are all improvements in traffic safety that have already been implemented in the Long Beach area.
“Traffic safety is really important, and it has been really important to our office,” Price said. “I want to make sure people feel safe walking, biking and being in the area. There’s multiple traffic-safety issues that have been ignored or not brought to light that we are now focusing on.”
She also brought up in her discussion that her office is making efforts to assist those in the homeless population. Price said that her office is exploring out-of-the-box ideas to deal with problems regarding the homeless issue.
One such idea involves looking at private partnerships to study a pilot project and study a specific group of people in order to gauge if those individuals could be helped out of homelessness.
“Right now we’re just studying it,” Price said. “There’s a lot more that would need to be done… We don’t want people to be homeless. Most of the people that are homeless are Long Beach residents. We’re Long Beach residents. People that are our neighbors, who represent our community, are addicted to drugs or have a mental-health issue that prevents them from having a stable living situation.”
Price also mentioned in her discussion that her council district is currently not able to “pave more than one street.” She said the budget is very fixed for infrastructure and there are generally only funds to pave one primary street, or to either allocate the funds and fix several smaller streets.
“We can really only pave one long portion of the roadway per year,” she said. “That’s all the money that we have. If we don’t increase our infrastructure budget, then we’ll continue to maybe pave only one street a year. If we increase our infrastructure budget, we’ll be able to do a lot more.”
Meyer spoke briefly and provided closing statements at the end of the presentation. He said the education in the district is great, also commending LBUSD Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser for providing the “wherewithal to have students succeed.”
