As Long Beach stares down an ever-increasing budget deficit heading into next year, city officials are seeking revenue streams and ways to cut back without terminating programs residents rely on.
The Financial Management Department presented the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for fiscal year 2024-25 on July 21, laying out the City’s assets, expenses and more. Representatives from Public Works, Fire and Police departments presented key performance statistics to Long Beach City Council as their departments’ budgets were briefly reviewed. However, no changes or suggestions to their budgets were made during the meeting.
Assets
Long Beach’s largest chunk of money consists of capital assets, currently priced at $6.6 billion. This category accounts for investments in equipment and vehicles, buildings and land owned by the City and infrastructure. This does not, however, represent available financial resources, meaning they cannot be used to fund any services or programs.
The City’s next biggest budget line is $2.2 billion in cash assets. The City’s ratio of cash assets to priorities is at 193%, a 41% decrease from 2023-24. If that ratio falls below 100%, City staff said this would indicate the City doesn’t have enough cash to pay for its short-term obligations. Short-term obligations include the current programs and services that the City provides, from libraries and parks to scheduled events.
This decrease is mostly due to a deficit in the City’s general fund, which is why Long Beach had to draw into its reserves this year, a representative from the Financial Management Department said.
Money Owed
Long Beach currently owes $1.6 billion in bonds, or long-term debt obligations. This number has decreased from $1.7 billion in 2022-23. However, its total debt owed sits at $2.4 billion.
The Financial Management Department has broken down the City’s long-term debt obligations into four categories:
- Bonds Payable: $1.58 billion
- Notes, Loans and Lines of Credit: $498.58 million
- Civic Center Long-Term Obligation: $268.46 million
- Finance Purchase Obligations: $87.87 million
The bonds payable portion of the City’s debt consists of dozens of individual obligations, Director of Long Beach Financial Management Department Kevin Riper told the Signal Tribune. The largest of those obligations are to the Port of Long Beach ($533 million) and the City’s Gas Utility Fund ($472 million).
In addition, the City also owes $1.3 billion to CalPERS, an employee retirement fund service, split between the public safety fund with CalPERS and miscellaneous (all other City employees). Long Beach will pay $160 million over the next year to begin paying off this debt, according to Riper. The City estimates this will be paid off in the next 15 years.
This debt with CalPERS began in 1950, when the City first enrolled its employees under CalPERS, Riper told the Signal Tribune. Long Beach is contractually obligated to pay back the full cost of its employees’ public retirement and pension benefits. Over the last few decades, both the cost of these services and the pension liability have increased, the latter more quickly.
“The cost of doing business and providing services has grown significantly and dramatically. I think it’s important for folks to understand that,” Mayor Rex Richardson said. “And we’re seeing the long-term effects of Proposition 13 in California, where other states have the ability to—their property taxes grow and ours do not—not at the same rate on residential businesses and properties where the majority of our revenue comes from property taxes.”
Revenue & Expenses
The largest revenue sources for the City are taxes (43.7%) and grants (24.3%), which account for 68% of Long Beach’s revenue, followed by charges for services (17.7%).
The largest expense for the City is its public safety fund at 42%, which includes the police and fire departments, followed by the community and cultural programs at 21.4%. The next largest expenses are public works (17%) and public health (11%).
General Fund
The City’s general fund is made up mostly of taxes, which account for 67.7% of the general fund, followed by charges for services (7.7%), licenses and permits (6.9%), “other financing sources” (3.7%), franchise fees (3.5%) and fines and forfeitures (2.4%). The total general fund for fiscal year 2024-25 was $722 million.
A city’s general fund is the money that can be used for basic services for residents, such as street repairs and keeping libraries open.
Long Beach spent an excess of $34 million out of its general fund in fiscal year 2024-25, going from spending $759 million in 2023-24 to spending $793 million last fiscal year.
Given last year’s general fund revenue and spending, Long Beach is faced with a deficit of about $70 million going into next year. To cover last year’s $60 million deficit, the City used $31 million from planned 2024 reserves to cover the deficit, and covered the rest with remaining Long Beach Recovery Act funds ($15.9 million), CARES Act funding ($5.4 million) and operating reserves ($7.8 million).
The City also has $50 million in its reserves, enough money to support its current programming for one and a half months.
“I’m concerned that we’re not investing enough to maintain the services our community relies on every single day. We can launch new projects [and] programs, but they aren’t going to matter if we don’t keep people safe, collect their trash and maintain basic infrastructure such as our streets, sidewalks, medians and trees,” Third District Councilmember Kristina Duggan said.
Fifth District Councilmember Megan Kerr brought up how certain companies are facing staffing shortages due to their immigrant employees being unable to work, and how this might affect the City’s projects and associated costs.
“It’s important I think as we enter budget season to acknowledge that there are really big forces happening that impact us in significant ways that might have nothing to do with the work that we’re doing here in Long Beach or the way that we’re trying to do the work,” Kerr said.
