The lack of air conditioning on City Hall’s sixth floor seemed to fan the flames of criticism among attendees at a heated July 3 City Council meeting before the council voted 5-0 to approve a $1.8 million borrowing measure to pay retiring city workers and those who intend to leave in the current fiscal year.
The council had initially considered a $2.5 million bond proposal to fund retirement and separation payouts for 27 police, firefighters and Civil Service Employees Association members who have retired or intend to leave the city’s employ. Council members agreed, however, to scale down the measure.
Councilman John Bendo noted that the city budget approved in May called for $1.8 million in borrowing to cover contractual obligations.
Former school board President Roy Lester said that a number of those who are set to receive separation payouts under the borrowing measure also received payments for their accrued time in the 2017-18 fiscal year.
“In order to help the city make these payments, they’re done in installments,” Council President Anthony Eramo said. “These are our contractual obligations. Our employees . . . deserve the benefits that your unions have negotiated.”
Without borrowing to cover the payments, Eramo said the city would have to raise taxes about 6 percent.
In its recent review of the 2018-19 budget released in May, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office — which announced in March that Long Beach was in “significant fiscal stress” — criticized the city’s handling of separation payouts, saying that its continued practice of borrowing for the payments is not “fiscally prudent.”
Moody’s Investors Service, meanwhile, revised the city’s credit outlook from stable to negative that month, citing “years of operating deficits and the City Council’s failure to approve budgeted borrowing to pay for operating expenses,” a reference to the council’s failure to approve the proposed bond measure in April, which officials said created a cash-flow gap.
Last week’s bond measure was discussed on a 90-degree day. Acting City Manager Mike Tangney drew jeers from a number of attendees when he said that the city couldn’t afford to repair the air-conditioning unit because it “ran out of money” when the previous bond measure was rejected in April.
The city was forced to wait until the start of the 2018-19 fiscal year, which began on July 1, to pay the contractor to repair the unit, according to Newsday. Officials said the unit has since been fixed.