Thursday, October 1, 2026
The City Council voted 4-1 to reject the amended and slightly reduced version of the City Manager's proposed 2006-07 municipal budget, in effect putting it in play without the reductions.
The $72 million budget became law at midnight June 1 due to a quirk in the city's charter. The council actually voted to amend it three times with various salary cuts, but when the overall budget was defeated - Democrats Robert Tepper and Denise Tangney crossed party lines and voted no, joining Republicans Tom Sofield Jr and Jim Hennessy - the reductions were in essence the only things removed.
The final budget raises the city's residential property tax levy by 25 percent, a nearly unheard of figure that provoked outrage and prompted a series of well-coordinated protests to pop up in front of City Hall during the past week, many of them hitting their full strength just as the television news vans arrived.
But the vote will have far-reaching consequences beyond politics. The budget effectively demotes three police detectives, including Sgt. James Canner, the head of the Long Beach Police Department's Narcotics Task Force, and John Sharpe, the president of the local Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Meanwhile, it gives a three-percent raise to every exempt employee in City Hall, including the City Manager and members of the council, who were quick to say they would not accept them.
Throughout the course of the meeting, four amendments were proposed, including a procedural once correcting some spelling errors. Democratic council president Leonard Remo's two amendments, which eliminated all non-contractual salary increases and four City Hall jobs, saving $240,584, was passed 3-2 along party lines.
When told that amendment would eliminate one percent from the budget increase, Hennessy called it "an insult," voted no and was joined by Sofield.
In response, Hennessy and Sofield proposed more than $1.3 million in cuts and suggested adding more than $4.4 million in revenues from projected superblock revenues and the sale of the ground-lease at Waldbaum's Plaza, thereby reducing the size of the property tax increase to 3.56 percent.
But the Democrats remained essentially united in not accepting the Republicans' numbers.
"I've given this a lot of thought, and asked myself 'Is this possible? Is this responsible?'" Councilwoman Denise Tangney said. "And I went to Goldman Sachs, and I went to Citibank. And I went to the state comptroller's office... And they all said one-shot revenues are not fiscally responsible. Thank you guys for doing your homework, but it's chump change."
She then said "I vote no based on the one-shot revenues" and was greeted with a chorus of boos.
Tepper acknowledged that his no vote, which was meant to protest the tax increase, had the effect of cementing it and called the system broken. He repeated his call for a charter change eliminating the May 31 budget deadline and converting the city to a strong-mayor, weak council system.
"Long Beach needs a mayor," he said, to a round of applause. "We've had four city managers in three years, when the person who proposes the budget should be elected, not appointed."
But the Republicans said Tepper's and Tangneys protests were too late, since he had voted to appoint the city manager who proposed the budget to begin with. "We're not in a mess," Hennessy said. "They are inflating these numbers for political gain."
