By Doug Miller
The $72 million budget became law at midnight June 1 due to a quirk in the city's charter, which automatically enacts the city manager's proposed budget if no alternative is in place by then.
The council actually voted to amend the spending plan 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 month, often hitting their full strength just as television news vans arrived.
The vote, at a special City Council budget meeting, had consequences beyond politics. The budget effectively demoted 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. The City Council, however, repealed the demotions at Tuesday night's regular meeting. (See related story, "Council repeals cop demotions," front page) While those demotions would have put more officers in uniform on the street and cut overtime, the move attracted hostility from both the police department and residents of the North Park neighborhood, which traditionally has been plagued by drug traffic.
Meanwhile, the budget gave a 3 percent raise to every non-union employee in City Hall, including the city manager and members of the council, who were quick to say they would not accept the raises - which, on Tuesday, were repealed as well.
Four amendments were proposed at the May 31 special budget meeting. Democratic council President Leonard Remo's two amendments, which eliminated all non-contractual City Hall salary increases and four municipal jobs, saving $240,584, passed 3-2 along party lines. When told those amendments would reduce the budget increase by 1 percent, Hennessy called it "an insult," voted no and was joined by Sofield.
For their part, Hennessy and Sofield proposed more than $1.3 million in cuts and suggested adding more than $4.4 million in projected revenues from the sale of the Superblock and the ground lease at Waldbaum's Plaza -- which the Democrats decried as "one-shot" revenues that would create further budget shortfalls the following year. When the dust settled, the Republican version of the budget reduced 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."
Tangney then added, "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 he blamed the system. He repeated his call for a charter change that would eliminate the May 31 budget deadline and convert the city to a strong-mayor-weak-council system.
"Long Beach needs a mayor," Tepper said, to a round of applause. "We've had four city managers in three years, and the person who proposes the budget should be elected, not appointed."
But the Republicans said that Tepper's and Tangney's protests were too late, in Tepper's case because 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."
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
