By KEITH GRANT
Guma, whose Board of Education seat is on the June 3 election ballot, will finish up her second three-year term on the board and officially join the council upon appointment on July 1. She'll almost immediately enter a campaign to hang on to the position in what should be a hotly contested council election in November. Guma, 45, said she's not intimidated by such a task, noting that school board elections haven't exactly been easy-going contests in Long Beach.
I'm not concerned about
running in an election, Guma said. I've been there. You get thick-skinned. I run on my own integrity.
The switch to the City Council is one Guma said she has long dreamt of making. I love Long Beach, she said. I really do like serving the people of Long Beach. Now I get to serve not only the children, but everyone.
Not every one of her future colleagues is overjoyed by the selection of the school board president, however. Councilman Denis Kelly noted that Guma is pleasant and personable, and that he expects her to be an energetic and hard worker, but he voiced some disappointment at the council's failure to chose a candidate from the western part of the city. With Guma's appointment, four of the five council members will reside within blocks of one another in the east end of town, Kelly said.
I'm very disappointed in the fact that the [Democratic] club, and the council itself, hasn't really done its job in identifying and selecting a candidate who lives west of Long Beach Boulevard, Kelly said.
Kelly stressed that he is not in favor of having councilmatic districts in Long Beach to ensure the election of council members from each part of the city. He does, though, believe that the Long Beach Democratic party has had a history of choosing council candidates from different neighborhoods of the city, something that will not be the case with the current council.
At the end of the day, the city could be better served [by] a more geographically diverse council, said Kelly, who also expressed concern that others might come to see the school board as a launching pad for a political career.
At the Tuesday night meeting of the council, President Joel Crystal reported hearing from more than a dozen interested residents, 10 of whom submitted resumes and were interviewed for the open seat. Guma's selection, he said, was based on her experience and record of dedicated service to the Long Beach community.
For her part, Guma believes that her six years on the school board have prepared her to move on to city government. I think I'm ready, she said. I'm looking forward to putting my energy into another area of the community.
Guma, who was in Miami last week celebrating her 25th anniversary with her husband, Frank, when she received the call inviting her to join the council, said she had only one condition for taking the seat. She wanted the council to allow her to complete her term on the school board, which she has served as president for the past year after five years as a trustee.
She admitted that she will need to be brought up to speed on many city-wide issues. There's some homework that I need to do Ñ I won't lie about that, Guma said. [But] like when I first became a school board member, you don't know everything that's going on.
One issue already on her agenda involves the teenagers of Long Beach. I grew up here when there were places for teenagers to go, she said. Such places united the kids. I don't see that here. I hope to bring more focus to the children of the community.
I look forward to working with the council, she added. I think Long Beach is moving forward.
Guma has worked for 20 years at Long Beach Medical Center, where she is now the assistant to the chief financial officer. She and Frank have two children, one of whom, Nicole, is about to graduate from Stony Brook. The other, Victoria, 12, is a Long Beach Middle School student.
The well-liked Kearney stepped down from the council in March, citing health and personal reasons. While several insiders supported the legitimacy of Kearney's health concerns, he later also resigned from his position as secretary-treasurer of the Manhattan-based Local 79 union, which is reportedly under investigation for some of its business practices.
Guma now takes his place not only on the council, but on the Democrats' election ticket alongside incumbents Crystal and Scott Nigro. The three are expected to be challenged by the same Republican ticket that ran in 2001. Former candidates Mona Goodman and James Hennessy have said they intend to seek their party's nomination a second time, while Tom Sofield Ñ a Democrat who ran on the GOP ticket Ñ has scheduled a campaign kickoff fund-raiser for later this month.
Though the Democrats swept the 2001 election to maintain full control of the council, the Republicans' self-proclaimed coalition ticket put up a battle. Hennessy narrowly lost out to Kearney for a two-year term, which is given to the third-place candidate in the election, and Sofield was a close fifth. The top two vote-getters earn four-year terms.
City taxes on the rise
The proposed 2003-04 Long Beach city budget is now available to the public at City Hall. Released Wednesday morning, May 7, the budget plan calls for a local tax hike of nearly 8 percent for homeowners, and 5 percent for business owners, City Manager Harold Porr announced.
A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20 at 8 p.m. at City Hall.
