Long Beach Owes $1.2 BILLION

Notice how the Mayor and many of our City Councilmembers are getting out of town.  That's because the Mayor and current city councilmembers deferred $1.2 BILLION in expenses they oversaw to be paid by taxpayers at some point in the future.  Said another way, Long Beach is behind in payments for $1.2 Billion in services already received.  The Mayor and City Council simply voted to NOT pay those bills for the past several years in order to claim it had balanced each year’s budget.  It was easy for them to do so because they knew they would no longer be the Mayor and Councilmembers when the bills come due.

http://lbbusinessjournal.com/component/content/article/255-13-08-27/1760--long-beach-may-begin-chipp...

This is similar to a person who racks up huge expenses on their credit card and later is unable to pay the bill and the huge interest expense it has accrued.  The only difference is our city councilmembers are simply able to walk away from the obligation they bestowed on taxpayers with zero accountability for creating those huge costs.  Many move on to seek political office elsewhere to continue their fiscal destruction.

You may ask what were those services received by taxpayers that have not been paid for?   While deferred maintenance on buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure; deferred replacements and upgrades of hardware and software; incomplete funding for vehicle replacements (such as fire response vehicles); and deferred investment in employee training and skill development are a small portion of this huge bill.  The MAJORITYY of the $1.2 BILLION is due to unpaid employee expenses including “workers compensation, sick leave, pensions and retire health insurance subsidy program.”  For example, city council has for years voted to simply not pay $70 million per year in city employee pension costs that have been “deferred” into the future.  These are expenses and interest that will need to be paid by Long Beach taxpayers in the future.

You may also ask “how can this be, Mayor Foster and Budget Committee Chairman DeLong just announced union pension renegotiations with the unions solved all of Long Beach’s budget woes."  What Foster and DeLong failed to explain is they renegotiated union pension and pay raises to occur in the future after they are long gone.    This is best described by a column Police Union Vice President Jim Foster wrote to his fellow union members in the Police Officer Association (POA) union quarterly report called the “Rap Sheet.”  Sgt Foster wrote on page 6 that the pay raise “problem” was solved by:

“putting the balance of our retirees expected raise into their sick time.  This essentially DEFERRED the city’s payout while giving the retirees the benefit of substantial health insurance longevity.  As we all know by now, this not only worked in securing our retiree’s future, but it also served as a retirement incentive.”

http://lbpoa.org/files/docs/rap-sheet/rs-2010-jan-feb-mar.pdf

Long Beach employs approximately 5,500 people.  The number of those employees making over $100,000 per year increased from 593 in 2011, to 862 in 2012.  That’s a 45% increase BEFORE the union contract negotiations even occurred and AFTER the city declared employee salaries would remain frozen until AFTER the city regained its economic footing.  With the average Long Beach household income nowhere close to six figures and unemployment hovering around 12%, its understandable why Mayor Foster and Councilman DeLong don’t want to talk details.

http://lbbusinessjournal.com/component/content/article/148-12-08-28/850-long-beach-100000-club-skyrockets-with-police-fire-pay-raises.html

To top it off, City Council voted in October to approve 15% previously unbudgeted pay increases to city workers and their pensions.   Mayor Foster “acknowledged the raises will increase future pension costs but argued that if an employee leaves LB [because pay and benefits are too low] and receives a pay raise elsewhere, Long Beach would still pay the additional cost.”  Foster then exited the city council chambers before the public was allowed to speak and the vote was taken to avoid “grandstanding.”

http://www.lbreport.com/news/oct13/raizes2.htm

A couple of years from now when your taxes and city fees increase 1000% and public safety staffing reductions continue to pay for the $1.2 BILLION in deferred expenses, just remember long-gone multimillionaires Bob Foster and Gary DeLong were the leaders you trusted with your vote.