Mismanagement sinks $23 Million on phantom repairs for Queen Mary

Long Beach, CA – Long Beach City Auditor Laura Doud today released her Queen Mary Report to verify that Urban Commons, the previous leaseholder, and operator of the Queen Mary, used the $23 million as agreed upon to fund the 27 urgent and critical repair projects and to determine whether the City of Long Beach (City) provided sufficient oversight of the funds for these projects.

Read more

Local Residents Express Major Concerns Over Newly Adopted Budget

The  Long Beach City Council voted to adopt the City of Long Beach’s $3 billion budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 on Tuesday, Aug. 24. The new budget includes a notable and controversial increase to the budget of the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) to the tune of $250 million, or about 64 percent of the total General Fund adopted within the new City budget.

Read more

LBUSD to Mandate COVID-19 Vaccinations

As the Delta variant surges throughout the world and local community, the Long Beach Unified School District has announced that they will be requiring proof of vaccination or weekly negative COVID-19 tests for all of their employees.

Read more

Update: Where Did the Children Go?

Mayor Robert Garcia and city officials announced late last month that Long Beach would be welcoming several hundred migrant children to be housed at the Long Beach Convention Center until a time in which the reunification of them and their families was possible (prospectively 7-10 days for each child to be specific). After two weeks of operation, with a lack of publicly available data, the facility has failed to reunite any children with their families or sponsors thus far. According to Forbes, only four families throughout the U.S., separated under the Trump administration, have been reunited since President Biden took office. Though the housing of migrant children here in Long Beach has been well-publicized, their transportation out of the city, and in this instance, the state, has not.

Read more

Long Beach Providing Migrant Children with Temporary Emergency Shelter

To ensure the safety and well-being of each child, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, has requested assistance from local governments throughout the United States to provide temporary facilities for these children, while the federal government quickly reconnects them with family members or sponsors in the United States. Long Beach specifically has been requested to assist with this humanitarian mission to safely house children who are unattended by their parents.

Read more