Long Beach Fee Hike Plan Draws Fire

Long Beach city leaders, who seem to have a knack for angering local voters, have stirred up another hornet’s nest.

This time they have turned a seemingly slam-dunk public policy question--construction of a new 911 emergency communications center that everyone agrees is necessary--into the most bitterly debated civic issue in months.

Toting tea bags and protesting what they called “taxation without representation,” more than 400 protesters showed up at the Long Beach Arena on Wednesday night to register their opposition to a tax that would increase monthly refuse collection fees an average of $1 per parcel to help build a $27-million state-of-the-art communications center.

The hearing was the last of 25 public meetings held in recent weeks by city officials hoping to sell their plan for replacing the nearly obsolete communications system. If anything, the opposition has been growing.

Representatives of senior citizens, homeowner and taxpayer groups, and business associations, as well as dozens of individual property owners showed up to complain about the tax and the city’s handling of the proposed 911 communications center.

“People are furious about this,” said Emma Ruchames, representing the Council of Seniors of Greater Long Beach. “Everyone is for 911. We need it. But we need to find the money from somewhere else.”

As troublesome as some residents find the tax increase, what rankles critics even more is a groundbreaking financing plan proposed by City Manager James C. Hankla. Opponents say it pushes to the extreme both the letter and the spirit of Proposition 218, a statewide ballot measure passed last fall that gives taxpayers more say in voting down local taxes, fees and assessments.

Under Proposition 218, fee increases such as the one proposed for the 911 system can be defeated if rejected by 50% plus one of the city’s property owners. But the measure doesn’t specifically call for an election.

As a result, Long Beach city officials are basically writing a new set of rules that would allow the tax increase without a vote, according to those who have followed implementation of the tax measure across the state.

“They are basically making an end run around Proposition 218,” said Joel Fox, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which sponsored the ballot measure and is threatening to take the city to court unless it backs away from the plan.

Lawrence J. Straw, the attorney for the Jarvis organization, vowed at Wednesday’s hearing that he would file a lawsuit against the city if it goes ahead with its 911 plan.

Louis Baglietto, a political consultant who is helping to organize local opposition to the Hankla plan, was among those who showed up at the arena. He said angry residents see the proposal as a way to circumvent voters, who rejected an earlier Hankla 911 financing plan in last November’s election.

Hankla, one of the region’s most outspoken and powerful city officials, conceded during an interview before the hearing that he took liberties in interpreting Proposition 218 but defended his actions as entirely legal and appropriate.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” Hankla said, still upset that the 911 general obligation bond issue he put before voters in November got 57% of the vote, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. “Contrary to those who say we are trying to hoodwink people and sneak something through, we have had more public hearings on this than just about anything we’ve ever done.”

Hankla added: “My plan may not be the politically correct plan, but city councils are elected to decide what is politically correct and city managers are appointed to make proper management decisions and I have done that.”

Under his plan, the city notified its 110,000 property owners that a refuse collection fee increase was being contemplated, and printed up tax protest cards that property owners could cast in what essentially would be a vote against the tax.

But the city decided that it could not afford the $20,000 it would cost to send out individual protest cards to all property owners. Hankla also decided that the best way to distribute the tax protest cards was in person at one of the 25 meetings held across the city to discuss the tax and why it was needed.

Despite Wednesday’s turnout, opponents could muster only 6,430 official protests against the tax increase, well short of the 50,000 needed to defeat the increase.

Property owners who did not pick up protest cards to mail in are counted as supporters of the tax increase.

To residents, already distressed over what they consider efforts by City Hall insiders to steamroll foes of a naval base reuse plan, downtown redevelopment and a play-for-pay park project, this latest incident was too much.

The City Council announced before the hearing that it would not be ready to adopt a final plan for several weeks.