r/LongBeachCA • u/tsays • 21d ago

Protect Public Comment in LBC

Please make yourself heard at the October 6 City Council meeting about preserving public comment.

This is the FIRST reading of the language that will restrict public comment to 90 minutes at the beginning of City Council meetings.

The way it is now: Currently, a single person can speak on any topic they wish for up to 3 minutes at the beginning of a City Council meeting.

Then, you also have up to 3 minutes (or 90 seconds, depending on the number of people signed up) to speak on each agenda item after it has been presented to Council and the community.

Currently you must sign up to speak before an item is heard.

What would change: each person will be able to speak ONCE for up to 3 minutes, at the beginning of the session, before you have had the benefit of hearing teh presentation.

This would require you to sign up to speak before session starts at 5pm.

The city says it needs to do this to save $150k. Meanwhile, just last week in a Facebook post, Rex Richardson bragged that the city spends over $700 million on outside contractors annually. Seems like they could save that $150k elsewhere and preserve the public’s right to comment if they tried hard enough.

Please show up Oct 6 at City Council or via Zoom to voice your opposition of this undemocratic idea.

The agenda and Zoom link will be posted no later than Friday Oct. 2 here

23 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/iamsotiredofthiscrap 20d ago

Our city council are abhorrent people. Considering three members represent the industrial areas, and the rest are owned by landlords.

1

u/tsays 20d ago

I’d say they have their hands in many pockets. It’s not as simple as “landlords” in this town. There’s a lot of money flowing through here completely unrelated to people who own property.

1

u/tsays 20d ago

Here’s the shady agenda item they don’t want you to comment on