{"id":310270,"date":"2026-05-11T13:21:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/310270\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:21:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:21:13","slug":"its-about-to-get-easier-to-tell-the-city-council-whats-on-your-mind-long-beach-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/310270\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s about to get easier to tell the City Council what\u2019s on your mind \u2022 Long Beach Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning, Long Beach. It\u2019s Monday, May 11. Here\u2019s what you need to know to start your day. Get this in your inbox each week by signing up at LBPost.com\/newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

City meetings<\/p>\n

Pressed by state legislation, the city of Long Beach will soon restore a COVID-era system of taking real-time, remote calls during government meetings to increase public participation and access.\u00a0That means you\u2019ll be able to dial in to tell the City Council what you think on any given Tuesday instead of making the trek to the Civic Center.<\/p>\n

Remote access was first offered to the public in June 2020, three months after the initial onset of the coronavirus forced the closure of City Hall. The service was halted in late 2021, reinstated in January 2022 amid the Omicron surge, and finally shut down in September 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now it seems it might be required for good. The city is compelled by state Senate Bill 707, a 2025 law enshrined<\/a> last October, to have a system<\/a> set up by July 1 that offers a real-time, two-way remote access phone or video calls for public comment. The City Council on Tuesday will discuss<\/a> how it plans to meet those requirements.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"City Council Members Cindy Allen, Mary Zendejas and Suely Saro listen to tattoo artist Kari Barba and Kevin Johnson talk about creating a tattoo museum on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a rare benefit from the outbreak, allowing more access to members of the public who live in far-flung areas of the city, or who can\u2019t otherwise make it to City Hall during daytime hours without fighting traffic, finding a babysitter or taking off work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of the city\u2019s rollout, it conducted a community survey of nearly 500 people and found that more than half hadn\u2019t attended a meeting in the past year. Many were unaware that meetings are livestreamed and recorded. Many found the meetings to be inconveniently timed or that they failed to address the issues they found most important. Some felt their fears and frustrations were often ignored.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A majority said that remote access was at least \u201cvery important.\u201d<\/p>\n

There will be an offset to this change. Public comment will be capped at 90 minutes, moving away from the open-ended, \u2018as long as it takes\u2019 approach. If there are so many speakers that they might exceed the 90-minute window, the mayor will have the discretion to reduce everyone\u2019s time to 60 seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Otherwise, the amount of time each person gets on agendized items is based on the number of those speaking: three minutes for under ten people, 90 seconds for 11 to 20 people and one minute each for more than 20 people. Non-agenda items will be one minute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The law also requires that meetings must be translated into Spanish, start earlier, and hold a consolidated public comment period at the start of the session for all topics, regardless of what\u2019s agendized. Supplemental agendas are to be published a day earlier \u2014 on Thursday instead of Friday \u2014 to give the public more time to review.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the city says it will offer more stand-alone study sessions for complex topics to prevent meetings from running too late. While not providing a final price tag, the city noted it\u2019s seen a dramatic increase in overtime costs due to the late-running meetings, with costs jumping from $5,500 in 2021 to more than $50,000 last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what else you should know about this week:<\/p>\n

Weeks after closing for needed repairs<\/a> to its roof and walls, the city\u2019s Multi-Service Center \u2014 its hub for homelessness services \u2014 is expected to get additional improvements<\/a>, including a new fence, electric sliding gate, swing gate, sidewalk extension and other accessibility upgrades. The item will come up at the Harbor Commission<\/a> meeting today at 1:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

The Project Homekey homeless shelter site at 1725 Long Beach Blvd. is in the final stages of its $5.1 million renovation, according to a federally required staff report<\/a> up for discussion at the Continuum of Care Board on Tuesday<\/a>. Although construction is \u201csubstantially\u201d finished, plumbing issues and rising material costs have delayed its completion until this month. Once open, the city\u2019s homelessness bureau says it will find an organization to run it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the Marine Advisory Commission meeting on Thursday<\/a>, there will be updates on the Long Beach Amphitheater and the effort to place advertisements on lifeguard stations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Business events and information<\/p>\n

The \u201cBiggest Small Business Expo and Networking Event\u201d is set to take place Thursday at the Sports Basement. Tickets start at $15 for Long Beach Chamber of Commerce members and $30 for non-members, while those looking to showcase their services can snag an exhibit space starting at $175. For more information or to register, visit here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Attention, voters: two important candidate forums are coming up this week. The first, sponsored by the Lakewood Village Neighborhood Association, will focus on the 5th District City Council race between incumbent Megan Kerr and challenger Tara Riggi. That will take place Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Long Beach City College Room W-201. It will run simultaneously with the mayoral candidate forum at The Grand Long Beach. It\u2019s free but requires an RSVP here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ICYMI \u2014 California and national news<\/p>\n

How a sales tax hike to protect healthcare would affect Long Beach (Long Beach Post<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Alaska Airlines restores daily flights between Long Beach and Seattle after 17 years (Long Beach Post<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Ships at L.A.\u2019s ports face a fuel shock that\u2019s shaking the economy (L.A. Times<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Did Newsom\u2019s $3.8 billion hotels-to-housing program pay off? (CalMatters<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning, Long Beach. It\u2019s Monday, May 11. Here\u2019s what you need to know to start your day.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-310270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}