{"id":461457,"date":"2026-09-12T08:08:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T08:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/461457\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T08:08:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T08:08:24","slug":"raising-parking-tickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/461457\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising parking tickets"},"content":{"rendered":"

This\u00a0story<\/a>\u00a0first appeared on\u00a0Long Beach Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Long Beach will make a slew of parking tickets more expensive and charge higher cannabis taxes to avoid cutting library hours and some specialized police officers. The last-minute change, proposed hours before a City Council vote, reversed a controversial plan city leaders laid out in June to lay off nearly a dozen library employees to help balance its budget.<\/p>\n

Facing a $58 million shortfall, the city will still lay off<\/a> roughly 180 other employees and cut hundreds more vacant positions. But it will spare library staffing and hours, after the original budget \u2014 which would have cut Monday hours at five city libraries<\/a>, the only ones open that day \u2014 prompted fierce public backlash<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Long Beach City Council members voted 7 to 2 on Tuesday for the revised $4-billion city budget.<\/p>\n

Councilmember Cindy Allen, who objected, called the increased parking fines \u201cpredatory fees,\u201d arguing that library funding shouldn\u2019t come at the expense of unfairly targeting people already struggling financially. Allen represents a district that includes the densely populated Alamitos Beach and Rose Park neighborhoods, where parking is already scarce. \u201cWe don\u2019t have driveways,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kristina Duggan, who represents southeast Long Beach neighborhoods like Belmont Shore, also voted against the budget because it cut Fire Engine 14 near Colorado Lagoon, a move that\u2019s expected to save $3.88 million but drive up response times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Duggan and Allen both tried but failed to delay the budget vote, with Allen saying the changes were put together in a \u201cslapdash manner\u201d without a chance for the public to weigh in.<\/p>\n

She warned her colleagues before the vote that if they approved the budget \u201cwithout substantial discussion\u201d then they were \u201ccomplicit in rubber-stamping\u201d a plan that would \u201caffect people\u2019s livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the plan, 18 categories of parking citations \u2014 including for blocking bike lanes, hydrants, double parking and crosswalks \u2014 will rise to a flat $100, up from $74 or $90, to generate $1.5 million. Street sweeping tickets would also get a $5 bump, to $80 \u2014 a difference that raises $700,000 in revenue.<\/p>\n

In the last fiscal year, which ran Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, the city issued more than 100,000 parking citations and 201,000 street-sweeping tickets, Public Works Director Josh Hickman said. More than a fifth of street-sweeping tickets were written in Allen\u2019s district, and more than half of all parking tickets citywide were issued in the first two council districts, which include downtown and Alamitos Beach.<\/p>\n

John Edmond, a local lobbyist who sits on the board for the Library Foundation and spoke in support of the plan, said the $100 rates are on par with cities like San Francisco ($108), Oakland ($110), San Diego ($117). He argued this applies to the \u201cmost serious parking violations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t say we\u2019re serious about pedestrian and bicycle safety without accountability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The budget also raises the city\u2019s cannabis retail tax from 7% to 8% and increases the cultivation tax to more than $15 per square foot, changes expected to bring in roughly $1.15 million.<\/p>\n

The proposals came from Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie, who chairs the city\u2019s Budget Oversight Committee. Ricks-Oddie said earlier Tuesday she had spent weeks preparing these and dozens of other recommendations in concert with city staff, continuously updating them to accommodate new requests that came in from the public and fellow council members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can\u2019t do this \u2026 then we can\u2019t fund the libraries,\u201d Ricks-Oddie said in response to Allen\u2019s concerns about pricier parking citations. \u201cIf we reject that, we\u2019re saying no to our library hours on a Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The budget also sets aside $1 million for the city\u2019s immigration legal defense fund, the Long Beach Justice Fund. That\u2019s well short of the $2.2 million immigration attorneys and local immigrant rights groups say is needed to sustain it amid rising caseloads. Gina Amato Lough of Public Counsel\u2019s Immigrants\u2019 Rights Project said \u201cthe need has never been greater,\u201d citing prolonged detentions, warrantless raids and difficulty accessing counsel.<\/p>\n

Since Public Counsel\u2019s $919,000, one-year contract to provide legal services began in November, the group has taken on more than 55 consultations and 46 full-scope cases through the Justice Fund.<\/p>\n

After hearing repeated pleas for more money Tuesday, Allen proposed reallocating all the funding for Long Beach\u2019s new Vibe City marketing campaign \u2014 which some have derided as a waste of money<\/a> \u2014 to the Justice Fund. She was quickly shot down, with a representative from the City Attorney\u2019s office saying they\u2019re not sure that would be legal, considering the Vibe City campaign is funded by tax revenue earmarked for advertising and promoting the city.<\/p>\n

City Council leaders called the budget cuts a necessary, if painful, step toward stabilizing Long Beach\u2019s finances after years of instability papered over with one-time cash<\/a> \u2014 a bet that higher fees now will spare deeper cuts later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard, and it\u2019s personal for everyone, and it will be really difficult on families across this community,\u201d said Councilmember Megan Kerr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This\u00a0story\u00a0first appeared on\u00a0Long Beach Post. Long Beach will make a slew of parking tickets more expensive and charge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-461457","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\/461457","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=461457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}