Residents are invited to the following important community meetings;
Friday, February 15 — Traffic Improvements Related to Lakewood Mall COSTCO project. We will discuss what has been proposed to mitigate the impact of traffic on the Lakewood Village area due to the proposed COSTCO store in the Lakewood Mall. Location: Mark Twain Elementary School Auditorium. Time: […]

If you count the number of hot dogs and hamburgers cooked and given out yesterday, 1,000 people attended the first Annual Good Neighbor Festival and Picnic at El Dorado Park near the Senior Center. (Thanks to the Long Beach Police Officers Association for cooking hamburgers — and then going to get more when they ran […]

No, this isn’t the title of the Olivia Newton John song… it is also another one of those “catch phrases” being batted around in public administration circles. Literally, it means let’s get government into business.
And why not? Our own city budget indicates “lines of business” for each city department. (A phrase that bothers me some […]

At the outset of this blog let me clearly state some “guiding principles”: I do not believe in censorship of any form. I strongly support encouraging the arts. I strongly support small business development.
However, I cannot understand the logic behind the current marketing going on in a Long Beach bookstore on the book “Graffiti LA — Street […]

Once again the City Council, led by the only Republican on the Council, went ahead and interfered with private enterprise by approving a deal that would rebate a portion of sales tax revenue if Best Buy came to town at Marina Pacifica.
Seems like the owners of Marina Pacifica have another tenant in mind who would pay […]

A continued complaint from some residents is the problem of businesses leaving handbills and other literature on porches.
I inquired of the City Attorney of what we can do about this and was given a memo dated May 2, 2005 that outlined why it is unconstitutional for the City to try and enforce the regulation of the […]

The first meeting of the 5th District Council Small Business Advisory Committee was a success! Approximately 20 business owners came to the El Dorado Library Conference room to meet each other and to listen to a brief presentation on the City’s Economic Development programs by Roger Hailey.
Also present was Byron Schweigert, President of the Long […]