Mayor Robert Garcia details road, infrastructure plans if June sales tax increase passes

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia unveiled plans Tuesday for how City Hall may spend $150 million or so on street repairs and other infrastructure projects if voters agree to pass a sales tax increase in June.

In terms of infrastructure, “this is the most investment that would happen in the city in a generation,” Garcia told reporters Tuesday prior to the plan being brought before the City Council.

The plan is contingent upon Long Beach’s electorate passing Measure A, a proposed 10-year sales tax increase. Garcia and other supporters have said the tax is necessary in light of some $2.8 billion worth of identified capital needs for the city. Tax supporters have also said new revenues are needed to reverse recent years’ budget cuts to Long Beach’s police and fire departments.

People buying goods in Long Beach currently pay a 9 percent sales tax rate. Measure A would levy an additional one percent tax on transactions for six years. The added tax rate would diminish to half a percent for the next four years before the tax expires. Long Beach budget officials have estimated that a increasing the sales tax rate by a single percentage point could be worth $48 million in new revenues.

A second ballot measure, Measure B, would require City Hall to place 1 percent of all new tax revenues into savings.

The $150 million plan

This is the first time the mayor and other Long Beach officials have revealed how they would like to spend new revenues. The plan outlines how the City Hall may be able to spend the prospective tax dollars over a period of roughly three years.

•Officials have proposed spending nearly $90.5 million on street repairs, with about $70 million going to arterial streets.

•Another $15 million would be allocated to sidewalk repair and Long Beach’s first alley improvement plan would result in $5 million being spent to fix the city’s most severely degraded alleys.

•Officials have identified about $18.6 million worth of proposed improvements for parks, including $4 million for the Houghton Park Community Center, more than $1.7 million worth of fixes for El Dorado Duck Pond, $1 million for seismic safety improvements for the Rancho Los Alamitos Ranch House

•Nearly $6 million is outlined for improving public safety buildings. The plan includes $900,000 in improvements to the Police Academy building, which assistant city manager Tom Modica said has been in use for some 25 years despite having been labeled as a temporary facility.

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•Nearly $3.7 million would be spent on improvements to city libraries.

The full City Council is scheduled to discuss the plan Tuesday during a 5 p.m. study session.

More to come.