The cost of a fancy coffee can help finance Long Beach infrastructure repairs

As much as we try to dodge the issue of full disclosure in all of our endeavors, we don’t think we can get away with writing in favor of a temporary increase in the sales tax in Long Beach without noting that our wife is an employee of the city and therefore we are steadfastly in favor of bloated city salaries, overly generous pensions and anything else that trickles down to her husband who’s stuck in a go-nowhere private-sector job.

We should also note, in the interest of the full transparency that’s all the rage these days, that our singular selfishness is why we are in favor of Measure A, which, if passed by Long Beach voters on June 7, would bring in $150 million to pay for long overdue infrastructure projects including street, sidewalk and alley repair, park and library improvements and a lot more, because we own a house, and it’ll be worth a lot more if it’s in a neighborhood where the roads are smooth, the parks are green and the library’s roof isn’t going all convex on us.

It’s been too long since Long Beachers have pitched in and voted for anything to add to the city’s ever dwindling funds. They’ve been pretty enthusiastic about tax cuts, though. They’ve been overjoyed with cheap gas, but they’ve balked at paying for improvements to the city. They haven’t approved any general tax measure in almost 40 years, though they’ve approved specific expenditures for Long Beach City College and the Long Beach Unified School District.

“What that tells me is that Long Beach has made the decision to invest in everyone but the city,” Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia told us on Wednesday. “They cut taxes and they vote no.”

“It’s time to invest in ourselves,” Garcia said. “In your own home, if you have a leaky faucet, you fix it or it gets worse. That’s what’s been happening in Long Beach. This hasn’t happened oveight. Things have been falling apart, and it’s been getting worse.”

In the increasingly distant past, Long Beach voters ponied up for things that made the city great, including the Municipal Auditorium, the Belmont Plaza Pool, airport improvements and, in the 1960s, the last infrastructure bond.

The Measure A tax increase wouldn’t be a crippling one, Garcia said.

He pointed at our cup of cappuccino. “How much did you pay for that?” he asked. We pointed out we paid for his drink, too. Ten bucks for both with tip.

“Five dollars a month is about what the increase will mean to the average person in Long Beach. Just the price for a coffee at Starbucks.”

Why does everyone pick on Starbucks when it’s cost-cutting time? We were drinking at Kress Market on Pine.

There is no shortage of people who are against the temporary sales tax increase. They’ll fall anywhere from declaring it’s just another way for politicians to “line their pockets” to suspecting it’s a back-door way to fuel more money into the budget-devouring police and fire departments.

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But it’s a sure thing that the city is losing revenue, thanks in large part to tax cuts, cratering oil income and the continuing crippling effects of Prop. 13.

At some point, and this might sound charmingly naive, you need to trust the city to use the money to repair itself, even if it means our wife doesn’t get to stuff taxpayer money into her purse to bring it home to her devoted husband who would squander it on another guitar.

Contact Tim Grobaty at 562-714-2116, [email protected], @grobaty on Twitter.