Last Night @ City Council

3 minute read

LGB Terminal Improvements

The Council unanimously voted to award a contract to Los Angeles-based Swinerton Builders to improve and beautify the Long Beach Airport’s historic terminal, namely the pre-security area. The plan also includes infrastructure improvements to bring the facility into compliance with California Building Code requirements.

The total cost of the project will be about $69 million, which will come from airport funds, passenger and car rental fees, and a Transportation Security Administration grant that has been provisionally granted to the airport.

Airport officials said no general funds would be necessary for the remodeling, and that the plug could be pulled at any point if the construction goes over budget.

All work is expected to be completed by 2021 and normal airport operations will not be affected while work is being done.

This will be the second phase of major updates the airport has undergone this decade. Work was completed in 2012 on a new passenger concourse with 11 airline passenger gates and a TSA passenger security screening checkpoint facility.

The improvements are part of Mayor Robert Garcia’s “8 for 28” initiative of infrastructure projects ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

Tattoo Parlor Ordinance

An ordinance that creates a non-discretionary review process for permitting Long Beach tattoo parlors and relaxes zoning laws mandating where they can be located was approved by the Council.

Now, prospective tattoo parlors will no longer have to apply for a costly conditional use permit and go through a public hearing in order to open up shop, but will instead only have to meet certain criteria to be permitted.

In 2010, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed First Amendment protections for ink slinging . In light of this, the courts last year ruled that Long Beach zoning laws related to tattoo parlors were too strict.

Tomisin Oluwole
Face the Music, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 36 inches

Click here to check out our interview with Tomisin Oluwole, a literary and visual artist based in Long Beach.

Instead of gunking up our site with ads, we use this space to display and promote the work of local artists.

This ordinance will now allow shops to operate in eight of the twelve types of commercial zones citywide, as long as they are at least 500 feet from other tattoo parlors and 700 feet from schools.

During public comment at a hearing for the ordinance in March, Joe Kasher, owner of Ace of Hearts Tattoo, questioned whether the relaxation of restrictions would reduce the quality of tattooing in the city by allowing an influx of new shops.

There are currently nine licensed tattoo parlors in Long Beach.

JetBlue Curfew Violations Appeal Hearing Postponed

JetBlue was set to address the Council regarding its appeal of violations the airline company received for landing planes at LGB past 11 p.m. in 2017.

Jetblue has already gone before the Airport Administrator and the City Manager with the appeal, and both times the violations have been upheld. The Council is the last rung on the administrative ladder.

However, the hearing was postponed to a date to be determined at the request of JetBlue.

Follow @LBCMtgNotes on Twitter for live updates during every City Council meeting.

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[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.

The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.

More on them later.

And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?

I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.

It’s like Lenin said, you know…

Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.

I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.

That is just its “ideology.”

The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.

This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.

If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”

“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”

This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.

This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:

(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system

Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5

This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.

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