Looking ahead to 2024

This time of the year is a slow time for everyone, and that goes double for a City Hall reporter. I jokingly showed my boss one of those memes this week about it being “pretend to work week,” but the slowdown allows a lot of time for reflection. 

Most city meetings have been mercifully canceled and even those meetings that do happen have a lot less meat on the bone. But a lot has happened in the city in 2023, and a pivotal 2024 will begin in just a matter of days. 

This week, the city sent out a press notice that the annual State of the City address is scheduled for Jan. 9. If you haven’t been, it’s an opportunity for the mayor to communicate to the public how the city intends to tackle issues or to make announcements about new programs or policies the City Council will pursue.

Some cities do this on the front steps of City Hall. Long Beach, as long as I’ve covered it, does it with a lavish party and a meticulously produced program at the Terrace Theatre Downtown. 

But it got me thinking, what is the state of Long Beach? 

The city has had some highlights this year, most recently the announcement of the Hard Rock Hotel taking over a prominent parcel of land that has been vacant for decades in the heart of Downtown. 

Long Beach also took back operations of the Queen Mary and was able to open the ship to the public again after performing some safety improvements that its previous operator did not do despite the city giving the group $23 million. The ship had been closed since March 2020. 

Downtown development, and now Southeast Long Beach, has continued to boom with thousands of new housing units proposed, under construction or currently leasing.

However, the city could be facing some fairly significant issues in 2024. 

Despite signals that the City Council may end the state of emergency on homelessness, it will continue to be an issue we all have to deal with beyond that. 

The city, in partnership with the county, purchased a year-round shelter this year, but multiple other shelter projects are behind schedule. 

Affordable housing developments have been cropping up, but not nearly at the pace or volume that will be needed. Of the 26,502 units the city was called upon to make room for by 2029, over 11,000 were supposed to be for low, very-low, or extremely-low-income households, but the bulk of the city’s new housing production continues to be market rate. 

Long Beach, of course, does not build housing. It has used other tools like loans and tax breaks to try to make the construction of more affordable units a reality, but those projects take time as developers seek tax credits and other financing in an intricate balancing act. 

The city could have to do its own balancing act this year when putting together its budget. New employee union contracts — with raises — and the evaporation of COVID-19 relief funding could mean cuts to city services might be necessary. 

Complicating this, the city’s budget could take another haymaker in the form of a state law that threatens its future oil revenue. 

Voters will decide if Senate Bill 1137 goes into effect in November, and if it does, city officials have estimated the near-term effect could be a $20 million hit per year to the city’s budget. 

Mayor Rex Richardson’s budget recommendations earlier this year called for leaning into tourism and attracting businesses to the city to replace the oil revenue, which the city plans to lose by 2035, but could lose sooner depending on the outcome of the SB 1137 vote. 

I expect Richardson will touch on this issue in next month’s address, specifically the city’s exploration of developing the areas around the Queen Mary and Convention Center. You can RSVP for the State of the City here, or you can watch it from home on one of the city’s social media streams.

What to know this week: After months of protests in the city demanding that the council take a stance on the war in Gaza, Long Beach became the largest city in the state to date to call for a ceasefire in the region. The proclamation called for a “lasting humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza and the “protection of civilian life in Gaza and Israel.” It also calls on federal leaders to support negotiations to end the fighting. If you’re wondering why the city was voting on an issue like this, which it can’t control, here’s a brief explanation. While the vote won’t have any direct effect on the ongoing conflict, the idea behind a resolution or proclamation like this is to put pressure on the people who can affect the outcome: Congress. 

Pay attention to this week: After 17 years of the Queen Mary operating at a deficit, Brandon Richardson, my desk-mate and reporter at the Long Beach Business Journal, wrote that the ship’s operator is expecting to pull in a profit this year. As discussed above, the 91-year-old ship will be important in the city’s plans of pivoting to becoming a destination to make up for losses in revenue in the coming years. While the city has spent much more than the $2.25 million in projected profit the ship generated this year to make the Queen safe to operate again, it’s a positive sign that for the first time in nearly two decades, the ship is making money again.