S IGNA L T R IBU N E Serving Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos, Wrigley and Signal Hill VOL. XXXVIII NO. 27
Your Weekly Community Newspaper
July 1, 2016
Responding to the challenge A local action plan for the My Brother’s Keeper initiative has officially been adopted. Denny Cristales Editorial Assistant
Two years after the launch of President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) initiative– a challenge to communities nationwide to address opportunity gaps affecting at-risk youth– the Long Beach City Council has moved forward with the MBK Local Action Plan and officially adopted the document as part of the initiative at its June 21 council meeting. The action plan launched in April of this year after months of development and input through the work of the MBK Task Force, a group composed of more than 40 representatives that include community, educational and city
leaders who collected data for the plan. “It’s an official plan now. It’s a document we can work from as a community,” 8th District Councilmember Al Austin said in a phone interview with the Signal Tribune on Tuesday. “This plan allows us to bring it together and hopefully work in synergy as a city with our community-based organizations to really attack and address the needs of our young people in an effort to enrich their lives and obviously address the social issues they face and provide help through violence prevention and higher education and preparing them to be productive citizens in our workforce.” The MBK Long Beach Local Action Plan is a direct result of more than 160 participants who provided their input on the MBK initiative and its six milestones of success– all directed at guiding youth toward colleges and their careers– at a summit last year at
Photo by Pete Souza | whitehouse.gov
President Barack Obama details the My Brother’s Keeper initiative– a challenge to communities nationwide to address opportunity gaps affecting at-risk youth and young men of color– at an event on Feb. 27, 2014 in the East Room of the White House. Two years after Obama’s call to action for My Brother’s Keeper, the Long Beach City Council officially adopted its action plan for the initiative.
Ernest McBride Park, according to the City. The six key milestones for success all stem from President Obama’s MBK initiative. They are: Enter School Ready to Learn; Read at Grade Level by Third Grade; Graduate from High
At the polls Both medical and recreational marijuana may be on the November ballot. CJ Dablo Staff Writer
The California Secretary of State’s office has confirmed this week that a proposed measure to regulate recreational marijuana is eligible to be on the statewide November ballot, but local proponents say that initiative shouldn’t create too many problems for another measure in Long Beach to regulate medical cannabis. For many years, Long Beach city
Courtesy Larry King
The Long Beach city clerk is currently verifying the signatures for a local initiative that proposes to regulate the medical-cannabis industry throughout the city. The process is a necessary step for the measure to eventually appear on the election ballots for Long Beach residents. The California Secretary of State’s office announced this week that a statewide initiative to regulate recreational marijuana is already eligible to be on the Nov. 8 election.
leaders have never been able to come to an agreement over how to develop a local ordinance to regulate medical-cannabis dispensaries and culti-
vation sites. The Signal Tribune has reported in the past that the City had an ordinance a few years ago, and its staff had even conducted a lottery to
School Ready for College and Career; Complete Post-secondary Education or Training; Successfully Enter the Workforce; and Safe from Violence and Provided Second Chances. The next step is to reconvene the task force for the summer and
develop a work plan to implement the milestones, according to Tracy Colunga, neighborhood relations officer with the City of Long Beach. The milestones will be addressed individually, and the task
determine which businesses would qualify for permits. However, the City faced numerous lawsuits, and eventually the California Supreme Court determined that parts of the Long Beach ordinance conflicted with federal law. In light of the legal challenges, the city councilmembers instituted a ban on all collectives and dispensaries. The council didn’t stop the discussion on developing an ordinance. A task force made up of a variety of different stakeholders had made numerous and conflicting recommendations to determine how to govern the industry. Earlier this year, the council considered a proposal to regulate dispensaries, beginning with a limited number of businesses offering a delivery-only service. That effort was soon dropped. An advocate for Long Beach Neighborhoods First, the group behind the initiative regulating medical cannabis in Long Beach, said the local measure was crafted with the understanding that voters may also be deciding whether they will favor regulations on recre-
ational marijuana. The ballot initiative for recreational marijuana legalizes it and sets a sales-tax rate of 15 percent on that use. Cultivation taxes would be set at $9.25 per ounce of flowers and $2.75 per ounce of leaves. Adam Hijazi, a board member with Long Beach Neighborhoods First, explained why the organization decided to gather the thousands of signatures needed to get the local medical-cannabis measure on the ballot. He said he thought that a lot of groups, which include individual patients, community members and industry professionals, had been hoping that city leaders would move forward in the efforts to bring about “safe access” to medical cannabis to Long Beach. “And when they didn’t,” Hijazi said. “I think that prompted them to pretty much say, ‘Okay, we need to go back to the voters.’” Right now, Long Beach Neighborhoods First’s ballot-initiative petition is undergoing the process of signature
see INITIATIVE page 13
see MARIJUANA page 19
Donate your tax-deductible clothing, furniture, appliances and vehicles to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and provide for the needy. Receive a tax deduction due to our 501 (c)(3)
St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Stores www.svdpla.org For FREE pick up call (800) 974-3571
Family nights feature a jumper & other kids activities
Thank you to our major sponsors: