Serving Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos, Wrigley and Signal Hill with 30,000 issues every Friday
VOL. XLI NO. 4
In this issue OPINION
Your Weekly Community Newspaper
www.signaltribune.com
January 18, 2019
‘Our city is getting even stronger,’ says LB mayor Mayor Garcia highlights progress, sets new fiscal and housing goals at State of the City address Jan. 15. Anita W. Harris Staff Writer
Remembering Sean Belk Local reporter, former Signal Tribune writer, dies in car crash. Page 4
COMMUNITY
During his State of the City address Tuesday night at the Terrace Theater, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia focused on success. He enumerated specific milestones Long Beach has achieved since 2014, including: lowering the unemployment rate to 4.1 percent from 9.8 percent; building 5,000 new homes; achieving a record-low homicide rate; increasing cargo shipments to the Port of Long Beach; and repairing street, sidewalk, buildings and park infrastructure. He also introduced new goals for the city, including increasing municipal reserves to $75 million, creating a year-round homeless shelter, constructing 3,000 additional homes by 2024 and envisioning a 2030 strategic plan. Garcia began by thanking Long Beach employees for these achievements, especially in light of the current federal-government shutdown and the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) teachers’ strike. “The tremendous progress over the last four years would not be possible without the City employees who pick up our trash, provide gas and wasee STATE page 11
As sea levels rise, LB promotes new plan based on ‘action’ and ‘adaptation’
Photos by Sebastian Echeverry
Pictured is Theresa Blackmon, a homeless woman who has lived in downtown Long Beach for more than five months, she told the Signal Tribune. In regard to the homeless situation in Long Beach’s downtown area– and her growing concern and claim about transients throughout Los Angeles County arriving via public transportation in the early morning and causing havoc– she said the situation is “an epidemic” and “a plague.”
Biennial count in SH, LB to identify homeless people in region LB official says the practice allows City to determine where to allocate resources to reduce transient issue, but local homeless feel like situation has not changed. Denny Cristales Managing Editor
Sebastian Echeverry
Residents gather to learn more about the consequences of a rising sea level and how to protect their homes from flood damage. Page 3
Contributor
T
heresa Blackmon has only been a Long Beach resident for a little more than five months, but it’s enough time for her to conclude that her home in downtown is filled
with people who “plague” the area with their aggressive behavior. She calls the climate in downtown Long Beach an “epidemic.” Things might be easier, however, if she did indeed have a physical home, as her residency in Long Beach is merely indicated by her presence every day and night among her fellow homeless neighbors.
CULTURE
Theatre review Long Beach Shakespeare Company’s Sherlock Holmes and the Final Problem Page 9
Photo by Diana Lejins
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia during the State of the City address Jan. 15 at the Terrace Theater
Homeless individuals set camp at bus stops or in miscellaneous nooks and crannies throughout Signal Hill and Long Beach, as pictured in this photo on First Street, near Long Beach Boulevard, taken at around 3am on Friday, Jan. 4. The man in this photo said he did not want to be identified.
“I’ve been here for five months,” she told the Signal Tribune. “And one day too long.” As homeless counts will be conducted in Los Angeles County this month, residents are reminded of Long Beach and Signal Hill’s ongoing homelessness situation. Although initiatives have been put in place to assist homeless people, like Blackmon, to achieve proper housing, there are some individuals– some of them homeless and advocates for transients– that feel it’s not enough. Marc Coleman, a downtown Long Beach lawyer, said he recently befriended Blackmon, as he sees her and other homeless people hang around the front of his building. “Living on the streets is problematic for anybody, because of the unpredictable nature of who shows up when, the unprotected nature of their sleeping arrangements and, at this point, the very cold weathsee HOMELESS page 8