Serving Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos, Wrigley and Signal Hill with 30,000 issues every Friday
VOL. XLI NO. 26
In this issue COMMUNITY
Your Weekly Community Newspaper
Page 10
School’s out! How to keep kids busy this summer
Page 4
NEWS Park purchased Long Beach City Council buys park from Tanaka Family.
Page 3
CULTURE
Review: LB Opera’s Central Park Five A true story of five African-American and Latino youth falsely accused of rape.
Page 7
June 21, 2019
Long Beach Water Dept. approves 12% rate increase Staff Report Signal Tribune
Coffee and concerns Homelessness and traffic dominate discussion at Long Beach 7th District community meeting.
www.signaltribune.com
The Long Beach Water Commission voted without dissent June 13 to approve a 12-percent rate increase on water consumers. The Water Department estimates it will increase the average single family home’s bill by about $5.46 each month, as reported on LBReport.com. The approval by the Water Commission, whose members are chosen by the mayor and approved by the city council, is subject to approval by the council, which stands to receive the transfer for General Fund spending purposes, and a Prop 218 “public protest” hearing– in which half of Long Beach Water Department users would have to object to the rate increase to stop it, according to LBReport.com. Water Department staff cited factors such as: increased costs of wa-
ter supplied to the department by the Metropolitan Water District; the installation of a new remote water metering system; a new capital project that staff says will reduce long-term costs; and a staff-recommended increase in reserves beyond current levels. Water Department staff said that even with the increase, its rate will remain below several other water agencies in the area. A number of public residents spoke in opposition to the rate increase, and many of them had previously urged voters to defeat Measure M, a June 2018 City Hall-drafted ballot measure– later approved by roughly 54 percent of Long Beach voters– now enabling although not requiring the Water Department to transfer up to 12 percent of water and sewer funds that it determines “to be unnecessary to meet its obligations” and “to set, and the City
Photo by Diana Lejins
People of Long Beach Executive Director Carlos Ovalle addresses the Long Beach Water Board regarding an upcoming 12-percent increase on water rates during the board’s June 13 meeting. The increase follows on the heels of a 7.5-percent increase in 2018.
see WATER page 8
One foot in the grave?
Long Beach’s historic Sunnyside Cemetery may close this summer unless city officials step in. Anita W. Harris Staff Writer
What happens to a cemetery with only a few gravesites left to sell? Answer: It has to pay for its upkeep with little to no funeral income. And if there isn’t enough money for that upkeep? Abandonment, leading to gravestones slowly swallowed up by vegetation, soil, rodent activity and general decay. Such is the grim plight facing the cheerily named Sunnyside Cemetery at 1095 E. Willow Street in Long Beach and its approximately 16,300 graveyard residents, which include Long Beach’s first fire chief, a police chief, a former California lieutenant governor and hundreds of Civil War veterans, according to Sunnyside’s social-media site. Embezzlement of half of the cemetery’s million-dollar endowment fund between 1989 and 1994 left it with minimal monetary resources over the last 25 years, not enough to consistently water or maintain its gravesites without the help of assiduous volunteers. However, there may be hope. Linda Meador, one of Sunnyside’s four board members who see CEMETERY page 14
Anita W. Harris | Signal Tribune Sunnyside Cemetery in Long Beach (foreground)– which may close to the public this summer due to lack of funding for watering and maintenance– with the greener Long Beach Municipal Cemetery in the background