"I’m running because of the failure of our current career politicians who prefer to represent out-of-town corporate developer and special interests rather than the interests of residents and small businesses.  The latter are what make Long Beach what it is.  I grew up in this city, attending Long Beach schools from elementary through Cal State LB, and even worked for the Water Dept. for fifteen years before starting my own small business as a housing provider.

"I've watched city governance change quite a bit over the years.  We used to have many council members who came out of their neighborhood associations and community activism.  Now we just seem to have politicians, and we see the system getting more and more corrupt.  They keep encouraging bigger and bigger money to infect our elections, while removing guardrails against the power of those special interests, like term limits and limits on officeholder accounts.  As a result of these changes, I was compelled to go beyond the life of an ordinary resident and get involved in activism.  As a candidate, I have signed the Long Beach Reform Pledge, promising if elected to fight for government transparency, accountability, and campaign finance reform.

"Here in the 8th District, our council member treats residents with disdain telling them that if they didn’t vote for him than he doesn’t represent them (true story). I’m running to represent every resident of our district, whether they will have voted for me or not. Recognizing that the most important decisions made by council members affect the entire city, I will represent all the residents of Long Beach as their fiduciary, as well."

- Juan E. Ovalle

 

  • PUBLIC SAFETY INVESTMENT: We must IMMEDIATELY AND FULLY restore the 200 SWORN OFFICERS deficit, cut from our LBPD budget during the recession, including the FIELD ANTI-GANG UNIT, to protect our residents from GANG VIOLENCE, VANDALISM, and RISING BURGLARIES. We need to help the homeless get off the street and into the care of service providers, instead of simply brushing the issue to the side. The current neglect of this issue leads inevitably to vagrancy, crime, and suffering. We need a coordinated approach between law enforcement, health and mental health care providers, and non-profit organizations, with smart funding and proper oversight rather than wasteful boondoggles.

 

  • FIRE STATION 9:  We must make its immediate reopening our HIGHEST PRIORITY.  The sudden and poorly explained closure of Fire Station 9 is a true scandal and an urgent, extreme public safety emergency.  The first thing we need to do is get honest about it, and about the consequences of its closure.  Many are unaware that this was the location where not only fire enginges but also our paramedics were dispatched from.  Recent examples have shown that its closure has doubled or more the response time to medical emergencies. When an attendee suddenly fell ill, an entire crowd waited about ten minutes for paramedics to arrive at the 100th anniversary event at Rancho Los Cerritos, just a short distance down Virgina Rd. from where Fire Station 9 used to be. Most tragically, the entire Awaida family, killed by an apparent drunk driver, also had to wait, as they lay dying, ten minutes from the 911 call to the first paramedics response. These are just the most well-known recent outrages. We need to do the following as soon as possible:
    • halt any plans to tear down Fire Station 9 (and spend $20 million on a new station which may open years from now).
    • actually follow, rather than ignore, the recommendations of the mold expert hired by the City to do additional work studying the water intrusion issue at FS9.  Outside experts on facility environmental safety say that FS9, like almost any building suffering from mold, is 100% remediable.  All focus should be put on remediation and saving our historic community fire station, FS9.
    • never again allow extraordinarily irresponsible deferred maintenance to rot away essential public safety infrastructure!
    • never again withhold information, from the public, which could lead to closure, temporary or longer term, of essentail public safety infrastructure!
    • never again boast about an unnecessary real estate transaction to build essential public safety infrastructure in mid-negotiation, causing the selling price paid by the taxpayer to skyrocket (as was done regarding a new proposed location for Fire Station 9 by Councilman Austin).

 

  • HOMELESSNESS CRISIS:  We must stop pretending like this is anything less than a crisis.  Widespread homelessness in our own backyard has been unthinkable until just recently in the 8th District—when this tragic social epidemic reaches all the way uptown, you know our leaders have not been addressing the issue.  We now have some areas, like the neighborhood near the Union Pacific tracks, where homeless encampments, squatters, and even bonfires are routine and terrifying residents.  We have to act immediately, both for the safety of residents and for the safety of those suffering from homelessness themselves.  To address this we need to:
    • stop wasting a massive amount of money on vanity projects, like the proposed City-run facility near the 91 Freeway—that was nothing more than a photo op for politicians, and it wasted over $10 million in grant money.  We bought it for literally $8 million dollars more than the last buyer of that property, and now we can't even fully utilize it because it has a preexisting cannabis lease the city claims it didn't know about.  That isn't just an incredibly egregious lack of due diligence by Councilman Austin and City Hall, and it smells like something far worse.  We should sell that property back and immediately start taking logical action on homelessness, which would include the following...
    • adding enough shelter beds where the homeless actually are, starting downtown.
    • adding social workers to guide the homeless along the incredibly difficult journey back to sustaining themselves and reintegrating.
    • enforcing vagrancy laws when homeless populations threaten to destroy the well-being of residents. 
    • conducting an honest homeless count.  Experts say our homeless count is false because we require the homeless to self-identify as such, we have other oddities when it comes to our questionnaire, and we do not have an independent third party handling the tabulations.
    • treating this as a regional issue, because that's exactly what it is.  We need to work in partnership with federal, state, and especially county authorities like LAHSA, the county homelessness agency, rather than allowing local politicians to use this issue to grandstand.

 

  • ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & SAFETY: We must MAKE THE AIR SAFER along the 710 corridor (a.k.a. the “Diesel Death Zone”) by addressing port, freeway, and refinery-related emissions. Residents along this entire corridor, including the 8th District, suffer disproportionately from asthma and other lung problems, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. Our highest priorities for addressing this public health crisis must include:
    • accelerating the LA/Long Beach ports’ Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) to clean up ship and diesel truck emissions,
    • implementing a far more robust air quality monitoring system in our communities, run by the City of Long Beach
    • by lobbying AQMD to discontinue dangerous refinery practices, such as the storage of deadly MHF (modified hydrofluoric acid).

 

  • LAND USE & DENSITY: We must support the rights of property owners and homeowners to have stable neighborhoods.  One doesn't just buy a house, one invests in a block, a neighborhood, and a community.  To have those neighborhoods destroyed by unchecked development by greedy developers, looking to drop in, make a buck, and sell on their way out, is an outrage.  That's exactly what happened in the 2nd and 6th districts during the crackerbox boom of the early 90s.  City Hall tried to do it again with the the 2017-18 proposed revision to the City's General Plan known as the Land Use Element.  Recently State Sen. Scott Weiner tried to do it statewide with SB50, with only tepid opposition from our City Council.  Proper planning means not just building anything anywhere.  The character of the community's preferred and established level of density must be considered, and you cannot build without infrastructure, both physical and in terms of public services.  And you cannot simply ignore CEQA, the Californai Environmental Quality Act and its environmental impact reporting process.  There are a lot of hoops to jump through for new major development in a fully built out city—that's how it should be.

 

  • JOBS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:  We need to be far more small to medium-sized business-friendly.  High taxes and fees and burdensome inspection regimes are devastating, as it takes forever to start a new restaurant here, for example, and they often just survive a short time.  The most important thing we can do very soon in the 8th District is to make sure we hold onto the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association, which is about to be devastated by the loss of half its funding with the end of a ten-year agreement to receive redevelopment money.  Our councilman has been as absent on finding new sources to sustain BKBIA as he has been in attracting new businesses to our district.  We have so many empty store fronts along Atlantic especially, despite the great regional economy, and what's Councilman Austin's solution?  More tax of course.  Rather than asking himself why these prime locations cannot find tenants, he wants to impose a vacancy tax.  He also supported our nearly highest in the nation sales tax from the beginning in 2016.  We need an energetic council office doing everything in its power to fight red tape and high fees and taxes at City Hall and at the same time welcoming every prospective new business and assuring them the council office would be there advocate if they came here, invested in our community, added to our community, and created jobs in our community.

 

  • TREES & THE CITYWIDE MAGNOLIA TREE THREAT: Long Beach is home to many Magnolia trees; many of them are in trouble because of a tree scale infestation. As part of the People of Long Beach, Juan worked with others to form the Magnolia Tree Scale Task Force. Juan spoke at a City Council meeting last year and sent a letter to the Long Beach Mayor and City Councilmembers about this important issue and recommendations needed to minimize this threat to our urban forest. View more info in this PDF.  In addition to these recommendations we should:
    • add and maintain thousands more trees throughout the city.
    • hire a top expert to be our City Arborist and greatly expand the budget for tree maintenance and care, in order not only to address the magnolia tree scale threat, but help our trees recover from the drought and prevent future threats from killing them.
    • hire a City Urban Forest Manager to oversee the expansion and management of our urban forest, from our parks to residential streets to our median strips.

 

  • FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY:  We must reform our City Budget top to bottom.  Currently it is shot through with special interests-driven (i.e. those big money organized interest groups who 'buy' politicians) wasteful spending.  It is truly a crime the way—in a city with the most amazing revenue assets (longstanding publicly-owned money generating assets like our global port, our tideland and upland oil extraction revenue, our airport, our convention center, and our occupancy tax-paying hotels)—City Hall always pleads poverty when residents ask why their parks aren't maintained, their infrastructure like streets and public safety buildings are crumbling, and there are not even enough police to patrol the streets (nearly 20% less than we had in the 1990s!).  What adds insult to injury is that we have the highest taxes!  We have one of the highest sales taxes in America, due to Measure A, yet we the return is minimal and we have deficits and a billion-dollar pension liability forecast as far as the eye can see.  So where's all the money going?  Pensions?  Hundreds of city employees each making hudreds of thousands of dollars (one even made over $400,000 in 2018 with overtime whose not even a top ranking manager)?  Developers and other corporates who make big money off city hall tax giveaways and contracts??  All the above.  We need to change this dynamic before it's too late!
    • We need an outside financial performance review and complete audit conducted, similar to the study done by Management Partners, Inc. in 2012 which was completely ignored by Councilman Austin and City Hall.
    • We need to bring back line-item budgeting, so that our City Council, and especially its Budget Oversight Committee (of which Councilman Austin is a member), can actually do its job and scrutinize every aspect of how our tax dollars are being spent.
    • We need to return, at least for an initial period, to zero-based budgeting.  Not one dollar should be taken for granted.  The days of only deciding whether we should increase or decrease budgets need to end.  Not one exenditure should remain on bureaucratic inertia, special interest attachment, alone.  Every dollar must be justified until we get our fiscal house in order.
    • Every resident should be mailed a booklet on the budget, not only showing what we spend our money on, but how much was spent before and after the original Measure A passed in 2016, how much we pay per expenditure category per capita compared to other comparabel cities, and how return in services we are getting per capita compared to other comparable cities.

 

  • GOVERNMENTAL REFORM & ACCOUNTABILITY: We must END SPECIAL INTEREST INFLUENCE and make city government less arrogant, more accountable, and more transparent. The influence of special interest power brokers is apparent in all aspects of City government when one looks beneath the surface, and it has resulted in gross inefficiency and wasted resources. We must always remind ourselves of our most basic civic declaration, that GOVERNMENT IS OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE! Our highest reform priorities should include:
    • revising the new, toothless "Ethics Commission" to imbue it with true investigatory powers, including subpoena power, a budget for investigations, and the power to hire outside investigators independent of city management,
    • adopting on a local level the principles of the national political reform organization Represent.Us, as elaborated in its proposed American Anti-Corruption Act (which "sets a standard for local, state, and federal laws that fix our broken elections, stop political bribery, and end secret money"),
    • catching Long Beach up with the City of Los Angeles's new 6:1 matching funds rate, so that grassroots candidates can compete with corrupt special interest money candidates (currently the rate in Long Beach is an abysmal 1:2 in the primary and 1:1 in the general election),
    • ending all campaign cash transfers, including those between officeholder accounts and campaign accounts and between campaign accounts for different offices sought,
    • restoring officeholder accounts to the original limits placed on them in the Long Beach Campaign Reform Act (1994),
    • greatly improving the usability of the public campaign finance portal on the City Clerk's web page, perhaps similar to OpenSecrets.org,
    • budgeting for and authorizing the City Clerk to launch a public education program offering tutorials on
      • utilizing City tools for accessing government information, including information regarding the agendas and business of the City Council, Council Committees, and City Commissions,
      • how to access public records and make requests under the California Public Records Act,
      • how to look up the recorded votes of all City bodies,
      • how to look up officials' Form 700 conflict of interest disclosures,
      • how to look up city lobbyist registrations,
      • how to look up published official City memoranda, and
      • how to access and utilize the City's campaign finance portal documenting the money flows in City politics,
    • immediately ending the practice of City (i.e. taxpayer) funded mailers in support of ballot measure campaigns, unless equal space is given to the authorized opponents of the ballot measures who have been granted status to argue the "No" side in the election Sample Ballot,
    • and hiring an outside auditor, given that the current City Auditor sacrificed her political independence last year by campaigning with the mayor to reduce the powers of her own office and to extend his terms in office, to conduct a top to bottom audit of our city government and provide recommendations of where we can cut waste, fraud, and abuse and maximize the efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

 

See full answers provided by Juan to the Press-Telegram for its candidate questionnaire here.

See full answers provided by Juan to the Long Beach Post for its candidate questionnaire here.