Over 100 people show at forum on hotel pay, housing

By Paul Eakins, Staff Writer, LB Press Telegram

February 19, 2010

LONG BEACH - The crowd was large at a City Council candidate forum Thursday night, but the candidate turnout was a little on the light side as issues such as hotel workers' pay, air quality and housing were debated.

Well over 100 people attended the forum by the Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community at the Neighborhood Methodist Church, 507 Pacific Ave., while only five council candidates showed up. Of the 15 candidates running in five races citywide, eight had been expected to attend, but three had to cancel, organizers said.

The Coalition is an organization of housing advocates, labor groups and environmentalists, and many of their questions reflected those interests.

Although 1 st District candidate Jana Shields, 3 rd District candidate Tom Marchese and 9 th District candidate Steve Neal were there, the rivalry between what may be the two lead candidates in the 7 th District race, incumbent Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga and Assistant City Auditor James Johnson, quickly surfaced.

When asked whether they would support an ordinance to require that workers at Long Beach hotels be paid a living wage, Uranga voiced strong support.

"We should not continue to have the hotels making profits and the workers making minimum wage," Uranga said.

Johnson gave a more ambiguous answer.

"I want to look at leases on city-owned land and say, 'If we have new developments, are those the ones that are going to have good jobs,'" Johnson.

said. "If that's city owned land, how can we use our power, our authority to make sure employees have good wages, good benefits?"

Marchese inferred his support for requiring living wages at hotels, while Neal said he supported requiring a living wage for workers at hotels that are on city land. Shields, the most conservative candidate of the group, said the council shouldn't interfere in relations between employers and workers.

Uranga later called out other candidates on their ambiguous answers, though her comments seemed likely directed at Johnson.

She said the candidates should give clear 'yes' or 'no' answers, because that's the way it works when the council votes.

"There is not a 'maybe' button," said Uranga, the only sitting council member at the debate. "There is not a 'I'll think about it' button."

Uranga made the comments as she said that she would sign a pledge that the Coalition was asking all candidates to sign.

The pledge says that candidates, if elected, promise to create plans "to ensure that the Long Beach hospitality industry provides good jobs with living wages"; that major developments provide benefits such as job training, local hiring and affordable housing; and "that green jobs at the Port of Long Beach are also quality jobs."

Marchese and Neal also said they would sign the pledge, while Shields and Johnson said they would have to know more about it and hadn't read it yet.

Johnson used the question as an opportunity to fire back at Uranga.

"What kind of council member does this city deserve," Johnson asked. "I think they deserve a council member who looks at what they're going to sign, who reads it and thinks about it a little bit."

Marchese took a different approach.

"I haven't read it - but I trust you," he told the Coalition members in the crowd.

Several times, Marchese called out his opponents, incumbent 3 rd District Councilman Gary DeLong and former Redevelopment Agency board member Terry Jensen, for not showing up at the forum.

As the conversation turned to housing, Uranga, Neal and Johnson all seemed to support increasing developer fees to provide affordable housing, while Shields inferred that she would support it as well. Marchese didn't voice a clear stance.

All five candidates expressed similar views in support of finding alternative fuels and technologies to clean up the air around the Port of Long Beach, on maintaining public safety funding, and in keeping libraries open or increasing staffing and hours. What wasn't always clear is how they would do that in the face of a projected $11 million budget deficit.

Neal and Shields stressed that outside funding, such as state and federal grants, will be needed.

"We can't just look to the city alone for a solution," Neal said.

One last notable comment from Shields was her strongest criticism to date of 1 st District Councilman Robert Garcia's 10 months in office after he defeated Shields and five other candidates in a special election.

She said that Garcia's support of proposed medical marijuana regulations that don't require collectives to grow their marijuana on site, or even within the city limits, is a mistake.

"It is really a façade for illegal drug dealing," Shields said.

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