Long Beach Passes Budget With 3.66 Percent Tax Increase

LONG BEACH, NY — At a special meeting last night, the Long Beach City Council passed its 2020-21 budget, which includes a 3.66 percent property tax increase for homeowners.

The council called the budget the first step the city is taking to try to get back on sound fiscal footing. In April, the city announced that it was facing a huge deficit due to poor budgetary practices over the last few years. In response, the city laid off 142 part-time workers. Many of those layoffs became permanent under the budget.

"There's some very difficult decisions that were made for this budget, quite frankly, regrettably, much of it fell onto the CSEA this year," said City Council President John Bendo. "That is regrettable. Now it's time for our other city unions to step up, just like our partners at the CSEA did, and join the team and help us fix this."

Though there were many spending cuts, taxes were still increased due to the huge financial hole the city is in. The 3.66 percent increase is within the city's tax cap limitation, and comes out to $142.44 more per year for the average household, the city said.

Because of the lower revenue, the city had to make some drastic cuts. The city laid off more than 100 workers, saving $1.8 million in the budget. Many of those layoffs came from the Recreation Department, Youth and Family Services and the Police Department. The Recreation Department had $500,000 in cuts to part-timers' salaries, and Youth and Family Services was cut by $410,000 — eliminating all of its part-time employees.

The police department also had steep cuts. Salaries in the department were reduced by $435,000. The fire department saw a similar reduction of $321,000.

The budget was unanimously passed by the City Council.