R-27 Correspondence – Dave Shukla
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Shukla [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2022 8:25 PM
To: CityClerk <[email protected]>
Cc: Council District 1 <[email protected]>; Council District 2 <[email protected]>; Council District 3 <[email protected]>; Council District 4 <[email protected]>; Council District 5 <[email protected]>; Council District 6 <[email protected]>; Council District 7 <[email protected]>; Council District 8 <[email protected]>; Council District 9 <[email protected]>
Subject: Public Comment on R-27, Parks Strategic Plan
-EXTERNAL-
Hello,
I don't know if my "raise hand" function was noticed.
Here's my public comment on this the Parks, Recreation, and Marine Dept. FY22-32 Strategic Plan, R-27, please append it to the official council correspondence for Agenda Item #27 (ongoing) tonight:
Good evening,
Thank you Parks and Rec for one of the most thorough, and visually appealing, reports I have seen from your department.
There are a lot of dollars flowing, for the first time, to Park Equity in the city.
This is good, especially if these monies are spent in Central, West, and North Long Beach. We have a number of complimentary plans and implementation initiatives, notably the LA River Master Plan, and Sen.
Gonzalez's efforts to fund urban neighborhood parks in underresourced areas, that recognize the social value of park space, as we all have appreciated, during this pandemic.
What better case could there be for full employment policies in Long Beach -- for all ages who would like dignified, meaningful work -- than a critical review of this strategic plan in light of the tremendous changes to local land use necessary to meet not only California climate goals, but our own existing maintenance and operations needs. Especially in the town that has this nation's largest Marina by total slips.
Long Beach has a number of strange, uniquely shaped, oddly placed parcels, irregular assessor parcel unit polygon types to be exact -- and a lot of that has to do with the historical development of oil and gas development in Long Beach over the past 100 years. These uses and paths of development could change markedly with the Cal-GEM rulemaking on oil/gas impacts. In particular, imagine a Golden Gate Park type resource, but along the entirety of the LA River, on both sides, in Long Beach. It could be done.
So, I'd like to hear how this plan integrates with things I care about, and have advocated for, like SB100, SB1000, SB1383, and other LORS around the transition to a 100% clean energy economy. Most important to me, I would like to see an integrated assessment of how these place types, these land uses associated with parkland acquisition fit into a 20-year or 100-year framework for what keeping global temperature rise below the global 1.5 degrees centigrade redline for organized life on Earth.
Finally, my organization, the Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy, is a stakeholder of sorts for this strategic plan, given our own mission of climate stabilization, so I strongly urge the Parks and Rec and Marine department, Director Dennis, Chairman Serrano, and the LB City Council to consider the full lifecycle of processes necessary to convert and redevelop disparate land uses into parkland in Long Beach
-- parkland in situ that is supposed to exist "in perpetuity" -- and how we only really have one decade, maybe one long-run business cycle of 15-18 years hence at most, to get park planning right for the climatic changes we know are already locked in, on century scale.
Thank you for a great start, but keep it iterative.
Dave Shukla