Recommendation to declare ordinance approving Resolution No. WD-1413, a resolution of the City of Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners establishing the rates and charges to be charged for water and sewer service and declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2019, read and adopted as read.  (Ordinance No. ORD-19-0018).  (A-10)
Motion carries. Thank you. And we have three budget votes tonight. That was the first. The second is item 18. Report from Financial Management Recommendation or clear ordinance approving resolution, establishing the rates and charges for water and sewer service and declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect on October 1st, 2019. Read and adopted as read. Thank you, Ms.. Control. Mislead. Please come forward. Thank you, Councilmember Mongo for clarifying because the word budget was not mentioned in that ordinance. 1718 does mention that this has to do with the water rates. And again, I think you have there are a number of violations of the Constitution and the Brown Act with passing this. The public did have a chance to register their protests and 1443 people did that. However, we find out that a lot of people didn't even get a notice. So that is a violation. The count was supposed to have been done by an independent person counting this. And that was not done. It was counted by the secretary for the water board and one of the deputy district attorneys who certainly has some skin in this game because. What you're doing is transferring $25 million from the water department. In 2019 and 2022, the general fund. And this is unconstitutional. Even though you can't measure m past, you can't change. The state constitution, which says a public utility is a nonprofit. You can't have surpluses. You can use the. Right. So that you collect the money that you collect for buying water, for fixing pipes, for even buying smart meters. But you can't have a surplus of $12 million a year and give it to the general fund. Again. I asked for an amendment of this. If you need money in the general fund or money to. If the $25 million that you're transferring to the general fund stays in the water department, and if it's not enough to buy the new smart meters or whatever they need, then I would suggest a rate increase of 2% to cover that. Don't take money out of the water department illegally. Thank you, Miss Cantrell. Miss Lee, please. So this is my speech from last week that I didn't realize was being cut in half as I stood here and got cut off half way. Taking money from the poor is wrong, and that's what we're doing with this water rate increase. You're not just hitting on the homeowners here. You're hitting on people who don't have it. You're going to get little kids who don't get a pair of shoes this month and their toes are crammed in because they don't have the money. Because you took it. You're going to take a box of cereal away from someone every month, and that's food for their children. So this is morally wrong. But moving on from that, before you do the final approval of the emergency ordinance in support of the water rate increase, you should look into whether the transfer of money from the water department to the General Fund violates the city charter. I'm not sure you can have surplus funds and at the same time have a budget shortfall. Those two things are in direct opposition water funds being held to transfer to the city general fund totaled $25 million for budget years 2019 and 2020, which, according to the budget charts posted online, amounts to about 10% of the annual water department budget. Additionally, the charter requires validation of the annual gross revenues of the water works by an external audit before making the transfer to the general fund. And I assume that would mean waiting till at least the care for audit has been done. I provide a detailed back up documentation on those numbers and on the city charter. Thank you. Thank you. There is a motion, a second council on Mango. Any comments? Vice managers? Any comments? Please cast your votes.