would offer just to any but a small minority. It was passed in uh year uh of the city joining in litig city joining in litigation withation with this socialist the constitution of United States and the constit foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and implicit and violation of both. >> Thank you for your time. >> All right. Next is David Weissbart. After David is Dennis control, she said that on on city property, this is not this is not 1960 anymore. This I shouldn't have to tell this august body that the bees are in crisis in North America. Be relocator. and finally and find a bee relocator rather than spraying the hive with insecticide. Um, that is all I had to say. >> Thank you for your comment. >> 10 years, we're not going to go away if I have to make it a warehouse or whatever, but I'm pleading that you will consider our location as a uh servers of those meetings. Uh we do cowboy chapel down that means juke boxes. We want to do community service for the Broadway corridor questionnaire sharp and ready to go. Thank you very much for your time. >> Thank you so much for your time. All right. Next is Mario and then Sasha. Good afternoon, Mayor Richardson, and I heard from somebody named Applegate that my property is on the city table, 1635 West PCH. Uh on your night out, um I kind of Well, I do invite you, but um and like not a suit. It's not pretty over there. And my friend um they call him dump truck. Um we found painful, but I still did forgive the bear. But um I just want to say want to say um moving forward that um yeah I'm trying to clean up over there and I need help on a bigger level. Um for example um call it plastic number two. Technical name is high density highdensity polyethylene. Rockview makes it with OJ and milk but it's trash when it's milk. It's scrap and there's more value in OJ. So why are we discriminating? It's from helpful. It's comforting. And sometimes people who work in warehouses and offices forget how I've been tolerant with people on substance abuse around my current um city personnel. >> Thank you. Your time has concluded. >> So much in property tax, especially new home owners in the area. And yet we continue to experience rising crime, dangerous speeding, and lack of visibility, safety, and infrastructure in our neighborhood >> because we're recruiting. because we're recruiting new new leaders in the community ongoing for the neighborhood to continue this discussion. So, I encourage you to meet our staff. >> We're here tonight and let's get you plugged in. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Nice to meet you. >> All right. Well, that concludes general public those deadlines. Um, some folks may want to start the budget process. So, Long Beach has gotten to work. Together, we've reduced that structural deficit, which was $89.8 8 million just uh just two and a half years ago. We've brought that down to 57.3 million. That is uh without raising tax and that is uh without raising taxes on residents. We brought that deficit down uh nearly 40%. And so that's great progress and we have more work to do. Uh and this is at a time where we've actually seen the opposite take place in jurisdictions uh around us. Uh we passed measure LB. So we want to thank the residents and voters for doing that. uh that helped close outdated tax loopholes uh on power plants in our city. That was this past November. That helped us to bring in new reliable ongoing revenue uh that will help us protect the services that we to you know um our employees who work very hard. were very very short staffed and so we made it a top priority and we passed measure JB which brought our civil service our HR together and now we're on track to be the first major city first big city in California to reach and continue to expand shelter and services in fact this week we're opening our first youth navigation center and shelter and through our Grow Long Beach initiative uh coming out of the pandemic we are catalyzing lots of investment new jobs we're found laying a foundation for a stronger more sustainable economy And just this morning, uh, Council Member Kerr and I were together welcoming Ford Motor Company back to the city, city of Long Beach, who used to have a plant here. Well, Ford is back with hundreds of engineers designing the future of electric vehicles. And so, what a stark contrast from where we were. The the budget we're presenting today uh is responsible. It's balanced. It accelerates our progress focusing on four priorities to build a more vibrant and prosper prosperous city. First, continuing our focus on providing core city services and improving the deliver of delivery of core city services and engaging our community as a part of it. That is first. Secondly, continued and economic growth. So, these four these four areas will help us to deliver services. They'll help us protect our most vulnerable residents and we'll keep moving Long Beach forward and putting points on the board. Let's talk about core services first. So, we're making some real progress on public safety in our city. We're seeing a notable decline in crime across our city. Uh property crime is down with categories like commercial burglary down 34.5%. And property now property damage down 25%. Uh these are incredible uh this is incredible progress and we want to thank the hard work of our Long Beach Police Department high crime focus team, our detectives, our patrol officers. We also want to recognize the in partnership with our community based organizations. That's right. I I see I see you. Um, we're continuing to make make uh diverse and their neighborhoods with the peace of mind that