Snoop Dogg talks to Councilman Dee Andrews about giving back to Long Beach
He wasn’t there to bemoan the possible loss of our concretinous Main Library if it closes due to budget cuts, but rapper-actor-football coach Snoop Dogg spent more than two hours Friday in the library’s Admiral Room, considering ways to give back to Long [...]

If the City of Long Beach had stuck to its original timetable, Main Library would be open just more six weeks before closing indefinitely. Then, some day, a new, watertight, earthquake-proof Main Library would be built or rebuilt, there or elsewhere. Some day.
That’s what worries members of

Wow! So here it is: noted science fiction author Ray Bradbury has an open letter on the Opinion page of today’s Press-Telegram, imploring us to keep our library open.
“I recently learned of the pending forced closure of the Long Beach Main Library from public access to balance the city budget. This is heartbreak and an [...]

In a conversation before, and remarks during this afternoon’s budget study session at City Hall, City Manager Pat West changed the course of Main Library’s proposed closure–originally said to be looming just over the horizon, possibly as soon as Oct. 1.

And what’s this about a two-year “gap in service”?

Time to leave work early today, for this afternoon’s budget study session, at 3:30 at City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.
Among the hot topics, of course, will be what to do with the city’s leaky 32-year-old Main Library

Mayor Bob Foster gets the profile treatment from Paul Eakins in this morning’s Press-Telegram, and his $571 million plan to rebuild the city’s infrastructure gets a separate examination.
Foster’s own take on his plan–which according to the P-T will require Long Beach City Council to “unanimously approve a declaration of fiscal emergency”? He doesn’t think it [...]

Another year, another city budget–this one made perhaps more interesting by what they’re now calling a projected $16.9 structural deficit in the 2009 Fiscal Year.
Otherwise, this afternoon’s Long Beach City Council budget workshop in Council Chambers veered from dry (four words: “Successful Refuse Nexus Study”) to, in Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal’s words, “draconian”