Long Beach New York Needs Our Help!!

For Immediate Release

Contact: Tiffany Andrews, 562 570-6932

Long Beach, New York Needs 

Your Help to Recover

Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske Calls Upon Residents to Lend a Hand or a Dollar or Two

Long Beach, CA; November 16, 2012 -- Next week is Thanksgiving and for the 37,000 residents of the city of Long Beach, New York  it will be grim day as all days have been since they were devastated during Hurricane Sandy says Gerrie Schipske, Councilwoman for the 5^th Council District in Long Beach, California.

“I had my staff contact city management in Long Beach, New York to find out why we could do,” explains Schipske. “A spokesperson for the city told my staff  they are a small town (37,000 residents) and most homes have lost their first floor. They are gutting homes and leaving debris on the street. They need the assistance of volunteers and neighboring municipalities to deal with the clean up. They are unable to accept clothing and household item donations. They need financial assistance  -  they were in a declared fiscal crisis before the storm hit.”

Schipske reminds local residents that “we are so fortunate here in Long Beach, California. Take a moment to see the video (http://youtu.be/sgkVdnxyGDk)  on the damage to Long Beach, New York and send a financial donation at: www.longbeachny.org or send to: City of Long Beach Relief,1 West Chester Street, Long Beach, NY11561.

“Let’s show them what Long Beach, California is all about!”

#30

Related articles

• Long Beach Still Devastated by Superstorm Sandy
• Editor's Picks - Long Beach Residents Stay Behind, Suffer Damage
• CBS 2 Exclusive: A Look At The Post-Sandy Portable Hospital In Long Beach

You Need to View this Video About the Concerns of the LB Firefighters

Take time to view the following video that has been produced by the Long Beach Firefighters Association. The Mayor and City Manager cannot continue to propose reductions in this critical department. Please forward this video to your friends.

Clean Tech Zone Can Bring Good Jobs to Long Beach

monokristalline Solarzelle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday in City Council, my colleagues approved my item asking the City Manager to report on how the City of Long Beach can implement a Clean Tech Zone that will attract industries large and small to locate in Long Beach -- industries that are focusing on clean technology such as solar, green products, wind, etc.

This idea came from researching what other cities are doing.The City of Los Angeles has established the Clean Tech Corridor as a national center for cleantech research and development and industrial manufacturing. The CleanTech Corridor supports the development of a business cluster dedicated to cleantech manufacturing processes and technologies for the 21st century. The Cleantech Corridor is a 4 mile long district on the eastern edge of Downtown LA, stretching from the Los Angeles State Historic Park in the north, to the CleanTech Manufacturing Center in the South, and including both the east and west banks of the Los Angeles River. 

The City of San Diego launched a new Cleantech (Clean Technology) Initiative in an effort to promote the expansion, attraction and retention of businesses that develop products and technologies that provide environmentally sustainable solutions.

The Sacramento Clean Tech Zone offers the following incentives to businesses:

• Expedited permitting provided by Development Services Department and eligible
   companies may receive redevelopment and job training funds offered by regional
  partners. In addition, all companies may be eligible for Small Business Administration
  (SBA) loans, Industrial Development Bonds (IDB) and venture capital funds
   
  Other benefits include:

o   Enterprise

·        Sales tax credits on qualified property

·        Wage tax credits for five years for hiring eligible employees

·        100 percent Net Operating Loss Carryovers available up to 15 years

·        Rapid Depreciation of Equipment

·        Financing Assistance, Hiring Assistance through Sacramento Works!

o   Foreign Trade (FTZ)

·        Duty-free treatment for items that are processed in FTZs and then exported

·        Duty payment is deferred on items until they are brought out of the FTZ for sale in the U.S. market

o   Recycling (RMDZ)

·        Below-market-rate revolving loan program for RMDZ-eligible activities

·        Free product marketing

o   Green Technology Small Business Loan Programs

·        Industry-targeted SBA 7(a) loans available through Grow Sacramento Fund

·        Zone-allocated SBA 504 loans available through Greater Sacramento Community Development Corporation

·        Community Development Block Grant funds to be available at very favorable terms for eligible businesses

 o   Specialized Business Financing Programs

·        City-issued industrial development bonds

 

 
I have already met with the President of the Green Business Council in Long Beach -- Kent Peterson, who was very enthusiastic about the possibilities of Long Beach moving this forward.

Related articles

• Los Angeles Plans Cleantech Complex

See My Posting on LAO Report on LB Courthouse to Cost $160 million more than it should

Please check out my posting on Open Up Long Beach concerning the recent report by the Legislative Analyst's Office concerning why the private-public partnership is costing taxpayers $160 million more than it should have...and why these arrangements are not transparent.

http://www.openuplongbeach.com/2012/11/lao-estimates-lb-courthouse-will-cost.html

Related articles

• Long Beach Question: Much like everything else, who is going to pay for it?
• The 1.8 billion dollar courthouse

All Aboard the Holiday Express..

Come join the Conductor, Santa Claus and our magical librarians as we board the express train for an afternoon of holiday fun.

English: Photo of Jonathan G. Meath portraying Santa Claus. Date approximate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Co sponsored by my office, City of Long Beach Library Services, the Friends of the Long Beach Public Libraries and the Long Beach Library Foundation, you will be treated to a holiday movie and will get a chance to meet the Conductor and Santa Claus. There will be goodies to eat and great books to read.

The public is invited to both events. Kids are welcome to come in their pajamas.
December 1 - 2-5pm at the Ruth Bach Library.
December 8 - 2-5pm at the El Dorado Public Library

Check out how to thank a Veteran

Read below how you can thank a veteran. We have prepared a brochure that provides a variety of ways. You can download it and pass it along to your friends and neighbors. Don't forget to come to the Veterans Parade this Saturday morning in North Long Beach on Atlantic Avenue. HowToHonorVeterans Web

Calling All Artists -- We need your art for our Winged Wonders banners

Artists Still Have Time to Submit Work for Long Beach Winged Wonders Banners Project

Long Beach, CA  -- November 7, 2012 – Local artists still have time to enter their renderings of local “Winged Wonders” for the urban bird walk project to be displayed on banners at the El Dorado Park duck pond off Willow Street and Studebaker. The project celebrates the diverse avian wildlife that make their home in the Lakes, Ponds, and Wetlands of the City of Long Beach.

Anyone who has walked around the El Dorado duck pond has seen a myriad of these beautiful winged wonders. Once local artists respond to the call to submit their renderings of the wild birds, you will be able to see their work hanging from light posts to help educate visitors about the feathered treasures in our city. The project, launched by Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske, will include a recorded tour which visitors will be able to access via their cell phones as the walk around the pond area.

“Local artists are being asked to submit artwork depicting 44 wild birds that inhabit the pond,” says Schipske, who established a Lakes, Ponds and Wetlands Task Force five years ago. “Visitors will be able to walk in the beautiful setting of the park while they learn about our different species, their migration habits, habitat, and the importance of these birds to the environment,” Councilwoman Schipske explained.

 Schipske notes that she launched the partnership between the art community and supporters of our wild life to help educate and promote awareness about the numerous birds who make their home in our local ponds, “The colorful, creative banners will be accompanied by bird sounds and a narrated tour that can be accessed by visitors’ cell phones.”

The “call to artists” is being coordinated by the Arts Council of Long Beach and the Long Beach Museum of Art and is open to all artists that live or work in Long Beach. There is no age restriction. Submissions of two dimensional artwork are welcome. Art must be a single image in color with no background. Work must be original and done on a flat surface of canvass or paper with each individual artists’ chosen medium. Photographs or three dimensional artwork will not be accepted. Artists are permitted to submit original art of up to three different bird species, and each can be created with a different medium. All submissions will be juried by an independent review panel assembled by the Arts Council. A list of the bird species is available by clicking here: http://www.longbeach.gov/naturecenter/birds.asp.

Deadline for submissions of original artwork is Friday, November 30, 2012. Submissions must be submitted to the following address: http://artscouncilforlongbeach.submittable.com  Each artist will need to provide his/her name, artist statement and description of each piece submitted. Up to three images, each depicting a single species, can be submitted with an optional detail shot of each image.

Schipske is partnering with Partners of Park, Los Cerritos Wetlands Trust, Waste Management, and the Port of Long Beach to raise funds for the printing of the banners and a book featuring the artists and their works that will be made available in the El Dorado Nature Center.
For more information, please contact Molly Gardner at the Arts Council: 562 435 2787.

Related articles

• Schipske Launches LB Winged Wonders Call for Artists
• Schipske Honors VA Nurses During Upcoming Vets Parade

453 People in Long Beach Think Roseanne Barr Should Be President

English: Roseanne Barr at the Hard Rock Cafe in Maui in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 That's right. 453 voted for the Peace and Freedom Candidate and comedian, Roseanne Barr for President. The other 73, 403 voted to re-elect President Obama and  39,364 voted for Mitt Romney.

The best news is once again, the 5th Council District had the highest voter turnout in the City: 57.40%. You Go 5th!!!

Here are the unofficial results given to Council today by the City Clerk. They are arranged by Council District so you can see how the 5th Council District voted compared to the rest of the city.
Unofficial Long Beach Summary SOV 11072012

LB Police Department Issues Crime Stats for Quarter

The Long Beach Police Department has issued the quarterly stats on crime in Long Beach. No way around this, we need more police on the streets. Police Stats Qtrly_00000

Playing Gottcha Doesn't Help Anyone

I have a number of email addresses that I don't check on as I do my City Council email address -- which I check hourly. So when I get an email from the press or an inquiry from a resident, I answer back almost the same day.

When I receive an email on my personal email, I respond as soon as I read it (which again maybe every couple of weeks). Over the years, former Councilmember Les Robbins has emailed me on my yahoo account -- but has also contacted my council office directly when he wants to report a problem in his neighborhood. So I was shocked when I received a scathing email from him yesterday blasting me for not answering his questions about police staffing.

Well, as it turns out, he had not contacted my council office on this issue, nor sent me an inquiry on my council email. He sent me an email on October 21 on my yahoo account -- which I had not read because I had not reviewed yahoo in a while. Now he informs me that because I didn't answer his yahoo email I am "not going to like the column I am writing" in the Beachcomber. The following is his October 21 email:

From: LESLASD@aol.com
To: egschipske@yahoo.com
Sent: 10/21/2012 3:57:09 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subj: (no subject)

 

Councilwoman, I have a couple of questions re: the police department that I need answered before I finish an article for the Beachcomber.  You should know the answer to these questions so I am going to ask you.

1.  How has the staffing level reductions on the police department affected their calls for service policy within the patrol division?

2.  How has closing the substations to walk-in activity from the public for the purpose making a police report impacted that issue?

3.  In the event that we no longer dispatch a black and white to certain calls for service such as auto burglaries, vehicle thefts, thefts from vehicles, residential burglaries, petty thefts from property, etc. how do we document those crimes?

 

My wife was the victim of a vehicle burglary in Cypress last week and when she called 9-11 out there they sent a patrol officer to her location, where he took a 459 PC report, and then handed her some very valuable and pertinent information regarding how to report her stolen credit cards, I.D. check book, purse, etc. etc. etc.

 

4.  I have witnessed a couple of multi vehicle traffic accidents in the 5th district in the past 4 days, one this morning at Wardlow and Palo Verde.  The one that I saw on Friday was at Willow and Palo Verde.  At both of those traffic accidents I saw a multitude of black and white present, with at least 5 at the Willow and Palo Verde accident.  The accident this morning at Wardlow and Palo Verde also had at least three fire apparatus present with two engines and one paramedic squad....lots of black and whites, at least 4, but I drove by too quickly to be sure....I am just curious how we can have that many black and white present to traffic collisions.  Hopefully we have so many out here now that we can have a respectable calls for service policy within the patrol divisions.

 

Please let me know the answers to my questions as soon as possible.

 

Respectfully,

 

Les Robbins

Now, Les knows better. He was a councilmember and he knows that if a constituent asks a question about a city department that the answer is official. So he should have contacted me through official channels and I would have answered him as soon as I got a response from the Chief of Police. He also knows as a former law enforcement member that it would take me more than an email to get the responses he is asking since I would have to go to the Chief of Police to get the answers on documentation and dispatching.

I actually had been working on a council agenda item that requests a report on police response time to all levels of calls. Because we only have two council meetings in November, the agenda item will appear in December. I am also asking for a public discussion of fire department response times.

So playing gottcha with this issue doesn't help anyone. Just come out and say it, Les -- you don't want an answer-- you want the LA County Sheriffs back in Long Beach.

Rebelmouse.com Provides One More Social Media Connection

Just had dinner with my friends George and Daphne and learned about a new social media aggregator called www.Rebelmouse.com. Allows you to combine Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest with RSS integration on one page.

Developed by former Huffington Post executive Paul Berry. Check it out.

Related articles

• Creating Slideshow's On RebelMouse [How To]
• Want a Spiffy New RebelMouse Page? Let Paul Berry Know, and He'll Build One For You
• RebelMouse: Smart Curation for the Classroom
• RebelMouse: Create a Website with Social Content
• RebelMouse Launches Tumblr, Pinterest And RSS Integration
• What is Rebel Mouse?

Schipske Elected Vice President of Medical Board of California

 

Schipske Elected as Vice President of the Medical Board of California

San Diego, CA – The Medical Board of California unanimously elected Gerrie Schipske as Vice President of the 15 member board today during its quarterly meeting. Schipske, who is serving in her second term as the appointee of the Senate Rules Committee had just completed her term as Secretary of the Board.

“This is a hard working regulatory board that is dedicated to the protection of the consumer. I am very honored to have the support of my colleagues to serve as Vice President for the coming year,” says Schipske.  

Schipske is the first and only Registered Nurse to serve on a state medical board.President, Dr. Sharon Levine; Vice President Gerrie Schipske, RNP/JD; and Secretary, Dr. Silvia Diego.