Councilwoman Megan Kerr, Worth the Drive

In this episode, we take a drive through the 5th district of Long Beach with Megan Kerr — a lifelong resident, community advocate, former school board member, and public servant deeply rooted in the neighborhoods she represents.

From growing up in Bixby Highlands and volunteering to feed unhoused residents as a teenager, to raising four generations under one roof and eventually stepping into public office, Megan shares the personal experiences that shaped her approach to leadership, service, and community.

This conversation goes far beyond politics. It’s about the unseen work that keeps a city together — the people answering calls, fighting for safer streets, protecting parks, supporting small businesses, advocating for schools, and helping residents feel heard during uncertain times.

We talk about:
• What city council members actually do behind the scenes
• How infrastructure projects really happen
• School board politics and public education
• Supporting Long Beach small businesses after COVID
• Airport noise, aviation concerns, and federal limitations
• Protecting green spaces like Willow Springs Park
• Why local government matters more than most people realize
• The importance of values, community, and public trust

Most importantly, this episode explores what makes Long Beach different. Not LA. Not Orange County. But a city built by people who care enough to stay involved and fight for the neighborhoods they love.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Cities don't become great because of buildings, budgets, or headlines. They become great because of people. People choose to show up, stay involved, fight for the neighborhoods they love. Because behind every safe street and every thriving small business, every community event, there's a preserved neighborhood. And in every public space, there are people doing unseen work and holding the city together. Long Beach is a city with strong identity. We're not Orange County. We're not LA. We're something entirely our own. And a city built on diversity, culture, and small business with historic neighborhoods and people who generally care about their community. District 5 sits right in the middle of that story. Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with 5th District Councilwoman, Megan Kerr. I want to know your origin. Born in Long Beach?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

What hospital? St.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Mary's. St. Mary's. Yeah, my parents moved here the year I was born. Or the year before I was born, so all my brothers were born back east.

SPEAKER_04 1:06

Why did they move here?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

My dad moved here for a job, actually. His first job was for an educational consultant in the old Jurgens Trust building on Ocean that they tore down.

unknown 1:15

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah. So we used to go as kids, we take the bus downtown and meet and the old like decrepit pike after it's heyday.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Um so yeah, his first office was down there.

unknown 1:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

And so the whole family moved here. You moved to Bixby?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Uh yeah, first house was over on 45th Way.

unknown 1:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

And that's where I was born. And lived there until I was four. My parents bought a house on Boyer in Bixby Highlands and lived there until I moved out when I got married. Uh had our first apartment on Carson Street, right behind Allison's Donuts, and then had the great opportunity to purchase the home next to the house I grew up in, next to my parents. And so we bought that house from the family of the older gentleman who'd lived there when I was growing up. He had passed away. Uh with a lot of paint and pizza for friends. We got it into shape and were able to live there. So it was uh Andy and I. We had Christian and Evan and Emma in that house. And next door was my mom and my dad. And my nana moved to California with them. So we were always a three-generational house. She always lived with us. And then in 2006, my dad had a heart attack and a brain injury and couldn't take care of himself. Um, but my nana still lived with him, so we bought a bigger house in Bixby Nomes. Uh, we've been there 20 years, this year actually 20 years in June, uh, so that we could move him in and my grandma and care for him. So for a lot of years, we were four-generation households. So my nana uh was with us until she was 101. Wow. Um, my dad uh was with us for about seven years before he needed more care. Um he since passed away a while ago.

SPEAKER_04 2:48

So you moved here? Yep. You gave us the houses, you went to preschool?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

I did, Cal Heights Methodist.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

Right here, and then just to the left, you got St. Barnabas. Correct. That's where you went to elementary.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

It is. I went to K through eight there. Uh we attended church there every Sunday, third row on the left, um, followed by Donuts in the Hall or Allison's if we were lucky. Um yeah, that was actually the place that kind of got me started in public service. It was not in public service, it was the first real volunteer work I did came out of St. Barnabas right after I graduated from high school. Um I was I went with my friends to feed some unhoused folks in Santa Monica on the bluff some Saturday morning when I was about 18, and driving back, having grown up in Long Beach and spent a lot of time downtown at my dad's office, realized we have a lot of folks in our own community, and I looked at my dad and I said, How come nobody does this in Long Beach? And he looked at me and being my dad said, I don't know, why don't you? Oh which that's how my dad rolled.

SPEAKER_04 3:46

See, that's great because that I mean that little introduction of public service in there, did it did it fuel you at a young age?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

It did. Well, you know, and it was based out of I was raised a social justice Catholic. So feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, like that was stuff that my parents meant literally. And it so we started doing a breakfast two Saturdays a month. We had camp stoves, Pullman camp stoves. I still have one of them today. Um, we would go down to the Old Lincoln Park and we would set up church tables and we would cook ham and eggs and bacon and pack lunches two Saturdays a month, anywhere from like 125 people to 300 people. A community of people from around the area, volunteers from schools would join us, and we did it for eight years, two Saturdays a month. Um, and then we finally had some warnings that the health department was gonna shut us down, and now I look back and I'm like, oh yeah, I get it.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, the self-health institution.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah, that whole thing. Um, but I remember one morning that, and this was the old city hall, so the old Brutalist building, and we were doing it, and we looked down, and Mayor O'Neill was standing on the corner waiting for her ride with her people. And my dad, being my dad, was like, let's go talk to her. So we went down and we introduced ourselves and we walked her along the back of the line of like, this is where we do this, and this is where we do that, and having really no idea what that meant at the time for her, number one, to take the time and to listen to us and be so generous and gracious to delay where she was going to listen to us. Um and so she knew, and we still continued for a couple years, and realizing looking at that perspective now of you know a mayor or anyone taking the time and being generous and encouraging and not standing in the way of good work, even if it wasn't, you know, the best choice. But it was what I had needed, knew how to do when I was 18. I didn't understand kind of how all of the legislative pieces worked. I was, you know, a kid out of high school trying to do a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

So you think that sparked something in you, just like that visual of her being amongst the people?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I think so, but I never had the idea that I would be an elected official. So my degree, um, so after St. Anthony, I'm at St. Anthony High School, it's where my husband and I met. He grew up, born and raised in North Long Beach, where his parents and grandparents uh had a house on Orange Avenue, so they also passed that house down. Uh we met while I was at St. Anthony. Uh we celebrate uh 31 years of marriage next week, actually.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

And um I knew I wanted to help people, but I didn't know how. My degree is in sociology with a concentration in social work, um, toyed with being a teacher, uh, but realized I wanted to be in a helping capacity. But we had our family young, so I had um Christian, we got married together for six years, got married, uh, had my oldest uh before I graduated college. So I was still finishing school and working and taking care of a kid. So when I graduated, we couldn't afford child care, so I stayed home to take care of Christian.

SPEAKER_04 6:49

And what did what did that feel like to you after you know getting a degree? Yeah. And then you're like, well, I I'm so capable, but I want to be a mother and I want to take care of my financial aid, right? Because childcare is way more it's way more expensive than actually you'd basically be working to pay for child care.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

And that's when we did the math. We realized that that was the situation. So if someone, if I wasn't gonna have enough money at the end of the paycheck for anything else, then I checked it was just easier to stay home.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

It's not worth the time to to be away from your kids if it's it's it's not correct worth it. And people are still in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Absolutely. But at the time, all I knew is we couldn't afford child care. I was able to stay home um and work part-time for a little bit, and I ended up volunteering. They went to preschool at Lambiche City College, so they have a great child development center there, and they had a program where you go bikings. Yes, go bikings, uh, proud Hall of Famer, thank you very much. Um But they have a program where parents could go and work in the classroom, and then your kid could go to preschool, and you took a parenting class one hour a week. That was sort of the trade-off for this um really reasonable tuition. It wasn't even tuition, it was I paid for one unit of class per semester for my kid to do that. And so I learned to get in the classroom, work with kids, and that continued when they got into public school. So they Longfellow, two of them went to poly. Uh one tried out a couple and till he found his way, and um so I just continued to be involved in that way, and so you know, I get to drive by Longfellow because it's right by my house all the time, and on the front it has that National Green Ribbon Award mural. So that was in 2012. So I was part of the group of parents, there were about five of us very intensely working on green initiatives. Um, Kim and Kathy planting trees, kind of all of that initial work back 2008, 2009, 10.

SPEAKER_04 8:40

Was that like PTA or just on your own?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

No, it was a separate, it was a separate group of people than PTA who were doing green team work. So, like there's a box on Hughes' campus that is painted. I remember the painting day where we had kids and we were doing recycling, we were separating organics way back in the day. So that was the inaugural year of the National Green Ribbon. They put out this big, huge national government form of you have to fill all this out and you have to have all the data from the district. Um, and this group of parents really buckled down. We worked really closely with the district. We submitted a federal, basically a federal grant application. Um, and then we're one of the first cohorts of schools to get the national green ribbon.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

So, did that draw you to the school board?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

It did. So I was involved in all of those kind of around the official ways for a long time, and then we had a huge recession in 2010. And I did some advocacy work with a state organization and organized a rally here in Long Beach with teachers, and Superintendent Steinhauser was there and the teachers union about school funding and the state budget. Uh, we had some state folks come down, it was really exciting, and then we proceeded the district, unfortunately, proceeded to lay off 800 teachers at the time, maybe 850. I went to a school board meeting and I gave a very impassioned please don't lay off the teachers speech. And half hour later, they laid off the teachers, and I realized I missed something, and I don't like not knowing how things work. I find myself I'm a very curious person, and so when I don't know, I get extra involved to figure out how something works so that I can impact change and realized after digging around that if I wanted to be meaningfully part of the conversations of what ended up happening that night, I was about a year too late when they were talking about the budget. Yeah. And not because they weren't listening, but because the process had already played itself out to make the decision. Yeah. So I um I got extra involved for that reason. I uh called the superintendent and said, hey, what committees can I be on? What can I do to learn more? So I ended up immersing myself. The North Long Beach Initiative was happening at the time. Um, so really got to know people better that way. And Mary Stanton, who was the school board member at the time, she'd been the school board member for 20, almost 24 years. And she saw me outside of Longfellow when I was going in one day, and she said, I'm not gonna run again, I think you should run. And I was like, Oh, it's not my thing. I I do the behind-the-scenes things. I'm the I'm the person you call when you need help and in the classroom or whatever. She goes, I really want you to think about it.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

So that was your first political step.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Absolutely. So I walked into the principal's office who I had a meeting with, who is a friend of mine, and I said, You will never believe what Mary Stanton just said. And when I told him, he goes, You absolutely should run. You're the kind of person that we need. And this is a guy that I had worked with, you know, he was my kids' principal for a lot of years. And I went home that night and I told my husband, Andy, and I said, You'll never believe what Mary said and then what Brian said, and he said, You absolutely should. And so I heard it differently coming from people outside of me.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Saying, We need you to do this for the community and for kids and for schools. I didn't have any political inklings, I didn't really know how anything worked. Um, I knew that I cared deeply about kids and families across this community, and I knew that I knew a lot about schools and I cared about how things worked. And so we kind of jumped in feet first, really blind, and decided to run in 2014 and won that election.

SPEAKER_04 12:07

How did you weigh that importance of education when you did that first run?

SPEAKER_00 12:12

So I had kids actively in the school system. And so I knew that every kid in every corner of this city deserved the same kind of education that I would see that my kids have in their experience at Longfellow. And I also knew, because my husband grew up in North Long Beach, that there are parts of town that haven't gotten the same uh attention. They have amazing teachers and amazing administrators across the district, but I hadn't seen outside people hyping up their good work and really getting people to understand that this collective impact wasn't about just one school, that we all of our schools needed to be that great, and we do that by working together. And so had the conversation with my had to have the conversation with my kids. I'm like, if I'm gonna do this running for office thing, what does that mean for our family? What does that mean for you? Does it mean that if there's a back to school night for you, there's a back-to-school night for the 15 schools I might represent? So that means that they may get less of my time. Yeah. Um, and really deciding that as a family that it was worth it and it's important enough um to be of service to the whole district. And we really saw ourselves. So I represented all of um North Long Beach, so Bixby Knowles, Cal Heights, all the way to the Compton and Paramount borders, and had the amazing Jordan High School as my flagship high school, which has gone undergone an amazing change. Oh, yeah, it's beautiful. I started. I heard that the pool is almost done. So I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_04 13:42

I've been up there a lot lately, so I've not been up there. But so how do we support I mean, because people forget about the school board.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

They do. It was it's really hard to get people to pay attention to a school board race. So I am thrilled that there is attention on it because the thing about the school board is it impacts families in a way almost like no other institution, governmental institution. If something goes wrong at school, it is what you talk about at the kitchen table, it is what directly impacts how you parent your kid or um being a guard a guardian or adult to whomever it is that that experience that. And so those are the folks making the decisions, and it's really difficult to get the press to pay attention.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

And so I'm glad people are paying attention to this one. I personally, Megan Kerr, I'm a strong supporter of Diana Craighead. She uh I served with her on the board. Um, she is smart, she is solid, she has seen this district through a lot. She got on the board as an appointment because someone stepped away and there was an appointment process. Interestingly enough, I was on the panel who interviewed all those folks to be appointed because I was involved in PTA at the time doing legislative work. And so she was never gonna run, quote, run for office. She did it because she was Long Beach Council PTA president, and she cared deeply about kids and families, and it was that was always the reason um that she started on the school board and continues on the school board.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

Which is great because that's how kind of how you started on the school board.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, and people need to vote their values. So I expect everybody when they um get their ballot that they're gonna read up on candidates, they're gonna talk to candidates, they're gonna know them, um, understands ways that you agree or disagree with policy positions, but like this case in particular, I think looking at people's value systems and and their history and where they come from, what they've stood for, who they have stood with and protected matters to me.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

And so who do they align themselves with politically? Um, do those folks share your values? You may not agree with them on everything uh that's put in front of you, but at the end of the day, for me, if I can count on someone making decisions from a similar value base, I can have hard conversations about the policy ways that we disagree. Um, but I can't have that conversation with someone who their starting point doesn't value the humanity of groups of people based on their belief system.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

I am a mom of LGBTQ kids, a sister, an auntie of LGBTQ folks. Um, it is Pride Week in Long Beach. Yeah. If someone's baseline denies the humanity of my children, my brother, my nieces and nephews, we can't agree on policy. No. Even if we do have alignment on policy, their your starting point is that you don't feel like my kids deserve the same rights as other people. We value people's rights, that we uh welcome immigrants, we protect people. Long Beach is diverse, diversity is our superpower.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

It is.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

It is not on the side. We are who we are because of that. And so when I'm looking at people that I'm voting for, I need to know that they value those things. And if they don't say it loudly that they value those things, I'm not sure if they value those things. Because I think that's one of the hardest things to do when you're in you know in public, is to stand on your values even when you know folks are gonna disagree with your values.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

So as we pull up here to Somerset Park, which is where my kids spend many a field trip. Yes. And we see construction going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

So I grew up in Bixby Highlands right across the way here. And when I was a kid, we played in Somerset Park. It's where I went to do after school programming uh because my Nana didn't want us in the house. Uh so we played at Somerset Parks and did parks and rec stuff.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

So I didn't play.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Exactly. But we had to dodge this giant street.

SPEAKER_04 17:49

Yeah, how many lanes? Now one.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Uh it's only always been four lanes. I don't think it's ever been six.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

With a center.

unknown 17:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, it had a turn late. Okay. But you you had no way to cross. There's no crosswalks there. So we're we've redone Carson Street, and that's what you're seeing there. Is so when we were talking about redoing Carson Street, we said, hey, how do we get better park access? So we're in installing two new sidewalks with those buttons that you push. Um, they're called rapid flashing beacons, is the technical term. I call them the blinky lights. And um, so that pedestrians can cross from the Bixby Highlands area into the park safely, and also on the other side from the park over to public transportation safely. So you'll be able to push the button. There'll be a pedestrian island in the middle for some of our older folks or folks with disabilities who can't get all the way across. Um, they can rest there in the middle. Um, but that's that's one way we make things better. It's not always the big and flashy things, it's a crosswalk that gets our kids more safely to the place that they're gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Which is 100% necessary there. Yeah. 100%. What finally initiated that happening?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So uh Carson Street was on the list to be redone, and so had conversations with the engineers. We get to bring up suggestions like that. They also look at the data around it's a high injury network.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Uh we've had folks that are hit right there at Gundry. Um, pretty serious accidents there. So they use the data around the high injury network as well as looking at what assets surround it and and how people organically use it because we know the math doesn't always match the lived experience of it because you can say one thing on paper and it still feels very different. Um, so getting the chance to talk to the engineers and see if we can find a way to get those things into the budget.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

Well, that it connects that entire neighborhood across the street to a park, otherwise, it it, like you said, frog are jumping across the street. So is that the funds for that? Is that measure A?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Partly measure A. We get street funding from different sources. So when we do safety upgrades like that, there's often state or federal grants around mobility or bike lanes that can add money to a project. They don't fund an entire project, but they kind of but they can pick and choose. So it's it's we used to.

SPEAKER_04 19:56

Because I'm assuming that's a more expensive intersection with the blinking lights and everything.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 20:00

So does that extra money pay for that, like the amenities of that?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

It can. It's and it's it's all built into the budget during design, and so as you add more things, you realize oh, that's gonna be another $15 or $20,000 to put in the light.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

It's always just like redoing your house.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Correct. Yeah, um, but making sure that we budget appropriately because we have a long list of needs. I mean, there's roads all over the city that need to get done and safety features and all of that. So, but that was really critical around the high usage of that park. So, how long does that process take? From like design all the way done is a couple years.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

We have a we have an issue now. We need to design it. We talk to the engineers. I'm sure we're voting on that periodically to usually nope, it's just part of the infrastructure work that we do.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Um sometimes we have to vote to uh to receive funds, like hey, they're gonna give us this money, we have to officially say we're gonna take this money. Yeah, um, but that's built into the infrastructure budget. Um, that's why we do a five-year plan. So five years ago they set out say we're gonna do these streets because we have this much money, and everybody argues over which streets we should do and make sure that it's equitable across the districts and meets some big needs.

SPEAKER_04 21:07

Well, Schoolhouse Rock never told me about city council. Oh, they sure didn't. So I think a lot of people, especially, I mean fifth test, right? Yeah, we don't know what our council people can do. We have an idea that you're the voice for us, right? And you go to the council and you can fight for us and you can uh put our voice forward, but we don't know what how much power you have in those situations. Sure. I assume people think you're the king of the fifth district and whatever you say goes. That's not so.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

That is not so. Um when I have good ideas, I have to convince other folks to come along and vote with me, especially if it is a policy change and especially if it requires money. That is why there is a council of nine, because All of us are working every day to serve our constituency and we'll fight for the time and the money and the attention for our own district. So, how we negotiate that and convince someone this is a really important thing for district five and for the city, come on board with me and do that. So that's part of it. And I think for me, especially, even with like using the Beverly O'Neill thing, I didn't know much about city government at the time. Yeah. Because for the most part, everything was okay for me. And so our best days are when you don't need to call us.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Um, because you haven't had something that negatively impacted your life. Um but we know that when something does, you call. Yeah. And that's when we want to be as responsive as we can. We want to look to solve the small problems, but then look for is this a bigger systemic problem that we need to pay attention to citywide, or is it specific to one district or one neighborhood? Yeah. Um, and having that bigger lens of yes, this is a thing that happened in our district, but it also, when we looked around, happens in yours. Will you support me in this legislation? Smoke shops. So a smoke shop opened up right across from McBride High School.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Right across the street. Yeah. 15 feet. And so when we saw it and it was brought to our attention by many residents, we said, well, there's got to be like a buffer zone, right? Because we don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And then we did our research and realized that there is not a buffer zone for can for tobacco.

SPEAKER_04 23:27

I assume there was. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

There is a buffer zone for cannabis because when we wrote the cannabis laws, or when the previous council wrote the cannabis laws seven, eight years ago, they put in a buffer zone for cannabis. But there hasn't been a buffer zone for tobacco.

SPEAKER_04 23:40

And there's a buffer zone for alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Correct. So we kicked into here, we did our research, we talked to some of our colleagues, we researched what other municipalities have done, and we introduced an item to council within a couple of weeks that said, I need the city attorney and the city manager and all the relevant departments to look at what other cities have done regarding a buffer zone and bring us back a proposed ordinance to create a thousand-foot buffer zone for tobacco around not just high schools, but what we call sensitive receptors, preschools, daycare centers, those kinds of things. And District 8 came on board with us, and district 9 came on board with us. She's actually written paper, policy papers in her professional life around local governance and buffer zones. Yeah. So she's on board. Um and so that'll come back to council for us to review.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

And the next side of that is we'll probably start getting some calls from business interests and tobacco interests saying, What are you trying to do? And we're prepared for that because at the end of the day, we are trying to protect kids and families because while they have snacks and chips at the front of their door, they have a wall of um flavored vape products behind those chips and ice creams that when you happen to see them is concerned. So that's kind of the idea of that. Many of the districts actually have that same issue. So, how do we fix the bigger piece while addressing the need of District 5 so that not other communities are impacted in the same way?

SPEAKER_04 25:14

You were talking about um how when things go wrong, that's when people call you. Have you noticed since the world, as of late, and the country as a whole, people are on edge, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:26

Like, and do you find since people are on edge and having problems with everything, you're becoming more of the well, I'm gonna call and complain to her. I'm gonna call and complain to her. Do you find that the complaints or the inquiries to your office are higher in a state uh the state of the world is right now?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah, I think, and as you said, I think everybody is on edge. Everybody doesn't know what's gonna happen today.

SPEAKER_04 25:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

You wake up and you're like, oh, this, okay. This is today's news or experience. At almost six dollars a gallon. And and what that does to a family in terms of like financial planning, uh, what it does for immigrant families in our communities, all of those pieces. We know that people cannot knock on the White House door and give three minutes of public comment. We know they can't knock at Congress and say, I want to come in and get my three minutes of they cannot do it at the state level. They can do it at the county level, but where they can be heard is at the city level. Yeah. And so when someone comes to public comment, and I have done public comment before I was on council, that is your three minutes to say your concern, peace, kudos, whatever it is, on the record. Yeah, it is noted for history on the record that you spoke that day. Um, and so it I think for many becomes the only place that they can feel heard. Sure. And so whether or not we have control over the thing that they're most concerned about is is there, but beside the point for them in that moment because they're feeling it, they're experiencing it, and they need it to change, and they need someone to hear it. And we may not be the group that can change it, um, but they can be heard by us in a formal way. And that is the beauty of local government. That is the beauty of having access to the people who directly represent you because we don't have that same kind of access at the next levels of government in the same way.

SPEAKER_04 27:20

Yeah, and I think that that that breeds frustration when people don't feel heard. Yeah, and that's and I think that's the crux of of a lot of things. Like if we don't feel heard, we don't feel acknowledged, and so then we get angrier and angrier and angrier. How do you keep up?

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Because how many people are in this district? So we have about 54,000 folks here in District 5, and we are the only district that spans from the LA River on the west to the San Gabriel River on the east.

SPEAKER_04 27:47

How do you even get a handle on responding to 10% of that? Let's just say 10% want to talk to your office. That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah, so we have um a great I have a great team at City Hall that does that work, and we make ourselves as available as we available as we can. So that means by email, that means I've got people answering the phones. Maybe they don't pick up when you're there because they might be on a call with somebody else. Um we do monthly community meetings, we have a weekly newsletter, we table at large community events so people can find us. So we're not hiding from that. We just ask that people, I just would ask that people interact with me and with my office with the same respect with which they would like to be treated. And I think that idea that we're all really keyed up and frustrated doesn't mean that we have to kind of devolve into screaming and yelling. We can have really hard conversations.

SPEAKER_04 28:44

Which I have seen happen.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:46

But I don't think people understand the mass amount. And it could be something small. I mean, it could be something, oh, there's trash on my corner. They're calling the office, but they want results or they want to be heard in that, and just keeping up with that to me seems like a daunting task. And having the people who are answering for you have to answer in your voice. So they have to know Megan. And how would Megan respond to this? And this is what Megan's view is on this. So they all have to be educated in the fact of what your standpoint is. I think if people realized that component of it, they would realize how much harder the job is. That and I don't know about you, but I've never pleased a hundred percent of people.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

I can't even make my three kids happy at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 29:35

I have a I have a family of five and I got four every once in a while.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah, we can put ten people in a room and we can present them the same set of information, and they're gonna take that ten different directions based again on their value systems, their belief systems, um, the way that they would choose to solve problems and and then you know the challenges of always coming back to community to solve the problem together because we are always stronger when we're working together. Yeah, um, you know, it's true for political stuff, but it's true in life of that divide and conquer always wins. That if you work to divide people, you will win things, but you don't solve it, and then what's left because that is not the long beach that I know, yeah. That is not how um I have ever been modeled of how to solve problems. Yeah, it is always how do we come back together in community to work together to get to the place we all want to go.

SPEAKER_04 30:26

So, how do you make people feel heard?

SPEAKER_00 30:29

You know, I've asked that question, so we do all of the formal things that we can do. Um, we do a lot of meetings on people's front yards and say, hey, do you want to talk to your neighbors about what's going on in community? Tell them to bring a chair, we'll come on Saturday, we'll bring some coffee. And I think people hear feel heard in different ways. And so when I've had um people who are frustrated with me, you know, both in work and in life, it's like, what can I do to demonstrate that I'm hearing you? Because I feel like I'm hearing you. I feel like I am listening, but you you clearly don't think that. So, what are the actions I can take that demonstrate that for you and really be in conversation about it? Because I don't know everybody's lived experience, I don't know how they were raised and how they were communicated with in the ways that are most effective with them. But I have asked many, many people tell me how I can demonstrate to you feeling heard. And when we can talk about it and they can say, it would help if you would um sit with me and not uh answer so quickly. Okay. If that's what demonstrates it for you. Because I think for everybody, it feeling heard is very personal.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Um but it always goes back to relationship, it always goes back to uh respect and care and concern for our broader community. Because at the end of the day, even if we uh disagree as we leave whatever meeting it was, we still are in community together.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

What drives you to keep going in this position every day? Because it's not easy.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah, some days are hard. You know, I always try to be honest with people when they ask, do you love it? And I say I love it most days. Which is all any of us could hope for in whatever job that we have. Um I I do what I do because I feel deeply rooted and connected to the people in this city. For me, as we drive by another elementary school, it is always about care and concern for children, for families, for seniors, for members of this community who deserve to live with dignity and respect and with all of the opportunities that we can offer. So at the end of the day, for me, it has always been about service. As my dad would say, servant leadership is that kind of being in a leadership position to be able to serve. You know, technically that means I get to help solve problems for people. I get to bring um things forward that help our greater community. But I take really personally when someone calls and something has gone awry for them. Uh and I I'm that nosy person who I look through uh our inbox. I know most of the emails that come and go out of my work office. Um my team can takes care of some of them before I get to them. So as I drive around, I am aware of the things that people have asked for or needed or experienced hard things. Yeah um speeding on faculty as we go by these streets.

SPEAKER_04 33:39

Yeah, it's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

And for me, it is a it always comes back to taking care of people. It's it's sort of who I was born to be in the family I grew up in. Um and this turned out to be the way that I got to be of um of service to people.

SPEAKER_04 33:55

And so you're running again, of course. And we've seen your your signs and is it because the job's not finished for you?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

The job's not finished, and we're I think at a really critical time in history in general, especially in our country and some of the things that you've alluded to. And I think more than ever, experienced folks with strong values who aren't afraid to have conflict, who aren't afraid to stand up for people is more important than ever. So we have lots of challenges in front of us. We're facing budget issues, as is every city. We continue to struggle um with housing and homelessness. Uh we need to continue to increase our public safety. All of those things that people have said, we've done amazing things in the last three and a half years, and there is more work to do.

SPEAKER_04 34:51

Streets are a big thing. Everyone keeps talking about streets. Um streets are huge. We pay a lot of money for our streets. I know it's it's we have to go with the lowest bidder, right? We do. Public bids are public bids, correct. But the lowest bidder has been switching between like three different companies.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Yeah, so some of the things, so my husband was used to be in the construction business, some of the things that happened around recessions, and he was in construction during the 90s, during you know, the 2010 recession, um, and saw that through is a lot of those companies consolidate. It is really hard for construction companies to make money. Um, and so we what we've seen is consolidation of bigger businesses, of bigger companies buying up smaller companies.

SPEAKER_04 35:38

But how do we make it so? Because I'm pro-union, I love the unions, how do we make it so that smaller union-based companies can bid on these projects and potentially bring the cost now? Because I know other cities have their infrastructure costs for their roads is way less than ours.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Sure. And and some of that is that they do their roads differently than we do.

SPEAKER_04 36:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

So when we do our roads, and you'll drive by some here shortly, we do what's called a complete street. So there are some places that go in and they grind down the road and they fix the road or they slurry the road and that's it. The top coat. The top coat. Or even they rebuild a road. When we rebuild a road, um, we take care of all of the underlying infrastructure as well. We take care of curbs that are broken, driveway even that are broken. We do the concrete work because how helpful is it if we come in and just do the street and we've left crumbling curbs and we've left other crumbling infrastructure. So we do that street completely, which means that street's gonna cost more than someone who just went in and repaved the street. Yeah. And so every city does that a little bit differently. And I think I can't answer the bigger question on how do you get smaller businesses to uh to bid for things. But what I will say is that not every business wants to do industrial municipal work. So District 5 is bigger than the city of Lakewood. Yeah, so 10.2 square miles in District 5. And again, different cities do their streets differently. We did not have any dedicated funding for infrastructure until Measure A passed in 2016. So we hadn't spent a significant amount of money on our roads in decades. So the level of deterioration that happened, um, we're still killing up to. Yeah. So this is next year though.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

This is next year, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

So this is Clark, and so phase one is almost finished. Uh-huh. Phase two will go south um from Spring Street down to Atherton. Uh-huh. And then after that, it will head back up north and cone it through the college to Delamo at our Lakewood border at our most northeastern part of the city. Uh will happen next year. Wow. So, and this is a project that got put we got pushed up a year because it's so bad. Yeah. So they were still finishing the design portion of this side. So they did the other two first.

SPEAKER_04 37:50

New bike lane.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

New bike lane, trimming the trees, the jack trees. The jackarandas are being trimmed.

SPEAKER_04 37:54

The bane of my existence. Jacarandas.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Yeah, us too.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

We've got one in front of our house. But come on.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

We made some cool improvements. So when the engineers were out here doing the rows, that they uh witnessed the fire station and that the fire engine came out at an angle every time. And they asked why, and they said because the pitch of the street, the truck hits the street. Yeah, yeah, it's like a low rider going over speed. Correct. So they s they they froze what they were doing up here and they worked with the engineers. Um, and our engineers got out there and redesigned it so that the pitch is perfect. So now feel the difference.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Um, so the pitch is different, so now the fire truck has those extra three or four seconds of heading out.

SPEAKER_04 38:32

Thanks, Belle. Yeah, but see, I mean, that's something that was something that happened in the middle of the project, right? Like, so so that of course costs a little more, but it it it will solve a problem and it will help in in the future in that. I just think the communication with people needs to be like this. And it's hard to do that. That's hard with 54,000 people with 54,000 people. Because if they understood it's happening, it's happening. Um, I think they would be a little more relaxed, it would bring them down a little bit. That's that's our field office over there. That giant palatial mansion.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Yeah, that the building 23 with 15 by 15 attached to the bathrooms. It's bathrooms on two sides of that building.

SPEAKER_04 39:16

It's a convenience.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Yes, a convenience. It it holds uh it holds a staff member or two, and we take meetings outside sometimes. Yeah. Um, you have to.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

I've seen people sitting on the bench out there taking meetings.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

That's what they do, and I am super proud of the work that we have done in the 5th district. We dedicated 48 acres of park space at Willow Springs Park.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

That is forever going to be a park. We will continue to work on it piece by piece.

SPEAKER_04 39:40

We were worried about Willow Springs for a while with all the space beach coming in, because Space Beach is great, but with all that stuff going in, uh I know the friends of Willow Springs, shout out to them. Yeah, absolutely. All the hard work they did. We wanted to continue that, and that becoming a park for me is huge. Yeah, huge. I I love that space. Uh, I do think we need more eyes on it. My favorite thing is I take people there all the time and they go, I have no idea this was here. Yeah, I've lived here 30 years, I didn't know this was here.

SPEAKER_00 40:11

It's one of my favorite questions to ask at different community meetings because we often talk about Willow Springs Park, probably at every meeting for some reason or other, because they have amazing events that are happening there. Um we were able to get a four million dollar grant to do some additional wayfinding and the trailhead project. Yeah. And so I I always ask who's been to Willow Springs Park. I just had a group of Cub Scouts in the other day, who's been to Willow Springs Park, and only one kid had been. But when I say, Hey, do you know where the old cemeteries are? Most people understand it. I say, it's that industrial property that you never knew was a park.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Well, even then, they'll know the park, but they don't know everything off the backside, they don't know the composting thing. Conservation core. Yeah. And that's such a great asset that we have in our community, and it's literally right down the street from my shop. It's so important to me that we have those green spaces, and we are spoiled in the fifth district. There's a park everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

There is a park everywhere, and that is unlike other districts.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

True.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

And so when we talk about everything that's right with the district, it's e it's really easy to concentrate on the concerns and questions and problems that we have. But when we look at the totality of who we are in District 5, we are very, very fortunate to have a lot of green open space, a lot of safe green open space, people, places for people to recreate. Um overwhelmingly safe in our neighborhoods. You know, not that we don't have issues. You know, I just got an email yesterday from someone that the catalytic converter got stolen and we've had our truck stolen from our house and those kinds of things. We know that those property crimes um do continue to happen, but overwhelmingly, we are not dealing with crime in the same way some of our other parts of the city are. But again, we are overwhelmingly uh fortunate in the 5th district. Yeah. Um Willow Springs is a great example of that. We're gonna continue to chip away and get more grant funding. We just asked for another federal grant. Yeah, that parking lot needs to do to do some work. Um but that's one of those great things that 30 years from now, when that is restored, completely restored wetlands and all of that that that I got to say. I got to do that. Yeah, I got to help the community make this a park forever.

SPEAKER_04 42:15

We're talking about things that are slipping, like we the sidewalk thing and what was written in the code and stuff like that slipping through the tracks. They we have one of the strongest noise ordinances for the airport in the country.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 42:30

I don't think people know that. I don't think we shop that enough, but there's a reason why we don't have commercial airplanes landing all hours of the night. And it was something put in years ago. Is it 10, 15 years? Oh god. That was 10 years ago, right? Yes, it was the 80s or 10 years ago, shut it. Um so I don't think people realize we do have that, and that's what saves us from a lot of large airplane noise. I think people shout about the airport quite a bit. There's different groups shouting about the airport. Um I do know their main complaint is the small airplanes. I don't think people realize we have a severe pilot shortage and we do need pilot strain. So there's that. There is something called fly-friendly skies, right? What pilots are supposed to abide by. How do we partner with the airport and these small airport uh or aircraft companies teaching people to fly because we know the benefits that we need them, but how do we partner as a community to get them to actually fly friendly over our be better neighbors? Be better. That's exactly it. Be a better neighbor. Um not just assume because our homes are near an airport that they can fly every way they want. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

So I'll just talk a little bit about it.

SPEAKER_04 44:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Um so the noise ordinance does not cover general aviation.

unknown 44:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:07

And only only the big ones.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Only the big ones.

SPEAKER_04 44:09

Let's explain it. General aviation and the correct.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

General aviation are the smaller planes as well as private planes, which sometimes are not so small.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Um, but they are not commercial. They're not coming out of our commercial term at all. Yeah. Um and so we call it the noise ordinance. It is actually a court settlement.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Which means it cannot be changed. And advocacy groups uh just recently tried to ask a judge to say, can we add one more thing to this? Can can this be covered even though it's not spelled out in the noise ordinance? Um and the judge said no twice. Um, so we welcome the clarification on that.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:47

And I think the thing that's important about the airport to remember is while we have control over the things on the ground, like the building and the size of terminal. We know people worked really hard to limit the size of the terminal uh back in the day out of concern for somehow disrupting the noise ordinance. Again, which no other airport in the country has. No, all of them would like it. Yeah. And that the FAA has not granted a single no a single noise ordinance like that since. So many airports have gone through the process, paying millions and millions of dollars of doing the research and presenting it to them and saying, we would like one. They have not granted a single one.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

No airports in all of those years.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

So and anything flying above the ground, everything in the air is not locally controlled. Correct. It is controlled by the federal government, it is federal airspace. We do not get a say over where and when. So that fly-friendly program, which is a voluntary program, because again, we can't tell people where to fly. We don't know what's happening in the sky. That is the FAA, that is the tower, telling people what they can do.

SPEAKER_04 45:51

Um some of the things with Thrive Fly Friendly Skies is not flying over schools, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Correct. So there's there's lots of runways, so so it's finding the safest path forward and making sure that the tower is directing them away from the community as often as possible. So using the runway that is more adjacent to the freeway, um, which the data bears out that that they are continuing to do that. Um, but that used to be a self-regulated sort of by the general aviation community themselves. And one of the things that we've done and worked on, uh we had a comprehensive report presented to council with a list of some recommendations of the things we can work on. And one of those was to kind of take that fly-friendly program in-house. And so now the airport staff and our noise officers with all of the data, hundreds and hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of data points, can work with each entity that chooses to be a good neighbor and work with them and say, here's what your practices are now. Can you do better in getting hired, turning quicker, all of those things? Yeah, um, and we've had some that have been very responsive and wanting to be better and we've seen improvement. Does everybody want to be a good neighbor? They don't, but we're gonna try to continue to be in conversation with them as a way to do that. Do we agree with it? Do we want them um flying over houses? I live in the pattern, um, so I know what it's like every single day. So we're doing the things that we can that are within our control. We got the noise, we were successful in increasing the fines for noise violations. Uh we're working on the unleaded fuel, which is really for me more critical than the noise. Um, yeah, we don't want lead dropping on our kids. Is lead.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

So um as a plane by as a plane. They're going to Hawaii.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Yes. They're going to Hawaii. That was a private plane. Um so the the the federal government is on track, supposedly, for 2030 Eagle Project transition for all general aviation to be on unleaded fuel.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

In the same way that um we have tried to ask them politely, go faster. I've gone to Washington, I've talked with the FAA, I have talked with the EPA as well, who's helping to make those rules, to go faster. Um, because it is not fast enough for us. One of the things we did is when we talked to general aviation folks, they said, well, you we have to have our planes inspected to be able to use unleaded fuel. We have to get a certificate that says it's safe to use unleaded fuel because again, they're in the sky.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

It has to be safe for them. Um and unleaded fuel still costs more than leaded fuel.

unknown 48:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

So we decided as an airport, we brought forth an item to um subsidize the cost of the inspection for your plane. We pay for that. We pay for the cost for the certificate to get your plane certified, and we're subsidizing the cost of unleaded fuel to match leaded fuel so that it would make it easier for pilots to choose it.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

We can't force it, we can't ban it. That is, in the uh the FAA passed that rule last year.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

We can't mandate it until 2030, which is when the federal mandate goes into effect. My bigger concern right now is that the current administration doesn't seem to advocate for clean skies, clean air, clean water, clean anything, basically. Um, so one of the ways that I continue to advocate with our federal partners, so our congressman, our Congressman Barragon, Congressman Garcia, um, our delegation in Sacramento as well, and our our senators Padilla, who's been really interested in this item, and Senator Schiff, is please keep that program on track.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

Don't let that become one of the things that goes away with this administration, which again is why voting your values matters, it's why paying attention to those things matters, because we need to hold tight to that 2030 for the safety of our community. And so we will shout from the rooftops at every opportunity that we would like this to move faster than 2030.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

But we need it to happen by 2030 and we need the federal government to commit to that.

SPEAKER_04 50:01

So, how do we communicate to our district about the work you are doing with these flight schools? And how do we communicate that they're being heard and you are on it?

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah, so I was the first council person to meet with the community advocates around this issue. We had heard about it before I was elected, um, sat down with the two co-founders of the group uh within the first couple months of being in office to talk about what does this really look like? How can we work together? Um, thank you for bringing the concerns. Let us figure out what we can control. I was new.

unknown 50:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

What can we control? Which was why we had that really comprehensive airport report um brought forward. And we said we can continue to be in conversation. They had talked about litigation. I said, I am happy to continue to be in conversation with you until then.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

And when you get a lawyer, we can't continue to be in conversation.

SPEAKER_04 51:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

And so for most of my time, it goes away from friendly and goes into legal. Correct, because I I am the city representative at that point. And you know, I consult with the city attorney, who that is her job. She is independently elected as well.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

Uh I confirming I cannot be in conversation while they are in litigation with us. Yeah. So that litigation just ended in January, the end of January, maybe early February. So there was not an opportunity to continue to be in dialogue because of litigation. I will say that, you know, the steps that we've taken around the unleaded fuel and supply-friendly and the increase in fines do demonstrate that we have been actively working on this for a while.

SPEAKER_04 51:43

It takes time.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Um working with the city attorney of what can we legally do.

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

And so we continue to have those conversations. I will, again, I will have a hard conversation with anyone. Um, we may not agree at the end of the day, but I'm certainly going to be really transparent about the work that we're doing. And I am proud that one of the co-founders and past president of that group supports my campaign wholeheartedly and fully and publicly because he understands that we're going to get work to get done better together because this is a federal fight for us.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

It isn't a local fight. One council member cannot. There are actually two council members that represent the airport. I am the one who is, you know, doing the legwork on this. Um, the mayor can't do this. This is not a city fight. This is how do we work together and talk to our federal um partners? And I will say, we pass along all of the airport-related concerns to um our congress members' representatives to say, hey, here are the things that we got this month, or we do it about every two months.

SPEAKER_02 52:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

And they often come back to us and say, no one has called our office. And so I think what we have to recognize.

SPEAKER_04 52:50

Are they relying on you to do that to make that call?

SPEAKER_00 52:53

Or they are, but they're elected too.

SPEAKER_04 52:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Yeah. So this is their jurisdiction, and they have the say-so and the oversight of aviation and the FAA. And so they need to hear from residents individually. It can't just be Meghan on behalf of the 150%.

SPEAKER_04 53:12

Because then it just sounds like too. It just sounds like they're saying it as opposed to the whole thing. Do you think when people see uh airports like Santa Monica and other places shutting down their um flight schools, did are they going, well, if they did it?

SPEAKER_00 53:27

They are, and that goes back down to we take federal grant money, we have federal assurances, we legally can't do that because it negates our federal grants. And so we all all of our airports run differently, which is why things like that report back. Um, we actually have an update coming from the airport on that this summer on where we've been. Uh, we've asked for a report to the um airport advisory commission on things like landing fees so that the public can understand what we're working with. Yeah. Because when someone emails our office or calls our office and says, Why don't you do this? We take that information to the city attorney and say, We got this suggestion. What do you think? Can we do this? And what has happened most often than not is here are the ways that that violates our grant assurances, and we are not allowed to do that. I really want to talk with folks who want to be in conversation about the realities in front of us so that we can work together to solve the problem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:24

Away from the airport, small business. Yes. This city is a mecca for small business. All my friends are small businesses because I'm a small business. I don't shop corporate, I stay away from the targets, the Walmart. She's not in the car, I'm just spouting my I I will not shop Walmart, I will not shop Target. But small business, I'm all about. What have you done and what do you plan on doing to increase small business in our district and to help them and help some of them still haven't recovered since COVID? Absolutely. Our restaurants, especially. What are we doing to help small business?

SPEAKER_00 55:06

Yeah, and it was just small business week last week. Yes. And one of our businesses, a home-based business, out of District 5 won a national recognition from the National Small Business Association. Yes. So um super cool. So I'm proud of the work that we've done with small business. We've introduced legislation to help streamline um special event permitting. If you already have a health permit here and a brick and mortar business that you're paying your fees, you shouldn't have to pay a fee to be part of a street event that's 50 feet from your restaurant. Right. Like those kinds of taking those small barriers away because we know the margins are so small, as you're saying, especially for restaurants right now. Um we are very blessed again in District 5 to have incredible small business corridors. Yes. Um, when I was a kid growing up in this neighborhood, Atlantic didn't look like that. Um, it was empty furniture stores and empty storefronts, um, and it has come such a long way. Yeah, and it is a real attraction for people outside the neighborhood and a benefit.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Yes. The Business Improvement Association and the team there has done incredible work to hype up and support businesses. Yes. And so what we get to do, um, we sit in on every one of those board meetings to make sure that we are present and hearing concerns and questions, um, able to solve problems and give updates. Because if you don't own a small business, you don't know.

SPEAKER_04 56:24

No.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

And I don't own a small business, so I'm not gonna pretend to know.

SPEAKER_04 56:28

It's a different animal.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

Yeah. And so we know that you know, my next door neighbor uh owns one of the businesses on Atlantic, um, and it's been great to see them um move in next door. They didn't used to live in the neighborhood and go to their business every day. Um, but it means something to know that many of our neighbors in our neighborhood are the ones operating those businesses on Atlantic.

SPEAKER_04 56:53

It feels better. Yeah, the meal tastes better when I go in and Luis gives me one of the biggest hugs in the history of hugs. Absolutely. And I'm supporting him, and I'm eating his grandmother's recipe.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

Right?

SPEAKER_04 57:04

Like that's phenomenal to me.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

Yeah, and yeah, so it's it's working with individual restaurants. So we all we have Bixby Nolls, obviously small businesses, um, Cal Heights as well along the Wardlow Corridor, but then we just drove by Norse Way and Viking Way on the east side of the district. So you have um innovators like at Wolf's Brew Coffee, you have Dilly Sandwiches, uh, and then you also had Village Cafe, who is like the bacon broil of that side of town. For as much as folks on this side of town bacon broil is their go-to breakfast for generations, village cafe is that same thing on the other side.

SPEAKER_04 57:37

I've been going to Dell since I can remember. Yeah, and it hasn't changed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

And so we've also uh Spring Street, a little more corporate over there, but we've got like family-owned ACE hardwares, yes, and restaurants and all of those things. Again, Fifth District is very blessed in this way, yeah. But that means paying attention to the things that they need, and that's the small things. You know, our restaurants especially have struggled, their margins are razor thin, we know that.

SPEAKER_04 58:03

Didn't get any better with tariffs and it sure did not.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

And so, you know, we've had restaurant owners call us and say, hey, this happened. Can you help?

SPEAKER_01 58:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

Um, restaurant wanted to put enhancements on their outside patio. I brought the director of planning to sit in their office with me, the director of planning, my chief of staff, and those owners and their architect and sketch out what is the most easily um approvable. How can we get this done really quick? Yeah, send this to us, we'll get it done. And so it's hand-holding businesses like that. Uh, a business had a mix-up on their utility bill, and they came into the restaurant, their gas was shut off.

SPEAKER_04 58:42

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

And they called the gas company and they said it takes um two to four days to get an appointment.

SPEAKER_04 58:47

And they're trying to run a business.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

And they're trying to run a business, they gotta open at four o'clock, and so they called us. And you know, we called the people we knew who to call and say, can you send someone over to turn on the gas? Yeah. And turn on the gas. Um, Village Cafe was having some concerns around their outdoor dining, and so intervening in ways that make the process easier or figure out where we don't need to do the process at all.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

And so it's being present and showing up very specifically to the individual needs of small business owners is something that we have done a lot of. I pride myself on a Norse way, which again is one of those mix of you have residents and and owners who've owned those buildings for 50 years, and then you got new innovative people who are trying to do pop-ups and those kinds of things. And so it has been heartening to be able to talk to them, but also the balance of these are the drivers of community, and how are we making their life as easy as possible? So we brought the economic development team to a business walk. We brought um the police department on our quality of life officers. We brought economic development, we brought people from the health department, we knocked on every business door and said, What can we do better for you as a city? Um because we know the bigger companies have opportunities and lawyers who can help them get through other things. Yeah, but it's those people with one or two or three business owners really need that extra support. And so we have shown up for businesses. Um, I think if you ask some of our business associations if we have been present, if we have um been responsive, uh they will say that we absolutely have.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:18

Um, I actually feel spoiled by it because I I feel I have more of a connection with you as a small business owner because we talk on both aspects of at the business side and the personal side. When it comes to businesses, like I said, like cost is a big issue. Like the margins are so small now. People are covering over COVID and then the tariffs, and then um the possibility of the sales tax going up, which I guess have just went down the last couple days here, to 11%, which will bring us up to the cerritos rate. Um, do you think that's going to impact them even more? Because now it's either the restaurant covers that cost or their people who are hurting are gonna have to cover that cost at an extra tax.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:06

So there has been no increase to the sales currently. Not currently.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

Again, voters have the opportunity in June to vote on a county measure.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

Um, and again, that is people need to individually vote their values.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:20

It's also people educating themselves, right? Correct. Because they think it's a Long Beach City Council thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:29

It is not.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

It is an LA County supervisor who put that on the ballot, I believe, two months ago. And so that is a countywide initiative that folks will have the opportunity to say yes or no to. And every city in the county will then adjust budgetarily to a yes or a no vote.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:50

Do you find this happens a lot though, that you guys as city council take the brunt of the impact because of a county thing.

unknown 1:02:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:01

Because no one knows.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:01

Correct. We're the easiest ones to blame, and it doesn't the conversation we're having today about these really hard things don't fit on a postcard. No.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:10

And so they It doesn't fit an hour-long podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Correct. Um so I think it is the levels of government and it is the willingness, and so people will vote in June, whether yes or no they support it, cities will adjust. Yeah. What the what I encourage people to find out on everything on their ballot is how it will have an impact. The city of Long Beach has said that without this passing, we will see probably a five to six million dollar reduction in money to our health department, which supports our most vulnerable residents. In addition to the federal HR 1, which is cutting money to health care, which will impact everyone. So when people lose access to preventative care, to keeping themselves healthy, they end up most often in emergency rooms.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

And we end up paying for it anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

Not just we end up paying for it, is we all use emergency rooms. They're by the grace of God go we not needing an emergency room today.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:15

But if in a couple of months, because of federal cuts in health care go down, we will see an increase in our emergency rooms. That is what our healthcare professionals are telling us. And so people need to decide how they would like to vote. That is entirely up to them, knowing full well what will stay and what will get cut as funds change.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:38

Speaking of community, we have one of the best men in this community ever.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:43

Tom! Tom, who runs our clean streets all around.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

Overall.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:50

Get some mulch.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:50

You have to get mulch? Willow Springs? Willow Springs to the mulch yards.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Yes, that's right. Yay!

SPEAKER_04 1:03:55

Love you, Tom! That's a great thing about the Fifth District. Yeah. Everyone wants to help. Tom even moved out of the Fifth District.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:03

And he's still coming.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:04

And he comes back to help. See, that's why I fell in love with the community.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:07

It's because of that. That community gets thrown around a lot.

unknown 1:04:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:11

But it's true community here in the Fit. Was everything from starting here to where you are now worth the drive? Like your community engagement, everything you've done, was it worth all the struggle, the fights, the the happy moments? Was it worth the drive?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Every day. Every day. I cannot say enough how much I would not have wanted to be raised anywhere else, but in this city. In this community. That I've told this to my kids. I said, you are better humans because of how long that you raised you. And that on our hardest days, when things are going the worst, is when this community shines. And we step up. Nothing, nothing demonstrates that more than a business that's broken into when we all show up the next day. Um, a family member who gets sick and people are bringing you dinners. Um people rally around you in ways here unlike anywhere else.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:21

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. I can't. I think we have an amazing conversation. I think people might get uh people to say, Hey, I know Megan a little bit more.