marxbros Groucho, Chico, Harpo, call your office. On Sept. 19, the very last day for him to act, Mayor Bob Foster vetoed part of the budget that he forwarded from city management to the City Council in July without offering a dissent on what he just vetoed. (LBReport.com coverage, click here).

Wait, there’s more. The items Mayor Foster vetoed last night were, it appears, part of the budget that the Council passed while Foster sat in the Mayor’s chair on Sept. 14 but didn’t dissent on the vetoed spending five days before he vetoed it.

Wait, there’s more. A FY11 replenishment police academy class, proposed by management in July disappeared in September because some on the Council think they’re saving about 12 sworn officers (exact number pending) which will actually only last until some officers (as expected) retire or exit in the coming months, at which time police levels for taxpayers will fall further.

Wait, there’s more. LB City Hall blames the police cuts (and firefighter cuts and other cuts) on city employee unions that thus far haven’t agreed to change contracts that they already changed last year — which Mayor Foster championed as affordable but now calls unaffordable pretending they were once affordable despite their oppressive taxpayer costs.

At the same time, Mayor Foster declined to veto the following items:

  • $250,000 from LB’s depleting Tidelands Fund for the Aquarium, not for a required debt bond payment but a discretionary sum for an Aquarium-desired “saltwalter intake system.” A few weeks after Councilmembers voted to approve this, they fought at budget deadline over a fraction of the sum to try and restore some lifeguard (lifeguard!) services.
  • $355,000 General Fund for the LB Arts Council, a sum that includes a $25,000 addition beyond what city management proposed (following several years of reductions). The $25k was sought by two of Mayor Foster’s Council allies, Councilman Robert Garcia and Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, and Mayor Foster left the $25k topper and the six figure principle untouched. Among the Arts Council’s recent accomplishments: allocating $60,000 in Redevelopment (“blight fighting”) funds for this temporary masterpiece at Ocean/Elm.
  • A mystery sum we believe to be approx. $150,000+, not itemized anywhere we can find it but obviously camouflaged somewhere, to pay the privately run LB Museum of Art Foundation to continue running the publicly owned LB Museum of Art (2300 Ocean Blvd.) under contract with City Hall. This comes a year after LB taxpayers were left holding the bag for $3 million (a debt bond sum used to expand the city owned facility) that the Foundation said it wasn’t legally obligated to pay despite its verbal (non-legally binding) pledges at the time the Council incurred the debt in 1999 to raise the money so City Hall/taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay.

Harpo, honk the horn!