About The Long Beach Recovery Act
What We’re Doing
On March 16, 2021, the City Council approved the Long Beach Recovery Act, becoming one of the first major cities to approve a COVID-19 recovery program utilizing federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. The Long Beach Recovery Act includes ARPA and other funding sources to support programs in three main categories through December 2024. The Long Beach Recovery Act funds a number of major economic, public health, and fiscal initiatives for Long Beach residents, business owners and workers critically impacted by the pandemic. LBRA embeds an equity lens to identify the unique needs of the community and includes funding for specific programs, outreach, language access, and digital access to ensure that the Recovery Act will assist all of those in need throughout Long Beach. The Recovery Act provides funding to support three targeted categories - Economic Recovery, Healthy and Safe Community, and Securing Our City’s Future.
Who We Are
Following the adoption of the Recovery Act, the Long Beach Recovery Act Management Team (Recovery Team) was formed to provide overall management, control, and oversight of the $251.8 million programs, a sum larger than the entire annual budgets of many California cities. The Recovery Team is led by Special Deputy City Manager for Recovery, Meredith Reynolds, reporting to the Assistant City Manager, and is made up of sub-teams to provide management of more than sixty recovery programs across eight City Departments.
This team will manage, implement, and evaluate the programs outlines in the Long Beach Recovery Act using a collective impact approach to ensure that the City's activities are mutually reinforcing.
Recovery Act Focus Areas
ECONOMIC RECOVERY
The Long Beach Recovery Act allocates resources to the City’s Economic Recovery Strategy for an effective, efficient, and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategy focuses resources on the areas of the economy that have been most impacted, seeks to relaunch business sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, and proposes ways to strengthen revenue generation and leverage consumer spending to promote lasting economic growth. The City’s effective and efficient economic response is targeted, data-driven, and equitable. The Long Beach Recovery Act will focus investments on activities that will provide the most benefit to business owners, workers, and residents in Long Beach.
HEALTHY AND SAFE COMMUNITY
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing structural inequities across the country, having an inordinate impact on our most vulnerable and historically underserved communities. The Long Beach Recovery Act has been developed with equity front and center to address the highest needs of community members most adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Creating a healthy and safe city for all communities is the second pillar of the Long Beach Recovery Plan, and these programs and services will focus on addressing the underlying social determinants of health and prioritizing the needs of those who have been hit hardest by the pandemic.
SECURING OUR CITY’S FUTURE
The City has faced severe budget impacts due to the public health and economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The City ended FY 20 with a significant budgetary shortfall and has taken necessary actions to balance the budget, including drawing down operating and emergency reserves, cutting departmental budgets, and implementing up to 26 days of staff furloughs. In addition to these budget cuts and revenue losses, the City incurred substantial emergency expenditures for COVID-19 emergency response, given that the City operates its own public health jurisdiction. The Long Beach Recovery Act invests in the fiscal stability of the City to ensure the long-term resiliency of our community.
