Long Beach calls Seal Beach racist, pulls buses - Local News - Orange County, CA - Santa Ana, CA

& Amid allegations of racism, Long Beach transportation officials say they are pulling their bus service out of Seal Beach in August because some community members "made it clear that our customers are not welcome." &

Long Beach transportation officials were offended by "deep seated ugly feelings" expressed during a community meeting in Seal Beach last May, wrote Laurence Jackson, president and chief executive officer of Long Beach Transit in a letter to Seal Beach City Manager Jill Ingram.

The meeting was called to discuss proposed changes to the buses and routes that affect the neighborhoods near Main Street. What happened at the forum depends on who is asked. Residents said concerns about the changes were expressed, and some were more emotional than others, but there were no racist overtones. Transit officials said residents made "colorful" comments and included references to "those people" coming into Seal Beach.

On Monday, Seal Beach was called racist again.

Two Seal Beach City Council members and a number of residents and bus riders from both sides of the border went to a Long Beach Transit meeting to ask its Board of Directors to reconsider pulling out the buses on the 131 and 171 routes.

"We sat through a meeting that was one like I've never sat through before, where we were told that we are racist and don't allow certain races to attend our beaches," Councilwoman Ellery Deaton said. "I finally went up, even out of order, and told them I was greatly offended. Because that is not Seal Beach and we should not be pictured that way."

The move to stop bus service from Long Beach into its Orange County neighbor will affect hundreds of residents from both sides of the county line -- hitting particularly hard those who depend on the buses as their sole means of transportation.

"It's about the passengers," Deaton told the community during a council meeting Monday night. "It's not about hurt feelings. It's not about difficult public hearings. It's about the handicapped. It's about the poor. It's about the senior citizens. And about the disenfranchised. And that's the message we want to bring them."

A change in bus routes was originally precipitated by the need for Long Beach Transit to retire its smaller red Passport diesel buses and replace them with larger compressed natural gas and hybrid buses that, because of their larger size, would not be able to make turns from the Alamitos Bay Landing Area in Long Beach "without significant modifications to the area." Transit officials wanted to have their 131 bus, which already comes into Seal Beach, follow another route that would go through the Bridgeport neighborhood -- a change in route the residents did not want.

"If we can't access Seal Beach over that (Alamitos Bay) bridge on the 131, we have to change our route," said Long Beach Transit spokesman Kevin Lee.

And the message from the Seal Beach community meeting was that the city did not want the route changed, Lee said.

"Whether anyone was offended or not, that's the reality," Lee said.

Long Beach Transit takes seriously its mission to "serve everyone in our community" but Seal Beach did not want to allow the access needed, Lee said. Long Beach officials are working with the Orange County Transportation Authority to ensure that their bus times coordinate for riders that need to travel from one city to the other, he said.

Riders affected include Seal Beach resident Jo Peterson, a senior who stopped driving when she suffered her first heart attack a decade ago.

"These past 10 years, I have relied on this transit system to take me everywhere I need to go and they have been there every time," Peterson said Tuesday.

Peterson is so confident about the Long Beach bus system, that when she experienced symptoms of another heart attack, she took the bus to the hospital.

"I did that because I knew that bus was going to get me there," she said.

Peterson attended Monday's meeting of the Long Beach Transit and said she felt board members were sympathetic to her concerns.

Paul Cabral, a disabled Seal Beach resident who rides the bus to Long Beach frequently, collected more than 300 signatures in a few days urging Long Beach Transit to reconsider.

"It's a hardship for me," Cabral said, referring to taking connecting lines between Orange County and Long Beach bus systems.

The feud between the two cities that straddle the Los Angeles and Orange County border began at the community meeting organized by Long Beach Transit. The meeting featured "angry, rude and unprofessional behavior," wrote Jackson, the Long Beach Transit president, in a letter to the city manager two days later.

"Community members and your city council member in attendance expressed vehement opposition to Long Beach Transit's proposed transit services in Seal Beach and made it clear that our customers are not welcome," Jackson wrote in the letter first published in the weekly Seal Beach Sun newspaper.

"Any bus service directly linking Long Beach & Seal Beach is not in anyone's best interest," he wrote in the letter.

Councilman Gordon Shanks, who attended that community meeting, said that Long Beach Transit officials got the wrong impression about him and Seal Beach residents.

Seal Beach officials have already apologized, Deaton said. And Gordon said another letter is in the works that will be signed by him.

Shanks, in an interview, said he was accused of being rude by people who were not at the meeting. He said people may have been testy because the rerouting of the buses into the Bridgeport neighborhood off Marina Drive has historically been "a touchy issue."

Shanks did not want to elaborate on the comments made because he said his goal is to "calm the waters" and have the bus service between the two cities continue.

Both Deaton and Shanks noted that local meetings can sometimes get heated when emotions are high.

"I'm so used to contentious meetings," Shanks said. "If you want to live in Seal Beach and have a happy life, you ignore (it.)"

Dr. Robert Goldberg, who lives in the Bridgeport neighborhood and also serves on the city's Planning Commission, said he does not recall "anything that smacked of racism or implied that we didn't want the bus service in Seal Beach."

Goldberg said he sometimes rides the two bus routes to connect with the Metro Blue Line and get to work in downtown Los Angeles. He called Jackson's letter an overreaction.

In Seal Beach, the goal is now to mend fences. And Long Beach Transit left a door open for further negotiation.

Bus service from Long Beach into Seal Beach is stopping August. 26. "We want to make sure that people understand that," Lee said.

But Jackson has also said, according to Lee, that "we would come back after the service change and talk to Seal Beach and see what we can do."

Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com and 714-796-7734

& & & &