The Brief

Children’s Hospital of Orange County is now the latest Southern California medical provider to stop offering gender-affirming care to youth, blaming investigations and escalating actions from the federal government.

The hospital, as well as other hospitals in San Diego and Riverside counties under the Rady Children’s umbrella organization, has said that it will stop offering gender-affirming care to patients under 19 effective Feb. 6.

The decision has forced patients to scramble to find health care in a span of two weeks or risk complications from a forced withdrawal from hormone therapy.

The backlash from community members has been swift after dozens of protesters recently hit the streets outside CHOC’s hospital in Orange to rally against the decision.

CHOC said it’s making the decision under duress to preserve funding for all its patients amid proposed federal rules that would pull all Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements for hospitals that offer gender-affirming care to minors.

“This was a very difficult decision, made to ensure we can continue serving all children and families across the communities we serve,” a CHOC spokesperson said in a statement to LAist.

But parents of CHOC patients who attended a rally Saturday opposing the move said that they were not consulted by hospital leadership for the decision. Some said they would have advocated for CHOC to preserve its gender-affirming care for all patients if they were.

Security guards stood watch over the rally from the roof of an adjacent CHOC-owned building.

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Haley Horton, a health care advocate who carpools to CHOC with trans youth patients, said the hospital's move was a “business decision.”

“ I know my son's nurse who's at this hospital doesn't want that happening,” Horton said. “I know the doctors at this hospital don't want this to happen.”

The background behind the decision

An ongoing concern for hospitals is the potential that their Medicaid and Medicare funding will be revoked if they offer gender-affirming care to minors.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are currently in the middle of a public comment period for two proposed rule changes that would stop the use of federal dollars for gender-affirming care for youth, and restrict all Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide the care.

Those rules have not taken effect and are expected to be challenged by LGBTQ+ legal rights organizations.

A CHOC spokesperson also confirmed to LAist that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office had launched an investigation into the hospital. Legal experts interviewed by LAist have referred to subpoenas and investigations launched by the federal government as “scare tactics,” and say that it’s possible they won’t hold up in court.

According to TransFamily Support Services, a San Diego-based organization that also protested the closure of Rady Children’s Hospital’s clinic in San Diego, the hospital system will continue to offer services like hormone replacement therapy to people 19 and older.

CHOC did not respond to a direct question from LAist asking the hospital what provisions were being made for families who now have two weeks to find another health care provider in an extremely precarious market. When Children’s Hospital Los Angeles closed its gender-affirming care clinic last July, administrators gave families a six-week off-ramp to find another provider, and many doctors wrote out prescriptions to tide people over for months.

What families are saying

Though Horton's son isn't trans, she said she has been in touch with the families she knows with trans teenagers who are patients at CHOC. She told LAist that those families did not attend the weekend rally in order to protect their mental health as they “scramble” to find alternate care.

The rally also drew turnout from elected officials and public figures, like Tustin School Board Trustee Allyson Muñiz Damikolas.

Damikolas said she came out on behalf of her kids, who are also patients at CHOC due to a complex medical condition, and to support trans youth nationwide.

Chris Kluwe, a former NFL player turned political advocate who’s running to represent Huntington Beach in the state assembly, said CHOC’s leaders were “cowardly bureaucrats who aren't willing to stand up and do the right thing” in the face of a “tyrannical federal government."

Chris Kluwe, who's running to represent Huntington Beach in the state assembly, showed up to rally against the CHOC clinic's closure.

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OC LGBTQ+  groups denounce the move

“ I'm a transgender woman and I'm here to tell you that denying people this gender affirming care doesn't make gender dysphoria go away,” said Stephanie Wade, chair of Lavender Democrats of Orange County. “All it does is make it metastasize into suicidal depression. And I've been there. I dealt with this as a child. We can't take this away from kids.”

Wade pointed to studies that show that trans youth who are denied access to gender-affirming care are more likely to attempt suicide.

Stephanie Wade of Lavender Democrats was one of many local LGBTQ political leaders attending Saturday's rally.

Felicity Figueroa, the chair of the Orange County Equality Coalition, called on hospital leadership to consult with the families and doctors, especially given that the proposed federal rules have not yet taken effect.

 “They're saying it's gonna affect the other kids who aren't LGBTQ,” Figueroa said. “But are they asking the parents of the other kids if they're willing to throw their neighbor's kids under the bus just because of a [possibility]? That's the thing. They aren't listening.”

Lasting concerns 

Brit Cervantes of OCGAPNet, an advocacy organization for gender-affirming providers in Orange County, said the closure of CHOC’s clinic would likely have ripple effects that could reverberate for years.

“ There's going to be a time where we exist beyond this administration, and we will have to work to rebuild this trust with our patients after we abandon them.  That is a very long lasting impact,” Cervantes said.

Cervantes, a medical professional, said that discontinuing hormone therapy can lead to major complications akin to what menopausal women experience.

In addition to the effects on local adolescents, the rally’s organizers also pointed to what they saw as a wider-scale erosion of rights and norms under the second Trump administration. It took place on the same day that ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis.

Speakers at the rally outside CHOC blasted the hospital leadership for capitulating to the Trump administration.

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Kanan Durham, executive director of the Huntington Beach-based nonprofit Pride at the Pier, linked the closure to “blackmail, intimidation and state violence” happening at other levels of the federal government, including the actions of immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis.

“ Suggesting that evidenced-based health care that is supported by every major institution in the Western world is medical fraud is to set a foundation where the government can decide who is allowed to have health care and who is not,” Durham said. “They are making decisions based on their own moral judgements. And if that's where they're coming from, then any American, anybody living in this country has their health care under risk.”

The backstory

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, which was the largest provider of pediatric gender-affirming care in the country, closed its Center for Transyouth Health and Development last July, affecting even patients over 19.

That was followed by other providers who said they’d stop or pause certain types of health care for trans youth, including Kaiser Permanente’s ongoing pause of gender-affirming surgeries and certain implants for people under 19.

Advocates say these closures are making it harder and harder for trans youth in Southern California to find the care that they need.

Pride at the Pier, OCGAPNet and TransFamily Support Services are also soliciting signatures for an open letter to CHOC and Rady’s leadership asking them to reverse their decision.

To weigh in on the CMS rule changes, visit this website.

Along the Arroyo Seco, on a strip of land where three cities come together, a fight is escalating over water.

Pasadena and South Pasadena are proposing to clean contaminated water from the channelized stream, but to build the necessary infrastructure, they’d have to remove nearly 140 mature trees, more than half of which are invasive and highly flammable.

And a portion of the cleaner water would end up irrigating a public golf course.

That fact has been a major point of contention raised by a group of residents on the Los Angeles side of the Arroyo. They have campaigned on social media and in weekly stakeouts to stop the project, which would significantly alter a small creek near the popular San Pascual Park.

Leaders of the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians-Kizh (Quiichi) Nation have also rejected the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse Project because the area is sacred and home to burial sites, said tribal chairman Andrew Salas. The tribe has opposed the project since its inception and sent a formal opposition letter last year.

“Long before the channeling of the Arroyo Seco, the natural springs, the sacred springs that were there, it was a traditional gathering place,” he said.

Though the city of L.A. itself has no financial stake in the project, one City Council member has called for the project to be abandoned.

The backlash has been so intense that the city of Pasadena recently hired a local nonprofit, Active San Gabriel Valley, to help with public outreach (the group supported the project when it was first proposed.)

Most everyone agrees that the Arroyo Seco’s water needs to be cleaned and that nature around it should be restored. But how to do that — well, there’s the rub.

Opponents of the project are hoping to protect a small creek in a densely wooded area that straddles L.A. and South Pasadena, near San Pascual and Arroyo parks.

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How we got here

The Arroyo Seco — or “dry stream” in Spanish — is a 25-mile winding stream that has little water much of the year but can swell to a torrent with rains. That’s why, in the late 1930s and '40s after devastating floods, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lined much of the channel with concrete.

Pollutants flow into the Arroyo from millions of homes and businesses and miles of freeways and streets that crisscross the watershed. The river has repeatedly received an “F” grade for bacteria contamination in report cards by nonprofit Heal the Bay.

Federal and state law requires California to identify and clean up water bodies that don’t meet quality standards. In 2010, the state adopted bacteria limits for the Arroyo Seco, and identified outfalls (essentially drains) with high levels of contamination. One of those spots was where the San Rafael creek flows into the channelized Arroyo, and it was within Pasadena’s city limits.

Over the years, Pasadena and cities along the upper Arroyo worked to develop a management plan — by 2016, it was approved by the state. In 2019, the cities of Pasadena and South Pasadena secured an initial grant for a joint project to clean water from the arroyo.

This spot where the San Rafael creek flows into the Arroyo Seco has been identified as having high bacteria levels.

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What will the project look like? 

The cities’ engineers identified two sites, both largely inaccessible or unused by the public. They dubbed the first the San Rafael site — about 1.4 acres in Pasadena where the San Rafael creek empties into the Arroyo Seco.

Just downstream, they identified a sliver of densely wooded open space in South Pasadena they thought could be rehabilitated. They called those 2 acres the San Pascual site. They developed plans for both areas to build wetlands with native trees and plants, walking paths, as well as underground infrastructure to treat the water for zinc and E. coli and filter out trash. Construction, they said, would take less than two years.

In recent years, Pasadena and South Pasadena secured nearly $15 million for the project.

Renderings of the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse Project

Renderings and maps from the draft environmental impact report show how the cities of Pasadena and South Pasadena plan to carry out the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse Project, if it goes forward.

Renderings show what the proposed San Rafael site, in Pasadena, could look like. At the bottom left, is what the site currently looks like. This site has little opposition, and would open a space currently inaccessible to the public.

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A rendering shows what the San Pascual site is proposed to look like. About a half acre of the site is within L.A. city limits, sparking controversy. At bottom left is what the site looks like now.

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This map shows the proximity of the two sites that make up the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse project proposed by Pasadena and South Pasadena.

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Opposition grows

One problem? About a half an acre of the San Pascual site is within the city of Los Angeles.

And about 10% of the water captured and treated would end up irrigating the nearby public golf course in South Pasadena, according to the draft environmental impact report. Today, water from the arroyo already helps keep fairways green at the golf course through a diversion that’s been in place since the stream was channelized nearly a century ago, officials said.

“It should be noted that the amount of water supplied to the Golf Course for irrigation will remain the same pre- and post-construction,” the draft environmental impact report states.

The blue icon on this map from L.A. County land records marks the strip of land that has generated the most controversy about the Arroyo Seco Water Reuse Project. These 2.2 acres straddle both L.A. and South Pasadena. There are no plans to alter the surrounding parks and baseball fields.

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The cities put together their first plans for the project in late 2023. But early on they did little community outreach on the L.A. side, and none in Spanish, and soon passionate opposition arose.

In 2024, Los Angeles resident Clara Solis sued the cities to stop the project. To avoid litigation, Pasadena agreed to do a full environmental impact report. In early May, the city released a draft for public comment.

But opponents like Solis say the revised plan is essentially the same and doesn’t go far enough to protect mature trees and existing wildlife habitat.

A few planks of wood and metal casing mark where water has been diverted from the Arroyo Seco to irrigate a downstream public golf course. The diversion has existed since the mid-20th century, when the arroyo was first channelized.

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A diversion from the Arroyo Seco that's existed since the late 1940s sends water from the river to this creek, which eventually goes underground to irrigate a downstream golf course.

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A wild haven in the city 

The San Pascual site is surrounded by several parks — the main section of San Pascual Park, on the L.A. side, just across the channelized river from the proposed project site, and Arroyo Park on the South Pasadena side.

On a recent weekend, the parks were full — people set up picnics on the grass, parents cheered as their kids played baseball. Runners made their rounds.

Solis has lived nearby for more than 20 years. When her children were growing up, they’d spot fish and frogs in the creek and sit under the trees, listening to the birds. Today, she and her dog, Summer, often see a blue heron.

Clara Solis, along with her dog Summer, picks up trash along the Arroyo Seco in June.

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To her, unlike the more manicured parks surrounding it, this spot is a rare wild gem in the middle of the city.

“ There's one huge oak, we call it the mother because it's so big, and she's going to get cut down, and it's just heartbreaking to us,” Solis said.

And construction will undoubtedly affect L.A. residents, whose neighborhoods are closest to the San Pascual project site.

“South Pasadena and Pasadena are not sensitive to the people of Los Angeles,” said Robert Acosta, who lives across the street on the L.A. side. “No one ever sent notification to me that they were going to do this.”

The mother oak.

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Small fish and tadpoles can be found in the creek running through the proposed project site near San Pascual Park.

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That’s why Solis and other volunteers launched the group Save San Pascual Park.

With the help of social media and local organizing, they built a movement and collected signatures. The group has accused Pasadena and South Pasadena of using the project to steal water and land from L.A. and say it's a case of environmental injustice.

The all-volunteer group Save San Pascual Park has been posting signs at the San Pascual site.

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In late May, the group successfully urged L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents the area, to formally oppose the project. The L.A. City Council sent her resolution back to committee.

L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Sen. María Elena Durazo had more success — they both sent letters requesting Pasadena extend public comment, which the city granted for 30 days.

But not everyone is against the project. Pilar Reynaldo, who has lived in nearby Garvanza for 14 years, fully supports it.

“ I have reimagined the Arroyo many times with the removal of invasives and the plantings of natives,” said the avid walker and certified master gardener, “and I'm really excited about this project because it would do exactly that.”

She argued that the planned sites would ultimately better support local wildlife — and nearby residents.

“The South Pasadena site has only been inhabited by unhoused people who have set many fires, which presents a real danger to the community,” she said. “ I've never seen anybody other than unhoused people and a man masturbating.”

Catching pollution at the source

On a recent tour hosted by Save San Pascual Park, a group of about a dozen people walked along the Arroyo Seco toward the San Rafael site upstream. Clara Solis pointed out a small pipe leading out of the San Pascual horse stables into the Arroyo.

Solis argues that stopping pollution starts at the source — such as the stables, Johnston Lake and a golf course upstream — not through large infrastructure projects after the fact.

A pipe and ditch directs water from the San Pascual stables towards the Arroyo Seco. It's one of many likely sources of high bacteria levels in the stream.

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Pasadena, though, argued that’s impossible — and that state law restricts their options. The city has tested San Rafael Creek and fixed leaky sewer mains, Pasadena city engineer Brent Maue said. Still, fecal bacterial levels remained high.

“We're forced under the law to reduce pollutants, and unless you can find the point source that's causing it, then you have to build a project at the compliance point, and that is where the water comes into the Arroyo Seco,” he said.

For decades residents, engineers, scientists and environmentalists have debated how to balance engineered flood and pollution control with restoring the Arroyo to a more natural state.

Tim Brick, executive director of nonprofit Stewards of the Arroyo Seco, has long pushed for restoring the stream to largely its original state to support wildlife and recreation. That could in turn improve water quality, as plants, trees and soils can filter out pollution.

Some projects have helped, he said.

“But the city [of Pasadena], particularly in recent years, has not done a good job of following through with maintaining the restoration projects,” Brick said.

An egret stalks food in the Arroyo Seco on a recent weekend.

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Clean water for a golf course?

On their recent tour, the Save San Pascual Park group carefully made their way along the dirt path within the proposed San Pascual site. They ducked under branches and warned each other of poison oak. Under the trees, the sounds of the city faded, replaced by chirping birds, rustling leaves and flowing water.

The group walked past a huge oak — Solis’s “mother tree” — as well as invasive and highly flammable tree of heaven and Mexican fan palms, many charred by a recent fire. Several ducks drifted in the creek. Some trash peppered the greenery.

“ I don't see the neglect,” said Mount Washington resident Yael Pardess. “I see the beauty. I see the potential, and I think it's a place that really makes you forget you're in L.A.”

Most of this spot is technically in South Pasadena, but Pardess said the community alongside L.A. City Council District 14 has hosted cleanups here and removed “truckloads” of trash.

Mexican fan palms dominate the San Pascual site. Many are charred black from a recent human-caused fire.

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Pardess contends that the area just needs maintenance.

“There's so much life in here, and we cannot eliminate this gem, even for the sake of clean water,” she said. “The solution for a park that is neglected is not to destroy it, it is to restore it. They don't have the money for that. They have the money to destroy it.”

The group reached the end of the trail, where the water pooled into a small pond. This is where the creek goes underground to the downstream Arroyo Seco Golf Course, a public and popular course owned by the city of South Pasadena with green fees of $29 or less.

Water not used for irrigating the golf course would go into the project’s infiltration basins, where it would seep underground.

“Depending on local geologic conditions, infiltrated water may contribute to groundwater storage, support downstream aquifers, or reemerge elsewhere as groundwater seepage over time,” Maue said. “In other words, the project changes the pathway the water takes, but it does not simply remove that water from the watershed.”

The proposed project calls for planting only native trees, unlike these towering Mexican fan palms.

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The creek running through the proposed San Pascual site.

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What happens next? 

For now, water quality regulators are not imposing fines, which could be as much as $10,000 per day, while they review the latest plans.

Reynaldo, the Garvanza resident, said she hopes a middle ground can be reached.

“It would've been great had the channel never been filled with concrete, but it was,” she said. “Now there are so many communities that have been built on the floodplain.  I think that perfect is the enemy of the good, and these projects do not impede on the possibilities of, maybe in the future, they are able to take some concrete out.”

LAist intern Sena Chang contributed to this report.

The World Cup mania continues, and we’d be remiss to not keep you up-to-date on where to check out all the games — whether that’s watching in person or tuning in. I am almost at my soccer-watching capacity, but I’ll admit this New York Times story about how hosting the World Cup in the Americas means every team is someone’s home team really got me.

Keep the party going post-Fourth with music picks from Licorice Pizza. On Tuesday, the legendary Don Was is at the Lodge Room, indie singer-songwriter Thomas Dollbaum is at the cool all-ages Pasadena venue Healing Force of the Universe, and Souls of Mischief play their first of two nights at Blue Note Los Angeles (they’ll be there Wednesday, too).

Also on Wednesday, Royel Otis plays the Greek, and Kurt Vile plays the Novo, or you can feel like it’s “so yesterday” and fly to the Forum for the amazing early-2000s bill of Hilary Duff with La Roux! That’s happening on Thursday, too.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can read up on how the White Stripes’ "Seven Nation Army" became a sports anthem, explore summer safety tips for grilling out and grab your tickets for Tuesday’s Moth Storyslam at Los Globos.

Events

L.A. Sparks vs. Indiana Fever

Wednesday, July 8, 7 p.m. 
Crypto.com Arena
1111 S Figueroa Street, Downtown L.A.
COST: FROM $92; MORE INFO 

Caitlin Clark's Indiana Fever will be in town this week.

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Arguably the biggest name in women’s basketball right now — Caitlin Clark — heads with her Indiana Fever to Crypto.com this week to take on the L.A. Sparks. If you need a break from all the soccer (hi, it’s me), swap it for some of the best basketball around.

Smoke Show with Jodie Sweetin

Thursday, July 9, 7:30 p.m.
Lyric Hyperion 
2106 Hyperion Ave., Silver Lake
COST: $17.85; MORE INFO

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Full House star Jodie Sweetin heads to camp with comedians Lisa Chanoux, Ify Nwadiwe and Jessica Saul. What started as a Netflix Is a Joke show has grown into a full competition where comedians compete in a series of themed challenges, and the winner is determined by you, the audience. There’s also a short meet-and-greet with Sweetin included.

The corpse flower bloom

Ongoing 
The Huntington 
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino
COST: $29; MORE INFO 

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Stinky and rare, the corpse flower is about to make its annual appearance at the Huntington Gardens. This year there’s a super unusual double bloom, so don’t miss your once-a-year chance to see — er — smell it. You can even livestream the bloom here. But there are many great reasons to go to the Huntington this summer, smelly flower or not. The third iteration of the museum’s Stories from the Library exhibit recently opened, where visitors will encounter rare materials that examine “how people have made meaning from imperfect objects and from the moon.”

Big Fan with Michael Schur 

Tuesday, July 7, 7 p.m. 
Chevalier Books
133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Larchmont
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Mike Schur will be discussing his new book this week.

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Fans of Michael Schur’s shows, like The Good Place and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, will want to check out his latest book with Joe Posnanski, Big Fan: Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love. In the book, the two friends travel and talk about baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football and many more pastimes. Schur will be at Chevalier’s for a conversation with writer and actor Mike O’Malley (Glee).

Postmodern Swing 

Thursday, July 9, 8 p.m. 
Culver City Foshay Lodge
9635 Venice Blvd., Culver City
COST: $14; MORE INFO 

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Marina Zvada

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Lindy hop your way into America’s 251st year with a night of dancing to some artists you might not think of when it comes to swing music — like David Bowie, Talking Heads, Hall & Oates, George Michael, and even Vampire Weekend and Olivia Dean.

Bottle Rocket 30th Anniversary 

Monday, July 6, 7 p.m. 
David Geffen Theater
Academy Museum
6067 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile
COST: FROM $5; MORE INFO

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FilmGrab

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The summer of Wes Anderson in L.A. (this weekend is the two-night Hollywood Bowl celebration) kicks off with a 30th Anniversary screening of Bottle Rocket at the Academy Museum. The director himself will be there, plus actor Luke Wilson and producer James L. Brooks will also appear. It’s sold out, but there may be standby tickets available day-of.

At the intersection of Sunset and Rampart, on the Silver Lake/Echo Park border, a taco stand is attempting to run an In-N-Out playbook with Sonoran asada.

This is Tacos Royale, and it may be the most ambitious taco in Los Angeles right now — a tight menu, total ingredient obsession, and cult branding, down to the red-and-yellow, lowrider-script on everything. Founder Saúl Pérez García calls it "a fine dining or steakhouse experience in a taco. For $7."

Tacos Royale sets up on Sunset Boulevard near the Silver Lake–Echo Park border, Thursday through Sunday.

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That's the bet: In-N-Out's discipline and cult devotion, but built on USDA Prime over mesquite instead of a 99-cent burger.

It's only been open since mid-June, Thursdays to Sundays, but his ambition is to create a chain that's as big as "10% of In-N-Out" — about 80 locations across America, drive-thrus and all, family-owned and never franchised.

His background 

Pérez is no newcomer to L.A. kitchens. He's a self-taught cook who likes to call himself a "creative entrepreneur." When Pérez is not slinging tacos, he runs his own furniture and interior design business. He's also worked at The Butcher's Daughter in Venice, Ceviche Project, and chef Enrique Olvera's ATLA and then launched the Sinaloa-Chinese mariscos truck La Hija del Marondo at 8th and Grand.

He says the Tacos Royale branding has been carefully crafted. "I'm trying to innovate in a retro brand," Pérez said. "Old-fashioned lettering with a modern Cali style. Traditional, modern Cali taquería."

Even the drinks get the full treatment: house-made coconut horchata, bottled in Tacos Royale's lowrider-script branding.

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He developed the name himself and hired an artist from Mexico City to hand-make the logo, landing somewhere between Southern California lowrider script and the red-and-white, neon-lit taquerías now everywhere in Mexico.

What sets the food apart

Pérez's whole operation runs on two things: "Good meat, good tortilla."

A cook grills carne asada over mesquite charcoal at Tacos Royale, a technique central to the Hermosillo style.

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The tortilla is made privately for Royale by a tortillería in Sylmar, created with his cousin — chef Eloy Aluri from Hermosillo — using an ancestral four-ingredient Sonoran recipe: wheat flour, beef tallow, salt, water. The meat is USDA Prime, cooked low over mesquite charcoal, rested and finished in the pan, never burned.

"If you do a taco with no charcoal, it's not Hermosillo style," he said. Even the salt is sourced: sun-dried Colima sea salt, from Mexico's Pacific coast, which he calls "the purest salt in the world."

USDA Prime steak, grilled over mesquite and finished with Colima sea salt — sourced from Mexico's Pacific coast, which founder Saúl Pérez García calls "the purest salt in the world."

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The OG taco's add-on is the veneno — Sonoran beef cracklings cut from the trim off each Prime chuck roll, slow-fried in beef tallow and finished over charcoal.

"It's beef chicharrón, not pork," Pérez said.

It eats savory first — heavy on salt and smoke — with a faint sweetness from the rendered fat, like beef-flavored peanut brittle seen through the lens of a traditional chicharrón.

Beneath the meat sits a thick layer of "Signature Party Beans" — made with beef tallow, California chile, Peruvian beans, and cheese. Pérez named them for the frijoles de fiesta served at Sonoran celebrations — baptisms, quinceañeras, weddings.

The price question

This isn't cheap: $7.49 a taco, $15.75 a burrito, combos at $24.75. For comparison, an In-N-Out Double-Double runs about $6 — less than a single Royale taco — and a Double-Double combo lands around $11, less than half of Royale's. Pérez makes the case on ingredients: each tortilla costs him about 60 cents, compared to a nickel for a standard one, and his Prime runs roughly three times the price of regular taqueria beef.

"How much are you spending at In-N-Out for a combo?" he said.

He frames Royale as "an affordable luxury taquería" — and points out his customers, the ones returning three and four times a week, aren't looking for the cheapest taco in town. Whether the rest of L.A. agrees is the open question.

Get out your calculators, Long Beach. It’s budget season, and you have an opportunity to weigh in on how your tax dollars should be spent. Your voice could be especially important this year as the City Council decides how to close a multi-million dollar deficit that top administrators say will force the first round of serious cuts in years.

The city on Wednesday released its schedule for adopting the 2027 budget, and it includes five community meetings where you can get up to speed and give feedback.

• Wednesday, Aug. 5, 6 – 7:30 p.m. — Virtual (Zoom)
• Thursday, Aug. 6, 6 –7:30 p.m. — Charles Lindbergh Middle School Auditorium, 1022 E. Market St.
• Saturday, Aug. 8, 10 –11:30 a.m. — Silverado Park Community Center, 1545 W. 31st St.
• Monday, Aug. 10, 6 – 7:30 p.m. — Renaissance High School for the Arts Auditorium, 235 E. 8th St.
• Thursday, Aug. 13, 6 – 7:30 p.m. — Long Beach City College, Liberal Arts Campus, Room T1200, 4902 E. Carson St.

How the budget works

The budget is one of local government’s most central documents, adopted each September, in which the city projects how much it will spend in the coming year on day-to-day services like policing, firefighting, garbage collection and street lighting, and how it will raise money to pay for them.

Budgets must be balanced — the city cannot spend a dollar unless it has identified a way to bring one in. To cover any deficit, officials must raise revenue, cut expenses or draw from reserves.

The city charter requires that the mayor release his proposed budget by Aug. 2, though it’s expected he will release it on July 30; City Manager Tom Modica will formally present the plan to the City Council on Aug. 4 and council members are expected to adopt the budget on Sept. 8.

Throughout those 40 days, officials and the public will deliberate — or scrutinize — the plan in a series of hearings and listening sessions, inviting department leaders one at a time to make their pitch on what they want and coming out with a final plan on how best to spend a limited amount of money.

Here’s the schedule for all those hearings:

• July 28 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Aug. 4 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Aug. 4 — Budget Hearing, 5 p.m.: City Manager’s Proposed FY 27 Budget; Human Resources
• Aug. 11 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Aug. 11 — Budget Hearing, 5 p.m.: Police; Fire
• Aug. 17 — Budget Oversight Committee (public comment only), 5:30 p.m.
• Aug. 18 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Aug. 18 — Budget Hearing, 5 p.m.: Health and Human Services; Community Development
• Aug. 25 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Aug. 25 — Budget Hearing, 3 p.m.: Parks, Recreation and Marine; Library, Arts and Culture
• Sept. 1 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Sept. 1 — Budget Hearing, 5 p.m.: Public Works; Proposed Capital Improvement Plan
• Sept. 8 — Budget Oversight Committee, 1 p.m.
• Sept. 8 — Budget Hearing, 5 p.m.: Budget Adoption

There will be agendas and live-stream links posted here.

What’s at stake this year

It’s a rougher-than-usual time for the city, which last year relied on reserved cash to even out a $40 million deficit. At a City Council meeting in April, the city manager said it’s “going to be a difficult year” and that the shortfall “is going to require general fund service reductions” — the first cuts of that scale since the pandemic.

Reductions, he said, are almost inevitable in 2027, and the council will need to hear out and come to an agreement on what should be cut to return to solvency. Officials projected a $61.3 million deficit this spring, driven by a steep drop in sales, property and utility tax revenue along with flat or diminished state and federal grants. Separately, the city faces pressure from rising payroll costs tied to workplace injuries, sizable liability payouts, and damage and vandalism to public property.

Last year, the city approved a $3.7 billion budget, most of which must go towards specific needs and cannot be used freely. Instead, the bulk of the annual jockeying centers on the city’s $760 million general fund.

More information on the budget process and community meetings is available here.