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LongBeachCC_10152019_19-1023

Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that, we are concluding public comment. We're going to go to item 12, please, and then the hearings. Actually. Actually, no, we're going to do the hearings and they're going to go out and we're going to go to 12 and 13. Speaker 1: Hearing number one report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record, include the public hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions on the application of Marina wine at 194 Marina Drive Suite 1214 Entertainment Without Dancing District three. Speaker 0: Luciano. It's required. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Please raise your right hand. You and each of you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. Speaker 0: Okay, Mr. Modica. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. Right. Jackie's business services officer and Emily Armstrong will be presenting the staff report. Speaker 12: Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. Tonight you have before you an application for entertainment without dancing for relevant ink doing business as Marina Wine located at 194 Marina Drive, Suite 101, operating as a restaurant with alcohol in Council District three. All of the necessary departments have reviewed the application and have provided their recommended conditions as contained in the hearing packet. I stand ready to answer any questions Council may have, and that concludes staff's report. Speaker 0: Can I get a second, please? There's a motion or secondarily a public comment. Mr. Morris and Mr. Goodhew. Mr.. Good to you here. No, Mr. Morris. Speaker 8: Mr. Mayor, I don't know. With Miss Price not being here, I'm not sure whether she can hear it. Okay, great. My name is John Morris. I'm a partner, general manager of Boathouse on the Bay at 190 Marina Drive. I'm not here today to oppose the entertainment permit, but I am worried about today's. This has been an ongoing issue at the boathouse for five years regarding this establishment, which Stuart just bought maybe nine months ago. I don't blame Stuart one iota for what he's trying to accomplish. I'd be doing exactly the same thing he's doing. But unfortunately, I think what we're going to do is going to add more problems to the existing problems we already have today. They just said it's a restaurant bar. He has no kitchen. He has no restrooms. He's built a 20 foot wide or 15 foot wide garage door that bleeds out to his patio now. So I know one of the conditions are that you have to have the entertainment inside. Well, I know exactly what he's going to do. An entertainer is going to have his feet right on the line of the inside of the building. And he's going to be playing to a total audience of inside and outside. Well, before it was just inside. The vast majority of these people go to the restrooms. He has one. He has a key for one bathroom upstairs. London boats, which has 25 duffy boats right around the corner from me, has no bathrooms. They use the same key to go to the same bathroom. I'll just tell you right now. What do you think? They're all going to go into the boathouse? And I would do the same thing and use the bathrooms at the boathouse. Aqua Link. 14,000 people wrote our link in the month of August. No bathrooms. Guess where they're going? The dock is next to the boathouse. I don't know what to say that. I just want to make sure that conditions, whatever they may be, they have to be put in place. They have to be followed up on. Being 20 years on Pine Avenue within in segment license I had, you could never get rid of the bad guys. Nobody would ever do anything. Nobody is held responsible when they're going overboard with the music. We pay $450,000 in rent annually in that location. The wine bar is going to pay 25,000. He has maybe one or two employees. We have 90 employees. I'm just concerned. And my license is ten feet away from his patio. I'm license in the courtyard. I don't know whether the staff knew that. We use that courtyard all the time for banquets and it's tied into our banquet room. So there's already a clash. I've lived and breathed this stuff for 40 years in this city. I had my first restaurant I built here in 1979. I know what the issues are and how the remedies are, and it's a very slow process. So I just want to make sure there's a method that we can come to with the city to have somebody license taken away, not in a nine month, one year, 18 months, two year fashion. If it's creating a negative impact, it needs to be addressed. And I'd like to recommend maybe putting a committee together of city staff, the financial staff or whomever puts out an entertainment license that they meet on a quarterly basis and discuss other issues to where that can be addressed immediately and not get aggravated. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Morris. So let me go go back to. There was a. Can I get a motion, please? And let me go back to Councilman Price. Speaker 6: Do we have staff that's prepared to talk? I only caught the tail end of Mr. Morris's comments as staff prepared to address that issue because I agree with him. It's it's really difficult for us when someone's not following the rules in terms of entertainment at their establishment. My staff and I have tried to do our own like counter-surveillance measures. And it just so turns out every time we go to a place, there's never music playing when we show up. So can you address that? Speaker 12: Yes. So we appreciate Mr. Morris comments. And we know this has been an issue in the past. The entertainment permit that we're recommending tonight does have a condition that does state that all entertainment has to remain indoors, so any doors or windows have to remain closed during the hours of the entertainment. And I know that garage door concept was a concern of yours. So that is addressed in the entertainment permit. And we also work with PD on these issues. So if issues were to come up regarding the entertainment, they do contact us right away and we stay on top of those issues and stay in touch with them. Speaker 6: Okay. And thank you for that. I appreciate that. You know, I will be watching this issue very closely and working with our acting city manager on making sure we have a swift response when we do have complaints, because we also have a lot of live awards in that area. And I do know Mr. Morris's business is fortunate to have received an entertainment permit, and we do monitor and very responsive to calls or complaints that we get from liveaboard with with that business. And we would not that we've gotten any complaints. But in general, we want to make sure that we're treating all businesses the same in terms of what they are allowed to do in their operations and how it impacts everyone else. So that's absolutely important. I want to talk about this particular item I'm in supportive of this item. I've met with the new owner of this business. I will say I was extremely disappointed in the practices of the previous owner since they were completely out of compliance with the city's rules and expectations. No permits were sought in the manner that they were supposed to be. And I have been personally assured by the owner, the new owner, that that won't happen. And I feel very confident. We've also been working with the tenant at that location to ensure that the signage for bathroom facilities and other public access points are made clearer so as not to impact other businesses in that shopping center. And I will state right now for all time this will be recorded, that it's my expectation that every business owner with whom we do business in that shopping center understands that having an entertainment permit and other conditions associated with running a successful business there. Comes with it. A lot of responsibility. And that responsibility is both to the city, to the residents and to the other businesses in the area. We expect you guys to work together in a friendly competition in order to ensure all of your successes. That entire area is changing. Tremendous opportunity for all of us. And I think that if we're working together within the rules and helping one another be successful, everyone serves a different interest in that. It's a very diverse set of businesses there, and they serve different populations. And so I want us to be able to work together and make sure that we are respectful of the impacts that our business model will have on the other businesses. So with that, Stewart, I completely would you like to say a few words? Speaker 12: Councilwoman Price We just wanted to ask within this entertainment permit, we can add a condition regarding the signage for the bathrooms, if that's a concern for the parties involved. Speaker 6: I think I don't think anyone would object to that. I think signage that clearly marks where the public restrooms are would be great. And I understand there there were reworking some of the signs because it before it said bathroom for tenants and the average customer doesn't know what that means. So I think we're changing it to have London Vote Rentals and marina wine specific signage. Speaker 2: Okay, great. Speaker 8: Yes, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Stewart Nakahara and the new owner of the Marina Wine Bar. I just want to thank you, Councilwoman Price, for all your help and Lisa West in your. Speaker 4: Office. Speaker 2: For all. Speaker 8: The help that. Speaker 4: You've given me throughout this process. And I do know it's a long. Speaker 8: And tedious process with a lot of information. The first thing that I'd like to address that came up are the bathroom situations, because that's something we've really worked hard at trying to fix. We've been having meetings with the Counsel's Office as soon as or as recent as last Monday to come up with maybe changing the even the traffic flow. So instead of sending people out our front door to go to the restrooms, that goes right past the boathouse, front doors to send them along this other corridor that we have that leads them straight up to the stairs where our bathrooms are with a big. Speaker 4: Sign that says Marina Wine Restrooms upstairs. Speaker 8: So we think just maybe changing the traffic flow will help a lot of that and push people away from the front door, from the front or the boathouse instead of coming up through through our ways. So that's one thing that we're working on. And I believe the artwork for the sign is done and I'm not sure if it's been ordered yet, but I know that everyone's signed off on it and gotten it ready to go. As far as the other stuff that we talked about, to Mr. Morse's point that you made earlier about music being outside and with the previous ownership not necessarily in compliance. If you're familiar with the area, about a year ago there was an outdoor stage that was built on an exterior platform out in the out in the courtyard that music faced out from the parking lot and it wasn't shielded by any sort of buildings was surrounding. It was just there echoing out in competition with a lot of the other noises that were out that were coming from Milanese and a couple of the other spots. One of the first things that we did is we tore that out and got rid of it and moved the entertainment inside. We do have a large garage door that we put in that rolls up that extends indoor to the outdoor. We created a music performer's area inside. We don't have any speakers outside anymore. We also got in all of that. My goal in this wine bar is not to be a rock bar or a club. It's a place that you can sit down and have a glass of wine or beer and not have to shout to be heard. So our goal isn't to create music that is exuberant and, you know, beyond our whatever. I think it's 50 feet from our patio. That's that goes straight to the boathouse. We've been really, really diligent about making sure we don't have speakers in that area and that we are being good neighbors. There is a lot of entertainment in that area. Milanese, I know, has a speaker that they put outside that faces us toward the parking lot, the boathouse area. Their music is on the backside. So we don't really hear them and I don't think they hear us. But there are customers coming in and out do so we just try and be really aware of of that situation. Where we're located is right in the center, right at the entrance. So I feel like it's our responsibility to put together a good foot forward, not just for us, but for the complex as a whole. So that's my goal. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Stuart. I do have to count someone else, if anything. Okay. There's no other public comment. I just want to add one thing. One is I want to congratulate you, Stuart, first of all, and thank you for your ownership. Obviously, you have a love of Long Beach in the community. I also just more broadly and I want to agree with Councilman Price just more broadly to the staff. There is so much happening at this location. And so I just would be interested and maybe Councilman Price might, you know, might be more plugged in. But just from the parking perspective, what's going on with the slips out there, the public restrooms, the the amount of folks that are coming down to what I think is a very successful enterprise and restaurants and bars? I'd love to understand that a little bit more because I think that obviously we have we are the major stakeholder in that area. And and is there a is there a planning process underway or what what's what is happening? Speaker 10: Yes, there is absolutely a lot going on down there. There are it's kind of a victim of our own success type of approach. It has become so active with so many great businesses coming in that there are some conflicts between the multiple different uses down there the boaters, the the visitors, the businesses. And so we are actively working on it with the groups. It is city property down there, but it's also privately managed by a group called Bandcamp. And then we have all of the city assets that are there. So we are currently in the process of really working on the parking because that is one of the larger issues . But we're also working with Mr. Morris and others on issues related to bathroom access. So a lot is going on. We can certainly give you more updates. And and Councilmember Price has been very plugged. Speaker 0: In as well. I just want to I know that as as second PCH opens in the next 30 days and the San Pedro Fish Company opens not to not to long after after that or may be open very soon. This is this has become for from a city perspective, one of our city's biggest success stories. I think just just this this area that is really a city asset. And so I'd be interested I know from a from a. Attraction perspective and from a place that is, I think, doing so well. I'm glad to hear that we are trying to take a more comprehensive approach to everything that's happening, and particularly the patterns of where the public is going. Because I have attempted on many occasions to head down there and, you know, if you're persistent, you you'll find a spot and you'll get there. But it is very successful, which is really great. So so thank you. Thank you, Stuart. And there's a motion and a second to conclude the hearing and go ahead and adopt the with recommendations and the conditions. So please cast your votes.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions on the application of Relevant, Inc., dba Marina Wine, at 194 Marina Drive, Suite 101, for Entertainment without Dancing. (District 3)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10152019_19-1032

Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're moving on to item 12, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Price, Councilmember Pierce, Councilmember Superdog Council Member, your UNGA recommendation direct city manager to provide an update on the implementation of the Long Beach ban on single use food and beverage containers. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 6: Thank you. And I'm going to turn it over to staff for their staff report on this item. And I think I'll have a few follow up questions after. Speaker 10: Thank you, Councilmember Price. The timing of this request from council was very fortunate. We were in the middle of doing an update, so this worked out very well. We happy to give you an update of the progress of the ordinance implementation so far and what's next to come. And then I understand in the next agenda item there's a potential to give us some additional direction. So with that, I will turn it over to Craig Beck. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Modica. Good evening. They are members of council. We appreciate the opportunity to come before you and share all the results that are happening relative to the expanded polystyrene ordinance that was implemented by this council. There we go. So adopted in April of last year, the polystyrene ordinance really put in place this city's goals to try to reduce pollution and address some of the issues. Polystyrene. The Council asked to move forward with an implementation over three different. Speaker 0: Phases and those phases. Speaker 9: Addressed different type of of food establishments. Phase one included all city facilities. Phase two were are large food providers in phase three were are small food providers in that is coming up here in December. So we thought it was a good time to check in, share what's going on and. Speaker 0: Why we believe we're having a lot of. Speaker 9: Success with the implementation of the ordinance. So I'm going to ask Deacon Marconi and to run through some of the specifics of what we've been doing. Good evening, Honorable Mayor. Members of the Council, I'm here to provide you some updates on what we've been doing with the ordinance and what we're going to be continuing to do. And I'm very excited to do that. It's hard to believe that this council requested this ordnance already. One and a half years ago, on September 3rd of 2018, we reached phase one in this phase included city facilities and permitted special events. And I'm really proud to say that we have 100% compliance and all our city facilities with this ordnance that includes the airport and all the restaurants within the airport, the Museum of Art, the Golf Courses, Aquarium Convention Center. And we still have a few challenges with permitted special events, mostly centered around food trucks that are given their licenses outside of Long Beach that aren't made aware of our ordinance. So we're working on that, but we're excited to see the success of Phase one. Phase two included larger restaurants as defined by the city council as being 101 people or more seating 401 people or more and franchised restaurants. That includes our subways and Starbucks and McDonald's and Jack in the Box. And it's interesting that many of these chain restaurants were already in compliance. There have already been some pressure on these restaurants, too, to steer away from polystyrene. So the subway's Chipotle Starbucks, jack in the box, McDonald's, all these chains were already in compliance. We did have a few like Chick fil A and 7-Eleven that requested specific assistance staff provided them with that. 7-Eleven is subject to a phase three as well, because they will be they sell polystyrene expanded polystyrene ice chests. And that were those were banned under this ordinance. But they already have a suitable alternative, and they have no fear that they will comply with that retail portion of their compliance. By December 3rd, phase three goes into effect December 3rd, and it affects restaurant seating less than 101 people. It also includes a ban on certain retail products such as craft beads, pies, expanded polystyrene craft beads and coolers. 77% of the food establishments in the city fall under phase three, so a huge chunk of the food establishments fall under phase three. I'd like to note that the Health Department started making site visits back in September of 2018, and to date they've found that one third of the restaurants that fall under Phase three are already early compliant. We also had public works staff go out over the summertime, starting much later than September 2018, around June of 2019, and in a three or four month period, they visited nearly 300 restaurants and found that out of a sample of 287 businesses, 43% were already in early compliance. So we were really pleased that that the restaurants are partnering with us so actively. So how did we get this message out there? We did a lot of outreach and education. We had direct mailers sent in June of 2018. In June of 2018, we advised the businesses about economic incentives that were available for businesses to utilize to help support the transition. January 2019 and about a week ago, we sent follow up postcards reminding the affected businesses of what their requirements were. We also we also have a phone free website for that provides resources and education to these businesses. And I'd like to mention that we gave away nearly $13,000 in incentives to our businesses. To put that in comparison to other cities we're aware of that have afforded economic incentives were San Francisco which is much larger obviously and Encinitas which is much smaller. Obviously, neither city had anyone to apply for economic incentives. We really put that message out there. So some of our businesses could take advantage of that, and we're really proud of that. We also did a little knock and talk. We borrow that phrase from elsewhere. We visited 362 businesses. We had a multilingual strategy. We had print advertising, fliers, lots of social media posts, lots of Facebook and website promotion of the program. We called it phone free. Long Beach was how we branded it, and businesses who complied with the ordinance, if they so chose, could join from free Long Beach and become a phone free Long Beach member. And what we do is then promote those restaurants as being phone free. We provide them with window decals, a letter from the mayor. We provide them with paper straws and special recognition, one on one assistance and promotion at city events. We visited restaurants in every council district. We visited at least 30 restaurants in every council district. Obviously, some council districts have more restaurants than others, or certainly they might be clumped together more than others, making it easier to hit more. But we had very positive reactions and especially want to call out restaurants along Retro Row in CD2, in Belmont, Shaw and CD3 and along Atlantic Avenue in CD8. Such willingness and downtown's such willingness to participate, and it's almost as if they teamed up together and said, Let's just do this. You know, it was great. Continued promotion of foam free Long Beach. Over 100 posts on Facebook and Twitter. Six weeks of advertising on Facebook and Instagram of nearly 30,000 people reached on that 13 print ads in multiple languages, including the Grunion Gazette, the Long Beach Business Journal, LA Opinion. This next slide is one of my favorites because these are three businesses I wasn't even familiar with, and we like to go out to new restaurants and places to try out. And this is exactly what we were trying to accomplish with the Fall Free Long Beach Partnership is to promote these businesses, and we're checking out new restaurants all the time now that we didn't even know existed. So we're really excited about that. But that's not all. Along with our foam free Long Beach campaign, we started to bring your own Long Beach campaign, and that was helping people make commitments to reusing their own material. So, for example, we have given out about 5000 packages of reusable to go items. You may have seen some of these. They include reusable cutlery, collapsible bowls, reusable chopsticks, metal utensil kits, reusable straws. And we have gotten pledges from 4000 residents of Long Beach to utilize these items and take them with them. The goal being as more and more people bring their own reusable items. Restaurants need to purchase fewer fewer products to use for to-go items. I have to compliment the Health Department on what amazing partners they've been. They've played a major role in compliance. They've played a major role in education. And without their support, this wouldn't be possible. They have integrated education and compliance into their annual food facility inspections. They go to the facilities each each year, and they've been working with the businesses to help them come into compliance. Their main focus, as they do with any new roll out of programs, is education, education, education. How do we get people compliant who aren't? They found that 33% of the businesses they've visited are already in compliance. And as I said earlier, a smaller sample over the summer, over a shorter period of time, we found 43 are actually in early compliance. Enforcement procedures allow for a focus on education. That's the goal. The second visit will reinforce that compliance requirements. A third visit may result in an administrative citation, which seldom, if ever, happens. Or an office hearing. A fourth visit could result in a referral to the city prosecutor or business licensing. The ordinance allows for a procedure to be put in place for temporary exemptions due to hardship. No one has asked for that temporary exemption at this point. A hotline has been created and online format will be available for the public to report repeated violations to us. At this point, I'd like to thank the Council for having a thoughtful approach to this and phasing this in. It's a unique way of doing it. Most cities that we don't know of, any other city that has a phased in process of this type. Most cities just give you 30 or 60 days and you're either in compliance or you're not. You move on. So I think the businesses are very appreciative of that sensitivity. Thank you. And I would just like to add quickly that I want. Speaker 0: To. Speaker 9: Recognize the leadership of Erin Roland. She's been leading this effort for the city. She's done a fantastic job in. Get to the point. We are and we look forward to her continued efforts as we move into phase three. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Do you have any. Public comments. I don't. Speaker 6: No strangers, Vice Mayor. Can I say a few things? Speaker 3: Yes, I was going. Speaker 2: Oh, sorry. Speaker 3: You know, I was gonna go by the diocese. Okay, fine. Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Vice Mayor. Sir. Thank you for that report. That was a really, really great report. I'm surprised, pleasantly surprised to hear that 33% of the small businesses are in early compliance. That's incredible. Thank you for that statistic. I didn't know it. I know that when we initially those of us that really advocated for a phased in approach, wanted to know what the fiscal impact might be for the small businesses to phase in fully. Do we did we do a study on that? Do we have any who did the study? Do we have any information on that? Like what is the cost to them? What kind of a burden is this for a restaurant that that seats 101 or less? Speaker 9: Councilmember Price We didn't do a formal study. We didn't commission a formal study for that. We do have some research, though, on cost comparisons, and we found very little differences in cost comparisons. And it also depends on what a business decides to use. We have one business that went to a using aluminum foil and said they saved a tremendous amount of money over it. And we have some businesses that have chosen to go more expensive options. But they've also commented that. Their customers seem to really appreciate the fact that they've moved on, as there seems to be some sort of social stigma starting to develop over polystyrene. So, you know, I can give you some examples where we have foam, for example, a 16 ounce foam cup for cold drinks was about. $0.04 a cup, and now they're about four and a half cents a cup in some cases. We have other examples where a nine inch foam plate was about $0.04 a plate and now the paper plate is $0.01 a plate. So it really is all over the map. Speaker 6: So it's fair to say that in some cases they actually reduce their costs. In some cases, their costs went up. But in those cases, it's negligible. The range is around a half a cent or so it appears. Speaker 9: So I would say it probably averages maybe a penny. Speaker 6: Okay. And then remind me on this. Did we did we include large retailers like Smart and Final and other retailers in our ordinance. Speaker 9: With respect to the ban, the retail sale ban on ice chests and with the Kraft foam balls. Yes. Speaker 6: But not as to cups, plates, things of that nature. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 6: Okay. So there's an opportunity there to to further expand the ban. Speaker 9: Yes. If you should so choose. Speaker 6: I'm frankly, I'm surprised that they're still selling those, but that's just my personal opinion. And the other thing that I thought was interesting is that no one has applied for the hardship exemption. Was that something that was discussed in all the visits? That that's an option? Speaker 9: I can't honestly say it was discussed in all the visits, but yes, they were made aware of it. Speaker 6: Okay. All right. And I'm assuming that's included in the outreach materials that we provided. Speaker 9: Yes, it was. And I think an important point that we wanted to add to your question earlier about economic impact. One of the things that we're also trying to champion, and we included a slide is to bring your own campaign. And so we're finding that more and more restaurant patrons are actually bringing their own containers to to if they're having take home and they're utilizing that. So I think the overall usage of the containers themselves are going down, that that's a trend we're seeing happening. Speaker 6: That's great. Finally, on behalf of the third district, I want to thank you. It looks like you went to 75 businesses, restaurants in the third district, more than any other district. And I'm assuming that's probably mostly due to our business corridors because they're highly concentrated in those business corridors. But I thank you for doing that. I think that individual outreach goes a long way. And I will say just anecdotally, I'm noticing trends in terms of the bring your own. I work in a courthouse on a day to day basis. And my the my staff that works for me are all much younger than me. And they've apparently caught this on this train long before me. And they a bunch of them got stopped at the metal detectors because they were trying to bring in their own knives and forks for their lunches. And the bailiffs were looking at them like they were aliens. Like what? What are these little bags? They had all had these cute little bags that had like their straw, their knife in their fork. And they they all you know, someone went and bought some for everybody. I was trying to bring them in. So they called the supervisor and they're like, your employees are trying to bring knives and forks into the courthouse. And they said, well, of course, we don't want to use the plastic ones. So this definitely is a as a change. And I could see how that social stigma would continue to grow in light of what I'm seeing with my the opportunities for learning that my staff provides me every day. So thank you. Speaker 3: It. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I was wondering. No, no, I wasn't trying to stop. Speaker 7: Thank you for the great report. I have another item coming up right after this. Obviously, to expand a little more on this on this topic. But a lot of the outreach and education component of this process, especially when you're raising it in. It's very important to keep people connected with what's taking place. So I have a new one here. So it's a knocking talker. That's a that's a that's opposed to what I always do, what I'm campaigning, which is smile and dial. Impressive flesh, though, which is what I'm doing when I'm here. Speaker 9: We all have our methods. Speaker 7: Yeah, we do. But no thank you. And and in the multilingual strategy, it obviously is, is is working. But again, I think we need to expand the efforts and try to get the the mobile restaurants more and more in tune with what's taking place, especially to be operating here in Long Beach. So but thank you for your efforts on this. Speaker 0: Thank you for not. Speaker 8: Thank you. And while many third district restaurants were mentioned, I don't recall a mention of Jojo's in the fourth District, but I believe they are part of the plastic campaign, foam campaign. Speaker 9: They absolutely. Speaker 8: Are. Okay. And are there any other 95 year old establishments and continue this operation who have jumped on the bandwagon here? Speaker 9: I can't say with complete certainty, but I'm going to say no. Okay. Speaker 8: Thank you. Thank you. Also, when you mention the Styrofoam ice chests, I think beanbag chairs, if my recollection serves me, also part of that ban. Speaker 9: Yes. Anything with the polystyrene balls is included. Speaker 8: The last question is. I understood that originally when this came forward, we were going to go with a third party analysis on these outcomes. If that wasn't the case, then I need to be corrected. I thought that's where we were and one of the rationales was that the impact on staff time. So two questions there. Do we do we have third party analysis? And then I think you said that the health department handled this with all within their staff time and it worked out well. Speaker 9: We went back and reviewed the council minutes and there was no direction to do a third party analysis. So we did not do that. That said, you know, there was obviously time to develop the campaign and distribute the materials, but the health department has now incorporated that education and outreach within their regular visits. Speaker 8: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. The sleep. He's come forward. Speaker 12: I just thought I should say something nice. So thank you so much for taking this one up. 12 and 13. Definitely. Environmentally, I think you're doing the right thing. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that members, Mr. Gordon, cast your votes. Ocean carries 13, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to direct City Manager to provide an update on the implementation of the Long Beach ban on single-use food and beverage containers made of expanded polystyrene foam, rigid polystyrene #6, and non-recyclable and non-compostable materials.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10152019_19-1033

Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that members, Mr. Gordon, cast your votes. Ocean carries 13, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilmember Urunga Council member Pearce, Councilwoman Price. Councilman Mungo Recommendation to request city attorney to amend the Polystyrene Food Packaging Ordinance to remove the exemption for number six plastic lids by city manager to work with Public Works Environmental Services Bureau to align implementation of these amendments with Phase three of the expanded polystyrene ordinance. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Ringa. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues to join me on this item, Councilmember Pearce, Price and Mongo. It's very important for us to continue the efforts that we started with the number 12 item quality. Before I begin, I want to make just a quick quote that I always use when we have items like this come forward and that is change is inevitable. And in a progressive society, change is constant. And that's why one of my favorite philosophers, Benjamin Disraeli. And that's what we are doing here. We're looking at including straws and other smaller, smaller polystyrene products. It becomes very important for us to make a commitment to improve our our surroundings, protect our and protect our environment. As a member of the City Council and as a member of the Coastal Commission. It's important for me to keep in mind that we want to keep our environment clean and we want to keep that access to our beaches as well as we can. So before I begin with a with a report from from staff, I'd like to show a little brief video we can to that up, please. Well, that was. Speaker 8: I've been working. Speaker 2: In the same way. Missing now the cracks in the. And in my own store, in my free. Speaker 5: Who call. No, thank you. Please, my. Anglo is just wondering. Speaker 2: From my. Speaker 5: Home town. We? I like it. Speaker 2: In the city when the air is so. Everybody. Shops and shops. He ran to. King defense I. Shows The way ain't gonna stand shit show the way I united shows the we ain't gonna take. Shows the way ain't gonna stand shit show Louis United. Speaker 7: Thank you for that. I don't mean to limit it on a bummer, but, you know, it's very real with what's happening in this world in terms of what I would plastics. So I'm not going to go a lot into it. I think we already seen the video. It's pretty compelling in terms of the message that it says. So with that, I want to basically just give two options here that we want that I would like to have included in the food packaging ordinance. Never be for one to remove the exemption for number six plastic lids to encourage a transition to recyclable alternatives and to include language that all straws be made available only upon request in any food establishment. And that those straws must be plastic, must be not be plastic or bioplastic. The first proposal, basically, is to eliminate the use of plastic covers and use alternatives, and the second is to make straws available only upon request. You know, I went to my local convenience store and I bought a package here of 25 straws for $2. So they're very affordable. They're they're paper. And I know that people have an issue with paper. There's also issues with people with disabilities who have to absolutely have straws that are more easily usable and don't biodegrade as quickly as maybe a paper straw. But there are other alternatives, and I would love to have that when the report comes back that we could get some artful options included in there that people can use as far as alternatives to straws made out of maybe not only paper, but there's options like pasta. And I heard one today from from acting the acting secretary of the Apple Apple Straws, which was amazing to me. So there are some alternatives out there. And if people really have a need for a straw, you could buy some of these metal straws that fold easily into your pocket. I think I gave each one of you one here. But basically what it is, is it's a straw in a little container. It holds up very easily. Well, if I can get my out here just to demonstrate what's taking place. That's real good, right? I mean, you know, you're trying to show something. You can get it out. There you go. So it folds and it goes into this little container that you have. And then when you stretch it out, there's a strong you can pull it back and put it in. It also comes with the little brush where you can so that you can clean it inside. So if if a person really needs to have a struggle with him on a constant basis all the time, you could get get one of these also, you can buy one of these in your convenience store as well as to make that available for you. So with that, I want to wish that they could get the support of my colleagues to support this these amendments to the the food the food packaging audience so that we can make straws less polluting and protect our oceans. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Price. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember, for bringing this item forward. I support it. I really like that video. Thank you for sharing that with us. And as a Coastal Commissioner, I'm sure you hear lots and lots of really unfortunate stories about how pollution impacts habitats and the oceans. So thank you for sharing that experience with us on the Council. I do have a question. I do. I like the option of allowing straws upon request, but can we have some sort of a phase out option that allows them to phase out their plastic straws if they already have them? So like it would still be option a straw upon request, but they could finish out the plastic straws that they have. So give them like, I don't know, six months to comply or something. Speaker 7: It would be. I would be open to that. Yes. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 9: And if I could just add kind of a timing component to this discussion, we would need to come back with an ordinance in conference with the city attorney that would need two readings. So it would be a real challenge for us to do that before December 3rd. So maybe what council is discussing this evening, if it were to be passed, this could become, say, a phase four. And we pick a time frame that would whether that's January or something along those lines, that we would implement this kind of phase four element. That would be a suggestion to this council. Speaker 7: Well, since I agree with Councilman Price's recommendation about phasing, and I think that would be an appropriate approach to this this issue. Yeah. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 3: Yes, thank you. And I want to thank my colleague and council. We rang up to bring this item forward because I think a lot of people look at items such as these and wonder why we adopted them because were not really nitpicking. And I believe everyone it was called to be a good steward of their environment. And more importantly, we have been elected to be a steward of our city. You know, straws can be seen as a small matter, but it litters our beaches and streets. Today, the Wrigley cleanup team points out stars are one of the major items that they collect when they clean around the neighborhood. So we can adopt some alternative we should, and in doing so, will make our city much cleaner. Thank you very much, Mr. Urunga, for bringing this. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. I just wanted to comment. Recently traveled to Oakland and in meeting with our former airport director who happened to be at the Oakland airport, we talked about what type of stores they had there and they were made out of apples. The county of Los Angeles had cups and lids made out of corn. They don't taste like corn. They don't taste like apples. They taste like any other straw. And they're far superior to the paper straws. And so I don't know what research we can do, but he said that after mass purchasing for the entire airport, they were able to bring those costs down considerably. I'm a person who drinks nearly everything out of a straw. Many, many years ago, I have tooth sensitivity. I know other people drink out of straws to keep their teeth white because they drink coffee out of straws. I don't. But there are lots of reasons why straws are very useful. And so I'd love for us to be very pragmatic about the options and hopefully create another product people want to buy that's environmentally friendly. So thank you for this councilmember. I think the timing on this is great this time. I think more cities and regions have really adopted environmentally friendly options, and so I think this will get us there. Speaker 0: Thank you. Customer Supernova. Speaker 8: Thank you. I just wanted clarification on on the proposed ordinance. So we're looking to stop the, let's say, restaurants from having the products in stock. But the behavior is not regulated here, that someone can bring a plastic straw into a restaurant and use it. Is that correct? And so the issue of people with disabilities. I would just like to maybe explore that if I don't understand the difference. If someone on demand wanted a plastic straw, but due to a disability, would that be feasible or would this ban just outlaw the restaurant from from having those products in stock? Speaker 9: That's what I'm from what I'm hearing. I think the goal would be is that we would work with the restaurants to have alternative options. And so, for example, if there was a member of our community with a disability and wanted a straw, I mean, similar to the example that we shared this evening, there are alternatives to plastic that can still serve the same purpose. Speaker 8: Okay, I guess that would be the better goal. But if I wasn't seeing a difference between someone carrying one in from a store and this does not regulate retail sales once again. So the the juice boxes with the little straw glued on the side will still be in existence, unfortunately. And the other thing for Manager Makoni and I think we have a dual purpose goal here and that is number one, to remove it from the litter and also you'd prefer remove from your waste stream or what you have to deal with when you pick up. Recycle bins or trash bins? Speaker 9: Absolutely. As you may be aware, the recycling markets, the commodity, passive commodities do not have any value anymore. And in fact, over the years, whereas contract cities would that would get revenue from their service providers over the years for their commodities, things have turned upside down and cities are now paying to get rid of what used to be a recyclable commodity. So we are actually investigating changes in our own curbside programs to address that issue. Speaker 8: Okay. And then one last issue. I think I saw either a Facebook posting or Twitter that you're recommending reusable. Trick or treat bags. Did I read that? Okay. You're nodding yes. Okay. Great minds think alike. Here's a go forth trick or treat bag. So call our office if you'd like. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 2: I heard about that bag actually, today at lunch, I was at a fire meeting up in the region, and I heard about your bags. Since we are on the polystyrene agenda item. Would it be possible to get in a two from four back what the outreach might look like on this? And then also folding in getting rid of the plastic food containers, retail sales. And Styrofoam. Speaker 9: So Councilmember staff is working on a24 from memo that kind of encapsulate everything that we talked about this evening and provide a little bit more details into our. Speaker 0: Outreach strategies in the successes. Speaker 9: That we've had thus far. So that should be coming to the council here shortly. I think it would be more appropriate and this would be a suggestion that when we come back with the amended language in the ordinance, that at that time we would share in some kind of report style as we present that ordinance with different options and different recommendations. And to me, when the council adopted that ordinance, they would expand. If you wanted to include retail limitations at that time, or if you're going to instruct us tonight to put that in, I think we would need to get that direction. Speaker 2: I'm comfortable with adding that direction tonight that we'd want to go that direction. Councilmember Ortega. Speaker 7: That a. Speaker 2: Friendly. Speaker 7: And the. Yeah. Yeah. That's. Speaker 2: Except wonderful. Thank. Speaker 7: It's all to finish up. You're talking about maybe another phased in approach to this ordinance as we as you move forward. Earth Day is April 22nd, 2020, that six months. We could do it by Earth Day. It's a request to see if we can do it. Speaker 9: We'll certainly do our best. Speaker 7: I certainly hope you will. Thank you. Speaker 0: Mr. City. Attorney. Speaker 9: Yeah, Mayor. Speaker 10: If I could get some clarification on the friendly that was just made. I'm not sure. Will that be part of phase four? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 7: And what will it. What are we asking to in at that time to include in the. Speaker 2: Retail sales of Styrofoam food containers? Speaker 7: Cups, bowls. Speaker 10: Utensils all stir. All Styrofoam. Speaker 2: We're going to take the suggestion of public works when they bring back that. But we're looking to head that direction. And hopefully the two from four will include language that we could adopt that night. Speaker 0: When we have public works that come up with that timeline and how we do it. Speaker 9: Okay. So it's just I think. Yes, to clarify, we're hearing that we're going to move forward with the ordinance this evening, the amendment to the ordinance that we would come back with a timeline for implementation sometime in January. Right. And at that time, when we bring back the ordinance, we would also make a recommendation for an additional phase that would expand into retail sales for this council to consider. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 0: Mr. City Attorney. Anything else? Speaker 7: Just just. Speaker 10: The one caveat when they come back with that recommendation, if you can either. Speaker 7: Adopt the ordinance as written or instruct us to add that it'd have to come back for a first reading, or we could do another. Speaker 8: Amendment. And that's not a problem either way. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's no public comment. Okay. Speaker 12: I said thank you for both of these earlier. But what you brought up those little juicy boxes. I'm going to tell you that I've been in the park clean ups and those are a nightmare. I mean, there are 9000 little tiny pieces. And because they're so tiny, everyone throws them on the ground. So I don't know if there's anything you can do about juicy boxes, but if you can try. Speaker 0: Thank you. I want to make some closing comments. One is I completely commend the city council and the city staff for working on this issue and the council members that have continuously brought this issue up. Some of us were here when a minority of us were trying to get plastic bags banned and we were the worst people ever and anti-business. And we're going to run Long Beach into the ground and to see the city and the way it's moved so quickly from plastic bag bags to to plastics and to straws and to all the other work around polystyrene is really impressive. I wanted to thank now State Senator Lena Gonzalez, who brought forward the initial ban on polystyrene. And I also wanted to thank the person that I think started this conversation. At least she she led it when I was here. And that was then Councilwoman Susan Lowenthal, who was the original introducer of all these things that everyone didn't like initially. And I wanted to say that what's interesting about this item and I want to think, Councilman, your Ranga and Councilman Price, Councilwoman Mongeau and Councilmember Pearce at all signed on to this is these actions have consequences statewide . And when we passed when we passed our plastic bag ban it affected the state's then decision on on plastic bags are polystyrene work has affected the way the state deals with public steering and what we're doing with straws will affect further laws. Statewide, Long Beach has always led on these issues and I'm really proud that this council continues to do that. And so it's very exciting items and really, really most importantly, love the work of our city staff on this. You guys have been so great in going out to the neighborhoods. I've visited some of the businesses with all of you. I've talked to the business owners and I have loved seeing some of my favorite restaurants that used to use polystyrene and having seen them now convert to other products, paper and other products has been really great to see. So thank you very much. Members, please cast your votes.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to amend the Polystyrene Food Packaging ordinance in the Long Beach Municipal Code (Chapter 8.63) to remove the exemption for #6 plastic lids to encourage a transition to recyclable alternatives; include language that all straws be made available only upon request in any food establishment and that those straws must not be plastic or bio-plastic; and Request City Manager to work with Public Works Environmental Services Bureau and other appropriate departments to align implementation of these amendments with Phase 3 of the Expanded Polystyrene Ordinance, on December 3, 2019.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Next item, please, which I believe is 14. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Price Councilmember Pierce, Councilwoman Mongo Recommendation to request City Manager to work with appropriate staff and report back to City Council in 60 days on the potential of drafting an ordinance allowing for driveway parking permits citywide. Speaker 0: On price. Speaker 6: I'm pressing all the wrong buttons. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. We've brought this item forward as a series of parking items that my staff has brought forward that are responsive to ideas and comments that we've heard from residents regarding parking and parking impacted areas. A lot of our parking impacted areas are historic neighborhoods with limited parking and areas where residents are right next to business corridors, leading to major parking impacts for both the residents and the business customers and employees. And these are the parts of the city where we need to think about creative solutions. The city has undergone studies and added parking throughout the various neighborhoods to try to improve the situation. But obviously we need to do more to improve. One way of better. Managing our available street parking would be to allow a resident to park on the street in front of their own driveway. If residents were allowed to apply for a permit to parallel park at the curb in front of their own driveway. This could create additional spaces and relieve some parking issues and many of our Long Beach neighborhoods. Currently, the city allows residents to apply for a permit to block their own driveway only in designated parking impacted neighborhoods. But this permit process could be a benefit to neighborhoods throughout the city that are not already designated as parking impacted, but may still have issues related to available street parking. Moving forward with this will allow Long Beach residents to be able to park in front of their own driveway in order to create at least one additional parking spot on their street. That could be used by residents who are using the street and struggling with parking every day. So I ask my colleagues to support this item. Speaker 0: Let me, ringa. Speaker 7: I support the Senate. Speaker 0: No public comment. Please cast your votes.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with appropriate staff and report back to City Council in 60 days on the potential of drafting an ordinance allowing for driveway parking permits Citywide.

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Speaker 0: And if we can just pull that item, going to hear that item right after this as well. So going here, all the CVB items together, but we're going to we're going to go to item 22. What we're what we've done, I know that we've been is we're taking item 22. I'm going to ask the clerk to read the item first. So please read the item. Speaker 1: Report from City Manager Recommendation to execute the 17th Amendment to agreement with the Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to extend the agreement by a period one year and to provide funding in the amount of 5,058,676 for fiscal year 2020. City wide. Speaker 0: Thank you. And then Mr. Monica. Speaker 8: Yes. For this presentation, we'd like to turn it over to Mr. Steve Goodling to give a presentation. Speaker 0: Great. And we're going to go ahead and do since we have two items on this. I'm going to Mr. Goodling is going to go a couple of minutes past the ten minute mark for presentation, because we're not going to hear a presentation on the consent calendar item. So we've combined it into one. So, Mr. Goodling. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. City council and also city management. Tonight, we'd like to share with you an update on where the tourism sector is. I. We commissioned Beacon Economics to do a study for us, and I love this graph. I wish it actually was my portfolio at home. I since 2002, it has grown 146% or $18 million. So it's a significant income for the city, actually. And for Vice Mayor Andrews, this is the data every year that you like, for every dollar that the CVB receives, we generate a $6 and 17 cent return. This past year, we were the fourth largest revenue tax generator for the city of Long Beach. That's a significant amount of money. In addition to the transient occupancy tax, there's also taxable sales on things that our visitors buy when they're here in the city, whether it's meals, whether it's clothing or anything else. And that's another 17 million property tax by those business owners is another 19 million for a total of $70 million in taxes back to the city. We are also the second largest sector in the industry for employment behind health care. Health care as at 19% and tourism leisure is at 13%. Pleasure. Travel was one of the areas we focus on. This past year we worked with the Academy, the Pacific, and also the Queen Mary. So we took double page ads. In the past, the aquarium would take an ad, Queen Mary would take an ad, they'd be on different pages. Now, when you go through any of these great magazines were a double track or two pages, and so Long Beach jumps out at you. In addition, we work we're working with these publications in their social media and their digital platforms as well. This is a sample of one of the ads for this past year. Our PR department has brought in over 100 and basically 140 writers this year and bloggers and digital influencers for eight millions impressions. So we've appeared in a variety of stories from L.A., L.A. Times, Orange County Weekly, USA Today and other pubs, but also a growing influence of blog sites. Our followers in Instagram, also Facebook and Twitter have grown 43%. And in just a few weeks, John Keisler is going to Qingdao. And so we created this video. If any of you know what she's saying, you win the award for speaking Mandarin. Speaker 2: While you our champion, Tedros Rumanian, your son by the Georgian too young one for which ultimately each I'm sure you're sure about for your too that idea clergy sexual standards. You don't say something to you vetoes you hold hands up like a joystick. Hang on doing the hammer. Do the way you join simple. Yet that's how hunger challenge our strong prototype your. The utility because. Yes, you bet. Is a type of theatrical Jewish, Yiddish. Oliver, you've had me on. Speaker 4: I should go back. Speaker 9: And if you go with John to Hong Kong and Qingdao, you'll hear that all day long. I, having worked in Asia. Speaker 3: I loved I loved hearing. Speaker 9: That. So that's another part of our reach out in terms of pleasure travel. In talking with mayor former Mayor O'Neal recently, Beverly and we're talking about basically tourism, the convention business. And she made a comment which I really thought was wonderful. She said, Steve, everyone that comes to a convention is a potential visitor in the future. And that's so true. It's it's what I would call trail marketing. You get to come into our city, and every time I hear people that come into our city, they either say, Gee, Steve, I never knew or, boy, has this changed. I hear one of the other. And that's what they always say. And what's interesting is our convention business is also a generator for repeat visit. To keep us competitive and keep us at the front edge. We have to continue to differentiate ourselves. And this is where all of you are so important. This past year, CMA, a national association of meeting planners of 7000 members, has a magazine that reaches 50,000 people. They commissioned a study with Marriott and it's called The Five Future Trends of Meetings. In actuality, these trends are across the board for most industry sectors. But as it relates to us and conventions and tourism, the two that are really key to us, I believe, is orchestrated serendipity and multimodal design. Orchestrated serendipity is what Google calls human collision is where you create an environment that causes people to actually network. And that's what we've been doing at the Convention Center, because we believe that people come to conventions in conferences to network. We also create areas that they can also power down and just do their iPad or iPhone or whatever they're working on. But more importantly, to network. Multimodal design is using a space more than one way. Today's planners, today's buyers want the ability to take a space and put their own distinct impression on it. So when you walk into the convention center across from the Renaissance, this is entering in through the north side. That space off to the left is a new space. Just this past year that was created again, a great space for networking, but look to the right, look all the way down. All of that is is new. And it's an opportunity for all of our people, all over conventioneers to network in addition across from the Hyatt, this is from that lobby area coming in and during a conference. This place is packed. You're all familiar with the terrorist theater. Thank you, Mayor, for the fountains. And and Janine, also. And it's really. This space has become so hot. This past year, we had a 1000 person banquet out on the plaza. It was a software company. And they again, multi-modal design, being able to use a space more than one way. The code you're familiar with. And believe it or not, this is the fifth year of the anniversary for the Pacific Ballroom. It was an antiquated arena, rarely ever used and multi-modal design at its best. The stats, we've gone from 136 usage days to 250 days a year. You might not see people parking driving up to that arena, but that arena is being used 250 days a year. It's booked over $425 million of new business. And 30% of our conventions use that space. The antithesis of that is if we didn't have the arena, we wouldn't have 30% of those conventions. So there's 40,000 square feet gave us this additional space. And in five years, catering revenues have doubled at the building because of all these new spaces, the newest activated spaces. Many of you saw the email that just went out. This was just finished. This is the area between Bogart's and our exhibit Hall's 9000 square feet. It's great space, part of the Pacific Gallery, which is adjacent to the Pacific Ballroom now, but it's completed. It's a total of 21,000 square feet of unique, cool space. When combined with Bogart's combined with our Pacific Ballroom, the entire place becomes active. And the Ocean View Club. The third floor of the Terrace Theater is also another space that we recently activated. The views are spectacular. The angels have loved going up there and looking out and looking at our ballpark. But with that being said, I'd like to share with you. Recently we had a reception up there for Mark Taylor's farewell, and I'd like to show you what that space is like as it's active. So again, taking a page out of PCM has five steps. Multi-Modal design, activating spaces. All of you were given this. This is a copy of the White Paper that PCMag published. We were the first city in the United States to actually have a white paper printed on it and how we are actually ahead of the curve and subscribing to the five principles of the future transit meetings. This was seen by over 50,000 people. I go into that sector to lead into this. And I coming up here shortly in Chula Vista in San Diego, the port of San Diego has worked out a development plan and it's going to actually shake up business on the West Coast. This project is $1,000,000,000 project. This is the 1400 room hotel that will open up, which is almost equivalent to the amount or size of of some of our larger conventions when they come to Long Beach. And this is the plan. It's going to be up at the top. Middle section is where the resort is being built. Another hotel adjacent to it. And then right around the marina is a lot like our Rainbow Harbor and Rainbow Lagoon and more residential and office space. It will have over 400,000 square feet of space, which is identical to us. It will have 600 rooms and it's also going to be one completed, the third largest hotel in California. It will be completed by 2023 and they'll start selling this next year. What that means for us is we're going to be running into these folks as they start selling. It's owned by Marriott Corp.. Gaylord is a is basically a subset of Marriott. And so for us, the challenge is going to be competing with everything under one roof. Planners love the luxury of signing one contract, working with one general manager, working with one management team when they come to Long Beach. We have to sign on average, 4 to 8 contracts plus a convention center contract. And so as a CVB and as a quite honestly, as a tourism community and a hotel committee, we work hard to make it easy to do business with us. And that's our that is our competitive advantage. Plus everything that I shared with you earlier. I can assure you Gaylord won't look like this like we do. However, it will be a great, great competitor to us. In addition, Portland just completed a $65 million renovation with the new hotel and new Hyatt up there. And. In Sacramento. We also they're investing over $240 million. They're blowing it up. I know many of you traveled to Sacramento frequently. It too will be quite beautiful when complete it. And it's interesting. They're spending 240 million, but they're only going to get about another 20,000 square feet of exhibit space. And they're paying $50 million for a 40,000 square foot ballroom. The Pacific Ballroom cost us 10 million. And so it was quite a savings for us and quite a high impact. But once they're finished, they will be almost identical to us. In Anaheim, we have two new hotels going in for another thousand rooms right next to the convention center. And so, as you can see, we've we've built a lot of great successes. Again, being the only city that PCMag has recognized is putting us out in a white paper as being leaders in our industry with our convention center partners. But at the same token, we've had a real we have challenges coming up, and we have to keep investing into the building. So with that being said, I'd like to share this video. And then, yeah, we're finished. Speaker 3: In Long Beach in Southern California. I can look out the windows and see palm trees, water, and the Queen Mary and I really feel like I'm in a destination is unique. Speaker 2: It has a great young vibe. Felt like I was in a resort town, but also in a meeting location all in one. It just had a perfect dynamic. Speaker 3: When I talk to my peers, I rave about Long Beach, great location on the waterfront, proximity of the convention center, two restaurants, easy airport access. But location, location, location. What I love about Long Beach is the fact that everything you need is right there. It's all walkable. Speaker 2: The weather's fantastic. You love to walk around in weather like that, and there's lots of interesting things to look at while you're doing it. Speaker 3: Entertainment, shopping, amazing food. It's just one big ball of energy and a lot of fun. Long Beach Convention Center is one of those places that makes me want to actually look forward to the meeting or event that I'm actually going to. There are numerous unique environments where attendees can gather and create their own experiences that they then will remember and take back. And that's what attending a convention is all about. Speaker 2: If I could clone the space here and take it to other areas because we have to move around, I would do that. It is a gem. You have to try it. Turkey is especially important to planners. Speaker 4: It makes it very simple. Speaker 2: To plan your events. You don't have to bring in different pieces because they're all bright. They're available for you. I have to say that there's no other venue that I can think of in the U.S. that would compare to the Pacific Ballet. In about a minute, you go from being in an arena to being in a ballroom, and that's an easy thing. Speaker 3: The Cove, this unique. Speaker 4: Little area underneath an underpass. Believe it. Speaker 3: Or not. Speaker 8: There's great lighting features. I've never seen. Speaker 4: An underpass. Speaker 2: That actually has chandelier. Speaker 9: Having amenities like ping pong. Speaker 8: Tables and lounge seating and the palm trees and the environment that has been created there. Speaker 3: Is phenomenal because it allows for great networking and it really sets them apart from the competition because when you go to another city, you have to pay somebody to put all those things in place for you. Networking. Speaker 8: That's really important to us. And so that's one of the reasons we love Long Beach because they have all these fun and. Speaker 4: Comfortable areas where people can sit and talk and really exchange ideas and connect. Speaker 2: I think that Long Beach is special because of the people that are there. It's all about creating community and relationships, and Long Beach always is a welcoming city. Speaker 3: They all know each other, they're a community, and what they. Speaker 8: Express and what you see when you go there is. Speaker 3: They want the business to come to Long Beach. Speaker 4: My CEO always says, Can we pick up the Long Beach Convention Center and take. Speaker 3: It with us wherever we go? They built Long Beach Convention Center in a way that every time you go there, there's a different experience. Long Beach is ever evolving. I think the great thing about this city is they're always thinking ahead, step ahead and thinking about innovation, step ahead and thinking about what type of venue is the venue of the future. When you go to Walter Reed, you feel the love. You feel like you want to come back there on a regular basis and it is your second home, if not your first time. Thank you for your. Thank you very. Speaker 0: Much, Steven the team. We're going to continue real quick. We have two folks in center for public comment that are actually also part of the they want to say some remarks about the presentation. And so if I can have David Blaine's build up first and then Imran Ahmed also, please come forward. Speaker 3: Honorable Mayor Council members, thank you for your time today. My name is David Blanchfield. I am executive vice president and group publisher of the Northstar Travel Group. I am not a resident of Long Beach or California. I come to you today from our company headquarters in Secaucus, New Jersey. But I come to recognize and report on excellence when I see it. And this is a terrific opportunity to give a shout out to to Long Beach, to the convention center and to the Visitors Bureau. My business were all about travel. I mean, we report about travel, all aspects of travel, leisure as well as corporate, as well as events and meetings, incentives and exhibitions. And that's the area that that I am responsible for. We have offices all around the United States. We also have offices in London. And we do have folks who speak Chinese. I don't offices in Shanghai and in in Singapore as well as as well as in Beijing. And, you know, for the past couple of years, you know, we have always been covering Long Beach because of the the excellence that the team here brings to the planning of of meetings and events. I was also formerly a meeting planner and an event owner and organizer and had terrific success in bringing bringing my meetings here a couple of years ago. We initiated a new program, we call it the Stella Awards North Star Stella. It's Latin for recognizing stellar work. And the process we brought to this was a very rigorous one. First was putting the nominations of visitors, bureaus and entities that provide services to tourism, putting it to a public vote over a period of time. And then after the public votes are tabulated, we then take the top players in each category, in each region, and invite a group of seven independent, experienced judges to evaluate the the entities that have been voted among the top players in the industry. And we break it up by region. Over the past three years, no other convention and Visitors Bureau has appeared in the top two other than Long Beach. And No Convention and Visitors Bureau has had both the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Convention Center winning these awards. So it's a it's a terrific, terrific a testament to the value of the services that that your city brings to to our industry. Although we are not making a public proclamation today, this is this is all somewhat embargoed because we are not officially launching these awards until November, when we publish a special issue to the tens of thousands of people who who subscribe to our magazines and get our content online. But, you know, when you're competing against the likes of the San Francisco's and the Seattle and the Los Angeles of the world in the Far East, obviously it's a terrific, terrific testament to the work of. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Mr. Paintsville. Speaker 3: So I'd like to, you know, bestow these awards on Steve and the team and thanked him very much for the services they bring to the industry. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And Enron has come forward and its public comments. Imran Ahmed. Speaker 3: Good afternoon, honorable mayor, esteemed council members. My slides are not here. But we have all heard of Beacon Economics in the first light that Steve Goodling showed, in which I am here to let you know honorable mention that we were able as a as as a chair of CVB. I'm letting you know that we were able to generate over $1.7 billion for the city of Long Beach and supported over 18,000 jobs for the city of Long Beach. So this is with your support that we were able to do so. So thank you so much. In addition, I would like to give out a shout out to all our CDB associates if they could please stand and remain standing. Please. Further, I would request the CDHB Board and the Executive Board to please stand and remain standing. Please. And then the convention center, Charlie Burns and his team, if he could stand with his team through. And finally, who's here to support the CVB? And that includes all our team. If you can please all the hoteliers. If you can stand and remain standing, please. And everybody. Honorable Mayor. Voila. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Speaker 3: Let's give the entire. Speaker 0: Team a big round of applause. Thank you. We do have we have one more member of the public wants to say that wants to make a remark. Mr. Goodhew. Europe. Nope. Okay. Oh, great. Councilmember Then let me start with the council, Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 5: Thank you. I just want to give a big thank you and congratulations to everybody that's here today for this presentation. Long Beach has come a long way in the last ten years, and our hospitality industry would not be what it is without the CVB, without the work that you guys do every single day. And I want to say personally, I really appreciate it. I have seen the convention center completely transformed. I've seen it transform not only the workers there, the businesses that surround our convention center, but our entire city. Obviously, the numbers that you guys laid out are phenomenal numbers. And I want to say that I've enjoyed partnering with you guys and I really appreciate the partnership and return. I know sometimes it's been tough, but what I what I see today is a thriving tourism industry that has deep partnerships, that's going to continue to thrive even whenever our economy might do whatever it does in the next ten years. But that today we've got new hotels coming on the market in this city. Thanks to your hard work and Imron, very proud of you and your efforts at your hotel. I've always told you how much I appreciate you and really I've enjoyed getting to know you and I look forward to next year's presentation. But thank you guys so very much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 2: Very much. I want to share those sentiments and thank you all for being here. It's really impressive to me. Every year when we have this item, how many of you turn out to support the item? Because your work is really a year round thing, whether it's trying to support new ideas, whether it's attending the events, whether it's participating in a change in terms of messaging or themes. In terms of Steve's big ideas, you're all there 100% to give everything that you can. And we really appreciate that as a council, you and the work that you do make us look good. I mean, that's the reality, the work that you do make us look good as a city. And yes, we have great assets and assets that that have a lot of opportunities and potential in the future. But the work that you do to make the assets come alive and attractive is is really transforming the city in terms of where we're at in the tourism industry. So thank you for everything that you do. And I want to I'm glad that our hoteliers are here today because I think it's such a a necessary partnership. And to have that very positive communication with all of our tourism outlets and offerings is critical. And so I want to thank you for collaborating and working through difficult challenges and also predicting what the market will bear in the future. We've been meeting, I know, several of my colleagues and I, you know, when we're thinking about how the market is changing, for example, it's changing in every industry. We have conversations almost daily now with how the retail markets are changing as a result of online shopping. And we're trying to make adjustments. Everyone's trying to make adjustments. The Conventions and Visitor Visitors Bureau and the hoteliers work really well together to be proactive about those trends in the marketplace rather than putting it on us to come up with the solutions. You're the subject matter experts and you allow us to follow your very solid and thorough lead. So I appreciate that and I thank you for everything that you do. And I also thank you for the support that many of you give personally and as members of the CVB and the hotel industry. To the arts organizations, you do tremendous work in partnering with us to encourage and highlight all of the assets in the city. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Councilwoman Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 7: Yes, thank you, Mayor. I know tonight first, when I came on, I thought that all these people will come into a council meeting and I knew better. Then when I heard about the CVB awards, it just the crowd that they bring in. Then I thought, I going to have one of those long, long council meetings, but now this is going to be much, much shorter. But I just wanted to say that and take a moment to take time to thank the sea. VB Of all the things that they do for the city of Long Beach, you know, under the leadership of the CEO Steve Gatlin, it has performed at the highest level in every test that he's been asked to perform. Staveley leads a team of commandments professionals that always make the city look good, and I applaud them for their achievement. Thank you, individuals again. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Steve, to the whole team, there's not much I can say that most folks have already said. You know how I feel about our convention center. Your leadership, frontline staff, the entire family. You're really part of this Long Beach tapestry. And when people come to Long Beach, you are the hospitality committee. You're the welcome committee to the hundreds of thousands and millions of individuals who come to our city. You're who they see first. And so you're incredibly important and we value you. Our city council does value. I think it's important and it's great that every year you start off and make the economic case, you make the economic case, you prove, you show every time you know the dollars and cents of why it's important to make sure that we continue to invest in our our facilities. We've transformed those facilities, invest in the arts and the performing arts that we have. So so thank you for doing that. I have to tell you, you know, it seems like so this would be the third year we've host it. So next week we'll be welcoming Legacy Cities back. And this is when a lot of our elected officials buddies come in and host and they party downtown and host a lot of sessions and meetings. And it's great to see that every time they come back, there seems to be another venue, some new space, and that's activated. So we look forward to welcoming the whole state of California, public officials, local officials across state California next week to the League of Cities. So, again, keep up the good work. We're incredibly proud and honored to serve on the city council with with partners like all of you. And we look forward to the many great things to come. Speaker 0: Thank you. And Councilman Ringo. Speaker 9: I want to also agree with you all your comments been said, but also the Nutter convention coming up in November, which would be the Democratic Convention, state convention here in Long Beach. And all our we will be on on on on tab to make a real good impression because we're going to get the candidates also visiting California , visiting Long Beach. And great job, Steve. Great job to convention visitors bureau, great job to our hoteliers and great job to everybody here today because I'm really looking forward to Long Beach getting placed on the map. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I'm just going to I want to just add first, I think, you know, Steve and Charlie, especially the two of you, are just an amazing team. And I want to start. You know, Charlie, I think you and and the SMG team just really do a great job and we're waiting now. It's SMG. Is that the right? The new name. The SMG team are doing a great job always with our facilities and our events and just we rely on you so much for for that work. And of course, to Stephen and the broader team and the board, I think our our economy in many ways is a tourism economy , especially in this part of the city and the hotels that get full and the visitors and the restaurants. And it's all part of a really great ecosystem that we've created and we're really thankful you guys do a fantastic job. And I know that the the best days for all this work are really ahead of us still. And so just thank you for the partnership. Let's give them all a round of applause for our entire CVB team. And congratulations. And with that, we have a most honor and a second for the four item 22, which is this report and this action item. So please, members cast their votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. And we're going to do item number, the consent calendar, which is going to include item seven in the consent calendar, which is a CVB item which was on consent originally. So if I can have a motion in a second on consent, Mr..

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute the Seventeenth Amendment to Agreement No. 28164 with the Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, Inc., to extend the agreement by a period one-year and to provide funding in the amount of $5,058,676 for Fiscal Year 2020. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Ocean carries. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you. We'll do our commission items next. We're going to do item 19/1 and then item 18. Thank you all very much. Madam Court, can you read item number 19. Speaker 1: Item 19 communication for Mayor Garcia Recommendation to confirm charter commission appointments. Speaker 0: Thanks, Mary Andrews. Speaker 7: Yes, thank you very much. We had the meeting today with I item 20. That was item 21, I think 19. And so I'm going to pass that on to the mayor for the nomination for this item. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I'm going to thank you very much. Let me go ahead and move on to these items here. If I can ask all of our guests to just quietly exit as we continue. Thank you so much. I did. 19 is a recommendation from the Civil Service Committee for an appointment to the Ethics Commission, and it is a new appointment, and that is for Margo Morales. And Margo is a seventh District resident who currently serves on the Long Beach City Parks and Recreation Commission. She has also been an employee of L.A. County for almost 25 years, and in her work at L.A. County, does ethics and compliance work as well as part of her her responsibilities? Margo has a former member of the Pacific Gateway Workforce Development Board, the Fair Housing Foundation, the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California, and on the Cal State University Alumni Council. And she is retired actually from L.A. County as well. And so we want to thank her for her willingness to serve. And there is a motion and a second. So some of Councilmember Pierce anything. Councilor Marie Ringo. Speaker 9: Thank you, Barry. And I want to thank Margo for stepping up and wanting to serve on this new commission. She'll be in the inaugural body for this commission. And I want to thank you for your service on the Parks and Recreation Commission in the past. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 4: I want to thank Margo for stepping up to this important role. I can personally attest to her character and her leadership. I've worked with her hand in hand in multiple departments that she worked in. I remember the first time I met her back when she was with the Office of Public Safety. She has a breadth of experience that will really be critical to an organization such as this in a commission such as this, that needs the background and understanding of local government and the requirements. And she brings that to the table. So I'm really pleased with this appointment and strongly encourage my colleagues to support. Speaker 0: And Margot, we're very excited to have you on board. We think you're going to be you've shown a excellence in the work you do with the Parks Commission, and we know you'll do the same here. So thank you. With that members, please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. And. And think I'll give Margo a round of applause. And if Margo, you can hang out for a minute. We're going to take a picture in a second and we're going to hear the second commission item, which is item 18.

Appointment

Recommendation to, subject to review and consideration by the Personnel and Civil Service Committee in accordance with Long Beach Municipal Code Section 2.03.065, confirm Charter Commission appointments pursuant to Section 509 of the City Charter and Section 2.03.065 of the Long Beach Municipal Code; or in the alternative, if for some reason the Personnel and Civil Service Committee does not meet prior to or on October 8, 2019, waive the requirement for consideration and recommendation by the Personnel and Civil Service Committee in accordance with Section 2.03.065, and confirm Charter Commission appointments pursuant to Section 509 of the City Charter and Section 2.03.065 of the Long Beach Municipal Code.

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Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Let me go back to the agenda, which we did all consent items -12. If so, if I can please here. Item 12 on the consent. And I think the vice mayor has to recuse himself. So, Madam Clerk. Speaker 1: Recommendation to authorize city manager to execute an agreement with the Long Beach Unified School District to staff school resource officers in an amount not to exceed 218,071, with an estimated net cost to the city's general fund for 54,518 and increase appropriations in the general fund in the police department by 218,071. Partially offset by contract revenue citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. There is a motion and a second on the item. Please cast your votes. Was no public comment. Oh, Councilman Pierce. Speaker 5: Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry. I had requested. Speaker 0: Sorry. No problem. Speaker 5: That's fine. I requested this to be pulled. Even if. Even if it didn't need to be. Just to ask a couple of questions. We've got a middle school in my district, and we know that the kids that go to the middle schools are residents in our city. And while school resource officers have sometimes been funded by the city and sometimes the school district, I wanted to get just a little bit of background because I do get a lot of calls about some of the bullying and things that happen, particularly in our middle schools in my district. So if we could just have a little bit of background on that, I have two questions. Speaker 8: For Commander Laura Sarah Saleh and give a little bit of information on how we use as heroes, but also how we use other police officers when we have instances of concerns in the. Speaker 3: School. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 3: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. The Long Beach Unified School District is contract with Long Beach Police Department for Police Services through the School Resource Officer Program. Due to budget constraints within the school district, funding for the School Resource Officer program has been reduced over the past years. The school district has requested to maintain one school resource officer at Pali High School for the 1920 school year term. The city of Long Beach and the school district maintain a cost sharing agreement. The city is reimbursed up to 75% of the cost for the school resource officer during the ten months when the school is in session . This agreement will result in reimbursement revenues totaling $163,553. That concludes my report and available for questions. Speaker 5: Great. Can you answer for me how many of these positions have we funded in the past? And then can you answer for me how they work with our police officers outside of school? So if there's a situation that happens right outside of the school with whether it's a bullying or fight, how how did this officer work with our PD? Speaker 3: Good evening, Council Member Pearce. In regards to positions that the school district has paid for in the past, we've had up to four school resource officers for a variety of high schools in the city. And in regards to the second question you're asking, we have an outstanding relationship with the school district and their school security. Any time there are any challenges on campus or around the campus, they don't hesitate to call us and we consistently work well with them on dealing with a variety of issues. Just this last year, going into this school year, we have a yearly meeting regarding police security related issues. And there was a lot of concern because if I could take you back about a year ago when we had the the Parkland, Florida school shooting, our threats to schools increased. At that time, we were being called as a police department, not only as initial responders, but to investigate a lot of these threats. We were working with closely with the L.A. County District Attorney's Office to resolve a lot of these. And the the teachers were very concerned about the students and what was going to happen to them. Obviously, some student or I'm sorry, some parents want to hear that the students were arrested and dealt with appropriately. But at the end of the day, the welfare of the children, both from a safety perspective of the ones being threatened and even the ones being doing the threatening to make sure that they're getting adequate resources, mental illness services and things of that nature. So between multiple agencies, we have a very good working, collaborative relationship that we enjoy. Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you for that. Is this the request that was brought forward and how we get to this agreement? Was that done at the school board level or was that through through L.B. USD staff? Speaker 3: The school board ultimately votes and makes the final decision. It's a recommendation from the Long Beach Unified School Staff. Um. Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you for that. And just the reason why I asked again is because we've had a lot of bullying videos of gang violence with our junior high and my district and we've been working with the school board member and the principal and our neighborhood associations, but I wanted to make sure I asked those questions publicly so that we have a good next steps for our community members to try to make sure that we're working better to secure our our schools in the areas around our school. So thank you for that report. I appreciate it. Speaker 3: Yes, ma'am. And if I can add something really quick, you just reminded me we do get videos that are reported. I'm sorry. Actually, I take that back. We get videos that come to our attention. Mm hmm. And one of the most frustrating things for us as a police department is most of these incidents are not being officially reported to the police department, and we're usually playing catch up. So for anybody who may be listening to us out there in our community is to stress that the minute somebody finds out that there is either violence, the threat of violence, that they notify either a school administrator as soon as possible or the police department so we can immediately address it, either respond to it, investigate it, and make sure it's resolved so that, no, none of our children get hurt. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Chief. We have a motion and a second. So, members, please cast your votes on that item. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to go back now to public comment and then we have the two hearings. The first set of speakers is, I believe Carlos via Larry Goodhew, Western Frontera and Jose Nanda, and then we'll do the next set.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and any subsequent amendments, with the Long Beach Unified School District, to staff School Resource Officers, in an amount not to exceed $218,071, with an estimated net cost to the City’s General Fund of $54,518; and Increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Police Department by $218,071, partially offset by contract revenue. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank you all for coming again. So with that, we will conclude public comment. I think we we went to public comment. Ready? Correct. Thank you very much. And again, thank you for coming out. We're now going on to hearing item number one. Speaker 1: Report from Development Services. Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record and conclude the public hearing. Declare Ordinance Amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding section relating to the designation of the 19 properties on the 6000 block of Walnut Avenue known as Grant Neighborhood Historic District as a historical landmark district read for the first time and lead over the next regular meeting of the City Council for Reading and Adopt a resolution establishing a historic resources designation for the 19 Properties District nine. Speaker 7: Fine. I'd like to introduce a speaker to be Rebecca. Mr. Carr. Speaker 4: You had a vice mayor, Lynda Tatum, director of development services, and Christopher Coons, planning bureau manager, will be presenting this staff report. Speaker 2: Just like to introduce our advanced planning officer, Patricia Defender for who will make the staff presentation for this item. Good evening, council members. Patricia Defender for staff of the Development Services Department of Planning Bureau. The item before you this evening is the adoption of an ordinance to designate the Grant neighborhood as a historic landmark district. The Grant neighborhood is located in North Long Beach and Council District nine. It is the first new landmark district to be adopted or be before the City Council since 2000 2003. You can see from this map the location in the north Long Beach area. The District comprises property is located in the 6000 block of the Walnut Avenue, bounded by 61st Street to the north, 60th Street to the south. Falcon Avenue on the east. And John Avenue on the West. To be eligible as a landmark district, the district must be a grouping of related properties that has a special historical, cultural, archeological , architectural or esthetic value. You can see that on the right is the timeline for this district. An application was submitted in January of 2018. That's when this process started. Subsequently, a historic contact statement, a historic resource survey report was prepared. Community outreach was conducted. The Cultural Heritage Commission held the a hearing on the item in December of 2018 and made its recommendation that the council adopt the grant neighborhood as a historic district. In March of this year, it was heard by the City Council and there was a request made by the council that the city attorney prepare the ordinances. And so those ordinances and an accompanying resolution is here before you today. The Grant Neighborhood Historic Resource Survey found that many significant events that shaped and characterize the Grant neighborhood and its place in the broader history of the city, including the oil boom, the presence and influence of the defense industry and the Navy, and exclusionary housing practices and redlining. The survey also revealed that 17 of the 19 properties evaluated do contribute to the district and that the predominant architectural style is the Spanish colonial revival style. So the district meets both of the required criteria to be an eligible landmark district. The grouping of properties is significant because it has a unified architectural style and scale and it has shared planning features that include street trees, landscaping and uniform setbacks. It is a cohesive collection of residential properties that reflects Long Beach's economic boom of the twenties and the corresponding rapid residential expansion in the periphery of the city, which was aided by the rise of the personal automobile. It also meets the criteria for concentration of of contributing properties. 89% of the properties in the district are contributing. So with that, the and consistent with the Cultural Heritage Commission action of December ten, 2018, it is recommended that the Council declare an ordinance to amend the municipal code to designate the 19 properties on this block as a historic landmark, this landmark district known as the Grant Neighborhood District, and to adopt the accompanying resolution to establish the district. Thank you very much. Staff is available to answer any questions you might have. Speaker 7: Thank you very much. And before we bring behind the taxes, I'd like to only public comment on this item. I have two individuals I think would like to speak very good here. And Jeff Roe. Afro. Speaker 3: Oh. Oh, thanks very much. I want to just to thank you all four for considering this. A special thanks to you, Rex, for being the champion for this project. But also to Gina Casey, see us, Christopher Coons, Alejandro Placentia and Linda Tatum and to the city attorney's office for doing all the work that got us here today . You know, I think I mentioned last time I was here, we thought this would be relatively easy. We'd fill out a few people, a little bit of paperwork and put up the blue on white signs, have a party and be done. Well, turned out to be vastly more complicated and meticulous than than than we had thought. And one of the things that was especially intriguing in this was that Gina's group and researching the history of the area. We thought, well, maybe there'll be some famous people over here, or maybe Ulysses Grant himself passed through at one point. But no Ulysses, no famous people. But what we did, what Gina, this group did find out, was that the original people who live there had put an imaginary fence around this neighborhood. It was only for white people. And I've wondered since then how different it might be if they had could come back today and see the neighborhood that they left behind. We have every ethnic group and and trait and people trace their origins on this block alone to every continent on earth. Our goal in this is to inspire and help adjacent blocks and other areas in District nine secure a historic designation and not just for the status of the blue on white sign, but because the process brought us together as neighbors in a quest to make our area cleaner, greener, safer and more prosperous. And we thought that that benefits us all and stands as the best legacy for our children and for those who follow us living in Grant neighborhood. Thanks again. I hope we can come back in the weeks and months ahead with additional blocks and to build on this other zone. Speaker 7: Thank you as well. Yes, Councilman, I register. Speaker 6: Thank you much, Mayor Jeff and the Grant neighborhood. You know, this initially began the conversation at the neighborhood association about, you know, restoring the old fire station, greening the old fire station, planting trees. And you guys are certainly working through your whole little, little list of projects on your your white legal pad. So congratulations to you, Linda Christopher. A lot of great work happening in North Lombard centered on development services. We we are proud and thankful to have you, you know, leading this this work. And there's a lot more a lot more for us to do. But this is certainly important to North Palm Beach and her our you know, our staff. It's notable to the city's history. And so that that that means a lot. So thank you so much. And I look forward to supporting this. Speaker 7: Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Richardson, I'd like to thank them. No, everything's fine. Well, good. See, no more, you know, speakers on the devices for this. Can we please call a vote?

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Section 16.52.2300 relating to the designation of the properties located on the 6000 block of Walnut Avenue as the Grant Neighborhood Historic Landmark District, read and adopted as read. (District 9)

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Speaker 2: Motion carries. Speaker 7: Thank you. Now we'll go to hearing number two. Speaker 1: Report from Development Services recommendation received supporting documentation under the record, conclude the public hearing. Declare ordinances amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding section relating to the designation of four properties located at 1500 East First Street 5281 East El-Arabi Street 3200 East First Street and 3735 Pine Avenue. As historic landmarks read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and adopt resolutions establishing a landmark designation for the four properties districts two, three and seven. There will be four votes required for this item. One for each address. Speaker 7: Thank you. I'd like to say hello to Mrs. Garner at this point. Speaker 4: Thank you, Vice Mayor. The staff report will be presented by Linda Tatum, director of Development Services, and Christopher Coons, Planning Bureau manager. Speaker 2: And we will introduce our historic preservation planner, Mr. Alejandro Placentia, to make this that presentation. Speaker 3: Thank you. So tonight's request involves the historic landmark designation of four different properties that we have throughout the city of Long Beach. Four of those addresses are 1500 East First Street, 3200 East First Street, 5281 East L Roebling Street and 3735 Pine Avenue. So the timeline here, the application for 1500 East First Street actually started last year. But this is sort of a winding process to get through this. The other three applications add on 3200 days. First Street and Robles and Pine Avenue were actually filed in February of this year and went through the Mills Act process and that's how they came before Development Services. As part of this process, the Cultural Heritage Commission holds hearings for each of these properties. They evaluate each of the individual properties. And in this in this case, they found that these four properties meet the criteria for landmark designation pursuant to the Cultural Heritage Ordinance here in the city of Long Beach. That commission, the Cultural Heritage Commission, made their recommendation to the City Council to approve those based on their independent evaluation. That. This. This is in order to qualify for landmark status, at least one of the following criteria needs to be found in the affirmative. So we have four criteria out of these. At least one of them needs to be found. Criterion A is specific to the association with the city's history. Criterion B is having a specific association with significant people in the city's history. And Criterion C is probably the one that we use most that relates to architecture and craftsmanship associated with the building. And last one criterion D is really associated with pre-history and archeology. So we'll just run you through the applications that we had here. The first property for consideration is located at 1500 East First Street. The CHC made two findings of approval for this. One, just finding a that the building's construction during the early 20th century is that a great association to the expansion period and the contribution of the broad patterns of the city. Finding C recognizes that the building is unique and an excellent example of a two story craftsman building. This one is particularly unique for its Japanese influence, and those are noted in the roof eaves and the roof ridge here. 3200 East First Street. That one is. The commission made two findings finding a and finding see the first one for city history as well as finding C for architecture. Item number three is a really unique property here. This is an art. That's the building designed by a famous architect, John Lautner. This is the only Lautner designed building that we have here in the city. The very last one at 3735 Pine Avenue is significant for its association with an important architect, Paul Taylor, and also for its mid-century architecture as well. With that. We have a recommendation to approve this these items tonight. Thank you. Speaker 7: Fine, thank you. We have a mr. Good here. You're going to speak on this all. Okay. We'll call him in the diocese. Councilman Pierce. I can't tell you whether. Fine. Okay. One. Would you please call the vote? Speaker 1: For the property at 1500 East First Street. Please cast your vote. Speaker 7: You have three votes. Honestly? Well.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Section 16.52.2310 relating to the designation of the Ferguson House located at 1500 East 1st Street as a Local Historic Landmark, read and adopted as read. (District 2)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10082019_19-1004

Speaker 0: Thank you. I will hear the next item, please to believe is 20. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilmember Arango, Councilmember Pierce, Councilwoman Price, Vice Mayor Andrew's recommendation to request City Manager to work with public works department and return to council with a two from four memorandum and a presentation within 90 days on the Magnolia Tulip Street Scale. Comprehensive Update. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion in a second. Let me start with Councilmember Ranga. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mayor. And before I begin, I want to thank my council colleagues, Councilmembers Pearce and Pryce, and also Vice Mayor Andrews for joining me on this important item here. A few years ago, I started receiving a lot of calls regarding magnolias and tree sap that were damaging not only cars, but streets and sidewalks. So as it's typically done, when we get calls like that, we get the arborists to go out and visit the the trees and see what is going on with them. The arborist concluded that there was a disease that was taking place in a few of those trees and they started a treatment to get them well. As time went on, we began to discover that the tree sap, which is not not toxic per se, but it is a thick soot that basically is a black and tar like that, basically hugs the ground and makes it very sticky and as well as on the street and also damages carpet. So we were finding that neighbors were not parking their cars under their trees and parking them elsewhere and creating all kinds of other havoc in the neighborhood. So as you arborists were treating these trees, we were getting more calls from other parts of the district now of experiencing the same the same issue with Willows Magnolias. So beginning earlier this year, we decided that this is an ongoing issue and it's a growing one. Come to find out that once we put this on the item that had my council colleagues join us in citing this issue, because it now that the SAP was beginning to appear in other parts of the city as well in other districts. So what I'm trying to do here today is to direct staff to look at the tree SAP issue and with the what's going on with the magnolias. The arborist has determined that the disease that these trees are experiencing is called to the tree scale. Basically, it's a pest that gets into the trees, it gets into the branches and it starts killing them. The response of the trees is like I like to liken it like to a body. When the body gets infected, it puts out its white, white blood cells to kill it. Well, the trees do the same thing. They start crying with their out, their sap, trying to get rid of the pest. But as you see here in some of these pictures, it gets really, really pervasive in terms of the tree set that that is that it deposits all over the place and could see right here the sap that goes out to the vehicles. And it's very liquidy, as you can see, and it's also very sticky. So the the item that I have here before you is to basically direct staff to take an inventory to get to give us some data in regards to the magnolia trees. By, first of all, counting how many trees are there in the city, how many are deceased? How can we treat them? What can we do to get them? Well, again, what can residents do if they have a magnolia tree that's infected in front of them in their yards? What can they do to preventive maintenance for preventing the the pests getting into their trees? So with that, I'm also wanting to get to a recommendation of some policies perhaps or some processes that we can include for the treatment of these trees and also getting some estimates as far as what would be the difference between. Fixing. One can fix a tree, but you can cure it. Cure curing the trees, treating them, removing them, and or eventually getting rid of them, as well as looking at what the cost would be for removing some of the the soot that you see right here on the sidewalks and on the streets and what the cost would be to get rid of that. It becomes a so not only a blight for the neighborhoods and for the houses that were there front of, but getting rid of those trees would really increase, would make the neighborhoods a lot better and more walkable. I walk my dog, for example, and I have to go around because walking through it, it is very sticky and and I don't want to even think what it does to the paws of my pets. So with that, I hope that I can get the support of my council colleagues to push this request forward and come back in around 90 days with a presentation and a policy as to how we can proceed with these trees. They pass it on. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: Thank you. I want to thank Councilman Ranga for bringing this item forward. This is so relevant right now, and I was excited to hear that he was bringing this item because it's a very relevant topic of conversation in the Alamitos Heights neighborhood of the city. We have about. 824 magnolia trees in the Alamitos Heights area. And I know that several of the trees have obtained are showing signs that there might be infested with this disease. So I'm looking forward to the report back. And I know that in our neighborhood we are going to have a community meeting just to give everyone an update about what's going on, because a lot of people have seen the sap and don't really know what it's connected with or what's causing it. So we will probably have a community meeting in the next three weeks to educate the community on what we're dealing with and what some of the recommendations are moving forward. So thank you, Councilman, for bringing this item forward and I appreciate the opportunity to sign on. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Speaker 7: Yes, thank you, Mayor. First of all, I'd like to thank my county councilman Evinger for allowing me to come on this item with him, because, in fact, my portion regarding the, you know, homes at the hundreds of the beautiful trees in the, you know, mature, you know, magnolia trees, they are part of what creates the beauty and tranquility and neighborhoods in which we live in. But unfortunately, many of these trees have come infested with scales. We need to do everything we can in trying to save as many of these trees that we can. If we can't remove the some of the, you know, the most disease ones, then will have to do and eventually, I think will do, you know, and now we're going to have to lose them. All that would be would really would be a tragedy because these are very beautiful trees. But I think if we can sit around and do the things we were supposed to do, get some type of, you know, at least we can get some kind of data on finding out what we can do and what we can't do in order to save these trees. So I'm really asking my supporters to please join me with this item and and supporting this. And thank you for bringing it to the diocese. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 4: I want to thank both Councilman Price and Councilmember Otunga in that through the budget process, we already started discussing the challenges ahead and we were able to, even though we don't have a solution yet, set aside some funding that could be used when a solution is determined. So I appreciate that being brought to the attention of the committee in advance. I think this kind of thing is only possible when there is funding for it. And so the forward thinking of those colleagues that have magnolia trees is is critical. And I'm very I think it's notable that they be commended for their forward thinking. Speaker 0: Thank you. We have four members of the public. Please line up and order Heather Stemmer to lead Stomatal orders and I apologize if I mispronounce it. Mr. Goodhue Mr. Horner via and I think it's Annette Aguilar. Please come forward. Speaker 4: Good evening. I have some additional photos if if you guys are open to looking at them as well. Speaker 0: You can pick them to the clerk right after. Actually, just give me after they speak. Speaker 4: Okay. So I'm here tonight with my neighbors. I live at 37 Golden Avenue. And in front of my house, there's two infected trees. And they each have one infected tree that's about ten feet away from my property line. So you can imagine with pretty much any direction the wind blows, I'm getting this sap from three different trees at the same time. It is a very sticky substance and very thick once it lands and once it's on the tree. But something else to consider is that it's very easily airborne. It blows out into a very fine mist and gets everywhere. It's as has been discussed, it's ruining paint on cars, on homes. It's actually damaging the screens on my windows in the front, which are less than ten years old. And that company has already said that that's not going to be covered under warranty because it's just unusual circumstances. It's caused. Insect infestations year over year. I've we've I've had bees so bad three years in a row that we had to hire exterminators to come out. They couldn't even just rescue them. They had to tear off the whole back of my garage. Ants year after year after year that have caused hundreds of dollars in food loss. There have been times where you prepare dinner and you set it out and you can't even have dinner before there's ants coming out. Everything has to be sealed up in airtight containers all year long. All the time. Just about a month ago, a branch fell. I think it's a little bit worse than than you guys are understanding to or at least some of the trees are a little bit further in the decay process than than do you know, my neighbor had a branch that was roughly five inches thick and about six feet long fall off. I was standing out in front of my house. It glanced off of his car, luckily didn't cause any damage. But we're half a half a block from Bernie Elementary and there's at least a dozen larger branches on our for trees that are ready to fall off. Two of the trees are visibly leaning towards the street. We've been trying to reach out to the city, all four of us, for several years now. Marilyn was able to get one of her trees trimmed, one branch last year, and that's it. I mean, we don't get much in the way of return correspondence on what is going to happen. I did get the you know, the notice from councilman you're on his office that this was going to be discussed tonight so that I could come and talk to you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Mr. Goodhue. Next up. Speaker 3: When you think about it in many respects. This is what's happening. Throughout this city. With marijuana and vaping. People doing that walking down the street. The same infestations of disease. Are entering people's bodies. By inhaling. What those people are exhaling. And that provides a solution of how we deal with that other subject, essentially cut them down and ship them out someplace before they infect. More people, particularly the kids. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is Mr. Horn Via. Speaker 8: Hi. Good evening, Mary. Council members. First of all, I would like to bring to your attention a quote from the Department of Public Works. And as well-intended it is. And in a lot of the hard work that's coming in from the public works, I think it's a really interesting quote. And it follows. As such, the Public Works Department is committed to preserving and protecting the community's urban forests and promoting the health and safety of the trees from the time they are planted through maturity. However, as I mentioned, as well-intended as it may seem. Misdirected priorities. A lack of funding have left our urban forests vulnerable to infestation and death due to lack of watering, proper maintenance and importantly, lack of planning. Back in 2015, Citi Order estimated that the value of park trees was in the vicinity of $112 million. That's not including street trees, nor the additional quantifiable benefits of warming forests that would undoubtedly increase the value of the assets by millions more. Therefore, I applaud the decision by Councilmember Robert Tharanga in bringing the subject to the forefront once again. This is an issue that many of us in Long Beach, including city staff, have attempted to address. If you're years ago, back in 2016, actually, station worker also addressed a similar issue known as the Urban Tree Canopy Assessment and Management Plan. Eight years before that, Public Works also brought to the Council the Urban Force Master Plan, which was received and filed. Therefore, it is necessary that it be clearly addressed now and that the city developed the necessary structure to develop the Urban Forest's vision and clearly see it for what it is an asset, not a liability. Now, the issue that has prompted Councilmember Ranga to step up know we've clearly heard it is the magnolia scale of the problem affecting is affecting not only trees in our urban canopy. It is also affecting the quality of life of residents in District seven, District eight, District two, and throughout the city. As we deal with the results of climate change and pollution that are nearly affected, there are clearly affecting all of the residents of Long Beach, but more notably West Side and North Long Beach. Therefore, many residents and organizations throughout the city will like to join your effort in developing a long range strategy and offer our assistance. Moreover, we also proposed to the city a suggested treatment method that we feel will be the best step in addressing a tree scale issue. The suggestion comes after various conversations with the University of California Cooperative Extension personnel and other knowledgeable experts of the field. However, as we look to the long term success, we must encourage the city. To be proactive, to proactively maintain our urban forest by hiring competent urban forester to adequately to add to with adequate resources to oversee the vast number of trees and increase the forest areas throughout the city. Thank you very much for your time. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, sir. And that gore. Speaker 2: Hello, Signor Roberto Ranga. I just found out today that you're my council member. I am your constituent. I'm glad to be here and meet everyone and all the council members for Long Beach. I recently moved to Long Beach and I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying here. I'm a first time home homeowner, and it took a lot of effort for my family, for myself to get into our first home. These two months have been a nightmare for for myself, for my daughter, for my husband. Every time we drive into our home, we can see the darkness from the six magnolias that surround my house on the street. You can see how dark and black they are. So it's like a horror movie, just just the site itself. Once we get in there, all the tarp from the outside, we take in two of the driveway into the back of our house. All the leaves are constantly falling because of the type of tree are getting that black powder into our home. And when we rape and pick up the leaves we're smelling and we're worried about our or about our health. Also, I don't know if a lot of people have mentioned this, but there is a bad smell, very extreme bad smell, especially with the heat. So I think I just came in to walk into my first home and the worst time, which is the heat that drops. And this thing is raining, I think. Signor Roberto, it's a little bit more than just, you know, walking the dog and trying to avoid the street. It's a smell. It's constant rain and the months of heat and is just it's just a nightmare. And I think that I moved to Long Beach to to. To make sure that whatever we bring as a family is to make the city better. To care for the house that we purchase. To be a good resident. But when I see how the streets are broken up, the pavement is making a puddle of this tarp right in front because it's so broken. So even if I try to wash, which I wash the the sidewalk, all the water that I'm throwing, it just gets together. And there's this tart that starts fuming, all this smell, and it just stays there. So I have a puddle of tar of the smelly thing, and even if I wash, it makes it worse, Senor Roberto, because I'm just releasing more of the tar in the smell. So it really is a nightmare. It's evaluating. Maybe my house, I was told by public works, it's been four years now and I there's no more time for this. You know, maybe we'll put it in and we'll try to figure out. I think it's only going to get worse. And we wish our next summer that tree is gone and that we have a baby tree that we're going to attend to and care for. So we would like to have those trees removed and for the money to be available, because we were told by public works that it's a question of of money. So if you can please chop up those trees and thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you for that. Councilman, your anger. Speaker 9: Yeah. I want to thank those individuals that came forward today to talk about the this this issue. Obviously, our concern is to get these trees well, cutting the trees is our last resort. However, we understand that that might need to happen because some of them will be so far gone that we can't salvage them. As Councilmember Stacie Mango mentioned, we did do a little forward thinking on this to set aside some funds so that we could manage this issue with with the this too, the tree scale pest that's affecting our trees. And also as as it was presented earlier, it's spreading to it might be spreading spreading to other trees as well . So we need to address that issue as we move forward. So it's a it's an issue that we need to take care of. It's one that came has come forward to us within the most recent times because of the growing infestations going on. At first it was something that we thought we could take care of with a with an arborist and treating a few trees here and there. But we now know that it's a much larger issue than we first thought. So my my challenge that's not my challenge. My request to the public works department to staff is to come back with a plan to get these trees well. And if not, then let's talk about how we can replace them or have other types of trees planted in that spot. But it's going to cost. We know that we have the money set aside for it. And if and I encourage anybody who has a magnolia tree in front of their house that they think is experiencing this pest infestation, to please contact our office, call us or call the city manager's office and identify your your neighborhood or the trees so that we could include it into our inventory, because that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to collect data and we're trying to find out where these trees are, how many there are, how many are sick, how many have been treated, and how many have responded to the treatment. And we also want to be able to provide you, the residents, with information as to how you can also provide some preventive maintenance on your trees if they're well, right now, the last thing we want is to get your tree sick. So there's opportunities for here for us to be able to provide you with the information you need to has a preventive maintenance on your trees as well as getting them. Well, again, like I say, the last thing we want to do is to kill trees, chop them down, we want to keep them. But if we can't, then we need some alternative ways of being able to handle this in this situation. So again, I want to thank you for coming here this evening and for sharing your thoughts. And feel free to contact my office at Erika by 625707777. Should you have any other concerns that you want to raise with us regarding that? So with that, I'll pass it on to my colleagues. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Ringa. And with that members, please cast your votes to receive and follow the report. And thank you to all those that came out I know that are going to be look obviously are looking forward to public works addressing this issue as well.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager, or his designee, work with Public Works Department and return to Council with a To/From/For memorandum and a receive and file presentation within 90 days; In addition, request City Manager, or his designee to provide recommendations to improve the current policies/processes surrounding tree infestations; a cost estimate for the removal and replanting of all affected magnolia trees within the City's boundaries; and a cost estimate for water blasting all affected sidewalks to remove the Tulip Tree Scale secretions.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10012019_19-0939

Speaker 1: Thank you. That concludes our presentations. We have two hearings today. We're going to go into our first hearing, which is hearing item number one, and then we'll have our second hearing. So let me turn this over. How can I have a clerk? Please read the hearing, please. Speaker 0: Hearing item. Once a report from economic development recommendations received supporting documentation into the record conclude the public hearing regarding an economic subsidy in connection with a transient occupancy tax sharing agreement with breakers development for the property at 210 East Ocean Boulevard and authorize city manager to execute a transient occupancy tax sharing agreement with breakers development for the development of an upscale independent boutique hotel. District two and this item requires north. Speaker 1: We go ahead and do the oath, please, Madam Court. Speaker 0: You stand and raise your right hand. You and each of you do solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the court now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you very much. So let me go ahead and begin by having our assistant city manager, interim city manager, Tom Modica. Go ahead and do the presentation to me. Speaker 10: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We will have Sergio Ramirez, our deputy director of economic development, give a presentation about this proposal. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, honorable mayor. Council members. The item before you is a transit agency tax sharing agreement for probably one of the most iconic properties on Ocean Boulevard, a property that almost a century ago opened its doors here in Long Beach and as a luxury hotel. But over the years kind of fell on hard times. This item before you tonight is is an opportunity for a new chapter for this property. I have a quick presentation for you. So the subject property is located at 210 East Ocean Boulevard. It's a 14 story building situated on approximately 1.15 acre parcel. So by way of background, the Historic Breakers Hotel opened its doors in 1926 as a luxury oceanfront resort. Over the years, the hotel experienced changes, changes to the name of the property ownership changes, physical changes, and changes to the use. From 1990, up until 2015, the property was operated as a congregate care senior facility. And as I mentioned, the property over the years experienced deferred maintenance and dilapidation. In 2017, Breakers Development LLC, a subsidiary of Pacific Six, a local development company here in Long Beach, purchased the property. The developer would like to reposition the property back to a luxury hotel, the Breakers Hotel and Spa. The proposed development project would include conversion of the existing historic breakers building into a luxury hotel, which would accommodate 185 well-appointed rooms, averaging approximately 400 square feet. The property would be a full service hotel with a spa, dining and entertainment. There would be over 10,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space over ten that I'm sorry, over 10,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space over 12,000 square feet of food and beverage would would provide space for a new full service restaurant and bar remodel and reopening of the doors of the famed Sky Room, a new signature rooftop bar and terrace, new ground floor coffee shop along Ocean Boulevard and a brand new destination jazz club venue. The project would also include a new beauty salon spa and a new pool deck would be constructed on the third floor along with a fitness center. As part of the Devon project, the developer will be constructing approximately $1 million in improvements to Victory Park, which will include new landscaping and reconfiguring of vehicle access. The proposed project will create approximately 500 new construction jobs and approximately 240 permanent jobs. Now, I'd like to just quickly take a moment to share with you some of the renderings of the proposed development project. The rendering before you on screen is an image of the new lobby. So this will greet visitors when they come and check into the new hotel. This is a typical guestroom of the new hotel. The image. Here is a picture of the new restaurant in the lobby dining area. This is the picture of the new spa. And this is the pool deck which will be constructed on the third floor overlooking the Terrace Theater and Pacific Ocean. And finally, the new and improved Sky Room, which will reopen upon the completion of this project. And the new feature, of course, the rooftop bar in and Terrace, which will have views of from Pacific Power. I'm sorry, Palos Verdes to Laguna Beach. The developers proposing a total development cost of approximately $135 million. The high cost of development is due to adaptive reuse of the historic building. The city engaged an economic consultant outside party Kaiser Morton Associates, to conduct an independent analysis of the construction costs and projected operating income. Kaiser Marson had determined there was an economic feasibility gap of approximately $37.7 million. The developer has requested a share of the projected transit occupancy tax or what the city would receive. The project is completed. Projected totals to the city because of the construction of the project is expected to be approximately 42 million in 20 years and 73.5 million in three years. Under the proposed TOT sharing agreement, the developer has asked to receive approximately 13 million over nine years. That would translate to approximately 34% of the feasibility gap. During that period, the city would the developer would save 80% of the total and the city would receive approximately 20%. During the nine year period and the assistance would be capped at $13 million. The developer would be required to make a minimum investment of $7.7 million and operate a four diamond rated triple triple A for diamond rated hotel for a period of 20 years. And certify annually under eight and have to operate a preferred hotel flag or better hotel. And the subsidy is similar to the same deal that we did for American Life Hotels back in 2017. Staff recommends that city approve the transit occupancy tax sharing agreement received the supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing regarding the economic subsidy in connection with transit occupancy. Tech Sharing Agreement with Breakers Development LLC, a California limited liability company for the property at 210 East Ocean Boulevard. Assessor Parcel Number 7278007034 pursuant to California Government Code Section 53083 and authorizes the city manager or designee to execute any and all documents necessary to approve transit occupancy tax sharing agreement with Breakers Development LLC, a California limited liability company or city for the development of an upscale, independent boutique hotel that concludes staff's presentation. Would you be happy to answer any questions? Speaker 1: Thank you. We're going to do public comment next as part of the hearing order. And so if I call you or your name, please come forward. The first speakers are Jose Soto. Can you stamp's Anna Evans, Goldstein and Jeremy Arnold? Those speakers could please come forward as a sotto can you stamps Anna Evans Goldstein and Jeremy Arnold, please come forward. Please. Thank you. Speaker 7: The City Council. Speaker 10: Hello. My name is Jose Soda. I work at Hyatt Centric here in downtown Long Beach. I'm here to encourage you to vote for the 13 million for the Breakfast Hotel Project. However, I have a question about why they have not received a similar amount to the American Life Project. I'm happy to learn about the project the developer has worked on to make sure that the hotel will include benefits to the environment and community. I am happy about the proposed parking plan that the developer has made and effort to increase. Also parks space in the city. The new Tanaka Park and the work being put into the Victory Park will be a great place for my family and me to visit and spend time. The efforts being made to preserve this historic building are good and will be a benefit to our city. We need more projects to include community benefits such as these and hope you will accept the 13 million. Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Good evening, Mayor Garcia and city council members. My name is Kenya Stamps and I am the associate vice president of sales at the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau. And I'm here along with my senior vice president of sales, Joseph Genesee, on behalf of Steve Goodling. He would like to be here tonight, but he had a previous engagement and could not be here. And we wanted to express our support of this project as it as it relates to the city being able to I'm sorry, the convention and visitors bureau being able to acquire more groups, especially citywide. We have run into situations where because we don't have an upscale boutique project like this, we are not able to speak with certain groups. And so this is a super important project for us. It will open doors for us that we initially couldn't get into and it's a great project for the city. And honestly, we couldn't find a better group of owners that are in full support of the city as well as as their own project. So again, we're just here to express support for this Breakers project. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 4: Hello. My name is Anna Evans Goldstein and I am here on behalf of Unite Here Local 11. I'm here to voice support for the 13 million total in total for the Breakers Hotel. Pacific six has made strong commitments to a variety of environmental protections and community serving uses, including mitigating greenhouse gas and noise impacts related to both operation and construction. Their commitment to the community has already been realized through partial funding for a newly permanent public park in a park deprived area of the city. The project also includes renovations to Victory Park and as an excellent. Speaker 5: Example of. Speaker 4: An adaptive reuse of an historically preserved building. However, I want to raise a concern over the process. The proposal for the Breakers Hotel does not seem in line with previous top agreements the city has negotiated mystifying the process by which the amount before you is reached. The American Life Project received an agreement in 2017 of 28. Speaker 5: Million to close a. Speaker 4: Feasibility gap of 47 million, making their rebate roughly 57% of the gap. The Breakers Agreement is proposing a cap of 13 million for a 37 million feasibility gap, which is only 34% of what is needed to close the gap significantly less than the American Life Project. These two projects are one block away from each other and both slated to be upper scale hotels. If the Breakers Hotel rebate were calculated similarly to American life, the full rebate would be capped at 21 million. So we ask that you approve the 13 million total for this project today, but we urge that this matter is brought back before the Council with a more in-depth analysis for the amount being recommended and to award the missing 7 million. The process must be more transparent. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker and then creative, carelessly. And tonight can be also. Please come up carelessly and to me. Can you please come up? Good evening. My name is Jeremy Arnold. I live in District one. I want to say I'm in favor of the $30 million total t0t for breakers. However, like Mr. Soto, Ms.. Evans. Goldstein, I am curious as to why they are not being offered a similar amount to the American Life Project. There's no explanation in the staff report of how the decision was made to determine the cap of $30 million. There are no indications that breakers should be receiving or sorry. There are indications on that staff report that Breakers should be receiving more in 2017. Long Beach Engage BRT Urban Economics to prepare a hotel incentive program. Study notes in its survey of California hotel development subsidies that, quote, subsidies for four diamond hotels are typically much higher than for three diamond hotels. These subsidies range from 15% to 40% of the total development costs. If we are to take the lowest percentages of this range at 15% of the total development costs of the Breakers Hotel, which is $135 million, the total subsidy would equal 20 and a quarter million dollars in order to be on par with the standard for the state. I'm a huge proponent of environmental protections for our city when it comes to development, and I'm happy to see the numerous mitigations. Pacific says six has put in place the on demand energy management system to reduce energy and greenhouse gas impacts. The additional employee parking spaces and on site information about transit and ride sharing services to reduce traffic and greenhouse gas emissions and the construction related measures to reduce air quality and noise impacts during the construction phase are strong commitments. I urge you to approve. Speaker 9: The $13 million. Speaker 1: In total now, but leave you with my question about why they're not being offered a similar amount of totty that was offered to the American. Speaker 9: Life Project slated. To be built only one block away. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. So. Speaker 4: I carelessly here. I love this project. That building is wonderful. And I'm delighted to see that we're going to invest in that hotel. The economic development subsidy does seem like it's a lot. 80% of the transient occupancy tax. I don't object to a businessman wanting to make a reasonable return on investment. I always compare this to my own era in business, and I can tell you that if Boeing couldn't find 10% on their money, it was a no bid. So this particular business is looking for 8%, which doesn't seem unreasonable to me. But what I would ask is if the numbers are not as anticipated and if they make more than the assessed calculations that we just went through, can we somewhere in the deal have the ability to recalculate and bring money back to the city? So I'd hate to give them a giant windfall profit at our expense. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Your last speaker, please. Speaker 7: So I can face success for president. Speaker 10: There's a developing trend across the country with. Speaker 7: The matter of. Speaker 10: Boutique hotels. Uh, I actually, uh, work at one in downtown L.A. and I have to say. But there is an interesting trend in which. The rise. Speaker 7: Of boutique hotels, you know, young hip millennials and maybe older generations that want proximity to millennials, you know, so this is the boutique hotel. Speaker 10: Thing. And I think it's great. The issue is, is when they don't work, because what often happens is a partnership with entities like Airbnb, where they convert hotel rooms into apartment hotels. This is happening currently in, uh, in southern. Speaker 7: San Diego County as well as Sacramento, Oakland and San. Speaker 10: Francisco. This isn't a by chance or a coincidence. This is a clearly a, uh, a business tactic used by a lot. Speaker 7: Of major. Speaker 10: Developers when the hotels don't work. They do this? Personally, I'm indifferent towards this project as a whole. I think 80% is inappropriate. But for me, if, let's say. Speaker 7: Karma, I read. Speaker 10: The report that they had and you know, there's certain stipulations which I think, uh, it goes without saying, the diamond, uh, the rating is that's imperative. But for me, if we going to invest public funds. Speaker 7: Coming out of Missouri. Speaker 10: Uh, which was supposedly supposed to be used to maintain a certain number of firefighters and police officers, if we're going to dedicate that money and to. Speaker 7: Making sure this development occurs. Speaker 10: I think that there should be some kind of, uh, agreement with, uh, Pacific six that. Speaker 7: Uh, they can't turn any of these hotel. Speaker 10: Rooms that they can't fill into Airbnbs. Or if there is the case. Speaker 1: That they are going to uh. Speaker 7: Designate a certain percentage of the rooms into Airbnbs. Speaker 10: That they should also pay an annual. Speaker 9: Permit per room like any, any other. Speaker 10: Provider Airbnbs do for the city in addition to the taxes that they're going to pay as a hotel provider. Outside of that, you know, you could do more with the. Speaker 7: Community benefits, but we'll take what we can. Speaker 10: Get. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I don't have Ms.. Control signed up, but I will please come forward and speak. And we just need a please sign up for the council, so please go ahead. Speaker 4: Thank you. I'm. Curious as to why. This is being done that the developer claims he needs money for historical restoration of this hotel when they're adding a swimming pool, which was never there before. A rooftop bar and a large circular driveway which is taking part of Victory Park. True and true they are. Putting. A new park in another part of town. But the. Coastal Act requires that if you take park land from the coastal zone, it has to serve the people that are in that zone. So any restoration of Victory Park should have been in downtown. My biggest concern about this is when the nine years is going to start. If it starts next year, 2020. We are having the Olympics here in 2028. That's eight years. So I'm assuming we're expecting a lot of people to come and stay in our hotels during the Olympics, will be losing all of that hotel tax or at least 80% of it. During the Olympics and you're shaking your head. Council member Mungo. I hope you'll explain how this doesn't affect the Olympics. I feel that we bend over backwards to help John Molino. Restore the breakers. We've already. Signed a contract with him, and now he wants more. He got part of Victory Park. We are subsidizing him to. For seismic. Repairs for community hospital, which he will profit from. I am against taxpayers subsidizing this project. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. With that, we will conclude public comment and I will move on now to a deliberation from the council council member Pearce. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to thank staff a great deal for their work on this. I know that this has been a topic since the company decided to to purchase this building for, I believe, $40 million. Correct. $40 million. And so I want to thank staff. I know that they've done a lot of hard work. I want to thank Pacific Six for really being a community partner. And I want to address some of the community concerns and really talk about why this project is a historic moment for this council. My work before I got on council was around community benefits. It was around responsible development. The organization I worked for put out a report about subsidies to hotels in particular. We subsidize the Hyatt on city land for $76 million with no strings attached, with no community benefits, with no worker standards, with none of that. In about 20 years, the city gave away nearly $1,000,000,000 to developers that weren't based in the city of Long Beach. What we have here is a project that is a cornerstone of our downtown. We have here a project that is a historic building that is gorgeous, that everybody that drives by it wants to go inside. They want to experience it. They want to go to the rooftop nest that's been up there. Now we have a developer that not only wants to really invest in it and really protect it and make it shine, but those developers are Long Beach based that we're keeping Capital Local, that we're saying for every dollar we invest in our local community, we're going to get a return on that investment for every good job we create that has a living wage. We know we get $3 back in our community for every dollar of that living wage. So what I see here is a project that is invested in parks, that's invested in historic preservation, that's invested in its workers, to say we have 200 workers that are going to have standards and a seat at the table. And those workers will likely come from Long Beach community. We know about 90% of Long Beach hotel workers live in Long Beach. And so for me, the idea of a community benefit is exactly that. And it is having a partner that is based here that's willing to give back. This isn't a giveaway, though, because this building for many years wasn't a hotel. We didn't get any tax dollars returned on that. We didn't get a total return returned on that. So by year 13, we are going to have a return on our investment is not the right number. I know that we've got. Yes. By year 13, we will have received back our 13 million that we gave up in the beginning. And so that again is a return back on our investment. I support this project. I do have a couple of questions. I know that we have struggled as a city to try to figure out how we wanted to do a total plan, how we wanted to address this, because we know that in other cities they don't just do a T or T share deal. They give away the whole house, they give away everything just to try to bring people in without community benefits. So understanding the difference between the American life deal, which I believe was 57% of the gap versus the 34% of the gap. Can you explain on that, please, John? Or Sergio. Speaker 1: Certainly a council member. Yeah. So so the deals are essentially the same from a percentage basis, 80% of TOTY over the first nine years of of the 20 year deal. But when we look at a project like American Life, which estimates to cost a total of 262 million, versus a project that is estimated to cost a total of 135 million. The percentages what you put in leads to a different outcome. So ultimately, between these two projects, it's a matter of scale. And so 80% of a much larger number is going to yield a much larger number. And in this case, the American life deal will return up to 28 million over that nine year period. The minimum level of construction or investment is 230 million. And as a comparison in this deal, the total over the nine years is 13 million because the minimum level of investment is 70 million. So these are vastly different projects in terms of scale, and as a result, they're going to return a different number in terms of subsidy. Speaker 8: And so in looking at that difference in between the gap, did you guys consider that? Did you have conversations about that, that it wasn't as much as American life? Speaker 10: I'm just definitely so one of the things originally the developer had requested 80% of total for a 20 year period. And so I think what we had said, because we didn't have doesn't have a policy regarding due to subsidies. We looked at the most recent deal the American be that being the American life and and structured RDL based on that framework. Speaker 8: Okay. As I mentioned, I support this project. I know John and I, we don't always see eye to eye on everything on this project. I wear eye to eye and I really respect the level of community engagement you've brought to it. I do want to hear from my colleagues if there's an interest in exploring that next piece of the conversation. But I would encourage my colleagues to vote yes on this tonight. It's a great project and it's a historic moment for the residents, as well as the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next up is Romney. If you could take a few if you'd like. Did you want to make some comments or three questions? Okay. Let me go to Councilwoman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you. I, too, am supportive of this item. I do have a few questions. The first is, did I read it correctly that there's a 20 year minimum operating period that's required pursuant to this agreement? Speaker 10: That is correct, Councilwoman. I'm sorry. I may have missed that during my comments during the presentation. That is correct. There is a requirement for the an operating period, a minimum 20 years. Typically, the life of hotels is about 25 to 30 years. But essentially what we've done is required a 20 year requirement period for operation to ensure that we're able to recoup our investment, but plus the latter years, which is where we really see kind of the return on investment. Speaker 2: Okay. And the $70.7 million investment that is part of this agreement on behalf of the developer, is that is there a timeline for that when that investment has to happen? Does it happen before the the occupancy permit does, or is it through the life of the contract? Speaker 10: No, that that's a great question. And yes, that happens before the occupancy. Once the project construction period is completed, those numbers are certified by an independent third party to ensure that that level of investment has occurred. Speaker 2: Okay. What happens then at year 15 on in terms of a requirement for ongoing maintenance by the operators to ensure that at that time, when the city is receiving the full top contribution, the hotel is at optimum condition to be able to attract customers. Speaker 10: Great question. Again. Again, part of the requirements that will be built into the agreement is a requirement for an annual certification of Tripoli's for Diamond certification, Triple A. The Automobile Club has a kind of rates, hotels and whether it's year one or year 30, there's a minimum standard that requires kind of certain level of detail from everything from guest experience, service, food and condition of the physical, physical condition of the hotel. If something is off in see, for example, the towels aren't soft enough or you know, the, you know, for maintenance they don't receive that rating of like for diamond. And so that is going to be built into our requirement of our hotel, of our of our agreement to ensure that from day 1 to 30. I'm sorry, you're 30. The condition of the hotel is of that of for for for Diamond. Speaker 2: And and I don't know this because I'm not in the hotel industry, but do they have like an annual audit of the correct regulatory agency? But I guess the the certifying agencies to determine whether they're at that. Speaker 10: So so Tripoli actually sends out certification. There's a certification that Tripoli conducts. The folks from Tripoli come out and the experience, the hotel, walk through it and experience it and provide that certification and that know whenever you go to a hotel, you'll see kind of at the entrance or lobby it's presented and it's in a prominent location . And that certification is what we will require to make sure that we are able to then provide our reimbursement of the total. Speaker 2: Okay. That's great. And I think that the I wanted to some assurance on that because I do know that there are folks who are interested in this high end type of hotel will be will look to resources that will list the hotels in the different parts of the region that are part of a particular hotel group. So it's important for me, if we're going to invest in this, that at the time the city is going to take over the full totti, that the hotel continues to be in the condition where people would want to stay in it. I'm very excited about this project. I think the fact that it's a historical preservation but yet an update and improvement project is huge for the city. This is definitely an area where we're lacking in the city in terms of services that we offer to visitors. And I think we've made so much progress in the city in terms of development and businesses that we're trying to attract to the city that we really need this this type of a hotel. To give folks yet another option for visiting the city. I'm very excited about it. I think, you know, historical preservation is important, but also updating the services, the look and what people and meeting the needs of what consumers want is critical for success. So at some point you have to merge historical preservation with reality. And I think this this project is going to do that. So I'm grateful for the partnership and I thank staff for your thorough job. And I know several of us reached out today for additional information on this item. So I want to thank you for all the work that you did behind the scenes to get us briefed for tonight. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 5: I will echo Councilwoman Price's comments related to preparation. I appreciate city staff providing the report that was detailed with all the addendums. I think that it's important for us to recognize that investments such as these are also a risk. And so we appreciate Mr. Molina taking a risk on Long Beach. He has a track record of being successful here. We appreciate that as well. I really appreciate the detail that we went into related to knowing and understanding the 80% sharing. I know I've shared my thoughts with staff, but in the future, as we look towards these opportunities, when you go year by year through the investment to MBS controls question the um, the number could be reached earlier than nine years and the project could cap off because the $13 Million cap could mean that it is achieved in five years. It just depends on the success of the hotel. And so with that, we would still be sharing in those revenues. Once that cap is reached, they would all come to the city, and that's a benefit. The other benefit is the property is getting significant improvements and those significant improvements show up on our property tax rolls . And while we do not get the lion's share of property tax, the County of Los Angeles does. And those are still programs that are are universal to the region. And then a percentage of that, a small percentage of that does come to the city of Long Beach, and we will benefit from that. And so if not, but for Mr. Molina's investment, we would be receiving zero. We would just be receiving the old property tax value, which is less than the current property tax value, significantly less should that property not have been purchased. So we are already in a better position today than we were under the previous operators and now we have a new revenue source that was not available when it was a senior care facility. And this is just a turning of the time, but with a elegant look back at our history. And for that I am thankful and just once again, I appreciate my colleagues and the amount of work that went into this. I know that it is not easy to bring together all these moving parts in a successful way and to do it and to do it in a way that is meaningful for workers. The community and history is is really remarkable. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, councilwoman. Councilman, super now. Speaker 9: Thank you. Vice Mayor De Andrews could not be here tonight, so he asked me to read a couple of comments on his behalf. So this is from D. Andrews. I support the request of the Breakers Development LLC to be granted a subsidy in the form of a TOT sharing agreement. The revitalization and renewal of the Breakers into a luxury boutique, hotel and spa will transform a property that has lagged behind the rest of downtown Long Beach development. This new development will be generating millions of dollars of new TOTTY and creating hundreds of new jobs. These are new revenues and jobs the city would not get if the breakers were not redeveloped. I believe that we I believe that we are if we are asked by the developer for assistance in financing and revenues of this project, it is incumbent on the City Council to respond favorably to that request, for it will still guarantee US revenue that we would not ordinarily get if this project was not built. And he concludes by saying, I ask for my colleagues support. I'd just like to say that community hospital or Miss Maryland is an investment community hospital was mentioned that got my attention that's in the fourth council district. But I'd like to remind everyone that community hospital was built in 1924 and the Breakers was built in 1926. So I'd like to commend Mr. Molina for investing in one of our newer properties. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'll be quick. I love this building. I love this project ever since I first heard about this project. I think with our beautiful downtown, we do not have enough rooftop lounges and rooftop venues. And this from these renderings, it looks amazing. The pool looks fantastic. But my favorite part is going to the jazz club, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up as much. We love live music. We will be active patrons of this jazz club. Separately from that, I like. There's a lot to like about the project and I think we should lift up some of those things. So I know that there's a lot of focus on TLT and Council among them interest in property taxes also. There's also sales tax. There's a lot of good things about this. So, Mr. Chrysler, so quickly, could we summarize what is the full picture of new revenue for this that the city will realize on this project? Speaker 10: Council member, if I may have me answer for Mr. Kessler in your one kind of new revenue, even with the share of total subsidy to the developer, the city is going to be receiving just under 400 $400,000. And then, of course, it escalates in the when once the subsidy burns off, the city will jump to the subsidy . I'm sorry, the revenue to the city will jump to $2.2 million. Overall, total kind of revenue to the city will be approximately $66.8 million from this property. Even with the subsidy. Speaker 9: And aside from your staff time to negotiate. This was the city's investment that that. It was a number $66 million over three. Speaker 10: I'm sorry. Speaker 9: It was the city's investment. Aside from your staff. Speaker 10: I think it's just staff time, a consultant staff time to review this and to make sure. And, of course, legal legal costs to review this. Speaker 9: So aside from soft costs of staff, this this is a strategic investment. It makes a lot of sense over the long term for the city. And is projects like this that we are able to balance our budget, advance more city services, police officers, firefighters, parks, libraries. It's because of projects like this. I commend you also commend the developer and everyone who has been involved in this. I also want to say it's great to see that, you know, a lot you know, Councilman Pierce mentioned it. This wasn't the way the development took place in the past. You've got business and labor together. The community is happy endorsing a solid project. It makes the choice very, very easy for me. Was that you're going to say no? Speaker 10: Councilmember One thing I want to mention is that one thing I would just want to clarify that this isn't money that we're actually kind of paying the developer. This is new revenue that is generated from this development. Speaker 9: It exists clear on that. We've all it cost us nothing, relatively nothing. And this is almost $77 million in revenue over three. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Ringa. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor. Just one quick question. Is there any part of this project that touches the coastal the coastal line, the coastline? It was mentioned before. Well. Speaker 10: I don't believe this requires a course of development permit. It's just on the outside of the course of development permit area. Speaker 9: Exactly. Speaker 7: Well, thank you. But I you know, I have to agree with everybody who's spoken so far, because this meets a lot of criteria. It's a remodel, rebuild. It's bringing in revenue will eventually. It creates jobs. And it has a community benefit. What else could we want? Plus, no expense to the city. So I think that when it comes to this project, it's it has a lot more pluses and minuses and I'm told, in support of this project. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 8: Yes, Rex, Councilmember Richardson reminded me you guys have a great music program. Was that in the presentation? I missed it. Did you talk about it? Speaker 10: We talked a little bit about the jazz club and of course, the venues, but maybe the developer would like to maybe talk touch upon the. Speaker 8: He's like, I don't want to. I don't want to. I'll just be a having having a Long Beach based company come in and do this means that we're going to have local musicians come in, not only in the jazz venue. Right. But throughout. And that we're going to have a connection with our schools. They're going to bring in the high school music guys and come in and they're going to jam for us. I mean, there is a great synergy that we don't have anywhere else in downtown. I just want to make sure that that's lifted up so that the press can come and bug you about it later on. It's great to hear my council colleagues thoughts. I'd like to to move forward with the motion. Could you also come back with just a deeper dove on the total? So we have an understanding. You can do that. Awesome. Great. That's right. Thank you. Speaker 1: That concludes council comments. I just want to just add that just more broadly speaking, I've I've obviously been I've encouraged us to think about our TOTTY as a way of attracting and ensuring that big projects and projects of significance could get built within our downtown. And I'm really glad that over the last few years, the city has begun using that as a as a mechanism for attracting quality projects. There are cities, some that are just a few miles from here that will provide 100% of Totti to build projects. And essentially that's that's not uncommon. And so I think and in some cases not get much out of that for the community or for labor standards. And so I think that to have a project of this significance that would not be happening if it wasn't for the commitment of the team involved. And I just want to thank the team for working with us, working with the team to ensure that we not only end up with what is really going to be a spectacular regional draw, but also one that provides support for our environmental goals and certainly our goals as it relate to worker standards and representation for those that are working there. So I think those are all things that are very important and I do want to thank the team for for doing that. And the last thing I'll say is there are there are hotel projects in L.A. in the broader state that literally that the hotel just alone, that one project brings in folks from across the state and the region because of the quality of the project. That's, for example, it's like the Ace Inn in downtown L.A. And this this project has the potential of being a a a hotel destination, where I think people are going to come in from across the state to visit this this location and enjoy the amenities and all the of the experiences that people can have in this space. So congratulations to the team and with that, members will go ahead and Castro votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing regarding an economic subsidy in connection with a Transient Occupancy Tax Sharing Agreement with Breakers Development, LLC, a California limited liability company, for the property at 210 East Ocean Boulevard, Assessor Parcel Number 7278-007-034, pursuant to California Government Code Section 53083; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary, Transient Occupancy Tax Sharing Agreement, with Breakers Development, LLC, a California limited liability company, or assignee, for the development of an upscale independent boutique hotel. (District 2)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10012019_19-0941

Speaker 1: Thank you. I have a time certain that I know his past because the hearings went went long. I want to bring up item 25, which had the first time certain here. You can please have that item up. Speaker 0: Item 25 Communication from Council Member Muranga Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the Century Villages at Cabrillo 2019 Social Impact Report. Speaker 1: Councilmember Ringo. Speaker 7: Tonight, I am pleased to have representatives from the Villages at Cabrillo, at the Council tonight to provide their 2019 social impact report. The villages at Cabrillo provide a multitude of services to our residents and serve as a model to other cities and agencies for services related to our continuum of care. I'd like to invite Ms.. Kimberly Wie, vice president of Resident Services, to present an update on their 2019 social impact report. And I see that Mr. Renee Castro has already lined up to present Southport to the Council. Renee. Speaker 9: Thank you, Councilman. Mayor. Members of the Council. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Renee Carlstrom, director for Community Engagement. I am not. Can we but I'm going to I'm going to tee it up for Kim to give our report. We just wanted to thank the councilmen, the mayor and council for the opportunity to present our 2019 Social Impact report. We're very proud of the work that's been done in this. Tonight, we actually wanted to start with a brief video, just a three minute video to share a little bit about the villages and the work that we do there. Of course, as all of you know, we provide housing, bridge housing and permanent supportive housing for on any given night, 1500 formerly homeless people are veterans, families, children. So we're very excited about this work. And we just really wanted we like every year to come and present to the council because and thank you for your partnership. We really could not do this work without the work of all the councilmembers. Of course, our council member in the seventh, Roberta Aranda staff. But in particular, we really want to thank the city department, its development services, everything Parks and Rec, Health and Human Services, the police department. It's really is a partnership to make this work. So again, I we're going to be sharing a brief video. And then after that, we will have our chair, Dora Soldo, who is the chair for villages at Cabrillo, speak briefly, and then we will have our vice president for resident services. Kim, we will present the data. Thank you so much. If we could cue up the video, please. Okay. There is no video. Okay, so I'm going to do it with hand puppets. All right. So I'm going to ask our chair, Dora Hassell, to please. Speaker 4: Good evening and thank you for having us. My name is Dora Herzfeld, and I have the honor of serving as the chair. Of the The Villages of Cabrillo Collaborative Marzo Executive Director of Comprehensive Child Development. And we are one of the many partners that make up the villages of Cabrillo Collaborative, and I'm joined by a number of our wonderful partners. And I think Renee was talking about really partnership and our support of the city for everything that has been offered to us in order to bring this neighborhood alive for people who formerly were experiencing homelessness. And for us, the heart really of the neighborhood is the people and the people who have worked so hard to create an environment where well-being and and healing can occur for us as the beautiful buildings go up. We're working on a parallel track to make sure that the experience of the residents is equally thought of and careful in terms of the experience we're providing. And I think for us, as the Villages of Cabrillo Collaborative, we say to you that as we get support for these wonderful buildings in this wonderful community, we owe you a service that any resident, any Long Beach resident would be proud to receive. And so we're here again to thank you, to let you know that we're certainly meeting our commitment to make sure that every single resident is cared for and is supported in a way that's going to make their quality of life better. And we have plans, just as we do have plans for the facility. We have plans for a residence which includes this year a real focus on improving outcomes for children zero five who call the villages at Cabrillo their neighborhood. And also to look at the organizational culture of the community to make sure that it's responsive to the needs of the residents in that community. So we thank you again, and we're here to let you know that we are honoring our commitment with our social impact report to you for your investment in our neighborhood. And I'll pass it over to Kim. Speaker 5: Thank you, Dora. And thank you all for The Village. It's a real collaborative standing behind me. I love having a posse. Thank you. Again, my name is Kim WI. I'm the vice president of residential services at Century Villages at Cabrillo. And it is my pleasure to present to you our Social Impact Report. Each year I come before you in and tell you how we're doing and this is how we codify our results. This is what all of the all the hard work in the dollars goes into. And we present this report each year so that we can show what, you know, all the great work that we're doing. It is a it is a labor of love. It is a ten month project that really brings together all of the data of our partners, both on and off site. It includes stories of our residents, great photos and data. It is truly a collaborative process in conjunction with the City Health and Human Services HMAS Team. We definitely could not do it without that. A lot of the data comes. Speaker 4: From the HMAS. Speaker 5: System. We also get data from our 14 partner agencies and all of that is put together by Dr. Beth Magee, who is our outside evaluator for the project. I'd also like to, again, as Rene said, thank the city for their ongoing supportive efforts of not only the villages of Cabrillo, but also the process of putting together the Social Impact Report, and especially Kelly Collopy, Alison King, Theresa Chandler, Shannon Parker and Ailsa Ramos. We definitely could not do it without them. Each year we look back at our progress and each year, as you've seen the Social Impact Report, you will see that there is a theme this year. Our theme is whatever it takes. And those of you that are familiar with the intensive case management or the Measure H funding, you've probably seen whatever it takes in all of the documents throughout the county documents. And so we wanted to put a story behind it and put some real life behind what that really means. And so if you read our centerpiece this year, that is all about what our service providers do, what our case managers do to help keep people housed. It is truly a whatever it takes model. We work in partnership with all of our service providers on and off site. We work with the residents hand in hand to help move them from homelessness to being housed. That takes a lot. And what that really means of moving from homelessness to housing is to becoming a good tenant, a good resident, paying the rent and being a good neighbor. And while trying to manage all of the daily tasks of having your own apartment while trying to overcome all the barriers that got them on the street in the first place PTSD, mental health, substance abuse and poverty and a long life of trauma. And so that is that is definitely a challenge that. Speaker 8: We have met. In 28. Speaker 5: 2018, 2291 residents were housed at the villages. Of those 1291 ward permanent supportive housing. And of that, 1200 30% of them entered permanent housing after. Speaker 4: Experiencing chronic homelessness. Speaker 5: At Harbor Interface building that opened this year, for example, there are 13 adults with a combined homeless experience of 38 cumulative years, 138 cumulative years. And so despite these challenges, our collaborative and our service providers and our wonderful team, county and city partners, our property management team, and of course, the residents themselves did whatever it takes to stay house and succeed. And you can see that in the numbers. Speaker 4: Did I hit the wrong button? I'll leave that. Speaker 5: At. 98% of our residents retained housing for six. Speaker 2: Months. Speaker 5: And 95% remained. How's after a year? Speaker 1: And just for I know that the timers not appear, but we've got about three, three and a half minutes left for the presentation. Thank you. Speaker 5: And beyond remaining housed, which is a huge chore as the own. We wanted to echo what Dora was saying in that there are lives improved in many ways as well. They increased their incomes. They saved in the rents. They were happier. They felt safe in their own home. Speaker 4: They're healthier. Speaker 5: And most of all, they're. They're living a life of a housed individual now. And so again, thank you so much for exploring our social impact report data. And I hope you have an opportunity to read our centerpiece, which really explains to you the concept of whatever it takes. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Not somebody, ringa. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 2: Q I want to thank Councilman Ranga for bringing this presentation forward tonight. I had the pleasure to take a tour with my staff not too long ago, and it's just very impressive the work that's being done there and the community that you've created that so many people call home, and all the different touches that you've put into making it feel like home for communities of people who may be in transition and needing the support of not just their neighbors, but also of the folks who oversee and safeguard the operations there to ensure that everyone is comfortable and included. So I want to thank you for everything that you do. It's a really fantastic operation that we have right here in the city of Long Beach. I wish more people knew about it, actually. And our our office has been trying to spread the word. I think we did our news newsletter article about the villages of Korea in our newsletter a few months ago. And we really appreciate you giving us an opportunity and giving the residents an opportunity to see all about your facilities. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilor Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilman Ranga. You have a true jewel in your backyard and on the West Side, this social impact report. I look forward to it every year. Rene, I'll tell you, we actually, Jack and we do a social impact. We do an impact report in our district modeled after your report. It's clear, it's transparent, it's easy to read. It takes a lot of complex things and boils down to what's all about making an impact. So congratulations to you on that. Villages Cambria is only so you know, there are so many things that we could all say, but truly it's a model. It's a model that is recognized nationally. You know, I served on SAG for a long time. I'm first vice president. This is the you're the only organization successfully navigated the cap and trade process. Received two awards in the first two years of the Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities Program. And we look forward to future applicants awarding additional projects as we move forward. You know, in our last year, I've been there many times in our last tour. I have to tell you, it was just great to see kids playing outside. You don't even see that very often. Just in regular neighborhoods. The kids were outside playing in the way that you've overlapped so many services, you know, you see children's clinic, so many services all working together and you've brought the train and mean brought the bus into the site. It's amazing. In fact, it's the model for the vision for the the bridge housing facility we're developing in uptown. This is the model to have to point out something in our backyard to be able to take residents, tour it and say this is where we could be. It does so much to really build the goodwill and the confidence to turn around that not in my backyard conversation because yes, villages Cabrillo is an amazing space. It has bridge, housing and shelter and all of those things make stand. And we need to we to make sure that our residents fully understand what's what's possible in this conversation. So, again, thank you. I really love this report. I'm a big fan of villages, Cabrillo and best wishes. We look forward to many more great years with you. Speaker 1: Thank you. And got some reports. Speaker 8: On some member of Richardson stole my talking points. I'm done. No, I'm kidding. I it's really hard not to say echo up here. As a council member, I want to echo their comments saying that you guys are a model. I don't know that that comes across as real as it really is to be able to lead not only organizations like yourselves, but to lead the city in this conversation. I think that our city, night and day, where we were ten years ago with how we talk about and and try to problem solve homelessness, mental health addiction . And that is really because you guys have led the way and demonstrated to us that you can do it in a safe, clean environment that's supportive and that you've got real outcomes. I do not think for a second that the City of Long Beach would have invested as much as we have in homelessness if it was not for your leadership. And I want you guys to really know that that's it's not just giving accolades because you guys are a partner that comes and presents to us every year. But I really feel that with my heart that you as individuals have led this organization to be a gem for the nation. And so I know that you guys are also looking to purchase properties. My team is working with economic development right now to identify some properties in the Second District that that might be up for sale right now. And so I look forward to those partnership opportunities and just thank you guys so much for putting your heart into it. We know that this work takes a lot out of you and your families as well. And so applauding you for that effort. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. We have one public comments and I can only please come forward. CNN. We're going to go ahead and receive and file a report from your anger. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank the staff at the Board of the Villages for being here this evening and present presenting this report. I look forward to it every year as well, because it just shows the progress that you're doing here. And you are a gem of the West Palm Beach area and you provide so much, so many very need, much needed services. And just to give a brief description of some of the the assistance that you get from Catholic Charities, U.S. vets, the children's clinic, and the. Oh, my God. All right, now we're here and a Project Return Peer Support Network. I mean, those are just agencies that provide a whole other slew of services that you provide there at the at the villages of. You're also expanding. I think you have another project coming in with another, what, 89 beds or so? Something like that. Speaker 9: 163. Speaker 7: 61. I was way off double that. And so, I mean, you continue to expand and you continue to provide great services. And if you don't make. And we take a photo. Wonderful City Council. You're welcome to join me down there if you want. Speaker 1: Please go and cast your votes in the receiving file, please. Speaker 9: Thank you. And if I may, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to just introduce a couple more partners. Jessie D'Agostino for the VA critical partner for us, of course, mentioned U.S. vets. Kerry Liggins Thompson, our acting director from the children's clinic, Gina Lee Lawlor. Of course, Jaylene Westfall, our. Speaker 10: Resident services supervisor, and of. Speaker 9: Course, star herself. So can we just give them a quick hand to mention my boss, our executive director, Steve Coleman? Speaker 1: All right, please, members, please go to cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 3: I'll send it to you right now. Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 5: You know, I'm like this. Speaker 9: All right. Speaker 5: Get a little bit closer. Speaker 4: If you can. One, two. But I want to add. Thank you.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request that City Council receive and file a presentation on the Century Villages at Cabrillo 2019 Social Impact Report.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10012019_19-0969

Speaker 0: Ocean carries. Speaker 1: Thank you. Now we're doing item 30. Speaker 0: Item 30 Communications from Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Mango Vice Mayor Andrew's recommendation to direct city attorney to draft an ordinance temporary banning the sale of flavor vapor products in the city of Long Beach. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: Thank you. I want to thank those who have signed on to this item with me, and I want to share my thoughts with you about why I brought this item. Tonight's discussion is about safety and health. Across the country, we are seeing truly concerning health impacts related to e-cigarettes and vaping. The CDC is reporting over 800 cases of lung injuries directly connected to vaping and e-cigarettes. And there have also tragically been 12 deaths. No one picks up an e-cigarette for the first time, expecting that it will rapidly injure their lungs and land them in the emergency room. And even more, no one expects to be killed by using these products either. For adults, these products are often marketed as a safer way of consuming tobacco, nicotine and and can help stop smoking. That is true, however, with serious and pressing pulmonary injuries being experienced across the country due to the mechanisms of vaping, we need to look more closely at these products to ensure that we are protecting consumers. Additionally, we have seen teen nicotine addiction increasing rapidly and connected with vaping e-cigarettes. This is heavily connected with the marketing of vape products to teens throughout, mimicking candies and sugary fruit flavors. So in light of the urgent health issues being seen nationwide and right here in the city of Long Beach, where we had two reported incidents involving pulmonary injuries, as well as the need to do more to reduce youth nicotine addiction. Enacting a temporary ban narrowly tailored to target flavored nicotine vaping products would allow the city to play a role in safeguarding our youth and protecting the general public. What is being proposed tonight is the sale of flavored vaping products. I know that there are many who feel the city should do more. I know that there are those who have asked us to to institute a permanent ban tonight. And I know that there are those who have asked us to institute a full ban on all vaping products. And I understand that. But I think at this juncture, it's important for us to study the impacts and find out what safeguards are happening at the state and national level that can help protect consumers. Anyone using e-cigarettes to quit smoking and break themselves of a nicotine addiction under our temporary ban would still be able to access the products. It would just not be the flavor of cotton candy. With this policy, we both take a prudent step to address a health concern that is nationwide, while also seeking to make a bigger impact on reducing teen access to vaping based nicotine. Cities, counties and states all across the country are making major strides to confront this issue. And it is time that the city of Long Beach did the same to protect our residents until we have more information regarding the health impacts. Tonight we found we received word that the county of L.A. instituted a ban on flavored vape products. We know that the state of Michigan has banned it. The state of New York, the state of Massachusetts, the city of L.A. has not yet instituted their ban, but their city attorney has indicated very publicly that banned a ban should be in place for flavored tobacco products. And I know that's something that's on their radar. San Mateo County has instituted a ban on flavored tobacco. San Jose has instituted a ban on flavored, flavored tobacco products. And I believe it's time for the city of Long Beach to do the same. I know that our health department has also been involved and engaged in this conversation. They are here this evening. I know that Kelly Collopy, our director of our health department, is here, and I'd like to invite her up at some point to talk about some of the impacts and concerns that the city health department has observed and . Share with us a little bit some of their concerns in regards to how we can protect our our city residents and consumers. Speaker 1: It's comfy. Speaker 11: Good evening, council members and Honorable Mayor. Thank you for the opportunity to provide some information around this topic. So we do know that generally that flavored tobacco products are the gateway to further smoking and other sort of other sort of tobacco usage. It is one of the things that we've been focusing on. When you look at the injury cases that we that have happened nationally, 40% of them or I'm sorry, 22% of them have occurred among those who are 18 to 21 and 16% are occurring for those under the age of 18. In Long Beach, we do have a restriction for anyone under the age of 21 for any tobacco product. Vaping is included in that process. So when we're looking nationally at the under 18 to the 21 year old, we would want to be making sure that we're paying close attention to that population as we're looking forward. Again, the flavored tobacco products, including vaping and non vaping, are the key entranceway. And as we're looking at the L.A. County that was just passed, they are looking at all flavored tobacco and vaping products, not just the vaping piece in terms of in terms of the vape technology of your e-cigarettes. It is not yet been determined what is causing. So they have not yet found a single agent. They're looking at vitamin E, but they're looking at so many other ways they are finding it, those coming from the streets, but also coming from the places that they're being sold in in different in different agencies. The city of Long Beach has 13 vape only stores within the city. That is that. And then on top of that, there's another 490 that sell that are licensed to sell tobacco and vape products across the city. So I just wanted to give you a feel for that for those numbers. We support as the health department this this ban. And I'm free to answer any questions after that. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Price. And anything else to add? Speaker 2: Nothing further from. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 5: Thank you. I appreciate those who have reached out to our office on this very important item. I appreciate our health directors thorough report related to the cases that have come forward. I think it's important for us to look into whether or not those that are being impacted are utilizing the FDA approved vape cartridges. I think that one of the things that this allows us to do is it allows us to take a pause for us to take a moment and a step back to ensure that we're being prudent in the way in which we establish parameters to protect youth health. We don't want to drive individuals to the online or illicit market. We want to be careful and appropriate in our action to ensure the greatest health impact. I think that one of the other things that I would like to see is an education component. We have a very strong green education component to our marijuana program. I think it would be appropriate for us to explore how to do that. I'd also be very interested in the recommendations that come back to this council restricting the places that you can get certified vape products from. Over 500 locations to maybe a more controlled environment similar to just the vape shops where we would be able to do greater education and control. And so for those reasons, I'm very supportive of moving in that direction, and I'm open to listening to the community who has already started a great conversation around the protections we need for our youth and health and my colleagues. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Price, for bringing this forward. I followed the the conversation on tobacco free Long Beach for a number of years of an ongoing discussion for over ten years in the city. And as new technology like vape pens come online. The conversation. The education outreach typically is delayed. You might. And during that gap from when a new thing comes online and when the foundations and the health world respond to it, a lot of mistruths come out during that time. A lot of people in the community truly feel that vaping is healthier than smoking. Direct cigaret. It's not true. It's not true whatsoever. Whatsoever. In fact, it could be more dangerous because you can't regulate the amount of the dose. Difficult to regulate the amount of dose. And all vaping pens are not created equally. So in that regard, I completely support this. And I would say what L.A. County did today. I just read the article. They banned all flavored tobacco, including Vape. I don't see a scenario where I'm going to say if is market cotton candy, like you said, is marketed at youth. I don't care if it's vape or if it's tobacco. Cotton candy, tobacco is a bad thing. I remember we were kids. We got an ice cream truck. They would have candy shaped like cigarets. Right? You blow it and little powder comes out. It's the same thing. So I'm okay if we want to go a bit further and say, Hey, when we instituted this moratorium, staff evaluate getting rid of these things completely because frankly, it's just the right thing to do. So that. Are you down for that? Speaker 2: This is for flavored vape products, but I think absolutely we should be following the research and hopefully the Health Department can weigh in with a recommendation. I think that's very, very good. Speaker 9: So I'll submit that to you as a friendly. But this is a great item. Thank you so much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilmember Councilwoman Mongo. Actually, she just went. Councilman Austin. Speaker 6: Thank you. And I. To support this this item wholeheartedly. I think as e-cigarettes are very commonly used, particularly among high school high school students and middle school students. So we have a responsibility as a city council to to look into this. And I'm very fortunate to have had a young intern working with me who's been keeping me up to speed and and and kind of drilling the importance of of educating parents, but also young people on the importance of understanding of e-cigarettes and the oils that are unregulated at this point. And we often don't know what's right, what's inside of these vaping products we need to catch up with. And I think that the public health needs to catch up with what's going on. And this is one of those situations or scenarios where the technology is kind of gotten ahead of government in a lot of ways. And so I applaud the other cities and states that are that are looking into this. If you haven't had an opportunity to check out Dr. Sanjay Gupta's special, I saw that this this past weekend. It was very eye opening on the the the real uncertainties, particularly surrounding vaping. I did have one question. We we're talking about a temporary ban. What would it include? We understand that it includes unflavored tobacco as well as vaping products. But would that include also menthol as well? Speaker 8: Well, I'd. Speaker 2: Be open to that amendment. Speaker 6: I could throw that in there as well. As a as a friendly. Because it is a flavored tobacco. Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Speaker 6: And and and it is a also. And I'll just say that this is a very personal issue to me. My mother passed away four years ago from lung cancer. She was a chronic smoker all of her life. She tried to quit on many occasions and was addicted to nicotine. And so if we can avoid people from that outcome, we have a responsibility to do it. And I'm happy to to the moral support to this this item. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward. I'd like to to understand a little bit from our health department, also your education program around cannabis. Really, I feel like if we're going to even if it's a temporary ban, I mean, I think from hearing our council colleagues, that would eventually lead to a permanent ban and understanding the education program we've done with cannabis, are there opportunities for us to include this in that education program as well? Speaker 11: Absolutely. They've been operating the green light bulb cannabis education program and we will continue to do that and also highlight the impacts from vaping. As part of that, we can also, through our tobacco education program, continue the conversations around vaping and other tobacco products that were not be flavored. Speaker 8: Now I know that from my family member that quit smoking, he smoked for 20 years and there was a one 800 number on a bus by our house. And he kept driving by, driving by it. And one day he called the one 800 number and he got help. He called the number and he had a counselor on the line that he could call 24 hours a day any time you wanted to pick up a cigaret. And he quit after 20 years cold turkey after trying patches and everything else. And so I think that those education programs as outreach opportunities are really key. I know that our youth often. You know, whether it's cigarets, whether it's vaping. I'm from Texas. It was dip cherry flavored, you know, so any flavored products? I'm very supportive of taking those out because that is the way that that folks come into this. I'd like to hear from the city attorney just you know, I know the county just did this. How that. I'd like to hear a report on the county ban and to see if that goes as far as Long Beach would like or if we want to extend it to even more tobacco products. So. Speaker 10: I'm not prepared tonight to give you. Speaker 8: That maybe. Speaker 10: To will get that and do a memo to you and the mayor and the council on the county ban. And if this passes this evening on the proposed ordinance for Long Beach and how that would be similar to the county ban. Speaker 8: Thank you. That's what I'd like. Again, I appreciate this. It's the right step. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Ringa. Speaker 7: I want to thank Councilmember Price for bringing this forward. Yes. We want to get a little bit of a clarification. This is the recommendation is to draft an ordinance temporarily banning the sale of flavored reaper products. That correct. Temporarily. I just want to get the the clear. Speaker 10: I have not heard what temporary is yet, but yes, but it does include flavored tobacco, including vape products and also including menthol are my notes so far. Speaker 7: Thank my customers that up as well because I was going to bring up about tobacco and menthol as well. And I'm glad that that part of this is going to be during the temporary ban. Is there going to be a study presented or researched or you're going to be doing a coming back with an ordinance that we . Evaluate and approve. I'm just trying to get a handle on what? What is it we're doing here tonight? Speaker 10: That's a great question. The the the ordinance, as I understand it, we're being asked to create would be a temporary ban, whether that's one year, 18 months, whatever that the council decides that would be, at which point it would sunset, unless there's further action by the council, if that's the desire of the council, or it could do a permanent ban. Speaker 7: Total ban forever. But you know that. Speaker 10: That's also an option. And you could come back at a later date and always rescind that if you have additional information and wish to change that. So those are options are on the table. Speaker 7: See my copy. If I recall correctly, we had a tackle, a tobacco prevention and education program at one time at the health department. Is that still there or has the funding sunsetted on that? Speaker 11: No, we have a we have significant funding around tobacco education. And we have a team of people who is who was working on that. And we have a number of different efforts. We're currently working to fill all the positions for that program, but we have the capacity to run a very strong education, tobacco education program around these issues. Speaker 7: I'm also thinking about it, tobacco enforcement. I mean, we're looking at a ban of a vaping and tobacco product, the flavored tobacco products. I think that would be important that we also have a strong enforcement component to this as well. Speaker 11: The environmental health. They do enforcement, at least in terms of underage sales when it comes to that piece. So we are out there consistently doing enforcement around that and we know how many people we state organizations who sell to underage under age 21 for all tobacco products. Speaker 7: All tobacco that including of the. Speaker 11: E-Cigarettes and vapes. Speaker 7: Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. I strongly support this. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember. Super now. Speaker 9: Thank you. I'd like to yield my position to Councilman Price, and then if you can come back to me. Speaker 1: And so. Woman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you. So I'm hearing a lot of support for this item, which I love. And to me, this is the kind of debate and engagement I love to have on council, because as we're hearing one another talk or we're talking about policies and where we all stand on it, and I love it. It's very authentic and organic. I want to put it out there to hear from my colleagues. I actually would like to go a step further and make this a permanent ban on flavored products. And I don't know what my my colleagues think about that. I want to hear from you about that. But. I won't amend the motion. I won't amend the motion at this point because I want to hear from everyone. But I think at the very least, in regards to how long will this temporary ban last, I will say until further notice. And the city would have to bring the item back in order to provide the research and lift the ban. The other thing that we didn't talk about is how long would we give the businesses to be able to comply with this policy and take these items off their shelves and have an opportunity to redo their marketing so that their cotton candy products are not the top selling products in their store. So maybe we can give them 30 days, which is what I know some of the other local jurisdictions have done. So as part of this motion, we would give them 30 days to be able to adapt to it. But I also want to hear my colleagues thoughts on making it permanent now. The motion on the floor is for the temporary ban until further notice, at which time we would come back and end the ban if we wanted to do that or modify it at that point. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Mongo. Actually, we want to go back to Councilmember Super now. Speaker 9: Okay. Thank you. I have to apologize. I just received a report like 13 pages, and it's a little late to the party, so I haven't had a chance to study it. But what strikes me is that the news on this is late breaking, to say the least. Here's a report from the CDC as of yesterday that they admit that bootlegged THC products are likely to blame. So that type of stuff for Kelly Collopy. I didn't bring these folks with me. So for Kelly, I really sympathize with your position that you're getting this information. You know, as we speak. And so it's so tough to sort this out. And then I wanted to follow up on Councilwoman Mango's point about I guess I would call it unintended consequences that if you put in a ban of this type, are you going to drive folks to the black market where there is zero regulation? And to that, I think maybe if we could proactively come up with a formula here that might work, and that is if we have. Those numbers were staggering, by the way. 13 vape shops versus nearly 500 outlets. So if you banned that everywhere but the vape shops where you could regulate everything, keep an eye on it. Is that a possible term? I want to put that out there. That would that would give people an outlet other than the black market. I think. I think if if if they are I assume we have the regulation in place already for these shops. Also, Kelly had mentioned that the oils and vitamin E and I know very little about this topic, but if they shops were restricted to water soluble only, would that be an improvement over the oils that seem to be causing a problem? So I have more questions and answers here, but I'm just throwing it all out there. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Did you miss coffee? Did you want to answer some of those questions? Speaker 11: So vitamin E is one of the things that they think may be part of it, but they haven't. It's not the core of every of of every time someone has shown up. So, like, I wouldn't I wouldn't look so much at whether it's water or oils or what it is because there's a really a mix. So I think those are one that's one of the things we are seeing impacts both well, predominantly they're seeing them on the streets. They are also, you know, they're seeing at least 25% of the cases coming from those that are coming from vape shops. And so, you know, are through sort of standard mechanisms to access. So it's making sure that, well, you know, it's it's still not clear. There's not well, there may be more of some and not of others. That's still not completely clear what it is and where it's coming through. There are also, you know, in terms of the FDA and approved, there's many things that are not approved about vape, even though they're being sold in different stores. So there's not a lot of regulation. So it's hard to know exactly what we're looking at there. Speaker 9: Can I follow up to that real quickly? And so if I can summarize what you're saying, is that in the interest of caution, you're supporting the ban at this time. Yes. Speaker 6: Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 5: Thank you. So what I would like to do is I am open to expanding to a more permanent ban. One of my thoughts would be if we could funnel tobacco users to just the 13 vape shops. So doing a permanent ban citywide on the for 90 those for nine. Do you have also other sources of revenues? Those are gas stations, liquor stores, other things like that where they would not go out of business. Then we work on a aggressive campaign for the vape shops to help us pull people away from tobacco. Because I will tell you, I still have three members of my family to smoke and one shoes. And so there are still actually four members. I forgot I have an in-law as well who are also choose. So I have four members of my family who still are addicted to tobacco. And so we do want to find places in Long Beach for those people to see the one 800 No Butts campaign and other things. And if we could all hone them into a funnel of perhaps those 13, I'm not sure. Again, I wasn't prepared on what direction to go, but to at least get them those resources because what we don't want to do is just have them step over the border. And I know that not every council member here is a border district, but in the fifth district I'm a border district, so I border Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens , Cypress, Los Alamitos, Rossmore. I could go on and on. And there are all these other places that those resources are available just over the line in a 7-Eleven. And so what I would love to do is find a resource here, a search here, since every councilmember has gotten to speak. Before we really get into the details on the item, would you be open to going to public comment and then coming back to the real. Speaker 6: I'm going to allow Councilmember Pearce to speak next. We will have two councilmembers cued up. We have Councilmember Pearce and Richardson, and then we can go to public comment. Speaker 5: Great. So those would be my comments. I would like to see an aggressive campaign like the No Butts campaign of the past, because I think there are just still too many people that are addicted to tobacco. Speaker 8: Thank you. I wanted to queue up to say that I support a full ban upon hearing your comments. Councilmember among its I hear we always we want to be supportive of small businesses, but when it's something like lung cancer and our kids getting their hands on things, we have to put the lives of our constituents and their children first. Well, I mean, that's I understood that you said you wanted to ban the hundreds of them that sell the product, but keep open the actual vape shops that. Speaker 5: I think that I care about the health of our community, so much so that I also don't want us to lose the opportunity to provide a public outreach campaign right here in our own city. Speaker 8: So so people do not get help getting off of a vape or cigarets at a vape shop. They get that help through our health department. They get that help whether it's in a grocery store at or a bus stop ad. And so I support a full ban. I'd like to see us get get there. And I know, Charlie, this is the first day that we've had this. I would like to ask if if our health department before our city attorney's office comes back with an ordinance but that our city health department do a small presentation. So we really have some of those numbers in front of us. I hope that the city attorney's office will continue to draft that item, but that we at least have some context that we know how far we want that item to go whenever that comes back in front of us. That's something that our health department could do. Speaker 11: What sort of numbers we would be looking for. Speaker 8: I guess I want to better understand the number of of users that that have been impacted and have an understanding about some of these claims, whether it's oils, whether it's water. Does it really matter? Just I mean, we're all kind of working without that information, without shared information on that. Speaker 11: We can do that. One other number I want to share that 61% of our high school e-cigarette users are buying in that big shops. Speaker 8: 61% are buying at baby shops. Speaker 11: 61%. Wow. Speaker 8: Wow. Speaker 11: And high school users are buying or buying them in vape shops. So just as we're thinking about the youth portion of this. Speaker 8: Well, we know that that sometimes we have laws on the books and those laws are not adhered to. I mean, I was buying Cigarets when I was 12, going into a store buying Cigarets when I was 12. We have to make sure that they're not there for kids to walk in and buy. And so I fully support a full ban. I support being as aggressive is as this council is willing to go. But I do think that we need a little bit more information from our health department and some clear direction if it's a full ban, if that's the direction that the maker of the motion would like to go . Thank you. Speaker 6: All right, Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Councilmember. So, Councilwoman Price, I want to address you wanted some feedback. Here's what I see here. So we've attempted bans in the past. Plastic bag bans, Styrofoam bans. And we should probably stick to the process to folks. Now we start with an immediate minute order, you know, a moratorium. And give staff time to shape a policy that works, that requires outreach. That should be a part of it. But the man goes into effect today. This conversation about a full ban or a temporary ban, any given Tuesday, anything could be temporary. There is no full ban versus temporary. The other thing I'll say is if we just slam this on. You know, Councilwoman Mongo mentioned the border districts. We border Lakewood, Bellflower, Paramount, Compton. Our markets still don't comply with the plastic bag ban. Restaurants probably aren't ever going to comply with the Styrofoam ban. Reality is the reality is if we want this to work, I think we should put forward we should ask staff how long it takes to shape a policy. Put the minute order in place now which the ban goes into effect immediately or as soon as the audience comes back. And then we take time and shape it, because there's opportunities also that we may not may not be represented here. For example, opportunities to codify education, to put noticing on businesses and other things and through their different audiences. So the conversation on and so youth flavored flavor tobacco targets, youth, right, menthol. There's the conversation that targets African-American communities. Those are very different, distinct conversations that have come up in other areas that have brought this up. And what we don't want to do while we're excited about this motion is go out and shape the policy without doing the work. And so I support the direction we're heading. But I would just say let's give those put the burden on staff to go figure this thing out and bring us a quality policy. That's what I would recommend. Speaker 6: All right. I'm going to ask for public comment. And as you coming up, I'll just give my quick comments on that as well. I do think this is like many other policies that that we have embarked upon. I think we'll be getting a lot of direction from Sacramento, which what might render a lot of the time that we're putting forward. But I'd like to come forward Kim Kirkman, Carlos Jeffrey Luciano and Corliss Lee to start. You have 90 seconds. Speaker 2: Yes, I'm good. Hi. My name is Kim Markman. Speaker 5: I have three kids, a college student, high school student. Speaker 2: And a middle aged student. I am actively. Speaker 5: Involved with the Wilson PTSA and the Long Beach PTA and other foundations. I am here to support the proposal at hand. However, you guys all want to do it. I'm. I support it. I don't care how you word it. I support it. Today I am wearing my parent hat. I can't wear my PTA hat today because, you know, once again, we're a body that has to vote on on supporting it. I have concerns and I have had concerns for probably since they started selling the e-cigarettes and the flavoring. I've read many articles. My husband keeps sending me articles. Speaker 8: Articles and concerns that are coming to light. The first 2 to 6 are alarming to me. Speaker 5: The National Youth Tobacco Survey. Speaker 8: Quoted on the Wall Street Journal. Speaker 5: And the safe to say B Corp, I saw the exact same quote today. It's 1.7 million high school students used e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. 90% of adults addicted to a. Speaker 0: Substance started. Speaker 5: Before age 18. And I know that goes substances abroad because I, I often talk to my kids about this. One pack of cigarets is equivalent to one joule. And I know I saw on the Internet today. Speaker 8: That Governor Newsom. Speaker 5: Signed an executive order to. Speaker 2: Confront the youth vaping. Speaker 5: Epidemic. The Wilson PTSA. Speaker 0: Board, which I am the president of and many of my peers. Speaker 5: Have high. Speaker 8: Schoolers are concerned enough that we. Speaker 5: Are hiring a professional company, this cyber safety cop, to come in and him. Speaker 4: Am I done? Speaker 6: Thank you. Yes, I'm sorry. You can. Speaker 8: Darn it. I was. Speaker 3: So close in. Speaker 4: School. Oh, you did great. Speaker 3: Oh, good. Speaker 6: Thank you, Carlos. After. Carlos is Jeffrey Luciano. Speaker 1: How are you doing? Thanks. Thanks for listening to us. Actually, I'm here representing the shops and every shop owner and I understand this is an issue that we have to address and everything have started with, you know, the youth trying to get all these baked cigarets and different stores. And we understand that what they do, they always try to get it anywhere, but no other beach shops. Usually our beach shops are run by the owners. We have all these licenses that we have to obtain in order to sell these devices and to sell these e-liquids. No, we not allowed any people under age to walk into our vape shops because we will lose our business now if there is a ban. I will say that you will can the 13 shops that there is in Long Beach so you can update some data about what's going on because otherwise futures will be followers on these and just follow where other cities are doing. And we don't we can do something with this. We can actually get a device or age verification that we already have talk about. So the every to everybody that comes through our stores will be verified. So we won't even take fake IDs because, you know, that's something that sometimes people can control. And then if you ban this, you will creating a black market. That's what's going to happen. People is going to go out of the city. You will close the shops. And then I think it's better if we allow only certain shops so you can obtain the data. Speaker 6: Thank you, sir. Speaker 1: You guys appreciate it. Thank you. Speaker 6: Mr. Luciano. Geoffrey Luciano. Speaker 1: Good evening, councilman. Thank you very much for your time. And, you know, speaking on this agenda and hearing me out, you know, I've been using electronic cigarets for ten years. I used to be a smoker prior to that for many years. And I quit using flavored nicotine. And all my customers, all my customers, which are 21 and over adults, they use flavored nicotine to quit smoking. And they're very concerned. Uh, you know, we all know that flavored nicotine has been in existence for about a decade. And this recent epidemic is a recent occurrence. And based on Kdka's report, 7770 7% of the of the epidemic involve THC or else 16% involve nicotine products. The recent occurrence has raised many eyebrows in Long Beach and action needs to be taken. I believe in preventable measures. Yet I urge the city council, the city attorney, to work with electronic cigaret retailers in forming alternatives to the prohibition of flavored products with the highest regard to prevention of use, access and curve, any potential harm and misuse of e-cigs. Speaking to many constituents in Long Beach, the underlying fear that this total restriction on flavors. Of flavored e-cigs will perpetuate parasitic. Thank you, sir. Bootleggers releasing harmful products into this market in turn, resulting in risking unimaginable consequences. Let's work together and reach an outcome of providing a harm reduction for all. Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Carelessly after careless, we have Neil. Neil Hanson. Speaker 4: I totally support what you're doing here today. And and I thought the discussion was really good. And I don't have a particular answer in this because I think when you ban something, in some ways you make it more desirable, especially for kids. You know, I think they'll probably go after it one way or another if they want to. But I do believe that the education part of it is probably the most important. So whatever we can do to get out to the schools and make sure that everyone understands the dangers that go with it. I love those old commercials where they had that woman with the cigaret in her neck. I mean, when you see the end game of of tobacco, it's not pretty. But I would say that I would favor raising the price. You know, if you're trying to get it away from kids, make it so that it's not economically feasible for them. Speaker 6: Thank you. Mr. Neil Hanson and then John Seaburg. Speaker 7: Hello. And thank you. My name is Nils Hands. And. And I own an electric bike store and a vape store, both in Long Beach. Speaker 1: For over six years, I've helped thousands. Speaker 7: Quit smoking to lead a healthier life. And I got to tell you, it feels pretty amazing. I, too, was a long time smoker who stumbled upon vaping in its earlier stages. Speaker 1: Prior to my discovery, I suffered at least four times a year with bronchitis, believing I was allergic to. Speaker 7: Everything since I was always congested. Before quitting, Cigarets realized that those were the source of my illnesses. Speaker 1: However, we're not here to listen to. Speaker 7: Me talk about how vaping saved my life. Speaker 1: We're talking about how to keep it away from kids. As a father of three, one of them a teenager. I'll be the first to tell you. I educate and with my wife, educate our kids to not smoke. Speaker 7: To not vape, ever. They don't need it. Speaker 1: Keeping kids healthy is a concern for all of us. And as someone who sells the products, I feel I have an. Speaker 7: Even greater responsibility. Speaker 1: Therefore, I would like to present to the Council a list of. Speaker 7: Responsible and I believe, ultimately effective regulations that would have even a stronger, more positive impact than an outright ban. Speaker 1: A ban would only send kids and people back to cigarets. Speaker 7: Black market type products. Speaker 1: First, we must limit and license the locations where these products can be found. To my findings, there's over about 600 tobacco. Speaker 7: Licenses in the city of Long Beach and only eight vape shops. I believe that only vape shops should sell vape products. Next, we need to limit the amount of nicotine. Nicotine is a huge driver for these kids. They're looking for a buzz. Speaker 9: We don't carry Jewel at my store. Speaker 1: My store, we see over 70 to 120 people a day. We don't carry JUUL. We don't sell it. We don't believe in that high nicotine stuff. That's what kids are going after. Speaker 7: They're going after the bus. Thank you, sir. Flavors for everybody. Speaker 6: Please submit your list to the to the clerk, and we will. Speaker 7: I gave you guys all folders today. Speaker 6: So thank you. Take a look. John Seaburg. After John Shane Simpson. Speaker 1: Podium for short people. My name's Shaun Seaborg. I have been a vapor for 11 years. 11 years? I have zero nicotine. I have never been a nicotine vapor in any shape or form of way, never smoked cigarets never gave up care about tobacco products in general. I however I have I have however, been using a great product and zero nicotine flavor to basically nebulizer albuterol sulfate. Now albuterol sulfate comes in a nebulizer for people with asthma or breathing problems and you can mix it. And basically it's activations which are the same as the active agents that are in Egypt's with the exception of nicotine. But I do believe that there is a serious issue here with your products in general. You're talking about a nicotine product that is within 50% or I'm sorry, 50 milligrams in nicotine when most vapes in general and most nicotine products are between zero and six milligrams at 50 milligrams, you're talking about a high, not a pleasant one. And it's never fun. I mean, it's what the kids are chasing after and it's not something that we need to really take a look at. Now, as far as kids getting it, most shops that I visit, there's never any kids in there. Rarely do kids ever even come in. But you will see advertising for Jewel on the front door of an AMPM, front door of a Chevron, front door of a 7-Eleven. And, you know, in my experience, it's those places where kids are also getting their vapes from that and online retailers. And both of those need to be seriously checked by not only the parents who are kind of being lazy and not proactive, but also by the council yourselves. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Thank you. Through Simpson and then after Mr. Simpson and Travis Anthony. Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Shane Simpson. Speaker 9: I'm with I'm a vape shop owner myself real quick we do it that vape shops this is this month alone fake IDs that were confiscated over the course of 38. There's 42 IDs here. The teenagers are to walk in and purchase nicotine products illegally. We use a third party age verification. These are purchased on a website called ID Guard. You can shop teens can buy five ads for $100. PayPal only. Stand by. But we we've caught them. And I'd like to submit this to staff to review them. You can scan and police department can also scan them. They all fall foul of the bar code authentication. We checked the barcode to verify that it's a real I.D. or not, not the magnetic strip. Many experts are very easy to forge. I recommend a 2% or 2.5% nicotine cap. We did independent research survey with 2500 youth in the Southern California area, and they're all looking for 50 to 70% milligram. They are not interested in 36 adult smokers, 86% use that. The CDC, DC data from the NTSB report of 2018, less than 7% of teens use flavors. Fruit. Less than 5% use meant I actually have the NYS 2018 report I can show you guys. Break it down. I want to work with the city to craft responsible progressive legislation. I think Long Beach could be the model for eliminating youth use and protecting adult access. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Then Travis Anthony and then Nick and McGwire. Speaker 7: Hello. My name is Travis Anthony. I own vapor land in Long Beach on the east side of Long Beach. Do you guys have a hard. Decision to make and duty to do. We get it. We've been paying attention for the last six years. There is 23 shops in 2013 or 14. I think there's down to eight. Pretty much spread over 52 miles of Long Beach. So it's not like we're all in one spot. We just want to give it give us an opportunity, because I know that nobody wants kids to smoke. I smoked at 1112. I didn't have a choice, but I found it either way. So last year I started a tobacco retail education team. I met with education. City enforcement, presented a bunch of restrictions. I didn't really get far with it. I didn't know how to how to go about getting any further. So the eight shops have come together and we presented you guys very restrictive, very regulated forms like you've been hearing lowering nicotine. Lowering consumption, doing the Peel System's roots, age verification. It can't be sold without it. And that's pretty much all we're asking for is don't make everybody go to Lakewood, to these other vape shops. They're going to get rich overnight. We're going to go out of business. And there's there's other ways than just making everybody go black market. What we want to communicate with you, I don't think a lot of you guys know about the products. That's why I started last year trying to educate somewhere. We. Thank you. Thank you very much. Speaker 6: Big. And then after Nick, we have Bill blow it. Speaker 10: Hello. My name is Nicholas Almaguer and I run a local bait shop. Speaker 1: I have worked there for about. Speaker 10: Five or six years. I have personally helped. Speaker 9: Over a thousand people quit smoking. I have cried. Speaker 10: With people on a regular basis when they quit smoking 3 to 4 packs of cigarets a day. I have had. Speaker 9: People come in who smoke 3 to 4 packs. Speaker 10: Of cigarets a day and we got them to quit on the spot and never touch another cigaret again. That is why I do this. Speaker 9: Yes, I am looking at losing my job. Yes, my boss is looking at losing his business. My friends are looking into going bankrupt because of this. And the thing that I care about the most is my customers. They are not just our customers. They are friends and family. I have been known personally to have my customers come over and have barbecues for them. Speaker 10: Support them, turn into a community type event where we are supporting each other, quitting smoking. That is the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand about this industry. I think that is what makes it a truly special community. These people encompass ex-smokers. They hate big tobacco innately. And I think there's a common misconception that we. Speaker 9: Are big tobacco. We go out of our way to avoid big tobacco, and it is really the main thing that we're against. Speaker 1: So I helped. Speaker 10: Prepare those folders that you received earlier and those folders contain. Responsible regulations that we believe you guys should put into effect in order to prevent this without hurting other constituents. Speaker 9: Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Bill. Then after bill, we have lance brooks. Speaker 1: Good afternoon. This bill baldinger coalition for smoke free long beach. Speaker 9: I want i'm not here to. Speaker 10: Convince you tonight. Speaker 1: I'm here to congratulate you. Taking up this strong measure that you're considering today on. It's a bold move and. Speaker 9: You have a lot of support in the community. You've received that support. You've seen this coming into your offices today. And we congratulate you for for. Speaker 1: Thinking of the health of the residents of Long Beach. Just want to say a few words about some of the comments we heard. There is no safe smoking. There's no safe vaping. There's no safe secondhand smoke. These things are just not true. Al. Mr. Austin, when you spoke about your family, it struck me. I lost my father and all my uncles, frontline servicemen in World War Two who never saw. Speaker 9: Their grandchildren because of tobacco. And I don't want another generation to go through. What? My family went through and years went through and we need to put a stop to it. This is a great first step. There is a lot more to do, but we need to keep children safe, number one. The other considerations are important, but not as important as that. Thank you. Speaker 6: Did ice caps keep Travis Anthony? Nick Almaguer. Speaker 1: I apologize. I think the last time I was similar. Last name? Speaker 6: Bill Blow. It's okay. Okay. Who was that? Speaker 1: Bill Ball. Vega. Speaker 6: Sorry about that. Speaker 9: Hi. My name is Bill Bloat, and I, uh, I own a home in the fourth district, and I own Smuggler's Success, which is also in the fourth district. It's a. Speaker 7: Vape shop we started in 2012. Speaker 9: And, you know, I did it to try to help save lives. And there seems to be a lot of. Speaker 1: Misconception about is vaping healthy, is it healthier? Speaker 7: And it depends on who you ask, I guess these days, because. Speaker 9: You get mixed signals from everyone you know. In the UK. Speaker 7: Doctors are recommending it and. Speaker 9: Here they're not. So it's something that obviously needs more. Speaker 7: Education, more research. Speaker 1: And hopefully you guys. Speaker 7: Look at what we've sent you guys for regulating. Speaker 9: We would like to be able to self. Speaker 7: Regulate and really make sure. Speaker 9: That they're not getting in the hands of children and that we're not selling, you know, 35. Speaker 7: To 60 milligram nicotine in things like jewels. Speaker 9: And small devices that can be hidden very well. I have two kids that go to high school in Long Beach and. Speaker 1: You know, they see the jewels, too, and they tell me about it. Speaker 7: Meanwhile, my two children. Speaker 9: I've never tried vaping, so thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. What a color romance books. And after the dance we have tonight complete. Speaker 1: Her name's Lance Brooks, and I work at Smuggler Success, a vape shop in Long Beach. I've heard a lot of interesting things here tonight, but one of the things that I've heard is the amount of products are purchased from vape shops. Speaker 10: I just think it's inaccurate. I think it's information here that's not true. Accurate of smoke, vaping. Speaker 1: Different than smoking. And I think we've heard some good ideas on how to help our citizens be more responsible and use it as a tool except for enjoyment. Speaker 10: Rather than for the kids to get hold of it. I think there are easier ways to for the children not to get a hold of it. I don't think vape shops in what they call C stores where they're getting it. We just don't have 16 year olds that walk through our store and buy jewels. That just doesn't happen. Speaker 1: We had a couple. Speaker 10: Incidents when we've had the health department come and do stings and we just didn't sell to them just because to them we always heard we we know our customers very, very well. Speaker 1: 90% of customers we know by name. Speaker 10: And we know we're selling, too. So I think if we. Speaker 1: Can look at some of these ideas and be drafting together, I think it would be effective to help our citizens, help the youth, help the adults. Speaker 10: I think education is a. Speaker 9: Huge, huge, huge part of helping this and. Speaker 1: Stopping this. And I hope that we can kind of come to something that would. Speaker 10: Work best for everyone. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Mr. Sunak MP. He's not here. Ashley Salazar in my notorious. Speaker 4: Hello. Speaker 2: Good evening. Speaker 8: I work for Brian L.A., which. Speaker 4: Is a organization that focuses on air. Speaker 2: Quality and lung health issues. Speaker 4: And I'm a health educator focusing. Speaker 8: On educating. Speaker 4: Parents and teachers and students about vaping and e-cigarette. Speaker 8: Use. Speaker 4: So for the last year, I've been doing parent workshops all over Los. Speaker 2: Angeles County, and teachers and administrators. Speaker 4: And parents are overwhelmed by what they see. These presentations just really give an insight to the problem. Students tell me that they go to the restrooms and it is so common for them to see their classmates vape and smoke. And young people choose to vape for many reasons, including peer pressure, availability of flavors. Speaker 2: And the youth and vape culture surrounding it. Speaker 4: Even though flavors are just one part of this big issue, it is a concerning one. There are thousands of flavors available, and these flavors. Speaker 8: Are often targeted as at. Speaker 4: Youth. Speaker 5: Frito-Lay supports the city of Long Beach and. Speaker 4: Tackling the teenage vaping epidemic to protect our youth. However, we do not believe a flavor ban will solve this problem if it is not supplemented by an educational component for parents, teachers, students and the community as a whole. Flavors is just one part of this problem. We think Long Beach for. Speaker 2: Understanding that this. Speaker 4: Vaping issue is a big problem and taking steps to study this issue in order to come up with a solution. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Lionel Trias and then Matt Morton. Council members. Speaker 1: For the time. Speaker 7: Allowed me to speak today. Speaker 6: My name is Lionel Triest. Speaker 7: I'm 35 years old and I no longer smoke. I beat the vapor for six and a half years and I have a daughter. My daughter means everything to me. My daughter means absolutely everything to me. And I am doing everything that I can to provide for her, which means working in this industry. I used to work in the medical field, hurt my back. I wanted to use my mind. Baby mama was pregnant. My grandma was dying of cancer. And I had to make a decision. I told her on her deathbed that I am going to change lives to get people to stop smoking. She said, I know you can do it. I wanted you to be in the medical field, but I know this is what your heart is telling you. My family didn't approve that at first, but they soon later to realize that I had changed. I have grown up. I became a man being in this industry. Please don't take this away. I know that we're adults here that can make good decisions and better decisions for our kids. I believe that flavors help adults such as myself to make things better, a better life for the rest of us in the future. I'm not going to go any further and more than what I need to say, but please reconsider what some of my colleagues here have been talking about, about better. Let's do a better legislative for a better Long Beach for baby. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 7: Sir. Thank you. Speaker 6: Matt Morton. After that, we have Chris Sherwin. Speaker 1: Hi. Resident of Long Beach. Don't really have a skin and either side of the game. I don't own a shop and whatever. I haven't had a real cigaret in over a year thanks to e-cigarettes. National Institute of Health in the United Kingdom has proven that e-cigarette vape only has 5% of the toxicity of a regular cigaret. And my own doctor says my lungs are better. I can taste food. It's fantastic. Unfortunately, right after this meeting started, CNN reported that two more deaths have happened because of vaping related issues. However, they also both of them were not nicotine products. They were under ground, counterfeit THC and CBD cartridges. The Institute of Health in the state of Virginia found that all of their products that they tested from legal legal shops. Came back with none of these contaminants. Sacramento just published a thing. They grabbed 13 legitimate products, 13 counterfeit black market products. Ten of the 13 had the vitamin E acetate. That is a cutting agent that goes into the counterfeit products that when heated, becomes cybernetic. That's our problem. I have apple watermelon in my pocket right now. I love it. Flavors are for everyone. Banning flavors on a kneejerk reaction like this for something else. Is a problem when you have a fantastic community that's willing to help. Listen to the community, please. Thank you. Speaker 6: Chris Sherwin. And I have to correct Christine Simpson. Speaker 7: Good evening, members of council. My name is Chris Sherwin. I'm with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. I want to congratulate you for your attention to this very important issue. What we've seen is a growing momentum in California and across the country of communities doing just what you're considering tonight. And that is a full and permanent ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco products. E-cigarettes and all other flavored tobacco products. Flavors and tobacco have no place together. We are very concerned about the the recent epidemic of respiratory illnesses. But let's take it back, step back and look at the bigger picture. We have seen a 135% increase in youth e-cigarette use in the last two years. This is recent federal data. This is the tide that we are most concerned about. And the FDA is the agency that oversees whether a device is approved or not as a cessation product. No e-cigarette has been even submitted to the FDA or as a cessation product and therefore has not been approved as a cessation product. What we are now seeing are thousands and we're up to 5 million youth nationally have used an e-cigarette product. We're hearing about it from parents. We're hearing about it from teachers. In addition, over 50% of youth smokers use menthol cigarets. There are over 250 flavors of cigar flavors now, and cigars are now more popular among high school boys than Cigarets. So I encourage you to do a full, comprehensive prohibition on all flavored tobacco products across the city. Thank you very much. Speaker 6: Shane Simpson. Speaker 9: All right. Thank you. Speaker 6: Okay. Kevin Price. After cave in is Taylor Thompson. Speaker 0: Hello, Mayor. Speaker 8: And council members. Speaker 0: My name is Karen. Speaker 8: Price and I'm in sixth grade. I'm here in support of. Speaker 0: Item 32 temporarily banned vaping. Speaker 8: Products. Being in sixth grade means I'm one step closer to becoming a teenager. Speaker 0: With Vape kids are. Speaker 8: Tricked into buying it because they think it is like. Speaker 4: Candy. Speaker 8: As scary as this is, here is a rush to become cool with vape as an option. This is kids number one choice. Speaker 4: It is. This is not just for middle schoolers. Speaker 8: But for kids and teens and all because it is. Speaker 0: Bad for our kids health and kids may get addicted. Speaker 4: It is your job to protect it. Speaker 0: Because the. Speaker 8: Vaping companies care more about their money than your health. I know. I know. If you vote yes, some will not be happy. But sometimes. Sometimes the right decision is the hardest to make. Speaker 4: So I'm asking. Speaker 0: You for for you to help. Speaker 8: Me and my community and make. Speaker 0: The right choice tonight. Vote yes. Speaker 6: Thank you. Next is Taylor Thompson. Yes. Then we have Jessica Quintana. Speaker 4: Hello. My name is Taylor Thompson. I have been working in the vaping industry for over six years now. I work in an open system type of product. I'll give you an example. I work for a company called Save Your Vape. We manufacture this product. It's a blueberry lime flavor. There's been a lot of studies proving that flavors do help people unflavored products that you guys are proposing. None of us want to. That's not appealing to us. It's not something we enjoy. And a tobacco flavored product would taste like a cigaret what we're trying to avoid. Right? So that's kind of the problem there. But I want to kind of show you an example of a dual really easily edible, right? I put this in my pocket, vape it. This is what I make. These are my two devices. They're over $200 for these. I don't think any kid's going to walk into a shop and be able to afford that. If I could show it to you, too, you would see there's a lot of cloud production with this. There's barely any. The milligram on this is 50 milligram, the milligram on this is six milligram. My mom quit smoking cigarets because of vaping. It changed and saved her life. She breathes easier. I was. I was raised with asthma because of her. I don't have it any longer, so I get a little emotional because this ban is just unfortunately so wrong. You guys are making the right call with this one. Unfortunately, we don't want our kids to vape, but this will drive tobacco back in power. This is this is the future here. This is we are not big tobacco. We don't want to be big tobacco. And we definitely, certainly don't want our children vaping. But this is not the way and we want to work with you guys. Just tell us how, you know on a real level, but I appreciate it. Speaker 6: Thank you for your comments. After jessica, we have Lauren Labar. Speaker 4: Good evening. Council members. Thank you so much. Councilman Austin. Jessica Quintana, executive director of Center Cha. We probably see over 10,000 youth each year. It's interesting that folks came up here and said that youth don't get access or can't buy these products, but they get them very easily. And so I've worked in tobacco control prior to working with Central Cha for over seven years. And so, you know, folks were afraid of the ban back then. Oh, if we ban Cigarets in the bars, the bars are going to shut down. Well, they're thriving. If we ban smoking in the parks, you know, nobody's going to be, you know, hanging out at the parks or, you know, smoking in the park areas. We no longer have smoking in the parks. We got rid of the the the nice billboards in tobacco that was, you know, advertising to youth and communities of color. They're no longer in magazines. The magazine company said they were going to go out of business if you took the advertisements away from the tobacco industry. They're still in business. What I can tell you is these kind of flavored and all these gimmicks that come from the tobacco industry are, number one, trying to target our youth . And so how they use their vehicles through, you know, vapes and vape shops and other stores, whether that be the markets, the supermarkets, the 7-Eleven. Long Beach has always been a Ford city, working in tobacco control for many years, and especially reducing youth access. Everybody remembers when you can get the pack of Cigarets off the self-service display. That's no longer the liquor store said they were going to go out of business if that happened. Well, guess what? They did it. Thank you. So folks have a responsibility to our children and the public health and the safety of our youth. The ban is the correct thing to do. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Next up is lowering the bar. Name. William Bowe digga. Speaker 1: O. Speaker 4: Hello. Tonight. My name's Lauren Lavoie. I'm 27 years old. I'm a former smoker. I've been working in the E-Liquid industry for eight years now. I started smoking Cigarets when I was 12 and was not able to get off them until I found vape. I tried everything. I tried lozenges, patches. I heard you say the health department is helping people get out of smoking and if that was the case, vaping would have taken off the way that it did. That's just the reality of it. In regard to the recent illnesses and deaths, I've heard it said before, but the CDC has come out officially and said that 84% of those were admitted to using THC products illegal as illicit drugs off the black market. And they assume. Speaker 5: That is actually a. Speaker 4: Higher amount and less amount of a vapers because they don't trust that people are actually being elusive to what they're using. Speaker 5: I think a more effective way of cracking down on that would be to go after the illegal cannabis market. Speaker 4: If that seems like too big of a task, I don't know what would happen. Speaker 5: If there was a black market. Speaker 4: E-Cigarette market. We are a passionate industry. Speaker 5: We want to stay alive and like we're not selling to kids. Speaker 4: Looks like I'm. Speaker 5: Running out of time. We do have a lot of options. Speaker 4: Only selling 21 over establishments like bars. Same thing with vaping. Speaker 5: Require a scanner for any e-cigarette. Speaker 4: Purchase. Speaker 5: Including delivery of online. Speaker 4: Purchases. And a lot of the kids are getting them online and and everything like that. So nicotine nicotine restrictions on levels licensing and pull our license if we if we fail. Speaker 5: At any of your tests. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 6: That stuff is Gina Payne, you know. Speaker 4: Good evening. My name is Dr. Gina Peony. I'm a retired professor from Cal State, Long Beach and Public Health. I've been an advocate of public health for decades. I'd like to address the fallacy that vaping is harm reduction. We're finding that it is not. The current epidemic is indicating that vaping has an acute toxicity. You cannot compare this to the chronic toxicity of tobacco. So don't fall into that fallacy. The second thing is that in public health, we have a history of moving forward for prevention before we know the actual cause. We have a history of doing that. John Snow took the handle off the pump and stopped the epidemic before we could see cholera in the microscope. We could prevent AIDS before we knew the cause was HIV. This is another opportunity of prevention. You don't have to wait to find out the exact cause. So I also am a mother of two daughters that graduated from Milliken. My youngest daughter told me she graduated in 2014 and she said it was easier to get vapes than Cigarets. She was offered them all the time. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. That concludes our public comment. We're going to take it back behind the rail for the council. Next up is council member Mungo. Speaker 5: Thank you. I really want to appreciate the amount of public comment. I know that this was a US Council agenda item created by council members. So you didn't get included in an outreach process yet? I agree with Councilmember Richardson that we really need to move down that pathway. I would like to. Propose that we make the ban effective January one. That would give us three months, 90 days for people to sell what's on their shelves and so on and so forth. I think that it should be limited to non-veg shops, but citywide we should ban the sale of all flavored vape and jewel and any violations of any sales of these products could result in in loss of your licenses. And I don't know what licenses we have control over in those because I don't know everyone that sells them. 490 is a very high number, and so I'd like to learn more about that at the vape shops. I'd like to require 21 and over signage, tobacco use warnings, limit of nicotine for sale to the 2.5%. Require an ID check. I don't know if it's legal. If they catch someone with a false ID, if they could be required to hand over the stack of false IDs collected to the city. I don't know if we'd want to get involved in that or not. I'd be looking for a recommendation from our health director on that because I think that. If there is no process where kids get stopped. From this and their parents don't know. What then? It just continues to go on. They go to alternative sources. And then I'd like to work on a collaborative with the vape shops where they provide us data. What are the zip codes of individuals buying vape? What vape products are sold to? What zip codes? I think that goes to Councilmember Richardson's point. And then I'm completely open to an a full ban if we find any violation. And the way that that would happen is if there's only currently eight vape shops. The moment one of you sells to an under 21, you're gone. That's it. So eight violations and we have a citywide ban. I appreciate that many other cities and counties have come forward with ideas. And one of the things I love about being on the Long Beach City Council is we're not all of those other cities. I think that this is a huge opportunity for us to stand apart from the rest. For us to implement a very aggressive campaign, moving people towards and away from tobacco. I mentioned to Councilmember Richardson, I surveyed my four family members that smoke. Two of them are nicotine and one of them is wintergreen. Flavor. The wintergreen is chew. And so these are adults that I would like to see move towards vape and then eventually towards nothing. But right now, I don't see them quitting any time soon. And I know they've one person's tried it multiple times, multiple, multiple times. And the failure is is very trying. Two of them have young children and have both tried to quit when their children were around because they didn't want to have spittoons around their house. I see people vaping and driving. I will tell you, I met Trevor when he brought his vape shop to the fifth District. And I will tell you, I met with the landlord. I was afraid. I didn't think that it was a good location. I definitely put up a lot of barriers because I had serious concerns about the youth. What he has demonstrated is to be a successful art conscious, environmentally conscious, and really an advocate for adult use only and getting off of nicotine. Because when I was in high school, everyone went to this one individual who, by the way, still lives in the fifth District and everyone would buy Cigarets from him. Everyone, he wore a trench coat. He'd open it up. You could buy a pack of cigarets you could buy. I'm not joking. He lives in Lakewood Village to this day and he you could buy a cigaret for $10. And so I don't want to be there. I really feel we need to get rid of the jewels. And then I also searched Amazon for 1999. I can have mango flavored vape delivered to my house tomorrow. If I order within 3 hours, it'll be there tomorrow. And so I really hope that the council and my colleague, Councilman Price, will consider the fact that there's only eight vape shops. And if we work with them over the next 60 days to come up with a plan that we really could come up with something better than any of the other bands we've ever seen, with the goal of reporting numbers of how many individuals you've pulled off of cigarets and tobacco, because I think that there's a future in finding a solution. So with that, I'm open to continuing to hear the items of my colleagues. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Super. Speaker 9: Thank you. I have a statement to read from Vice Mayor Andrews, if you'll bear with me here. This is from Dee Andrews. I believe that it's important that the city council act to protect the health of Long Beach citizens in light of the nationwide health impacts of e-cigs and other flavored vapor products that have recently been in the news media. As a part time educator at the high school level. I have to say that any proactive measures we can take to protect youth are very much worth it. Teenagers already think they know it all without the added pressure of industry tactics that use flavor and other attractive methods to make a profit. As adults, we make a choice on what we purchase and consume. Teenagers who may not have access to products do not need an extra layer of unhealthy products. I hope this matter is taken seriously as deaths are increasing, and we must work proactively with businesses getting the word out that these products are not safe and not a safe alternative to cigarets. We are doing this for a healthy Long Beach. Sincerely, Dee Andrews. Speaker 1: I thank you, Councilmember. Councilwoman Price. Okay. Speaker 2: So just a couple of thoughts. First of all, I want to thank Vice Mayor Andrews. He did sign on to this item and I want to thank him for his support and for those comments. I know he's not here tonight, but he's been very engaged in this discussion. I don't accept the I guess there are friendly amendments. I don't accept, expect, accept them and I'll say why, at least not in their entirety. We're talking about a public health issue where people are dying. People are actually dying. I understand we want to be business friendly, trust me. Let me repeat. Speaker 1: Let me. Let me just make sure Councilman Price has the floor. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: When pressed. Speaker 2: Continue. So while I want to support our businesses and do everything we can to work with them, let me just say we are the only city that's offering a mitigated temporary ban while we figure out some policies that will be long term implemented. Every other city and county and state has proposed a full, permanent ban. We are trying to approach this from a mitigated standpoint by saying let's get these products off the shelves as soon as possible because they are killing people. They are actually killing people. And we have a duty as we have a fiduciary duty, we have a duty in every way to protect our consumers and our youth. And I cannot say that we are going to wait three months and keep these items on the shelf while we continue to see negative impacts to the youth. We've already had two incidents of pulmonary injuries in the city of Long Beach. What if one of those was a death? One of the one of those was the death of a of a young child. So we're talking about a temporary ban that gives us an opportunity to work with the businesses. Absolutely. We want to work with the businesses. And Jessica, I love your points. When we talk to every time we talk about a ban, people say, oh, this is going to cause everyone to go to the black market. We had that conversation with marijuana. And you know what? The number one complaint we're getting with marijuana now is that there's too much competition from the illegal dispensaries. The whole reason we enacted legislation and to legitimize it in the city of Long Beach is so that we wouldn't have a black market. And yet the number one complaint we're getting now from the legitimate business owners is that there is a thriving black market. And so I don't think a ban is going to cause any of these businesses to go out. I really don't. We're talking about a temporary ban. Look, I own a small business. If there was a national data tomorrow that said the product that my store offers is killing people. I would stop and pause and I would think, okay, maybe I need to think about the future of my industry because fighting a temporary ban today is not going to change the fact that there is a mechanism associated with vaping that is causing pulmonary injuries. That mechanism needs to be studied. This is not a traditional class one or Class two medical device that gets FDA clinical trials. So we're just starting to learn more and more about this industry as a result of deaths. And I don't want those deaths to be Long Beach deaths. So I'm asking my colleagues, I submitted this item. We've been working on it for four months. Up until tonight. I did not expect or know for many of my colleagues that they wanted to somehow exempt vape shops from this 60% of the sales according to our data. Of Youth comes from products sold in vape shops. So while I appreciate our eight businesses are checking IDs and I think that's wonderful. 60% of the youth are purchasing their products in vape shops. That could be completely bogus information. I don't know. But we work with our health department and we rely on them regularly to form opinions and conclusions and policies on behalf of the city . That's our job to do. So with all due respect to Councilwoman Mongeau and I have tremendous respect for her. If this was any other industry where the product was killing people, we would say, let's stop, let's pause and let's take a look at it. And you know what? We have worked very closely with our businesses in Long Beach to shape policy so that it's well-intentioned and thorough. And I'm open to doing that with the vape shops. I'm not saying that we should have a permanent ban tonight, although I would support that. But the item that I drafted is let's take an immediate pause because people are dying. People are literally dying. We have a duty to take a pause and mitigate that. Will people still get. I can't control what people buy on Amazon. Absolutely. But we can control what people buy in Long Beach. I'm not here to control what people buy on Amazon. That's that's not within the purview of our jurisdiction. This item is meant to address what people buy in Long Beach. So I'm asking for my colleagues support on this item. I think some of the item some of the suggestions tonight by my colleagues were amazing in terms of working with the companies, trying to develop comprehensive policies. Education and outreach is huge. I'm the one that brought the education and outreach item to council for cannabis, and I think we could do a similar thing. But this item is not about getting people to stop. Smoking or not be addicted to nicotine. This item is because. Speaker 5: The. Speaker 2: Products are being ingested through a mechanism. That is deficient on research right now. And the products are causing pulmonary injuries to people. It is a public health emergency. This item isn't about let's work with people and help them not be addicted to tobacco. That's a great conversation. It's a wonderful conversation. Someone should bring an item to talk about that if they want. But my item tonight is about the public health issue of people dying as a result of the mechanism of vapes which are sold in vape shops and they're sold in convenience stores. So thank you. Speaker 6: Next up, we have councilmember pearce. Speaker 8: I i support the statements made by councilmember price. I hope that we can get the report from our health department to kind of open up our eyes to the facts about this so that we we have those before us. I support a ban as soon as we can while we explore that and understand more the impacts. But absolutely, people are dying. We have to act fast. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Council member Supernormal. Speaker 9: I'm going to speak for myself now. I've completed my duties to the vice mayor. And first, I want to thank Kim Kirkman from Wilson PTA for speaking here tonight. Kim, I'm sorry we didn't get you through your entire conversation there, but I also have a pipeline in to Wilson High School for information. And that just made me think that as far as some type of ordnance is crafted, any way we can reach out to the school district and get them involved in this, in crafting this, I just think we have to have a larger conversation there because I think everyone in this room wants to protect the youth. The only question is how we get there. And then I think for the comments that Council Member Richardson made, I think maybe Councilman Price and you are on the same page. It just wasn't really articulated that way that this is a temporary ban, then get it sorted out. Okay. Speaker 2: So, yeah, we're on. Speaker 9: Okay. So I think that's where we are now. I just want to thank everyone for spending some time with us here tonight. I'm the biggest proponent of streamline council meetings, but sometimes it takes this type of process and this is the beginning of conversation. So I think it's going to be very fruitful in the long run. So thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. And I'd like to also just remind the council we have five minute limits under our new rules. And I know are some some of our constituents are paying attention and clocking us. Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 5: Thank you. I just don't want to be misquoted. And I know council member Price doesn't want to be misquoted either. I'm not here trying to stick up for any small business over any other small business. What I'm saying is, and I think maybe some of our council officers and I can identify a person calls our office and says X is happening. And it's it caused this accident, which then means you need to change the stop sign. But when you go back and look at the data, perhaps it wasn't what we perceived. And so, again, when I signed on to the item, because I am supportive of a ban, I did that with the caveat from my chief to yours that I want to craft something more comprehensive, because I don't know a lot about Vape. I don't know a lot about the industry. And I'd read conflicting reports that the CDC doesn't necessarily think that it's from FDA approved cartridges. And so what I don't want to do is punish and ban an industry that has not actually caused any deaths. And I think it's very inappropriate across the state for us to continue to blame people without the information. Specifically, do we believe there's correlation, perhaps? I don't know. But 80% related to THC? I think that there's a bigger issue at play that we need to address as well. And I'm not trying to bring my own item or step on your item. That's not my intent at all. I just also don't want at least a partner that's been in my district as a good vape shop. Not to mention there's a not so great vape shop on the border of my district in Lakewood that does sell to youth. I don't want to funnel kids there because that particular vape shop, which is going to be next to the new marijuana dispensary, is not a great partner and is not a part of the plan. And so for the hope that we could all work together to find a solution. I was hoping for that to be the case. So what I will state is I will be supportive today, but I hope that the Health Department can come back very quickly and find a way that we can also utilize this as a public health campaign. And I think that I see the news media here today, and I hope that you'll report this as a city who's really working hard to know the facts behind the deaths, to ensure that we are making the right bands so that we can protect our youth. Because every single person up here, including myself, is first and foremost looking at the health of our youth and ensuring that we're not pushing them from one thing to another. I'm not going to get into a whole nother conversation today, but like soda and then juices that have too much sugar. And it's a it's a it's a bigger item overall that we as a policy body get to discuss. And I was being very genuine to your request to have a genuine conversation. And when I heard from individuals who are much more knowledgeable about Vape than I am, I really feel like they were being genuine. When you bring forward a stack of ideas like that, I think to myself, being a police officer, what mechanisms do I have to get at youth to stop breaking the law? And I will tell you time and time again, it's their parents. It is getting their parents involved and collecting those IDs. You're not currently getting to the parents. How do we do that? What does that look like? How do we bring them in? Is there any kind of. Appropriate level of peer pressure that we can provide and how do we encourage that? I don't know what those answers are. We've only had ten days to discuss this item. It has been on a bigger level. I have watched the county supervisor meeting and other meetings throughout the region, but I just don't know that we can say that we aren't. We are still not banning non flavored THC. And so I'd like to amend the item to include banning dual and non flavored THC vape cartridges. If you'd like that friendly. Speaker 2: No, I don't accept the friendly. Speaker 6: Okay. So Councilmember Turanga. Speaker 7: Okay. So we've gone. We'll circle what appears to be here. And just and this I had and we went from a temporary to a permanent. And I think we're back to temporary territory where we. Speaker 10: Well, where I think we are is we have a motion on the floor to ban all flavored tobacco products and vape products, including the menthol flavor. 30 days to the audience would give 30 days to come into compliance with the ban. The ban would be temporary until further action by the City Council. And prior to bringing back the ordinance for Council's consideration, the Health Department would have a presentation to the City Council. Speaker 7: Remember prices that you're understanding of the motion. Like. Speaker 6: Before we go to a vote, I'd like to just a point of clarification as well. How long is this ban going to be in place? Speaker 10: Until further action by the city council. Speaker 6: Okay. So do we have any idea when. When we'll be able to? Because I want to. Yeah. I'd like to be able to understand that we're going to be forming a policy and that we will have a process where we're outreaching with the public. Um. Speaker 2: Sure. So why don't we stakeholders? Why don't we include, as part of this motion that our health department can reach out to the vape? Yeah. Businesses in the city and start working on some education and outreach options similar to what we did with our cannabis industries. And then also, I know that many council members here are involved in researching what's going on around the country. But certainly if our health department could take the lead and if there's anything new that's discovered regarding health impacts or if there's any specific danger zones that were made aware of as a result of some of the research , I know that for the deaths are conducting a lot of autopsies and it's actually a big issue is the mechanism of the vape and how the product breaks down into the lungs. And so hopefully we can follow that research so that when the item comes back and perhaps health department can issue ATF to all of us, that talks about those outreach efforts and the updates in policy and health impacts that they're watching. This is a trend that I imagine our health department will be following closely. So I think I would defer to them to bring it back when they feel they have enough for us to move forward on something. Speaker 6: Think that clarifies things a little bit better for me personally. Are you okay, Mr. City Attorney? Okay. Speaker 2: Hearing that this collopy is okay. We didn't ask her. I don't know if that's feasible. Speaker 6: Yes, of course. Speaker 11: It will be. I mean, we have been tracking on it. We'll be able to provide the data and we'll we'll issue a two from four on the outreach plan with our folks at Timeline. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 6: And I'd also like to just encourage us to work with some of the community organizations that do education around this issue. I think all of us as council members can can really help reach our school age children and help our parents as well. With that members, please cast your vote. Speaker 0: Ocean carry.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to direct City Attorney to draft an ordinance temporarily banning the sale of flavored vapor products in the City of Long Beach.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10012019_19-0974

Speaker 6: Next up, item number. 35. Speaker 0: Adam, 35, is a report from technology and an innovation recommendation to work contracts to Deloitte Consulting to provide implementation services for a customer relationship management system for a total amount not to exceed 1.8 million, and to sales force for the software licenses for total amount not to exceed 303,007 and 68 citywide. Speaker 6: Okay. Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 5: Yes. We are very excited to hear a report from Ms.. Eriksson, and I was also asked by the mayor to give positive comments and vibes to Ms.. Eriksson, because we're so excited to finally have this presentation. Speaker 10: So members of the city council, we echo that. This is exciting. This is something that the council has really invested in. And when we were in front of you about a year and a half ago, with all of our critical technology needs, this was one of the major focus areas of the council. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Lee Ericsson, who will walk through what we're doing with our customer relationship management system. Speaker 4: Good evening. Members of City Council. We are here tonight to request approval to enter into contracts with Deloitte Consulting and Salesforce to implement a CRM or customer relationship management system. This project is a high priority for the city and was included in the technology systems category of the critical technology infrastructure needs that acting city manager Tom Modica just mentioned. First I want to cover the goals of the CRM project. In 2010, the city implemented Go Long Beach, a mobile application that allows residents and city staff to submit service requests each year. The usage of go along beach has increased and in fact usage tripled over the last five years to almost 60,000 service requests in 2018. As Gold Long Beach becomes more and more popular. Manual processes need to be automated to keep up with demand. Even with the success of Go Long Beach, it is evident that a true customer relationship management system is needed. The goals of an integrated and comprehensive CRM include to provide residents easy access to city services, provide tracking and monitoring capabilities that can serve as a tool to help improve city service delivery, improve resident engagement and access in conformance with the city's language access policy. Improve openness, transparency and accountability. Improve alignment of resources with service demands, and enable district level reporting capabilities that will drive improved data informed decision making. To support this effort. The city hired a consultant to assess the city's organizational readiness capabilities and resource capacity, as well as to create a strategy for a CRM system. We then use that assessment to help put together an RFP to solicit potential vendors for the system. The RFP process was multi-phased included a request for clarifications to gain further information and clarify responses. A multi departmental selection committee reviewed the nine responsive vendors and invited five firms for product demonstrations. A best and final offer request was then issued to the top two finalist, followed by reference checks. The Selection Committee then selected the Salesforce platform implemented by Deloitte Consulting. Salesforce is an industry CRM leader with 19.5% market share. Last year, Gartner has recognized Salesforce as a leader for CRM systems over the last 13 years, as evidenced by ability to execute and completeness of vision. Salesforce has public sector experience and a flexible platform in both look and functionality. The platform is also scalable and cloud native. Deloitte has a proven track record as an implementer, with both the City of San Diego and Orange County. Deloitte has also stellar public sector customer references, and all project team members are local to Southern California, which helps with logistics and travel costs. The scope of the CRM includes replacing the current Go Long Beach app with a more robust system. The new app will retain the goal Long Beach brand but offer a modern user interface. The customer self-service system will be able to be accessed via tablet, phone or laptop and allows constituents to track status of request and will also include access to a knowledge base to help residents placing requests. There will also be a robust back office utility that will allow staff to enter requests from constituents that call in and or to check status of requests. There will be seamless interfaces to back office work order systems which will eliminate duplicative and manual entry by staff. Lastly, there will be dashboards and reports that provide metrics to city staff and officials on the service requests, including items like duration, to close the ability to identify multiple requests that are on the same issue and to better pinpoint the geographic location of the request. With this CRM system, the public can expect a replacement of go Long Beach with modern technology. The transition will involve a robust communication and education plan. In addition, the Platform and Apple have multilingual support in conformance with the city's language access policy, and there also be enhancements to the city's website, Long Beach Lock up to serve as a one stop source for information about city services and the CRM system will include all existing go along beach topics, plus new topics such as beach and park maintenance items backed by digital workflows. Afghan officials can expect one common platform to manage interactions with the public, insights into performance through reporting tools like dashboards, and the improved ability to recognize and address duplicate service requests, among many other benefits. These screenshots show what is possible and serve as a blueprint for what the new Go Long Beach app may look like. The new Go Long Beach will be developed from the ground up by Deloitte based on city direction and staff and officials will be provided with opportunities to provide feedback throughout the project. The city will also receive a knowledge base as part of the implementation. The goal of the knowledge base is to provide self-service for constituents through one channel and to provide staff and officials with one consistent tool and points of reference for comment. Answering commonly asked questions. So the first year cost of the serum project will not exceed $2.16876 million, which include $2,168,768, which includes software, license costs, implementation, services and contingency. The ongoing license costs are already included in the FY 20 budget that was approved by City Council last month. The upfront costs are covered by funding identified in the critical technology infrastructure needs, as well as the remainder of funding coming from savings in other areas of the Technology and Innovation Department. FY 19 budget. If City Council approves this award appropriation tonight, the project will be kicked off this quarter and a new CRM system will be launched and operational by the end of 2020. This concludes my presentation. I am joined by burying a body, our brand new business Information Services Bureau Manager and Scott Otter, our business information technology officer. And collectively, we are ready to answer any questions that you may have. Speaker 6: Thank you for that great presentation. I'll take it back. I know Councilmember Mongeau spoke on this to want to continue. Speaker 5: Yes. Thank you. So I just want to tell you how pleased I am with the work that's been done. I know it took a long time, but I know it takes a long time to be thorough. I appreciate the level of research that you went into. I think it's important to note that these conversations are happening across the region. I also serve on a county wide mobility discussion and we are talking about how systems like these need to integrate over city lines. Within my district there is a donut hole of unincorporated, and if an individual drives through that area not knowing that they're no longer in the city of Long Beach. They would potentially use the gold on each app and not know. And so I look forward to the first phase, which is us handling our responsibilities to our constituents in a meaningful way. And then I'm. Our next agenda item is also related a little bit to this, but how we pull it all together so it's seamless across the region that Long Beach is the leader in allowing constituents to interact with their local government. 24 hours a day, seven days a week without coming to City Hall. And so I'm really excited for this. A lot of people talk about, oh, when you got elected, didn't you get a booklet of all the backlogged data and all the sidewalk requests that were pending or the tree stump removals that had been pending? We didn't. We received the database, but it was in the system in methodologies of the prior councilwoman, something that we did not know or understand how to really interpret. And so this tool will be able to be passed, not passed at all. It's it's a structural tool that is the responsibility of the city for us as council members to interact with to ensure constituents get services. My second year, an individual told me that three different council members had promised to remove their tree stump. It had been 17 years. Systems like these won't allow that to happen. We'll be able to get data that shows how long reports have been or requests have been pending and why they're not getting done. And so for this, I'm very excited. Congratulations to Lia and the team. I know it doesn't just happen at the top. So to each and every one of the members of the team that had a role in this. Thank you. Speaker 6: I also remember, Piers, you seconded emotion. Speaker 8: Yes, I did. Second emotion. Thank you. I'm really excited. I feel like we've been talking about this every budget. We kind of bring up the app. My office uses it a ton. I have a couple of questions and you might not be able to answer them, but that's kind of like a wishlist right now. Even though I know we've got a year to go through this process, I'm wondering if there's a way to overlap our district lines in here so that we very quickly could be able to say, okay, here are the request and that that constituent now understands, Oh, when I'm filling this out, Councilmember Pierce is my contact. So if I don't hear back, maybe she's the person I can follow up with. We're getting nods. Speaker 4: Awesome. I'll go ahead. Yeah, that's. We are planning on having district level geographic boundaries so we can work to incorporate that. Speaker 8: Wonderful. And then when I'm looking at just your possible images, I see location of issue. Are we still going to have the geo mapping where you'll be able to? Okay. I just wanted to make sure on that. This is great. I think it looks amazing. I look forward to going through the process over the next year and maybe we could also put a competition layer in here. You know, we can say let's start a competition that begins on this month and see who gets the most go Long Beach request. It's kind of fun. It's kind of fun, guys. Thank you, guys. Speaker 6: You're on your own. Yeah, I. Speaker 7: Don't think so, because after all, we are about service to the community. It's not a competition. We all we all win. You know, one of the one of the goals that you set here in terms of the the project goals and you stood out to me right away obviously is a I don't number three improves resident engagement and access in conformance with the city's language access policy. Can you describe how you're going to do that and will it require additional staffing and other types of human resource management type of? Take this A to take on this and this item. Speaker 4: Councilman Yarrawonga. So the app itself with the labels will be translated into the different languages and it includes template standard responses that would be coming from commonly from common items. But what could happen with more customized individual interactions? We would be meeting city staff who have translation capabilities to be responding to those. So the actual roll out of that will be determined as part of the project scope and get department involvement and how that would actually work when we execute this. Speaker 7: That sounds great. I'm looking forward to that. Thank you. Speaker 6: With no other comment. Is there any public comment on this item? Or you. Let's cast their votes. Oh, I remember supernova. Well, was it? There was nobody signed up on it. I don't. Well, come on up. Come on up, please. Speaker 4: Would you on this one? I think it's a really good plan. Mm hmm. It could be make be a big benefit, make it easier on customers, easier on city staff to go electronic. I didn't hear anything about cost savings associated with the system. And normally when you go electronic, there are cost savings. Secondly, I'd also like to see I know Deloitte has industrial engineers and in terms of how the processes work in the city, I think the industrial engineers could be brought in as well, although I wouldn't want to negatively impact your budget. But great idea. Speaker 6: Thank you, members. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Councilmember Pearce Councilmember Mongo. Motion. Speaker 6: Thank you. I'd like to go to item number 22 for housekeeping purposes. I know it was announced at the beginning of the meeting that we'd be laying over an item and we just need to vote on it, I'm told.

Contract

Recommendation to adopt Specification No. RFP TI18-063 and award contracts to Deloitte Consulting, LLP, of San Diego, CA, to provide implementation services for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in the amount of $1,650,000, with a 10 percent contingency in the amount of $165,000, for a total amount not to exceed $1,815,000, for a period of one year, with the option to renew for one additional one-year period, and to Salesforce, of San Francisco, CA, through its recommended reseller, Carahsoft Technology Corporation, of Reston, VA, for the software licenses, in the amount of $294,807, with a 20 percent contingency in the amount of $58,961 for a period of one year, for a total amount not exceed $353,768, with the option to renew for four additional one-year periods, with annual increases ranging from 2.5 to 7 percent; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contracts, including any necessary amendments; and Increase appropriations in the General Services Fund Group in the Technology and Innovation Department (TI) by $1,

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Speaker 0: Motion carry. Speaker 6: Annexes. Item number 28. Speaker 0: Item 28 is a communication from Councilwoman Mango Councilwoman Price Council Member Muranga Councilman Austin Recommendation to require City Manager to work with Technology and Innovation Department and report back within 180 days on the potential cost, benefits, partnerships and challenges of a city of Long Beach issued ID card. Speaker 6: As a member. Mungo Thank. Speaker 5: You. I know earlier this year a member of the community stated that they don't always know what the council agenda item is by the verbiage that's on the screen. So I'm going to read you the subject line of the agenda item. The Long Beach one card streamlining, resident connectivity and access to city services. I brought this item as a continuation of making sure that we're putting forward best practices to ensure that our residents have the capability to easily engage and access the things that matter most to them, whether it's providing department or policy feedback, reporting a pothole, finding a library program, looking for a free, family friendly event, or renting a park space for a birthday. All of those activities could be streamlined into one easy place for residents to access. Currently, a resident might have up to nine different accounts in the city. They might have their library card number, their gas card number, their gas account number. They might make reservations at Parks and Rec. And each and every time they have a identity that is not necessarily known to the other departments. And so through the CRM system that was approved in the previous item, we are implementing functionality that will better able us to manage our communication systems with residents with the Long Beach One card. We would also be giving the residents a portal for easy engagement and connectivity in their hands. This could connect a citywide calendar. When we talk about equity and access, a lot of that conversation falsely gives a representation of a barrier fence in which a tall person can see over the fence. And we have to let the shorter people stand on boxes to see over. I'm saying let's remove the fence. Let's take down the fence. It's the 21st century, and it's time we seek innovative, technology based solutions to make sure all people have equal opportunity for access, not those that know their council offices phone number, not those who know that public works is the one who handles that versus Parks and Rec , whether it's language, access, identification, qualifications, or needed services of housing, public transportation, parking, access to citywide parking lots, access to our our regional park health and senior programing, access to our C one and C two meal programs for seniors, arts and cultural institutions as we. As well as we have the capability to connect everything with banking and payment functions. There should be that same functionality that allows our residents connect easily with us. That's why I'm proposing the Long Beach one card as a solution. As a city, we should strive to get everyone connected. And so with that, I hope that I'll have my colleagues support in finding the next step. Right now, we have several different apps. You have an app to review, a police report, you have an app to do Long Beach Transit. And within Long Beach Transit, you can enroll and reserve your seat to get to and from events. And we should be able to have that same connectivity across our library programs, our park programs. Individuals call my office and say I registered for summer day camp with these deposits and now I have to go somewhere to do something to get my kid enrolled. To be able to move from six weeks of care to seven weeks of care should be easy and convenient for the senior mom, single mom. And so with this, I ask for my colleagues support. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember Mongo. I'll remember. Richard. I'm sorry, Your Honor. Speaker 7: Thank you. Acting mayor. Normally I'm opposed to any kind of additional ID cards that are going to be given to people to identify themselves where they're at. But I sound down on this and because I think that it's a discussion worth worth having only to so that we could get more information about some of the technology that that we are in the 20th and 21st century. We are looking at more technology as we move forward, and I think that we need to be on top of it. So I'm doing this with a bit of trepidation in thinking this, that I want to see what comes out of it. So before I vote against it, I'm voting for it, but not that I'm going to vote against it at the end. But just giving a preview that in case it comes out to where I'm not totally sure that I want to support something like this. I just want to put it out there that there is some concerns that I might have with this card as it moves forward, especially as it relates to identifying people, residents who perhaps are not fully documented to be here. What would be the requirements to get the card? What types of ID and proof of residency they would have to show? Those types of things. So like I say, I'm checking this with a bit of trepidation, but let's move forward with it. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Well, if there's no objection, I want to go to public comment and then bring it back line. Will. Speaker 5: I would love that. Would I be able to make one comment to council member? Speaker 6: Would your comment hold you hold your comment. Speaker 4: All right. Speaker 6: Well, you got me. First, I'd like to call Leslie, then Jessica Quintana. Speaker 4: Hi. I just wasn't really clear that we actually needed an ID card. I mean, I would think just a password and a name should do it for most things. The other thing that concerned me about this one is that it kind of smacks of Big Brother and a watchful eye of the city that, you know, they're going to keep track of every single thing that you do. And I think that makes people fearful. Um. I wouldn't want to inhibit their participation in anything by them being paranoid that their participation is being tracked. So that's it. Speaker 6: Thank you for your comments, Mr. Quintana, please. Speaker 4: Good evening. Jessica Quintana, executive director of Central Asia. As you know, we're a nonprofit organization in the city of Long Beach. And time and time again, we hear from our residents and families and youth that, you know, they need to reduce the amount of paperwork and IDs that they need to go get services within the community. You know, I think this is very innovative. Thank you so much, Councilwoman Mango, for bringing this forward. I think it needs work, you know? Definitely needs to have a good discussion in regards to the community, you know, not being fearing that their identity or their whereabouts are being tracked. We're trying to make this, you know, system very easily for our families and residents to get park recreation services, to be able to go get go to a food bank, to be able to get transportation. So I think there needs to be more thought into this initiative because there's definitely needs to be benefits for a lot of our low income families to be able to access services citywide. So not just in one eastern area, but also on the west side of area in north and south of of Long Beach. And so I think that if we can come up with a system that benefits our community residents to be able to access, you know, things for their families, education services, for the children to go to the library, to be involved in baseball, soccer. You know, one idea that shows that they're qualified, that they're eligible and they can participate. And so I think that that would reduce a lot of, you know, challenges for parents to access, you know, city services, whether that be the arts, culture, you know, recreation, you know, food banks, anything for the city. But I'm telling you at this point, this is very, very infant stage of this. And there needs to be a lot more discussion. I know up in Denver, Colorado, where I'm from, where I was born, because I grew up in Long Beach my whole life. They also have a one ID card. And so folks are able to access the bus system, you know, get library services, get recreation services, go to their local museums for free. So, you know, that's the kind of opportunities that we want to be able to provide our families. So I'm sorry. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I think the clerk gave you a little bit more extra time. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Clark. Speaker 6: With that back Councilmember Mongo, you did want. Speaker 5: To thank you. Yes. So Rusty is the most progressive cities across the country are the ones that are on the cutting edge of this. Oakland, Denver, San Francisco. I did feel that this was in its infancy, though. I have gone out and met with Jessica and one Benitez and others at Liberty City College and Lobby, Unified School District and Long Beach Transit. And I've done a lot of the initial meetings to get feedback on the initial item. I provided 180 days a six month period because I do believe that there is a greater discussion that really needs to be had. We are finding that passwords are actually causing more risk to people's identities than face ID or a thumbprint or something. Especially our senior communities are most vulnerable when they have multiple logins and passwords or a password that has to change. And so we feel as though I'm sorry, the experts have stated that it is better to have like a digital ID card on your phone of some sort that only you have access to with two two factor authentication. With that, it would also be opt in. And to to Jessica's point, a lot of the discussion of why I didn't bring this three months ago, even though it was prepared and we had these meetings so long ago, was because of the fear and discussion around the census. And we just didn't feel it was an appropriate time until that matter was handled. And then we felt like a six month opening to have that dialog would be appropriate so that we can really talk about moving forward in a more collaborative and collective way. I think also six months from now, we'll have made significant progress on the CRM. Significant progress. I see them all in the back. And so once that significant progress has been made, will really be able to better understand the utilization of this. That really is possible. I think of things like discounted swim lessons to be able to say click. Did you know your kid can go to a safety class today to learn how to swim before drownings? To be able to have that kind of push notification and access to individuals who opt in would be great. It also is great when something is going to happen in your community. We spend a considerable amount of money notifying people by mail that they don't open that something near their home is going to change and oftentimes they're not notified till too late. You'd be able to opt in to that. And so the possibilities are endless. And I really appreciate the openness and both by Councilmember Suranga, even with his trepidation and the support of his canton. I thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Member Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Councilman. So supportive of the item. I think giving 180 80 days to evaluate it makes a lot of sense. Couple of things. So I think over the course of so, in most of those cities where they move forward with municipal I.D., there was a process of sort of engaging with communities. And so I want to make sure that that we call out specifically the undocumented community. Latino population, like the leadership, is engaged about making sure that this is something they're seen as a benefit, not a barrier to services. Also, sort of, you know, municipal I.D. has a lot of benefits and opportunities. I think one of the one of the greatest sort of trends is is the full integration of transit. And, you know, like we had a discussion most recently at Skegg about how we make decisions about what vehicle to take. Right now, you can grab you know, you might be able to grab an app, Uber or Lyft, and see how long it takes to, you know, to get from point A to point B or you might grab Lyft at a Lime app and see a scooter or a bike once in the area. Which one takes the most or at least time looks right now is how do we integrate all of that? Right. If you have municipal services and it may include Long Beach Transit, how do you integrate your app? Right. To say, do I prefer to walk? Do I prefer to scooter? I prefer to ride a bike or catch a lift to get where we're going. That's where things are heading. So I think when we think about municipal ID, I think our innovation department should be thinking about more than just identification, but integration of services that makes us helps us to make smarter decisions about emissions, smarter decisions about transportation and more efficient choices. So I'm certainly you know, I'm certainly going to track and sort of engage here. But I just want to be clear that, you know, there will be apprehension on this issue. And so I want to make sure that that is fully vetted out before it returns in 180 days. And I want to make sure that we we really put some real emphasis on transit. I know about tap car, you know, Los Angeles, but here in Long Beach, we're not we're not online in the same way. Even if we get tap cart, our transit agency, our bike share, our mobile, our scooters are all three separate sort of functions led by three different policy agencies, all in the train. Right, three policy agencies. If we want to make a decision about rates, you have to have three different conversations with three different agencies. If you want to talk about efficiencies, senior discounts, youth access, equity, how to distribute around town, right now it's three conversations with three agencies. We should at minimum, as we explore this, be thinking about a JPA or some joint committee among transit agencies to explore this conversation. So there's just a lot of thoughts here. A plan engage. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. I look forward to see where this goes. Speaker 6: Thank you. Member Pearce. Speaker 8: Yes, thank you. I did have a lot of conversations before coming to council tonight on this issue. I think in an ideal world, all of us have talked about wanting to have integration. I think it's wonderful that we have the CRM conversation happening right now, so I'd want to have a couple of questions answered. First, I'd like to understand how it would interface with our CRM system. I'd like to understand what the cost are. I'd like to understand how our other agencies not only I know that there's some issues where we wouldn't be able to have library cards because there's certain information that's privileged information that can't integrate. So really understanding where can we align different areas. There are a couple communities that are vulnerable communities. I know that the council members is saying it's an opt in. I have issues with creating a system that might be privilege for some that other communities fear getting involved with. So I would ask the staff in exploring this, sit down and meet not only with Jessica's organization, but the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition. The Cambodian community is another population and then our senior population. So we have our senior advisory committee commission. I would want to make sure that how are we making sure that our seniors feel comfortable with this? And I think in an ideal world, it sounds great. Recognizing that it's going to take a lot of work to get there and being realistic with that. I see. I think that that's it in our school board. You know, I know that I spoke with our school board member. The represents my area and I know that they had a lot of concerns. And so let's just make sure that as we go through this, we do it kind of slow and with engagement from all stakeholders. So thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 5: Thank you. I appreciate the comments of my colleague. And I'll also add, and I alluded to this a few weeks ago when we were hearing the discussions at the state level related to banking changes and local banks. And so I think that I mean. We talk about some of our Section eight renters, and they don't even have a bank account sometimes. And they they live at cash advance check facilities that cash their checks and pay those amounts. I mean, long term, it could be even bigger than that. And I'm not I'm not going to add the banking in today, but I think that it's important to have the conversations with that in mind in providing that kind of financial access to some of our low income and most in need communities. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Hearing no more comment from the behind the wheel. Thank you for the very innovative and thoughtful item this evening and I'm sure we'll be having plenty of discussion on this in the future. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Ocean carrying.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Technology & Innovation Department, and all other appropriate departments to work together, research, and report back within 180 days on the potential costs, benefits, partnerships, and challenges of a City of Long Beach-issued identification card.

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Speaker 6: King. So our last item of the day is item number 29. Speaker 0: Item 29, communication from Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Mango, Councilman Muranga and Councilman Austin. Recommendation to request city attorney to explore. Joining an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decisions in Martin versus City of Boise. Speaker 6: Okay. This item is. Up. Councilmember Price. Speaker 2: Thank you. So I want to update the item a little bit because we filed it on the 23rd. And there are two stages. There are two points in time when you can submit an amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. One is at this stage, which is the petition stage, which the deadline for that has already passed, although it passed after we submitted our item for council consideration. The second stage where you can submit an amicus brief is at the merit stage and the merit stage is not yet before us. We have some time before the merit stage and it's not even for certain that we will get to the merit stage because the Supreme Court will have to determine whether the case has merit before we get to the merit stage, at which time we'll have seven days after the filing of that petition to file our amicus brief . So at this juncture, I actually want to change this item. And because because we don't know if we're going to get to the merit stage and the petition stage has already passed. What I'd like to do is request that our city attorney prepare a letter of support for the L.A. County Amicus. I mean, sorry, not a letter of a resolution supporting L.A. County's decision to file an amicus brief. That's my my request tonight is that the city attorney's office be directed to prepare a resolution in support of L.A. County's amicus brief in connection with the case of Martin versus Boise. So so with that, let me give you guys some background as to why I think this item is important and ask for your consideration. So we we all know we talk about homelessness frequently as a council body. And we know that Long Beach is one of the best equipped cities to handle the crisis. Speaker 5: And we are. Speaker 2: Struggling, like every other city, to manage the issue in terms of its impact on residents, businesses, city and of course, those who find themselves homeless and need services. We have an amazing set of resources available at the Multi-Service Center and housing providers who are helping us with all types of assistance that our homeless population should choose to accept. We have outreach teams in the Health Department, police department, fire department, and hopefully soon our awesome lifeguards are all trying to get people into services. And we're working on this from every angle with creative approaches like an in-house jail and in jail, clinician new shelters, day labor programs, real time bed availability software and even research, such as working with Cal State Long Beach to focus our outreach strategies and find opportunities for improvement. These are just a handful of the great programs we are working on in the city, but this is not about what we're doing, right? Earlier this year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case of Martin versus City of Boise. And their decision has fundamentally changed the way that cities are now able to manage our open spaces, including parks, beaches, sidewalks and parking lots. The decision has resulted in us not being able to any longer enforce our own ordinances that are designed to prevent public health issues from spreading. The decision forbids municipalities from enforcing ordinances that prohibit public camping unless those local governments can offer acceptable shelter to every unhoused person in their jurisdiction. This severely limits our ability to address homelessness and the appropriate protections of the rights held by everyone to access and meaningfully enjoy public spaces. The city needs to have the ability to appropriately regulate public camping and enforce our city ordinances with the objective of protecting everyone equally and maintaining public health standards throughout the city. The decision of the Ninth Circuit is truly unique as there's no other circuit interpreting the Eighth Amendment in this way. So this inconsistency is why earlier this week. We we saw. Well, I think it was probably last week now. Multiple cities throughout the nation joining in the amicus briefs in order to ask the Supreme Court to reevaluate the impacts. We have a responsibility as a city to help those that are experiencing homelessness in every way that we can. We have a responsibility to help them find their way to services. We have a responsibility to make sure that we are not punishing them for the fact that they are homeless. But we also have a responsibility and a duty to protect citizens and to allow citizens to be able to use public spaces in a meaningful way and to feel safe doing so. When we have encampments and the city is not able to do anything about the encampments, we start to see crime happen within the encampments. We've seen that happen within the region and nearby counties. We've also seen some incidents of it here in the city of Long Beach. We also see public health issues with spreading of disease that we're not able to control and we need to control. We also see issues that are vulnerable to fire hazards, for example, such as many of our wetlands, areas where we are not able to clean up the encampments as as merely a public health and public safety issue because of the restrictions that have been set forth by the ninth District, it has severely limited our ability to provide safe and safe public spaces that all residents can enjoy. And so with that, I would like us to adopt a resolution to support L.A. County's efforts in filing their amicus brief and to support the larger county that supports us every day through the use of county funds to help us address the issues of homelessness. So I ask my colleagues to support me on this. Speaker 6: Thank you. I was set in motion, but before I go to comments from a counselor, I'd like to do public comment. We have Gary Holbrook. Bill Sheehan. I'm sorry, Jenny Holbrooke. It's getting late. Speaker 4: Reprise and also Councilmember. Speaker 1: Mongo and wrong guy in Austin. Speaker 4: For bringing this agenda item to the council. The city of Long Beach should be able to control occupancy. Speaker 1: Of its. Speaker 4: Public spaces to ensure they are available for all residents and visitors to safely use and enjoy. So let's not delay in supporting L.A. County in asking the US Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit's ruling. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. Bill Sheehan. Speaker 9: Good evening. My name is Bill Sheehan. I live in District three and I support the recommendation on the resolution. There is no single answer in dealing with the homeless crisis. Long Beach has been ahead of the pack in finding ways to get homeless people off the street and connected with service providers. For example, our quality of life officers are really doing groundbreaking work in this area. The Boise ruling is too sweeping and the city needs to have flexibility in dealing with a problem that cuts across all neighborhoods. The Boise ruling makes it difficult to regulate public camping. It's important to regulate camping in order to keep people safe and to protect the rights of everyone to access and use public space. I wanted to touch on the safety and access issues. For example, people have been camping and congregating overnight at the Granada Rest Restroom and Snack Shack area, off and on for several years. Two years ago, one late one night, a man died on the Granada ramp. Police reported there were a group of people there. One woman accused another man of a crime and a group of men jumped on this fellow and he died in the scrum. This happened after 10:00, so none of the people should have even been out there because it was past the beach curfew. And there have been similar deadly incidents involving the encampments in Long Beach in the past. And I think the encampments are not only dangerous to the general public, but they're especially dangerous to the people who live in the encampments. The second issue I wanted to bring up was Access. And a couple of a few years ago, the city repaved the sidewalk between Granada and Bayshore, and they went out of their way to make sure it was ADA compliant. But now I see sometimes there are people camped on the sidewalk or leaving their camping gear on the sidewalk, and there's people that need the ADA access are out in the street going around that. So that almost seems like an ADA violation. So I really encourage the Council to consider supporting the resolution in support of L.A. County. And I think the most important thing is that the city have flexibility in dealing with homelessness. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I'd like to call forward and this city material. And after that, since I came, say. Speaker 4: It's cottage to your liberal desires. Speaker 2: Good evening, everybody. A very involved. Speaker 4: Citizen in this. Speaker 0: Community, and we do a lot of outreach with a transient population in our neighborhood. Speaker 4: The population fell on hard times, but who also continues to respect their surroundings and the people around them. Speaker 0: We know them and respect. Speaker 4: Them as well. Unfortunately, we also deal with a different kind of transients, mostly addict, who do not want to follow the rules or the basic coexistence. They are the ones who do not want to accept services and refuse shelter, and yet they take advantage of all the protection laws created for the truly needy. They set up camp in our parks and beaches in the sidewalk. Speaker 0: And we are the ones who pick up their trash, their needles. Speaker 4: At times stolen goods and worse, their human waste is to become a real health hazard issue. Ordinances were created. Speaker 0: By the city to. Speaker 4: Protect all citizens equally, to protect us all from health and crime problems. This ordinance should be enforced on all citizens without discrimination. I am grateful for Councilwoman Pryce, who is always on the front line, bringing constructive ideas and effective. Speaker 0: Effective ideas to improve the. Speaker 4: Quality of life for all. We love Long Beach. Thank you very much. Speaker 6: Thank you for your comments. We have Corliss Lee up next. And after carelessly we have Larry go to. Speaker 4: I don't think I've ever had so many line items that interested me on an agenda before. But this amicus brief, I think Suzy pretty much said it all, but I did last week with some folks who are looking into the homeless issue. And they had set up interviews with a social worker, a manager of a homeless program, and then a guy who worked with the union rescue mission. And we asked him certain questions and one of them was, Who are they? Who are the homeless? And they all answered it the same way. They said, basically, it's the mentally ill. It's people with substance abuse problems. And then there's the all other so, you know, people coming out of prisons, people who lost their jobs, you know, a whole big bank of all other. But moving on from that, when I looked at the homeless situation over in our local park and Eldorado Park, I'd say six months ago we turned in that there were some homeless camped on an island in the middle of the lake there. And I can't believe how crazy it was trying to get them removed. I mean, I finally told Hiroto that I could do it in a morning, you know, I could go get a couple of big guys, move the stuff off the island. And we really felt like, as as our group, Friends of Eldorado Park, it's a safety and sanitation issue. And. It always has to be balanced with compassion and what you're going to do to help them. But you can't have them in the middle of the park where there's no bathroom, you know, and they're defecating. And if they've got needles, there's problems and there's little kids there that spend the night. So you have to be allowed to implement the ordinances that you have out there for safety and sanitation. Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Mr.. Good to you. And after Mr. Good who we have Tasha Hunter. Yeah. Speaker 1: Very good. You? I'd like to make this recommendation to the city attorney. Quite frankly, work and figure out a way to avoid jerking our council agenda around. Like Seinfeld's, Kramer enters and leaves a room. Additionally work with the Innovation Department, the Innovation Department. So we had the ability to present like we used to do. Something in writing. I had to pass out what I passed out to you today. Previously we would be public, would be able to you'd be able to see that the public would have it up on the screen if we would present it to the tech department a week ahead of time. But we don't have that ability now. So I would urge you, the city attorney, to explore ways in which that can be done. Speaker 6: Speak to the issue, sir. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Miss Hunter. Speaker 4: Good evening. Speaker 5: Tasha Hunter, Uptown Business Improvement District. Speaker 4: So I wanted to come to you because. Speaker 5: This is an issue all over the city, especially in the business improvement district. Speaker 4: And I have had the opportunity to work with. Speaker 3: Our. Speaker 5: With our police department, with our commander, Laura Cella. Up there are. Speaker 11: Acting Commander. Speaker 5: Sol Amita and Erica moreno with the with and in our health department who come out weekly to work with the individuals. I also go out on my own when I get these phone calls from the property owners in the businesses. My phone is on 24 hours and I get the calls and I show up. And I know about Cynthia and Benjamin, who live in the alley allergic to the sun. They can't be out in the afternoon, so they come out at night. And my business owners can't come out of their business to go to their cars and their vehicles. So there is that compassionate approach. But it's also if it's interfering with our businesses, being able to conduct that business and patrons being able to go in during the day, there's a fear. There's children. I'm in the area of two different schools, and so I thank you for bringing this forward and all of you that are supporting it. It's something that has to be addressed. We are, like I said, trying to take that compassionate approach because at the end of the day, they are people. There's Johnathan that helps take out the trash at the 7-Eleven in exchange for Slurpees and coffee, but as stretched out in front of the 7-Eleven. Jonathan, you can't be here today. I met Cookie. Cookie was blocking an entrance of a business and the people were afraid to come out, so they called. So I'm thankful for the services that our police department, our health department, the people offer and and thankful that the businesses and the property owners feel comfortable enough to call. So, again, I support this and everything that we do, and I'd like to know, let it be known that the business district does humanize the folks that are out there, realize their circumstances, but also letting them know you can't be here. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I bring it back a second into the motion, but I would hold my comments. For now. I will recognize the member. Speaker 9: RICHARDSON Thank you. Councilmember And so, yeah, I mean, I didn't realize I didn't I didn't fully understand this measure until it was brought to me, the Supreme Court decision. I mean, it just raises a lot of questions. So I want to start asking those questions. So. Mr. City Attorney. So under the law today can a homeless individual sleeping on a street be it were arrested. If we go to move this person and by offering them a place to stay. Speaker 10: In California under the Boise case, the answer is yes. If the city has a location or a facility in which they can go to and they refuse services, they can be cited. Speaker 9: So under Boise, under law today in Long Beach, we have a hotel voucher or bid for them to go. We offer that if they refuse it. Then simply then we can still move that individual today if we have that resource. Speaker 10: They can be cited under Boise. Speaker 9: Yes, it can be cited. Things can happen under Boise. Okay. Now, if someone, let's say they're creating a public nuisance, making noise, you know, relieving themselves on the sidewalk. Today we have the power to move that individual or decide that image. Today, under Boise. That's correct. Okay. So what if under Boise today, an individual was sleeping? On the sidewalk. Who hasn't broken any other law except for the existing camping law. And we approached that person, offer them and we have no bed to offer or no hotel room to offer. Could we today under Boise? Cite that person or move that person. No. So what would be the difference if this Supreme Court ruling goes down? From what we can do today. In that scenario to what we could not do. I'm what we could what we cannot do today and then what we could do. Speaker 10: I'm probably going to oversimplify it. But if you the Boise case added additional restrictions in the Ninth Circuit for those cities in states under the Ninth Circuit jurisdiction that don't exist in other areas of the country. And so if the petition is accepted by the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court overturns the ruling in Boise, it would excuse me add basically another tool for the city and cities to police department to and give them a little bit more flexibility on how they handle those situations that you describe. Speaker 9: Actually wasn't more simple. When, like. What do you mean, flexibility? I need to understand it currently. Speaker 10: It limits the ability to cite a person unless they have a and a shelter or a facility for them to go to. Under Boise, unless you have that, you can't cite them. And a number of cities are just not enforcing. If you remove the Boise requirement, it could be cited. Speaker 9: So let's say Boise goes away. Let's say it's overturned in that scenario. Mr. Modica, what how would we treat an individual if we don't have a place from. Speaker 10: Actually going to ask Commander Herzog to come up and talk a little bit about what we would do in a situation like that. And Police Chief Robert Luna as well. Speaker 1: Good evening, council members. So currently, as he explained under Boise, we're offering him that if there isn't a bed available, we're approaching them trying to get them to get compliance and. And moving them along that way. And if they don't move and we have no bed available, they're staying where they are. Speaker 9: So that's what we would do if Boise's overturned. We would ask them to leave. Speaker 1: Sorry, I misunderstood the question. Speaker 9: If Boise is overturned. Speaker 1: If Boise is overturned, that allows us to go up to and approach them. And if they don't want services, we can take enforcement action. Speaker 9: Well, let's say we don't have services. So right now we can do enforcement action today. We can do enforcement action today if we have services. Correct. Let's say we don't. Speaker 1: If we don't have services, we. Speaker 9: Don't have hotel vouchers, shelter beds. And how would you handle that? Speaker 1: And if Boise has gone. Then we can take enforcement action. Speaker 9: What does that look like? Enforcement action? Well. Speaker 1: It's what we would have then, just about a year and a half, two years ago, before the Boise decision came out. We would still work with our partners trying to do outreach to offer services. If they didn't, then we would take enforcement action. But it also allows us if the. Speaker 9: If you could just elaborate a little bit on enforcement action. Speaker 1: Okay. That's either citation or arrest, depending on the situation. Most likely citation. But if the problem's not going to go away, then it may lead to an arrest. Speaker 9: Okay. So I. So there's two concerns with that for me. So one. If an individual is not working any law other than the camping law and we don't have a place to offer for them to sleep. And we are, in fact. Making the act of existing and sleeping when there's no other option illegal. That's a civil rights issue, and that's where I draw the line. If there are real on the ground, tactical things that we can do to strengthen our policies, everybody on council would support that. I'm pretty confident when it comes to we have to have a code. There has to be a law to cross is a reason why this law got held up. The investments hadn't been made. Sure, we're in a better situation than most cities, but we are not where we're supposed to be. We have 125 beds that we're working on. Everyone Home report says we need 500 beds. We still need to identify two or three locations for additional beds. That's where our focus should be. This. I get it. The idea of doing what we can to address the homelessness issue. But at some point there's a line to cross, which is rights. Secondly. I have a concern with the leaf leaf blower approach. Push, push, push. I don't care where the leaf goes. If we have. And that's not an insult to anyone. But if we haven't created the beds and today we don't have them. If we haven't created the beds and the realistic, what really is happening is we're pushing people from side sidewalks into larger hidden encampments along the rivers and the freeways, the seams of life in those areas. It's scary. Two weeks ago, one homeless individual stabbed and killed another individual in the encampment in my district, not on the sidewalk. This happened in a hidden encampment that crawled back onto the street and the guy died. The same encampment, an individual with a toy gun was held up. And, you know, at the AMPM, where people thought he was going to shoot people. The encampments are real problems and that's where we need to be focusing. It's not going to solve the issue by pushing people from sidewalks into encampments, and I don't think that's what anybody's implying. But the reality is this measure here puts us on course to make a political statement essentially, and doesn't help us to address the root issues. What do we need to do? We need to build more beds. We need to build confidence with our residents. That is not going to be the end of the world. Trading a dangerous encampment for permanent supportive housing. That's what we need. I'll also say we should be really clear on what we speak and support and what we speak in support of to hear that. You know, I you know, public comment saying, you know, it's it's fair. Anybody can say what they like. When you represent organizations that make statements, make sure you fully understand the impacts of those statements and how they reflect on those businesses. I can tell you, you know, I can tell you most folks agree on homelessness. But if you if you ask a person a simple question to someone should be potentially criminalized for sleeping in the place that they seem safe if we don't have services to offer them. And I'll tell you right now, a lot of those businesses would say, well, that's a different conversation. That's a very different question. And enforcement or or leaf blower solution. The other thing is, I'm actually happy to see that it's been changed from a friend of the court brief to a letter to L.A. County. I'm glad to see that. But it was by no means was this a unanimous decision. It was a32 vote. And the issues cited in this very controversial 200 people speaking L.A. County vote, the major issue was civil rights. It came down to simply civil rights. So from my standpoint, I understand I don't like the in the council meeting on issues like this. But frankly, I don't think this is something that we should be doing. It's not consistent with our values as councilman as. As Long Beach. Housing First City. It's not consistent. We should be focused and focused on upstream solutions and identifying at least two more locations to build a bridge housing, a permanent supportive housing to get to our 500 bed support. I understand diversity. You know, our colleagues like to talk about the diversity and points of view. I would ask and I get it. We have differences and points of view here. I would offer and suggest if folks feel strongly about this, I do this all the time. Issue a letter from your office. Get your colleagues to sign on to that letter. The whole council should and shouldn't be forced to make a decision like this on something that goes right up against the line of civil rights. So those that's my piece. I can't support this. Thank you. Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Artists take the privilege to speak on this issue just briefly myself. I will try to stay within the five minute time frames prescribed for the council. This is a very, very important issue. I'm glad to see you come before the council for discussion. This is something that I know I've heard from many residents, constituents about. They feel like we need more tools in our toolbox to deal with the issue of homelessness. And I don't. Think that signing on to this amicus brief in any way diverts our focus from creating more beds and more shelter beds. I'd like to see us be a little bit more aggressive on that. And I'm with you. I stand with you on that, and we definitely need more beds than less. We would do a lot better if we have more places for our homeless or those experiencing homelessness is to go. But we also know that it takes several contacts and a lot of outreach to get these individuals to those services. Right. And. This this particular decision before us has put impediments for law enforcement as well as homeless services, and almost creates a disincentive for individuals to get services. And so I strongly believe that we need to do do more and the law needs to be give give local government tools to work with. And so this is why I stand in support of this. So this particular item, when we talk about encampments in public places, on sidewalks, in places and spaces where our public is actually engaged, when you're talking about business districts and I did hear from a board member just last week from the Uptown Business District who was very upset and emphatic that we do something and sign on in support of this amicus brief. I heard that. And so I do think the public commenters who came forward and spoke on behalf of those business, Susan Uptown Business District, but I hear from them and because me knows, I hear from them in the Virginia Village, I hear from business as well as residents throughout the district. This I think challenging this this item is not something that is I don't think it impacts anybody civil rights necessarily. I think what we are trying to do here in the city of Long Beach is take a compassionate approach. We are using every tool in the toolbox and looking at every option to provide help to to those experiencing homelessness in our city. And we'll continue to do that. And so. Councilmember Richardson. If you can help fast track beds in the city and help identify where we can put more beds in the city, you know, you have a partner in me to do that. Because I do think we do need to help offer more services and and help for for. Population. But at the same time, I do think we need more tools in the toolbox to, to, to encourage individuals to get help, the help they need and to move them into the services that we provide here in the city. So with that said, Councilmember Pearce, you're up. Speaker 8: Okay. I didn't know how the conversation was going to go tonight, but I know that when I read this item, I had a lot of questions. You know, under hearing council member Richardson talk about it as a civil rights issue was not something that I had thought about. I had simply thought. Can we really arrest somebody for sleeping? You know, and I know that there are cases when this population is very diverse and their challenges are very diverse. I want to understand what protections are in the Boise case right now for those struggling with homelessness that could be removed if if the Boise cases overturned . Is there someone on staff that can talk to that? Speaker 10: Yes. Basically, the Boise case, as we said earlier, requires the city in order to enforce an anti-camping ordinance to have services available, a bed or a place where the person can go. That person is then given that option. And if they refuse, then they can be cited or arrested. Speaker 8: And that's it. There's no other there's nothing else in the case to correct. Speaker 10: I'm simplifying a very long decision. But yes, that's the gist of the case. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 8: The reason why I pressed on that is because I feel like it is a heavy case. And to make a decision like this where we are going on record at a national level, to be able to say that we're okay with with that decision is a challenge for me. So let me I think my challenge is that this is an opportunity, not a hindrance, that this is an opportunity for us to really push ourselves. And I know that that. Mr. Modica, we as a council and the mayor have already pressed on you in a very firm way that homelessness is our priority. I'm not sure that the numbers have shown, and I know that we had the justice lab that gave us some numbers around repeat offenders that go into the jails. Are we seeing that those repeat offenders are getting help, that that going to jail is helping them get on their feet, get sober, get mental health support? If I had those numbers and I was like, clearly, why don't we take them to jail? Because we've done X, Y and Z. It's now helping. Then I would be I'd feel very different right now. Speaker 9: Councilwoman Pierce. Very good question. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I believe our pilot program, which is one of the first of its kind in a in a jail, eventually will work. When you have a clinician that is able to listen to the individuals coming in and then trying to identify services that they may need, we are getting some numbers of people who are going to the M.S. and other resources that the clinicians able to divert them to. What we've got to do is better not coordinate, but keep track of any individuals coming back after that. And we're in the process of doing this because it's all new to us. But that is the goal at the end of the day, to reduce the number of high frequency offenders that are re-offending and getting them back on their feet, whether it's substance abuse assistance, mental illness disorder or assistance, whatever it may be. Because at the end of the day, the goal is to keep our jail empty some day. Maybe we can accomplish that. Speaker 8: And let me ask I mean, I think we all kind of say we all look back and say, Reagan, we wouldn't be in this situation if we wouldn't have taken away those tools. Are there other things that are happening at the national level or the state level that that allow us to say, okay, instead of going to jail, say police come out, instead of taking you to jail, we can require to take you to a bed. Require not offer. Speaker 9: Yes, there are options out there. But please remember for Commander Herzog and I were police officers and we are one of the only services that's out there that's 24 seven. We are filling an extraordinary amount of gaps. 99% of the time, your police officers do a magnificent job of dealing with the mentally ill and those suffering from substance abuse disorders. We would love to be able to turn to the mental health profession, but typically they don't work but 8 to 5 and on weekends and we're there. We're always there. So we're going to do our best to fill in those gaps. No police officer wants to encounter somebody on the street and take them to jail unless they're just outrightly violating the law. And please keep this in mind as you're asking us questions. We estimate that over 60% of the people we contact, those individuals you're talking about who are sleeping on the sidewalk, sleeping in front of businesses and so on and so forth, they refuse services. And that's the frustrating part for these police officers who are going out there based on dispatches and then have limited tools in their toolbox to deal with it. Then the citizens turn around and get angry at the officers because it's them who aren't doing anything about it. When it's a complete system failure and I'm talking system at the county level, state and federal level. So I hope that answers your question. But I'm telling you, most of the time, our officers do an absolutely amazing job of trying to find alternatives because for us, it's service first. And I'm going to tell you something, I'm very proud of this city, which includes every one of you for all your efforts in everything we do about homelessness in this city. If you are homeless in the city and you want services, we can provide them. If you choose to accept them. Speaker 8: And that gets directly to the the crux of my question, which is, is there something that we could do that we require we take somebody and we get them off the street, but it's not jail with a citation next to their name. It's not putting them in the system, but it's putting them in a mental health system. And I'm thinking of what happened at the county level when they said instead of having a county jail, we want to have a county mental health facility. Are there opportunities here in the city of Long Beach for us to say instead of it being jail, it's mental health services that are required? Because I live in the second district, I know the homeless population in my community. I almost hit somebody last week on Broadway running like a crazy man. And I and I know he was going to jail because a police car was there and he was not stable. Yes, ma'am. And that was the right thing for him because he was not being safe with everyone. So what can we do outside of jail? And what I'm getting to is trying to put the city of Long Beach to think outside the box and to use this Boise case as an opportunity instead of an opportunity to push back. So I'm digging in on some of them. Speaker 9: Yes. And I can then try and answer each one of those concerns. Our city, I believe, has done an amazing job of thinking out of the box. Can we do better? Absolutely. I always look to to raise our efforts when this Boise decision first came out. Our officers were on the street encountering people suffering from homelessness. And like they always do, if they were breaking the law, they would take the measures they had to to enforce the law. But it was a service first. Do you want services? Do you need services? So from that perspective, we didn't change. Eventually through the city manager's leadership, Pat West and Mr. Modica, we as a city came up with the plan with our partners in health to come up with this voucher program that has been, I think, pretty successful for those who choose to want the services. But the key in answering your question is this. When I walk up to Charlie Parkin, who may be experiencing homelessness, and I ask him, Sir, I would love to get you in a services. You may need assistance. And he looks at me and says, You know what, man? Thank you, but I'd rather just stay on the street, which again, is over 60%. If he's violating the law, I have the discretion to cite him or arrest him. Or I could say, Hey, do me a favor, just please move somewhere else. I don't want to cite you. I don't want to arrest you. That's where the discretion comes in. But the big difference in what you're asking is the law does not. If Charlie says, no, I don't want to, I cannot force him. The only thing I can force upon him if he's violating the law. And that's a big if I can say to them or I can arrest them, but I cannot make him legally accept services. And that's where the big problem comes in. I would love to be able to force somebody into substance abuse treatment or mental illness assistance. But the law does not allow me or us to do that. Speaker 8: Is that state law or federal law? Speaker 9: That is state law. Speaker 8: So what are we doing to change that at the state level? Speaker 9: I'm going to have to look back at all of you. Speaker 8: And that's a question. Absolutely. It's for us. I think it's for city staff. I think it's it's another one of those tools that doesn't criminalize being homeless. It doesn't criminalize being mentally ill. It doesn't criminalize addiction that often is caused by poverty or perhaps the system. And so I'm trying to use this again as an opportunity to put it back on us, to think outside of the box and say, well, what can we do instead of just opposing this? But take it as an opportunity to really each of us agenda something or work together with staff to do something bolder than we've already done. One other area that I'm going to go back and work with my staff on right away, in addition to at the state level, I know that we've said no to module housing in the past, that we've said no to shipping container housing in the past. And I believe we have a memo right before anybody left that that outlined how we could do that. I'm working with economic development right now on two properties to try to have the city purchase it as a place where we could build more housing. So that question around more housing, we're taking that serious. But for the city to look at that module option and say, are there areas right now that our city loaned city owned land that we could build on quickly? So these are some of the pressure points that I think the Boise case is hopefully pushing us to do. I'm not going to be able to to vote yes tonight, but I do want to say how much I appreciate Councilmember Price for always looking at the homeless challenges and really trying to come up with the best way that her constituents want her to lead on this item. I know our constituents differ sometimes in relation to this. I hope that this is an opportunity for this entire council to take seriously the fact that there are going to be laws that are passed at the state and federal level that we have to engage in and make it a big priority. So I ask staff to consider some of that, what we can do with lobbying on the state level, and we will continue to do our part as well. Speaker 10: And Councilmember, I wanted to add a couple of things that we've done since the Boise case in response to this, to try to be innovative, to try to adapt. I think the police chief said it well. Cities that have not had any services and don't do any of the things that Long Beach has already done. It found themselves in a much different situation and they've had a harder time adapting to to the new law. A couple of things we have done. We have now a new mental health facility in Long Beach that helps us with some of those emergent needs where police can actually drop off people who are, you know, at that level where we can take them into custody for and get them some mental health services. That was something that came in to District seven, which has been a great resource for us. We also have now instituted a pilot program where we are purchasing hotel rooms every night so that every night we do have the ability on a limited basis for our officers to offer those services, even when the embassy is closed, even if we don't have a shelter bed, to say that those are available so that we then do have some tools to be able to react to that. And then the third innovation is we found while the officers are willing to do that, we have a difficult time. If somebody has a lot of belongings, who who will may want to go there, but then say, I'm going to refuse because I don't want to lose all of my stuff. So we have this council has given a used city truck to a nonprofit and they are operating and they're a phone call away and assist us with moving some of those belongings. So that's you know, these are all pilot programs. We're studying their efficacy of how we're doing out there and we'll be reporting back on that. But we are adapting and and trying to address so that there are other options. Besides that we still get individuals that just don't even with all those resources, just say, I don't want to do that. And this allows us to take enforcement action if they really do not want to to participate. Speaker 8: Thank you for that, Tom. I'll just I'll wrap up with saying I also know that we yes. To all those things and I applaud us for all those things. And Councilmember Price and I've worked together on this pilot program for the Tidelands area, where we are also going to invest some of our funds to make sure we can open up more nights at hotels and knowing that we need our health department to work on the weekends sometimes. But we need somebody that's going to be there to make sure that they're connecting with that homeless person before they have a chance to leave in the morning. And so I know that we are doing some of those things, and I guess that that is why it's hard for me to kind of move forward in this direction. But I look forward to hearing my my council colleagues thoughts and again, appreciate that we have done a lot and we just have to keep pushing ourselves to do more. Thank you. Speaker 6: All right. You hold the record this evening. Next, does Councilmember Suber nor do I will interrupt in the future. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 4: 9 minutes. Speaker 9: Dude. Speaker 6: Laughs Miss Cantrell to be the timekeeper. Speaker 9: Do I have the floor at this time? Speaker 6: Councilmember Super Nora, please. Speaker 9: Okay. Thank you for the floor. I'm going to turn it over to our esteemed colleague, Vice Mayor Dean Andrews. He has asked me to read a comment on his behalf. Speaker 6: Your time? Speaker 9: Yeah. Okay. I'll donate some of my time here. The Andrew says. I support my colleagues in requesting the city attorney in filing an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up the case of Martin versus the city of Boise. And it's an important case for both the idea of local control, but also how we can address and mitigate the impacts of homelessness in our community. City of Long Beach has and continues to provide services to those who seek to get off the streets. But at the same time, we have a duty to make our public parks safe and inviting for all. This case severely limits our ability to balance those duties, and I believe that we must take our views known. The Supreme Court. And that ends the vice mayor's comment. There was a line in here that I just noticed, and that is we have a duty to make our public park safe and inviting for all. And with Commander Herzog sitting there, I would like to publicly thank you, because he worked very hard for a year and or as of a park. And I. I would you and I should mention your successor, Commander O'Dowd, also worked with us, and we were able to return that park to the residents and the neighbors. And I would just suggest that if we're going to talk about civil rights or rights of any type, I think there should be a balance with those rights of the neighbors to utilize these facilities directly across to you. And this is a park embedded in a neighborhood. Also, to the last point that was made, I believe our pilot program started today to have services on the weekends. Did it start a. October 1st, Mr. Monaco. Speaker 10: So technically the budget starts today, so the money is now available and off we go. We are putting together how that will work and then we'll launch it programmatically very soon. Speaker 9: Okay, so well, technically we're not on the weekend yet, so if it started today, it wouldn't take effect on next weekend. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. A member of Durango. Speaker 7: Thank you, sir. Austin. You know, I've been listening to the discussion here. And, you know, I originally signed on to this thinking that it's a public good, a good thing. But, you know, when I when I go out in the community. And people ask you, what are you doing about the homeless situation under the freeways, on the park, at the empty lots for the stores? They said, well, you know, my response is always been it's not a crime to be homeless. But I think that's what we're doing here is we're criminalizing homelessness, and I can't agree with that. You know, I think that the opening discussion that Councilmember Richardson brought up in terms of some of the things that. The tools that are there for the police department already exist is, I think, something that we need to give a chance of. Council acting city manager Tomioka has mentioned some of the items that we're working on now and homelessness being at the top of his list in terms of his goals during his interim position that he's here is acting in position, and I think we need to give those a chance. The last thing I want to do is put in people into jails or citations that don't deserve it. I mean, I took a big hit a couple of years ago when I supported having the behavioral health center put in my district. And I said at that night, they say, you know, there's there's a political thing to do and there's a right thing to do. And I said that night, I know I'm going to lose votes. And, you know, so be it. But I think the right thing to do was to support that behavioral health center. And I did lose votes. They did go to those neighborhoods and those people and say, you know, you supported that behavioral health center. I can vote for you there. Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I think that I did the right thing. And yeah, and that's where I'm at right here. I'm at this point where. The political thing to do is like, let's go with the amicus brief and let's support it and let's turn it over and so be it. But I think that the right thing to do is we need to look at ourselves internally and we need to address this issue internally with ourselves as we do. I'm not confident that sending a message through a resolution or Ivanka's brief is going to be effective, quite frankly, because it's going to be up to the Supreme Court . So that brings me up to this point. The discussion we're having right now is about a resolution. The item that we're dealing with here is a request to join an amicus brief. Is that a separate motion totally and completely that we need to change or, you know, this is a point of order, I guess, that I'm asking for at this point, because I think that this discussion basically is moot if if we can't join the amicus brief and that's what's in the agenda. Speaker 10: Councilmember, as Councilmember Price indicated at the beginning, the time to actually sign on to an amicus brief for the petition has passed, but there isn't a second opportunity. Should the United States Supreme Court accept the petition and consider the matter on its merits? What the. I do think it's appropriate and allowed under the Brown Act to re. Amend this motion as the Council member from the Third District did in a resolution in support of the L.A. County Amicus Brief, because the intent in the in the direction in the first one was to explore joining that amicus brief. So while we aren't able to legally sign on to it because it's already been filed, a resolution in support of it is going to state the position of the city of Long Beach that you do support the Supreme Court hearing this matter. Speaker 7: For the record, he took a minute of my time. I do want to say, though, however, that while that may be true and we can do that again, you know, I'm looking at what we're dealing with as people and how we represent ourselves to those people. And, you know, kudos and my total support goes to the police department. You guys are phenomenal. I mean, the work you do, the people that you confront and you have to deal with and the patients and the tact and the decision making that your officers do on a daily basis is absolutely phenomenal. I can be a hothead. I don't know if I would be able to do that. But your your leadership certainly shows in the fact that Long Beach has been a leader in having to deal with this issue in a very humane and an honorable way. So given that, I'm not going to be supporting the motion, the floor. Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Price. Speaker 2: Thank you. So just a couple of observations I've made. And again, I'm very thankful for this conversation. We are a diverse city and we're a diverse council. And I love and appreciate the fact that we can argue passionately and disagree and still respect one another's point of views. And I think we're doing a very good job of that tonight. I will say a couple of things in regards to our business corridors. As a small business owner who owns a business in a business corridor. Absolutely. We want to make sure that we're doing things that are humane and cognizant of individuals that need assistance and support . And I have a lot of stories myself personally, similar to those shared by Tasha Hunter with transients that I've interacted with on Second Street, in and around our business. And my family and I have gone to great lengths to help individual people over and over again. When you have people that are choosing not to go to a particular business corridor or you have business owners that have habitual problems that they can't address related to transient activity, it impacts the business corridor and it impacts their ability to thrive as a business. And I think that's important for us to think about. You know, we have our directors that manage our bids and we tell them, you know, go forth and do the very best you can. And really, we set them up for failure because we're not giving them any tools and it's not fair. It's just really not fair to them. We have to do our job. What I would say is to the council members who are against this item, you should perhaps think about turning over the laws of the city that you don't agree with, because what this item says is that we have laws in the city that we cannot enforce, so our police department cannot enforce our camping ordinance. If you think we should not have a camping ordinance, then that's the item you should bring to council. Because what we're saying through this item is that we should have the local ability to enforce our own ordinances. Camping is illegal in a park. It's illegal for a variety of reasons. There's all manner of public health issues that come about when someone doesn't have access to toilets or running water and they're sleeping in a park. Think about a campsite that you go to with your family. If you don't have access to toilets or running water and you're there for a prolonged period of time, there's going to be health impacts around you. So when we have that happening in a public park, it's not fair to expect our residents to go to that park and enjoy that park and throw the football with their child when there are needles on the ground or signs of camping. So, you know, I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made tonight. But let me be very, very clear. Civil rights, civil liberties and due process belongs to everyone. It belongs to everyone. It belongs to residents in the city, and it belongs to those who are violating current, existing ordinances. If we don't think those ordinances should be in place, then I would challenge those council members who are opposed to this item to bring an item next week, sometime this month, and say, You know what, we no longer should have a camping ordinance in the city, because what we're saying right now is Boise. The Boise decision says we can't enforce our own ordinances unless we have available beds. If we don't have available beds, we cannot enforce ordinances that we have on the books. So if there if there are people on this council that think sleeping in a public park and having an encampment in a public park should not be against the law, then why is that item not coming to council? Why is that item? Why are those council members not saying, you know what, let's reverse that law? Because that's a discussion I'd love to have. I'd love to hear what the people think about that. So I think to hide behind Boycie and say, you know what, Boise is punishing. You know, if we overturn Boise, it's punishing the poor. By the way, the council, the supervisors who voted on the amicus include supervisors like Janice Hahn, who has done more for homeless issues in this county than any elected official I know of in recent history. She's putting her money where her mouth is, and she voted in favor of this amicus. So I don't think anyone's intent is to punish the poor or make homelessness a crime. And look, just because we disagree on things, I don't think it's okay for us to spin or infer or, you know, accuse our colleagues of having bad intent. That's nobody's intent. Okay. So there may be parts of an item that council members don't like and they say, I want to take this part out. I like this part. It's not okay to then say this council member is blank. That's not okay. And I hope we don't do that. But I think protecting the rights of all residents is important. And that's what this item is about. Ah, by the way, it's too late for us to file a support our own amicus. Right now, the best we can do is a resolution. And when it goes to merits, we can file an amicus then if we want to, within the time limit. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you. And you know, again, I don't know, I, I believe that whenever we're talking about taking positions on policy, we should try and attempt to be clear and specific about what we're trying to do. I've heard of term a number of times tonight. Tools in the Toolbox. As a council member who likes to understand the specifics, what tools are currently not in the toolbox that if this law goes away, will be inside the toolbox? Anybody. Speaker 10: The ability to cite a person and not have a bed available. Speaker 9: So again. The conversation about enforcing it. So all the examples that we're giving tonight of refusing services is not relevant to this conversation because if someone refuses services that are available, we can today enforce on them. Is that correct? Speaker 10: If there's a bed available. Speaker 9: If there is a bed available today, if there's a bed available, we can enforce on them. Today, this conversation is all about simply capacity. That's it. If there is a bed available, we can enforce. We can cite. We can arrest today. If we don't have services, meaning no more hotel vouchers, no more shelter beds, then the very narrow, specific tool that we're talking about, just to be crystal clear with everybody here, the only tool is criminally enforcing on someone. We cannot offer them a service. We haven't run into very many situations where we haven't had services. We have services to offer. This is simply about capacity in that very narrow, fine, specific fact that if we don't have something to offer you, then we want to pass a resolution saying we don't agree with this law that says you can be arrested when we have nothing to offer you. I just want to be crystal clear. This is not about some great tools in the toolbox. It's about one tool, which is simply criminalization. I want to say something else. I want to be very clear. We can have laws about camping. You know, sleeping in the right away. We can have laws. This is about, again, capacity. We don't have a place for people to go. We cannot enforce that law. That's the right thing to do. That is the right thing to do. If we offer you services, we're ponying up taxpayer dollars, working on taking on the risk of counseling you, Ranga said. Mental health facilities in his district. We're taking on a conversation on bridge housing in our district. We're taking it on. If we take that conversation on, then parallel to it, we can step up enforcement. It's it's it's about capacity and how this thing rolls out today. We don't have that. So again, to be crystal clear, there are no make up tools in this toolbox. It is one tool that we're voting on. One tool. It is. If you don't have a place for someone to go, should they be? Could they be criminalized? Actual criminal action. Now, I think if someone is breaking laws criminalizing, I think if they're stabbing people, criminalize them. I think if they're if they're attacking someone, if they're stealing your property, if they're doing all these things, go after them for way too long. Absolutely. We should not. I mean, we have enough right now to go after individuals. But there's a fine line. And that line is human rights and civil rights. That's a very clear, very clear line. So, again, I'm I'm fine. I'm not swaying the council going one way or the other. I'm going to vote no. I think as a matter of courtesy, I think this issue itself that again, to our business district, to everyone here who believes that this ad some tool to be clear it doesn't add it to this is a resolution that has no impact , no tool. It's a political issue at midnight. That's what this is. I think we should be focused on support, on getting the shelter open, on doing more outreach. Councilman Austin, put it out. Hey, if we know of other places, let's be clear. We also need a shelter downtown. We also need, you know, we need geographic diversity with these shelters. Let's be clear about that. That's what we need. But for the sake of this conversation, to be crystal clear, there is no invisible tool in the toolbox. This is simply about we don't have a tool for you. We can arrest you or cite you criminal action. That's what this is. Capacity. That's what this conversation is. And I don't think we're there and we have the capacity to do this. So I'm fine. Thank you. Speaker 6: Crystal clear from your lens. Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 5: Thank you. If allowed a point of. I mean this in a genuine way. I'm not judging in any way. Mr. Richardson, have you been on a ride along yet? I don't know, actually. Speaker 9: I've been on a number of ride alongs. I've been the reason that every I've been a part of this body, one way or another, I got it. Speaker 5: I just wanted to know because I have a story to tell and I just wanted to know the context of what you would hear it. When I first graduated from the sheriff's academy, my first shift on patrol, my first shift on patrol, we were encountering a homeless encampment. I mean, every officer on their first shift nowadays encounters either mental ill person or a homeless encampment. And there was a woman who was being abused by another man inside the homeless encampment. However, she did not want to admit that many of you know, battery and abuse is one of the more difficult things to get people to talk through. There are all sorts of things that are in these encampments. We may not have enough that we might have enough beds for one individual who's in a park or two individuals on a business corridor. But it's an entire encampment that needs to be broken up on a regular basis to protect the individuals within it and quite frankly, the health of the community around it. I appreciate your point about one specific tool, but it's actually not one specific tool because even if there's not a bed, we have services to offer. And oftentimes the individuals that we encounter are rejecting the services. Not the lack of bed. And so I appreciate that you think I'm wrong. I. I actually am hearing on this side of the dias, they disagree. We have something to offer. Often it might not be what they want at the time. I will say that. The amount of training coming out for police officers is consistently changing. The amount of resources available is consistently changing. If this. City of Boise cases overturned. We still can choose to create a local policy that we don't enforce unless they've had multiple encounters of being offered a bed or any of those things, we can still do those. And so for those reasons and in in support of I watched the supervisors and their discussion and public comment and the way in which the board of Supervisors really put that forward. Supervisor Hahn. Yes. Has been a leader on homelessness. Also, Supervisor Barger has really talked through some of our environmental issues and the fires created that fires that have literally harmed individuals in great numbers and that that season is coming again. And so for those reasons, while I appreciate I don't want to criminalize homelessness in a way that we don't offer anything but. Oftentimes, as some of our data showed related to our innovation team, it's the same individuals who do not want services and they do not want a bed or they take the bed voucher, but they don't actually ever go there. And we need to talk through sometimes the threat of enforcement is actually what puts them into services. And so I appreciate your perspective and I appreciate the councilwoman for bringing this forward. And I. I look forward to us continuing to try to solve homelessness. That was a quote from you on the day you were sworn in for your second term and you said, We will solve homelessness. I'm pretty sure my husband's repeated it like five times. He said Rex Richardson is going to solve homelessness. I'm pretty sure we've got to go back and watch the. Speaker 9: Tape, address the elephant in the room and build essentially shelters and affordable housing that's working on the shelter and affordable. Speaker 5: We are. We are. And so for those reasons, I really want to appreciate those who have come before us and taken on this amicus brief. And I'll be voting in support. Speaker 6: Right. Seeing nobody else cued up without public comment. Please. Can you repeat the motion? What's before us? It's the city attorney. Speaker 10: The motion is to request city attorney to prepare a resolution in support of the Los Angeles County's amicus brief. Speaker 6: Okay, members, so you're clear. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Ocean carries. Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you very much. We will now have our second public comment. Solution. Speaker 10: We need a motion to reconsider the item. We need to vote on the motion to reconsider. Speaker 6: Oh. We can vote on the motion to reconsider. Speaker 10: We need to vote on the motion to reconsider to bring this item back in front of the council, because I think we want to revote. Yes. Speaker 6: What if we don't want to revote? Speaker 10: Then vote against the motion to reconsider. Speaker 7: Okay. Speaker 0: Motion carry. Speaker 6: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it's been moved in second it. Motion to reconsider. Speaker 10: Has passed. Now, this is the motion again on item 29, with the resolution in support of the Los Angeles County Amicus Brief directing city attorney to prepare that resolution and bring it back to council. Speaker 6: Members cast their votes. Speaker 7: And I got it. I got it. You. It was like, boom. Speaker 0: Motion pass for three. Speaker 6: Okay. Long night. So we're going to go into our second public comment. We have Joanne Freeman and James Midway. Are you still available still with us? Joanne Freeman. It was midway. Please come forward.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to explore joining an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Martin v. City of Boise.

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LongBeachCC_09172019_19-0929

Speaker 0: So I want to make sure that we hear them. And so we're going to do item 21/1 and then we will go back to the regular agenda, including hearing item number one and the other items. Speaker 3: I am 21 Report from Human Resources Recommendation to adopt resolution approving the 2019 to 2022 Memorandum of Understanding with the Long Beach Police Officers Association. And adopt a resolution of intent to approve an amendment to the contract between CalPERS. Speaker 2: And the city citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to hear a staff report first. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the city council. We are happy to be here tonight to recommend an agreement with our Police Officers Association for a three year agreement. We'd like to walk through a number of the provisions of that document. And for that, I will turn to Alex Vasquez, our human resources director. Speaker 2: Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. You have before you a memorandum of understanding and applicable resolutions between the city and the Police Officers Association. The city and PIO had over 13 session negotiation sessions since May of 2019, resulting in the M.O. you before you the way agreed to a three year term contract term that provides structural wage increases that are in part offset by having employees pay a portion of the city's pension costs. The general wage increases include a 4% effective October 1st, 2019, 3% effective October 1st, 2021, and 2.5% effective April 1st, 2022. There are no structural increases in year two. Instead, the agreement includes a one time payment for all employees, with some exceptions of $2,000, effective October 1st, 2020. As I indicated earlier, the agreement also includes a provision for classic safety employees, which represent approximately 70% of the PEO membership to pay an additional 3% towards the city's employer contribution to CalPERS, bringing their total contribution from 9 to 12%. This pension pickup implementation will require a contract amendment with CalPERS. To all the contribute so that all the contributions will be credited to the employees account and the city will still realize the savings from this pension pickup. In order to start this contract amendment, the Council must adopt a resolution of intent to approve a contract amendment between CalPERS and the city. The amendment process. Speaker 3: For the. Speaker 2: Cost sharing arrangement also requires a vote of the power members and a council vote on an ordinance authorizing this contract amendment. Staff will bring the ordinance to the Council for consideration after the appeal membership vote and after we work with CalPERS to put together this contract amendment. In addition, this Simiyu agreement also includes several changes to skill space, one of them being the advanced boss pay certificate. By increasing it from 7.5% to 10% of the top step of police officer salary at step five, it also provides two new additional skill pays for officers assigned to SWAT and officers assigned to the Dove team. And there's also a change to the detective administrative and administrative pay, skilled pay. We negotiated agreement that provides for a review of this skill pay and also identified approximately 30 positions that will no longer receive this skill pay. Effective October 1st, 2019. Some of the other major provisions of the CMU include changes to the over time bank maximum, which is going to be increased to 120 hours by 2021. The EMU also contains some new provisions that provide parental leave to all employees if they meet certain criteria. And it gives them approximately 30 days or 160 hours of paid parental leave for the adoption birth of a child or foster placement of a child in their home. The MCU also provides an additional city holiday to be determined by the city council and also makes adjustments to vacation in lieu holiday that will assist us with when we implement our new LBE Coast system. There are no increases to these benefits, but just a modification as to how we track them in the new payroll system. In addition, there are a couple of enhancements for the department operations, which includes modification of the probationary training for police recruits that will allow the department to deploy officers. And as long as they're partnered with another officer at month ten, as opposed to month 12, which is current, and they're currently going through 12 months of training. And then we're also implementing a detective rotation program, which will allow police officers to gain experience in the detective assignments. This will also assist with. And giving officers an opportunity to experience a different side of police work. There are also other provisions that are included in the Emmylou, that are non-monetary, that are just codifying current department practices, such as including a provision that explains bereavement leave, military leave, a process for processing documented counseling. Again, these are current processes that are in place, but the Emmylou just codifies it and has a place where employees can see information regarding these provisions in one place in their Emmylou. In addition, there is a new provision regarding SB 1429 1421, and I'm going to turn over to Tom to explain that provision. Speaker 9: Thank you, Marin. Counsel and thank you, Alex. I would like to spend a little time talking about the SB 21 provision as that's been a topic in the media. And I know we have some speakers here tonight. So as we all know, SB 1421 is a new landmark law that the state passed, providing kind of unprecedented access to certain files that really had not been disclosed before, not only to the public, but also to officers themselves. And so we are in the process of releasing those documents. In fact, we made a big release earlier this week. And I want to talk a little bit about this provision to clear up to clarify some things. So first, back in April, this is when this issue started where the Police Officers Association requested that as this information go out because it is public record, that they also had the ability to have access to those records. We worked through our city attorney and came up with a process that we believe fully complies with SB 1421, but also provides that balance to give officers the ability to have access to those documents, especially because some of those are going to be coming out and giving them some time for their families to prepare for some major information that has not been released before out in the newspapers. So through that, we started that process back in April, the way as we came closer to negotiations, asked to codify that administrative process in the memo you which is appropriate because that's where all of the documents reside that deal with employee management relations. And so one of the key tenants is that praise are already public record. So praise are whether you are getting that data as a public record or you're requesting that data as a public record, that is all something that everyone has access to. And so the process we created was to notify the officer at the same time that the requester has been notified that documents exist, that that officer would have, at the end of the process, five days to review the documents. But I want to clear up some confusion. They cannot change those documents. They cannot delay those documents. They cannot ask for documents to be withheld. And if they do, that will not be honored. The only way that we would do any of those things is if a court is ordering us to do that and they go through a due process system to order the city to do that. If the employee cannot, you know, review within those five days, the city would release the documents anyway. So we do believe that this provides a balance between full compliance with SB 1421, but also recognizing that there are both officer safety and officer wellness issues and for them to be able to notify and prepare their families for the release of that information. Long Beach is not the only agency to do this. There are six other agencies that we know of. L.A. Sheriff, San San Francisco Police Department, Sacramento Sheriff, San Bernardino Sheriff, Riverside Sheriff and Riverside PD. One of the topics that we have heard is that there are, you know, potentially if there's any misuse of this information, that that could have a chilling effect. I want you to know that this will not be tolerated, that any misuse of that information, that is misconduct and that is most likely a criminal act as well. And that will not be tolerated by the police department or by the city. We also have the ability for request of public records to be anonymous. We have a system that allows that and people do avail themselves of that today. So if anyone wants to submit anonymously, they may. And one other thing that we're doing is we're proactively putting all this information on a website so you don't have to ask for it in the first place so that someone doesn't have to go through a process of asking for it as those documents are available. It's on a website, in fact, that website launched earlier this week. So with that, we stand ready to answer questions. The city attorney, myself and our police chief or assistant chief is here. And with that, we will turn it back to the mayor and council. Speaker 0: Thank you. I do have a motion in the second maker of the motion. We're going to go ahead and ask the public comment and then we'll come back to the Council of the Council for motions and questions. And so I'm going to ask folks to come up as I call you up, please come forward. In this order we have. Foster, Stefan, Boris and swallow. Very good, Hugh added. Tushnet and Bridget Cervelli are the first five speakers. Please come forward. Go ahead. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. City Council. Mr.. Your city manager. Wherever he left for tonight, I want to say thank you to everyone that's involved in this contract, to the city management staff, specifically to Alex Vasquez and her staff and all. If she's here, she worked many long hours and getting this done along with city finance. Just to put it in historical perspective of this financially. Look back when the Great Recession hit in 0809, it was the play that was the first one to the city to do pension reform. Then when the economy continued to be very tough, it was the power was the first back to the city that did a contract modification to save the city's finances. And again, here we are first in the city to do additional additional pension pickup for the city. So we appreciate that. We're leading the way. We hope others will continue to follow. We think it's the right thing to do. This contract also sets the precedence for our peers in the fact that it is the right thing to do to continue to pick up and make sure that we're doing our part as far as the city's finances and pension. I do want to say it's a bit disturbing and really unnerving that the complete conversation about what's really a smart and fiscally prudent contract has been hijacked over the last week by some really irresponsible press. Denzel Washington gave a great quote I couldn't find one better and said, If you don't read the news, you will be uninformed. If you do read the news, you will be misinformed. And that's exactly what's happened here. An irresponsible journalist put out a half truth piece of information, has misled the public into believing some falsehoods. And I really owe an apology to the people here who are to speak, because you've done a disservice. Thank you, Mr. Potter. Thank you, sir. Speaker 0: Next speaker is different. Burson Twitter. Speaker 5: Send Sulu. Thank you. That's a step toward some social democratic socialism in America. Long Beach. I'll be brief, as apparently the mayor is so insecure in his own policies that he can't stand more than 90 seconds of criticism at a time. I'm here today to speak on the menu from the IPO to the massive pay rise for police officers, which was deliberate and secret, is offensive in its own right, especially in light of the past patois induced austerity for other city departments. The fire department in particular should be asking why they are not receiving any of this benefit when there are only four fire inspectors on the city payroll right now. But the ammo use curious decision to undermine public safety protections, including SB 1421, are even more offensive. For a city department plagued by scandals involving excessive force and a complete disregard for mutual discovery rules. This more use inexplicable term, allowing officers both a five day head start and the identity of any requesting party after a Public Records Act request lacks any conceivable public interest. As a defense attorney and a resident in the city memo, that was as to why this policy is being proposed tonight. As a socialist state, it's fascist. This prospect of removing even the pretense of accountability over an agency entrusted with the monopoly of force in the city is downright chilling. In closing, I please ask that the council review the article written by Steven by retired Deputy Chief Steven Downing, proposing eight different questions as to why this policy is being enacted and what protections are going to be available for the requesting parties for public records of records. Record requests. Act. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Very good. Here. She's not here. Okay, we're moving on. Meditation, please. Speaker 2: The M.O.. Speaker 3: You with the Police Officers Association contains at least one clause that I'm really thrilled to see, which is the. Speaker 2: Extended parental leave. I think that's very important. Speaker 7: Should be a model for the entire. Speaker 3: City, actually, for the entire nation. On the other hand, releasing names of those requesting public records will have an effect on our suppressing. Speaker 2: Public involvement in accountability. Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be active suppression. Speaker 4: It will have a. Speaker 3: Chilling effect that people will know that. Speaker 4: Their names. Speaker 3: Have been released. No one for a positive city environment. We need accountability and openness. No one should fear. Even if you say it's. Speaker 4: Not going to happen, any reprisal when they act. Speaker 3: To ensure true public safety. Speaker 2: Please do not ratify the memo until. Speaker 3: The offensive clause is release is removed. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Is Brigitte Cervelli here? No. Okay. So let me go to the next set of speakers. I think it is Dawn, Aliya, Jordan, Darlene, carelessly, and Kim to very close folks, please come forward. In that order. Dawn first, then Alia, then Jordan over the first three. Speaker 7: Good morning. So we're going to Don in Canterbury. You're going to switch places. Speaker 3: Good evening, members of the Long Beach City Council. My name is Kim Tilbury. I'm a resident of Long Beach and a member of Black Lives Matter and other organizations in Long Beach. I'm reading from an open letter to the Long Beach City Council members that was sent via email today. And I also have hard copies for those of you that may not have gotten to your email. So the letter is in response to this, definitely the agenda item 21, the LIPA Association request for acceptance of a proposed MRU. The provision is a blatant undermining of Senate Bill 1421, a landmark policy police transparency law that went into effect January 2019. Senate Bill 1421 mandates disclosure of police reports and discipline records. Whenever an officer was dishonest sexual abuse to a public, to a member of the public and where there are serious uses of force, such as police shooting. Specifically the section that we're asking to be removed, section nine public records request where the officer is notified of the date the person requests the information, the person's name, the organization that they're with, and any nature of information about that person, I think it's completely dangerous. So approving this memorandum would show that the city of Long Beach are in the business of valuing police privilege over legal transparency, protecting police, violent police officers, and overlooking the safety of our community. This is a dangerous mistake and unacceptable to the residents of the city. In one unified voice, we demand that you remove Section nine of this memo you before voting. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Mr. Barak. Speaker 2: Oh, and lastly, there. Speaker 3: Are 20 organizations that signed this letter. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Barak. I think, Don. Yes. Speaker 7: We do time from 3 minutes to 2 minutes. Good afternoon. And I think this is a it's an opportune time for council to stand with its constituents. Just on the right side of history with this people voices with political pressure from the air. And we're all only made aware of this last week. I think it's pretty clear that like these are efforts for police departments across the state to attempt to circumvent Senate Bill 1421. No department wants to disclose records of misconduct by their officers who have raped citizens, who have physically assaulted citizens who have murdered citizens. People who have been impacted by state violence have been seeking for years to get information on their assailants who have committed hard harm against them and have not been able to. And finally now we have 1421 and police officer associations are seeking to protect these violent officers, which is troublesome. My concern mainly I'm going to cut a lot of this out is for the family members who I've been working with for the past five years who are directly impacted by police violence and murder are the families for Dante Jordan and Tyler Woods know a premium. Noelle Aguilar, Hector Motorhome. Jason Coleman, 34. Mariah. Lionel Gibson. Barry Prag. Davon Thomas. If they're family members who now finally have information about how these officers were disciplined, have they murdered before? Are these officers still on the force? And where are they? And and you continue to try to block it. And now they want to use city council to try to do that. If they have a problem with state legislation, they have to take that up with the state. It is not you guys is responsibility to help them circumvent this law. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you very much, Don Elliott. Speaker 4: Hi. My name is Aliya Sheik. I work in the labor movement in partnership with several unions. I use public records regularly in my work to hold employers accountable to their job commitments. So I especially understand how important it is for the public to have access to public records without barriers and without fear. This provision in the police union contract disincentivizes constituents from requesting public records. It's one thing when staff at a good. Speaker 3: Governance group. Speaker 4: With organizational support requests something and another one an individual does. We know that that the most vulnerable residents historically don't have a trusting. Speaker 2: Relationship with law enforcement. Speaker 4: And it's not comforting to anyone knowing that an officer can easily overstep boundaries with. Speaker 2: Information about us. I shouldn't have to remain anonymous. I don't. Speaker 4: Understand why BPD would seemingly be rewarded with such access when they've already shown contempt for the public's ability to hold them accountable by using Tiger. Speaker 2: Text. I think that's enough of a misconduct. It's horrifying for democracy. Speaker 4: If that is something that you care about. While the city as an employer should engage in good faith with organized labor. Please see the. Speaker 2: Difference between police who have so much physical power and authority over residents how they're different from from other. Speaker 4: Types of workers. In my opinion, I don't see this as part of a respectable labor initiative. Please negotiate to remove this provision from the police union contract. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Jordan, darling. Then carelessly. And then I'm going to ask the next set of speakers, Audrina Redman, so I can see and Shante Campbell and and Cantrell, if they can start making their way up to the podium. Speaker 10: Yes. Hello, City Council. And Mr. Mayor, my name is Jordan. I'm here today to ask you to take out section nine of the EMU contract. Obviously, SB 1421 was passed as a transparency bill. We all talked about that. You all know this because you authorized to destroy records right before that law went into effect, thousands of them that we can no longer do public. Speaker 5: Records. Speaker 10: Request for. And there's been approval in the new budget, as you know, to charge anybody who files these requests, the costs of police time to redact things, things like that, as well as giving more money to the police department for records. Speaker 5: These two things are pretty. Speaker 10: Clear that you're that these are designed to go around that law and discourage people from actually doing these information requests. Obviously, the message is clear. We're all getting it. I think one of most disturbing things about this, though, is the five day notice. Pat West recently released a memo where he said that and it's. Speaker 5: Been mentioned before that. Speaker 10: The information will not be stopped unless there's a lawsuit. So you're basically just kind of opening yourself up for the Police Officers Association to just sue the city repeatedly every time there's a records request, at least for anything significant. So that opens up the city to a lot of legal danger. And I have to ask, like, how many millions of dollars are going to get paid out in wrongful shooting lawsuits before now? We're going to have to play suing us as well. Like, where's this money going to come from? It's ridiculous. So I'd ask you to strike Section nine. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Carelessly. Speaker 3: Carelessly. And this is one of those topics that's worthy of more than 90 seconds. First I want to look at the fact that it says here in the newspaper that a pay and benefits increase of roughly 30,000 per year. Is is what's been negotiated here. And that seems like it's excessive. I didn't do the numbers myself and I can't validate that. But if someone was presenting that to me, I would be looking in depth at those numbers. Secondly, that Section nine, I think, bothers everyone. The proposed MRU. The proposed amendment already operational. I really want to question that already operational. That's not in the law. The law didn't intend that. Somebody here made that up at the company I worked at. The ethics coordinator instructed us to always tell the truth and further to avoid the appearance of impropriety. This is the appearance of impropriety when you go off and change the way that this law was intended to work. No one said that the person who's being looked into deserves an additional five days to look at it. That came out of the poea and I can understand the peo asking for that. Any department head would want that. What it does is it gives you the opportunity for spin control and it gives you the opportunity to frame your defense. So I'm next. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next is andrea redmond for mispronouncing audrina. Speaker 3: You are is audrina. Audrina, audrina redmond. I am here to close the letter that Kim Tiberi started reading and to list for you the two organizations that have signed on to this letter, all of whom are very esteemed organizations working diligently for families and against police violence. And Section nine allows for the continuing sanctioning of police violence because it allows them yet another way to hide from public accountability. So some of these supporting organizations include Black Lives Matter, Long Beach, Black Lives Matter, Global Network, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Immigrants Rights Coalition. Los Angeles County Public Defenders Ask Me Local 148. CSU Oby Black Student Union Greater Long Beach Interfaith Communities Long Beach Community Action Partnership. Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and Healthy Community Council on American-Islamic Relations. Housing, Long Beach, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy Come My Girls in Action Sanctuary Coalition. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. American Civil Liberties Union Long Beach Forward Black Alliance for Just Immigration Long Beach Area Police and Peace Network. National Lawyers Guild, CSU OLB La Raza. Students for Quality Education, Long Beach. Sacred Resistance. Democratic Socialists of America Long Beach Chapter and Affirm. They can't all be wrong with the information they have and you be right. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Our next set of speakers tonight can be shot at Campbell and Cantrell. I think it's on the side that Mubarak and Camilla Holmes, if those next, please come forward, please. Speaker 10: So I can say sixth district resident. Speaker 5: I like many. Speaker 10: I don't know about a misinformed press. I feel like the press is one of the few safeguards of the rights of citizens. So I just find it odd when state, you know, structures are telling people not to read the paper. Speaker 5: But that being. Speaker 10: Said, I did read the paper. I'm a fond subscriber of The Beachcomber, as well as the Long Beach Post, and we have both been press publications that are covering this local scandal. One of many in the last year or two regarding our law enforcement. Speaker 8: And I just want to I'm sure we've all read this. We all know about why people don't like this. Speaker 10: So I just I'm just curious. Now they have an opportunity to stand in front of the city council. Maybe Mr. Downing, in his in his article, said that he didn't get any response from anyone from the council. So I'll just ask some of the questions. What the 30 seconds I have left. Number one, he says that the employee has all of the rights under SB 1421, as does a citizen if the employee wants to exercise that right. Why does he or she need to know if a citizen has exercise that right? This being the you know, the the citizen that's asking about the public records. And number two, to what purpose does the people in the city believe information. Speaker 1: About the requester it will benefit the. Speaker 10: Employee. These are the questions we would like the city council to answer. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: And Cantrell and I agree with all the questions that have been asked, especially. The last speaker's comments about not reading the newspaper. How else are we going to find out about this? It seems that Mr. West had already started this. Allowing the. People to get this information from the clerk back in April. And now, just now we're finding out about it. I'm also wondering about the connection between the amount of money that each one of you, except for Janine Pearce, has received from the peel away in between 2017 and today. Mayor Garcia. Maybe this is wrong. The Beachcomber says that you have received $117,800. Speaker 0: That's wrong. Speaker 3: Richardson 8400. Austin 6950. Susie Price A measly 2650 EUR. Angus 7858. Stacy Mungo 8200. Speaker 0: Thank you for you catch up. Speaker 3: And Girls Supernova and the Andrews only 750, etc.. Congratulations. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Let me go ahead and is I'm sorry if I want to say, is Shante Campbell here? No. Okay. Nusseibeh Mubarak is next. And then after the sidebar is Camilla Holmes. And then Maureen McHale. Speaker 5: Please. Speaker 2: Hi. My name is New Sabir. I'm a community organizer in Los Angeles. On behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Care, California. I wanted to say that it is the right of the people to access police records instantly and anonymously. And Long Beach should lead by example. We need to know the record of police officers who we entrust with armed weapons to protect us. Long Beach Police Officers Association should not have the opportunity to hide officer officers information as it has before in the murder of Douglas Douglas Zarb, an innocent, unarmed man, a black man standing on his back porch. Police officers do not need extra time to cover their tracks. We, the people do not need to provide our information when we request police records. Police officers already have access to their records. So this resolution does not ensure officer rights. It takes our rights. So this is not a balanced resolution. As I heard a speaker say, five days. I should be able to receive a police record instantly as soon as I request it. If citizen's information is public and available, police officers should be held to an even higher standard. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much next week and please. Speaker 3: Good evening. My name's Camille Holmes. So I know you guys already know this, but I just want to emphasize that I think it's really important. SB 1421 mandates that personnel records be made available to the public, where an officer shoots at somebody, an officer uses force that results in death or. Bodily injury, an officer sexually assaults a member of the public. An officer has been dishonest, whether it be true for an investigation, prosecution or other police misconduct. In short, SB 1421 applies where it is found that an officer has done harm to the community. As proposed Section nine of the Ipoa M.O. you does a disservice to the community. It prioritizes police convenience, comfort over the community, needs the same community that the police have already done harm to and perpetrated trauma on. And for what? To protect police officers reputation. So they won't be blindsided. I trust that an officer with a record of misconduct knows what they did and should be prepared to address that at any moment. Section nine unabashedly intends to thwart the intent of SB 1421. That is shameful. I proposed this to the Council. Please do not need any more protection. Their union, the legislature and the city already protects the police officers at the expense of the community. We are your constituents. We are the community that elected you. We should be your priority. Speaker 0: Thank you very. Speaker 3: Much. I urge you not to accept this MRU as it is. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And our next set of speakers are two competing importers of Marine Mickael, Sheila and Andrew. Speaker 3: Hello. I'm Maureen McHale, a long time resident of Long Beach, and I'm in the fifth District. So I'm asking that the. Section nine. Of the memo of understanding that was added b be removed. It was made operational in April and it was never brought to light that this was part of the M.O.. You we know that a number of the council members and my council member, Stacey Mungo, received money from the Police Officer Organization Association. That was significant since 2017 to support your officials, U.S. officials. Janine Pearce is the only council member not receiving any money from the poppy. So there is a quote that says the department will provide this opportunity. Well, with this Section nine, the department will provide the involved officer five days to review the documents. It will also provide the officer sufficient time to file a legal action in court to prevent disclosure. So I am asking that Section nine be removed from the memo of understanding. Thank you. Speaker 0: And Sheila here and then Andrew. Speaker 2: I'm here on behalf of Black Lives Matter, but. Speaker 4: I'm going to be reading a letter from Clu, which is the Clergy and Laity United for Economic. Speaker 7: Justice. This letter is in response to the Long Beach City Council's upcoming vote. Speaker 4: Regarding 20 item number 21, regarding the Police Officers Association and the memo, you specifically Section I X Long Beach Post September 10th article on this proposal stated that the Long Beach City Council is set to review and approve the menu and provision whereby Long Beach police officers would be informed if someone asked to see officers public records of misconduct or times they use potentially deadly force. This is a blatant undermining of Senate Bill 1421, the landmark police transparency bill that went into effect in July and January of 2019. Senate Bill 1421 mandates disclosure of police reports and discipline records. Whenever an officer was dishonest, sexually abused a member of the public, or when there was a serious use of force such as police shootings. Approving the levy EPD contract with this provision would show the Long Beach community that you value police privilege over legal transparency and the community's protection and safety. That would be a dangerous mistake and unacceptable to the residents of long of the city. This is an open and joint letter by Long Beach residents and organizations, including Black Lives Matter, Long Beach, showing up for Racial Justice and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice as people of faith and advocates for workers, their families and immigrant communities. Clue strongly urge you to remove Section I of this menu. Speaker 7: Before the vote. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 10: Hello, Mayor and City Council. My name is Andrew Montano with the Democratic Socialists of America, Long Beach. I'm here to speak against Section nine of the Power's menu. Growing up, I would hear stories of police intimidation and violence from police officers attending parties, violating young women and threatening my cousin if she said anything to unjustly handcuffing my brother and his friend and purposely dropping them off in rival gang territories. But it wasn't until I started working as a legislative aide to then Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez that I saw and heard of the corruption from within. A trusted community resident approached me during the community event to explain to me that her son was unjustly detained and told he was, and I quote, a piece of shit and would never amount to anything by a police officer on patrol. Even though that kid was working and being a positive role model to his friends and family. I forward this information to South Division Commander Michael Lewis and luckily he addressed the issue and had a conversation with the police officer. However, a few days after the commander had that conversation, the police officer patrolled the same area until he found the community's community resident son and stopped him. The officer harassed the young man and asked, Why are you trying to get me in trouble? Not knowing it was actually a concerned parent who informed me. He then proceeded to ask his friends, Why are you all hanging around a snitch? He tried getting me fired. If you come from certain communities, you know, snitching is not tolerated. What would this officer hope to do was indirectly cause harm to this young man by hoping to manipulate his friends to inflict harm. That officer is still on patrol, along with the officers who unjustly killed those individuals Don mentioned. If you allow this to pass, you are making it that much easier for these same officers to intimidate, harass and cause violence to our communities more than what they already do. Thank you, Andrew. Speaker 0: Okay. That concludes public comment. Councilman Price. Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry about that. I have a question for the city attorney. Can you talk a little bit about the petition process that some of the speakers spoke about regarding petitioning the court to prohibit the release of records that the officers would have the option to do? It's not listed in Section nine, but I'm sure it's the public has referenced it. Speaker 10: If I understand the question correctly, if the if the officer who is given the opportunity to review the files believes that the city through our process has either put it in contain records that they believe don't comply with SB 1421. The only way that the city will not release those records is if they file an action in the court and the court orders the city to withhold certain documents that are part of the 1421 disclosure. Speaker 4: And I understand that. I'm aware of the letter. I'm asking, is it part of the Poea contract because it's being referenced and it's not in Section nine. Speaker 10: That Section nine is reads as it is and it's not in there. Speaker 4: Or fact, I just wasn't sure if I was looking at the correct version because this is Section nine is a 15 line section that's been included in here. And honestly, some of the comments not necessarily tonight, because I think the comments tonight were accurate, but some of the comments that I read coming into tonight make some inferences from these 15 lines that are actually unreasonable given what these 15 lines actually say. The one question that I do have is Perez, can they be filed anonymously? Speaker 9: Yes, they can. And they often are. Speaker 4: Okay. What I'd like to do is I'm going to make a motion that we approve this. But as part of my motion, I'd like to request that both the city manager's office and the police department create an interface on their websites, on their public facing websites that allows a PDF billable form that is a public request form that allows for an anonymous option so that that would be an option that would come down in the menu. So anybody who wants to file a PRA can easily file it anonymously. And I think making it easy for people to be able to file an anonymous PRA requests will allow individuals to not be afraid of exposing their identity when they file the pre. And so I don't know if that's possible. Speaker 9: So if I can explain our anonymous pre process, so we have for the last several years allowed anonymous praise and we used to do it very much similar to that through a form where someone could give it to us. The problem was they still had to transmit it to us in some way. Whether they created an email address that they'd have to create an email address that was, you know, kind of a dummy email address, or they'd have to walk and give it to us. Over the past two years, we have enhanced our peer system. We have a third party and it has a complete, separate way to do it, where there is no connecting information whatsoever, there is no email address that is required. It just allows you to go in, you get a code that you can use and so that is currently in use. On the city manager side, we are under review today or realizing that is not activated yet on the PD side and we would be happy to turn that on. We can turn that on very quickly. PD currently accepts anonymous ones through the the other method where you don't have to say your name, but you can certainly turn that on as an improvement. Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm on the city manager's website right now and it could just be me, but it's not as easy to just click on the PRA option and submit it. The PDF form shows up, but at least without clicking on too many buttons and looking at it, it looks like it's a form that you have to print. And somehow am I not mine? I'm looking at the site right now. So what can you maybe tell us? I'm looking at requests for public records on the city manager's website and then it says, fill out the public records form. So if you click on that, it's a PDF form with no electronic submission option. Speaker 9: So there should be a when you get into the system, there should be a way to say log in and create your request or to log in anonymously. There's a there's a split. And so the log in anonymously is the way to do that. Speaker 4: Okay. Well, let me just say again, it might just be me. It doesn't seem user friendly to me. It could totally be me. I do pride myself on being able to get around electronics a little bit, and this doesn't seem easy to me. So if we can make that interface easier so that people can go in and file anonymous ones, because what I'm hearing is that's one of the major concerns is that the requesters name and or organization is disclosed and it shouldn't have to be. Speaker 9: Absolutely. We can certainly enhance that. I'm on the site right now and it has a a log in section and then it says submit anonymously and then gives you examples how to do that. We will make that certainly easier and upfront so that people can understand that right away. Speaker 4: Are you looking at it on an iPad or a desktop. Speaker 9: On an iPad? Speaker 4: Okay. Me too. So maybe you can show me how to do it. But either way, if we could just make it very easy. That would be great. The other thing is, you know, I think that in my opinion, I do believe that the police officers should get notice of what's going to be discovered. I think that that is only fair. When anyone is accused of misconduct, they should get notice and they should have the opportunity to review that material before it is publicly disseminated. Speaker 0: Guys, we need to make sure that. Thank you. We need to make sure that the councilman's speaking. So please, she has the floor. Speaker 4: So I respectfully disagree. And I understand that there are others who may not agree with me. And that's the beauty of our system, is that we're not always going to agree, but trying to find an opportunity to address the major concerns if there is room to do that, I think is progress. I personally believe that our process of justice demands due process when allegations are made against anyone. I will say that while I can't speak for specific instances or specific situations, I work in a profession where every single day the 80 or so employees that I supervise make disclosures all day long with officers who have conduct involving moral turpitude or conduct involving what we call Brady. And so we make those those disclosures every day. I take that very seriously. And I have never in my 20 years as a prosecutor ever come across a single police chief who has ever, in my experience, asked us to hide something, redact something or sugarcoat something. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just speaking to my own experience. So I will say that I appreciate this contract. And I think that if we can try to make Perez more accessible for people to file anonymously, I think that will go a long way in addressing some of the concerns that have been raised. I think, you know, at this point, the most important thing for us to figure out is how do we improve this process and of the multiple cities that are implementing this process. I will say that allowing for easy, anonymous praise to be filed is more progressive than a lot of cities have that have looked at this are entities. So I'm grateful that our staff is willing to do that. Now, I do want to talk about the provisions of the plaza that I think are a huge success for the city of Long Beach. And I want to share kind of my thoughts on that. I want to thank our city team from Human Resources and of course, the leadership of the posse on working on what I believe to be a very fair contract. I want to thank the Powar for agreeing to the increased employee pick up for the pension. As everyone knows, our pension liabilities, our unfunded liabilities in the area of pensions are by far the highest unfunded liabilities that we have. So it's okay for us to say we have other unfunded liabilities, but it's dissent. Disingenuous to argue that the other unfunded liabilities are even remotely close to where our pension pension unfunded liabilities are. So the fact that we're addressing that and we're trying to be more proactive and aggressive with how we're addressing pension issues for for the future is is very important. And again, I think it's progress in terms of our financial status. I also like the probationary training police recruits aspect of it. I like that it increases our patrol staffing capabilities. I think that's something that's really going to speak to the needs of the community with the community wants more patrols and they want more police officers in the in the community. Speaker 0: We're going to and just real quick, Councilman, I want to make sure that we've had a public comment now the council with opportunity to speak and make comments. So please continue. Thank you. I ask those in the public, please, to be respectful of the comments thanking you. Speaker 4: I know I speak from my own experience in my contacts with with my residents that they definitely want more patrols. We want more police officers patrolling our alleys, our streets, our parks and our beaches. And so allowing this partner. Relationship through this contract that we've negotiated, I think allows for higher capabilities for our staffing, and I'm grateful for that. So I want to thank everyone for bringing these issues to light, and I'm hopeful that this contract is going to pass tonight. I just want to make sure that we have some provision that addresses the concerns of the residents. And that's why I bring the option of the PDF Sellable Form that allows for easy online submissions of anonymous forms. This contract was going to pass with or without that provision, but I think that provision helps address some of the concerns that are raised tonight. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank, first of all, the residents who came out and spoke this evening expressing their concerns. I want to, first of all, say congratulations to our city team, as well as our Police Officers Association for coming to an agreement and for those of who have been involved in the collective bargaining process. It's not an easy process. It's long, it's arduous, it's complicated. And to to reach this point, to have an agreement is actually a milestone. Understanding that there are some some some misinterpretation and misunderstanding regarding some of the language. You know, that happens. But I'm glad we have an agreement. And I will just say, from from from from my core, I think due process is is very important for for all city employees we represent and for anybody else, for that matter, who may be accused of something or charged with something. Like it or not. I would also just like to just say that the city council has invested millions just in the last couple of years in response to many of the complaints that we've heard and many of the concerns that have come to this council from people in the community who have a mistrust for public safety and police officers today. I want to say that all of our police officers will be equipped with body cameras. We have invested in data as well as invest in a website portal that actually discloses and provides more transparency than we ever have. And in terms of public records, acts request, you know, I know I've been subject to several of them and many of the city council members as well. It doesn't mean that we were all guilty of something, right? Public records request come all the time and it's part of operating a public entity. SB 1421 There's been a lot of conversation about that, and this particular clause speaks to that. It does do something. It gives a tool to the public, to the press, to to advocates attorneys today that wasn't there a year ago. Right. Today, information and transparency has now forced in disclosure is forced through this legislation. And I have heard nothing coming from our city attorney or city staff that says that we won't be providing that information. So that's a good thing. And I want to just say, speak to too many of the advocacy organizations that spoke here today. You've been to the council member meetings before. Your advocacy has been tireless in the community and and in other forums. And you guys have impacted change. This legislation that we're speaking out today was largely because of many of the efforts that you guys have put forth. I want to say that also you've impacted change in terms of, I think, the culture of this city, particularly our police department. And I do want to have an opportunity to ask a couple of questions to our our deputy chief in city management in 2019 and 2018. How many officer involved shootings that we have? Total. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilmember. Let me get that information for you. It was 2019 zero. You asked about that zero officer involved shootings, one unintentional discharge. That doesn't count as an officer involved shooting. And let me pull up the number for you on the back to you on how many for 2018. Speaker 1: Okay. I'd like to know 2017 and 2018, but I want to mark and note that in 2019 we're seeing zero and it's already halfway through September. I think that's something to be noted. Speaker 8: Yes. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you very much, guys. I want to make sure that we're counterman also on the floor. Speaker 1: So also what i heard also this was a concern of of possible intimidation and coercion and retaliation. Currently. Are there any administrative provisions or laws that prevent an officer from from engaging in that activity? Speaker 5: Absolutely. Council Member So first, I'll go back to the numbers. I just pulled them up. 2017, we had eight officer involved shootings. 2018, we had four officer involved shootings. 2019, we have zero. So that's the first part. The second part is if if the use or the information that is released regarding a requester for a public record is used in any way to harass, intimidate or stock an individual when it would be misconduct and not tolerated and could potentially be criminal. And we would file against that officer if that was the case. Speaker 1: So is there any policies currently that specifically state that it is will not be tolerated and you will be subject to just discipline if severe discipline if you did if you engaged in such activity. Speaker 5: So, Councilmember, there's no policy related to SB 1421 because that's new legislation. But the policy that the officers would have to comply with is professional conduct in conduct unbecoming of an officer if they were to do something like that. And also they are required per policy to comply with all state laws. Speaker 1: I'd like to see a policy developed specifically out of the concern that we've heard here today to put a a check in place, particularly as we move forward. I plan on voting in support of the the item in front of us. Again, I understand that it took a lot of sweat equity time effort to get to this point. And I don't think I see anything within SB 1421 or the current provisions that we have for it that would prevent the transparency or disclosure of information as requested. And I do think that there's an opportunity to do some public education, particularly for advocacy groups out there, to try to inform folks that they do have that option to to to file anonymously and request an anonymously. Thank you for your information. Thank you. Speaker 11: Thank you, Councilman. Also, Councilwoman Pierce. Speaker 2: Thank you. I want to begin by saying that I was absent at the last closed session meeting where this contract was negotiated. I had had emergency gallbladder surgery and was not supposed to be back at work for three weeks. And I tried to come to work that day and I couldn't make it the whole day. So what happened after that day is nobody raised any flags. No one said we had approved anything until the agenda item was posted and until the post the press had lifted up some of the items in there. And so I want to start by saying that I think there are some good things in here that there's some step increases that I think certain officers deserve. I think that we've got a parental leave, which I think is important, although the way that it's done, I have some some questions about I think the the pickup the employee pickup is is great. And so I want to applaud those efforts. It's no secret that every time we bring up a police officer contract or issues like that, that I have a lot of questions. I have also said from the very beginning of my term in office that I know that we have a lot of great officers that took a risk and they put their life on the line every single day. I've had the privilege of getting to know a lot of great officers in my district that work very diligently to make sure that we're reducing crime, that people feel like they can trust them, and that they're doing that part. But I also know that systems are oppressive and that it takes a lot of change and a lot of ground work to make substantial changes so that people feel protected, that they are protected, that they have trust and that they don't feel intimidated. And so I think pushing back on some of these issues is absolutely the right thing to do. And I don't want anyone in this room to feel like comments that were made by the first speaker should make you feel like you shouldn't get up and speak. You absolutely should read the press. I don't agree with the press. A lot of the times that's no secret. But I think that you absolutely should ask difficult questions. And I applaud you for coming out and speaking, and I applaud you guys for the work that that's been done to get us to this point. We wouldn't have police cameras today if it wasn't for your advocacy. So thank you for that on the front end. I want to talk about the parental leave. I know I talked to city management a little bit and I won't take up too much time on this. But we had drafted an agenda item where we had asked the city to come up with a way to provide parental leave for the entire city. And I was asked to kind of hold back that we were going to assess what was the best way to do that. We had some conversations around should that be in bargaining? And the next thing I know is that we find out that PO has it in their contract. Of course, I'm happy. Of course. I want you to have parental leave. Can you answer for me how it was? Decided to offer them 30 days straight parental leave. And what decisions were made around state disability and not having employees pay into that first. Speaker 9: So I'll have Alex Basco to talk about those specifics in terms of providing and to employees. That is something that we are addressing at the bargaining table and we'd be happy to talk to you more in closed session about how we're going to do that through a negotiation process. Alex, if you can answer the other part of the question, please. Speaker 2: Yes, sir. Just to kind of. Address a meeting, confer items so that providing these types of benefits is a mandatory subject of bargaining. And so we do that through the IMO you process. So the 30 days that we're providing paid parental leave provides of 160 hours for this particular milieu of time off that employees can utilize and employees done during those 30 days. This is a separate benefit. Don't have to use their vacation or their sick time and it provides them with paid leave at 100% of their pay. The difference with SDI is that that requires an employee deduction of 1% that they have to contribute and it comes out of their wages. And that benefit is not as generous. It provides between 60 and 70% of their wage loss, and it's only it's capped up to a certain amount. So this benefit that we're providing, in my opinion, is much more generous. Not a lot of cities are offering this benefit. So we're actually at the forefront. There are very few cities that do provide this type of benefit in California. So I know my office and I know another office has done a lot of research on this. And there are some cities that do SDI first. And it should be noted that state disability is not only for pregnancy or having a child, but you have cancer, you have gallbladder surgery, and you have to be out that. I've had a lot of employees talk to me about wanting to pay into SDI. So I guess my question is, did you do research to look at what cities and places have done SDI first and then the city backfill the rest to get them longer than 30 days? Because I know all of you guys have kids and I know that 30 days is not enough to spend with your child when they're first born. So figuring out that gap, did we look at that as an option? And we we did do some benchmarking with other cities to see what they offered. And we are we do have a plan that is one of the first groups that we reached an agreement with. We are in. Close to concluding negotiations with FFA and we are currently at the table with four other groups and going to be starting with the remainder of the bargaining units. So I'd be happy to to brief the council in closed session as far as what our plan is for the rest of the bargaining units and go into more detail about that. Thank you. And I'll just I know that this isn't the end of the conversation. Again, I support, obviously, paid parental leave being in there. I personally wouldn't want to bargain against my wages and time with my children. And so I have some some concerns about the way that we bring that up. And I'll let it sit there for now and bring it back. In reference to the item that we've been talking about tonight. I want to let's see, I want to start off with saying it's good to hear that my colleagues like due process. I would like due process to. So can you answer if S.B. 142 requires people to requires the name to be released to police officers or that department. Speaker 4: So it's not a requirement, but it is something that is. Speaker 2: Allowed under the PRA. Okay. Can you answer the question for me? What's the purpose of a name on the front end? Why is why did we go with provide your name and then you could opt out to be anonymous? Why didn't it start? You are anonymous unless you want your name to be revealed. So since the PRA was enacted. Speaker 4: Members of the public have been able to file PRA request anonymously. That has not. Speaker 2: Changed. So I think the conversation that that was had by previous speakers was allowing someone to to check anonymous. But that's an additional step. And if you're, uh, if you're someone that's been disenfranchized, if you're someone that has been going up against a system that you're not used to filling out those forms, I'd want to be able to say that very first year it's anonymous. And then you check if you want your information provided. I see. Mr. Parkin, do you guys have a. Speaker 9: So we have a dual path when you get to into the system. This new third party that we have, they have a you have a decision to make, do I want to go one route or do I want to go another route? So if you go the route where you're logging in and you're creating a system, an identifier, and that helps you as the requester to get updates, to be able to email, to tell us what you would like to receive. That's one system. The other is completely anonymous. And so they are two different systems. And if we need you, we can put them side by side. So it's very clear that you can go either direction and we can support either one. Speaker 2: Okay. That would not I'm not going to say which way I think the vote is going to go tonight, but I think that my my press is that we don't that we put anonymous first. And if that means that that's the top of the website, that it's bright, that there's some kind of identifier that people that aren't used to filling out these forms, like I'm a mother of a son that's been shot and killed, who is under distress, doesn't accidentally mess up on her pre request and then now is terrified of retaliation. I mean, that's real life situation. As much as we can create a system that we think is perfect, real life situations are where those things get blurred. Can you answer for me why this went into practice in April? Speaker 9: So this was a request from the pope that came to the city via their normal process of of interacting with management. They asked the city attorney for an opinion and how to help create a process. We saw this as an administrative and restorative issue. The city attorney ran it by the police department, ran it by city management. And we believe that this meant that both the intent, the spirit of SB 1421 and was something that we could put into place. And so that was put in place by management. And then it was then later codified into the memo, you know. Speaker 2: So can you answer for me how praise are handled with other departments? Speaker 9: Is there a specific question? I can certainly try. Speaker 2: Well, I have an example in my head that I wasn't necessarily going to share, but there was a PR done on all of my emails. There were hundreds of them and I got notice 5 minutes before that package went to the press. So, yes, I'm an elected and I'm under different scrutiny, but I want to know, it seems like praise to me is a procedural policy that adheres to the entire city, not one department. And I would hate to create a process for one department. That's not fair to the entire city. Speaker 9: So we create a process in general. It's informal that if you are getting a pre, you have access to that as well. I remember that. Speaker 2: Day. Sure. You guys. Speaker 9: You had to send that out. And yes, we do believe that they are public records in the person who gets the requests has access to those as well. It is not as formal as what is in the agreement here. I would say the difference is this was a formal request from a labor organization going through a process saying, you know, through the bargaining process we would like access to this information. Here is our proposal. And so we were followed a slightly different path. The the specific language that you have here on on 1421 is really only for 1421. It is not going to be for every other PRA and honestly, most people who are prayed and we are all prayed very often we see those documents because we're the ones helping to produce those documents as well. This was their personnel file, something that they don't haven't seen as they don't have access to normally these types of documents. And so it is slightly different. Speaker 2: Well, we do know that while the PRA if I gave you one email, you can still go through and say, actually, we think that these other ten emails. So I, I have a real issue with this proposal because I feel like it's a policy that should be adhered to and created for the entire city so that things like politics don't get involved, so that it's equal across the board and so that people don't fear retaliation. They can go forward, they can ask for that information and do what they want to do with that information. So if this item is still in this, I will definitely be voting no unless some of my colleagues can come up with an option to pull that memo due out and go back to the drawing board or make those changes and come back. But it's not something that I can support today. But I think everybody, again, for speaking, I think the Police Officers Association for their efforts as well. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I want to make sure just as a friendly reminder, I know we're going to ease into all the rules, but after 5 minutes, if we can just continue going on and then we'll cue back up so we can go back up. So I know we've let it go a few times and that's okay. I just want to make sure remind the council as we as we move forward. So, Councilman Richardson. Speaker 8: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Still getting used to our new rules. I'll say so a few things. So I want to acknowledge and traditionally with a collective bargaining agreement, you know, we start with the knowledge and all the good things. And so I do want to acknowledge all the work on both sides in negotiating a fair deal that also accomplishes and is the first union to address the the full pension pick up. And it's a great standard to to set given we know that we have pension issues, unfunded liabilities and budgetary issues on the horizon. So I do want to lift up and recognize that also as as a parent, you know, fairly new parent. Well, not that new, but, you know, got little ones. You know, the parental leave issue and the FMLA and parental leave issues been an issue, an issue in Long Beach for a long time. I'm glad to see this is addressed here. And I and to be clear, I think this should be addressed for all city employees. I think all city employees, we should be opting into parental leave and figuring out a way to make that happen. So those are my issues there. I want to. So so I want to separate and talk about this issue that's come up and a lot. It's actually been a lot of good discussion from my colleagues on Section nine. So my thoughts, my thoughts and my questions are firstly that we've learned a lot in the last in recent years about the shifting legislative landscape around compliance and public records. We also learned a lot during the Tiger tax issue about updating our policies to keep up with shifting laws. This is yet another example, in my opinion, of the city council and the city not being proactive on a shifting law and allowing for the guidelines in the process of that law to be determined by a collective bargaining process. I want to say that this is not. The community's fault. This is not the police union's fault and this is not the press's fault. We should own up and take our responsibility. If we don't put forth local policies, you cannot hold the union accountable for negotiating the best position for their workers. That's what unions do. I understand collective bargaining. You can't blame them for that. You can't blame the press for going out and talking about a collective bargaining agreement if we haven't shaped the narrative. This is on us. I want the opportunity and we've said this during Tiger to text and I'll say it again now. I think the council and the city should be proactive and take the opportunity to shape and discuss policy in public within the light of day, not in closed session, but as a part of a larger conversation about how we address and handle public records and transparency. I personally believe any question on transparency you should air on the side of being overly transparent. And so. So let's let's get into this issue. I've heard actually a lot of good ideas and discussion from the council tonight. I heard Councilwoman Pryce say the process of making, you know, making sure that someone is has the ability to be anonymous is not clear on the website. I also heard Councilwoman Pierce say that, you know, when you go submit a pre adding your identity ought to be the optional part, not making it autonomous. You know, anonymous should be the optional part. I think both of those make sense. I subscribe to things and then at the end it says, Would you like to add your name, your email address or so on and so forth? I think this is what this process should be giving, number one. It's on us. We didn't proactively address this, and we now have to operate outside of the collective bargaining agreement to shape the policy on the fringes. So, Mr. Moga, is something like that possible? Speaker 9: Yes. So during this discussion, we've been putting together some thoughts about how we can address the council's concerns. I think they're very valid. I think this is a good opportunity for us to to look at that. I think I'm formulating kind of four different areas that we we can focus on. One is to remind people when they submit a pray that your pray is probable, that happens a lot. People will submit something and then they'll submit something else to say. I want to see, you know, if anyone else submitted what I submitted. So I think a reminder, when you are submitting a pray that that is by itself creating a public record that is available to others. And I believe we can enhance our anonymity features. We mentioned before just through this review that PD has an anonymous process, but they could be using the same system that the city manager's office uses for other praise to enhance that. And then in that feature, and we can turn that on, we can create that even path for anonymity so that you show up and you have two paths. And there it's very clear that you can go one way or the other and not prefer one over the other. That certainly was never our intent. But when you lay out a website, you read the top four, so we can address that. And then again, you know, we mentioned this earlier, but I do want to highlight that we are trying to create and putting the data out there so you don't have to request it in the first place so that we have that new website. Now, you don't need to log on. You don't need to submit an anonymous request. All of our 1421 data will be available to the public without saying who requested to put that up. And so that is active and now and reminding people that want 1421 data to go there first without even having to go through the pre process. Speaker 8: Thank you. So a few of the things I want to lift up. So so I took took a moment to read this letter that just came in from the ACLU, and I read it while I was sitting here. Unfortunately, you know, a lot of this came in, you know, over the weekend, and we're just getting a chance to look at it. Mister City Attorney, have you had a chance to look at this ACLU letter? Speaker 10: I have just seen it this evening. Speaker 8: Okay, I will. I will. You know, this is an incredibly legal conversation. There's a claim that we're out of compliance with public records laws. I don't know if that's true. I know laws are changing and shifting, and I actually don't need an answer today. What I'd like is I would like for you to actually analyze some of the claims here and the model ordinance that's there and tell us if there are any deficits, what we're doing. I would like to I would like to know that. And so would it be possible for you to do some sort of analysis or to run for and come to us and let us know where we are in terms of our California public records laws? Speaker 10: Absolutely. Speaker 8: Okay. On the conversational anonymity, it's been brought up a few times and I want to bring it up again, just to be very clear on this on this question. So does this email you in any way diminish the right of a citizen to be anonymous in their records request? Speaker 9: No, it does not. Speaker 8: Okay. So it sounds like in practice, the way that we actually achieve that, how we implement this, the council is still fully up to the council and up to city staff on how this is implemented, to make sure that we're not somehow inadvertently giving an advantage to one side than the other in terms of anonymous versus not anonymous. You're going to we're going to figure out a way to make that make more sense. That's correct. Okay. And given the shifting in hanging on, I think our my goal here is to try to understand it and try to address the issue and these questions. And I think all of our questions are, too, do those things help understand the concerns that have been raised and help figure out a path to address these concerns. So given the shifting lands, the legislative landscape around public records, are there any additional steps that we can take to make sure as changes happen, the public is advised or noticed on a regular basis on any changes to to the law. Are we thought through any way to proactively when people come to our website, any prey website, either PD or the city's or maybe it should be one website, not two? Is there a way to proactively state, hey, these are the changes and here's how we're implementing these changes? Speaker 9: So, yes, we have thought that through. We mentioned that earlier so that everyone gets a disclaimer, a reminder right up front in clear language if there are any changes. So we can look at that on the landing page. We can also do that as you as you actually file your request, whether you're doing it anonymously or not. We think that's a good practice and we will look to do that. Speaker 8: So the next area I want to I want to talk about, which has been touched on as well, is there were questions raised in this ACLU letter about the integrity of an investigation or the integrity of a process being somehow compromised through this. What I would like to know is what provisions are in place. To make sure that once parties are notified that there's a peel pre, the investigation is no way compromised. Are these things tracked? Right. Has there ever been an instance where we've notified an employee that something's going to go out an employee's engaged and somehow it hasn't ? The information that was going to go out hasn't gone out. Has that ever taken place in our city? And what mechanisms do we have to make sure the integrity in that process? Speaker 9: As Assistant chief. He wished to respond to that. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Modica. Thank you, Councilmember. That has not happened. We have released records that were requested and they have not been withheld because of an employee inquiring about those records. Speaker 8: Okay, so my. My job. Thank you. Speaker 10: Councilmember, if I could just add to that, there have been cases or instances where an employee has raised an issue or asked that certain records not be withheld. And the police department has a process in place where it goes through the chain of command and they they will review that request. And as the chief said, there have been no instances where that request has been honored. Those records have gone out. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 10: And there is a process. Speaker 8: Okay. So what I heard a bit earlier and I want to be crystal clear on this, what I heard a bit earlier was that the only way that could be changed or or held up was through a court order. Speaker 10: And that's true for the 1421 records. We were talking about other public records, not just 1421. So we have to subject matters here. We have 1421 very specific. And then you have your general public records, documents under the general public record documents. There have been requests by employees not to release records at that request has been reviewed and then the decision was made. Note that those records were all going out under 1421 at that five day stage. That's going through the final review process before they go out. So there's no delay, like an extra five day delay. And then if if there was a court order, then the city would not withhold, would then not. Speaker 8: Sit on those records. So the provision email, you were specifically to the 1421 or is it apply to both? Speaker 10: 1421 only. Speaker 8: So as it relates to this provision, only a court order can affect that? That's correct. Understandable. So which raises a separate issue, right. I think in general, we need the time. I think the council needs the time and space to talk about these policies in general as it applies to every department. Because simply what you just notice is that I didn't know there was a process for someone to go engage a department and say, I don't want this to be included, make their case, and then that department makes a decision. I want to better understand that and make sure that, you know, separate from 1421 across any department we track. When APRA comes in, we fully understand what changes have happened and why we want to. In this environment we have to always erring on the side of more transparency and build slowly, build community trust. So, so, so for the sake of sake of this, I think this was actually I would have rather had this conversation sooner than later. But I think it's important that we get to this conversation after tonight's vote on this contract. I think it will put the community. The council are all of our bargaining units, all of our employees. It would it would do well to give everyone a bit more stability and confidence in knowing what the rules are and that there are no ways to sort of game the system to create advantage for yourself. And so those are my comments. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Ringa. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mary. And I really appreciate all the commentary that's come forth so far regarding this issue, because I did read it and it's pretty much square. And what it says in Section nine, the requester, the data, the requests, the requester, name and organization, and the nature of the information request. That's pretty black and white right there in terms of what it says directly. So to be devil's advocate at this point right now, I know there was a discussion earlier by Council member Pearce about not wanting to vote for the for the MCU based on section nine is section is the removal of section nine. I renegotiated that part jeopardized the passage of the emoji tonight. Speaker 2: Council member. The Council has the option to either adopt the EMU as it's been presented or not adopt it, receive and file this item and give bargaining instructions to the bargaining team in closed session. As far as instructions on how to modify the agreement, this is a tentative agreement. So those are the two options. The council could not just pull this particular item out and then adopt. The more you. Speaker 1: I just want to I just went blazing. It was okay. You want to be clear that what we have before us is a full document and any changes or adoptions that happened to it have to go back to the table for renegotiation, knowing that negotiations take sometimes years and no question months. We're sure a lot of staff time, a lot of staff came from our our management team as well as from the union. So there's a lot of blood, sweat and tears that goes into these these negotiations. And I'm certain understand that other issues I mean, the the Emmylou itself, it's as been discussed, it has a lot of positive stuff to it. You know, the certainly the the pension contribution is good. The ability to offer other skill pays for some of our specially skilled officers is certainly well done. There are some issues that was brought up before in terms of parental leave that we should I'm not going to discuss it here, but we should discuss about a parental leave policy citywide as you go through that. And I'm certainly very much interested in getting a pre policy that also is citywide. I belong to a number of organizations, not only in city law, but others that I that I represent the city on and I get PR aid all the time. I just got a primary today as a member of the Coastal Commission regarding discussions that I may have had or not had with lobbyists or other entities requesting information on whether I've been contacted regarding projects up and down the state of California. So I get those all the time. And it's, it's, it's a benefit to the, to the coast commission staff that they let me know about it. And it's it gives me an opportunity to search my records and my files if indeed I have had any kinds of information that I can share with them so that they can share to the requester. And the requester hasn't been exposed to me, so I don't know who's who is making the pre request for that information because I guess in that process it's anonymous and this and as it should be here, I think it should be anonymous. I'm hearing from staff that that certainly can be added in including to I see this as a procedural administrative way of dealing with it. And and I think that your assessment of this coming to you a few months before at the request of you was was a correct one. The only criticism that I have about that is that we should have known, we should have been contacted as a city council to advise us that this is an issue coming down. And it was based on legislation that is that would that passed in the state of California that we would eventually have to contend with. And I think that's where maybe the ball was dropped, if at all, that was that. You know, it came to a surprise that it there's any one thing, like we say as elected officials, we don't like it, we don't like surprises. And this fell on us as a surprise, especially when it came down to the reaction of the of the public in the respect of what appears here and how it's worded in here. Perhaps we could have provided some kind of language to assist with this in regards to having it in in the email you that it would be that there is an option to submit pre request anonymously without having to basically identify the the the request or or the organization. And in addition to this, I think at the there was another time when as a council member, elected officials certainly were always again what to praise. And I was just like Councilmember Janine Pearce one time there was a pre as my my responsibility as. Remember that came. I knew nothing about it. And the PRK was sent out. And it was sent out with erroneous information. That was not me. But staff sent it out. So I think the the importance of having a citywide PR, a policy that is very similar to this, would be very, very helpful to us as a council and of course, to our to our agencies that have who are pre eligible, if you want to call it, for lack of a better term, who who get praise a lot. So that's my basic $0.02 worth of this. I mean, I want to I want people to understand that we can't simply remove Section nine from the on the discussion of the M or you without affecting the whole M, will you? And after all the discussion that's been taking place for the last several months between the city management and the PEO, so with the addition of the mayor of the portions of the oh the suggestions made by Councilmember Price in regards to improving that ability to submit praise anonymously, I'm certainly good with that. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Vice Mayor Andres. Speaker 11: Yes, thank you very much. I first of all, I'd like to speak on the VOA contract. You know, I'm happy that we have reached agreement on this new contract because I feel like it's fair in all sizes. But I what is more what I think what it provides, especially additional cost sharing of the pension costs and also provides a raise in pay to keep us, you know, competitive with the other departments. Know what was more pleasing to me than any, I think was that it was a very pleasing that we're now providing a new pay, you know, apparently benefits that would give new moms and dads 30 days spend with their children. I think that should be we hope and I'm hoping that we continue to do this with that bargaining with all employees unions, that everyone will be able to get that form of been it across the entire city. You know, so in all, I would like to commend that the city, you know, management putting this together and to speak on the. The items that came in tonight. I would would hope that the individuals that came here tonight to to express their opinion, to let you know that your voice is not being void. People are listening. They hear you. And that is the only way you can hear the guys is up here. We spoke on it. We listened to it. And it's the only the way things are going to get done. You continue to speak and let people know your concerns and your feelings about various things that you feel is an injustice or not fair. So like I said, I've been on both sides of the law. And like I say, with the grace, I've been able to know both sides of, you know, these issues. And I think transparency is an important issue, but we must have transparency on all issues. So that is my comments on this. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Vice Mayor Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 2: Yes, I think the discussion tonight has been a good discussion in the right direction. I was curious. STAFF You've mentioned that you've got a lot of ideas about how to make this where that anonymous part would be up front. How long do you think it would take you guys to make those changes? Speaker 9: I don't think that it will take us long at all. So we're going to immediately look at the at the issue of how you approach our website and what that looks like. If it's a simple fix of just moving it left or right, we can do that. If it's a systems issue because there is a third party vendor, they have certain restrictions on what we can do with theirs. We'll work through them, but we can, as early as tomorrow, start working on this and put things up to to make this clearer. Speaker 2: And what it would it be something that we could do if we said we vote to move forward with this, but that you suspend that policy until because you've already implemented the policy in April. So have you suspended that policy until the actual contract was completed and those changes had been made? Speaker 9: The contract is ready. So once you give us the, you know, the direction today. So you either are going to tell us to go forward and do that or you're going to tell us to go back and negotiate. Speaker 2: So I think the direction that I've heard from many of my colleagues is that they don't like the way the system set up. We would like to see that system change. That is not something that's negotiated as part of that contract. So could we suspend the practice until that system change has been made? Does that require to go back to negotiations? Yes, it does. With that, I will still be a no thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 4: I have no doubt that city staff will be able to address the issues we've talked about in the next 2 to 3 days. If that's not and I'd like I'd urge my colleagues to move forward on this item tonight. I will be checking in 2 to 3 days to see with my limited technological challenges if I could file an anonymous request and if it's user friendly and easy. If not, I will bring an item back to council to address that issue. And that's my commitment because I think that's very important. I don't want to hold up the contract. I don't want to go back and renegotiate. We've been working on this for a long time, but I will look on Friday and see if it's easy to find and if filing an anonymous PRA is is as easy as it should be. If I think if staff has any problems with that, perhaps letting us know so that we know progress is on the way. But we're talking about, you know, a PDF sellable form that makes it easy for people to file prey requests anonymously. They have the right to do so. They should be able to do so. We should support and make it easy for them to do so. And if that's not happening by Friday and if it takes needs longer than I expect it to from four, that will tell us that it's going to take longer. If not, I expect we'll be addressing that specific issue at another item as another item to council separate and apart from this contract. Speaker 9: Yes, we commit to that. Absolutely. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 8: Just just to be clear, before we move forward, Mr. Modica, can you just recap what you heard? I think the there was a lot of good comments and you got a lot of good direction. I just want to hear back from you what you heard. I was also a city attorney, if you could chime in on that as well. Speaker 9: So what we understand is that we are to make a lot of progress on the website on how to file a PRA by Friday, that we are to create an even path so that it is there. You can choose one way or the other and it's very clear that it's not one is preferred over the other that we are going to enhance the anonymity features also on the police website, which is a uses of the same system, but it's set up a little bit differently for praise and we will do the same thing on that website that we will also be promoting back to people who want 1421, that they have the ability to go to the website. They don't even have to do that. And we'll put that on our 1421 page that that is the place where you can get it without asking for a prior request. We will also be letting people know when they file praise that that is a public record, that the filing of a PRA in and of itself becomes a public record that others have access to. And then those are the major items that I had, Mr. Attorney. Speaker 10: And I just had the request from the council member for a two from four on the ACLU letter. Speaker 8: Sure. And one thing I would ask, I think in general, I'd like to and we can talk offline, but I'd like to figure out a way for us to have a broader conversation about praise and all of the sort of reporting requirements and how to make sure we have an ordinance that's that's modern and keeping up with the standards that serve our state and federal government. So if that's something that staff or city attorney wants to come out and say, hey, this is how we recommend the council go about it, or if you think that we should bring forward an item, I'd certainly want to hear that on how to take that step, because, again , this is second time that's come up. I want to have a more full conversation about it. Speaker 9: So that will take a little bit of additional time. We can respond back with a two from four, just explaining how do we do praise, how many praise we get, how are they filed, how are they handled? We can certainly do that. That is going to take more time than Fridays. Yeah, it'll be. Absolutely. We can do that. Speaker 8: Fantastic. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Super now. Speaker 5: Thank you. I would just like to add to the motion and in addition to creating the more user friendly pre request page that we investigate that there might, may or may not be an outdated city manager page out there, I think Councilwoman Price was able to find it tonight. I think you two are looking at two different pages. So if you do make the improvement, it's that's going to be null and void if there's an erroneous page still out there. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'm going to make some comments as well. So let me just say that I think there's obviously I want to thank everyone for the discussion tonight on an important. Part of the contract. I also want to just take a step back and focus on the larger contract in of itself. I do support the contract that's in front of us. I think first and foremost, it includes what I believe all employees deserve, which are fair wages and good benefits within our city. I am glad and I support supporting our police officers to ensure that they are paid respectably and that they have the same level of support as our peer communities. I also want to thank the team and the leadership and the rank and file for also doing the pension pick up. I think that's a significant part of this contract. I want to thank the staff and the and the officers involved for negotiation, negotiating a parental leave program. Really the first the first one that we have in the city of this type. And I think it's going to be a model to ensure that we do the same for all of our employee groups. All employer groups deserve parental wage. I think that's been said a few times that we can all agree to that as well. And I want to also just just say that the that the not just on this occasion, but on multiple occasions, our police officers have stepped up and come to the table with fair packages for fair wages. And I want to thank them for that. And so with that, there is a motion and a second. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 3: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to be moving on to public general public comment I have is king over here. Larry Goodhue, Bernice Jimenez and and control please come forward for. King is King out there.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution approving the 2019-2022 Memorandum of Understanding with the Long Beach Police Officers Association; and

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Speaker 0: Actually. 18, 18, please. Speaker 3: Communication from city attorney. Speaker 2: Recommendation. Speaker 3: Execute an agreement with Thomas B Modica to to serve as acting city manager. Speaker 0: I can if I can get a motion in the second comment, please. I have Mr. Goodhew in control. Police confirmed for public comment. Nope. Okay, Mr. Goodyear? Yes, go ahead. Speaker 11: I thoroughly support this. And again, though, I want to make sure we do not reconvene the Council of Trent. Let's get down to business. We know what you want. Just go ahead and pass it so we can move forward. We've got plenty of challenges. Will be getting a new mayor. And we'll get getting some new counsel people. Probably from hopefully from the second for the second district, we'll be able to stabilize this city in a way that it hasn't been stabilized for the past year in terms of getting solid, mentally stable council people and. An honest mayor. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. Speaker 9: Thank you. Speaker 10: Pursuant to the government code, the the acting city manager salary shall be $276,815. And down to the 100th of a cent six, seven, six. On a 12 month period, at an hourly rate of $132.63 per hour. Thank you. Speaker 5: He's casting votes. I'm a no. Oh, wait. I don't get to vote. Damn, damn. No vote. Speaker 3: Motion carries.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement with Thomas B. Modica to serve as Acting City Manager.

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Speaker 0: Congratulations, Tom. Next item, please do hearing item one. Speaker 3: Report from Economic Development Recommendation, receive supporting documentation into the record and conclude the public hearing. Adopt a resolution continuing the Belmont Shore Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessment Levy and authorize the city manager to extend the agreement with the Belmont Shore Business Association District three. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion in a second, Mr. Goodhue. Public comment? Speaker 5: No. Speaker 0: Okay. Do we have a report on this, Mr. Moti? We need to hear a report in order for this hearing. Mr. City Attorney, do we have to have a report on this or can we just. Speaker 5: We do need a brief hearing. Speaker 0: Okay. Let's go ahead and do that. Speaker 3: There is an oath required on this. So if you're going to be, can you please stand and raise your hand? Do you and each of you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Speaker 5: Yes. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Economic development director John Keisler and Eric Romero, economic development project manager, will do the presentation today. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. The Belmont Shore Parking and Business Improvement Area, also known as a bid, was established by the City Council in 1983, allowing for the levy of an annual business license assessment to be paid by businesses located in the bid city of Long Beach. Long Beach contracts with the Belmont Shore Business Association to manage the bid and the Belmont Shore Business Association Board of Directors serves as an advisory board to the City Council on matters related to the bid. State law governing parking and business improvement areas requires an annual report be submitted to the City Council by the Advisory Board for the bid. The annual report describes boundaries, proposed activities and budgetary information as well as well as the method and basis for the continuation of the assessment. The 2019 2020 Annual Report proposes no changes to the boundaries or the method of living assessment. The proposed activities will focus on marketing and promoting the district, businesses, special events and community and business outreach to continue the assessment levy. State law requires that a public hearing be held on the proposed program and the annual assessment. At its September three, 2019 meeting, the City Council approved a resolution granting approval of the annual report, declaring the intention of the City Council to levy the assessment and set today as the date for public hearing. The City Council shall here and consider all protests against the assessment program and boundaries as proposed in the annual report. The recommended action on this item receives supporting documentation and to the record, concludes the hearing, adopts the resolution, continuing the assessment and authorizes the staff to extend the agreement with the Belmont Shore Business Association for one additional year. That concludes my staff report and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think there's no other comment from any anyone here from the from the assessment district. So we're gonna go ahead and take a vote.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, adopt resolution continuing the Belmont Shore Parking and Business Improvement Area assessment levy for the period of October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2020; and, authorize City Manager, or designee, to extend the agreement with the Belmont Shore Business Association for a one-year term. (District 3)

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Speaker 3: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Item 19. Speaker 1: Well. Speaker 3: Report from Economic Development Recommendation to. Speaker 2: Declare city owned property at six, five. Speaker 3: Two and a half Alamitos Avenue as surplus. Execute a purchase and sale agreement with the Robert Gunn Byner Foundation in the amount of. Speaker 2: 27,500 District two. Speaker 0: As Mr. Goodhue or Ms. Control here? I don't think so. For public comment of our peers comments. Speaker 2: I just wanted to thank staff for their hard work on this and it was a small parcel, but it's an important key. So thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 1: Second, the motion, I think this is a great opportunity to to really add character to this area of the city. Speaker 0: And I just want to thank staff on this. Mr. Crusher, you and I have been working on this for a long time with my team and a few other folks. And this is an important opportunity for for a parcel. I'm really proud of the partnership and proud of the work here. So I'm excited about the future for for this corner. Please cast your votes. Speaker 3: Councilman Richardson. Ocean carries. Next Item 20 Report from Financial Management Recommendation to approve the fiscal year 2019 second Departmental and Fund Budget Appropriation Adjustments in accordance with existing City Council policy citywide tendency.

Contract

Recommendation to declare City-owned property at 652 ½ Alamitos Avenue, Assessor Parcel Number 7266-006-900 (Subject Property), as surplus; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary, including a Purchase and Sale Agreement, with the Robert Gumbiner Foundation, a California nonprofit corporation, for the sale of the Subject Property, in the amount of $27,500; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE-19-221. (District 2)

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Speaker 5: Not been withdrawn. We need to I think there's a motion to continue it one week. Speaker 4: So moved their motion in a second. Q Public comment on the continuation. Saying none their members. Please go ahead and cast your vote on that, please. Speaker 0: Okay. Councilwoman Price. Okay. So. Not sure. Ocean carries. Speaker 4: Ocean carries. Thank you. As before we go into our second hearing, I do want to welcome Dr. Allison Deegan, who is here. I know she's here with one of her classes from Cal State, Long Beach. So one of its I believe it's a master's course in public policy work. And so Dr. Deegan and I actually did our doctoral work together. And so we've been through the fire together. It's good to see you and one of your course classes here. If you want to maybe just stand up and have all of our Cal State Lombard students be recognized. Let's give them a round of applause. And thank you to our Cal State Long Beach students for being here. And they're observing one of our meetings. So thank you. And if we can have the item read, please. Hearing number two.

Public Hearing

WITHDRAWN Recommendation to receive the supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, consider the appeal by William Grisolia, dba Long Beach Blues Society, and uphold the decision of the Parks and Recreation Commission to deny the City Manager’s Office of Special Events and Filming Application #20-10539, for the operation of the New Blues Festival in El Dorado East Regional Park, Area III (Application #20-10539). (District 5)

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Speaker 4: Let's give them a round of applause. And thank you to our Cal State Long Beach students for being here. And they're observing one of our meetings. So thank you. And if we can have the item read, please. Hearing number two. Speaker 0: Report from financial management. Recommendation received supporting documentation under the record. Conclude the hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions on the application of Promenade Hospitality Group at 210, the Promenade North for Entertainment with Dancing District two. There is an oath required for this. Well. Any witnesses, please stand. You and each of you do solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the court now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God that it. Speaker 4: Well, thank you. With that, I'm going to go ahead and have our assistant city manager, Tom Modica, introduce the item. Speaker 5: We'll have Kevin Jackson do that. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Tom. The staff presentation will be conducted by Deputy Finance Director Sandy. Speaker 2: St Palmer and Emily Armstrong. Speaker 5: Business Licensing. Speaker 1: Division. Speaker 0: Good evening, honorable. Speaker 7: Mayor and. Speaker 0: Members of the city council. Tonight you have before you an application for entertainment with dancing for Promenade Hospitality Group LLC doing business as the ordinary. Located at 210, the Promenade. Speaker 7: North. Speaker 0: Operating as a restaurant with alcohol in Council District two as a new business in the downtown dining and entertainment district. The ordinary was required to conduct a sound study of the establishment. After review of the application and sound study, all of the necessary departments provided their recommended conditions as contained in the hearing packet, as well as the police department stand ready to answer any questions Council may have. And that concludes staff's report. Speaker 4: Thank you for that. Are there any applicant comments on this item? No African comments are needed. Are there any? I don't think there are any appellant comments either. And so with that, let me first do public comment. We do have I think Ms.. Cantrell wants to speak to this hearing item. Is that correct? No. Okay. Then I will turn this over to Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: No major comment. There have been any issues. Have been a great. Speaker 0: Addition to the. Speaker 7: Promenade. Speaker 4: Councilman. Councilman Price. Okay. Then with that, I will close council deliberation and ask members to please cast your votes. Speaker 2: My system's rebooting, so I'm a yes. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the hearing and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions on the application of Promenade Hospitality Group, LLC, dba The Ordinarie, at 210 The Promenade North, for Entertainment with Dancing. (District 2)

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Speaker 4: See there's a motion in a second. Ms. controlled the public comment. Okay. Members, please go and cast your votes. Item 14 Police. Speaker 0: Motion Carries Item 14 Report from Human Resources Recommendation to adopt resolution approving the amendments to the current terms and conditions for the Refuge Basic Bargaining Unit Citywide. Speaker 4: Bush in a second. Ask Mr. Modi, because anything you like to report on. Speaker 5: This is a very good thing. This is giving a 2% increase to the refuge workers. This was already budgeted for, already planned for and with SEIU there. Now they are accepting it. So we'd like to get a recommendation to approve. Speaker 4: Thank you, Ms.. Cantrell. Any public comment on this? Speaker 8: And control. I have no problem with the. They're the refuge workers getting more money. I do have a question about the recycling. Money that we're getting. I understand that many of the recycling places are closing so that I'm wondering about the city continuing there to. Continuing collecting both recyclables and trash. Speaker 4: Ms.. Kantrowitz stick to the basic bargaining contract, if possible. Speaker 8: Okay. I well, I guess I'm not going to get an answer on that, so I will. Speaker 4: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. And Vice Mayor. Sure. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you very much. And first of all, I can say a few things about the refugee union, because I want to thank the men's and women of the refugee bargaining unit for their hard work and dedication to the city. You know, these are people who are filling the bulk of the homeless and the impact on the streets and parks. They are people who we call the cleanup and the encampment who pick up, you know, the matches and the TV. It is a job that we few a few of us would want to do. But every day they risk injuries and disease, but they do it in the heart of the summer and the rain and the cold winter. If you talk to them as I do, they will tell you they do it because they are proud. The pride because the pride of the city of Long Beach and proud to keep our city clean and sanitary. We owe them so much more than we are proven today. But it is a start. And hopefully as we move through the our negotiations, we can offer them more as a as a way of expressing our gratitude to them. And I ask for your support. Thank you very much, Mayor. Speaker 4: Thank you, Vice Mayor. With that, there is a motion. A second. Please cast your votes.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution approving the amendments to the current terms and conditions for the Refuse Basic Bargaining Unit. (Citywide)

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Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much. And with that, we have a motion in a second. Please cast your votes. Ocean carries out in 16. Speaker 0: Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code regarding City Council meetings red and adopted as red strike. Speaker 4: Thank you. This is the second reading, Mr. Goodhue. Ms.. Cantrell, a mislead. Please come forward. Speaker 1: Grand Prix P2. It was in tone earlier. We should have. We should go back to work. Would go back to what worked so well for so long. Period. No limitations on you. We have the three minute time limit, which is 3 minutes should be enough. Whether it be a consent item. Or an irregular agenda. But don't mess with that. If you don't like that, consider another. Occupation. Part time job. Period. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Miss Lee, please. I'm sorry. Miss Control's next. Speaker 8: And Cantrell. I have a lot of problems with this ordinance, starting with the fact that I think there's been a number of violations of the Brown Act. Start looking at. The description of what this ordinance is about. Is very vague and no one reading this would know all the changes that you are making tonight. Changes requiring people to sign up before an item is heard. Changes that if there's more than ten speakers, we only get 90 seconds. It even has changes for you. 5 minutes on an item, but you get to talk multiple times, whereas the public does not. The worst part of the violation is that you started implementing this. Three weeks ago. We were required to fill out the cards. Before. The item was written. That's why I have signed up for every item tonight. I don't know whether I'm going to want to speak on an item until I hear usually of our staff report. You aren't doing much of that tonight. But we should not have to sign up before we've heard what the item is going to be about. If your council meetings are too long and I agree they are. Put back the fourth Tuesday of the month and have a council meeting then. I think you can amend this. Or nets to make everyone a little happier. And I suggest that if there's a lot of people signed up to speak, the first ten get 3 minutes. The next ones get 2 minutes. Or if there's a lot of people towards the end, you could cut it down to 90 seconds. When people start repeating themselves. I understand. But this 90 seconds, especially last week to speak on all of the budget in 90 seconds was impossible and I think a violation of the Brown Act. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you, Miss Lee. Speaker 8: I also oppose the streamlining ordinance as written. I would also suggest 3 minutes be given to the first ten people and then restricted to 2 minutes after ten speakers. But after people take the time to drive all the way down here, it's because they are passionate about that subject and you owe it to them to listen to what they have to say. And 2 minutes is not too much. Last week I attended to speak on on the agenda item about the water rate increase. It was item 110, one, dash ten. There were four people here to speak on it, although like about 20 people had showed up at the water board. I was about. It was about the budget. There were like 16 different topics listed under line item one and then the interests of streamlining. The mayor lumped all 16 under one and gave each person 90 seconds. This ordinance had not been voted on and passed. Additionally, the Council was not asked to restrict their speaking time, which according to the same ordinance, proposed ordinance should have been 5 minutes or less. This is clearly an attempt at restricting Democratic free speech by the public, and I don't intend to drop this. I don't know what I have to do to turn it in, but I don't intend to stop. I think this is wrong. Speaker 4: Thank you, Miss Lee. We have the first and second reading. Vice Mayor Andrews. Any comments? No concern. Response? Any comments? Okay. Councilor Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, you know, and supportive in in in general of of doing this. But I do want to say that I consider this still a test run and we need to be open to making adjustments as needed. And so I'm just looking to Mr. Modack or whoever is monitoring this. We have an opportunity to check in six months, see how it's going and if there needs to be some adjustments. You know, from one standpoint, I understand making meetings more efficient, but from the other standpoint, I know it's a big shift. The sign up for each card is a big shift for some folks. And I want to make sure we are getting some kind of feedback and not diminishing folks participation in the meetings. Speaker 5: Certainly these are your roles, so we can certainly look at those and six months or nine months or a year in terms of the sign ups that actually is going to be continuing to change as we get technology, it'll be a little bit easier. So we're currently looking at some technology solutions, but we can certainly come back and change this. This is an ordinance, but it's not set in stone. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 4: Customer Pierce. Speaker 7: Thank you. I also wanted to check in and just what's the notification in the hallway as to what the rules are so that people know that typically don't come to meetings, that they need to sign up for each item. Speaker 5: If I can have the city clerk speak to that, we did put some messaging out so that people know what they need to do when they get here. Speaker 0: There's no notification in the hallway. We've had an employee in the hallway handing out cards and not talking to people when they enter the council chambers. We've also put something up on our Link Elbe to notify people of the change and put it out there on the agendas as well. Speaker 4: Maybe Madam Kroger we could do also, I think would be helpful is where we have the table out. If we could have some visible signage as to what the procedure is so that folks, it's very clear and I think we appreciate the staff member as well. If it came can be having the signage would be great as well. Speaker 0: Fantastic. We'll do that. That would be great. Speaker 7: And then just also to clarify, at any given time, we can suspend part of that if it's one of those heated nights. That's what I recall the mayor saying. Speaker 0: Before. Speaker 4: Council can always suspend the rules. That would be up to majority of the body. Mr.. Speaker 5: That's correct. The first line of this ordinance is this is your order of business that you're adopting this evening. However, you may waive that with the consent of council at that meeting that night, you don't have to come back and amend the ordinance. So if there was a specific item you wanted to address. Yes. Speaker 7: Thank you so very much for answering those questions. Speaker 4: Please cast your votes.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending and restating Section 2.03.040 and Section 2.03.060, all regarding City Council Meetings, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 4: Thank you. Item 17. Speaker 0: Report from Financial Management Recommendation to declare ordinance adopting an amendment relating to the Depart Mental Organization of the City of Long Beach. Red and adopted as red. Speaker 4: Please. This is basically to enshrine what was done last or last meeting or with the budget. And so is there any there's public comment. I'll take first, Mr. Goodhew and then Ms.. Control. It's good to hear any public comments. Speaker 1: Yes. The comment is. There is no specific. That I hear. To comment on. And this is why this goes to the issue of we need to go back to what really works. I was just I signed up earlier today, too, for an open public comment. And I was just told. Essentially that's gone because I spoke before. These are too confusing you've got to put out. If you're going to list these all down, Mr. Goodman, this is what these subjects are. Speaker 4: Thank you. This is about the budget. So I'm 17. Please. Speaker 1: But it doesn't have. It's about the budget. Yes, but it doesn't have the details, period. That's what you've got to change that. That's the thrust of what has come almost on every single item. And I go back to the other one. I was going to comment on something relative to not reconvening the Council of Trent in order to appoint a new city manager. But that got lost in other. And all the previous stuff that was up here. So we have to go back to what works so well. Before we let Ed let the criminally complicit get in here. And jerk around the agendas. So give that some thought, please. Or again, look for another part time. Occupation. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. Miss Cantrell, please. Speaker 8: Item 17 Recommendation to declare ordinance adopting an amendment to ordinance number c6496 adopted July 5th, 1988, and amended on January 24th, 1989. July 11th. 1989. December 5th. 1989. March 20th. 1990. July 3rd. 1990. September 18. 1990. July 2nd. 1991. July 7th. 1992. July a January 25th. 1993. August 24th, 1995. And on and on. There's 67 more lines of dates, and you finally get to what this is about relating to departmental organization of the city of Long Beach Red and adopted as red. I would like one of you to explain to me what you're voting on. Speaker 4: Make you Miss Cantrell. Vice Mayor Andres. Canterbury Ranga customer Margot. Speaker 7: Yes. I just wanted to thank the community again for this budget. I know that it took many community meetings. I want to highlight and raise up a few things that we were able to accomplish. I think it's amazing that we're going to be able to do some pilot programs with homeless services on the weekends. Homelessness is not a monday through Friday 9 to 5, and the opportunity to be able to have these outreach teams on the weekend is crucial. Through the mayor's recommendation, we're adding a refuge team, a clean team, which will be instrumental in keeping our community clean and safe. A lot of our summer youth programs in partnership with partners of Parks, who was so gracious to bring forward an extra $25,000 to make sure that we had the summer programing and our parks additional library hours. I mean, this really is a robust budget and I appreciate every member of the community who came forward to give their opinion and input. I want to thank each and every one of my colleagues who was very thoughtful about the things that they advocated for and against. And I want to thank the staff for their excellent work throughout the year, ensuring that we start from a place of fiscal responsibility. And I really, really also appreciate Mr. John GROSS and grace for their continued commitment to the fiscal policies that keep this city sound. So thank you very much to my colleagues for voting on those very fiscally prudent policies. And then thank you for our budget team for always ensuring that we're we're keeping those in mind. And with that, I asked my colleagues support on this very important item that has a lot of stuff in it. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance adopting an amendment to Ordinance No. C-6496, adopted July 5, 1988, and amended on January 24, 1989, July 11, 1989, December 5, 1989, March 20, 1990, July 3, 1990, September 18, 1990, July 2, 1991, July 7, 1992, January 26, 1993, August 24, 1993, June 28, 1994, July 18, 1995, November 28, 1995, October 1, 1996, March 25, 1997, October 7, 1997, October 27, 1998, April 20, 1999, October 19, 1999, October 17, 2000, October 30, 2001, March 19, 2002, November 26, 2002, January 6, 2004, February 8, 2005, November 1, 2005, December 5, 2006, March 20, 2007, May 22, 2007, December 18, 2007, July 15, 2008, September 21, 2010, September 13, 2011, September 11, 2012, October 3, 2013, and September 9, 2014, September 22, 2015, September 20, 2016, September 12, 2017, and September 11, 2018, relating to departmental organization of the City of Long Beach, read and adopted as read. (A-6)

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Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 4: Thank you. And we have three budget votes tonight. That was the first. The second is item 18. Speaker 0: Report from Financial Management Recommendation or clear ordinance approving resolution, establishing the rates and charges for water and sewer service and declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect on October 1st, 2019. Read and adopted as read. Speaker 4: Thank you, Ms.. Control. Mislead. Please come forward. Speaker 8: Thank you, Councilmember Mongo for clarifying because the word budget was not mentioned in that ordinance. 1718 does mention that this has to do with the water rates. And again, I think you have there are a number of violations of the Constitution and the Brown Act with passing this. The public did have a chance to register their protests and 1443 people did that. However, we find out that a lot of people didn't even get a notice. So that is a violation. The count was supposed to have been done by an independent person counting this. And that was not done. It was counted by the secretary for the water board and one of the deputy district attorneys who certainly has some skin in this game because. What you're doing is transferring $25 million from the water department. In 2019 and 2022, the general fund. And this is unconstitutional. Even though you can't measure m past, you can't change. The state constitution, which says a public utility is a nonprofit. You can't have surpluses. You can use the. Right. So that you collect the money that you collect for buying water, for fixing pipes, for even buying smart meters. But you can't have a surplus of $12 million a year and give it to the general fund. Again. I asked for an amendment of this. If you need money in the general fund or money to. If the $25 million that you're transferring to the general fund stays in the water department, and if it's not enough to buy the new smart meters or whatever they need, then I would suggest a rate increase of 2% to cover that. Don't take money out of the water department illegally. Speaker 4: Thank you, Miss Cantrell. Miss Lee, please. Speaker 8: So this is my speech from last week that I didn't realize was being cut in half as I stood here and got cut off half way. Taking money from the poor is wrong, and that's what we're doing with this water rate increase. You're not just hitting on the homeowners here. You're hitting on people who don't have it. You're going to get little kids who don't get a pair of shoes this month and their toes are crammed in because they don't have the money. Because you took it. You're going to take a box of cereal away from someone every month, and that's food for their children. So this is morally wrong. But moving on from that, before you do the final approval of the emergency ordinance in support of the water rate increase, you should look into whether the transfer of money from the water department to the General Fund violates the city charter. I'm not sure you can have surplus funds and at the same time have a budget shortfall. Those two things are in direct opposition water funds being held to transfer to the city general fund totaled $25 million for budget years 2019 and 2020, which, according to the budget charts posted online, amounts to about 10% of the annual water department budget. Additionally, the charter requires validation of the annual gross revenues of the water works by an external audit before making the transfer to the general fund. And I assume that would mean waiting till at least the care for audit has been done. I provide a detailed back up documentation on those numbers and on the city charter. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. There is a motion, a second council on Mango. Any comments? Vice managers? Any comments? Please cast your votes.

Emergency Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance approving Resolution No. WD-1413, a resolution of the City of Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners establishing the rates and charges to be charged for water and sewer service and declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2019, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-19-0018). (A-10)

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Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 4: Item 19, please. Final budget vote. Speaker 0: For financial management a recommendation to declare ordinance approving in adopting the official budget of the city of Long Beach for the fiscal year 2019 2020, declaring the urgency thereof and providing that this ordinance shall take effect on October 1st, 2019. Read and adopted as read. Speaker 4: Mr. Goodhue and Ms.. Control. Mr. Goodhue, any comments? Mr.. Good to hear any comments. Please come forward. Speaker 1: I would hold off approving any any budget factor. Until we decide. Not to try to reconvene the Council of Trent. In approving. A new city manager. The City manager that is in queue and will hopefully be formally confirmed. Is with us now. And hopefully will be in the future. If we have the right people sitting in the right place. Period. It makes no sense to do what is a reference tantamount to reconvening the Council of Trent. Period. It's a waste of time and a waste of money if you can't see that now, again, I would suggest. Particularly those who are criminally complicit in going to jail to resign now. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. This mango. I'm sorry, Miss Cantrell. No. Okay. Let me just. Before we vote, I just want to, first of all, just thank the staff for this amazing, amazing work. I know we were pretty late last time when we adopted the budget. And I do want to thank the entire finance team, particularly Mr. GROSS and Ms.. Yoon, for their work. And I want to also thank the work of the council. I want to personally thank the BFC Chair Mango and also Members Pryce and Austin and the entire body for their work in the many meetings that were hosted across the city. I believe there were over ten community meetings that happened and those took a lot of work by both council staff as well as city staff to organize. And I just want to thank everyone that's been involved with those. I also want us to say that, again, the Council is adopting a budget that is responsible. It's balanced. We continue to maintain our Double A credit rating, which is an independent review of how well this body continues to manage its finances. And we continue to, I believe, live within our means while also making important investments as they relate to public safety, our public infrastructure and programs that matter to our community within our parks and our community centers. The budget, also, thanks to the work and creative work of the Council and the BFC, is looking to really bring additional support and needed attention to things that happen in our community that are unexpected, like our firehouse challenge out in Bixby Knolls and in the Crown Heights area, as well as other needs as they relate to policing that happen throughout the year. And so I just want to thank everyone for their hard work, and we look forward to the year ahead. And with that, please, members cast their votes.

Emergency Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance approving and adopting the official budget of the City of Long Beach for the Fiscal Year 2019-2020, creating and establishing the funds of the Municipal Government of the City of Long Beach and appropriating money to and authorizing expenditures from said funds for said fiscal year; declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2019, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-19-0020). (A-16)

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LongBeachCC_09102019_19-0802

Speaker 0: Ocean carries. Speaker 4: Thank you. And now we will be doing item 20, please, which is a report. I know we pushed back a couple of weeks because of the time, but I'm going to have to turn it over to Mr. Modica to introduce and we'll hear this report. Speaker 5: Thank you very much. This isn't a request that came from the Budget Oversight Committee as part of their diligence during the budget season. They really look at a number of different things, including our liabilities, and they ask that this get presented to the city council. So with that, I will turn it over to Grayson to go through the presentation. Speaker 7: Great. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, Mayor and members of the city council. As Tom mentioned tonight, I will be providing a presentation on CalPERS. This was a presentation provided to the Budget Oversight Committee on July 23rd and was requested by the PSC to be presented to the full City Council. Over the past few years, CalPERS has implemented several changes to its investment strategy, an expected return designed to address the plan's unfunded liabilities and to ensure its long term fiscal sustainability. First, CalPERS adopted changes to its amortization and rate smoothing policy, which began to impact our FY 16 budget. The new rate smoothing approach is intended to eliminate the city's unfunded liability. Back then, it was in 30 years, but also exposes the city to a higher volatility in annual costs. Second, CalPERS also changed the demographic assumptions which began to impact the F.B.I. 17 budget assumptions such as mortality reflected a population that is living longer and thus collecting pension benefits over longer periods of time. Third, the board adopted a new risk mitigation strategy, which was originally slated to impact the FY18 budget. The board felt that their current investment strategy was too volatile with too much risk. So the risk mitigation strategy was implemented to slowly, over time, make the city's investment mix more conservative. Then in December 2016, CalPERS voted to lower the actuarial assumed investment rate, also known as the discount rate from the current 7.5% to 7% over three years. With the first year impacting our FY19 rates, this was done to reflect the expectation of the lower rate of returns over time. Predicted by CalPERS investment advisors for the calculation impacting our Fy20 budget. The discount rate assumption was lowered to 7.25%. The full impact of this change will be realized in Fy21 when the discount rate drops to 7%. At this time, the risk mitigation strategy was put on hold until the end of the three year period, lowering the discount rate and is slated to start back up for FY 21. Finally, most recently in 2018, CalPERS adopted changes to their amortization policy. Currently, investment gains or losses are amortized over 30 years, but this new change will shorten that period to 20 years and will start to impact our fy22 rates. The projections you see in this presentation and also included in the FY 20 adopted budget now factors in all of these changes. To address the challenge of rising pension costs. Several pension reform initiatives have been implemented both by the city and the state. Without these proactive initiatives, the city situation would have been much worse. In 2006, the city lowered the benefit formula for miscellaneous employees, also through negotiations and with the partnership of our bargaining units. By 514, all employees began paying their full employee contribution rate, which had previously been partly subsidized by the city. Then Peprah was passed by the state, which implemented new benefit formulas and new contribution requirements for employees hired on or after January 1st, 2013. Then in FY14, the city created and funded the CalPERS Stabilization Fund. This fund was an innovative approach to addressing some of the challenges we had with budget planning. This fund, however, has been discontinued as the most recent risk mitigation approach adopted by CalPERS PERS has made it unlikely that this fund will be replenished in the way that it was originally envisioned. And lastly, the city made a decision to make an early payment of the unfunded liability portion for FY 18. This was done again for the FY19 and FY 20 budgets. The FY 20 adopted budget now is estimated to save approximately 1.7 million to the general fund and 2.8 million all funds. All of these changes made by CalPERS put the city on a path to pay down its unfunded liability and strengthens the long term sustainability of the fund. However, this has also meant significant cost increases for the city over the past few years. Our pension cost increases in the general fund has been a significant cost driver. The good news is, while the costs are expected to continue to increase, the rate of growth is expected to slow and then peak in FY 31 and then start to actually decrease slowly thereafter. This table reflects the employer contribution rate as a percentage of payroll for safety and miscellaneous employees. As you can see, the rates are anticipated to grow until 531. Pension costs at these levels will be and has been a challenge to fund. But this is putting us on the right track towards paying down our unfunded liabilities and being in a better fiscal position to meet our obligations. And as mentioned before, after 531, our costs are projected to go down. Investment returns have an impact on the pension costs. So an important point to recognize is that even when investment returns are good, with all of the changes that CalPERS has made, our costs will still be expected to increase. Additionally, in the years beyond Fy21, because of the new risk mitigation methodology adopted by CalPERS, any significant gains the city experiences will partially be used to further lower the investment mix to be less risky by lowering the assumed rate of return rather than reflecting reduced costs for the city. Pension costs are not our only unfunded liability. There are three other major employer related unfunded liabilities, including retiree sick leave to pay retiree health insurance premiums, retiree health insurance subsidies and workers compensation. The city currently has 1.4 billion in these unfunded liabilities summarized in the table. Unfunded liabilities are cost for services already delivered but not paid for in full. The principal causes are generally lower than expected investment earnings on system assets, benefit enhancements that were made retroactive, and underfunding the amounts of the unfunded liabilities will vary from year to year based on these factors. For pension, the city will be again on track to pay off the unfunded pension liability. Now, in approximately 25 years for the miscellaneous plan, it is 76.4% funded and for the safety plan, it is 80.7% unfunded. The city with the support and leadership of the Mayor and City Council has worked hard over the past few years to implement strong financial policies and strategies to address these unfunded liabilities. We will continue to look for cost control strategies, explore ways to increase pension funding, and continue to adhere to strong financial policies that will keep us on track with recognizing and addressing our unfunded liabilities. And lastly, before I close, I wanted to address some common misperceptions regarding the city's pension plan that was requested by the BBC. One misperception is that pension benefit formulas continue to be very high to employees with no change or no reform that has been done. The reality is, with the state pension reform benefit, plans were also significantly reduced for new employees, and contributions that they are required to pay has increased. The miscellaneous formula is 2% at 62 for Pepper employees, and the safety formula is 2.7 at 57. As more employees become pepper, employees cost to the city will continue to decrease. Another misperception is that pension costs are increasing again, because benefits are increasing. And I just want to reiterate that pension benefits have not increased and rather decreased for new employees, and pension costs are increasing because we are working to pay down our unfunded liabilities and because of the various changes implemented by CalPERS as described in this presentation. Another misperception is that employees pay nothing towards their pension. The reality is employees pay a contribution rate required by CalPERS for classic employees safety, pay 9% of their principal wage, and miscellaneous employees pay 8% of the principal wage. And after the state reform that took effect in 2013, Peprah employees pay 50% of the normal cost rate for safety employees. That's currently 12% of their principal wage. And for miscellaneous, that's 6.5% of their principal wage. And lastly, another misperception is that the city will be paying these higher pension costs forever with no solution or end in sight. And while it is true that costs have been high, as noted in the presentation, we are on a path to pay down our unfunded liabilities. And also we're already seeing this, but the rate of increase is starting to slow down again. We are expected to peak around 531 and then it is anticipated that the cost will decrease after that. That concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions. Speaker 4: Thank you, Miss Yoon. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 7: Thank you. Oh, I want to thank our PSC chair, Stacy Mango for allowing us to have this presentation. Initially at BFC, we all felt it was very important to have this topic come to the full council. I think all three of us spoke at length and asked a lot of questions at the BFC meeting but were helpful that our colleagues who did not get that presentation at the time will have the opportunity to ask questions regarding this very substantial issue facing the city tonight. And that's why we felt it was important to bring it to your attention. As I said during the BFC meeting, and as I'll repeat again today, I believe that our pension liabilities are. Of huge concern. We're certainly not alone. There are many other municipalities that have to address the unfunded liabilities that are attributable to pensions in in the coming years. But as many of you will know, that these numbers continue to change for the city. And really, we have limited control in terms of what we are able to do in terms of managing the payback options and the impacts to the city. Every time CalPERS makes an adjustment, it impacts really what our projections look like and what the projections for our overall budget looks like for, in this case, decades to come. So we talked at the PSC meeting about the possibility of the city paying more into our unfunded liabilities so that we can get ourselves to a place where we're, we're. Looking more stable earlier than in the 2040 era, because it wasn't too long ago that we were looking at being more stable in the 2025 to 2030 era. So as a result of the changes that CalPERS has made, of course, now we're looking at liabilities that are really going to be taxing us as a city into the 2040 era. I think this our pension obligations should be at the forefront of every conversation we have regarding the budget. This is an absolute burden for the city as it is for many cities. We're certainly not alone and in fact, we've done more and more aggressively than many cities have. You know, we we we were the first to take pension reform to a different level, especially in the area of law enforcement and public safety. We were the first to really set some trends in regards to employee pick ups and the rates that we were looking at in terms of our pension obligation. Having said that, we find ourselves in a position now where our budget, our annual budget can be severely impacted as a result of CalPERS making modifications and changing their calculations. So I, I wanted all of I'm going to stop talking now because I talked at length about this at BMC, and I'm sure you can go back and watch it if you're interested in hearing what some of my questions were. But I wanted to make sure that my council colleagues had an opportunity to ask questions and understand really the reality of this issue. It's a significant issue. And I think if we don't have this on the forefront of our minds in our budgeting, the commitments that we have similar to the commitments that you would have in a family mortgage or other family expense, will overtake our ability to fund some of the necessities that we have in the city. So with that, I defer to my colleagues to engage Yoon in this presentation, and thank you, Ms.. Ewan, for bringing it back, and thank you for coming back on multiple Tuesdays, because I know this is such an important topic. I wanted us all to be awake and alert when we're hearing the presentation because I think like many other cities, it really is the topic of the decade. So thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 7: Thank you. I want to thank the city staff for this presentation. I think that page eight really sums it up. I think it's important important for us to know all of our unfunded liabilities, not just the pension liability, but the the complete package of what we are responsible for providing, whether this council or previous councils committed to it. The city had made a commitment. So I think it's important that we know and understand what those look like. I think it's a broader conversation about how we handle it. I've had discussions at length with our budget division and there are cities who have made investments of buying down that debt sooner, only to see a downturn in the economy. And then they're thought to have made a terrible mistake. Other cities who try to buy down that debt sooner and experience a boom in the economy and are thought to be brilliant. And really timing has more to do with the decision outcome than the actual decision of investing in itself. And so. I think that we need to be prudent. I think we need to recognize that we have a commitment with an organization where the decisions that they make are really influencing us. So we need to, as an elected body, focus on and pay attention to the economy, the returns we're getting as a system, and then the influencers of that system and the policy by which they make investments on behalf of our employees. It is of the utmost importance that their focus remain on investment returns because it is us at the city level that get the opportunity to focus on programs and policies that improve the entirety of our region. And yet. Those policies and end programs would potentially need to be cut because of investment strategies at a higher level that could could impact us. And so I think that we need to keep this in mind, perhaps as a part of our state legislation discussion or state legislation committee. Perhaps that's the appropriate place for us to follow that legislation as we move forward and also follow the PERS board, which is not technically a legislation but another state entity. So thank you for my colleagues on the Council for their continued efforts to know and understand what liabilities we have ahead of us and continue to work hand in hand with our labor partners to solve these important issues. Speaker 4: Thank you. Controversy for now. Speaker 10: Thank you. And thanks for the report, Ms.. Yoon. Great job. I want to follow up on what actually both my colleagues said. First, the point about the changing calculations are miscalculations. I think Senate bill is it too 66 just hit the news cycle yesterday. So I won't put you on the spot tonight for a comment. But moving forward, should that bill become law, it'd be nice to have a follow up either to from for Memo or maybe another study session on that in particular. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. There's no public comment on this, but I'm going to go ahead and just add that. Also want to think, I think we're finding Steph has done a really good job of, um, you know, keeping the back myself, keeping the counsel informed about what our entire liability picture looks like. I think it's something that obviously oftentimes the community may not have the complete picture in. And the way, you know, CalPERS impacts us depending on what happens year to year and depending on the markets. I will also say that the state has over the last few years certainly provided a pretty robust framework for for how we we pay back our payments and they've given us additional flexibility as the years move forward. And so I think we appreciate that. And I think that it's important for folks to know that we we make significant payments every year. And and and I think that's something that we will continue to do and we should do. And I think that counts on Mongo is right that a lot of of how our our liability looks is really dependent on on on risk taking and what happens year to year. But I want to just commend you for the plan we have. And the truth is, is that right now we are making these these investments in the future, because those that will see the benefit of us paying down these liabilities over the next ten or 20 years are really going to be the next generation of young people that are in our city that won't have this this level of liability in front of them. And so that those investments can be made directly back into programs in parks and then the things that we love in our city. And so it is the right thing to do and it's also the legally mandated thing to do. It's both those things. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you. It took me a while to hit the button. I was breaking down some of these slides. So on slide nine. And first of all, thank you for this presentation. And it's a big issue. You know, I remember when we accomplished the first pension reform, you know, when Mayor Foster was here and and we learned a lot. But but I think this is a sort of a what you show on these slides. It really shows that the next, you know, 12 years, 11, 12 years are going to be the decisions we make are going to be incredibly important. So I see on the second bullet on page nine in terms of moving forward and says continue to explore ways to increase pension funding further, which reduces cost, how are we working on this strategy now and when can we get some feedback from staff on, you know, I know what our obligations are, but if the idea is we're going to sort of pay in advance, I think the sooner and the more regular regularly we hear about this, the better we can plan and prepare for it. So is there a schedule or cadence that you'll get back to us about some of these ideas that you're exploring? Speaker 7: Certainly. So we do explore different options and work with our consultants and independent consultants on CalPERS as well as the contacts we have at CalPERS themselves. They do have become come out with offering more options that city cities have to potentially pay into a trust or pay down or pay earlier into their unfunded liabilities. There are some potentially unintended consequences with that or risks that the city may not want to take. So that is something we're continuing to explore at this time. That's not something we have recommended. But as we continue to work with our CalPERS partners, that's something we are going to look into and we can report back to city council if things change. Speaker 5: And then the slide councilmember, if I may, talks about pension, but we have other unfunded liabilities as well. And so those strategies might also be a way that we address some of the health care liabilities that are on the books. Long Beach is very fortunate in that we have comparatively very small health care liabilities compared to some cities that offer, for example, lifetime medical. So are not is a lot smaller. But we do need to be thinking about some of those as well. Speaker 2: Sure. Just, you know, when when I anticipate a big bill coming down, you know, there's always where do I get more money and where do I save costs? I see a lot about where do we save costs? But we got to also focus on how do we grow revenue and and intentionally say, hey, if we anticipate through economic development or whatever it is, one of the first things we pay on new revenue isn't the next great idea. It's the tuck away for unfunded liability. So whatever plan we come up with, I love to see an economic development strategy that says we're going to do our best to grow revenue that we can receive and set aside for this. So that's what I'd be looking for as we move forward. Thanks a lot. Speaker 4: Thank you. And with that, we do have a motion in a second to receive and filed this report. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 4: Thank you. With that, we are going to go. I don't see anyone. I don't have a sheet for the second public comment period. No one signed up for it. So with that, let me go to new business. Is there any new business concern we ringa.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a report on the City’s pension costs and trends impacted by changes implemented by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) Board over the past several years. (Citywide)

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LongBeachCC_09032019_19-0827

Speaker 0: We'll hear that after. And so we're going to start with the with the hearing, which is hearing item number one, which is the budget. Speaker 8: So, Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, we have two presentations for you today. The first will be technology and innovation, and the second will be civil service. So with that, I will turn it to Leah Ericsson, our director of technology and Innovation. Speaker 3: Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to present the technology and innovation departmental budget for fiscal year 20. First, the Technology and Innovation Department takes pride in its mission of providing a customer focused environment that integrates people, process and technology to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of city services. Our dedicated to IT employees deliver our core services that you can see here on this slide. As for accomplishments, the Technology and Innovation Department had a big year. My team worked really hard planning and implementing a new all the new technology for the Civic Center, which was a monumental undertaking that involved countless hours of tied staff, time and effort. These efforts are still ongoing as we stabilize the technology in the new building. In addition to the Civic Center, we are also completing a two year project to replace our aging public safety dispatch systems and public safety radios. The Department is also focusing on expanding the technology, infrastructure and communication networks to help support key projects such as Abbey Coast. Our Enterprise Document Management System and a new customer relationship management system, as well as body worn cameras. And we're also continuing to expand our fiber optic network to improve connectivity to additional city facility facilities. And the department has upgraded our phone infrastructure, including the establishment of a new E911 one locator system with city within city facilities. As part of the Council's priority to improve transparency and open government, we worked with financial management and public works to develop an interactive measure, a mapping portico that shows residents the infrastructure improvement projects funded by Measure A. We also improve access to information by migrating additional city websites, including those of development services and library to our new platform, which involves streamlined design and improved usability. We initiated the co-creation of a digital inclusion roadmap by working with community stakeholders, along with the city's Technology and Innovation Commission, who did an extensive survey and analysis with recommendations to advance digital inclusion in Long Beach. Our work on the Digital Inclusion Initiative led to the city's designation as a digital inclusion trailblazer. In addition, the department was ranked a top ten digital city by the Center for Digital Government for the eighth consecutive year. This is a tremendous accomplishment for the department and the city. We are also we also completed our coast phase one with the go live of Munis Financials in April. And we're still in the stabilization phase for that portion of the project. We are also continuingly continuing to develop and implement the planning of Elbe Coast phase two, which is h.r. And payroll and three budget. This is an ongoing multiyear effort that is required to operationalize our new modern ERP system and migrate off of our old mainframe based systems. We began the EDI project with local vendor laser fish to enhance operational efficiencies by automating business processes and reducing paper files and storage. And in partnership with development services, we created a series of code enforcement rhetoric reports. We also launched a citywide data committee to facilitate a data informed culture that focuses on using analytical tools and decision making in partnership with the Office of Civic Innovation. Now moving on to our FY 20 budget, the Technology and Innovation Department proposed budget is $57 million and includes and supports 173 full time equivalent employees. 99% of our services are funded through the General Services Fund Group, which is supported by all city departments. RFI 20. Some of the notable changes to the department's budget includes the transfer of both, both budget and positions and the Financial Management Department to the new Enterprise Information Services Bureau in our department, which also includes an increase in budget positions all to support our new munis system. In addition, there's a new systems technician position to support mobile devices for the new body worn camera program and assist with AB 953 compliance. The addition of two business system specialist positions to support the increasing technology needs in the Fleet Services Bureau and the Public Works Environmental Services Bureau. The addition of the communications specialist position and funding for the production and coordination of artistic, cultural and educational video programing with a focus in the new civic center. And finally, one time funding to expand the data storage capacity in City Hall and to improve obsolete technology, infrastructure and existing city facilities. Now to discuss some challenges and opportunities due to the intense focus on the new civic center and all B Coast Phase one implementation. Over the last couple of years, TIDE has accumulated a significant backlog of other critical technology projects that we will be addressing in the future. And we are not done with lbe coast. These two and three continues to require a tremendous involvement and focus of staff from both technology and innovation, financial management and h.r. Along with all operating departments. This has to remain the city's top technology project priority. It continues to be a challenge to balance the significant demands from city departments for technology systems and projects, along with the current staffing levels and other critical technology infrastructure priorities. In Fy20. We will also be working extensively to perform ongoing cybersecurity assessments, as well as creating a roadmap to better monitor and respond to the increasing number of cybersecurity threats and to address data security. Legislative mandates. Fortunately, there are also tremendous opportunities to continue to implement new technology that enables the city to work more efficiently and for residents to engage more easily with their city. So for example, we are implementing the one number project to make it easier for residents and business owners to access city services via the phone. In addition, we are also implementing the CRM system as a modern way for residents and businesses to get their issues identified, tracked and addressed. It's a focus of our department to pursue innovative approaches and partnerships to enhance digital inclusion. That's always a priority for the department to continue implementing technology solutions to increase efficiency and keep city costs low. Thank you for your ongoing support of the Technology and Innovation Department's projects. We look forward to continuing to work together to find innovative solutions. I'll end with some beauty shots of technology in our new civic center and library. This concludes our presentation, and we're ready to answer any questions you may have. At the end after civil service gives their presentation. Speaker 0: We're going to go into the Civil Service presentation, and I know we have first an introduction before we begin the actual budget. So I'm going to have the President of our Civil Service Commission, Suzanna Gonzales. Edmund, make an introduction. Speaker 3: So can you guys hear me? Speaker 0: Yes. Now, do you mind also just shifting the podium. Speaker 4: Because I have a belly. Speaker 0: There we go. Speaker 4: Sorry. Good evening, everyone. Speaker 0: Beautiful baby. Coming? Speaker 4: Yes, my little girl. Good evening, everyone. Like the mayor said, my name is Susana Gonzalez, Edmond. I'm the new. Speaker 3: President of the Civil Service Commission. And with me is a new vice president, Heather Morrison, where thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to make this presentation. We wanted to formally introduced to everyone our new executive director. She's not new to Long Beach, but we wanted to. Speaker 4: Give a formal introduction to Christina Pichardo, 20. Speaker 3: We are very excited to have her on board. We are very excited to be able to. Speaker 4: Initiate my. Speaker 3: Term as president. Speaker 4: To be more engaged and be able to bring more awareness. Speaker 3: About what the Civil Service Commission does. And therefore, she's going to. Speaker 4: Give a brief overview and then go into our budget presentation. Thank you so much and have a great evening. Speaker 3: Thank you. So it's definitely my pleasure to be here tonight. And Susannah said to return to Long Beach. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. What I would like to do is take the honor of presenting our budget for the Civil Service Department for fiscal year 20. I would like to highlight our past, present and our future. And so with the first slide, you will see that there is a little bit of history that I thought would be important to share with the council. The Long Beach Civil Service Commission was established in its first city charter in 1907, so it's been around for a long time. We maintain the rules and regulations to carry out the merit system. We also have a board of five civil service commissioners appointed by the mayor and approved by the city council. Their job is to support the merit system of maintaining a fair and impartial treatment at all times. Civil Service Commission also has a responsibility to enforce and remedy violations of these rules and regulations. So they have their their meetings every other week to do so. They also appoint an executive director that helps carry out the policies through staff that through a professional management staff and finally the can. The Commission endeavors to remain flexible and innovative while ensuring the citizens of Long Beach that the principles of Personnel Administration are followed. So how do we do this? We have our course services. As I mentioned, we uphold merit system through civil service rules and regulations. We identify and attract qualified and diverse applicants. We develop and administer job related employment examinations. We manage eligible lists and certification of qualified candidates. We manage and provide training for city wide applicant tracking system. We adjudicate disciplinary appeals. We manage classified performance evaluation processes. And we implement special projects that promote that promote the innovation of core services. So it's a little bit of all of our divisions. So. On this next slide, you'll see that the numbers tell the story. This is year to date information. We're not even done with our fiscal year. But the numbers, I'm sure we'll we'll reach 20,000. The first number that you see, 19,659. Those are the number of applicants that have come through our system that staff is processing. So fortunately, we have an electronic online system that we're processing these applications, but it's still staff looking at every single application that comes through. The next thing we do is from that from those 19,000, which will probably be 20,000 at the end of this fiscal year, we have 90 we had 99 recruitments that took place in in 2019. From there, we created 202 eligible lists for departments to review and select candidates. Of those 202 lists, the departments had 8915 candidates from which to select. And then finally we have 198 users out in the department that use our electronic applicant tracking system. That makes it easier for them to review candidates and bring people on board. The other ways that we do this as well are we are continuing we continue to expand the use of our social media and our event calendar to promote promote events and employment opportunities. We coordinated attendance at 46 community outreach events and job fairs for public safety personnel, and we provided weekly communication to 847. Constant comment subscribers of current and upcoming job opportunities. So the goal is trying to get the word out so that people then know what jobs are available here in the city of Long Beach. The next slide you'll see, how do we. So what do we do? How do we what do we do with all of these applicants? We have increased the use of technology in the examination and transfer processes and in 2019. And so that made it. We tried new examination processes to manage the volume of applicants. We partnered with the Office of Civic Innovation to analyze the recruit police recruit process. And we're still working to see how we can continue to streamline. We also partnered with the fire department to increase partition participation in the fire engineer exam and came up with what I was able to see on my second day of work as a very innovated, innovative process to encourage more participation. And then finally, all of that takes into consideration that we had to process over 4000 personnel transaction forms and 1700 requisitions to meet departments needs of moving staff through the city lifecycle. So in the graphic on the right, you can see that civil service is kind of at the center. Applicants are coming through to us. We're pushing them out to police and fire as well as other general operating departments. So in our budget, you'll see that we have our proposed budget. 3 million. We have 18. Point seven fte ees. But with our five commissioners we have 23. So notable changes. We? Participated in the fund reduction and it led to the elimination of one of our a vacant personnel assistant position as well as reduction in materials. But the good news is that we also there a proposal for two personnel analyst positions to be added to our budget to strengthen the city's hiring process, which are very, very appreciative of that. So what are the opportunities and challenges? Certainly, again, very, very grateful for the two positions that will allow us to benefit the entire city by creating more recruitments and going out and attracting more people. We also see this as an opportunity to resurrect our proactive recruitment and outreach efforts. Due to some budget cuts. That has been those are some activities that haven't been allowed or haven't been. We haven't had the resources to do and so we really have heard the need for that and we would like to take that on in the coming year. The challenge will be will be a challenge will be our success, because we will have those two added additional positions, because we will be generating more eligible lists. We will also it will also be impact our support staff. So we with the elimination of the one staff person, it's going to be a strain, but we're going to figure out how to how to do it in the coming year. The other challenges that Long Beach Coast activities are also very significant. And so we will be participating in phase two and seeing how we can find the resources to fully support this endeavor because we want it to be successful and support the entire city system with the implementation of Long Beach Coast. So that concludes my presentation and certainly I'm open to any questions if anybody has any questions. Speaker 0: Well, thank you and and welcome. I know we had a chance to speak, but I just want to again welcome you. We're very excited for you to be a part of our city team. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 0: And you've all you've been here in Long Beach already, so we thank you for that. We're going to go ahead and do for the budget hearing is I don't see anyone cued up yet, but I'm going to hear from the public. And so we have members of the public that want to speak. And so I do want to go ahead and begin cuing, cuing, cuing them up. Give me 1/2 and then we'll start the cue. Our first five speakers will be and Cantrell and Christiansen carelessly. Helena Sigel, Horst and Ramon the sixth. So the first five can please come forward. Speaker 4: Good evening. Before I begin, I have a question. Is this am I to speak on all items on number one of the budget? Speaker 0: This is this is open public hearing on the budget. And so you can speak on anything to do with the budget. Speaker 4: Before you have any discussion on it. Is that correct? Speaker 0: That is correct. Speaker 4: I find this quite. Different. There hasn't been a motion made, so I don't know how the public can make a comment. Speaker 0: I don't have any members queued up. And so, please, we're going to do public comment right now on the budget. So please go ahead. Speaker 4: All right. I would like to address item number ten on the budget. The recommendation to declare the ordinance for the reach and charges for water and sewer, and especially I'm concerned about. The third section of this resolution. It states. If any section of the ordinance is for any reason held to be unconstitutional, invalid or void. Such decision shall not affect the validity of the remaining portion. Speaker 0: You can you can continue because I took up some of that time. So please continue this control. Speaker 4: Thank you. And it also states that the Council hereby declares. That if this ordinance. Is passed and is found unconstitutional, irresponsible, irrespective of the fact that one or more sections are unconstitutional, that you would have voted for this anyway. I do not understand how you can vote for something which you know may be unconstitutional. This rate change. Is against Proposition 218, which says you shall not raise the rates for the water. Thank you. As you have done here. And I urge you to uphold the Constitution as you have sworn to do. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Miss Cantrell. Speaker 4: Thank you. Anna Kristensen Oh, yeah. There's a lot of flaws here in the system. Still kinks. I noticed that one of the previous speakers commented on how some of their funding was coming from Measure M of. It seems to me we have a close circle when it comes to the water department at the state level, which says that when you charge people to provide water, that's all you can do with the money is provide water. You can put in more pipes. You can put it in more storage tanks, which apparently we need. I was at the water board meeting and they're in dire need and that's. Speaker 6: Why they're raising our rates. Right. So it's all about the water and providing water. Speaker 4: Which we know is life. Right. It's not a luxury. So the idea that there would be a measure M that could allow for extra money made from charging people for the water that could be spent on no matter what kind of a benefit and budget it in. It's in the budget. Now we're using measure in money to do this. We're using measure and money to do that. It doesn't seem. Possible. I mean, I think it is illegal and I think you were told it was illegal before and then measure em came along and now you're trying to think that you can make it illegal . I would suggest that if you want to make it legal. To charge people for water, but provide other services with that money that you amend the state constitution. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Speaker 4: You live here? It's your constitution. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 4: But the city does not control the state of Washington. Speaker 0: Next speaker is Ms.. Lee, and then Helena's single horse. And then remind. Speaker 6: Hi. I'm here to speak on item ten as well. On the water rate increase in just 45 days time, 1443 water account holders submitted protest letters to the water board opposing this rate increase. Now, that did not meet the impossible number of 45,000 half the account holders to defeat the rate increase. But you all have the ability to do something about that here today. You can see that the public doesn't want this. Last year the rates were raised 7.2%. Today. Today we're talking about adding another 12% just in rough numbers. That's 19.2. And in fact, it's actually over 20% because you're compounding the 7.2% against the base. The city charter allows for 12% of the water revenue gross that is, surplus to department needs to be transferred to the general fund. It is impossible and illogical to have surplus and at the same time have the need for a rate increase because there isn't enough budget to run the utility. I went and looked at the budgets and in 2019 it's listed as 12,318,000, which is 9% of the water budget. And in 2020 it's shown as 12 654,000, and that's 10%. You can actually fix this problem of this big rate increase by giving back the money. Thank you. Speaker 0: Very much. Speaker 6: That is coming to the general fund. Speaker 4: Good afternoon, Mayor. Council members and staff. Thank you. Very therapeutic to lend my support to may your advocacy of this request to include the $100,000 for a phase two park lamp post project in the city. You pride fiscal year 2020 budget. As a 55 year resident of Long Beach and a member of the Heritage Preservation Movement for many year, many of those year, I have seen their great value to the well-being of the city that has been aided by the formation of the many historic districts. Part of their well being is the ambiance, the streetscape, Enterprise Park, Historic District, Neighbors Form Day Committee as part of their neighborhood station to do a pilot project to duplicate the antique style of lamp posts. They I our certain there aren't first street though first street lamp post mustering moved in 1968 by this city, but was stopped by intense opposition from residents, those necessary to a project just kind of on the side street. And the hope is that it's a success, a phase one pilot project and the inclusion of 100,000 apartments, and there's a new one, he said. It will also encourage more residents to contribute towards the removal of an appropriate for you. Gray Goose Gooseneck Street lights to the border starter star yellow lampposts throughout the park the starter districts. Thank you. Thank you for your consideration. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. All right. Speaker 9: Hi. I noticed that one of the line items on the on the budget was artificial turf for Eldorado Park. So I wanted to briefly talk about that. This is stuff that the Parks already knows. So I'm just going to make sure that we're clear. I don't know if Stacy Mongeau knows, but the Ayuso 177 has been subletting the middle soccer field to a group called The Air. So Los Alamitos, this is not allowed and. Speaker 1: Not. Speaker 9: Continuing to do this. Will They've been doing it for three years. So I don't know what what. What the justification could be to to do this to the. The air show has lost about 400 members, 2 to 400 members of its own people. Speaker 1: And so they're using this to make it look like they have bigger numbers. Um. Speaker 9: The residents were. We're wanting to were told that they would be able to get some equity and that they would be able to to speak and on on the anyth anything change they were given. Speaker 1: The the grass and then somehow it changed. Speaker 9: So all we're asking for is just to get a fair shake and to be to be inclusive. This is kind of what I've been part of this organization for, to have a fair shake. Speaker 1: And not have one, one. Speaker 9: One special interest organization run the show. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: All right. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Our next speakers are Marco Pizzo, Rebecca Burningham, Regina Taylor, Tamisha Shay, Angela and Angela Kimball. If you can, please come forward in that order. Marco Pizzo. Rebecca Birmingham. Regina Taylor. Timothy O'Shay and Angela Kimball. Speaker 8: Honorable Mayor and city council members. My name is Marco Pizzo and I live in the Bluff Park Historic. Speaker 1: District located inside the Third District. I am one of the project. Speaker 8: Co-Chairs for the Bluff Park Historic Lamppost Project, and I'm currently the VP of Events and fundraising for the Bluff Park Neighborhood Association since 2017. Five years ago, co-chair Jeff Mallett and I were approached by various historic district leaders, former CHC commission members. Speaker 1: And Long Beach Heritage. Speaker 8: Preservationists of the Year to spearhead bringing back historic lampposts to the Bluff Park Historic District. Our common goal was to remove out of character. Speaker 1: Freeway style, concrete cobra poles and replace them with appropriate vintage lampposts that have only remained on East First Street. We were seeking to make our historic district feel whole and fully connected while honoring the lamppost icon on our. Speaker 8: Neighborhood district logo. Speaker 1: Supported and encouraged by the previous. Speaker 8: Board, our subcommittee spent hours of. Speaker 1: Research closely working with public works and collaborating with the planning department. Public Works unearthed the original. Speaker 8: 1927 drawing of the actual first street lamp post in the City archives. We reached out to the original manufacturer listed on the drawing and with much coordination and. Speaker 1: Even a trip from the Bluff. Speaker 8: Park from Canton. Speaker 1: Ohio. Union metal industries fabricated the new beautiful lampposts using the same design specs as the original. Speaker 8: During the five years, scores of volunteers worked tirelessly to fundraise, and we have raised $80,000 with support from the community. Speaker 1: And the neighborhood. Bluff Park is poised and ready for the second phase, and we are thrilled. Speaker 8: To have city funds being allocated to make this happen. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. We urge you to support. Speaker 1: The project, and together we are bringing lamppost history back. Thank you. Speaker 0: Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Good evening, Mayor Council. My name is Rebecca Birmingham, sometimes known as Reba. Speaker 0: You know, can you put the mic a little bit closer to you? Speaker 6: I can. Last time I was here, I was in court in this building. This is new. I'm a 20 year resident of First Street. I live in Bluff Park. I'm part of Bluff Park Neighborhood Association. I'm here to speak for continued funding for the Historic Lamppost Project. As you can see from the beautiful city council, chambers atmosphere is important. It can make you rise to new levels and make soaring arguments, or it can bring you down. We live in a historic neighborhood. These are antique style lampposts, just like we had in 1927, in the fifties. 57, I think, is when Cobra came about. People were tearing down historic buildings right and left, and they were putting up these freeway type modern things. I truly support it. I've seen phase one. We all got together as a neighborhood. I want to thank Councilmember Price for all her support. The other members, there are a lot of neighbors who would be here today if they could. So I believe $100,000 is what we're talking about. And I strongly urge the council to go forward and allocate that so we can have a phase two. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Reba. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Regina Taylor If this relates to our topic of the day, a Section 1407 charter use of water department funds and the surplus that you want to transfer over to the general fund. I have problems with the charter and that particular item number eight and it says the commission is authorized to fix and the City Council is authorized to approve water and sewer rates in an amount sufficient to recover cost of certain obligations which are spelled out in the charter. And also a new obligation, which is the transfer of funds to the excess funds limited to a 12% amount of the surplus that is not needed to the general fund. Now, the problem I have with that is, do you get to say. You the city, get to say how much surplus you want and then we fix the rates so that that is generated. I have I have a half a minute but I do mean that sincerely that that the wording in that. Chartists says that to me that you're aiming at a certain amount now. You have a 12.3 million that you want for 20. 2019 and a similar amount for 2020. So we had to ensure that you get those amounts once the budgeted. So that might mean raising the rates. If you can't make that proper surplus, in other words, you're generating the surplus that you want. That's the point. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Mr. O'Shane. Speaker 1: Council mayor. Esteemed Council members. I'm here to speak in support of the $100,000 budget line issue for the Love Park Lamppost Project. I'd just like to say that as a past president of the Bluff Park Neighborhood Association, this is one of the projects where a partnership between city and the community is just an example to our surrounding cities. Long Beach is a city with a forward view and is very strong in historic preservation. It brings a great deal of interest from around the country and around the world. We see fantastic tourism in this neighborhood and how this particular neighborhood is one of the most walks and walkable neighborhoods and the removal of the modern lampposts and replacing them with the historic style lampposts only goes to improve that. This is a win win as it beautifies the neighborhood and it bolsters the city's reputation. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And Angela Campbell. Speaker 6: Good evening, Mayor Council. My name is Angela Kimball. And for the record, for the public, I am a plaintiff with Diana Jeans in a lawsuit against the city with respect to measure M, which we've. We find is in violation of Proposition 218 of the state constitution. You cannot pass a measure that violates the state constitution. Um, the con is measure em. It started with a lawsuit to begin with. And Measure M comes about, and you introduce another way to try and take the same money you were taking before that you were found in violation of the state constitution. So here we are again. I am a county unincorporated residents. I am not represented by this this council, by this mayor. We did not have an opportunity to vote on Measure M. The 545 homeowners that live in my community are not represented by this board, but we pay the 12%, the 7.2, the 12% you're now looking for because water and gas is provided in our neighborhood by the city of Long Beach. Measure M was not on our ballot. We were not given an opportunity to even hear about it. You have no jurisdiction to talk outside of your boundaries. So for the record, just so everybody knows, Diana, La Jeans and myself will not see one dime from this lawsuit. We are not here to get money. We are here to get justice and follow the Constitution. Thank you. Speaker 0: Ma'am. Our next speakers are Megan Berry, Jeff, Melanie, Angelica, Mario, Magnolia Rodriguez and Veronica. Via Kenya, Megan Berry, Jeff Mallin, Angelica Maria, Magnolia Rodrigues and Veronica via country. Speaker 6: Hi, my name is Megan Barrie. I am also a resident of Bluff Park and I just kind of wanted to lend my voice to the chorus of my, my neighbors who all are in support of the allocation of $100,000 for the. Can you hear me? Phase two of the Bluff Park Lamppost Project. Unlike Kaleena, I've only been in the neighborhood for about 5 minutes compared to her. I moved in three years ago, in large part because I was really drawn to the historic district. We were originally looking at other neighborhoods and then we just happened to go through Bluff Park and we just loved it and in large part because of its charm and its character. So, so I just strongly urge you guys to all vote on the allocation of those funds. We love our lampposts and they add so much charm and character to our neighborhood. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much next week with this. Speaker 1: Hey, Honorable Mayor Garcia, Vice Mayor Andrews and City Council members. My name is Jeff Mallon and I am also a resident of the Third Council District and live in the Bluff Park Historic District. And I'm here to support the mayor's recommendation as well to fund the second phase of the North Park Historic Lamppost Project. You heard from a number of residents already from our Bluff Park Historic District. And it really warms my heart to see how such a project has brought together such a large number of people throughout the city and even beyond this city for a common cause and a common effort. I wish I could say it was my idea, but it wasn't. The leaders of the neighborhood association back a couple of decades ago had the idea to remove the modern coprolites and replace them with ornamental lampposts, bringing cohesion to the neighborhood. The project didn't go far back then, but there is evidence in the association's files of their efforts. Then we put together a group of people, a group of neighbors and people outside of the neighborhood. We met with many people within public works. I can count about eight or ten of those people looking on the ninth floor, doing research, working with the planning department to identify some early grant opportunities and also uncovered the original drawing from 1927. We got to work with Long Beach Heritage, the Historical Society of Long Beach to do some of our research. But one of the key things we needed to do was reach out to the neighborhood and raise funds, and we did that. So we look forward to further supporting the project with the mayor's proposal. Thank you so much for that. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Thanks. Speaker placing. Angelica. Maria, please come forward. Jack is not here. Okay. Okay. Let me let me just. I'll come back to Angelica then. How about Magnolia? I'll come back. Oh, here we go. So let's let's go back and begin with Angelica muriel. Speaker 10: This is Magnolia. Speaker 0: Oak Magnolia. As you. Speaker 6: Can. Speaker 5: See when. Speaker 10: I started this Sunday. Speaker 3: Mr. Mayor. And everybody. Speaker 10: Is dead. We know Magnolia Rodriguez represents the oldest retail city in the other or you get opposite but Occupy interpreters by reporter facilitated travel. Speaker 3: Good afternoon. My name is Magnolia Rodriguez and I represent my community in the seventh District. Today I'd like to ask you to help the interpreters so that they can facilitate the work. Speaker 10: Separate from their own up that so that they delay interpretation. Yep. I am on monitoring at E. They came for my support, our project, but I said my interpretation. Speaker 3: If you could have a person that's in charge of the interpretation and that person could monitor and see what way they could help to make sure that the interpretation is more comfortable. Speaker 10: They'll be over into the Agosto estate. Well, no interpreters. No interpreter. Yes, they are not. We must de la Junta, since everybody else goes to the location below. Speaker 3: And in the meeting on the 20th of August, one of the interpreters wasn't able to interpret everything that was being said, and we left without knowing some things that had been said. Speaker 10: You know, I meant the people who are caring for Michael Caine portrayal in the Iowa oil gas, gas earning medium and really the almighty consumidor. Speaker 3: And again, I'd like to also ask for any information that comes to me in the mail and my bills, whether it be on water, anything that it be in my language, in the consumers language. Speaker 10: But it's always very most doses mean. But I said we show the interpretation. Speaker 3: And so we're asking for $200,000 for interpretation services. Speaker 10: No songs sufficiently lost in simulcasting over. Speaker 3: The 15,000 that is being offered isn't enough. Speaker 10: But on that common design, can we be better? It's a very diverse community. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Yes. Yes, it is. Is Angelica maria? No. Oh, yes, she is. Let me have as Angelica is coming back. Is Veronica here? Come on. Come forward. Right. Speaker 10: Feel my body. I'm bringing. Speaker 3: Them. No. Sorry. We're getting a little feedback. Speaker 4: Okay. Okay. Speaker 10: I'll tell you, when I started this, I mean, I'm gonna be one of these three third keeper available and see that the travel tourism players policy that this bonnievale completo cuando Jamal Departamento de la Ciudad Para Servicios must guarantee you Madeleine was through the Obama Instagram if you could that in etc. Servicios Vesicles was studying for miles a local gobierno local espacio. But as the critical and critical issue that occupied travel, tourism, players policy or there is still going to essay what area and playoff scope within that I will see it is then disperse disponibles when those important instead familiar recitals contrary information, but the mentors in particular Occupy scholars without employer travel tourist particulars travel tourist plans that necessitate as a lot resident. This common included travel thought industries mission assistance contest econo said about swarm as this process necessity almost all thought are less ideas and encompasses reasoning budget a humanist your study mental effort that is lacking but a handful of entry are also lateral to on this account that for whatever embodies because on this body system must be the local issue that authorities although let us barrel interpretation neutral to on the calida Cinquanta will not let us but organization as a confidence. I could put them from EAP in some scholars can say meanwhile are discussed herein but internal mentors no set insufficient this grasp. Speaker 3: Yes good evening my name is Veronica being via can you and I live in the eighth district. I'm here to talk about the need for translators employed by the city who are available on a full time basis. When I've called city departments for services. It's not guaranteed that someone will answer in our language. This creates difficulty in being offered basic services or staying informed of all the local government is doing. This is why I think the city needs to employ its own translators. This would help ensure that the city employees who can translate are available when they're needed and are knowledgeable about rules, laws and other information needed for particular city departments. We need the city to employ translators so that the translators can serve the needs of us as residents. This includes having translation, including transmissions of these meetings and knowing different ways of expressing a particular idea. We need translators who can express ideas as they would be expressed in multiple regions. I've experienced the last I've experienced that the last of this here on August 20th, a translator at the meeting. The translation at the meeting was cut off at certain points. This is why we're asking the city to allocate $200,000 for the interpretation and quality translation, as well as $50,000 for a trusted organization that can promote this policy. We believe that the $15,000 that have been proposed for trainings are not enough. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 10: Okay. I'd like to get this done. Speaker 3: But I think in our lives. Okay. Okay. Speaker 1: I like the standard name. Speaker 10: All I want is that it is in Cumbria. We want to at owner. Speaker 3: Good evening. My name is Angelica Maria. I live in the first district. Speaker 10: You are a keeper of the land as I see that. Get your madre E just by that as the name was. But I didn't see this. Speaker 3: And I'm here today to speak about the need that I have as a mother and many parents have that documents be translated. Speaker 10: And later of the work on the scene also will e and also focus yes look at the make up of that or see Abby up on another. Yeah am able to see your body are you there. Speaker 3: And the other day I'm going to give you a small example. My neighbor got a bill. She didn't know if she had already paid that or if it had to be paid. And she called me so that I could explain it to her. Speaker 10: Just as these classes are here, the English battle noise of and then they don't not oxygen correct that they look at your boiler they say hello are you that unless business. Speaker 3: And I've taken some classes in school in English but it's not enough to be able to know everything or to help people. Speaker 10: If those I is doing well as lost good momentum. You know those Ratana that traders it is meant to get into soon as I see that is a problem you start being control as I look at the anarchist that again as you there. Speaker 3: And so the two of us for like 20 minutes were trying to figure out trying to translate this document to know if that she needed to pay it so that she could be okay with all of the rules in the city. Speaker 10: E labor that you're not super inland and the dump worker. Yeah okay. I took a paragraph literally Sierra see locate and we'll get in yet Iraq or Iraq it just area parallel or north area internally that get a look at them person. Speaker 3: And so I didn't know or understand any more than she did and in the end she had to pay somebody to translate it for to find out if this bill was something she had to pay or it had been paid and she didn't know what to do. Speaker 10: Joe Crockett, is this alone? Simply implore the look. Nosotros necesitamos forget early work, Amy Amiga mutual systems are in some is more there's some is more money to the problem as General Sabemos Garcia. Speaker 3: And I think that's just a simple example of what we all need, that there are many of us, just like my friend, that have these large types. Speaker 5: Of problems. Speaker 10: As it get you up. Some of them I get that you learn contradictory qualifications for the Puerto Rican Documentos get lost. Get Amazonas through the old map. What? Because if I was a I, I'll go see thumbs are workers look almost by them. Speaker 3: And so I'm appealing to your character to please bring us translators, of course, that are qualified and documents in our own language so that we know if we have to pay something, we know what we need to do. Speaker 10: Gracias. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm next because. We have Christina. Lilian. Linda, there's actually speakers. Come, please. You can have Mrs. Clements here. She can come up also. Speaker 4: Oh. So you really covet this place? Yeah. Speaker 10: Walla Walla winners notice me. Nobody's Kristina I'd boring at least ritorno. Speaker 3: Good evening. My name is Christina and I live in the first district. Speaker 10: Just as the Alamo Consiglio elevated Agosto e to La Experiencia, the la tradition aviators through the Torah's Una the Yazoo tradition erects a lengthy beard, also wound the persona nasally than the estava coming under your nose, pony up your little microphone. Speaker 3: And I was at the council meeting on August 20th and I had the experience that there were two. TRANSLATOR One was excellent and the other wasn't understandable because she was walking and couldn't talk into the mic. Speaker 10: So here we don't see Bratislava ID microphone no eto eso eso una mala tradition that may come from the EU, but. Speaker 3: There was noise and the microphone was moved away and that all made it a bad translation. So the truth is, I was very confused and that's why I'm here today. Speaker 10: But I read you say incluyen in the press. The those cientos mil. Doesn't smell mean but is thought to be the case in Guatemala. San Diego's L'organisation community idea for a new system for the Brazos. But Monica Effectivement along with events in format information press. Speaker 3: And so that's why I'm asking to be included in the budget, $200,000 for the translation and $50,000 to be given to the community organization because they're prepared to effectively communicate with the residents. Speaker 10: But as he says, over in la la la la la la la la liga, gratis agencies play a in a mobile study again with structure in look at it is. Speaker 3: But they are able to give information about the language access policy. And I would like our people to be included. Speaker 10: It's interesting that this was in that your e-mails you that. Speaker 3: In the neighborhood and the city. Speaker 10: Theater there goes to assist the La Junta the Supuesto the Distrito no Grupo the personnel with the most beer. And this is a necessity that this central early dilemma. Speaker 3: And on August 28th I went to a meeting that was for the budget in District one. There was a group of four group with a collection of personnel that we were able to see the need of the language access. Speaker 10: Okay. And but is little more than that. And but in the apartment, those stereotypes there really say, well, neighbor, listen and well, this is the commenters. Lina's the Lina that they live on. Speaker 3: And in several departments, we would like there to be a yearly evaluation of the documents, telephone lines. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Peter. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 10: Linda. I mean, I don't I don't think. I love when it starts limber, but then it's written off. Speaker 3: Good evening. My name is Linda and I belong to District. Speaker 4: One. Speaker 10: And I was trying to be conciliatory buble as princess and the element of one leader, but no longer. But we are committed here and need your eye on datacom contract. Speaker 3: And August 28th I came to the council and I had the experience of feeling confused because I couldn't find the place. There were no signs or anything showing me in my language where it is that I had to go or how to get in that room. Speaker 10: But to me, Leslie's persona there and the set of Incapacitate US, he did it all Mugabe who we were not going to on. Speaker 3: And the translation for me, the two people must be well-trained and they should have a fixed place and have a good connection. Speaker 10: No, there's you know where they call you there for the physical and then they look at you. Speaker 3: The translation was not a good quality. It was difficult to understand what. Speaker 4: Was being said. Speaker 10: And make a living theater. There goes to City Hall, opera connoisseur David Ibaka said, When I went to the corridor, we must not know this apart on the line trader that's gone. Booth owners witnessed this an atrocity almost the same moment here. Speaker 3: And on Wednesday, August 28th, we came to City Hall to get to know it, to see it and to see what can be done better. And while we moved around, we saw that it doesn't say where the entrances, the computers need to have access in other languages. The bathrooms don't feel safe, at least to me as a woman. Speaker 10: So. Yes. Is the electoral history to you? That must've been either. Either where? Me. The Obama circle. Go on. The rebel though, Elizabeth, as well as with other members at sea. Speaker 3: And on the same day I went to a meeting in District one about the budget of the city and I felt welcomed. It was in my language, it was close to where I live in all of the city. Events should be like that. Speaker 10: MM Look is a better genesis with Damascus and Austin for me that it's not as important just to be able to have an assessment of the Confianza game in town with that same bullock dioramas. Is there an approach to that? Speaker 3: And what I could see is that we need to be informed as the community about these meetings that are very important. I was there because of trusted organizations that invited me and I'd like our community to be involved more, and I'd also like them to know how to take advantage of city services. Speaker 10: Not as they can for other parts of Western, including para la policia, doma especificamente the Washington mill. But that relationship with the interpreters, you and the Khalida, if I may, I think what that means is you skip megalopolis, I guess almost like it. Massacre the confianza. Speaker 3: And please don't leave us outside of the budget. Include money in it for the language access policy, specifically 200,000 for translation and quality interpretation, and also 50,000 for organizations that can promote the policy that are messengers, that are trusted messengers. Speaker 1: Thank you. Your next speaker, please, Mr. Clemente. Speaker 10: Whatever. Clemency, clemency, this case. Yeah, I don't. Well, I mean, clemency, Crespo. But Venezuela is on our way. That's why I keep talking so eloquently that, I mean, first of all, I think we poking fun at all of NSC. Speaker 3: Thomas Hi. My name is Clemency. Crespo and I belong to District nine. I'm here to say I'm here as part of the community. And the $15,000 that Mr. Saez offers offering is very little for everything that we need. Speaker 10: There's a run of the mill parallel line operators, young men, girls, young and old, sit in qualifications, perform a la la la la petition de la comunidad. Speaker 3: And we need $200,000 for interpretation, for translation. Please don't put aside what the community is asking for. Speaker 10: The commissioner says he cannot all on us. I'm afraid the position and the system of personnel and the language he is paying extra high as that person is. Speaker 3: And we need to have we as a community need to have all of the resources available to us. We need people that are bilingual. Speaker 5: And that are paid. Speaker 3: Extra so that we can have. Speaker 4: Someone to help. He needs. Speaker 10: His time. So he allows us in the time being with our rooster, as you can see on the horror level, to really access all work. Speaker 3: And we need to have good translation here at the meetings and all through the city. I also am happy to hear that you intend to better the culture thats language access. Speaker 10: He will Star Como Opera Company. Morose Passos. They don't know that I'm in a parallel organization. Speaker 3: And I see this as a first step or four steps, but it's not enough. We also need $50,000 for the community organizations. Speaker 10: So I had the confidence because I'm not the confianza de la comunidad para la luna. Speaker 3: There trusted people in the community. Speaker 10: Experiencia do not put into action the policy while promoting on yellow capaci. I was told that. Speaker 3: I had an experience at the meeting, just like my companions have already said at the meeting on August 20th. Speaker 10: Kennesaw También. It was a little horror as it was young and well. Oportunidad written over. He met with some mutual attention as to only being with Laura. Years were continuing. Speaker 3: And I'd like it to get better. I had the opportunity to go to the meeting in the ninth district. It was good. I like the translation. It was clear and I hope that that is how it is. Speaker 10: Can be an amazing thing. We are all talk one of him only Uncle Stacy work direct. I'm into Mary Hawk. I see your stuff. I keep working with bhagavAn. Yona, you're sorry I keep working for you. The lack of money, the government and this is the Tamil. Speaker 3: And I didn't feel comfortable when I went to the meeting with Miss Stacey because she said I was here because I was being paid. But really I'm here because I'm part of the community and we need that. Speaker 10: Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Thank you very. Speaker 1: Much. And the last three speakers is Mr. Berry, Mr. Coleman and Mr. X. Hmm. Mr. X, you're. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Mr. Barry. Dave Barry. Yes. Okay. First, Mr.. I just want to quickly show support for the Bluff Park Lamppost Project. I appreciate the Council's support and recognition that historic districts like this increase the city's culture and diversity that our city is well known for. Thank you. Thank you. Next, bigger. Thank you, General, Vice Mayor and members of the Council. My name is Mark Coleman and I'm a resident of the third district and I work in the second. I'm here to support the mayor's budget item on the census. Ten years ago, those of you who are familiar with what the process was, the city did not have a process. It was left to the CBOs to go out and community, do what we could to try to educate people about the importance of the census. This year, there are massive challenges to those in the Cambodian community, Latino community and African-American community. Those challenges include the use of technology with devices that are very difficult for people who are not familiar with the technology to use. A lot of the enumerators are not going to be fluent, bilingual. We tried to get a handle, for example, and the Cambodian Complete Count Committee on how many bilingual Cambodian community members there were. We couldn't find out. So you can imagine the enumerators coming to the doors and saying, We're from the government. Please tell us how many more family members you here you have here who so we can count them for the government's purposes. And that's similar to what the Khmer Rouge said when they use that information to tear families apart and commit terrible atrocities in Cambodia. So we very much support the need for this money. But I want to ask for a friendly amendment that you dedicate a significant portion of this money to the community based organizations. It's $600,000, please. At least 500,000 should be dedicated to the CBO so we can do our job. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: I think that concludes public comment that I have signed up on speaker cards. Speaker 3: I gave my. Speaker 0: Speech before speaker carter-smith. No, go ahead. Did you call speaker further? Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 0: Okay. But you go ahead, Ms.. Smith. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 3: I am a resident of Bluff Park, and I am here to talk about the fact that the Bluff Park Street Lamppost Project has not gone through the proper channels and should be removed through. Speaker 6: The. Speaker 3: The budget. I request that City Council amend the proposed budget to remove these items because they are not consistent with the city charter. The general plan element, which is the historical element and the scenic element and the Bluff Park Historic District Ordinance. The proposed budget items are inconsistent and should be excluded, and I sent a document to you earlier today that establish that the city projects. That are not consistent, should not be adopted because they go against other elements in the general plan. It's a little embarrassing to I live in Bluff Park and it's embarrassing that the city is giving us funds for Lamp Post where we have a perfectly good lamp post in our district. So you're spending about 200,000 or more dollars taking away lamp posts that are. Speaker 7: Modern. Speaker 3: For ones that look antique. These can be funded outside the city, especially want to hear about needed funding for language access and the people's budget. It's embarrassing. Speaker 5: As a person and resident of Love Park where we know we. Speaker 3: Could have these items. We have enough and we're able to access it. But funding for lamp posts when there's many other needed items is embarrassing. And it's also illegal if you're going to continue to adopt budgets that have projects that go against the general plan and city charter. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: And then I think this is actually something we signed up as ex. Speaker 5: No, we signed up. Speaker 0: Who set up his ex. Okay. So Mr. Evi is next. Mr. Rivera. Speaker 1: Your next. Good evening. I'm here to speak about the water issue. Speaker 2: The utility fees. What are utility fees are supposed to be. Speaker 1: Used to support the production. Speaker 2: Distribution and purchase of water. The city has no justification to skim any of the utility fees for the general fund. If it does so, it becomes a tax. If it is a tax. Then the burden of proof for the tax must lie with the city to prove to us the reasons for the tax and to submit it to a vote just like any other tax increase. The water utility fees disguised as utility rate increase is a gross violation of the Constitution and and of our trust in you, the public officials, because it is basically a given that the tax will happen unless 50% of the users who happen to be aware show up to protest Speaker 0: . Thank you. And our last speaker, please. Guard. Please come forward. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 0: Is this is this one presentation? Speaker 5: There's two. Speaker 0: Okay. I don't have a speaker card for. Speaker 5: We turn it in. Speaker 0: Okay. I don't have it. Go ahead. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 11: Good evening. My name is Jamilah and I am a community. Speaker 5: Organizer with the Long Beach Immigrants Rights Coalition and a representative of the budget advocacy work group. I'm here because Latinxs, Filipino and Cambodian families are part of the Long Beach community, and we deserve to. Speaker 3: Be included in this year's. Speaker 5: Budget. As I mentioned before, last year's budget included six 160,000 foreign language access. And that money was all used in attempts to make services provided by the city more accessible to communities that speak other languages than English. This year, the proposed amount is half. Of that, only 80,015 thousand for training. Speaker 3: Is being offered. That is not what the community needs are. We have community members. Speaker 5: Here who are committed to advocating to access spaces that don't represent their native language. It is the job of the city now to do their part and ensure a welcoming environment to everyone that lives in the city. Clearly, maintaining a language as a barrier will deny literal access. Speaker 3: Well, what the city need. Speaker 5: To do is allocate 200,000 for interpretation and translation. These very basic needs will ensure that our community is engaged in city affairs that impact their lives. Speaker 3: Additionally, as a community. Speaker 5: Organizer who works with. Speaker 3: Under underserved communities. Speaker 5: Of color. Speaker 3: I know that the first from first. Speaker 5: Hand of the importance of trust when working with community member. Speaker 3: Some members here only know about the language. Speaker 5: Access policy because of the organization like ours. We know how to do the outreach within these communities. That is the very. Speaker 11: Reason why. Speaker 5: Community is asking for 50,000 for community based. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I had your card, so I apologize for that. Thank you. And next, people place Peskin for. Speaker 10: Mayor council members. My name is Lily Ocampo and I have been living in First District for 34 years and I'm also very active in the community with various community organizations such as CPC, LeBoeuf, Liver, Lombard for and also serve my children's school as a base president, vice president and member of the English Learning Advisory Committee. Also the school to console and represent my children's school at our district level level and the District English Learning Advisory Committee, of which I serve as a vice president. And in my experience and the access to language is very important for parents, especially at schools and in the community, to receive the services we deserve. So I'm just here to say, don't leave us out. Include the people's budget. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Thank you so much. That concludes public comment. Uh, and so with that, I'm going to go and continue the, the hearing and I'm going to begin by going back to any questions also that the counsel might have. So I have folks that are cued up now. I'm going to begin with Councilmember Ringo. Speaker 2: Thank you. Mr. E.A. Continue asking me, Sir Thaddeus, or to let the parliamentary nuclear services civilians. You know, I without risk, as he said, no matter what happens, I must intervene. Those are accessible language. But those who stay is not what I meant in the Spanish embassy. No, I mean in Los Angeles. Come or come? I eat at Vietnam. This is the desert. Yet that almost is a society that they think is important. The communication. The communication is going letter as he enters you says being in a long beach. But I believe Ethan Allen had a scare. You know, I silverado's gearstick second see that automaton in Wendell in their windows looking says listen the easternmost switch handle what I said in Spanish was basically I want to assure the residents of Long Beach that we are addressing a language accident, that it is important to us that we are hearing you were listening and that we do have that utmost priority for for us to communicate with you, because we understand and know that communication is of the utmost importance for us to reach out to you. So with that, I want to continue with my comments and my questions to technology services and civil service, because we went from the hearing into the comments or we didn't have that opportunity. In terms of technology services, I don't really have much. I think you're obviously you're being challenged with the new city hall and the new technology that is being presented out there. But last year we had a an issue, not an issue, but an item that came up that I signed on with Councilmember Lena Gonzalez at the time, talking about the digital divide between City Hall and the West Long Beach area. Is there any progress made on that? Is there a plan or a timeline that we can look at in terms of when that might be fully operational? We're fully integrated into the city for solving that digital divide. Speaker 3: So in terms of the City Digital Inclusion Initiative, we have already been convening stakeholders, including community members and most recently, in words all a direct correlation to your specific item which related to the YMCA. We invited participants from that initiative to join the City Wide Greater Digital Inclusion Initiative. We just, in fact had our first kickoff meeting last Thursday and we had a robust participation. And the goal is, by the end of this year, to have a digital inclusion roadmap that had is co-created with the stakeholders and the community members in terms of the specific initiative with the YMCA and the partnership with the schools. I'm actually not in the lead on that meeting. The city manager's office, I believe, is is responding to any needs related to that specific initiative. So I can't speak to that, but I can answer any questions about the Greater Digital Inclusion Initiative. Speaker 2: Well, hopefully that sometime in the near future we can get a full, more extensive orientation and update as to what's taking place with that. I know that's very important when it comes to our students in the West Palm Beach area, when they have homework assignments or they need to do research and they need to have that access to the Internet. Speaker 3: And I will add that the Long Beach Unified School District is also at the table with our with our greater digital inclusion initiative. Speaker 2: Wonderful. That's. Thank you. And in regards to civil service, Christina, welcome back to Long Beach. It's been quite a while since we worked together. Thank you. As we go, we both joined the city at the same time. Speaker 3: We did back. Speaker 2: To back a few years ago. A few years ago. And I know that with your experience, having worked in civil service and having had that experience and also where else you bring. Even a greater wealth of experience to Long Beach that you will be able to to use as we move along with our with our our needs . Oh, you use several terminology, some terminology here that I think would be important to for clarification purposes, for those who aren't all that in line with what some of that terminology means, you may be able to describe what it is. And I'm speaking specifically like what we're talking about when we have an eligible what is an eligible list? What when establish what does civil service do with it and what do departments do with that, with an eligible list? Speaker 3: Sure. So the. The first thing we're doing is we're we're doing outreach. Applicants are coming to us. It is a job as a civil service department, civil service staff to assess the skills, knowledge and abilities of individuals as they pertain to the the positions that we have vacant. And so our job is to test these skills in the various manners that we conduct tests. And then we say we create a list of candidates that meet those qualifications. So on the job bulletins, it has minimum qualifications and then it has duties. And we, we create tests that align to the duties. How are we going to how we're going to be how are we going to be able to assess if someone can do this job? And that's why we create tests that that match those skills, knowledge and abilities. We create the eligible list. Based on the testing, someone has either been able to pass the test based on the skills, knowledge, ability, or they're not quite ready for a particular position. So those eligible lists that go out to the departments, we're saying to the department, we have vetted this group of people, they meet the needs for the job description. And so you should be able to find a qualified person within this group. Speaker 2: So once a list has established, it is certified to a department. Is there a rule of how many candidates a parent will receive based on vacancies? Speaker 3: It depends on if there's a if it's a promotional list or if it's an open list to the public. With the promotional list. We have a rule of three. We have a rule. Mixing my cities. We have a rule of four here. So for every one vacancy they will get four names in the open competitive list. That depends on that. We are giving people names of qualified. There are also potential for bands of people. Speaker 2: And when you talk about you run the tests, you identify and attract qualified and diverse applicants. You want to explain some of that. How do you go about identifying that diverse applicant pool for these or these tests? Speaker 3: So certainly we we work with the subject matter experts in the departments to say, where do you think we could find the best candidates for your positions in the past? And I think currently still, when I identified some community events that staff has participated in. But there is that collaboration in the community that is imperative to make sure that we're reaching out to specific organizations, the faith based community, the various. Communities representing underrepresented groups. And so there is there is a a targeted plan that can be put together based on the needs for each department. Speaker 2: And some of those some of those departments, for example, of fire and police. Speaker 4: Mm hmm. Speaker 2: I take it that you. Get their assistance and. Speaker 3: We do so. So it's been I had the good fortune when I was here before to be the actual recruitment officer for the city. So as the recruitment officer, we put together the actual plan and then determining and typically it was a multi-media plan where we were providing access to for the department to go out and talk to students at community college, talk to students at churches in the community, talk to individuals in just community organizations. We also did radio and and television at the time, but it's an opportunity for civil service to plan the targeted recruitment, but then get the actual people doing the job out in front of the candidates. They don't want to talk to the civil service staff. Unfortunately, they want to talk to people doing the job and they want to understand why should I come to work for this department? Why should I? Why should I come to Long Beach instead of any other city in Southern California or in California, for that matter? And so it's really connecting, creating the infrastructure to infrastructure to connect people working in our departments with potential candidates so they can learn about the department. Speaker 2: One of the big challenges that we have in the city of Long Beach, and we've had it before, we've had several discussions about this is salaries and wages there sometimes, and we lose a good staff to other jurisdictions because our salaries are not competitive with the surrounding cities. Do you find that as a as an impediment to recruiting? Speaker 3: It can be an impediment. But I think. What. What needs to be developed then is what is what are the other benefits to working in this community? And I think there are many benefits. I'm a returning person, so I understand the benefits of being able to work in this great community where everybody is is valued for what they bring to the table. And so I think it's it's just certainly competitive salaries are are a plus, if you can get that. But we're also being fiscally responsible. And so the other thing would be to highlight some of those other benefits that someone would receive working here in the city of Long Beach. Speaker 2: And finally you load it in your notable changes for this coming year your the addition of a to new personnel analyst positions. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 2: Is there going to be some specialization on those, Alice? You didn't put them into. Speaker 3: So so. Speaker 1: Areas. Speaker 3: We are we're going to get together. My management team and I are going to get together and we're going to talk about what is the best way to use utilize these resources so that we can see if we can bring back some of the targeted recruitment activities that I think would benefit all city departments across across the organization. Speaker 2: In regards to, I get a little bit more into the minutia, but I wanted to get into it very deeply because I think that there's some other stuff that we could address what's going on with recruitment in our employment processes. You know, many, many times I would hear departments complain about the process taking too long. That civil service testing is lengthy, the process is too strenuous, or the process just just takes long. Have you done an analysis of. I know you're new. I'm sorry. Speaker 3: Not yet late. Speaker 2: Perhaps later on down a few months or maybe at the half year mark in March. We'll get an update as to the numbers of certifications that you've you've done, the exams that you've done, the sort of occasions you've done, and how many vacancies have been filled. It's very important to know that while departments have vacancies, we want to make sure that those vacancies are filled and that nobody on an eligible is stays on the eligible this without having an opportunity to get selected. So I mean, it's one of those situations where I want to see that if a budget has 2020 employees and they have two vacancies, I want to see that at the end of the year that department has 20 employees and the vacancies and they had it and they ran a test. So I mean, that's something that I think we need to pay more more attention to, that we should that we ensure that when we go through this budget process and we're we're approving a budget for X number of employees, for a department, that those positions are filled. Speaker 3: Absolutely. And that's something that we will be looking at, because it it does impact our metrics as well by if the vacancies still are there. But we have created eligible list in hopes of people being able to find the qualified candidates. It also puts a significant chilling effect on our recruitment. If we've gone out, recruited people for a particular position and no selections are made, candidates lose faith in in the fact that we've we've attracted them. But there has been no action with the eligibility so it's. Everybody can help us. Everybody is a recruiter in my mind. Every. Every. Employees, a recruiter. And once we are utilizing all of our resources, we are going to have more than adequate number of eligible and qualified candidates that want to come and work here. They're there now, but they're going to be more vocal. And so it will be really important for us to make selection so that we can get them on board as quickly as possible. Speaker 2: I want to ensure that our departments have the most qualified individuals ready for them to work for them. And I know there's some been some occasions where candidates on an eligible list might accept a job somewhere else because we simply just took too long. Speaker 3: Absolutely. Speaker 2: So to conclude. Thank you very much, Christina. Welcome back to the city of family. Thank you. Looking forward to working further with you. Speaker 3: I appreciate I look forward to coming back and giving you all a report. Speaker 2: Councilmember Mungo. Speaker 7: Thank you. I just wanted to give some recognition for the great work that you're doing in technology and innovation. One of the things that I had talked about with our language access community is how there's a lot of work that we can still do to. Fix some of the issues at City Hall. But really. City Hall. I don't have my phone on me, but is in your hand 24 hours a day now and you should be able to use the Golden Beach app in Spanish as well as English to make city city services work for you. So I'm just going to make a quick recommendation on a project I was at with the County of Los Angeles. If you go to their website, there was always a person in the city who was on a bilingual bonus available via Instant Messenger, to communicate with the community on their issues. And so if I was looking for something on the website or I needed a challenge with my bill, I could click on, talk to a representative and that talk to a representative linked through the Skype accounts that most people have on their desk where you could. Trouble, solve or troubleshoot and problem solve on behalf of a resident that doesn't have to take off from work to go to city hall to wait in a line. And so while I appreciate. That. Our water department has 52 people that are bilingual. Our public works department has 20 people that are bilingual. Our Parks and Rec department has 17 people that are bilingual. A big congratulations to Health and Human Services. They have 90 people that are bilingual. If those people are not accessible to them, then they come to city hall. And so if there's a way to. Communicate via app or better publicize the language line through the app or through our community groups. I know that Mr. Supernormal does an excellent job. He has a very diverse district. When people get on the line with his office, Barbara quickly links them up with an interpreter and solves their problems . But that's only during business hours. And so during those non-business hours, what other opportunities we have, I'm not sure, but I'm open to suggestions in the future that might help solve this problem for our community, especially because City Hall is more than 9 to 5. It's really 24 hours a day through our apps. So that and then I will also mention what I've mentioned to you in the past, which is the opportunity for a citywide calendar. And I know that's currently being considered through the PIOs office, through a agenda item that I think I speak in 120 days. And I think it's been. 13 months. But when it does come back, we're looking at a citywide calendar and the opportunity for our communities to link up to and receive notices that they're interested in in their own language. So specifically Spanish. Other than that, great work. Welcome on board civil service and look forward to the hiring process improvements that are ahead of us. Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. Speaker 2: Thank you. So I'll start with the I.T. report and just the great job our our. City has been recognized and designated as a digital inclusion trailblazer, ranked as the top ten digital city. But we still obviously have a lot of work to do. I think Councilmember Mangold touched on a couple of good points and I think of my colleague, Councilmember Turanga speaking the language access. We've heard a lot about that here this evening. We can we can and should improve our communications and how we communicate. To weigh with with our constituents. I'm completely on board with that. I'd like to be a lot more innovative and use technology services to help us with that as well. I'm I'm really interested because I've been around long enough to know about when Long Beach Coast or LBE Coast project was kind of conceptual and we've been planning and ramping up to deal with phase one. And, and I know we're moving into another phase now, but in terms of the staffing for for be because. I know that there was a lot of extra staff brought on to bring that that system up or to get us to a point where we could be where we are today. Where do you foresee staffing in your department moving forward? Are these project positions or are they career positions to manage this process moving forward? Speaker 3: Councilmember Austin Yeah, you are correct with all because we did have a extensive project team. We still have them working on phase two, which is the H.R. Payroll system and then the budget system. So in the in the budget, you will see that we do have an addition of ten full time equivalent to the Technology and Innovation Department budget to help do the ongoing operations for what we're calling munis. So munis is the system and that is offset by five FTE that were moved from the the financial management department. So it's a net out of five FTE that's being added new to the city's budget. We're also reallocating a few positions within our internal technology innovation to make sure that we try to have this be less costly as possible. And so that is built into the FY20 budget and our FY 21 budgets. And and so if with your approval, that would be staffed and that would be the staffing. Speaker 2: So I guess I'm trying to understand project versus. Speaker 3: The ongoing operations right. Speaker 2: Program. Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. So I'll be Khost is the project and then munis is what we're calling the ongoing operations and that is the ongoing team is, is built into our budget and we do need to fill those positions with permanent employees. So that is that is in process is is looking to fill those positions. Because, as I mentioned, we are live with phase one operations of munis. Speaker 2: Got it. And you know this budget as well as anyone, I would imagine. Thank you very much. Keep up the great work we will be looking for big things from from my team moving forward. I want to welcome our new civil service. Executive director and my constituent as well. Welcome. I only had a couple of questions. Obviously, I think your department is has a huge challenge in front of it, maintaining, you know, the merit system in a large city is is a huge undertaking. You've got a great commission and good staff. And I know you're coming into a good situation because this council, I believe, will will provide you with the resources you need to be successful moving forward. But on the line of some of the public comment we heard here today, just a question kind of came up regarding our minimum qualifications for for various positions that are advertised. All right. Is is bilingual a prerequisite for any of the positions that we have currently in the city? Is that a legal prerequisite? Speaker 3: I would say it's it's probably not a it is not a. An actual requirement. A lot of times it says desirable and so and that's that's a standard practice to to say if there is a position that really would benefit from bilingual, we would say that it's it's desirable. And so that then somebody that has those qualifications oftentimes gets gets screened into a pool because of a desirable, um, requirement that we may list. Speaker 2: Understood. And my, my colleague, our budget chair is really good with numbers. I don't know where she gets them sometimes, but she, she, she listed a number of departments who have, I believe, bilingual. Correct. Pay incentives for for employees. Speaker 3: So those employees have they may not actually be they may not actually be have it as a requirement, but they have that skill. So then we will ask employees, do you have that skill? Do you have a language skill? We can then do a selective certification, which means we can certify those people with a specific skill if we like, and which is why we asked, you know, do you have that? Then we we take track of that. And then we can selectively certify to a position where they say may need a community worker, Spanish speaking community worker. So that's how we we push that information out to them. Speaker 2: And ah, we, I guess this might be a hybrid kind of conversation with civil service in h.r. But are we strategic in terms of how we, we place people with those skill pays so that we have good conversation or communication with, with our constituents? Speaker 3: So, so absolutely. When we are working with the department and what we call the subject matter experts, we say we know a lot about, we know a little bit about a lot of things. We rely on our subject matter experts to to be the experts in their particular areas. And if they tell us that there's a language need, then we're definitely going to look for that for them. Speaker 2: Okay. Well, thank you for that. That concludes my questions. Like to open it up and pass it on to councilmember pearce. Thank you. Speaker 1: I'm. No problem. Yeah. Speaker 11: That might be a good way to work from now on, huh? Just pass. Speaker 1: It on. It's easier that way. Speaker 11: So thank you guys very much for your presentations. I know I was in and out in them. I looked over the PowerPoints, I looked through the budget book. I have a couple of questions. First, welcome to the team. It's nice to have you here. Thank you. I had a couple of constituents that wanted me to inquire, and so I will. First of all, hiring and bringing on good staff is something that I obviously, as all of us in council care deeply about, we've got, you know, nearly 6000 employees that interface with our residents every day bringing them on. And what that experience is like is is critical for us. I know that there's some tests that happen whenever we bring on or when we're looking to hire somebody. There's a personality and motivation test. I wanted to understand how was that weighted with other tests and other processes that they go on before they are hired? Can you speak to that? Speaker 3: So that particular test has that. I'm. Newly learning about. We've actually created a subcommittee from the personnel from our civil service commission. And so the commission is is looking at that test right now and how that is working into our future testing. Speaker 11: Great. That's wonderful to hear. I know that we've talked in the city about trauma and making sure that we aren't leaving people out that maybe have experienced trauma. I know our health department hires a variety of different people with different lived experiences, so wanting to make sure that we're not putting tests in place that then leave out the very people that we want their experience and their life experience on our team. And so I look forward to hearing that report from you and really understanding all of those matrix in there. Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 11: Thank you so much for that. Okay. So I t thank you so very much. I obviously love your guys presentations. I thank my council colleagues for their comments. Obviously, closing the digital divide is really important. Two things that I want to talk about today is I want to echo that I love our Go Long Beach app. I know that we had some previous conversations earlier today around having our city employees use that app. I'm wondering if we have any numbers on how many of our city employees actually have the Long Beach app? Speaker 3: So go Long Beach is we can get that for you on city owned phones. It's definitely on an authorized app on his phone so I can get back to you. On how many have that actually downloaded. Speaker 11: I would love to put out that challenge as I think we already have to have every city employee have that on their app and that on their phone and that all of us are being that ambassador while we're out in the community, whether we're driving to work or whether we're out of park servicing. But I think the app is great. But I, my app has crashed several times in the last couple of months. So I think it means either I'm using it too much or other people are using it too much is a good thing. So I'm wondering when when are we going to have an update on that? I know every budget cycle we talk about it. Speaker 3: Yes. And one thing, too, I do have the app downloaded on my phone, so. Yes. And we are going to be looking at replacing the Go a Long Beach app with our CRM system that I had talked about earlier. And we were actually coming to City Council for an award of the contract on October 1st, and then the goal would be to finish the project by the end of 2020. Speaker 11: That's great. Sorry if I missed that earlier when I was in and out. Great. That's great to hear. My other big topic is cameras. So I know that I brought this up with Assistant City Manager Modica and we have several cameras in our harbor area. Many of them are not working. And so I wanted to understand, is this something that needs to remain in your department? Is it something that should be with another department? Just talk to me about what that process is going to be. Speaker 3: Certainly so in October 2017, my department did launch a two year camera modernization program focused on the the Genetec based cameras that are mostly throughout in the right away. At the time, we had 544, 544 genetic based cameras and hundred and 60 of them were non operational. So that's about 29%, I'm pleased to say that right now we have 888 genetic based cameras, so that's an increase of over 60% and only 38 are not operational. So 4.3%. However, we also noted back when we were talking about this in 2017 that there are over 30 plus closed circuit camera systems that are in addition to the GENETEC based citywide system, network system. And those includes the ones that are in parking lots, you know, in in the airport, for instance, and inside the jail, for instance. And so those those systems we need to take on a case by case basis as funding allows. And and our goal is, is to work with those departments to modernize those and incorporate them into our citywide system so they can be reviewed centrally and be connected. And so, for instance, the cameras that you were mentioning that is planned in the FY 20 budget from some funding with public works to to fix those cameras in those those parking garages. Speaker 11: Okay. And it's not just the parking garages. It's like Marina Green where we had that. Horrific incident about two weeks ago. So these cameras, it's it's an absolute priority for my district, for my constituents, for the boat owners, for the businesses that if we have cameras and we've spent money on those cameras, that we have the funding to make sure that they work. And I know that we'll be talking about budget priorities later on. And so that is one that I continue to work with staff on. It's it's not acceptable to to have cameras in areas like that that that aren't working and that our police officers don't have access to. And so I appreciate all the work that you've done in bringing those on. But I just want to make it clear that that's something that we need to to figure out. Thank you, both of you, for your time, for your presentations and for staff, for your work on these areas. Speaker 7: Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilwoman Rice. Speaker 5: Thank you. So, first of all, welcome to our new civil service team. So I appreciate the presentation tonight. I'm going to start with just a couple of questions from technology services and then I'll move over to civil service. I only have one question there, but Ms.. ERICKSEN, I have a follow up on the security cameras as well. I know this has been a very heated area of discussion in the business corridor that runs in my district, one of the business quarters that runs in my district, Second Street. And I came when I came onto council, there was a lot of discussion about the cameras and what was happening with the cameras. Shortly after I got onto council, I believe, is when your department started to take over that project in earnest. Did you do you believe that your department is adequately funded to support the operations? For the cameras, since we're relying on them so much more as a public safety tool. Speaker 3: Counts. Councilwoman Price We do have funding to, you know, to get to the progress that we've done so far. And we have funding to to replace the cameras as they go down. So that that's all built into critical needs in terms of tackling all those other closed circuit systems. We do not have all the funding in place. So we would be working with the departments and, and with the budget budget process to to to actually address all those as those are as we identify those as priorities. Speaker 5: Okay. So just to give you a heads up, nothing to discuss tonight, but I do expect that we'll ask this item to come to the Public Safety Committee with an overview of how many cameras we have. Which ones are not working? What challenges and opportunities we have things of that nature. Speaker 3: Yeah. And I would like to say that the, the, the, the ones that are out there on your second street quarter, as you mentioned, those are part of the 888 GENETEC based system cameras. And that is what we have the funding to do and tackled. And we're only at a 4% failure rate at this point, which is really great. That's just normal cycle replacement. Speaker 5: That's great. That's good. Yeah. I think at some point we should have maybe a bigger education on what our camera system looks like, what areas of the city we have them in, how we're utilizing them. It's been something that I've been thinking about bringing to public safety for a while anyway. So just giving you a heads up, maybe in three months, three or four months or so. So with that, I mean, that's just a topic of discussion, especially now we're going to get body worn cameras. There's all sorts of other public safety tools that are available to us now that weren't years ago. So to the extent that we can maximize those and make sure that you're adequately staffed and you have what you need to function and to do the work that's expected of you, that's really what we want to make sure we drill down on. So thank you. Thank you for the presentation tonight. And by the way, I just want to give a huge kudos to your AV team who goes out and supports us at our council meetings and our events. They're really a fantastic group of people to work with, really accommodating, just always a very passive but strong presence. And we really rely on them. So. So extend our thanks to them, please. The other, the one question that I had for our civil service team is we've been talking a little bit about recruitment officers in different departments. Do you recruit for police and fire? Speaker 3: So we will coordinate the efforts. In the past, we had there has been there have been three dedicated recruitment officers in the in the history of the department. I was the last recruitment officer. So the position was not dedicated. But my understanding is staff has continued to help with police and fire to coordinate events. Correct. And so. The. The opportunity to provide more support to the departments is something that we want to look at to return to resurrect that full support that we can provide not just to police and fire, but to the all departments that should be able to have that that expertize that I think our staff has. Speaker 5: Do any of our departments currently have their own recruitment officer? Speaker 3: No, not to. Not to my knowledge. Crystal can speak to that. Good evening. Speaker 5: The police department actually has a dedicated recruitment officer right now, and the fire department is also looking at a new person that a fire captain that is also looking at recruitment primarily. Okay. And so do you. So I'm assuming that means you have a model in place in terms of how your department would work with their recruitment officer so that we're getting the most efficiency out of those budget dollars in terms of the two departments working together. Yes. We're currently looking. Speaker 3: At. Speaker 5: Like I said, the fire department recently, just within the last couple of weeks, identified the person and the police department identified someone probably within the last last year, and they've been working with us closely. Again, like Christina mentioned, coordinating outreach events. Our team is out there when we can attend events, but primarily the folks that are at police and fire at the events. Okay. And you said police added a recruitment officer within the last year. If I recall correctly, it was an within the last budget year. Oh. They've had it. Speaker 3: They've had it for a while. Speaker 5: My apologies. Okay. I'll have to defer it. No problem. And it's just a discussion. So no, like, I get it that we're doing our best to answer the questions. But so basically the gist of it is that you've had a model in place where you've been working with a recruitment officer from a particular department to try to enhance our recruitment efforts. Speaker 3: Correct. With the police department? Speaker 5: Definitely over the last two, 3 to 4 years. And like I said recently, within the fire department, just within the last. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you to all three of you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, Congressman Silvano. We were just talking. Someone else. All right, so can we move? Speaker 0: Thank you for that. Let me move on to consumer super now. Okay. Speaker 1: And everybody hear me. Okay. I don't have any questions for civil service. Welcome aboard. Don't take it personally if you haven't watched the council meetings. I specialize in brevity. So for technology, I just wanted to follow up on what Councilman Price was talking about, the camera systems. And we had our own issues on the East Bay or the Anaheim Corridor now notices Aphria Business Improvement District. And what struck me so much when I inherited that was that we had these one off systems all over the city, and I think the goal would be to standardize everything. I also sit on the Public Safety Committee that is chaired by Councilwoman Pryce, so I'll get the information there. But I just think we need to get this out citywide, that what the plan is for, for the cameras moving forward. And also, since you mentioned a second, our next generation of the Go Long Beach app, I realize that will be coming to council soon, as you indicated. But if you could just give us a sneak preview, is there going to be a migration to the new system or does it stand alone that you have to then sign up for the new system? Speaker 3: So Councilmember Supernormal, they're there. They'll look over on the beach app when I go away until the new system is ready. And it would be a stand alone system. In fact, you probably won't even be an app in the general sense of the word. Speaker 1: Oh. Okay. And what was the projected date? That the new system would come. Speaker 3: Online by the end of 2020? Speaker 1: Okay. Great. All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Next week, Councilman, would you simply. Speaker 12: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Just a few things. So, first of all, civil service. I don't have very many questions for you. You do a good job, your office, and we'll let you know. It's one of those we shouldn't hear from. You shouldn't hear from us unless there's a problem. Speaker 3: Hopefully you see us out in the community that that's what you. Speaker 12: Hear from us. And we look forward to partnering to expand some of that. Right. Just a few comments and questions for technology and innovation. And so thank you for kicking off your community process and honored to give a welcome was just a couple days ago. Right? Michelle Obama library. And so you know, we've had this conversation about this digital inclusion roadmap and all that before it had a hashtag, right? Right. When we were just going project by project trying to figure out how to make things more accessible. And you know, and my first experience was dealing with the uplink project, everything that went into simply tying into fiber, adding security cameras and Wi-Fi on a corridor. There's a lot that went into it. And, you know, I guess it would. You know, if coming out of this process, we had a more clear understanding of what's realistic and feasible for cities to take on. And what should go to the private sector to figure out, I think would be incredibly helpful. So just a few things I would lift up. I hope through the process we've identified where we can strategically deploy security cameras, a plan to do that. I know security cameras in the parks and around facilities are popular, and I know that they're not it's not necessarily consistent. We have cameras in many works. I mean, not work. That's something I'm interested in, making sure that we address that road map process. I think publicly available Wi-Fi has been something that's popular, particularly if you don't have a lot of, say, coffee shops and cafes that do that. When we just offering free Wi-Fi to libraries mean incredible hit. I'd love to see the Wi-Fi in the parks become stronger, tie into our fiber and have plans for that and corridor. Wi-Fi is great as well. It's actually an economic development tool. If we already provide Wi-Fi and have guidelines to add patio dining and bulb outs and things like that, we can sort of place make our economic development through deploying strategically deploying technology. I think I'll underscore again, you know, I've learned just in the last few months how cities that do have these plans are heavily looking at public private partnerships, for example. When we do dig once, a lot of times are doing once will notify the utilities and our own departments. But we should think about when do they once? Is there a way that we can save costs on our project by saying, Hey, who else wants to lay down? Can't do it while we're here? Right. And maybe it helps save a little bit of money, but also figure out how to, you know, monetize it and expand our network. Another thing. So that's something I want to look into how we do the dig once we've talked about it. But how do we maybe open it up broader? Another thing is so, you know, we've been talking about this this kiosk situation. I've said, you know, we have five city halls close to the ninth District on our own. And a lot of times, you know, going over to Highland Park or going over to the library, people like to check multiple boxes when they go to the city facility. Highland Park has a health facility, a community center, potentially other things like workforce. So if we could figure out how to like deploy the things that are available, you can walk up and pay a bill, walk up to do something that sort of takes these spaces and make them into like a mini mini city hall access, basic information and city services, not specific, just the parks. I think that should be a part of, you know, a part kind of part of the plan you're embarking on. And then the last thing I would I would say it's a more of a question. So, you know, it'll be cost completely supportive. It's still very difficult to fully understand all the capabilities it offers. But does it with this help us with this what capacity or what additional us? How could this new CRM system help advance language access in the city? Speaker 3: So Councilmember Richardson, like the Syrian system, would need to comply with language access. And so like our knowledge based questions and other interactions could be in the three other languages. So that would be. That would be. I would definitely bring the 24 seven accessible CRM system in the four languages. Speaker 12: Okay. So, so this does give us more ability to sort of serve our serve our residents needs in multiple languages. Speaker 3: It does. Now, what I need to check on is, is how much of this would be Google Translate versus the actual real language translation. So I do need to get back to you on that. Speaker 12: Great. Curious to know. But you know, all in all, I think you have a very exciting year ahead of you. Look forward to supporting your budget. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilmember Gringa. Speaker 2: Thank you. When a customer Pierce was talking, she mentioned issues such as a trauma. I'll take a test. And it's my understanding that the Civil Service has moved on to more technologically, I guess, enhanced testing methods. The concern that I would have with that obviously is the issues regarding test preparation, a person's ability to take a test , a built in biases as an example in these types of tests, the inability of of an applicant to fully understand. The capabilities of the tests or what it or how to take it. Is there a methodology, if you will, for civil service to provide? Information as to how to take these tests or how to access a practice test or anything such as that that would make the testing experience a lot smoother and be able to ensure that the people taking the tests are in fact fully capable of sort of being tested to the best of their abilities with we're seeing with this testing process. Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, I think that returning to the city of Long Beach, it's it's been very enlightening to see of that, the type of the use of technology and testing that is going on. But I absolutely think that we could provide services to our our candidates, where we're providing workshops and on what to expect, how to how to access it, how to have access to even online application. So all of those things where we're involving technology, I think it's an opportunity to do that. We also have been doing some very innovative things with online videos. So I think that that would be another option to to create some online videos that would help individuals that are interested in in how to prepare for a particular exam. So yeah, definitely there's more that we can do in that area. Yeah. Speaker 2: So I understand that. And you mentioned earlier about a task force or a. Speaker 3: Subcommittee of the an ad hoc committee of the Civil Service Commission. So we have two members that are looking at the particular test. Speaker 2: Would it be possible to expand that committee to include stakeholders such as some departments or police or fire other departments who have a vested interest in the results of these types of testing? There's what, 22 departments in the city? I think all 22 departments use an administrative analyst or administrative assistant maybe for that kind of test that you could have their input as to what this test can do for them. Speaker 3: Well, absolutely. Whether or not I think one's absolutely I think one of the things we're just trying to learn about is what is available through that test, what we've used it for. Just in our brief, we had our first committee meeting this afternoon. And so I think there's a lot more that we can learn about the test that may be able to help us. So I know there are pros and cons to it. We're going to look at that and then certainly take those results out to the departments and talk to them about how we could utilize this for everybody Speaker 2: . Well, in another life, I was I was a testing special, if you want to call that at at Cal State Long Beach, before joining the city. And I also, through my experience with Lamar City College, when I was there, we created a holistic methodology of determining how a future student or employee can perform under their job by looking at the individual and not only in terms of their test results, but their resume, their education, training, experience, all of those qualifications that we're always looking at for people. And I think that if there's anything that we can do ourselves a favor is to use that type of approach, a holistic approach to testing, and to put a knowledgeable list together that incorporates all of an applicant's experience. And get on that list based on that, and not just on one instrument testing instrument that would determine an individual's fate. Because we're talking about people's lives. We're talking about their their future and their ability to get a job. And a test in and of itself should not be an impediment to a person wanting to get a job. So I would really want to promote a holistic approach, if you will, to testing so that maybe you could get into when you let a department that well, rephrase it, when you establish a list, a certified list, that it includes and entails everything on that individual in terms of skills, knowledge and abilities as well as the performance on the test. Because we know and it's happened to me that if the test on Friday morning and I have testing ZT, that I'm not going to perform as well on that test on that Friday morning or if I have something coming up on Friday afternoon, a big party or whether that be party. Well. That sounds so bad. That sounds so bad. Well, it's sad. Let's say it has something important going on. Maybe I'm getting married on Saturday. I have a bachelor party that night. That's not good either. Anyway, you catch my drift. Drift? We're going to beat that. People are naturally affected. By what? What's going on in their lives when they take a test. Speaker 3: And I think that the key is for us that we are as transparent as possible, that people understand why we are conducting particular tests. Some tests are better for some physicians and others, and that we we balance the need to manage volume. With the need to assess skill level. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Speaker 4: Mm hmm. Speaker 0: Thank you. Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to thank the technology and innovation team, because the fact that, you know, that you can tell by the city hall here that you guys have done a great, great an amazing job, you know, especially by keeping Channel three going and everything else you've done, you know, the good work you've done. So I just want to leave that out there to the technology division. But the biggest part about I'd like to move into the civil service part because the fact that especially when I talk about civil service in the hiring process and getting jobs because, you know, that's a primary concern in my district. And like I said, I understand exactly what Councilman Duran was speaking about, especially when it comes to testing. I'm not saying that you shouldn't test, but I think in the way we do a lot of our testing, we can really, you know, omit some of our best, you know, qualified individuals. And especially when I tell individuals, well, you want to get a job, you got to go online and go online. A lot of these individuals, they will go online and they substantially have been there for three or four weeks and nothing's happened. So I don't know how the expediency of trying to when you go back and say, well, what do you tell a person, well, I should keep going, going back. So what's the length of time that you would have a person once they go online and you find that the job is still open, but you can still they say, And what do I do? So what is the process that you've been waiting so long once you've already applied online to try to get that job? I know there's a lot of candidates out there, but I tell them to keep try and keep trying. So what is really I just what I'm really trying to say is what is kind of the waiting period once you have a person go online to apply for a job? Speaker 3: So I wish I could tell you what that waiting period is. Every position is different. I am learning as I in my second week or beginning of my third week here that we have a lot of positions that are open continuously. And I think that may be what you're talking about, that where candidates are saying, hey, what is what is happening? And so we're we're evaluating all of those so that we can give more information to candidates because we don't want them to give up on us. And so we're going to we're going to be looking at these processes and evaluating some positions are very hard to fill. And so we do need to have them open continuously so people have access. Other positions are are we have plenty of candidates and it would behoove us to move forward with the process. So we're going to try to see how we can assess, be more transparent, share more information with candidates and communicate with candidates so that they understand. And they're not having to call their council person to get updates on what their what their status might be. Speaker 1: Well, that's one of the because I know there's no way that they can get in touch with you guys and find that out. But I just want you to know that because I mean. Speaker 3: I think you should they should be able to have some information from us if that's if if we are generating that information. So definitely that is something that we will be working on so that they do have they have ability to communicate. Speaker 1: And thank you, guys. That's that's a very key area in my especially in my district. Like I said, the job does it mean so much because it resonate all over the district. Once she said, well, a guy that hasn't had a job for the last ten or 15 years and get a job from the city. I mean, that goes to show because you know what he had to do in order to get that job. And I just want to let you guys know that that's one thing I really applaud union budget for, but just help us out a little bit more on that, if that's possible. And thank you very much. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: And. Yes. Speaker 11: Thank you. I had one question that I forgot to ask, Leah. In your budget, under the SAP funds, there's a reference to educational programing video for Focus on the New Civic Center. Speaker 4: The total looks like $300,088. Speaker 11: So I wanted to understand more about this video you could just share with us. Speaker 3: So Councilwoman Pearce, that includes funding for Councilmember Pearce, that includes funding for a position. So about 138,000 of that is for a position who's going to be helping work with Long Beach television as well as staff here in the Technology and Innovation Department on programing and and art and engagement. And the focus is on the Civic Center because that position and the funding will help with the media wall. And out there in the lobby, also with the the the messaging that's in the elevator and the elevators, all of the public service announcements and messaging in the elevators, as well as just general programing and features for language television. Speaker 11: So it's not a program about the Civic Center. It's literally programing that wall. Yes, programing. What's in the elevator? Yeah. Speaker 3: As well as content for language television. And so. So there's one time funding as well as the position. Speaker 11: So the 250,000 for one time funding. Outside of the position. I mean, is that for the video team? Help me. Speaker 3: Understand. A portion of that would be for some of the content for the the city hall media wall. And a portion of that would be for curation. So but for curation of original content, including working with local artists in the Long Beach Museum of Art, for instance, and the Arts Council. Speaker 11: Okay. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Speaker 5: To add one thing, and it's a comment for Miss Erickson. You know, I know we talk a lot about digital inclusion, and people heard me talk about this at the Bossie meeting. But one stopgap until we get to the place where every resident in the city of Long Beach has access to the Internet and access to the computer is our libraries. Every resident in the city of Long Beach has access to the Internet and to computers through our libraries. And when we extend our library hours, residents who work full time have the opportunity to go in and look for jobs and do their searches on the weekends and try to, you know, enhance their own lives by looking at what opportunities are out there and preparing themselves for job opportunities and job interviews. So I just wanted to throw that out there that the entire burden of digital inclusion, inclusion should not fall on our Technology Services Department because we do have other services available throughout the city that can help make that need a reality. Until such time as we're able to enhance the infrastructure citywide, which is a multimillion dollar project. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilwoman. With that, let me go ahead and that I know that concludes all the questions we had as far as it relates to technology and and civil service. So thank you. Let's give also and let's do another welcome for our new executive director of civil service. Very happy. So thank you and welcome again. And talk about being thrown right into the rain to the fire on your on your second week. So thank you. Thank you. We do have we a series of votes, of course, as it relates to the budget. And we can also, of course, get getting some more discussion as it relates to the budget. And so we're going to go out and go through those right now and want to take a few initial votes. And then we're going to pause because the finance staff has got to go back and do some work on some of the recommendations, and then we'll do the rest of the council meeting and then finish the budget at the end of the night. Speaker 3: A Mayor Can we get a vote on. Speaker 0: It to receive and file as part of the hearing? So I'm not sure that we do. We need a vote on that. But let's go ahead let's just go to the last was even file in those three departments cluster your votes. Speaker 4: Catlin. So when you were younger. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 13: When your younger. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We we we have a series of items. I'm going to also during when when the BSE committee's recommendations come up. I know there are some some comments and I have a couple as well. And we're going to we're going to work through those. And that's in a couple of items. We're going to go through the first three votes on the on the on the budget. We have taken all public comment. So, Madam Clerk, the first one is to adopt the mayor's proposed budget recommendations as amended and as have been submitted to the the council.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2020 budgets for the following Departments: Technology and Innovation and Civil Service; and

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_09032019_19-0830

Speaker 0: And to get a motion in a second. Members, please go ahead and cast their votes. Motion carries, motion carries. The next item is the Bloc Oversight Committee proposed spending recommendations. And I know that there were those will be the read into the record. And then we're going to have some also some discussion, I know, from the council on some of the items. And so I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to Councilman Mongo, who will read read them into the record. Speaker 7: So I want to thank the mayor. I just want to say how proud I am of the city staff and all the hard work that they did. This has been a truly collaborative process. I want to thank Councilmember Price for making the suggestion that Bossie members attend as many budget oversight committee meetings as possible. We had a Budget Oversight Committee member at nearly every single budget community meeting in the city. I think there was one or two that had attendance at less than ten community members that maybe we didn't get to all of them, but nearly every one. And that's a first for for this committee. But I think that it was great in the efforts we made to hear directly from the communities without them having to make separate appointments. We did also take separate appointments from community groups that reached out and asked for the opportunity to meet with us and share their priorities. And we all know that we are going into a tight financial time as our pension obligations increase, our available funds decrease. And so we won't have as much money available. And so as the belt tightens and we recognize that some of the things we've spent one time funding on in the past, and we're going to need to really learn what our priorities are or become even more efficient. So thank you to everyone that's made recommendations on those items. I'd like to further state that some of the items that I've received comments on since the Budget Oversight Committee about whether or not they were funded, were already funded in the budget or departments, have stepped up and said they can find that in their budget. And so just because it was not mentioned does not mean that it was not a priority or that we didn't find funding. So I welcome any of those questions from my colleagues if they'd like to make such comments, I think from here. Miss Yuan, would you like to read the first item? Speaker 5: Sure I can read. The budget oversight committees voted on recommendations into the record. Speaker 7: Right. Speaker 0: Please do so. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 5: Okay, great. So motion to support Mayor Garcia's proposed budget recommendations. Motion to modify the proposed FY 20 multi-year measure plan as follows. Modify the measure. I plan to use $9,561,510 one time funds set aside for public safety or other enhancements. The outyear measure I plan as follows. 4,700,000 to temporarily fund a two year restoration of Engine 17 for FY 20 in FY 21, with a two week delay in implementation in FY 22 mid-October. $4,761,510 available over four years to help fund the cost of providing a temporary and long term solution for fire station. 900,000 for disease, magnolia tree program and removal. Consistent with the measure I plan as modified appropriate the following for FY 20 based on the projected available cash flow for FY 22.3 million for engine 17. 1,000,514 $645 for Fire Station nine, 100,000 for the Disease. Magnolia Tree Program and Removal. Appropriate in FY 20, up to 3 million in additional measure funds for Fire Station nine contingent on the availability of Fy19 measure a year end surplus above what is currently projected in the proposed FY 20 measure plan. The total plan funding for Station nine with this contingent funding is $7,761,510. If there are any additional future surplus funds that are realized or improved revenue projections for Measure A prioritize the additional funds available for one time infrastructure investments in the following areas using the following priority allocation of any additional funds. The following dollars would be allocated over FY 20 through FY 22 if overall revenue projections increased by 3 million, with half being available for one time purposes. Ali's at 60% at 2.7 million park bathrooms, 20% at 900,000 playgrounds at 10%. 450,000 irrigation pumps at 10%. 450,000. Motion to appropriate $148,133 from the General Fund, Group and Uplands Fund Group projected at Fy19 and FY 20 ending funds available and recognized one time savings of 179,000 from proposed departmental activities for one time investments as follows. Speaker 11: As well as provide. Speaker 5: Additional direction to study staff proposals in the General Fund group as follows 115,000 for a three month pilot to provide weekend homeless outreach and response that would begin October 1st, 2019 and continue for three months. $88,133 for expanded library hours, which can include some form of Sunday hours, Monday afterschool hours and or summer morning hours at select locations to be determined by input from the current utilization and the recent Library Patrons survey. Direct the city manager to work with the Library Services Department to report back to the City Council on the plan. 24,000 to augment the 80,000 structural to be matched by 25,000 from partners of Parks. So Parks, Recreation and Marine Department will be able to run the program at Drake, Seaside, Silverado Sheer and MacArthur for the Be Safe program. Additionally, modify the name of the program to make it more marketable and easier for the community to understand the purpose of the program. 15,000 for senior programing at the Expo and direct staff to reappropriate any remaining fy19 19 funds that had been allocated for this purpose. This to fund this funding, along with Fy19 carryover funding, is expected to support senior programing for FY 20 10,000 for trashcan lids in the non tidelands area. Reduce appropriations for the short term rental program on a one time basis by 79,000, and direct the Development Services Department to explore and report back on program, volume and less costly program enforcement models in the proposed short term program prior to the adoption of the FY 21 budget. Recognize 100,001 time vacancy savings resulting from the time delay for hiring and onboarding of the nine positions added to the police department to support addressing state mandates in the body worn camera program from the city manager's proposed 600,001 time investment set aside for census and redistricting. Allocate 350,000 for census and 250,000 for redistricting. Direct the city manager to report back to City Council on the estimated uses of the funds. Appropriate 60,000. In the Parks and Recreation and Marine Department and freeze utilization of the 19th strategic one time funds and appropriate the remaining funding from the Health Department to the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department via a budget adjustment to lead the remaining implementation of the plan and expand it to include follow up on last year's request for workforce programing at the McBride Teen Center. Appropriate 15,000 for training estimated at a half a day, but up to the discretion of the city administration for nonpublic safety employees who currently receive bilingual bonuses and others as appropriate to help further a culture of multilingual openness in the city. Motion to appropriate 408,000 of the special advertising and promotions fund group funds available for one time investments as follows as well as provide additional direction to city staff on SFP related items as follows 35,000 to support the annual Martin Luther King Jr Day celebration in FY 20, conducted by the Special Events Office and the City Manager's Department. 135,004 Council District priority funds to be divided equally between the City Council districts to only be used toward special events or contributions for special events managed by the Special Events Office. 108,000 for the city's match needed to utilize Metro Grant funds for the following two beach streets events in Fy20 Beach Streets University, covering 4.1 miles of eastern Long Beach along Atherton Street, adjacent to California State University. Long Beach. Speaker 11: Bellflower Bellflower Boulevard. Speaker 10: Los Coyotes. Speaker 5: Diagonal and Spring Street Beach Street downtown covering four miles of roadway along Broadway, Pyne Avenue, Cherry Avenue and Fourth Street. 100,000 as a grant to the new Economic Development Corporation for Direct Activities for outreach and promotion of the city. 20,000 for a youth poet laureate program subject to later confirmation on program structure and eligibility for SRP funds. 10,000 is a contribution to support the Women's Suffrage Centennial Celebrations mural, as presented to the Budget Oversight Committee. Motion to modify the city manager's proposed FY 20 tidelands capital projects to free up 200,000 that can be appropriated for other priorities by decreasing Colorado Lagoon Playground by 50,000. Decreasing painting at various public facilities by 150,000. Decreasing wayfinding signs by 50,000. And increasing the appropriation for Tidelands critical facilities by 50,000. The net result of these changes frees up 200,000 to be appropriated for new priorities, as follows Under 50,000 for homeless rapid response along the beachfront. 50,000 for trashcan replacements in the Tidelands area. Motion to appropriate the next 150,000 of the 75% project area share of sale proceeds from the sale of the former RTA properties anywhere in the city for establishing a two year lease for North Long Beach Higher Education Center. And that. Speaker 3: Concludes the BRC. Speaker 5: Recommendations. Speaker 1: Perfect. Speaker 0: Thank you very much for that report. I I'm to make some just some general comments. I have some questions and a couple of clarification points that I know the council will will be engaging as well. I want to just first begin by thanking the BRC for all the work I do. I do want to also thank them. They put an enormous amount of time. I'm not just at the public meetings, but of course attending many of the community budget hearings. And so this kind of work is important. It's very thoughtful, and I want to thank them for all the time. I also want to particularly do some things that are in this and these recommendations that I wanted to uplift that I think are really important. I want to thank the BRC, but also those members have been advocating for the expansion of homeless outreach services on the weekends. That's something that is a part of these recommendations. It's something that we have not done before, and I think it's very important and to have been able to get to a point now where we're going to be piloting and looking at doing all these outreach programs over the weekends, I think is really important. We know there's a huge need. And so I just wanted to mention that I mean, there's a lot of recommendations in here, but that's one that to me speaks directly to a critical need. And I can tell you that when I am visiting and going through parks, I know vice mayor knows this because he and I talk about it often. There's such a need on the weekends, not just in the center part of the city, but across the entire city to do this work. I also wanted to just also mention that I really want to thank particularly the council members that have worked on our our fire station challenge. I think that obviously losing fire station nine has been a real difficult challenge for the community, particularly want to thank Councilmember Al Austin for his work here. I also know that Councilmember Roberta Ranga and Councilmember Rex Richardson have been involved and very supportive of this work. And I think to have come together so quickly with with the chair of the Budget Oversight Committee, Councilwoman Mongo, and kind of put together a plan that addresses the need for this fire station to be rebuilt. Is is impressive. It's important and and is necessary. And I know that our city staff have been putting their their heads together as to how we ensure that the community that this community has access to a reliable and quick response times. And and I'm really glad to see that you guys have worked this out through these recent recommendations. And there's a clear plan of how to get there, especially with this very detailed timeline that was produced, I think, by Councilmember Austin as well as kind of reviewing some of the history. So I want to I want to appreciate that as well. And I think that's really great. I think there's a lot of other great items that are funded here. And so certainly looking forward to a conversation on those. I did want to ask two questions. The first is because I've heard some folks come here to talk about language access. And I think everyone on this on this body is supportive to ensure that people have access. All of our community has access to to all of our services. It's been important for the city, and I think members of this body have have voted that way in the past. I want to point out something I haven't heard. To me, the biggest additions to the budget, which I don't think we discussed enough, is that we actually took a position and made it permanent and full time, but is actually working on language access within the city. So that is that is actually a new addition. And so I know that there's been some discussion about how much we're funding language access, but I haven't heard that position having been lifted up too much in the discussion. And can we can can staff talk about this? Because to me, this is the most significant thing we're doing within the language access work in this budget. Speaker 8: Yes, Mayor, we certainly agree. So we as staff hear you loud and clear and the whole council about language access that has now been with us for several years and it's becoming into institutionalized into our city. But the way we've been running that program is having a part time person who is the main coordinator. So while every department has a responsibility for following language access, there is one person that helps with training, helps with document translation, helps provide resources, but it's been a part time position. Last year the council asked us to study this issue and say, what are our top priorities on how to move language access forward? And the recommendation from the Health Department was to fund a fully funded one time or a position that is dedicated to this, that is there full time. So we that was included in the city manager's proposed budget and we think that will take us a big step forward in continuing the work on language access. Speaker 0: Right. And so I think we're going from a from a part time position that was not structural to moving forward. A full time position that is structural, is that correct? Speaker 8: Yes, it's a structural position going forward. Speaker 0: Thank you. I just want to make sure that the community also is aware of that. I think that's really important. Step forward. And so that's in the budget that will be adopted tonight. I also want to just add on language access. I know that there was a reference to what the amount was last year. And and I know that this year there's there's an additional 80,000 for to help implement the program. But I, I was under the impression and I think I think I'm correct that one of the shifts that we've tried to do is to ensure that every department actually is working on language access programs within their budget. And so I think one of the what I heard from this council for the last couple of years is to instead of just putting language access money into one bucket, that it should be a part of every single department's work. And so that we wouldn't necessarily be coming in for, for one pot of funds, but that each department would be setting aside funds within their department to do that work. Can you can you explain that to me a little bit more? Because that's what I thought was was happening. Yeah. Speaker 8: So there's actually two things. So often when we create a new policy, we just say, all right, this is now our policy. And departments have to try to absorb that within their budget. With language access, we try to go above and beyond that to get additional compliance faster and provide a dedicated bucket of money that's that $80,000 that departments can draw from. And to have a centralized approach to how we do that. We are now at the point where departments are using their internal funds to do language access. I'll give you an example. When we do special events and we have certain special events, especially in the coastal area, we've done language access and outreach and in different languages and those are all funded, not out of the 80,000, but out of the actual program itself. Same thing with a lot of our planning outreach. Those are in multiple languages. So the 80,000 is really on top of what departments are spending. And last year it was actually there was a one time bump up that the mayor put in to help us get caught up on some of the documents we needed to try to translate. So that's why it went up last year, is to help us move forward that plan. The 80,000 is what we have historically budgeted for and that's included in the budget. Speaker 0: And the 80 and remaining because I the 80,000 is is beyond what the departments are already doing. I mean, the departments are each expected to provide these important services to the community. Is that correct? Speaker 8: That's correct. So another example is census. When you're funding census, they're going to be having money within their budget to do language access I think, into the 80,000 now. Speaker 0: And I and I think I think Councilman Mangold mentioned a bit earlier as well, even within the budget of the census, I think there's $40,000 or so just for language access that is on top of the $80,000 that are also there. Is that correct? Speaker 8: Correct. And when we're putting together programs now and we're bringing to you here are what our programs look like for these new programs. Those are including language access, not as a part of the 80,000, but as part of the base program, because that's how we operate. Speaker 0: Thinking that is that's helpful. I think that it's just I want to make sure that all of the the resources that the cities invest in which are really important are happening. And it seems like they are. And so I know that we're that work will continue. So thank you for answering those those questions. I also want to just to mention, I think that one thing that was proposed by our fire chief and the fire department was there and they really did a great job is kind of their study and their look at wanting to do diversity, recruitment and diversity training within the department . I know that I personally have had some conversations with the chief. I know Chief Espino is here. I want to commend the Chief for his work in this area. And I know that that I know that he and the department were looking to be able to have funds to do some of that work. And so I in talking to Councilwoman. I know that we want to make sure that it's called out in the budget and that it's there as a part of the budget. And so I just as we have this conversation, I just want to ask also that Councilman Mongo that we look at calling out the fire diversity work within the budget. I know that there are IAC funds. There may or may not be enough there to cover that work within the department. But if there isn't, I think we should look at other contingency funds within the fire department. And if those aren't there, we should look we should look at the rest of the budget, whether it's measure or any other funds. But I think that that work needs to happen. I appreciate the work the fire department's done. I appreciate. I mean, Councilmember Richardson, I know that this is something that you've advocated for as well. But I've heard I've also heard this from many members of the council. And I've heard when we had this first issue brought up, I know that many members of the council have talked about this being important. And and it is. And so I'm hopeful that as discussion moves forward and we've had some good conversations about it, I think we know that we have work to do and we want to provide our fire department with that support as well. And so I know there are other items that will be discussed. I don't want to take up all the time. I will recue at the end for some additional comments. But I do want to think again the the full council on the BSE for for the work. And so with that, let me let me turn this over and to the discussion, and I'll start as a council item. I'm assuming that you've you want to you want to go first, assess the motion, and we'll go through. Speaker 7: Sure. I'd love to add something. Speaker 0: I go to Councilman Mongo, Councilman Price and then Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: Thank you. I really appreciate you lifting up diversity. As many of you know, I supported the Arise conference at the county level for a diversity of all fire departments of the whole region where all departments were invited. I'm a big supporter. Staff came back and said they thought that there would be easy funds available in the amount. I want to say of 94,000. I don't remember if that came through staff or whether it was in one of my discussions with Mr. Richardson or with. I don't remember. But. I would love for that to support what the mayor said and actually calling it out would be helpful. If not, then I would be comfortable with modifying the motion to state that it could come from year end savings in the fire department. Speaker 8: So if you remember about a month ago when we came and presented that report, that was one of the recommendations. We fully support the idea of looking at a position that does that in the fire department. We at that point, we're not recommending taking from another department to fund that, but looking either within the fire department or that that revenue source, as I say, training funds. So we that is our plan right now, if that would if you'd like to include that, is giving us direction to do that and we would come back to you if we needed additional funds. We're hoping to contain that within special revenues dedicated to the fire department or fire department savings. Speaker 7: I'm very comfortable with that. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman, would you be amenable to adding that to the B or C recommendations? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Price. I can come back to you if you'd like to. Speaker 5: So I just wanted to comment on two big projects that I think we're going to be embarking on as pilots. And the mayor already touched upon them. But the two pilot programs that we have come up with for homelessness, they're similar but different in a sense. I want to thank Councilmember Pierce for being a great partner in trying to figure out how we can work on some of our beach challenges and offering services and trying to get people into services on the weekends, which is a time where our beaches are fully engaged. And unfortunately, we see a lot more transient populations out there that have no outsource mechanism. So I want to thank police and fire and our health department for working together on some of the ideas that we had. We made it very clear that this is a pilot program. There's not a lot of money there. And I want to reach out for a mayor or I want to stress the creativity of Deputy Chief Rex Winkle, who's here, who suggested that we could expand some of the work that we've done with the heart teams and train some of our Marine safety officers the skills that our heart team officers have since they're on the beach and they have the apparatus to be able to maneuver the sand and be able to do some outreach on the beach on a more consistent basis. So I'm very excited about both of these homeless pilots that we're going to be trying. I know that council member Pierce and I are both going to be using some of our divide by nine moneys to help augment the the pilot that we're trying on the beach, which is a huge thing for the two of us, because that's money that we can't use for other services. But we realize that the amount of money that we're giving the departments to assist with this pilot is limited. And so we're we're putting some skin in the game to make sure that it's successful. My concern with both of the pilots is and I just want to make the the legislative intent very clear. We need to be able to track the data for these pilot programs. I've already reached out to Assistant City Manager Modica and I've talked with Councilmember Pierce, at least for the Tidelands pilot, where Councilmember Pearson are going to come up with some performance measures or objective, some data that we can track. Because if this is if we start to see something that's working where we're able to put people into services, where we're able to track individuals, the combination, the Tidelands project that we're envisioning involves police and fire working together and health, helping with transportation and ultimately getting folks into the system through the Multi-Service Center on that Monday. If this is a system that works and we're able to see some results, I'd like to be able to model it throughout the city. And so we will I envision that will have a follow up item that comes back where we ask for performance measures, how data is going to be collected so that we can track the progress, talk to other cities that may have tried similar programs and build upon it. And that's my hope. What I don't want to do is see us fund money for pilots that do basically the same things we have been doing, which are amazing and great. But this is trying something different and it really does need to be different for the tidelands portion of it. I've shared this with Assistant City Manager Modica as well, that I think it's very, very important that police and fire have access to the money so that they know when they need to deploy their resources. They can use their discretion to make that determination and the response is swift and directed by them because they're the ones that are going to be out there doing the work. And so that's very, very important to me. I would hate for us to have to have, you know, collaborative group discussions about every single deployment because nothing will happen. So I'm really hoping that we allow our police and fire departments to make the best determination as to what's needed on the weekend and deploy accordingly and work with health to do that. With that, I think we are funding a lot of different priorities every single year. I wish that we could fund every single priority. I cannot think of any project or proposal that's come forth to council that doesn't have merit. A lot of projects and programs do, but we have limited resources. And I want to thank our Budget Oversight Committee chair, Councilwoman Mungo, for being so thoughtful and inclusive in her efforts to try to meet everybody's needs. I will say. That the one project that the one program that I've always really been advocating for is Sunday library hours. It looks like the amount of money will be able to allocate to that program is a lot less than we did in the past. So I'd like to put it out there that when we have our first quarter budget numbers and evaluation of, you know, what our savings from the 19 looks like, if any, what our actuaries are in 20, that any budget reallocation that we do that sun library hours be given some priority in that discussion. Speaker 7: Thank you. I will take that under consideration. I appreciate the recommendation. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Mango Councilman Price. Thank you, Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 11: Thank you. I want to start off just by thanking everybody that's been a part of this process. I know the timeline moves kind of quickly and we're all on the last day kind of scrounging to figure out how we do continue to fund all of those priorities. And I am very proud of this budget and the fact that we have funding allocated for our shelter, funding allocated and greater extent for our biggest priority homelessness for our heart team that we continue to set the priorities of our constituents. First, I'd like to go ahead and piggyback on Councilmember Price's comments around our pilot program that we're doing in the Tidelands Fund and just also say what a great process it's been to sit down and bring in the other departments and sit in a room and try to strategize around how do we really make sure we're not spending the largest amount of money for the littlest return? And so I want to thank the staff that's here today that sat down with us and said, let's figure something else out. Maybe the heart team can train our Marine bureau. Maybe we can try something that hasn't been done before. So I'm really looking forward to that. Happy to spend my divide by nine money to see if we can make a bigger dent on the weekends and in the areas that tend to be our most problematic areas. I echo the conversation around we need to track. I mean, if we don't know when we're coming in contact with the most people, when we're able to get them off the streets, when we're able to get them resources, then it's even harder for us to figure out how to staff. And while we're not the ones staffing, I think if we can look at those numbers come next budget or next cycle, then we can say, okay, now we know how we spend our money more wisely. And whenever we're tackling a problem that's city wide like this, that is going to be ever more important. So I look forward to having that conversation. I want to thank the mayor for the clarifying questions. There were some of the same clarifying questions I was going to ask about language access, and I think that everybody's trying to put forth the best effort to make sure that we don't drop the ball on something that we've said consistently for years is a priority. And sometimes maybe we don't know where those dollars are directly spent. Sometimes maybe community members don't. But what they see is that. The vision hasn't been carried out. And I know that already talked about this last time. I want to give that opportunity one more time to our team to kind of talk about what your vision is for really making sure that it's strategic and that it's implemented into every single department. I know that we already asked that, but if you could follow up a little bit more just on the conversations that have happened since last budget cycle or last budget meeting to today to demonstrate what a priority this has been. Speaker 8: So every Wednesday, right after the budget or after the council meeting, we sit together as a department team. We talk about what happened, the last meeting and what we need to prepare for. I had a conversation with every single one of our departments about language access, about a priority, and this has been with us for now several years. And what we really want and expect is that it gets put into our daily operations so that it not be an add on than it be something that we think of when we plan, when we're doing our internal deadlines. We need to be thinking of when does the Spanish translation need to happen? When does the commission need to happen? When does the Tagalog need to happen and that those all be rolled out and considered as part of our overall budget? If you've noticed around City Hall, we took the comments very seriously about, you know, that we did have some language up access signs, but some of the you know, for example, the computers hadn't been done yet and, you know, the staff were working on those. But if we don't tell anybody that that's happening, the assumption is that it's not happening. So if you walk around city hall, you'll notice that there's a lot more signage. In the last two weeks, all of those digital displays have signs saying it's coming. And in the meantime, if, you know, while you're waiting for that, go see a staff member. And so we do have the ability for all staff to call language line to get someone who's who's a translator either on the phone or in person. So, you know, that is happening and will continue over this next year to make sure that, you know, our department director and or their number two when they're approving work products, they're saying, hey, have we have we included language access so that it becomes part of our culture even quicker. Speaker 11: Thank you for that answer. I know that while we're funding Francesca's position or that position full time and that is a great step, I think that's an additional $30,000. That's something that I know four of us council members said last year we were willing to fund ourselves of the h.r. Would just make it full time. So that's something that we felt like we could have had last year. And it's great that it's full time position. We know that it's going to take coordination, the amount of money that keeps going back and forth, as is the 80,000 and the fact that it was to bring it back up to make sure that we implement the program fully. What it's my understanding that this year this department is over on this line item, that there are already over $160,000, is that correct? Speaker 8: I've heard the number of 100 670. I don't. We can ask Kelly to do that. But when you give us money, we try to spend it all. So there was a plan. You know, if there was 80, we would have spent 80. If there's 160, we spend 160. So last year there was this push to get more documents done and then do the study, which we filed back a couple of months ago to say what are our major priorities? And the biggest priority of moving language access forward was the full time position. Speaker 11: And so the you're saying that some of these funds were spent on that study. Speaker 8: I believe a little bit. Speaker 4: Okay. Here. Speaker 11: Just making sure it's really done for everyone. Speaker 8: It would be incorrect and we didn't use any of that funding for the study. We think that was part of the budget motion was to use part of it. We actually were able to use internal staff time and not have to charge against that money on vote. Speaker 11: So this year, if we say we put 80,000 instead of 160,000, but the need is 170,000, what opportunity do we have to make sure that that doesn't go unfunded? Speaker 8: So I think is the mayor mentioned we spend more than just $80,000 on this program. So I understand. I understand it's included in the department budgets. Honestly, if that money's available, the departments will use it. If it's not available, they need to do language access anyway and they're going to absorb it within the budget and then there'll be some other kind of service reduction. That's just how it works. So language access will get taken care of as we do our programs. Speaker 11: Right. And that was what I was trying to get at, is that we're not going to reduce our language access ability if we don't give that additional fund today that we are committed to language access regardless of it's 80,000 or 160,000. My next question. You know, I'd like to also ask I know that in the BSE meeting that happened right before the council meeting, there was 15 K earmarked from BSE chair to be used for training. It was my understanding that there was already a training plan proposed by the team. Is this on top of what will be happening or is this to support that? Speaker 8: As I understand, this would be on top of it. So in discussing this a little bit with the BSE chair, we have over 700 people who are all getting language access or they're all getting a bilingual scope and they use it on a daily basis. We think it's a good idea to bring people together, to use it, to have a training opportunity for all those people that are currently getting that pay to be able to be on the same page about how and where do we use language access and that standardization and really get them in front of Francesca. So anytime you're doing 700 people, there's going to be over time that we're going to have to use to schedule them, to bring them in. There's going to be training materials. So this would be in excess of that to provide additional training. Speaker 11: Thank you for that. I don't know that we've had the conversation yet. I want to bring it up now and see where my council colleagues are when the first quarter comes up in November. I would like to to hear my council colleagues thoughts on making this a first priority for evaluation for another 100 K if that is needed. So I look forward to hearing my counsel colleagues conversation on that. I think it's demonstrated it's a priority. We want to make sure that people are getting those services, that other services aren't being cut, but making sure that we're not. Taking less whenever. Now Francesca is full time, and I'm imagining that more requests are going to come in. More trainings are going to be required. The fact that city manager's office is really taking this to heart and I really feel like for the first time you guys are going to institute this in every single department. I feel like that workload is probably going to be there. And so I want to make sure that we have a backup plan for that. My my I have two other three other areas that I'd like to talk about. I know that there's a proposal in here around moving the Youth Fund to Parks and Rec. Also want to hear my council colleagues conversations around this. The Youth Fund was advocated for by community groups. The mayor put this in his budget last year. We debated this last year behind the dais in which department it goes in. I know that each of us have our departments that we love, each of us have, our departments we struggle with. It is my firm belief that whenever we're talking about areas where there's an equity, areas where there's overlap, where we're talking about impacts on people's health, like as the case with our youth and our aging seniors, that it's best positioned in a health department or in a structure that allows the health department economic development in parks and recs to work together. I know as assistant city manager we've had the conversation around how do we have collaborative works within different departments? This is one of those areas where I would hate to have a program that was intended to address health inequities, poverty disparity, go into being an after school youth program, which is very important, and I love that we're funding them again and that we're keeping them. But it can't just be that it has to be so much more and be in a position where we're able to get more grants and more collaboration with other departments outside of the city and the county to really address those economic disparities that the community groups came and advocated for. So I want to make sure that we keep this fund with the original intent that it was voted on. My last two. I think everyone here knows the Office of Aging has been an issue that vice mayor several years ago Deandra has brought forward. It was two year funding. We know that nearly 40% of the population in the city is made up of older adults aging 50 or more. The population is expected to increase by 22% by 2025. This is a population that, if we ignore now, will suffer later and the city will be paying the bill for that. And I'm didn't think that I would be the one that's championing this, but I want to make sure we have that plan in place. We have also an item that I worked really hard on, which was a short term rental policy, and it was my firm belief whenever we decided to regulate this was that there had to be an intersection with housing. And when I think about our older population and their housing vulnerabilities that they have, it's real. We don't have a plan in place, but when we funded this two year position, one of the things was a strategic plan. And that strategic plan said that housing was a priority for our aging adults. I think it makes a lot of sense to earmark some of the funds from the START position that is there to fund this position at half of the cost. And so the motion that I would like to propose is to reduce appropriations for the short term rental program on a one time basis in FY 20 by 73,000 and delay implementation of the SDR program according to spend with the remaining 4020 SDR funding, and to reallocate one time funding to continue the current Office of Aging position through 2020, supplemented by another 73,000 from the Homeless Program 2.0 funding. I know we worked a staff on this. I know I just proposed it. Charlie's giving me the look like. Was that a motion? I can read it later. I'm proposing it now. I want to hear my colleague said, since I'm one of the first council members to talk, it's something that I think if we care about homelessness, we care about housing, we care about our seniors, there's a path there to delay that SDR program from starting so that we can make sure we have a full time position funded. My last comments are on the Civic Center video program, which I just picked up. I would like to. I would like to understand more about that fund and if that's something that we feel like is a critical source, I know maybe we could take those funds and use them. A divide by nine for the entire council spending $400,000 to program our big screen in the first year is something that I'm not sure I'm fully comfortable with. At a minimum, I know that we've had the Women's Suffrage Centennial Fund. They came to us and asked us for a fund to help program community events, not just fund a mural and not just fund a video. But what's in this is funding a mural. So I would like to try to find $10,000 to fund the program citywide that we unanimously voted on in June. It seems like, if anything, we could get ten K out of this to make sure that that was funded as we all voted on unanimously back in June. Those are my comments. I look forward to hearing my council colleagues. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 12: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, first of all, thank you to everybody who worked on preparing this budget. We had our budget committee, our ninth District Budget Committee meeting. I think it went pretty well. I want to thank Chair Mungo for spending some time and coming up and bringing, you know, bringing the baby out and giving some remarks . We had a good time. Just a few things. It's a lot here. So I'll try to narrow it down to either the things that I want to raise up or the things I think might need some adjustment. So first, Mayor, I like your comments. I appreciate your comments on the fire diversity. And I know that we've all sort of talked about it's important to many, many people that we figure out how to get it done. And I like that approach. We're going to look internally within the department. But if you know, I want to I want to say I want to echo the mayor's comments. If we the intent here, there's a good plan. You know, my first conversation with the chief and I'm sure this went the same way with many of us, you know, it was a priority to focus on diversity. His presentation, I think, was amazing. He said the words economic inclusion. He said the words racial equity, and he wasn't forced to do so. And I think that should be recognized and rewarded when you have a visionary department head who steps forward with an idea. And I want and I want to lift that up. And I also want to say the intent here is to get it going in the first year. If we can get that going internally, let's do it. But like the mayor said, if for some reason, you know, those funds, the special funds and those year end dollars don't materialize. We want to know about it because we want this program to roll out. So we need to look we need to look at an allocated rea or whatever it is when it comes back. So I definitely lift that up. So thank you all for for doing that. That's that's incredibly important. Secondly, I just want to give some recognition to Councilman Alston on moving very quickly since the community meeting. And I know what we're probably going to hear more about the the plan for Station nine, but it seems like it's off, it's on his way and it has my support. Again, you know, all of this, it impacts our whole community and we you know, we're one in uptown on this issue. So there's no space between us on this issue. Secondly, on the be safe. So so two things on the Be Safe program and it was hard to tell because it didn't say the words be safe in the recommendation. I see that there's five sites listed. How were those sites selected? Staff or among the staff. How was that? How were those five, five sites selected in this recommendation? Speaker 5: So the chair of the Budget Oversight Committee worked with the Parks and Recreation director, who can also discuss this. But they looked at data of the utilizations of the Be Safe program and looking at the locations as well. And so if you'd like further discussions on that, we can ask. Speaker 12: Were these the top five based on that list? That this was. Speaker 4: May I? Speaker 7: So originally, we were only gonna be able to fund three programs. And so the three programs recommended by parks, and unfortunately, two of them were in the same district, but they had significantly higher utilization than others. It was brought to my attention about an hour ago that the data provided is actually from last fiscal year and that perhaps two years of fiscal data could have been helpful because the top three might have been different. Further, the other two sites were kind of discussed in partnership with partners of Parks, who was open to funding a site. Sure. And so they were open to funding a new area that hadn't been tested yet. And so we came up with a. Originally it was gonna be a 5050 split. We were going to find a new one. They were going to fund a new one. Then they came today and said they were willing to give us a little bit more flexibility in light of the discussion related to the data. And they'll put $5,000 towards up to five sites. Speaker 12: Great. So here's what I here's what I would say. The list that was provided. So every year since the program is started out in parks been top three, the third, second or first, and it showed probably one of the lowest in attendance. And the reason why is because it didn't take place this year at Highland Park. Highland Park is closed. And so it was redirected into other programs, other safe programs. But Highland Park is where they started, you know, the new iteration of Be Safe. It's one of the it's consistently been one of those top three. So in terms of selecting sites, are you open to just removing the list, the sites, giving it to staff and say, go back, look at your numbers. Take out this past year. It's not realistic. Well, the average of the top three sites that have been and I understand the also the issues with Drake and the other park and neighborhoods completely understand that. I think that that happens in a number of neighborhoods. But to simply base this based on that data, which we know is not reflective since the park was closed, I think I think it makes sense to give it to Parks to come back with, you know, you've got this funding program, these 3 to 5 sites based on utilization. Speaker 7: So I think that we'd be open to them bringing back using an average of multi-year data. I think that there's going to be a challenge with two of those parks. Two of those parks are new. And part of the appeal to the donation from Partners of Parks was that there are some synergies at those parks. I'm not specific on the exact programing that's already there. So I'd be open to them also considering that synergy component and perhaps asking a member of Poppy to be at the table for that. But yes, because I don't want to lose the 25. Speaker 12: I get it. Absolutely. And these programs are important to many of us and we all raise money to keep them there. And so I would say so. Just so we're clear, what I hear is we're going to kick this over the parks. They're going to consider usage data from the past. This past year wasn't reflective, at least particularly for for North Long Beach. Was it reflective? And then secondly, to make sure that partners are partners on the table if there's some leveraging funds to match. Speaker 7: And I think what I also hear specifically is two of them are in downtown right now. And if there's a way to consolidate that into one and make sure that. We still have the opportunity to explore parks that haven't had opportunities. I think that that's important, too. Speaker 12: I mean, I know there's sensitivity there. I don't want to say one over the other. Let's not forget that. Why don't we get into. I just know that Parks understands the dynamics with neighborhoods, and Parks also understands the history of these sites. That's why I think the decision on where we probably we know there's problems with our methodology and how we selected it. So I say we just give it to them and make sure that they understand the partners, the parks consideration. Speaker 7: And I just want to also just lift up. There's need for 11 sites. Speaker 12: Absolutely. Speaker 7: And no doubt you need to be able to figure out upstream what grant opportunities we have. So I would also ask that every single park that's had to be safe program in the past and the council member for that park work on bringing together park advocates for that park. Partners of Parks has a fundraising page available for all of them. They could even be a part of the Long Beach Gives Day. There's just so many opportunities and none of those other parks I've really activated behind it yet. And Poppy is here to match some of that funding. Speaker 12: So. Understood. Understood. Okay. So moving on. So, yes. Speaker 7: I'll do a firm friendly at the end to modify, if that's okay. Speaker 12: Okay. But I consider this is accepted. Yes. Okay. Great. So moving on. I appreciate the the consideration given to the poet laureate. And I understand fully the initial intent didn't reconcile with some of the funding sources. So I think that's good. I think the intent here, the poet laureate program, even though the two from four came back, said it was a training, is not a training program. We're lifting up our local youth poets was not a training program or if anything, is promoting our city, advocating for our youth and things like that, which is an appropriate use of the SAP funds. So I want to just. Right. Recognize that and lift that up. Also recognize the funding for expanded library hours. And I say expand it not just Sunday because I think we've we all know the benefit that that libraries avenue is we find that you know Sundays or what what works but most bang for the buck great if we find that you know what I see if the library opens let's say a noon, I'll have a, you know, a whole line of kids getting ready to get in during the summer right at 10:00. And so if we find that, you know, getting the kids off the street and getting them in 2 hours earlier, a few days out, the week, I'm supportive of that as well. Mondays, Monday after school and things like Monday, Monday after school, I think those are good. So I think we just need to continue to expand library hours in general. Some supportive of this. We'd love to see it go further down, supportive of it. Next, I want to lift up and you know, this has been work this north Long Beach Higher Education Center was a motion about a year ago to explore partnership with Long Beach City College. I'm glad to see us get to the point where it's ready for prime time. So I'm really. Speaker 0: Councilman, just really quick, just before we keep going, because it's just been a request from our city attorney just for their own bookkeeping as we go. And he's asking. Speaker 12: Why there's only one friendly. Everything else has been. Speaker 0: Exactly. Let me let me. Let me just just I just to clarify, per per our city attorney, that if there are things that get added, they're going to be added as we go, if they're accepted or they'll be put into a discussed later list. And so I just want to make sure to clarify on the park issue that something that we are moving forward with. Speaker 12: That was exact. Speaker 7: Correct. So my comment is at the end, I just meant at the end of all of Mr. Richardson's requests, if that's okay. Speaker 1: And if so, I can evaluate and these are made. Speaker 8: I think it would be helpful to me, too, if we're tracking this and the staff that you're identifying here, I believe that you want to remove Drake, Seaside, Silverado, Sheer and MacArthur and say locations as determined by the director of Parks and. Speaker 1: Rec. Speaker 12: Yeah. With consideration given to the partners of Parks piece as well as prior utilization. Just not this past. Speaker 8: Year because I just think it's going to be too hard to go back and ask for trying to change in the language as we go. It'd be helpful for us. So I understand. Speaker 12: I'm fine with City Manager. Speaker 7: Much appreciated. However, sometimes Mr. Richardson has a very long list of requests. Speaker 12: I'm sure. Speaker 7: I'll like one later more than. Speaker 1: Current. Speaker 12: And you know, to be fair, I didn't get to sit through the bills I got. Speaker 7: Yes, I. Speaker 12: Heard of today. Speaker 7: And I'm just going to make sure I hear all of your requests before I make any decisions in case there's funding implications that one has no funding implications. So I'm happy to accept it on the spot. Speaker 12: I'm going to make friendlies as well. Speaker 0: Let me let me let me stop there. So I'm Mr. City attorney. So that one has been accepted. And so the park the park request has been accepted. And now back to Mr. Richardson, who has a four. Speaker 12: Thank you. And yes, I like to be thorough. I would love to have more time. I get it. 2 hours since. We'll see what I'm going to take my time and sort of go through these and and I understand what you're saying. It's okay. So, again, poet laureate, I think. Good program. I think it should be appropriate through SAP because it's a it's promoting it's promoting the youth, one of our cities now a training program. And I think that was what the clarity was. I want to clarify the intent. You know, that's what it's been since the beginning. Expanded Sun Library. I was very happy to support that. The North Long Beach Higher Ed Center. I think we're teeing up for a good win. I just want to recognize John Keiser Keisler. The conversation initially was about synergy. Community college knew that they have they need to do more recruiting and outreach their strategic plans at North Long Beaches where they need help, real estate opportunities. They want to be a part of the uptown renaissance. John, you and your team have come together, figured out something that really makes sense. And I'm glad I'm glad that it's been vetted through city staff and that we're going to support this today. So that's incredibly important. So thank you, everybody who had a hand in that. I'm happy to support this budget and this makes it even better. And then next, I want to talk about I want to touch on language access. It's already been touched on in a lot of ways. I do say the term bake it in, not sprinkling on top. I think making the position full time is just that beginning in not sprinkling on top. But I do have a question about the concept of interpretation. I we use in the ninth district, we use interpreters, we submit a request and we try to use interpretation as often as we can. And I know that interpretation was sort of a stand alone fund that gets drawn down. And I'd like to understand, if we don't have that fund, how is actual interpretation being baked in? And I sprinkled on top because what I see here and what I don't want to happen is, you know, we get into second, second half of the year, we put in a request for interpreters and there's just no money. Halfway through the year. Right. So how do we handle interpreters today and what's our plan for it in the future? Speaker 8: So as I understand the interpreters, they are part of the 80,000 and that fund is there. So that is available for people to request it. We actually have data on who's requested it and the number of City Council members have used that. And then and we haven't reached a point where we've denied any request and I don't expect that to happen. But I'll have Kelly answer the rest of that question. Speaker 6: So there's not a specific line for interpretation versus translation or something like that. That thousand covers all of those services. What has happened in the past is we've hit we've hit the 80,000. And as you've heard, other departments are also including them as part of their budget. So when those at this year, when you've taken that, the training and the other pieces of the council we've had, we have topped out at 160,000. There have not been denials of requests, but we are now seeking that for the rest of the time that departments will be paying for their own. Speaker 12: So moving forward, the departments will pay for their own interpreters. Speaker 6: That would be the expectation, yes. Speaker 12: Mr. MODICA Is that is that the case here? Speaker 8: So they would draw down on the 80 grand and then if we run out, if we need to do interpretation, then we need to find a way to fund that. Yes. And if we're going to be way over on this program, that's something we'll come back to at the end of the year. And to say we're over budget and here's the solution. We need to fund it and this is what we're not going to do instead. So and I know there's been discussion I don't want to open a can of worms about salaries and keeping positions open, but that is how we manage our budget sometimes is sometimes we say , you know, our job is to manage it and we say, this is important, it needs to get done. And then we find it, whether it's extra savings from, you know, pencils or pens or sometimes positions to fund those things. Speaker 12: Understood. Absolutely. And so I just want to make sure we're clear on it. When I think of like language access, I agree it shouldn't be something we have to load up and fight for every year. Right. We should embrace it. I think making the position full time is one step, but making sure that we can make a commitment and say interpreters are available on request and that we're meeting that commitment, I think I think that's what I'm most interested in, making sure that we can meet that commitment, whether it's a separate line item of $80,000 to make sure it's there or it's rolled in and baked into individual department budgets. I think it's just honestly so. Mr. GROSS Staying on, what's the most responsible way to go about it? But that is a commitment that I'd like to monitor and make sure that we can continue to make to the public. And so my understanding is there's a fund already is 80. There will be a transition this year to sort of drawing. You know, providing this based on the department. And we're going to watch it to see if if there's any funding needs based on. Is that inaccurate? Yeah. Speaker 8: And if you remember when we started, you actually had us come to a plan on all the documents that we thought needed to be translated, that we hadn't translated yet. And we used a lot of the 84 80,000 was to do that. Well, those are all translated now, so that actually frees up space to do more, you know, interpretation. So we are seeing more interpretation and less of the document producing. Speaker 12: All right. That makes sense. Thank you. Next. So I see on the bill see recommendations the motion before and it talks about additional future surplus funds measure a and breaking it down 60% or ALIS and 20% or bathrooms and 10% or playgrounds and 10% toward irrigation. First is a question. I know that last year we went out and said on allocated measure A, we found some dollars and now we can anticipate some new infrastructure that we can commit to it as early as FY 20. And I paid attention to that because our first playground in District nine is a part of that. It was it wasn't full. It was replacement. I think it was ten or 15,000 for Ramona Park. My question is, does this affect any other projects that are already been announced? Is this just new money or is it a fact we've already committed to publicly? Speaker 5: So this does not affect any of the projects that are currently in the out your plan or any of the infrastructure projects that were described in the FY 20 proposed budget. The section that you are referring to is really if there is any surplus funds above and beyond what is currently projected, whether it's one time or structural , this is the list of priority of how those funds could be allocated. But again, those funds have not materialize or have not been currently projected. And so that would be a discussion council could have if and when those funds do come in. Speaker 12: Sure. And so, Madam Chair, so I appreciate sort of breaking it out. I would say the 60, 20, ten, ten, we probably should look at balancing that out a little bit. 60% of and I get it. There's not never going to be enough money to put into, you know, alleys and things like that. And I completely get it. But if we can balance this out a little bit and one area I think is low is playgrounds. If playgrounds were to get closer to $1,000,000. If we're talking about like for 50 essentially one playground, if we were to get to looking at these and balancing out like 50%, 20%, 20%, 10%, I think it smooths it out a little bit. And we know we're going to have to identify more money for allies is clearly is not the solution to allies in the city, but it could build a couple of playgrounds or replace a couple, 250 K playgrounds, maybe four of them, if we bump that number up to a million bucks. What do you think? Madam Chair. That's all that's offered as a form of friendly, formal, friendly. Speaker 7: So in reading the budget book and the capital improvement book, one of the things that I think is. Very difficult for individuals to swallow and I heard it at multiple budget meetings is we have $98 million in ally needs. That's a huge number. We have no current current projection on our playground needs. Also, if I give Craig Beck $10 million tomorrow, he'll be ready to go October one to pay for those rallies. If we give him $1 million for playgrounds, there's still a planning process. All these different things. Speaker 12: And so one day right now, Craig Beck will spend that money. Speaker 7: He will. But residents want to see results now. And Mr. Beck said his most shovel ready project is the 30 and below. And so at 2.7 million, which, by the way, is only if the full amount of the measure materializes, that's still less than 3% of the city's need. And I feel like 3% is a minimum where we should be at in alleys. I think we should be at a minimum of 10% in streets. I think that people should know that there's a ten year plan to getting their street done. I really thought I'd be able to make a stab at sidewalks this year. But Mr. Beck. Gave me one of the most depressing days of my council career when he told me, We have $600 million in sidewalk need. And so you'll notice I didn't even try to figure out where to start on sidewalks this year. Every year I've been excited about sidewalks and then the number hit and like my heart dropped $600 million in sidewalk needs. Look at his droopy face because he is about that number. Speaker 4: It's it's just a depressing number. He's like this. Speaker 7: So I feel like there's a plan for Alice. I appreciate you bringing forward the idea of doing an inventory of the parks. There is an inventory that was done I'm sorry, park playgrounds. There was an inventory done by the Parks Department when we asked for county funding for some of our park playgrounds and park refurbishments. I think we really need to work more closely with the county to draw down those funds. We don't have any other potential sources for alleys at all. Irrigation pumps, it's only 100,000 and that's a maybe. That's maybe going to get you one or two pumps that could, in the long term, save us money and park bathrooms. I would say the number one thing I get to complain about is park bathrooms, number one. Hands down. Consistently, every member of the community needs to go to the bathroom. And when they're in public, these park bathrooms are redoing. Also, really support your other program that you lifted up, which was the baby changing stations in the male bathrooms which speaking of gender just to also give a shout out to fire diversity is not just race, it's also gender. And so I really support the diversity comments of earlier, but I didn't have an opportunity to chime in. Don't forget gender. Speaker 12: Understood. So. Haven't given that. We just saw this breakdown. Are you open to any adjustments to the breakdown or is it firm? Speaker 7: If there was a rationale for why we would move it, I could understand. But at this time we don't have a plan of which playgrounds to even tackle. And you have $1,000,000,000 playground. Speaker 12: Do we have a plan on each of these line items right now? Speaker 7: We do. Park bathrooms has a waitlist. Speaker 12: Okay, so let's see it. Speaker 7: Mr. Beck. Speaker 12: I'd like to see it. Speaker 7: Do you have a list of park bathrooms in need? Speaker 10: Mm. Speaker 1: Council Member We are going through a facility. Speaker 0: Condition. Speaker 1: Assessment and that includes park restrooms. So the short answer is some of those. Speaker 0: The assessment has been completed on some of those. Speaker 1: But not all of them. So there is a need for park restrooms. I couldn't list those to you right now. We would have to go through the FCA. That report should be concluded at year's end. So in January I'll have more accurate information to show. Speaker 7: You. Do currently have more than 20 bathrooms that are in need of more than $100,000 of repair. Speaker 1: I wouldn't debate that number. Yes. Speaker 12: All right. So let me just ask a couple of questions here. So if the assessment isn't done on the facilities, is it complete on park that you're saying it's not complete on park bathrooms now? Speaker 1: We're not complete on all the park restrooms as yet. Speaker 12: What about irrigation pumps? Is a complete there? Speaker 1: I'm I'm not 100% sure what irrigation pumps are. If it's part of our citywide irrigation system and the need to upgrade all of our controllers, then we know we have a need. Speaker 12: You know what we need. But there's no assessment to say what's the priority or where that money would be spent. Speaker 1: To my knowledge, I would defer to parks. Speaker 7: Okay. I would agree with that. Let me add to irrigation, because I will say I was asking staff where we got the irrigation line from from the budget, because there's a specific four piece in the budget that I was looking for that a community member brought forward at a community budget meeting. I have not been able to find that yet. If you wanted to move the irrigation pumps up to playgrounds, that would be something, since I am unable to find it at this time. But. Speaker 12: So. Just. Just. Just to continue. Just to continue. What I heard a moment ago is there needs to be a rationale. What I just heard was three out of the four of these, there is no necessary rationale. So how do we get to 60, 20, 21? How do we value them? How did we pick that priority? Speaker 7: I guess I would disagree. I was trying to get to 3% of Alice, which is where. Speaker 12: The Alice drove it, and we broke up the rest. Speaker 7: And then the rest was from a playground standpoint. Mr. Mayor had commented that he was interested in funding some of our playgrounds. I know that the play community group came to multiple budget meetings and indicated that they had fundraised about $60,000 for playgrounds, and they had also advocated that the last playground that they implemented was originally estimated to be $220,000, but it came in at 180. And so when I was trying to get to these numbers, I thought, well, that's a good number to start off with. And then I had a rounding error left over and a community member came forward with pump irrigation. I know Mr. Muet did a walk through with some of our community groups about irrigation. I don't know if he's even able to speak on that or what pumps it was. Speaker 12: Okay, I think want to land the plane here. I think the I think the point I'm making is there's certainly funding here, the methodology. It's a long explanation. It's a community member did this. I'm looking for that. My point here is that I just think I want to give a higher priority to playgrounds in this mix. That's pretty much it. And so noted in some some more of this. Speaker 7: Is there a particular playground you're interested in funding? Speaker 12: I'd like I'd love every kid in the city to have me too. But but without sort of undermining this with a selfish sort of goal, I think we need to acknowledge the misery playground was a good program, measure a playground program. It didn't get everywhere. Right. And I've been clear, we don't have any measuring programs in my district. We had a tough choice. We had to advocate to build this failing building or new playgrounds. Playgrounds are still although we've done a lot of project playgrounds, we still have a big need on playgrounds, 250 K, 384 and 50 K makes a big difference there. 2050, 300 400 K isn't going to put a dent in $100 million deficit into Alice. So it's not it's impossible to debate the need for Alice versus Neath playground. So I don't really want to do that. I understand there's certainly need. I just think we can close the gap a little bit by doubling this 20%. Speaker 0: And let me just add that I think that counts on Mango said that she would be amenable to the suggestion to move the 10% from irrigation to playground. So I think that was said earlier. Speaker 12: And so was there this irrigation pump where it came from? I mean. Speaker 0: That's I think that's what Councilman Munga said, is that she and I. Speaker 7: Just I just received a note that it's pump stations. And I may have misquoted that, but but I actually would like to go back. Mr. Richardson, with all due respect, you started by saying that you didn't think I had a rationale, and I did have a rationale, and every community members input is very important. Louis Magnolia Trees came from a community member in the seventh District and another community member in the third District. And then I work with the city staff to validate that information. I don't just pull numbers out of the air. And so there's the mind. Speaker 12: You just I just want to be clear. Speaker 7: And for for you to say that $250,000 isn't nothing in Alice. There are several alleys and I you want. Speaker 12: To have. Speaker 7: Counseling. Mr.. Mr.. RICHARDSON, I'd like to comment back on your comment. Speaker 12: Let me tell you and this one excuse me. I'd love to hear. Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor, who has the floor. Speaker 0: So let's go back. So Councilman Richardson is wrapping up. He has the floor. Who here is finishing his comments? Speaker 1: Excellent. Speaker 0: And so we'll let him finish his comments and we'll continue on the speaker's list. Okay. I think I think were why Councilman Mangos were responding because I think you had possibly made a friendly. And so if you have, I wish you could respond as we go. But while you continue with the comments. Speaker 12: So here's what I'll say. The irrigation pump issues is so irrigation pump. This is the irrigation pumps that water our parks. Just ahead. Not dear Mr. Rawat, is that what this irrigation pumps are? Okay. I imagine you certainly have a need for that. Grass is important. Is there a specific project that we're cutting by making this a judgment adjustment? Yeah. The proposal here. So I'm saying that we need to sort of adjust work on this adjustment. The recommendation here was maybe shifting 10%, this 10% from irrigation plants into playgrounds. Is this are these specific projects we're cutting or is this something that we need to do for. Speaker 1: So the I was just talking to Hurley, our maintenance operation bureau, and there is definitely parks where we can identify the investment of all these moneys in new irrigation pumps to improve the irrigation system. So it it doesn't solve all of the irrigation systems. Speaker 12: It was not allocated to a specific project. Not a. Speaker 1: Specific project. Yeah. I'm not aware that this is like this, just a dollar amount that was mentioned for irrigation pumps. And I just heard that it's not. It's pump stations. Okay. Speaker 12: I understand. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Millet. So. So that's it. Mr. Mayor. Stacy, I think, Councilwoman, I think it makes sense if we said. I didn't hear that it was a specific project. We're moving. So if we shifted it 60, 2020, that that sounds like it helps balance it out the way that we described. So is that something you're open to? I think you recommended it. So that are you open to making that a friendly. Speaker 7: When you've completed all? I'll make my comments. Thank you. Speaker 12: So my options while I have the floors, offer a friendly or make a substitute motion. We're trying to work together here. Those are my two options, per Robert's rules. So if I don't have an indication or option one, that forces me to option two, it sounded like there was some agreement. Speaker 7: At least please feel free to make your your motion then, sir. Speaker 12: I'd rather work together. Speaker 7: And I would like to work together as well. But you continue to. Speaker 12: Reserve the ability to come back. Speaker 1: At one. Speaker 0: Point. So I think it's only Robert I'm going to suggest is counseling, which I think that there's obviously you have an interest in making a change there. I think that's been. Yeah. And so why don't we go through the rest and then you can make a motion if you'd like as well. Speaker 12: Thank you. So, okay, so that's the the adjustment I'd like to see. So I submit that as a friendly we'll see the response there. The last thing is just some questions I'm unclear on. I see that there's some conversation here in the budget about you. Strategic plan looks like see nine. So was this staff recommendation or recommendation from the committee? What it said is appropriate. 60 K Free's utilization of F y 19 youth strategic one time funds and appropriate the remaining funds from the Health Department to the Parks and Rec Department via budget adjustment to leave the leave the remaining implementation of the plan and and expand to it to include last year's request for workforce programing at Bright Teen Center. So was this a staff recommendation? Was this a committee recommended? Where did this come from? Mr.. Mr.. MODICA This is Africa and this is a committee recommendation. Okay. CHAIR Mangoes. Do we have any background on this? It seems like a very complex motion and I have much to say about it. Speaker 0: So I think there's a concern among, I think, the council workers and what is once information about the. The request on the on the motion. Speaker 1: See. Speaker 7: Not me to respond, but I won't be. I won't be interrupted during my response. Speaker 1: Go for it. Speaker 0: Okay. So guys, let's an import during an important budget hearing. So we're going to go ahead and we have a question. So I know the Council on manga, if you can please respond. Speaker 7: So there's been a lot of things said with relation to the youth strategic plan. I think that during the initial presentation from Parks and Rec, I made comments about how successful the senior implementation was and I heard from the colleagues how successful they felt the senior implementation was as well. I think that the great part about the way that the senior implementation funding, one of the greatest parts was that 100% of the money went back to the seniors. And I know that through this it's been a year and we have not made a lot of progress on the health and the youth strategic plan. And community members have asked for updates and and other things. Members of the consulting team have reached out to council members and stated that they were unable to recruit youth to the plan. In last year's budget, we had lifted up the McBryde Teen Center and Workforce Investment, and those two had not really been rolled into the process of the youth strategic plan. And so I thought this a great opportunity to. Roll with the momentum of the work that the Parks Department had done on the plan. Also, a majority of participants that are youth in our city participate really through parks and through libraries. It does not mean that the information Ms.. Pearson recommended, which was that there are other components of health that really need to be discussed with the youth in their strategic plan. But the first and most important component of that is access to an input from the youth. And so when the consultants are reaching out to councilmembers, saying that they don't have any volunteerism, and as council members are saying, actually, we had multiple volunteers, I'm willing to move forward. That's difficult and frustrating. And furthermore, the updates that were given along the way from parks were exemplary. And we thought that just to run with the momentum to date would be a great opportunity. And so we weren't quite sure how much had been spent from the original 200,000. So we thought it appropriate to augment it slightly to ensure that Health Parks Library, everyone could still be at the table and we could still discuss not just the health implications but also the potential funding cuts for the future around to be safe. After school, library hours, Sunday library hours and other components. And so we just thought it was a great place to land. Speaker 12: Oh, a bit of consternation about this recommendation. And and it seems like the answer to the question was that there was some level of community input. Some consultants reached out to council. Typically if there is a performance issue in a department and we want to address it, I don't know that it would show up on the BBC agenda right before voting without engaging with stakeholders. What I'd like to hear, I'd like to hear from staff. I'd like to hear from staff on where we are with this process. What I just heard was, was essentially that the process hasn't started and there hasn't. What I heard is that it hasn't officially started yet and that Parks did a great job with seniors. Therefore, they might be better off doing the youth strategic plan. What I'd like to know is where are we specifically with the strategic planning process and who is the consultant that's reached out to the council with these concerns? I haven't heard that. So if you could just answer those two questions. Where are we? The process in which consultant reached out to the council about not getting youth engagement? Speaker 9: We started with a plan, so we're moving forward. We brought on more than one consultant. So there's 2 to 3 consultants. There's one master consultant working with the health department. As we move forward, they're working very, very closely with Parks Rec and Marine. And so the program is moving forward. We're looking to council offices to provide to youth a piece to put on the committee. And each of the youth will be funded to participate in this program. But we stand ready to listen to what recommendations the City Council gives to us on moving forward with the strategic plan. Speaker 12: So it's not the plan hasn't been delayed. Speaker 9: It certainly could have started perhaps earlier, but it has started right now to get to do the fees, to get the consultants to move it along. So we're happy with where we're at right now, but certainly some people may feel we you know, it could have gone on a little bit earlier, but right now, we're happy that things are moving. We have several consultants. Speaker 12: Yeah. From the budget discussion I remember last year, I don't think we didn't say, hey, gun to the head, get this going and finish by the end the first year we talked about strategic plan could take up to two years and that was actually staff. When we made this question, it was staff that said this could take up to two years. Here we are, you know. Three quarters of the way through the well approaching the end of the first year. So at the 50% point. And so has there has been a committee been assembled. Is it where are we in the process? That's what I'm unclear on. Speaker 9: We're moving forward with the consultants. We're right now in the process of selecting the youth. Each. Each council district is to provide us to youth and to participate in this program. This is a very large commitment for the youth. So we want to make sure that the youth are trained, they're ready to participate. They're going to get paid. They're going to get a stipend that you've built. Speaker 12: Some part of this. And is the idea that's moving forward this next year's all engagement. Speaker 9: Is, well, the engagement has already started with the youth that we're getting. It's true that not we haven't received recommendations from every council office for the two youth similar that we have for the piece is exactly. But we're moving and everything is going ahead and we're certainly open to any recommendations out from the City Council on where we operate this. Speaker 12: So I just heard from the city manager that there wasn't a concern about. This not being on time or that there's some lack of confidence in the process publicly. And I'm just asking questions here. So it seems to me that shifting from one department to another within a budget action doesn't it doesn't seem appropriate. Now, technically, yes, under Brown Act, you can put something broad like budget recommendations, but we should sort of given the fact that we are changing city council procedures. That's a little bit more responsibility on our part, to be clear about what we're doing. And I don't see a nexus between a balanced budget here if it's the same funding or one departments taking lead versus the other. I didn't hear anything from city staff just now. I mean, Mr. West spoke of I'm sure Ms.. Collopy would speak up, too, but I haven't heard. I haven't heard that. So I don't see how this is appropriate. And I honestly think that we're opening a bigger can of worms right now by tackling this issue through a budget action. So you want to say say. Speaker 7: I would like to respond. Speaker 12: Let me just see if I had another point here. Quigley. Okay. All right. So the organizations I know have been engaged here. We're the ones who brought this concept. The council, initially. E.J. my girls in action. C.J., we had a conversation at council last time about, hey, we know, we understand these are sort of community organizing groups . We want to make sure that other youth serving groups, your, you know, soccer clubs or whoever engages in youth has a platform and a place to sit there. And I don't want to undermine the process halfway through, given we had this debate already. So I'll pause at that point, and I think it will be a good time to hear the response. Speaker 1: Thank you. Comes among. You're going to respond. Speaker 7: Yes, thank you. I think it terrible that you would implicate that there's any performance issues, because I think that Miss Copley is an excellent department head. I've worked closely with her on many matters. This is a funding reallocation, and I'd like to ask my second year of the motion for any additional input. Speaker 5: Sure happy to respond. So I support this recommendation. I'm also happy to hear alternatives that counsel want to put forth. Let me just be clear that when we allocate dollars for citywide efforts, every council district needs to be engaged, every single one. And I completely, wholeheartedly disagree with Council Member Pierce's comments a few moments ago on this topic. Respectfully disagree that when we adopted the Youth Strategic Plan, it was not for a specific category of youth or youth in a certain area. It was for the use in the entire city. And the use and the entire city needs support and need guidance and need for resources, all of them. It doesn't matter if we're not sitting here judging what stresses one set of use might be dealing with and what stresses another set of youth might be dealing with. We need to engage with when we're using dollars that are designed for city wide programs, we need to engage the entire city. I received an email from one of the consultants who we are paying, which said that their efforts to outreach in the third district have been unsuccessful. It was the first that I had heard of any outreach efforts in the third district, in fact. And I understand why our city manager perhaps provided a broader and brief response, but I have had numerous conversations with him via email regarding my concerns about how we're allocating citywide dollars and. How we're using programing dollars in ways that maybe are not. Mindful of the entire city's needs. So whatever strategic plan we come up with for the youth, whatever strategic plans they come up with is going to involve programing. It's going to have to involve programing. It's going to have to involve programing for every single one of our nine districts, every single one. And that programing is going to be directed and led by our Parks Rec and Marine Department. The issue with this particular budget recommendation, it's not just moving one program from one department to the other. It's also combining this program with a program that we gave priority and attention to last year at McBride. Mm hmm. And so. And those are youth. And so while I understand that there is a very directed effort and desire to route money to particular departments, for whatever reason, I want to make sure that the money that we are allocating for city wide purposes take into consideration the city wide needs and the intent of the legislative body. That's that's allocating that money. I do not personally believe that it is ever appropriate for our department heads to not know what the consultants are doing and for the consultants to reach out and tell us that they're conducting outreach in our city, in our district, without involving us in the process. And let me be clear, whether it's the poet laureate program or whether it's the youth strategic plan, I support these programs. But every council district needs to be involved. These are taxpayer dollars that we're using. They need to help our entire city, regardless of judgment about what city or what what what part of the city needs the help. Every single member of the public in this community is paying into the taxes that support these programs. And every single member of this community that's paying those taxes is going to reap the benefits, period. So for me, I believe that the money should go to the department that's going to be in charge of the programmatic aspects of the strategic plan because they will be involved. My experiences with Parks Rec and Marine has been very different in past experiences that I've had with them. Very inclusive, very engaged. I feel that the needs of my community have been considered, and I think that many of my colleagues feel that way as well. So it's not a slight on performance or lack of performance. It's what's our ultimate goal? Our ultimate goal here is to come up with a plan that's going to allow for the youth to have programmatic opportunities to allow them to succeed and thrive regardless of what the stresses in their life might be. It's to help reduce overdoses among youth who might be stressed for various reasons in one part of town that they're not stressed about in another part of town. That is what we should be talking about. And frankly, when you look at who's been selected as consultants on this committee, there's now, from what I could see in the list that I looked at, no substance abuse experts on there, no mental health experts on there. We did not. I just I understand what the intent is. But what Councilmember Pearce said was the stated intent for the youth strategic plan was not my stated intent for the youth strategic plan. It wasn't to target a specific group of youth in a specific part of town. It was to help all youth in the entire city. So I would like to have a department lead this effort who is mindful of what their consultants are doing and is mindful of the entire needs of the city. And so that's where my intent comes from. But I'm open to suggestions, whatever we decide to do. It's going to look very different moving forward. It just is. Otherwise, you know, we're going to start getting into this this argument, which is not good and it's divisive in terms of are the taxpayers getting the benefit of the taxes they're paying? Speaker 12: Oh, I understand. I understand. So. So, Councilman Pierce Price, the I think we had this conversation a year ago, and that's that's my challenge. Like, nothing's new here. And and my issue here is really, truly just process. It's, you know, this came up today. No heads up. And if if these were real issues, I think I'd like you know, I would like to hear from here a status update or two from for, you know, a study session if people feel truly, strongly about it. Because I'll tell you. This process is already underway under leadership of the health department. Our understanding was not that this was just simply about part programing. Part programing is going to be covered under under the Parks and Recreation and Marine Strategic Plan. We talked about here was sort of a comprehensive strategic plan for youth development, which isn't just parks. It's libraries. It's health, as you mentioned, drugs, drug abuse, education. All these things. How we have workforce, how we all work together to have a comprehensive plan for youth development was a youth development strategic plan, not a Parks and Rec strategic plan, not a health department strategic plan. And it was the community. Just to be clear, this were not a an agenda from city council when the community brought this forward. Community advocated for this approach. It was it was initially it was a request to establish a youth fund. The mayor took that, placed it in his mayor's budget recommendations and said, we're going to work directly with the youth to figure this out. The mayor's office worked with the youth who propose this and said, Yeah, we want this to be comprehensive. We want and you may very you know, a number of councilmembers made it very clear that they want representation from youth all over the city. I haven't heard that that's not happening. I'm also I also know that we have to at some point take ourselves out of the process that trusted a little bit. If they're halfway through their process, they've already put out public notices. I know that they've put out progress notices with the committee. I know a number of folks have served on other task forces from everyone home and others are engaged in this. That's what I know, what I don't know and I'm not an expert on it. Some of the issues are here and I know that I'm hearing now and I don't want to diminish those, but from a stack from a process standpoint, to hear this come out today, a budget oversight committee and then be provided to us at the council to make a yes or no choice, I think that's unfair. Given a full year of work, not just with city staff, with community groups, we're getting ready to get to the main part and main point. And I don't fully understand the impacts of shifting the leadership from one group, one person to the next, and to ask the council to make that decision. I just think it's a bit unreasonable, unfair, particularly given the the emphasis that we're placing on people signing up for speaker cards and not coming up to speaking on their own changing council protocols. I think we also have a responsibility to hold ourselves more accountable to adding that actually or some sense of sunshine. I would love to have a full conversation on this, and I know that tonight is not the time for it. I would love to do it. I would be completely open minded to work together. I agree that all the youth in the city should have a place here, but I also think that it makes sense. And there's reasonable people at this council who make who understand that this without giving the appropriate time to kind of talk this through with staff and talk through what happens, this will seem like a power grab or like a political decision. And and it aligns with some of the conversation we've had about we want you know, I personally want to see the Budget Oversight Committee during budget time focus on presenting a balanced budget. Any other point? If the Bills wants to talk about policy issues or anything, you got the rest of the year for that. But for this, this is really about presenting a balanced budget and helping achieve some of these needs. I don't see how this helps balance or unbalance our budget or if it's if it's in support of some strategic goal that was that was prioritized at the beginning. So all that said, what I want to do is divide the question, I don't want this. If this isn't a budget thing that we have to do tonight, I want to divide the question and handle that separately. Speaker 9: If I can interrupt, I want to make it very clear that I have had conversations with Councilmember Mongeau, with Councilmember Pearce about the situation. We talked about this price I'm sorry, city and I've had conversations with both the Parks and Rec director and also the health director. And whatever charges that the city council gives us right now will not impact this program. They'll continue to go. It's not going to stutter or anything. These departments are working closely regardless of what's happening. The Parks and Rec Department is going to be supporting health. Health will support the Parks and Rec department. So I just want to make it clear that whatever decision the council makes is not going to impact this strategy program as it goes forward, no matter what the leadership. Sure. Closely. We won't skip a beat. I just want to make everyone clear with that. Speaker 12: I will hope that that's the case. And if it wants to be beat, I don't understand why we're switching departments in the budget. And it also sounds like. We had conversations with two council members, but not all. Speaker 9: I will say one of the one of the communications we had was the health department is normally engaged in the CDBG areas of the city and hasn't normally worked in areas that are not. This is general fund money. It's not restricted on where it goes. So we just wanted to make sure and the conversations that I've had with the council members is that perhaps I think in speaking for them, that perhaps a department that's more that has worked all over the city as opposed to just the CDBG areas, might have more success working throughout all , 52 square miles of the city might have better success dealing with some of the issues throughout the city as they're all so diverse. So that said, that's what I've heard. I can understand that. And I'm open to wherever the city council wants to place this and won't skip a beat. I've talked to the department heads and we'll continue to move on and I totally understand the concerns that have been expressed to me that in the health department it certainly is not you know, it's not totally always in the 52 square miles. Most of their work is in the city, not just CBD areas, but those are the cities. And I understand the concerns expressed by those elected officials and I'm wide open to that. Speaker 12: So thank you, Mr. West. Since when is the Health Department expertize and CDBG? CDBG is handled has been handled by councilmember. Speaker 9: I'm not I'm not I'm alluding to the areas of the city where most the health department is is a. Speaker 12: Saying they participate in lower income neighborhoods and their communities. Speaker 9: Are where the grants go. And the grants go primarily to diverse, lower income neighborhoods, which many times are. Speaker 12: Sinon really didn't want this to go head this direction. So you're saying because what you're saying is you have you. Speaker 1: You have you. Speaker 12: Had a conversation with two councilmembers and said that this department this makes so much more sense. Now I understand where this is coming from. So you had a conversation? No, Mr.. I'm on. Hold on. I'm just said. Speaker 9: One. I'm listening to the counsel and I'm just telling you what I understand. Speaker 12: So there was no conversation between you and these council members about this issue of CDBG areas? Speaker 9: No, that's that's my terminology. I apologize for that. Speaker 12: But it's so there's been no conversation between now, this just came up randomly about oversight committee. Speaker 9: This conversation has happened over the past month. Speaker 12: So what has happened? Yes. In which council members have engaged? Speaker 9: I mentioned that councilmembers mongeau and councilmembers price. Speaker 12: So if the issues are that the community groups come from areas that are CDBG, you didn't think it was appropriate to speak to some of those communities that are CDBG communities about these concerns about the process. Speaker 9: The process was not community groups. The process was the departments, the communities. Speaker 12: The CDBG communities, and this shouldn't be an East-West thing. We were clear at the budget that we should make whatever adjustments need to be made to make sure that Parks and Rec and these other communities feel included. So we didn't get here. I do not do not want to fight with my colleagues over something that we were crystal clear about a year ago. This is a this is a. Speaker 9: Fumble, is as a city manager, I'm totally supportive of whatever I. Speaker 12: Think will be supported. Speaker 9: Wants to make. Speaker 12: This put a lot of us in a bad position because this is a this is a good thing we left last budget with funding to conduct a street a youth development strategic plan. That's why we left with that process has been undermined now it's been completely undermined and we're forced to make a decision based on information that was only disseminated to two members. We're using, frankly, a loophole. Speaker 5: You're completely misstating what? Speaker 12: I'm sorry. I have the floor. Speaker 5: You do, but you're not allowed to misstate. What point of order manager? Speaker 1: Oh, that's one sector. Speaker 12: Point of order. Can't feel free to queue up. Speaker 1: This is wasn't. Speaker 5: A game. Speaker 1: Five point of order. Speaker 12: Feel free. Speaker 1: To. Speaker 12: Express it. Thank you. I'm wrapping as vice mayor. Speaker 1: Fine, thank. Speaker 12: You. So what I hear is that these concerns, you know, I'll just get straight straight to the point. I think that this issue has gotten incredibly political and is not the appropriate place for our budget conversation. The youth of all the city should not be have this much pressure from the council to conduct this process. It seems to me that there was some sort of backroom chatter about this, and it's undermining the process. And frankly, we haven't had to think about this process for months. My understanding was that the process was moving and getting ready to fully roll out. You know, committees have been appointed. Council members are pointing their folks and then we undermine it here. And I don't know how this vote will go, but I'm going to make a motion to separate this issue because clearly there's feelings. Clearly it's political. I want to divide the question, separate this from the main motion. So so I move that we divide this specific issue, which, again, has no impacts on the balanced budget represent divide the question in separate this to handle it after we've handled this motion. That is my motion by the question. Speaker 1: Where a second. There's a second. Speaker 9: So. So the first we would vote on to divide the question. Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Speaker 8: And then if it passes, then it would be. Speaker 12: Yes. Separate. Speaker 8: Yes. This item C Roman numeral nine would be taken out and voted and taken up separately. Speaker 1: And we know. Any questions on that? I mean, you can you get to. Speaker 7: Discuss the motion on the floor? How do we queue for that? Speaker 12: I think it is a debatable. Divide the question. Speaker 9: I think the motion to debate is not debatable. Speaker 8: I think you need to vote on. Speaker 12: Don't know if it's debatable or not. Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 12: Could we just vote yes or no to divide? Yes, yes. Yes. Speaker 1: Wisconsin. Oh, please. Speaker 13: Motion fails. Speaker 12: Thank you. So that's that's the last issue I had the talk on. It was great that I put it in the end because I figured that was going to be the one that didn't get a lot of motion. So. So the. So I guess the only thing we need to resolve is we put out as friendly and we didn't get a response to that friendly. Speaker 1: I was reading it to vote and you get it. You didn't get up early on it. Speaker 12: Council would make a motion said she wanted to wait till word. Speaker 1: And. Speaker 7: So your friendly is to keep the program in the health department at this time. Speaker 12: No the friendly we're going back so this issues it it failed to divide the questions was that. Speaker 4: I think so. Speaker 12: The when we went back to so you accepted the one friendly on be safe and then the second one was the allocation 6020 1010 making it to 6040 460 2021 is that this was on before in the B or C recommendations. Speaker 2: Can point of a point of order. So there's a lot of motions being made here and I don't think everybody's had an opportunity to even weigh in. And so I would ask that you reserve accepting any friendly amendments, and so we can all get an opportunity to weigh in because, I mean, we may do this this thing could be done by the time one of us gets to speak at the way we're going. Speaker 12: And I know this is the last thing I'm done speaking. Speaker 7: Okay? I would just only like to make. I'll make my comments at the end. Speaker 1: So, you know, accepting the. Speaker 7: I'll wait until the end. Thank you. Speaker 1: Yes. Congressman Unger. Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to talk now. When we. Speaker 4: Get back, bring us back a. Speaker 2: Hell of a discussion here. And, you know, obviously, it's a very important topic. Obviously, budgets are always tough. There's always a lot of negotiation taking place. There's a give and take. And there's also the opportunity to come to a to a a middle road where we can all be somewhat at least satisfied with the discussion we had tonight. So I, I have my point of that on this budget has many really when it comes to it, it's, you know, it's a budget that we have we have a finite budget that we have to deal with. It's a matter of how we disperse it and how we share it. And, you know, I want to thank staff for all the work that they put into it. I also want to thank the bosses. I know you've put a lot of hours into this and not only here, but in your personal time, as well as attending all the community budgetary hearings that were on the out in the various locations throughout the city. And, you know, it's a personal commitment, personal time that you took. So it's it's something that's commendable. What's taking place here tonight is, you know, we're at that point where we're just about ready to adopt a budget that's going to move forward. But it has to be a budget that we're all going to be satisfied and happy with. There's going to be winners and there's going to be losers. But I'm hoping that the we're there aren't going to be real losers in the sense that you're going to get everything you want, but we're going to be satisfied with what we get because obviously everybody can get everything they want, but we do have an opportunity to at least get closer to where we need to be. And that's, I think, the end goal that we have in this budget here. So having said that, obviously, I have I've had a few little pet peeves and pet projects that I want to push forward. Obviously, the one that I've been pushing for the last year, year and a half is the Language Access Program. And I I've said it before and I will say it again, this is a citywide commitment is not something that we need to find a budget for. It's something that every department has to make that commitment to translate your documents, to provide translators, to provide staff, to provide language facilitation, language access for people who need it. That's a citywide commitment. And I'm pleased that the that the comments that Mr. Modica said in regards to if we run out of money, we're going to find it. That's what we need to do better than that. We just budget for it. We have the budget already there. It's and we budget for it every year. Not have to find funds over here of funds over there or fund this or fund that or move but move budgets from this category A to category B. We don't need that kind of discussion when it comes to language access. It's something that we are committed to to provide for our communities, and it's a commitment we need to make from the top down, including my office. I have bilingual staff in my office. They're not getting bilingual pay. They should, but they're not. So, I mean, when it comes down to it is we need to make that commitment to provide the staff for it. And I don't know what happened to the city, but I remember a city long time ago and we had civil service here a little while ago. They're talking about, I think they do a selective certification for skills that are particular to a certain position. What happened to bilingual certifications? Bilingual selective certification. Do we do are we even still doing that? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think we've lost focus in that respect. So I think we need to get back to that area for service minded and we serve our communities needs. And right now, what we're discovering is that we have a service need for language access and we're just not doing it. We're fighting over it. We should we should never be at this point. So. Point taken. I think we need to strengthen our language access programs or whatever you want to call it, but we need to get sure that we have the staff. And that we have people on staff who can address the language needs of our communities. We're going to call it Carmine, Spanish or whatever other language is necessary. The other issue that I want that that I want to bring up and it was one that was brought up by my Councilmember Andrews a few years ago about the Office of Aging. I'm very disappointed in where we're going with this. We need to sustain that. It's an office that, you know, work. You know, I'm a boomer. Yeah. I'm a baby boomer, and Andrew's not so much. And then before that. So he's a little bit ahead of me in that respect, but still. But, you know, we need we have needs and the needs are growing. And I say that from the perspective that in KD seven, District seven, I had the highest number of assisted living quarters in the city. I have a high percentage of assisted living facilities in my district and, you know, and the highest number of cemeteries. So when it comes to it. We need to have that Office of Aging fully staffed and be able to provide the necessary services that are aging population here. Long Beach needs. It's it's it's been it's a it's a what it calls a. It is a cycle of life, I guess, because I remember coming to Long Beach as a freshman, 17 years old, to lobby state, and I would come downtown Long Beach, and it was a older community. There were a lot of retirees in Long Beach at that time, just back early seventies, aging myself. And then we're in a in a in a in a trend now where now that the aging people are now in the in these health care facilities or assisted living facilities, and that and the youngsters are coming in. The Baby boomers. Now the baby. Speaker 4: Boomers are getting old. Speaker 2: And the young people are moving out. But yet we still had a need. We still had a need for aging services. So I think that we need to look at sustaining that program, sustaining the Office of Aging, and let's let's keep it there, because we have a growing population of baby boomers who are going to be needing that. And then in regards to the the issue that we dealt with most recently, I want to thank Councilmember Austin for bringing it forward in terms of what's going on with our fire station nine and the mold and the need to replace it. He has established somewhat of a undroppable plan per se, but we are talking about how best we can continue the needs of that that the station so station nine provided for the community. And by the way, it's not just an Uptown Department station. It's it provides you know, it's a citywide program. But a lot of the service area that Station nine provides isn't the CD seven. So it is very important to me to ensure that my community and City seven continue to receive the level services that they deserve, whether it's in paramedic or fire services. So it's it's important to me and I'm going to continue to monitor where we are with that. And I will work with the Council member, Austin, to ensure that the fire station nine gets back up and running as fast as it possibly can and will commit that we'll find the money for it. Finally I have my own motion I want to make and it's in regards to item f the motion to re to to amend the former RDA property proceeds item that would be item F and I would like to make the motion if I can at this time. Madam Chair, would that be appropriate? If you motion to appropriate the next 150,000 or the 75,000 project area share of sale proceeds from the sale of the former RDA properties anywhere in the city for establishing a two year lease for North Long Beach or freeze it wrong when appropriate. This is amend that motion not sorry appropriate 150,000 of the 75,000 project area share or sale proceeds received in the former West Project area and any future sales proceeds in the West Project area if needed for improvement projects in the Santa Fe Corridor in West Palm Beach area. Speaker 7: Yes. That was something that had come up. I appreciate the motion. I will accept it. I know that originally we didn't know if it was ready, but it sounds like you've made some significant progress and I would be really excited to support that. Speaker 2: Thank you. And that's all the comments I have. Speaker 8: Just so we understand, it's not changing the 150,000, adding another 150,000 correct. Project in the West. Speaker 2: Santa Fe sales. Speaker 8: Okay. And what was the project again? Speaker 7: Santa Fe Spring Business Corridor, a bit of a corridor, kind of like we did with the other three corridors. But this one would be. Speaker 0: So I think. I think. West Long Beach. Speaker 8: To revitalize Santa Fe Corridor like we've done with in. Speaker 0: West Long. Speaker 1: Beach. Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. Speaker 7: I think that's a very creative way to continue the corridor improvement project. Speaker 0: Okay. So we are just. I can get up to speed. I think we're on. Councilman, your ringer. Country ranking of anything else. Got some more, Austin? Speaker 2: Okay. So I look forward to this this process every year. It seems like we we we we're talking about almost a $3 billion budget when you look at all funds and we spend, you know, several hours debating the last $100,000 or so and it never changes. But I want to thank my colleagues on the BRC also support this recommendation. I want to thank all of my colleagues one, thank all the city staff for all of their work. I think this is a responsible budget. It's not perfect, but it's a good budget. It funds our priorities and represents the values of this very complicated and diverse city. I had the opportunity to attend not just my own community budget hearing, but I went to two others, had an opportunity to interact with, you know, dozens of residents and get feedback, understand what was important to them. I would disagree. I don't believe that there's any losers in this budget. Right. I think this committee and I know this council is going to work to make sure that we're hitting everything that we need to hit in terms of priorities for our city. I also reviewed the the surveys that were taken, and the results were pretty profound in terms of feedback from residents in their their their perceptions of priorities of our budget, for our budget, that they're not far off of what we are where we are headed. Homelessness was by far the biggest issue, and people in our residents really expect us to to make a difference on that issue. It's one that we hear from every single day, and I think many of us are probably losing sleep about this issue. Public safety, obviously, police and fire, emergency response times, street infrastructure, parks and libraries. I believe those are the core priorities that emphasis by most residents. And I think those are the issues that that I think we all can can agree on. In terms of the the the big picture been a lot said about language access and I'm really appreciate the clarity that staff gave in terms of you know, funding a full time position. But not only that, what I heard is language access is being adopted into the organizational culture. Right. And that. Is qualitative in terms of how we approach language access. I think our city is a lot better today than when we first started talking about this issue just a few years ago. Right. And so we're definitely headed in the right direction. I shudder when I hear and I do respect the work of the community organizations, but for them to give us a budget number and say this needs to be in the budget, but not really have understanding as to how that money is going to be spent in the operations of the city. I think that's a that's tough to to suggest. Implement. And then obviously this budget cycle when we first this budget was first adopted. Fire station nine. We we it was an unexpected issue that came up during that period of time. And I really have my faith really restored in from my colleagues, but also city staff in terms of how flexible everybody was and how how everybody responded to that issue. This is an issue, obviously, of utmost importance to residents in my district, but also in council member Yarrawonga and Richardsons area. This is this is an issue that affects the the emergency response and delivery of services. And for, I believe, citywide. I mean, it's a system issue. And so. Mole. Removing personnel was the right decision. Removing the apparatus from fire station nine was the right decision, but also coming up with a swift and immediate plan and having the flexibility to identify resources to to. Come up with a temporary. Proposal. And then a long term solution as well is something that I'm just amazed that that actually was able to happen in a matter of just three or four weeks here. And so I run away. I really want to thank Councilmember Mongeau, chair of the Budget Oversight Committee. I want to thank my colleagues, all of my colleagues, Susie Darrell, that showed up at the meeting, town hall meeting. Councilmember Urunga, who was was right there front and center, as well as Councilmember Richardson. It showed that that we can put decide district issues and come together and understand that public safety is a city issue. And and I believe the fire said station nine will be restored in short order. The plan, I believe, is, is within the next hundred and 20 days to have have something concrete in place to move forward on. And so I know my constituents really care. Appreciate that. I, for one, appreciate that as well. We also pivoted in this budget with the quality of life issues like magnolia trees. We found out we had disease, magnolia trees throughout the city, which is a bigger problem than I think we realize. We've appropriated $100,000 to help treat many of those trees. That may not be enough considering what we know today, but it is definitely going to be a start. And I know our public works department is going to be working very diligently to to get that issue resolved as soon as possible. But I never did not foresee, you know, magnolia trees being a priority in our budget. Just just a few weeks ago, another issue. But this budget and this process has shown some great flexibility and shows that we can be flexible as a city when we need to be. There are things that I would love to give funded in this budget that I know that I won't be able to get funding for my district. And I think each and every one of us is going to walk away from this process with a sense of sacrifice. Well, you know what? We didn't get everything we wanted, but we are going to pass a budget that is going to be in the interests of the greater good for our city. And I think that's the focus in which we all, as city council members should be approaching this. ALLEYS I've heard from dozens of constituents about repairing Ali's. And I do not feel good about leaving this process without having several million dollars secured to appropriate toward Ali's. But I didn't see Fire Station nine happening a couple of weeks ago. So so I do support the 60% allocation for future measure, $8 going toward Ali's, I think to $2.7 million, if we divide that right, gives our public works department some something to work with and to help prioritize. Ali repairs restrooms in parks is another big issue for me. The restrooms that that I'm aware of and I know in other districts as well, that that is something that's very important. And so I support that as well. Playgrounds, I wish we could build new playgrounds all over the city. I think there are options and I know I'm exploring some options with grants with Kaboom! And other organizations that that can help. And there are other private interests that want to want to get involved with playground builds as well. And so I would recommend to my colleagues to look in that direction as well. As long as long, along with Partizan Parks, who can also help facilitate that. Also have a lake. It's your park that I want to get maintenance then. And I'm talking about looking to identify ways to to improve that as well. But the big issue seems to be on the youth strategic plan. And I wanted to just weigh in on it. You know. The Department that that that actually facilitates this, I think is less important because what I've heard is that this is consultant driven , right. City manager. Several consultants have been involved in this have consultants are driving this process. They just need a department to facilitate. They need a plan. And I think Parks and Recreation and Marine actually does have the best access to our youth. They deal with them. They they are literally raising our youth in parks every single day. They have the relationships. And I think it's it would be short sighted on this council and the city not to recognize that in terms of developing a youth strategic plan. If and if these departments aren't collaborating, I would recommend very strongly that they do collaborate together because there's a there should be some synergy and a nexus for for getting the best product possible and not just. One department versus another. And I'm really interested in seeing out of this you strategic plan opportunities to to to really impact some of the social ills that face our city. Right. Particularly with our youth. We we have we have gang cultures in our city that can be addressed through this process and and should be addressed. And I think Parks, Recreation and marine parks and Rec Department is very close on the ground to to to the individuals, to subject matters that we need to meet, actually reach. And I'll just say for for one, I don't recall my office being contacted regarding having anybody participate. This is the first I've heard and perhaps I'm wrong, but I have not not not had a whole lot of outreach even to my office on this. And so I'm a little disturbed that after a year after over a year now, we're still talking about the development of a strategic plan that was supposed to happen in the last budget cycle. That said, those are those are my comments. Again, I think this this budget is is all inclusive. I think it touches on the priorities of nine different council districts. Various areas, very complicated diversity, but at the same time, it's a responsible budget, it's balance, and it's one that is also thinks about the future. You know, we know that our next year is going to be a tough year ahead. We should not jump into this budget with too much program, programmatic dollars. I mean, I think there's a lot of one time's being used here. And this is this is a budget that that will allow us some flexibility moving forward. So thank you for the comments. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 1: As a thank you, Mayor, I first of all, I'd like to thank the Budget Oversight Committee, you know, for doing such a great job, especially for the fire department and police. You know what, the cameras and the fire department for their stations, you know, I don't think neither Mr. Austin, Councilman Austin or anyone else really felt like that was going to happen in the near future. But they found a way and I want to congratulate them on that. And, you know, me being who I am, I think it's time for me to go to my first party and it's not my PSP. I think it's just my greatest thing. And that's the aging process. And this is something I think I can handle very easily because, you know, agreeing with Councilman Pierce, anything that you can really do, aging population should really considered be considered any priority. This is a vulnerable population and the Office of Office of Aging should help us find any additional resources to help in these individuals. When I say these individuals, I mean all of us individuals that are at that age, not very many of you out there, but just keep living. So with that said, I really would like to for our staff to get with me and my office to discuss some of the status of the office and the aging as a whole and what more we can do to bring resources to the Six District. And ideally, you know, I would like to make this a standard monthly meeting, if that's possible. And now getting back to one of the main things that I see we're having some problems with, and I think we can really resolve a lot of these things because about when some of the comments, you know, that I do agree with that we can be doing more for the language access. That's whether it is translating services outreach and having, you know, proper access to the council meeting. I think that also warrants a performance review by city auditor because I think that this is a lot of confusion who it does or what it does not. Each department needs to figure out on their own translation. And I really would like to ask our head of the Budget Department that the $15,000 appropriated for the training for the nonprofit's safety employees should be instead be given to the community based organization to help us with the work that they are already doing. And that's something I wish you would take a chance to look at, if you don't mind. That's a $15,000 and give that to Councilwoman Mongo. Yes. Councilman Mongo. Because I mean, it's not the nonprofit arts or space, because the fact that I think we're already doing that. And if they can take the $15,000 themselves and see what they can do with it in their, you know, their own organizations. Speaker 7: Can I think about that for a few minutes? Speaker 1: You can. Okay. Matter of fact, you can take, you know, all night. Yeah. Cause we're going to be here. Yes. Yeah. And the last relationship you guys had as father be saved. I just want you to know that it is important that we you know, we should review the numbers. We also take it back to the, you know, community and the stakeholders to engage in this budget. We know we're cutting your milk, which is not healthy. For example, you know, for a while I thought the attendance there was low and we were, you know, proposing back out that as a high usage. Many issues that could be, you know, averted with additional, you know, playgrounds. We need to make sure that we are going to, you know, going back to the fourth, you know, what our community and some of these cities have relieved of, you know, the BE program. You know, but I would like to to add to Councilman Richardson's motion that we you know, we take back the sites located a determination to the stakeholders as well, because our stakeholders, the one that really makes the decisions, whether our community need these BCA programs and you guys utilize the parks is very, very important to most of our districts and I think that that's very important. And even if you just get a survey, but I would really hate to have no sixth district because basically you guys know as a target. So we know that this B program in our cities and our parks is very important for our kids. So I think that's something we should look more at, if you don't mind. And with that, I think I've taken my 5 minutes. I'm just going to be quiet. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 11: Okay. Can I first get clarity on what motions on the floor? Speaker 0: That's I was actually just checking in on so but just clarify with Mr. Modica. Mr.. I thought the main motion I know exited, so I'm not sure if it changed, but it the main motion was the motion by the BMC with the additional changes that have been added along the way to the main motion. Is that correct? Speaker 8: Correct. There's, there's a fire recruitment position can look to fire budget year end savings to help fund that position has been added. The friendly was accepted on B3 to. Speaker 1: Remove. Speaker 8: The locations and those locations will be determined by Director of parks with additional input. The. The divide by question failed. There's a friendly pending to I understand correctly move the appropriated 15,000 for training estimated a half a day and give that money to a CBO community based organization. And I'm not sure the purpose of the money to be given to them. And then. The accepted friendly for F subsection F, which added a second paragraph to provide $150,000 from the sale of RDA properties in the West Project area for the Santa Fe Corridor. Speaker 4: Mm. Speaker 9: We also have a. Speaker 8: Friendly that's pending on the reallocation of the money for the alleys, park bathrooms, playgrounds and irrigation pumps. I believe that the motion was to eliminate subsection D irrigation pumps and move that 10% to playgrounds so it would be divided 60, 20, 20. That has not been determined yet. Speaker 0: I think that's I think that's right. That that's the that's the emotion is it's the main emotion with the changes that's been added as we went. Right. Okay. Okay. And if you're looking at the the the the the screen, there's a a ringa substitute that's not supposed to be there. And I think it's trying to get cleared off the screen. Maybe that's what you were referring to. Speaker 11: Okay. That's why I was okay. Speaker 0: No, no problem. Customer. Customer. Pierce, back to you. Speaker 11: Okay. I. I recognize that every budget cycle we kind of go through this and this is my first body that I've sat on and I'm trying to make sure that I follow Robert's rules. And I just want to make a clarification so that when I proceed that I'm following within Robert's rules, I'm reading from Robert's rules right now that sometimes people suggest amendments that they sincerely believe will improve the original motion. These are friendly amendments offered with positive intent. An unfortunate customer has arisen whereby a person suggests a friendly amendment to the presenter, often turns to the maker of the motion to ask him. Although they need some gender pronouns in here if they would accept the amendment, if he agrees or she or they are, the presenter sometimes would also ask the seconder if she would accept the amendment. This is wrong. Once a motion has been made and seconded, it stated by the chair it belongs to the group as a whole , not to the individual who first proposed it. I could go on, but I think that. The basis of this is that we are very kind when we try to make friendlies. But it is not Robert's Rules of Orders to make friendlies. It is Robert's Rules of orders that the motion belongs to the body. And I think that this is why sometimes the budget process gets so frustrating for us, because it's left to the chair. And depending on if your issues are accepted and if you guys have had good conversations, then this process goes very differently. But when you've had a couple of conversations like I have had with the chair of the AOC and laid out all of my budget priorities, I now cannot go and talk to a fourth person about my budget priorities because I've done that with the Bossi chair. And when the boss chair doesn't align with my priorities, I am now left not able to advocate for my community. So I'm going to make motions and I'm going to ask for seconds. I'm not going to do friendlies. I do appreciate that. A lot of work has been done. I do appreciate that there's big responsibility with your position as the chair of the body, and I respect that you are good intended and trying to have those conversations with all of us to put in our priorities. So I want to recognize that. But for the basis of my community members that have asked me to advocate for things like aging language access, I'm going to make motions and I'm going to ask for seconds as according to Robert's Rules of Order. So my first motion is. The U.S. strategic plan. We've had a lot of debate. I don't want to bring up the whole debate again. And this one doesn't necessarily need to be a motion, but I would just want to make sure that the city manager's office is really managing this process. I'm not going to try to change it from one place to another. One of my conversations with Councilmember Mongo was that I thought it would be best handled, maybe with Kevin in city manager's office, to make sure that we're coordinating with the workforce, with parks and with health. If I can get that commitment, I won't ask for a motion in a second. Is that something that the city manager's office feels like they can do? Speaker 9: Yes. Speaker 11: Thank you. My first motion on the floor is going to be a motion to reduce the appropriations for the short term rental program on a one time basis in FY 20 by 73,000 and delay implementation of the STR program according lead to spend sorry, with the remaining 4020 staff funding and to reallocate that one time funding to continue the current Office of Aging position through FY 20, supplemented by another 73 from homeless heap 2.0 funding for total funding of 146. That's my motion. Do I have a second? Speaker 0: There's a second by Vice Mayor Andrews. So there's a motion in a second we can go and take cast a vote on that. As any other comments on that on that issue. Okay. So let me make sure that I'm not sure this is it within the system. If the clerk is able to queue up folks under this motion or I'll just take folks that want to speak because I have cues from other other not on this motion. Are we able to do that on this or. No? Speaker 1: No, it's one queue. Speaker 0: Okay. Well, let me let me just if you have if you want to comment, just I call on you. So, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 7: First point of order. Speaker 0: Actually, let me actually first go to Vice Mayor Andrews on the second of the motion. No. Okay. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 7: Just a point of order. We've operated this other way for the six years I've been five, five plus years I've been on the council. And so I guess I'm just. Unclear if the body gets the opportunity to maintain the procedures as we utilize them for five years. Speaker 0: I think I can answer that, Charlie. And I think if there's if there's a disagreement, let me know. But I think that this body uses Robert rules as a overall guiding document. But we also have, over time, adopted our own rules and our own way of operating, which which we can do. And so the way we the way we've done of the way we have done friendlies being accepted is absolutely within the right of the body. However, the councilman also has the ability, if she would like to put a motion on the floor as she has. And so both ways are acceptable. So if the councilman wants to take votes on particular items, she's welcome to do that as well. And so there's a motion in a second. Let me go back to Councilman Mongo. Speaker 7: Great. I'd like to call up Development Services, please. So. During the budget process, there have been extensive discussions about the needs and priorities. I know one of our board members, Councilmember Alston, attended a a meeting. In. The Second District and they talked about senior programing. That was a priority and I think that it important to fund it. However, in discussions with my colleagues and or the community and or anything, I work hard not to break any Brown Act requirements. So I always listen, but I don't develop consensus or any of those things. And so when I went back to Development Services to do some research, I was under the impression that the star could not take more than a $79,000 reduction, which is what we did today. So could you speak a little bit to how reducing SDR allocation over the threshold of which was done by the EEOC would potentially lead to a reduction in revenues? So it's not necessarily a 1 to 1 basis. I think that's what the email kind of outlined. Speaker 3: You hear the question. Speaker 5: Councilman Mongo. Speaker 3: And as the boss recommendation included a reduction of. Speaker 6: $79,000 to the the program budget. An additional $73,000 a reduction would put us into a situation where we'd be forced to delay the implementation of the program. The combined total of. Speaker 3: 152,000 is a 66% or a two thirds reduction in the staffing budget for that program. And it would be impractical. Speaker 6: To move forward on the implementation of the short term rental program if we were to reduce it. So the motion to delay implementation. Speaker 3: Would certainly be appropriate. Speaker 6: Because we could not move forward without staffing to initiate. Speaker 3: The program. Speaker 7: I appreciate that. I'd further go into that in discussions. Publicly at my community meeting and others, we kind of talked about some of the areas that were less defined. Specifically, I had questions from the community and colleagues about the funding allocated for animal control services that was not very restricted. I had questions related to PD and their allocations, and over time I know that they've already squeezed as much as they possibly can in the delayed onboarding of the mandated programs. And so for me, I want to support aging. Mr. Oranga talks about that. He has the most senior living facilities. Mr. Andrews talks about that. He's the oldest member of the diocese. And I get to say that I have the most seniors in the city living in my district. It is of the utmost importance. However, we do not have any guarantees of heath funding yet, and so I believe it impractical to cut a program further. Development Services, a short term rental program, which is our Airbnb types of opportunities, where we could be in a position that if we do not pass it. Towards the end of this year and we don't have a staff person to process the applications, then there's a potential loss on the revenue side. And so I want to think. Ms.. Tatum for the advocacy. She had to not reduce it the first 79,000, but I just don't see how I could advocate taking even more. It's been a tough fight for them on the first place. And so I would say. I would. I'm aging through this process right now and support it. Speaker 0: Okay. And I remember I'm going to suggest we just go ahead and vote on these as they come forward. So I know I've got some of Richardson that had his hand up. I think the jury had to know. Okay, then let's go ahead and vote. There's a motion in a second because I'm appears to want to clarify it. Speaker 11: Well, I wanted to clarify the connection between staffers and this item is that we've said that we wanted to tackle homelessness and keeping people in their homes. And one of the most vulnerable populations is our senior population. When I brought forward stars, I said that I wanted to make sure that any of those funding went directly to trying to impact housing. So this is not a huge impact, but it is a direct correlation, which is why I'm not suggesting taking the money anywhere else. So I wanted it was a thoughtful process in that a delay could be as long as two. Three months is something that I've heard. It's not a long did delay. We also haven't voted on our score policy yet, so we don't know when that is going to be implemented directly even though we are already taking in TOT. So it's well thought out. So to get to this point, I hope that my council colleagues will support. Speaker 0: Councilman Mongo and then we're going to vote. Speaker 7: So in the 79 that we've reduced so far, we allocated that to both library hours and be safe. And so if if the diocese would be open to really doing like for like as Councilwoman Price Pearce has suggested it would be. Not funding be safe and not funding library hours from the 79,000 and trying to find another place for that and I'm just being honest about where the money's moving on emotion. I understand what you're saying, but I'm saying that if you take that reduction, I cannot advocate for keeping the revenue at the same level because without a staff member to process the applications, how can individuals become a part of the SDR program and therefore provide us revenue? That's all. Speaker 0: Okay, well, there is a motion, I think. I think the motion's clear cut, some reports on on the aging. And so you're unclear what the motion is. Yes. The motion is to increase appropriations out of the out of the Star Fund. Speaker 12: Let me be clear about what I'm unclear on. It's not what the motion is. The response is that it's my understanding. The motion. Speaker 0: Let me counselor, let me let me just finish really quick and then if I want to cue in here. So let me just so I'm clear from what I heard is the motion by counsel appears is to use the delay SDR implementation so that there is additional funding from those SDR funds to fund the motion as it relates to the Office of Aging. And so that is what the motion is on the floor. And do you have a clarification, Counsel Richardson, on that? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 12: So my understanding is there's a certain amount of money here. It's not coming from B.C. for something else. It's hey, if we delay, if the number of workouts. Speaker 0: Correct? It's not. That's correct. Speaker 12: That's was not coming from be safe or sun latest. Speaker 0: That is correct. That's the way the motion is laid out. Speaker 12: Okay. But is that the truth of it? If we allocate SDR, is this going to effectively result? I'm seeing a conflict here. So is this going to effectively result in a cut to those programs? Are we saying. Speaker 0: This as far as that? Let me let me clarify. As far as I'm concerned, this does not, because the other part of the BSE motion remains as is, which is to use SDR funds for the other programs as described. And so this would be this would just delay the implementation. The way I'm reading it. And and if the council chooses to make other changes to be safe, then that's a separate motion in a separate discussion. And I think that's correct. Mr. City Attorney. Speaker 8: I believe I'm reading the motion. Speaker 9: Motion to reduce appropriations for short term rental. Speaker 8: As to our program on a one time basis in fiscal year 20 by 73,000 and delay or otherwise adjust implementation of the SDR program accordingly to spend within the remaining fiscal year 20 as TR funding and to reallocate that one time funding to continue the current Office of Aging position through FY 20, supplemented by another 73,000 from Homeless Heap 2.0. Funding for a total funding of 146,000. Speaker 0: That's, that's, that's how I read the motion so far. So that's how that's how it's it's pretty clear to me. So there's no other questions on that. So that's the motion, as is Katherine Austin. I'm sorry. Speaker 2: So I'm a little unclear on terms of us not actually having a short term rental policy. Right. And I guess I need to understand, when do we expect to have that policy coming and even vote on? And if this motion passes, will we have the resources to fund that, that the staffing for that? Speaker 6: If this motion passes, it would remove a total of. Speaker 3: $152,000 from the staffing, the two staff positions that were proposed to implement. Speaker 5: The program. Speaker 3: And therefore we would not have the funding to initiate that program. The current status of that program is the environmental review that was done to take forward. The ordinance amendment is wrapping up now or it would wrap up later this month in we would envision bringing the ordinance to start the implementation of the program sometime in November Speaker 8: . So. Council Member Every year after you adopt the budget, we come back to you and say, here's how we're going to implement what you've asked us to do and we clarify anything. So this is one that we'd add to our list. And we we can't tell you tonight whether it's a four month, six month, eight month delay, but there would be some delay. So we would then respond back to you. And we'd also look at the revenue as well and tell you this is one we could implement. So you would make a decision by the end of the year on the STR and then you'd have information on when you could actually start the implementation of the ordinance. Speaker 2: Are you okay with that? So remember. Speaker 11: Me. I'm okay with that because I do know that we are well, we're not getting the money from the registration and the permits. We are getting tot already by Airbnb. So. So I'm good with that and I feel like we haven't even voted on it. We don't know how long that that implementation plan is going to be. So I'm good with staff coming back. Feel like that's their job to come back to us and tell us how it will be implemented. Speaker 2: But I ask because I know both are very important to me. Speaker 11: Both are very important to me. And I would not go to Starz if the Office of Aging wasn't so important to me and if I didn't feel like if we didn't fund it now and I didn't have another place to take the money from which I've tried, that it would go away and we wouldn't have it back . And we have an opportunity to have matching grants for it if we do this now. Speaker 2: That said, I'm going to support the motion. Speaker 11: Thank you. Speaker 2: The Office of Aging. This is not something I'm completely comfortable with, but I do understand the commitment that we've made to to our residents. And I think it is something that we should do. But I will tell you, moving forward is going to be very difficult to sustain. Speaker 11: I understand that. And I the one year is figuring out those fundings for what it looks like or if that means that that staff person is doing a similar program like we've done with Language Access where they train others. So I appreciate that vote of confidence to try to get through this next year. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 5: I support the motion too, and I think we're all on the same page. But I just want to make sure that we clarify our intent. So this Office of Aging would be directed for the entire city. And as we roll out the program, every district would be included in the conversation. All seniors needs would be considered, and we'd be looking towards finding programmatic opportunities and other opportunities to assist all seniors, regardless of their income, their zip code, anything like that. Is that you're. Speaker 11: Abso absolutely. Speaker 4: Absolutely. Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. Mongo, any final comments we're going to vote after? Speaker 7: Yes. It is my understanding from staff that while we are receiving top from Airbnb, we are not receiving the TOT from VR, bio and vacation and HomeAway and all the others. And so again, Miss Price and Pierce, I have advocated with staff for this to be a possibility. And staff came back and said, Stacy, if you were to reduce any further than the 79,000, you would need to take a proportional reduction in revenue. And so when you're allocating the 79, 73,000, there's not a full 73,000 available for funding because there isn't a person registering people. And we're not going to be able to get the total from those other programs. So I would just state that as I spoke with you earlier, my recommendation would be to take funding from one of the other areas that's not outlined because. If staff were correct in their original prediction. And I see Mrs. Tatum nodding her head, the reduction of the 73,000 would not give you a full 73,000 for aging. And so, as I mentioned, no disrespect to animal care. Love Animal Care did some meetings with Hiroto and Stacy about it. I was looking at other revenue sources for aging, all of which you rejected. This, unfortunately, is not a one for one, and I think it disingenuous to fund it from that position. Furthermore, you're only funding the position at half away. And when I met with Kelly and asked her and offered her a partial funding meeting with the department heads, as I feel is my responsibility as budget chair, she stated No, she needed the full amount of the position that it could not be a triple AA or other position like economic development uses because the level of expertize necessary for the position is higher. Furthermore, when staff came back and said that the position cost X, then we moved forward and Mrs. Copley communicated that the person had already left the department. The position is currently vacant. She took a position with scant health care and we don't need the full amount of the money because there's no one working in that position today. So there would be a delay in the implementation as well, like we have talked about in all the other programs. So we would need an additional 74,000 from HEEP, which we do not know is available. We would need to hire a person which we have not started on a process. And so I appreciate that there is a support for aging and we as a council have said that. I have also said that I'm willing to work with Councilmember Odinga and Council Member Andrews, and Mr. Price appears on an agenda item to find out a way to make that happen. How? However, this has been four weeks of data and research from the initial conversation that I had related to the desire to fund this office. And I took it very seriously. And I'm not trying to just allocate $74,000 off the top when staff have come back and specifically stated that that is not how the program works. So feel free to support this item in its intent. But the actual amount of money does not materialize that way. And unfortunately now it makes it look like I'm a bad guy and I don't want to support aging. But but the numbers 75 plus 75 doesn't always equal 150 when there's a revenue component tied to it. Speaker 0: Okay. We're going to go ahead, go to vote. So this is the motion by Councilmember Pearce. Please cast your votes. Motion carries a thank you. Motion carries comes from a picture of another one. Speaker 11: I have one last one. I'd like to make a motion to move $100,000 from the SAP fund that's been marked for the Civic Center. Video programing to our divide by nine for city council members. Can I get a second? For special. Speaker 0: Events. Is there a second? There's there's a motion in a second. I got some of her peers. Did you get any official comments on that? No, I'm okay. Councilor Richardson, any comments on that? Katherine Mungo, any comments on that? Speaker 7: Yes. So I've already allocated what the committee thought was an appropriate level, which is $135,000 for divide by nine of special events funding. I specifically have been the one at this dais who has argued for being more mindful of the types of funding available and movement of that funding. When looking at the allocations of prior years by all council members. I would say that that is significantly more than has been available in the past and specific asks of council members that have come forward were solved. And so I don't know that there's a lot of value in allocating funding from ACP with the Olympics coming, and we were warned against it by the Finance Office. And so I would ask my colleagues to stand with me on the initial hundred and 35,000. If there's any specific ask of any specific council office, I'd be interested in taking that on a one by one basis. But we're giving away our review process by situating it this way. I think that we really need to have a longer strategy and policy discussion related to all of the bigger events in the city. Summer within Parks and Rec. Some are within special events, some are within our offices. And I think there needs to be a plan and I don't think we're there yet. I'd be open to setting a portion of that aside, however. It is difficult when Leah Erickson is the department head for technology and innovation and she has been so fiscally prudent on the budget, I would doubt that she would overestimate by $100,000. And to take that away from a department who has made such great strides in promoting our city when we're already receiving $15,000 per council office for promotion just doesn't seem fiscally prudent. So I will be a no vote. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 5: You know. I think what we're trying to I get completely where our budget chair's coming from. I support her completely. But I do see we have a colleague who has identified something that, frankly, to me, it also seems like $400,000 may be a lot of money to spend on programing for elevators and a digital wall in a civic center that's already beautiful naked. Right? I mean, I don't know that we need to be spending all this money in our first year to, you know, jazz it up even more. It's pretty exciting the way it is. And so when when. Ms.. Erickson was asked about that item. I have to be honest, it caused me to think, well, could we maybe, I mean, be more creative in terms of how we're doing the pieces or whatever? Like, for example, could we maybe partner with Cal State Long Beach's film school and just for the first year, do some pieces that are maybe a little bit more homegrown and not as expensive, given the fact that we have a lot of other needs. And so I just I'm just suggesting that maybe although it wasn't the plan, I don't really see it as taking money away from Ms.. Erickson. I see it as instead of $400,000 with which to provide some animations for the elevators and the digital wall, we'll have $300,000 to do that. So it's not as though there's no money there to work with. But again, I'm not totally plugged into why the need for 400, 383,000. So, you know, I'm open to hearing my colleague's comments on it. I think it's a great suggestion. What I would say is what I think the suggestion was was to add to the moneys that the budget chair has already identified for divide by nine for promoting the city through the hosting of events in Council Matic district. Speaker 4: To the centennial. Speaker 5: To adding to it. As opposed to I mean, so that does it. We do all promote the city through our the events that we host in our districts. And the money, I think, if used in that way, would certainly fall within the intent of ACP funds. But again, maybe the $383,000 price tag is specifically intentioned for something. But I wonder if there are some creative ways that we can bring the City Hall to life through videos and have that extra hundred thousand dollars to divide among our colleagues for the many events that we host to promote the city in an effort to have different programing in the diverse districts that we represent. So, you know, I'm I'm I understand where the budget chair's coming from. Completely support your efforts. I hope you know that. But I'm just asking for just a little bit of consideration, you know, maybe just softening of the position a little bit just to think about maybe there that's that hundred thousand isn't necessarily going to kill a huge priority project that we have in mind. Speaker 0: Ms. And just just briefly, Mr. Mourdock, I think that whether, you know, obviously you're too programed for a certain level of quality, but $100,000 less is not going to somehow dramatically change the quality of the programing that you'll be able to do. Is that correct? Speaker 8: So there are two components to that money. One is a dedicated position because that is there's a lot of new technology in this building and they make it all go, especially on the visual. We need somebody to be able to manage that wall. Then there's supplemental funding to help with the art that you're currently seeing in City Hall to have that program through a year. If the council would like to take that money and repurpose it, what we would shrink that contract and and we would find other ways to fill it. It wouldn't be quite what you see today, but it could be something different. Speaker 0: Thank you. Well, there's there I'm I just repeat with a motion on the floor, I have two more folks who want to speak suggests hopefully I can get to these quick so we can take a vote on this. Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: I just need a quick point of clarification. Is the motion specific to the B or C recommendations or something else? Speaker 11: The motion is a response from the line item that's in the technology that I asked about earlier, which is $380,000 to program the wall. Speaker 2: So that is that in the city manager's budget and. Speaker 11: The city. Speaker 0: Manager, if you want, you know, we can do this two ways. I mean, you can the most you can be to add it to the B or C recommendations that can be your motion or it could be you just you do that motion at the next. Speaker 11: Added to the B or C. Speaker 0: The motion to add up to be a C. Speaker 2: Recommendations. Okay. And then I don't feel that strongly that what the recommendation here, I mean, I can support the the request because I think there are some pretty healthy reserves, particularly in the SAP fund. We did understand that throughout the B or C process, if this will will help us get through this process a little quicker than I'm supportive of. Okay. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Richardson. Speaker 12: And thank you. Yes, a few things. One, I think, you know, I hadn't thought of it because I was just thinking within the lane of what's in front of us on A, B or C recommendation. So it's great that we figured we're figuring out how to do this. This is money that will help promote and it will be well spent. These are like the money to support the parades or community concerts or those things. So it will certainly be directed into the community. The other thing I would say is I think our youth groups in the city would love to have a crack at designing some stuff for that big wall. So while we may see this as, you know, maybe a cut to what's proposed, I would push back and say, let's go to our Summer Youth Institutes. YMCA was go to Long Beach Community Action Partnership. All these groups were developing and training youth to do these videos. This is who we should be and how they're going to their bid is going to come in much lower than some consultant. That's where we should be putting our focus. So I like this. I'm going to. Speaker 0: Spank you there. We're going to go to Councilman Mongo, then go to vote. Speaker 7: So. So I agree. I am supportive. The staffing position is only 138,000. There's an additional 250,000 which came up tonight at the meeting, which I am open to reducing. But I think my bigger point is that right now as SAP and our community calendar and our community concerts and different hodgepodge of projects are all trying to be united under a single policy for big events and a citywide. Calendar, and I think those are important things. I'm completely open to reducing by 100,000, but I think that it's also important to know that programing that big media wall is not cheap. There are lots of photos that are on there that are of excellent quality, but there are also photos that are of subpar quality because it costs money to buy those. Again, no disrespect to whoever did the first set of programing, but when we arrived at City Hall, the pictures on the elevator of which City Hall won the bid was not the correct city hall. I mean, these are crucial and critical things that need a staff member looking at and being held accountable for these level of items. And so I'm open to reducing even the 250 in its entirety. And Thomas Eriksen brings back a two from four of some sort. But what I also think we need to be aware of is $15,000 to put on events. It's just a small token. Each council office, in addition to $35,000 for dealers, bought those $35,000 for justice, $35,000 for MLK Parade. I can't think of the number off the top of my head for community concerts. And so these are a lot of things that come together, and we're talking about a quarter to a half a million bucks. And so I don't know necessarily that our council officers need discretion over an additional 15,000. But I would be open to there being money available to pull from throughout the year as big things come up. And I think we did that by allocating an additional $10,000 to the women's suffrage. And so if you look at the list of all the funding that council members have spent things on over the last year or two, not one office of a council member that sits at this dais would have needed more than 15. And so I would hope that we would be conservative in that we would bring these items to the council in the future. And for that reason, I would like to make a friendly or something. I don't really know what the procedure is right now. Speaker 0: That you can make a substitute if you'd like. Speaker 7: Okay. I substitute that. We would reduce the funding. Of the 250,000. So she has a staff position for her to at least bring back a two from four on how it would be spent and the costs of these things. And at that time, we can potentially make another decision if we want to move it around, because I think that kind of there's a lot of detail that went into this and a lot of cost estimates that we should probably be aware of before we end up having a $2 million wall that has $20,000. Parcel things because we can't afford the investment. Speaker 0: One time we're going to get there. We're going to go and vote on the substitute motion and we're going go back to the main motion, which is the original motion. But Councilmember Pierce. So this is a substitute motion. Yeah. Yes. Speaker 5: Okay. So I'd like to talk about the substitute motion. So I'm not supportive of the substitute motion. Speaker 0: You're right. There's no second. Speaker 7: No talk of the. Speaker 0: Substance. There's no there's no substitute here. There's no second. That's right. So now we're back to the original notion, which has got to be appears as motion. And if you want to have anything else, Councilmember. Speaker 5: I did I did want to make a comment that talked about some of the comments that were rolled into the the the draft substitute motion. And that is, yes, I agree that the ACP funds at 15,000 a council office is as is a great number. It's a fantastic number. And I think the Budget Chair for identifying those funds for us, I think an additional $10,000 would also be good and positive. I will say that these funds are designed to promote the city and there's no better representative to promote the city than the representatives that are in touch with the needs of their own district and who know what's going to bring the community out. So for me, as much as I, you know that I love to focus on public safety and infrastructure in terms of our funding, but when we do community programing, it's really such a nominal investment in what makes our city great and what what makes our city , what brings us all together, makes us stronger as a city is when we make that nominal, you know, it's really a drop in the bucket. But when we host community events and we have thousands of people come together, regardless of their differences, sitting side by side, enjoying being residents of Long Beach. To me, that's building community. You really can't even put a price on it. So I would like council members to have discretion to be able to make those decisions. And to me, you know, a lot of the projects that you listed that we get SFP funding for, for like Dale Baylis, Muertos or MLK Parade or whatever, those aren't in my district, but they're really great programs for the city. I love them even though they're not in my district. I love that we do them even though they're not in my district. So to the extent that we can do more community building and programs I'm supportive of, I think when we're talking about as huge of a budget as we have and that's an insignificant amount of money in the big scheme that we're talking about here, I think I think we get a lot of return on that investment. I will say I think it's important that Ms.. Erickson have this money to, you know, figure out really what her needs are going to be long term and have some seed money to get that effort started in a quality way. And I don't want to I want to set her up for success, too, to the best extent that we can, you know. So I think reducing it by 100,000 makes sense to me, giving the council officers discretion to decide where that money should go to promote the city and to promote their district, I think is a really great development and I thank you for bringing that to us. Had you not done that, had you not championed that, we wouldn't be having this discussion. So thanks to you for bringing that. Speaker 0: So it sounds like so there's nine councilmembers, 100,000, so I get ten. Am I getting ten as part of this monies? Speaker 1: But just I don't want to. Speaker 5: Rounding the. Speaker 0: Numbers. I don't I don't need it. I'm we're good. Let me go to a let me go to. Okay, Councilman, I want to go to a vote, please. Speaker 7: I appreciate your comments. Councilman Price and I would agree, I think that my long term concern that I will set aside for today and be supportive of this is that there's always going to be more things we can spend money on. It's easy to spend. What's hard to do is fit yourself in a budget box. And so I felt like. For a first year of having $15,000 was a lot. 25,000 is, of course, more, and I am sure we can come up with ways to spend it. I'm positive that each of us will have an email tomorrow requesting more than 20 many emails tomorrow that comprise requesting more than 25,000. And what I didn't want to have is winners and losers. And so unfortunately, this conversation throughout the night has kind of been about apportioning, and that was never the intent. It's really about raising up the whole city. And so I'll be supportive of this motion. Speaker 0: Okay. There's a motion in a second. Which was that Councilmember Pearce motioned. Please cast your votes. Speaker 5: Oh, it says how? It says motion to approve substitute motion. She has a substitute motion. Speaker 0: It's a sub because it's still on the main motion. So. Yeah. Motion carries. Okay. So that will be added to the C recommendations as the motion asks for cuts. What appears to show the floor? Speaker 11: Yeah. Five more motion I'm getting. I just wanted to say thank you, guys, everybody. It's thank you guys for the votes. I look forward to hearing what the rest of my council colleagues have to say. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. So I don't have any more any other folks queued up. Speaker 4: Yeah. Speaker 1: He. Speaker 0: That's weird. Doesn't have it. And where is this thing? Q Okay, so let me go back to controversy and there we go. It wasn't it was gone for a minute there. Speaker 1: We didn't want anyone else coming in. Speaker 0: No worse controversy or no. Speaker 1: Has magic to. All right. Thank you. And we have a just reminder. We have a public safety committee meeting tomorrow at 1230, so I'll make my comments short. I don't want to run it into our next meeting. First of all, I'd also like to commend the Budget Oversight Committee just on a tremendous job. I think the level of detail, especially with our chair, is unprecedented. And I just really admire the amount of time, energy and expertize all the members put into this. I just have a couple of comments and then a question. So I'm so happy my colleagues are supporting restoration of Engine 17 and the nice tie in with working on Station nine is that restoration of Engine 17 reduces response times by a minute citywide, so that should help out up in District eight. Now for the third item there, $100,000 for disease, magnolia trees. Those aren't just trees on Magnolia Avenue, are they? I guess it's too late for a joke, I think. Sorry about that, Chris. But my question is here's is the removal always been my pet peeve is stump removal. And if if I could ask the chair if that includes that on your. Speaker 0: Mr. Beck as Mr. Beck is coming forward. I believe that all stunt removal has been funded across the city and we're going through that process. If that's not correct, it'd be. Speaker 7: Unfortunately, more changed. I'd. Speaker 1: So you're both are correct. Speaker 0: The major dying as we speak. So let's make it quick. Speaker 1: The this council did during that fiscal 19 funding year allocate dollars towards removing a backlog of stumps. We've made a lot of progress on that. About a thousand of those stumps have been removed. If I remember correctly, I think we had funded roughly 1200 or maybe 1250 at the time. Unfortunately, going through a couple of drought years, we've had a number of our trees in distress and we continue to lose. Speaker 0: A large part of our urban canopy. So we do. Speaker 1: Have trees that have had to be removed. And we we probably have in the neighborhood another 500 stumps that that need removal. And that is a separate issue from the magnolia tree tulip scale that we've been talking about as a council. And and while I appreciate any funding that can be allocated to help address this problem. 100,000 may be a little light. Right now, we anticipate somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand trees that are infected in this city. Just like the trees scale. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Cipriano, you're the fourth. Speaker 1: Okay, so I think the answer is that this this will not address the backlog of stumps and whatnot. So, you know, I'm going to leave it at that. Speaker 0: We have. Speaker 1: Well, you know. I'm sorry. I'm not making eye contact here, so. Okay. I'll leave the issue alone. Okay. And I'm sorry. Exceeded my time. I just had a comment on Mr. Emoticon on language axis. I really liked your your philosophy of inculcating a culture of this in every department city wide. I think that's really important. What we find is where the rubber meets the road is out there with our constituents. And if that could also be addressed, that whether we're working, we had a classic case in public works where a consultant went out with English only fliers in neighborhoods that were either predominantly Spanish or commercial speakers. So I think that has to be added to the mix that each department has to realize that you have to cover every single base on this. And to me, that that's where it's falling apart, is that at the user end of things? And also just I wanted to say something to Pat West and that is enjoy your retirement. I think we're padding the resume pretty well here. You're going to put on there. You saved a hospital. Two engine companies now rescue unit and and you have destroyed a bunch of magnolia trees. So congratulations to you. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. So let me go to Vice Mayor Andrews and. Speaker 1: Yes. I want you to make a motion and you said give you time to think about it. So my motion is for the language access is that is that to move the $15,000 from training into item X, to move these dollars to the community based organizations so they can continue education, outreach, the language access policy, and the city manager to determine the distribute the funds. Speaker 0: Okay. Could you make the motion count? Mr. Vice Mayor. Here is their second for the vice mayor's motion. There's a motion in a second. Any other customers want to comment on this? It's basically taking the $15,000 and having those funds be used to work with the community based organizations through a process determined by the city manager. Is that right, Mr. Vice Mayor? Okay. Councilmember Richardson. Oh, that's the other one, Councilmember Price. Speaker 5: Thank you. I would be supportive of this motion, but I think it's very important that there should be some sort of process in place for selecting the community based organization. They should have a training curriculum in place. There should be some sort of selection criteria. Impartiality in terms of any messaging should be very important. I've I've communicated this with the folks that were advocating for the people's budget, that sometimes the language is a bit. Advocacy as opposed to information sharing. So I think it's really important and fair to the entire body that would be using these funds for the purpose of helping residents, that there be some sort of selection process that is committed to. Any work done by the CBOs in training to be not advocacy, but rather information sharing for the purpose of translation of materials that the city provides to individuals who may speak a different language. That's really, really important to me. I love working with community based organizations. My very first job after graduate school was working with community based organizations in Oakland, and I very much enjoyed it. But I also understand that sometimes the nature of those organizations are advocacy in nature, and that's at odds with any sort of neutral task that they might have, because it's important to rally support in an advocacy role to keep a community based organization going. So I think it'll be interesting to see how this works out. But I would I would hope that as part of this motion, we can include that there's a selection process that's designed by the city manager that allows for a competition of different CBOs and a curriculum for training. And I know this is very important to both Councilman Ranga and Council Vice Mayor Andrews, so I want to support them in this program. I just want to make sure that whatever we do is is fair and true to the source of the money. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Price. Councilman Mongo, I think you're on for this item, right? Speaker 7: Yes. I think that one of the challenges that we have is in meeting with the community groups. Their biggest ask of us was $100,000 for bilingual bonuses. And when I let them know that we have over $800,000 a year in bilingual bonuses, they were shocked, just jaw dropped to the floor. And so in talking with them, well, I appreciate that 15,000 could go a long way in helping their groups. I don't know that that outreach stuff next is ready. If when people come to city hall, they're still not getting the access. And so that's why the 15,000 was originally allocated to train the staff that are getting the bilingual bonus. There would be almost 400 staff that would be touched by this program. And so I want to support Vice Mayor Andrews because I feel he knows his community best. But I also want to be very mindful of what I heard from the community at the sixth and seventh District budget meeting, which was we come to City Hall and we are not getting the help that we need. And so I don't know how we do that next step, which is inform people of how to get the help they need. If we haven't first done the rounding up of the staff and giving them the training, I would be open to. Mr. Andrews, would you be open to working with the community groups to help train the staff? Is that what you're saying? Maybe I'm not understanding. Speaker 1: I think a lot of this is really especially when I think about our districts. You know, I don't have an awful lot of individuals coming from the sixth District down to city council. I would rather you know them take that. That's why I was really mentioning that if I had I see at city council, we just don't have that many individuals active on this. I don't know about the seventh, but I know this is a very few a number. Speaker 7: Okay. And so that would be for outreach then. Majority of the Cambodian community. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 7: I see. Speaker 0: Well, I don't think I don't think the motion has as majority to anyone per se. I think the motion says have the city manager work with community based organizations. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 0: Okay. Is there any other comments? We have a motion in a second. By this motion by Vice Mayor Andrews. Seeing no other comments, please cast your votes. Speaker 13: Comes Richardson. Motion carries. Speaker 0: It. Motion carries. Thank you. Next up is Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 12: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And this has been a long, arduous conversation. I'm glad to see we're at the end of it. Okay. So one outstanding thing was the the allocation, the formula, wherever it was on before, we didn't. And, you know, I'll say initially I was planning to make a friendly motion because we've done it year after year. But it seems like it's more success simply making a motion and voting on it. So we didn't resolve that. Chair Mongo. So I'm going to move that. We make this adjustment, I think 60, 20, 20 between alleys, park bathrooms and playgrounds by elimination, eliminating irrigation pumps 10% and applying that to playgrounds. Speaker 0: Is there a second on this motion? And again, the motion is 2 minutes to do 60, 20, 20 alleys, park bathrooms and playgrounds. Councilmember Pierce, anything else to add to that? Council member Mungo. Speaker 7: So earlier today, I think this actual motion was part of the reason we got off track because in in one breath you said how much you appreciate the Budget Oversight Committee and yet that we have no rationale for what we do. It took a few minutes because, as Mr. Superhot mentioned, I've gone through every single page of this book. So if you turn to CRM 57, where it talks about irrigation pumps, I found the specific line item and the specific line item was for 35 irrigation pumps under immediate critical needs, and it's 35 irrigation pumps used to pressurize the irrigation systems or move lake water. That are not functional at all, marginally functional and decades old. And so again, I'm thinking and so again, this was a need that came up at one of the community budget meetings. It was not something that I was advocating for personally. I actually in discussing this and the item with Mr. Beck over the evening, he actually communicated that while this is important and a community member is advocating for it, what he really, really needs is that extra hundred thousand for tree stumps and other dead trees in the city . And so he said that if I were open to finding another hundred thousand, he would ask that it go towards trees, because we made a commitment last year to remove every stump in the city and because of the number of trees that have died, we have not been able to do that. So I would like to make a substitute substitute motion. That it would still be 60, 2010 ten, but that the the last actually it would be not a full ten so would be 60 2020 with a carve out of 100,000. So would be what you had recommended with the carve out to get us over the hump and finally end the discussion on tree stumps. Speaker 0: Okay. That's a substitute motion, it sounds like. Consider Richardson. Did you want to. Speaker 12: If you just wanna make it a friendly I'm good with it and those three categories but lumping into playgrounds 100 counts tree stumps. Speaker 7: Would you like to revoke the motion as well? And we'll go back to the original and I will accept. Speaker 12: One of them. Speaker 6: That would be. Speaker 1: Great. Speaker 0: Great. I think so. I think Mr. City attorney, I think councilwoman was changing her original motion and says no. So it's going to be 60, 20, 20, but $100,000 is going to come out of. Speaker 8: The. Speaker 0: Total off the top. Yeah. To take care of of tree stamp removal. Okay. Councilmember Richardson didn't have anything else. Okay. Councilmember Austin. Speaker 2: So I'm glad that there seems to be some sort of agreement here, but I'm still kind of curious about irrigation pumps and the need. Speaker 7: Mr. Beck thinks he can meet it within the current allocation of the ones that are on the list. Speaker 0: So let me go back to Councilmember Austin if you have any questions for the staff. Speaker 2: Okay. So I just I did want to ask somebody, I mean, is there an authority on irrigation pumps who can give us some clarification? And and is this an issue that we can. Speaker 8: Early owns what? Speaker 2: Ignore ignore for right now because I know I have pump needs that my lakeshore park I mentioned that earlier there's you know. I mean, it didn't appear here magically, right? Speaker 7: No. Mr.. Mr.. Speaker 0: What actually, let me let me, let me go ahead and go to the staff. Speaker 1: I brought her to help me, but I believe he just clarified that we. Specific to the the pump issue for lakes. Do we have moneys and also I'm looking to see for replacing our purchasing new new pumps for lakes. I think that was the question. What's in it? Speaker 2: Well, I'm specifically concerned about your park. I know we've had several conversations. I don't want to mess up any funding or unfunded. Speaker 1: So, yeah, we don't have for Shire Lake or any of the Lakes for the for the replacement of the pumps. Speaker 2: Okay. And then the original budget, city manager's budget, it mentioned critical needs, 35 pump stations. Um, can anybody clarify that? Speaker 8: Yeah, that's on an unfunded high priority. Needless. So that's not funded. It's on a list of we just wanted to let you know the other things that are outstanding so that isn't funded. Speaker 2: Is there a an amount needed? Speaker 8: It was up to 1.6 million. Speaker 2: Okay. So we're going to have to hope for rain this season. Keep our grass green in our parks. Is that what we're talking about? Speaker 4: So. Speaker 5: Part of this list for the ads that's being referenced in the budget book was an effort to keep the council informed as part of our financial policies of needs that are not yet funded. So the budget book does do many things. But we do want to disclose that there are still many unfunded needs out there. And this list provides some of those categories and some estimates of funding and ways in which we can try to approach solving those issues. At this point, as Tom mentioned, there, there isn't funding for that. And those are things that we need to continue to look at as we disclose what the lists are as funding comes. And, you know, different studies are done in terms of assessing and providing more detail on some of these unfunded needs. Then we can start to tackle and see if, as there are additional resources, how we can apply those resources. Speaker 2: Many of our infinite funding needs are like a wish list of of issues that we in an optimal situation we will fund and that everything would be perfect. Speaker 8: Yes. If it was a critical if there was a failed system, then we would have put that in the budget and cut something else. So we just this is a list of things that we know also on this list or things like alleys and and water needs and tree trimming. So it's a larger list. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilmember Supernova. Speaker 1: Yes. Since Councilmember Austin mentioned Shire Park, I'd like to ask about Stearns Park. I thought that was good to go. I don't know if Craig Beck could answer it or someone from PRM could, but I would hate to see that project drop out of the queue. And also, Councilmember Austin mentioned, will the parks not be watered since we have Chris Garner in the audience? I think one of the major benefits of this implementation would be saving water to do the do the irrigation with far less water, with a more efficient system in each of the parks. Councilmember Suber. Yes. Stearns Park is still moving forward with irrigation upgrades and it is funded. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Before I go to Councilman Mongo, just really briefly. Maybe, Mr. McGuire, someone can can answer this because I always hear about the issues that are lakes or ponds. It's a constant lake issue. And so those are being identified in the budget book are all the top projects we need to get funded, some of which are not, is a correct mission. That's where I would find those. Speaker 5: Yes. So that unfunded list just includes an overview of the different categories and types of unfunded needs. Speaker 0: Okay. And I would just like to ask also just our management team that I think I think a plan specific to our lakes and ponds at some point, it's just constantly out there in the community. And I would love to have a plan to just kind of take care of all of them if there are issues that we could we could do. So if it's not, the cost isn't too high. Sounds like it maybe is not too dramatically high. That that would be that would be helpful. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 7: Thank you. In the initial discussion related to pumps and irrigation and I must read my notes, it is 11:00 at night, so I apologize. 1.6 million is allocated for up to would be allocated is needed for 35 pumps. And so my assessment was the average would be about 45,000 per pump, which is what the $450,000 number came from as that would have been potentially ten parks. I know that there are ten pumps. Some lakes have more than one pump and some have only one pump. And so the original. Recommendation would have been the 2010 ten as as mentioned. And if I'm hearing from my colleagues that these pumps are as important as we thought. I'm happy to go back to the original motion. But what sits on the floor right now is Ali's at 60%, park bathrooms at 20, playgrounds at 20 with a 100,000 carve out for trees. But I'm happy to go back to 60, 20, ten, ten if we feel the pumps are crucial, as I originally thought. Speaker 0: Okay. So we do have a motion on the floor of Councilmember Austin. Speaker 2: One question for Mr. Moore and Mr. Moore. So I just want to be clear in terms of my priority pump. Your part. We do already have funds identified to to to to address that. Speaker 1: The my team can clarify, but as I understand it, we recently approved a water quality maintenance for all of the lakes. That's not the pump. That's just the quality, the making sure that that a consultant treats the water. But with regards to circulating the water, that is a function of the pumps. And we do not have funding for the pumps in in in in for any of the lakes, including share. Speaker 8: And what I want to point out, what we're doing here is you're giving us direction about future dollars that may come in and where we should spend those. So if and when those dollars come in, we can also tell you these are irrigation pumps that are failed. If that's the case, then you can make a different decision. So you're giving us general guidance and we would bring back specific projects. Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I'm I would like to support the motion on the floor, but I'd also like to make sure that we are being mindful of our maintenance priorities in the city. And I would defer to the maker of the motion on the floor to carve out at least $100,000 in there for for for emergency pump repairs to to our facilities. And legs. Speaker 7: So I will make all except the friendly. And the new motion will be allies. 60% park bathrooms, 20% playgrounds, 10% a hundred thousand off the top. Four Pump maintenance and repairs. 100,000 off the top four additional tree. Issues that Mr. Beck needs. And then finally to direct the city manager to come back with a plan to fund $1.6 million in pump needs. And what those pumps are and what order? Speaker 0: And that with. Speaker 8: 6020, 20. Speaker 0: 2020 plus 200,000 or 200,000. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I think. I think that's the motion. Please, members, go ahead and cast your vote. Wait, actually, is that everybody? Okay. This is now the new biosphere recommendation, as has been compiled. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: No. Speaker 0: Now I think we're good. We've heard it. Please cast your. Speaker 5: Vote. Speaker 13: Mayor. Is this the original motion? Speaker 0: This is the amended DRC motion, as has been built throughout the last few hours. Speaker 13: By mango. Speaker 3: Price. Speaker 0: Yes. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 7: No. We resolved it. We have consensus.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to adopt the Budget Oversight Committee’s proposed funding recommendations, as amended, to the Proposed FY 20 Budget. (A-2)

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Speaker 0: We're going to go into item 20, please. Speaker 13: Communication for Mayor Garcia, Councilwoman Price Councilmember Super Now Vice Mayor Andrews Councilman Austin recommendation to direct City Manager to begin negotiation negotiations with trades for the extension of the project labor agreement and explore the addition of street construction projects citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. I have a couple brief comments and then I do have a couple of members of the public. I'm not sure if some of these folks are here. I did ask our our our friends in the trades to go ahead and head home. It has been a long night and so I'm not sure how many of them are still here, but I just want to just briefly just say a few things and then I'm going to I'll make some comments. I'll let the members make some comments. And then I want to make some clarifications to the staff before we go ahead and and take a vote. Let me just begin by saying, and I think this whole council deserves an enormous amount of credit for establishing what is viewed as today as a model citywide project labor agreement across the state of California. And in fact, when other cities are talking about putting together project labor agreements, they look to Long Beach for the way we have modeled ours. And I just want to thank the members of the Council for being supportive and for doing the work. I also want to thank our staff has done a great job of implementing these this project labor agreement across across the city and you've seen the work and the good jobs across the community are the reason why this is in front of us today is very simple. I have been having discussions, as have other members of the council directly with the Building Trades Council, including Ron Miller and some of the individual trade organizations. And their main requests are in fact their single major requests that they have asked us to consider is the expansion of what is considered street infrastructure work into the project labor agreement as we move forward. And so the the recommendation as you have it in front of you is to begin negotiations with the Los Angeles and Orange County Building, construction trades and signatory craft unions and councils for the extension of the project labor agreement. So this will be the first major extension that we do, which is exciting and an opportunity to build even more good jobs and explore the addition of street construction projects in this negotiation. Because of Measure which was adopted after we put the play in place, we've obviously seen that increase. And this this is a top priority for our the building trades because it directly impacts jobs. And so I do want to thank the folks and the council members that have also signed on to this. So I want to turn this over to Councilwoman Price. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank you on your leadership on this particular item and on this topic in general. I will say that when this issue first came to us in 2014, I was one of the the people on council that really wanted to make sure that data supported the benefits that were being shared with us by the advocates. And here we are several years later. I will say that including the building that we're in, we've had several projects happen very smoothly, several projects where we can all. Put our faith into the quality of the work that was done. And we've had very smooth integration of this policy into the the plans of the city. So I want to thank our public works staff, really, and our the leaders in our public works department in terms of facilitating those relationships and allowing that to happen in such a successful way. I think this extension is warranted under the circumstances. We've had several years now where we've watched closely. Again, you know, I think in some cases the expenses have been perhaps a bit higher, but the results have been, you know, timely, sometimes under budget and very quality work. And in my opinion, the overall success has been nothing but positive. So I support this project. I thank the mayor for bringing it forward, and I urge my colleagues to support it as well. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Vice Mayor Andrews. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, Mayor, also for bringing this project agreement because it has been good for the city of Long Beach and it's good for our residents, you know, has ensured that public projects utilize the quality of tradesmen and women in constructions of our own infrastructure. At the same time, it ensures that the disadvantaged workers get a shot at a great career in building and construction trade. I have hosted a few job fairs with the trades over the years, and I'm always impressed with the dedication and the passion that people are looking forward to be employed or receive with. Because of that, I believe that we should include our street improvement project into the extension of APRA so that we can ensure quality constructions while providing new opportunities for our residents. I urge my colleagues to join me on this item. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Mayor. And I also before I get to the speaker's list, I also want to thank Councilmember Darryl Supernova and Councilmember Al Austin for also signing on to this. So let me before I get to the speakers, if I can, also a clarification. There's one particular item I've heard from some folks. I want to make sure that we're clear. We're clear, Mr. Modica. So I just want to just also just note that earlier this year, the Council in June adopted actually unanimously to have the on on the project labor agreement that we currently have as a pilot program. The jobs coordinator work. I know that's something that is not just being supported by some of the folks working on on these jobs issues in the community, but also the trade. And I've talked to, you know, Mr. Mr. Miller and others as well. So that. Can you give us an update on where that's at? I think there was some question about that. This isn't one or the other. This is the item in front of us today is building on the work the council already started in the first discussion. So can you give us a timeline of where the jobs crane or position is that. Speaker 8: Sure. We see those as two separate issues. In April, we came to you with the report. That was something you asked for back in 2014 was give us a report on how we've done with creating jobs and meeting our benchmarks. And we provided that report. As part of that came a discussion about jobs coordinator. So just a reminder, we have a jobs coordinator in the play as it stands today, but the amount is set at $10 million projects and above. So this council was interested in having that be a lower type threshold. And so in June we got direction to basically do a a pilot program where we lower that amount, but it's kind of on the city. We didn't open the play and that we would then have a group that would then coordinate with workforce and everybody else to get out into the community and really recruit jobs and get people into the pipeline. So that was direction in June. We are. It was also direction to do an RFP and then to take the results of all of this pilot program and use that to inform the next round of discussions. So you've already given that direction on jobs coordination. The RFP will be out in September and we expect to make a selection in October and then that will start and that will be more than six months worth of data because we would be renegotiating this in spring 2020. Speaker 0: And it's my understanding and talk, Mr. Modica, that in talking to the building trades and the jobs and the around the jobs coordinator work, that they're obviously interested in negotiating that as is as this additional street work. And I'm imagine that as from what I remember in the discussions the first time that obviously the pilot is going well, that's part of the negotiation that would happen as we move forward. Is that correct? Speaker 8: The pilot will give us good information and help us determine kind of what that appropriate threshold would be in the new play going for. Speaker 0: Because I think the key question would be what is the threshold question, which I think you're working on with through the pilot? Thank you. I hope that clarifies that question. I think this is this builds on the kind of unanimous vote the council took. And this you know, we've been working on this specific street infrastructure expansion specifically, and that's what the item is about. And so thank you, Mr. Modica, for those clarifications. And let me go ahead and go through the rest of the the members. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 12: I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor Garcia, for bringing up this this item. I think, you know, the conversations have evolved over the last really the last ten years on plays and what's appropriate, you know, specific areas of town or citywide. And here we are. We've been involved in this four and a half years. And I think the question of of if a play has been been answered, I think thank you for acknowledging sort of the ongoing conversation that, you know, I think we've sort of brought down anxiety around plays and union work and all that, and that's sort of accepted. And then we also want to give acknowledgment to sort of the community concerns have coming up come up and how the council has heard that has received that has acknowledged that and wants to make sure that that is also encompassed and reflected in what we're doing today and moving forward. So, so thank you for asking those questions, and I'm looking at you. Mr.. MODICA So the idea here is that this motion adds the street work in, but we're not going to aggressively sort of take anything off the table we've already began to work on. Is that correct? Speaker 8: That's correct. Speaker 12: Okay. So yeah. So if we put, you know, on the street work, I completely support it. I know. I think it was an oversight before I support it. And I think if we. Give up that additional work. At the same time, we double down on the local jobs as a negotiation, and I think that's head in the right direction. Also want to just state that it does address some of the issues raised here. I have a letter I'm looking at from the Long Beach Ministers Alliance, which is a group that I check in pretty regularly. You've got, you know, you know, ten, 12, maybe a masses of 12, 15 pastors signed on to this. And so I would hope that this response that, hey, this is not not you know, we are acknowledging the private previous work and this is going to be included in that. I hope that some communication goes out, an acknowledgment of this letter to say, hey, we received it, counsel acknowledged it, and the play issue with the job coordinator is not going to be left off the table and that this is sort of going be central to our negotiation. So that's that's my hope. There, again, I think this is is smart. It makes a lot of sense. I think it's smart. It makes a lot of sense. And I support this motion in front of us. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 11: I think you are right to recognize that this has been a long journey. Before I was ever ran for office, I was on the other side advocating for this policy when it was first in front of us. And the biggest issues are for myself and the organizations that I partnered with were really how do we make sure that taxpayers get a return on their investment whenever we're doing big projects? And that means funding good jobs and making sure that those good jobs are local jobs and that those jobs hopefully will be going to people of disadvantaged communities, people that have been locked out of having a good job. So I'm good to hear that this is a step that nothing that we've done is kind of going backwards. I know that that's been maybe a concern from from not having communication. And so I to support this item as is in front of us, I look forward to having the continued conversations. I do think that we have to grapple with the lack of language around disadvantage workers, around how we calculate work hours and making sure that our Long Beach residents are really getting access to these good jobs that our taxpayers are creating right here in the city. That will help us with crime reduction, that will help us with health impacts, all the things that we talk about every single day behind this dias it is the only way that we can really tackle those things in a holistic approach. So I support the item as is, I support the community groups that have come forward to advocate and I look forward to continuing to have that dialog over the next several months. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm proud to support and sign on to this particular item. I believe that the building trades have been a very good partner for the city since we entered into the project labor agreement several years ago and it wasn't the smoothest process, but I think it has proven to be a model that that that works there . Training programs have been excellent. They've worked with most of our council districts and many of our residents to create good middle class jobs in our city. And I believe this next play that will be negotiated will will meet the our values, but also the city's goals will continue to meet those goals of inclusion, equity, local hiring. And importantly, we know that with the project labor agreement on future infrastructure projects for street projects, we're going to get quality workmanship. On those on those jobs. So I'm happy to support this. It was an oversight the first time, but this is an opportunity for us to to, again, give back in and hopefully create local jobs. That's what that's my goal, that the local jobs and the quality workmanship that we know we can depend on. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. And I'm not sure if some of these folks are still some of these folks I know are not here anymore, but I'm going to read their names and Cantrell is not here. Angela Kimball, Ex. I know, I know Chris isn't here. Omar Galindo is not here. I know Marco is also not here. Juan Alvarez. Theresa Hernandez, Eric Lopez and Andrew Mayorga. Okay. And a councilor appears to have another comment. I'm sorry. Speaker 11: I just realized that we I wanted to mention and think East Yards. Long Beach Community Action Pvt. Jobs Legal Aid Library Logo 11 Long Beach, Florida. United Cambodian Community for also sending a letter supporting this item and asking for continued partnership in the future. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And members, please, Gordon Casper, cast your votes and it's another big night. This is the official extension of our second project labor agreement. So this is a big deal for us as a as a as a community. So please go ahead and cast your vote. Let's not start begin negotiations. Speaker 2: Beginning negotiations. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 11: Beginning of negotiations, but not the official start of the second one. Speaker 0: That would be till 2020. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 0: What? Did everybody freak out? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. Motion carries and we're going to go back to that was that was item 19. I'm sorry, that was item 20. Let me let me do these third district fund transfers real quick. So 22 through 25.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to direct City Manager to begin negotiations with the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council and the Signatory Craft Councils and Unions for the extension of the Project Labor Agreement (No. 33859); and, explore the addition of street construction projects. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. That that concludes those district transfers. Let's go and go to item 20. We're going to go out on 26. Speaker 13: Item 26 Report from Economic Development Recommendation to execute a grant agreement with the Long Beach Community Development Corporation in an amount not to exceed 125,000 to support the establishment of a community development corporation citywide. Speaker 0: Think I'm wondering. I'm not sure. Mr. MODICA This is actually a pretty big item and one that I want the council to be engaged, engaged on to do. How long is a presentation? Long are we up for it? For right now. Speaker 8: Okay. Ready to answer questions? Speaker 0: Okay. Well, this is this is the to accept the grant for the Community Development Corporation. There's a motion in a second. I don't see any public comment on this. Are there any questions? I guess we don't need to go that much discussion then to go and get your votes.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute a grant agreement with the Long Beach Community Development Corporation, a 501(c)3 organization to be located in Long Beach, in an amount not to exceed $125,000, to support the establishment of a Community Development Corporation (CDC) to deploy programs and services that support economic development and financial empowerment of low-median income communities; and Increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Economic Development Department by $125,000, offset by proceeds received from the sale of Successor Agency properties. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Item 28, please. Speaker 13: Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code regarding city council meetings. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Speaker 0: There's a motion and there there's a motion and a second on this. Mr. Goodhew, do you want to comment on this? 28 Nope. Is that not sea and control here or carelessly and as Christians? No one else is here. Mr. City. Attorney. Speaker 8: Mayor. Thank you. This is the streamlining ordinance. Kind of ironic. We're bringing it back this evening. Speaker 9: So just to walk real quickly through it. Speaker 8: You'll note that we one of the major items as we change, we move the consent calendar to right after the Pledge of Allegiance and then ceremonial and presentations follow the consent calendar. If an item is pulled from the consent calendar, it would become the first item of your regular agenda and the next would be on the supplemental agenda and would require a statement of urgency from the Council office that putting it on the agenda. And if the Council as a body doesn't determine that there's an urgency, it would be laid over. Speaker 1: To a subsequent meeting. Speaker 8: And then the other, as we've been starting the process in the new civic center, the it does require the person to sign up. And then we also have included in here is the limits of debate by the city council with unlimited number of recues, but at 5 minutes time for duration. Speaker 9: And once this ordinance goes. Speaker 8: Into effect, it would be applicable to the conduct during hearings. Speaker 1: So during the any of your hearings, during your. Speaker 8: Council meetings, the five minute rule would apply to the. Speaker 1: Discussion at council with unlimited. Speaker 8: Recues. And then. We're available to answer any questions if you. Speaker 9: Have on this audience. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 3: Motion carries.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending and restating Section 2.03.040 and Section 2.03.060, all regarding City Council Meetings, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Speaker 13: Count motion carries. Speaker 0: It. Thank you and reader 16 Please. Speaker 13: Report from Financial Management Recommendation to declare the Appropriations Ordinance for FY 20 as an emergency ordinance read. It adopted is read and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. Speaker 0: Thank you. Last week I said you wanted to again think the city council before we vote on really great budget season has been a lot of work a lot of community input but there's a great document in front of in front of everyone. I just want to thank all the work. I also want to just make a quick note that I do want to again thank the council that partnered Engine 17, I believe, is probably the last major commitment that we had outstanding from measuring that office where there's others other commitments ahead that we will be obviously making. But that was a move that was important, I think, for the community. I want to thank Councilman Supernova and the work and under the community is very excited about that. And that is also here in this budget and that's beginning on October one. We look forward to a roll out date for for that engine. And again, thanks to all the work from the BFC and everyone else. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 7: I want to thank my colleagues for all their input on this process. And then just a big thank you to the budget staff. All of you have been excellent to work with, with particular recognition for grace. There wasn't a time where she didn't answer the phone, even though she probably shouldn't have. She was on vacation and she would answer calls with questions I had about appropriations and revenues and all of that. And just the outstanding dedication from all of you is just been exceptional. Thank you very much for your partnership. Speaker 0: Thank you. And with our members, please cast your votes. Speaker 13: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Next year's budget passed.

Emergency Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance approving and adopting the official budget of the City of Long Beach for the Fiscal Year 2019-2020, creating and establishing the funds of the Municipal Government of the City of Long Beach and appropriating money to and authorizing expenditures from said funds for said fiscal year; declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2019, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-19-0020). (A-16)

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Speaker 1: Thank you very much. And with that, if I can just please ask the council to join us as we take a photo. So let's give them all a round of applause again. Well, thank you. We are moving on to our next item that's going to be item 16, which is an item by Councilwoman Price. So if we can go to do that item. Speaker 0: Item 16 is communications from Councilwoman Price Council member Pearce, Vice Mayor Andrews and Councilman Austin. Recommendation to require city manager to evaluate the feasibility of working with get help to develop City of Long Beach specific mobile web based applicant applications for city staff and Long Beach residents who work with or interact with those experiencing homelessness and report back within 60 days. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If I can invite Dr. Tony Greco and former Councilman Mitch Englander to the podium. What I'd like to do is to have these two gentlemen give us an overview of this particular app and how it could be used. And then I'll save my comments for after they finish talking. But I did hear about, you know, we have residents all the time come up with come to us with solutions of, you know, how can we connect people better with services. And when I saw an article in the paper about this app and its use in the city of L.A., that's when our office reached out to Dr. Greco. So I thank you for being here. I'm going to turn it over to you. Speaker 2: Great. Thank you very much. Honorable mayor, councilmembers and Councilmember Price, thanks for reaching out as well. I will say, though, that Los Angeles is number one. As a former L.A. city councilmember, we were number one. We are number one in homelessness. Make no mistake. I don't think anybody can argue with that. Speaker 3: That's not to go for that title. Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Well, you've achieved it. And and you're doing a lot here. And I can I congratulate each and every one of you for what you're doing to to tackle this epidemic and this moral dilemma of our lifetime. And so the reason I'm here is as a councilmember and the chair of Public Safety and president pro tem of the L.A. City Council was certainly something that I was personally dealing with every single day. In fact, I myself as a child was homeless. And so this is near and dear to me. And while everybody in Los Angeles at the time, a few years ago, when I was looking at what options and what opportunities and what tools do we have, everyone was talking about housing, and that's critically important. Make no mistake, we have a tremendous crisis and housing shortage and rents are way too high and it's very difficult. And so many people who are housed are right on the edge of homelessness themselves. But what are the tools and the different obstacles and issues and ways to get people help? It didn't exist. And in fact, when I graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy, I was given a book, a resource directory. By the time I was given, that resource directory had already been ten years old out of print. This was some 16 years ago, and I haven't gotten an update ever since. And so I looked at what's out there in the space, and I tried to create an app myself, an app that would be geo coded. When you stop somebody on the street, when you're trying to help somebody, whether it's a first responder, a clergy member, a teacher, a nurse, and they need resources. They need a domestic violence shelter. They need a homeless shelter. They need a food bank. They need a work source center. And to know what's around you close by that's open and available with all the information didn't exist. So I reached out to everybody I knew and it wasn't there. So I created it myself and it failed miserably. I worked on it, put my own funds into it, and spent years on it. Didn't work. Not to my delight. And so I scoured the universe and what was out there. And I met with Google. I met with big tech companies, could not find anything we were looking for that would actually have in real time geocoding what's there to help people. It didn't exist. And so in talking everywhere about this, somebody introduced me to Dr. Greco, who actually created the very thing that I was looking for. And it has been piloted with the Los Angeles Police Department and many others that love it, that have said that it's one of the most valuable tools on their tool belt, the ability in real time to get people information and help, particularly when dealing with the three P's, their personal belongings, their partners and their pets. A lot of people are service resistant, but it's just because you have a moment in time to get their information, to help them, to give them the resources, to give them a referral before you lose them. And so you have to capture that moment, particularly if they have mental health issues or drug addiction. They need help. And it's not just always a shelter bed, but it's also a shelter bed. And knowing what beds are available in real time, where close by. So with that, I want to thank you very much, Councilwoman, for looking into this for Long Beach, being on the cutting edge and and trying to help as many people as you possibly can all the time. You've been setting the example for other cities that I've certainly looked to as well. So I truly appreciate it with that. Dr. Greco. Thank you. I am Dr. Tony Greco, and it's an honor and privilege to be here today. Thank you. I'm a licensed clinical. Speaker 10: Psychologist by trade. I didn't start out that way. My parents. Speaker 2: Actually met in a 12 step meeting and. Speaker 10: My mom didn't stay sober. Speaker 2: At the time. And my dad was dealing with mental illness. And what I what I tell people a lot when I'm telling my story is that I've been trying to get people into treatment in some way or another since I was seven years old. So I was intimately familiar with how difficult and challenging it was and also intimately familiar with what happens when people don't get help. Speaker 10: And as a result of my my parents. Speaker 2: Own issues with addiction and mental illness. I myself was homeless at 15 and didn't. Speaker 10: Get help myself until I was 17 years old. Speaker 2: And that was only by the grace of. Many people. And so since 17 I've been trying to get that my whole life has been dedicated to trying to help people both in recovery, family members of those involved. And I've known how. Speaker 10: Difficult it was in that moment that Mitch was talking about, that moment when somebody wants help and how difficult it is. Speaker 2: When all you've got are a couple either people that you can call or outdated phone lists or anything like that and that really. Set the direction in my life. Speaker 10: Right. That's why I got a doctorate in psychology was I figured they're the ones, right? Speaker 2: The the licensed professionals, the doctors, they're the ones that no other way. Speaker 10: Around the system. They're the ones that that know the secret handshake or whatever that is. And what I discovered is that not only did it not make it any. Speaker 2: Easier to get people help, but now it made it harder because I had more people asking and even less resources. And that was the foundation for me. Founding Get Help was to be able to create resources and give people that that in that window, in that moment of time when when they need help to give people like Speaker 10: . Myself, psychologists, therapists, social workers, you know, I did my internship and worked in the county facilities and and to give all of us the tools. Speaker 2: That we needed so that in that moment of time, we'd be able to get help for people who needed it, because that's that moment and that's when people do. Speaker 10: End up homeless as a result of not. Speaker 2: Being able to find a resource that they need. And sometimes it's not shelter, sometimes it's detox, sometimes it's it's a warm meal, you know, or a shower or something. And that's enough to give them hope to go on to the next day. Right. And then the next day is when they say, maybe I'll try that mental health facility. And so that's really been the. Speaker 10: Foundation of get help is for us to be able to provide resources. Speaker 2: To the professionals, the first responders, the people that are out in the field on the front line, and make sure that that data is accurate and up to date and can give people exactly what they need in that moment when it can make the difference between life and death. So thank you for letting. Speaker 6: Me be here. Speaker 3: Thank you to both of you. So I'm just going to make a few comments on this, and I know my colleagues want to speak as well. Thank you to the residents who are here tonight and support as and those who have written our office and filed comments and also emailed me over the last week. And of course, to Dr. Greco and Councilman Englander for being here tonight. Looking at more efficient approaches to homelessness is an incredibly important to this city and to cities throughout the state. What I'm proposing tonight is the creation through the help of partners to create an app that provides real time services and bed availabilities for services to the homeless. If we can put these types of services in the hands of our city, teams that work directly with the homeless population as well as our first responders, like police and fire, we can really improve the efficiency of getting people into the services they need. As someone who routinely goes on outreach ride alongs, both in the city of Long Beach and throughout Orange County, with the Orange County Community Officers Group, throughout the 33 agencies, and as a prosecutor who often staffs and also manages the collaborative courts, including our drug court and homeless court programs, I've seen firsthand how important outreach can be in building trust and credibility with people suffering from homelessness. The amount of time and repeated contacts that are necessary to build those relationships is essential as we work to get people off the streets. Our outreach done out of the Multi-Service Center and by our police and fire department is incredible. However, our outreach teams would absolutely benefit from having real time updated information for bed availabilities where they can immediately route someone or transport someone to. Sometimes that window where someone has a moment of clarity can be brief. And if we're lucky enough to have an outreach officer reach out at exactly that moment, we cannot miss the opportunity because the officer had to call around looking for somewhere that would admit the homeless individual at that exact moment or risk the individual losing faith in the system or in the officer because they weren't able to follow through quickly enough. I've been on so many ride alongs where individuals have said that they want help, they want to go to detox, but that they were not ready at that moment or we didn't have a bed for them at that moment and they've asked us to come back and when we've gone back, the person's been gone. This technology based solutions means that we can quickly and effectively allow our officers and outreach teams to access information they need in real time in order to give the people the services that they need immediately. City cities across the country are looking at moving forward with creative, technology based approaches to homelessness, and this is one of them . Los Angeles is currently undergoing a pilot program that they are proposing to extend because of how successful and useful this app has been for their outreach teams and first responders. Apps like this not only help get people the help they need, but get them used to the idea of accepting services, trusting and building credibility with first responders . They may not be ready to accept detox treatment today, but they may be ready to accept shelter. Or maybe they're not ready for shelter, but they're ready for a food bank. Or maybe they're not ready for shelter, but they simply want assistance or an opportunity to talk with others who are going through a similar thing. Having access to what is available at that moment is critical for our first responders and for the homeless population in the city of Long Beach. I ask my colleagues to support this item, but more importantly, I ask my colleagues to support a commitment by this Council to to direct resources at providing help for the homeless so that they can be given the opportunity to get the treatment they need at the moment that they decide they need that help. And although it's a different topic and not part of this particular item, I do believe that having services 24 hours, seven days a week available for our homeless population and our outreach officers to be able to contact them seven days of the week is an important priority for the city, given what we're hearing from our constituents as a priority for them as well. So I think I thank the presenters and the members of the city who have reached out to us and I thank my councils in advance for their support, my council colleagues Speaker 1: . Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 4: Thank you. I definitely signed on to this item because I know how challenging it can be to create an app like this. In 2016, we had nearly 100 people do a day of service. They did a hackathon to try to create an app very similar to this. It is difficult to find the right technology, particularly in places when we have HIPA and we have privacy concerns. And so when you have a vulnerable population like our homeless population, we have to think creatively. We have to think outside. Of the box. And so taking what's worked and building on that, I think is an exciting opportunity for all of us. I think that our entire city has said over and over that dealing with homelessness as a public health issue and not as any other type of issue is their priority. And so while I love the item, as is, I know that there's been some ideas around expanding not just where are their beds, where are their basic services, where are their socks, where are their clothes, where are things that they can pick up if they're not ready for those services? But maybe we connect them with geo and the socks that they're doing and the homeless services around creating jobs to create those socks. And so I look forward to seeing what staff brings back. I hope that this is an app like many other apps, so we can have a phase one, phase two and phase three where it just gets better with each development. So I wholeheartedly support this item and I encourage our community groups. I know there are some here in the room that have participated in that hackathon to try to create that app. I hope that our city staff will work with Long Beach organizations as well to kind of see what's already worked and what they've had a trial and error on. And I can work with staff afterwards to connect you with those groups. So thank you very much, Councilwoman, for bringing this forward item. Speaker 1: Thank you, County Councilman Austin. Speaker 6: Thank you. I'm going to say less because I think my colleague, Suzy Price, council member, probably said most of what needed to be said. I think our presentation was excellent and I am fully in support of this item. I think this Get Help app is very, very intriguing as we are working as a city to create more bed space and create more resources, we need tools to help us manage our resources and be smarter and more efficient with everything that we're doing. I just had a question regarding the capabilities or capacity. This this is not or is this just limited to public resources? Or or can we we look to engage our faith based organizations who are doing work around the homelessness issues, nonprofits and other private partners. Speaker 3: So I can answer that question. So if the city chooses to go forward and identifies the funding to start a pilot, then we'll work with the app developer to define our parameters. What can be included and what I would be recommending be included is nonprofits as well as government based resources, not just in Long Beach, but within the region. Because, for example, we have very few medical detox beds, but there are cities within the region that have medical detox beds, and we don't sometimes know immediately if there's a bed available. So this would allow us to go within the region, even outside of the county. So if there's a bed in lossL or there's a bed in SEAL Beach, then we would be able to transport, help somebody get services there through transportation. Speaker 6: This is much better and this is an advancement on anything that we have today in terms of tools. And so this is a great start and I'm fully support. So thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Ringo. Speaker 6: Thank you. And I want to thank Councilmember Susie Price for bringing this forward. I think this is an excellent opportunity for the city to really get engaged in dealing in and confronting homelessness. One of the biggest. Progress that we can make is having opportunities for people experiencing homelessness or mental health issues or drug or detox issues is admitting that there's a problem. That's the first step as it was a process goes. And a lot of times all they want is not a handout, but a hand up. And this is application would be able to provide that with them in the sense that it's simple. They come to somebody and says, you know, I need help. Where do I go? This application, I think, would be very beneficial in providing that kind of assistance. So I'm glad that this brought forward looking forward to the city, to the cities, evaluating this and looking into it and hopefully that we can get this on board as quickly as possible, because as we know, every day we talk, there's another homeless person on the street. Speaker 8: Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 4: Yes. Thank you. I remember the first day that I was assigned to the Lakewood Station after I got out of the sheriff's academy and we went into a homeless camp. And I will tell you that in a region as big as Long Beach, I mean, we are a large city and an officer may be on overtime on the east side, but usually works downtown and they might not know those resources. And so I feel like this app is a phenomenal opportunity to really put the technology in our hands. I would also say that in some ways it would be great if it could plug into another resource or app that is already available to the officers. There's already so many different technologies they're working with on a daily basis. I hope that we're mindful of the amount of connectivity that they have and how that all fits together, because it can be cumbersome to our new recruits, especially who are out there on the field every day. Thank you to Councilman Price for bringing this forward. It is a a critical component of what we can do, but also highly recommend as we work through this and get some cost outs what the long term commitments are and. Finding a way to ensure that, as we talked about, it can scale and grow over time to the needs of the community. And perhaps that we could then have other cities or other agencies adopt in and help us pay for those costs. So. Great work and thank you. Speaker 8: Thank you, Councilwoman Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Vice Mayor. And so in looking at this item, I think it's very well written, all the references and you know, as you know, as I'm out on other boards and commissions and it's gag, folks, pay attention to what Long Beach is doing around the homelessness issue. And particularly around the last homeless count. Folks were asking, what's Long Beach doing differently? And I think what we're doing differently is continuing to innovate and continuing to focus on this issue and really lock arms and support it. And so, Councilwoman Price, I think this is a great step in the right direction. I also want to want to just lift up what Councilwoman Mongo just said. I know that we're you know, our firefighters move into different applications. And so there's ongoing conversations within the health department. So the more we can think about integration, you know, one comprehensive system, the better off our our whole collaborative system will be. The last thing is, I know that, and I would just hope that this is sort of there's a level of sort of privacy we work out with outreach workers. And I wouldn't want to see this link in any way to like go Long Beach. Right. So I wouldn't want any residents taking photos of incoming encampments or or anything like that. And I know that's not the intention here, but I think as we lift it up that the people who use this are professionals. Right? These are people who can actually help people in need. And I think that's important to call out. But this has my support. I think it's a very well thought out item and I look forward to supporting it. Speaker 8: Thank you. Councilman Richardson. And, you know, I also would like to thank my colleague, you know, Councilman Price, for bringing this to the, you know, item forward, because the fact that Long Beach, you know, is in the middle of a one of the homeless crisis that we need to use every tool at our disposal to help try to solve this problem. You know, using technology to identify solutions is an innovative way to enable our hard team match up with the homeless, which is available spots to help them return to society. You know, I'm urging my colleagues to join us in supporting of this item. And thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Colleagues, I just wanted to end with a few comments. First of all, while I appreciate and respect the thanks, it's not thanks to me. Every single person on this council has been working really hard for the past four years to find solutions that are impacting all of our communities. So this is just part of a larger team effort and a larger discussion. I will say to Councilman Austin, I forgot to include that private providers can also be included in this system. So hospitals and, you know, other types of treatment, rehab centers. The problem with those is that they may not all accept, you know, they may have different insurance requirements and things. So we want to make sure that that those who don't have the means are able to get into those resources, but that can be included. I also say that, gosh, about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, I was invited to be the keynote speaker and my day job as a prosecutor at the Orange County Community Officers Meeting. They modeled a program in Orange County similar to our quality of life officers. Here, there's 33 police agencies in Orange County. Every police agency now has a quality of life officer. They don't call them quality of life officers. They call them community officers, and they have an association of community officers. So I invited our Quality of Life team and our East Division commander to go to the meeting. And there was a there was over 100 people in the room and they were all talking about the same things that I read on next door and that same things that I hear at my community meetings. And I had to take a pause for a moment. I was standing in front of the group giving them a presentation about different misdemeanor offenses that we often see in quality of life type situations with our transient population. And I took a pause as I was looking out this entire room filled with police officers, and I said, you know, they didn't know this about me. I said in my other hat, I'm a councilwoman in a city, and I go to a lot of community meetings. And I have to tell you, one of the most common things I hear at community meetings from my residents is why is this only a problem in Long Beach and not a problem in Orange County? And they all started laughing. You can ask Commander O'Dowd, because the same exact issues we have here, in fact, the Newport Beach officers were there. I said in my my city, my residents are always telling me this isn't a problem. In Newport Beach, they said, actually, our homeless count revealed we have 67 while 67, compared to the population they have in Newport Beach, would be proportional to the population. We have given that we have almost 500,000 residents. So it was really interesting. They had the same issues that we do with encampments at the railroads because, you know, the railroads run through all through Orange County and a lot of the same issues in terms of enforcement. So, you know, I was really happy to see that some of the things that were doing, they were looking to. Learn from they. Many of them didn't have standing, no trespass orders like we have here for our business corridors. They asked us to send ours to them so they can model it after that. So it was very and I've invited many, many residents. Anytime you want to go to one of those meetings with me there once a month, I'm happy to take you with me. But I think an app like this is honestly a game changer for the city of Long Beach. In the area of homelessness, there are so many different aspects to homelessness. But if we can't get people connected to services when they're ready for services, they will lose faith in the system and our outreach efforts will not be as effective. So thank you, colleagues, for all of your comments and thank you to all of you for your ongoing efforts on this issue. It's not about this item or me or anybody. It's all of us working together to find a common, common solutions for this problem that we're all facing. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Councilwoman. I'm going to go to public comment. I have eight speakers. I want to ask the first four to come up Luke Cardenas, Katie, Della, Donna, Wil Cullen and Marco Pizzo. You four can please come forward. And please begin. Luke Cardenas. Speaker 2: Hi. Good evening. My name is Luke Cardenas, the Louis Vuitton Apostle. Speaker 9: A special messenger of the Louis Vuitton kingdom. Speaker 1: I am here to advocate. Speaker 2: For the recommendation of the new. Speaker 1: Digital app that would allow police. Speaker 2: And fire personnel real time data on what beds are available at various shelters to better assist the homeless. This is a progressive step to reduce human suffering, and I urge council members to search your hearts and indeed your souls and approve this recommendation. We are watching the gap grow between extreme wealth and extreme poverty. With such wealth available, it is morally apprehensively that in this, the 21st century, we are stepping over bodies in the streets and having to smell human waste throughout the city. We need more public showers to clean those on the streets and more safe and clean shelters to house them. Speaker 1: In Palm Springs, for example. There is a water truck that. Speaker 9: Drives around with portable showers for the homeless. Speaker 2: As well as a clothing exchange program where the homeless trade their clothing to be washed and then redistributed. We need more creative. Speaker 9: Solutions like this. Speaker 2: Taking care of the least of us isn't merely the moral thing to do. Speaker 1: According to police officers I've spoken to. It would help the businesses that currently suffer. Speaker 2: From the blight the homeless individuals can bring. Caring for the needy also reduces crime. Speaker 1: Desperation fuels crimes against property. Imagine a city where we. Speaker 2: Can walk around safer not. Speaker 1: Having to smell human waste and not having to step over bodies. Speaker 2: I urge you to please. Speaker 1: Approve this recommendation. Speaker 2: Take this. Speaker 1: Proper step to help those. Speaker 2: In need and let us continue to reduce human suffering. Let us solve the manmade problem of homelessness. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Speaker 1: May the universe be abundant to you all. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 4: Hi. Katie, Della, Donna, Naples, Neighborhood Watch. Thank you, Susie Price for bringing this recommendation forward. I'm all for it. I would mirror everything you say, but I don't want to waste time. One point I want to bring up is it's not just about the detox beds and the rehab beds, which we know were limited. It's really just a bed. Sometimes at 10:00 at night when an officer approaches someone, he can't offer them a bed. If he doesn't know that the Salvation Army has one more. Or Catholic Charities has one more. So I think it's important that all the officers have this on their phone so they can access it and get anyone to bed when they need it. And I also think it's important that we interface with all of the homeless shelters and get some sort of system organized so that we can allow people in the door at any time because people need beds at 9:00 at night and 10:00, not just till four or 5:00 in the afternoon. So I would hope that when they develop the app, they consider that and consider negotiating with these homeless shelters and what we can do to get their doors to be open whenever an officer needs it. So thank you very much. I hope you all vote for it. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Next speaker I am Marco Pizzo. I'm from the Bluff Park Historic District and I wanted to just thank you all for considering this great idea and for Suzy Price to Councilwoman Price to bring this forward. I just wanted to show my support. I wrote any comment. I didn't know if it went through, but I just wanted to say that I do support this application and I think it's a great idea in being on the forefront of homelessness, which I know we're always trying to do. So thank you very much for your consideration and I hope you all vote for this. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Marco is the next four speakers. Jeff, Jeff Malin, Joe Ganim, Matt Simmons, Anthony Kennedy. Please come forward. In that order. Mr. MALLABY first and then Mr. Garnham. Speaker 2: Good evening, counsel, and thank you for this proposal. Councilwoman Pryce. I am Jeff. I'm in also the third district Councilwoman Price's district in the Bluff Park historic district. And I. I think I wholly support this proposal. I will just say briefly, as a as a person in health care, myself, as a pediatrician, myself, I am looking at it from the perspective of of those people that are actually trying to get services for the homeless people, the people that need detox, that kind of thing. I can speak from my own perspective. Many years ago, when our system at Kaiser Permanente was not as connected as it was, it would be very difficult for me to call around and find beds for my pediatric patients that needed hospitalization. I think something like this and our system has evolved as well with personnel and technology. I think something like this moves that bar and makes the lives of all of us much better. So thank you so much for bringing this forward. Speaker 1: Thank you so much next week. Speaker 10: Mr. Mayor. Members of the council. It's a pleasure to be here. Your new surroundings. I'm Joe Ganim. I spent nearly four years on the Homeless Services Advisory Committee as a commissioner. I was also on the Continuum of Care Board, and I was a board member for the Long Beach Coalition for the Homeless. I'm very excited about this because to me this could be very well the beginning of the end of homelessness. And I don't say that lightly because quite honestly, what you're talking about now is finally putting all the disparate parts together where they can be accessed by the very people that are needing those services. The Health Department does an outstanding job, and they have won awards nationally on the work that they've done. They have a computerized system, the HMAS, that provides them with critical data, but it's not available to everybody. Your app that you're talking about developing can link those services. In addition to that, there are very simple things that occur, which I can see this later. I don't want to get away from your original purpose, but I believe you'll find that agencies, nonprofits, churches and so forth that are would be eventually participating in some way. Some of them will have resources that other ones need. I recall attending a commission meeting one day when the chair came rushing out of the parking lot running in, and he was running late and from the time he had left where he was to the time he'd come to the mission meeting, somebody called him to say, Hey , I've got 12 crates of crates of apples and I don't know what to do with them. And he had found he knew other people and he'd contacted. But had he not been able to do that personally, those 12 crates of apples would have rotted. And so this is what we're doing. We have tremendous resources. By linking them together with this app, I think you will be able to do some amazing things. I personally am a believer or a strong believer in technology. My wife of 42 years has to tolerate living with two other women, Alexa and Siri. But but it also has its benefits. And so I think by by finally linking up all these available resources in this community that have heretofore not really always talked to each other, it's not because they're mad. They just know what the other one was doing. You're finally bringing the what what I think of as a potential into homelessness in Long Beach. And I congratulate all of you for participating. I think you're about to approve this. So I'm going to get off of here so you can do that. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Hello, Mr. Mayor. Members of the council. My name is Matt Simmons. I am president of Semtech Solutions, and I applaud this initiative to bring the tech into the hands of the people. They're trying to do this good work. The reason why I am at the podium is I do want to ask and encourage that the community look to put this out for public comment and for a bid because there are other technologies out there and the bid process itself will help flush out some of the challenges that have not yet been surfaced. The data integration required to link up the app with Service Point Your homeless management information system is significant. If you want real time information to be exchanged to be in the hands of the people that need it the most, there is a process that needs to happen. Well, Sky, the vendor for service point their capacity to share data back with any app is limited and so I would encourage fleshing that out. Resource directories are out there and birth is a common one you can look at. We have an app, it's also out there called Show the Way. It's on the App Store and Google Play and it's meant to be put in the hands of outreach workers. And it's not just a resource directory. So I just mentioned it. I competition can breed innovation. May the best man woman company win because in the end we all win by helping the people that need it the most. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. And our last speaker, please. Speaker 9: Hello. City councilman and honorable mayor. My name is tonight Ken Faye from Sixth District. Uh, I want to, um, first say that I want to thank the, uh, Councilwoman Woman Price for bringing this, uh, agenda item up. And I think that this is a great opportunity. Speaker 2: Uh, to. Speaker 9: Uh, have another tool in our toolbox of solutions to help with the homelessness and housing crisis that we're currently facing right now. Um, I, I, uh, signed up to comment specifically on some concerns that I have in regards to, um, uh, Texas, uh, as we just heard in the previous texts, uh, maybe excitement and uh, possibly the , the future of privatization of services like this. Um, it's, it's a little bit concerning. Um, because this program is something similar to this program was tried out at San Diego County where they also, um, uh, did a lot of connection with uh, uh, law enforcement in regards to like uh, uh, thermal. Speaker 2: Imagery to, to, they use the data points that they got. Speaker 9: From these similar apps to then do drone. Speaker 2: Uh, flyovers. Speaker 9: To then, uh, calculate thermal technology to verify the point. I think it's called point in. That's a look it up. It's called like a point in play. It's the HUD requirement for proving that someone is homeless. Speaker 2: Look it up later. But the. Speaker 9: Point that I have is that it's. Speaker 2: Uh. It's a little worrying to see, uh. Speaker 9: Uh, a digital solution to an analog problem come up. Um, from, for me, in my personal opinion, the great solution to this crisis that we're living through is, you know, housing, building more shelters, building more affordable housing, building more options for people to live in. For me the cities to get involved in this looking towards the right honorable city attorney. There are concerns regards to possible liability concerns here because, you know, I don't know, this is just a pilot program, but I don't know to the extent of what get. Speaker 2: Help will do with. Speaker 9: The data that that the acquiring in the process of this. You know, this is a pilot program and this is a public benefit corporation that could just as easily go from being a nonprofit nonprofit into a for profit. And if we as a city allow allocate any kind of city funds to partner with this organization, there should be some serious security guidelines with regards to the data points that are acquired during the. Speaker 2: The year of this program. That's all I would like to say. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. Before we go, we're going to go to a vote. I want to just make a couple of comments. I think that when I was on the council, one of the apps that really kind of changed the way we do business was the lobby, John. And I remember bringing that forward and working with Mr. Modica and other members of the team to try to kind of rethink the way we did services for residents. And without question, the Golden Beach app has changed the way public works and our code enforcement and our clean teams work today because of the work of our city staff and the way the public has embraced that, I think I mean, there are tens of thousands of people that use the Golden Beach app, and we have opened and closed tens of thousands of cases, probably close to 100,000 cases by now at this point, I imagine. And so when I saw this, I really was very supportive and really thought this was a great approach. I've heard of other types of technology kind of applications, but, you know, this had not been brought to this body before. I want to thank Councilwoman Pryce. I think this is a great opportunity for the city to engage in using technology to help solve a very real and serious challenge. It is the single biggest challenge we have in front of us today is is helping folks get into housing, get mental help, the mental health care they need, and provide residents with an opportunity to help us all solve this challenge together. And so I think this is a great idea and very supportive. And I want to thank Councilwoman Pryce and those that support this item as well. And with that will go to a vote. Speaker 0: Mushing carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to evaluate the feasibility of working with Get Help, a California Public Benefit Corporation, or a similar service, to develop City of Long Beach specific mobile and web-based applications for City staff and City of Long Beach residents who work with or interact with those experiencing homelessness and/or addiction or other mental health issues and report back within 60 days. The tool would provide updated real-time data on bed availability for shelters, rehab, detox, medical detox, and other types of public, private, and non-profit beds. The mobile and web-based applications would provide additional information to City of Long Beach employees and residents about services such as food pantries, showers, or locations to get ID vouchers.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_08202019_19-0771

Speaker 1: Great. Thank you very much, everybody. With that, we're going to move on to our time certain. And that is for me. Give me 1/2 is. Item number 17, please send Kirk. Speaker 0: Item 17 is Communication from Council Member Richardson, Council Member Peers, Vice Mayor Andrews and Council Member Urunga recommendation to require City Manager to work with the Harbor Department to conduct a study of automation at the Port of Long Beach and report back within 120 days. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. With that, I'm turn this over to Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a few thoughts and then we want to kind of hear from the port, I mean, here, from the public. You know, as I traveled to a number of cities and I like to reflect on those cities as I go there, sort of what was the impression was the identity of those cities? And when I go to, you know, Seattle, I think of the clouds. I think of the Space Needle. I think of innovation. When I go to Saint Louis, I think of the arch. I think of automotive industry and most of the cities up and down the Midwest, in the Mississippi River and with Long Beach, you know, and , you know, I think Long Beach is a working class town and it's been like that for a long time. If you think about the legacy industries, from the naval bases to to manufacturing and automotive to our port, and that's something that's been sort of consistent. If you take a step back, Long Beach is a town of middle class working families. And we've, you know, made sure that we've talked about our economic development, we've talked about our values of economic inclusion and making sure that we pay attention to the way our our individuals, our workers of small businesses are impacted and are considered as we make economic decisions in our city. The Port of Long Beach is our regional economic driver. It's anchored to our city. It's one of our most important economic engines, and it's the second busiest seaport in the United States. And there's a transition happening around the country that has a lot of people on edge with respect to the conversation on on automation. And so I think, you know, this this this concern is certainly warranted as we, you know, sort of see reports and see what happened in other industries and, you know, how some communities were hard hit. You know, my mother was a welder for General Motors in Wentzville, Missouri. That that plant's closed down. And and we see what happened in a lot of these cities. And so I'm a member of the city council. I represent the city of Long Beach. I have a great deal of sport and respect and support for our port. But I think we need to be able to to ask some very, you know, some very clear questions about the status of whatever transition is taking place with respect to automation within the ports adjacent to our community . The purpose of this of this this item is to really be proactive, not reactive. The idea here is we want to engage our port who shares the complex with us and into sort of a higher level conversation about the economic impacts of the conversation of of automation. And, you know, we want to understand things like. You know, how long are we going to be having this conversation? Right. Is it. Is this a five year conversation? Is this a 40 year conversation? What's the impact to our local jobs or, you know, is there an impact, you know, as if automation were to be fully realized ? What does that what does that mean? Are we looking at a at a port that doesn't have very many connections to local jobs at all? Does it mean that more jobs going to warehouse jobs or trucking jobs? What's the ratio? What does that mean? Trucking jobs and warehouse jobs, we know are not to the same level of quality as as a longshoreman. And from, you know, the standards of work and, you know, the the amount of money that an individual makes. What are the impacts on our local communities where the impacts on our local small businesses. We have a lot of questions, and I think this is an opportunity for us to get to the table and begin a dialog and ask some of these questions. I think I don't want to, you know, necessarily limit this. I want the port to be able to, you know, be be broad and come and tell us explain to us what the impacts are. If there are things that we haven't asked at the very beginning, we need to know. I think one to on the side of being open, being balanced and erring on the side of more information than less. And if there's you know, if there's a challenge that the than the port has with is we want to hear from them because ultimately I think we have a responsibility to ask questions of every city department , particularly the ones that have a major economic it could potentially have a major economic impact on our communities. So so to sum this up, you know, I want to thank, you know, the folks who have sort of reached out, helped shape this this motion. I want to thank the class of students, recent leadership students who most of the focus group and submitted their results today of their local focus group. And I want to thank the members of Iaw and all the industry stakeholders who have reached out and have come out tonight to speak and to thank them to coming out. And I think, again, I would love to hear back from the port of Long Beach within the next hundred 20 days on the scope and the scale and the timeline of this report. And I think that pretty much sums it up. And that's my motion. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: Thank you. I want to thank Epic for taking a look at this. I know you guys take on different issues and bring them forward and thank Councilmember Rex. Obviously, the port is in the is great interest to the second district. It's about 70 to 80% of it is in the second District. And so when the conversation around automation came up, I think a lot of people felt that they weren't fully in the conversation of automation and really understanding what was the intent, what was the timeline, how long are we looking at and what questions we can have ? And so I know that the county is doing their report. I look forward to seeing that report, and I hope that our port, in doing their study, really takes that report and looks at the gaps and has a conversation with the council and the city about what other information we need to find out specific to Long Beach . Obviously, the balance in a city, just as we talked about with the previous item is how do we make sure we have a thriving economy, that the workers are the backbone and that those are the jobs that continue to support our city? We know one in five jobs in our port come from one in five jobs in the city come from our port. We know that as a mother, I want to make sure my environment's clean and healthy in the future. And so where's that balance and how do we make sure we keep our jobs, we have a clean environment and that we all are doing the very best to keep our port competitive. And so I really look forward to hearing the comments tonight from those that are in the audience. I look forward to continuing the conversation with the port around the study and making sure that it's as robust as possible. And I think my council colleagues, again, for bringing this item forward. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. That's right. It's now. Thank you, country Ringo. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Councilmember Richardson for bringing this forward as well. And I also want to thank the members of the L.W.. You have brought this forward in terms of concern because it is obviously to the law, which is not only an economic engine for the city of Long Beach, but it's a regional economic engine. And I understand that there are other reports or other agencies that are also conducting some form of study, including the city of Los Angeles, Portland, Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, and the Blue Ribbon Committee Commission that was put together by Governor Gavin Newsom. So I'm hoping that when these reports are put together that there's some kind of collaboration between all these different agencies, because I wouldn't want to see that one report conflicts another or is in competition with another. We should have a report that's comprehensive, that is in in coordination with one another so that we could get a very clear picture as to what's going on with this issue so that we can have a better way of being able to address it as we move forward. So thank you again for bringing this forward. And I'm looking forward to what would be brought before us in 120 days. Speaker 1: Thank you, Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 8: Yes, thank you, Mayor. I also I'd like to thank Congressman Richardson for bringing this, you know, indeed, the individuals who know who I am and know the things that I usually see when I come up here concerning jobs. And I've been saying it for many, many years. A job can stop a bullet. And I've always, always supported the Port of Long Beach and the growth and has provided thousands of jobs for our residents. You know, we need to understand what the cost of this local business, what the cost to local business is and the input that to our workforce. You know, so I feel like I believe that we should not put the job of our dockworkers at risk so that we could so retailers can save a few pennies on their merchandise. So I'm looking forward to reviewing, you know, the report and what it returns back to the city of Long Beach. And thank you, Mayor. Speaker 1: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. I have a couple questions on this item. Is this and it's it's to Councilman Richardson. Is this a study that you think the city is capable of doing a good job on? Or do you think maybe the harbor department could initiate a study? Because in my opinion, it's a great topic, really talking about an issue that's a national issue of automation and productivity. And so I don't know. In terms of the impact to the city, who who would be the best person to do that? Speaker 9: The report thanks for arising in conversations with the port. I think they understand that we're asking them to conduct they can sort of partner with them on that process. Speaker 3: Okay. Got it. Excellent. Thank you. The other question that I had and I don't know if our staff has the answer for this. I know I saw Mr. Cordero here earlier, but do we know are there any productivity metrics that are built into the leases so that we can have objective data? Because there's a lot of recent research that has come out of late suggesting that automation doesn't necessarily mean more productivity. So what kind of data do we have built into our leases where we could measure those kinds of metrics? If anyone knows, I'd love to see that in the report, I guess. Speaker 9: Yeah. My hope is the conduct report come back to us and we have we can have a full conversation on all of this. So that certainly we can include that. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really important part of this discussion. This is this is a national discussion that's impacting so many industries in so many different areas. And I think one of the most important things for us to think about is a huge part of the labor force, are residents of this city in all of our districts. And when we're talking about a topic such as automation, you know, does that necessarily mean more productivity? How are we measuring that? Because there's there's a lot of research out there that says the work that's done by the worker can produce a more productive outcome for the industry as a whole. So, you know, I worry about when we talk about things like automation, which I'm very supportive of us advancing in our technologies and moving forward. But we're talking about displacement of workers. That's that's a huge, huge contributor to our city's local economy and the life and welfare, not just of the people who live here, but those who spend money here as well. So, you know, I really want to make sure that we support policies that are proven to be effective in terms of the direction we're headed. And I look forward to being educated on that topic. I've been reading a lot of research on this topic, especially in the area of goods movement. I think Mr. Cordeiro knows I'm really interested in this topic in regards to the port and the impacts of local policies on the port and the workers at the port. And so I do try to keep up on that and I will say that automation is an issue that's not just affecting our port, but every port in the country and in the world and is going to be something that we're going to have to be very cognizant of in terms of the impact, not just to the workers, to the industry, but to both. So I thank you for bringing this project forward. I'm I'm thankful that we're going to be working with the harbor department on this, because I really do think, you know, for me, I look to our harbor commissioners a lot for guidance in terms of their area of expertize. And certainly I believe that they're in the best position to understand the impact of any policies that are made on the labor force as well as on the tenants. And to strike a balance that's that's fair and takes into consideration the needs of the city as we continue to grow our local economy, our revenue base, and our protect our homeowners and our our residents and visitors who shop here. So thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Austin. Speaker 6: Thank you. I'm glad to see this idea of this item come before us today. I want to thank those who brought it forward. And for those of you who know my background, I grew up in Detroit for the most part. I come from a family of autoworkers. I've experienced this this issue of automation myself. I moved to California and a few years later worked in the aerospace industry right here in Long Beach, was a member of the UAW Local 148, and we had 23,000 members in 1989. Right. There's no members today. And many of those workers were impacted not just by the market, but automation as well. And so I don't need a study to tell me that automation impacts jobs. It impacts neighborhoods and impacts quality of life and communities and impact cities. Detroit Long Beach are examples of how major job losses in manufacturing industries have impacts and the ILWU. There are many members who live in my neighborhood or my neighbors, folks who depend on jobs in the maritime industry. This is a this is something worthy of our attention. And I'm glad it's coming forward and I'm happy to support it. Yeah, nothing else said. This is a good item and happy to support. Thank you. Speaker 1: Councilman. Councilman. Mongo. Speaker 4: Thank you. I just want to thank the writers of this motion. I think that is a great opportunity to reinforce the great work of our workers that are at the port and to really talk about how we've made great strides with the leadership and the Port Commission on what they're doing to address the issues that they've had in the past and the solutions of optimizing our terminal gates and Pier Pass 2.0 and all the other things that you guys are doing. It's just only one part of a bigger picture. And so I look forward to this item. My initial question I cued up for was fiscal impact. But I think Councilmember Richardson's comment that this would be in partnership with the port would mean that the fiscal impact to the Long Beach side of the budget would be insignificant in nature. And so for that, I'm appreciative of the clarification and I look forward to reading the study. Thank you so much. Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Councilman Austin. Speaker 6: Just really quick question for the maker of the motion. In terms of scope is and I think I heard you mentioned earlier that that you wanted it to be broad. Is there a certain level of latitude that you give in stuff to look at in terms of economic impacts? And job impacts overall. Speaker 9: So I'd like to get a clear picture. I'd like to. I'd like it to be focused in on Long Beach. I'd like to hear about the impacts to our local communities. If you have to frame that within the broader context of the region or what you know, the impacts from a regional standpoint of automation are there you know, is there an idea based on phasing like we just need to get a better picture to understand if that means that the study is maybe to part or if they come back and say, hey, we can engage in this level of study, come back, then gets us, gets the conversation going. I think that's fine. I think the idea here is that. We you know, we want to work with the board here. We want to engage in a smart dialog. We do value workers. We need to understand a lot more and we have a lot more questions to ask. So the point here is the sort of beginning discussion around the context of economic impact and a study on this issue within our report. Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that. Speaker 6: I appreciate it. Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and go to public comment. We are we first five speakers are Billy Wharton, Sheri Lopez, Chad Lindsay, William He-Man's and Martinson. If they can, please come forward. Bill Orton, Sherry Lopez, Chad Lindsay, William Timmons and Martin Sawada in that order. Sorry very much, Mr. Mayor, and members of council. The motion by the gentlemen of the ninth District and a question posed by the member of the third District. You mention three cities or you mention cities, multiple cities, and you asked the question. Speaker 2: Of who best are we trying to handle this? Speaker 1: I would point to three cities that are us that deal with the real threat of what automation is. Yeah, it's certainly going to affect jobs here because people are going to lose day to day, month to month, year to year. Speaker 2: They're going to lose work. Speaker 1: But they are going to lose their careers. Speaker 6: Because those. Speaker 1: More those machines are going to follow wherever markets take. Speaker 2: Them. They are going to I would humbly. Speaker 1: Opine they're going to leave the West Coast of the United States because maps. Speaker 2: Change. We now have a new. Speaker 6: World. Speaker 1: Of melting ice. And that melting ice is going to mean that. Speaker 2: Ships already are testing the waters. Speaker 1: The navigable waters of the Arctic. Last year, Maersk sent a major. Speaker 2: Vessel over Russian waters to move goods from Vladivostok. Speaker 1: To England to Europe. Speaker 2: And they moved 40% faster. It was cheaper. They are moving a ship right now in Vladivostok. There is going to be an Asian. Speaker 1: Conference on the Arctic in the president is going to Denmark, he said. So. Thank you very much, Mr. Jordan. Thank you. Thank you. And next speaker, Sri Lupus. Speaker 4: Good evening. Thank you for listening to us. Speaker 3: I heard your whole story on the homeless and I applaud you guys. Speaker 4: Our position here is to keep jobs so that we don't have more homeless people. I have a small tax and insurance business. Speaker 3: And our business depends on the longshore industry. 70% of our clientele. Speaker 4: Are either. Speaker 3: Part of the longshore industry and they are the businesses that support them. I will promise you. Speaker 4: That if this goes. Speaker 3: Through on a large. Speaker 4: Scale basis, you will have a double, triple homeless population. You have jobs that are going to be taken away. And I'm telling you that humans pay taxes and. Speaker 3: They buy insurance. Robots do not. So I'm asking you. Speaker 4: Guys to please continue with this. And by the way, there was already a. Speaker 3: Economic. Speaker 4: Study done years. Speaker 3: Ago when there was a lockout. I'm not sure if any of you guys remember that. Speaker 4: But the study was done at Cal State Long Beach. Speaker 3: And it was labor and unions. Speaker 4: And I would recommend that you take a look at that study. Speaker 3: And if anybody wants it, you can contact me or anybody else. Speaker 4: It was already done and the devastation and what it cost the community. Speaker 3: And just ten days with the lockout. It wasn't a strike. It was a lockout. So thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Lindsay. Speaker 6: Good evening, our members. Speaker 10: I'm Chad Lindsey. I'm the vice president. Speaker 6: Of Pacific Maritime. Speaker 1: I do labor relations for the Southern California region. Speaker 6: Our CEO, Jim McKenna, sent a letter to each. Speaker 1: Of you earlier today. Speaker 6: And I'm here to say, reiterate on a few points. Speaker 1: First, PMA looks forward to working with the city, with the port. Speaker 6: Of Long Beach should you decide to conduct a study on port automation? We have commissioned some excellent studies ourselves on the topic, which we're happy to share. We believe any study. Speaker 1: Of automation. Speaker 6: Should consider its impact on the port's competitive standing, including its ability to attract and retain and retain discretionary cargo. A recent study found that 60,000 workers in Southern California relied directly on discretionary cargo coming through the San Pedro Bay ports. Speaker 1: We believe it's also important to study. Speaker 6: What happens without automation. This includes potential financial financial risk to the. Speaker 1: City and the poor. Speaker 6: Related to the Alameda corridor. And specifically on bonds issued by the Aluminum Corridor Transportation Authority. Speaker 1: And the cash flow deficits. Speaker 6: Projected if cargo market share continues to decline. In addition, we encourage the study to focus on automation as role in achieving the port's environmental goals. And finally, PM is happy to provide information. Speaker 1: About our collective bargaining agreement. Speaker 6: And the automation provisions it contains. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Thanks. Next speaker, please. And is William Simmons. And then after William would be Martin certain if I can please have after Mr.. Mr. Rich Dines, David Ross, Gary Herrera, Sydney Ken Fee and David Tirado. ALL Please come to the microphone next speaker. Martin. Yes? It's William Heymans here. No, Mr.. Sort of. Go ahead. Speaker 6: Hello, everybody. I would like. Speaker 10: To. Marty, sort of. I'm a norther north Long Beach resident. I would like to point out some of the things that were commented on. This absolutely is a national issue. There are Oxford reports and Brooking Institute reports that state that we've lost over 5 million jobs to. Speaker 6: Air power automation since 2002 and we are on pace to lose 10 to 5 million more jobs. Speaker 10: Across the nation in the next ten or 15. Speaker 6: Years. This problem will absolutely be exponential. Speaker 10: Now, some of the things that have not been pointed out. Speaker 6: More recently, APM Terminals has decided to. Speaker 2: Automate 90% of their work away. That's going to be 5 to. Speaker 6: 700 jobs lost daily. Okay. We are. Or is it? We have over a. Speaker 2: $300 million lost. Speaker 6: On their lease agreement. Speaker 10: Over $300 million lost. I think that was in one year in the first year. And that's based. Speaker 2: On the cargo and the volume that's. Speaker 10: Going to slow the throughput. Right, as I understand it. We make money off of in taxes. Right. So the volume and the production of this automated facility is cut in half, 50%. I think that absolutely needs to be looked into. And that's. Speaker 2: Not including. Speaker 10: The like I said, the tax payer revenue, the jobs that are going to be lost as well. Um, thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Mr. Dinesen. Good evening. Speaker 2: Thank you, members of Council for the opportunity to address you this evening. My name is Rich Dines. My addresses is on file and I'll give you the Reader's Digest version. I speak in support of AB 1321 and the need for an economic impact study to help understand how much revenue the City of Long Beach would lose due to foreclosures, bankruptcies and small business closings. Speaker 1: If our public part becomes automated. Speaker 2: I recommend an independent academic based study be contracted by the port to avoid any political influences. Proponents of automating our port claim it is necessary to achieve the goals of the cleaner action plan. They claim it is needed to add efficiencies and increase productivity. Those claims are completely false. As you know, I provided a lot of input on the cleaner action plan. The port does not require any automation or electrification to achieve its cleaner goals. The port continues to be fuel and technology neutral. In fact, alternative fuels such as renewable natural gas, can meet the same zero emission standards adopted by the California Air Resources Board as an electric vehicle. The Cleaner Action Plan also pushes for operational efficiencies, including a goal of moving 50% of all containers by on dock rail. No robot can compete with IOW workforce where the most productive and efficient longshore workforce in the world. Thank you for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Dines. Mr. Ross. Speaker 2: Good evening, commissioners. My name is David Ross, and back in 1911, Long Beach was entrusted with the title Land Trust Act. It allows the citizens of Long Beach to have control over the port and the revenue and what source of income is coming through. We as the people of Long Beach deserve to know and they should be transparent on what impact automation will have on the future of our economy and all our local businesses and anything coming into the ports. Because, as you know, most ports are owned by foreign companies. And by eliminating jobs at a high rate, we only they save money. No one else does. And what exactly and how much is it going to affect us all? APM Terminals, for example, wants to fully automate, as Richard has said, and in their port master plan, there was no information regarding how much jobs were lost and how many jobs could be gained. And this trend can keep going on without any effect on us at all. As you already know, there's a homeless issue going on in Long Beach and in Los Angeles. If if automation is to continue at a rapid rate, we have no idea what can affect us now with smaller jobs, with long , short jobs being affected, and any longshoreman that spend money in communities and in restaurants and mom and shop shops. Restaurants or shops. Sorry, but. I feel the need to push this agenda through so that we have at least transparency going forward with any automation project. And I think every community should be involved with this. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much, sir. Next speaker, please, sir. Speaker 2: Good evening and thank you for having us here tonight. Thank you for putting us on the agenda. My name is Gary Herrera. I'm vice president of the Iaw Local 13. And I just want to touch upon a couple of things. Did I hear here tonight? I hear very greatly that you guys care about your community and you do a lot of us who live across the bridge over there come over here and we support the business because you have such a great community and because of that, you're able to thrive because of us that have jobs. We talk about the homelessness problem. Homeless. Homelessness will only increase when there's no jobs. Right now, we're looking at losing anywhere between 570 jobs across the bay over there. Right now, we lost jobs here. It'll be because of automation. If you continue to automate over here in Long Beach, there'll be further job loss, which will contribute to further homelessness. Small businesses failing your community that is thriving so well. Going backwards, we heard some testimony that it could be more competitive with automation. There's a McKinsey report, report that you can look in your own and it will tell you that is not did it is not give you more productivity. As a matter of fact, it was said to us over the L.A. Harbor Commission, the APM will not be more competitive. They will not be more productive. It was about getting rid of labor. I was in that meeting. So what I'm telling you today is a truth. Also, we've heard there's other terminals here in Long Beach that have converted their machines for clean air with the human driving them. So we're asking to this report go through. You look at the economic value and the environmental value that we can all work together on this and keep humans working. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next speaker. Speaker 2: Please. My name is and I can say. Speaker 9: You know. Hundreds of years ago, coastal towns across the world, they were plagued. Speaker 2: By a, uh, an invasion of, uh. Speaker 9: Of, uh, an entity called the Vikings. This is the modern day version. It's just a p molar instead. Speaker 2: But going back to the roots, it's the same exact plot. Here we have an opportunity. Speaker 9: Much like, uh, the, um, the councilman over just across the shore, the 15th District. Uh, Mr. Schiano, you know, it's, this is an opportunity for. Speaker 2: Our city to step up to the plate and really. Speaker 9: Strive and work. Speaker 2: Towards the benefit of the workers. You know, this is not about automation. Is it about clean energy or clean air? It's about, uh, limiting the power of the labor movement in America. And it's imperative, as. Speaker 9: We can see, as Mr. Wilson was councilman also was talking about his own experience as a McDonnell Douglas, which my uncle and great aunt worked, that it doesn't exist anymore now. Those are orchestrated attacks on the American worker by companies that don't have our best interests, um, in mind. So with that saying, I think rather than having a recommendation to, uh. Speaker 2: Conduct a study, we should have a recommendation to stand in solidarity with. Speaker 9: What they're doing just across the board. What's going on? Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. And before before I have Mr. Serrano speak, I'm going to call the next round of speakers our our community college trustee. President. Vivian Marlowe. Shannon Ross. Brandon Dowling. Joni Ricks. They can please line up as well. Speaker 2: Hello, Toronto. Hello, Mayor. How you doing, Rex? How you doing, everybody else? Thank you very much, council members, for having this study. Al in there. There's Roberto. Janine, thank you all. And you know Susie Pierce. I like what you said. What she said got in here. This is a national problem that's going to happen. This automation, it's not just I lw I had a sign out there 48% of jobs to be automated by 2040. It's not just the ILWU, it's everybody. And there will be a revolution in this country. When you start losing that many jobs and people start to be homeless like crazy, you know, Rex came to I was talking to him the other day and he's working on like you're all working on automation. Thank you for that. I mean, not automation on homelessness. And then the other thing you're talking about taking care of your people in Long Beach. Taking care of your workers. A couple of them. One of them is one tenant. You know, Long Beach is really done. Good. I can tell Long Beach cares about the port. They all know about the port. Other city councils don't know. We have a guy named Chris Garcia. Would you stand up real quick? This is an SSA, one of our top drivers, SSA driver. They do some moves between 30 and 50 moves an hour that'll beat a robot. But it isn't all about a robot. It's about keeping American jobs here, keeping people worked in America. So, you know, it isn't all about getting this in that it's about taking care of your community. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you very much, David. Speaker 3: Good evening, Honorable Mayor. Council members and city staff. Speaker 4: While I am very proud to be president of our college board. Speaker 3: I'm not here in that capacity, nor as a commissioner. I'm here as a rank and filer of ILWU, Local 13, and I'm here with my family, my union sisters and brothers. I would like to thank Councilmember Richardson and the other council members who have joined him in bringing this agenda item forth. I'd like to speak in favor of it. I would also like to thank EPIK and the outstanding focus group that came out to our Local 13 and spoke with some of our Long Beach Union members. This is an important issue and couple of key points just moving forward. Please take into consideration that near zero and zero emission cargo handling equipment technology has advanced with many options available that include human operation. Also, the Port of Long Beach today is recognized as a world class port. Let us not forget the significant contribution of the ILWU Longshore workforce, and I'd like to ask that all future automation projects at the port include job and economic impact reports and human operation. Please direct the port to be sensitive to that. Thank you once again. Thank you for including us. Thank you for giving us a seat at the table. And most importantly, thank you for getting ahead of this issue. Thank you for being proactive. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Trust. Speaker 4: Hi. My name is Shannon Ross, council members and mayor. Sorry in reverse your efforts. I commend your efforts to be proactive on this issue of automation. Additional automation in the Port of Long Beach will definitely come with a cost, and that costs will be job loss, as we have already witnessed this at the Long Beach Container terminal . Many families that live right here in Long Beach will be adversely affected, in turn affecting the local economy. Further, the December 2018 McKinlay, McKenzie and Company report, as reported in numerous trade journals such as the 2018 Journal of Commerce, found that terminals implementing automation. My apologies. Experienced a loss of productivity that only. And that any benefit were outweighed by the cost. At this time, I believe clean air is a must in the port, but also no clean air can be accomplished without automation. I urge you to vote on agenda item 17. Thank you for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you very much as Ross Speaker. Speaker 2: Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Council members and staff and thank you for allowing us to present on this critical work related to automation at the Port of Long Beach. My name is Brandon Dowling and myself, and the subsequent two speakers are all members of the Inaugural Class of the Economic and Policy Impact Center's Leaders Institute, a six month program designed to empower and develop a network of diverse leaders to advance racial and economic equity and create positive social change in the Long Beach region. As part of our class graduation requirements, we must complete a community project focused on a policy area affecting the Greater Long Beach community. Our group's project in support of this agenda item engaged ILWU Local 13 in July of this year to conduct a focus group with 12 full time longshore workers to gather their perspectives and opinions on the impact of automation on their own jobs at the port. These longshore workers range in age from 35 to 53, with an average tenure of nearly 20 years on the job. And over the course of approximately an hour and a half, they were guided through, facilitated questions asked by our team. It's our intention that every voice be heard as policy discussions around this issue continue in the coming months. And it's our sincere desire that future policy decisions will take into account those who'll be most impacted by the effects of these policies. I'll now turn over to the next speaker to talk a little bit about our findings. Thank you very much for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Speaker 3: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Dr. Johnny Riggs, O.D., and I'm part of the Epic Leaders Institute, as well as a proud resident of Long Beach. I had the distinct privilege of facilitating the focus group. They were a couple of moments in our discussion that particularly resonated with me, and I would like to highlight them tonight. When asked what they consider to be the best benefit about working for the Port of Long Beach, a longshore worker discussed that this job makes workers feel that they are impacting and giving back to the local community. And this statement served to be a common theme throughout our time together as the workers share. Time and time again, how much they value their community and how much their presence impacts Long Beach, both economically and socially. When asked about the biggest concern regarding port automation, a long time worker brought up the fact that the port is publicly owned land and thus the decision to automate and its subsequent impacts should be taken to the local community since they technically own the land. It should not simply be the decision of port operators. That really caused me to pause because as a resident, I never really thought about this issue from that perspective. When asked about the best strategy for stopping job loss due to automation. A long show worker brought up the importance of encouraging operators to invest in technology that improve the efficiency and productivity of current workers. As a researcher and statistician, I know how much data matters. And with the talk of the importance of efficiency, I think what gets glossed over is whether or not automating every aspect of port operations is really in the best interest of Long Beach port operators and the Long Beach community. I think it's time to act. I'll end with saying I think it's time to investigate this issue from all sides. I encourage you to support it. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And our last two speakers are Dr. Sally Saro and Elissa Ruth. Please come forward. Speaker 4: Good evening. Speaker 3: Honorable Mayor Garcia, Councilmember and staff my name is Dr. Sally Sara and thank you to Councilmember Richardson and Councilmember Pearce and Vice Mayor Andrews as well as Councilmember Ranga for supporting this item. Speaker 4: It was an honor to be part. Speaker 3: Of the inaugural. Speaker 4: Class to. Speaker 3: Help with the. Speaker 4: Conduct, this study group. Speaker 0: And it was a privilege to be able to speak to. Speaker 3: The longshore workers, to hear from them. And I have a few items as far as their suggestions to include in the study, and that is to consider phasing in automation slowly over time with the input of those who will be impacted by the change. Identify and evaluate long, short jobs where a human worker is more efficient than a robot. And finally, which has brought us here, which is to push for an and economic impact report at the city level that also includes the community social impact. And I want to thank you all for supporting the item in advance and agenda item number 17. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Our last speaker. Speaker 4: Hi. My name is Elizabeth and I am a longshoreman and also a small business owner here in the community. I want to thank you for considering being a buffer between the foreign companies that are coming and taking. Speaker 7: Over and. Speaker 3: Having their own. Speaker 4: Personal agenda, taking jobs from our workers. And it's. Speaker 3: Really going to affect and it's going to impact in so many different. Speaker 4: Ways the economic impact and the environmental. Speaker 7: Impact. Speaker 4: And I want to thank you guys ahead of time for actually considering and backing this bill. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: That concludes public comment. I'm going to make a few comments now. I think everyone else has had a chance to say some remarks. I want to just begin, obviously, by thanking the council members that brought this item forward. This is actually a critical discussion and as was noted by some members of the LW. It also goes beyond what's happening at the Port of Long Beach, the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Oakland, and certainly across across the country as well. This this discussion is really about a broader discussion about what the future of work in this country and in this world actually looks like. And we are in danger as a nation, in grave danger as a nation of getting so far ahead with the way technology is automating all of our jobs that we could hit as a country, a major crisis when it becomes people's ability to actually find work, to put food on the table for their families. And that is just a reality. There has been there has been a lot of of academic work on this topic. In fact, if you ask, you know, the top economists and top folks across the country in our universities today, they will tell you that second to climate change, there is no greater challenge facing us right now as a as a world than what the future of work is going to look like for for people out there every single day in Long Beach. There is no more important industry than our port and goods movement. It provides the largest impact to our local economy. It is the larger, largest provider of good jobs and where and where. The future of work and automation certainly has impacts across industries. You're seeing it in fast food restaurants. You're seeing it at in retailers, you're seeing it on the assembly line. One key difference and why I think the discussion about automation is critical at the port is you're actually talking about jobs that are high paid, have benefits can have attached to them are pensions and have you have the ability to actually be able to take care and maintain of families on their own. And so these jobs are not just jobs. They are good paying jobs. You want to have to build a strong middle class in any city. And so I commend the forward thinking about the discussion, not just of automation, but hopefully once this study gets gets moved forward. I think this council and this is a good impetus for it. But it is it is past time that this body had broader discussions about what the future of work is going to look like over the next ten, 20 and 50 years in the city of Long Beach and across the country. And if we don't get ahead of what is happening, this economy could could suffer indefinitely. And that and that crisis level will affect real people with real jobs within our community. And so I just want to think I do believe that that the LW and though our dockworkers are actually leading this kind of this discussion across the country about what work is going to look like and what good benefited work should look like, represented work and what it should look like. And so I want to thank all of you for doing that. I want to also add that as mayors in California, we're having serious conversations with the governor about how he can really pull together and lead on this topic. And I think he is going to do so. It's critical that this is a discussion that not just happens in Long Beach, but not just in all of our ports on the port side, but also in the community as well. And so thank you all that had brought this forward. Thank you. And I look forward to supporting this. And with that, I want to go back to Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 4: Thank you. Very well said, Mayor. I think I really want to applaud everyone that came out and spoke tonight, everybody that's been leading this this fight. And obviously, the gravity of this topic is serious, serious for you and your families. It's serious for our port. We've invested millions and millions of dollars into infrastructure in our port. And it's important, as was mentioned by a speaker for our small businesses, because of how many of you spend your dollars. And we know. I know from my work at Lane that every dollar of a living wage equals $3 back in our community. And so those good jobs really do matter. And so with that, you know, I'd like to make sure that the the study focuses on how we keep human operations at our terminals while also automating as much as possible , but keeping those human operators there. And I'd like to ask Rex Councilmember Richardson about the conversation about having an independent study, because I know our port does have a lot on their hands right now. I know that this type of study is not something we we want to step in too lightly. And so as I'm sitting here, I really think that it's important that we have that conversation around an independent study. So, Councilmember, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on that. Speaker 9: Or is there anything else. The last one. Cute. I was going to touch on that. That it. Thank you, Councilwoman Pierce. I think a few things came out from this conversation that probably need to be highlighted. Three things. So one funded by property. So there were three council members who brought up and saw the fiscal impact, the intention funded by port. I think given we had, you know, folks and statisticians talking about the importance of data and academics, I think goes without saying it should be an academic report. And then I think it also goes without saying that it should be it should be independent. Fair. Right. That's that's our expectation. So I know that the port is paying attention to every word we say right now. I want to raise those three words up. So funded by you, port independent and academic. I also want to I also just want to say, again, I think this is I think the mayor summed it up beautifully, really the larger conversation about the future work. But at the same time, we do have a responsibility to our citizens of Long Beach. And we've been talking, you know, having this discussion about inclusion and the fact that we can't be a world class city. We can't continue to talk about our economics unless we really have a focus on key performance indicators on how our people are doing. And this should be a study that really tells us about how this is going to impact the people of Long Beach. You know, I know that there will be other studies. I know that the state will ultimately engage and all the counties engaged, but I don't think their focus will be Long Beach. My hope with having a local study that we're able to learn from the lens of our local community, the neighborhoods we care about, the schools we care about, the businesses we care about, what does the impact to us? What our you know, what are the things we can do? What does this time I look like? And how do we begin as a community to really embrace and engage in this conversation to make sure that's the best outcome for the people of Long Beach? That's why we should do a local study. So thank you again. Thank you to everyone who came out. Thank you for. I'll just say this. I'm really proud of these EPI graduates last two weeks. That really brought some really incredible issues to the city council. And I look forward to, you know, what you guys take on in the future. Thanks a lot. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember. Yes, Vice Mayor Andrus. Speaker 8: Yes. Real quickly, I first of all, to really thank Councilman Richardson for bringing this item. But I guess a lot of individuals really understand that when we talk about homeless and you think some of those individuals, you know, the jobs that we have, as I put the individuals from the port, it makes our city so much better because those individuals are put back into the city. If you think about automation, what it would do to a city of this magnitude, it would be incredible. So that's when I sit down and talk to some of the management and the board. What impact would this have for us? Automation would be, and I know what it would be because I've had a chance to go over and take a look at it. You know, it's kind of odd you walk around and talk to nobody. You know, what kind of job you want like that. But I can see of individuals coming out of school with no education and can make the type of money that you make there. I mean, this is something that everyone it's a dream job because I remember the lines that they used to have when they did open it up were male and female. And everyone have a chance to work at the port and those individuals have those jobs, what they've done for themselves and their families, it's incredible. So what are we talking about? Automation. I don't even. What how do you talk to a robot? So you guys have to understand, we have a job. We're going to do it right. Thank you very much for being a part of it. Speaker 1: Thank you. I want to just one quick thing to add, because it's been mentioned a few times, I just want to make it. I think the council certainly aware. And just to be clear, also, the Port of Long Beach is not some faraway entity. The Port of Long Beach is a department of the city of Long Beach. So the Port of Long Beach is the harbor department of the city of Long Beach, just like the Port of Los Angeles is not some faraway entity from Los Angeles. It's the it's the department of the city. And so I think for for this body, like our water department or our civil service department or the many other departments that are that are governed through appointments made and affirmed by this council and myself, these these departments of the city are are critical to the work and the way they impact our our community. And so it's very appropriate and important for us to to work with all of our city departments in coming up with solutions to these big challenges. And so I think that's that's important. And I know we're all going to move forward together. And so with that, there's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 1: Thank you. And thank you all very much for for coming out. I know we have our budget hearing. I do want to make sure I do public comment as well as there's one other item that has folks here. So I'm going to take those to you before I do the budget hearing. Can I get a motion in a second on consent calendar, please? There's no public comment. Please cast your votes.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Harbor Department to conduct a study of automation at the Port of Long Beach and report back within 120 days. The study should focus on the economic impact of automation, as it relates to the local community (job loss and local businesses).

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Speaker 1: And now we're going to do item number 20, please. Speaker 0: Item 20 is report from economic development. Recommendation to accept the transfer of real property at 1095 East Willow Street, also known as Sunnyside Cemetery, except the transfer of unrestricted funds associated with the subject property and authorize city manager to execute all documents necessary to effectuate the transfer of District seven. Speaker 1: Get a staff report, please. Speaker 2: Mayor Councilmembers This truly is a very, very exciting opportunity for us to expand our municipal cemetery, and we're looking forward to this. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our economic development director, John Keisler, who's been working with the Sunnyside folk to make this transaction happen. John. Speaker 7: Thank you, honorable mayor and members of the city council. As the city manager said, we're here to talk a little bit about Sunnyside Cemetery, which is located on Willow Street between California and Orange Avenue. This is one of the most historic sites in the city. It measures approximately 13 acres and was established in 1906. We say it's the second oldest burial ground in the city of Long Beach because the municipal cemetery was actually established in 1901. There are about 16,000 people buried in Sunnyside, including Union soldiers and several pioneer Long Beach figures. Over the past few years. As the cemetery filled up, the space to sell, new burial plots decreased. And so that put a lot of pressure on the cemetery to operate and continue to maintain its aging infrastructure. In June 13th of 2019, the Friends of Sunnyside Cemetery approached the city and indicated that they were unable to continue maintenance and that a permanent closure of the cemetery was imminent. Later that same month, we actually received formal notification from the board that they were requesting to work with the city to transfer the title of of the cemetery to the city of Long Beach, changed the status from a private cemetery to a public or municipal cemetery, and to transfer any remaining funds in their endowment to help with ongoing maintenance or operations of the cemetery. And so when we discussed this this proposal I'm sorry, we actually invited our our Parks Rec and Marine Department into the discussions because they currently operate a four acre municipal cemetery, which is contiguous to Sunnyside. That four acre site has an operations budget of approximately $60,000 in the general fund budget. It's obviously much smaller than the 13 acre historic cemetery next door. But we've asked our Parks Rec and Marine Department as the operating department to to to evaluate and to propose some of the recommendations with regard to the long term maintenance of the subject property. The initial assessment of staff based on the four acre site of the municipal cemeteries that the 13 acres, Sunnyside, would add approximately $230,000 of additional annual maintenance cost that is currently unbudgeted. Some of the other issues associated with the cemetery and its current status is that. Speaker 1: I know that the Council had a chance to review much of this presentation. If you can just kind of I know we have a long budget hearing, so maybe we can just kind of go through this a little quicker. Speaker 7: You got it. All right. So one of the things that we want to make sure we do is we want to disclose to the city council and to the public that there are some outstanding liabilities, both one time and ongoing. Also, the Sunnyside board has asked that we recognize some of the existing obligations, some of the events that they put on and some of the contracts they have with for for grants. They've also agreed to transfer all of those records that would become also the property of the city. So essentially we have done some due diligence, the boards current with all of their licenses, with the state, with all their reporting requirements. And we have been evaluating some potential funding sources that might be available to assist with both the one time and ongoing improvements at the cemetery. So with that, the recommendation tonight from the city manager is to accept the transfer of the the property itself, as well as to accept the transfer of the funds in the the foundation's endowment and then allow for us to work with all the existing contracts that are currently on the site, either for burial or for events. And with that, I'll conclude my report. I'm here with Steve Scott from the Parks Rec and Marine Department if there are any questions about operations of the cemetery. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Mr. Kyser. I'm going to make a couple opening comments. I'm a conservative councilmember. You're Ringo. I made the motion. I want to just say that the preservation of. Of the site of the cemetery is incredibly important. It's been incredibly important, certainly to me. It has been incredibly important to Councilmember Turanga, who has advocated for this for many, many years. And I just want to thank the staff for their hard work in getting us here. There's a couple important notes about this site. The first is that it's a historical site for us as a city. While it certainly is not in public hands currently. Many of our founding fathers and mothers of the city are buried there. It's their last resting place. And so it's an. Credibly a significant location for for history and for the city as it looks back as it looks back to its founding. Beyond that, there are many residents and families who currently have members of their family buried at that site. And these are folks that I run into when I'm walking down the street that I might see at the grocery store that talk about their, you know, their mother or their grant or their grandparent or an uncle whose last resting place is there at Sunnyside. And so this is also not just a historical place. It is a place that has deep connections, a deep emotional connections to many of the residents that live in our city. And so to to be able to acquire the site, bring it into our Long Beach Park system and to really create synergy with the rest of our park system is really, really special and really, really important. And so I think this is a very important decision. I think that the staff, Mr. Kaiser, you and your team have been working really hard on this. We've been talking about this for for a couple of years and how we do this the right way while being respectful to those that are doing the work currently. So it's been a back and forth, but we said from day one we would not let the cemetery close or fall into a major disrepair. And I'm really glad that we're meeting that that commitment and that promise. And with that, I want to turn it over to counsel for your anger. This would not be possible without his full support. And I want to. He's made the motion. I'll turn this over to him. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. And I think basically you said it all in regards to the importance of this merger. I really want to thank staff for really making this happen. From the city manager to the to John Kyser and his team and also the team at the Park Recreation Marine, because it wouldn't have happened without them pushing this forward and finding the and having the wherewithal to make this happen. I really want to thank you, because it's a very important part of our park. It's going to become a very important part of our park system. And for those of you who don't know, there are five cemeteries in the city of Long Beach, and they all reside in the seventh District. So people are dying to get into the seventh. And now they will be attached to a park, as many of you may know as well. We are also in the phases of developing Willow Springs Park. So looking forward to having sunny side municipal becoming a part of that system as well there. So thank you, Brian. And I want to thank the mayor as well without without his also being in the background, pushing this forward as well. This would not have happened. And of course, the residents the residents brought this forward. They felt it important enough to say that, you know, we need to do something about Sunnyside and let's make this happen. And of course, it was a wake up call to us to like, yes, we need to to save our heritage and we need to save this cemetery. So thank you all for making this point. I hope I get the support of my colleagues to also move this forward. Speaker 1: Thank you. And Councilman Austin. Speaker 6: Yes. I'm happy to support this and second, this motion. I have had the opportunity to be at Sunnyside Cemetery on many occasions. And I cannot support your your claim that there's a lot of history there. The Historical Society of Long Beach holds their annual cemetery tours there, and I have tried out my thespian chops there. I acted, played the role of many of our historic figures over the years on on a few occasions. And and I do understand the value and significance of that. And I've been reached out to by many of my constituents who have loved ones who are there, who are resting there. And it's only appropriate that we as a city take that on and support the legacies that that are actually there. As you said, Mayor, many of the the founding founding fathers and mothers of the city are arrested there. It's an important item I'm happy to support. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Comes from a supernova. Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm very happy to be able to support this item. I originally didn't think I could do that because my grandparents are buried at the cemetery. But I consulted with our city attorney and he said, because I don't want to speak for Mr. Park and he's right here. But I think basically that because I don't have a current financial interest in the cemetery, that there's no conflict of interest. He also asked me if I planned on being buried there. I don't own a plot. That decision could be made later. Just don't rush me. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Andrews? Speaker 8: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Counsel, I'm hearing it's very important because the fact that we do have a lot of history in that regard, and I'm so glad the transfer is being taken care of and I said is really going to do a big job in that. So congratulations to you doing, you know, bringing up this item to the DHS. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Also just case, remember, also noted. I know that the Historical Society obviously has done a lot of work on the site and did a lot of research. So I'm sure as we move forward will make sure that they're an active partner in restoration and in doing that work. And so we look forward to that partnership. I have public comment. I have five members of the public. Please come forward in this order. Roxann Palmer, Christine Rattan, Jeff Mallin, Michael Michael Minter and Cindy Canfield. Please come forward. Speaker 3: Hello, Mayor and Council. Speaker 4: Thank you for having us. I'm on the board of the Historical Society and along with Kay Regal, who's back there, our historian, Dr. Kay Regal. We write the scripts for the tour, so we know really well who's buried there and all the ways they're they're interesting. And thank you, Daryl. You've been a supporter and lost and who stepped away, who is often performs was Eddie Cannon, a retired auditor for the city. So each year we tell the stories of the people buried in the cemetery. Over 23 years, we've told 200 stories to about 12,000 people. We know how much history is there. We've got a Japanese family whose son was in the regiment that liberated Dachau while his parents sat in an internment camp. We've got a family that ran a mexican restaurant for more than 60 years. We've got mayors, we've got city of port commissioners, water commissioners, all kinds of people. The diversity that is Long Beach, you can see in that cemetery, you can see the history. You can see the flu victims, the scarlet fever victims. Every a veteran of every war going back to the Civil War, it's all there. So we thank you very much for taking this on. We always say that every plot has a story, and it's certainly true at Sunnyside. And this is you guys, this chance to be a hero to save Sunnyside. And we thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next week it was. Speaker 4: Hello, Mr. Mayor. And Council, this is one of your personal stories. My name is Christina written. I'm here on behalf of my 92 year old mother, Yoshiko, Arya, and many of the families of those buried at Sandy site. I first found out about this in May of this year. My mother, who visits the cemetery monthly, came home. She was in tears. She couldn't find my father and my brother's headstones. And that's how bad it was at the cemetery. It was so overgrown and so full of go for holes. She couldn't find anything. And so that got me and started into writing and sending out letters and trying to contact friends and families of people that were interred at Sunnyside. I myself was born here in Long Beach, and I grew up here. I have three generations of families buried at Sunnyside in 1945. My parents and their families came to Long Beach from the Manzanar Relocation Center in Independence, California. They settled in Long Beach, and my father worked as a freelance gardener for this in the city of Long Beach for 25 years. In 1978, my father was hired by the city of Long Beach Parks and Recreation as their gardener. He worked at many of the local cemeteries and he also worked at the municipal while he worked at many of the local parks. And he worked at the local municipal cemeteries. My 92 year old mother has a companion plot with my father, who had passed away in 2006. And so when it is her time, she is hoping that she would be able to be buried there with him. And we just wish and thank you very much for looking at this for us. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thanks, Speaker. Speaker 6: Mr. Mayor and the council and the staff. My name is Michael Minor. I am on the board of directors of Sunnyside Cemetery, and I'm the chief financial officer. We're in a unique situation because of what you have done tonight that. We can ensure that the cemetery will go on and that more funds will be available to do the work that needs to be done. Our biggest problem was we ran out of money. Pure and simple. We did as much as we can. We use we have one gardener. And we have community service workers that do the rest. We have some volunteers that work in the office part time. I was on the I was a manager up until November of last year when I had a heart attack and had to leave. And but I'm still on the board. And I took over the position of chief financial officer because we need to have so many officers. I want to thank Councilman Turanga and his staff for all they've done. I want to thank John Kaiser and Parks and Rec. And I'm sorry, I forgot the name and Darrell have all been very helpful in this endeavor to get this taken care of. Speaker 1: So I'm really. Speaker 6: Proud that you have put a recommendation. Speaker 1: To. Speaker 6: Approve this recommendation, and I hope all of you will vote in the positive. And we are our board volunteers. We will help in whatever capacity we can or that the city would need it for as long as we can. That's our promise to you. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And our last speaker, please. Speaker 2: I just want to say I want to thank the seventh district councilman around, go for spearheading. Speaker 9: Um, the assumption of the. Speaker 2: Responsibilities of maintaining the cemetery. Speaker 9: I followed the, the discussions that were held in, uh, the Facebook group, uh, for the Wrigley Neighborhood Association. And it was amazing to see a lot of this. Speaker 2: The, the separate groups and, uh, kind of just. Speaker 9: Neighbors all throughout the city who had ties to, um, Sunnyside and what it meant for their family history here in the city. And, um, I grew up just south of Californian and BURNETT, not too far away. So as a kid, me and my friends would always go and, you know, and I went to a bunch of those historical society towards as a kid and I worked at the, um, when the first jobs I ever had was at the, the driving, uh, the golf course just across the street from, um, on the municipal cemetery side. So it's, it's, it's great to see that this ode to the ancestors. Speaker 2: Was going to be maintained in perpetuity. Speaker 9: By the city government. So thank you for being progressive and stepping up to the plate and assume this responsibility. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. There's a motion and a second that concludes public comment. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Bush and Kerry. Speaker 1: Thank you. We're going to be doing a general public comment and then going into the first hearing. So if I call your name, please come forward. And Mike Murchison, Larry Goodhew, Carolyn Byrnes, Pat Paris Appleby, Giselle Ashok, George Romo.

Contract

Recommendation to accept the transfer of real property at 1095 East Willow Street, Assessor Parcel Numbers 7212-009-903 and -908, also known as Sunnyside Cemetery (Subject Property); Accept the transfer of unrestricted funds associated with the Subject Property (estimated at $540,000); Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary to effectuate the transfer, including the assumption of all contracts related to plots and burials; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE-19-204. (District 7)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_08202019_19-0785

Speaker 8: Thank you. Next Expo. Ash Booker Ezell. Okay, fine. Next. One more. George. One more year. Okay. And. Okay. Do we have an annoying. Oh. Okay. Is Mr. Perry. Well. It seems the end of our. Public comment. Now. Into the budget now. I know when I was a teen. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. We are. Madam Court, can I have you please read the first hearing? Speaker 0: Item number one is a report from financial management. Recommendation to conduct a public hearing. Receive and discuss an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2020 budget for public works, including Capital Improvement, Program Development Services and Health and Human Services. Speaker 1: Thank you. We have a request. Unless there's any objection from the council, there's been a request to allow public comment on on the budget first. I think some folks in the community may have to head out and say, I'm going to call these names and if you're here, please come forward. You can make some general comments on the on the budget and then we'll hear some of the department presentations. And so let me go ahead and call. Call the first group of five. Jeff Mallin Herlin to Horo. I'm sorry if I put mispronounce this, maybe I'll dirty veronica wilcannia and pho moron if those first five could please come forward. Speaker 2: Honorable. What do I do? Okay. Speaker 1: I can do it. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. And Honorable Council members. I am. My name is Jeff Malin and the Bluff Park Historic District in Council District three. And I represent here myself, as well as being a part of the Bluff Park Neighborhood Association. And we are honored to have been included in the public works portion of of the budget considerations for for next year. You have received a number of comments from people, so I won't necessarily repeat them, but I just want to thank you for the for the esteemed honor. We are super excited about the to be part of the historic preservation effort in the city. And we think that this project will support the city and the historic district. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 4: When I'm not just maybe one of these three and they are they always do I keep it a lot of those are like empty, an abyss of wisdom, for example. They're always looking or burning letter working, medium group. COOPER supposedly keep undergoing that loss. De La Rosa enters Colombia's. My daughters. I think once this iguanas, I've done only the homework. And I think lessons will say, Oh, God, this is incredible. MoMenTos, cinta cuentas cuatro. This by no means possible to complete the class with that Peruvian novia. Nadia Caldera, me, your my brother Manas and Busari to see what is the problem and Tamu is one problem. Muchos me neither local or region and they are not participating. It is with us in that U.S.A. you that. Not as they can have what other westerners, they are New Guinean Tamil. But as per the policies, there's a solid Uma. But elements are there long between us. I think inclusive growth is. Good afternoon. My name is Linda and I live in District one. Today I'm here to speak regarding the priorities for the budget for the people, for example. Today I'm here and I don't see any sign here in my language. How can it be possible that when 40% of the residents of Long Beach, who are older than five years old, speak another language that is not English in their homes , and this includes 145,544 other people who speak Spanish. My husband and I had a conflict with the city, but there was no one who could speak my language. And it's been three weeks now and we still have not received an answer from the city to our problem. This is not just my problem. This is a problem with many members of our community. And this makes people not want to participate in their neighborhoods and in this city. Please do not leave us out of the budget. Include $530,000 to the policy to make access to our language for people who are people of the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Speaker, please. Speaker 4: But I'm not just at those numbers. Veronica, can you be one of these three thoughtful, healthy essays? That is an idea model DEPARTAMENTO de leaders, LSU that you represent Denton Espanol. He is better for the cancer minolta's. But again I contest. I don't represent them. Go the mic on the spot on my video means that maybe that's ill motivated like your mother. Less political motive, operability information there potentially uncollectable lawsuits and the people in Paraiso. Metheny, I get that. I'm sorry. Outro Apartamento you're Italian Mother Teresa nice better dispossessing anthem. You know those in hospital system of medical care but I sit. But I know. So you didn't. It's better you can offer that to me too. This idea that as though the recipe the la your mother is the son said to be so was utilized constantly meant he could L.A. area there were representantes and the parentheses the illness. But that's sort of been a lack of money that for as long as customers program ten local superstore this than your employer can impose $3 million but I implement that la policia solidum gracias. Speaker 1: Thank you. I had called for more. Oh, yeah. I just want the next two people in line for more. No. Okay. Speaker 4: Good evening. My name is Veronica. The Kona and I live in District eight August six. I made a call to the Department of Utilities for the city and I asked to speak to a representative in Spanish. The wait was 15 minutes before someone answer my call. When someone answer my call, they asked for my information, my address, and the reason for my call. I explain the recent form I call and I asked for information regarding the reason for not collecting the trash in this city where I live. They told me that they needed to transfer me to another department. I was called three and it took 20 minutes. I was waiting for 20 minutes and the system and the system said that they could answer, they could return my call, and I decided to take that. To this day, I have not received a call. This is a basic service that is used on a daily basis, and I feel that it would be important to have representatives who can speak different languages. And we ask you to please add $130,000 to the budget to implement a policy that makes access in different languages. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Our next our next five speakers are Giselle Becerra, Maria Angelica Murillo, Lilia Ocampo, Maria Lozano and Magnolia Rodriguez. Please come forward. My group to Zelda, Sarah Marino and Angelica. Maria Lilia Ocampo, Maria Lozano and Magnolia Rodriguez. Please come forward. Please confirm. Speaker 4: Well. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Lily Campo. Speaker 3: I live in District one and I want to ask for the budget to consider. Speaker 4: Funds and allocate money for. The paper papers to be translator and the different languages that we have as a diverse city. Speaker 3: We also want. Speaker 4: To have to consider the. The fans. So many different languages are people have access to that different language to the service that the Siri the Siri provide. When we come here to look for the different departments and be service in our language as much as possible, because. Speaker 3: Sometimes those. Speaker 4: Misunderstand can cause like we will lose our service if we come to pay our gas or electricity and we don't have the. Speaker 3: Understanding. Speaker 4: Of what it being we are being told or what we said. And also, it's not that we're not trying. We're trying to learn the language. But sometimes for us, it's like a broken phone. Or when your cell phone doesn't have service, you only hear like three words and lost the rest. Oh, thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 4: When I notice minorities. Maria Lozano we want to repeat it. But then according to it all, those that as long as I use pronouns he does not give me, ma'am, I want to be not cry. Hold up. I don't be an ongoing control, not personal killers who the Omar village yell will give a present though. But apparently that is, I think they nevertheless quando la persona guillotine the old lady who gave the nigga passing through Kinsey. Good evening. My my name is Maria Lozano, and I'm here to tell you about a situation that my mother had when she came to pay for a bill. The bill was supposed to be for $79. And if you don't get the next person and they told her that she needed to pay $150 them, that that's what the system was showing. So he has a copilot working it. And I must tell you that at the last second they don't give this clinic that entails epidural canal in Espanol. So she was concerned because she only had the money to pay for the bill and not the amount that they were asking. And they told her that if she didn't pay, that she would have her services disconnected. Here on Cannon is a moment on Aria Caleb well-attended in Espanol. Sorry at the Gator Castle, yet I got two separate bags in total, but I no longer. I went in there and took pieces in tomorrow's reader working avia keynote speaker Berkeley's Laura Sullivan Coronado they must. And so she had to go home and get the money and go back and paper. She was still very confused as she did not know the reason why she was being asked to pay a different amount. Yeah, it's possible. I saw it label online and it's finally you don't get as a memento unless at the end of it and Clara spagnuolo so totally polarized workers electoral must look at this bill and so she went back and again she was told that there was no one who could speak the language to explain to her the reason. So she paid the amount to this, say she does not know the reason why she had to pay that amount equal for the economy. Okay. So I'm with this data, Cynthia. This has been our lab working on control numbers on this glioma. So she share with me this. She was very sad about the fact that she was not able to find anyone that could speak to her in her language. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Speaker, please. Speaker 3: When I notice Atlas. Speaker 4: Bread, Magnolia Rodriguez, Burton, quite coalition. They're Grupo Garcia. The Western L committee part is a building healthy community. The language historically para represent para el distrito city. Speaker 3: For necesario to. Speaker 4: Learn more specifically, this decision is a la ciudad. Speaker 3: Necesitamos. Speaker 4: El and go ahead para todos participation. The party la comunidad in a process or press western oral attorney experience rega produces pride and comfort in their la importancia is the most appropriate ideal. Yes, they are combined Gallego or mutual masses Yamada strategy versus you that. Joe Louis City Hall. But I got me. Really. Del Garcia, our. Speaker 3: We are now the medium. Speaker 4: In terms of medical personnel, then we'll get laterally applied in Gillespie McKinnon's Sego Chemical Potassium. Speaker 3: Yoakum up to the levee. Speaker 4: I pay my bill. Speaker 3: Degas, Enquirer. Le Parisien are in. Speaker 4: Hot water in English. But we are a pity. I pay my bills. The gas and water or medical. Speaker 3: Suppose on a computer. Laura, you are the only one with medical tomorrow. This connection you service. Your internal a that disconnected themselves. You really had. No, no, no, no. Speaker 4: Let me help me. They only pay my bill. They worry. Oh. And does. Speaker 3: It really matter. Speaker 4: If we're up by that? Jocelyn comes from Leader Itamar. Speaker 3: It also began with what I got this term. He said. Speaker 4: Recio. Is the price of piezo. My garrulous and fearless linguist traveled to see the documentos and the only other consumidor anteriormente mc on say hi boys though as part of hipsters tambien waiting up for yet gracious. Good evening. My name is Magnolia Rodriguez. I belong to a group of budgets and also healthy communities of Long Beach. I am here to represent my community and the District Seventh and it is very important that our voices are included in the decisions that are made in this city. We need to have access to languages for every one that participates in their community. During the process of the budget. I would like to relate my experience, which I expect, which I experience, and so that you can understand the importance of. So you can understand how important it is to have. Speaker 1: So what I'm going to do is I'm going to let you kind of capture the story. Okay. I did give you double time on this, but we've got to make sure we do it quickly so you can just kind of capture the capture the translation. Speaker 4: Yes. Yes. When I went to city hall to pay my bill that the person who helped me did not understand. I try very hard to explain what I was there to do. I said I pay my bill. She didn't understand. She said, my, your you will be disconnected tomorrow. And I said, no, I'm paying my bills. So as you can understand, I was very confused and concerned, wondering whether my services would be disconnected. I just want to ask this lady to add a budget, to add bilingual workers, and to have documents interpreted in many languages. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speakers are Cyndi Dela, Cruz Brown, Paula Stewart, Janice Mendez, Jordan Doering, Anthony Kennedy. Those next five can please come forward. Speaker 4: All right. Good evening, council members. My name is Sydney de la Cruz Brown. I am a resident of the seventh District and organizing director at Long Beach Forward as well as a member of the Long Beach Language Access Coalition. Low income, Latino, Filipino and Cambodian communities are part of our Long Beach community, and we deserve to be included. Don't leave us out of the budget. This year's budget. We cannot be included by adding the people's budget that allocates 530,000 for language access and 500,000 for census outreach by trusted messengers. The City Council declared language access as a priority in 2012, but seven years later, we didn't. We still do not see structural funding. Last year, the budget included 60,000 for language access, the largest amount of funding that we have ever seen. This year the amount is half of that, and it's almost spent. Residents who don't speak English are not being included from the city, according to the American Community Survey. Like Lena said earlier, about 47% of Long Beach residents over the age of five speak another language at home outside of English. Because the City Council has not allocated enough funding for the language access. Low income families have suffered when we have not had important documents like the water rate increase. Notices translated to service kiosks in the new city hall are in English only and the city's first multilingual budget hearing, an extreme, had extremely low attendance because there was no multilingual outreach in the community, and fliers are only in English until the week of the event. Nearly all. This is why we asked that. Not that this is. The need has not decreased by 50%, and neither should the funding. Thank you so much and hope you'll consider our recommendation. Speaker 8: Thank you. Stuart. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you for having this hearing tonight. My name is Holly Stewart. I live in the Walker's building over at Fourth and Pine. And I'm here because I do support also the idea that people's budget items that have just already been discussed. And these are important because if our city has to be the city that we have been and that we want to be in the future, a place that is inclusive of all the people and then makes a better life for all the people. We have to do these things. We have to have as many languages available at City Hall and through city staff as possible. That's a part it. Just as language or language. Just as in English. And the other thing is, do we really need to have a complete count in a sentence in the census? Because that, in fact, gives the city its rights in terms of being part of the United States and in terms of federal funds and budgets and things like that. And the kinds of things we're talking about. By the way, build on what we've talked, listening to all night about preserving jobs, keeping jobs, not having automation take things away. We need to have a life that goes on for all the people who are in. One of the best words of all is make sure everybody is counted and that everybody is served by the city of Long Beach. I'm proud to be a Long Beach resident. I've been here quite a while now and I was here back in the seventies. So let's just keep this going and let's have budgets and put money into things to build jobs and don't people we don't want to end up in the in the 21st century. Or is this the 21st? Anyway, with with the police and the military running our cities and we're getting more and more like two thirds of our budget is from police. That isn't good. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next week, police. Speaker 3: Hello. Mayor Garcia and City Council. My name is Janice. Speaker 4: Mendez, and I'm 17 years old. I'm a leader with. Speaker 3: The Invest in Youth Campaign and Californians for Justice. I'm a lifelong resident of the ninth District, and I'm here in support of the people's budget because I understand the difficulty of growing up in a community that lacks investment and resources as a part of the people's budget. We are calling on the City Council to allocate 500,000 of the proposed 600,000 for the census, to go to community based organizations to conduct local education and outreach efforts targeting these hard to count communities. Speaker 4: Our vision is that through the census process, we are. Speaker 3: Building trust and engagement with our most hard to reach populations and avoid creating any fear or anxiety that can lead to misinterpretation of the. Speaker 4: Needs of our city. It is critical. Speaker 3: That we get this right. The youth of Long Beach are depending on your leadership to get this right. Young people are among the most vulnerable populations, and we will inherit the outcome of the 2020 census. So we are calling on the City. Speaker 4: Council to prioritize vulnerable and hard to reach populations by leveraging community based organizations deep ties to communities. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: My name is, and I can fe. Um. Speaker 9: I. I don't see him out here, so I won't put him on a spot, but I went to one of these budget hearings that you guys have been conducting within the community. And I had a, um, a candid conversation with a city employee and which is why I made sure to look at the agenda item. And with that it came. Speaker 2: Up today. Speaker 9: Because if there's one department. Speaker 2: In the entire city apparatus that needs more money, it's code enforcement. I think they need at least five or $10 million. Speaker 9: You know, they only got about two people in office and they give I think they get more phone calls than, you know, they are probably up there with, uh, nine. Speaker 2: Nine, one one. You know, I think code enforcement, what they do. Speaker 9: Is, I think, objectively speaking, some of the best work any city department can do. You know, whenever I'm dealing with a tenant who's telling me about. Speaker 2: They got mold growing on the. Speaker 9: Walls and, you know, the the piping is is the the water isn't coming out. Hot water isn't coming out for the last couple of weeks. Who do we call a color code enforcement? The problem is, is only about two, three people in that office. And, you know, the way that the baby boomer generations is going, you know, we need we need some stimulant stimulated income going into the budget side for them so we can get some more. Speaker 2: You know, people in there are going to be working for 20, 30 years. So if I can make a recommendation, at least give the good people, the code enforcement, five, $10 million. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. The next next speakers. If I call your name, please confer. Kelly Chinchilla, Alyssa tung, Monserrat Pineda, Mia Hernandez, Luna Hernandez, Laurie Smith and Sterling Raglan. That concludes our public comment after that group. Speaker 4: Good evening. Mayor Garcia and City Council. My name is Kelly Chinchilla, and I'm a part of CalPERS for Justice and the youth ambassador with Ambassador Youth Campaign. And I'm a lifelong resident of the ninth district. The census is something that we know is very important, but often gets overlooked as a process. Lots of times people get left out and there's no way for folks to be included when it comes to filling these things out. Folks don't know that you can do this online or call it in, and some people stated that they don't even get the little paper in the mail. And to get an accurate count and truly represent the population of Long Beach, we need to we need people out there doing the work and collecting these surveys from the underrepresented. But the point is the point isn't just to go out and collect the survey, but to truly inform the community about why this is so important. When people are left out, we don't get the resources we need. The best way to go and collect these is to have local community based organizations, because we know the best about how to reach out to these communities. And folks, as I talk to neighbors and community members. So yeah, and it's imperative that we get this right for the outcomes of the 2020 census. It'll have lasting effects on our city and especially young people like myself who inherit the outcomes of the count. So that's why we're asking to allocate $500,000 and a one time fund to have community organizations educate and conduct outreach to the community. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mic Speaker. Speaker 4: Good evening, Mayor Robert Garcia and City Council members. My name is Monserrat Pineda, I I'm a lifelong resident of District nine here in Long Beach. I'm here tonight in support of the People's Budget proposal to allocate $530,000 towards language access for non-English speakers. I'm here in support of the many organizations that have worked tirelessly to uplift the voices of our community members. Most importantly, I'm here tonight in support of my family, my neighbors, and my friends as community leaders of your city, who is one of the most diverse from ethnic backgrounds, economic status and age. I asked you to not forget the members of your community who do not always feel that they belong simply because of their lack of knowledge in English. Residents who do not speak English should not be excluded from the city budget. This is their city too, and they should feel and every right to have a voice to understand what is happening in their own city. These residents need to have access to information regarding their own city with something as simple as translation. They need to be provided with the resources not only to understand the continent of information, but to feel that they are valued as community members. Language justice is not a privilege. It is a necessity. As someone who grew up in a household where I had to translate city notices, city bills and explain what was happening in Long Beach, I know how difficult it has been for my parents to navigate through not being able to understand English proficiently. I know how much of an impact representation has on an individual. That is why I'm here tonight to ask you to represent your community and provide them with the resources that they deserve. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 2: Next speaker, please. Speaker 4: Hi. My name is Luna Hernandez. I am a ninth district resident. I am in support of the People's Budget because Long Beach is a home to many to diverse non-English speakers, meaning my mom, my friends and my neighbors, Long Beach resident are in need of language justice. Thank you. Hi. Good evening. Honorable Council Members and Mayor Garcia. My name is Mia Hernandez and I am a lifelong ninth district resident. I am in full support of the people's budget proposal. 4040 7% of Long Beach residents over the age of five speak a language other than English at home. These are Long Beach residents, and it is inappropriate to not acknowledge this language barrier. The hardworking organizations behind this campaign have a strong connection with our non-English speaking populations, and I want you to trust, to support and to pour value into our local community based organizations by providing funding. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 4: Good evening, honorable mayor and city council name is Elsa tongue from Long Beach Forward and a District seven resident. And I'm here for the people's budget. So making equitable decisions about how resources are allocated in this city is a start to reversing the structural ways certain people and communities have historically been ignored because of racial and economic discrimination. The Budget Oversight Committee, Bossy, oversees the annual city budget and makes recommendations to the full council. But when it comes to making decisions on where and how to spend the city's money, wealthier and whiter communities have been overrepresented on the bossy, while lower income communities of color have been underrepresented, which has helped to perpetuate inequality based on race and class since the boss's establishment in 2000, three council districts two, three, four and five have been represented the most, with District three having a seat on the committee. For the vast majority of the past six years, districts six, seven and eight have had very little representation, and districts one and nine have had zero representation at all. Districts three, four and five include wealthier, predominantly white communities in East Long Beach, and districts one, six, seven and nine include predominately lower income communities of color in central, west and north Long Beach. As this current budget cycle continues on, we call on Mayor Garcia and the city council members to discuss equitable representation. Thank you. Thank you so much. To take steps to address this structural inequity. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, speaker, please. Speaker 7: Good evening, counsel. My name is Sterling Franklin. I'm a resident of the eighth District. And I just had a couple of comments that I was thinking of as these gentlemen and ladies were speaking. I'm not associated with the People's Coalition, but it sounds to me like their request is not unreasonable at all. Speaker 2: $500,000 to include. Speaker 7: Everyone and we possibly can in a democratic process that is the backbone of any local municipality. And I would spend $1,000,000,000,000 if we could get every single resident activated in our community, and that's what they're asking for. I think you guys should support that other thing, the automation situation that that came up recently. I think there needs to be more money allocated for job training and I'm glad that the Council has addressed this issue with this study. But I can tell you that by the end of this study, it will tell you that jobs will be lost. You don't need a study to tell you that there are there are innovations happening as we speak in the in the port industry, and we need to prepare for that. And that needs to be included in this budget. Job training. There needs to be an awareness campaign because this is the city that is employing these people. As the mayor said, this is a public entity and we need to reach out to those people. And this budget is a chance to do that. And I think we have a great opportunity. We should miss it. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Next week for his final speaker. Speaker 4: Hi. My name is Laurie Smith. I'm a resident and property owner in Bluff Park in the third district. And I'm here to speak about the concerns about the recent and proposed public works projects that are not consistent with the city's general plan, specifically the historic preservation element and the scenic element. Recent public works projects do not adhere to the Bluff Park Historic District Ordinance, nor do the projects pass through the city's Cultural Heritage Commission. The general plan elements provide details about official policies the city has adopted pertaining to each of these elements and policies. Establishing any one of the elements must not conflict with the others. Two elements of the city general plan that do not appear to be addressed by the capital improvement projects that were presented to the Planning Commission last week. They they did not. They were not consistent with this store preservation element and the scenic element. And as a recent Mills Act recipient for my home, for my home that I bought recently and went through a very intense process with development services, I became aware of the city ordinances in general plan elements that protect the our properties . So the BLOCK Park Historic Ordinance specifies that the entire neighborhood is a designated landmark, not just specific buildings. And the designated streets are Ocean Boulevard, Second Street, One Apparel Loma. So the primary goals of the historic preservation element are to better integrate historic preservation into city procedures and interdepartmental decisions. And the historic preservation elements. Streetscapes such as light standards, contribute to the historic character of the district. I voice his concerns and questions several times the public system development services as well as my city representative. Thank you so much time as myself and other property owner concern thank. Speaker 1: You so much. Speaker 4: Consumers are not going to. Speaker 1: Ma'am. Your time is up and that your microphone is off. Thank you so much. Thank you, ma'am. Your time. Your time is up, so we've got to be respectful of the time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much from that concludes public comment on the budget hearing and we will go ahead and begin the presentations for the departments. So if you're if you're here for an item that is after the budget, we are probably going to spend the next 45 minutes to an hour on the budget. So that is what is coming up next. Okay. So with that, I'll turn it back over to Mr. West and Mr. Modica for the next discussion on the Budget. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. So we have three departments that will be presenting. We have public works who will also be doing the public works budget and the CHP program. We have development services and we have Health and Human Services. And so with that, I will turn it to Craig Beck, our public works director. Speaker 1: Okay. Good evening, Mayor. City council and community members watching this presentation. I'm here this evening to talk about both the public works operating budget and the city's capital improvement plan, or sometimes called CHP for fiscal year 20. I will first focus on the public works department. So who is public works? Public works, of course. Services include the maintenance and rehabilitation of the city's rights of way, including streets, sidewalks and our urban forest services, supporting a healthy and sustainable city environment, including waste diversion, stormwater management and enhancing Long Beach livability and the efficient and safe design, construction and maintenance of our public facilities. In these pictures, you will see some of the team members at work. Some accomplishments this year include some large infrastructure projects, including where we're sitting today. So the opening of our new sitting and our new city's civic center installing 68 lane miles of streets, 1000 new ADA curb ramps, park playgrounds and facilities. All this work has kept our project team extremely busy this year and they will continue to manage multiple projects moving forward in fiscal year 20. It's interesting whenever I look at stats like this and have a chance to reflect on all the activity of our field operations, I'm just amazed at how much work they achieve in a year 46,000 calls for service. That averages about 180 work orders each day. 80 this year just from Golden Beach alone. I know the mayor was talking about that app earlier today. I really don't know how they're able to do it. For example, the clean team responded over 21,000 illegally dumped items. Well, this number is still too high. We are seeing a positive change through collaboration with Harvard Kennedy School and the city's innovation team. Public Works has increased its services for collection of large items, and the community has responded this year. There was an 18% increase in folks asking for items to be picked up, thus reducing them just being dumped on the corner or in the alleys. So still a lot of work to do, but we are making progress. The Clean Team also supported 47 neighborhood cleanups, collecting over 300 tons of litter during these cleanups. So for their hard work, I have to give a shout out to AOC seven and Wesker. Both those neighborhood associations are definitely the neighborhood cleanup leaders. So we we believe and we put out the gantlet for others to try to achieve their success. So livability will allow me to strength is that our community loves being outside, enjoying parks, beaches and dining to make it easier to get around. The city continues to invest in the expansion of its bicycle network. This year we celebrated one of our newest and longest bike routes, the Daisy Myrtle Bike Boulevard, taking you from uptown to downtown. This nine and a half mile bike way runs through districts one, six, seven, eight and nine. And if you haven't taken a ride on it yet, I highly recommend that you do. It's a great way to see our city. The next bike way to be completed will connect central Long Beach to Cal State via 15th Street. It's our 15th street bike boulevard, so go beach. There is also a new important connection through Belmont Shore. Getting us getting bicyclists all the way to the L.A. or excuse me, the San Gabriel River. This is an important connection for that highly traveled bicycle path with 160 miles of bike ways, the community has responded. We added a new echo totem this year at Promenade and Broadway, similar to the one that we have down at the Belmont Pier. And those totems are on pace to record over 1.6 million pedestrians and bicyclists enjoying being outside. I also want to highlight sustainability. Our efforts continue to grow with an 8% increase in the amount of waste diverted through recycling efforts. So we've increased recycling. Also, phase three of the expanded polystyrene ordinance or EPS ban goes into effect in December, and that will bring into compliance our small our smaller restaurants, 100 seats or less. Even though it's still months away. We are seeing compliance from many of those restaurants. So we appreciate the hard work of the team and the work of the restaurants and really the citizens who are pushing sustainability efforts citywide. So what does the public works budget look like? It's really split 5050 between operating and CHP. It's roughly $245 million. And I want to focus on operating first. Which, as you can see in this slide, kind of breaks down the different funding sources. So in FY 20, the operating budget is 127, $127 million. The different funding sources include the General Fund. Public Works represents about 7% of the city's general fund, supporting 244 hardworking men and women providing city services like street sweeping parking enforcement, traffic operations, permit review and street maintenance. Notable changes, Public Works is constantly striving to deliver more efficient services to Long Beach. We're proposing new positions to support street medians. You will call that is a directive that came from this council to transition medians from Parks and Rec to public works. The city has over 220 acres of medians, median islands and backlots, and that's equal to about 166 football fields. So these positions are key to help deliver a cleaner city. Public Works has also released a new development guidelines. This book is to help our customers navigate the permit process. We have also reorganized the operation to deliver faster service and I really think the team for their efforts to try to make that process easier. Last thing we're doing is looking at technology and like development services. We're implementing a permit filing to help implement a faster process and like to also highlight the passage of a measure w with that funding. Long Beach should receive over $5 million annually for stormwater capture and reuse projects. With this funding I anticipate we will break ground of LBE must this next year. This is a facility cleaner. Our water going into the L.A. River. It's an exciting project and I look forward to getting it built. Also to help reduce some costs. The General Fund Public Works has been able to shift its staff for stormwater from general fund to measure W funding. This will save almost $800,000 annually. Lastly, we will be bringing forward in the next fiscal year the adoption of our state streets. Long Beach Vision Zero plan. This will seek to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities in our transportation system. I look forward to making that presentation to council and gaining broader community support as we move forward with a Safe Streets Long Beach program. So what are our challenges and opportunities? One of the opportunities we have is our zero waste plan. So not vision zero, but zero waste. We will be bringing that forward to this council soon. We're currently in the process of conducting a waste character characterization study, and that's not easy for me to say. This will allow us a better understanding of what waste is actually going into is being thrown away, and so from that will be able to understand better what can then be diverted. So we're working on that and we look forward to bringing that to council in the community for adoption. We're also implementing a pilot program for automated license plate reading. This will help our parking enforcement staff be more efficient. It also allows us to electronically chalk, if you will, tires to enforce time, limited parking areas and assist in the recovery of stolen vehicles. So so far, that's in a pilot mode. And we look forward to finalizing that and bringing something forward to council to give us new tools moving forward. So what's one of our challenges? Well, one of the big challenges we have in our department is a competitive job market. It's significantly impacting the retention and recruitment of qualified staff. Currently, public works has approximately 100 vacant positions or 20% of our workforce. So I look forward to working with Christina, our new civil service director, to help close this gap. I'm confident that we can come up with a program to help hire staff and help fill those vacancies. So that concludes my operating budget discussion and now I want to shift into a.S.A.P. So this investment in infrastructure continues to be a priority for staff and for this Council. I know that as I meet with different council districts, there's always lots of questions about where are we in different infrastructure projects and how are we moving infrastructure forward? It's always good to talk about some of the prior some of the projects that have been accomplished. So you see some pictures here. New sign at the airport, Bay Shore lifeguard station. A new curb ramps, a storm drain line on Seaside Way, a new playground at Drake Park and our soon to be completed New Haven Park Community Center. So shifting to the Skippy side of the public work budgets, there's roughly $118 million that is being, excuse me, committed to infrastructure improvements. And we've done a revamping of the copy book and there are six different categories within the IP book. We're trying to show three or four snapshots of the community gets an understanding of what is that three year investment plan. And so if you went to any one of these different categories, you would see the details of the various projects that would that are planned for implementation under under these categories. So first, I want to highlight mobility. The city takes a complete street streets approach. And so what does that mean? It means that we don't just redo a street. We also look to see if it needs to add ADA curb ramps, if we need to fix broken sidewalks, if curb and gutters need to be replaced, if the trees need to be trimmed. So or if the street is part of the bicycle masterplan and we need to add a bicycle facility. So that's all a part of what we look at whenever we redo a street. And this is an example of third street in downtown what which we call our cycle track project. But in this example, we've added updated bus lanes, updated separated bike lanes, and it's really a key connection for all folks riding in and out of the downtown area. So this year, 13.6 miles of bicycle lanes were added for all residents, ages 8 to 80. That's what we strive for. It's not for the club riders, but mainly for folks trying to use it as transportation or for exercise. And it really enhances the city city's livability efforts when we provide alternatives to single occupancy vehicle trips. Mobility has a number of different funding sources. You see them listed here and then you see how we plan to utilize those resources moving forward. So under our major streets, we have two different street categories majors and and residential. So our major streets, we plan on improvements in fiscal year 22 Market Anaheim, which is a pedestrian safety corridor project, and we will start working on getting the design updated for Artesia, which is a Great Streets project, and that's being coordinated through Skegg. So we're looking forward to those major projects coming forward. We're also planning to finish paving all the dirt alleys because council made a commitment in measuring to two paved dirt alleys so that funding is identified, which will accomplish the last of about roughly 1.6 miles of alleys to be paved. And then we have $7 million that will be going towards sidewalks and addressing our ADA ramps in our path of travel. All right. So this slide hopefully looks familiar. This is essentially our five year street plan. We're well into this plan. And I wanted to highlight just I know you can't really see all the details of all the streets in this plan, but you can see that on our Web page. But this really shows all the green, the green, our completed streets and really highlights the level of activity that's been occurring in the city since the passage of measure. This is just 17 to 19. So in two and a half to three years, we've been able to achieve a lot of work in our in our citywide streets system. We do work to try to do at least a two year paving program that gives us a year to design the streets, in a year to deliver the streets. This shows the one that was provided last year for the 19 and 20 streets. We're working now to update a new program which will show that fiscal year 20 and 21 streets. So shifting now to public facilities. We plan to invest about $11 million to further our our public facilities. You can see the sources of those fundings on the table to the left. And what where is that money going to go? So the council is looking to make strategic investments, and we are working to finalize a facility condition assessment, which is looking at our libraries, parks and other city owned facilities. And that money will go to address some of the most needed issues in those in those facilities. Once I have the FCA completed, I'll be able to return to this Council and highlight what facilities will be targeted with those dollars. The police academy design will be completed and we'll be building that project in fiscal year 20 and hope to start construction towards the end of FY 20. We're also looking at energy efficiency improvements at our armory building. So under the category of Parks and Recreation, we're looking at continuing our efforts to complete some enhancement in Hampton Park . We're also looking to expand our Drake Chavez greenbelt or interconnecting those two parks and then putting some money towards those areas. Wetlands restoration. Quickly, beaches and marinas. There's a commitment of $2 million there that will help with the Colorado Lagoon Playground, Naples Seawall Maintenance and Alamitos Bay improvements. Our airport has projects planned for the terminal and rehabilitation of the airfield runways. And lastly, utilities is focusing on upgrades to our stormwater pump stations and our capture and reuse projects like Long Beach, much like, as I mentioned earlier, and then important water and sewer pipelines. So before I conclude measure, I before I conclude the SIP presentation, I think it's important to talk about measuring because without measure, a many of these things that we're talking about this evening we wouldn't be talking about. Measure has been a significant influence in how we address our citywide infrastructure. And first, I want to point to this map. If you haven't been to the cities, measure a Web page. Please go there. It's a fantastic interactive map. The team has done a tremendous job really putting information out about measuring projects. So just some projects. Quickly, I want to scroll scroll through some pictures of what measure has helped fund Bixby Park Community Center, roadway improvements via Carmelita as West Police Station Improvements, Accessibility at City Place, Garage and Harvey Milk Park Silverado Field Improvements Main Health Facility Lobby Improvements More Curb Ramps Citywide Veteran's Park Playground New Roof at Fire Station ten Eldorado Park Restroom Repairs, Redondo Avenue Improvements and our Smart Streetlight Network. So those are just a few highlights of our measure funds. So what are we looking at for fiscal year 20? It's another $19 million, a measure that's looking to be invested. And with the 19 million planned for FY 20, which is going to support alley improvements, Low Street is wetlands, Drake Chavez, Greenbelt and Police Academy design, as I mentioned before, with all of that investment. Next slide, we're looking at a $107 million through fiscal year 20. So if you recall, when we went out to the community and started talking about the infrastructure plan, it was roughly $100 million a measure investment. We will have already exceeded that with this year's allocation. And then looking forward into the next three fiscal years, it's anticipated another $45 million will be allocated towards infrastructure, bringing the total through FY 23 to over 150 $153 million of investment from Measure A. So just lastly, where are our challenges and opportunities relative to CHP in fiscal year 20? We continue to strive to create plans for making strategic investment of our infrastructure dollars. We'll be updating our payment management plan. So in 2020 will have new data to see where we're at from a citywide PCI assessment. We recently completed a sidewalk, what some call a self-assessment are really looking at where are we have missing curb ramps, where do we have out of compliance curb ramps, where do we have uplifted sidewalks and how do we then plan to address those? So that sidewalk assessment was recently done. As I mentioned earlier, we're in the process of finalizing our facility condition assessment. That should be something we will update every ten years along with the sidewalk plan. A pump station master plan was last done in 2015. So that would be another ten year plan that we would update regularly. And so the one that we're really weak in, that we're looking for a different measure, w opportunities is our stormwater master plan. The last update we had was in 2005 and it was really an incomplete report. That was roughly the time when the stormwater program was transferred from water to the city. And so we still need to get a really good understanding of where we have challenges within our stormwater conveyance system. That's one of the reasons that we're working to find and seek grants, opportunities to address stormwater. I mentioned Seaside earlier. That was a federal grant. We're also working or were are pleased to announce that the Federal Economic Development Administration, EDA, has awarded Long Beach about $8 million for to address flooding in different business corridors in the city . So we're really looking forward to getting that money in and fixing a couple of things. Just lastly, I appreciate the Council's continued support for investing in the city's infrastructure. There is a great need, as and as indicated by these recent assessments listed here, but we are making progress. I look forward to working on delivering these important projects illustrated here tonight, and I'm available to answer any questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Mr.. Mr.. Beck. I'm going to hear Development Services and Health next, and then we'll come back and do all the questions. So one, development services. Speaker 3: Good evening, Mayor, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. I'm really pleased to present this year's budget for the Development Services Department. I'd like to take a moment to just acknowledge and thank our Administrative and Financial Services Bureau manager, Lisa Falls, who played a key role in the preparation of our budget this year. So I'll start by talking about the core services that are. Can I get the. The clicker. No, you're fine. Okay. You're fine. So we'll go ahead and get started. I'd like to talk about the core services that the Development Services Department provides. Our mission is fundamentally to shape the city's physical environment and improve the quality of life for the city's residents, visitors and our daily work force. And I'll talk briefly about the role that each department plays in that effort in the planning and each bureau. In the Planning Bureau, we really shape the built environment through the general plan land use policies that are adopted by council and the use of the zoning code regulations to implement those policies. We review all proposed new development projects to ensure that they are in conformance with not only the general plan but also the zoning code objectives . The Building Safety Bureau maintains and updates our local building standards to ensure that new buildings are properly designed and constructed. Our Plan Check Engineers Review Development Project plans to confirm that the construction meets current codes as well as during the construction. The inspectors ensure that all structures are being built according to the approved plans. Our Code Enforcement Bureau ensures that buildings and properties are maintained and that communities are free from blight. We're in the second year of implementing a program that monitors vacant lots to ensure that they're there, properly maintained, and that they don't become an eyesore in the community. Our Housing Bureau works with the developers to provide affordable housing, and our neighborhood services team provides routinely interfaces with the community and with developers to enhance the quality of life. These efforts include their work with neighborhood groups on physical improvements in their neighborhoods, as well as implementing a residential and commercial facade improvement program, as well as coordinating neighborhood cleanups and neighborhood tree planning events. These all work to enhance neighborhood esthetics as well as to build a sense of community. Lastly, we work to ensure that the city's significant historic buildings, architectural resources and neighborhoods are preserved. So I'll talk a little bit about some of our accomplishments as it relates to preserving the city's heritage. We've made great strides this year in preserving the city's historic resources. The Planning Bureau, working with the Cultural Heritage Commission, had a number of significant accomplishments this year. We approved 21 mills that contracts to rehabilitate landmark properties. We won an American Planning Association award for the Design Guidelines for 16 historic districts in the city, and the Grant neighborhood in North Long Beach became the first historic district that has been established in the city in the last ten years. And lastly, per the mayor's request in his budget that our department is assisting the funding of the Long Beach Historical Society's efforts to digitize the the Long Beach Press Telegram archives. So our staff looking at how we actually do shape this physical environment and shaping current development activity. Our staff has been working harder than ever. I think anybody who's been driving around the city can see a substantial amount of new construction underway. This slide highlights a few of the recently completed or soon to be completed projects such as our new Civic Center and City Hall, important administration building, new apartments in the downtown, and two new single family subdivisions that have been built in the city, as well as new projects in the Douglas Park area, the Long Beach Exchange and the terminal. During this fiscal year or this previous fiscal year, the building safety staff completed nearly 6100 plan reviews. This is an increase of 25% more than they completed last year and the number of commercial and residential inspections that our inspectors in the field. That number increased even more dramatically. It increased by 75% over last year's inspection levels. Our department is also protecting existing residents through code enforcement and rental housing inspection. Code enforcement staff investigated approximately 14,000 cases. They inspected nearly 11,000 over 11,000 homes and reported 133 potential garage conversions. And they registered 630 properties in the foreclosure registry and an additional 215 properties in the vacant lot registry program. And we also draft at the recently a city council adopted tenant assistance program policies. And in terms of looking towards the future, I'd just like to highlight some of our accomplishments during this past fiscal year. We mentioned the land use policies that lay the groundwork for building our future. This year we completed three significant policy documents, and those will soon be coming to the City Council for Adoption. The first is the general plan noise element, one of our mandated general plan elements. We completed a draft Climate Action and adaptation plan and also a Globemaster Quarter specific plan. This plan will facilitate an innovative repurposing of the former Boeing C-17 site, as well as stimulate reinvestment along the charity Cherry Boulevard Corridor. We also entered into agreements with four affordable housing developers on a project on projects that will provide a total of 190 new affordable homes for some of the city's most vulnerable, vulnerable populations. Vista Del Puerto Apartments are a for 47 affordable homes for families and households with special needs. That project is in coordination with Clifford Beers. The second project, The Spark at Midtown, provides 97 affordable homes for families and households who are homeless or at the risk of homelessness. We're building that project in coordination with link housing. We partnered with Habitat for Humanity for a project at 116 West 14th Street for ten for sale townhomes for low and moderate income first time homebuyers. And lastly, for 69, West Apartments provides 39 affordable homes for households who have experienced homelessness. That project, we're also partnering with link housing. We launched an updated the city's website and we're really proud of the fact that this new website update has a mapping tool that allows the public staff, city council members and anyone who's interested to track the status of our major new development projects. So here for a brief snapshot of our budget, the development services. Our department's budget really relies on a mix of funding sources, including fees for services, former tax increment and also a number of different grant sources. But I'd like to note that most of our services that we provide in the department are covered by fees, and only 7% of our budget is from the city's general fund. And this year in our budget we're adding to new FTE fees. So I'd like to briefly talk about some of the notable changes in the budget that are being that is being proposed for this year. I talked about the two new FTE fees that are being added. Those are to implement a program that was directed by council to implement the short term rental ordinance. And these two positions include an administrative analyst and a combination building inspector. They both of these sessions will be needed to to manage the program as well as to enforce compliance with the ordinance that council. We hope to be bringing to council later this year. We're also going to be using a third party consultant to provide registration data interface as well as to man that 24 hour hotline to respond to immediate issues that occur in the residence. And they will also validate the data for the registrants. So I'd like to just talk a little bit about some of the challenges and opportunities in our department, and I'd just like to highlight a couple of those, both in planning, engineering and our inspection staff. We are experiencing, like the public works department, we're experiencing a lot of turnover and it's generally do from retirement but some from attrition. And we continue to experience that, that level of vacancies at about a 19% rate, so just shy of 20%. And essentially we have to do with either hiring temporary or contract staff to to backfill positions to continue providing an appropriate level of service. We also have challenges with our technological capabilities. As you probably know, we're assessing the are in for a data tracking system. And the objective of that effort is to optimize how the system functions for us as a tool for tracking, monitoring and reporting our key workflow dynamic to make our our service delivery more efficient. And lastly, on one of the key efforts that we have been undertaken this year is our outreach, community engagement and outreach efforts. Our community we have implemented this year for the first time community education workshops. We have a much more robust reporting of the department's agendas for project reviews, and those are now being made available to the public in a much more transparent manner. And we also have a we continue with our very robust community outreach activities, and we're promoting those very highly on the city's new website. So those we will continue to be working on each of these challenges. And that concludes our presentation. And I'd like I'm available to answer any questions at the conclusion of all of the budget presentations. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 6: Anex health. Speaker 11: Good evening. Good evening. Honorable mayor, vice mayor and city council members. Thank you for this opportunity to share the Department of Health and Human Services for a 20 budget. We've had a busy and exciting year and we have significant opportunities on the horizon. First, I do think my team members who make all of what I share with you possible. I appreciate them fully and know the Health Department would not be where it is today without them. Of course, services. The Health Department offers over 40 public facing programs serving the life span from prenatal to end of life. We work in and for every community in our city to protect the public's health, promote healthy living. We prevent and control communicable and vector borne diseases. We're currently building systems to improve access to early childhood and older adult services. We house people and we enhance opportunities, policies and systems to address health and social inequities in our city. Speaker 2: Excuse me. Speaker 8: Miss Cisco. Can the audience not hear? Speaker 11: You're not here. Speaker 8: Everyone here. La la, la, la. Yes, please. Speaker 11: You told me I didn't have to. How you can hear there. Speaker 8: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 11: All right. So. So while public safety generally focuses on police and fire. The Health Department is a vital component of the public safety continuum. In Long Beach. We plan daily to ensure the city is prepared for large scale public health emergencies and partner closely with the police and fire departments at large scale events such as the Grand Prix and Pride Parade, we coordinate emergency shelter, response and services and lead bioterrorism efforts for the city and the region. Our environmental health team coordinates city response to hazardous waste threats and ensures our restaurants and waters are safe. We lead violence prevention efforts through safe Long Beach, and we immunize against public health threats. Just think, without the Health Department, mosquitoes would have taken over Long Beach and many more of us could have West Nile virus. Measles would be more prevalent. No one would know if it was safe to swim in our waters and our beaches would be so lonely. More people would have foodborne illness and we'd lose a lot of tourists and just think we could have a release of anthrax at a large scale event? No. Wouldn't know what it was, nor could they adequately respond. It would be crazy to think about a city without a health department. Our accomplishments this year reflect the wide variety of programs in our department. We launch the All Children Thrive, which focuses on shifting policy and systems and developing new mechanisms for funding health and other services for children and families. We are highlighted as a best practice across the state. We were recently awarded our second round of funding for this effort. We've implemented an age friendly task force which is striving to strengthen the system of services and connection in the city through the Health Department relationships at the county level, the justice lab now has direct access to service systems for people that are being assessed by the mental health clinician in the jail. We are currently the only city in Los Angeles County with this direct access to resources. We continue to contribute to the fitness and safety of bikers in Long Beach, giving out over 500 helmets and educating a thousand people on bike safety. The Language Access Program continues to increase access to services and community involvement. We've had a 37% increase in the number of documents translated and a 91% increase in interpretation. Requests for community meetings relaunch the Justice Fund, which provides legal representation for immigrants facing deportation. And we continue to strengthen the equity lens in the city by training 500 staff and community partners to ensure planning efforts, the capacity and outcomes in communities that have previously had limited opportunity. In terms of communicable diseases. We launched the the HIV NSD strategy in partnership with our comprehensive HIV planning group. The mayor has proposed $250,000 per year for the next two years to support work to achieve these strategies to support reduction in new HIV infections. We currently operate a prep center for Excellence. We've tested over 900 people for HIV. We've also conducted 800 syphilis contact investigations in the last year. We responded to more than 3300 disease reports diseases such as salmonella, pertussis, typhus and West Nile virus. This has all been done with a team of four, four people. The the team is small, but it's mighty. We met the citywide effort for the regional measles outbreak. New measles suspect cases come in regularly and the team investigates each one. One measles case can include follow up for over 100 people. We pull in staff from across the department and they work around the clock. And finally, our vector control responded to over 600 requests for mosquito abatement in the city in addition to our normal services. I must say, we're very excited about our new and welcoming ADA compliant lobby that was funded through Measure A is absolutely beautiful and I welcome you all to come out and visit. In terms of homelessness, our accomplishments continue in homeless services and the housing authority. With our partnerships with other state departments and nonprofit providers. We've permanently housed over 1100 people this year, and the point in time count showed an 8% decrease in those who are chronically homeless. We secured $27 million in grant funds this year, which has allowed us to continue to operate our ongoing services while also allowing us to purchase the navigation center in your homeless shelter site, provide more prevention services and rapid rehousing, as well as move toward implementation of services for Youth Safe Parking and the jobs program. The Housing Authority implemented the homeless incentive program for landlords, provided over 7200 housing vouchers 712, or which for homeless veterans. The Housing Authority also committed 121 project based vouchers for ongoing support of low income and homeless housing in the city. Our budget this year was our budget. Last year was just over $133 million. This year it is just over 152 million. This is due to increased homeless and housing authority funding. The funding for public health specific programing remains essentially flat. The department receives approximately one third of a percent of the general fund acting to take after taking into consideration overhead costs. This represents a little bit less than 1% of our department revenues. We have 427 budgeted full time positions. The notable changes in the general fund include moving the language access program manager position from a three quarter time to full time position and an additional $25,000 for utilities for the Homeless Navigation Center. One time funds include $80,000 for the Language Access Program Services and 255,000 to support the Proactive Homeless Initiative and rapid response. Within the Health Fund, we are upgrading and hiring new environmental health specialists that will be serving in the food program. And finally, ASAP funding will support a public affairs officer, the first we've had in the Health Department to support developing strategic messaging and education campaigns for issues such as homelessness and HIV, STD prevention, effectively communicate public health messaging and highlight the many amazing programs and services offered by the Health Department. Other things continue to go well for the department, we do face some challenges the increasing HIV and STD rates, as well as increased presence of other communicable diseases and the many international communicable diseases that will not stop at the border are putting intense pressure on our team. Our Response Team Health Department is the only to provide TB provider in the city of Long Beach. TB is very difficult to treat as people have to be seen every day. We are currently at 40% of staffing capacity and this is very concerning given the highly transmissible nature of the disease. The competition for medical staff, including nurses and doctors as well as laboratory staff, is intense. Our salaries cannot compete, placing pressure on our existing staff to try and meet the growing needs of the clinics. The older adult population continues to grow, become more diverse and have fewer resources. Yet our service system for older adults is essentially unfunded for particularly for those who cannot get to senior centers. The mental health and substance use prevention and treatment system is insufficient to meet the needs of the city. In addition, the homeless prevention funding does not nearly match the number of people who are at risk of homelessness. Well, we are completely remodeling the north facility and we're very excited about this opportunity. The remaining facilities are aging and need significant physical and technological upgrades. Funding for the Health and Human Services programing is becoming more difficult to access. The competition is steeper than at the national and state level. To add to this difficulty for the competing for the grants, we have had insufficient administrative resources to manage the hiring process for all the new grant funded positions and to ensure that we draw down all those last dollars. The team is amazing, amazing and fully committed. There just aren't enough of them. Unfortunately, this leads hard earned money, hard earned grant money on the table because we cannot fully draw it down and we really hate leaving money on the table. And finally, in the past, the health department was financially in a place that it could not meet payroll, given difficult times. We work every year to ensure that we build the reserve needed. So this does not happen in the future. In a grant environment, this is very difficult. But through strong fiscal discipline, we are making progress. Our opportunities are endless, but there are just a few that I'll share with you here. We received a second round of funding for our catchy and Our Children Thrive initiative, which allows us to continue designing a coordinated system for young children and their families across the city. We just completed the community health needs assessment process for the department for the city and have nearly completed our own strategic plan for the next five years, which lays out our goals and strategies for a robust organization and community health improvement. The Youth Vote Strategic Plan for youth and emerging adults is underway. This plan will outline goals and strategies to ensure youth success across our city. While currently unfunded, we continue to lead the Long Beach Age friendly initiative, which builds off the earlier older adult strategic plan and works to design services and connection systems to support older adults . Our trauma and resiliency informed city efforts are moving forward. Both the Health Department and Library Services will serve as pilots for this program. The Justice Lab, in partnership with the police department, is growing, and we see real opportunity in the city to connect people to services they need instead of their returning to the streets. This provides increased wellness opportunity for the people involved, as well as a crime prevention strategy for the Long Beach communities. We'll open a fully remodeled center for families and youth in Heaton Park next year, which will work on strengthening families and violence prevention. We've also added two clinical rooms to provide much needed HIV testing and treatment and other clinical services in North Long Beach. The Navigation Center year round shelter will greatly strengthen services for people experiencing homelessness and change the face of access to services to our city. State funding will bring an additional 9 to $10 million to strengthen prevention and housing retention services with a focus on older adults and transition age youth. We're moving forward with technology opportunities that we're very excited about. The first is a common intake and referral system for the health department. Our goal here is that data are collected only once for each person who walks into our system and people are connected to those services they need. This will improve customer service and outcomes. We're also working with UCD to improve data access and integration among city and community partners for homeless services. It's an improve our view to the cost of services, the ability to prioritize service improvements across the city, to enhance efficiencies for future cost savings to the city. Your Health and Human Services Department is present, is proud to stand for the health and wellness of Long Beach communities and individuals. We continue to seek funding, innovation, partnerships and community voice to build opportunity across this great city. We truly appreciate your support over the past year and we look forward to our continued work with you to move many opportunities forward. And with that, I conclude my presentation. I'm open for questions. Speaker 1: Great. Thank you. This is our receive and file presentation. If I can get a motion in a second to receive and follow the presentation. Thank you. Before I go to Councilman Pearce, I'm going to make a couple couple questions and comments. I want to just first start by just saying how impressive our public works budget is and it just continues to to grow and to really focus on doing quality projects expeditiously and certainly putting those measure dollars to work. It's always a good opportunity to check in and just just remind ourselves how, how significant that investment by the community has been to our public infrastructure. It's hard to measure. I was I was having a conversation, you know, with some of your team members. And I think that what I love about the the public works team, especially the team that we've assembled, that you've assembled, Mr. Beck, is they are they're really thoughtful about what the future of city building is and where cities are going. And they're really constructing and rebuilding kind of streets and communities in that direction with that with the forward looking lens. So I just want to commend you for that. And I wanted to add that you and I had had a conversation and I know we don't have you looking into the exact number in here, but I think it's it's your estimation that. In APR could be could be around 15 years or so. And I know you're still going to look at the exact number, but it could be that in about 15 years, thanks to both Measure Rea and our regular CIP work, we could we the potential to repave every street in the city. Is that correct. Yes, Mayor. I think if you look at our our current investment and if we are able to continue that current investment, I do believe that that's very accurate, that we would move from probably poor to fair level streets throughout the city to very good. And I think that's really significant because it shows a direct investment that when you put those extra dollars there, there's an opportunity for us over the next, you know, ten, 15, 20 years to really rebuild the entire city when it comes to a street infrastructure point of view. And I think that's really substantial and something I'm excited about. You mentioned pieces. I don't I just want to make sure I mention this is for for the public sake as well. There there's a report or a story today, I think I read in online about our PCI numbers and the data that was pulled on PCI. Just as a note, I think the PCI data that was pulled was from 2014. So I just give a cautionary note. I've had a lot of friends text me there. There's PCI numbers which are which is great. I'm glad they're looking at our other open data portal, but those are PCI numbers that I think are from 2014 . It's not before measure investments. And so a lot of those numbers are not up to date. And I think we are working on putting up the latest data so that people have the correct information. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct, Mayor. And just to add to that, so that that data comes out of the city's pavement management plan, so that's part of the results of the pavement management plan. We are in the process of conducting an update. So the most current data we have is from 2017. So I do anticipate once we have the 2020 data, that will be even in better shape than we were between 14 and 17. Okay, great. And obviously, I know that some of these numbers that we're giving and the years were we're doing some guesstimate. So we'll have better we'll have a real better idea of of what the total years for a complete repave and where the PCI goes. As we do more work ahead. So thank you for that. And but I also want to just a note and again, to to both our other departments, thank you for the great work. There's some really important programing and work that is happening. I do want to just note, just in the Health Department budget, when we called this out as well to remind the council what we don't often talk about it because it's not maybe it may not be top of mind all the time. We can't we can't forget that Long Beach. Is in the unfortunate position of having one of the highest HIV infection rates in the state between us and San Francisco and West Hollywood. I mean, we've discussed this. This is a we're at a a health crisis level four four in this area. And we have to take aggressive action and support, not just prep, pap and all the other really life saving drugs and choices that there are for four members, four members of our community, but also to aggressively try to reverse and bring down these high rates by working with the community and just doing a lot more testing. And so I think I want to thank the particularly the HIV Comprehensive Study Group that has put forward some significant recommendations to help us with this work and many members of the LGBTQ community who consider this for them, if not the top issue, one of the top issues that we should be focused on as a city, because it certainly also is is an issue that directly affects that community and particularly gay men. And so I just want to make sure that we uplift that. And I want to thank you all for the work there. And with that, Councilman Austin, do you have any comments? Speaker 6: Just a few. Seems like I've been here all day long, and this air blowing underneath is not helping. But thank you to all of the departments for your presentations. I want to just just have a couple of questions. One for our public works director. And, you know, everything is planned out and that's what the budget is for. But my question is, is there room and flexibility in your department's budget for unplanned infrastructure needs, such as, you know, serious facility repairs that come up? In the course of every day. Operations. Speaker 1: So Councilmember Austin, the short answer is yes. We tried to allocate some funding for emergency repairs. I believe the budget proposed for FY 20 is $1,000,000. Speaker 6: Okay. So can we build a new fire station for $1,000,000? Speaker 1: Um, unfortunately, no. Significantly more to build a new fire station. But as an example, and I've used this example before, but I think it really does illustrate some of the challenges that we have at times. We had a water leak at the Stearns Community Center, and that water leak brought water into the electrical panel. And when we tried to address that and uncover the challenges and peeled back the roof, the entire roof structure was completely disintegrated from a lack of maintenance. And we ultimately had to cut the entire roof off that building and build up the new roofing structures before we could put a roof back on that. What would normally be a simple reroof project turned into a hole what we called a roof academy, and cost the city over $1,000,000. So that one project alone eight well into and beyond the emergency funds that we had available for facility work. Speaker 6: And I would say that we're probably going to be facing the same type of problem with the fire station nine situation, which obviously was not planned or foreseen. Otherwise, it would be listed in this 520 budget. But I think because of the serious nature of that, that. Unforeseen issue with the the mold in that fire station. That's going to be an issue that I'd like to see moved to a priority list. And I've already had the conversations with the city manager as well as fire chief to do that. And so, again, it's good to know that there are some contingency funds here. Obviously not going to be enough. So the other pieces is mobility. We've talked a lot about that. We've made a lot of great progress in the city with Measure A and other funding streams. Can you talk about how your department leverages the the other measures other other measures from from the county MTA like measure R, measure M SB one funding to to and where those funds are going toward to overall master plan. We I know we get to put a lot of emphasis on measure a I'm sorry. Yeah. Imagery. Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think it's a really good question. And just as reference, if we went back three years, which is before Measure A, it's before the extension of L.A. County Measure M and before SB one gas tax, we were able to make an investment of roughly $16 million into our city streets. Today, our investment is more than double that. We're at about $33 million. So we're able to make significant strides in addressing our deteriorated roadways citywide. And you have to remember, and that's one of the reasons I try to illustrate are our Complete Streets approach, that we're not just doing paving, we're adding in those ADA ramps. Whenever we touch the street, we're adding in and fixing those sidewalks that are damaged and fixing the curbs and gutters that are damaged. So I know at times there's there's concern about the cost of the street, but you have to understand that it's a full package. And when we're done with that particular street, we don't plan on having to be back in that area, except maybe for some maintenance slurry for ten or 15 years that we're really doing a complete project and then moving on to the next. And I think we're very excited about some of the funding sources that we have and we're able to address. We're now getting into some of our major corridors. You know, I've had conversations about market before and that is on the list of streets that we're working on. That and dilemma in District eight. Speaker 6: Of course, we are interested in our District eight projects, but in the interest of everybody's time here, I'm interested in the citywide efforts as well. I think you you hit on something that begs another question. I know we got some communication today from some residents regarding, you know, seeing a line item. The states that we're spending up to $10 million or planning $10 million for for planning and design for for our streets program. Explain how and and what that contra I think that's actually one of our items in in our agenda today. But can you explain how those funds are used for for our our mobility plan? Speaker 1: Sure. Thank you for that opportunity. So the item before the council this evening is an extension of existing on call engineering contracts, and we're asking for a total capacity of $10 million for various design needs. That not only includes our street projects, but it also includes work that we're doing on Shoemaker Bridge, which is a large design cost and endeavor for us to take on. So these are budgeted amounts. They aren't actually committed to specific projects, so to speak. It's part of our on call package. Having those engineering contracts in place allows the department to be very nimble in how we design, build and deliver streets throughout the city. And if you go back to the map that I shared earlier, it's one of the reasons that we have had so much progress in the last three years. I think Council for their support in our on call contracts. There was one approved earlier this year for All American Asphalt and Sally Miller. So those two large road building contractors are now under contract in the city and allows us to deliver streets much quicker. Speaker 6: Thank you for that. My next question is for our health department director on this call. AP. Obviously, our health department is doing a lot of work here in the city, a lot of important work, and we appreciate it. Obviously, the the major issue and the issue of the day is homelessness for and we hear it from our constituents on a daily basis. What are we doing? How are we doing? And we can't do enough. It doesn't appear. But and I but I know we're making a lot of. Progress and not much credit to you, your department and the people that work hard every day for our health department and for the city. My issue always has been and always will be. Are we doing enough outreach and does this budget meet your outreach needs for for the city to really make a positive impact on this very important issue? Speaker 11: So we conduct outreach every day. We are we are out. And I think the key thing to understand is that we have a planned outreach system and then we have all the phone calls that come in with additional places that people would like us to visit. And we often don't have the capacity to make it to all those places, particularly when we you know, there's a there's an a focus on something more quickly. And so to have you know, we often we say, well, we can be out there within 48 hours or something instead of being able to be out there right away . Um, the measure h funds are funding additional outreach. So right now we have those resources. Our problem is, as you know, at our current capacity, is that we have, you know, people out on sick leave and going back to school and some other things. And so we are down significantly in our outreach capacity. Um, not, not necessarily due to the funding of it, but more about, uh, with the situation with the people who are outreach workers. Then, you know, they'll come back, we'll get people hired and we'll be able to move forward. But the measure H has allowed us to build outreach capacity. Speaker 6: Okay. And for the the those employees who do this critical function and it's it is really a critical job. What are their work hours and winter normal? What is the normal work week look like for an outreach worker for homeless? Speaker 11: It's Monday through Friday. They often go out at 530 or so in the morning so that they can meet people while they're out first thing. The Multi-Service Center is open until approximately 430 every day, but Thursdays it closes a little bit earlier on Thursdays. It's not open on the weekends or extended hours from there. Speaker 6: Okay. So if someone has a need for for or is experiencing something, they have to wait until after basically office hours at this point. Speaker 11: They can call two on one, so they can call the county to run one and get referrals to services. The other is we have the contract with the local motel, so we have vouchers held, right motel rooms held through voucher that are available after later hours to the police department or fire department if they've identified somebody who was ready to go into housing. Aside from that, we do not have any other services available. The interesting piece is that the providers of most of those who provide services within the city, if they are shelters, they tend to be full by mid-afternoon. And so even if they're, you know, if they were open later to take increase, they don't really they generally don't have any additional beds. So that is certainly an issue. And 125 bed shelter that we're planning to open will have, you know, a very positive impact on that opportunity. In addition, that the 24 hour nature of the new shelter will allow for ongoing services. So while we currently don't have the weekend and evening opportunities, the shelter will be able to provide that. So we really see a shift in the ability to access services once that happens. Speaker 6: Thank you. I know obviously, I know this is a work in progress, but we certainly still have work to do. I'd be more than supportive in terms of extending those hours making. And I know Councilmember Price has talked about this as well. There's there's this is a 24 hour kind of need in operation and in many respects. The and so the development services. Thank you, Ms.. Tatum. I just want to say your department is, you know, really on overdrive, doing quite a bit of work here in the city. Major development projects, small development projects. You guys are doing it all I do. I think you gave some great, great information regarding our code enforcement and how the numbers are actually up. And I guess they're doing a whole lot more with less if you listen to Mr. Kim vs public comment. But the up plan I just wanted to just just so give some some praise on on that that work particularly because I know it's going to make a very positive impact. That work is going to have a great positive impact on North Long Beach, my district, as well as a District nine. And I know it's something that that Councilmember Richardson and I very much support. And so we continue that. I think the zoning work there is going to not only transform North Long Beach, but it's going to also have an impact on the entire city. So keep up the great work. I just want to just give some some comment on that and no real budget comments. Thanks. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Councilor Marie Ringa. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mary and I. Want to piggyback on some of the some of the things that Castmember Austin has said in regards to some of the positive works about being out there. But also, there's some challenges that that we need to face as well in terms of public works. I know that, you know, we have our challenges with infrastructure, with sidewalks and streets, especially when we're talking about the deterioration of some of those cement streets that are almost beyond their lifestyle, their life cycle going at 70, 80 years, which is, I think, something like the life cycle of a concrete street. So is have you looked at which ones you're looking at to maybe convert into maybe asphalt type street? Or have you identified what areas those would be looking at the next ten years, five years, whatever it is that we need to look at those trees. I know there's there's a couple of streets that are really I mean, just in dire, dire need. People complain about their, you know, alignments going off in their vehicles and what have you. So is there is there a plan that you have in place or is it something that's coming in the very near future? Speaker 1: Councilman Murang'a, you are correct. We do have some street segments within our citywide network that is constructed of concrete entirely of concrete. And while concrete streets tend to last longer than an asphalt street. They're also extremely expensive to replace. And we've been struggling with that cost and managing the replacement of different segments. Part of the challenge is many of our concrete streets are within historic neighborhoods. And as we start having discussions about doing an overlay or putting asphalt on top of those streets to try to repair them, community members have come out and expressed concern about the historic nature of their street, or rather the concrete street, adding to the historic nature of their neighborhood and community, and have essentially asked us to not put asphalt streets down. So that's a struggle that we're trying to work through, knowing that there's a significant cost to replace with concrete versus doing an asphalt overlay is really been the biggest challenge and something we'll continue to work on as we move forward. Speaker 6: Do you have any. Ideas, any kinds of out of the box type of thinking that we could use or maybe that the city council can look at to perhaps set a set out, set aside some funding that will address perhaps the the worst concrete streets so that we can improve those, especially if we, as you mentioned, and we'll have one of the largest historic areas in my district, and it's all concrete. And when you look at repairs that I've made, rephrase it that we have made in the city in regards to street improvements and so well prepares. It just stands out. There's nothing that that's been taking place in that area because the majority is concrete. But I think that the time is arriving where we need to look at how we're going to mitigate that, how are we going to repair those kinds of streets with concrete, like for like so that it can maintain the the integrity of those neighborhoods, perhaps what we might want to do and we can do it tonight. But obviously, I think we need to look at some future discussions as to how we can leverage some of these budgets that we're getting the funds, major funds to put to the side so that we can address especially those those are streets in in a historical district so that we can repair to maintain the integrity of those districts and maintain the quality of life that people have gotten used to in the streets in that area. So I'm just throwing it out there as a as a thought. You know, we could have off of the mike discussions afterwards when we when we meet at our regular meetings to talk about how we can address this. Speaker 1: And certainly happen to work with you on on moving this forward. And I did want to share that, that there is an out of the box idea that the team has come up with and that is colored asphalt. So there is a way to lay asphalt that isn't the typical black asphalt that you see in a street. But we can get it to a color that could be very close to matching what a concrete street looks like. So that might be an alternative that works in those historic neighborhoods. Those are things that we're exploring. We wanted to try to get a sample so we could put a call it a pilot paving, if you will, of what that might look like and see if it's something that we would consider moving forward with. So those are some of the things that we're working on. But yeah, continue to work with you on trying to figure out a way to address those streets. Speaker 6: Really. I'm really glad to hear that because obviously we need to think about new and innovative ways of how to address these these big challenges that we had that we have in regards to development services. You know, one of the biggest challenges that I have in my district and probably, you know, citywide is the zoning that we have. We just went through a major Alawi exercise two years back, looking at our transportation corridors. What we could do there, and especially we were talking about the housing elements in regards to affordable housing, transitional housing and how we could address our homeless and mobility issues with the city in regards to getting people to and from places to work and also be able to afford to live in Long Beach as well. So I mean, and a lot of that has to do with with with how we how we structure our our code in terms of those corridors, residential, commercial. Remain. Are the other ones. At last track rate, residential commercial. And there's a third one there. I can't think of it right now. Speaker 3: Industrial. Speaker 6: Industrial, of course. Industrial. So, I mean, it's it's it becomes an issue sometimes in some neighborhoods. I know that was a major a big discussion when we're going through the Allawi discussion, because there were some residents who were concerned that some of these changes that we were looking at would affect residential areas in regards to heights. And some of the buildings around residential neighborhoods, especially around the corridors that are that are adjacent to two neighborhoods where you would have aa4 or five storey building going up and there would be a single family homes right behind that. And that still continues, I think, to be to be a concern. And and so I think we have people who are monitoring that very closely because they don't want that intrusion of a five or six storey building that is going to be looking into people's front yards or backyards. So I think we still have to be very careful, I think, in that area as far as what we're what we're proposing to do. And I'm especially concerned with with some some of the. The the the the zoning that we have in some of the corridors, it's, you know, you know exactly what I'm talking about in terms of Santa Fe. I mean, it's that Santa Fe corridor that I have there has so much potential. And it did have potential at one time, but because of the changes nature of it was it was incremental or or how it happened. But, you know, that whole corridor is just a mishmash of all kinds of different. Commercial, industrial, residential. It's crazy, you know, and it really, I think, hampers how we address the West Long Beach area, especially in that Santa Fe corridor, because there are restrictions and and the and the codes that are there in residential, commercial and the ability to build a residence right on Santa Fe that you had is totally, completely out of place. And you know what I'm talking about? I mean, that that shouldn't have to happen, but I want to prevent that happening again. So I'm going to be obviously discussing with you and looking at ways that we can create more opportunities for development. That's going to be very, very beneficial to the community, to the West Long Beach community in regards to business development as well as providing improved housing opportunities along that corridor as well. So and what are the major obstacles I think that we have here is and I don't know you you probably can tell me, is being able to adjust change. Get rid of. Some of those measures that that restrict us from being able to provide greater business and economic development and in that area. So that's something that, again, something we can't deal with right now tonight. But I want to throw it out there as as a a need in that area, because I'm you know, I'm constantly being confronted with we're not doing anything for the we're saying we're not doing anything for Santa Fe Corridor. And the understanding is, well, you know, the the zoning laws, the zoning rules in that area prevent us from doing that. I mean, I have to give kudos to the eighth and ninth districts for being able to do such the other such a great job and what they're doing with the with economic development in those areas. But they were able to do so because contiguous is a nice it's a nice contiguous community that they can do that. Not nothing like I can do that in West Palm Beach because zoning rules restrict us from doing that, and we need to revisit that. And I'm really getting passionate about this because I really feel that, you know, our hands are tied because of the zoning rules that we have in that area. And that includes Will Willow Street as well. That goes from the freeway to to the border to L.A. and that that also has a mixed use mishmash of different zoning rules, where you have houses next door to businesses, next door to churches that just me makes that corridor a complete mess. And we need to be able to be able to correct that. We're going into a future here where we want to build real, good communities for people to want to live there and that and be proud that they're living in that area. And if we have zoning laws and rules that restrict that, I think that needs to be corrected. Speaker 3: And that councilman will be happy to work with you to address some of those issues. You're correct. We do understand where they are and will be. Speaker 6: We hope we will. Thank you very much. In terms of the health department, you know, again, the health department is just amazing in everything that you're able to do with grants and what, 97%. Of your budget is grants and funding in the. Excuse me. Are you? Well, yeah. What's 2% now? Speaker 7: Yeah. Speaker 11: Yeah. So 85% comes from grants, about 15% comes from fees, or maybe 13% comes from fees like the environmental health. And the other 2% comes from the general fund. Speaker 6: So you continue to face challenges. And, you know, I was, as mentioned earlier in terms of the, you know, STD, STD investigations that you have to do and and the TB education investigations you had to do so many and and with limited staff and you do quite a bit with what you have. And that having been a former Health Department employee, I know the great work and the commitment that individuals have there because they might they might not be able to get the great big bucks that they probably deserve. But it's a labor of love and they love their work. And they really have a lot of kudos for for the health department and the employees that work there, because they really do have a commitment to service in Long Beach and especially working with the health department. But we do have some challenges, right? We have our language access program that is in your department, in your area. I know that you have increased the allotment for a full time language access program coordinator, which is great. But if you heard tonight, as you heard tonight, we had quite a number of residents come up here and say, you know, I came for a service and I didn't get it. Because there was a language barrier. So we need to improve that. And I could understand, if not only in your lap or in the health in the health department. It's a citywide issue. And I think we need to look at at different departments, especially those that have a lot of public contact, like commercial services, where they go up and pay their bills. We need to provide we have to provide more opportunities to hire bilingual staff and provide them with the bilingual pay that they deserve in order to provide that service. So this is that's a citywide type of issue. And I don't know if the EEOC is is capable of doing that. Okay. I must ask father part. I must say, I fell in love anyway. Where was I? Anyway, bottom line is that. That when it comes down to. Service, sir, increasing our ability to serve the communities, especially when in the diversity with languages and with cultures. I think we were not doing the best job that we possibly can to serve those communities. And it's and as we move forward. Long Beach has become increasingly diverse. Increasingly people of color. Increasingly, people with different languages that speak here. So, I mean, we need to move forward. We need to progress with that so that we can start getting better service to our communities who need that. So I know it's not you per se, but having a full time language access program coordinator, I think provides us that opportunity to to address that, that issue that we're getting. And it's it's only going to get worse. So we really need to be a little bit more proactive in trying to address the language needs of our communities, because it's it's it's it's an increasing issue that's coming up. And then one last thing that I wanted to to get before I get off my soapbox. I know we're I'm one on one right now. It is the is the the issue with geez, I lost my track at that rainbow train of thought. Anyway, I'll just go ahead and stop there for Don. If it comes back, I'll re line up and bring it back. But I think it's, it's it's phenomenal what you're doing with the the budget that you have. I and I've repeatedly said again and again, especially right around this time of year, budget budget time is that we need to look at institutionalizing much of the services that you do and get away from grants. We need to start we need to institutionalize what we're doing with STD education and investigations. Well, what we doing with homeless homeless services we need to that those need to be part part of the essential services that the city provides and that have to rely on grants. So I'm off by soapbox. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Councilman Pierce. Speaker 4: All right. Good evening, everyone. How you guys doing? Yeah, it's like almost 11 and I've got a long list, but I'm going to talk excitedly for you guys if I could. Okay. So I'm going to start with public works. And just overall, again, these three departments, just like last Tuesday, you guys are essential to my constituents, the city of Long Beach as a whole. I'm very impressed with the changes that we've made from year to year, recognizing that we've brought on a whole new industry cannabis into the city and tried to regulate not only retail manufacturing , understand that that's a challenge that we're undertaking, a huge CHP projects. And so just overall, I've enjoyed working with all the directors and really appreciate you guys working with us to deliver the needs that our constituents are really asking for. So I'll start with public works. The first question is really around our mobility plan. I know that we talked last time around making sure that enforcement was really key for our scooters and our bikes and making sure we're getting those off the sidewalks in our business corridors. I also know that in downtown we have a lot of tourists and that those are often the people that ride the scooters on the sidewalks, that ride kind of erratically and aren't getting to work to home. And so we've had lots of conversations around what the D Cal program looks like. I know we don't want them, you know, every two feet. I know we don't want five different organizations putting them on our sidewalks. So I hope that you can share with us what the DeKalb plan is and if that's included in this budget. Speaker 1: So kind of going back to the presentation we made on our Micromobility program, good news. We're about ready to release our MICROMOBILITY permit for the permanent program. And Councilmember, if you remember during that presentation, we wanted to come up with a modified drop zone vehicle. And within that modified drop zone vehicle, it would include language relative to no writing on the sidewalk. Plus, our new program really strengthens the rider education component as something that is it was part of our pilot program, but it was a much weaker component that we believe that the new program, working with the vendors who want to do business in Long Beach, will have to really strive to implement better rider education, information, training videos, regular tests, if you will, just as more of a safety reminder. And so those are those pieces together, I think Will along with some enforcement that we're working with the police department on, some specialized enforcement paid for from these fees that we'll get out of the MICROMOBILITY program will help address some of the sidewalk writing that we're experiencing. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you for that. When we're talking about our street repairs and street request in the second District, the most requests I get are for our alleyways. And I you know, I take an alleyway every single day and it feels like off roading, but it's just so much easier to get to the street that I need to get to. What is a realistic timeline around? I know we have an alleyway plan. I know that with Measure eight, we're doing the dirt roads first. Can you just talk a little bit more about the Alleyway plan and funding that's needed for that and kind of what's happening. Speaker 1: To do that? Similar to our payment management plan, we did a similar thing for all of our alleys. We know our conditions of those alleys and their relative need. It's roughly $100 million. I think the number is 98. In the presentation, we have the $5 million commitment for Measure two to pave the dirt alleys. So that's really good news. We'll finish that in fiscal year 20, but we haven't yet identified funding for repairing the alleys moving forward. One of our challenges, Measure eight, gives us some flexibility. Most of our transportation dollars are tied to just that, to transportation and alleys are typically not eligible for fund for those type of funds. So I look forward to working with this council, moving forward on identifying dollars that can help us address kind of that next level of of problem. Alley We know we have some that aren't dirt but are very, very close, you know, asphalt that has worn away, large pothole segments, new grading that needs to occur because there's retention of water. And so I certainly realize that every district could point to really, really bad alleys. And I'm looking forward to try to find funding to be able to address those moving. Speaker 4: Well, hopefully in the next year we can try to work on that a little bit more. Definitely the second district, I think because we have so many multifamily areas, people really do use the alleyways as additional roads and so it is a question I get asked often. So I needed to make sure that I asked for everyone. The next question I have is just around staffing. It looks like you're doing a great job with interns. I, I start as an intern at Lane before I became staff, so I have great appreciation for that. Is there a plan to take interns to full staff? Because I know that you have staff openings, so I didn't know what the plan was to fill those openings if it was with interns or so. Speaker 1: I certainly agree. We have a great partnership with our colleges and we have been able to attract a lot of bright young men and women who want to come and see what we see, what it's like to work in public works. And it gives them a good on the job training opportunity and gives us a good resource to be able to to get some things done. I'm a strong believer in giving folks an opportunity to move into the city. And so we'll be working with civil service to make sure that there are those testing opportunities and that our interns are eligible to take those tests and get on lists so we can ultimately hire them. Speaker 4: Awesome. Thank you. I want to give you props for Vision Zero. I think this year you guys have really stepped it up. I know that in the second district, we're obviously having a lot of conversations around that. I also this year will be spending some of our divide by nine funds to focus on Seventh Street. And so I'll be just on the visioning. So I really look forward to working very closely with you guys. So we're doing that with you and, you know, looking at planning and making sure that we don't have a vision that doesn't set with the city parameters. So looking forward to that and the thanks for giving props to AOC seven. They definitely rock. My next my next focus is going to be on development services. But my first question is really for both of you guys. I know that we have a lot of businesses and particularly in the cannabis industry that I get complaints on around how they go forward with the permit process. And I think it's there's permits with public works and there's permits with development services and trying to understand, you know, alignment with those. I understand in the past there was more coordination or that's what I was told by a previous member of this body, that there was coordination to make sure that people had one point person that was able to really talk them through both public works requirements and development services. Is there anything in the budget or process right now within your departments to make sure that. That that those things are clear to people that are trying to go through the permit process. Speaker 3: I would say that generally the the planning department, because we issue the entitlements and we coordinate with all of the other departments for the comments that those other departments have on a project. As it goes through the process, we tend to tend to be the lead. And we do have a key contact person in public works that we coordinate any development project with. And that point person coordinates with all of the other bureaus and divisions within public works. So I think we do have a fairly, fairly well-defined process for coordinating. The thing I would point out is that in addition to public works and planning for all the permitting, there is a separate process that these cannabis projects need to go through, and that's out of the city, the city manager's office. So I think we do have a fairly well-defined process, but probably like anything it could be better. And to the extent that we have a feedback on, I guess, critical areas that we need to address, we're certainly more than happy to take a closer look at how we can improve those, but we didn't propose any additional funding in the budget for that purpose. But I would just mention one other based upon the Council direction a few months ago. One of the things we are looking at is, is are just ways to streamline and make it a little bit easier for those businesses to go through the process. And the results of that will be coming back to you in the next, I'm going to say the next few months. So hopefully we can take a look at that. I guess the development in the permitting process to see if there are ways that we can continue to work on streamlining the process. Speaker 1: That's been I think I would add just two quick things to Linda's comments. And one is our new building permit center. If anybody hasn't been there, they should go. We've been able to co-locate a business license, public works, planning, building. Everybody sits now on the second floor. So that's kind of a truly one stop shop. So that's going to help everything become more efficient. And then I mentioned earlier in my presentation that Public Works has just released a development guideline, and that's really intended to help people walk through the public works process. So we're happy to put any companies that have questions in touch with our operation. And within that guideline book, it provides very definitive timelines of when people should expect to get a response back. Speaker 4: That's great. I didn't hear that. Thank you for that. I do know that in our economic development services, one of the things that they did, you know, a couple of years ago was really doing the online portal for small businesses that were trying to open up. And I know that technology sometimes is our strongest suit and sometimes we feel light years behind. And so anything we can do to think about technology in that effort, whether it's an online timeline where you're here and here's the department you talk to next, obviously would be awesome. But thank you guys for for answering that direct question. For Development Services, I want to thank you for the work that you've done on housing, on the short term rentals and bringing staff on to do that and all the stuff that you brought on last year's budget. I really am impressed with that and I appreciate the additional community outreach. Obviously, it's an area we can always do try to strive to be our best at. Let me see. I want to make sure I find my notes before I pass on. My team is writing notes in my Google doc as I'm talking like I'm going to read this. I love you guys. You're awesome. Let's see. Development services, technology on the Cup, focusing on restaurants and entertainment. How are you guys going to engage the community members like we did on the first up overhaul? Speaker 3: Can you repeat the first part of that? What effort? Speaker 4: You mentioned the second phase of updating the CFP process in your presentation. Speaker 3: I. I did not. I talked about the cannabis process. That's the one thing we're taking a look at. Was that what you meant? Speaker 4: No. In not in your presentation. In the budget book, it talks about focusing on restaurants and entertainment uses next. Speaker 3: Yes, we will. We have a standard protocol for doing community outreach. And what we would typically do is identify a couple of different phases. First, the general public to get their feedback, but we also like to make it a point to reach out very specifically to stakeholders. So to the extent that we're trying to target restaurants or any specific entity in the business community, we would make it a point to work directly with our economic development department, chambers of Commerce, or anybody that could make sure that we're reaching out to the folks who are going to be most affected to make sure that that input is is incorporated into whatever we bring back to council. Speaker 4: I appreciate that. I remember when we did the CFP process the first time when we tried to do a lot of outreach, there was a lot of business owners that were scared, for whatever reason, to talk to the city and to share their honest opinion. The people that we did get to the table when we had the City Roundtable were the people that were willing to talk. A lot of them were restaurant owners. And so I would encourage you to go back to that list and engage those that are willing to really be honest with the city so that we get honest feedback. So that that would be my request on that. And that's all I have for for those two departments. I really appreciate, again, you guys have done a great job in addressing the concerns that we've brought up. Now for the Health Department, I feel like I'm the cheerleader of the health department. Every budget cycle this microphone is so far, I feel like I'm leaning over the table. You do a lot with a small amount from the general fund, which I'm greatly appreciative of. As was mentioned by the mayor, our city numbers are absolutely unacceptable and I think it's been great to see the funding that we added last year's budget really out on the streets. We've really seen the mobile unit. I actually went and did my own, you know, we had it at the park. I went and did my acid test right there with the mobile unit. Everybody was fantastic. They served a lot of people that day. I think that the numbers that we have there are great. My question is, in your in the strategic plan, we do a lot of great plans. And then you got to come to us at the budget and you got to beg for kind of crumbs, you know , identifying $2 million and identifying the necessary funds to make sure that our state plan is real is going to be difficult. And so I just I want to say whatever help we can do to try to identify grants and partnerships with other organizations, I know in the planning groups, we have a lot of great people at the table, but I also know we have a lot of great people at Cal State, Long Beach and professors that want to help do the work and doctors that want to help do the work. So anything that we can do, because now Carla has really been engrossed in that community to make sure that we're using all the resources that we have at our fingertips, because it is an epidemic that could get worse if we're not really tackling it. I wanted to comment on the Office of Aging. I wasn't here when the council directed staff to create the Office of Aging with that staff person. We have a plan, a strategic plan for our aging adults. What is what does it look like not to have staffing for that department? I mean, my district is 35% seniors. And now that we have a plan without a staff person budgeted, what does that mean for us? Speaker 11: So we had one time funding that we were able to carry over through accessing some small grants to make it through two years. That funding ends as of October one. That position is the one who is driving our Healthy Aging Center all the additional older adults strategic planning that is taking place or an age friendly initiative. The key areas of focus are really housing and homelessness, as we are seeing increasing numbers of older adults becoming homeless. Transportation is a core issue that comes up all the time health, safety at home, in the community and quality of life. One of the key things we're really trying to do is how do we bring an age friendly lens to all the work of the city so that every time we plan, every conversation also acknowledges the fact that we need to look at it a little bit differently and a sort of a universal approach for older adults. So without somebody in that space, those things get set aside or they're piecemeal together whenever someone has some time to focus on it. And the data show that by 2030, five, older adults over the age of 65 will outnumber the number of children under the age of 18. So we've got about 15 years to get ourselves really together, to be able to have the systems and services in place. And our older adults within the city are becoming more diverse and generally lower income are seeing higher levels of poverty and homelessness. So there's a lot of work to be done there and there will not be anybody to hold that space. We do have a public health nurse. We do have a half time mental health social worker who does co-locate at the Fore Street Senior Center to provide services. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you. I mean, looking at the at the strategic plan that you guys presented, when I look at the needs and the opportunities, the opportunities seem really large and they don't seem like we're tackling with all the resources that we that we need to. And so understanding that sometimes our senior population is also the most difficult populations to reach, whether because of the housing that they live in or whether it's because they don't trust, because there's so much fraud that happens out there. I would love to see us have that staff person back and I don't know where my colleagues are on that, but I know that my constituents are just getting used to having that staff staff person there. We had five senior roundtables where she's been able to come out, and it's been a huge resource of sharing information that these people didn't know was there. And so it's something that I would like to explore. The second part, I think you'll no one's going to be surprised, but the language access policy for 2020 have been again around since the beginning of this advocacy. I was really proud of us in the last two years and the progress we made with the conversations on this council. Unfortunately, there's not a representative for District One, but I do know that that is a district that has the largest number of Spanish speakers. The needs have not decreased by 50%. And so the idea that we would put in 50% of the funding. I'm just really confused by that. I really don't understand why we would reduce that funding whenever we actually need more. We know that whenever we go out and we educate the community that the government is here to work with them, where often there's not a lot of trust with the government, where often they don't know that they can come and actually communicate with the people that are supposed to represent them, then our democracy is flawed. This is at the core of what cities do. This is what big kids cities do. L.A. does, Sacramento does, San Francisco. They have a language access plan that is real, and it is baked into to every fabric of what they do. So I appreciate that we have on here funding Francesca's position full time, totally support that the idea of skill pay, bilingual skill pay. I've heard a lot of stories about what workers can get it, what workers can't. Every department should have somebody that has bilingual skill pay. Every department interfaces with the public in some way. Every department has someone that picks up the phone and is talking to a constituent in a different language. What we talked about last time was really how we make it structural, and that's not just about that position being full time, but that it's been for the last two budgets that I've been a part of. We've talked about having people in every single department be responsible for translation and making sure that we don't have like the water department. Right. Right now we're talking about rate changes, but we only have information in English. So how are we making sure that every constituent out there is able to know what's happening? So that's what when we talked about whether it's Rex uses his baked in sprinkled on top you know thing but that's what we mean by language. Access cannot just be the council saying, hey, we have language access. It has to be in the culture of every single department where those people have a budget item, a line item in every single department that says, here's what we're using so that we are a city that is accessible to everybody. So I support in the, you know, the what we call in this people's budget should know that by now. I definitely support, you know, making the full time position, the bilingual school pay interpretation, translation and community stipends on outreach. I mean, I know we did a budget meeting recently that was supposed to be bilingual, that a flier didn't get translated for the bilingual budget meeting until very recently before. That's not a city that has a culture of language access. And so I think that we can do better. We're a city that has shown ourselves to be really great at doing a lot of awesome things. So I that's my that's my pitch today is that our health department needs to continue doing the great work that they that they do, that if we do strategic plans, that we also need to have a plan to implement those strategic plans and not shy away from that. And if we're going to have language access, if we're going to be that city that is diverse, that we actually create a culture where residents can count on coming to meetings and them being accessible to everyone. I probably have more. I have one more for public works, trees, tree trimming. Tree trimming plan. Can you walk me through that real fast? Speaker 1: Currently, the city has funded about $1,000,000 annually for tree trimming. Given the number of trees that we have citywide that allows us to trim on a seven year cycle. So we essentially have split the city up into seven segments and we do one segment each year. We also have some funding for emergency tree removal, and we've we're starting to experience that more and more during storms that we're losing trees, most of our urban forest and all. We have a number of new trees planted, but most of our urban forest is at the end of their typical tree life somewhere in the 70 year range. And I think Councilmember Mungo had had mentioned at the BMC that we are seeing a number of tree losses and we're trying to ramp up our ability to replace those moving forward. Speaker 4: Thank you every single one of you for your help. Appreciate it. Speaker 8: Is that it? Speaker 4: The. Speaker 8: Okay, we'll move on, Mr. Price. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you. So I'll start. Thank you, all of you, for your presentations. I'll start with public works. So. Mr. Beck, I was looking at the public the parking operations that we have. And I would have thought that with the implementation and the installation of our smart meter technology, that our parking revenues would have gone up. But it seems like the the revenues have stayed pretty stable. Um, in looking at page 83 on our budget summary. Can you speak to that at all? Speaker 1: And certainly I think when you look at the overall parking revenue for this fiscal year, we had a large drop off because of the construction projects that we experienced in the downtown. So for a number of months, almost six months, we had no meters active in two of our main corridors on third and on Broadway in the downtown area. We're just getting those meters installed and back online, so we're hopeful to get back up to speed in our anticipated parking revenues. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 3: It looks like I mean, the highest we've been was in in 2018 and then we dipped down. So unless I'm reading this wrong, I mean, I was thinking that the increase would be significant with the installation of the smart meters and our ability to be more efficient with enforcement. Do we expect that that number, even from the 2018 period of time, will go up a lot higher once all of our lots are on the smart meters and operating? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that and as I mentioned earlier, if the pilot with the automated license plate reading comes through as we anticipate it will, that will also help us be more efficient. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 3: I will say the parking citation revenue increased dramatically and I don't know how much of that had to do with I know we had a slight increase, but that's recent. And then the smart meters. That's a good revenue source for the city. It's a steady revenue source for the city. But do you know what that increase could be attributed to? Is a combination or is it mostly the smart meter technology? Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The question was parking enforcement citation. Speaker 3: Revenue. Speaker 1: Oh, so the council adopted an increase to the parking citation amount and that went up $10 per unit. This fiscal year. Speaker 3: Okay. So that's why the proposal is about 2 million more. Okay. Makes sense. Curtis. Okay. We had some revenue changes that I noted in your summary, your budget summary on page four of three. And it looks like it was pretty significant from it was revenue from other agencies went down from 434 million in 18 to 25 million . Now is that and actually went down and in 19 and 20 what is that attributed to that $10 million difference. If you know. Speaker 1: Okay. I am on page 403. Speaker 3: Revenue from other agencies. Speaker 1: I can get those details and provide those to you in in more specifics. Speaker 3: Okay. I'm assuming it's probably, you know, revenue that we got maybe from the state or county that that ended. And I just want to know, moving forward, if we're expecting that backer or not. You talked about $21 million. And I don't know how what you referred to it as, whether it was emergency funds or. Councilman Austin was asking you about that $1 million. I'm sorry. What? Speaker 1: $1 million? Speaker 3: Oh, $1 million. Correct. I heard $21 million. Speaker 1: I heard you elevate that. I'm. I'm happy to receive 21 million. Happy to put that to good use. Speaker 3: Okay. But that's just. And that's for emergency repairs. Speaker 1: $1 million for emergency repairs? That's correct. Speaker 4: If we were to. Speaker 3: Identify additional moneys for Ali's for FY 20, would we be able to? How feasible would it be to allocate that money on a divide by nine type basis so that every district could get a portion of that additional moneys to be able to repave an alley or two? Speaker 1: Well, I think as your public works director, I would recommend one of two options. Either that that you equally divide the money or you do it by need. And we when I say by need, what we would look at is a total. Call it square footage of Ali's spread across the city. And then you would divide it by that percentage. So if District three had 10% of the alleys citywide and District four had 12% of the Ali's, you would divide the numbers by those percentages. That's what we did with the extra million dollars that we received for path of travel sidewalks. We we divided it by need based on the number of sidewalk square footage by district. Speaker 3: Okay. So there would be a mechanism to ensure, you know, the entire city benefits from additional funds that we'd be able to allocate to a specific need. Speaker 1: That's correct. Speaker 3: Okay. Okay, Fer. Thank you, Mr. Beck, for our Development Services budget. And this may be a better question for Mr. GROSS. Is he still here? Oh, yeah. There he is. Well, I don't know. On page one, 91, it looks like there's a property tax decrease. And that's why 20 in terms of your anticipated revenues. Why is. Speaker 4: That? Because, general, overall, for the city, there's a property tax increase. The property tax that we receive is based on our enforceable obligations. Sorry. The property tax that we receive is based on our enforceable obligations that we put on our ROPS and our enforceable obligations are going down primarily due to this was our last year to repay our city agency loan and that had been a significant amount. Speaker 3: Got it. Request. Okay. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. The other thing that I noticed was the and I didn't put the note on the transfer to other funds. From Development Services. Oh, yeah, here it is. Okay, so on that same page, transfer to other funds in FY 18 was 26 million, and then it went up to. Speaker 4: 42. Speaker 3: And then it drops dramatically for the proposed Y is that that's got to be attributed to something. Speaker 4: So also the ROPS but. We'll have to get back to you. Speaker 3: Okay. No problem. It just it's just a very dramatic dip, like, you know, 40 million. Okay for our health department. How feasible would it be for the Health Department's Multi-Service Center to develop a skeleton crew for the weekends at the Multi-Service Center? Speaker 11: We've looked at various staffing models about what it would take to operate there, and the resources really run between the half million dollars. Um. For a year. For a year. With Saturdays open range between a fully staffed all new by completely stout. Otherwise we would be looking at people trying, you know, working overtime and other sort of situations. And so it ranges between a half million to $700,000 per year to be open on Saturdays, and that's twice that number on Sundays. The issue is that when people come in, you still have to have security, you still have to have supervisors in the building. You have to have people who can assess. So even in a skeleton crew, minimum is between six and about six people by the time everything is covered. Speaker 3: And the 500, 500 is 700 for Saturdays and a million for Saturdays and Sundays. That's on a regular staff. Not regular staff as part of their their hours, not overtime hours, just regular. Speaker 11: So if we were going from leaning toward the $500,000 per day rate or, you know, for a Saturday and then another 500,000 for Sundays, that would be hiring some part time staff, some overtime staff and coverage when we moved to the $750,000 range. That is full time news staff. And they would be operating. They would be they would be full time staff. They would also work early, you know, other days of that week to be able to cover additional capacities. Speaker 3: Okay. Is there any model that you've looked at that doesn't involve opening the center, but having caseworkers or other support people available on weekends or working on weekends? Does it have to be tied to the center? Speaker 11: I think the issue there is that, I mean, we could do outreach on the weekends and do that. The issue is, where do we do the assessments? Where do we connect people to services? And the key thing for us is that most of our providers also don't do intake on the weekends, almost any of them. And so when it comes to if they needed shelter or if they needed some level of care, we would not be able to connect them to that care on the weekends. Um, if we can, if, if we have a center for people to engage in, then we, then we continue to do that work. And then we would look at the possibility of renegotiating some of our contracts or seeing if there would be others to help support those services within the Multi-Service Center. So I think without a place to go, we can do outreach and reconnect people, but then they still have to come into the multi-service center and and do all the full assessments and everything it is to actually start to engage in services. Speaker 3: What about if the service was was limited to maybe providing motel vouchers for that night or for two nights until the multi-service centers open and facilities have intake operations available? I mean. Speaker 11: We're doing that already through the that you know, we're holding the two motel rooms with vouchers per night. And that's exactly what's happening, is that they're being housed in a motel and then they come into the multi-service center the next day and they provide and then they can access services. That's how that model works. Speaker 3: But we're not doing that on the weekends. Speaker 11: We're not. I'm just saying that that's what that we could look at that mechanism. Good. Right? Oh, they do. On the weekends. That does happen on the weekends. I'm sorry. Speaker 3: Not on the weekends. Okay. Speaker 11: For those two motel rooms. Speaker 3: Okay. So so what I'm hearing you say is it really wouldn't be very probably would not be a good use of city resources to open the multi-service center on the weekends anyway, because they wouldn't be able to get anyone into a service because there's no intake on weekends for most of the service providers. Speaker 11: That's correct. I think when we have the, when we have the, the year round shelter open, um, that's a 24 hour operation in that space we would be able to do intakes and connection and have people to land. So at that, at that time, it really does sort of shift the face of accessibility to service overall. Um, but until that time, we have a hard time with working with our providers to access services. Speaker 3: Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you for that. Because I think a lot of us were wondering, you know, if we're assuming there would be a lot of benefits to having the multi-service center open on the weekends. And what I'm hearing is there probably would be some benefit, but it would be limited in nature in terms of placement . That's correct. The outreach teams that we have working on the weekends, I didn't know we had outreach teams working on the. Speaker 11: We don't. Speaker 3: Oh, we don't. Speaker 11: We could if we were going to open the Multi-Service Center on the weekends, part of that team could be outreach teams that could go out, could be conducting outreach, bring people back to the multi-service and go through those service miles. We don't currently have that as our operational OC. Speaker 3: Could we have an outreach teams that worked on the weekends without the Multi-Service Center being open to give vouchers to people to stay in a hotel, to check in a multi-service center that Monday? Speaker 11: We can look at what that would take. Okay. So currently right now, the place, you know, the so the police officers have the opportunity to utilize those two vouchers. We don't conduct any other operations in the quality of life team does not operate on the weekends either. Speaker 3: I know so. Speaker 11: So really the. We could look at a model of outreach. Um. In partnership with the police department and others to determine if we could pull that off and I could bring back information on that. Speaker 3: That would be really great. I think that's something we'd be interested. Maybe we do a pilot where there is a collaborative effort on the weekends and those individuals are housed temporarily for the weekend until they can come in to the Multi-Service Center that Monday. That way there's, you know, there's a close eye on them and they can have transportation and access. Speaker 11: So we'll put well, we'll look at what that could be and we'll make sure to bring that forward. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. How does our how do we currently decide what part of the city we conduct outreach in? Is it complaint driven? Is there a schedule? Speaker 11: There's a schedule. So the city is broken into into sort of segments and those are all visited. So we visit, um, we visit each site at least ten times in a month. And we go out to over 100 sites. And so we're all over the city. And then on top of that, when we receive calls to the Multi-Service Center, we then respond as as we have capacity to respond to those addition to those additional calls. Speaker 3: Okay. Let me ask you this one other question about this weekend of this weekend option. Yeah. Would it be possible in the weekend option that the individual that's working that weekend, the case worker that might be helping doing the outreach, could also follow up with, you know, kind of keep that that case. Like if they make a connection with someone on a weekend, give them a voucher to come to Multi-Service Center on Monday, that they'd be able to be the person that that person sees. It's not guaranteed. But would that would the individual that's working at the Multi-Service Center also be able to do the outreach on the weekends, having that continuity? Speaker 11: Yes, we can do that. I think we would just have to look at what the staffing is and what the days are that they're working in those kind of things. But we do I mean, that is the way relationships are built as our outreach workers. So our outreach workers know just about everybody by name on the streets, as do those. You know, our quality of life workers and the Hart team. So I think those relationships do exist. And we could continue to to build on that with the outreach workers don't do case management necessarily. So we would then when they come into the multi-service center, lead into a straight into the into the ongoing assessment and case management process. But that would likely be with somebody else. Speaker 3: Okay. And Ms.. Colby, I know you're really involved with the collaborative efforts of all the departments in terms of homeless outreach. So when you're bringing this item back, I would love to see is there a model that could work on the weekends where we have collaborative partners, police and homeless services working together to do some directed efforts in particular areas. So what would that kind of look like? Speaker 11: Me and I will have to do back and we did do a pilot of a couple of Saturdays where we went out and did proactive outreach and response. I think it was just in the mornings, but we'll go back and look at that and see what the costs were for that, what that model looks like. And we can we can work from there. Speaker 3: I would love loved to see that data. Thank you very much and know no pressure, but the sooner the better on that because I think we're thinking about options for for this budget cycle. So in terms of okay, so on page 301, of course, I made these notes when I was reviewing the budget this weekend and I don't remember what's on what page on page 301, we from FY 18 to 20. It looks like the other other revenues. So in FY 18, obviously the other revenues was in the $300,000 range and now we're closed. The proposed is close to a $5 million range. What is that? Is that from grant funds? I'm assuming it is, but I don't know. Speaker 11: They're looking for the page. So I wasn't paying for getting people. Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Speaker 11: So what's the question again? Speaker 3: Rio one under other revenues, if you look at Fy18, we're at 351,000, but then it goes up to, you know, above 4 million. So what is the source of that other revenue? Speaker 11: It looks like measure H. Speaker 3: Measure H. Wow. Speaker 11: We received an a significant increase in Measure H funding, that is outreach and other and other sources from the county. Speaker 3: Do we expect that to continue long term? Speaker 11: It is an ongoing funding source. But yeah, it's a ten year funding source. Um, the way that it is distributed. So we receive, we receive a direct allocation based on the percentage of homeless population that the city is of the counties of the county's homeless count. Um, and then we received those revenues only for those, um, for those strategies that Lahsa, which is the county S.O.S. receives. So that's, that's what we get. So it basically covers, um, it covers five different strategies, but it would be ongoing, that is outreach, prevention, rehab and rapid rehousing is the end. Yeah, outreach prevention. Rapid rehousing are the primary areas as well as support in doing the continuum of care. Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's honestly, I did not realize how much of an increase that was to the to the city. That's huge. And I think that's really important for us to to highlight in terms of those county dollars. That's huge. Yeah. And looking at on that same page, I noticed that the amount of overtime that was used in the Health Department in FY 18. Was more than double what we're proposing in FY 20 and as well as 19. So is that because your staffing model has changed or because overtime dollars are not as readily available to you? Speaker 11: We have had a large number of vacancies and we've been requiring staff to work. We've been asking staff to work overtime to cover. So when we're talking about these measles outbreaks and all of those, that is all overtime work and with vacancies. So what we're doing is we are we are working to fill those staffing positions moving forward so that we're not paying the overtime. Speaker 3: Okay. Because we're paying less in FY 20 and overtime and in FY19 and overtime than we did in FY 18. Speaker 11: Right. So we've been building we've been building, we have been hiring so that we're not paying we're not in the overtime structure. Speaker 3: Okay. Got it. Thank you. Okay. On page 84, there's a $9 million reserve for the health department. And I'm wondering where that comes from. What is that? Speaker 11: So the reserve comes. So each year at the end of the year there we, you know, after we've we've closed out the budgets into about ten years ago, we were actually in a deficit situation, unable to make payroll. Since that time, we've been moving forward so that each year that we we work to have to hold some of those funds that we receive and we put it into a reserve. Our goal is a six month reserve so that if grants and we don't have any way to cover people, if at the federal level for some reason, you know, when we've had shutdowns, we are very concerned about how we pay for the housing authority and all those things. So we've just through strong fiscal discipline and prudence, we've been holding those funds. They come primarily from re-alignment funding. Um, so what we've been, you know, and also a lot of, from vacancies when we're unable to fill positions out of realignment and those, those go into the reserve. So we're utilizing those for the six month reserve and we've been utilizing those funds for the HIV, STD positions and other things that the that we don't have ongoing funding for. Sometimes we dip in for one time funding. Speaker 3: Okay. But your intention though, for that $9 million is to continue that reserve and not tap into it in 20. Speaker 11: All right. Well, we are we will be tapping into it for the HIV CD, the tune of $250,000 this year and again next year. Um, that and then the, um, we, we, our intent is to maintain that reserve. But we do have different things that come to us because we are a grant organization through audits and other things that sometimes we do, we pay back. We want to make sure that we have the resources available to do that. Speaker 3: Okay. And these reserves are these reserves. General fund reserves. Speaker 11: They are not. They're re-alignment funding. Speaker 3: Okay. What can realignment funding be used for? Speaker 11: Public health? Speaker 3: Public health? How broad is that category? Speaker 11: It's the work. It's the I mean, it's the work of the public health department, um, moving forward. So we receive approximately it's been between seven and $8 million a year from the state that comes through, that comes to based on population. Those are only on those are only funds that do not have a specific outcome or other. They pay my salary. They pay my administration salary, pays for the lab, pays for vector. It pays for a lot of other things. Any funding that we have available left over from that, that's what goes into the reserve and is held as a public health focus. Speaker 3: Okay. So basically anything that you do in your department, not the housing. Speaker 11: It does not it cannot be utilized for homeless services and other things that are the human services portion of our department cannot be utilized out of that fund. It's very much specific to public health. Speaker 3: Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. All right. I don't have any other questions at this time. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember now. Speaker 2: Thank you. For those watching this meeting or not tonight, it's it's after 11:30 p.m.. So I'm going to streamline my comments because I promised Vice Mayor Andrews I'd get him on before midnight. I guess I'll start with the Health Department and there's so many topics we could talk about, especially the homeless issues. But indifference to today, which happens to be August 20th, happens to be World Mosquito Day. And I appreciate that Kelly mentioned that in her comments. And the American Mosquito Control Association has been around for, I think, 80 some odd years out of Sacramento. So the problem is not getting resolved. And in fact, you can make a case for it's getting worse in terms of the strains and different species in the past. First of all, you want one of your health department staff, Emily Holman, has done a great job. Every year she'd come out and do the presentation. We didn't have it this year. And as you know, we've we've had a West Nile death in the fourth District. So it's something very important to us. I guess. My question is, since the vector control district didn't go through, what is plan B or were you describing it earlier or what is the plan for the future without that in place? Speaker 11: So as a as I indicated, we we pay for vector control out of our realignment funding. The realignment funding has been a fairly stable resource in the last since I've been there in the last five or six years. But prior to that had gone down, you know, based on the economy. So that so basically for vector services, that is our funding source. We're doing our best to keep it stable. But as, as we see increases in, um, in different diseases and different types of mosquitoes and other vector borne diseases, I do have concern that we will not be able to keep up with the capacity given the funding source that it utilizes. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you for that. And so I would just suggest that we we need to. Look at other sources for this and and not let this fall to, you know, not a top priority. It needs to be a top priority, in my view, all the time. I'll move on to public works and thank you, Craig Vick, for mentioning our neighborhood associations. Wesker and AOC seven West is 100% in the fourth District and AOC seven. I think I have one or two streets of that organization, but it's interesting that they're adjacent to one another. For those who don't know, AOC seven is Anaheim Orange, a seventh street and. Jerry and Wesker is buried. Think about this area, how huge it is and dense on the north. It's PCH on the east, Redondo on the south 10th street and on the West Cherry. A huge area. They do a monthly cleanup. Our office provides a dumpster and we're more than happy to do that. And if anyone else would like to form a similar organization, we'd sure support that. And to to public works, I would assume you would just support more groups like that organized organizing. So just want to get the okay on that. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. The more that neighborhoods take control of their own areas, the better we see a reduction in illegal dumping. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 2: And the other piece is, I think the clean team, it's a great concept because we'll have one street or one alley or a certain section of the district that seems to be chronic. And so, you know, regular visits by them, you know, these groups collect so much and trash because they they do it once a month and we're very happy for that. But most of these areas, I think we could do it more often and certainly expand it. Also want to thank you for mentioning the Stearns Park Community Center Roof. And and it is fixed now. I hope so, because Mayor Garcia is going to be there on Saturdays. So we don't want it collapsing on him, if at all possible. But you had many no. Speaker 1: Worries of a collapse. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 2: Councilmember But you had mentioned the the maintenance issue there or the lack thereof and just sort RINO's. Craig Beck inherited this issue as did I, but I think in real numbers it's important to point out that for lack of doing a roof repair or let's say a roof job, I have no idea what that number is. Let's say it would definitely be under $50,000 to fix the roof. The entire repair was 1.4 million. Is that number right? Speaker 1: That's the ballpark, yes. Speaker 2: Okay. So it really behooves us to to do that ongoing maintenance to that point, have you developed a program? Obviously one I guess didn't exist before your time, but but what are we doing moving forward? Speaker 1: Thanks for the question. A couple of things. Partly through measure A, some measure did fund a reroof program. There was $1,000,000 committed to doing roofing. Many of that many of those dollars went towards our libraries and our fire stations. And then secondarily, the facility condition assessment that we're currently underway and will complete here in another few months. One of the most important aspects of that is identifying where we have further roof challenges and we'll be prioritizing dollars towards the roofs. First, we want to make sure that we can stop the leaking and if in fact, that's existing in a building and then we go from there. Speaker 2: Okay. And speaking of water, I think you were leaking. ROSE But you also inherited the the the medians from Parks and Rec recently. And that's a major challenge for us, is just getting the medians watered. We've had this discussion many times, but I just want to say it publicly that we were we weren't watering medians by state mandates. So we're going to look at ways to to get that going again. One of the key areas in my district is the traffic circle, and no one ever said anything about it to me until the grass died. And then we heard from a lot of folks who didn't like that look. I think I'll. I had a couple other notes here. I'm going to, for brevity, move on to development services. I just like to say we have some tremendous personnel there. I'd like to say publicly what Oscar Orsi has meant to community hospital. He's just done a tremendous job and he I don't think he's been recognized publicly. So I'd like to say that now. Christopher Coons. I don't think we've ever thrown a question at him that he hasn't answered, and very often it's directly with a constituent. So that is very much appreciated. I guess the one area where I would like to see us move forward on and that would be communication to the council offices. I think I said the certain thing year after year, but I consider it stakeholders. And if there's a new development or something in our district, a boy, be great to know whether it's a new restaurant and at the time it comes to the planner. We'd love as much information as possible on that so we can promote that. That's all I have. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 8: Okay, fine. I'm going to wake up everyone because I'm going to devote my 38 minutes to Rex. Okay. All right. Well, I'll move on. First of all, I'm going to deal with public works, and that is Mr. Beck. Well, he says, I want to thank you and all your employees for all the hard work you do. You know your department does, especially I want to thank all the people who work in the refuge department. You know, the Transportation Mobile bill does an amazing job. What they have and what they have known to have gone back and forth on the traffic control and and the and pedestrian safety. And I'm impressed that the seven and eight traffics, you know, safety and park and investigation has been completed. Moving on. I would like to say I would really like you and your team to be focused on the consistency process and the criteria to improve traffic calmness measures across the city. These are various plans out there. And the right plan is, you know, we call it the Verizon zero among those others. There have been many ways to implement them and to keep them up this year. So I would like for you to continue to do a great job that you have been doing on the street. So I'm looking forward to meeting with you individually to determine if there are additional resources that this body can allocate to help you with. So I have no really no big questions. I just want to kind of thank you, Mr. Beck, because I heard that once and. MLK that you're going to do Hill Street. That has been I am almost 90 years old and that street is just not being talked about. So I heard that is on the horizon for the next month or so. It is a thank you very much. I just look good. Thank you. Speaker 1: Councilman Richards. Speaker 8: I'm not through. Okay. I got 38 minutes. Go ahead. I'm use all of my 38 minutes. Speaker 1: Get 38 minutes. Speaker 8: I'm good. Okay. And Mrs. Tatum, I want to thank you and your employees for the hard work you and your department does. You know, they are very, you know, courageous in and promptness in their response. And I really must say that because, you know, when we talk about code enforcement and other things, you guys are there because you really help my district, because you guys realize the situation that we're in over there. And I really want to thank you guys very, very much for being so prompt and responsive and the things that you do. I'm very proud that you. Included disability disposition and a department agreement for, you know, Libya. That's a link. And they have a Habitat for Humanity in the budget work that your department accomplishment and all these projects have broken ground in the district. And I know that it would wouldn't have not happened if it was possible without your help. And Mr. Patrick Ewing and Chris Coons and yourself. And you guys are doing a great job. If you look around the sixth District opening up three, we put the shovel in the ground with three projects. And that's saying something, you guys, because the fact that we're going to be able to help, you know, eliminate some of this homeless situation that we have. I'm just telling the other district, get busy, get busy because we got a big job to do. And thank you guys so much for being there for us. I also want to applaud you and your house in the neighborhood serve as well on the Neighborhood Leadership Program. This program really educates our residents on how the city works and empowered them to advocate for their neighborhoods. And I'm excited for the graduation this Saturday. And think everyone of you guys. And the last but not least, I'm going to deal with Health and Human Services. You know, I do have a pet peeve with that situation because the fact that the department at many of our top priorities, under their care and for the many districts in the hot topics are all covered and you're focused on 2020. I looking forward to continue conversation and making our homeless coordination an extreme system and then making it stronger, especially increased increase in our engagement on the youth and keeping our community healthy. One of my biggest pet peeves, and after listening to it tonight was our earlier that believe that we could be stronger in our language access program . I don't speak Spanish fluently, but I realize what the lady was saying tonight when she talks about paying a bill and not being able to have someone to be able to dare to translate that word, because if you don't pay your bills, they're going to cut something out. And these individuals do have a family. And I was very, very saddened. And to me that we're not able to be able to do something about that. So we got to put more money into it and make sure and I don't believe that we yet have, you know, streamlined this system to our non English speaking residents. And can we do a get this information that they need or to interact with that city in a way that can equal to English speakers? I'm very happy that our language coordinators is being made full time, but I worry that maybe this not be insufficient. And and she the goals of providing an equal service to all of our residents. And I'm wondering if there is more that we could do in partnership with community based organizations and other innovative means to leverage the investment. Thank you. I told you I could do it. Less than five. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Unfortunately, the later it gets, the slower I speak. I'll do my best. So first of all, these three departments, I think it's very appropriate that they are presenting together. I think of planning as sort of what's the long term game and how do we think about think long term public works is implementation. How do we get them the resources they need to implement the things that we need? And then health is really quality of life. We all talk about quality of life and what that means. We're fortunate to have our health department. And to think from a health lens on the decisions we make. So all three of your departments are incredibly important to doing our job as a city in providing quality, quality public services. In terms of I'll start with planning long range stuff. So you certainly have a lot going on. So we won't reiterate a lot of that. You know, the city wide stuff I think has been covered. So I'm just going to touch on just a couple of things that that I can speak to congratulate. I think, you know, I can't say enough about Oscar and Christopher Koontz. You've got some great lieutenants within your department. I think the work that took place in Grant Neighborhood this year was was incredible. It meant a lot to place that focus on sort of the historic nature in our communities. It was great to get an update on the Vacant Lot program. I think the next step is to really make that connection to economic development because we wanted to register them, but ultimately we wanted to encourage them to make plans for these vacant lots that have sat vacant across town. So I think we need to make sure in this next fiscal year, we we make that connection between the vacant lot registry and economic development. The Neighborhood Leadership Program is a great program. We've heard a few good things about a plan, and you and I had a conversation about a plan today. I think it's important that we, you know, make sure we intersect a plan with some of the amazing work public works has going and and that we do a better job really lifting up you know, destination uptown right. That's what this is is we've never had this amount of planning attention in Uptown before. And I want to make sure we get this right and that the residents understand how significant of an effort this is. And I know that we have we have a you know, we have we're in agreement on that. I think, you know, just in general, when we refer to the shelter, we need to start referred to it as bridge housing. Right. We need to be disciplined, planning, health and all of us and referring to this appropriately as bridge housing. And I myself will help hold folks accountable to to adopting that, because that's essentially what this is. This is a bridge. It's a gateway to other services, a gateway to getting people out of homelessness. That's what that's what it is. You know, Mr. Koonce has given a lot of I want to make sure that it's important that we know that he has the flexibility to help with this arena process moving forward. It's incredibly important. We're rounding the bend on methodology. We're getting more and more involved in this gang. And when we come out of the arena process, there's a big conversation on what happens beyond arena, and we have a role as a major city to help shape that process. In fact, due to advocacy of, you know, some of the Big Ten mayors and others, you know, there's a there's a grant program that skegg. $50 million that we can help shape to help cities do what's next. And so I want to make sure that that you and Christopher are being proactive while we have a seat at the table and helping to shape what will be helpful to Long Beach from our position and what can help get other cities cranking on this regional housing issue because it is an issue for Long Beach and we can help shape that $50 million program. So that's essentially my comments. I didn't really have any questions for you. Linda is the easy ones. You know, it was move on public works. Just some feedback. So first of all, I know you're doing an amazing job with the limited resources you have and you keep getting more and more responsibilities placed on you. I think we need to think about the name of the Daisy Bike Boulevard I've heard of as the Daisy Myrtle. I've heard that the Daisy Linden Myrtle. It's a north south bike boulevard. I think we can make a better name for that, because I had a hard time even understanding when I thought Daisy Avenue was few different , but it's been referred to differently. It's a great project. You know, me and councilman in Austin went on a ride with you, and it's a great project. And I think we need to embrace these these newer sites, so we need to brand it a little bit better. Artesia Boulevard is something that is always in the conversation with ninth District because only touches the ninth District. Right. So folks may get tired of hearing of it, but hearing about it. But we're the only ones are going to pick up and lift up Artesia because it only touches it's a 91 freeway, essentially only touches the ninth district. And you've done a pretty good job at effect at sort of linking different agencies to lift up how important it is to the region and has been a successful strategy. So, you know, with Skaggs support with the colleagues support with the city strategy, MSR sees support with active transportation stuff and Metro strategy with the great Artesia Boulevard Project. We have something special that's going to begin to take shape this year and so on, to make sure that we are intentional about using this opportunity to address whatever we can address Artesia Boulevard, including undergrounding those utility lines. We will probably not touch Artesia again for another 25 years. So while we have an opportunity, we have to, like early on, embrace this conversation about utility lines. And I know we talk about that, but I think it's important enough for us to lift it up because this is our, you know, one time year to do that out in park. I see it here. I know it's a difficult project. We know once you crack open a near 100 year old building, you're going to find things. And, you know, and this has been you know, we've had to sacrifice over the last, you know, really nine years and focus on assembling that funding over years to be in this project. And we knew we had $7 million to begin. This could potentially be more. So thank you for really taking on this tough project, finding the issues to, you know, finding out how to address these issues. So my question here on out in part is what do we see as the you know, given the action tonight and what we're doing, the budget, what do you see as the anticipated completion of this phase of Highland Park? Speaker 1: Well, if all goes well, Councilmember, we hope to be done in November. Speaker 9: Okay. All right. And I know that that means you always give yourself a couple of months of cushion. So that's a good sign. November. I know they want a. Speaker 1: Couple months of cushion, but certainly we hope to be done in November. And if all goes well, we we will be having a celebration in that month. Speaker 9: Great. Fantastic. And it's again, Highland Park is important. We've made sacrifices. There are five city halls closer to to Highland Park in my district than our own city hall. So to many people, that is our civic center in uptown. I mean, it's it's you know, it's got a North health facility that you, you know, you and Kelly have partnered on and have a really good plan. So it's incredibly important. And I'm looking forward to closing that chapter for now so we can focus on many of the other priorities that we have in Uptown. It's hard to go to the community, say, unfortunately, the next few years we can't focus on playgrounds, we can't focus on this and on that because we have this massive project of 100 year old community center to make safe. So so thank you for that. So I'm going to move on now to health. I'll start with, you know, there's a really there's some some dynamic synergy going on with Kelly and Teresa Chandler and even Diana Tang and and the mayor's efforts in the state led efforts. I mean, I'm noticing the money that you guys are pulling down on homelessness. It should be recognized and we should be encouraged. And you are doing so much work, everyone's lifted that up. And I think everyone's made a strong point that we should be supporting it because every dollar we invest in the health department is leveraged, you know, nine times, 97 times 50 at least. So we have to continue to do that. And while it might be tempting to go to you and talk about efficiencies, the reality is you are the most efficient department. You have consistently been the most efficient department for many, many years. And so we want to continue to reward that efficiency. I lift up a couple of things. It's great to see you're going to be taking on the youth strategic plan. It's great that you guys closed out the Veterans Strategic Plan in this past year, and we gave one times to help with the printing from our our office to help make sure that happens. So that's fantastic. I know we have a lot of workout work cut out for us on Bridge on the Bridge housing project in North Long Beach. We're not there yet. I don't want you know, I think we should all just be realistic that we still have a lot of work to do in terms of the multidisciplinary approach and having all the cities on the same page to make sure that there's the commitment we made publicly to really join hands and push this project. We have to follow that through. And it's going to we're going to have to color outside the lines a little bit. I know that this is going to intersect what you're doing, what Linda is doing, what economic development is doing. But we have to get it right. It's on us to just get on each other's nerves early and figure this out. So we look back on this and this is something that that we can really be proud of, because it's important to all of the work that we're doing in the city around homelessness, sort of. The next thing is the homeless incentive program. We, you know, we came to council and talked about helping to find funding and other we identified some county funding for the in the housing authority, the incentive program. But when we came to council and talked about that, we also talked about the source of income discrimination policy. Do you have an update on where and this is the policy that essentially said you can't outright just say no Section eight in your advertisements and source of income. We should be neutral. Do you know where you are with that policy. Speaker 11: Yeah. So we've we pulled from the county's language to the county recently passed a similar ordinance we have pulled that we think it's a really strong that the language is appropriate and makes a lot of sense for the for the city. So that is currently sitting with the city attorney to draft to draft the ordinance. And we're bringing that forward to you. Speaker 9: Okay. All right, great. You have an idea on a timeline where we can get that back. I just want to close this issue out. Thank you. So next, you know, Councilman Superhot brought up the vector control in my district, about 40% in the Compton Creek Mosquito Abatement District. And we get a question and there's dedicated staff and they do outreach and we see that. And I was, you know, disappointed to see what happened with the Vector District. But at the same time, I didn't see much of an education campaign around it. I don't know that people fully understood what the stakes were and how this understand this helps our ability to respond. What went into the education campaign around this. Speaker 11: Given that it was prop to 18? Um, we were, uh, we were instructed that, that the, a strong education campaign could look more as an advocacy campaign. And so in those cases we were able to, through our, um, through the, the information that went out, you know, with the original survey and then went out with the ballot itself, had a lot of information to it. Um, if we were in community meetings or, and people talked with us, we would share with them what the, what the issues were. But we did not produce materials. Speaker 9: Okay. Just just some feedback. When it came up that this was an idea, I think it was already too late. I think we have to have an ongoing education campaign around the issue so that when this does come up and it's time to go silent on the issue, we've already helped shape the message. And I know, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking is hard to look back at what we did wrong. But I think I think it is important, even though 40% of my district's in a basement district, I do see the difference. And it's important. And we need to we need to maintain a focus on that. I want to move to language access. You know, this is a general statement. It's not really directed at you, Ms.. Collopy, but having served as chief of staff for four years and then been on council for five, I'm tired of this. It being the main, main issue of council. At some point staff has to just own this and say this is a part of what we do. This is a part of our service philosophy. The Council, many councils reaffirm this so we can move on other things, I think, between now and the next and I don't want to sound cliche because Janine use this councilwoman Pearce uses baked in that sprinkling on top means to me we take it we own it. We have an understanding of where we're going. It's got buy in from the community and we move forward because the council does have other things to get to. And an example of making it in again is we talked about signage at the Civic Center. I don't know that it was embraced, but the kiosks are in English only. That's something we can't address. I mean, we can't we can't even respond to that. I don't know how we miss that. There's I don't I don't know if there has been a good education or understanding of the challenges, but the kiosk should not be in English, only in the city. And that's an example of we got to be going in. People need to know come correct or this is going to be an issue I council so this need we need to really take this to heart. This should not be something the council spent so much time on. In my opinion, we should be moving on. Right? So that's just my opinion. Their last thing I'll say, I actually like all the conversation about making the Multi-Service Center and outreach happen on the weekend. And I know I understand there's limitations every time we take grant funding and there's limitations with, you know, the measure age funding and. So I got the message council. Nothing. I know that. I know that there's limitations. I think I think it makes sense for us to say, I mean, and this is a different conversation, but the new revenue that comes in, should Masri be available? I think it should be. I think it should. I think I mean, I think it should be able to be used on to close the gaps on homelessness. We're making commitments, the capital we're investing in and the bridge housing facility. We're doing certain things, but we know there is a gap in services and with funds that are other people's color of money measure is our local covered money. And we we set the policy on it. I think if there is should be an allowed use maybe not forever, but while we're in the midst of this crisis, it should be an all out use. So that's just me as a policymaker taking a position on policy. And I think measures should be opened up to be used in certain ways to help us close the gap on homelessness. Again, thank you for indulging us for the last, you know, 5 hours or so into midnight. A lot of great work is happening. We're proud of the work that all of you are doing, and we look forward to continue to work with all of you. Speaker 1: Councilmember. Well, and it is a it is a obviously a large budget and an important discussion. So I know it's late, but it is it is critical in these budget meetings. I tend to go late. So I think we all understand. I want to just reiterate just briefly the discussions that was brought up by multiple members around homelessness and weekend service. I really hope in the next couple of weeks the council addresses that in the Budget. I think that the really well-taken points. And Kelly, your point on the Multi-Service Center, I know that it's not possible. It's called P positive or not feasible to open it on the weekends like you had mentioned. What about the navigation center that we're going to open? I know that we're going to be opening a navigation center that will also include services or a smaller social service footprint. Would that be possible to kind of be a location where when we open it is open on weekends or have some of those. So you don't have the whole multi-service center open, but you have a navigation center open on weekends. Speaker 11: That's something we certainly look into. Since it hasn't opened yet, hasn't been fully staffed, we're not sure exactly which just we could look at the staffing of that and to see what the possibility. Speaker 1: I'm just wondering if, you know, using that as it is because it's a smaller footprint and could serve as a weekend center for these types of services. And this I mean, maybe it couldn't, but I just think we should throw that in the mix. Speaker 11: I mean, generally, it will be it will be just sort of a smaller service model and the primary, you know, a lot of the focus of that space is for storage of people's belongings. So that may be a place that we could utilize. And our team will look at that and consider that as well as as well as the alternate around the outreach worker and motel vouchers. Speaker 1: And I do think that the the bridge housing site is critical to addressing the week in service. Obviously, I think that and I would I will just say for the council that I will absolutely support if the council comes up with some ideas or moves around funding to do a weekend outreach, and we can work to address and provide additional services on the homeless service side. I think that's something which would be great if we were able to do that. Where are we at with our. Or our number at the Multi-Service Center are homeless. Kind of one stop shop phone number. Is that all been implemented? Speaker 11: Yes. It's five seven now for AMC. Speaker 1: Okay. And can you remind me, Mr. City Manager, the CRM system. That's in this budget, correct? Speaker 2: So CRM system is funded. We are we've been doing a number of things over the last year and a half. We will get an update from tech, an innovation. I believe you'll be seeing some progress with the rollout either end of the year or early next year. Speaker 1: Okay, great. Thank you. There's a motion in a second on on the budget hearing. Members, please go ahead and testaments. Speaker 0: ICE May Andrews Council Member Richardson. Motion carries. Speaker 1: Thank you. Item 28.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2020 Budget for the following Departments: Public Works including Capital Improvement Program, Development Services, and Health and Human Services.

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Speaker 8: I did not to put. Speaker 0: And today's report from Financial Management. Recommendation to increase Munis Contract with GSI or providing security guard services by 454,500 city. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor. Speaker 8: Yes. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much. You know, I put this out there because, you know, I was somewhat disappointed in the contract because probably our analysis made a lot of assumptions. I'm not comfortable, you know, sourcing out for public safety service unless extremely necessary. Also, it was shameful that we are having to have a discussion on contracts so close to the expiration date. Long Beach have always had employ a dedicated workforce and a special security office to protect us. Civic facilities have done and continue to do an outstanding job. I'm hoping to meet. I'm hoping to meet and confer a process. We work with them and find a way to bring these jobs back to our city employees. When the contracts conclude. With that, I would like to make a motion to approve this contract. But the clause that our city manager worked to the best ability to find a solution that will restore the majority of these positions back to the city employees when this contract terminates. And that report, the city and we put it back to the city and return with a plan before the end of the year. I'm hoping I can get a second. And thank you very much. Speaker 1: You have you have a second there. There is no public comment on this item. Councilman Pierce. I'm sorry. Country Ranga. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. I'm very. I'll be happy to second that motion. One of the things that I think that we're missing here is the fact that when you do a Prop hour study, it's not only about finding out whether we need the services at all, but whether we need to hire more staff. And I think that this approach that we're having, the way we're looking at this is is reversed. We're looking at the fact that the services that we need are to cover positions that we don't have. And we need the supplemental services provided by this agency, when, in fact, we should probably be looking at creating more positions that our city employees can provide because those are continuing services as we go, for example, security at the library, that that would be something that's in part of our internal service that we should have as city and have city employees provide that service as opposed to a contract service. So that's, I think, the essence of of of what we're what the motion is trying to to present here is the fact that we need to have a review. Whether are we are we properly staffed in in our security services classification to provide the services that are needed on a on a continuing basis and not have to rely on contracts to provide that service. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilmember, there's a motion and a second. Please go ahead. And Castro votes. Speaker 0: Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 1: In public. There's no public comment. Speaker 2: Look. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to increase Munis Contract No. 3190000026, formerly Blanket Purchase Order No. BPLB19000026, with GSSi, Inc., dba General Security Service, of Wilmington, CA, for providing security guard services, by $454,500, with a 10 percent contingency of $45,450, for a revised total contract amount not to exceed $999,900, and extend the term to March 9, 2020. (Citywide)

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Speaker 2: we get through these hearings, but we're going to get through those first. And so hearing item number one, of course, is our hearing on on fire and police tonight. And I believe we're also doing one other department. And so I'm going to and turn this over to Mr. Westminster Modica and the budget team. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council members tonight begins in earnest our budget hearings. So we're going to hear from three departments. They're going to make presentations on their budgets. We're going to hear first from the police department. Next, we're going to hear from the fire department. And then we're going to hear from the Parks Recreation and Marine Department. These are part of our continuum of public safety departments that help keep our communities safe. And with that, I'm turn it over to our chief, Robert Luna. Speaker 7: Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. The police department performs a variety of public safety services. Our core services are delivered through the work of five bureaus and 17 divisions. Our core services include 24 seven response to 911 emergencies and general calls for service. Investigating Misdemeanor and felony crimes. Homeland Security, including protecting major critical infrastructure such as the port, the airport and Metro Blue Line. Providing contract services to city partners such as. Long Beach Unified. Long Beach. City College. Long Beach Transit. The Civic Center and the Pike outlets. Our department also trains, equips and plans for response to natural. And man made disasters, including recent examples such as earthquakes and mass casualty shootings. I want to sincerely thank all of our employees and volunteers who do amazing work. Our department has many accomplishments to share. The men. The men and women of the Long Beach Police Department are committed to excellence. I am pleased to share that through their hard work, we responded to over 208,000 dispatch calls for service. We have a year to date average response time of 4.4 minutes to priority one calls for service and a 4.2% reduction in total Part one crime for 2019. In Fy19, the police department funded 50 public safety operations and event action plans through the Neighborhood Safe Streets Program. These funds have supported collision reduction, school traffic safety, property crime suppression, homeless outreach, fireworks enforcement, prohibited firearm operations just to name a few. And I really want to thank the mayor and all of you sitting at the city council for your support in this program. I am proud to share that. Out of 507 17 laboratories in the world, our Long Beach Police Department crime lab was the first internationally accredited forensic laboratory to meet the strict standards of the and see Askew Accreditation Board. Forensic analysis supports our ability to investigate crimes and is a vital law enforcement tool. Thank you to our crime lab employees for their amazing work this last year. The police department has made huge strides to implement smart policing methods throughout the department to make our processes more streamlined and efficient. We are nearing our first full year of stabilized body worn camera technology with 250 cameras deployed in the north and south patrol divisions. In December of 2018, the Department successfully implemented a mobile application to comply with Assembly Bill 953. This legislation requires all police officers to record their demographic perception of all individuals who are detained or stopped. The Department began collecting this data in January of 2019 and will officially submit data to California to the California Department of Justice in April of 2020. We are also in the procurement stage of acquiring a modern, modernized records management system, which is typically, typically called arms. Nearly every police department employee uses the arms system. Arms is a core technology that helps our department operate. We look forward to choosing a modern solution that streamlines our data entry, data storage and overall records management. Responding to homelessness and quality of life issues are top priorities for the police department. We have increased our original Quality of Life program from two officers. Currently deploying six quality of life officers today. Two are funded by measure MJ revenue. Two are funded by Measure eight and two by L.A. Metro. Additionally, through the use of prop funds, we are working to increase our Met team from six officers and six clinicians to eight officers and eight clinicians. The police department supports restorative justice efforts, including warrant clearance and expungement opportunities. Our department is held for workshops partnering with City Prosecutor Doug Halbert. In total, we have helped clear 167 warrants. Building community trust through relationships. Transparency and accessibility is a foundational principle supported by the Long Beach Police Department. Year to date, we have attended over 150 community meetings and trust dialogs over the past year. We have strengthened our working relationships with the Lee Human Relations Commission to discuss potential policy and procedural changes. The BPD management team also participated in eight trust dialogs led by the Long Beach Interfaith Community. Under this effort, we met with many diverse community groups to understand their perceptions of law enforcement and to share our policies and procedures related to hiring, equipment, accountability and training. Recently, we have taken proactive efforts to meet with our community groups to have open conversation on the Long Beach Police Department's stance on immigration enforcement in our city . Long Beach Police Department team has also chosen to prioritize wellness for both our community members and employees. We onboarded an employee wellness coordinator to help guide injured employees to a pathway of recovery, allowing them to return full duty more quickly. Thank you. And we want to thank the city attorney's office, human resources and financial management departments for helping us accomplish this effort. We are proud to share that. We have partnered with Counseling Team International to provide short term and emergency mental health services for our employees. We are optimistic that this partnership will allow our first responders to have long, successful, successful careers despite the trauma they see on a daily basis. The police department is also working on a collaborative partnership to on board a program that provides personal, immediate trauma informed care to members of our community who who have experienced traumatic situations. That's you. And that's why 20 the proposed police department budget totals $264 million. The total full time equivalent count is 1251 FTEs, which includes 851 sworn and 400 civilian employees. In addition, our operations are supported by over 250 volunteers. The Police Department's proposed Fy20 budget reflects many notable changes required within our department to comply with new state legislation and new programs. Roughly $870,000 is needed to support our body worn camera contract. This will increase the number of cameras from 250 to 875 cameras. These cameras will be deployed to nearly all sworn in the four geographical patrol divisions and two specialty sworn units and Investigations Bureau, as well as Field as well as the for the Field Support Division. While expansion is planned to include contract services groups such as the airport, port, Long Beach Transit and City College. Deployment to these operations may take a little bit of more time, a little bit more time. Cost sharing and infrastructure details need to be finalized before implementation. 850,000 is proposed to add nine civilian full time equivalent to support the full implementation of the body worn camera program. These positions will provide our department with basic resources to begin the initial compliance with Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748. Both bills require full release of documents, audio and video files within a timeline set by state law. The Justice Lab will be fully implemented and funded by the police department budget by converting to existing civilian positions to support this program. The Department proposes to add a public affairs officer to assist with strategic communications funded by the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group. And as I have mentioned earlier, add an administrative analyst to position to serve as a department's wellness coordinator. Funded by the Insurance Fund Group. Structurally measuring is is is a huge funding source for the police department. It has helped us maintain 86 sworn position positions and enhances police operations by supporting 21 additional police positions in FY 20 or the FY 20. Budget also includes one time measure funding for the Neighborhood Safe Streets program at 2.2 million, which is an increase from 1.9 million. Measure eight will allow us to continue to fund jail our jail, mental health, clinician services and one time costs for the body worn camera program. As the police department looks ahead into Fy20, there are also many challenges. Unfunded legislative mandates are a serious concern for all of us in the city. As you can see in this slide, the police department has been impacted by multiple state legislative mandates that place new and extra responsibilities on the department with no funding. Most of the legislation targets information sharing, which, while important, is very technical and cannot be done without a combination of new technology, staffing and vendor contracts to comply with these new laws. As highlighted on this slide, the police department is in the process or has already implemented a solution to comply with the laws that require us to report race based information and produce public records within an expedited timeframe, including audio and video data. Assembly Bill 953 Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748 alone have an estimated minimum financial impact of approximately $2.5 million annually, and we are still exploring the full cost that's going to impact our city. As I mentioned earlier, Assembly Bill 953 places additional workload on police officers required requiring that they enter multiple perceived data points for entry stop for every stop and detention that is conducted. On top of cell phone costs used to capture this data officer time spent on detention and stops have increased due to this additional task. This takes officers away from doing proactive community based police work. Senate Bill 1421 An Assembly Bill 748 have brought in the types of document, video and audio records that must be released under public record release laws. Specifically, Assembly Bill 748 requires that all police video and audio footage of critical incidents be released within 45 days of a public records request act. As previously previously mentioned in the FY 20 budget, we have requested additional civilian staffing to assist with the review, gathering redaction and data extraction of these files. I must emphasize that it is unknown whether these new resources will be sufficient to meet the new state law. For legislation where implementation is still pending. The police department is working with a variety of partners to understand how to comply with these new and potential laws. Senate Bill ten Cash bail reform is on the ballot in California as a vital referendum on November 3rd, 2020. Senate Bill 978. While Chapter has an effective date of January 1st, 2020, this provides the department some time to adjust to this new law. I would like to emphasize again that these new and proposed laws do not include any additional funding for local law enforcement agencies. However, despite these challenges we are optimistic for. F1 20. I am pleased to report that the police department has had no intentional officer involved shootings in the past 16 months. I want to repeat that I am pleased to report that our police department has had no intentional officer involved shootings in the last six months. I don't know if that's ever happened in our history. We accomplish this by improving our internal review of department operations. We have issued a variety of moderate force equipment options, such as 40 millimeter projectiles to our field officers. We have expanded our training and do more life scenario based training with the use of our simulator at our training facility. We also train officers to use de-escalation techniques whenever possible and using time, distance and cover when officers interact with suspects in high risk encounters. We are also appreciative of the support to convert existing resources into key management positions, such as the Assistant Chief and the Professional Standards Administrator to help navigate the police department through these legislative, legislatively challenging years. Our department is committed to promoting diversity among all levels of the department, and I am pleased to share that increasing diversity is reflected in our police recruit, hiring supervisory ranks and command staff. The Department. The department is also looking forward to the construction of a new training facility and public safety parking structure, which will help support our current operations. Lastly, city wide an investment in our technology, infrastructure and fleet has benefited our ability to serve our community well, providing a safe city for all people. This concludes my presentation and I'm going to be around to answer any and all questions at the end before I turn it over to my partner at the fire department. Speaker 2: Thank you. I think we're going to be moving on to the fire department presentation. I'm going to hear all the presentations and we'll come back and do all the other questions. And just as an update also. As the rules were adopted. So because this is a hearing and hearing hearings, the limits that that were adopted as far as speaking time and questions from the body, I think are are do not apply on hearings because of their usually extensive and and they're sometimes legal in nature. And that's something that the city attorney and I have talked about as well. So. Speaker 1: Fire Chief Javier Espino. Speaker 8: This evening, I'll be providing a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's fiscal Year 20 proposed budget. Our presentation will highlight the services provided by the Fire Department. Some of our key accomplishments for the current fiscal year. Notable changes in the fiscal year 20 proposed budget and some of the major issues and opportunities that we foresee for the upcoming fiscal year. The Long Beach Fire Department delivers fire rescue, emergency medical services, marine safety responses, hazardous materials response and non-emergency response services to residents, businesses and visitors in the city of Long Beach. We provide a 24 hour operation in which all first responders must be prepared at all times. Additionally, we work to ensure the safety of the community and to prevent fires through proactive fire prevention and code enforcement programs. We also provide training and education that is essential to the delivery of our core fire and search and rescue services . I would now like to present some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for the current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, we've responded to over 72,000 fire, emergency medical services, marine safety and other emergency incidents. Since many incidents require multiple units to respond, these 72,000 incidents equate to more than 140,000 unit responses. Included in this number are over 51,000 medical calls and over 5700 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous materials responses, airport responses and other non fire responses. A major highlight of the current fiscal year is the expansion of the Homelessness, Education and response team to two units. Together, the two units completed over 2500 interactions comprised of 1800 proactive contacts and 700 dispatches to incidents involving persons experiencing homelessness. The heart units have improved the fire department's response capabilities and would not have been possible without Long Beach measure funding. Working in partnership with UCLA and supervisor Janice Hahn. We've recently incorporated a mobile stroke unit into the city's emergency response profile. This unit enables the potential to diagnose and treat stroke victims in the field, thereby increasing our ability to provide specialized lifesaving care to stroke victims before they even get to the hospital. Fiscal school year 2019 was and continues to be a very successful year for the Long Beach Fire Department. We realized great success with our Fire Recruit Academy. The Academy attained designation from the State Fire Marshal as a state accredited local academy, and the 2018 Academy graduated 22 new firefighters. Our Fire Prevention Bureau promoted community safety and economic growth by conducting over 8000 residential construction and business related fire safety inspections. Our training cadre has developed and is currently conducting the department's first ever Engineer Academy. The Academy is due to graduate candidates within two weeks and is anticipated to be highly successful. This year, our Long Beach fire ambassadors have impacted more than 4000 students throughout the Long Beach Unified School District by providing fire safety demonstrations and instruction. And finally, our Strike Team units received the Red Cross Hometown Heroes Award for their response to the Woolsey Fire. Their efforts positively impacted the residents of that area and were responsible for the protection of many residences and structures. The proposed fiscal year 20 budget for the fire department is $130.8 million. We comprise a total of 533.86 full time equivalent staff consisting of 405 sworn PhDs in the fire ranks. Another 25 full time year round marine safety first responders, over 180 seasonal lifeguards and 26 full time ambulance operators. Additionally, the fire department is supported by civilian staff in fire operations, support services, fire prevention and administration. 76% of our budget is in the general fund, which supports most departmental activities. The proposed fiscal year 20 general fund budget for the fire department is $99.2 million. The Long Beach Airport provides support in the amount of 5.9 million for fire and rescue services provided to the airport. And this is included in the fire department's general fund budget. Additionally, the Tidelands Fund supports marine safety activities as well as our fire operations in the Port of Long Beach, which include specialty programs of urban search and rescue, hazardous materials and marine firefighting. The Harbor Department provides cost reimbursement for the services provided in the port in the amount of $18.9 million, and that is included in the 26.6 million Tidelands Fund budget for fire. Proposition eight funds from the oil production tax continue to provide additional support for fire staffing in the amount of just over $1.5 million annually. The fire department, together with the Health Department, provides environmental protection services that are supported by the Cooper Fund. Krupa stands for Certified Unified Program Agency and through permit fees, provides funding for inspection services and business emergency plan reviews to ensure hazardous chemicals are handled, stored and transported in accordance with current state and local standards. Notable changes. The fire department's proposed fiscal year 20 budget includes several notable changes that I would like to highlight. First, Missouri has been a significant source of funding for the fire department, providing financial support in the amount of 6.3 million annually to maintain 35 sworn fire positions and providing an additional 3.8 million a year to restore 20 additional positions . The Marine Safety Bureau will receive structural funding to provide additional lifeguard staffing for the city's Bayshore Aquatic Playground facility. By all accounts, this has been a very successful program, and we look forward to supporting it on an ongoing basis. The proposed budget includes staffing adjustment to our cannabis inspection program to better align with current service level demands. The annual inspections for sanctioned businesses and enforcement activities related to illegal or unsanctioned businesses have not reached anticipated demands. Conversely, the clerical demands created by the medical marijuana program have exceeded our capacity to manage. We have responded to these findings by shifting staffing from inspections to the clerical staffing necessary to maintain a reasonable turnaround time for the inspection process. And finally, the proposed budget includes additional staffing to manage our electronic patient care reporting or PCR processes and emergency response data. Implementation of the p c. Our system has streamlined the patient reporting process, improve the efficiency of patient billing, and increased our collection percentages. Looking forward to fiscal year 20. The department has several significant challenges and opportunities. The Long Beach Fire Department is committed to serving the Long Beach community and wants their personnel to represent the city's diverse population. In recognition of this priority, the Long Beach Fire Department, in partnership with the city manager's office, undertook a study to proactively review their entire recruiting and selection process and identify best practices for strategically recruiting a more diverse pool of firefighter applicants. Our intent is to implement identified diversity, recruitment and hiring process strategies for entry level and promotional positions in our fire department. Consistent challenge is to improve response times and response capabilities and continue to meet the expectations of our community while expanding the quality and capability of our emergency medical services. Our addition of a second heart unit and the recent addition of the Mobile Stroke Unit will assist in meeting this challenge. The most basic service infrastructure of a city is its public safety functions. The city of Long Beach has been operating fire and lifeguard services for over 100 years. Although the workforce and equipment are evolving to meet the needs of the growing and changing population. Its buildings and structures have not kept pace. Because public safety facilities are utilized by and support our personnel and the public. 24 hours per day, seven days a week. Public safety facilities deteriorate more rapidly than a typical office or commercial building. In addition, since a service the needs of the city have changed, some buildings should be considered for redesign or relocation. Finally, a significant challenge and opportunity is to prepare the next generation of firefighters to step into positions of leadership. To that end, the fire department continues to mentor potential future leaders in the areas of supervisory skills and management development. These succession planning efforts are critical to our continued success in the years to come. The opportunities for our department are encouraging. Our desire to develop a strategic plan was based on the recognition of a need for clear, unified direction for our fire department. In this collaborative effort, our overall objective is to ensure that we create a safer community for our residents and visitors to the city. This document will serve as the roadmap that will provide focus and direction to ensure we fulfill our stated goals and define strategies. We will we will utilize PCR and other emergency response information in collaboration with other city departments to enhance data driven initiatives such as adult adult fall prevention and other high frequency utilizer programs. Recent changes in the state billing system for emergency medical services will allow us to leverage increased state funding to make long term investment in operational capability and service delivery. And finally, we continue to work to identify funding to enhance our citywide response capability by supporting the restoration of Engine 17. That concludes our presentation. Thank you for the opportunity to present an overview of the Fire Department's Fiscal Year 2020 proposed budget. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you, fire chief. And we're going to move on to the next presentation, which I believe is for Parks, Recreation and Marine. Speaker 1: Park Structure Recreation Marine Director Corrado Mowat. Speaker 6: Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present to you the proposed fiscal year 20 Parks, Recreation and Marine Department budget. The PRM Department is very wide in scope. 170 parks, six and a half miles of beaches, a marina, recreation programs and animal care services. The prime budget was developed by leveraging existing resources so that the strategic, modest enhancement goes a long way. This budget will allow your prime staff to continue passing forward their passion of bringing joy to all from infants to older adults and our companion dogs and cats. Your prime team does this knowing that it is strategically, that it strategically needs to be nimble in order to be effective in responding to the diverse needs of a diverse community. Our core services focus on parks, recreation, beaches, marinas and homeless dogs and cats. We aspire to develop and maintain a vibrant park and recreation system. The urban and diverse Long Beach population deserve a park and recreation system that is calibrated to the specific needs of neighborhoods with sensitivity to environmental friendly landscapes and environmentally sustainable maintenance methods. We aspire to keep our marinas well-managed and to maintain our beaches clean and safe for all to enjoy. The beaches are for our residents, no matter what part of town they live on. With your support, we develop a winning approach to take animal care services in a positive direction. That approach is Long Beach Compassion Saves, model the and commitment to our core services and mission is based on the knowledge that we deliver services that so seeds of joy and health and prevents urban discord and helps develop community unity and harmony. It is the upstream part of the local government business. Is an honor to share with you accomplishments delivered by your PRM team. We are now the 18th best park system in the country with a top notch marina, which is the largest public marina system in the country, a parks and recreation system that provides over 1.5 million participation . Days of recreation programing at our 27 community centers. Three pools, five teen centers, six senior centers, an aquatic facility and a nature center. Because of your support, we enhanced our senior programing by offering expanded programing and are boosting our volunteer program. By leveraging our needs, impact fees and Citi measure. In many ways, we have been able to make major improvements in our park system. PRM staff in partnership with the Public Works Department have worked intensely to upgrade playgrounds, community centers, sports courts and began efforts to improve our irrigation system. We made investments in water conservation by implementing a data driven irrigation controller program and improve the management of our ground maintenance services contracts with which permits us the opportunities to operate our vast park system in open space more efficiently and effectively. Our enhancements in our beach maintenance operations support beach and sand maintenance a cleaning device. Barbara the rake, as shown on this slide, was recently deployed on our beaches, which helps keep our beaches safe, clean and fun for many residents, for our many residents and visitors. Animal Care Services continues to improve the live release rates, reduce in pounds and supports spay and neuter efforts. The compassion saves implementation further, promotes our goal of having positive outcomes for all animals in our care. Currently, we have an overall save rate of 92%, 88% for cats and 96% for dogs and are heading towards ending the year with a very good with very good rates of saving animals. We provide local teams from our teen centers with new experience, opportunities and personnel development and personal development. We are partnering with Workforce Development to provide training for team participants to increase prospects of obtaining good jobs and are linking our participants with resources for job placement. We have also had great opportunities to partner with our local major sports teams with with our youth such as the L.A. Kings, L.A. Dodgers, and have a wonderful partnership with the school district that helps us offer free recreation swim to local youth. We have other partnerships, such as the one with musical Theater West and an overall partnership network with Partners of Parks. We developed Community Beach Week, which includes free events on the sand and in the water each day for children and adults. This is on top of the many beach related programs offered this summer, including last Friday's All-City Beach Day, where 2000 youth had great fun, fun and got to know and got to know youth from every corner of the city. For fiscal year 20. The PRM budget totals over $60 million across all funds, with nearly 35 million from the general fund, which represents a 7% slice of the city's general fund. Prime also has substantial tidelands funds used to support our operations in the marinas, beaches and waterways. This budget provides for 44 445.6 full time equivalent positions during our busy summer months, which we have one in which we have one and a half weeks left to go. Our staffing grows to well over 800 people. We employ hundreds of seasonal staff and are proud of our role as a workforce development engine. Notable changes expected in PRM with the adoption of the budget is the permanent addition of an animal care services adoption coordinator and support staff to develop to help drive, increase adoption rates and improve life outcomes for shelter animals. We are also excited about adding a prime volunteer program coordinator. The coordinator will recruit more volunteers, train them and deploy them in all the prime areas of need. Long Beach is very giving is very giving when it comes to volunteerism. And Prime is a great opportunity for wonderful community building volunteer work. We also are excited to receive one time funds to develop support and launch launch fundraising efforts for our Long Beach Animal Care Services. As we face the coming year, Primo will continue to face challenges. But with those challenges, opportunities can be explored, such as taking a creative approach to bringing in more grant funds for park projects. The key is leveraging funds such as park impact fees and telling unique stories that meet the needs of grant requirements so that we succeed in bringing more capital improvement progress. With the help of your leadership, the task force and dedicated back staff, animal care services will continue to deliver on performance with a compassion saves model. Leading the way we play. We plan to bring to you the bag strategic plan in the spring of 2020. We are passionate about exploring how to use nature to benefit the impact of our recreational programing. We call that approach restorative environmental programing. This is a strategic launch that focuses on clean water, sustainable park landscape, clean beaches and wetlands that align with the city's climate action and Adaptation Plan. We will continue to advance the development of the PRM strategic plan. The existing PRM strategic plan is six years old and things have changed substantially. We plan to bring to you the prime strategic plan in the summer of 2020. One of our challenges is how to sustain the Be Safe program. We do not have sufficient monies in the budget to support all of the B save sites. We will be exploring different avenues to increase our chances in maintaining this important summer evening recreational programing in key areas that benefit from this targeted prevention program. As you can see, the PRM team provides very diverse services. We what we do provides joy to a large, diverse community. Our parks and recreation system is considerable, with 170 public parks, six and a half miles of beaches, 27 community centers, dozens of athletic fields and playgrounds, 67 tennis courts, five municipal golf courses, three city pools, and over 3300 marina slips and animal care services. We have been recognized for our award winning programs, but the biggest satisfaction is the millions of positive contacts, PR and staff does each day of the year. Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council. Thank you for your continued investment in the Pride team. Your support helps us meet the needs of the community all across the city. Our dedicated employees and I thank you for your support. This concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Mr. Malloy. And let me there is a motion in a second, but let me start with Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to all of the department heads that presented this evening. I really appreciate all the presentations and the thoroughness and the overview of the changes. That's always the most helpful part of budget hearing nights. So. I have a question first for police, a couple of questions. So for Chief Luna. First of all, the stats regarding officer involved shootings are fantastic, and the efforts by the department to focus on that area should really be acknowledged and applauded, because I know that's an area that where my colleagues have a thank you. Yes. Let's let's applaud. Yes. That's an area where the police department has received a lot of feedback from this body. And so I'm glad to see that we are moving in a good direction there. And I'm really pleased that we're finally implementing a body worn camera program that's going to go throughout the department and outfit most of the officers. I think that's fantastic and I think it's great. Given where we are now, would you say that the full implementation would be about six months out? Speaker 7: If this body approves this item in the budget the day it approves, it will. We have letters ready to be sent off to with the organization that we're going to contract with. And I would estimate with the delivery of the items that are needed, the infrastructure has already been built thanks to our team here. And I would estimate sometime in the beginning of 2020 that we would have the nearly 800 plus cameras deployed. Speaker 3: And the reason I ask that is because I support this program a lot. I mean, more than I can convey in words. I think it's fantastic. I think it's great that we're doing it. My only hesitation with the dollar amounts that are proposed in the budget is that one. You know, I don't think we're going to be prepared to utilize all nine of these positions on the first day of the budget cycle. I think there's going to be some time before all nine will need to come online. And as Chief Espino was talking about rerouting some of the marijuana positions because of the actual need versus the anticipated need and that that that actuary having to result in shifting some of those positions. What I want to do is think about what do we what do we think we're actually going to need for the body worn camera program? And could we maybe not allocate all nine funds, all nine positions now, and come back in six months if the reality is that we need an additional person or two? And the reason I say that is because I'm just I'm just putting that out there because I think there's other priorities that council members might have in regards to city wide issues like gun safety, gun buyback, things like that that might be of more immediate relevance to us. And I'm wondering if these the body worn camera positions are of immediate need for the police department. Speaker 7: You are asking an outstanding question, a question that I posed to our state attorney general in a meeting that we had with other police chiefs. And it was this situation that we're were encountering with unfunded mandates. I would love nothing more than to divert a lot of these moneys elsewhere where I absolutely believe they're needed in our community. But unfortunately, we're looking at a bill of we're estimating $2.5 million of unfunded mandates because of Senate Bill 1421 and 748. We have no option of skirting that at all. We are targeted by the media. They're getting frustrated with us because they're asking us for specific documentation that we to date are starting to release but are unable to because we don't have the people or the technology to do so. So yes, that is an option. But what ends up happening is I have to go into the department somewhere and look for bodies to comply with all the unfunded mandates that we already have. One way or another, I have to provide at least nine bodies, and I think we're being conservative in what we're asking for. I actually think it's going to be more and this is where I challenge us as a community when we're hearing about all these criminal justice reforms and social justice reforms, somebody needs to start asking who is paying for this? Because right now every citizen in the city is paying for these social justice changes that we're mandated to do. We don't have an option. We didn't get $0.01 from the state or anywhere else to comply with these, but yet we're under the gun, literally, to present these documents to the media, to the public and everyone who is asking for more way behind already. So I sound a little passionate about it, but I'm frustrated because this money can definitely go elsewhere and each of you have great ideas of where that should go. But I think we need to we need to regroup and start looking at our state elected officials and saying, hey, what the heck are we doing here? Speaker 6: Councilmember to you is a very good question about timing. And can we knowing that that workload is coming, can we phase it in? The reality is, is we are experiencing that workload right now. So we are currently rotating in police officers who were able to pull from other areas, whether they're injured on duty or others into that job because that workload exists today. So this is actually one that we need to speed up rather than slow down and actually authorize them very soon in order to meet our deadlines. Speaker 3: And I get that. And I completely I mean, Chief, given what I do every day, there was no money that came with Prop 47. So I'm very mindful of the realities of criminal justice reform, where we have unfunded mandates. The thing, though, Mr. Modica, is we have 200 something body cameras that are currently deployed, and yet we don't have allocated positions for those to do the redactions and the discovery. Right. We are going to be and right now we have zero positions. My question is, can we phase in the 0 to 9? Because if we had three bodies right now to help with redactions, praise and criminal discovery, that would alleviate the need of having to put officers into that position. The way I what I'm suggesting and nine may be a conservative estimate. But with the police agencies with whom I have worked, I have found that. The redaction requirements have not been as onerous as people once thought, especially if we're using software like evidence dot com. So there is an ability now it takes a lot of time to watch the video. Redaction of the videos is not that complicated. I'm just saying, maybe once we implement it at full, we realize, you know what, seven positions is great, but we won't know that. So if this if these positions are funded starting October the first and we know we're not going to have 800 cameras deployed until, let's say, March, then from October to March, we have nine positions that we're not really needing for this program. We may need them for other things, but we're not really needing them for this program that budget savings could fund. Let's say we take 200,000 of that and we find some sort of a program that is more of a bigger need that I know the chief is also very supportive of, like taking guns off the street so we can use that instead of taking that at the end of the year. Now, police department has a budget savings because even though they were funded on October the first, they didn't fill those positions until, let's say, March or April. Now that budget savings are going to get rolled back into the budget, which I have no problem with more money going to the police department. Let me be clear about that. But I'm just saying, why can't we use that budget saving what we know is going to be a budget savings for something that we might need now , like a prohibited possessors program, task force or you know something, I'm just putting it out there. I want to hear what my colleagues have to say, but I'm just putting it out there because I don't know. You know, when we do criminal discovery, a lot of the redactions are going to happen at the prosecuting agency. When we're doing press, the redactions are going to happen with our police department. When we're doing 1421 requests. The redactions are going to happen at our police department. So how much it burden is the crime? Is the prosecuting agency taking that might relieve us of the duty? I don't know. I'm just saying perhaps we'll know as we roll out the process more. Just something to think about. So the other question that I had that I wanted to ask about is, I know Commander O'Dowd is the Commander for East Division. He, by the way, he's doing a tremendous job for the record. He has done a lot of great work using Tidelands money with specific equipment on the beach to address camping tents, you know, illegal activities, syringes, things of that nature that we have had issues with on the beach. And and I think that was a great use of tidelands money. And I'm wondering if it if I'm interested in finding out what our options are in reallocating one time dollars from Tidelands for additional enforcement at the chief's discretion along the beach? Because the beach is an area where thankfully this year we did not have any junior guards step on syringes. But we want to make sure that we keep the beaches clean. Speaker 6: Certainly so. As part of the budget in front of you, we haven't really gotten to this part in the cap yet, but there's about $2.6 million worth of Thailand's one time investments that we were recommending to put into certain projects. If this is a higher priority, we can certainly work to carve out maybe a little bit of extra funds and dedicate that. So we can certainly work through the Budget Oversight Committee if that's an area that you'd be interested in pursuing further. Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you very much. And I want to thank the chief and, of course, our director of Parks Rec and Marine for the amazing efforts that have been taken to ensure that the beaches stay clean and free of debris. It's not just it's a beyond a beautification issue at this point. It's a public hazard issue. And so I thank you. With the equipment that we've purchased to both patrol the beach, enforce the law, and also to clean the sand, it's been fantastic. So thank you. The other question that I have, the final question that I had is actually for our PRM director. So thank you very much. She flew and I really appreciate all of your comments for the PRM Director for Director Mowat. I had a question about the budget item for replacement of trash containers. What is the anticipate it in the beach. I think we're using. Is this tidelands money that we're using for that? Yes. Okay. And what's the plan for that? Because let me just say that one area where I think there's an opportunity for improvement as a city is to have trash cans that match in parks and beaches. Like, I'm not sure how expensive it would be for us to have just trash cans that match. So I'm hoping that whatever trash cans we get for the beaches are somehow similar to the ones we might be able to put in the parks and and so on. Speaker 6: Well, that's a good point. And that's something that we will strive to make sure that they match. Speaker 3: Our these big bellies. Speaker 6: I'm. No, they're not. Speaker 3: Do they have covers? Speaker 6: Yes, they do. Speaker 3: Okay. We cannot invest in any more trash cans in the city that don't have covers. It's a huge, huge problem. Things blow out of the trash that go into the water. Terrible for the environment. Not to mention people who go through the trash cans looking for items. So I just want to make sure. Are they going to all be the same? Speaker 6: Yes. Speaker 3: Okay. And by the way, I see Corey shaking his head. Corey Forester, that guy should get an employee of the Month award. Pat, before you leave, can Corey get an award? He's amazing. He's wonderful. So thank you. That's all I have. Speaker 2: Thank you. Council member. Council member. Austin. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And, you know, many of my talking points were were actually. Cover with Councilmember Price's presentation or questions. And so I will be pretty brief here. This first question is actually for PD chief. The Neighborhood Safe Streets Initiative. Are we? We plan to put 2.2 proposals to put $2.2 million in one time funds toward this initiative. Can you elaborate on some of the programs and initiatives that were undertaken this year with the funding you received in FY 19? Speaker 7: Yes, sir. We did everything from gang enforcement, prohibitive. Possessor, which has been mentioned up here, is we spent about $100,000 this year on prohibitive possessor enforcement. And that is something that I think is very effective when we're talking about gun challenges that we're facing, whether it's on our community regionally or the topic of conversation across the country . And I do want to thank you specifically, because you talked about trying to bring a program that would reduce gun violence in our community several years ago. And I know there's been talk about gun buyback. And you and I had had a conversation about switching those dollars to let's focus on individuals who shouldn't be who shouldn't have guns, people who have been convicted of domestic violence, people with mental illness. The list goes on and on. And our detectives, our officers have done an amazing job. And just to share a quick statistic with you about where some of that money has gone this year, so far, we estimate that 201 weapons were recovered as a result of our prohibitive possessor operation, along with 50 arrest and 13 search warrants. That's significant because those are people who could have caused a mass shooting potentially if our detectives and officers weren't staying on top of it. So thank you all really for allowing us to have that money that is going to a very effective program. Speaker 6: And Councilmember, I did want to correct something from last week. So there was a question last week about was it the same amount we had done, 2.2 million in the past. Actually, last year, we had a little bit less in terms of funds. We were down to 1.9 million. And this year we're able to go back up to $2.2 million. So it is an increase over last year. Speaker 1: Okay. Well, it I think that when we first funded the Prohibited Possessor Task Force, it was funded to the level of, I think, 250,000. That is, anybody would recall that was a few years ago. And so the to the fact that you're still using funds toward doing that, I do appreciate it. And it sounds like it's effective, particularly if we'd taken 200 guns off the streets in our city right now. Speaker 7: Yeah, just for that operation, we've taken over 700 guns off the street thus far this year. Speaker 1: Okay, well, I want to get to 1000 and or more. And and obviously, there are there are concerns in the community because shootings are being amplified throughout the city. We we need to do more. And I think there's an opportunity, unique opportunity with this this budget to to focus a little bit more. And so my comments regarding the Neighborhood Safe Streets funds, I'm glad that there is a portion of it going toward prohibited possessors. But, you know, I'd like to make sure that we are dedicating at least a certain amount in more than $100,000 of that toward that that effort, because obviously there's some still challenges that we're still facing Speaker 7: . I agree with that. And thank you for your support in that area. And that that money, those moneys we're talking about from 1.9 to 2.2, you got to look at that money as each patrol commander gets a portion of that. So for us, from a community policing perspective, we are very visible and accessible in the community, just like each and every one of you are. We go to these meetings, people tell us what the issues are that could be traffic related. Going back to your original question, school traffic, it can be fireworks, it can be violence on the street, it can be auto burglaries, it can be people stealing packages from porches. It could be anything that the community's telling our commanders, this is a problem. And this money allows us the flexibility to put people where the problems are, whether whatever day of the week, time of the day, whatever that may be. That's the the great part about the money that all of you have approved in the past, and hopefully you will this coming year. Speaker 1: Which if I'm confident that you will use these funds wisely, but understand that that this councilmember and I think you'll probably hear from others, are really, really concerned about guns and gun violence. And that that is I wouldn't like that to be a focus. Speaker 7: Yes, sir. You've lit up my phone plenty of times. I'm fully aware of how you feel about gun violence and. Speaker 1: Yes, sir. And and I think Councilmember Price spoke briefly about it. But the the the structural funding for the body worn camera implementation. Now, did you say March? There were you felt that you been able to be fully implemented? Speaker 7: We would anticipate if it was approved and we are able to acquire the equipment. We believe that by the beginning of 2020, closer to January or February, we would have those cameras out in the field on the officers. Speaker 1: Okay. So there was a pilot. Program in North Lawn Beach or the North Division last year? Correct. And as I recall, that the cameras and equipment were were provided at no cost to the city. What happens with that equipment, with this new program? Do we absorb that or. Or is that program, that equipment given back to the so under. Speaker 7: That's an excellent question. I do want to highlight that the first year of this body worn camera project, the young lady sitting next to me from a financing perspective, an administrator, Jason Campbell, who's in the audience, did an outstanding job of reaching out. And we got this camera system or the equipment and storage for free for an entire year. And it was in South Division and north division are the others that have the cameras on them now. So with the additional cameras coming in, we would outfit the rest of the patrol bureau, including our field support division, and and that's what we're talking about doing. But right now, currently, every officer in North Division that contains your district, Councilman Richardson's district and part of Mr. your Angus district have body worn cameras now. Speaker 1: Okay. So those cameras won't be replaced. Speaker 7: They will not. Speaker 6: Okay, well, they will. Speaker 7: I'm sorry. I'm being corrected. They are going to be replaced. Speaker 1: Okay. So we'll have one system? Speaker 7: Yes, we will have one system. Speaker 1: Okay. And and I know citywide there are citywide cameras installed under the COPS program. How are they maintained? And is there an assigned staff to handle the installation, maintenance and replacement of those cameras in the department? Speaker 7: Yes. We currently have staff that manages the logistics of the 250 cameras. But but I do want to reemphasize excellent question that was asked earlier, that the bodies that we're talking about are not necessarily for body worn cameras. It is for the unfunded legislative mandates that we have to comply with with 1421 and 748. So when we're talking about these additional bodies, they are primarily coming in to manage the information that we're having to release, information we're having to redact. Speaker 1: Well, I think in the summary in this big giant book that I think I hurt my back. Karen And today I think it mentioned it was going toward support in body worn camera operations and it didn't emphasize the rest of that. And so, yeah. Speaker 7: It's the majority of the bodies that we're asking for are for the other unfunded mandates that were required. We're obligated by law to fulfill and we're already behind. We are constantly being critiqued specifically by our local media that we're not releasing information quick enough. And our response is, Hey, we're going to be in front of our political body. We're asking for more resources to comply with this, and that's why we're asking for those bodies and that money. Speaker 1: So in my last question for you and thank you. The in the proposed budget actually concept templates, the possible reduction or cancelation of a contract with L.B. USD for Saros as negotiations are pending. So with this focus on school safety, is there something that the school district is discussing with the PD as a possibility? Speaker 7: We are currently in negotiations with Mr. Steinhauser and their staff. Speaker 1: And King, I guess sounds like negotiations. Can you give us an update, any status on where that's at? Speaker 7: And we're currently negotiating at least one position to remain. We're trying to push for a second and and they're having some of the same budget challenges that we're all talking about tonight. So I don't want to say too much publicly. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I think there's still a lot of a lot of compromise to be reached on both sides. Speaker 1: Duly noted. Thank you very much. I do have a question for the fire chief. You know. We're just say thank you for all the great work you do in your department. The men and women department keep our city safe and respond to some very extreme circumstances. Thank you. But my my question and this actually was mentioned at our community budget meeting for District eight last week. Can you please explain the current status of Fire Station nine and what the long term plans are and whether or not we are considering that in this fiscal year budget in any way? Speaker 8: Okay. So at at the current time, we're out of station nine, Engine nine is at station 16, which is on the airport and rescue nine is at station 13, which is Adriatic and Willow. Pretty much they've been out for a number of months and we've met with public works, with health, with city management. And we've determined that we're at an all stop right now on any further work on Station nine. At this point in time, we're trying to identify different parcels of land that we could go to as a temporary quarters for engine nine. We would probably leave Rescue nine at Engine at Station 13. And then the long term goal is to eventually find some property and build a new station nine. Speaker 1: How far is a station engine 13 from? From Station nine. Well. Speaker 8: Mile, mile and a half, probably. Speaker 1: Okay. And for miles or miles. Jerry And how does having a fire station nine out of place impact response times in a big city knows not Long Beach area. Speaker 8: Having both of those units out of place has increased response times. They they do patrol during the day. They're out of the station. They've been making a good play of staying in the night area. Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I would just say to you and to our city manager and staff, we have to to to rectify the situation quickly. No, it's not something that can be done instantaneously. But I'd like to see a plan in place as quickly as possible to make sure that we we're delivering the services to to the residents. And response times are important. Yes, sir. I do want. Speaker 6: To highlight for those that aren't aware and the council is all plugged in, but we have had major infrastructure challenges at that facility. So that is one of our older fire facilities. And we were having, you know, safety issues and we investigated them and eventually got to the point because we've not been. Speaker 1: Able to invest. Speaker 6: The infrastructure dollars that we've needed to over many, many years that we had to shut it down. So we're now at that point where we are investigating the alternatives. But yes, we realize that that is a critical facility and we need to devise a plan and come back to you on that. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you all. Hold my questions for now. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And a number of my questions were answered. So if we could just have the director and both chiefs just come up and I don't think you're going to need your additional staff. I just have some general questions for you. I didn't want you all to have to sit down and get up and sit down and get up. Right. And I'll start with the fire chief since he's already sitting down. So, first of all, congratulations on all your accomplishments. And just one thing. And I know we'll have a conversation a bit later about some of your ideas around diversity, and I'm looking forward to that conversation later on. I noticed that you named as an accomplishment the heart team that you have to hart teams deployed. How are they deployed. Where are they are they anchored at a station or how are they deployed? Speaker 8: They're not anchored at a station. They deploy from headquarters and they're on different schedules. The one Hart unit goes from Monday through Thursday, the other goes from Tuesday through Friday. And essentially they patrol and sometimes that occurs because of need. Well, we'll hear from the different council districts stating, can you please visit a certain area? And they will. I think predominantly most of their contacts are in the downtown area, but they do basically travel the entire city boundaries. Speaker 5: Okay. And I'd be curious to know and we can, you know, continue this conversation offline. But I think it's appropriate to raise. If in the next fiscal year the plan is to open up bridge housing, a shelter, homeless shelter. I would love to see if this is going to create if we're going to have a new system on how is deployed, does it create new demands and is there a need for additional resources to the heart theme program? I'd love to see a good relationship between the heart team and the shelter, the bridge housing that that's proposed. Thank you. Just moving on down the line, Chief. Congratulations on your accomplishment in terms of what you raised up as. With respect to the officer involved shooting. So what would you attribute your success to? Speaker 7: Fantastic people working for the Long Beach Police Department. And I say that honestly. One, paying attention to the environment we've been in for the last 5 to 6 years. And when I say that, it's not just watching something on on TV or a video, but I mean, actually visiting other police departments, looking at best practices where people have succeeded, where people have failed. What training is working? Our training staff has done amazing to really research best practices, bring them back. And at the end of the day, it's not just about standing in a classroom and teaching, but running people through life scenarios of of doing things over and over. And it's we've taken situations that have actually happened here and then translated them into scenarios. So we just go over them and over them again. There's I could sit up here for at least 30 minutes and talk about it, but it's our fantastic people absolutely willing to to look at what's going on around us, try different techniques . And at the end of the day, it's the numbers are working out for us right now. We have a fantastic police department. Speaker 5: It's good. I'd like to you know, I think that's good. And the more we can sort of pinpoint what best practices we're doing so that we can continue to support those efforts if there's training, if it's the new training staff and although we've talked about your efforts to boost your training staff, those are the things I personally like to know so that I can know how to support you. Yes. To continue to have that level of support. Speaker 7: By the way, you've done that partially. When all of you decided to support Measure three, we were able to put nine police officers out at our academy where they're able to do exactly what I just described. So you're already on the path there. Speaker 5: Thanks. And I think doing the the shooter training, going out and understanding what goes into it, the training that many of us participated in, it certainly helped open my eyes to what all the sort of nuances that police officers have to deal with. Moving on to a different topic. So I know that so every summer, you know, having worked for the city for nine years, every summer, I know that there's typically a some sort of elevated levels of of violent activity. And we you know, a lot of times we come together and we talk about what we can do to prepare for it. You know, we've a lot of great programs come out of that, like be safe. And we've ramped up things like summer youth jobs. Nonprofits have stepped up like the YMCA Summer Youth Institute, located in different areas to sort of just get the whole community prepared for whatever happens every summer when, you know, youth get out of school and there's just a lot more activity. My question for you is, this year just seemed a bit more elevated than most years. And and is there a is there more is there a need for more resources during the summer months within our police department to make sure that we adequately are staffed up to respond? Speaker 7: We constantly keep up. We're data driven. We're looking at data to see where the spikes are. There are 4 to 6 times during the year that crime, specifically violent crime, will go up. It's not always in the summer. A lot of it revolves around the school year, beginning of school and the school. Those are two of our are highlighted areas. So we make sure that a lot of the moneys we are talking about earlier that the previous 1.9 now hopefully to point to that money is instrumental because we do save it for those times where we believe there are going to be spikes. So we'll go out. If we look at two weeks, for example, and that's spiking up beforehand. We'll go out and do probation searches will do prohibitive weapons searches, will do all these things to try and prevent some of these things. But there's a lot of great programs going on in the city during the summer. I'm we talked about negotiations with Mr. Steinhauser. We are actually talking about a program for next summer. Like our partners at the fire department are doing this summer to take youth off the street, people who are interested in fire will now be interested in police and able to to really connect with the youth like we haven't in years from that perspective. Speaker 5: Okay. And, you know, along that same line of discussion, you know, we used to have the Police Athletic League here in Long Beach. And I know there were, you know, budget decisions, but that was something within your department and it was a good interaction between law enforcement and the community. Has there been any conversation about taking a look at a new model of the Police Athletic League? Speaker 7: We're constantly trying to research best practices. Police Athletic League Once Upon a Time was a very effective program. As you know, during the recession, we lost over 20% of our staffing, and that's one of the programs that went away. Our partners at Parks and Rec do an amazing job, so maybe the model looks through Parks and Rec with maybe. Speaker 1: Us. Speaker 7: Having a part in that. Those are constant challenges that we're looking at. We're talking about and figuring out a potential way of doing that. But as we talk about some of these reforms that are going on, and that's the unfortunate part, Councilman, a lot of our moneys are having to go to these unfunded mandates and not look at these creative programs that we should all be looking at. And I think we all need to take a hard look at that and discuss this at the state level to see what our priorities are or should be. Speaker 5: I understand. And, you know, and they're connected to the decisions that we made as a as a council like the body camera program. I think it's positive and inevitable, the body camera program. But if we're going to do it, we need to comply with all the laws that that that align with it. So that's something that we know will have unknown costs and we should be prepared so that you don't have to come back to the council to fully fund the things that we request you to do. So I support that program and helping fund the program. The last thing I'll bring up with you is, is some of the, you know, something I brought up with the fire chief. So, again, we're having a conversation about the shelter, the bridge housing that we're working on doing in the next in the next year. I know that the police department in the last budget established a quality of life officer. What I'd like to see is for us to be proactive in thinking about what the relationship is between the community, police, the, the quality of life officer, the heart team, you know, our and we have some bike patrol and we have a neighborhood resource officer. I'd like to see some relationship of like a community policing team operating somehow around the shelter operation to make sure that the community really sees and feels that we're really all hands on deck and on this the shelter and and that public safety is a part of the continuum we put in together to make sure that the shelter plan works. So I really don't have a question for you on that. Maybe, maybe your thoughts. But that's something I love the conversation I love to have over the course of the next year. Speaker 7: It's an excellent point. And I'd like to share just a quick story. The mayor and I traveled to South Carolina about a year ago where we spoke at the U.S. Conference of Mayors because Long Beach is seen as a leader in in handling the homelessness challenges. We definitely have some work to do, but a lot of what you're describing is already happening with the multidisciplinary team that our health department leads with our fire department, our police department, city attorney, city prosecutor. We're communicating and coordinating like no other city. And I'd like to invite you to one of those meetings and to see what goes on there and there. They discuss challenges and priorities, not only individuals, but locations. And I think the location you bring up is a great idea and that can be brought to this team. And I think you'd be very impressed with what the with the employees being part of that team do. Speaker 5: Great. Fantastic. I'd like to take something like that model and sort of replicate it specifically for this, but we have time to talk about it. Thank you for responding my questions, chief. So moving on, the Parks and Recreation. So first of all, Harold Gerardo, first of all, thanks for being so easy to work with you and Steven Scott. You know, the Parks team is just the best folks to work with. I you know, my questions generally are about sort of where we're going. I love that you're working on a strategic plan. I believe in planning your work, work, your plan. I also think that every time we bring a budget, we should be able to point to what plans, where we're addressing or what gaps we're closing. We've had a lot of conversation about closing the open space gap. And, you know, and, you know, and I can reference my district where 1.1 acre, 1.2 acres of open space per 10,000 residents. Right. Which is is, you know, significant. It's it's low. And so we took the steps of establishing a plan, creating a plan uptown open space plan to help identify creative ways to expand open space. And I love to make sure that we're taking incremental steps as needed every year in helping to close that gap in every budget. And so my question for you, and it's okay if you don't know it, it's kind of on the spot. But over the course of the last year have. We applied for any grants or anything in alignment with that plan. I don't think you're I don't think it's on. Speaker 6: Specific to the the the north Long Beach. Speaker 5: Town obviously. Speaker 6: No, there hasn't been any particular grants other than grants to supplement the existing projects like. But with regards to adding adding more space, the only planning that we've been thinking in is, is the possibility of joint use, because that is one way of increasing open space and identifying schools in certain areas that would be too expensive to to purchase land in that area. That's the discussion level that I've been having with staff. Sure. Speaker 5: And just just a nudge, if you will. I would I would say when the community goes through a process and, you know, the councils sort of reinforce this, when the community goes to these planning processes, we get input and we we we we talk about how we can close gaps and achieve the things the community needs. I think it's important that we immediately follow up by identifying resources, grants and those things that help, you know, give a little momentum before the plans become stale. Mm hmm. Right. So I think this plan received American Planning Association Award. It was very well received. And so to not have submitted and I know there's been multiple rounds of grant applications for not have shown up to the game, you know I don't think is acceptable. So I think we over the course of the next year, we need to show up. We need to step up and submit some applications so that we can say with each budget, here's the steps we've taken to help close these gaps. Right. Balancing of providing a balanced budget is a good step, but it's not enough. We should be a city that can every year talk about our efforts to close the gap. And then the last thing I'll say is, I know we talked about investing in like a mobile spay and neuter sort of animal health van. And I know this thing is expensive, but just curious, have you had any conversations with, you know, partners of parks or other potential funders about this mobile spay and neuter? Speaker 6: With staff. We've had discussions and hopefully leveraging the funds that you are being proposed in the budget with regards to raising money. Right now there isn't. It's the same thing with discussion with partners of Parks. As you know, there's a one time only money of $100,000 to help develop a momentum for fundraising for animal care services. And so those monies, as we bring in more private monies, we will be identifying the high priority areas. And as you know, the as I mentioned, the the El Bax strategic plan is coming back to you in in the spring. Speaker 5: Sure. Right. Thank you so much. I think that satisfies my questions. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: Yes. Hello, everyone. I want to first say how proud I am of every single department, every year that we come to this budget meeting. There are issues that are important to the council, to our community members, and we've really been able to see progress in all three of your departments. So I would just want to start by saying that it's an exciting budget to know that while we're on a tight budget, we're doing what we need to do to continue to move the city forward. And so for PD. I guess I'm trying to decide where to start. My first question would be, with the attrition rates that we're facing right now, do you feel like this budget is helping us kind of fill that gap? I know that we've had some discussion around some retirement in the department, so I'd just like to hear about the plan to kind of address that. Speaker 7: Yes, ma'am. Very good question. I feel very comfortable about where we're at in regards to planning ahead recruiting, hiring and training. A new Academy class is a significant accomplishment. It takes a lot of work to get there. A lot of commitment from all of you to fund it. We estimate that a class cost approximately $6.5 million to get through. Currently, we just hired another class that's anticipated to start on August the 29th. It has 72 recruits that we were able to recruit and hire into this class. A very diverse class, by the way. And that'll help us stay ahead of of the anticipated higher than normal attrition that you're asking about. And we have been concerned about in planning this. And I believe we're well ahead of the curve. And one of the biggest reasons is your guys's commitment for the funding. It is a significant commitment and it's there. And thank you. Speaker 4: Okay. I support the new the new class, so long as you can get Commander Lewis to stay on for another ten years. I don't know if he's here, but Commander Lewis is the man. Speaker 7: Commander Lewis is there and he's here. Speaker 4: He's awesome. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: And one of the reasons and this leads me to my next question, one of the reasons that he's awesome is because he's out of his car a lot. He's building relationships with our neighborhoods, with people that typically might not have a relationship with PD. And so I like to just echo the conversation around community policing. I know I brought it up last time and I know whenever we're short staffed, it's difficult to have our officers out of their cars. But I do know that we have some members of of the second District here today, that community policing is really important to them. So if you could maybe elaborate on when you guys decide to have officers out of cars, how much time do they get to do that? And then also talk about the bike program that we have. I know that we voted on that last year and it's just now seems to be kind of rolling out. Speaker 7: So in regards to community policing, it's a foundation of the way we do work. It's the standard we expect that all of our patrol officers that are in the field for a portion of their shifts will get out of their cars and do what we call walk in talks. I don't have the statistics right here in front of me, but it depends on the day. There's days where they're going from called the call and it's a little more challenging. But we do ask them when they see kids playing in the street, in the park, get out, throw the football around. As a matter of fact, if if you follow our social media, we're finally getting officers to to take pictures of themselves. That was something they didn't want to do. And I can see why. It's it's it wasn't easy for them, but we are transitioning to a little bit more of a marketing mindset. And so we're doing that a lot. And the officers know it's part of who we are and it's part of building a partnership and trust with the community. So it's we ingrain it from the minute we hire people, through the time we train them to get out there and do it. So I appreciate the fact that citizens want to see more of them as opposed to the opposite, not wanting to see them at all. So we'll continue to to in our efforts to get people out there. In regards to the the bike unit that was funded. We're not quite there yet. The funding wasn't made available at the time, and we're still kind of trying to work through that. But what we're doing is we're augmenting it with the safe streets money that we've talked about. So, for example, if you're as you communicate, I know you are with Commander Lewis or Commander O'Dowd. If you tell them there's an area that needs a little bit more, maybe bicycle patrol or foot patrol, that may be something that they put in, then action plan together and put people out there to do just that. So in regards to the people in the money, we're we're actually, I think, doing a very good job of putting them on the front lines. Speaker 4: It's great. And I do know that that both commanders are working at Bixby Park. I believe they're putting their bikes in this next week into our field office so that they can do patrol out of there. So just when that kind of gets into full swing, it would be good to have a report back around the areas that had bikes. And if we saw a reduction, I know we've got a lot of chop shops in my district and so making sure that that we're kind of looking at those numbers and saying, does it help? Do we need more so that we can have that conversation with the next budget in relation to. I mean, you guys already know it. I know that I've probably been the most outspoken around reducing some of our instances with with PD and our community members. And so the statistics that you shared at the beginning of your presentation, I am thrilled to hear and I'm thrilled to hear that the answer is, well, we have more training, we have more hours, I mean, more resources to be able to really invest in our officers. And I think that that's what I've always committed to our constituents, is that we would always have the resources available to our officers to make sure that we're doing training and that we're able to look at the data that we have. And so I want to take a moment just to echo Councilwoman Price's comments around whatever we have to do to get staff in there early on to be able to do the redaction and kind of try to do some of that unfunded mandate is important. Whether it's unfunded or not, it's important to our constituents. And it's something that we as a council have to prioritize as well alongside all those other police programs. And so it's something that I wholeheartedly support trying to figure out. And then last comment for Tidelands. Every budget year, I always say that I support spending more Tidelands funds on public safety on our beaches. I know we did a lot the two years prior. So as you take that conversation, Mr. Modica, to the Budget Committee, that's something that I do support as well. I just wanted to to go on record with that. And then just could you elaborate briefly on the gang unit? Because I do think that that we are seeing crime, that that really affects our neighborhood. And we know it happens more in the summertime. And I know that it's part of some of the funding that you're already doing. Is there a I mean, I know that we've kind of talked about how much spending we have on our gang unit. Is that enough? As like. Does this budget get you what you need with that? I know we don't have fluff in this budget, but it's something that I think is timely for us to talk about. Speaker 7: So from a perspective of needing more, I don't think any department head would ever sit up here and say, We don't need more. I'm really proud of the city family, the employees for every department because we're working our tails off to make this city safe, to make the city function. But at the same time, I'm very cognizant of the fact that when I'm talking about gang enforcement, for an example, you have to have intervention and prevention. You have to have parks and libraries. Those are all functions we absolutely need to have in order to to get to where I think we all need to get to. I believe we have a very effective gang enforcement section. Yes. In years past, it was reduced as many specialized units in our department were. That just meant that we we do have to work a lot harder. We have to communicate and coordinate like we never have. And our gang enforcement section people are constantly passing on information or intelligence to our directed enforcement teams that are assigned to each patrol division, and they're responsible for the front line enforcement that's taking place. And there are times when they are busy or some of the the the questions that Councilman Richardson was asking about certain times of the year. We're trying to maximize our deployment. And that's where I'm telling you that the the the the neighborhood safe streets money is absolutely critical to what we do and how we do it because every time we get flare ups, that's essentially like putting more police officers in specific geographical areas at specific times where the data's telling us that we think this stuff's going to happen. And at the end of the day, it's about saving lives. It's about preventing these shootings from occurring. Speaker 4: Thank you for that. And I know I think I said that was my last question, but the one thing we can talk about in the future, though, is that connection between jobs, our workforce development, our city prosecutor. When we have people that come in with low level situations, what are we doing with the prosecutor's office or with our workforce development to make sure we're connecting those people back to jobs? And that's really where we're going to see the biggest reduction in our crime, not just policing, but making sure that we're investing on that front. And so those are my questions for for you police chiefs. So thank you so much for all the work that you guys have done for our fire team. I have just two questions. It was great to hear of the progress of our Hart team. Obviously, it's something near and dear to my heart. And you guys are seeing a lot of the times in our district, so really appreciate the team and everything they do. Are we anywhere closer to being able to have? I think there's some changes that have to be made at the state level to be able to have the Hart team respond to 911 calls for homeless. Is that still an effort that Janice Hahn and others are working on? Do you know? Speaker 8: We do have one of the heart units as a certified, and the other one is not at this point. Speaker 4: Okay. So we do have one that's certified. Yes. And I thought that last year we had talked about adding a third heart team. Was that not part of that conversation last year? Speaker 8: That has has been part of the conversation. But at this point, we're not looking at it in this budget. Speaker 4: But it doesn't. Okay. And then one. Speaker 6: Has to remind us, we used to have one heart team that we formed as a pilot. And then last year we added a second using measure. So that was the addition. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you, Tom. Obviously, the downtown we've seen, you know, over 3000 new units in downtown. It's an area that's that's extremely important to me, particularly with all the high rises. Will you be able to share with us in the next time that we bring up the budget, the number of calls for station one and station to increase from last year to next year? I know that's a year out request, but it would be helpful to kind of look and see. I know that the increasing fire in our downtown is low on the list, but since we've added so many new residents, I think it would be helpful to make sure that we as a councilor are being mindful of that change. Speaker 8: Sure, we'd be happy to give that to you. Speaker 4: Thank you so much. And Parks and Rec. I am so thrilled to have you and the team really partner with us on a lot of our key areas. I know Bixby Park Parcel one has been key. I want to thank your team for the role that you've played there. Thank you for helping us in downtown try to figure out the cover around the park. Park. But I wanted to just give big applauds to you for really taking compassion saves to heart. It was great to open up the budget book and see the new positions that have been slotted, and I think I don't have too many questions. I just really wanted to say how much I appreciate that. I echo Councilmember Richardson's comments around Park Equity. We've spent I know you came in at the tail end of Park Equity conversation, but we spent a lot of time talking about resources. And as a second district resident with the seven year old, every single program my daughter's in is on the east side. And it is frustrating not to be able to have something that's close to have some of that park programing. So urging you to take that park equity conversation serious not only in greenspace, but in programing whenever you're doing your your strategic plan, because it is a real issue that we have and we have parks like Miracle on Fourth Street that don't have open programing that people aren't aware of. And it's not listed in our parks and rec books. So making sure that we are activating those spaces that that needed the most. So thank you all department heads and city manager. I'm very pleased with where this budget is at and look forward to continuing the conversation. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Ringo. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues for asking all the questions I was going to ask. He stole my thunder. And then so basically the one the one question I was going to ask for both the public well, both the public safety heads is it's a recruiting and academies. Chief, you mentioned you have a Chief Luna. You mentioned you have a class currently in place with over, what, 72 recruits, I think you mentioned in the class. Speaker 7: Yes, sir. Speaker 1: When is that class expected to graduate? Speaker 7: Six months from August the 29th. And doing the math in my head, I'm going to say about February of 2020. Speaker 1: Is there going to be another class coming immediately after or what's the plan for the with a budget year with the academy where this year. Speaker 7: Our goal was to hire to this last year for 2019 and budget permitting. The goal will be to hire two more in this coming year. So we're already recruiting for the next one, even though we're just starting one at the end of this month. Speaker 1: And I realize that it's all peaks and valleys when it comes to attrition, promotions, people who don't complete the academy. So I know that that's a big part of the the process with personnel, and that's a challenge every year that you face as well with the Chief Espino, that you both have to deal with those issues in regards to that. Where are we with the idea? I know you're going to want more because we need more police officers to be hired to get us at least that a closer to a place where we want to be a police officer per thousand. Where are we at right now in terms of our representation of police officers to the population that we are at the 480,000, the last census? Where are we with that in terms of a deployment? Speaker 7: Our current ratio stands in about 1.8 per thousand. Speaker 1: And what's the national average, you know? Speaker 7: You know what? It's all over the board. And we're consistent with departments on the West Coast, the average and maybe just a little bit beyond us or below us. And on the East Coast, it's it's closer to sometimes three per thousand, but their policing is very different than it is out here on the West Coast. Speaker 1: Understood. In regards to the item that Councilmember Richardson mentioned in terms of the power program and I know we used to have there, and that also went away with all the budget cuts. Just to give you a heads up. I have been approached by a community group to look into reestablishing Pell. And so I'm looking forward to working with them as well as your department. You're represented that I'm going to be working with is obviously it's the Commander McGuire that I'll be working with and hopefully we can bring something forward that will be workable for not only the police department but for the community as well. I think it's a it's a program that was very successful and one that we should probably bring back. So I'm looking forward to having discussions that and of course, with our city manager and and the mayor to see if we could re-implement or reinstitute such a program. I think it's very successful. We know that they have the search and rescue, which is there, which is very helpful, as well as promoting future firefighters and future public servants. And I want to commend both of you for all the service that you've done for the city. Both of you have been with the city practically your whole careers, and it's been phenomenal. So the same question to Chief Espinal in regards to recruiting, and I know we're going to hear the presentation a little later, but in terms of academies, what do you have in mind for this this budget year in regards to hiring? Speaker 8: Well, we currently have an academy that's ready to start on August 19th, and they should be graduating December of this year, mid-December. Right now, that number is right around 30 and I say right around 30 because we're in competition with everybody in the region for the same candidates and they're getting swooped up left and right. So hopefully we start this academy with right around 20, 30 candidates and we have 28 new firefighters by the end of the year. The follow up to that is we'll start recruiting. In November for the class that's scheduled for 2020. That class, by the time they go through the entire process again, they'll start up in August of next year and graduating by about mid-December, about the same number of candidates. Speaker 1: How many recruits do your comedy class? Speaker 8: Ideally 28, right. Is a starting point. Right now, I think we're right around 2830 and we have a week to go before we actually start. Would it be unheard of that we lost one or two in the next week or so? It's happened before. So just anticipating that. Speaker 1: And Mr. Moy, I hope that we've spoken before, and I know you have a great grant writing team, great writing team, and I hope that we are able to continue to look at grant opportunities to enhance not only our parts base, but to make them much more enjoyable and and make them more able to be welcoming for people to come to the park and play. And those those playgrounds that you put out there recently have been very received. I hope that we can do more. I know you're working with Park with Public Works in some of those projects, so I hope that we are able to continue and put more out there. So those are the only the only two questions that I have for each one of you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just one thing. It's just got to be right now because I saw it right here in your budget. Chief Luda, I noticed that you were going down last year. You had a higher number of SS O's in your budget and this year you have about four less. Is there a reason for that? What's what's taking place with your. I'm looking at SS. So three. Last year, you had adopted NAFTA 101. And this year you have a budget at 97. That's for lessors. Are they being re reassigned or promoted or what's the what's the status of that? Speaker 7: I believe there are two positions. I'll have to get back to you on the four. Does it sound familiar? I know there were two that are being shifted around and a lot of them the moneys that we have in order to fulfill some. I keep on repeating myself about these unfunded mandates, trying to figure out how to get stay with 1421 and 748, because those are things that or positions that we have to do to get the work done. So but I can get back to you. I'll follow up with you on the four. I think it's two. Speaker 1: Okay. Well, it says four in a bunch of books. Okay. Just following up with that. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Oh, excellent. Excellent presentations from all three of you. As always, we're really moving in the right direction, and I appreciate all your work. A couple of things I know that I sat with. I can only think of the joke right now, Mr. Emergency. Right now I can't think of Master of Disaster. Thank you. The Master of Disaster. Earlier, there was a notice that went out today, about $12 million available from at the state level for 911 modernization. I know that currently we would have to be a recipient from the state and I don't think we're eligible, but I'd love us to keep an eye on that. I think that that's something that's crucial in the next few months. And if if possible, if there's any legislation that we could look for to help modernize the way that the the legislation was written. It would be great. The state has 12 million coming our way, and I hear more to come as our 911 system is is important to the work that both of you do. Actually, all three of you, quite honestly, a little bit about unfunded mandates in my prior life. We used to package up the unfunded mandate costs on an annual basis and send them to the state. Is there a process for that? I can't think of the acronym right now. Speaker 6: Yes, we still do that. So every single year we record it's financial liability, we record those and we send them to the state. And every year they don't pay. But every couple of years, probably every 5 to 6, we get lucky and there is a settlement and they end up cutting us a check. So it's really important that we track those and that we submit them every year. If you don't submit them, you don't get paid when they do actually pay their unfunded liabilities. Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to say that I recently heard that a settlement from like 2009 came in. So they're very, very far behind. But I do appreciate that we're still doing that because it's crucial to the work that we're doing. Finally, there are. Speaker 4: Governments. Speaker 3: Across the states that have looked at getting sponsorships for their trash cans. Many of you may remember when there was a radio station called The Wave. And while we don't have waves at our beaches currently, the wave used to sponsor all the trash cans for the departments of beaches and harbors up and down the state. And so in exchange for the cost of the cans and the cost of emptying them and maintaining them and paying for the trash contract, every single trash can up and down the county coastline said 94.3 or whatever the radio station was. I'm sure one of you know the wave. And so thank you of 94.7, the wave. Another piece of advertisement for them. For there, there are many years of financial support. I'd be very interested in seeing the Parks and Rec program better utilize the Peps program that this Council adopted that does allow for sponsorships, as Councilmember Orange discussed Speaker 4: . I think that it is important that the trash cans at the. Speaker 3: Beach have lids. And I also find that it is crucial that the trash cans in our parks have lids. And I know that we've been working hand in hand with the Friends of Eldorado Park. East. I was confused sometimes on East and West on their desired park trashcan lid that we could put on the park trash cans so that our vermin population and our birds aren't diving into the trash cans, getting tangled up in wire and other such things. Speaker 4: I'm also quite interested. Speaker 3: In knowing a little bit more about our senior programs that we took a lot of effort. I know that the Parks and Rec Department really took a strong lead on that. Do you have any? Short update that you could provide on the initiative that we supported last year that came from Council Member Austin. Speaker 6: Yes. So the the senior program at the expo, which is was 40,000 of the 100,001 time, only minutes is going very strong. It's three days a week and it's very, very popular. There's about 40 to 50, sometimes more participants. So it's very, very strong. And then the we're creating a mobile program to move around senior programing, and that's in the works and being developed with the the $20,000 a one time only. And then the 30,000 is to develop a robust volunteer program for our seniors and for people that want to provide volunteer services at the senior . And then the last 10,000 is we're working on just promotional material. So the the the moneys are going to very good use. And we appreciate that those resources. Speaker 3: Well, I really appreciate the hard work that you put into that and the numerous stakeholders that you brought to the table. I know that it was Passion of Councilmember Austin, something that his staff really volunteered for and put his money where his mouth was in terms of the effort. And I think that for you to have led that so successfully, we're just really proud of the work that you did. I know you were new at the time, and I just think that that was fantastic. Another initiative that came out of budget oversight and the full council last year was the postings related to park utilization. Are you able to give a short update? I know you'll give me updates at our staff meetings. Speaker 6: But the on the website, the the permits. Yes. So are daily posting of the athletic field sports permits is going very well. People from the public can see who has an actual permit for the sports organization. And we're very close to them now, putting the permits for park events. And that's the second part to our plan. Hopefully we'll be able to do that fairly soon. It's the same software as you know, and we're just developing the training to be able to do those reports and put it on the Web. Speaker 3: And do we think that will be before the end of the fiscal year, before the end of the calendar year? Speaker 6: I would say around the fall, it may be early October, but we will definitely we are able to do it. It's just a matter of training staff to do it on a regular basis to to to update that information. Speaker 3: And hopefully that that plan would eventually be automated. That's something that was advocated by our friends of Wardlow Park. And I think that, again, the department has really embraced working with the friends groups and their initiatives. That was a park that was consistently used in violation of the city policy. And this allows for the community to be our eyes and ears and support us knowing and understanding when mass gatherings are happening, when additional potential public safety or other things are not scheduled because they were not permitted. And finally, I just want to give a big round of applause. And I know the mayor is very supportive of this as well. We are now accepting credit cards at Eldorado Park. I think that is just a huge, huge change and an ability for us to reduce the wait times for the number of individuals who used to have to make U-turns because they did not have cash. And I look forward to phasing in a more comprehensive. Documentation of the utilization of park users as they go into the park and what that looks like over time. So thank you very much for your hard work. I think that we are moving in the right direction. All three of you. Any other questions I had? My colleagues have already answered or asked. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Supernanny. Speaker 9: Thank you to all three departments. Excellent reports and very comprehensive. I just have one question. And it involves body worn cameras. So it's either for PD staff or our chief Luna. Great response that that will get things implemented possibly the first month of 2020. I just like to approach the question from the opposite direction because I'm sure there are a lot of variables and in getting these things up and in place. So council does its job. Let's say we approved this in this budget and I think the first meeting in October would be October 1st. That falls on a Tuesday. If you were to get the go ahead that night, what's the soonest that a contract could be executed? Speaker 7: I'm being told October. Speaker 9: Okay. So if we approve this October four, sometime within that 30 days, that a contract would be executed? Yes. Okay. And in terms of the point that Councilwoman Pryce brought up about ramping up for personnel and whatnot, it just seems like you have a pretty short window there. That's my impression there, that if you're going to get this thing implemented and in place the first month of 2020, and this contract is, let's say, executed November 1st. That seems like a very short window to get everything going. So. So you're you're telling us that that's that's all doable and and no real issues there. Speaker 7: I will never say there won't be any issues. We will do our best to get there. But again, I do want to clarify. I don't know if I've done a good enough job of communicating this this evening. And by the way, if I didn't say this, I do have through the city manager's office a24 from memo coming to all of you regarding our legal obligations with 1421 and 748. It is pretty complex and. Please remember that the the people in the moneys we're asking for today are to comply with the law that's already passed and we're already behind. So even if we started. Two weeks from now, we're already behind. So I need people. And one way or another, those people are going to have to do that job. I already have people doing it now. I don't have enough people. So what I'm asking all of you to do as your chief is I need the money and people to comply with the law. And it just doesn't involve body worn cameras. We tied it in together, but it's it's all the legal mandates that we have a legal obligation to fulfill. So at the end of the day, hypothetically, we don't approve the moneys. I'm going to find the employees somewhere in this police department to complete those task. And it's not going to be pretty. But at the end of the day, we have to get it done as a team. Speaker 9: Okay. I appreciate that. I just wanted to give you that opportunity or I just want to make sure council is doing everything that we need to do to make this happen. So thank you for that extra explanation. That's it. Speaker 2: Thank you. Council member Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 10: Thank you, Mayor. As minority. Fine. Thank you. You know the end. I thought I would wait it to the end because the fact that I knew how the questions would be asked, but not the ones that I want to ask you. And the biggest part about all of it is that with the chief fire and police. And Parks and Rec. Yeah, I just can't really commend you guys enough for the work that you do here in our city, especially with the fire and the police department. Because the fact that I feel like I live at the fire department, yeah, I'm 17, but station ten, you know, they're so quick and fast, I don't get a chance to sleep at night. That just goes to show you how busy they really are. And Chief, I'd like to commend you and your staff, because the fact that every incident that happened in my district, I get a call from one of either your commanders or one of your sergeants, and it's excellent. Only at the time when it's like four and 5:00 in the morning, I still get a report. And that's why I give everyone in my district my phone number. So if I do get a call from one of those individuals, I will have an update on it. So I really appreciate that. The only question I have to ask an individual and then in the patrol bill, I see that the traffic safety in the proactive role of traffic stops are listed as there, you know, as a key service service. And these officers based out of are these officers based out of, you know, our regular station, are these individuals who are solely responsible for these kinds of tasks like the motorcycle officers? Speaker 7: Every uniformed police officer is responsible for traffic enforcement in the city. So if you if you're working a beat, say, in the area where you live and either, A, they observe a violation or they get complaints of a violation, somebody's running a stop sign, maybe driving too fast. Part of their job is to be proactive and make a traffic stop. They don't have to site all the time. It's their discretion. They cite or warn. We do have officers on motorcycles who primary function is traffic enforcement and there are out of our field support division, which is located on Lakewood Boulevard. But they have citywide responsibilities. And any time we get community concerns about traffic, whether it's coming from a community member or one of you, your officers, your staffs, they're the ones who get assigned to an area to enforce a speeding or maybe it's traffic around schools, specific traffic enforcement, and they can get around traffic a little bit easier. And they're the ones you don't want to see in your rearview mirror. Speaker 10: Thank you, Jane. Also, I'd like the last question. How many more officers do we have working in the department? How are they assigned throughout the city? Speaker 7: We have approximately I want to say it's 16 or 18 motor officers and there's we try to have coverage on multiple shifts. We get a lot of, for example, overtime or grants from the Office of Traffic Safety to specifically focus on people using cell phones, impaired driving, seatbelts and things of that nature. So they'll get assigned to the grants on overtime. But generally they are focused wherever the complaints are throughout the city. Speaker 10: Thank you, because I haven't really had a great response when we're having our problems over on Magnolia and Pacific and they were there and they really have to tighten up a lot. So I want to thank you officers for that also. And that's enough. I don't need any more from you, Chief, on this. Thank you very much. Now for the fire captain, I'd like to I'm very happy to see that we have the Fire Corps, you know, program because under way, because it's really like, you know, to offer, you know, the help. And if there's any help that we can offer you, you know, and to recruit in, you know, at risk kids, you know, we'd be interested in being any part of that upcoming class. And I want to thank you for that. Also, you know, Chief, on that one and the like. Speaker 8: I think it's a terrific program. Speaker 10: It's a wonderful program. And thank you so much. And then regarding to the budget, looking at it, I learned that about the the limestone program targeting the city, the Latino community. And I am interested in my office having an outreach and in the material for this program, if it's possible. On that, and I don't really know much about it, but I'm seeing that that's in it. So how do you pronounce that? Speaker 8: Yeah, you definitely go and get together with our community services. Speaker 10: Thank you. Thank you. And the last I'd like with Parks and Rec, you know, in our recent community budget meeting, I heard in the ask for the continuing to be say program during the summer and the feasibility of establishing Mecca. This park is one of our sites. You know, I'd really like for us to look at this if possible. And I know that the meeting, the staff mentioned it, it costs about 25,000 would be safe season. So let's please keep this as a priority for my district cause I only saw that be save mentioned once in the budget book. So I'd really like for, you know, the Parks and Rec to really keep that as a priority, especially MacArthur's park there, because we have a lot of situations, you know, with homeless there right next to the park. So we could really keep some of those things possible. I really appreciate that. And last. And last. I know that lately in the budget hearing, we were heard from the Health and Human Services. But since both PD and parks are here, I think we need to work on an after hour and weekend homeless outreach program, especially around our parks. So I would like to meet with any of you and discuss this. You know, we get a chance to Y20 and that's the end of my report. Thank you very much asking. Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. Everyone has spoken already, so I'm going to make comments. And then if there's additional comments, we'll go from there. A couple of couple items. The first is, I don't know that I that we had publicly said yet that we have the live release rate is at 92%. So I just want to congratulate you on that, Mr. Mouat. And if there's anyone here from the Animal Care Services team that that's actually really going in the right direction. And if we if our if our total number for our total live release number is at 92%, that is showing some significant improvement. And we've been improving every year. But I want to just congratulate you on that. I know that was kind of in a slide, but I wanted to point to that and thank you for your work. And let's give our animal care team a round of applause because they work really hard. In addition, I just want to echo a couple of comments. One is I'm also an esthetics person. I want to agree with Councilman Price on the trash cans any time we can. As you know, Mr. West, I always talk about stuff like this, but any time that we can ensure that everything looks, matches and looks the same and there's a quality to it, please, on those trash cans before we purchase a whole bunch, make sure they're quality and they look similar. I want to lift up something the vice mayor, Andrew said, which was I am also very interested in our homelessness efforts around weekends especially. I find that because we don't have the Multi-Service Center open on the weekend and because we don't have staff, obviously we have quality of life and our other folks out there doing the work in the fire department, but we don't have as much dedicated folks. Oh, they don't. I thought they were on weekends. Okay. So also quality of life and fire apparently are not a weakness, but I have found that we are doing as best we can during the week. But then on the weekends it becomes very apparent that a lot of folks out there need support and that there is not any sort of resources. And so and it also has an impact, quite frankly, on on the way we respond to needs and folks that are out in the community. And so I would just I would just concur that that's something that we should do. And I would hope that the council would look at that as an issue. The third is I notice that all everyone talked about measure in their presentations, and I just want to uplift that again and certainly think and talk about the impact that measure has had on the city. And it's had an impact on every department, but especially on police and fire. And then the last thing, Chief, I just wanted to I know there's been some discussions about violence and some of the councilman mentioned our needs for policing. And I want to just ask to ask you a couple of questions, and I think they're important as well. The first is on the officer involved shooting number. I, too, want to commend you and the department and the leadership. I think that you have you all and our rank and file have done extensive amount of of training and thinking about how we how we work on this. This is a very complex and difficult issue. And it's it's something that we want to make sure that all of our officers feel safe. And the fact that your you have implemented just some different different tactics and different ways of dealing with incidents. Incidents I think is very commendable to you. And I just want the whole team to know that it's it's very impressive. And it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be tragic incidents in the future. But I just want to commend you on that, Chief. And I also want to note something that was alluded to earlier. I think we know there's a lot in the in the in the media about about crime or violence. And I think every single crime that happens is very serious. And certainly every single homicide that happens in our city is very serious. And every homicide, like the one we had recently, impacts families and people and loved ones. Our homicide number rate this year up to now is is what number. Speaker 7: And before I answer that, you're right. Every number I'm going to say is is something we look at very seriously. Each one gets investigated fully. As of today, we are at 19 compared to 19 last year, which I wish it was at zero. And we fight really hard to try and do everything we can to prevent all of them. Speaker 2: I know and I know that sometimes I'll read that the homicides are dramatically up this year. There's a lot more than last year. And I think what you're saying is that there's at this point in the year, there's a same amount this year or was last year, is that correct? Yes, sir. And then I think that I know that obviously we know that the homicide rate in the last few years has been some of the lowest that we have recorded in the city's history. I know that every single one is a is a tragedy. A few years ago, we were averaging I think I know now we're averaging depending on the year, it could be 30, it could be a little more, could be some, some less. I know that we used to average 50, I think maybe 20 years ago when we were averaging 80. Before that we were averaging we've averaged over 100 as well. Has the overall crime rate decade to decade gone down over the last 40, 50 years? Speaker 7: Drastically? There's no comparison. When I was a young homicide detective in 1992, we had well over 100 murders, and that was the average right around that time. So when when people ask me out in the community, it sounds like things are getting worse today. I've been here 34 years. And I'm going to tell you, we the city has changed drastically when it comes to violent crime. Speaker 2: Is it safe to say the city's safer today than it was ten years ago? Speaker 7: It's a lot safer. Speaker 2: Today than it was. Speaker 7: Absolutely. But the changes that it's social media, 24 hour news cycle, everybody knows everything that's happening on these devices. So they feel like there's more of it happening. And that's not to downgrade the seriousness of the events we're still responding to. Speaker 2: And I know I also have looked at the media reports that you post online that are that are for public consumption. I think they're for public view. And I notice that that the media reports for for this year that if if the things stay on track, in the end they certainly could change. But that overall crime this year at the six month at the six month check in is lower than it was last year at the six month check in, is that correct? A little lower overall crime? Speaker 7: That is correct. We we are as of the the end of June for the 3010 that we report to the FBI, we have a 4.2 reduction in overall part one crime. Speaker 2: And I know that. And I know that in the last few years, we've been recording the lowest levels of part one crime that we've ever recorded in the history of the city of Long Beach. Is that is that true? Speaker 7: That is well within range. We are much better today than we have been in the past. Speaker 2: And I certainly think one of the things that's important, obviously, is looking at data and sometimes I say this to uplift the work that you're all doing, but all our partners across the city, whether it's in parks or in libraries or across the city, violence of any kind at any time is serious and is involves real families and real people, and they're incredibly tragic and heartbreaking. I think everyone feels that. I also I also want to just commend you that every every single one of those is is serious. But the fact that they continue to decrease and that we are experiencing right now lower levels of overall crime that we have in the last 40 , 50 years, I think is also important to note. And and I also want to be clear that when I when I read that, you know, homicides are shootings are up dramatically over over the last few years, I think the numbers and the data is the data. And and so I think that's important as well. So I just want to I just wanted to add that I think that you all are doing a fantastic job and I'm really proud of our police department. It's a tough environment to work in, but these numbers and your work show just some incredible progress. And I just want to thank every single member of the rank and file. And then and then lastly, I'll just say again to the finance staff, you guys have done a really great job. So thank you again for this presentation, Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: And thank you. I want to talk about trashcans again. I left it off my list and it's one of my pet peeves. I believe correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Modica, didn't we in the last two years purchased some big bellies out of the Tidelands funds for our beaches? Speaker 6: We did, yes. So we have a report that we'd like to give you. We've done additional big bellies. We also, I believe, put something like several hundred additional cat trash. Hands out on the beach. So we will get you those stats. It's important to celebrate what we've done and we know we need to do more. So and we agree things need to look consistent and tight. And and and the and the trashcan caps help as well. Speaker 4: Yes. And I brought that up because of the conversation is can we match our trash cans? I don't know. I know there's an additional cost associated with emptying big bellies. But they keep our streets so much cleaner and our parks so much cleaner. And I feel like every budget I'm a broken cycle, a broken record with whatever we can do to get whether it's big belly or different trash can. The trash cans we have on Broadway are probably what I'm thinking are the trash cans that they want to put back on our beaches while they have a lid. You can put your hands in each side and they dump over while they have sand in the bottom. Every Sunday I drive down Broadway and there are empty trash cans. And so whatever we can do, it's just like my biggest pet peeve. Those trash cans make our streets look filthy. They're disgusting looking. They're not clean. And I know they're cheap to to empty. But what's the cost? Whenever we think about how much pollution we're putting back in and the cost to those businesses, when you go down a corridor, that's beautiful, except for their trash cans. I never thought trash cans would be my issue, but trash cans, whatever we can do to make sure they have solid lids. And then I had one question for Parks and Rec, our mobile adoption van, which I'm very happy to say I adopted Jojo out of. I know one of the challenges has been cost to try to get them to be more mobile and to be at places. Do we expect an updated plan on how to get the mobile adoption van actually out and being used more frequently? Speaker 6: Yes. So that's that's very much part of the Elma strategic plan. And also, I'm excited because of the opportunity of now being given the tools to raise additional monies to be able to do these extra things that will make a big difference. Speaker 4: Awesome. Thank you very much. Speaker 6: And Councilmember, I actually do have some of those stats right here if you'd like them. Over the last probably six months or so, we've deployed about 100 of the blue barrels throughout our parks in the Tidelands, and we've done additions on 60 of the 95 gallon rollout receptacles along the beach bike path. We've done a number of other big bellies and just this step blows me away. We have a two person team that empties every day, 350 trash receptacles in the Tidelands area along our beaches. So we definitely have a crew that's doing that. We can continue to do more and we hear you loud and clear. Speaker 4: And I think I speak for Councilmember Price and myself. We hate hate the blue barrel trash cans. We just we will take out a campaign against those trash cans if we have to. But also, I know that we've used resources in our Tidelands funds in the past. Whatever we can do is we're having the conversations around the Highlands to make sure that if we're talking about consistency, that we go towards the best. I know that the Mr. Beck had talked about. Maybe there's something in between those mushroom top ones, the blue barrel and the the expensive ones to empty. So I thought we were going to get a report back on that last year, I guess is really what I'm saying is that we haven't finished our trashcan conversation and I want more trash can conversation. Speaker 6: We will certainly follow up on that. Speaker 2: Councilman Monk. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 3: That work now. Thank you. I really want to reinforce what the mayor said about statistics and misinformation about crime. Are we on a pathway or trajectory to start integrating the crime statistics in a more user friendly manner through our open data portal? Is that a better conversation for T.I. or is that a police conversation? Speaker 7: We are putting it out through our website. But yeah, it's probably better answered by T.I.. Speaker 4: Okay, I'll work on that. Speaker 3: And then I don't know if you'd have this available today, but perhaps for your recall to the Budget Oversight Committee, if we were to add either through a position or through overtime, a quality of life team for our weekends, I'd be interested in knowing what that would cost and potentially some sources that we could pull it from , because I completely agree. The homeless population needs to be able to be served 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And if they become accustomed that we are not on duty on the weekends. That's when we have some of the challenges. I know I've also met with the city manager on this and I plan to meet with Park Public Works as well. But we have Muse with Caltrans to do maintenance on their property. We need a use immediately to do quality of life. Support and enforcement on. Speaker 4: Both our waterways that are. Speaker 3: County facilities. DWP has some land behind Steve Lee that we really need to be able to access. And furthermore, on the Caltrans properties, we cannot wait for their process, their postings there. It's just too long of a process and the residents cannot rely upon it. And so I'd be interested in a report back. Within, I don't know, 120 days on what our options are and or a draft. And I will also take my time to meet with the department heads city attorney public works to help form that because it's crucial. Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much. That concludes questions for hearing out of number one. And we are going to try to comment on the budget if there's. I think we have folks lined up for coming on the budget, so please come forward cautiously. Robert Fox and Control, Gary Shelton, Ramon Vana and Carlos Avila. Please come forward. Speaker 1: Mr. Mayor, before we hear from the public, we have a there's been some questions from council to hear from different departments. So here's the schedule. So next Tuesday, we plan to hear from public works and the capital improvement budget. Also development services. Then we had September 3rd. We can hear we've had our requests for health and civil service so we can have health and civil service instead of the harbor and the water department. And I think there was a request for ID. So on September 3rd, we can have health, civil service and technology. If that's all right with the city council. Speaker 2: We'll work on the schedule. Thank you. Speaker 1: Courteously, please. Speaker 4: Right. Carelessly. A number of things to thank you for here. But with only 90 seconds, I'm going to skip those. Speaker 2: You have you don't have 90 seconds. Oh, you. Speaker 4: Don't? Okay. You have 3 minutes. All right. So in terms of the budget, I'd like to talk about the parks budget first. And I want to thank Corrado Mackay for being I'm very encouraged by his willingness to listen and consider alternatives. I've been really pleased with Stacie Mungo's program of Friends of Parks that has the promise for working together with the community. Each park is unique. One is an ecosystem with wildlife, and another can be a sports center. So the friends of those parks are all different, have different frameworks on them. My my greatest concern here in Eldorado Park is the fact that there has been a lack of maintenance for a number of years, the long term maintenance. I used to ride my bike around the lake in Area three in the 1980s, and that would be a death trap to do that today. If you go along that there's chunks of cement six and eight feet or six and eight inches high every few feet. It's broken. And we've talked about that and that it requires capital dollars and a lot of money. But we can't ignore that because that's an ADA compliance issue. And if you'd rather pay for a lawsuit, I mean, that's just where I don't want to go. You know, the first time somebody stumbles into that. So I'd really like someone to take a look at that. I appreciate the talk about trash cans. We have spent a year on trash cans and our friends at parks groups. And I can only tell you that I am concerned about the discussion about esthetics because we don't have toilets, funds where we are. We don't have the money to go out and buy all new trash cans. We have trash cans without bottoms in them, so we need trash can lids. And I don't care what the trash cans look like and I don't care what the lids look like, but those animals are being hurt. Every week I am given reports of animals that are taken to emergency and I see them in the park and it's heartrending to see their little foot cut off. And, you know, how do they get away from a coyote if they don't have a foot? So I'm really asking that instead of focusing on esthetics, we focus on getting trash can lids and I don't care what they look like. The third thing I'd say about the budget is coming from the private sector. In the budget meetings I've been in, there's always a discussion about reducing budget and headcount, and I don't hear any of that in the city ever. I always hear about adding headcount and adding budget making giving raises. So I'd like to see industrial engineering brought in. Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Mr. Fox. Speaker 6: Good evening, city council and mayor. It's working. It's on, Robert. I would like to speak on a few subjects. First one is for the police department. I hope we can include in this budget enforcement for E-Scooters. It's a new program that we have here in the city and we have not planned for any kind of enforcement mechanism on e-scooters. And we've had several accidents in the Broadway area, and we don't have any options there. We don't have anybody to call or any kind of monitoring whatsoever. So I do hope that we can set aside at least some portion of our police budget to address that relatively new addition to the mobility of Long Beach. Also bike enforcement. Since we have such a combination of things happening at this point in time, it's imperative that we have people that actually stop at stoplights or stop at stop signs. The resultant accidents are tragic for everyone, and that's going to take enforcement. That's not going to be done voluntarily. I would also, of course, like us to record any dispatch call. I know. That's really. Minutia. But if we don't record the minutia, we don't have a pattern of what happens. This was part of our problem on the Broadway corridor, was trying to figure out what actually our stats were. And so I applaud your great work and I hope that we can add on. I mean, that may take a staff person to record all dispatch calls. But particularly if we know we have a problem in a certain area, I think that becomes terribly important for us to make a decision. As for the fire department. I know you're into the idea of adult fall programs. Unfortunately, the addition of will anchors on the Broadway corridor have accelerated the falls of individuals, particularly the elderly. I myself happen to have two hip replacements, and I don't really want to fall. And I've already fallen once. And I think I have pretty good eyesight, even though I have to wear glasses to read. It occurs to me that we really need to take a really serious look about our infrastructure if in fact we want to preserve people's health and prevent the tripping falls that are happening. So I'd like us to look into that as a fire department and give a recommendation to the city manager as to how we might mitigate that. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Also, it seems to me we need to in some way notify the public that there is a $250 charge for any kind of emergency services, like an ambulance to them. I have so many of my people in the area complaining to me about they got a bill for $250 because the paramedics showed up. And I think that if we don't tell people about that, they get irritated afterwards. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Miss Cantrell. Speaker 4: I was glad. Good evening. And Cantrell and I have just been reading a fascinating book by a retired librarian, Long Beach librarian Claudine BURNETT, called Prohibition Madness. And I found this interesting. Statistic about the police department. She says that when the town was about 18,000 people, there were 23 men on the police force. And then in 1933, which is the year I was born, there were. 200. Members on the police force. And this was for a population of 145,000 people. Today we have the number of sworn officers as being 1.6 per thousand. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, there was one for every 750 people. I am very concerned about the fact that you are not replacing the police that we lost in the last recession. We no longer, as you said tonight, have the Athletic League. We no longer have the. Field anti-gang unit. That go out in the field and see what's going on. We do not have visible patrol people. We don't have the car, the patrol cars in our neighborhoods that we used to have. And I think that this even though you say crime is down. People that are in the neighborhoods don't feel this way. So I would like you to use more of Measure A's money to hire more policemen. I think that this will be. A better use of the money than some of the other things that have been mentioned tonight. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you, Miss Cantrell. Mr. Shelton. Speaker 6: Hi, everybody. My name's Gary Shelton, and I'm going to try to draw a nexus between the budget that you're looking at tonight for public safety and Parks and Rec to a couple of other items that might not seem that obvious at first, but the first is that I would hope that you would ask the department heads to work to control overtime expenses. And the second is that I would hope that you folks would work to identify available funds for the city's housing trust fund. Now, I'll try to explain to you how I get to those two items from tonight's budget meeting. We do have public safety on the docket. We have a lot of homelessness. It was discussed tonight, even homeless dogs. But a lot of money goes to homelessness. I think one thing that we didn't hear and I think we would discover if we asked is that the fire department probably has more calls for service toward assistance to homeless people than the police department does. Just a wild guess. But I think that they're they're out there in the streets dealing with homeless people who have fallen or for whatever reason, need their assistance more often than the cops. If we were to start now and we have to start now somewhere, and why not now to create the housing that's necessary to put those people into housing where they really belong in, to services where they really belong for their own benefit. Then what we would look at would be reduced calls for service and reduced expenses and reduced workload on the public service people. Now we have to start somewhere. We might not get to that point this year, but we do have to start somewhere. So the reason I mentioned the housing trust fund is because that's one of the local sustainable sources of. It has a local sustainable source in the transit transit occupancy tax for up to $500,000 a year to come out of the general fund, which is earmarked. And a couple of years back and I've been here many times when we had the periodic budget reports expressing that there is funds available, but we lost money never going into the housing trust fund because it was always never available. The funds were not available. Now I would ask you folks to work to make sure that those funds are available every year. Okay. And the one year that came down here and it was so disappointing because the funds were clearly available, they had all been spent all $500,000 for police overtime. So if we reduce overtime, we can help create housing. If we create housing, we can host housing homeless people. We can reduce the calls for service to those homeless people. Now, I don't think that's a far shot, but we have to start somewhere. Okay. So it's up to you folks again to try to work to identify the available money in time that it can be put into the housing trust fund. And also to ask your department heads to work to control overtime. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shelton. Ramen Vesuvius. Have your oats close enough. Ramon? Speaker 6: Yes, that's fine. Speaker 1: Hey, I'm going to be quick. I see you guys are kind of. Speaker 6: Falling asleep, so I'm not going to keep my. Speaker 1: My talk to too long. Speaker 6: I support all of these departments. I think all of you do, too. And here in District five, we're just noticing that it looks like things are just falling by the wayside. And so all I can say is that from the perspective of the residents, we've never seen the parks in worse shape. Right now, I applaud the. Speaker 1: Mayor when he he said the same thing when we. Speaker 6: Were running out of water for our parks. So I applaud you for. Speaker 1: At least admitting that to some of the people you'd never seen them that that bad. Since we've gotten the since we've gotten some water back, our. Speaker 6: A lot of our parks have improved. Right. So I can say that. Speaker 1: At least one of the problems that we've had for about well, for a long time are the the piping for the for the reclaimed water that we have. It's all of their pipes are about their way past their their lifetime. And so it's a matter of time before they just burst. And all together, there's about $212 million worth of of, you know, an undone maintenance that needs to be done on these pipes just replaced altogether. So that's the main thing that I have. I'm going to, you know, put my my head to the grindstone and I'm going to look for some some grant funding. And I'm going to work with the parks like I was doing. Speaker 6: With with Marine. Speaker 1: And we're going to see if we can get get some money to to help the parks. And I've also secured I got some quite a bit of money that I have secured from private funding to help our parks. But it's going to take an effort from the city to to prove to me that they care about our parks. I haven't seen any evidence in a long time. The part that water was a good, good reason, a good. Speaker 6: First start. But that was a very minor, minor effort. So I can secure money. I can help you, help you get what you want to go, but you have to at least. Speaker 1: Meet me halfway. I have approached I've approached my council person, haven't heard anything. So all I'm saying is I'm bringing this to you, and if you want to ignore it, that's fine. Speaker 6: We we all know that. Speaker 1: The police, in the way that they are making the statistics every year seem to be changing. So and that's that's easy. Speaker 6: That's publicly, you can see the way that they measure the crime statistics. Speaker 4: So I'm just letting you know that. Have a great. Speaker 6: Day and I'll see you out. Speaker 2: Q Mr. Carlos of Ibis. Speaker 1: Good evening. I want to address a couple of things. The first has to do with the police department recently. A few months ago, I ran into something called the police scorecard. Those are the statistics in the police scorecard are from 19 I'm sorry, from 2016 to 2017. And they don't really present Long Beach in very good light. Out of the 100 top or largest police departments in California, Long Beach ranks number 96. Now, I know that things have been changing. I know that Police Chief Luna presented some some really encouraging statistics, and I applaud that. But at the same time, I would like to see the chief's response to the police, the items addressed in the police scorecard. Now, I know that during the campaign for Measure A, there was a glossy flier that came out kind of putting the fear into us, telling us that that we really needed to get those 200 police officers reinstated. That hasn't happened yet there. I mean, it looks like we barely are able to keep up with attrition. And I know that all the overtime that the police are working must be pretty stressful and must be leading to some not not very good situations. Let's see. Parks in the western half of Long Beach where I live. We have a. A tiny amount of parks in relation to the site of Long Beach with Eldorado Park and with all the golf courses. The parks and the urban forests are really the lungs of the city. And in the west side of Long Beach, where I live, where we get the direct results from the four or five freeway, the 710 freeway, the refineries, the port, the incinerator, we really need more parks. Now, this was sort of interesting, the joint use of as a means to increase open space. That's a little bit of a stretch because it doesn't really increase open space. It allows use of school facilities as parks, but it's not increasing open space. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you so much. That concludes the comments for our budget hearing. We will continue the budget hearing at the next council meeting and continue with the different presentations. So thank you all for participating in the budget that was hearing item number one before a hearing item. The second hearing on the agenda, I want to ask Mr. Patrick Lavin to come forward if he is if he is here. Speaker 5: Ms.. Mr. Mayor, there's two people queued up on this one. Speaker 2: I'm sorry. Is this for public comment? Responses are. Councilman Pearce? Speaker 4: Yes. I just wanted to clarify two things. I know from talking to our commanders that PD did receive a grant to start enforcing the scooters and the bike program and that that enforcement is supposed to be starting sometime soon. Is that correct? Speaker 6: So in the FY 20 budget, we are actually proposing that we add positions as we formalize the ordinance for the SCOOTER program. So there will be enforcement positions as well as administrative positions. Speaker 4: Great. And then I also just wanted to clarify, we do record all of our dispatch calls in a911. Speaker 1: Yes, we. Speaker 6: Do. Speaker 2: Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to just refocus and thank you for bringing up the point about data. I think it's important we do look at data. You know, my conversation with my line of discussion with the police chief was really focused on those months where we get out of school and get back in school. And in fact, the data shows that we had a 50% increase in violent crimes in North Division, 18% in West Division during that period. That spike that we were talking about and when I said it seemed like it went up. I'm not saying across the whole city or smoothed out across the whole city or for the whole six months, talking about that period of time when kids get out of school where we all sort of brace. And we saw that. And so, you know, sometimes we we need to it's okay to talk big picture about the data, but our job is to really focus in. And so I really wanted I really wanted to have that. Where I wanted that conversation to go was, what can we do around those months to really boost our response or prepare for it? So thank you for bringing up the data. The other thing is the way we break out our data is not really reflective of the way people communicate in the public. Right? So when the public's on our reports, I'll say part one, part two, aggravated assault. But what you'll see in the press are the dramatic things. A shooting here, a shooting there. We don't really report in that same way in shooting. So we do need to probably think about how we sort of engage and talk about it in a way that actually responds to the needs of the community. So I want to just make sure, you know, I didn't want to be I want this to be misunderstood the way it was last week. I'm talking about a very specific thing. When we get out of school, when we get back into school, I think we should I'd love to sort of talk about that period of the year. Thanks a lot. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. With that, we've concluded our budget hearing. I'm Mr. Levin. Speaker 1: On our end city council members, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and our organization. I'm Pat Lavin. I'm the IBEW journeyman lineman from IBEW 47. We represent 12,000 IBEW members throughout the state of California and Nevada, and we recently have filed an affiliation with the Association of Long Beach Employees. I want to take this opportunity to introduce us that through the hard work of my assistant business manager, Dick Reed, and the members of the association and the other members of our staff that worked on that. So we look forward to a long and productive relationship with the city of Long Beach, not only for our 477 new affiliated ALB members that are now part of IBEW 47, but also for about the 2000 members of the IBEW of our local union and other local unions from the Southland that live and work and also vote here in the city of Long Beach. Thank you for your time. Speaker 2: She'll have an thank you and welcome. And we know we'll be we'll be talking. So thank you very much. And we are we're going back to our hearings. This is something we were discussing in closed session and we didn't get a chance to do it earlier. So I brought that comment forward. But that's related to some of our closed session discussion. Now we're going to hearing item number three. Second. It's the second hearing, but it's titled the hearing out of number three.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2020 Budget for the following Departments: Police, Fire, and Parks, Recreation and Marine.

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Speaker 2: Motion carries item 15 from the consent calendar. Speaker 0: Please report from Financial Management Recommendation to Increase Munis Contract with G SSI Inc. For providing security guard services by 454,500 citywide. Speaker 2: There is a motion and a second, Mr. Andrews. Speaker 10: Yes. Yes, I would I would hope my colleagues would back me on this, because the fact is, I would like to move this back a week, because I don't think we had enough time to do an evening on this, because I'm looking at the price in here and the outside sources in which is being sent out to I would just like to get another week so I can do a little more venting on this if that's possible. Speaker 2: So there's a so there's a motion to hold this over to the next meeting? Yes, please. Is your public comment on holding this over to the next meeting? I don't see any. So we will go ahead and take a vote. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to increase Munis Contract No. 3190000026, formerly Blanket Purchase Order No. BPLB19000026, with GSSi, Inc., dba General Security Service, of Wilmington, CA, for providing security guard services, by $454,500, with a 10 percent contingency of $45,450, for a revised total contract amount not to exceed $999,900, and extend the term to March 9, 2020. (Citywide)

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well, thank you. That that concludes public comment. We're moving on to item 33. You know, I think. So you were you were signed up not to speak on general public comment, but I did call your name. You were signed up to speak on the on the item before, which was already adopted, which was often some sort of consent calendar. So I already passed the consent counter. Okay, great. So now we're going on to item 33. Speaker 0: Communication from Council Member Richardson, Vice Mayor Andrew's Council member who ranga recommendation to receive and file the 2019 Long Beach Fire Department recruitment report and request city manager to identify resources to establish a full time sworn diversity recruitment and partnership manager position in the Fire Department. Speaker 2: Councilor Richardson. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mayor. So I think this is a pretty timely and a good conversation to have. We've been discussing diversity within our fire department for a number of years. I remember my first conversation with our new new chief. He told me this was going to be, you know, something really central to his agenda. And there's been a lot of work, you know, in the community as well. The recent graduates of the Economic Policy Impact Center, who I see are there and holding up signs. There's a little bit of work over the last few months and help publish a study on the very issue. And internally here within the city, our chief has done some pretty amazing work with our innovation team and taking on this issue of diversity as well. And and so so the goal tonight is to really hear about some of the efforts that are taking place to diversify our police, to power our fire department, and to sort of lift up. I noticed that that both reports, the economic policy impacts and a report in the chief's report both lift up the need to really have a full time person dedicated to focusing on diversifying and recruiting and really going deep into our community and recruiting. And so I wanted to lift that up. A city or a city our size, you know, with a, you know, a city where it's in a unique position where both our police chief fire chiefs are both Latino. And I remember hearing Chief Espino recount his early years in the field talking about the sense of ease the community felt when they received aid from responder who spoke the same language to them. I think these things are important. And so the idea tonight is we're going to hear presentation and I want and the motion here is going to recommend to the city manager to go ahead and explore how we can better support this effort by committing to a full time sworn diversity recruitment and partnerships manager within the department. And so let's go ahead at this point and get our presentation from Chief Espinal. Speaker 8: Thank you, Councilman Richardson. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. This evening, I'll be providing a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's 2019 recruitment report. In April of this year, we began a review of our recruiting and selection process that was completed in July. We partnered with the city manager's office and the Civil Service Department to analyze data from Long Beach Fire Department applicants, perform qualitative interviews with current firefighters, survey the previous three cohorts of fire recruits, and review best practice research from other cities. Here are the current demographics for the Long Beach Fire Department. These numbers are for sworn staff, only, of which there are 389 total because of its size. Small changes. Changes make a big difference. In the Long Beach Fire Department, for example, the addition of just five more females in the ranks would reflect a 30% increase in females . Here are our five recruit applicants identified by race and ethnicity over the last four recruitment cycles. Long Beach Fire Department receives an average of 3263 applicants for each fire recruit recruitment cycle. However, from 2014 to 2019, Long Beach Fire Department's black applicants have been reduced by half from 15% down to 8%. Meanwhile, its Hispanic applicants have increased to a level similar to white applicants. The Long Beach Fire Department's applicant breakdown by gender is 5% female. This also reflects the state of the department as a whole, which is 5% female. Best practices. We looked into a lot of other fire departments across the country and found that we already employed a lot of their best practices. And here's an overview. The fire science program at Jordan High School, which we will be starting in fall of 2019, the Long Beach Fire Department will partner with the Long Beach Unified School District to start a fire science pathway at Jordan High School. Our application window time. The Civil Service Department's Fire Recruit application is open for two weeks, which gives people enough time to apply as opposed to some departments which are only open for a day. Standardized test. Instead of administering its own written exam, civil service and language for our department, use a standardized test. Our Test administration. Which is our physical built ability test. The Long Beach Fire Department administers its own physical ability test at no cost to the applicant. Standardized oral interviews. The two rounds of oral interviews measure different applicant qualities and are standardized. Community involvement stakeholders from the community are invited to participate in the first oral interview. Our team came up with research strategies that fall along the following five categories selection process. Recruitment. Staffing, recruitment programs. Communications and data processes. Our selection process has been developed from best practices. However, as in all processes, there is still room for bias. Sending all BFD staff that participate in the selection process through implicit bias training would give them the tools to identify and mitigate any potential biases. We got a head start on this and it's happening this recruitment cycle for all of our staff involved in the selection process. We also want to implement, monitor and evaluate pilot studies to make adjustments to our selection process. In pilot study number one, we would invite all of a band list to the patty currently in the selection process. The Long Beach Fire Department receives a band of applicants from the Department of Civil Service and reaches out to the air band for their resumes. This pilot study, which switch that step with the invitation to the party and analyze to understand the effect in diversity. Pilot Study two We would be adopting the city of LA's test or develop an independent written test. The Long Beach Fire Department does not currently currently have anyone assigned to work on strategic recruitment. This report strategies rely on having appropriate staff to develop, implement and monitor programs and policies for recruitment. We are proposing a diversity recruitment and partnerships manager classed as a fire captain. We're establishing a cadre of five rotating firefighters that represent the diversity of the Long Beach community as a crucial step in building a recruitment team. These firefighters would be funded by overtime and would help in targeted outreach events as directed by the recruitment staff mentioned above. The Support Services Bureau, Civil Service, personal personnel analysis analyst and recruitment staff will meet quarterly to refine the recruitment efforts. This will ensure cross departmental collaboration. Long Beach Fire Department will utilize Instagram, Facebook and the city's website to promote recruitment efforts. We will also update our website, so to best utilize it as a recruitment tool. This is already happening, so stay tuned for a new website coming soon. Long Beach Fire Department recruitment staff will use technology like Google Forms to manage applications for programs and to track every recruitment effort. The Long Beach Fire Department recruitment staff will also develop methods for increasing the reliable reliability of the selection process, which includes established establishing highly structured processes for all steps and conducting reliability checks. Long Beach Fire Department will develop an internal survey to understand the culture of the organization and how they will receive these programmatic changes. Long Beach Fire Department Recruitment. Recruitment staff will also develop a community survey that measures the community's perception of the fire department and how likely they are to see a fire department job is feasible. The Long Beach Fire Department will establish a comprehensive mentorship program. Recruitment staff will set up a short application for interested applicants to fill out and posted on the Long Beach Fire Department website. Overtime is not planned for this. Recruitment staff will partner with Long Beach City College to develop a one day event that begins with a panel of female firefighters in the morning asking them questions about how they became interested in the fire service and describing their path. This event will be open to all but target females. College athletes and veterans have been proven to have the necessary physical training and discipline to be successful. Firefighters targeting recruitment toward local college sports teams and recent veterans will help the Long Beach Fire Department reach a more diverse candidate pool while also recruiting highly qualified individuals. Recruitment staff will develop a recruitment engagement outline based on best practices found in the city's participation in the Government Alliance for Racial Equity, or Geer, as well as several other city wide engagement efforts such as economic developments. Everyone in strategy and development services. Climate Action and Adaption Plan. Long Beach Fire Department is working on strategies to fund the implementation and implementation of key recommendations, such as the Diversity Recruitment and Partnerships Manager with cost savings. This concludes our Long Beach Department recruitment report, and we would welcome any questions that you may have. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr.. Fire Chief. Mr.. I'm going to go back to the counselor. Speaker 5: Just to wrap it up. So we saw, we all saw the EEO presentation and, and, you know, behind the rail, a number of us looked at the numbers and said, hey, you know, we can do better here. And I think this is this is great. Lift up two things here. The Jordan Highway Pathways Program. Congratulations. I've been tracking and following that. Really excited to see that program get off the ground this fall. And secondly, I thought your presentation was amazing and the fact that you tie in so many current efforts and how it aligns from our governance alliance, racial equity to our economic inclusion work, this this connects all of it. And so kudos to you. The last thing I'll say is one I want to recognize and thank the two letters of support, one from Long Beach firefighters, Local 372, who's been a big advocate for this work, as well as a Lumbee City college trustee, would walk Joe into who's involved in some of the Longview City College pathway stuff. So thank you so much. And those are my remarks. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Concern re oranga. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank you, Chief, for putting down this report for me. This is like deja vu. As you may recall, I was the city's recruitment officer for 14 years, 15 years with the city of Long Beach and the civil service department, until I had an opportunity to work with this as a team where I had a crew of assigned firefighters to work with me to do the recruiting up and down the state, even in regards to going to fire science classes, our academies, jobs, job fairs, community colleges and universities, I think that that resulted many times. We used to have about 7000 applicants come to apply for jobs in the city of Long Beach, where we had maybe 40, maybe 60 positions. And with that many applicants, it made it very, very tough. And that's why we went into the banning of the of the list, which was something that created greater opportunities, obviously, for the city to pick from that from from the best the will you would have a larger list, you have more opportunities and I think we need to maintain that. I would venture to say that I think we have to stop you in that and just go by the rule of the list. If rule less meaning that if you take a test and you meet the cutoff, give the whole list to the fire department for you to look at, at the candidates that are there. And that would also provide greater opportunities to look at the people who are there. Go to go through the patty. I don't probably you don't have to said all of the patty but the ones that you think are the ones that based on the interview that you think would be more compatible to to do the job and deal with the rigors, I think would be very helpful. It creates more work, I understand, for you, for the department, because you would have to assign more people to do these extensive interviews because they do take days. I know that I was part of that once upon a time. So, I mean, we have to look at other ways now. We're in the 2000 when I was doing this, it was back in the eighties and nineties that 19 it seemed so long ago now, the 1980s and nineties. But, you know, with social media and Twitter and and. Facebook. You know what? It makes it easier now, of course, to reach out and make contact because a lot of people are into that. And so one of the surveys that I did back in the day was to survey the candidates and say, how did you learn about this job? And a lot of them a lot of them was word of mouth by relatives, friends, acquaintances, referrals. So I think that that needs to be looked at as well in terms of how you can expand on that. And certainly Facebook and Twitter provide another those kinds of social media platforms provides that opportunity. But there's nothing that says success, like pressing the flesh. Being there, going to community organizations, CBOs community based organizations, talking to them directly about firefighters and having the recruitment team reflect the community, which goes a long, long way. And I, I had a lot of positive contacts on that. They would see a female firefighter with me and just felt felt inspired to apply for the job as well. So you might make sure that you include females and people of color in your recruitment teams. And I'm also very pleased that you're going to look at assigning a person, a a uniformed personnel, to be the full time recruiter. That's that's great because it's it it makes a real good commitment that it registers the commitment that the fire department has to this effort. So I want to commend you on that. I also know that civil service has had a great commitment with that, too. And you also have to look at the test itself. The test itself has some negative aspects to it. People aren't always ready to take a test. Test anxiety is is high. I used to be an examiner myself back in the day. So I know how how impactful that can be. So I'm glad that you're reviewing that. Look at it in turn to analyze it and see what what what better examination instruments you can use to cut people out to get the people to to apply. So with that, I ran out of time, and that's about all I'm going to say for now. I might relying on a baton. Speaker 2: Thank you. I thank you very much, Councilmember. Next up, right on time, Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all right. Speaker 10: Thank you, Ms.. Thank you, Mr. Super. Not for that legislative item. 5 minutes. And I'm going to real quickly go to this, because this is very serious, because last week various media outlets broke the story about the lack of diversity in our fire department. And similar to those stories was the commitment from our chief, who has increased diversity in the department. And I believe that we can, in the city, need to back up our chief to give him the tools that he needs to get the job done. So I am supporting this measure because diversity and opportunities are a key to what makes our city so special. And I ask my colleagues to join in with me. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Vice Mayor Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: And for those of you in the audience that don't see it, we have a timer on our end, too, to make sure we don't talk longer than 5 minutes. So that's why we were laughing, because I don't see it up on the screen. I just wanted to say I appreciate the efforts, the lens, and any day that we have department heads talking about implicit and explicit bias and trying to make sure that our departments look like our community is a win for me and and my constituents. And so I fully support this, whatever we can do to make this a model, to make sure that we're using this in other departments as well. I know Public Works is not as compensated as our fire PD, but I know it's another department that lacks a lot of diversity, particularly when it comes to gender. And so hopefully we can continue to work with EPIC and with our departments and our city manager to to make this a good model. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember Councilwoman Price. Speaker 3: So I want to thank the chief as well for all of his efforts. So before I was at my current job, I Orange County Fire Authority was one of my clients when I was at Woodruff. So I'm very familiar with their inner workings. And I and also the City of Orange Fire Department was one of my clients. And so diversity in the fire department is always a challenge. And so the efforts that we're doing here are amazing. And I applaud them and I think it's great. And this this item, the concept of this item is fantastic. Of course, we're going to have to figure out what the details of it come out to be after we get a report. But the question that in terms of fiscal impact but the question that I have is do we have a position similar to what Councilmember Randall . I used to hold a recruitment officer for the city. Mr. City Manager Do we have anything like that now? Speaker 2: Sir West. Speaker 3: I mean. Speaker 1: Mr. Stout That would be a question for the Civil Service Department, but I believe they do that. But they certainly do that. I'm not sure if they have a position strictly related to that, maybe. Mr. HONEYWOOD. No. The former or the current acting director. Good evening. We do have a deputy director of civil service who. Speaker 2: Oversees our recruitment and selection division. So that's one person not. Speaker 1: Dedicated to managing, just recruitment, but also oversees all the work that our test analysts do. Speaker 3: Okay. And do any of our other departments have recruitment officers in the departments like this? Police. Do we know yet? Police. Speaker 2: The police department does have. Speaker 1: One at least one dedicated staff working on recruitment issues. Yes. Speaker 3: Okay, great. Any other department in the city? Speaker 1: Each department has an administrative officer and that person is responsible for working with H.R. and also civil service to do this job. Yes. Speaker 3: But fire doesn't have that. Speaker 1: Fire has administered. OFFICER But not a not what? The Chief is asking for tonight. Speaker 3: I see. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Well, I hope that when if the when the report comes back to council, we could include a little bit of kind of historical nature of what we've done for recruitment and some maybe some models of what others are doing and maybe even some other departments. Because I imagine, you know, we want to have diversity in the city and in all aspects of the city. This is probably an issue that's not unique to the Long Beach Fire Department when it comes to work as a firefighter. But I think that if we have a sense of what is going on throughout the city, we can determine whether there is a central approach that's better or a specific approach within the fire department. Speaker 1: I think we just recently submitted a report to the city council about three or four months ago, and pretty much all the departments were looking good. The fire department was an outlier, though, and that's why it's here tonight. Speaker 3: Well, it was an outlier compared to other city departments. But do we know if it's an outlier compared to other fire departments in the state? Speaker 1: Chief. Speaker 8: In regards to other fire departments in the state, we're actually doing very well with our percentages. And the difference between that report that the city manager's referencing and our report is that our report only looks at sworn firefighters and not all admin and civilian staff, all of that. Speaker 3: Okay. All right. Thank you for that information. I look forward to getting the information back. Thank you, Chief. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Soprano. Speaker 9: Thank you. Happy to support this item tonight. And and also will be happy to support the efforts through our council offices, social media, whatever. But many have touched on it here. I just would like to commend Chief Espino on your work today. Great job. Speaker 8: Thank you. And if I may, I'm just going to take this opportunity. Thank you all for your support. And it's I know right now it's directed at me, but I really do need to recognize Stephanie Zavala, who just stepped away from the dais. But for three months, she put her heart and soul into this and really brought this all together for us. So I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize her in front of everyone today. Thank you. Speaker 10: Yeah. Don't. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So the conversation, the questions actually prompted me to look at my recommendation and see if I need to make it a little more specific. So, Mr. Chief, in your efforts, do you currently have have you identified currently funding to move forward with this position? Speaker 8: We have not identified any funding at this point where we're looking through our budget, but we haven't identified anything yet. Speaker 5: I think the hope here was that we could, you know, help the chief identify those funding, that funding, and then come back with a report later next year about how to make it sustainable. So if I need to amend this to include also recommended to the Budget Oversight Committee, I'd love before we finish this budget to take a look at, you know, what we can do to help support to support the chief here. So I want to I just want to amend this. I'm directing, requesting the city manager help identify resources as well as the Budget Oversight Committee. I would like for both to look at what we can do to help move this along in this fiscal year so that we can have a conversation, a more fruitful conversation next summer, next August 2020 about sustainability of it. So that's what I'd like to recommend. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilman Ringo. Speaker 1: I had to rely up. Ran out of time last time. But I do want to acknowledge the comments that Councilmember Price mentioned in terms of other recruitment efforts. I words at that time the general recruiting officer for a city law meeting and that was all employment but the specialty was public safety, police and fire. But I think that one of the things, if we want to look at the possibility of a year round recruiting program, we need to look at how we're going to fund it for one and two. Where is it going to be housed? Where it was housed before in civil service was one part of it. We're now in 2020, coming up in 2020, and we need to look at things a little differently. I think that we need to look at it in terms of diversity as a as a whole for the city. And I think that every department has a commitment to it. So I would look at maybe having a conversation with our financial office with John over here with regards to growth do in regards to how we can provide a sustainability model for our recruiting division, if you will, or or recruitment officer or whatever that would be sustained by all departments because all departments have recruiting needs. We need to, although the city as a whole is, as the city manager stated, that we have a lot of departments are looking good. They're looking good in some areas and not so good in others. And I think that we still need to look at diversity as an overall goal for the city and perhaps looking at how we recruit our employees and where we get them from and and what efforts we put out there makes a big difference in terms of where we find people and how we get hired here. We're always looking for the best. We want to say that we hire the best, but if we don't make an effort to find the best, we're not going to get them. And I've always said in the past, if we don't get them through the front door, we're not going to we're not going to get them out through the back. So that's that's get them through the front door by providing front door meeting, testing, interviewing and getting them to get him on the list or whatever. And in, in, in hiring them and then promoting them and the back door being retirement. Okay. Hey, you get the analogy. Didn't work too well, but for whatever it's worth, I think that this is a city we should make this a city commitment to towards diversity. And nothing speaks volumes about that commitment we have there, making a city commitment to diversify our city by having focused and a general recruitment effort that attracts all our employees here we had before and we've done the city has gone phenomenally. When I first started, I had three police sergeant, three Latino police sergeant. Now we have a Latino police chief. And because of the efforts that we did, we had very few police captains and battalion chief of the fire department. Now we have a Latino police chief because of those efforts that we did before that came in through a targeted recruitment effort. So we want to really put our money where our mouth is. Let's put our money where our mouth is. Let's put money into a recruitment division or a recruitment effort that is going to diversify the city. So I'm hoping that in future discussions, we could emphasize that a little more. And like I say, we could find the funding mechanisms to do that. Sure percentage of funds that could go from every department into a employment, if you will, employment. Basket bowl, whatever you want to call it, pot. There you go. Not that kind of pot. Pot. In terms of money, pot to waste to do this efforts. Hey, man, you know, if you can't have fun here, why not? And so anyway, let's let's look at that. I think that's that it's an opening conversation that I think we we should continue. And I know we're going to be looking at getting a new city manager. Perhaps that will be something that that we could discuss as well with with a new city manager. No aspirations to the current one, of course, because, you know, you've been here a long time and and thank you for your service. And we also need to look at moving towards a future. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. And now we will move on to public comment. We have five members of the public and I can say Adrian Sias, Stephen Contreras, Brooklyn Wilson and Devin Abad. Please come forward in that order tonight. Ken Fay, Adrian Sias, Steven Contreras, Brooklyn Wilson and Devin Ballard. Please begin. Speaker 1: She's in here. So I just want to make sure, you know, I don't want to join real quick. I don't want to be part of the Scooby Doo and the gang over there. But, you know, there is no speak there's no sound system outside that's stipulates that you're calling, you know, speakers to come to the role. You know, in the previous city hall and our old one, seismic one, they had that system, you know, and you have a bathroom that's over 400 feet away. So you have to run to the bathroom, go back through police check to come back in. So if we could figure it out, I know we just started in here. We can figure that out. It was a good request. Thank you. Thank you. That being said, I want to first say I appreciate the and commend the efforts of our fire chief. This is a very progressive moment in time where we have a city department admitting that there are flaws in the system and they want to do better. It was amazing to see a slide admitting that there is implicit bias in relation to any hiring, especially here in the public sector. That being said. I saw that the African American presence has gone from 8.5 to about three and a half. I would assume that's because we're in the the age of the baby boomer, the great baby boomer retirement. That's literally, you know, everyone who was hired probably in the seventies and eighties due to targeted hiring and court mandated , you know, an unfunded mandate, you know, whatever wants to be called, you know, those those opportunities that occurred in the seventies and eighties. You know, now we have the, you know, the gradual decline that comes with people retiring. So we need to figure out a way to not only offset that, but also increase it more to be more reflective of the diversity that we live in. A suggestion that would come to mind for me would maybe be reaching out to the L.A. chapter of the Stentorian, which is a group that advocates for black firefighters across the nation. There's a sizable chapter in L.A., and I'm sure they would love to have a conversation with you, fire chief, if you could reach out to them. Also, you know, I grew up next to a fire station and on 23rd and Long Boulevard, I think that's I don't know what number that is, but it's ten. Yeah. And, you know, the only fire, the only person that look like me that I ever seen in the jump and the get up. And he came to my school when I was a kid was Mr. Wayne Chaney. So, you know, I know I don't know how many years he's got left, but it'll be great to see for the next generation of children that look like me and go to the public school system. You know, we can replace three more of him. That being said, thank you, fire chief, for your efforts and I appreciate to see where we go forward from this. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Next speaker. Speaker 4: Good evening. Oh. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay. There we go. Now hear myself. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the City Council. My name is Adrian Sears, and I'm a. Speaker 3: Proud resident of the great city of Long Beach. Tonight, I am here on behalf of the inaugural class of Epic. Speaker 4: Leaders, the class of 2019, in support of Councilman Rex Richardson's recommendation to hire a full time sworn. Speaker 3: Diversity recruitment and partnerships manager. Speaker 4: For the Long Beach Fire Department. Long Beach is the seventh largest city in the state of California and is ranked among or is ranked number ten among the most. Speaker 3: Diverse cities in the country. As such, we need our first. Speaker 4: Responding agencies to reflect that diversity. As you well know, the Long Beach Fire. Speaker 3: Department is not. Speaker 4: Alone in its struggle to. Speaker 3: Increase diversity in its workforce. Over the past 20 years, I have worked with first responders throughout Los Angeles County, and they all grapple with the best ways to diversify their workforce. But progress is being made. For example, I worked with the City of Los Angeles Fire Department to create the Crenshaw. Speaker 4: High School Fire Academy. The Academy's goal was to create an interest in a career in fire service among students of color. We actively recruited males and females and spent the next three months mentoring. Speaker 3: And training them inside and outside of the classroom. Every Saturday, we transported. Speaker 4: Busloads of students from Crenshaw High School to the L.A. City Fire Training Academy in Elision Park. They participated in physical training to prepare them for the physical demands of the department. They also participated in classroom learning and hands on. Speaker 3: Exercises to gain knowledge and the manipulation of tools and equipment. At the end of that three months, each participant proudly received a certificate of completion at graduation in the presence of their family and friends. These kinds of recruitment strategies are only successful when the positions are fully funded by the department and the city, which it serves. We have we have to make a sustained investment in diversity and inclusion. Speaker 4: Chief. Congratulations on the best practices that are already being employed by the Long Beach Fire Department. We appreciate your efforts. To that end, again, we strongly support Councilman Rex Richardson's recommendation to hire a full time sworn. Speaker 3: Diversity recruitment and partnerships manager. As Jesse Jackson wisely stated. Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Good evening. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor and council. My name is Steven Contreras and I'm with the Epic Leaders Institute, and this is our culminating project. I would like to ask for your vote. Yes. In support of the recommendation for full time diversity, recruitment and partnership manager, someone who is as someone who has been through the hiring process with public safety. I know what it is like to be a minority and not have anyone around you who looks like you during the process. This would add to the diversity, inclusiveness of the fire department. Thank you, Chief, for all of your work and thank you for your time, Mayor and Council. Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Next speaker, Brooklyn Wilson. Speaker 4: Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, all the council members and everyone in this room. My name is Brooklyn. Brooklyn Wilson. I'm 13 years old. I'm a student at Hughes Middle School. I'm an avid reader. And some of my favorite subjects are science and health. I'd like to share a quick personal story of myself. When I was around ten or 11, I had a major surgery, and about a month after that surgery, I was in an accident. A car accident was my mother. And because of that major surgery, my mother wanted to make sure I was okay. So she called the ambulance. And when the fire department came and made sure that everything was all right that day, I realized that I meant that I met real life heroes. And I thought, how cool would it be for me to work in that profession? But the reality. Speaker 3: Is, I've never seen anyone that looks like. Speaker 4: Me fighting, working as a firefighter or a paramedic in our community, as a young woman and the as a young woman of color living here in Long Beach, I can speak on behalf of youth like me and say that we need access to programs that show us how to succeed in pursuing careers with the Long Beach Fire Department. And we need to see that it can be done through examples that we see working in the fire department today. Thank you. Speaker 2: Q In the last speaker of bar. Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Devon Abla. I'm also representing the Economic Policy and Impact Center as one of their inaugural graduates from their leadership class. So obviously, I am here today to ask you to vote yes on this item. But first, I just wanted to say there's a lot of different opinions on a lot of different subjects coming from this dais. And the one thing I notice, I worked for city council for two and a half years, and as a resident of Long Beach, there's a real commitment to diversity on this council. And I want to thank all of you for that commitment, because our diversity is really our strength. But I really want to talk today because in Epic, we all sort of split up into different groups to tackle different issues going on in the city, from automation at the port to diversity in the fire department to the wage gap. Now, I know that the wage gap was said, well, all right, so the fire department, a couple other places maybe, but for the most part, everything is fine. And you know, I applaud the city because women who are doing the same job as men are roughly getting paid the same amount, but they're not getting all of the same jobs. And so as we vote yes on this fantastic item that I really do appreciate, because it's so important. I want us to look forward and to see how it's successful, how it is not successful, and how we can carry it on into other departments. We need more women as engineers. We need more women as bureau managers. We need more women as department heads. And I think that there's a lot of ways we can accomplish this. And I think that this program or this position right here is going to be a great way for us to measure the effectiveness of some of those programs, whether it's going into our high schools, going into our communities, our universities, and making sure that we are letting people know that, you know what, you do have opportunity here in the city of Long Beach. You do have the ability to run a department. You do have the ability to be a traffic engineer. You don't have to look a certain way to achieve a certain thing. And I also want to say that this isn't just about women. Obviously, ethnicity is a big deal. And I also want to throw out to our LGBTQ community. I want to make sure that as we're doing this, we're looking at them as well and making sure that they can get into high paying careers as well. Thank you for your time. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be at the dais during the first part of this. Many of you know I'm a pumping mom, but I did want to make a few comments. I appreciate that we're moving forward on our diversity and inclusion. And I think that it's also important to recognize that a lot of great strides have been made by other agencies across the country and even in the region. I know Chief Osby has made a commitment to diversity at the L.A. County level. We have a women's academy, pre academy that we run that has helped with both recruitment and retention. We've changed the way that we advertise for our vacancies. When we are doing a recruit academy, we advertise in movie theaters and other places throughout the region and pick those locations by the diversity groups that we're looking to target. And and we also do a annual conference where we invite women, firefighters from all over the region to attend and discuss and be a part of the solution of a regional effort. And I would expect that in the future that Long Beach Fire Department will make a commitment to participating in that conference. It's an annual conference. It's called Arise, and it's been well-received by the participants. The reviews have been remarkable and inspiring. And so I hope that we can get on to the the the global effort regionally. And finally in closing, I will I'll take another quote from our chief. Some of the tests that we do to become, whether it's police or firefighters, are that of history. There's a lot of history behind those tests, but not a lot of data to support that. That kind of test proves the type of capabilities that are necessary to actually execute the job. He knew a lot of fire terminology in his speech at the time that I'm not as familiar with, but I'll make the analogy for the sheriff's department as I am more familiar. L.A. County Sheriff's Department used to mandate that you used a particular kind of revolver in your shooting test, but once you became a deputy, you would not be required to use that same firearm. And so that firearm, because of the width of its base and because of the the pounds of pressure necessary to pull the trigger, had an extremely high failure rate among people of a certain hand size and smaller. Typically, women and people of certain ethnicities had smaller hands than other individuals, and so they had a significant disadvantage in the process. Once they opened up the door to using other equipment which you're allowed to use on the job, the graduation rates skyrocketed and the failure in that particular category of the academy dropped. And so similarly, the chief had mentioned that you have to throw a particular apparatus in the L.A. County Fire Training Academy, but never on the job do you have to to throw that apparatus anymore because of newer systems and technology and different materials that those apparatus are made of. And so I would ask us to also look at any barriers in the process that are causing those challenges and to ensure, through subject matter experts, that the tests that we are utilizing are most aligned with the success of an individual being on the job, successfully executing the responsibilities and not being injured during the life of their career because safety, once they're on the job, is also of the utmost. Importance. So thank you for that. And I also think that there are a lot of challenges that go along with nursing moms that are firefighters. It's nearly impossible to be a first responder and be a pumping mom. It it's nearly impossible the way that calls are both on both sides of public safety. So I don't know what opportunities we have to be more inclusive of that side of it as well. But I'm always open to suggestions and support. Congratulations on the great work you've done, and thank you for accommodating my my comments at the end of this. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: That. Speaker 2: Yeah, we are. Speaker 3: We are frozen. Speaker 2: It is. There's air pumps underneath these. Speaker 0: Motion cars that. Speaker 2: Are just pumping very cold air. Thank you very much. That passes. And then moving on to item 35.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to respectfully request to receive and file the 2019 Long Beach Fire Department Recruitment Report; and Request City Manager to identify the resources to establish a full-time, sworn Diversity Recruitment and Partnerships Manager position in the Fire Department to complete the strategic diversity recruitment plan and report back to City Council with the recommendations for sustainability in August 2020.

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Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next item 36. Speaker 0: Report from Economic Development Recommendation to adopt specifications for the Purchase and Development Opportunity at 9252945 East Pacific. Speaker 4: Coast Highway. Speaker 0: Declare the city owned as surplus. And authorize city manager to execute all documents necessary with Mercy Housing California for the sale of the subject property in the amount of 750,000 District six. Speaker 2: Thank you. And we have a short presentation for this. Speaker 1: Yes, John Geisler and Sergio Romero. Perfect. Good evening, honorable mayor. Council members. This is the disposition of a very important property in Cedar Six that has been vacant for a long time. It's the corner, MLK and PCH, a property at 925 East PCH, a former RTA property. By way of background, back in 2016, the city issued an RFP and selected wood investments for the development of this property. Unfortunately, during the due diligence process, wood investments was not able to secure financing and was not able to move forward the development of the property. Back in 2018, staff issued a new RFP and through a multidisciplinary panel that was comprised of outside consultants and city staff, selected Mercy Housing, an affordable housing developer with a long track record of successful, quality, affordable housing products throughout Southern California. Mercy has proposed a project that would include incorporating the city on site with an adjacent property for the development of the frontage of almost an entire city block about 30,000, a little over 30,000 square feet. The project would bring forth about 68,068 new senior housing units with the segment for seniors who have previously experienced homelessness. The project would actually feature a community room, community outreach resource center and of course, recreation and courtyard open space. Through the process, about 140 construction jobs would be created for the development of the project, and about five permanent jobs would be created through the affordable housing project. The terms of the sale. This is the first. This tonight's actions will be the first step of the development this property and will be kicked off by the sale, the property and or the exploration of the due diligence by the developer for the acquisition of the property. Better state that the property would be sold at $750,000. The developer would conduct a due diligence for about 90 days and would have 21 months to secure financing process entitlements through the Development Services Department. So the rendering that you previously saw, that was only a concept they would be working with Christopher Kuntz, this group, to process the design and do community outreach to make sure that the community had an opportunity to have input on the project and features. And with that, staff recommends approval of the sale of the 925 Eastern Pacific Coast Highway and is happy to answer any questions. Speaker 2: Thank you very much for going to public comment. I have two members of the public eye so I can ferry and Jasmine Tong, please come forward. Please go ahead. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you, Mayor. City Council Vice Mayor. I want to say that I'm in complete support of this affordable housing project coming into the neighborhood here. And Africa town, I mean, central Long Beach. You know, I think this is a very appropriate, uh, you know, development in the area. This is formerly been, uh, it was formerly a liquor store that was a nuisance in the area. And I was glad when they fled it out and I knew something great was coming. And I just want to say my appreciation to the wise counsel of the sixth District, city councilman and vice mayor, for bringing these kind of occasions and opportunities to the neighborhood. That being said, I'm curious to see if maybe. Excuse me. Excuse me. You got me. Yes. Okay. I was curious to see if this will also be an opportunity for the, the Long Beach, uh, investment, whatever that program is that gave $4 million to the project on. And I'm in Walnut. You know, maybe we could shorten that at 21 months of escrow and get it, get it down to 16 or 14 with the good graces and opportunities provided by our economic development department. You know, I don't know if that's Mr. Keisler or, uh, uh, Mr. Coons, but, you know, we would love to have that. We'd love to have a clinic in that neighborhood. My family has a property on 16th and okay, so I'm right down the street and it would just be so opportune to see this empty lot be turned into something, uh, providing affordable housing for the neighborhood. So I would love to see this happen. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Mr.. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. My name is Yasmin Tong, and I'm here representing Mercy Housing, California. We're a nonprofit, affordable housing developer with more than 10,000 affordable homes nationwide that we've developed, own and manage. We're delighted for this opportunity to acquire this property from the city. This will be our second development in the city of Long Beach. It will target seniors, 68 seniors, senior households, as well as formerly homeless seniors. And really, we just want to say thank you very much for the opportunity. Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Vice Mayor Rangers. Speaker 10: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. You know, I keep telling my. Constituents in the sixth District. You got to be around long enough if you want to see good things happen, because patience is a virtue. You know, you can't get it all done in eight, nine, ten, 11 years. It takes you little time. That's why I'm sticking around you guys to make sure that these projects come to fruition. So on that corner, if you don't know Long Beach and haven't been in the time that I've been here, that's the corner that you always said. No. That is the part where you will understand that when this project goes up, you will be able to see it from downtown on the fourth floor, the third floor. Because that's going to be one of the tallest buildings we have in the sixth District. And again, I want to let you individuals know that is a key and a section in my community. And it's been a subject of a lot of interest in over the last several years. No, not several, but seven. Last year, the council directed staff to put this workshop up and I couldn't be happier with the results. They established elected mercy housing to be a recipient of this purchase of our development opportunities. Remember, they said they've only done two and I am so happy that you took the second in my district. You guys can do two more because I'm going to make sure that our seniors get a place to live and our seniors are going to be excited about everything we do. Everything this blindness excuse me, will be filled up. I guarantee you that. Just stick around and watch us do our work. Thank you guys again. And I'm hoping my colleagues will sign on with this group also. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Councilman Austin. Speaker 1: Yes, I'm Allison, and I support that message. Speaker 2: Excellent. Thank you. Well, thank you. Members, please go out and cast your votes on a very exciting project. Very supportive. Speaker 6: Oh. Speaker 2: Person monger. Yes. Speaker 0: They're pushing cars. Speaker 1: They're just very cold.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP EP19-028 for the purchase and development opportunity at 925-945 East Pacific Coast Highway, Assessor Parcel Numbers 7210-013-900 and -901 (Subject Property); Declare the City-owned Subject Property as surplus; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary including a Purchase and Sale Agreement (PSA) with Mercy Housing California, Inc., a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, or affiliate (Buyer/Developer), for the sale of the Subject Property in the amount of $750,000; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE 19-168. (District 6)

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Speaker 2: It's what welcome to to the end of the meeting to our report director. And next. This next item is 42. Speaker 0: Please report from Public Works recommendation to modify and extend existing refuge transportation agreements with private haulers currently operating in compliance with their refuse transportation permit citywide. Speaker 2: Thank you. Can we have a short staff report? Speaker 1: Craig Beck. Just real quickly, we'd. Speaker 2: Like Diego Mosconi in to go over what we're proposing and how it aligns with previous council action on the five year notice. Speaker 9: Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and members of the City Council. In 2009, the City Council approved a nonexclusive franchise agreement system for our commercial waste collection and recycling collection. And we've been operating under that system since that time. Franchises were awarded to the haulers that were currently at that time operating legally and in compliance with their FCC transportation permits. The agreements that we entered into enhanced existing operating rules regarding refuse and recycling collection. Compliance with state laws required the use of alternative fuel vehicles, established fees that generate revenue for both the general fund and the refuse fund and required improved reporting requirements. Current haulers that are operating in Long Beach are some of the biggest ones in the world, such as Waste Management and Republic Services, as well as some smaller, privately owned companies like a Rent Ban or ATCO. In May of 2017. Speaker 1: The. Speaker 9: In May of 2017, the City Council directed staff to issue a five year notification to private refuse haulers operating in Long Beach, effectively advising them that the city may at its discretion change the way we manage commercial waste hauling in Long Beach. At the end of that five year period. Five year notice is a requirement by state law, but does not require that any specific action be taken. Currently, the solid waste industry is facing many challenges. There's great uncertainty in recycling markets. What was once considered recyclable is no longer, in many cases, recyclable. The state continues to pass legislation mandating cities to implement new diversion programs, most recent of which is organics collection, which must be implemented citywide by 2022. In order for us to effectively address solid waste. As a whole, we've begun the development of a zero waste plan. This plan will create a path for Long Beach to strive toward generating zero waste and comply with state laws such as organics collection. We've currently stages the beginning stages of that plan. We have commissioned a waste characterization study that we should have all the results for by the end of the year. That study basically just goes through our waste streams and determines what materials are there for us to target in order to continue developing this long term strategy for managing our waste. We recommend the City Council to enter into agreements with existing haulers for a three year period to align our current system with the five year notice. Staff also recommends to have two one year options off. The Zero Waste Plan identifies a preferred method of managing our waste. We will have time to implement a transition plan from our current system to a new system. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. There's one member. The public is Manuel Govea here? Please come forward. Speaker 6: The new Mayor Garcia, and his team council members. We made it to item 42, so thank you. My name is Manuel Gouveia, a municipal relationship manager. Speaker 12: For Republic Services. Speaker 6: Just briefly, on behalf of Republic and our 300 plus employees here in the city of Long Beach, I thank you all for your consideration in approving this item this evening and the opportunity to continue serving as a solid waste and recycling partner to your great city. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 4: Yes. I want to thank staff for their time on this. I have just two quick questions. It's a three year extension and so there'll be an RFP process starting one. Speaker 2: That's why I'm here, Piers. Yeah, we're proposing that the council approve a three year extension at Lindsey's with the five year notice. It will provide us time to educate us on some of the state mandates that are coming forward and how that affect us from an operations perspective. So we anticipate within the two year time frame we would start the RFP process. So at the end of that three year term, we would be ready to come to council with our recommendations on how. Speaker 6: We would move forward in our. Speaker 2: Franchise waste hauling. Okay. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you. And I know you and I have had several conversations today. I know City Attorney Parkins, we had a couple of conversations, so I don't want to make it too complicated. I just want to make sure that the RFP process, can we bring that back to this body so we can have a public conversation about what we would like to see in that RFP? Speaker 2: Certainly. In fact, I think it would be helpful to not only talk about what we would want to include in the RFP, but just where we're at from our zero waste plan, where we're at from organics collection and kind of help do an update to council and where we see our current operations would be at that time and then where we would be going forward in the future and how our private haulers would integrate into our future plans. And so certainly support bringing an item back and talking about the RFP process. Speaker 4: Great. And at that time, when you talk about that holistically, I'm assuming that you'll talk about the surf as well. Speaker 2: That's right. Our waste energy facility that we have in our city is very unique to Long Beach and really helps us keep our rates down for all of our residents here, providing good renewable energy so that with. Speaker 6: The clarity. Speaker 2: On the financial viability of surf moving forward is a little murky at this point in time. So I think a couple more years would help us understand how that's going to fit into the waste picture moving forward. Speaker 4: Great. Thanks. And just I'll be brief in a little bit of context. Obviously, trash is something that we talked about trash cans earlier today. Sometimes our neighborhoods say their trash wasn't picked up, their big cans weren't picked up. And so we want to make sure that as we move forward with a new process and that new RFP, that we really are going into an agreements with the best actors that are consistent, that abide by state laws, that abide by their contracts they have in other cities. And that we really are looking at the whole picture and how we get the best haulers with our new standards. And so I appreciate having that conversation come back and that satisfies what I was trying to reach today. So I appreciate the time at the end of the meeting to have this short conversation. Speaker 2: Councilman Hooper. Now, I'm sorry, Councilman Ringo. Councilman Soprano. Speaker 9: It's just a question of staff regarding what we're asking here. It's my understanding that the haulers are be being asked to invest in as part of this agreement. Would it make sense to go with a five year term? I'm not understanding the advantage of the three years plus one plus one would be a disadvantage of just going five years. Speaker 2: Councilmember Suber not as directed by this council. There was direction given to staff to issue a five year notice to all of our franchise haulers, and we have done that. The extension before you tonight would take this current contract extension to that five year notice period. The reason were we're putting in two more options is if at that moment in time, if this council decides that they want to extend. Speaker 6: For another year or. Speaker 2: Consider other options, we felt it was important to have that flexibility built within the contract. But right now, the three year term that this council is considering would align with that five year notice if the council was was looking to extend beyond that time frame. I think the city attorney can answer this, but it's my interpretation that you would have to take an action to push off the five year notice longer than the term we have currently. Speaker 9: Okay. Understood. So the two one year extensions gives us flexibility, I think is what you're saying. So that that wasn't clear. So I appreciate the explanation. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember. We've done public comment. Please cast your votes. Thank you. And I think we have anyone signed up for this ocean carries. Speaker 0: We don't have a second public comment. Sign up. Speaker 2: Okay. So that something that we could do for next time. But if there is one, please, now would be a good time. We don't I don't see any. So we will move on from that to new business and new business.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to modify and extend existing Refuse Transportation Agreements (Agreements) with private haulers currently operating in compliance with their Refuse Transportation Permit, for three years, with the option to renew for two additional one-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; and Authorize Director of Public Works to (1) develop and implement rules and regulations, as required, for the successful execution, implementation, and administration of the Agreements, and to ensure compliance with Federal, State, and local regulations; (2) limit the number of permits issued to the 16 existing permitted haulers; (3) collect all fees as authorized by the City Council; and, (4) establish consistent branding for all waste, recycling, organics collection containers/bins, and education and outreach material within the City of Long Beach. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: So let me have the the clerk, please read the item. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor De Andrew's Personnel and Civil Service Committee Chair Recommendation to receive Charter Commission appointments and reappointment approved by the Personnel and Civil Service Committee. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Mayor. It's quite a pleasure for me to be able to represent this body in what you are going to ask tonight. For my colleagues to have a second and a first on this item, because I'm sure that this individual that has been been asked to be a part of this. I want everyone here to really get behind us and let you know we have some fabulous appointees in the mayor. We'll take it from there. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Vice Mayor Andrews, these are we're doing three charter commission appointments today. And I want to just briefly chat about each of them. I want to first congratulate James O'Mara, who is a District one resident who is being appointed to the Citizen's Police Complaints Commission. James has a District one resident and currently works as a senior communications manager for the US will be Associated Students, Inc.. In that capacity, he oversees communications and media and strategy for the ACI at Cal State Long Beach. He is also a graduate of this year's leadership language class as a member of the Cal State Long Beach Alumni Association Board involving the numerous community organizations and is active across the Cal State Long Beach campus. He's looking forward to joining this commission. I know that Mr. Matt is here, so let's give him a round of applause and thank you for being here. James Mar Our next appointment is to our Civil Service Commission. Again, important role. These five member body, of course, really oversees and looks at our hiring and our recruitment. Mr. Dowling is the communications director for Pacific Sussex Enterprises, where he oversees communications, community engagement and employee leadership and messaging. But I got I got to know Mr. Dowling actually when he worked for the city and was here in our communications department and was a great part of our team as well. He was the communications officer for the city manager's office and Brandon has also served as the internal communications director for Molina Health Care. So a lot of experience here locally in the city of Long Beach. He is currently also involved in a variety of community organizations across the city. And I know Mr. Dowling was trying to get here from work. I'm not sure if he made it here yet, but let's welcome him and give him a round of applause if he is here. And our final appointment today is to our harbor commission. And I'm proud to appoint Steven Neal, a former member of this body, to our harbor commission. Steve Neal has for more than three decades advocated and served to help working families across the Long Beach area. He has been on the board of the Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network. He was the chair of Our Citizens Measure, a committee on the Long Beach Transit Board and served on a variety of numerous bodies across the city. I'll also note that Steve is also senior pastor with Life Gospel Ministries. So Pastor Neal has been serving this community for a very long time. And I had the honor of serving with with Pastor Neal also on this body. And I always tell folks, as you know, Steve, that I have met very few people with your level of integrity and love of community and service. And so I just want to thank you for that incredible service. I just want to also add one more thing, because I think it's important. Mr. Neal will become the first a member of the Harbor Commission from North Long Beach. We believe in the history, certainly in the modern history of the port, and it's been important to ensure that there is representation from across the city. And we have some wonderful harbor commissioners. But to see your leadership and to have someone from from North Palm Beach on this commission is very important. And we're very proud of that and proud of you for your willingness to serve. I will also note I'm very impressed. I know I have a letter in front of me with over 100 leaders within our African-American black community here in the city supporting you. I was just mentioning to Vice Mayor Andrews that it seems like everybody's on this letter, which shows, I think, your breadth of support, not just within the African-American community, which I know is very strong, but across the city as well. Steve, I know that you will always think about Long Beach, about our city, about all neighborhoods across the city, and ensure that our port continues to be the economic engine and force for good that it is here locally, but across the world as well. So we're honored for your interest to serve. And you and your family have been of great service to the city of Long Beach. So congratulations to you and welcome Steve as well, Mr. Neal. And with that, I'm going to turn this over to Councilmember Ringo. For some remarks. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mary. And I, too, want to add my voice that when it comes to commissions, it's the beginning of a of a service to the city of law, which are to the citizens of Long Beach. I want to congratulate you in this further endeavor and welcome you volunteerism, because it is a job of Christ that you do. And I know that for for Mr. O'Neill, it's O'Neill, Neal. It's especially important. So I want to welcome you and looking forward to working with you as you continue your service to city along. Speaker 0: And consider Richardson. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I know all three of these gentlemen have gotten to know Brandon here recently. But so congratulations to all three of you. But my relationship with Councilman Neal, I got to tell you, I'm incredibly proud of this appointment. Mr. Mayor, this is this is. You know, this. This appointment is important to a lot of our communities. We've it's been an ongoing conversation about making sure that all corners of our city are represented. And we've talked about certain commissions like harbor and planning, how important to make sure we have folks from 9 to 5 represent represented , giving us, you know, a fifth of the city's population. And we've never had representation there. And I have to tell you, you know, Mr. Neal, when he was on on council, was a champion for for equity, a champion for inclusion. You know, we'd had conversations years and years about making sure that the port looks north. Right? Those trucks and goods move and all that comes that comes through North Long Beach. And we need to make sure that we're we have a seat at the table. And folks have heard me say this term, but I got it from Steve Neal. If you don't have a seat at the table, you're most likely on the menu. And so, Steve, congratulations. You got a seat at the table. But we still have work to do. Thanks a lot. Speaker 0: Councilman Austin. Speaker 5: Thank you. I'd like to join in the chorus of congratulations to all of the new commissioners. It is a labor of love and certainly a great service to your city. I began my involvement in the city of Long Beach in 2003 as a commissioner on the PCC. And so I know, Mr. Motta, you will enjoy that experience and it'll be an eye opening experience to go a long way back with Steve Neal. I want to say that, you know those conversations about 12 years ago, we're starting to realize those visions today about equity. In North Long Beach, about making sure that there's there's great representation, I'm sure. And I'm very confident that you, along with Commissioner Gaskin, who also represents communities along the 17 freeway, will will work together to make sure that that goods movement moving north on our freeway, particularly in the future, we have clean air and equity for the communities that that are impacted from from that poor cargo. Steve, when he was on the city council, I enjoyed working with him. Then I know you're going to be a great partner as a port commissioner and bring that same level of moral authority and voice of reason to to that body as well. And so congratulations again to all of the commissioners, but especially Steve Neal. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Is there a public comment on the commission appointments? Seeing nonmembers, please go ahead and cast your votes. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Andrew. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Congratulations. Our first vote in the new in the new civic chambers. And I want to I want to like we like we traditionally do. I'm not sure if there's a new set up, but I'm going to ask the council to come forward and we're going to take a photo with our new commissioners that are here, and we'll see how this works out. Thank you. We also have general public comment. Is Bill Brown here? Please come forward. And Tom Cataldo, I'm sorry if I pronounce mispronounce it, please come forward. Mr. Brown. Good.

Appointment

Recommendation to receive Charter Commission appointments and reappointments approved by the Personnel and Civil Service Committee pursuant to Section 509 of the City Charter and Section 2.03.065 of the Long Beach Municipal Code.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. I'm sorry. No, we would have known that already. We're going to move on to item number nine. Speaker 2: Communication from Councilwoman Price recommendation to increase appropriations in the general fund and the city manager department by 100,663 and $0.77 to provide a contribution to the Friends of Belmont Shore who will be holding a community concert. Speaker 0: In motion in a second as very public comment on this item, CNN. Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Anything? Speaker 9: I just want to announce that this is going to be the annual memorial concert honoring Bill Laub year in Belmont. Sure. Thank you. Speaker 0: Well, that's very nice. Thank you. There's no public comment, so please cast your vote. Speaker 2: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're moving on to the second public comment period saying seeing none. New business, please. Councilman Ringa. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. I want to invite everyone to join us on Saturday, July 27th, for a free concert at Cherry Park, located at 1901 East 45th Street. The free concert will begin at 4 p.m. and will feature the Midnight Ride Band, which plays a variety of music, including Disco, Latin, Current and Top 40. Again, I want to encourage individual people, residents of the sixth and seventh District. As Vice Mayor, De Andrews and I host the meeting for the upcoming budget on August 21st. First, from five and 6 to 7 p.m., the meeting will take place at Veterans Park, located at 101 East 28th Street. This will be an opportunity for residents to give their insights into the city's fiscal 2020 budget. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Before I go, I'm going to go back to business, but there was somebody here for a second public comment period and maybe we had missed it. So please go ahead, sir.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $1,663.77 offset by the Third Council District one-time District Priority Funds transferred from the General Fund group in the Special Events Department to provide a contribution to the Friends of Belmont Shore who will be holding a community concert; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Special Events Department by $1,663.77 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 0: District five. District six. Yes. Seven by eight and nine motion carries. Moving on to hearing at number three, Madam Clerk. Speaker 2: Report from financial management recommendations received supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions on the application of grant investment group DBA, the Harbor Bar at 130 Pine Avenue for entertainment with dancing dessert. Speaker 0: Thank you, sir. A short staffed presentation. Speaker 5: Yes, we are. We will have a staff presentation from Brett Jacks, our business services officer, and Emily Armstrong from the Business Licensing Division. Speaker 2: There's also an oath required for this hearing. Speaker 4: Yeah. So. Speaker 2: Please raise your right hand. Do you and each of you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Speaker 4: Sorry. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. Tonight you have before you an application for entertainment with dancing for Grand Investment Group doing business as the Harbor Bar located at 130 Pine Avenue, operating as a restaurant with alcohol in Council District to all of the necessary departments have reviewed the application and have provided their recommended conditions as contained in the hearing packet. I, as well as the police department, stand ready to answer any questions Council may have. And that concludes South Report. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: Yes, I just want to thank staff. I've received no opposition to this, no emails, no calls against this. So happy to vote yes tonight and we'd love to have a second on it. Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. We can get a second on this is a public comment on this, seeing no public comment. I will take a roll call vote district to. District three District 456789 Cape motion carries. We are going to be doing, I think majority of people here are for the MacArthur Park vision plan.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions on the application of Grand Investment Group, dba The Harbor Bar, at 130 Pine Avenue, for entertainment with dancing. (District 2)

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Speaker 0: So why don't we do that next, which is item 37, if we can get the court to read that? Speaker 2: Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine Public Works. Recommendation to receive and file the MacArthur Park Vision Plan. Adopt a resolution to submit a grant application to the California Department of Parks, Recreation and Recreation for the first phase of the MacArthur Park Vision Plan Implementation Project. Except, said Grant, if awarded in an amount of 8,500,000 District six. Speaker 0: Well, thank you. Let me turn this over to Vice Mayor Andrus. Speaker 3: Yes, thank you, Mayor. Speaker 0: I would actually. I'm sorry. Vice Mayor. Mr. Modica, do we have a staff report first? Speaker 1: Yes, we do. The we have our parks. Our Parks Rec, a marine director here at the moment, and also bureau manager Meredith Reynolds. If one of you guys could present the presentation, this is a real exciting opportunity. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 4: Good evening, Mayor. Member City Council. We're very excited this evening to put before you the MacArthur Park vision plan. This is a project that is been part of a community process, an inclusive and multilingual community process to identify the vision for MacArthur Park, which has not had a vision plan in the past. In your packet you have the full vision plan, but just wanted to highlight a few things as we move toward this grant application and the process that was done began in January and is sitting here with you all this evening. I included some significant site analysis, park audit, walk, audit, several community workshops in partnership with the L.A. Neighborhood Land Trust, AOC, seven and Friends of MacArthur Park and City Fabric. Many of who are here this evening and through this process, we were able to identify ideas from the community that turned into prioritized ideas that turned into and coalesced around a vision plan for MacArthur. This timing was very important. I in particular, because there is an opportunity for some grant funding, some state grant funding through Proposition 68, the State Park Fund, which is due in the beginning of August, and allows for us to ask for $8.5 million to build out the first phase of that vision plan. In particular, some of the amenities of the community identified as priorities were walking path and fitness loop around the park and some expanded programmatic areas adjacent to gamba with theater connecting the building online cultural center to gumbo theater with some new area for program programing, restrooms and a lobby, an expanded playground, a relocated court, and some reconfigured parking that adds some additional actual park space to the park. So there are a handful of really great things that are included in this plan in particular, and in your packet you have that map of the concept as well as some cost estimates, next steps. And for the community, this was something that was very important that they were able to have a lot of ownership over in terms of identifying what was important to them. So if I can have all of our partners stand up, our superheroes from MacArthur Park are here. Thank you for being here this evening. They may opt to speak with you, but with that, that concludes staff's report. Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Speaker 0: Well, thank you. Let me turn this over to Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor. I first before we get started, I just want to first congratulate and let everyone know who was involved in this process. You know, the SATs that you came out and really put a lot of effort and energy into this. And I think through all of that, we were able to come up with is, I think, an excellent plan. It's going to really benefit, you know, MacArthur's Park. So by that, I just want to thank Mr. Myatt and the planning team at the Parks and Recreation and Marine for their diligent work in bringing this vision plan to us. When we started this discussion last year, we hoped that we could come up with a good plan but make others part, and they have crafted one that exceeds all of our expectations. Of course, they did not do this by themselves. The community came forward and was an active part of the planning process. And I want to thank the Friends of MacArthur Park and the AOC seven for their participation. And they are here tonight dressed in blue, as I am myself, to show support to the park and its future. I would also like to thank Alex and the team at the City of Fabrics. I attended that. I attended their engagement and meetings were impressive by their professionalism and the ability to get people involved as we go forward and apply for the grant funding. I have the utmost confidence in the L.A. Neighborhood Land Trust and their abilities to make this vision a reality. And I ask my colleagues for their support on this item. Thank you guys very much for being here today. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: Well, I want to say congratulations to getting to this point. AOC seven. I get to share some in my district and you guys are a model neighborhood association and you consistently fight for your neighborhood. You fight to get grants, you consistently fight to make sure that you get every crosswalk that you deserve. And I'm so proud that I get to have some sharing of that with you guys. While this park is not in my district, I know that everyone has worked really hard on it and we need to improve our park system as much as we can not only expanding greenspace, but making sure that there's ample space for everybody of every ability to come and enjoy that park. So congratulations on the partnership and congratulations to to District six for getting this point wholeheartedly. Support this. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let's do public comment. If you're here for public comment on this item, please come forward. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and close the speakers list. One, two, three, four, five speakers. And the speakers list is closed. All right. Whenever you're ready. Speaker 4: Oh, Silva. They made Garcia an honorable city council members. My name is read out loud. I am a resident of Not Long Beach. I am the graduate of UCI this year in public health policy. I am here in front of you tonight to voice my absolute support for the master plan of improving MacArthur Park in the Sixth District. Even though I am living in Long Beach, I got involved a lot in the sixth District, such as chair planning, neighborhood cleanup, attending many AOC, seven meetings and other city events. With all this involvement, I really pay close attention to MacArthur Park. This neighborhood park is in a center of diverse communities, not just only the Cambodian community. A lot of children are living around this park and they need to get out of their houses to play and spend their time in the park after school hours and on the weekend. However, the environment and the aspect of the park are not well equipped to fit the children needs. We love to see our children grow in a safe and healthy environment so they can have a strong and healthy physical and mental growth because it will lead to their success in their school academic achievement become healthy, happy and productive at all. I am asking for Mayor Garcia and all of the City Council support for this matter, for our community and our children of the sixth District. Thank you. She will have something to say in camera. And I also translate her in English. So I'm committed to all loop. So I crank up location and look at the architecture architectural walk right from my nose and got the emoji. Hi. I'm lonely. Arms up. I'm waiting. Am I on your room? Canoga bottom. I know much of what I know, Paul. No, no, no, no, no. Paul. How I do it, I'm told. Hi, Nick. I'm doing them all by. Yeah, I know. AOC. Then pretty many don't make your stride in your own control. I'm below yous on cap, Robert Carson and lo yo. I look so I could look you like Garcia. And look, I was captain or John Walker. Look, all I know, pop art, pop like normal people. Morgan, he's a hack. Then go out there, run like Nelson got deep and whinny me in the circle. People are me and Captain. Follow me and call me Jack or Ryan so you can monkey with him. So I'll go along with Michael Garcia. I mean, look, Johnson got bigger, so right now we translate. She said, Hello, Mayor Garcia and Honorable City Council member. My name is right from. I am the resident in the district and I've been living in Long Beach for 39 years. I've been involved in many events such as beach cleanup, neighborhood cleanup, street cleanup, strip tree planning, and attend many AOC seven events. I support Mayor Garcia and the Honorable City Councils for the Master Plan of improving MacArthur Park in District six. For our community and the children who live in this street and to improve their physical and mental health in order to achieve a higher level of education. Uh, thank you, Mayor Garcia and the council members. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker. Speaker 4: Good evening. Mayor Garcia and City Council. My name is Mary Simmons. I'm super excited to be here. This is like a dream come true for me. Although I've been advocating for MacArthur Park for a number of years now, but in the last year, working on this vision plan with Parks and Rec, Meredith City Fabric, the Land, Neighborhood Land Trust and Vice Mayor's Office, it's been amazing. So I'm here just to make it short and sweet and to say, please receive and file this vision plan for MacArthur Park. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Speaker, please. Speaker 9: Okay. I'm sorry. I'm in a cry. You made me cry. Sorry. Good afternoon or good evening. City Council members and mayor. My name is Lucille Torres. I'm a lifelong, lifelong, lifelong Long Beach resident, a parent and educator and AOC seven board member. I'm here to advocate for the MacArthur Park Vision Plan. As a child, I was fortunate to be able to walk safely to MacArthur Park with my brothers and sisters. Summer lunch and play on the rocket ship. Yes, this was my perk for my entire life. However, today I'm here as a co-chair of Friends of MacArthur Park, representing the neighbors that surround our park. Our journey to improve our park began seven years ago, first advocating for homeland facility improvements. Later, we collaborate with Sixth District to renovate our playground. Both improvements have had a positive impact on our community. Nevertheless, we knew that MacArthur Park needed more to become a central location for our neighborhood gatherings, a place to advocate for our residents health, fitness, and a place to program. To program. To program. To offer to all all ages. All ages. Sorry about that. So we continue our journey to improve our park. Researching, grants, calling, emailing. We found the Trust for Public Land, which inspired us to seek funding and resources within our community. This is truly a grassroots effort by encouraging one neighbor at a time to share their vision for a new and improved MacArthur Park. Friends of MacArthur Park walk the surrounding areas of MacArthur Park, passing out fliers, listening to neighbors concerns, developing solutions. Collaboration is a key component of friends, a MacArthur Park collaboration with neighbors, collaboration with neighborhood nonprofits, associations in our area. My Parents Association Midtown Bid My Town Inc, UCC and AOC. Seven Parks and Playgrounds are the souls of our cities and we need to treat them as such, nourish our parks, and create inclusive, plowed playgrounds for all our children that play friends in MacArthur Park, or continue advocating for more funding and collaborating with our hidden for our hidden gem, which is MacArthur Park. Please approve our vision plan in order to ensure a positive future for MacArthur Park and create a safer community for all. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 8: Good evening again. Mayor and city councilor Ailsa Chang with the Long Beach Forward. I just want to stand in strong solidarity with all of the MacArthur Park neighbors and stakeholders. And it's personally gratifying for me as a former staff member and advocate of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust to see this vision plan come to fruition. I think it just underscores the value of community based and community driven planning and development. This this is what inclusive and this is what equitable development looks like, especially in neighborhoods that face disproportionate and negative land use impacts and fewer infrastructure investments. So again, just very excited to stand in solidarity with my colleagues today in favor of the MacArthur Park vision plan. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. And the last speaker comes first. Speaker 4: Good evening, Mayor. City Council, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Citizen and I am the chair of Cambodia town ing. Tonight, my boards and I are here to support the MacArthur Park Vision Plan. It will provide new walking trails that encourage healthy outdoor exercise, which help to decrease obesity and other adverse mental health impacts in our community . It will also provide the community an opportunity to experience open space and recreation. In the past three years, Cambodia count ING had to move our annual culture festival from MacArthur Park into the parking lot of the Mark Twain Library. Because the park was so either so dusty or muddy. We support the MacArthur Park region plan to include more grass, tree, a playground and outside stage. We are looking forward to more the annual Cambodia Town Culture Festival back to the park. We also hope to bring back the Cambodia Town Parade in April 2020. Therefore, we would like to request the Mayor and member of the City Council to approve the MacArthur Park vision plan tonight. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. That concludes public comment. We have a motion and a second on the floor. I just want to add, I thought having looked at this plan, I think the community's had a really great job. Obviously, there's a lot of community love for the park. I think, Vice Mayor, I know you've kept me in the loop in our office and the plan itself, you can tell, is very thoughtful. And so I just want to congratulate all the stakeholders and the neighbors, the folks that were involved on that on the planning side and the and the organizing side. So now it's all about implementation and the next steps, but excellent job by the community. So congratulations. And with that members, we're going to catch our votes. I also will note that Councilman Price is on the line. And so I will we will be doing roll call and she should be joining us. So roll call, please. District two. District three. I District. Speaker 1: Four. All right. Speaker 0: District five. District six. Right. Seven. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Eight. And nine motion carries. Thank you graduations to the community. Okay. We had we are now going on to we have a couple more items here. Let's we're going to do public comment. Mr. Goodhew and then Paul Workman and then Andy, I believe it's passage of I apologize if I mispronounced it.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive and file the MacArthur Park Vision Plan; Adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to allow the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT), on behalf of the City of Long Beach, to submit a grant application to the California Department of Parks and Recreation, for the first phase of the MacArthur Park Vision Plan Implementation Project; accept said grant, if awarded, in an amount of $8,500,000 in Statewide Park Development and Community Revitalization Program funding; execute all documents necessary to accept the funds; negotiate and execute a Turn-Key Agreement with LANLT for the development of MacArthur Park improvements; and Accept Statutory Exemption SE-19-159. (District 6)

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Speaker 0: Six, seven, eight and nine. All right. Okay. Next up will be that motion carries what we're now doing. Item 30, please. Speaker 2: Communication from city attorney recommendation to adopt a resolution calling for the placement of a general tax measure on the ballot for the of the March 3rd, 2020 special municipal election to extend and adjust the rate of transaction and use tax and making findings of fiscal emergency pursuant to California's Proposition to 18, adopt a resolution providing for the filing of primary and rebuttal arguments and adopt a resolution requesting the Board of Supervisors to consolidate a special municipal election for one local initiative measure to be held on March 3rd, 2020, with the statewide primary. Speaker 0: Okay, thank you. There is. And we have it unless there's any objection. We want to hear the staff report again from last week and no one's less. A customer wants to hear it again. I think we just go and go to the second vote. So why don't we go ahead and if the public comment on this item. Casey to members of the public. I'm going to close the speakers list. After these two three members of the public. And then I will close the speakers list. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you, sir. Jim Foster, president of the Long Beach Post. I come before you again to give my full support for this measure, really on five different levels for us staffing, equipment, facilities, technology and our mission and our mission being a community hospital and all the services that it provides not just to us but to fire . Also, the staff report last week was fantastic. It describes a number of staffing positions that we will lose as a result of the loss of measure. It impacts us on multiple levels in each of your districts. The equipment that we're getting with body cameras, the radio systems that we have to have our facilities with specifically for me is the academy, which needs some desperate help. Our technology, which is coming in droves from the state and unfunded mandates of things that we have to do to accomplish, in fact, a requirement from the federal government that provides some compliance with our technology systems that we have to do. These are all items that the community benefits from. In fact, I can't think in my history here of any other measure that where the taxpayers got more bang for their buck and just things they can touch and hold and see and feel the impact of where these tax dollars are going. So again, I encourage your vote on this. I think this is a great event for the community, really, something they can celebrate in the future to see all of the benefits they gain from these dollars being spent. So thank you, sir. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Mr. Foster. Next speaker, please. Speaker 1: Get my notes here. My name is Randall Chesky. My address is on record with the city clerk. I'm here. Thank you for having me. Honorable Mayor and City Council. I was actually here for another item, but this. Speaker 7: Was very much related to what I was here. Speaker 1: For. I am speaking on behalf of the permanent extension of this, the measure A This provides essential resources to many of our infrastructure improvements, our parks or recreational activities or libraries, and provides very important funds for making making repair, necessary repairs, improvements. It's essential resource for when we're looking at grants outside of our general fund, when we're looking for local dollars. Speaker 7: To make competitive. Speaker 1: Applications, whether it is for parks, whether it is for a street. Speaker 7: Improvement at the federal, state, local. Speaker 1: Level. So I encourage you to continue with this resource. It allows our our departments to. Speaker 7: Better. Speaker 1: Plan and make strategic investments for improvements, whether it is for MacArthur Park or I think there is another park plan ahead of you on this agenda. These are really important resources. I do encourage you to continue supporting it. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Roski. In our last speaker. Speaker 1: Rex Pritchard, President, Long Beach Firefighters Association. I can't thank you enough for staff council and the mayor and bringing this item forward and making this measure permanent. I echo the same sentiment President Foster had with the poet. This is vital for all of us. Now, as you drive through Long Beach, you see the improvements that are being made with measure, whether it's the restoration of Engine eight, Rescue 12, homeless engagement. In response, our Hart team the countless. Every budget this council has brought forward has been restoring public safety resources. And this council has been very responsible in using and spending those dollars. This is a proactive approach of keeping Long Beach dollars in Long Beach. And for those people who may not be supportive of this and some of the naysayers out there, and a year from now, they are going to be coming back saying thank you in bringing this forward, because if this council wasn't acting in the fashion they are and getting ahead of this, there will be other governmental agencies who are going to take these sales back, sales tax dollars that we're paying now, and they're going to get moved to another agency outside of Long Beach. This is a proactive approach and ensuring Long Beach Dollar stay in Long Beach. And I am just thankful that you are bringing this forward and I encourage our residents to vote for this because this is going to be vital in everything that is going on. You drive down 15th Street in seeing what is going on, on 15th Street, everything that's going on on the east side. And the most important thing, community hospital, that is a vital, vital part of the 911 system that we need to have your Long Beach firefighters and paramedics and EMTs as we are driving East Side residents all the way to memorial across town. Community hospital is vitally important to the nine 1 to 1 system. It's part of our team. So thank you for bringing this forward. And we look forward to the residents making this permanent. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. Councilman Richardson. No. Vice-Chair Andrews. Yes. Speaker 3: I just want to say a lot of individuals, I especially when you have your two heads here, come and speak on something so important. When we talk about infrastructure and we have a person from the community letting you know that our our money that's going into $8 is just showing you what they do in the community. A lot of people ask, what is all this construction going on? That is your taxpayers money at work? And I just want to thank everyone for just letting you know that what you're doing. Don't think that we're just taking your money and just running away with it. We're doing things with Measure eight is a reason for that. And I want to thank our public for voting on that measure. Thank you very much, Mayor. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Councilman Price. Speaker 11: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have a question. I know that when we voted on measure the last time I'm putting it on the ballot, we had a resolution. Can staff give me an insight into whether or not we'll be amending that resolution to include community hospital and when that will happen? Speaker 5: Mr. MODICA Yes, Councilmember, you're correct. There's a number of actions that you take. The ones right now we're doing this the same way we did measure, which is you're putting this agenda, this on the ballot, and then there will be a second resolution that is the intent to spend. And so if we get direction tonight for this to go on the ballot and one of the staff recommendations was to include community hospital, we would bring back that resolution to the council at a later date. And like we and it has been set yet maybe a month or two. Speaker 11: Okay. And the other question that I had is, will we continue to have an oversight committee to ensure that expenditures are consistent with the intent of the council and consistent with the resolution that will be adopted in the future? Speaker 5: Absolutely. That has not changed. They've met ten times already in the past three years, and every single year they not only review and give us give us input, but they also take actions and votes to make sure that when we are proposing that to you in the budget and you adopted, that those are consistent with the resolution . They actually have their next meeting already scheduled for August 29th, and we're going to continue those meetings. Speaker 11: Okay. That's great. Thank you, Mr. Moto. So I do have a couple of comments that I want to share. Um, I'm going to be supporting this item tonight, and one of the multiple reasons why I'm going to be supporting this item tonight, first and foremost, is going to be our need to contribute our portion to the reopening of community hospital. That is a new development since the passage of Measure H that the east side of Long Beach has now to deal with. We know that we had 27,200 emergency services. Speaker 0: Consumer prices. Speaker 11: Have increased. Yes. Speaker 0: We we lost you there for about 10 seconds, but you're back on. Speaker 11: Okay. So ambulance transportation times have increased 10% since community hospital closed. We know that in order to reopen the facility, we are going to need to be involved in a cost sharing with the network provider and we need to make sure that we have funding in place for that. As we move forward with those discussions and that process, which itself is a very lengthy and multiple regulatory agency involved process, and so we need to have that funding set aside and a plan in place of how we're going to continue to meet our responsibility as a partner in the endeavor to reopen the hospital in 2016. When the voters approved Measure A. One of the biggest concerns that my constituents shared with me was that we were going to be having the highest sales tax in the city of Long Beach as compared to cities within the region. And at the time, what I shared with my residents and something that I'll continue to share today is that, you know, we're looking at as well, we're talking about our sales tax measures, our sales tax numbers. We're looking at a point in time. If you look at what's going on throughout the state of California, the challenges and opportunities that have been presented to the various municipalities throughout the state, it's not surprising to see that sales tax numbers have changed not just since 2015, but that the trend is that they're continuing to change. In fact, in looking at the cities in the region that have a 10.25%, we've got Burbank, Compton, Covina, kind of. Hey, Culver City, Glendale, Glendora, Hawthorne, Lawndale, Monrovia, Pasadena, Pico Rivera, Pomona, Santa monica and South Gate. These are all cities within the region that have the same sales tax measures that we do. And the reason for that is because they have a lot of the same opportunities and challenges that we're seeing with our budget and with the the the needs of the community. I think one of the key factors for me in deciding to support this was that because state law places the total cap on sales tax at 10.25% for local taxes, an extension of Measure A, we need to take that cap into account. The proposed extension would levy a point 75% tax from 2023 to 2027. Then when Measure H expires in 2027, that rate would be 1%, the same amount levied from 2017 to 2023. We know that there are other government agencies considering sales tax ballot measures, which is an act that would use up to 0.25% remaining under the cap after 2023. So the sales tax rate in Long Beach after 2023 would continue to be 10.25. But the 2.25% increase would not be spent locally. And that's a huge, huge consideration for me. We have restored a lot of services in terms of public safety. For me, that's key. The fact that we're going to be able to finally have a body worn camera program in the city of Long Beach is it's just so long overdue. I cannot say enough about the need for us to include that technology in our current policing model. The fact that we don't have it right now is disappointing to me. And the fact that we are going to have it is very for me, it's a very positive step in the right direction. So for me, the fact that we have restored Engine eight and multiple other fire resources throughout the city, the fact that we've continued to add police officers every year and fire resources has been a tremendous benefit to my resident. You know, one of the things that the residents tell me all the time is we need more police officers, we need more police officers to address the issues we're dealing with, with a lot of the homeless unintended consequences of homelessness that we're seeing. And what I tell residents all the time is, you know, this is homelessness is not an issue. That is a police that has a police solution attached to it. Enforcement is not the solution. But I do know that it gives at least the residents in my district a lot of comfort to know that police officers are out there, ensuring that people are offered services and ensuring that people are held accountable when they violate the rights of others, whether that's in the form of theft, whether it's in the form of quality of life type crime. And so seeing more police officers out there patrolling the streets, seeing more police officers be proactive in enforcement action, has been something that has been very positive in my district. And we cannot we absolutely cannot afford to go backwards in terms of our resources. We need to ensure that we maintain the resources that we have restored. And finally, I mean, when I took office in 2014, we were paving about two strips per year in each district. It was very, very depressing to go to a community meeting and tell them that no streets in that neighborhood were going to be getting paved that year. It was great if the community meeting that you were at happened to be one of the ones where the streets that are getting repaved situated in. But for the for me, there's 21 community organizations in the third district. So we were able to pave one or two streets per year, which which meant that somewhere between, you know, 19 to 28 community organizations, there was no good news to share. That has changed a lot since the passage of Measure eight. We've been able to pave so many streets and address a lot of immediate needs in terms of street repair that we were not able to do before. Of course, I hope that measure funding in in the future is used for alleys and sidewalks throughout the city. I do not believe that it is fair to persistently tell residents that they're going to have to wait on alleys because there are alleys and worse conditions, because I do believe that we need to figure out a way to allocate that infrastructure money equally throughout the city so that every district and every resident feels the benefits of the measure. $8 in their neighborhood. And so for me, making sure that alleys throughout the city are given priority is important, because I understand that the condition of alleys is very much something to be evaluated in perspective. But when you have an alley with multiple potholes and flooding, it's hard for you to say, Well, you know what , I'm going to drive through this flooding and I'm going to drive through these potholes every day because there are dirt alleys that need more attention than than my alley. While I understand that concept, that sounds fair. I think people have a hard time supporting attacks, as they should, when they're not seeing the immediate benefits of it. So that's one area where I hope that the resolution will include equitable distribution of funds for alleys and sidewalks. With that, I thank my colleagues for indulging me and allowing me to share my comments on this very important issue. This is an issue that I have received a lot of feedback from my residents on. I am a broad currently, but it was important to me to weigh in on this issue so that the record is clear in terms of my desire to continue to maintain the resources that we have restored and to do whatever we can possible to ensure that our contribution to the reopening of community hospital is secured in the form of a future revenue projection. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilwoman. Let me let me just cut to close. Let me just add, I want to just first thank the staff and the attorneys. I know you've all worked very hard on getting this. I particularly want to thank Amy Webber from your team, Mr. City attorney, who's just a superstar and your office and consistently does a great job. Can we just give her a round of applause? Because, see, this stuff is actually it's a lot of hard work. And, and she does a really great job for you and your team. Mr. City Attorney So I just wanted to thank her. I also want to thank our our departments, I think particularly on police and fire and public works. You have all been great stewards of some of these resources in the past and what we've done, including the other departments that have seen the benefits and we know that will continue. And so just excellent work and we look forward to ensuring that these resources stay in Long Beach and don't go to other outside agencies. And I think that's critical for us moving forward. And so thank you for to all for for moving this forward. So with that, I'm going to do the roll call vote. Speaker 3: Before we get started, could Amy stand up about 20 minutes and speak to us? Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you, Miss Weber. And so with that, let me let me go into the roll call vote. So District two, District three. Speaker 11: I. Speaker 0: District four i. District five I. District six. District seven i. District eight. And District nine. Thank you. Motion carries. Thank you for for passing that. And we will be moving on to the next item, which is going to be item 41.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution calling for the placement of a General Tax Measure on the Ballot of the March 3, 2020 Special Municipal Election for submission to the qualified voters of the City of Long Beach an amended ordinance to extend and adjust the rate of a Transactions and Use Tax, and making findings of fiscal emergency pursuant to California Proposition 218;

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Speaker 0: District four i. District five I. District six. District seven i. District eight. And District nine. Thank you. Motion carries. Thank you for for passing that. And we will be moving on to the next item, which is going to be item 41. You the Missouri. Speaker 3: You please. Speaker 2: Report from Public Works recommendation to adopt a resolution establishing an annual special tax of 0.14 per square foot for commercial properties and Belmont Shore for fiscal year 2020, and authorizing the Los Angeles County Auditor Comptroller to be included in the 2019 2020 secured tax role District. Speaker 8: Three. Speaker 3: Whoever we put in there. Speaker 1: Craig Beck, our public works director. Speaker 11: And I have a few questions for staff. Speaker 3: But excuse. Speaker 2: Councilman Price has a few questions. Her staff. Speaker 1: We could have the questions and then Craig can answer them. Speaker 3: Are you okay? Go ahead and start. Speaker 11: Okay. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor. Um, so, Mr. Beck, I do have a few questions that have come up on this, and I'm hoping you could clarify them for me. Um, what's the Belarus Fund used as the primary source of repayment of the bond? Or were Mr. revenues used? Speaker 0: Councilmember Price. We conducted a review of the Mallory's funding. It collects roughly, say, 65 to $70000, depending on where the assessment rate is set. Our debt service on our bonds is currently about $270,000, so it's really a mixture. The Melrose collected again about 65 to $70000, and then the rest of that is supplemented with parking meter revenue. Speaker 11: Okay. So my understanding is that, um, the revenue sources for the annual payment obligations are 200,000 from parking meter revenue. And then the risk assessment. Is that right? Speaker 0: Fairly close again. The Melrose Sets collected its first pledge to the debt service, and then the parking meter revenue makes up the difference, and that difference is roughly $200,000. Speaker 11: Okay. Was the Belarus Fund used to pay back public works for the immediate improvement and instead of the meter revenue. Speaker 0: Councilmember. No, that is not accurate. Again, the assessment for the Melrose is being used for debt service. We utilize parking meter revenue to do the improvements along the Second Street corridor that address the medians and the landscaping and the lights and some of the other enhancements that were made. Speaker 11: Okay. I think that's a really important point. So it's it's a it's an unequivocal no. The reason the median repayment was budgeted as the parking meter funds budget, the Melrose Assessment was not used for the meeting. Is that correct? Speaker 0: Yes, Councilmember, that's correct. Speaker 11: Okay. Um. We have heard some concerns about that. There was supposed to be $700,000 in the Mallory's account. Can you shed some light on that? Speaker 0: Councilmember I heard that, but as far as we understand, that is not correct. There was an initial bond offering of about $5.4 million when the bonds were issued in the Melrose was generated. Since then, we've been making repayments to the bond structure. And as mentioned, we're collecting roughly the 65 to $70000. What we are proposing with this action is that we would set the assessment at $0.14. This is a $0.01 decrease from the current fiscal year, which was set at $0.15. We anticipate that. Speaker 11: Okay. Speaker 0: So I was just going to say, we anticipate the $0.14 will generate roughly $69,000. Speaker 11: Okay. So tonight's action would actually be decreasing it from the present 50%. Speaker 0: That is correct. If Council approves this item, it would decrease the assessed rate from $0.15 to $0.14. Speaker 11: Okay. What is the military spending paying for currently? Speaker 0: Councilmember. Currently, all the funds have been expended except for roughly $70,000. It can be used for any parking improvement within the within the district. So most of the funding has already been expended. And at this point, we're just making debt service payments. Speaker 11: Okay. And one of the requests that I had from stakeholders in my district was to continue this item to a later date. Is that possible? And if it's not, why is that? Speaker 0: Councilmember Yes, we understand that request came forward. Unfortunately, we need to have this item addressed this evening because we have to have information to the county assessor by the end of the month to be able to put the assessment on the rolls. If we do not take action tonight, then the rate would stay at $0.15 for the next year. Speaker 11: Okay. And then another area where we had a lot of concerns from some of the stakeholders was on the topic of notice. Can you please share to the best of your ability what the notice requirements are when there is a change in the rate? And, you know, maybe some historical perspective on when the rate has been changed and what type of outreach has been done. Speaker 0: Well, I'll do my best. I don't have a long history with this item. I can tell you that the the assessed assessment rate was about $0.12 for a number of years. Recently, we were finding that there was a gap in the amount of money raised to be able to make the payments. So there was a recommendation to increase the $0.15. I believe city staff could have done a better job reaching out and educating the stakeholders about that increase. Unfortunately, that was not done. So you are trying to do that this year. There is not a noticing requirement, but it certainly is a best practice. That we would work with the stakeholders whenever a changes made. Speaker 11: Yeah, I agree. And, um, this is obviously something that was initiated by staff and presented to our office as basically a. A necessity and not something that we had too much discussion or outreach on. So I think moving forward, it would be a best practice for us to engage a little bit earlier if there's going to be any rate adjustments. I'm happy to see that the rate adjustment that we're voting on tonight is actually a decrease and that it's getting us closer to the 12% rate that we had for a number of years. And in the future, should there be any sort of rate adjustment? I think it would be important for us to maybe have some discussions or or maybe even an outreach meeting in advance of it coming to council. But I know that you share that that intent with me. So moving forward will make sure that we do that. In regards to tonight's item specifically, are you able to give any sort of prediction as to whether there will be another rate change in the next year or two? Speaker 0: Councilmember. I'm not in the prediction business, but my anticipation is that we would leave it at $0.14. Speaker 11: Okay. So that so it would not be appropriate for me to ask you to predict what streets are going to get repaved in the next few weeks either. Speaker 0: Maybe once you return from vacation, we can have that discussion. Speaker 11: That sounds good. Excellent. Thank you very much. I have no additional comments or questions. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mrs. Rice. Would you like to continue, Mr. Craig, with your report? Oh, is that it? Speaker 0: Vice Mayor I think that we covered all the outstanding questions. I'm happy to go in more detail if the council would like, but I'm fine at this point. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Councilman Orson. Fine, Councilman Ewing. Okay. Do you have any public comment in this? Could you please. Come on. State your name. You have 3 minutes. Speaker 1: Sure. Okay. Son I can feel District six. I'll be curious to hear from Mr. Beck about in regards to the roots of this area. You brought up the being decreased from $0.15 to $0.14. I just happened to find online the hundred and 12 page report done by the legal counsel that initiated the original one. I think it's Quinn Quint something Quentin related when you you know, I'm just curious about Proposition 218, which is how this even comes into effect when you change the the tax, the amount of tax for this, which is basically a parcel tax when you change the amount. Isn't there supposed to be some type of like a two thirds approval from voters? That's a question I have. And also, is this decrease within the tax? Because according to the series 29, the expectation for these bonds, it's supposed to be about 75,000 for 2019. Is there any kind of, you know, evaluation in regards to the new development on the second PCH that's coming along? Just curious about these things. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you, sir. Did you want any answers to those questions or are you just. All right. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Fine. We can go to the vote. This is why. Speaker 1: I did want to get some clarification. Speaker 3: Okay. Councilman, Arson. Speaker 1: City manager. Mr. West, can you answer the question regarding the requirement for a two thirds majority? Sure. Mr. Beck can answer. Speaker 0: Sure. Council Member Austin Council Regarding the community's comment. This is an assessment for a specific number of parcels. This is not a citywide assessment. If you think of it, the mailroom is I like to use the term set up similar to kind of in a way where certain property owners are paying rent and those dollars are only used within within certain boundaries. And I think the question was put out, does does the development of the second impact have an impact to this? And as. Speaker 1: Of now, this. Speaker 0: Project is not within the jurisdiction of these properties. Speaker 1: Thank you for answering that. And I was clear. I just wanted to make sure that the public was as well. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm sorry I am on public comments on this item. If not, we will go to the vote just to go. District to district three. Speaker 11: I. Speaker 1: For. Speaker 8: I5ii. Speaker 3: Think District six, seven, eight, nine. Designate. Yes. Thank you. But. We move on now to item 43, please. Do you please with the 1843.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution establishing an annual special tax of $0.14 per square-foot for Community Facilities District No. 2007-2 for commercial properties in Belmont Shore for Fiscal Year 2020 and authorizing the Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller to be included on the 2019-20 Secured Tax Roll. (District 3)

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Speaker 3: Think District six, seven, eight, nine. Designate. Yes. Thank you. But. We move on now to item 43, please. Do you please with the 1843. Speaker 2: Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to adopt resolution to denounce HB 41 and HB 314 immediately suspend official travel to Georgia, Alabama and any other state which adopts similar heartbeat legislation until such time as the new law is revoked, amended or struck down. Speaker 3: By UMD to have a public opinion. Any public comment on this item? We're going to the public purse, if not anyone. Congresswoman, first. Okay, Congressman, your anger. Okay, fine. We can take a vote. District one. District two, District three. I. Just before. I. I. I. I. Speaker 1: Seven i. Speaker 3: Eight and nine. You. Now we're going to move. And now we're going to move back to. Let's see. I think when we were back to 30.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution to Denounce Georgia's Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act (HB 481) and Alabama's HB314, Immediately Suspend Official Travel to Georgia, Alabama and any other State which Adopts Similar Heartbeat Legislation and Imposing Financial Sanctions until Such Time as the New Law is Revoked, Amended, or Struck Down.

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Speaker 1: Item 28. Speaker 3: Item 21. Okay. Now we're going to move back to item 28. That would be. She please. Speaker 2: Item to item item 28 Communication for Mayor Garcia Recommendation to receive and file a report from the City Manager on earthquake preparedness in Long Beach. Speaker 3: Right to have a report on that week. Speaker 5: Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the city council. This was an item that the mayor has put on to really educate the community about what the city does in during an earthquake. So we obviously had those two right on the fourth and the 5th of July. Rest assured. Ah, we were responding. We were. Everything was working the way that it should. And we'd like to really take this chance to hear from Reggie Harrison on behalf of our departments about what it is that we do during an earthquake, what we recommend to the public on how they can help. And also talk a little bit about seismic resiliency hearing from development services. So with that, I will turn it over to Reggie Harrison, our director of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 10: Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, and members of City Council for this opportunity to present this update to you. Seismologists have for years been predicting a strong earthquake to impact this area. City staff has taken those predictions seriously at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of fiscal year in October. The city hosted a Homeland Security Executive seminar attended by our management team, all department heads, including the Port and Water Department. We were joined by 60 other participants, including including the L.A. and Orange County Sheriffs, the L.A. City Police and Fire, the FBI, National Guard and others. We brainstormed around a catastrophic event that would require all of our collective efforts, like an earthquake. We put it we put into practice the lessons learned from that seminar that day. To be clear, earthquakes cannot be predicted, not even by the famed Southern California seismologist, Dr. Lucy Jones. What we do know is that we live in an area prone to earthquakes, and we need to be prepared to survive as individuals, as a family and as a city. So on July 4th, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake rattled. Southern California was the largest earthquake that we had experienced in the last 20 years. The quake struck near the city of Ridgecrest and in Kern County, which is about 160 miles northeast of Los Angeles. People, however, felt the effects of that earthquake from Las Vegas to Phenix to Ensign out of Mexico. Then one day later, on July 5th, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the exact same area. That the second earthquake was larger, higher in magnitude, and the first was alarming even to seismologists and of course, to many residents. There is no doubt had either one of those earthquakes hit closer to the metropolitan Los Angeles area, there would have been injuries. Compare this to the 1994 Northridge 6.9 magnitude earthquake, which killed 57 people and caused billions of dollars in damages. In Long Beach. We train our staff and work with our residents to be prepared for all hazards. Of course, we live on the Pacific Rim and with that comes the rest of us tsunami or sea level rise. We are responsibility for securing the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. And with that comes terrorist threats and natural and man made disasters, as well as we're responsible for the Los Angeles and Long Beach airports . Again, terrorist attacks and natural disasters are major concerns there. Now, an earthquake is the most probable disaster that we face in this area because of the many earthquake fault lines that crisscross the region. Many fault lines are near Long Beach, including the Newport-Inglewood, Palos Verdes and Cabrillo Fault Lines. And you see some of those fault lines depicted there in that picture. The city has many disaster preparedness and response plans that comport with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA's national standards. All of our plans have been approved by FEMA. The fact that we have plans that have been approved by FEMA allows us to be able to apply for additional grants as well as for disaster response reimbursement. Community outreach is one of our major priorities, and we take a whole community approach to disaster preparedness and train our staff and residents to be prepared for all hazards, whether preparing for an earthquake or tsunami. Having a family emergency plan is one of the most important things we can do. The plan should include where to meet if the family is separated, and a communications plan for contacting a relative who lives outside of the impacted area. And we also encourage residents to think about their pets as well. What are the needs of pets? We've we've seen across the country that people tend not to evacuate from their homes. And unless they're sheltered in us, their pets can also travel with them. We encourage residents to become members of certain, to be trained in areas to promote self-sufficiency. Residents should take disaster related first aid classes from the Red Cross and other providers. The really Long Beach, the the very Long Beach Disaster Preparedness and Resource Fair is one of the largest of its kind in California. Last year, we attracted over 3000 attendees for this event, the fire department said. And the Department of Disaster Preparedness. Our primary organizers for the event were representatives from across Southern California attend this event. The Red Cross. Los Angeles County Resources. The National Guard. SoCal, Edison and other utilities are there. We have events that include first aid demonstrations, emergency vehicle displays and preparedness booth for various vendors. This is a much sought after event. Representatives from Cal Lewis often come down to this event to just experience how large of an event this is. This year's event will be held on September the 28th at Cal State University, Lombardi's campus. Earthquake preparedness, in particular before an earthquake. And I talked about some of these already before the shaking begins. We should have family plans, go kits in place, and especially for an earthquake, secure, breakable items and large items that tend to fall over and of course, take first aid classes during an earthquake. I think we all know the drill. We practice that the last couple of weeks I believe now since the earthquakes to drop, cover and hold on drop to the floor and cover your neck and head and hands and get under a table and just hold on until the shaking stops. Running out of a building is not recommended. It's not a good idea as objects attached to buildings tend to fall off. In fact, the only people that got killed in the Paso Robles earthquake back in 1992 were people who ran out of the store and got hit by falling debris from the store after an earthquake . As a time to check for injuries to your family and neighbors, turn off gas only if you smell leaking gas and listen for updates from the city and be prepared for aftershocks. One of the programs that we are really promoting with neighborhoods and a number of you council members have seen me make presentations on this program, which is really your Long Beach neighborhood. Recent events across the country have shown that the new first responders in the immediate aftermath of a disaster are fellow neighbors. Neighbors helping neighbors is the basis of the map. Your Long Beach neighborhood program that we are encouraging residents to participate. And through this program, we teach residents to understand and identify the risks in their neighborhood. Who are the elderly, the mobility impaired, the residents that are dependent on electrical medical equipment, and then to also identify the resources that they have in their community, who other residents that have plumbing skills, electrical skills, who's that neighbor that has every gadget in his or her garage that you can imagine? Who are the retired nurses and teachers? And so through this approach. Neighbors develop a plan for how they will help each other until a police and fire personnel arrive. They identify a meeting place who is going to check on the elderly, the children who are home alone, who will make rounds to determine if gas lines are busted. I place at each of your chair a backpack that we intend to be able to distribute a few to the neighborhoods that successfully go through this program, where this does take work on the part of our neighbors where we have staff that's available to assist with that. Alert. Long Beach is the city's emergency mass notification system. And you'll recall during the power outage in 2015, system did not service our community well. We have a new system in place that we implemented shortly after the 2015 power outage. This is a system by which we would notify our residents what has happened. What first responders are doing and what actions our residents should take to protect themselves. Residents do have to sign up for alert based to be able to receive voice, text or email messages. During the Ridgecrest earthquake, we sent out three messages through this system and one of them for the first time ever, we sent a message to the entire database in the city of Long Beach, 197,000 phone numbers. We had a 45% rate reach and we gained 6000 new contacts either text voice or email contacts to the system. We have made signing up even easier for residents. You can easily sign up for alert lobbies by simply texting alert L.B. to 99411 and a sign up link will be sent to you. It's as simple as that to be able to receive these emergency notifications. Shakealert. L.A. is a relatively new app that has just come out. It was in effect prior to the Ridgecrest earthquake. Our residents need to download this app to be able to provide a warning of a pending earthquake. Lambie's beta tested the technology behind this app for the previous four years. We have confidence in it that it works. The public facing app test that has been released is set at a 5.0 and above earthquake. Hence, we did not receive an earthquake warning through the system for the Earth for the Ridgecrest earthquake. However, the city of Los Angeles has reset that threshold now, so it's a much lower threshold so that the notice would be sent out. The system provides information and English and Spanish is available on for iPhones or Android. You have to download that app and the city and the county and the city of Long Beach. Disaster preparedness will continue to work to perfect this notification system. We recently completed the development of a crisis communication plan, working with a consultant and a city manager's peer and peers from across the city. This plan provides guidance for the coordination of communications during during a crisis. The plan considers all communication platforms, including social media, media and press releases. The plan is also sensitive to the needs of our non-English speaking residents and those with other disabled access and functional needs. This slide provides an outline for how incident manager incident response flow works from the street level up to the federal government. The slide also depicts the scalability of this federal system. Every incident, regardless of the size, utilizes the incident management system. Every department has staff that has been trained in the system. Police and fire have personnel that have received advanced training and all has an incident management system. Often are all hands. Teams are requested to go out to assist other jurisdictions outside of the city of Palm Beach. Our fire department plays a critical role in in the event of an earthquake. A priority for them is to ensure the safety of their equipment or apparatus that it is not so that they're not stuck in firehouses. They're responsible for making critical facilities checks. And as you can see from the previous slides, fires do erupt during an earthquake. And so they all have a primary role of controlling those fires. Similarly, the police department, the police are our eyes and ears out on the street. They provide us with situational awareness in terms of what's going on across the city. The police would coordinate evacuations if necessary. Police would also enforce any curfews that may be established by the city council and much, much more responsibilities. Public Works has a responsibility to ensure the free flow of traffic by removing debris that might hamper first responder police, fire, emergency medical personnel. They also have a responsibility to check critical facilities. I hope the Human Resources Department is responsible for coordinating mass care and sheltering sites if necessary. The city health officer would issue orders regarding air quality or boil water any of those issues related to health. Our city health officer would have that responsibility. And with that, I'm going to turn this presentation over to Linda Tatum. Speaker 6: Thank you, Reggie. I will be covering some of the proactive activities and a little bit of the history regarding the city's efforts regarding seismic activity. And the first is a just a piece of trivia in history regarding the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. It was that earthquake that where there were over 100 deaths caused and and more than $40 million in damage. And interestingly enough, the the deaths were caused by people leaving the buildings and being hit by falling debris. But as a result of that earthquake, the good that came out of it were two really critical pieces of seismic legislation. The first was the Field Act. And what that did was establish or was the basis for the city's office creation of the state's Office of State Architecture. And that's the entity at the state level that actually permits and approves all of the state facilities, as well as critical care facilities, things like hospitals and schools, again, public schools and hospitals. The second provision in the legislation was the Riley Act, and that was the legislation that required all cities and counties to regulate building construction. So it was a very early days of the California building code. So the very first and most vulnerable buildings that occur during that are that are damaged during seismic activity are what we call the unreinforced masonry building. So essentially buildings that are the brick buildings. And back in 1971, the city did an inventory of all of its masonry buildings, and it was a voluntary program for the property owners to actually seismically reinforce those buildings. And it was amended in 1976 to make that a mandatory requirement for owners of those buildings to upgrade those buildings with retrofits. And from this program, the city did an inventory, and of the 936 buildings identified, the vast majority were actually repaired, but a significant number, over 300 were actually demolished. And the very last building that was completed under this program, which took a number of years, was the Masonic Temple that's located on Locust Avenue, one of the city's historic buildings in the downtown, and that was retrofitted as recently as 2007. So I talked a little bit about the soft story buildings. That's the I'm sorry, I talked about the unreinforced masonry. Another very vulnerable building that we have to deal with here in the city are what we call soft story buildings. And those are essentially buildings that where there is no attachment to the foundation. And this photograph here that shows the tuck under parking, that's essentially what the type of construction that we mean when we talk about soft story building. As you recall, during the the 1994 Northridge earthquake, that's when the city first implemented a voluntary program for other types of vulnerable building construction. And the slide here shows a list of those buildings. But of course, they include single family residential buildings that were not at the time they were constructed many years ago under the building codes . They were not required to be attached to the foundation. So that's one of the major categories. And then I talked about the soft story buildings. Again, this is an example of those were the the building the wall of the building is not attached to the building foundation. And there are a couple of other types of vulnerable construction types. And after the Northridge earthquake, that's when the city required these buildings to be seismically retrofitted. I'm sorry, a voluntary program for these buildings to be retrofitted. So what I'd like to talk about here is one of the city's efforts starting in the late 1990s, which was an assessment district. It was the city's first attempt to try to establish a funding source for buildings that were damaged or buildings that were built under former building codes that were not seismically anticipated to withstand substantial earthquake activity. They created an assessment district and that covered about over 500 residential structures. And this was, again, some of the older, more vulnerable buildings built under older building codes, essentially pre 1934 buildings. And after the initial assessment, we added additional 65 units to this assessment district. So the results of the assessment district were mixed because of some of the extensive work that needed to be done to some of these buildings. There were definitely some some issues with the buildings. Some of the property owners were able to complete the seismic retrofits without any issues. But there were a number of problem areas where the scope of the retrofits were more substantial than the property owners could handle. That resulted in some some cases where a few property owners actually lost their properties. And this effort actually continued until I'm going to say about the mid-term, early to mid 2000s. But that program and that assessment district is is no longer active. So that's kind of a lesson learned for the city, because as we go forward, we'll be looking to make sure that any future program that the city structures will take into account the kind of the potential funding sources. And we'll be looking for ways to incentivize for property owners to be able to complete the the necessary retrofit. So this next slide just gives you a list of some of the buildings throughout the state of California that have actually undertaken a number of different approaches in terms of how they've addressed having their building inventory, in terms of a number of different approaches and how they funded, whether they provide incentives. So there is a lot of good information in some of the cities that have started programs. And as we go to the next step and try to and start to craft our program, we'll be looking carefully at each of these programs and making sure that we establish best practices from among the cities that do have active programs. And I think as anything, we'll just need to be aware that there is no magic bullet. There is no one city that has a perfect program. I think, like most of our other efforts, will need to look carefully at the city of Long Beach. We're different from many other cities in the state. We have an older building stock and our income levels aren't necessarily what some of the other cities that have more aggressive programs. So we'll be looking at all of those factors. So again, the next steps for us, once we get direction from council, we will be looking at picking up a program, an effort we started initially back in 2018, which is a scope of work that brings on board a consultant to take a look at the inventory of these buildings so that we have a comprehensive inventory of the vulnerable buildings. We would then look to expand that scope of work to include having someone take a look at possible funding options again so that we can provide an incentive to property owners to support their retrofit activity. And we've had a very last year's effort. There was a preliminary price tag to do this work at 1.1 million. But again, we'll be going back to relook at that scope, seeing if there are some ways to make sure we get a very complete list of that scope of work with the added benefit of having them look at funding sources and hopefully try to get a better value on that. But we'll be doing that through an RFP process. So we'll be again looking at that and looking at other cities programs to make sure that we establish a program that that works very specifically for the city of Long Beach. And again, just to close out here to talk about some statewide legislation that was previously considered, this was the AB 2681 that was proposed to require local and state reporting of the inventory program for for building. And that's the type of program we're going to be taking a look at. That bill was vetoed by the governor. So it's not a requirement. But again, we think it's best practice isn't something that the city should be moving forward on. And again, there are other proposed legislation regarding seismic resiliency. And we, through our city manager's office, will be continuing to track those bills. I'll turn it over now to Craig back to complete the presentation. Speaker 0: Thank you, Linda. I think we have seen that the outline this evening is really focused on all the opportunities that exist relative to preparing and preparing one's residents to be safe. But we just wanted to spend a brief moment highlighting some of the critical infrastructure that we have in Long Beach and what we're doing to make sure that it's safe for continued use. So we know right now that there is over 200 facilities in the city that we would consider a critical facility. So these are our fire stations, our police headquarters, our pump stations, our water and energy resource utilities. Certainly our city hall and other important government buildings. And then we we know we've identified some weaknesses, in particular some of our bridges. It's surprising to think, but we have over over 100 bridges in this in Long Beach, 131 that are owned by the city. So we need to start being diligent in analyzing those bridges and making sure that they're safe so we can provide access if we were to have a major event in the city. We want to make sure public safety can can get to those. But recently, as detailed, there's new building methods that really focus on the resiliency of a city facility. And I think the first city facility that really employed a lot of this was our echo. So there was actual rockers put within the building foundation. So it can kind of move independent from any motion that might happen in that was typical in an earthquake. Certainly our public safety building retrofit addressed many of those things, shoring up that structure and making it much more earthquake resilient. Our new passenger concourse at the airport is another example of where we strengthen the facilities and really build them from a place where we're understanding what earthquake motion does to a building and what improvements you can do in a building to help. You can never prevent 100%, but you make it much more resilient and much more likely to survive a major event. I really wanted to spend just a moment highlighting our City Hall and our main library. I know this council in the council before this this seated council really weighed heavy on this question about how safe is the current city hall. And we know we have some seismic challenges in this building. And so when we took on the the project to build a new civic center and in particular a new city hall, seismic resiliency was one of the key issues that we looked at and that we really put within the entire RFP process. And when we we selected and finalized the layout of the building, it's really a matte foundation designed. So both the Port Tower and the City Hall Tower function together. And as far as resiliency, it was imperative that we are able to re-occupy the building in no more than five days of a major event, and that we would be operational to the public. No, no more than 30 days from a major event. So that is built in and built into our contract with plenary. The project company in charge of the facility. And if for some reason they aren't able to meet those standards and they need to provide alternate space for us to look at them . So we take this all very seriously as we design any new project, any new facility, earthquake strengthening and resiliency is important to the project components. And just wanted to convey to not only the council but the community listening this evening that we are making our new facility stronger and any retrofit of an existing facility is done with earthquakes in mind. I'll pass it back over to you. Speaker 10: So I've got the, the last line for presentation as a summary slide. The recent earthquakes really did crack our California cool over the 4th of July weekend. They motivated a lot of residents to get prepared. We saw an uptick in the number of residents who signed up for alert Long Beach. We saw an uptick in the number of residents visiting our website, looking for information. And then just anecdotal, just being out at department stores, hardware stores and others. You saw residents there getting fire extinguishers, water, gloves. It's never too late to get prepared. City department plans continue to evolve. The newly developed crisis communication plan allows us to quickly and effectively get messages out to our residents. Our first responders work as part of a regional response network to ensure we have resources necessary to manage an incident. And we take a ground up approach to disaster preparedness, starting with individual and family preparedness and working our way up through our neighborhoods and the city. We have to accept that we live in an area that is prone to earthquakes and we have to do our part to be prepared for it. Being prepared mentally and physically for whatever may come is what it's all about. We need to be ready to help ourselves and then each other. That concludes staff report. Various representatives from various departments are available to answer questions. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I want to thank the entire team. I think that was a very extensive and good report and a great update on our emergency disaster preparedness response, particularly to Mr. Harrison and your team. And also, of course, the entire public safety network that we have through public works and planning. And so are really, really important for us to always get updates on this. Just a few, a few comments. So I had asked Mr. West to kind of bring this back and to prepare a presentation, because I think it's important to put it out there and continue to put that information out there. We had a pretty, I think, you know, serious scare recently with with the quakes. And I think that it certainly got people's attention. It's certainly got my attention. And I was reminded as I had conversations with the chief and Mr. West and others in the minutes following both of the quakes, that that this information is really important to review and to practice and to continue to review and to keep going through our our our our our preparedness consistently. A few things I want to note. I do. We made an effort the next day to increase our alert Long Beach sign ups and we doubled them or doubled more than doubled them, which I think is really important. I want to encourage residents to please sign up for alert Long Beach, and I want to encourage staff to continue at every possible event to continue to to do that. I want to ask Mr. West also, we need to make a personal appeal to our city employees there, 6500 of them. They should all be on alert. Long Beach. And the fact that we have how many folks signed up already to have 10,000 folks signed up, maybe on alert. Long Beach, is that right, Mr. Harrison? On the cell phone. Of course, we can we can call, I think, over 150 or 160,000 or whatever the number is. But we need to I would expect that that all of our city employees would be interested in being on that system. And so there needs to be an internal effort to do that. And so I would hope we would do that. I'll also just add, I think that our our cert operation teams and the fact that ready Long Beach and those groups are out so consistently in the community I think is really great to see. I see them in all the events in the community functions, so I think that obviously should continue. It. We continue to promote those that work. I wanted to just note. I'm not sure. Maybe, Mr. Modica, you could you can answer this. You and I talked about this some. So our our resiliency program, I just want to make sure that I know that that that issue has been before the council, before we discussed it. We want to I want to make sure that the timeline I know we still have it may be possible to your timeline to complete that work. And I really would like to see that moved up if possible. I know it's a lot of work. I know it's not easy, but I think that that that's just a little bit longer than that I think most of us would like. And so maybe you can get back to us on an expedited timeline and what that would look like. But I think we need to cut that, you know, cut that in half, hopefully, and and get something in front of this body as to what the next phase of this is. In addition to that, I will say that I want to commend the city, because we the first thing that we have done is kind of taking care of our own buildings and facilities. And so the fact that in two weeks we are moving out, we're moving out all of the employees in this building, which is a structurally unsound facility into a facility that is to the latest standards on earthquake preparedness, I think is really important. And I'm glad that we're making repairs across the city on so many public buildings to to continue that work. But I do I do think that whether it's, you know, the Los Angeles program or or the Santa monica program , there are other programs that are out there. And I just want to I want to make sure that we adopt a program. I think it's that's that is important. And I know that funding is always a concern on the on the private side for for for property owners. And we certainly don't ever want to overburden property owners. We also don't want to. We also want to make sure we do everything we can to to ensure safety and the continuation of of of every person and life. And so don't want to repeat the disasters that we've had in the past as well. And so the last thing I'll say is I have been so impressed with our emergency response when we've had these incidents that have not in most cases been major. But what what happens in the way the PD and the fire department and public works and everyone kind of rolls out these plans is really impressive. Has been impressive for me to see as mayor and and to follow. And so I just want to commend the team. And and I think we just got to redouble our efforts and really focus on this. I know that, you know, interest in this sometimes wanes from from from from time to time because there may not be the emergency in front of us, but we just got to be vigilant constantly on this issue. And so I want to thank the staff. I'm sure Mr. Murdoch could want to add anything to that, but I think you guys are pretty on top of it. Speaker 5: And there's a good comments and we agree on the study. So, yes, it does take some time to do an inventory of everything as we go back out and relook at the scope of work would be happy to look at what we can do in different chunks and we also want to really focus on that. How do we get those economic solutions? Because that's something that we heard last time that we didn't quite have worked out. Speaker 0: And maybe and maybe maybe it's done in those chunks. Right. And so we can get to some of the, the, the the lower hanging fruit and quicker. Speaker 5: We'd be happy to look at phasing that so that we can do something a little bit different. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Erika. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mary. And I certainly have to agree with the last point you made in regards to the response of police and fire and this last event that we had, the updates that were given to us in regards to their checkpoints and to going to public facilities, ensuring that they were secure and no damage had been caused by the quake that that happened at Ridgecrest. One of the most important things about this report here, and I really want to commend staff for putting this together. It's very thorough. It covered practically all points that you would want to hear, including that as you were going through the report. I think we should probably get a little historical perspective on Long Beach and where we were back in 1933 to the present. And you did that. And I think that was important because it's always is that, you know, would you learn from from from your moment in history? One of the points that I see here also, although we may be encouraging, of course, our residents to send up to emergency to the emergency alert system. I think it's important that we have this kind of report yearly, maybe even twice a year, because of the you never know what a disaster is going to hit. And just being at the forefront of our minds is always important. So, I mean, I hope that we can maybe not as extensively, maybe once every two years, but I think every year we should have some kind of preparedness report such as this. I know we do it at our events that we're going to be having that the Cal State, Long Beach. But, you know, not everyone attends that and not everybody is is aware of what we might have available for them. So I think that having this kind of report to seek answers is important. But more importantly than that, I think we need to engage our media in regards to getting them to also post some of these recommendations for public safety. Also getting the alert system published through a PSA or event or through other kinds of media that we could use for them to alert the residents that there is this system available for them where they can get this kind of information. And, of course, the the extended resources that we have with Facebook and everything else that we use. I think as we move into our into the technical era that we are in using all these different mediums and platforms to expand the information, to make people more aware of the issues that are out there in terms of public safety and disasters, both natural and manmade, that we keep them aware and abreast of what's going on in our in our system. So, again, I want to just commend staff for a very thorough report. And I know when you look at police affairs, they're always conducting exercises and sometimes they seem redundant and they seem like boring. But that's how we get to do the bit. That's how we get to be the best we are. It's practice and it's practice all the time. And while it may be look routine, you never know when that practice is going to become a reality. So thank again. Yes. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 4: I yes, I want to thank you, Mayor, for agenda raising this so quickly. It was definitely something that we had talked about a ton in my district. Doctor, disaster preparedness has been a key issue for the second district. We have the coastline, we have our downtown. We have many senior homes, high rise buildings in our district. So I want to thank you guys for this. We're constantly having this conversation. And right after the quake, we had our third roundtable of senior residents that were meeting about how we can improve their lives. And one of the biggest issues that they all hooked on to was the fact that most of them lived in a high rise building and none of them had been through a drill in their building. And so I know I quickly grabbed your ear a minute ago, but could you walk through for us, are there requirements for residential, high rise buildings to have any kind of drills? Speaker 6: No. There are currently no city regulations nor state regulations that we're aware of that would make that a requirement on building owners. Speaker 4: So that is something that, you know, I know it's not in your report. I think it's your report. Fantastic. I really echo the comments about trying to get a quick timeline to have an assessment of those buildings. But in the meantime, we know that what they said with this last quake is it could be five years of having, you know, the ripple effect from that. And so what are we doing to make sure that our residents, not only at our neighborhood meetings, because there's a population that's engaged and there's a population that works two and three jobs or they're elderly and they don't get out of their building. And so I have a real concern that, you know, say that the next big one is here, that we have a lot of people that maybe they went out and bought their kit, but they've never done it. I mean, how many people sat there during the quake and just looked at everybody and didn't get under a table and didn't do the things that we know we're supposed to do? And so I, I will come back, and I hope that we can work together on trying to explore what options we have, particularly for our downtown, where we have senior high rise buildings and older buildings. And what we are doing to really whether it's annually, whether it's whenever new people move into a condo, what can we do as a city to really make sure that we're engaging with our constituents and that they're practicing their plan? Because I think if we really understood how many people have gone through a drill, know where the exits are, we would be pretty disappointed just because our lives are so busy from the from just a quick search at the Internet, looking at all the studies. Residential high rises are the least prepared. And so whatever we can do to make sure that we address that would be fantastic. I had another question on the right of your neighborhood, which, mind you, is all our downtown picture. So just making sure. What does it take for a community to get one of these presentations? How long does that take? How long does it take to set one up? Speaker 10: I'm glad you ask that question, Councilmember. We have staff that has been trained and and are going through a training process to be able to conduct these meetings. The meetings actually take place in the neighborhood. Lead resident will invite their neighbors over to their house, living room, garage, lawn, wherever that might be. And the discussion would take place that I described in regards to identifying the resources and the rest and who's going to do. Speaker 1: What. Speaker 10: After a disaster. So the map here, Long Beach neighborhood is patterned off of a longstanding map, your neighborhood program that's been in existence for a while. We have the city of Long Beach has teamed up with the city of Los Angeles and the county of Los Angeles to roll this program out countywide so a neighborhood can be whatever it is. So we can map your high rise. Right. We can map your apartment building. So certainly the people, residents in your district that we have a tool available for them. I would also just and with your prior questions, encourage residents to also participate in the Great California shakeout. And maybe that's something that we can promote more so that we can get to residents, so that they do practice that drill on a on an annual basis with which we can set up a competition among the districts and see how many people can sign up for it. You've done Facebook stuff with us in the past, and we're certainly willing to do those. And again. Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we've definitely we try to. My goal is to do a disaster preparedness video every quarter. But again, we get so busy that we let the disaster just kind of sit in the background. So I like those ideas. I would want to make sure that we have benchmarks that we're meeting. And so for me, I mean, my number one goal is as soon as you guys are ready that every one of my neighborhood associations and my business improvement district, I have 16 different groups that identify themselves that way in my district would get that done as soon as possible. So my team is always here to help. But whatever we can also do to reach those buildings that are hard to get into, that have ways that don't. I mean, most of these senior buildings, we had a large conversation about it because they have a management company that's in there providing them those services . Even when we've had the city go in, they haven't allowed us to do presentations and things like that. So for some of those troubled buildings, we need to figure out how we make that a requirement, particularly, I think, for our senior building. That so many of those people in those communities are most vulnerable and might have disabilities or mental health challenges and are just our most vulnerable. So whatever we can do to to have that discussion in the future, I welcome that. So thank you, guys. Again, this was a thorough presentation. Look forward to keeping disaster preparedness as a priority. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you, Councilmember Supernova. Speaker 1: Thank you. This is going to be very specific, probably not the best venue for it, but I didn't think about it until this item came up tonight. But I it brought back my memories. So the night of the earthquake, I think the alert went out at 10:41 p.m. that police and fire personnel were going to be assessing damage in the city. And I'm one just philosophically, I want more information, not less. That's my idea. But I question that when at I think it was. 12:36 a.m. an alert went out with the same intensity of any emergency that public safety officials have completed. The infrastructure checks, no reported damages have been received and in the city of Long Beach, unless new information becomes available. This will be the last update. So that's essentially an all clear update, but it comes in the wee hours of the morning with that same kind of intensity. So I don't know if I assume protocols are established about how these things go up, but that's that's some input I'd be willing to meet on a committee or whatever, like how will we want to lay this out? And for an all clear message, I'd be willing to wait till the morning. I think Mayor Garcia sent out a comforting message about 9:30 a.m. That was that was a good timing. Thank you. Speaker 0: Make it, councilmember. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I enjoyed the presentation. I appreciate the increase in uptick in the enrollment. I was at concert in the park at the time with approximately five other 5000 other residents, and I thought that it was a great opportunity to talk with neighbors about being prepared. I think one of the things that we often forget until we have a power outage or any of those things, is that you need to be able to provide food and water and save yourself for many days. And I think that your group is doing a great job, especially our CERT teams, in getting out and communicating that to the community, in going into the details of the presentation and talking about bringing back some guidelines to help get the city infrastructure, the infrastructure within the city at a high level of preparedness in case of an emergency. I had read some things that I'm not clear on, but maybe you could help that. Many of the roofs in the region are all flat, so helicopters could land on them for rescues. But that in actuality, I'm internationally when these incidents occur, they don't actually use those helicopter pads for those things at all. And some cities, including Los Angeles, have actually changed the requirements and allowed for variances. And so. We might want to look at making those adjustments at this time if we have policies in place that are based on misinformation, I'll give an example. We don't stand in doorways anymore when there's an earthquake. That's not the protocol. And yet there are still people and teachers out there who haven't gotten the new updates to know that now you want to be underneath the desk or adjacent to a desk so that if something falls, you can be protected. So for that, I would also say that if there are any other earthquake guidelines in the city, that we could look at them and see if there are any that aren't fact based that we could erase them from from the. The ordinance or codes or whatever, so that the city can again, if safe, resume our economy and resume and increase our iconic skyline. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Speaker 3: Yes, thank you, Mayor. Mrs. Tatum, Mr. Beck and Mr. Harris, after the report in which I just heard, I think all of us can go home and sleep very. Safely tonight because that was a fantastic report and more information. I know A people hear that and they adhere to that. I know they will be able to get to any other quick that we have. Thank you, individuals, for giving us that fantastic report. Thank you again. Speaker 0: Thank you. Just a quick note, just on behalf of the planning staff, I was talking to Councilman Mongo. I know that we a few years ago changed our our codes at the city and to align with some of what other downtowns are doing. These are relate to construction of roofs and giving the ability for for design that are not just, you know, flat helicopter pads. And so that's been changed. And that is why you are now seeing building designs with pointy roofs and spires and other things that are coming to the downtown. It was a big pet peeve. Councilwoman, go. Speaker 8: That's great to hear. Maybe, perhaps we can also allow the places you already have, the flat roofs with helicopter pads defensively, put outdoor furniture and start utilizing that space more effectively. Because as I look out the windows of the new city hall next week or two weeks from now, and as I look at any other tall building in the city, there's a bunch of numbers on the tops of buildings with no furniture and no enjoyment. And I know there's a limited amount of downtown outdoor space. Let's start giving them the ability to use that space effectively. Speaker 0: Thank you. Is there any public comment on the side of city seeing none or is that public comment? Please come forward. Speaker 10: No. They had to do a lot of work up there. Speaker 8: That's right. It could happen, but only after. Speaker 12: Good evening. Tiffany Davie, resident of the fourth District. I want to thank you all for a very comprehensive report. I was looking forward to this. I actually started training with the California Specialized Training Institute the beginning of this year and with L.A. City EMT. So when we had this opportunity during this emergency to kind of see the language system in place, I received reports of 1041. I know. Was a little bit late, but the all clear going through felt like any time for that news was great. I look forward to the community partnership meeting that I believe was scheduled for the 18th and just in case, I didn't see that in the report, but it's now the 25th. Okay. And that's from 1 to 3 p.m.. Okay. As well as perhaps more engagement for Stop the Bleed trainings. And there's also a mass. Mass casualty exercises in August. I learned of that at the Met Court kickoff of the year. So I just wanted to know if that could be updated on the website as well and just look forward to being able to find the crisis communications plan as well as an updated hazard mitigation plan that reflects the new development that's taking place over the past five years. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 1: Dave Shukla, Sun File, thank you very much for the presentation. So very informative. A couple of brief comments. First, an inventory of seismically vulnerable buildings in Long Beach is crucial, even if that doesn't move on state or county levels. It's important to know what here could potentially be affected. Bridge collapse. Also in disaster scenario planning is very instructive for traffic flow, but it's not the only impact. In my neighborhood, we're right by the Newport-Inglewood fault line and there's a lot of critical infrastructure that could severely limit ingress and egress out of the county. And it's important to kind of think through and these are exercises, you know, just look at a map. Cross some lines of what would we do? They're pretty easy to think through, but harder to actually implement in the way of practice. Councilwoman Pierce's point about requiring multifamily property owners to drill for seismic or other disasters is pretty intriguing. I would like to see a way that that that could actually be made amended, but not just for. For Senior living, but also for a lot of the high rises we have downtown and some of the workplaces as well that are in some of these taller buildings. Lastly, a ground up approach or actually not. Lastly, sorry, one other point that a councilmember your group made was that we need to kind of wideband all the technologies that we get information out. One that we didn't hear that much about, especially older folks, still turn to handy dandy AM FM radio and being able to get information out across a variety of platforms is important. It's also important to recognize that. What your neighbors tell you is more likely than not going to be what sticks in your head. And so that brings me to the last point, which is the grownup approach is to be commended. And that's why it's absolutely crucial that we continue to support our program. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Our last speaker. Speaker 1: Hello. Good evening. My name is Johnny Wallace. I'm a resident of the seventh District and I am actually a graduate of the CERT program with Long Beach Cert. And although I was not here for the first earthquake and I got a lot of, you know, a lot of people asking me if I was I was actually studying abroad when the first earthquake happened and I was talking with someone and they were like, oh, I'm glad you are here, because, you know, it could have been bad with that. And I was really like, I want it to be here, you know, to help if, you know, if I mean, luckily there wasn't any structural damage or anything like that that was too major. Um, but I would have liked to be here to help. Um, after I. Completed the CERT program. I actually went back to my neighborhood. It's actually right next to the Goldstar Manor. It's for veterans and a lot of elderly people live there as well as in my my neighborhood as well. But I actually went back to my neighborhood and did a presentation with the help of firemen from. You know that helped that help with the cert program by the name of JC Heflin. And they came by and gave them some first aid kits. But after the presentation, I, you know, gave my residents, the residents of my neighborhood survival kits. And that's all great. But I wanted to know, are there any plans on setting up neighborhood preparedness officers and are there any plans to establish new leadership roles within the communities , people that actually know the community outside of cert? Are there any opportunities to learn how to do better presentations and inform the community? Um, you know, all throughout Long Beach, I wanted to just know how to. You know, touch up on that because I was actually kind of in that California cool. You know, even though I wasn't here, I was still in that California cool because nothing had happened for some time. But as we know, you know, seismologists are predicting that artists are anticipating a greater threat from earthquakes in the coming years. So, you know, we're definitely trying to get ready, going to get ready for that. But, yeah, I want to keep my keep my neighborhood alert before a disaster like this. And. Yeah, thank you. Speaker 0: First of all, thank you for doing it for us and for your interest. I think it's great to have folks that are out there volunteering and doing that work. So I just want to thank you also. I I'll make sure that we get get back to you in, Councilman. I think if you're not connected already, maybe someone from your team can go over there or someone from staff so that we can connect. These are some good ideas and some areas we're going to kind of close the loop on, I think, with certain fire and some other folks. And so maybe we'll do that. Councilman, we will connect with you in just in just a minute. Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to thank you for stepping up also with a third program. One of the things that we're trying to emphasize more nowadays is that, you know, although neighborhood watch programs have gone away, that would have been a good resource for people to get information about such things. We are now encouraging more and more to our police department, community watch, neighborhood watch programs where you could get your neighbors, get updates on what's going around in your neighborhood in terms of public safety. But it's also a good avenue to talk about earthquake preparedness or disaster preparedness as a whole. So let me get your information and I will get back to you in them. And we have in the West Long Beach area, we had the West Long Beach Association. I would recommend that you attend one of those meetings. Our police officer and our neighborhood watch and our community watch person is always there to talk about what's going on in the neighborhood, in the area and give updates. So that would be I would strongly encourage you do that as well and we'll give you those dates when the West Palm Beach Association meets. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. That concludes we're going to take a roll call vote. Councilman Pierce. I'm sorry, district two. District three for. Speaker 11: I. Speaker 1: Okay. That's three, four. Speaker 0: Five, six, seven, I eight and nine. Okay. That motion carries for the seat in front of the report. Thank you very much. We're going to item 36 now.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a report from the City Manager on earthquake preparedness in Long Beach, including but not limited to the Alert Long Beach system, seismic studies of buildings in the city, and general readiness for natural disasters.

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Speaker 0: Five, six, seven, I eight and nine. Okay. That motion carries for the seat in front of the report. Thank you very much. We're going to item 36 now. Speaker 2: Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine and Public Works recommendation received and filed the Drake Chavez Vision Plan Adopt resolutions to submit a grant application to the California Department of Parks and Recreation for the first phase of the Drake Chavez Vision Plan Implementation Project. Accept, said Grant if awarded in an amount of eight 8,500,000 District one. Speaker 0: So why don't we let me just have staff maybe kind of briefly go through this. I know I've had a chance to review it already, but if I can just make it brief, please. Speaker 1: Gerardo and. Speaker 0: Meredith. Speaker 1: Yes. We're excited about this opportunity to pass it on to the Meredith friends. Speaker 4: Good evening, Mayor. Members. City Council. This item is to receive and file the Drake Chavez vision plan along with authorization to submit a grant for Prop 68 State Park Bond. If you recall, in 2010, the Drake Chavez masterplan was completed. That was followed by a series of community stakeholder discussions, which was really focused on amassing properties for park purposes that would connect Cesar Chavez Park to Drake Park through the development of wetlands and passive and active open space. There was a big effort by the city over the coming years to purchase just over 15 acres of property in the Drake Chavez neighborhood through grants and local funding. This master plan has been in existence for quite some time, but since that those purchases have been made, many new projects have begun to impact the future park parcels , including projects like the Long Beach Must the 710 realignment proposed by the California Department of Transportation and the Schumaker Bridge Replacement Project and the Drake Chavez Vision Plan worked to incorporate all of these new projects in addition to new feedback from the community and this vision plan updates that original plan. This is a guide, kind of a visionary document that guides future improvement at these acquired and undeveloped park parcels, as well as the future improvements to Drake Park and Cesar Chavez Parks to address the needs of the community. So our effort included all of those different things, which is included in your packet as the ultimate vision plan. But there's a one particular parcel we focused on very specifically for the 8.5 million grant dollars, which is the parcel at 970 West Chester, which currently is the home to the MTA bus lot, that was one of the parcels that was previously bought in anticipation of connection of those parcels to those parks. Through this community process, it was inclusive and multilingual. Our Parks Department partnered with the first Council district, the Wilmore Heritage Neighborhood Association, Communities with Power to Change the nonprofit. Katie, who Paola is here as a representative, and we'll speak with you here momentarily, as well as public health advocates, where we conducted this community engagement for the Vision Plan over a series of nine public workshops, the community developed multiple project priorities, three community sourced vision concepts, and ultimately voted on their priorities for the final vision plan . Four That parcel of the MTA lot. The first opportunity for funding for this comes through Prop 68, the State Park Fund, which the grant is due here shortly. And that is what we've been working toward for the vision plan and for this particular property for the first phase of that development. This particular grant is really focused on open, active, outdoor space. So in the plan for this property, in your packet you will see an open grass area, playgrounds, walking, jogging trail, picnic areas, shade structures, outdoor fitness equipment and a variety of sports amenities. Park completion of this grant application. Should we be successful? Those would be the first steps to move forward with our community through a follow up community process. With that, that concludes staff's report. And we're here available for any questions. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me just make some comments. I've been working on the Drake Park Master Plan since I was on the city council or before that, a community community activist. And this is I know this plant obviously very well and I'm very, very excited about us moving forward. A couple of things. I'll just I just want to add, you know, one, I think when we first started this many years ago, it was really important for us to get the active pieces done. And we obviously working with Councilman Gonzales, just getting the soccer field, the the initial soccer field done, the walking the walking paths. We work with Wilmore also to do some landscaping work throughout the area and make some connections, particularly with some of the D.G. we put out there. And there's been so much improvement from where it is today, from where it was ten years ago when a lot of the work initially started, but really glad that we're moving forward on this grant. And in addition to the grant, I know that the port at the port already worked with with our office in being very supportive of our efforts at the Colorado Lagoon. We worked with Councilwoman Price and staff to ensure a substantial investment in the Colorado Lagoon, and that is something we've been working on for a few years and I've already had some preliminary discussions and with the port as well. And so the next what I expect will be important investment from the port will be my request to the to the Drake Chavez vision masterplan for the connection of Cesar Chavez to the rest of of Drake Park. And so I look forward to championing and getting this project done for the community. It connects with our vision for the L.A. River, and it connects with plans and communities and working on for a very long time, at least at least close to a decade since I remember our parks team being there every step of the way . And so with that comes of Pierce. Speaker 4: Yes, I. The second park I spend the most time at is actually Drake Park. So while it's not in my district, it's one that's near and dear to my heart. My daughter first went down a slide for the very first time. So congratulations again to a community that's done this work. Congratulations, everybody. It's been building on this for so long. I look forward to the next steps. Speaker 0: Thank you accounts from Councilmember Richardson. As for public comment, please come forward. Speaker 1: Hello. My name is and I can feel District six. I think this is a, you know, a great, greatly needed an improvement in the neighborhood. I grew up going to the part jam that happens at Drake Park. I know that for. Statewide when Mr. De Leon, when he brought this in to the Senate, you know, Greenspaces are very much a needed necessity in areas that don't have it, such as this part of the First District. But it's also important to note that we don't just build these green mausoleums. That's what I like to call the parks in Long Beach. A lot of them are just green mausoleums, meaning that they're just edifices that are celebrating space. But we don't necessarily provide budgeting or funding towards programing, cultural events, and in particular parkson's in in the city. So maybe if Parks and Recreation, in addition to taking over that lot, that empty lot, which is which is nice, it's bad to look at. We can also provide some funding for programing in this area that isn't just like the municipal used using that space or I know I appreciate the the center there that's named after Mr. Peyser. But, you know, it would be great if we, you know, have programing such as like, you know, there's a lot of graffiti artists in that area. You know, we can utilize them. You know, it could team up with L.A. Metro instead of having people on the trains. Maybe they can around the parking lots there, they could be able to do some of the work that they do in the same places like at MacArthur Park. You know, there's a lot of graffiti artists that use Homeland and teach art and painting to the children and neighborhood. You know, it's great to have children use these spaces, you know, beyond just having these spaces and beyond just having wetlands. It's great to have children outside in the spaces all year long, not just when it's the summer. So great that we're expanding the park and I'm glad the wetlands are being developed. But also I'd like to see more emphasis by Parks and Rec towards providing funding in these parks so that we can have children and adults and everyone outside, you know, whether it's movies in the, you know, movies in the park, a variety of ways to utilize it. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next week, please. Speaker 4: Hi, my name is Mariella Salgado and I'm from the First District. I also serve as a Parks and Rec commissioner and I wanted to say something. Speaker 8: That I remember at one of the meetings. I think Meredith might find it humorous, too. Kathleen Irvine, who is the president of the Walmart Neighborhood Association, said, I just want this project to be done before I die. And it really kind of brought to light to me how long people have been working on it. So I appreciate Mayor Robert Garcia mentioning in that because it's been a long collective effort. Um, I wanted to speak. Speaker 2: A little bit about. Speaker 4: In addition to kind of piggy bank a what this gentleman said is. Speaker 2: We know the importance of early education, parks, programing, arts and music and it's proven effect reduce negative health impacts, crime and ability to stimulate growth. Children most in need of arts and music instruction have been the least likely to have access to it. Less fortunate children have been receiving what I'd call the emergency room approach to education, one that addresses. Speaker 4: Sorry I lost my place. One that addresses on the parts of a child thought to be the. Speaker 2: Most dire need of attention and subject to state exams. Speaker 8: Math, reading and writing. Speaker 2: I've seen it as a school, say council member at Edison Elementary, the fourth lowest performing. Speaker 4: School. Speaker 2: In the school district. I've seen it in early education as part of the Long Beach Early Childhood Education Committee. Those in low income communities have less access to high quality childcare in great public spaces, including green space. And I've seen it as a Parks and Rec commissioner where we have the least green. Speaker 8: Greenspace per 1000 residents. Speaker 6: So I really look forward to this project and like I strongly believe. Speaker 2: That equity is the way forward. Speaker 8: And I really hope that. Speaker 6: This project. Speaker 4: And we get. Speaker 2: Awarded and moves forward and continues to. Speaker 6: Add greenspace for our. Speaker 8: Kids and yes, programing. Thanks so much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thanks, Speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Patrick Goddard and I'm a resident of the fifth District. I support the vision plan for the Drake Chavez redevelopment and the authorization to seek grant funding. As a skateboarder and parent of a skateboarder, my interest is in the potential for a new skate park within this project. Drake currently has a skate spot that is old and outdated, so a new skate park as one of the new amenities is very welcome. Skate parks are some of the most well-used features and parks in Long Beach, while we have nine skate parks currently. Long Beach is a large city with a large amount of users of our skate spots. The more terrain, so to speak, the Better Hawaiian Gardens and Harbor City are examples of nearby cities with newer skate parks are very successful. Harbor City's new skate park, in particular, has generated a lot of buzz and has been an instant hit with the skateboard community. I would love to see a well-designed, well built skate park built as part of this project. Goes without saying. But the area surrounding Drake and Chavez is well deserving of all new park amenities, not just a skate park. And I look with great excitement to see what unfolds with this development. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next week. Speaker 4: Hi. Good evening. My name is Paula mendez. I'm here with Concrete Design Initiative, which Meredith mentioned was one of the partners on this project, were new to this long standing community effort that has been going on. But we're very excited about what we've been able to create together in partnership with the Parks Department and with the members of the community and the community groups. I'm here to express support for the park and the broader Tree Harvest Vision plan. And I wanted to reiterate from what Meredith said, the strong role that community members played in this process. We were able to bring together groups in the community that have traditionally been very active and very vocal, along with groups whose voices have not always been heard. And this has allowed us to create a plan together. Speaker 8: That will benefit. Speaker 4: This diverse community, particularly the youth and families. I also wanted to highlight a couple of additional comments that we heard from community members throughout this process that are outside of the scope of the grant at hand, but that I wanted to make sure we captured moving forward as this longstanding process continues. First, to echo a previous comment that we heard tonight during public comment, programing would really greatly benefit this area and was strongly desired by community members, particularly to keep youth and teens out of trouble. And I would urge members of this council to encourage and support programing, as well as the participatory processes and community based planning processes that have led to the identification of these needs and these ideas. And secondly, particularly as the first Council District is filled, I would also encourage the Council to consider additional measures that could be implemented in this area moving forward to prevent any displacement or potential displacement of residents that could occur as an indirect result of developing this new park. During the process, I heard concerns from many community residents around increasing rents in the area, causing people to have to move further away from the neighborhood, severing local ties between residents and, you know, sometimes causing people to move out of the city. We heard concerns from the very residents are involved in creating this park that they don't know if they will be able to stay around long enough to benefit from this park that they themselves are shaping for their children. Some residents suggested creating a Latino cultural arts district, which could be guided by a local Latino Cultural Arts Council. And I would urge the city council here to consider this or other appropriate solutions to prevent any displacement before it starts. Thank you. Speaker 0: You so much. There's emotion in a second. Please cast your votes through roll call, please. District one. I'm sorry. District to District three. Speaker 11: II. Speaker 0: District. Speaker 1: Four, High. Speaker 0: District five. Hi. District six. District seven I District eight, District nine Motion carries. Thank you. We'll be doing now. We're going to be moving on to item 38, please.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive and file the Drake Chavez Vision Plan; Adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to submit a grant application to the California Department of Parks and Recreation for the first phase of the Drake Chavez Vision Plan Implementation Project; accept said grant, if awarded, in an amount of $8,500,000 in Statewide Park Development and Community Revitalization Program funding; execute all documents necessary to accept the funds for the implementation of the Drake Chavez Vision Plan; and Accept Statutory Exemption SE-19-191. (District 1)

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Speaker 0: Eight and nine. Motion carries. Keep going back up to. We have three other items. Item 32 Madam Clerk. Speaker 2: Report from Health and Human Services recommendation to receive the results of the ballot tabulation from the City Clerk for the proposed Mosquito and Vector Control Program Benefit Assessment District. And if a majority protest does not exist, adopt a resolution approving the engineer's report and ordering the levy of the VCP benefit assessment. Or if a majority protest does exist, the City Council cannot take action on the resolution citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'll go ahead. I know that the city staff had asked, wanted to see if the if people wanted to form a better control district, had asked the community if they were interested in it. They are not interested. They don't want to form a vector control district. And so we won't be forming one. And that's and that's okay. So I don't know if you want to. Go ahead. Madam Clerk. Speaker 2: The results of the ballot tabulations show that the total percentage of yes ballots weighted by assessment was 45.76%. The total percentage of no ballots weighted by assessment was 54.24%. There is a majority protest. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. Any public comment on this CNN district to receive and file? District three. Speaker 11: II. Speaker 0: District four, District five. I'm sorry. Councilman, do you have a comment? Speaker 8: I just thought it was important that this does not impact. 90808 which is already covered by L.A. County. But I'm an I. Speaker 0: Okay. District six. District seven. District eight, district nine. Thank you. Next item is item 34. I'm sorry, 33.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive the results of the ballot tabulation from the City Clerk, the tabulator, for the proposed Mosquito and Vector Control Program (VCP) Benefit Assessment District; and If a majority protest does not exist, adopt resolution approving the Engineer’s Report, confirming diagram and assessment, and ordering the levy of the VCP Benefit Assessment for Fiscal Year 2019-20; or If a majority protest does exist, the City Council cannot take action on the resolution. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 0: Thank you, guys. Have it. Next up is 34. Speaker 2: Report from Long Beach Airport. Recommendation to submit a grant application to the Federal Aviation Administration for for the capital improvement to taxiway C accept said Grant if awarded in an amount up to 25 million District five. Speaker 0: I know, I know we're anxious here but really briefly staff do you talk about why this is important? Because I thought it was is it's good for the council to make sure. Speaker 1: Claudia Claudia Lewis, come on down there, our interim airport director. Why is this important? Speaker 8: While we're waiting for her to come on down. Come on down. What a great job she's been doing as the interim airport director. Accessible, knowledgeable, very professional. Just. I've had so much great respect for you in the short amount of time, how seriously you've taken this and what a fantastic job you've done. Speaker 4: Thank you. I appreciate that. Honorable mayor and members of the council. This is very important to us. This funding will go towards rehabilitation of Taxiway C, one of our largely used taxiways. We're currently on a two year program for grant funding. That's why this amount is fairly large. But with your approval, we can accept this grant money and continue to improve the airport and create the best passenger experience, both airside and landside. Are there any questions? Speaker 0: Any questions? CNN Councilman Mongo has a comment. Speaker 8: Maybe I was just commenting on how great of a job she did and I wasn't cleared. So I'll just say it again. Speaker 0: I think. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 0: I think there's no public comment. Councilman, actually in motion in a second district, too. I disagree. High District. Speaker 1: Four. Speaker 0: High District five six, seven, eight, nine. OC motion carries. 0a9 was an I. I think that is all of the agenda items are correct, Madam Clerk. Yes. Okay. So we're going to go now to the second public comment period, because any items that are not on the agenda.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to submit a grant application to the Federal Aviation Administration, for the of capital improvements to Taxiway C; accept said grant, if awarded, in an amount up to $25,000,000 in Airport Improvement Program for Fiscal Year 2019 funding; and, execute all documents necessary, including any amendments, to accept and expend the funds. (District 5)

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Item three, please. Speaker 1: Item three Report from City Clerk Recommendation two Adobe resolution declaring a vacancy in the first Council meeting district and ordering, calling, providing for and giving notice of a special municipal election to be held on November 5th, 2019, and Adobe resolution requesting the Board of Supervisors to render specific services to the city relating to the conduct of a special municipal election. Speaker 10: Any public comment on this item? Yes. Please come forward. Speaker 3: Very good you address on file. I'm wondering if there's merit and if we can accomplish this. I think it would be great. As long as we're doing this having a special election. If you would have a special election. For the second district. And get that over with. Now, the people of the second District and indeed this city, but particularly sick people of the second District, are entitled to have a representative that is mentally stable. And that does not have a police record. Of fishing off the company pier with a staff member. The Second District really hasn't had good, solid leadership, in my view. Well over ten years. Well over ten years, but certainly in the last. Three years with the present council. The people are being short sighted. Therefore, I think it makes eminent sense to take the needed steps. You have a special elections for the second district so they can get a fresh, clean start with mentally stable. Council representation. Which they do not have now and have not had for the past three and a half years. Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. There's a motion in a second. Councilman Richardson, anything to add? Nope. Councilman Mongo? Nope. No other public comment. So please cast your votes to call the special election.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution declaring a vacancy in the office of Member of the City Council for the First Councilmanic District and ordering, calling, providing for and giving notice of a Special Municipal Election to be held in the First Councilmanic District in the City of Long Beach on Tuesday, the 5th day of November, 2019, for the purpose of filling the Office of Member of the City Council for the First Councilmanic District for the remainder of the term of office terminating on the 3rd Tuesday of December 2022; and

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Speaker 10: Great. Thank you, Congressman, but. Okay, fine. I close public speaking. Now we go to item 23. Item 23, would you please read the item? Speaker 1: Item 23 Communication from Councilmember Richardson, Chair of the Economic Development and Finance Committee. Speaker 4: Vice Mayor, Council Member Pearce says announcement. Speaker 10: Yes. Speaker 7: Yes. My announcement is I have to recuse myself since global investments is a source of income for me and they are an investment company with from the Earth cannabis. Thank you. Speaker 10: Thank you. Okay. Ready? Could you. Could you please. We got. Speaker 1: Item 23 is communication from Councilmember Richardson, Chair of the Economic Development and Finance Committee. Recommendation to receive a report on the feasibility of creating a 24 month pilot project to expand the tax base of non-retail cannabis businesses. Speaker 10: Please, I'm going to turn it over to the staff. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Council members, we have a presentation by A.J. Curie, who is our cannabis manager. And A.J., take it away. Speaker 9: AJ, I'm sorry. Speaker 12: Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is A.J. Hillary and I work for the Office of Cannabis Oversight in the city manager's office. I'm here to present the findings of a report requested by the Economic Development and Finance Committee on Non-retail Cannabis Businesses in Long Beach. Speaker 3: With a clear. Thanks. Speaker 12: On April nine, 2019, the Economic Development and Finance Committee requested staff to refer to the City Council a report on the feasibility of the creation of a 24 month pilot program to expand the tax base of non-retail cannabis businesses by streamlining processes, adjusting tax rates and providing incentives. In response to this request. Staff from the city manager's office met with departments responsible for regulating cannabis activity in Long Beach to solicit ideas for a pilot program. Staff also met with cannabis industry representatives to receive feedback on the current licensing process. Before discussing the findings of the report, I'd like to first define a few key terms referenced in the EDI and F committee request. First, what does it mean to expand the tax base? Expanding the base means increasing the amount of economic activity subject to taxation for the cannabis industry. This can be accomplished in two ways either increasing the number of licensed cannabis businesses in Long Beach or increasing the amount of taxable sales at existing businesses. Next, what is a non-retail cannabis business? There are four business types that fall into this category. Cultivators which grow and harvest cannabis plants indoors only in Long Beach. Manufacturers which extract essential oils from the plant and use that oil to create other types of consumer goods. Distributors which warehouse and transport cannabis products. And finally, testing laboratories which test cannabis goods for mold, pesticides and other contaminants. The common denominator for all non-retail business types is that unlike dispensaries, they do not sell cannabis goods directly to consumers. The next few slides are meant to provide an overview of the Long Beach cannabis market. This slide provides a breakdown of all proposed cannabis facilities in Long Beach and where they currently stand in the application process. As seen in the table of the 248 proposed cannabis facilities, only 37 have been issued a license to operate. The remaining 211 facilities are at various stages of licensing process, which includes zoning review, application review plan, submittal and construction. The vast majority of these pending cannabis facilities are for non-retail business types. Non-retail businesses in particular have moved slowly through the application process, hence the significant discrepancy between the number of pending and licensed facilities in Long Beach. This slide shows general fund cannabis tax revenues collected in FY 18 and estimated in FY 19, broken out by business type. As you can see from the table, the city is collecting more in tax revenues from dispensaries than from all other non-retail cannabis business types combined. In FY 18, 51% of all cannabis tax revenues were collected from dispensaries. The remaining 49% were collected from non-retail businesses in Fy19. Staff estimates this discrepancy will grow, with 75% of cannabis tax revenues coming from dispensaries, 25% from non-retail businesses. The main reason for the underperformance of the non-retail sector are twofold. First, the slow pace of business openings. And second, the fact that those non-retail businesses that have received a license have reported minimal gross receipts to the city thus far. In preparing this report, staff contacted cannabis businesses to better understand why non retail activity has not taken off. The most common responses are summarized on this slide. First, almost every non-retail cannabis business expressed concern over the tax rates charged by the city of Long Beach compared to other jurisdictions. Some non-retail businesses indicated they were considering relocating to other cities with lower tax rates. Second, some non-retail businesses have struggled to navigate the building plan check process, sometimes requiring multiple corrections and resubmit prior to receiving building permits to start construction. Third, some businesses underestimated the amount of capital necessary to construct a non-retail facility and have been forced to secure additional investments midway through the application process. Fourth, some non-retail businesses report weak demand for licensed cannabis products due to the limited number of licensed retailers operating throughout the state. And finally, some businesses have found it difficult to cover the inflated cost of real estate charged by property owners, who often demand a premium from cannabis businesses relative to other business types. Staff has prepared a set of options for the City Council to expand the tax base of non-retail cannabis businesses. The options are broken into two categories. The first category includes options that require changes to the Long Beach Municipal Code and therefore must be approved by the City Council. The second category includes administrative improvements that can be made by departments. As a result, departments already began implementing these changes upon release of the report. In theory, all of the options identified in the report can be adopted as a 24 month pilot, as required as requested by the EDF committee. However, there are some limitations to taking a pilot approach. First, businesses tend to avoid uncertainty when making decisions. The shorter a pilot, the less likely businesses will respond by increasing investment in Long Beach. Second, given the significant, significant amounts of volatility in the cannabis market, it will be difficult for staff to measure the impact of temporary policies , which is typically the purpose of a pilot program. Having said that, staff can implement any of the policy options identified in the report on a trial basis if requested by the City Council. The first option is for the City Council to direct staff from the Planning Bureau to conduct a study of cannabis building, design and zoning requirements . Once completed, the study will be submitted to the Planning Commission for review. The Planning Commission may then recommend changes to the Long Beach Municipal Code and refer those changes to the City Council for final approval. Through the proposed process, the Planning Bureau will be able to study and adopt best practices in cannabis facility design. Currently, adult use cannabis businesses are required to meet industry specific requirements relating to signage, window installation, exterior lighting, visibility and other important architectural elements. These requirements are meant to discourage the construction of fortress like facilities that detract from the overall esthetics of the surrounding area. For businesses, however, facility design requirements create additional costs during construction. Since passage of the Adult Use Ordinance, the Planning Bureau has gained a deeper understanding of the cannabis industry and its specific needs relating to safety, security, lighting, product, visibility and other aspects of cannabis business operations. As a result, the Planning Bureau is in a position to conduct a one year review and recommend improvements to the Planning Commission. The second option is to adjust tax rates for manufacturers, testing laboratories and distributors to a level determined by the city council. Generally speaking, the lower the tax rate, the more commercial cannabis activity will expand in Long Beach. However, at this time, staff is not able to recommend specific tax rates without further direction from the city council. The reason for this is that the ideal tax rates for each business type will depend on city council preference in the following areas. First, whether the City Council wishes to stay competitive with other jurisdictions charging lower non-retail cannabis tax rates. Second City Council's preference for short term versus long term general fund tax revenues. And third, the impact that a change in tax rates may have on other non cannabis businesses through an increase in demand for industrial property. I'll discuss some of these issues further in the next few slides. But first, some clarification on City Council authority to adjust cannabis tax rates pursuant to the Long Beach Municipal Code. City Council has the authority to increase or decrease cannabis tax rates by ordinance, subject to the maximum and minimum rates approved by voters for cultivation. The city currently charges a tax rate of $12 per square foot of plant canopy. The city council can increase the tax rate up to $15 per square foot or reduce the tax rate to $0 per square foot for all other non-retail business types. The city currently charges a tax rate of 6% of gross receipts. The city council can increase the tax rate up to 8% of gross receipts or reduce the tax rate to 0% of gross receipts. In terms of the competitiveness of tax rates, Long Beach continues to compare favorably to many jurisdictions in Southern California. However, there is one elephant in the room, and that is the city of Los Angeles. Los Angeles charges significantly lower tax rates than Long Beach for most non-retail business types. Thus far, the Los Angeles market has had a limited impact on business location decisions in Southern California due to a delay in implementation of the Los Angeles application process. This delay has prevented most new businesses from being able to apply for a cannabis business license in L.A.. However, that is set to change with the announcement of what they are calling phase three of the Los Angeles licensing program, which will allow for new businesses to apply for a cannabis business license. At that point, Long Beach may no longer be able to compete for new non-retail cannabis businesses locally. If competitiveness and the ability to attract new non-retail investment locally is the primary concern, then City Council may consider reducing non-retail cannabis tax rates to a level more in line with the city of Los Angeles. The second consideration. Is for a short run versus long run general fund tax revenues in the short run. Staff estimates that a reduction in tax tax rates will lead to a temporary reduction in general fund tax revenues. Specifically, staff estimates that for every 1% reduction in non-retail gross receipts, tax rates, general fund revenues will be reduced by $31,000 in FY 19 and $120,000 in FY 20. In addition, for every $1 reduction in the cultivation canopy square footage tax. General fund revenues will be reduced by an additional $28,000 in FY 19 and $58,000 in FY 20. The projected loss in general fund revenues assumes that in the short run, non-retail businesses will not increase supply in response to lower tax rates, nor will the pace of business openings in fy19 and FY 20 change as a result of lower tax rates. In the long run, however, it is far less clear what the impact of a tax rate reduction will be on the general fund. The main reason for this uncertainty is the fact that in the long run, non-retail businesses have much greater flexibility to adjust supply in response to lower tax rates. For this reason, staff cannot estimate long run impacts without collecting greater amounts of tax revenue data. In summary, if regional competitiveness is the main concern, City Council may consider reducing non-retail tax rates to a level more comparable to the city of Los Angeles. If short term revenue, if short term general fund revenues are the primary concern, then rates may be kept constant. Finally, if long term general fund revenues are the priority, additional data is needed to determine the appropriate rate structure to maximize revenues. The third option for the City Council is to direct staff to research the feasibility of allowing for shared use manufacturing in Long Beach. In 2018, the state of California created a new license category called Type S Shared Use Manufacturing. The license type allows for multiple manufacturing businesses to operate out of a single premise, with the requirement that only one business utilize the space at a given time. Allowing for shared use. Manufacturing could expand the tax base for non-retail businesses by creating new opportunities for less capitalized businesses to partner together to share in the cost of facility design, construction and operation. However, should the City Council decide to pursue this option, staff would first need to complete a study identifying the resources needed to regulate this business type. As part of this study, staff would contact other cities in California that currently license shared use facilities. Once finished, staff would refer the study to the City Council for additional input and policy direction. That concludes the set of options requiring city council approval. In addition, staff identified a set of administrative changes to expand the tax base of non-retail business types. Departments began implementing these administrative changes following release of the EDF report. This includes adjusting the timing of the initial cultivation business license, tax payment to be due later in the application process, creating application flowcharts and inspection checklists to help applicants better understand and navigate the application process. And finally, closer coordination with Southern California Edison, who we met with during preparation of the study and identified some areas where the utility upgrade process could be streamlined. I have included a summary of items discussed in the report on this slide. I'm happy to go into more detail on any of the items if needed. That concludes my presentation and I am available for questions. Speaker 10: Thank you. Thank you very much. First, we go into public comment and then we'll. Come on, guys, would you please line up if you want to speak on this item? Speaker 4: Larry Goodhew. As I've referenced before, my views of. Cannabis is in the same level as sex trafficking. Period. My views on it, I think I've shared this before or shaped back in the late sixties or early sixties when I would work up in Maine during the summer at a. Nice Resort hotel where every year General Paul would rendezvous, who is Ike's chief of staff with his Oasis buddies, and reminisce about those days and so forth. And one of the things this was back at the time that Timothy Leary was advocating LSD, and he pointed out and he to all the people my age and even of people older, how dangerous that was. He's pointing out that LSD was so dangerous, even the Nazis. Would not deal with it. So far, so unstable. Is it so unstable? And that's to have shaped my view. And it's absolutely the same view with cannabis. It's this city. Certainly should have. I know we've got some dubious leadership. There's no question of that. And, you know, we don't have to do that. But there should be enough solid citizens in this city. Sitting behind this council. And those with proper elections will get you get a full council with. Good mental stability to figure out how to meet the financial challenges of this city. Without getting into the drug business, which is essentially what you're doing. And don't try. Try. Tried to try to dance around it. It's no ifs or buts. It's a it's a dangerous road you're going to travel down. So I would suggest you do your research and diligence and find out just how dangerous the drugs can be. And then figure out a way how to. And I think we will get, as you referenced earlier, we're going to get some federal money, considerable federal money to help the city and dealing also with the crime issues. Thank you. Speaker 10: Thank you. Next speaker. Speaker 4: Good evening, stephanie Dawson. So Second District. Thank you again for your attention to this issue. Crafting good public policy takes time and constant bickering, and I'm glad that we can cordially address these specific issues where we can make the system better work for everybody involved in the city. When voters approved measures made in this earnings council later passed, I spoke to Municipal Code Section 5.92. It demonstrated the city's collective decision to create a highly regulated local monopoly for commercial cannabis, including these policies, were a strict commitment to preventing underage sales, enacting labor standards and unionization, ensuring purity of products at the local level. Given the absence of the FDA in this matter and providing local tax revenue to offset any increased regulatory burden on the city with regards to the taxes, it must be said that this local industry here has been consuming, has consistently more in the city about the highest tax threshold placed be a major may specifically were concerned regarding a consumer choice to participate in a local licensed retail market and be preserving a competitive advantage for non-retail businesses in this city. As it stands today, businesses in the city are suffering both points and immediate moderate as modernization is necessary. We've seen similar actions in Oakland, Berkeley, West Hollywood and Palm Springs, all of which are either in the process of drastically reducing their tax rate or already have done so in direct response to the falling wholesale price at the commodity level for commercial cannabis. With regard to the specific regulatory burden, I think that Mr. Corey's department is deserving of praise as well as the rest of the your bureaucracy, for doing their sincere best to keep these projects chugging along despite constantly changing regulations at the state level. However, it is also clear that the fire department specifically is dramatically understaffed for this work, specifically in licensing volatile manufacturing within the city. The opposite seems to be true with regards to enforcement. Despite dozens of officers assigned and funded for the four narcotics abatement, it seems that very few, if any, misdemeanor charges or municipal code violations are being filed by the Long Beach Police Department or the city prosecutor. Despite the flurry of unlicensed scab delivery services currently selling untested marijuana to any child capable of operating a smartphone, again, thank you, council members, for your willingness to continue sharpening this policy and seeking out ways to improve it. Please modernize the total local local tax system in a manner that increases the competitive edge for licensed businesses. Please allocate additional forces in Long Beach fire departments so we can complete the inspection process for the manufacturing businesses. And please direct the city prosecutor and code enforcement to follow similar campaigns in the City of Los Angeles and the city of Anaheim against unlicensed delivery services who are selling untested marijuana to children. And with all due respect, the pilot program is not broad enough in its scope or fast enough to address these systemic issues. We need an expansive and thorough approach, including reforms to the retail rate. Thank you and have a nice day. Speaker 10: Thank you. Thanks, Speaker. Speaker 4: Dear City Council. My name is Hab Hadad. I am the CEO of Greenpoint Holdings. We are a cannabis manufacture and distributor located in District nine and on the border of District eight. We wanted to take this opportunity to thank you, the City Council, for being proactive in reviewing the burdensome tax code placed on cannabis businesses by local and state regulations. We wanted to thank you for broadening the tax base and allowing cannabis businesses and the industry in Long Beach to evolve into the great industry it can be. We want to bring a few points to your attention as you consider this topic. Cannabis is taxed at every step in the supply chain. Do not tax the supply chain. Manufacturers, distributors and testing labs should have a lower tax base to keep the entire pricepoint competitive at the retail level. This will curb the underground market. We recommend evolving the tax base to be competitive with neighboring cities, let alone the entire state. For example, the city of Oakland has recognized us recently and modernized their tax base to help small businesses compete. Los Angeles does not burden the supply chain with aggressively high tax rates. Companies have already started to exit Long Beach as a result of the high distribution tax. GROSS receipts needs to be redefined. The way that Long Beach defines gross receipts is oppressive to businesses. Cannabis businesses need to take the cost of goods deduction in order to stay competitive, let alone survive. Oakland voters, for example, approved Measure V, which amends the tax code to allow for cannabis manufacturers and cultivators to deduct the value of raw materials cost of goods sold when calculating their gross receipts. In Long Beach, under the current definition, when a distributor facilitates testing and is reimbursed for those costs, the city would tax them at the entire transaction, which would net the distributor losing money. Distribution businesses typically charge 10 to 20% for their services. So for the city of Long Beach charge, 6% on gross revenue realistically means they receive 30 to 60% of earnings before income tax, employee wages or expenses. Long Beach is not attractive until we fix the tax rate and cost of goods sold deduction. Thank you for your time and considering an evolving our cannabis business tax rates. Thank you. Speaker 10: Thank you. Well before the next speaker, is anyone else Spanish speaking? We're close enough to speak English right now. No one else. Okay, fine. This is the last speaker. Speaker 7: Hello. My name is Stacey Loucks. I want to thank vice mayor in the council for meeting with us tonight. First of all, I'd like to also thank the city for the research that was done to put this report together. I get asked quite often why there aren't many more manufacturers open and running. I manufacture license here in Long Beach. I got calls from AJ. I got calls from other people in the city. The research was done. And so I just want to thank you for the for following through with that and saying we would do our research and dove into it. So thank you for that and other members of the city to the help that we get on the fourth floor. It's not always crazy there. We did get some support there and seventh floor, too. We do get some great support. Like I said, I'm a licensed manufacturer in Long Beach and to my knowledge, there's only a few handful of us that are open and operating. There are other licenses issued, but a lot of them are not open and operating. I'm asked often as to why they're not open and operating included by the city. I was asked that the expenses of licensing filled out equipment purchases. Legal and compliance issues are certainly the first hurdle, but not the last. The limited number of licensed retail outlets which result in less places to sell our product has obviously changed our model significantly. Price increases due to taxes and other compliance issues have driven people to the black market. And that's not good for any of us. Many of us, many people have just simply run out of money and cannot operate with a five figure loss every month. In the supporting documents for this agenda item, there were two estimates for cannabis revenue tax for manufacturers. One was 78,000, the other was 17,000. Based on the number of operating manufacturers, I don't know which number is correct. However, based on that the number, I would suggest that is probably closer to the 17. Just to give you some perspective on that number. I personally have already paid $10,000 and I saw two more quarterly payments that I have to make this year. I'm currently losing $50,000 a month in my business. I think Long Beach has one of the most well-thought out and fair social equity programs, and I am proud to say that we have completed the orientation and certification for this. We would love to be more involved and benefit more individuals, but the reality is we cannot afford to hire them. Instead, I worked 70 hours a week wearing many hats. I would like to point out two potential issues with the agenda item. The two year pilot program will cause businesses to think twice before setting up shop in Long Beach. Cannabis businesses need to be able to operate on a five year plus plan. The investment is very significant and the returns are very slow. Most will not be profitable for 12 plus months. Second, the recommendation that cultivation be excluded is not in the best interest of the cannabis cannabis industry or expanding the tax base. Cultivation is where everything begins and we need the starting point to have financial stability as well. Again, I appreciate all the efforts of the City Council said in city offices for taking the time to dove deeply into this issue. We are facing and addressing these issues tonight in the meeting. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me turn this over now to Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you all for for attending. I want to start with just thanking staff, including Deputy City Manager Kevin Jackson and AJ. I don't really know your title, AJ, but you're the czar on these issues. So thank you for taking your time and particularly the really good outreach. I know how seriously you've taken this issue and you've learned a lot, and that's clear. And you're very, very open and transparent about the things you've learned since we took this step forward, since adopting this this this ordinance. So just in terms of the process here, you know, this you know, this issue has been raised over the last few months. And the idea here is this is a big, big issue. It's not simply something we can place on the agenda and move forward. We're going to need a number of levels of review. And the council has talked about doing a lot of work in the appropriate committees. When we talk about taxes and and growing taxes and the bottom line for the city, the appropriate committee, city council committee is the Economic Development and Finance Committee. And so we took up this issue. And, you know, and the idea here is we want it to go over a basic overview of the facts. We can't make policy changes at the committee level, but we can begin with a high level overview of the facts. So we asked city staff to take a look at the facts and sort of break out this issue into something the city council can deal with. And they have they've come together with some changes that need city council direction in order to take that next level of review and then administrative changes that they can move forward with administratively if the case is made. And I think that's what's happened here. So I want to thank staff for seeing the distinction between the things that need further city council review and the things that just simply make sense because they were asked to talk to the industry about making those changes. So that was sort of step one, the community committee high level review. And so we've asked for this broad conversation and this study and that moves now to phase two. It's been referred to the city council. And what you get is instead of just a simple agenda item from a council member saying, look at this, now you Speaker 4: . Have a lot of. Speaker 2: Facts and data and details to begin to look. Speaker 4: At. Speaker 2: And the city council can now, you know, the committee has limited power. We can't ask for full review. The city can now say thank you for doing that high level review, go ahead and conduct a further fiscal impact on this or the Planning Commission review on that. And so that's where we are today. The idea is that next, after, you know, we get past this next level review, all the things that require city council action will come back and we would adopt changes based on that next level of review. So if anyone's confused about it tonight, we're not actually adopting anything tonight. We're taking these questions that are really organized by staff and taking the next step of a deep dove and asking staff to go back and connect that conduct, that next level of review that's been happening tonight. So there's been a lot of questions and and I'm thankful to my colleagues for raising some of these questions. And I had a chance to kind of warm up on some of this earlier today. Why retail versus non-retail? Why not retail versus retail? Right. Why the non-retail? Why are we tackling non-retail versus retail? And there's a number of reasons why it makes sense to address this in this way and to start this conversation with non-retail number one as a political issue. The retail businesses have been a political hot, hot button issue for generations of this council. And it's really comes down to a real need to protect the quality of life or any perceived impacts to the quality of life to residents that are brought into a neighborhood with a dispensary. And so sometimes we can't even get to the substance of the conversation because of the impact of a dispensary. What we're going to do, some dispensary, we're taking that and setting that to the side. We're talking about the part of the industry that largely has zero blight impact or neighborhood impact because they're not dealing with customers as residents there. These are business to business manufacturing entities and sort of upstream supply chain industries. So let's make that clear. We're not talking about dispensaries tonight. Secondly, it was brought up that we have this you know, it was brought up that we have a robust cannabis equity ordinance. Many of the economic opportunities associated with this industry are not with the dispensaries. Much of the economic sort of benefits are with the supply chain and the upstream businesses. These are these are jobs. These are union jobs. These are prevailing wage jobs. And this is the segment of the industry that is really stalled. And that's, frankly, the part of the industry I'm most excited about. And when we say stalled, we're talking about 37 out of 211. And we know that in conducting the staff review, staff said it today. The number one message coming back from the industry is number one, the check, the challenges with our ordinance as we're learning. And two, the tax rate associated with the non-retail businesses. So number four, why why why focus on non retail? Well, one, we've learned a lot in the last year or two. For example, this conversation about type s didn't even exist when we started this conversation. And state law has changed and the industry has learned and our staff has learned. And so we know that sometimes these new industries and these big issues need to be tweaked. And so this is why, again, focus on non-retail. And then and then lastly, I'll say, if this were any other industry, I don't know that we would have, you know, a tax structure that touches every single level of the industry. If this were if we were manufacturing other things, I don't know. You know, I don't know that it would be treated in such a way. And my I never really expected a huge windfall of taxes. I would love to see that. But what I see when a new industry comes in, I want to see that we milk all the economic benefits, including the jobs and most importantly, the jobs and opportunities to sort of invest in that that industry and that. And those are the opportunities that really haven't really taken root. And so so to kind of wrap my comments, I want to go through. So my hope today again, is the things that we know need further review and direction from council. We can start giving some direction on that next level of review. And I want to start going through that, some of that right now. So let's start with there were broken into sort of the changes that need direction from council, the options and then the administrative changes. The administrative change has already been handled. So we're just talk about options one, two and three. So option one really focuses on the facility design and zoning. These are non-economic issues. These are things that we learned through the process. Our intention was simply to make sure that things don't look a certain way or don't look like fortress fortresses. And and it's a good thing and we support that. But we've learned that there are some challenges with, you know, installing, you know, $6,000, $10,000 windows simply to just put plywood over it because it's a factory. And you wouldn't just put a, you know, window at a certain wall and factory and some of these planning standards could maybe be changed or tweaked. And so option one is requesting us to further send this collection of issues that's been reviewed at, you know, economic development. And now here, send it to the Planning Bureau and the Planning Planning Bureau and those folks in the Planning Commission to do what they do, take this feedback and come back to city council with something that's actionable. And so in terms of option one, it's not economic. I think that's something we can move forward with tonight. So within the my motion, I'd like to move forward with option one. And then the other thing that really is non-economic is option three. So if we look at option three, which begins on page 16, the shared use manufacturing, this is something that, you know, we have a shared economy. This type license didn't exist in the state when we started. That's something that we simply need to evaluate. So option three asks us to ask staff to go ahead and began researching the feasibility of option three. So again, it's not economic. If anything, it may be able it may be some opportunities for us to grow business here. And so I want to move forward with option three, which again will return to the full council as staff has the opportunity to evaluate the feasibility. So I want to begin with options. I want to also include option two, an option to into the motion. I mean, option three. And so the motion now as we get to option two, this was a high level review, right? We had we didn't do a full fiscal analysis on the tax rates yet. What we're able to do is really kind of break out, see what's happening across the region, understand what's happening with phase three, with the city and with phase three in the city of Los Angeles. And really take this time to understand fully what the industry is talking about. And so the idea here why it came to our committee is we want to expand the tax base. And so and the premise is the premise here is that if we have a you know, if we have a more competitive rate, we may see more than these 20, 30 businesses adopt, you know, roll out. But maybe we see a full, you know, a full adoption and roll out of these businesses, which creates more jobs. And so what they need from council here is further direction on what are some buckets of rates to do a full economic get full fiscal analysis on . And so I think that we need to take a look at a fiscal analysis of something that's in line with the city of Los Angeles and bring us some options. I think we need to look at 1%, 2%, 3%. We need to do a fiscal analysis on all three of those, bring them back to council so we can make some decisions. And that and with that analysis, one thing that is missing that I'd like to see is if what's driving this for me is jobs, I'd like to see a job. I'd like to see an expectation of if we're able to ramp this industry up, these types of businesses that have very little impact on our neighborhoods, but high sort of economic impacts and job creation impacts. I'd like to see what the projections of job creation is. If we if we are able to get 50% of these permits through or 75% or 100%. So I'd like to see a real projection or forecast of what the job creation numbers are so we know what we're getting in exchange for a tax rate that's that's diminished, that's lower than what we initially set out. And so I'm certainly open to hearing more from the city council, but that's the framework of my motion. It's option one, option three, and then come back with fiscal impact on one on 1%, 2%, 3%, with also a jobs impact to the city council. So we can have the next level of of the discussion to make a decision. And so that that's my motion. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 10: Yes, thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank Congressman Rex for bringing this forward because being chair of that committee. But, you know, a lot of things that I'm seeing and hearing is that these individuals. I put together a business for people that can. Getting things done in the city of Long Beach. I don't like to do that. We want to take a look and look at other individuals because most of these individuals who are doing business, they're very intelligent individuals because these are businesspeople. And I think we as the city of Long Beach are going to have to really get up off our butts, make sure that these people be able to do what they're planned in doing, what they've waited for many, many years and gotten this start started. So by getting this thing started, we're going to have to be very considerate and understand that the tax that we're putting on these individuals are making it almost impossible for them individually to do what they're supposed to do. And that's. Now. I'm not the guru on this. I'm just telling you what I feel and see. You know, the council is an industry which potentially could bring in huge new revenue to this city, but only if the cannabis industry can locate their businesses here. You know, as we find out, the industry has many different components manufacturing, testing, distribution, as well as retail sectors. Each of these sectors have their own special needs and require to open up and get established. Our audience, unfortunately, really doesn't seem to fit. Non-retail business. Further, our planning and zoning code should be looked at and ensure and not turn business away unnecessarily. We need a city manager review that we are doing as a city to recommend as a way in which we can ensure and capture the revenues and the opportunities for the jobs our citizens need. So this key, bring it in, look at it. I mean, how long have you guys been at this? I know you know what you're doing. Everyone knows that. The longer we wait, the more the underground will take. So I just want to let you guys know. Thank you for being here tonight. Speaker 0: BECK. Thank you, vice mayor. Next up is council woman Mungo. Speaker 5: First, I want to thank the czars of marijuana. They've been available to our calls at any time. I know that working hand in hand with the dispensary and facilities in my district, I've had a lot of calls, not only to them, but but an extensive amount of calls also to Lynda Tatum and our development services. And for that reason, I have personally seen requirements that just don't make sense related to you need to put a window here. There's three fronts to this building. You need a a sheer wall and there's a window. So how is that going to happen? And then you talk to the contractor onsite and they're like, that's an extra $30,000. And then the neighbor who lives next door is like you told me, they weren't going to have a window and now they are going to have a window. What the heck? And so I'm super supportive of option one. The requirements are too cumbersome and often confusing, and I know the fourth floor is very supportive as you go from desk to desk, but it really needs to be more of a one stop shop to each of those desks speaking the same language and coordinating, because sometimes you don't know the impact of the move that you're making until you get to the next desk. And that's another $30,000 and that's just not acceptable. Option two I'm supportive of a fiscal impact study. I think that when we look at page, um. Whatever it was. Here it is, page 14. If we talk about $178,000 of revenue per percent, a 1% reduction in the rate of 170,000, a 2% reduction would be 300 and 400,000 and so on and so forth. I think that it's important to think about over time what have we invested that money in and where do we see the long term implications? So currently we've invested about $1,000,000 into a heart team. Heart team that I think has been impactful for all of us, a quality of life team, a clean team, and a health outreach team. All homeless related services, which was the intent of the bill. I think that that also helps the community. I think that it's also important to discuss if the tax rate went down, would that even impact the number of people interested in coming to Long Beach? Because from what I'm hearing today, there are more interest than there are facilities. So there are a certain number of vacant facilities in the city, and many of them will not take a marijuana use. Others of them are through a bank that won't allow a marijuana use at the facility because they hold the title. We've had a couple of discussions about those. I'm interested in what the others are. And so in the fiscal impact, I know that our vacancy rate is super low. And so I'd be interested in knowing we want to expand the tax base rate. So instead of having ten people burden 100% of it, we'd rather have 20 people and 50% rate lower the base by 50%, but have the double the number of businesses. I don't even know if that's possible. So I think that it would be great if our marijuana czars could work with the. Either those in the industry, the brokers on the industrial commercial side and or EDI and F are economic government department to to better understand where we could help and support. Are the buildings not facing the right direction are they? What is the missing step of why there's still a vacant building in the city? And then I would ask, what would the other use be if it was not marijuana? And I think that people aren't always aware of what high paying jobs are in the industry. And so when you talk about it, if you have like an Amazon factory or a marijuana dispensary, how many jobs are at each of them? Because I don't see a lot of robots doing work in cultivators in cultivation facilities versus I see that more in the automation that we're moving through in the manufacturing side. But. It's a good question to ask because I don't know how many people work in a cultivation site. I just don't know. I have two in my district, but I've not seen a lot of people at those facilities going in and out of them. I don't know how many jobs they are. I don't know what upgrade they are, and I don't know if there are more jobs or less jobs at, say, a plumbing warehouse that has 70 plumbers that work out of it and help the community or a cultivation facility. And do cultivators make more than plumbers? I just don't know the data, and I'd be interested in that. I also think people forget that in the marijuana industry there's a created career path. Often when we have a dispensary opening in my neighborhood and one of the discussions was, Wow, it starts at a pretty reasonable price. And I get a 50 cent raise every six months or a year until I reach X percentage. And wow, I didn't know that I had a pension involved in these other things that people are looking for in jobs. And so I think that that needs to be included in the study. So even if there is a slight variance between one use and another, what's the total impact to the economy based on jobs and those facilities? And then. What would the other use of that facility be and is it even taxable? A lot of our first tier manufacturing is wholesale. Some of that is taxable. Some of it is not taxable. Some of it is service goods. When you have a drain cleaned, you don't get a tax on that. But if you purchase a product like a drain that actually is installed, then you actually have a tax base. And so I just think it needs to be a robust look. And does the tax rate decrease or increase really make that big of a difference in the total? I think that at least when I ran a business, one of my biggest challenges was cash flow because of the upfront investment. And so I didn't hear the maker of the motion make any direction related to the administrative changes at the end. We don't have to we're just going to move forward with that because I think the timing of the payments, how often you have to pay, all of those things are also a really big impact to a business owner who at the end of each month literally needs to sign checks for people to get their paycheck. And that's important. And so I'm very supportive of these administrative changes and better coordination with Southern California Edison. That has been a barrier on multiple properties in my district, not just marijuana related. And so I hope that those will be lessened. And then option three, while I don't really understand it, it sounds like a good idea, but I think I need to meet more with staff. I go the council members comments to date, but I'd like to better understand the specifics because I just it's a lot of nomenclature and terminology that I'm not familiar with, but it seems like something that would would be a good direction to go in. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Austin. Speaker 8: Thank you very much. First, I'd like to just appreciate the E.D. and that committee for bringing this issue to the council for discussion and consideration. I've had several conversations with some of our advocates in the community and in researching this issue for quite some time. Watching trends throughout the state with state legislation just came back from Oregon. Some interesting things are happening up there. And I love the issues that come before us that challenge us to think about today, but also the future. The cannabis industry is now legal in California. The voters in Long Beach have spoken loud and clear, as well as in the state and as local policymakers. I think we should be striving to make policy that is flexible and we're bending with the curves, particularly with this new industry, that that is changing still by the day. I'd like to make. And I think this proposal before us and what Councilmember Richardson's motion does is give us the opportunity to make some adjustments that allow our local businesses to be competitive and to succeed. We talk about often creating good jobs in this, and I believe this industry has a potential to do just that in the future as well. We have to, I think, be focused on and be very deliberate about facilitating an environment that's conducive to creating economic prosperity in our city, for our businesses and the jobs that they will create. And I also think we need to be looking at the long game. I think it's just a matter of time before the cannabis industry is legal on a federal level. Right. And I think supporting manufacturing here in and here in Long Beach, maybe put put us in a position to be ready for that long term. And so particularly those states, I think 11 states where it's legal, where we have the infrastructure, we have the manufacturing capacity. Once that happens, there's going to be economic benefits to our local economies, but our state. And so I think our businesses obviously are depending on us to get this right. Our consumers are depending on us to get this right. And the employees whose jobs are are dependent on this industry are depending on us to get this right. And so this is an economic development decision before us that that that I'm going to support wholeheartedly. And I really like option one. When I look at this table, I see. Two three cities that that connect. They have borders with Long Beach, Los Angeles, Carson and Bellflower. And looking at the the retail rates but not only that, I guess we're looking at the non-retail, but those rates are I think we need to be doing I think the proposal before us puts us in a position to be competitive with with all of those those those cities. And we have to look at it from strategically that way. I do like and I'm intrigued with the option three, so I look forward to hearing more about that. And then certainly I think a job analysis is merited with the option to. I still would love for the social equity piece to come back because I have some ideas about that and I don't know if this is the appropriate time to talk about that, but I think we're we have not discussed that. And I'm talking about it now. We have not talked about, you know, gang intervention and prevention programs in terms of social equity. We've talked about it from a job component. But when it comes to, you know, the profits that are that are coming from from this industry, I think it would be really, really wise for us to look at that direction as well as I look forward to having some further conversation about that. But looking forward to supporting this this evening. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. And just let me go to Councilmember. You just I want to make sure I had a request this also just to clarify the exact motion. And so let me clarify please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. The motion currently, as it stands, is to basically take option one and for that after the planning commission so they can begin to do the work on those recommendations as kind of outlined by staff. Then to take option three and to basically ask staff to come back with recommendations and to examine that as as a possible see the feasibility of option three and bring that back to the City Council for for discussion. And then to take option two and four have to have staff do both kind of a fiscal and job analysis on option two and to come back with options that are within the range of of Los Angeles, which I believe the councilmember said between one and 3%. So I think I got the motion correct, but I get any of that wrong. Speaker 4: I agree that the job impact, fiscal impact in one one, a 1%, 2% to 3%. Speaker 0: Okay. And those would those would come back to the city council. Right. Okay. And I think that was I will ask Vice Mayor Andrews, just ask just to clarify the motion. So obviously, we we I know that the planning the the vice mayor part one, which is the planning to go to potentially planning to staff and then measures. And that will kind of go through that process through the Planning Commission, I imagine option three, that piece of it and the option two piece of it. What do you think the timing would be from staff on that? Speaker 12: So for option one, which was. Speaker 0: Well, we're actually I just want to I just want to understand not the planning commission piece, but the piece that that that that that our staff would have to do on option two and three. Would either of those come back first or to where they both come back at the same time? What's the timing on that? Speaker 12: We'd probably be able to come back with option number three more quickly because I suspect from number two, which is that the tax analysis, we would probably have to hire an outside consultant to assist with the level of detail that city councils are requesting. So I don't know how long that might take, but option number. Speaker 0: Three but you can get you can get back to us on the timing pretty fairly soon at least. So we know the timing. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Let me let me just I just wanted to clarify the motion. Just let me continue with the with the with the council members council meeting. Speaker 9: Thank you. Just for a clarification that we started out in the beginning with the possibility of a 24 month pilot program. So I guess, Councilmember Richardson, where are we with that? Is it still in place? Or do we want to look, consider a shorter period of time or a longer period of time? What's the what's the viewpoint on that? Speaker 2: So though the viewpoint is I like 24 months because it gets us going into a pilot and if we want to make it permanent, we have the option as opposed to, you know, starting off with a permanent change that may change in the future. And so so I like the concept of a pilot respecting that. We heard all the concerns about it. I like the concept of a pilot. Speaker 9: Well, also in that discussion that the staff brought forward with the 24 month pilot program, they were also concerned with the fact that it might not really be helpful to the industry, because there's so many unknowns in regards to having a 24 month program as opposed to having maybe a longer view for them to consider what's happening in Long Beach and all the changes and recommendations that we're looking at implementing. So I'm more in favor of extending that if it's a pilot program or basically just make it. Nancy, let's adopt a program that lets adopt a program that we're looking at for a permanent establishment. It's opposed to a pilot, but. Speaker 2: I think it's time to have a recommendation because I'm flexible. Speaker 9: Okay, I'll leave that to you. One of the other things one of the things that that I have here is is a somewhat unique perspective on this whole issue. As many of you know, I also serve on the Coastal Commission and cannabis growth and manufacturing and distribution has been a big issue along the 1111 100 mile stretch of California's coast and the establishment of not only manufacturing distribution, but growth of growth along along the the coast, in outside the locations not not only inside of case in point is a very large I don't want to call it a plantation, but a growth area after the Santa Barbara coast and up there and all the all the. Issues that that brings along with them. And that's including your employees union jobs at all at all parts of the of the chain of of getting cannabis ready for market. So the I think that in terms of the employee market, I think it's there. I mean, it exists. We're just not having a good handle on as far as what it would take for here in Long Beach. But so I think that the jobs basically are going to be there. Some might be automated and and can lend itself to automation, some aspects of it, but certainly not all. And so I could see I consider this as a job maker. And just like anything else, it's a it's a manufacturing, it's a new business. It's something that we're just getting into the the the tip of the iceberg, if you will, of an industry that that is new. And when I look at this chart of the report, which is an excellent report so far, that's that put together, you know, looking at already only 37 out of 248 applications being accepted. You know, that's 15%. And we've been going at this now for at least, what, two years that we adopted our our plan. And everybody who looked at law was saying, you know, language is really at the at the forefront, cutting edge of of marijuana licensing. But I see 50%. I see. No, we're not. We've got a long way to go still. And there's too many applications out there still hanging on the edge at all levels. So the time I'm talking about zoning and planning and building and those that are under construction with 53, which I hope is I hope they do finish. But in terms of what I was saying earlier with with the with the Coastal Commission, I've had an opportunity to visit a number of cannabis growth, distribution and testing labs up and down the coast from Arcadia to to locally to here. And I see a lot of people doing work in there. And, and I've seen the product itself in regards to its per in particular, it's always the, the big emphasis of the medical benefits that cannabis has. So I see this as something that is growing and we need to get behind it. I think that Long Beach is is at a very good position here to create a manufacturing capital, if you will, in Southern California, especially when it comes to this this this manufacturing area. So I'm going to support the motion on the floor. But I like I said, I would like to see that that not be as restrictive in terms of a 24 month pilot program. But to be more open on that open ended, if you will, maybe come back after a three or four year, five year evaluation to see where we're at with that. I especially think that in in like in any other manufacturing industry, we need to be competitive. I mean, if if our taxes are too high because we tax it at every level of production, it's ineffective, we're going to lose. And I think that we have to reconsider the the options that we have here in terms of taxing every step of the process. So we look at one process, one tax and get it and get it done. Also, looking at the in terms of of of that and also looking at the at the access to capital, you know, we have to be a little bit more flexible on that. I, I don't recall which of my colleagues stated this, but, you know, we know that that the federal regulations are going to be coming. We know that it's it's going to be delays. In fact, if truth be told, we're looking at other options of other natural world plants that are going to be available, though. Yeah. Mushrooms. Yeah. And mushrooms are the under consideration nowadays. So I mean, that's that's on the edge of coming in here. And we're probably going to be hearing about mushroom cultivation and distribution and manufacturing. Maybe not now, but but that's that's coming. Okay. Let me back let me backtrack it a little bit anyway. At the end at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I think that we in Long Beach need to consider ourselves to be competitive. We're a large city as we as we know. And we have some great staff and we have and we have people who here who can do can do the work. And and like I say, we're in a cutting edge. So let's. Hey there. And then let's let's move on. And hopefully staff can come back with a recommendation that will really be able to be put to use. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember. Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 5: Yes. I have two additional small things. One is a jay. On page five. You have almost the same number of businesses in building round review and under construction 130. That is more than 50% of the businesses that are in the process at all. Do we have a timeline that we can get some of these guys online? Like what is. I mean, a lot of these people are already interested. They've already made the investment. It's the process that's holding them back and or construction. Do we have anything besides options one and three we can do to speed it along? Or do you have a timeline of how many will be online in 30 days? 90 days? 120 days? Speaker 12: Yeah, it's hard for us to say because the timeline, once businesses start construction, is primarily up to that business. The timeline that they're construction team is on. We do have inspections, but generally once they reach construction, the holdup is the project itself. We have averages for those businesses that are licensed that have been able to get through the process, and we use those averages for our tax projection purposes. But offhand, I don't have those. Speaker 5: Would you be able to work with development services to give us a a update on the 77 Building Plan Review? Like, have they been sitting on desks for weeks or are they back with the contractor so we could at least know that from them? Speaker 12: Sure. We can provide more of a breakdown for businesses that you said. They're in the construction phase or in. Speaker 5: The building plan review. That's on our side. In the city side. Speaker 12: Sure. Perfect. Speaker 5: Thank you. I have one last statement, which is I see the greatest ability to increase the gross receipts of the marijuana industry in enforcement. Until we crack down on the illegal marijuana sales in our city, it isn't going to. I mean, these things are all minor compared to that. A large percentage of the sales are still in the illicit market. And so one of the things I would ask Council Member Richardson to consider, if we do go to a consultant, which sounds like 30 days to get a consultant, all that stuff, the difference between 1% and just doing the cost out across the whole percentage. The one thing I've heard from I've talked with Elliott, Johnnie Adam consistently. They'd be willing to put money into a pot for enforcement. I don't know what we can do. We've talked about some options. We've offered to sit down between some of the industry, individuals and PD to talk about what options are available. But if there was a discussion of, Oh, we would like to settle on X percent tax, but we'd be open to 1% more if that $178,000 was put into enforcement of getting these illicit individuals out of the market. I know there was a a write up of a potential program that kind of came through the industry. But we need to be more serious about enforcement and we're closer together. So I hope that the industry will take us up on the offers we've made to meet with PD on potential options to help all of you, because the greatest path to increasing your gross receipts is enforcement. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Price. Speaker 6: Thank you. That's kind of the topic that I wanted to talk about. I'm really grateful up until this point that we haven't had as much of a problem with the brick and mortar illegal dispensaries as our neighbors in L.A. have had. I think that's a lot of that is a testament to how seriously we've taken this issue as a council, how much of a priority we've made the enforcement issue, and really honestly, how often we talk about it being a priority for the neighborhoods. But the delivery concept is is completely out of control. And I don't know. I mean, I'm really looking A.J., I know you've worked really hard on this and on all these issues and you've been really plugged in to what other cities are doing. I think we've taken some really good, proactive measures as a city to increase our enforcement, our fines and fees for commercial property owners and things that we have passed as a council. That has been great. But the delivery market is completely something that we don't have control over right now. We need to figure out what to do in that regards because, you know, I'll tell you, I'm sick of the advertisements all over the city for the four places that. Deliver from businesses that are not licensed in the city. There's no testing in place. There's no consumer protections in place. And we're basically, you know, not we're allowing these people to advertise here. And we have zero consumer protections in place. And we and and we're not even able to tax these entities so that we can put that money back into to enforcement. You know, maybe it's what I do for a living every day that makes me think there's an opportunity for enforcement here, that we are not capitalizing, we're not being aggressive about it. We're not and I don't know, that's not a criticism because I think everyone's similarly situated. It's more of a we need to figure out some out-of-the-box ideas. You know, it's kind of like not exactly the same thing. But when we talked about short term rentals, one of the concepts we had is we've got this entity that's an intermediary between the homeowner and the renter, and that entity is trying to distance itself from regulations, doesn't want to be involved in the regulatory aspects of the industry. Well, that's kind of the same thing that we've seen with a lot of the advertisers for marijuana. They don't want to be involved in figuring out who's licensed and who's not before they advertise them. So maybe we can go to the table with some of the biggest online delivery companies and we we ask them if they can refrain from. I don't I don't know, maybe they can refrain from advertising from businesses that aren't located in the city. What that looks like, I don't know. This is not an area where I have subject matter expertize. But I do know that if you're violating the law and you're not allowing for some of the consumer protections that we are all entitled to as residents in the state, you should be held accountable. And if you're bypassing the testing requirements and you're bypassing all the different regulatory requirements that are brick and mortar operations, or are operations that are licensed in Long Beach have to follow, then you shouldn't be receiving a benefit. You should be held accountable for trying to bypass those because it's just not fair. And so I'm really hoping that we can figure. Speaker 5: Out a. Speaker 6: Way to find some out-of-the-box ways to go after the illegal delivery market that we're seeing here. In regards to this particular item, I'm totally in favor of looking at it and studying it. I do have a question probably for our city attorney, though, and perhaps you can just educate me on this because I will tell you I'm glad of the direction this item has taken, because when I initially read it, I was having a really hard time understanding how we could in one vote, vote to increase taxes potentially for our residents, and then in another vote, vote to reduce taxes on an entity that's providing income so that we can support enforcement operations. But so I'm glad that we're the timing of this is such that we're going to be able to evaluate it some more. But the question I have is how does changing our ordinance impact the fact that this has come to the city as a result of a ballot measure? Because I think it's very, very important for residents to understand that we're having the marijuana discussion, that we're talking about marijuana industry and we're talking about sales tax for the marijuana industry because of a voter passed initiative, not because of this council's actions, but because of voter passed initiative. So how does changing the ordinance impact the fact that this came to us as a ballot initiative? Speaker 4: Well, it would it impacts what changes you can make to the ordinance, because it's a citizens initiative or the initiative that was passed by the voters cannot be just changed by the body itself. But the study and the taxes that have been approved were approved at rates that offered the opportunity for the council to adjust it up or down. And so you could do that. And that's within the authority of the council as. Speaker 6: Long as you stay within that range. Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. Otherwise it would have to go back to the voter. One of the other comments made from the Dias about dedicating a certain percentage of the tax if you're changing it would probably not be allowed based upon the voter action because you're creating a special tax by dedicating it to a specific resources as a general tax . And so you could allocate any amount you'd like, but that would have to be done during the budget process. Speaker 6: Okay. The other question I had, and I love the concept of a shared manufacturing space, but one of the things I'd love the report to include when it comes back is how we go about enforcement. When we're talking about a shared manufacturing space, how do you apportion negligence? How do you apportion lack of compliance? How do you apportion that when we're talking about a shared manufacturing space, especially when we're sharing? Utilities, other resources, assets of that nature for the manufacturing process. So that's something that I would be really interested in. But, you know, as a as a as the wife of an engineer who has worked in labs for many years and understands the lab industry, it's not it's not cheap to set one of those up. So anything that we can do to help bring quality. Industry to the city and work together to keep out illegal industry that is not complying with what the residents, the community and everyone here who's who's serious about consumer protections work together to keep those businesses out. I'm all in favor of. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Let me I have a couple a couple of questions, such comments for when this comes back. And let me go first, since I know that the next few speakers have had a bite at the apple already. Just a couple of things. So the first is, obviously, I think I'm supportive of of where this is going and is certainly of getting the information detailed out to the council. I think option one is is very interesting. I think there are a lot of planning, I think adjustments that need to be made to ensure that we just have a just a better system in place. And I think the Planning Commissioner is absolutely the right approach. I am also interested in the shared use manufacturing. I think that's that's certainly something I think Mr. Modica and the team can get back to us hopefully fairly quickly just to get that information. So that can be part of, of, of this process. It doesn't seem like it's something that is too much different than what we're doing, but certainly a way to to create some some synergy within within the industry. And certainly I think if that looking at what our our tax rates are and coming up with the recommendation from staff, I think is a very reasonable request. I do have one question as it relates to that, and I think this is something I've actually talked to some of the BCA members in the past about and it's actually something I want to understand better because I, I remember in our conversations and setting up on the cultivation side. We did this $12 a square foot number. And I know if you look at a bunch of cities, there is a difference. You know, some some cities are using the square footage measurement and others are just using the flat percentage. And so if when this comes back, can you just kind of walk us through why we went that in that direction and how and why this changes is is better or or in your opinion, not better, you know, for for the city of Long Beach, because I know there was some extensive conversations that we all had as to whether this was the right approach. And the truth is and I think it's important for us to note that as the council developed these rates and these percentages, it's not like we had the perfect formula to get this 100% correct. We were building something as we went as best we could, hearing input, ensuring that we would have the resources that we needed to provide, the services that we committed to with the residents. And we wanted to make sure that we found the right balance. And so a lot of these numbers were developed in partnership, I think, with with our partners, but also in a discussion and debate the council had. And so I'd love to hear from staff just a little bit more explanation on the square footage and the percentage when that comes back. I think that would be good for the council to hear. And then the last thing is I'll just reinforce something, something that a couple of councilmembers just added to me. The the, the when I hear, you know, you know, maybe the, the, the taxes aren't coming in maybe as high as we initially projected or, or not the numbers that we'd like to see. I mean, to me, the biggest reason for that has got to be or a huge reason has. Speaker 4: Got to be. Speaker 0: The illegal transportation that's happening across the city. And I think it's been mentioned now, and I think that the delivery services that are not getting taxed and they're not paying into our system are absolutely causing a major burden to the current operators are now illegal part of our process and so I don't know if there's more that we can do it I can't imagine that that that we're doing all we could be doing in that area. And maybe it's a resource question or a technology question, but I'd love to know and see how we could either invest on our side or figure out a way to capture more of that market and crack down more on the illegal deliveries. And I think that whether that's we do that through the budget process or whether there are maybe some additional new best practices that are happening in other communities, I will say this is not like unique to Long Beach. This is happening in a lot of in a lot of communities. But I hate that. I don't I don't like that our local, ah, local folks that have gone through the process and that are illegal entities we recognize are essentially being put at a competitive disadvantage. And, and the other group is being put at a competitive disadvantage is us because as a city we are losing. Do we have any idea how much how much we're losing in revenue because of the illegal deliveries? Speaker 12: It's it's hard to say for sure, but I've read reports that estimate the size of the illicit market to be around 75% of the total market statewide. Whether that applies to the city of Long Beach as well, I'm not really sure. Speaker 0: Well, I think I you know, I'd like to to do a little bit more if it's possible. I'm not sure if it's available data, but I'd love to understand how much we are missing out on it from a revenue perspective for the city because of the illegal because of the illegal delivery system we have. And if we are losing out on as much as I you know, I assume we are just by looking at what's out there from an illegal delivery perspective, that is an immediate place where we should be. We really want to focus on our public safety services and our health components and all these are the things that we want to do and ensuring that our current operators are successful. We I think we got to kind of figure that out. I'd love to see a number or a guesstimate on what we're losing. Can we get that? You think? Speaker 12: We've we're working on analyzing the illegal market and we can prepare studies. Speaker 0: Yeah, but I want. I want how much we're losing in tax revenue every year. Speaker 12: Oh I see. Sure we can include that in the in the report. Speaker 11: And may I think would be helpful to also show kind of the history of how we became to this decision. We spent a lot of time as we were developing the ordinance, talking about what our enforcement mechanism was going to be, what kind of staffing resources we were going to need. Try not to make this a police activity, but more of an administrative activity in keeping with state law. So we'd like to provide you a lot of that background to and just understand where we are today. And of course, we'll look at other cities if they found a way to do it within that model. We'd love to know that as well. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you very much. And Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just. Just the talk. Just come back to a couple of things. So, one on timing. I know the mayor asked about option two. An option three. I want to go to option one. So. So, AJ. Mr. Jackson. So this planning commission. Look, how long do we think have you already engaged? Planning. Planning department? How long do you think it takes to do that process? Speaker 12: We have and Planning Bureau believes that they should be able to complete the study by the fall. So as soon as three months that that would be the estimated timeline for that. Speaker 2: So about three months. Okay. So three months on some of the planning stuff. How does that align with what we think is phase three in Los Angeles? Speaker 12: Phase three, I believe, has opened or is scheduled to open soon, but within phase three, they actually have more phases within it. So the complete rollout of phase three, I'm not sure, but possibly by the end of this year. Speaker 2: Okay. And then so option two, in terms of the consultant. So so I would imagine the job piece that we added in that something, you know, I don't think we need to do like a, you know, like a Buxton report or some elaborate economic analysis. I'm thinking we talk to Pacific Gateway, our internal folks. Figure out what the formula is on jobs and sort of forecast that out. So like an internal calculation, that's something we can do on the job. He's right. Speaker 12: Yeah. We can take averages for existing businesses and apply those tests. Speaker 2: That's, that's what I'm thinking. And then in terms of, you know, comparing what the fiscal impact is on 1% to 3% range, the fiscal impact we're talking about, that's not something that we can conduct in financial management because we see that all the time in the budget process. Speaker 12: So we have prepared an estimate for for every 1% change in the tax rate, what the impact would be to the general fund. What I'm hearing is that city council wants us to dove more into the details and study those numbers further. So for that, I think we would need a consultant to help us prepare that analysis. And how long that would take? I'm not sure at this time. Speaker 2: Well, so what? Like what? And and I understand people have asked about option three. I don't have a question on that. So what I'd like to do is understand. So when I think fiscal impact, I think, you know, let's compare what our our initial forecast was short. Right. We we looked at what we anticipate to open based on a certain amount of businesses opening. The forecast we're looking at is, you know, sort of looking at 1%, 2%, 3%. And assuming that we get a higher, the idea is we get a higher sort of open rate. Speaker 4: Or sort. Speaker 2: Of clearance rate of these businesses, and the idea is to try to offset it. So are you saying like to do that kind of analysis, you may need to bring in a consultant to do. Speaker 9: Yes, I'll go ahead and take that. So what we have what the council. Speaker 4: Has before them right now is a fiscal impact analysis that's been done by staff in order to do to go deeper, to do analysis. Speaker 9: On the jobs impact and some of the other questions. Speaker 4: That were raised in terms of the fiscal and economic analysis, we it's likely going to require some professional services to do that. We certainly can, you know, work with our economic development department to see how we might be able to economize on that or partner on that and get support on that. But based upon what's being requested, it looks like we're going to need to get some professional services to help us with that. Speaker 2: So what what I would love to do is get an update sooner on what that timeline looks like, the fleshed out timeline. So like within the next 30 days, come back and just say, hey, after, you know, talking to planning, after doing our initial review on option three and looking at our resources internally, this is what the window could look like to bring this back. Because my my expectations, I and I want to put that in comparison to like if the idea is to be competitive and to try to boost, you know, sort of be competitive, to boost the tax base, then I want to understand that in comparison to sort of the timeline on phase three in Los Angeles. So if what we're saying is Los Angeles phase three begins in in fall and we'll fully optimize and people are making big business decisions within the three months of fall, by the end of the year, then that tells me you've got, you know, your 90 days to do your initial review and then implement over another 90 days or whatever it is to make sure that we're competitive. So so what I don't want is to put restrictions on you here at council that somehow trip up the intent, which is to try to be competitive. So that so the hope is we can do as much as we can in house, not spend the money on consultants if we don't have to and see if we we can sort of achieve that. That's that's the hope here. And then the other thing here. The other thing I'll say is so, so, so yeah, a two from four early that says, hey, this is what the timeline could look like and this is what we heard. I think I'd like to see that in the secondly on the conversation on on enforcement, I completely I completely agree on the conversation on sort of the legal delivery stuff. And and I would grapple with I, I understand that this is something that people have unanimous generally unanimous support for sort of tamp down on that market. But I also understand I understand that also understand that when we say new industry, I put quotes because it's not a new industry at all. It's it's it's not a new industry. This product is existed in the community. This is the process of bringing it into the into the sunshine. I think while, while we do a lot of enforcement and we should still think of the innovative ways to do that, I think we should focus our time will figuring out how to capture as much as possible of the legal industry. And if they have if they're overburdened with regulations and taxes and all those things, it doesn't help us. It doesn't help them to compete with the illegal market. And so we just have to keep that in mind as we connect that to the timeline. If we're overburdened, we're overburdened and we have a long time on this process. All it does is just support the legal market and support the legal delivery market as well. So so those are those are my thoughts, my comments. So is that okay? Can we do that? Is it okay to get back with the two from for within 30 days on simply the timeline? Yes, because I know there's been a lot of questions by counsel. I know you need a minute to kind of think all this out. Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely. We can do that. Speaker 2: Great. Thanks a lot. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 5: So I think what I heard of Jason is that page 14, 178,500 number is the loss to the general fund per percent. So 178 times 3% would be 534 over a 24 month period. 36 month period. You go 1 million, you go 1.5 million and so on. I think that I'm in complete agreement that we don't need an outside consultant, if possible. I don't want to spend $60,000 to save $178,000. What I'm really looking for is a staff member to reach out to the industrial real estate community, pull a report of vacancies in the city. They say everything on it. They say cost per square foot. They say all these things. It's a quick survey of the vacancy, our vacancy rates 2% or something that I think that they presented that I see not that easy enough. Give a call through. Real quick, are you open to taking in marijuana facilities? If so, find out which one of these they fall in and how much revenue we think they could bring in. Make them growth estimates. Here's the high. Here's the low. That's what I'm looking at. Hope that brings some help to what my series of questions was, because I don't I just don't think it's that complicated. Speaker 0: Sure. Thank you. There's a there's a motion and a second on the on the floor. It's a motion by Councilman Richardson as presented. And so with that members, please go ahead real quick. Speaker 2: Bickerstaff, just respond to Stacey's comments about the council, about their consultant. Speaker 5: Mine is just an opinion. It's still their decision. Speaker 0: I think at the end of the day, I think it's I think they're suggesting to staff that that the government members suggestion of staff that if you can do it in-house, preferably preferably to do it in-house is the suggestion. And so there's a motion and a second. The motion as made by Councilor Richardson. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. Motion carries. We're now moving on to the rest of the agenda. So thank you all for being here for the other item. Item 20.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive a report from staff on the feasibility of the creation of a 24-month pilot program to expand the tax base of non-retail cannabis businesses by streamlining processes, adjusting tax rates, and providing incentives, and provide further input and direction to staff on development of a pilot program.

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Speaker 0: Vice Chair Andrews. Yes. Yes. Speaker 1: Okay. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Item 21, please. Speaker 1: Item 21 is communication from Councilwoman Pryce. Recommendation to receive and file a public service announcement video on the dangers and impacts of illegal fireworks. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Price. Speaker 6: This is our third video that was created by the Cal State Long Beach film students. And I believe it should be ready to go. I don't know if Eric's back there, but. Let's do this. Speaker 13: Welcome to God's blood. Today is the 4th of July. This is my big dog, Tito. Fireworks are awesome, but the bright lights and loud noises scare Tito and other pets. I made a few steps so that all our pets can be safe and stay with it. Now, as I was saying, make sure your pets have their colleagues on at all times. Speaker 3: And then. Speaker 13: Close your doors and your windows say pets can run away. And make sure to bring them inside. The floor. That way you can hide and feel safe. Keno can silly dog feel the bee journal to music. Speaker 14: The high the shelves. Speaker 13: Keep your pets safe this 4th of July before. Speaker 6: So that was that was Tito, the star of our third PSA and the Cal State Long Beach students who put the films together did an amazing job. These videos have gone out all throughout the city. They've been showed on digital board displays. They've been just promoted really, really well, considering it's our citizen committee that initiated this project and has been the one that has been spreading the word. So everyone, please be safe. Watch out for your pets. Watch out for each other. And in addition to illegal fireworks, please, please, please don't drink and drive, please. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Any public comment scene and please cast your votes. Can someone close the door on the top? Thank you. Item 22, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file presentation of Public Service Announcement video funded by the Third Council District on the dangers and impacts of illegal fireworks.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next item, please, is 27. Speaker 1: Item 27 is a report from Health and Human Services. Recommendation to execute an agreement with a California Department of Public Health Office of AIDS. To accept and expend grant funding in an amount not to exceed 5.7 million for the provisions of HIV, AIDS health care services citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion. And the second is any public comment saying none. Before we voted, I want to say just congratulations again to the health department and to the the the entire planning group that's been involved in our HIV strategic plan. So I know that this will this relates to that as far as our ongoing funding, at least. And we're also looking at some additional funding moving forward to kind of really get us really more in line to where the county's at and hopefully much below that and trying to get us to much less infections and transmissions of STIs. So thank you for your work on this. There is a motion and a second. Please cast your votes.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and all necessary documents and any amendments changing the amount of the award or extending the grant term, with the California Department of Public Health Office of AIDS, to accept and expend grant funding in an amount not to exceed $5,765,194, for the provision of HIV/AIDS health care services, for the period of April 1, 2019 through March 31, 2024. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: We're taking a couple of items out of order per a request from council. We're going to begin with item 24, which I believe we have most folks here for. Speaker 5: Item 24 is communication from Councilmember Pearce. Councilwoman Praise. Council Member Councilman Austin. Council Member Richardson. Recommendation to support the denouncement of HB 481 and HB 314 and authorize city managers to suspend all travel contracts from the states of Georgia and Alabama so long as the bills become law. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me go and begin by turning this over to Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you to all the women and men and organizations who have fought for health care, for all the women and men that came before us in the sixties and the seventies to make sure that women like me had access to affordable, safe resources. This item is here before us today because at a national level, there's an organized effort to take away the rights of women, to make decisions for themselves, the rights to health care, to economic dependance, the right to choice. There are many stories that are true. Women across age, race and class have been. Oppressed whenever states have decided to take away their rights to affordable health care, such as abortion. There are already levels that exist. Barriers that exist to getting access to abortions in states where it is legal. And so when we have states like these that have decided to try to roll back the efforts of so many before us, I felt, and I believe my colleagues felt, that it was necessary for Long Beach to take a stand and say, we are a pro-choice city and we will spend our resources where we see fit in . Spending our resources in states that continue to take away the rights to health care is not a priority of this city. So I'm happy today to have many people signed onto this item, many people in the audience to support this. I wanted to remind us that Roe versus Wade was done in 1973. Before 1973, we had a high number of women having children that were put into foster homes, high number of women having children that they had to leave behind, a high number of women that were having abortions that were unsafe. Many women died. And so we want to make sure that nationally, we don't let that happen again, that nationally we continue to make progress not only in California, but as a nation. So I look forward to hearing my council colleagues comments, but I'm really proud to stand with Planned Parenthood, proud to stand with women, and look forward to hearing from everyone here in the audience. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 1: Thank you. I want to thank council member Pierce for bringing this item forward. Obviously, it's a very timely item and it's one that I think the city of Long Beach should take a strong stance in support of support of the item. I do not believe that we should be using city funds and public moneys to support policies in other states that are taking steps backwards. Since 1973, the law has been settled and the law has been clear in allowing women choices. And we cannot allow for progress in states that are trying to take those choices away to continue to thrive. We have to stand firm as a community in supporting the right of women to choose how they want to care for their bodies, what choices make sense for them in their lives. It is their choice. It is their bodies. And we should, as a community and as a society, support that. I strongly support this item. I thank my colleague for bringing it forward. It is not the time in 2019 for us to take a step back. It is time for us to continue to take steps forward. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 8: I want to thank my colleagues, especially Councilmember. Janine Pearce in price I that's a tongue twister sometimes. The many community organizations that are signed on in support of this. Obviously the recent legislative actions in Georgia and Alabama are seeking to turn the clock back and divide our country further. And I think tonight Long Beach is taking a stand to show that we are a pro Troy City, progressive city, and we won't support backward steps. This is a moral dilemma, in my opinion, because in my opinion, it is immoral to bring in an unwanted child into this world, this hard, cold world where it's tough enough for those even with advantages if a child is unwanted. The world is in brought into this world. The deck is automatically stacked against them. They are coming into this world, possibly without love, without support of a family. And if they are poor and of color, then inequity is even much greater. Policies that create more foster children, more prison pipelines, more social ills are our policies that we can ill afford to support. And lastly, I think we should not be criminalizing women who are standing up and making decisions for their own reproductive rights. And so I'm happy that this has has come before us. I'm glad to see that our city and hopefully will take a stand on this. I'm happy to support. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: And thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 9: Yes, thank you, Mayor. I'd also like to thank my council persons like, you know, Jeanine and by Mrs. Pierce both the two PS but I like to let you know that this is I really want to say that this is an album about freedom of choice and the barriers that brain places by institutions that no business get involved. You know, in a personal matter, I have four daughters and a wife and I'm supporting this item for their rights and for women just like them. I hope that this sends a message to Alabama, Georgia, and I hope the California stay out of making legislative stimulus to this. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you, vice mayor. And before I go back to cancer prepares to close closest allies add I mentioned some of this I think earlier today but I'll say that we should always, always under under all circumstances stand with women and their ability to make every choice about their body. Every health care choice that they that they would like to make is their right and their right only. I think it's also important for the city to go on record and and and recognizing that abortion is health care and that that is part of a women's that is part of women's health care is the ability to make those types of choices and be very clear and vocal about those when we can be. I want to thank especially Councilwoman Janine Pearce, who thoughtfully worked with our Planned Parenthood group, affiliate groups, as well as Zoe Nicholson, and now and some of the other groups that are involved in in women's rights. I know our our Long Beach breast feeding group as well. So I just want to thank the women's organizations within the city that are leading this fight. And and like I said, as an as a male, as a as a as an ally, that's a man. I, again, say to all the men that we have no business being involved in women's decisions about their body and just mind your own business and stick to yourself. So. And so I strongly, strongly support support this. And I want to thank the other council members as well that signed on and Councilmember Pearce. It's a really public comment and then we'll wrap it up. So if there's any public comment, please come forward. Speaker 7: Good evening. I have to apologize at the start. I'm not used to wearing a hat and chamber. It feels very odd. My name is Zoe Nicholson. I live in Rose Park. I happen to love Long Beach. I'm very grateful to all who are here today to stop the band. Thank you. Councilmembers in particular. Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Pierce. Councilman Austin. And whose Air Force? I forgot. Oh, Rex, she's not here. That's why I can't see it. You might find it interesting. That is the same 13 states, 13 that have not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, that are now closing in on the strictest abortion bans. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it's about universal respect. No disrespect for those women in those states. For me, in fact, this is not about abortion at all. It is about seeing women as full human beings, capable, responsible members of society, not appendages or ancillary to men. Women. All women are my family and therefore my responsibility. It is not just my obligation, but my privilege to share the safety and protections we are awarded here in California. Just because women are in Arizona or Alabama and not in California does not exempt us from caring and sharing a public outrage as we are tonight. Recently, I've heard Mr. Mayor talk quite a bit about Long Beach being the same size as Atlanta. I want to tell you that if a woman wanted to have an abortion here, there's a whole list of places she could go. Some close, some far, but all available in Atlanta, the same size as Long Beach. There is one, and that one is under siege. The bogus heartbeat bill is being passed by all male committees. I don't even understand what they're talking about. They don't understand how birth control works or what the criteria is for second or third term abortions. Even making laws, assuring rapists visitation with children, which is so unthinkable. These are the same legislators who are in favor of sending living, breathing children to internment camps, and they are now reporting death tolls like it's a war. These same men are collecting data on the menstrual cycles of the girls being held in those internment camps and ordering arbitrary vaginal probes or requiring a three day wait, making it impossible without threatening jobs and privacy. I understand that we are here rallying about stopping the bans, which we don't have here. But the fact is it is our obligation and fundamentally it is our privilege to raise our voices for those who cannot. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Hi. My name is Karen Ayres. I'm vice president of Hollywood now, and I'm a resident of the city of West Hollywood. I'm here today because Long Beach speaks to me, is a is a place that is primed to pass the resolution you have before you. West Hollywood has come forward and embraced its identity publicly as a pro-choice city. I think Long Beach can be the same and bigger. And Long Beach is a fantastic city. The residents here are so warm and welcoming. I think they are representative of the nation and that the majority of the people here and in our country support a woman's right to choose. And I commend the five council members who came forward to support this resolution and and are taking a stand to protect a woman's right to choose. Councilmember Austin, a few of those comments you've made have really resonated with me, particularly with regards to children in foster care. And as you know, Southern California has a huge population of children and youth in foster care today. I am a CASA volunteer. I work with a youth in foster care who told me that when he and his girlfriend needed Planned Parenthood, they were there for him. He said that if a if he didn't have Planned Parenthood, he felt his life would have been ruined. And his biggest fear was to bring a child into the world that he couldn't support and to put a child through what he had gone through six years in the foster care system. So it's real. What you're doing is meaningful. And I commend you and taking your stance. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Hello, Mayor and honorable council members. My name is John Erickson. I am the director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood Advocacy Project, Los Angeles County Action Fund. We have a health center right here in Long Beach. And I want to say thank you very much to the. Counsel for considering supporting this resolution tonight. I am hopeful it passes and we join here in Long Beach where the rest of the cities, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, the county of Los Angeles, LAUSD, and multiple cities that are coming aboard here in Southern California and staying. We won't go back. Enough is enough and we stand with women. I want you to picture it. It's 1973. Roe v Wade was decided by 7 to 2 at the United States Supreme Court. 7 to 2 when we're so used to decisions that are coming about five, four, 4 to 5. What we saw last summer with the appointment of Justice Kavanaugh was now being held up, and that promise is being upheld right now with the challenges directly to Roe that we're facing. 73% of Americans do not support overturning Roe v Wade. That is the highest statistic that that statistic has been of its time. 73%, two thirds of Americans believe a woman has a fundamental right to access to reproductive freedom in deciding her reproductive future. Additionally, right now in these states, 25 million women of reproductive age would face desolate areas where no reproductive health care would be available. Should Roe v Wade be overturned? 25 million women. The economic impacts of that alone are daunting, scary. And it's because places like Long Beach, places like other cities here in Los Angeles and the county of Los Angeles and everywhere we can call home are taking a stand and saying, enough is enough. And I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you for standing with Planned Parenthood. And I want to say we got your back because you got our back. And we want to thank Councilmember Janine Pearce, Councilwoman Susie Price, Mayor Garcia, Councilmember Austin, Councilmember Richardson, Councilmember Andrews, I hope the rest of the council signs on to this really important resolution, because right now we're on that. We're on the future, the cusp of the future, and we could see Roe v Wade overturned in our lifetime. And I know the children in this end in the United States, as well as the children in the audience and their parents do not want to see a generation of where we have to go back to the horror stories that many of us have heard about and maybe have even experienced firsthand about when a woman's reproductive freedoms are taken away from her. So thank you very much for this resolution. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And before I do the next speaker, I'm going to go ahead and close the speakers list. So we have our last speaker there and then our speakers list will be closed, please. Speaker 7: Hi. My name is Carolyn Weathers. I'm a member. I live in the first district. I'm 79 years old. And when I lived in Texas in the sixties before, while abortion was still illegal, I was in my twenties and a friend of mine was in her twenties. She was gang raped by seven men. She could not get an abortion, so she would tell us we would get together at our house and we would have coffee and we would talk about it. And all she could do is say, Oh, I hope I can learn to love this baby. That's all she could do. How she could learn to love this baby that seven men had gang raped her to make her pregnant with. She committed suicide. She committed suicide. And she was maligned by the city. Her grave. Was wrecked. So I came out here in the sixties to do the counterculture, the hippie stuff, and I marched for Roe versus Wade. I was out in the streets marching for it, protesting, pushing for it, and thank God it happened. I never dreamed in my wildest imagination that we would be coming to this point. There would be so many people trying to push us back to what I remember, the horror stories, and they would happen again. If it's not happening here, it's happening in other places. Thank you. Let us stand up and not go backwards. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Hi, my name is Mariella Salgado. I am a Parks Rec commissioner and a small business owner. More importantly, I'm a mother of two daughters. And one of the reasons why I come before you. I just wanted to say it's important that we think about this from a perspective of where we put our dollars matters. And I want to thank you all for. I want to thank you and respect and commend you for taking this action and saying that where our dollars go in contracts matters. So I just wanted to say that, and I truly appreciate and commend you guys for taking this step forward. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Yes, councilman. Councilwoman. Mayor, I'm glad to be here for a couple moments because in my life with my wife, we went through a problem of getting rid of her, getting an abortion back in the early seventies before Roe versus Wade. We had to sneak around and find somebody who would do it and hope that it turned out okay. And that was a tried and true situation. More for her than for me, of course. But from that I learned a lot. And one of the things I do whenever I talk about this, I say to other men, you know, this is our issue, too. And if we think we can ignore this issue or we can stay silent or we can let those who are against abortion take control of our perhaps daughters or granddaughters or great granddaughters and cause them to be treated like like like really animals and not even have the right to say, oh, no, I control my own health and my body. Then we as men are letting women down. And this is our our species. And we have got to stand together and we can't let people tell us, oh, women are less than men. Women don't have. So please, everyone support this because we need every vote so that people like in the legislature down in places like Georgia and Alabama and Arkansas and Missouri don't come to realize that there's a price they're going to pay now for being against women and for taking on women's right to choose and has their right to choose, not mine. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 1: Hi. Council members. Mayor, my name is Genesis to Square. I'm an intern with Planned Parenthood's political political advocacy project. I'm here today supporting this resolution because, as we all know here, money not only is power, money in this country is also speech. And I think it's important that the city of Long Beach and the state of California uses their money to show that we are on the front of this issue, that we are here supporting women's rights, trans men's rights and the rights of all people. So I ask you to stand with us today, stand with Planned Parenthood, stand with the women of Long. Speaker 7: Beach, California. Speaker 1: And the country to not use this money to support states that are going to hinder these rights for other women. I think it's important for us to all be on the right side of this issue. And I asked you to stand with us today. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And our last speaker. Speaker 5: Good afternoon, Mayor Garcia and council members. I want to thank you so much. My name is Marisela Rivera. I am many things. Among them, a city commissioner. I am an activist in my community. I am a leader. I am also the founder and director of Long Beach Breastfeeds. I had the pleasure when I was a homeowner in the second district to vote for a councilman, Jeanine Pearce. I am eternally grateful that I got to vote for somebody who would bring something like this forward. And I am now a District nine resident and got to vote for Rex Richardson, who is a co-sponsor along with council members Susie Price and Austin. And I thank all four of you for being brave enough to put your political capital behind women, because I know that that's what this is. You know, we talk about labels and we talk about who we are and the importance of that. I am a mother. I am a queer woman. I am a wife. I am also incredibly privileged to have made the choice to have two abortions. Unlike most people who don't feel the need to share their medical history, I do because I am privileged. Because I had the choice to continue my college education, to only give birth to the children that would come into a loving marriage fully and completely wanted and adored. I had the choice to finish my career and then leave my career at the city of Long Beach when I wanted to be a full time parents. That is what feminism looks like. That is what reproductive freedom looks like. And that is what ultimately privilege looks like. Because I am a Southern Californian from a liberal family and a liberal place and was able to ask my mom for a ride. I was able to pay cash because insurance did not pay for it. I was not ostracized by my community. I wasn't shamed. It wasn't in a dark room. And unlike my grandmother and my great grandmother before me, I did not give birth to countless children because I had to. I am very grateful that I live in the city of Long Beach. I'm very grateful that you are doing this. And I'm grateful for the Long Beach Breastfeeds members who showed up today and the many, many hundreds who wanted to and can't. Long Beach Breastfeeds is about equity. It is about reproductive justice and freedom from whether or not a person can get pregnant, whether or not they want to, how they birth, where they birth, and yes, also how we use our breasts and where we feed our babies. I'm very, very grateful to you. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 0: Speaker's list is closed and I will go back to Councilmember Pearce and then we're going to vote. Speaker 7: Thank you. I don't want to have a whole nother round of talking, but I have some things that I haven't said yet. One is, thank you again for sharing your stories. I grappled with the idea of sharing my story or not, but I had the privilege in Texas to go to Planned Parenthood when I was 12. My mom took me. And my life was not normal. Obviously, if your mom's taking you Planned Parenthood at 12. But I was thankful because I had an education around reproductive rights at an early age. And so I want to share, as many women did as Roe versus Wade came up that were in power, that I to have had an abortion and that I want to make sure that everybody in the nation has access to their reproductive rights. I also wanted to say that I just got word that way. 31 ABC News in Huntsville is watching and looking at what Long Beach is doing. And so I want to make sure that we send a message not only in our vote tonight, but a clear message to the representatives in the state that doing right by all of your constituents, doing right by all of your residents, is what you were elected to do. And that it is my hope that you give all your residents access to reproductive freedom, to health care, to choice, because that's what we are elected to do. And that's what this ban is trying to isolate women. So please do the right thing and hear us loud and clear. We will make sure that we continue to fight all the way till the end. I hope everyone will vote on this. Yes. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Okay. Well, now go ahead and call called the vote for the council. Please cast your votes. Speaker 5: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Great. Excellent. Unanimous. Congratulations. Thank you and thank you all for coming out today as well. Appreciate all the advocacy and hard work. We're going to be moving on. Our next request was to do item 30. Actually, let me do the consent calendar really quick.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to support the denouncement of HB 481, Georgia's Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, which bans abortions if a doctor can detect a heartbeat and denounce HB 314, Alabama's Human Life Protection Act that bans abortions at any stage of pregnancy; authorize City Manager to suspend all travel, contracts, etc. from the states of Georgia and Alabama, so long as the bills become law. 1. Request City Attorney to prepare a resolution for adoption denouncing Georgia's Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) act (HB 481) and Alabama's HB 314, immediately suspending official travel to Georgia, Alabama and any other state which adopts similar heartbeat legislation and imposing financial sanctions until such time as the new law is revoked, amended, or struck down. 2. Direct staff to send signed copies of the adopted resolution to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, California Governor Gavin Newsom, California State Senator Ben Allen, California State Assembly Member Richard Bloom, and others as deemed appropriate. 3. Authorize City Manager to susp

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Speaker 5: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Item nine, please. On the consent calendar. Speaker 5: Item nine from Health and Human Services recommendation to authorize city manager to execute an agreement and any subsequent amendments with California Community Foundation on behalf of Kaiser Foundation to accept and expend grant funding in the amount of 90,004 North Long Beach. Healthy eating, active living. Speaker 0: Dots from Eureka. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I pulled this out on behalf of my colleague, Councilmember Rex Richardson, who wanted to highlight the work that's been done throughout the years in North Long Beach through the Kaiser Permanente Hospital Corporation Foundation, and what it has specifically provided. Kaiser Permanente has been supporting Long Beach, healthy eating, active living zone initiative for over six years and has invested more than $2 million into Long Beach, North Long Beach Community. The Hills Zone, as it's known, helps address the growing obesity epidemic by supporting community transformation with a goal of creating changes that support lasting health improvements for residents over time. Since 2012, the Hill's own initiative has resulted in several accomplishments, including installation of fitness equipment and hydration stations at Houghton Park and Coolidge Park, initiation of the now adopted and award winning North Long Beach Open Space Master Plan. Implementation of the Healthy Living Lifestyle Prescription Program at the Children's Clinic. Establishment of a very popular crop crop swap. Sorry, a crop swap. Where residents exchange their own grown produce. And activation of an active Hill's own youth leadership group. And beautification also have roots along the schools. So at this time, I have a certificate from Councilmember Rex Richardson who would like to present to Kaiser Permanente for their continued partnership in this area. And is Jenny Oliver present? And I would like to present it to you, but you have an opportunity to say a few words at this point. Speaker 5: Good evening. Mayor Robert Garcia and members of the esteemed council. It's been a long time since I've been in front of you. I see a lot of your wonderful Facebook updates, though, so I know a lot of great work is happening. I'm Danny Oliver and I'm the community health manager for Kaiser Permanente representing the South Bay area, which includes Long Beach. And I'm really here today just to recognize the city of Long Beach for all of the hard work and dedication and support that they've given over the last six years in partnership with Kaiser Permanente and the funding that we have invested, which was $2 million. And this year really marks the transitional year in which we are really thinking about how we can sustain the progress and the work that has happened. I want to also acknowledge the public health department under the leadership of Kelley Collopy and also members of her staff for all of the work that they've done as well. Many of the partners have included multiple city departments that have really contributed to the progress of this of this grant. And then the Long Beach School District, a number of community based organizations, representatives of neighborhood associations. So we've had a lot of resident engagement. Youth have been participating. And I think Councilmember Durango also kind of mentioned a lot of the highlights around the crop swaps, the park improvements that we've had at Highland Park and Coolidge Park with hydration stations and also fitness zones. And so there have been a number of accomplishments over the years. I also want to acknowledge Councilmember Rex Richardson, who's not here, but really was a part of the early adoption of this work. He and his staff really put in a lot of effort of convening the residents, really getting behind the work. And so we're very grateful for that. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And we didn't at the time are up, but we need to conclude. Speaker 5: Can I just. Speaker 0: Just really briefly, Greg. Speaker 5: Lastly, sorry, just I want to thank you for the policy as well. All of the policy that's been passed around park improvements and that includes the master plan. So thank you. Appreciate your time. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. No seen no other public comment. We will go ahead. And members, please cast your votes on this item. Speaker 8: Well, yes. Speaker 5: Ken's membership in all caps membership now? Yes. Speaker 0: And Vice married. She's also a yes. Speaker 5: Council member. Urunga. Speaker 0: He's a yes. Speaker 5: Also motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We are now we have a couple of other items are moving up. We're going to be doing the Conservation Corps presentation now because item 23.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and any subsequent amendments, with the California Community Foundation, on behalf of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, to accept and expend grant funding in the amount of $90,000, for North Long Beach Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Zone activities, for the period of June 1, 2019 through June 1, 2020; and Increase appropriations in the Health Fund Group in the Health and Human Services Department by $90,000, offset by grant revenues. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. We're. We have two more items that have been moved forward. That's the Tanaka Park item and the center cha item. So they want to take those. Next item 30, please. Speaker 2: He actually. Speaker 5: Yeah. Item 30 Report from Economic Development, Parks. Recreation, Marine. Recommendation to execute all documents necessary for the purchase of certain real property at 1400 West Wardle Road in an amount not to exceed 1.1 million and execute all documents necessary with breakers development for the reimbursements of 55,866. Of the purchase price of the subject property district seven. Speaker 0: Country ranga. Speaker 2: But we go ahead and have a staff report on this. Speaker 0: Mayor. Speaker 3: Mayor, councilmembers. This truly is a very, very unique night. We have the opportunity to make Tanaka Park a permanent park in the city of Long Beach. Our team has been working very hard on that and then you give a presentation. John Keisler from Economic Development and Stephen Scott from Parks, Recreation and Marine. Take it away, guys. Speaker 10: Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council, thank you very much. We're very excited to present this item in partnership between our two departments. What we've got here is a piece of property located at 1400 West Wardlow Street. This is on the West Side. You'll recognize this is just below the 405. In just a little bit east of Santa Fe, it is approximately 60,000 square feet. So it's a it's a big piece of property. It's a it's a sort of triangular shape. And in 2001, the city of Long Beach entered into a lease with the Tanaka family to turn this space into a recreational space for the West Side residents. So currently since 2004, we've had this collaboration between the seventh District Council office and the surrounding community, various departments, including Economic Development and Parks, Rec and Marine and the Tanaka family, to provide access to about 5800 residents in the half mile radius of the property. And the way that we describe this is primarily as a passive park. So we don't have, you know, sports leagues and and other permitted uses. But it does have a really great playground, half court basketball on some benches and a perimeter walking trail. And that perimeter walking trail is a great asset, particularly for our West Side livability plan and neighborhood use. And so what we're looking at is essentially that the Tanaka family had indicated that they were going to sell the property they were going to listed, and the purchase price listed was approximately $1 million. And of course, with the due diligence, which is some environmental review and administrative costs associated with escrow or closing costs, the total purchase price that we negotiated with the Tanaka family is 1.1 million and $5,000. And we believe that if with council approval we move forward and enter into escrow, we could actually close as early as September 20th of this year. And this is really special. We're really grateful, the Tanaka family, because they could negotiate with anyone. It's possible if the property were put on the market for other uses, that it could actually command a higher purchase price. So I wanted to make this point that we negotiated a good purchase price and if zoned for other uses, it possibly could go at even a higher market value. And so an important thing that we always want to present to the City Council, in addition to the details about the transaction, is the actual funding sources. How did we come up with $1.105 million? So the first funding source, of course, is our seventh District Council member, Roberto Durango, pledged council discretionary funds of $50,000 to get the project going. That was fantastic. $764,455. We are extremely grateful because the Los Angeles County safe, clean neighborhood and Parks and beaches measure of 2016 approved by voters countywide, actually put a 1.5 cent parcel tax on countywide properties. To develop and fund the acquisition of open spaces, parks, beaches, etc.. And so this is a really, really fantastic funding source for us to pledge for this park. $234,679 would come from construction and demolition funds. So we're very grateful for this funding source from the Development Services Fund, which actually these are funds that come from recycled deposits. And when developers or builders are not able to recycle all of the material or choose not to. These funds are available for these kinds of acquisitions and development. And then finally, this is a wonderful opportunity, $55,866 that is coming as a pro-rata share price per square foot from the Breakers development company, which is a local development company . And that is actually Pacific six. They're working on the Historic Breakers Hotel, and there's a portion of the public space in front of their hotel that has to be reconfigured as part of that new renovation of the project. And so as a result, um, they're required to replace 2 to 1 that park space somewhere else in the city. And so it just, so has just so happened that the timing of this project and the timing of this acquisition lined up and so Pacific six and the Breakers Development LLC, we're very, very grateful that they were able to contribute to this project. So a number of funding sources, a number of partners. This is really an exciting project and I will be able to answer any questions. We also have Steve Scott, the assistant director from Parks Rec and Marine, who knows a bit more about some of these funding sources and the park uses here to answer any of your questions. That's the conclusion of our report. Speaker 0: Yeah, I think that's I think that's a good report. So, Councilman Ranga. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank our staff for making this presentation. This is a almost a once in a lifetime opportunity that we have to get open space to become permanent open space in the city Long Beach. I want to thank the Tanaka family for offering this property to the city and for their ability to cooperate with us in getting a price that would be amenable to us so we could we could purchase this. So last month, I contributed $50,000 to go towards funding this event, this this park, so that we could get it started. And and as we just heard right now, we got the money to do so. As we know, open space is hard. It's one out of every six people in the city of Long Beach are are missing an open space opportunity to go out and recreate and create healthy, healthy lifestyles. And this park will certainly do that in perpetuity. So I hope that my council colleagues can vote with me tonight to provide this opportunity for this land acquisition of the park and looking forward to getting more people to enjoy it and having a big celebration once the the deal is completed. So I think at this point we went. There are some individuals in the audience who would like to come up in and say anything about this opportunity here. You're welcome to do so at this point. Speaker 0: Thank you. Please come forward. So I've got two comments, then I'm closing the speakers list. Speaker 2: Good evening. My name is The Oregonian. I'm a long time resident of West Long Beach and a member of West Long Beach Association. And we would like the mayor and the city council members to support this issue that was presented by our council member, you, Regan, in light of some of the other things that were said earlier this evening. In West Long Beach. We have the highest rate of childhood asthma. By making this a permanent location is helps in that reduction last year earlier this year USC issued a report that asthma in the city of Long Beach is down. However, regionally, West Long Beach still has the highest incidence of childhood asthma. And we would like for you to consider that when you are deliberating for your vote. But as city. Good health is the main course to enjoy freedom. The freedoms that we here. Take for granted. It's normal that some of the earlier speakers spoke in reference to Planned Parenthood. All freedoms count and you cannot enjoy any of them without good health. And I would like to thank you and once again urge you to vote yes on this. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: So I can face this district. First, I just want to thank the estate of Mr. Tanaka and the vibrant history of the Japanese American population here in the city of Long Beach. This is a living example of their contributions to the great and peace as a whole. When I was younger, I used to live in West Long Beach in the Springdale housing projects. And, you know, there is a divide on the west side of green spaces such as this outside of Silver Lake Silverado, sorry, and Admiral Kidd, you know, and so this one off of Wall. Recently when I played soccer there, I won a couple of weeks ago with some friends. So this is a great acquisition. I want to thank Councilman Urunga and the seventh District, especially for taking the initiative to contribute more green allocate more green space to, you know, West Long Beach and the overall, you know, access for children on the West Side in general. And I encourage the Council to follow the recommendation of the. Mr.. Your Honor, and adding this to the Parks and Recreation, you know, park space. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Council man Minister. Speaker 8: Thank you. I'd like to just also lend my support. Congratulations to Councilmember Turanga and the residents of the seventh District on the West Side. Obviously, when we can add park space, we are winning as a city. Recently Long Beach was has gone up in the rankings in terms of public park space. I think we were in the top 20 in the country now number 18 and more park space just will improve our our our standing but it's desperately needed on the on the west side. I think it was mentioned by one of the residents there. Anytime we can we can add park space. We should. And this is a great use for that space. I want to congratulate again Councilmember Urunga, the residents of the seventh District, but also applied staff for being creative and putting together the deal. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: I yes. I also want to congratulate the west side and Councilmember Urunga. You know, I remember when we did our first Long Beach Rising, which was in 2010 or 2011, your wife Tonia gave a presentation to about 100 of us about park equity, in particular on the West Side. And so I wholeheartedly support this and thank all the parties that have been involved. I did have a question because I had a constituent ask on the two for one replacement. Whenever they take away park space that can be put back anywhere in the city, is there any requirements on that you want to support? Sorry. Speaker 10: Yeah. Council Councilmember. I'm sorry. Speaker 5: Surprise question. Speaker 10: I was going to ask the city attorney to, uh, to explain the ordinance, but Steve Scott from Parks Rec and Marine will do that. Speaker 7: Yeah. Just a quick. Thank you. Speaker 2: Catwoman Pierce. Members of the city council. So for the two for one replacement, 50% of that needs to be within district and then the rest. The other 50% can be outside of the district. Speaker 7: Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you again, everyone, and congratulations. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Andrew Fine. Speaker 9: So I congratulate Congressman Unger for this wonderful project because in fact, I think all of us realize, you know, a retired kid is a good kid. And I think this park is going to keep him day. So thank you very much. Speaker 0: Count summary Ringo. Speaker 2: Again closes out that this 18 years ago started with no longer on the city council and we're going to close it out and make it a park in perpetuity with another rung on the city council. So I'm very proud of that, and I hope that I could get the support of my colleagues to approve this Park District acquisition. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I just I just want to add, I think from your rank, I think you deserve a lot of credit for making this a top priority. Immediately you came to the staff and certainly to me and was very, very active about how important this was. And we support you and good work and thank you to the community and members. Peace. Gordon, cast your votes. Speaker 5: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Great motion carries. We're good there. We have I still have. The last one that got moved up was the central chore. And then I have public I still have the public comment list. So we had a lot moved up today. So I won't need to get those done first and then we will move on to the remainder of the agenda. So we have central chore item 28 and then we're going to the public comment.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary, including a Standard Offer, Agreement, and Escrow Instructions for Purchase of Real Estate, with the Estate of Roy Masaru Tanaka, for the purchase of certain real property at 1400 West Wardlow Road, Assessor Parcel Numbers 7311-017-027 and 7311-013-001, in an amount not to exceed $1,105,000; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary, including a Reimbursement Agreement with Breakers Development, LLC, a California limited liability company, for the reimbursement of $55,866 of the purchase price of the Subject Property; Accept the Categorical Exemption CE 19-154; Increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Economic Development Department by $1,105,000, offset by various fundings sources including grant reimbursement revenues and transfers from other funds; Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $50,000 to offset a transfer to the Economic Development Department; and In

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Speaker 0: So I won't need to get those done first and then we will move on to the remainder of the agenda. So we have central chore item 28 and then we're going to the public comment. Speaker 5: Item 28 report from Economic Development Recommendation to execute a letter of intent between the City of Long Beach and Center CHA for the development of a lease agreement with the option to purchase city owned property at 1850 through 1862. Atlantic Avenue, District six. Speaker 0: Thank you. I know that Mr. Crusher has a presentation. Yes. Speaker 10: Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. This is another one tonight that I'm really excited to present to you on behalf of the city manager. So so what we have before you is an opportunity to enter into a letter of intent between the city of Long Beach and Central Asia to perform some additional due diligence and some negotiations around the potential lease or sale of this property on 1852 1862, Atlantic Avenue. And the property is really just north of the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Atlantic Avenue. So this is about a block north of Poly High School. And ultimately the reason that there's multiple addresses here, 1852, 1862, is that it comprises three parcels of property that were purchased by the city's refuge fund over the past about two decades. The property itself, when you put all those parcels together, have almost 15,000 square feet and it has one larger building, 4800 square feet of improvements, plus a playground and an adjacent parking lot. So this is a great piece of property with a lot of potential uses for the community. Part of its history was that it was purchased with refuge funds dollars. That's a restricted fund, an enterprise fund that is owned by the city. But there were three pieces of property purchased at a total of $800,000 in the purchases began in the late nineties, early 2000s, and then culminated in 2014 with that adjacent parking lot and support piece of property that's to the right in the image of the center, which is on the screen above you. In 2017, the city entered into a lease with the Jenni Rivera Love Foundation and the goal there was to provide a rehabilitation of the facility, of course, but also to introduce a daycare center, community room and museum dedicated to the legacy of Jenni Rivera, who had, of course, very, very strong connections to the city of Long Beach in 2018. At the request of the Foundation Board, they took action and requested the city to terminate the lease due to some financial issues related to the actual retrofit of the building. Since that time the property has been vacant since mid 2018 and there are substantial tenant improvements that are required to make the property suitable for reuse . So so the action that we're requesting from the city council tonight ultimately would allow up to 120 days for the city to work with Central Cha, a local nonprofit with a longstanding history of providing community benefit services in the city of Long Beach. And we would work together to conduct some additional due diligence, which would include things like architectural plans, construction bids and even evaluation of the property to make sure that we understand the true appraisal fair market value. As if the improvements were completed, we would explore some financing options together and then ultimately we would come back to the City Council with an agreement for your consideration. So this this would allow us up to 120 days. Now, we might not take 120 days to complete this due diligence, but it's likely to take at least 90. The general terms and conditions which the city attorney asks us to read into the record, this allows us some guardrails in terms of negotiations would be potentially a lease of ten years +25 year options to extend a base rent that's established by a fair market appraisal that we would work on together. Of course, we'd be looking at those issues of tenant improvements and what kind of capital improvements were required to make it usable. Um, Central Cha would have some termination rights, of course, if we we couldn't come to an agreement or if we do, and the capital or tenant improvements are too prohibitive from a cost standpoint. And then we would work together to all. Similarly establish the the the plan for redevelopment. Finally, there would be an option to purchase. So that's an important piece of this is not just a lease but the option to purchase. We want council's authority to negotiate that of course, that price that that we have to repay the refuge fund. Ratepayers who purchased these properties would be $800,000. And we would come back to you with the final terms and conditions once we've completed that, that process. So I'm going to wrap up my report here, but I'm happy to answer any questions and we're very excited about this path forward. Speaker 9: Thank you very much for that report. I first of all, would you like to have you could have you can do the committee report if you guys like. But if not, we can speak on the diocese first yet would like to come up with a report first. Public comment, in other words. Yes. I mean, you would never like to speak. You can come up and you. Speaker 2: Go. Speaker 5: Is that going to be a whole lot of us getting mean? Vice Mayor Andrews, members of the city council. City Manager Pat West and our dear John Kaiser, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today and for the opportunity for the site and to come before council. If you know the history of the organization and our journey here, this has been quite a journey. I don't think any other nonprofit in the city of Long Beach has moved five times in their life, and I don't think any organization that's a nonprofit would have been able to to really to survive those moves. But, you know, the services that we do are necessary to the constituents that we serve, which is the city of Long Beach constituents. So we are pleased to be here today. This offer and this letter of intent is something that has been discussed, you know, with our board members, with John Kaiser, who was so kind to come down and talk to our board members because they were very hesitant. I have to tell you what, the city of Long Beach, they're very hesitant to do any business. And so I can tell you that they're all very supportive. You know, we got 100% direction to move forward on this alloy. We're excited. You know, we believe that we have new leadership in the city. So we're we're definitely looking forward to to holding hands and ensure this new venture and this new journey for Center Child to be able to anchor our organization and to be able to continue to do the services that we do. So thank you so much for bringing this item forward. We truly appreciate every and appreciate every single one of you. And also economic development. The majority of the council members here know, you know, what we do in the organization is really focus on workforce development and job training. And most recently, we developed a social enterprise to the agency and started a screen printing and apparel line called Long Beach, Port Vila. And literally, it's it's to support the life of our young people, to provide jobs and and training and really understand how to do technology and graphic design. And so, you know, we're just asking the council to continue to support us in our journey and in this decision making that we're going to be doing in this 120 days. And we appreciate, again, the support and the partnership. Speaker 9: Thank you. Thank you very much. You and I would like to speak. Speaker 2: Good evening. Good evening, counsel. My name is Jerry, added. I'm a longtime resident of West Palm Beach with board member of Central Cha, familiar with all the services that Central Cha has provided throughout the Long Beach area. Mr. Kaiser came in and we were really excited with this partnership and I just want to say that I hope everybody supports the cause. It's a well worth cause and it's going to provide services for future generation leaders here in Long Beach. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Avila. Is there any other public comment? Please come down and see. No other public comment. We'll close the speakers list. After, Senor. Speaker 2: Good evening. I'm Professor Madagascar Ramos. Just destroy your way up. And I'm delighted to be here and to not only support this partnership. I want to thank all of you that have been already behind the scenes working with this project, as I have been also supporting in some of the conversations. John has been a real gentleman. And and I think that this is a great opportunity for a win win relationship in many other dimensions that could come from here. I know that John is looking at creating a model that can be done in other parts of the city with other nonprofits. And I certainly think that there's a great opportunity to also build around this relationship that can go into other aspects of the city. So a cultural and an artistic as well as the the educational aspect that I'm very much a part of. So I thank you. And they definitely are supporting and hope that this will be the beginning of a wonderful relationship. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. And with that, let me turn this over to Vice Mayor Andres. Speaker 9: Yes. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I'd just like to say I'm looking at the picture back. Well, what you were seeing back there. It doesn't look like that. I mean, that is probably one of the most bright areas I have in the Six District. And I would just want to thank to Quintana, but trying to really see the uplift that area right there, because it is a mess and we're going to get it done, I promise you that. And I really want to think, Pat, you and Mayor, for helping us work on this project. And I'm very happy to see that this item finally is on the agenda because this park property is long overdue for the tennis and will care for it and the Uplift Atlantic corridor. I cannot think of a better organization than Central Cha to come and back into this district because they can do some of the amazing work with the youth employment, civic engagement and many other, you know, programs. This group is one of the very, very few that can do it all. And it is so unfortunate they can have a hand in relocating after being relocated several times. I can't remember. I usually I'd go to one building, another building. I'm trying to figure out where Central Georgia. So I'm hoping that you guys will finally find a home for yourself where you can land and not continue to flip flop all over the city of Long Beach. This is going to be your home, I promise you that. And I'm hoping that in the next 120 days since you are in the city, can come up with a path forward that they can acquire this property and able to rehab it. I am committed to the cause and I will commit. I am continue to be available for anything that the organization need. And I'm looking forward to a ribbon cutting at this project. Ribbon cutting at this project. Thank you guys very much. Speaker 0: Excellent. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 8: Thank you. And I think Councilmember Andrews or Vice Mayor Andrew said it all. Central Cha is an organization that has great credibility in our city, and it has done so much in terms of improving the quality of lives and of young people and families in the central area and throughout the city. Jessica, I'm always proud to say that she's an eighth District resident and a constituent. And so we we have a special relationship in that regard. But this this site, I can't think of a better location and a better organization to to to call it home. Obviously, this is a first step along the way and is going to require some some due diligence and some some some sweat equity to to bring it up to speed. But if anybody is up to it and capable, I think, central to Jessica, under your leadership, we can get it done and look forward to partnering with you throughout the process. Speaker 9: And that's why they're moving into the sixth District. Speaker 2: Of course. Speaker 0: Thank you, Carl, Terry, Ringo. Speaker 2: Thank you very. And also want to congratulate Seth Rich, Jessica Quintana and, of course, city staff for working with you in this project. There's a little bit of closure and history happening tonight that I see with a Dr. Armando Vasquez Ramos here, who had back in the day, back in the service area, Centro de la Raza, which operated many of the same services that center chose not providing. And of course, the city was a different city in those days, and we were not able to be able to move forward with an agreement that we have here tonight. So I'm very proud to be here at this moment, at this time, to support this this lease agreement. And I'm very encouraged by the city's opportunity to work with with Central, which has worked for 15, 20 years now or so in operation. 17 years so. It's it's time that you found a permanent home and to continue to grow your services and become even stronger. So I'm looking forward to also to a ribbon cutting in the very near future. Congratulations. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: I yes, I, too, want to congratulate everyone that's been working on this. I know we didn't have an opportunity to meet, but I do really. Proud of how far you guys have come. I think I've been to four of your locations and on top of the resources that you provide and the services you provide, my experience has always been as a community organizer working and in the neighborhoods and trying to find a place to meet. And so often with these very extremely grassroots organizations, we kind of struggle to find meeting spaces. Churches are open, but you got to pay $50 an hour for a staff person. And so I really look forward to you guys having a permanent community space as well. And so congratulations. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you to Councilmember Super now. Speaker 2: Thank you. I just want to add my congratulations and what I'm struck here by tonight is government is always criticized for working so slowly. Thanks for reaching out to my office. And that was just one week ago. We brought this together in one week. And I think so much credit goes to John Keisler and of course, your organization. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I want to just add, you know, Central Asia is the the leading organization in the city when it comes to working with underserved communities, particularly a Latino community that is now reaching, you know, 40 to 43% of the population. It's so important to have an organization that has the cultural competency skills to reach out to diverse communities that might be monolingual Spanish speakers, that might be dealing with issues around poverty, immigration, workforce development. And so these are oftentimes unique issues that require unique organizations that can work with with those that are some who are in fear of deportation, some who might be struggling with with questions around citizenship. And we know, obviously, that Central Asia, while traditionally has been a Latino serving organization, has also transitioned to really serving everyone, our African-American youth with our Cambodian population, all all families and and communities across the city. And so that's something that I think is really significant. I also will say that I have been to many Central Asia offices over the years, and so I'm really glad that you guys are going to have a permanent home that will be yours. At least that's my hope. And I'm really glad that the city was able to partner with all of you to do that. I know that we're not done this. We're going to have some conversations over the next couple of months. But it's very important to support an organization that is literally changing and saving lives every single day. And I'm really proud of central chair of the board. Jessica, you and your team and I want to anyway that the city can can be there to support you will continue to do so. And so we've had public comment and members as we cast their votes, I do want to point out. And I want to thank Vice Mayor Andrews. I will tell you that Vice Chair Andrews has called me at least weekly about this issue for like two months or something, it seems like constantly. We got to get the center chad deal done. And I know he's been on Pat West constantly as well. And so I just want to this would not have happened without Vice Mayor Andrews, his full support. And I want to thank him for his leadership on this issue. So with that, mayors, please cast your votes. Speaker 5: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Congratulations. And we'll take the next step here. Let me let me do a public comment. And I want to just ask. There's four people here that are going to they're speaking on our animal care services. So if I can just do them together, that would be great.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute a Letter of Intent (LOI) between the City of Long Beach and Centro C.H.A, Inc., a California 501(c)(3) corporation, for the development of a lease agreement with the option to purchase City-owned property at 1850-1862 Atlantic Avenue, for youth workforce development, civic leadership, inclusive entrepreneurship training, and community services. (District 6)

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Speaker 5: He's pushing carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next item is 26. Speaker 5: Item 26 is communication from Vice Mayor Andrew's recommendation to reallocate 18,006 council district one time district priority funds to support the Juneteenth celebration. Speaker 2: I think they were best managers. Speaker 0: Yes. Speaker 9: Thank you very much for me for. Speaker 0: Actually, if we can. Mr. Kyser, can you turn the mic off up there? Speaker 9: Thank you. Yes. Before we move forward, I would like to say that I would like to appreciate my colleagues reporting on this item, because I would been working with, especially in this office and putting these together is going to be a great one. So if anyone feels free, please join us in starting from 12 to 4 p.m. at Kings Park. And we're going to have live music, food trucks and some historical sketch. So if you're able, please try to get there Saturday. And that's some two out of four. Thank you. Speaker 0: There's there's emotion and a second is a public comment on this item. Speaker 2: I just want to support my councilman, Mr. De Andrews, and the allocation of funds. I'm going to be a little biased here. I am going to be participating in the celebration here. This is a great celebration supporting Juneteenth, which is the official end of slavery in the continental United States. I'm proud of the city of Long Beach for participating in the City Managers Group, City Managers Department for allocating resources. Part of the City of Long Beach for participating in the celebration of the defeat of the traitorous Confederate States of America and the the landing of General Gordon Granger and Galveston Island. This is a story that needs to be told. You know, believe it or not, while the traitor, General Robert E Lee, surrendered his forces, we formerly had an elementary school named after him, but when he surrendered his forces in April 5th. Believe it or not, there are multiple parts of the country that didn't have Twitter or Instagram then, but there are multiple parts of the country that continue to participate in this slavery of African-Americans. And so Juneteenth is a celebration of it's founded by a lot of our Texas brethren, much like our our councilman here, who when they they moved to the West Coast, they let the rest of us know that, you know, the man's emancipation came a little bit later. So Juneteenth is an important it's a it's a it's honor to to live in a city that supports it and celebrates it. And thank you for your time. And I hope to see you guys out on Saturday. Thank you. Speaker 9: And now, real quickly, I'd like to know I wonder why I'm using him as my DJ for that event. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Okay, thank you. There's the motion in a second scene to the public comment. Please cast your vote. Speaker 5: Cosmo Mango Council Member Ranga Washing carries item 27. Item 27 is communication from Council membership in a recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund group in the City Manager Department in the amount of 500 to support the Historical Society.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to reallocate $18,000 Sixth Council District one-time District Priority Funds currently budgeted in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department to support the Juneteenth Celebration.

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Speaker 5: Councilmember Austin. Motion carries. Speaker 0: And next up is 33. Speaker 5: Item 33 is a communication from counsel and price recommendation to receive and file a public service announcement. Video on the dangers and impacts of illegal fireworks. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Do we have the video cued up? Okay. This is remember the Cal State Long Beach students had made three animations. We already saw the first one. This is the second one. So. Consider yourself publicly advised. Speaker 2: Hello. My name is. Speaker 3: Cooper, the fire dog. And today we're here at. Speaker 7: The Long Beach. Speaker 2: Animal Shelter to find out what animals do after the 4th of July. Hi, kids. Why are you two here today? Speaker 5: I was thinking of it where there were the shiny lights and loud noises coming from the sky. I got scared and ran away. They never hugged. And then I fell and got it out. And now I'm here. Speaker 2: Those things in the sky are fireworks. They appear every 4th of July. Fine. Speaker 5: Well, tell fireworks it's not very nice to scare others. Speaker 2: You could have gotten really hurt last night. Speaker 3: If you didn't have. Speaker 2: Your color, you. Speaker 7: Might still be lost out there. Really like it? Speaker 5: Gabby, it's my helmet. Speaker 2: See. Speaker 7: Cathy's human found her because she had a tag on bumper sticker. I lost my tag last night. Speaker 5: Tell Murray Barkley. Speaker 2: Your humans. Speaker 7: Are on the way because you had a chip. Speaker 2: With a tag or chip. Speaker 7: The shelter can contact our humans to. Speaker 2: Pick us up if we get lost. Yay! Contact your local animal shelter or pet store for more information before the 4th of July. Be prepared and keep your animals safe. Speaker 0: Okay. That was a. Speaker 1: Huge shout out to the Cal State Long Beach students who I don't think they're here tonight, but we're rolling out their pieces leading up to 4th of July to get everyone in the mood. But this was a project that we proudly funded, and I'm very excited about it. Thank you. Speaker 0: That was that was so good. That was great. Are we sure? Speaker 1: It was almost like an Outback video. It really was more about like than fireworks this year. Speaker 0: Why are we showing that on Earth? Speaker 3: I'll be okay. All the ones that the councilman is presenting here, get in the pipeline with Pete, with the fire department, everything. Speaker 0: Yes, we should all. Are we doing them because we putting them on social media and stuff? Yes, that's good. All right. Speaker 1: Thank you for doing that, Pat. Speaker 0: That's really great. Is there any public comment on this? CNN members, please cast your votes. Speaker 2: Do those cartoon characters have their SAG. Speaker 5: Card because of price? Bush and Kerry's.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file presentation of Public Service Announcement video funded by the Third Council District on the dangers and impacts of illegal fireworks.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next item, please. Speaker 1: 2027 Communication from Councilwoman Gonzales Recommendation to Increase Appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by 35,000 to support infrastructure improvements at the 14th Street Park. Speaker 0: There's emotion in a second. Is there any public comment on this item? Seeing none. Please, is there? Please come forward. Speaker 2: Hi. My name is Celia McGill. I have been living here for 30 years and I represent the association neighborhood of Washington. And I have noticed eight other families here need a safe, safe space for for Labor. The funding for 14th Street Park will help create a social cohesion if will create recreational activities in the center. The community always like to showcase them all until they party the party protest community in which leader will be updated on the progress and where they are aided by community. This process will help the resident on this then be part of the improving community pride. And also, you know, it is because I support I support, but also because I like to be provocative. Right now right now, in this moment, you pass by your brother of the park 14. You saw it is a chain for my community. Represent the poorness, the shame, the negligence of my community. That's why. And really, I gave invitation to both roles. The restrictions for people to use over there because I like the park will be for families for children. And that's the basis for what we need funding for support the bar for my community. It's take away for the negligence and for bodies, for families together. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Is there any other public comment on this item? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 0: Yeah. Please go ahead. Speaker 2: My name is Catalina Munoz. So Representative Ella is going to Washington, a neighborhood. Speaker 0: Poor. Would you mind speaking into the mic about a microphone? Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 2: So, resident. There, there. La la la. Washington neighborhood. Poor quality areas. A. Los Fondos de there's the park. There are collectors. They argue that here are la salud and physical elementally. That there are ninos adultos. They are commonly. De La Comunidad in Estep Park. Your pueblo man in futuro familias they will need us can be combined. It is through tandem in our community that in El Paso. Como a como Mali has. Labor. Appropriate that they will study Gehry's fruit. Dudamel's la familia. This is. This is it. This is eaten all over their recreation. Are you there? Are you out here? April Morales. Si la seguridad de todos. Gracias. Speaker 3: Clashes. Speaker 0: Vessels. Speaker 3: So. Speaker 4: Um. My name is Catalina Munoz. I am a resident of Washington neighborhood, and I've lived there for 40 years. Um, the funds for the park on 14th Street would help the physical health and mental health of the children and adults and for the community and whole it. In this park, I can see a future for the families that meet and so they can live and enjoy it in our community. This park. It's like our property and I would like to enjoy it and for the families to because the families need a place where they can have recreation. It would help to promote security for everybody. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Speaker 2: Speaker when I started this. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Judith Cottrill. Speaker 2: And this is called Campaign Saddle and Infrastructure for Thursday. I said that I would. Speaker 4: Like to thank you, first of all for thinking about the infrastructure of the park on 14th Street. Speaker 2: For example. That will now be a family friendly, familiar goal. Speaker 4: This will give us of a familiar environment in which we can feel secure. Speaker 2: If I say the emperor told. Speaker 4: And it'll be a good thing for everyone. Speaker 2: E Damian Campbell. Sorry, sir. I see that you look like a total setup. It's Completamente cruiser mustang. I would also. Speaker 4: Like to suggest for 14 on the site what's to be blocked off so that the children can be secured. Speaker 2: Ideally without being used. I will say. Speaker 4: I'm a voluntary I. I help the children to cross the streets. And we were stationed there. Speaker 2: The iris partial of the castle. Speaker 4: And there's a space there where a car can sit. Speaker 2: It way past and. Speaker 4: It could go right behind you without you even notice in. Speaker 2: Those four awarenesses it can be open an and. Speaker 4: If you could make a change here, that would be for the safety of everyone. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you neither. Yeah. Please come. Speaker 3: Forward. Yes. Speaker 2: Hi everyone. My name is. And money and only I'll be talking about. Speaker 4: Um, three days in the park and changing the community. Speaker 2: First, I will start out with a lot. Speaker 4: A lot of kids play there. Speaker 2: And the families play there. A family makes us a family to us. Speaker 4: It's like a family to them. Speaker 2: We get we get add baby swings and regular swings. Speaker 4: Add a baby structure. Speaker 2: And we can make everything new. Thank you. Yeah. Hi. Vitamin neighbor. And today I'll make the flag. And when? Okay. Okay, down. It's okay. Go ahead. Take your time. You know. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Speaker 0: She did a great job, too. Excellent. Speaker 2: Hi. Good evening. My name is Crystal Jones and I'm a resident in a small business owner, family childcare provider in the Washington district and me and my daughters in the daycare children play at the 14th Street Park. Park. Make life better. And I think it's very important that we improve and change the park for the better and the safety of the community as a whole for all children and the neighbors within the community in the 14th Street District and all the kids that I take there, they love it. They always want to go back there looking for new things and exploring the different sections is a joy for me to see the impact of the park on their afternoon activities and physical activity or exercise. And I feel like everything's going to be changed for the better. The community will produce stronger socialization for the kids and the parents to come together to not only help the kids socialize, but interact one another to grow and learn and develop. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Your last speaker. Speaker 3: Good evening. My name is Alan Butler. I've been in. Speaker 5: Long Beach Community now going on 16 years. I'm also the council vice chair for the Boy Scouts with the community. A lot of my children and my particular troop that I'm responsible for in the Washington neighborhood live in that area. Speaker 3: The improvements that the park is being suggested with this agenda item basically are long overdue and very much needed. Speaker 5: And would help as other people have already said. So I'm not going to repeat a lot, but the. Speaker 3: Other things that it will do. Speaker 0: It provides. Speaker 3: Over. Speaker 5: 1700 families that live in that. Speaker 3: Area, a place for their children to have to go, particularly during this summer. Also, as. Speaker 5: Some of the people that I mentioned before me, we need to have possibly. Speaker 3: Have our police department provide a little more assistance because right now, on a daily basis, anywhere from about 215 to 230. Speaker 5: To the next morning until about 715 to 8:00. Speaker 3: That four strip block area of park has. Speaker 5: Turned into a homeless encampment. And that makes it an issue for the children when they're on the way to school. There will also be one because as most of you know better than I do, are children will be out of school this coming Thursday. So that would be a place they would be looking it up to get to go. And that's what they would have to face at that park. And if any improvements would be made not to try to degrade anybody, but how long would those improvements last and be in place? Unless we can make that measure to help move those people out of that area to help those children have a. Speaker 3: Place to play. Thank you for your time. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, sir. We have a motion. Please go ahead. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. My name is Alejandro Lujan. I have three children. If you go to Washington and I live in the area. Washington. Speaker 2: I remember setting up a bar. Speaker 4: As a parent, I would like the idea for my children to enjoy that area. I'd also lament the Commodores. I've only been to the park twice for a start because it's always dark. Especially gruesome. Is dangerous. Is so social. It's very dirty. You put it so well. And that is the reason why no longer take my take my children. They're being so colorful. And I feel that the funds would help a lot that for there to have that there be security. And so and as a parent I feel that cannot always that it be narrow. It's not just the giving of the funds making their construction. And then that's it. It's elemental. But to maintain it. Speaker 1: SIMON As a man, I'm. Speaker 4: Amazed week after week, month after month. Speaker 1: YOKO My mama. Speaker 4: As a parent would ask him if he could come in and put aside. I don't feel sure having my children walking in that area. Speaker 2: It'd be fun to tell you that. Speaker 4: I would do that, and I feel that the funds would also help to have some security and for my children current activities. What are they watching? What to how to look for activities outside of the outside of Washington, but to find activities right there. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. So with that kicking in motion in a second, please. We got those to appropriate the the funds listed for 14th Street Park and please cast your votes.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $35,000, offset by the First Council District one-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to support infrastructure improvements at 14th Street Park.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Item 35. Speaker 1: Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the status of Census 2020 Planning and authorize City Manager to execute an agreement with the County of Los Angeles to accept, expend and administer county allocated funding in the amount of 322,141 Citywide OC. Speaker 0: And we have a presentation on this. This is a very important topic, and so I want to turn this over to our staff. Speaker 6: Sure. Mayor and members of the city council. We have the staff coming down for this, so I'll go ahead and get started. So Census 2020 is a really critical project. We do this only every ten years and we really need to make sure that we're paying a lot of attention to this, as so much is reliant on our on our census. So we'd like to give you kind of a quick presentation of where we are and then answer any questions. So why does it matter if somebody can advance the slides? Speaker 3: Here we go. Thank you. Speaker 6: First, it's a constitutional mandate. It's something that's required that every city and jurisdiction does every ten, every ten years. It really affects our congressional representation. So counting every people is the only way that we know how many people there are so that we can determine how many congressional members California gets. The data is critical for redistricting, so we'll be going into redistricting process in 2021, and we really need to use that data so we get a solid process. As I mentioned, federal funding and state funding is directly linked to the census. And of course, accurate data and demographics is really important for planning, policy and decision making. And so in the census, we tend to talk about hard to count areas. So we really focus our areas on on people who either don't want to be counted or aren't aware of the census and how do we make sure everybody counts . And so some of those hard to count areas, the characteristics are low income neighborhoods, households below the poverty level, people older than 25 with less than a high school diploma, people who are unemployed, non-family households, single parent households, people living in low visibility housing renters and temporary residents and overcrowding households. So very specifically, the hard to count populations are here on the screen. It includes everybody from senior citizens, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, individuals experienced homelessness, LGBTQ, Hispanics and Latinos, blacks and African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, children ages 0 to 4, veterans, people with limited English proficiency and college students. And so there are a number of steps along the way that we really need to focus on for our census challenges. So we start with a complete address list, trying to really get a very accurate list of every single address in Long Beach that that may have population in it. We look at kind of the broadband access. We're looking at privacy concerns as well. And, you know, there's the issue that we're in litigation on, on citizenship question. There's also, you know, less people this year to be able to go out and do an actual counting, depending on how they're doing the census. So that's that field capacity. And then, of course, there's language barriers. The good news is that, you know, we're not doing this alone. We have a lot of partners. And so there is a lot of regional and state collaboration. And Long Beach is really at the forefront of leading this effort. Not every city is taking such a proactive approach. There is the Los Angeles Complete Count Committee. There's the California Complete Count Committee, and the U.S. Census Bureau is putting a lot of resources into this. And then locally, we're looking at creating our own complete count committee. And we've been working on a strategic plan and really how to mobilize all of our resources. So what have we done to date? We have engaged in the LUCA process, which is called the local update to sensor addresses. And so believe it or not, but we identified 5800 new address locations. So we match all the databases that the county gives us with our databases. And we found 5800 new addresses that either deleted address or the new addresses. We've also engaged with some of our community based organizations. We did a pilot with five Central CHA, United Cambodian community, St Luke's Latino in Action and will be forward to do a community based CANVASING initiative. And then we contract our contract with Community Connect Labs. Oh, yes. And at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Jackson. Yeah. Hey, thanks, Tom, for stepping in. And this effort was truly an innovation and an example of the type of strategic collaboration that we envision for since his 2020 outreach moving forward. It was made possible through a contract with Community Connect Labs. Community Connect Labs is a nonprofit organization providing mobile technology solutions and training to help government, governments and service providers connect with hard to reach populations. The cost of this pilot initiative was partially offset by the city's participation at states like incentive program. So in early August of 2018, the offices of the mayor and city manager sponsored one of the state's 24 readiness assessment convenings in coordination with the State Census Office. The event took place at the Long Beach Convention Center, engaged in engage more than 150 community leaders representing community based organizations city, county and state officials. In these convenings, the state aimed to promote and facilitate collaboration, educate and identify partners who would play a key role in establishing local, complete council committees and help to build the capacity of CBOs that will serve as trusted, trusted messengers. During the 2020 Census campaign. We saw this as we saw this partnership as an opportunity to further engage and educate our community directly about what lies ahead for the 2020 census. As Tom indicated, we in early April of 2018, the California attorney general's office requested that the city join the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff against the Department of Commerce and Census Bureau to prevent the addition of the citizenship question. Speaker 3: The secrecy. Speaker 6: To the to the census questionnaire on April 24th, 2018, City Council authorized the city's participation in the lawsuit suit as co-plaintiffs. The city was joined by the by L.A. County, the cities of L.A., Oakland, Fremont and Stockton. And in preparation for phase two of the Census 2020 planning, the city manager's office worked with the mayor's office to hire a few fellow in September 2019 to work with the city and community stakeholders to develop a Census 2020 Outreach and Mobilization Plan. Over the past year, we have had deeper engagement and strengthened our relationships with the primary organizations actively engaged in census planning across the state, including the city and county of L.A., the L.A. Regional Census Table, led by the California Community Foundation and the Advancement Project of California. And with our sub regional Long Beach partner LV Forward. Also we've street that our relationship with the State Census Office and it's been particularly possible through our relationship with our regional program manager, Sarah Palin, who's a Long Beach resident. And we've also managed to strengthen our relationship through constant interaction with the California State Association of Counties, the LEO Educational Fund and the League of California Cities. In October, as part of the 2019 League of California Cities Annual Conference, we are partnering with the City of L.A. and the State Census Office to do a workshop on achieving an accurate count in 2020. Best Practices for Cities. So as we approach the close of FY 19, we are currently working on finalizing our strategic plan, city department outreach plans. All city all city manager led departments have been activated to create these outreach plans. A Census 2020 website, the launch of a city manager, a complete count committee and with the City and City Council's Authorization of Fun, an agreement with L.A. County to support the census planning efforts. And as I as I briefly mentioned on the previous slide, the city manager's office is in the process of initiating a complete account committee . This committee will assist with finalizing a holistic strategic outreach plan and implementation plan that we hope to integrate contributions of all major community stakeholders and their respective networks. We envision this committee, consisting of city and community leaders and practitioners representing the following interests community and faith based organizations, local government, education, public health, business, workforce development, housing and neighborhoods. Public engagement, particularly practitioners representing the media, special events, coordination and engagement of court volunteers and digital inclusion. We anticipate initiating the first meeting of the committee in mid to early, early to mid July. The city's complete count efforts will primarily be supported by state funding provided to the county in the amount of $322,141. Eligible uses for the funding generally include city department outreach, support for community based organizations and faith based organizations to do outreach, promotional materials, local media engagement, special events, and the establishment of what L.A. County is calling census action kiosks places where people can go to take the census and get help if needed. The Census 2020. Planning and execution will require a commitment of significant resources from the city manager's office and city operating departments. And a significant workload impact to existing priorities is expected. Additional one time resources will be needed to support these efforts and will be identified via the FBI 20 budget. Looking ahead, we expect to finalize the Census 2020 strategic plan in the summer of 2019 and the implementation plan by fall of 2019 upon initiation of the Complete Count Committee in July. We will begin conducting early stage education and outreach through December 2019. And finally, we will initiate full mobilization of the outreach campaign in January 2020 through August 2020. We will continue to provide City Council with updates periodically during the balance of the planning phase and during execution. During the execution phase. After full mobilization. And that concludes the status update on planning efforts for the Census 2020. Thank you. And I'd be happy to take any questions at this time. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Let me make a couple comments and then I'll turn this over to Councilmember Pearce. First, I want to just think the staff for the hard work on the complete count, our work, the complete count committee that I know we're going to be putting together as well as the presentation. I also want to thank there's a lot of community members and organizations that are working across the city to ensure that we have an accurate and complete count. And the census, the census process and ensuring that we have a complete count is incredibly important for cities and especially for us in Long Beach that has such a diverse population and it has so many languages that are spoken and different communities within the city. A lot of people don't realize that so much of our funding, whether it's federal funds for major projects, whether it's assistance for homelessness, whether it's assistance from the state on a lot of projects that might help low income seniors or families that are that are struggling are all set up through the numbers and the counts that are done through the census. And so getting an accurate count of every person that is living in the city of Long Beach is incredibly important. And the only way you get an accurate count, especially when you have all types of folks that live in your community, some that might only speak Kami, others that might be new immigrants, others that might be in dense communities. Where it's hard to count, folks, is to have the engagement of the community and of the whole city. And so I just want to thank all the community advocates that are out there that are working on doing this really important work. And please know that your city is 100% in on ensuring that every, every person be counted. I also just want to note that unfortunately, it's not going to be a great cycle for cities. And as they ask and seek help from the federal government on ensuring that everyone counts. And we've we've already had some indication that from a resource perspective, we won't be receiving the same type of support that we would like to receive when it comes to counting every single person that lives in our city. And so it's going to fall on states and counties and cities to step up and fill that gap to ensure that everyone is counted. And so in Long Beach, I, I hate to say it, but if we don't ensure a complete count, no one else is going to be out there to help us and to ensure that we do it. And so we're going to bring in the support from the state. The governor is completely committed to ensuring that we have a complete count in the state of California, and we will be rolling out many initiatives with our county partners to ensure that everyone in the community is counted because every single person benefits the city so that we have a complete picture of who is actually in our community. And so I just want to thank the staff again and think the community on that. And with that, let me turn this over to Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: Thank you for that and thank you staff for your presentation. I definitely agree with everything that our mayor said. I have a I'm going to highlight what he said. I mean, having every single person count in our city, regardless of immigration status of language is so important for everybody. Regardless of where you live in the city, it ensures that we have resources and that we can actually ensure that we've got parks in every single part and that we're not leaning on some more than others. And so this is critical for everyone citywide. I appreciate through the presentation the comments about the CBOs and all the nonprofits that were listed, obviously someone that's done community work before stepping in to the government side. I understand that there those CBOs are much more skilled and in a position to build trust with people that might not want to share information with the census. So not only do we have that partnership, but I was hoping that you could explain what does that partnership look like? Are we providing materials to them? And if we are, who's translating that material? Does it come down from the federal government? Is that something that we do in-house or is that something that the CBOs are responsible for doing? Speaker 6: Well, Councilmember Pearce, I would state that community based organizations are what the 2020 centers are going to be receiving support from a variety of areas, principally from the state. The state has allocated funding to administrative, large administrative, community based organizations. The one that's representing L.A. County is the California Community Foundation, who received approximately $8 million to support provide funding, support for outreach activities for community based organizations. But in the context of our complete count efforts, we want to create a strategic plan that is synergistic to the county's strategic plan. And we want to apply our resources that we're receiving to support that strategic plan. And part of that strategic plan includes support for CBOs. Then we will allocate funding for that. So I don't think that. So the short answer to your question is that the CBOs will be adequately supported from a variety of sources to to do on the ground outreach throughout the campaign. In terms of translating materials, the state is requiring that the county and any of the contracting entities with the county have a language access plan as part of their strategic plan. So we are actively working on that. So it's part of our complete count effort. We will be making sure that we have resources available to support the translation of materials and providing them to community based organizations and others who are doing outreach on the ground. Speaker 7: Great. Thank you for that. And one other question. I know we can have as many strategic plans as possible, but if those organizations don't have the staff and the volunteers and the community groups to actually go out there and get in neighborhoods that we otherwise wouldn't, then it doesn't matter what strategic plan we have. So I wanted to ask on the $300,000 in county funding for Long Beach, how much of that stays with the city and how much of that goes to the CBOs? Speaker 6: Well, at this point, since we're early in the process, I mean, we haven't even established agreement and we have a draft strategic plan at to this point. We want to make sure that we give the community an opportunity to weigh in on a strategic plan to establish the priorities in partnership with the community. So we don't have a specific amount that we set aside to support CBO outreach. I will I will add that our Lucca effort a year and a half ago is provides an early indication of kind of how we intend to work with community based organizations. So we receive $15,000 through the local incentive program from the state of California to support our contract with Community Connect Labs to provide the technology. But we as a city, we allocated approximately $30,000 to support the community based organizations that did the canvasing in the hundred and 23 block groups as part of that effort. And so, you know, we learned from that that was very successful. And so we think going forward, we realize that there is a need for resources for those groups and in order to do the work. Speaker 7: Great. Thank you for that. I think my takeaway today is that I think that this is wonderful. In your conversations, in your strategic planning, I know we often whether in any kind of outreach that we as a bureaucracy try to do, it's never quite enough. And we can't do a job as well as the nonprofits and those organizations. And so I would hope that our funding would be centered on creating a structure to help them be successful in doing the work. I'm not sure if any of my other colleagues have comments on that, but thank you again for the presentation. And I know some of the CBOs are here. Thank you guys for rolling up your sleeves and doing the important work to serve our community. Speaker 0: Any public comment on this item? Speaker 6: Good evening. Mayor and City Council. My name is James Swanson, the associate director at Long Beach Forward, where a community based organization here in the city. I'm also a third district resident. My sleeves always stay rolled up. So I just wanted to thank you and thank city staff that are moving us not only from the city manager's office, but from the mayor's office as well, and some of the council officers that we've met with already to be partners in the census effort, because we all know what it's what's at stake for the 2020 census for Long Beach Forward. As an organization that supports movement building, we've taken on the role of being one of the one of six regional co conveners for the L.A. Regional Census Table. And this is a county wide effort that's never been done before and unprecedented because we know what's at stake in this county. So I really appreciate the partners that we've been able to meet with so far in this, because the L.A. Regional Census table is a space for community based organizations to organize ourselves in the city of Long Beach, where we serve community members in the city, outside the city, and to talk about how we can strategize and connect and work together to do census education and outreach, because we know once come once January comes, we're going to have to hit the ground more than running. We're going to have to be really going at it to make sure that we cover every inch of these hard to count areas in the city and these community based organizations that we've been working with over the past. It's the end of last year. I've been meeting in Long Beach, have amazing outreach plans that are really upping the game and what it means to actually do authentic community engagement into people who haven't been reached before. And when we think about these hard to count populations, of course, it's probably no surprise that the hardest to count areas in the city are areas like central west and north Long Beach, including also the Beverly's and the fourth District. As you can imagine, a lot of student housing of students who live there. But just to give you a snapshot, just yesterday, the state of California released some really amazing tools to read, to describe hard to count populations not only in cities, but other counties that encourage anyone else in the community who wants to know more to check out the California State Census website. But just to give you an idea about what these hard to count populations are like, the top populations in Long Beach and Crewe include overcrowded rental units, limited English speaking households, households without broadband subscriptions or Internet access, families that are 150% below the poverty line and families facing unemployment. So there is no easy task to reaching these communities and these populations. But we're really looking forward as these community based organizations are getting organized and partnering with you all and to learn and share from each other not only about how authentic engagement can be done, just like the Lucca canvasing that we were part of. But how we can use this process not only as a community building strategy, but a local hire strategy so we can get people in the community who know the community best, but also really build a wealth building strategy. So we're in good terms going into 2020 and 2021 and beyond. So thank you so much for your efforts and I hope you have a great night. Speaker 0: Thank you. And our next big final speaker, please, on census. Speaker 6: Good evening, Mayor. Council members. My name is Pat Kennedy. I'm with the Greater Long Beach Interfaith Community Organization. Just wanted to appreciate the complete count effort the city is looking at. To be honest, we've been working closely also with Long Beach Forward, trying to figure out how do we engage non-profits across the city to engage deeply in terms of getting people out and getting them counted. We think the difference between 450 and a half a million people is going to be those hard to reach people. And that's going to be a big difference, obviously, in our budget, in our resources in the future. So we hope that 300,000 that a significant portion of that is invested in getting people that are trusted messengers knocking on doors and talking with people. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. That concludes public comment. We've heard the presentation and had our questions. Please cast your votes on the receiving file on the census report. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the status of Census 2020 planning; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and any necessary documents and amendments, with the County of Los Angeles, to accept, expend, and administer County allocated funding, in the amount of $322,141, to support Census 2020 outreach efforts to Hard-To-Count (HTC) communities. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: And we're going to go ahead and go back to item. 42. Speaker 1: Report from Public Works Recommendation to award a contract to raise construction for construction of the Naples Islands. Seawall Repair Phase two project for a total contract amount not to exceed 15,685,900 for District three. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let's begin by turning this over to our staff. So, Mr. Modica. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council. So tonight before you is a pretty significant project. We wanted to give you a very quick update on. So the Naples Sea, I think a lot of us have been down to Naples. It's a beautiful part of town. And we walk around those seawalls and most people don't recognize that those are actually public walkways. So those are not part of people's houses. Those are the public domain, which is why it's such an open, inviting area to go down to. And so we've been assessing those Naples Sea walls over the last several years, and they're in need of repair. There's seven different fit or six different phases, and two of them have been the most critically identified as really in need of repair, specifically for seismic and for other types of of degradation. And so in 2009, we started this effort and identified the issues. We did our six total plans, and then we actually completed phase one in 2015. And so we're here to talk about phase two. The scope of work is we really need to protect homes. It's on the left side. As we protect our existing infrastructure and homes, we then demolish what's there already and then we create a new walkway and a new seawall that goes along with it. So phase two is a little bit different than phase one. The project actually is not one single area of the canal. In fact, it's three separate landmasses. It's a little bit bigger than phase one. It's another 240 feet. And it's more complicated because the sheet piles have to go down 4.4 and a half feet to accommodate those rougher waters. There's 60 concrete piles that support larger docks, and there's two new pump stations as part of the project. And so this is a more complex project, a larger project, and it's about 17.9 million total funded out of Thailand. So these are not funds that are general funds that could go to streets and roads. It's all out of the tidelands. So you get a sense of where the site is. So we're looking at Treasure Island and the entrance to the Naples Canal is where we would be doing the work. That's the next vulnerable part. So a lot of what we're trying to do is to replicate what we did from phase one. So we learned a lot from the community outreach and a lot of the technical issues there. But we did learn some things from phase one, specifically about the utility conduits, about some of the desires of the residents to plant some technical issues with our access platforms and also our pile caps and some of the some of the issues to make sure people aren't just sitting out there in a dangerous condition. So for construction timelines, we're really excited to be here in front of you today. So summer 2019, we would go out and start working with homeowners and do all the project submittals that are necessary and site preparation. We then would start the project in early 2020 when you install those huge sheet piles and push them down into the water. And then 2021 and fall would we would have substantial completion. So tonight before you is a recommendation to adopt the plans and specs. It's about a contract of $13 million with a 13% contingency. And with that, we're available for questions. Speaker 0: Well, thank you. Great presentation. I want to turn this over to Councilwoman Price first. Speaker 8: Thank you to our staff one for working so hard and learning the expertize on this project, but two for conducting so much community outreach on this. Many people don't know that the first phase involved a whole construction scheme that was different than anything that we had done before, given the materials that we were using and the type of construction that was required. And so we've had to utilize a lot of lessons learned from the first phase to make phase two be efficient and cost effective as best as we can. So I appreciate the the expertize that's been developed by our Tidelands team to make this happen. I'm also very mindful that as we look towards our climate adaptation plan and talking about our climate adaptation challenges in the future, making sure that our sea walls are structurally sound is a very important component for all of our all. Speaker 2: Of the. Speaker 8: Coastal communities throughout the state, but especially, of course, here in Long Beach. I do want to thank the residents. I'm not sure how many of the residents are here, how you guys, they really have worked very hard on this project, attending monthly meetings for years, especially. Maureen Poe is here. She really has been a champion for the entire neighborhood in making sure that she advocates for the residents in regards to this particular project. This project is really important to the city because every year, especially around Christmas time, tens of thousands of people come to Naples to visit the area, to enjoy the sights . And we need to be able to provide an environment that is safe and a public walkway that is structurally sound. So I'm very grateful for the work that's been done on this. And I want to thank the residents who are here. I also want to say, I know that we're we're still talking about some of the aspects of the project that will need to be fine tuned and based on. Speaker 2: Cost to further. Speaker 8: Identified. And I think if we can have consistency to the extent possible with phase one in terms of the railings, that will be very important, even though it may not be as cost effective as going with a different type of railing. I want to make sure that we have consistency and are paying attention to the esthetic needs of the community in that regard. So with that, I want to thank our staff for being involved and helping with this project. Speaker 0: Councilor Pearce. I just want to add a few comments. First, I just want to thank staff as well. I think a lot of folks don't realize how important of an infrastructure project are or Master Seawalls project actually is. The first phase was incredibly complex, but we also, like Councilman Price said, learned a lot. And I think the Tidelands team did a great job of working with the community and the project. Beyond being a large project within our Tidelands is also it's just a massive infrastructure project and also a public safety project. We have to ensure that the seawalls are are not just strong, but are also protecting not just the property, including including the cities, but the people that come to visit Naples and that are walking through the canals every single day. The other thing I wanted to add is I will I just want to to our staff. I, I had communicated a little bit with Councilman Price today, and I agree also the issue on the railings and the the fence or the railings, whatever you want to call it, I've had some communication with some folks that live there . And I think that the consistency I know while there is a difference in in price, I think it's important that we keep the consistency the same. And so I just want to make sure that we continue that we have a commitment from staff that we are going to look to ensure that that happens to the best of our ability. Speaker 6: Mr. MODICA Yeah, so we absolutely agree that it would be nice to have consistency. We really like the design. It has to do with whether it's a horizontal fence or a vertical fence, as we've been working on this project and costs have been kind of creeping up on us as they do with every every cost, the cost of every project, the cost of steel. First and foremost, we wanted to make sure we got all of the project done because the safety came first. But we would really like to find solutions to get back to that original fence. So the project is bid actually has the vertical fence in it. Our plan is halfway through the project. We're going to see how we do and if we can make the change order and get that upgraded fence, we would love to do that. So it's about a half million dollar change order. We're open to that and we'll just do the best to make sure we don't run into any problems. And then we hope that will work out quite well. Speaker 0: And just it's not just I understand that. And so I'm I'm glad that we're going to hopefully commit to doing that because it's not just about what we're installing. It's a completely esthetic change to where currently is there. And so I think to go from one kind of traditional classic look that we've had to then completely change that I think would be not consistent with just the look of, of the whole neighborhood. So I just want to make sure that we're as committed to that as possible. Please. Speaker 6: We are very committed. Speaker 0: Thank you. And and so with that, obviously very supportive of this project. Is there any public comment on the Seawalls project? And seeing members. Please go ahead. And Castro votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. And we are going to hear the other. We have another item 25. That's right.

Contract

Recommendation to adopt Plans and Specifications No. R-7142 for construction of the Naples Island Seawall Repair Phase Two Project; award a contract to Reyes Construction, Inc., of Pomona, CA, in the amount of $13,881,331, with a 13 percent contingency in the amount of $1,804,573, for a total contract amount not to exceed $15,685,904; and, authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments. (District 3)

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Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. And we are going to hear the other. We have another item 25. That's right. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Price recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund group in the City Manager Department by 2000 to provide funds to the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, who will be hosting their annual Long Beach Race Week event. Speaker 0: Is there a motion and a second? Okay. Any public comment on this item? See nine Councilman DiGiovanni Finger OC Race Week. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Councilmember Urunga. I'm still on the price. Speaker 4: Are you? Yes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and do our commission appointments now. So we are going to start with item 22.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $2,000, offset by the Third Council District one-time District Priority Funds transferred from the General Fund group in the Citywide Activities Department to provide funds to the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club who will be hosting their annual Long Beach Race Week event once all required City permits are obtained; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $2,000 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 0: The charter commission. The next one. It's item 34, I believe. Speaker 2: 30. Thank you. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Andrew's Chair, Personnel and Civil Service Committee Recommendation Received Charter Commission Appointments and reappointment. Speaker 0: These are commission appointments coming from the the committee. And let me go through this first over to Vice Mayor Andrew says. Speaker 5: Yes, thank you very much. At this time, we have two appointees, I think, and that's Mr. Porter Gilbert and Justin Morgan. So could we please, if you like to stand up and say a few words, you can. Speaker 0: Let me go ahead and read their we want to read their their bios really quick. And so we have two appointments to see. PCC The first one is is Porter Gilbert again. Porter has been a resident here in Long Beach for now almost 15 years, and is the executive director of the LGBTQ center here in Long Beach and currently oversees the operations, programs and outreach efforts. He serves currently as a commissioner for the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations and has been involved in numerous organizations here locally in the city, including the Fourth Street Business Association, our Everyone Home Advisory Task Force and Advisory Boards for both the Lumbee Trauma Recovery Center and the Cal State University, Long Beach Master of Public Health Program. So congratulations, Porter, for joining this commission and also Mr. Justin Morgan, who is a fourth District resident. Justin Johnson lives in the fourth District and is an educator and teacher at Westerly School, where he teaches math to sixth and eighth graders and is the department head of mathematics . So very smart, Justin. He he's also a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Phi Delta and the Phi Delta and Kappa International Education Academy Academic Honor Society member. And so, Justin, also congratulations on joining the PCC. And with that is your public comment on these two on these still seeing nine? Let me turn this over first. Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 7: Thank you. Thank you again to all of our newly appointed commissioners. I did want to take a moment and just say that tonight we are making history in the city of Long Beach where we have the very first non-conforming gender non-conforming commissioner being appointed to our city PCC and to our charter commissions. And so I'm really proud of Porter Goldberg, who I would call a friend who have got to see a start as a volunteer and make his way to this position and educating all of us on how we can be more inclusive and thoughtful in our policymaking. So I'm just really proud of Long Beach today. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Warringah. Speaker 3: I totally agree in that the Long Beach is one of the most progressive cities in Southern California, in California, and probably in. Speaker 6: The United States. Thank you for your service. All you volunteers. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you very much. So with that members, I did call public comment. And so members with that, please cast your votes on these two appointments. Speaker 1: Of motion carries. Speaker 0: Great. And with that, we're going to go ahead and go and take the photos of all the commissioners that are here to please meet us here in the front and the council members to also please meet us in the front. Speaker 2: When his service members. Speaker 3: Oh, really? Yeah. I got older, man. Good. Thank you so much. Yeah. Speaker 7: I know you're not a hugger. You're getting a hug. Speaker 3: Thank goodness. Why is it so slow. Speaker 2: Down. Speaker 3: Again? Thank you very much, Mr. Supernova. Yeah. Yes. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Can we get a picture? Speaker 4: Can we get everyone on the right side of move in, please. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 4: All right. Want to. Speaker 2: Three. You. Speaker 4: Oh, wait. Speaker 3: Oh. More or less. No more. One more. Speaker 0: Okay, we are. Thank you. That we're going to go ahead and take a one minute recess. We're going to get set up for the presentation for Senator elect Gonzalez, who just joined us. And I know. Like I mentioned, she just joined us from her son's graduation. So I know she was rushing. And so thank you for for being here. One minute recess and we will meet when we come back. We will be beginning the presentation. Speaker 3: You. You know. Speaker 2: No. Okay. Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Okay. Oh. Speaker 0: But I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting back to order here. Speaker 3: So we have folks I know in the back. Speaker 0: If they can hear me, just please come back and we'll get this meeting started again. Speaker 3: Hmm. Speaker 0: Okay. We're going to start in just a minute. If I can have folks take their seat, please. So I'm going to start in just a minute. Madam Court, could you please do that? We're going to call this meeting back to order. If he can please you. The roll call, please. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilmember Pierce County Councilwoman Price. Councilmember Suber down here. Councilwoman Mongo. Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilmember Your Honor. Councilman Austin. Councilmember. Mayor Garcia. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I'm here as well. We're going to go ahead and begin our presentation tonight. And it's like we do as a tradition here at the city council. We do our farewell presentations to any member of of the council body that is ending their tenure within the city.

Appointment

Recommendation to receive Charter Commission appointments and reappointments pursuant to Section 509 of the City Charter and Section 2.03.065 of the Long Beach Municipal Code.

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Speaker 0: All right, let's go. Okay, we're going to do one more item then public, then the public comment. So let me go back up to. Which is the other one I got pulled. Okay, Adam. 43, the second reading of the tenant relocation. Speaker 1: Communication from city attorney recommendation or declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to tenant relocation assistance red and adopted as red citywide. Speaker 0: This is the second reading. There's a motion and a second is the public comment on this item. Seeing. Not in the public eye. Please come forward. Oh, yeah. Please come forward. Is there any other. I'm going to close the speakers list. And anybody else. Now is the time we're trying to move. We've still got a full agenda, so please, we can be brief. That would be great. This is the second reading. Please hold on 1/2. Okay, I'm closing the speaker's list. And it's closed. It's fine. You're in line. Guys, is everyone in line for this item? This is the second reading. So I think we've we've let's be. Yeah, I get that. So let's go ahead and begin, please. Speaker 2: My name Jeanette. Speaker 0: And actually, I'm sorry. We're going to go down in 90 seconds. Please begin. Speaker 2: My name's Natalie Shaw. I there's a six unit building I live in, and three units have been thrown out. And a new owner came in, and they did not give us two option to pay more rent. They just have evicted us. And you're doing it on July 25th, so we would not be covered by the August 1st bill. And we all might be homeless for a while until we can save some money to get first and last month's rent. And I just wanted to say that this item 43 is very important, and I do hope it does pass. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you very much. Next item, please. And before Mr. Fox goes, we have closed the speakers list. So the gentleman in the back is our last speaker. Nope. Actually, this not just. Yeah. Behind Jordan? Yep. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm here for the second reading of this ordinance. I remember that they said that there was going to be some tweaking to this ordinance last time we were here. Did that get accomplished? Rex Richardson brought it on the floor that we could adjust certain things. I haven't heard anything back about any kind of a adjustment to the ordinance as read. I'd like to have an answer for that if possible. My concern on this ordinance, frankly, is for tenants, not for landlords, particularly the more stringent we make any kind of . Contract between landlords and tenants. The more stringent the landlords will be in selecting tenants. Right now we do favors for people and say, Oh, you have a 505 score, we'll let you rent anyway. We don't care. You're a nice person, but if it becomes too onerous with relocation costs, not based on the 10% thing which the state already said, but don't just cause eviction, it may make it difficult for people to get an apartment because the standard will be so high. And so I think there's always consequences to what we do, and I hope that we will. You know, if you are going to pass this ordinance that in the future we look at that and see come back to it maybe in a year to figure out if we can amend the ordinance, as Miss Price had wanted to do. And Darryl Supernanny and I thank you so much for your time today. I just wanted to make that a little speech for you. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Fox. And also, I know there's there's some other folks that are kind of, I think, having some conversations in the in the gallery. So, please, if you have to chat, please go outside. I want to get through our public comment. Yes, sir. Speaker 3: Council Mayor Chuck Brewer. I am here to say that since the conversation of this ordinance had come into place, I have seen rents already go up and it's hurting. The tenant. This ordinance will eventually hurt the tenant. I've also seen investors who are excited about the city. Talk about leaving the city. We've seen this before. We've seen it in. In our businesses. As Toyota has left the state, we're right now. The hot area to buy in is not California. Well, you know, when you go up there, let them know that we're seeing businesses leave. We're seeing people leave and people who want to invest in the state leave. Delaware statue trusts are one of the way it goes. So when toilets need to be correctly cleared, windows need to be fixed, and there's damage to buildings. And a landlord can't make a decent profit to do this because of ordinance of rent control like this, it will eventually hurt the tenant and our city. Our city deserves better. I think there's unforeseen consequences and we see it in our city just like we see potholes. We thought we couldn't fix the city, let the potholes go. Well, the same thing is going to be with the tenants and the landlords. Speaker 0: Thank you for making the next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Good evening. Mayor Robert Garcia and council members. I'm sorry, knew it. This is like it my third or fourth time. But I'm I get like to the point because I'm very, very active with this. 43 lieutenant relocations is that I am for this because if this doesn't pass, how can you have people relocate and then they don't have the money to relocate? Because the you know, the housing is really, really high. I mean, Long Beach, affordable housing. They have Section eight. They have Long Beach affordable housing as well, a sliding scale. But some management companies, they don't have that. So my my I hope this you will understand that instead of doing something to reduce homelessness, this is going to create homelessness. And it's big enough as it is. We want to do better in our city. And I hope that this passes because another thing is also the risk, not only the rent control is high, but also minimum wage. You know, as soon as minimum wage goes up, then next thing you know, then the rent goes up and then everything else in the grocery stores goes up. I mean, I remember once upon a time when you could buy a can of Campbell's soup for a dollars a 40 something says now it's almost $5. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Good evening, councilmembers and Mayor. My name is Maria. I'm a proud de one resident. Ten years. Thank you, Lina, for serving undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic. And I'm also the community organizer, director of community organizer for housing Long Beach. I would first and foremost like to thank everyone who has put work into this in getting this ordinance. It has been a long journey for us at Housing Long Beach. In 2016, we advocated for a responsible renters ordinance which mirrored just cause. In 2018, we pulled papers for rent control and stirred up the whole city. We are ready for this policy. We look forward to working alongside you all, alongside landlords and alongside all our beautiful community members. Again, before I leave. When renters rise, cities thrive. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Nick Speaker, please. Speaker 2: Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Ailsa Tong with Long Beach Forward. I just want to thank you so, so much for your leadership in putting this ordinance forward. This ordinance will help prevent homelessness. Period. Full stop. We are working Long Beach Forward is working. Proud to work alongside our partners housing Long Beach and Libra. And we also urge you to make the critical fixes that we did discuss in the last round, especially to ensure that tenants do receive their relocation assistance before they are required to move. But in any case, thank you so much, Mayor and City Council, for your leadership on this critical ordinance. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next week for please. Speaker 6: Good evening, Mayor. Council and staff. My name's Peter Madsen. I'm in the third district and I am with Long Beach. Residents Empowered. It's great to see such a critical policy being treated with the urgency that reflects the urgency of the housing crisis that we're facing in Long Beach, that families, seniors, disabled folks are all facing here in Long Beach. I'm eager to see this policy and other policies continue to be strengthened to better protect the renters that make Long Beach the diverse and vibrant city that we always love to talk about. I've heard that word thrown out a lot tonight, and I love my city, too. I grew up here and want to see it protected and I want to be able to continue living here myself. I think. Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great that we got the. Speaker 6: Urgency to reflect that crisis and I think to make it stronger, we got to make sure that these tenants get the money before they move out so they can actually use that money to get the next place they're going to live instead of winding up without a home. That's kind of the really what the spirit of this policy is supposed to get at. And I hope we can I hope we don't forget to prioritize that additional source of funding that we want to find to provide the extra relocation amount to seniors and disabled renters. Um, I hope this remains a priority because these are some of the most vulnerable to displacement and have the least amount of safety nets. So thank you for your time. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Hi there. My name is Jordan. When I'm a resident of the seventh District as a tenant, I like to speak for myself and as attendants rights advocate, I've been empowering other tenants to speak for themselves as well. So I speak for myself and hopefully I speak for other tenants in that we're really thankful to everybody on the council and on the staff that has helped push this forward and get this tenant relocation policy passed, something that we've been waiting for for a long time. And it's the first step in fantastic housing policy. From here, we have more work to do. I really hope that council members see this as a call to action for future action, especially advocating for affordable and supportive housing services that we need throughout our city. It's just as important to build as it is to have comprehensive rent stabilization and renter protection policies in good city planning. So once again, thank you so much for bringing this forward and I really encourage you pass this tonight. Thanks so much. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And our last speaker. Speaker 2: Good evening. Council Mayor Garcia, I mean, I'm not sure why I'm here because you guys have already decided to push this through. So it's kind of I think the people that watch this on TV need to know that everything's already decided before we hit this council chamber. So congratulations housing Long Beach, because you already made it happen. But the truth is, yeah, congratulations. But you know what? The real loser is going to be the tenants, because they're the ones going to lose their housing. And you guys can take the blame for it because they're going to lose their housing because you push policy that isn't going to keep you in your homes. So you guys should think again. When you push policy like this, it's bad for the tenants. Rent controlled cities have the highest rent in the nation. So I mean, I'll benefit as a property owner because now I can push my rent really high now because I'm going to need to because of the policies you're pushing. So, hey, think about it. Santa monica rent control, highest rent in the nation, San Francisco rent control, high rent, New York rent control. So you're pushing policy that's going to raise rents. You're going to put it on the backs of the property owners. You're going to have a lot of small property owners lose their housing. You're going to lose your housing when the property owners lose their buildings. So think about it, because as you grow your political future, you're harming a lot of people. You're harming a lot of people, and you're making it look like you're helping them, but you're hurting them. You're going to hurt a lot of people. Like in Santa monica, 30% of the Latin population was vacated out when they implemented Erika Charles So think about that. Housing Long Beach. Goodnight. Speaker 0: Goodnight. That concludes public comment. So we have a motion in a second on the motion. Councilor Pearce. Anything? Nope. Country Ranga? Nope. Councilman Austin. Speaker 10: Thank you. And I will be voting in support of this second reading. I want to thank public comment. I do want to just reiterate that this was. Speaker 3: This issue was was widely. Speaker 10: Discussed by the council. I think it was acknowledged that this is an imperfect. Speaker 3: Policy and that it still needs work. And I look forward to working to make it a more and even better. Speaker 10: Policy that protects tenants and and gives them flexibility. So look forward. Speaker 3: To that discussion very soon. Speaker 0: Figure Councilman Councilman Price. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to support the advocates who have come out on both sides of this issue. I will be voting against the item tonight consistent with what I have shared in the past regarding my concern with the just cause eviction portion. The rest of it I'm okay with, but I don't like the just cause eviction portion of it. And I look forward to bringing this item back or having somebody bring it back so that we can make those modifications, which I do believe is in the works. And I will happily and proudly support the modifications made at that time. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Supernova. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thanks to the speakers here tonight. I have a couple of questions of staff. One involves education and the other involves data analysis. Can staff explain what kind of outreach or training we're doing or plan to do in the future? And the dilemma we have is calls to our council office. Speaker 9: Both from tenants and from landlords, wanting the policy explained. Speaker 3: Do we have budgeting here to conduct that. Speaker 9: Or what is. Speaker 3: The plan moving forward? Speaker 6: Yes, Councilmember I'll have Linda Tatum and Patrick Harris answer those questions. And yes, we're planning on a very robust outreach campaign. Speaker 2: And just to elaborate further, the outreach campaign will involve direct contact with the property owners, as well as the residents using the business license address list, because landlords are required if they have four units or more, to get a business license. Using that as a primary tool, we will be able to identify the very specifically the landlords. Speaker 8: And. Speaker 2: Provide them with some of the material that was specifically called out in the ordinance regarding information that they'll need to transfer to the tenants. But in addition to that, we have a number of other outreach sources, such as providing information on the city's website, on social media. We'll have a fairly robust outreach effort, and we're I'm happy to share that in a little bit more detail with the city council in a24 from memo to. So you'll have a better idea of that going forward. That, frankly, was one of the reasons we asked for additional time just to allow staff to pull together those resources to make sure that we make a very concerted effort to get the word out to landlords and to the tenants. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you, Will. Speaker 9: Appreciate that, too, from four Memo. Speaker 3: And we'll if there's something you'd like to do in the interim. Speaker 9: Or if would you like to us to communicate our office, to communicate that we'll be waiting for this policy to. Speaker 3: Come forward? I'm sorry, could you repeat we're getting questions daily about the Policy Council. Should I sell my units now or whatnot? So the response is we will have those answers. Speaker 9: Forthcoming at a certain. Speaker 2: Point. Yes. And you can also feel free to direct them to the Development Services Department. We're happy to respond to those questions on a one on one basis. Speaker 3: Okay, great. Thank you. My other question is on data analysis and what type of data we have in terms of the number of people impacted. And I'm not sure if much of this was data driven, but do we know how many people have how many landlords have raised rent? So, for instance, I think we know the number for Plex's in the city. The number I have is 2829, if that sounds about right, do you know how many sold in the last year? Would staff know that? Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Councilman, we don't have that that kind of data available to us. Speaker 6: Okay. Speaker 9: So I think. Speaker 3: That number is 97 have sold. So my question would be, I wonder if. Speaker 9: We're going to at a certain. Speaker 3: Point either benchmark where. Speaker 9: We are now in terms of how many rents have been raised of that 97, where the. Speaker 3: Apartment houses have changed ownership. I just think we either need a benchmarking exercise for where we are so we can track this ordinance as we move forward. So that'd be my request. Thank you. Speaker 2: Agreed. And we can certainly accommodate that. That was one of the purposes of the program so that as we get payments made out under the provisions of this, we would have some data that we could start tracking and report back to the to the council. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you, Director. I think we're on the same page. I just wanted to bring it up for the. Speaker 9: Public so there's no thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. And finally, Councilman, can. Oscar. Speaker 8: I just want to say thank you to our all of the housing advocates. We started this about a year and a half, almost two years ago. Of course, it's gone beyond. And now in my last final meeting, I'm really, really proud of this this ordinance. And I'm looking forward for this to carry through and to really be supportive of of our residents that need it the most. So thank you very much for all of your work. Speaker 0: Thank you. And this is this is the the main motion, which is to approve the ordinance. Second reading, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. That concludes that ordinance. We are now going back to the agenda where next up item is going to be 32 and 33. I do want to I do have the public comment that I want to get through here.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.97 relating to Tenant Relocation Assistance, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06112019_19-0560

Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. That concludes our public comment. I will move to item 32 of you, Mr. Richardson, Councilman, to please with either. Speaker 1: Item 32 communication from Councilmember Richardson, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilwoman Mango Councilmember Urunga recommendation to receive and file the 2019 Everyone in Economic Inclusion Implementation Plan adopt recommendations and request City Manager to work with the appropriate departments to report back with a timeline for implementation within 120 days. Speaker 5: Thank you, Congressman Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you, Vice Mayor. So tonight we are recognizing a year and a half of work carried out by Long Beach stakeholders and community members who set out to take a deeper dove into the question of how do we change the narrative of the tale of two cities here in the city of Long Beach? Two very different economic realities for the people who live in the city. We've set out on set on a process of learning, information gathering to ensure that we understand the challenges and opportunities that face our community. I know this this conversation began in 2017. And since then, you know, I joined the Economic Development Committee, Economic Development and Finance Committee. And I was, you know, very clear with Mayor Garcia that this is this is the deeper conversation I'd like to have in this post. And so tonight, we conclude that research and engagement process, as we submit to the Council five recommendations to advance economic opportunity and economic inclusion here in the city of Long Beach. So here's a little bit of context. We kicked off in 2017 for this deeper dove into economic inclusion, which is already referenced in our economic blueprint. We dedicated time to learning what economic inclusion is, and we explored strategies that help us expand on economic opportunities to communities that have traditionally been left left behind for generations. The first phase was dedicated to learning, and it had three steps. These slides are going to advance. Speaker 3: Oh, we got it. Okay. Speaker 9: So great. So. So the everyone listening tour engaged. So it began with learning and listening. So we began with a listening tour. We engaged 100 Long Beach residents from underrepresented communities and nine equity based focus groups to create 12 community solutions and to hear what the community really felt. It was a listening session, to hear what they felt about the economic reality in Long Beach. Then we hosted policy roundtables in partnership with L.A. LISC that facilitated a series of five roundtables addressing specific aspects, different aspects and ideas around economic inclusion. We commissioned a report from policy linking from USC program for Environmental and Regional Equity, the policy link, equitable, equitable growth profile. All of those things, you know, came to City Council in 2017 and over the course of the last year they took place in the data and the lessons we learned really. The city staff did a good job on that first step and it really set it set the stage and the framework for phase two, which was community led. This report summarizes this report, you know, conducted by my office, by a lot of the partners, by LISC, by Economic and Policy Impact Center, reflects that that next step of that process, it wouldn't have been possible without community partnership from Wells Fargo, who helped support the community outreach process with L.A., LISC and all of the community members who are here. So phase two really was focused on debt, on solutions, right? The first phase was listening and let's hear what the problem is. And the second phase is really solutions. So we began by convening a multidisciplinary work workgroup of Long Beach community partners known as the Implementation Committee. This was made up of of community partners, economic development commissioners, stakeholders. And at our first meeting, several community members expressed their readiness to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Over the course of three months, the economic I mean, the implementation committee helped us condense 20 separate recommendations and objectives down into five comprehensive recommendations. The committee examined each strategy considering the content, the current level of support from city staff, the needs and interest of the community, and our best practices in action around the country. And the five strategies are feasible, as some can be accomplished in the short term and some are very comprehensive. It may take up to five years to fully implement some of these these bigger ideas. Here are the five recommendations. Then we took it to the community. We took we took it on the road. We took the show on the road and hosted nine community conversations with Long Beach residents and business owners across the city. Partnering, partnering with Councilmembers Councilmember Garang on the West Side, the Economics Student Association at Cal State Long Beach, the Council of Business Associations. On the Small Business Conversation, we co-hosted the Conversations with Councilmembers Gonzales and Pearce in the downtown area. We partner with Central Cha. We partnered with the United Cambodian community, the LGBTQ Center and the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. So over the course of three months we engaged more than 300 community members in dialog centered on these five key strategies. Gathering input on each concept. The plan highlights the community feedback in each recommendation to ensure the strategy achieves the best intended outcome. So while these recommendations have been vetted by the community, the implementation plan presents the context, the timing, additional consideration as we hand this off to city staff. So here are the five recommendations that we landed on. So first and I'm going to I'm going to lift up each of these. So first is to establish a municipal small business council with dedicated staff to provide representation, advocacy and technical technical assistance to every small business in the city. It may sound like a big, big idea, but for a city our size, there is room to expand our business groups in our city, our business districts do very well, but they represent businesses. They advocate for businesses within a defined boundary. Our Chamber of Commerce is present and they're engaged. But there are cost burdens to be involved in the Small Business Council at the Chamber. What about any small business in the city that's not located within a business district and may not have $500 a year to join a business association? So during the Cambodian community conversation, an attendee expressed he discussed the obstacles he and his wife faced while while in the process of starting a business and and he was an immigrant and with English as a second language, he he recounted his difficulty in finding others within the industry to talk with or engage with, with with the different agencies that help navigate the processes of establishing a business. And there are a number of, you know, several mom and pops across our city located outside the boundaries of business districts who have no idea, who lack the navigation support to really access the resources that already exist for our city. And so establishing a municipal small business council allows for industry clusters, it allows for ethnic clusters. You know, an African-American business committee, Latino Business Committee, Cambodian Business Committee, all of this can be sort of facilitated through this first recommendation of I mean, of a municipal small business council. So our second recommendation, which is centered on procurement, is the recommendation is increase the percentage of that the City of Long Beach spends on local, small and diverse businesses by establishing a streamline certification process, integrated vendor database for Long Beach agencies and institutions, and a transparent supplier diversity goals. And so the idea here is that, you know, we over the course of these conversations, we learned that, you know, if you want to certify as an African American business and compete for bids, it's a different process from the city of Long Beach. Then when you jump over to Long Beach Transit or Long Beach City College or Long Beach Unified School District, at each step you may have a different process to certify as a small business minority owned businesses, so on and so forth. We even heard a story we might might hear tonight. I'm not sure about. You know, someone had to prove that they were were African American. And they actually to prove that they were African American, they needed to find their their military records of their father who said, you know, Negro on it in order to prove that they were African-American to receive those incentives. And so in a lot of cases, we have an opportunity to really look at these different agencies and align our strategies to make it simple, to simply opt in and say, I'm an African-American business or I'm LGBTQ business. In a lot of cases, it takes a lot of extension, extensive paperwork. It takes multiple attempts at certifying as small as a small business or a minority owned business. You know, and frankly, many people want to pursue government contracts, but they are just discouraged from the process. We've done a lot of work and we want to recognize a lot of work that we've done to add preferences for women owned businesses, veteran owned business, LGBT, LGBTQ businesses. And all of those are good, good efforts. But we should really be thinking about how do we comprehensively change the process and design it to really suit the businesses that we want to that we want to support. So imagine if we set goals within our purchasing purchasing thresholds to support local businesses. L.A. County just established a 25% threshold for local, local, small businesses and social, social enterprises. And so if we take a step back and really take a long view and say, let's comprehensively think about how we conduct procurement in the city of Long Beach, we can we can take this a long way. So the third recommendation is centered on workforce and youth development. And so the recommendation is develop a plan to expand and deploy workforce development services to every Long Beach teen center. So modernizing our teen centers is a great strategy that that was discussed at our economic at our implementation committee dialog. There's already great momentum for this idea that's been introduced by a number of council members, including Councilwoman Mongeau, as well as Vice Mayor Andrews. It's it's you know, it's already in conversations with Parks and Recreation and with and with our Workforce Development Agency. The conversation here is how do we make our workforce resources accessible to the people who need it most? Data tells us that our youth unemployment rate is three times the average unemployment rate within the city of Long Beach, each Long Beach Teen Center. And you see the map here is strategically located near a high school on a park ground and strategically located in north central west downtown east Long Beach. There's a teen center in every part of town. So if we take our workforce resources and we align them with the teen centers and have a strategy to address teen employment by anchoring and rethinking our teen centers, we can make a big difference here. And so this is you know, this recommendation had a lot of support and it seemed like a make sense, you know, short term idea that we can move forward on. Our next idea is really rooted in our need to expand the capacity to support small businesses and deliver services to neighborhoods who maybe have felt the need to compete with other neighborhoods to receive attention. And so this recommendation is to support the establishment of a community development corporation, to deploy programs and services that support the economic development and financial empowerment of north central west Long Beach and the small businesses citywide. And so the concept here is that CDC would essentially provide services that go beyond the traditional scope and scope of local government, such as financial literacy classes, credit building work workshops, expungement clinics, support and education around housing. And so those are some of the things that the CDC could do. So that is a recommendation here. And then our fifth recommendation is is really started centered on housing. So we we've had, you know, a lot of work around housing production in the city. We've done a lot of work around. We had a conversation earlier tonight about tenant protections. And really the committee felt the need to lift up the conversation. Really that's centered on home ownership because it is still the chief means of wealth building in our in our community. And so the recommendation is support community based organizations, efforts to become a HUD certified home buyer counseling education agency. And so here's the concept is that Long Beach, the length, the mortgage landscape is changing. The green lining report told us that seven of the of the top ten mortgage originators in the city were non-banks. Only three were banks of the top ten. And so these are your Quicken Loans and your new American funding. And these guys, they're not subject to CRT. A lot of them are a lot more flexible, and that's a good thing. But there's a trust gap. And some folks some folks may need a certified sort of source of education in their local community to know that they can trust these products. And so in in conversations with HUD and looking through HUD, there aren't very many HUD certified housing counselors in the city of Long Beach. I believe the closest one is is neighborhood housing services in the city of Compton. There's community interest in this. They provide advice on buying a home, renting the default process, process, foreclosure avoidance, reverse mortgages and more. And so, given what we know about our city, the changing landscape, it makes sense that we prepare and educate our communities for homeownership. We know there's a lot more we can do, like down payment assistance the city's already working on. But we can start now with a very small step in creating this HUD certified process. And so those are the five recommendations, as you know, that we're moving forward here. Some of them have already come to city council. Some of them already gained city council support. But we we wanted to culminate this process by bringing it forward. And I want to at this point, I want to say I want to acknowledge everyone who's participated in this process. There were really, you know, a number of organizations. And I would ask if you if you at any point participated in the everyone in process, if you could just stand so we can recognize you. So I thank you. You can you can go ahead and have a seat. Thank you. But I want to invite down representatives from four agencies have really been a pivotal to this everyone in process. So I'll love representatives from L.A., LISC, the The Economic Policy Impact Center, Wells Fargo and Long Beach Community Action Partnership. If you can come down, I know that there's we have a presentation for you and we and you have an announcement for us. So if you could make your way on down and I think we'll hear from LISC first, then I think it'll be CAPP and Wells Fargo and then we'll hear from Economic Policy Impact Center. Speaker 3: Okay. They're coming down. Speaker 2: Vice mayor and the council members on the dais this evening. I thank you so much, Councilman Richardson, for that presentation. So I am tonight with Rush in Turk and I'm the executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. We're a national economic development firm, and we have invested 25 million in L.A. County just in 2018 alone. I'm a local Long Beach resident, and I'm here to share with you some of the things that we do at LISC that we're so excited that we've been doing here in Long Beach and Long Beach. We're on the ground. LISC is in more places than any other community development organization. We have staff, expertize and relationships in more than 25 L.A. County communities. We listen, and I'm so proud. That list was asked by Councilman Richardson to co-chair the Everyone in initiative. This provided us a chance to engage with the many local leaders, neighbors and stakeholders that are here today to plan and to make policy recommendations that you have before you tonight. We innovate. We're we look at making we look at testing ideas on the ground and making sure that those ideas can be adapted nationally. We're proud to be testing out new models for local business ownership here in Long Beach through a succession planning process to create worker owned cooperatives. We were able to attract several hundred thousand dollars to make that happen. We see the big picture. LISC is all about comprehensive development. We tackle issues all at once. We work on housing, business, jobs, education, health, safety in the same place at the same time. And finally, we have an impact as a partner, not only with the city, the council here in the Economic Development Department, we have helped to launch Long Beach as a key VA city. And today to date, we have recruited more than 13 trustees that have supplied microloans up to $160,000 just here in the city of Long Beach. And LISC was helping to match those loans dollar for dollar. I urge the Council to support the policy recommendations that are before you. You can see that these are strategies that come from the ground, from the people of Long Beach. And we cannot have a thriving Long Beach if everyone is not part of our economic prosperity. We're proud to partner with all the community stakeholders that are here today as part of the Everyone in initiative. We want to thank the Citibank Foundation, Wells Fargo, the Economic Policy Institute, the city of Long Beach, and, of course, Councilmember Richardson. Thank you for your continued commitment to ensure that Long Beach is an equitable city for all of its residents. Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Next speaker. Speaker 8: Good evening. My name is Alyssa Gutierrez. I'm the executive director of the Economic and Policy Impact Center. We are an advocacy and think tank nonprofit, working to expand economic opportunity to disadvantaged communities through civic engagement, leadership, development and policy advocacy. First off, I'd like to thank Councilmember Richardson for your leadership on such an important issue. It takes bold leadership to not only listen to, but respond to the needs and concerns of our city's most vulnerable residents. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this work. From my involvement in the implementation committee meetings to leading the engagement of over 300 residents and business owners and community conversations, I witnessed firsthand the excitement and hunger for this work. It has been an absolute honor to be a part of it, and I look forward to continuing the movement toward creating a local economy that includes and benefits every Long Beach resident and business owner. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mr. Gutierrez. All right. All right. Speaker 10: Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Senator elect Councilperson. It's an honor for me to stand here and say that I'm proud to be a part of everyone in. Because when you think about the objectives that were just mentioned and you think about the mission of the Long Beach Community Action Partnership, it's very much in alignment with what we do to serve this community. We're very proud to serve in a key role, and that will be fiscal sponsor in this initiative. And we're we're proud to serve in that capacity, first and foremost, because we have the fiscal integrity and leadership as an agency to be able to do so and certainly in a such an important role. Secondly, because we know that in doing so, the success of this initiative means the success of those that we serve. And it's very much in alignment with things such as workforce development, entrepreneurship, creative space that we do. So it's not a big stretch for us. It's a matter of getting to work and doing what we do best in service of something that will be best for this community. So in addition to working with you and the council district to make this happen and the council and at whole, we are also proud to work with Wells Fargo. So that's not going to be a stretch either, because they've been our banker since we grew from a $1.3 million agency to a $10 million agency. And we are proud to serve with them. They know us. We know them. So that's a seamless relationship as well. So thank you for the opportunity to serve and thank you for your leadership in making something as innovative as this happen in our community. And we're proud to be in the ninth District to work closely with you on it. Speaker 9: Thank you, Derek. And and so if you could stand up there while while Linda gives her remarks there, you're an incredible partner on the fourth recommendation, which is establishing the Community Development Corporation. And Linda, the second phase, this community work couldn't have taken place without the support of Wells Fargo. And so we welcome you and your comments and whatever you have to say. Speaker 4: Yes. Good evening, council members. My name is Linden Wynn and I am a part of Wells Fargo Foundation. I'm joined by my colleagues, Justine Gonzalez and Just Tirado. I would like to thank you, Councilmember Richardson, for including us in the conversation about everyone in we have been a part of the conversation since it pretty much started since 2017. From the community conversations to the roundtables and even to the summit and program planning, this initiative embodies what we at Wells Fargo really believe in equity and inclusion. Wells Fargo realizes that we are only as strong as our community, and that strength is really in that foundation of access to housing opportunities for small business growth, and having workforce development opportunities for our youth and for our adults. Thank you for including us, along with residents, community leaders, nonprofit organizations and public and elected officials. In this effort, as we all share in shifting that narrative and changing the statistics on economic inclusion and prosperity. On a personal note, I can really speak to that shifting narrative because my parents moved to Long Beach in 1990 as Southeast Asian immigrants really looking for access to opportunities and homeownership and to also have a thriving business. So and hearing that there is this conversation about how can we really be more inclusive? Really was more of a personal inclination. But for this opportunity to be here on behalf of Wells Fargo and to speak on behalf of this on a larger level and be an advocate has really been a tremendous honor. We have supported the summit as the title sponsor and also supported the planning phase, which really brought together a lot of collaboration and partnerships. And in this next phase, the third phase is really the implementation plan. And we were proud to say that we are already going to support with a $115,000 grant to the development of the Community Development Corporation, the very first in the city of Long Beach that is dedicated to this very deserving community. And we're proud to say that Long Beach, Kap, will be providing the leadership in that. So thank you for this opportunity and including us in this conversation. Speaker 9: Let's hear it for Wells Fargo and lobbyist Katz for that amazing announcement. So I have I want to I want to come down and give you a presentation. But the last thing I will say is that this process was really led by a number of really dynamic individuals and a part of our city family and our partners . And so we'll be recognizing you. But I don't want to overlook really Ilana Grant right here on our team, our policy director, Alana Grant, Alana Grant, even Rebecca Calma, you know, a number of people were really involved, but really it's the people behind the scenes that helped interact with all of you. And so I want to come down and give you all some some certificates now. Speaker 5: Is it? Is anyone going to speak? What is going to. Argue and wait until we. Speaker 3: Yeah, we won't give it up. Okay, fine. All right. Speaker 8: I just wanted to say. Speaker 4: This is Councilwoman Gonzalez for. Speaker 8: Another day, but I just wanted to say congratulations to each and every one of you, and I know how much hard work you put in. And a big kudos and thank you to my colleague of Councilmember Richardson. He does such an amazing job with economic inclusion. And I just thank you for leading on this effort for the rest of the city. Thank you. Speaker 9: All right. So let's let's. So Long Beach mean the action partnership. Thank you. Thank you. Economic Policy Impact Center. A list of. Thank you. And to the A la list. Thank you for all of your your help and support and helping pull together those here for all of it. Speaker 3: I'm in the middle. All right. Good job. Speaker 2: Guys. Thank you so. Speaker 5: I'm fine. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Richardson. Mrs. Price. Speaker 2: Councilwoman Price, thank you. Speaker 8: I want to thank Councilman Richardson for this presentation. It's great. I love this packet. I was looking through it and it has a lot of great information. And one of the recommendations that I really, really like, I mean, all the recommendations are great and I haven't been involved in the process, so I'm not in the weeds on any of them. But the one that I really liked that I was reading was the Workforce, the Youth Development one. I think it's so important for us to teach our young people early some job skills. I know that when we get interns in the office, a lot of them, when they're in high school, they need to learn organization. They need to learn, like you said, like the pamphlet says, customer service, you know, all those basic job training. So I think that's really, really important. And I'm happy that it was included here because I think that's a really big asset for our youth throughout the city. So I think this is great. I mean, it's it's wonderful to see that you had an idea and you developed it and you got engagement from the community and that it's to the point that it is today. Nicely done. Speaker 5: Well, thank you. Thank you. Counsel women peers. Speaker 7: Yes. I want to thank Councilmember Richardson for your work on the Everyone in plan. I know this has been long in coming and I especially want to thank all the community members. I know often our electeds, sometimes we ask you guys to participate in work groups or housing groups and we ask for your input. We ask you to be on commissions. And I know that this is one of those times that not only did you guys get invited to the table, but you really got to roll up your sleeves and add input that is presented in this presentation today. And I think that's really meaningful and powerful whenever we talk about how we make sure that everybody is included and that those ideas have some momentum behind them, because we can put ideas up here on this council all day long. But unless we have people on the ground that are willing to put dollars into that program and put sweat equity into that program, it's not going to see the fullest potential that that it could be. And so I think that is a great there is a lot of recommendations in here that we've had side conversations on. It's great to be able to now hopefully be able to have them come back one by one as and give them some more tofu, as I like to say, not not meet, but tofu to be able to help add them. The vegetarian, you know. And so just congratulations. I look forward to the next steps. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is Councilman Mango. Speaker 2: Thank you. I think that this is a great plan. I really appreciate that. A lot of the work that's been done wasn't left out. I know that it's important to start something and to to get the buy in from the community. And I can see that each of you added your input along the way. I know some of these things start out in the community and some of them started out at the dais, but until they're adopted and embraced by the community, they're just words. And so thank you for each one of you who really took the time to go to the listening sessions and to make these policies the best possible, because we do it the Long Beach way. So great work, everyone. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Speaker 5: And yes, thank you very much. I just want to give complete kudos to Councilman Rich Richardson, because the fact that usually when he gets his money and he had put into something, this young man, he never stops. And I think a lot of that has to do when you look out here in the audience and see individuals , when he said a two year plan, I mean, sometimes you can't get people to come together for a week. This is two years he put together and look at the output here. I just want to let every one of you guys know there will be something that comes from this that will make a difference. And the city of Long Beach and I want to thank you again, Councilman Richardson, because I know this is world work. When everyone is in and we talk about the village, you are the village. And I see that this will come to fruition. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you very much, I think. I believe I saw you did public comment, correct? Speaker 3: I think you have the call. Speaker 0: No, not yet. Speaker 3: But I don't think. Speaker 0: Okay. Is there is your public comment on this item? Nope. Okay. So we have a we have a motion in a second. Members, please cast your votes. Motion carries a thank you and then that the second part. Item 32, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file the 2019 Everyone In Economic Inclusion Implementation Plan, adopt recommendations, and request City Manager to work with the appropriate departments to report back with a timeline for implementation within 120 days for the five recommended policy areas: (1) Housing and Homeownership; (2) Small Business, Diverse Entrepreneurship; (3) Procurement; (4) Workforce and Youth Development; and (5) Connectedness (Economic Resilience); and Request City Manager provide on-going implementation plan updates every 6 months thereafter until a workplan and funding source for each of the policy goals has been approved by City Council.

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Speaker 0: Okay. Is there is your public comment on this item? Nope. Okay. So we have a we have a motion in a second. Members, please cast your votes. Motion carries a thank you and then that the second part. Item 32, please. Speaker 1: Item 33 Communication from Councilmember Richardson. Councilwoman Gonzales, Vice Mayor Andrews, Councilmember Miranda Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Department of Economic Development to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a special economic empowerment zone program in the targeted areas of North, Central and west Long Beach. Furthermore, request to report back on the program in 90 days. Speaker 9: Thank you. And so during the course of the community conversations, we we kept coming along across that theme of the tale of two cities and how we know that there's a different set of economic circumstances in north and central west Long Beach that that have gone on, persisted for generations. And, you know, this was an opportunity for us to to listen to the community and say there needs to be a separate recommendation here that takes a takes a look at existing opportunities that are happening now, like the Federal Opportunity Zone program that we know is really focused on sort of front loading investment as well as, you know, our state program, which is really are our major strategy for north central west Long Beach redevelopment, which ended in 2012. And and we know that shifting politics, shape shifting legislative environments, makes it difficult for local cities to really put together an on the ground strategy to address persistent economic challenges in targeted communities. So we know that. And so we have local control and we have local power to determine our own zones and say, hey, we can determine the economic circumstances in these areas in order to sort of achieve our public policy outcomes. So we see these impacts in north central west Long Beach, where communities are disproportionately layered with inequities in health and wealth and opportunity. And this recommendation before you is is to create a new tool, an economic development tool, that will shift this split city narrative by growing opportunity in the neighborhoods, in the targeted communities that need it most, which in turn benefits the overall growth of Long Beach. This is really about really taking advantage of opportunities, opportunities that we haven't taken advantage on as to our best ability. And so during the Community Conversation series, we observed a pattern at the at the three conversations in North, Central and West, a pattern in the feedback. We asked a very simple question of what does your community need to economically thrive? And what we noticed was that everyone said the same thing. Every community said, we want access to financial institutions. And there were the West Side didn't have a bank in areas of North Long Beach, didn't have a bank. They said, we want access to capital, as there are still many unbanked neighborhoods of our city. Residents want to be connected to resources and connected to each other. They know they want to pursue activities that will grow wealth for their families. That's universal. Everybody wants that. This includes pathways to homeownership, affordable housing and skills necessary to to, you know, to earn good paying jobs. There is a mutual concern for neighborhoods susceptibility to displacement. There were concerns about being able to walk to a neighborhood serving store on your business quarter. You could be proud of. Everybody said that. And everybody in every area of every every area of town knew which quarter they're talking about. They're talking about Santa Fe on the West Side and talking about Atlantic Avenue, North Long Beach or or PCH or Anaheim. And so to understand the need for this this special economic development, certainly circumstances, we need to take a look at the demographics of the communities. So the following maps were released early this year. In the first slide uses a dot map to show the racial economic concentrations by census tract. So notice north central west is big red circles north central west. That's where the people of color are concentrated. And then in addition to racial, racial diversity, north, central and West have more families with young children. If you notice those circles, it shows, you know, north and central and west of areas with young families. And then you see in northwestern and southwest and neighborhoods, you'll see, based on the Cal enviro screen that these neighborhoods are also exposed to pollutants which directly impact the quality of life. The story is the same in north, central and west Long Beach. And you look at the next map, which is life expectancy. The darker shaded portions of the map are shorter life expectancies, which are concentrated in north, west and central Long Beach. Let's take the next one, which is higher concentrations of lower income neighborhoods. You know, let's do the next one, lower lower levels of higher education attainment. Let's do the next one. Draft drastically higher. The dark. The dark red is drastically higher. Levels of unemployment. These channels, the challenges that these each of these communities is facing is resounding. It's laced with with you know, it's systemic and is laced with race in disinvest, disinvestment, rooting back to redlining. In other conversations, we know that it's all connected public policy. It's been the same story for generations. And and, you know, counsel and staff has done you know, they've done what they can do. But we need to get really specific about when we talk about these areas that we need to break the cycle and do something specific to change the circumstances there. Because as local leaders, we have a responsibility to create policies that build strong, resilient communities and establishes basic life and dignity standards for everybody. And that's essentially what what what the economic empowerment zone conversation is about. And so, um, so around the world, economic development programs leverage partnerships between public and private entities to stimulate, stimulate growth and target areas. You know, there are special economic zones in Taiwan, in Thai, in China, in India. We know that there are state and federal programs that use incentive driven strategies to address economic inequity, such as redevelopment, which we know was ended in 2012. Right. And and we know it proved to be an effective state program, but it's subject to the same policies. State politics and budget challenges is everything else. RTA built affordable housing, attracting new investment. It created jobs in its project areas, and fortunately that program is gone. And when the state eliminated redevelopment and conversely accelerated its sustainability goals, it created the gap right there more demands on local communities. But they took away our biggest tool to really address it. And then we learned about the Federal Opportunity Zone program. Now, the federal program, it's really it's really about upfront infusion of capital. In fact, the first deadline for the federal opportunity zone is June. I think June 29th of this year is the first deadline in order to maximize the incentive. The next one is December 31st. So the idea is, if you can see the investment now, you ride it out for ten years and you get the maximum benefit. So it's a short term infused. It's not the answer for everything. And so while they do offer these these these, you know, incentives, it's not going to it's not going to save us. It's not going to save north, central and west long beaches, economic circumstances. And so economic empowerment zones could connect the dots between the opportunity zones and the state programs like EIA, PhDs and Careers and these other programs. So what could it look like? It could look like looking at a number of different incentives and key areas that we can locally control if we know that businesses in north, central west Long Beach have a higher failure rate and they don't typically last longer than three years. And why do we charge them a business license fee for three years? We should we should give them a shot to establish. Right. If we know that we need more access to the grocery stores, health care in banks, then we should make sure that every department that touches those things knows that this is a special economic zone and that we're going to leverage our procurement, leverage where we spend our finance, you know, where we bank to say make sure you place locations in those areas. So it's really taking a taking the time to really target those areas and say, what can everybody do to make it happen? If you're public works and we know that there are burgeoning business corridors, we put a lens on your budget process and say, how do you invest and make sure you're adding street furniture better, lighting the things that will make it safer and better for those businesses? If you're our workforce agency, how do you decentralize and make sure you focus on those areas and make sure you have these resources available? So that's the idea. So in terms of, you know, sort of deviate it from my my my PowerPoint, but the idea here is I deviate a little bit. So the idea here is simple. How do we we want to give staff an opportunity to spend some time on this. We don't want to rush this. We want them to think about a place based program, just like opportunity zones, just like redevelopment, but local, using our tools, something we can put in place and keep it in place so people can plan around it. Like five years, right? Put it in place for awhile. Come back to us. Tell us what it's going to cost. Tell us you know, tell us how we're going to get it done. Tell us how we're going to draw these boundaries and targeting. I got to tell you, there may be areas that are not on the big red areas that if we can figure out a special target, those we should special target those as well. So so information in summary this the idea here is about rising tide lifts all ships. We should take advantage of the biggest opportunity we have where the majority of residents are, where the majority of growth is happening, and make sure we invest and invest in those areas and take into account the circumstances, the economic circumstances in those areas and really try to try to change the narrative. Thank you very much. And I urge and I vote on this motion. Speaker 0: Thank you. Council member Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 5: Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. You know, I want to thank you for allowing me to act, you know, sign on to this, you know, item, because especially in this issue where we need assistance in activating central corridor, such as, you know, in my district, you know, PCH Pacific and out of some of the areas that could benefit from the incentives that stimulate economic growth and basic access to different amenities, many of us that take for granted they are already within what is considered an opportunity zone. But if we cannot create these special empowerment programs, I think we can go a long, long ways. And I'm looking forward to hearing back on what we can do as a city to promote these areas. And I want to thank you again. RICHARDSON Thank you very much, sir. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Councilman Pearce. Speaker 7: I yes. I want to thank you for bringing this forward and thank the community members that brought this forward as well. So staff is going to come back with a report about what this might look like in Long Beach. Is that my understanding? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 7: I think that's fantastic. Not only my district, but the area surrounding my district. I would definitely you know, we're looking at the map. We have some of the highest unemployment rates and the edge of my district. And so I look forward to seeing that stock report come back and seeing how we can implement that. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilwoman Gonzales. Speaker 8: Thank you. Councilman Richardson, I think, you know, you've been talking about this, and I think this just brings it to life. And I want to thank everyone who's been involved from Epic and and everyone that has really helped the everyone in implementation plan. I know that with this study, we hope to get good results that will really be equitable for the whole city. So thank thanks again for all your work. Great job. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'm just going to go ahead and apologize. I was dealing with some stuff for for tomorrow's for tomorrow. And so I wanted to just first, those that have been involved in the economic in roundtables, which I know have been extensive and across the community, a lot of folks who I've talked with just want to thank everyone for participating in those roundtables. I want to thank the staff particularly want to think. John Keisler I know that the department has been very involved in guiding the work and active in ensuring that that the work that's happening also aligns with our economic development blueprint, which is obviously a broader document. Right, that's looking at a variety of initiatives. And again, to Councilmember Richardson, who has been the key voice in the everyone in economic inclusion work as it relates to economic development. I just want to thank him for the work here, as well as all the council members that have been involved in this process and as makers of these of these motions as well. And so particularly though I think the community is your public comment on this item, please come forward. Speaker 6: And I can face this district. You the vice vice mayor, Mr. Andrews. Don't ever forget with this this, you know, economic zone. I think it's an appropriate opportunity for neglected areas in the city to gain access to, you know, investment in order to revitalize neighborhoods that are probably forgotten. My only worry with this is that this could be a potential opportunity for major corporations and larger investors to have effective tax havens and disadvantaged neighborhoods, as is the case currently with the opportunity zone that the federal government passed about a year ago when they recalled the tax code. So, you know, what we find is that, you know, outside investors who have a higher rate of access to capital moving into neighborhoods that they otherwise wouldn't be able to. And because of the opportunities that come with zones like this, you know, they they get to effectively defer their taxes for upwards of, you know, 10 to 20 years. And in many times in statistics show instead of actually revitalizing the neighborhoods that they park their money in, they just let it sit. And it just maintains blight. And it's blight that doesn't necessarily obviously help the people that have to live in these neighborhoods. You know, I live in the Wrigley area, and if you just go down the Pacific corridor, there's over 23 for lease signs up. That's I discovered that on Thursday. It could possibly be more. And clearly, these are properties that are owned by investors and businesspeople who have no desire of filling those leases. And so if there is to be a zone like this to be established in central, north and west Long Beach, I'm in agreement with it, provided that there are very stringent recommendations that are placed upon anyone that's operating in these zones. For example, you know, 75% employment of local, you know, people in the community just I will hate to see another opportunity of something like, you know, the marijuana thing coming in again because recently, you know, you have a major corporation like Medmen come in and buy up a local dispensary for $30 million. And, you know, they wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a voluntary equity program. So if things like this to happen in these areas, it needs to be mandatory equity. It shouldn't be at the discretion of the big investor. It should be at the discretion of the city and the cities, you know, citizens. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next week. Speaker 3: Hi there. Speaker 6: Jordan Win, member of the seventh District. I'm also here on behalf of everyone in Los Angeles. Funny enough, we have that kind of fun shared name. We were excited to help kick off kind of some of the stuff at the very beginning of the year, and I'm so happy personally to see this manifesting. It's been great to get to know you through that and as well as attending the one that you hosted, the first one you hosted with Urunga at Silverado Park. I'm really excited about these programs. I think there are some incredible recommendations here. I'm really looking forward, especially to the ISS. I really want to see how those manifest. I think as and I was saying, there are so many great opportunities for community development. I just want to make sure that that as we move forward here that we consider, you know, the housing piece as well, that that's still something that's that's present. I think there's some fantastic investment opportunities that are moving forward. But I think kind of to echo what's and I was saying important to keeping economic opportunities in neighborhoods is making sure that people don't get displaced and that those resources do stay with the community members and that they do get to benefit from them. And I know there are a lot of homeowners in these areas as well, and that's great for those who are renters looking for affordable housing or opportunities to stay in the area to benefit from these programs, I think is going to be quintessential to its success. So really looking forward to this, really excited for this. And thank you so much, Rex. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next, speaker and I going to close the speakers list. Speaker 8: Good evening again. Good evening, Mayor and Long Beach City Council. Alexa Gutierrez, executive director of Economic and Policy Impact Center and a proud resident of the second District. I'd like to thank you again, Councilwoman Richardson, for leading on on these important efforts. Again, it has been our honor working alongside you, everyone, an initiative, Councilman Richardson's office, the Economic Development Department, L.A., LISC, and all the community members who contributed to to this recommendation here. So as you heard a little bit over the past three months, our organization helped to convene the nine community conversations. And, you know, we heard it during that process. We heard from over 300 residents and business owners from all over the city on what they feel they need in order to thrive. We had the privilege of knocking on doors, talking to residents, walking into businesses, hearing from business owners and about these initiatives, but more generally about economic inclusion. But most importantly, we listened. We listened to the single mom, aspiring entrepreneur who's working three jobs to to pay for her bills and one to save enough money to buy a food truck and open up her own taco business. We heard from college students who were fearful that they're just not going to be enough good paying jobs in their immediate communities once they graduate. And we listened to the young family who's ready to purchase their first home and become building wealth, but just can't seem to save for that down payment. And so these are the stories that we heard and through these conversations, these economic empowerment zones. And what we can really put into them was really that that reoccurring theme. And so, you know, too many families in Long Beach are feeling like they're not included or not fully benefiting from this booming economy that we have. And as we know, they're overwhelmingly and disproportionately families of color that live in west, central and north Long Beach. And while this is the reality for many of our families, I'm optimistic that if we continue to place the needs of our diverse communities at the center of our economic development efforts, we'll have a city that's more prosperous than ever. So establishing these economic empowerment zones in the areas of the city that need it most is a great first step toward creating a long beach, where all residents have pathways of opportunity to really reach their full potential and thrive. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thanks so much. And our last speaker. Speaker 2: Hello. I would say hello again. My name's Choi. Choi and Freeman. I'm sorry I didn't mention that the first time. And I just would like to say thank you very much, Councilmember Rex Richardson and Mayor Garcia and everyone here on the panel. This program here is everyone and process this is creating the solutions and listening. And then I'm very impressed about how the inclusion is going to operate the equality, the economic empowerment is on. I am a first time undergraduate student, graduate from Cal State University of. Speaker 3: Long Beach. Speaker 2: In 1990 294. And those opportunities didn't come to me in. And you know what? I'm I'm I'm okay. I'm in a good place because I know that I'm here to speak on behalf of those with the learning disability as myself and to say that, hey, you know what, with. Speaker 3: With all of. Speaker 2: Us together, it takes a village, we can make this happen. And I'm so glad to hear about this program here. Speaker 3: Because. Speaker 2: I'm also doing my own community outreach. I I'm with a. Speaker 3: Long Beach. Speaker 2: Mental health, and I'm proud to say that, hey, I am a recovering. Speaker 3: I'm a. Speaker 2: Sobriety OC. And, you know, I'm learning, I'm a work in progress. But, you know, I'm not fancy with the political stuff yet, but I'm learning and I have 15 years of being clean and sober. And, you know, I'm. Speaker 3: I'm in a good. Speaker 2: Place now, so I can I can do some things and and share, you know, with my community and with just just, you know, with the other organizations that are listed here like L.A. List and Long Beach Partnership Economic Impact Center and do something with and be involved. Just be involved at the roundtable. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 0: Excellent. Thank you so much. We have a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 3: Hmm.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Department of Economic Development to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a special Economic Empowerment Zone (EEZ) program in the targeted areas of North, Central, and West Long Beach. Furthermore, request a report back on the program in 90 days.

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Speaker 0: Motion carries 41, please. Speaker 1: Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine and Public Works recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing city managers. Submit a grant application to the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District for funding for projects, programs and improvements citywide. Speaker 0: Motion in a second. Is there any public comment? Please. We can be brief. Please. Come forward. Speaker 4: Good evening. Mayor Garcia and members of the council. My name is Aaron Reinke. I'm the president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles since the inception of Habitat L.A. nearly 30 years ago. We have built and repaired and rehabilitated more than 288 homes here in Long Beach, providing all those homes are affordable homes for Long Beach residents. And, in fact, Habitat. Ella's very first home was built right here in Long Beach. So Habitat is a Long Beach native, as am I. And we continue to seek opportunities to engage residents in this vibrant community. So currently, Habitat L.A. is engaged in the neighborhood revitalization efforts in the Washington neighborhood, where we're working alongside residents safe, Long Beach, nonprofit organizations and city departments to improve the overall quality of life for residents in this community. This work includes building over 60 brand new homes and working with parents on safe passage in the Washington Middle School and supporting community events, among other things. I'm here to thank Councilwoman Gonzales for your leadership and continued support. And in partnership with the with Habitat, L.A. and with the Washington neighborhood, we'll really miss working alongside you in the Washington neighborhood. However, we look forward to working with you in the state legislature to address pressing public policy matters like the affordable housing crisis. Tonight, I'd like to urge the Council to execute green agreements related to safe, clean neighborhood parks and beaches. Measure of 2016 in the amount of $270,000 for the 14th Street Park improvements. Collectively, the first District priority funds and Measure eight grant dollars will help activate the 14th Street Park for Children's Empowerment for Children and Families, which is right across from where we plan to develop two neighborhoods in the near future. So again, I thank you for your support of this measure. Have getting. Speaker 0: Thank you next week. Speaker 2: My name is Celia. Gail and I represent the Naval Coal Association, Washington Neighborhood Association. And I am here to support this program because we need those programs like families, working families, children. They their money in those grow because they they see they are very in bad shape and they need to give it up but safe. And also is like I have a video living here in in not in long B.C. I see my community from them from above the walls in I am very very I hope you know we we got us soon as possible. This program said this bro. You think you. Speaker 0: Next speaker. Speaker 2: I you know what? When I started those. Good afternoon to everybody. Banco de la Rue de la Washington. I'm coming from the stone of Washington. Yeah. And this message is for Eleanor Gonzalez. Well, the animals, like alligator say we're here for 14th Street in Los Proyectos. And the projects that we need there, we need help. La Comunidad is for the community is so yo and I'm there. I've been there for several years, so as time goes on, that's what we need in this society and we need help. In La Kantor, third on 14th and Cedar Washington of a Washington school. But I say so that I'm also hearing and we're suggesting that puntos get the animals. The points that we have is is to put a light there or stop. On the site side as a person that hit it, that will help the kids cross more in the Pacific, like on Pacific. We like that light or the numbers of three. We have another example. Uh, people are very like, well, Oropeza like the Oropeza school stands that those are the fences that are closed in order. They can y you can I use that as well. They're open when school is open and closed. Always open when. Race was the other way around. Uh huh. Well, when. When the school is open. If they're open and no, they're closed, but, like, they're going under. And then when the school is out sovereign, they open them. Uh huh. Yeah. And that's. Yes, it can do. I guess when the school is open, they close them. Yeah. I mean, they, they, they mostly and we're also asking parties that the parks, like I say, from 14th Street. See, imagine if there can be away benches, but, uh, for benches for the community. They sakuma noon Big Lake, so we could have like an area for a picnic if it can be done. I That was and I want to thank Lina Gonzalez for everything that she's done for us. Some of us want, and we wish her good luck. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Gracias. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: Gracias, Kimo. Okay. I mean. Speaker 2: My name is Esperanza. Speaker 6: And as much as. Speaker 2: Good evening Robert Garcia and councilmen and women. Speaker 6: Being represent and. Speaker 2: I'm representing. Speaker 3: The Washington. Speaker 2: The Washington Neighborhood Association. Speaker 3: Is that all. Speaker 2: I'm asking, all the councilmen and the mayor to approve the funds for the the 14th Street Park? Speaker 6: It's more important. Speaker 2: It's very important for the community. Speaker 3: And the work. Speaker 2: That our kids can have fun and play. Speaker 3: And live. Speaker 2: In a safe place where there's no drugs like we did it at one time. Speaker 3: You can make it fun. Speaker 2: And believe me, there were very nice memories. Speaker 6: That that format. Speaker 2: Such a way were appealing. Speaker 3: Secretario. Speaker 2: To your judgment so that our young people won't be tempted to try drugs which you can see during daylight? Rapido, I repeat. Speaker 3: Garcia. Speaker 2: We want a safe place where there's no drugs. Speaker 6: But como comunidad? Speaker 2: And we as a community, we promise to work together with the police from First Division Street. Distrito First District. Speaker 3: Commission with the Service. Speaker 2: Commission Multi-Centre. Speaker 3: L.A.. Speaker 2: L.A. Public Works. Speaker 3: The mental park theme, the. Speaker 2: Park Department. Speaker 3: And Antonello Limpia to. Speaker 2: Keep things clean and accessible for our community. Speaker 6: So attention. Speaker 2: Thank you very much for paying attention to the mayor and thank you to the council, men and women. Speaker 0: QUESTION Thank you very much. That concludes public comment, Councilwoman Gonzales. Speaker 8: Thank you so much glasses that those were very obvious like water resistant notches. More important they get the animals who was lucky and last you that it's really important and I'm so glad that the Washington neighborhood residents we don't often see them here but I am so glad and so proud of them that they're here speaking their voice. And I hope that this becomes one of many, many times that they come back to city hall. And I look forward to helping you with all of these improvements. And we're going to keep fighting and keep going. And thank you so much for being here and to Habitat for Humanity. I cannot thank you enough. You have been a strong, amazing partner with us at every community meeting that we've had. So thank you very, very much for your support in the Washington neighborhood. We appreciate it. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilwoman Councilman Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 9: Thank you. So I, I know this presentation had I just want to make sure this is stated publicly. So I see that under. Park. It says $90,000. That's a great number. Speaker 3: I'm kidding. Meredith. Speaker 9: You dropped a zero off of that. Speaker 7: There is a revised powerpoint that was handed out that has the correct numbers in it. The correct number for Howden for the community center is $782,612. Speaker 9: Thanks. That's a big difference between 90,780. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify. Speaker 0: Councilman Pearce. Speaker 7: Well, I'm excited that Bixby Park. We have 90,000. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that we're including Bixby Park in this personal one. We have phase one and phase two process there that the community members have been very engaged with for a very long time and trying to do not only pathways, but making sure that we could possibly have some access to local produce as well as those pathways. So thank you very much. Public works for your work on this. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Orson. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 10: I'd like to just chime in and say I'm going to be an enthusiastic yes vote. This is the first time this year park has ever been considered central Long Beach or a central area. But we will take it and I'm sure Park will benefit tremendously from this these grant funds. So best of luck. Keep up the great work Parks and Rec as well as public works. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I actually think I may have made a mistake here. This was initially going to have a staff report that actually. Yeah. And so I think I went I thought I think I confused myself with a another item. And so this is this is an I mean, look, the council doesn't want to hear it. It's a no. Okay. All right. There's a motion in a second, so please cast your votes. Speaker 7: Thank you. The county. Speaker 1: Councilman Ashton. Motion carries.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to submit a grant application to the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District (RPOSD) for Measure A funding for Projects and Programs; authorize City Manager, or designee, to submit applications to the RPOSD for grants under the Community-based Park Investment Program (Category 1) and the Neighborhood Parks, Healthy Communities, and Urban Greening Program (Category 2) for 14th Street Park improvements, Bixby Park Parcel One improvements, the Pacific Electric Right-of-Way between 8th Street and 10th Street, Whaley Park Community Center, Wardlow Park, Lincoln Park, McBride Park, MacArthur Park, Tanaka Park, Scherer Park improvements, and Houghton Park Community Center (Projects); if awarded, accept an amount up to $4,312,724; and, execute any documents necessary to accept the funds and implement the Projects. (Citywide)

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LongBeachCC_06112019_19-0483

Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. And we have item 44, please. Speaker 1: Report from Development Services Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the use district map of the City of Long Beach by amending portions of part 22 of said map from single family, residential, large lot to community commercial automobile oriented read and adopted as read District eight. Speaker 0: There's emotion in a second republic comment on this signal and please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to move on to new business. We do have some some folks we want to honor and closing the meeting tonight. And so I'm going to begin with those. I have to. And then I know that Vice Marie Andrews has one as well. I want to begin by closing the meeting tonight. And on behalf of Laura Killingsworth. Speaker 1: Mayor Garcia. Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 1: We still have one more item. Item 45.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Use District Map of the City of Long Beach as said Map has been established and amended by amending portions of Part 22 of said Map from R-1-L (Single-Family Residential, Large Lot) to CCA (Community Commercial Automobile-Oriented), read and adopted as read. (District 8)

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Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 1: Thank you. 11, which we had called earlier. There was no public comment on 11. So go ahead and cast your vote. Speaker 4: No, no, I'm going to speak. Speaker 1: Oh. Speaker 3: Yes. Go ahead. Speaker 1: Mr. Andrews. Speaker 4: Go ahead. I thank you for this, Amir. You know, I want to have a discussion on this because I think we can be doing more in the city and within our department to partner with Ring before we move forward. I would like to request our city attorney office and our police department to take a look at the possibilities of us implementing a rebate program funded by whichever council office want to partake in it. So with that, I wish that our residents have more assets to these ring doorbell systems. Ring already there's a rebate in other cities like Rancho Palos Verdes and Temple City. And I would like to argue that in the sixth District, and I am sure that other council districts have an interest to. If we are partnership with the ring system access to portal, I would as we offer this good start and should not be a problem. So I am hoping that I can get a second motion to postpone this item to the next council meeting to allow staff to bring back a recommendation. Thank you very. Speaker 1: Much. Okay. So we're going to there's a motion to postpone. And let's go back 1/2. We can go back. Councilman, Vice Chair. I want to make the motion to postpone the item. Speaker 4: Yes, please. Speaker 5: Yeah. You made. Speaker 4: Yes, at the moment, yes. Speaker 1: Cosmo Richardson. Okay. So let me go to Councilman Mango. Speaker 5: So, Councilmember Andrews, I'm. Speaker 6: So glad that you brought this up. We recently talked with the promoter for Ring. Speaker 5: And did a promotion in our council district. Speaker 6: Where we just they have a general policy about it and they're willing to offer $50 rebates if they're purchased through the ring site. Speaker 5: It is interesting to note, though, that. Speaker 6: There are providers of ring that sell it for less than it is on the ring website with the $50 deduction. So if you buy it from ring, let's say I'm just going make up some numbers. It's $300. You get a $50 rebate, it's 250. But if you buy it at Costco, it's 250, let's say. And so that's kind of been why we didn't feel that the fifth District, that they had many takers to use the the rebate program. Also then the neighborhoods app is an. Speaker 5: App that I met with the chief on and showed him how it was working and how it could be a value. Speaker 6: How you can box around your neighborhood to specifically see what the police officers are interested in. So I would only ask if they could do it concurrently because I'd love to see a rebate program, but I'd like to see it to be more competitive. And I'd love for our staff to do that while going through this process of the agreement. Is that something you'd be open to? Speaker 4: I could be open to that because the fact that I would just like to see that most of our neighbors would really take a look into it and see what it would do for your constituents also. Speaker 6: And I'm going to send you an email. That's the contact that we worked with at the time. Speaker 4: I would appreciate that. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Well, thank you. There's a motion and a second, a good call, public comment on that. And members, please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all necessary documents to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding, and any subsequent amendments, with Ring, LLC, for ongoing digital access and support to the Ring Neighbors Portal, at no cost to the City of Long Beach. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Just kidding. So. So next up is our first hearing, please. Madam Clerk. Speaker 0: Hearing item one report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing. Adopt negative declaration and declare ordinance. Amending the official zoning map zone change to rezoning portions of the property at 45 one Long Beach Boulevard to community, automobile or into district. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading District eight. Speaker 3: Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, I'm going to introduce Christopher Koonce, our planning bureau manager, to give the staff report. Speaker 1: And thank you. Speaker 3: We won't need the PowerPoint unless there's questions. Mr. Mayor and. Speaker 8: Members of the council, this is a procedural item in Council District eight 4251 Long Beach Boulevard is a vacant piece of land prior to the 1990s when the city produced its zoning maps. That was done on paper with the pen, and then those documents were turned into maps. That process results in errors from time to time, which are being corrected over time. This particular property is a commercial property. It's always. Speaker 3: Been a commercial property, but it has a 25 foot. Speaker 8: Portion of that lot that, at. Speaker 3: Least on the city's official zoning map, is zoned residential. Speaker 8: In front of you today is a corrective action to zoned the entirety of the site commercial. This action was approved by the Planning Commission back on April 4th unanimously. And while Councilman Austin is not here at this moment, we did discuss this item with his office and he was comfortable moving forward in his absence. With that, I'm available to answer any. Speaker 3: Questions you may have. Speaker 1: Any public comment on this item? Seeing none. Councilman Richardson. Anything? Nope. Country Ranga. Okay, members, please go and cast your votes.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Use District Map of the City of Long Beach as said Map has been established and amended by amending portions of Part 22 of said Map from R-1-L (Single-Family Residential, Large Lot) to CCA (Community Commercial Automobile-Oriented), read and adopted as read. (District 8)

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Speaker 1: Thank you. We're all here. So we have two items not on the agenda. We're going to go back to the item that we were on and then we will be moving on to the last item which had a time certain at sometime after 630. And so, Madam Clerk, can you please read the last item that we were on? Speaker 0: Item 22 Report from Human Resources. Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing the implementation of the terms of the city's last, best and final offer described in the October 24th, 2018 correspondence to the IAM detailing the scope of service on the airport security divisions and the Long Beach Police Department integration citywide. Speaker 1: Okay, so I think, Mr. City Attorney, we're back on the item 22. So we actually believe we completed public comment. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Okay. And the staff report is all complete, correct? Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Okay. So there's a there's a recommendation by staff. It's on the agenda. Is there a motion on this item? We had to wait for council. Okay. If there's there's a motion or a second on this item. I don't think we need, chef. I think some people are asking, do we need a staff report again or no? Speaker 3: No, you don't. Legally, you've had the staff report and public comment and then you continue to till later in the meeting so you can proceed with council discussion. Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's go to those. Go to that. Go to any council discussion then. I'm sorry. I just got to. I got to follow the city attorney's rules, and I believe that they're we already had a public comment and the staff report. And unless there is a request from counsel to do to have the staff report again, I know we're short. We can do that. So why don't we do the staff for one more time? Speaker 10: Right. Speaker 3: Thanks, Dana. Alex Vasquez. Speaker 5: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. This item is regarding the airport security and the Long Beach Police Department. Integration is a brief overview on this item and the city is proposing that we implement this integration between airport security and Long Beach Police Department. This item was presented to Council on April 23rd, 2019. The council at that time requested to postpone this decision point until May in order to implement the City Council. A city council action is required. We'd like to give you a brief background about the airport security and police department integration and result in the 911 attacks, there was a nationwide emphasis on airport security. The city first proposed integrating airport security in the police department in early 2002. The rationale for this integration. Was because post-9-11, federal oversight drastically expanded airport security requirements. And although state law requires security positions at the airport to be granted peace officer status, their core duties continue to be continue to focus on regulatory compliance. Part of the rationale is also to ensure the city addresses inconsistent and non standardized training and creates a single chain of command with law enforcement oversight and supervision. We also look towards best practice. And what we found is that other California public regional airports have an integrated airport security with law enforcement divisions. For example, Sacramento International, San Jose International, the city of Los Angeles. World Airports. Oakland International. John Wayne and San Diego International. Some of the expected benefits we hope to gain with the integration of the airport police, airport security and police department function again, a single structure, chain of command, better coordination of both resources and personnel, including supervision , training and deployment of staff, consistent and appropriate training standards and continued safety and security of passengers and other airport stakeholders at the Long Beach Airport. I wanted to give you a briefing about the reorganization process. The city is required to complete a meeting, confer process with the impacted bargaining units. The results of the meeting confer a process that we conducted are as follows. We met with Poppy, who represents the police officers, and that process was completed and they agreed with this reorganization. We also met with IAM as they represent the special security officers or CISOs, however, that meet and confer process resulted in an impasse. And we also completed the fact finding process. On April 23rd, the City Council received and filed a fact finders report. However, action is required in order to implement the integration on the IAM because our meet and confer process resulted in the impasse. I just want to quickly recap that the IAM meet and confer process. The city and I am did meet and we had approximately we had ten meetings that were held over months. The parties were unable to reach an agreement in October and on and on October 24, 2018, the city declared impasse and provided Iam with our last , best, final offer. On November 21st, 2018, the IAM requested the fact finding process and the fact finding hearing was held on February 8th. The fact finder issued an advisory recommendation on March 5th and on March 15. This. The Fact Finder report was made public. The City Council has the option to consider the Fact Finder recommendations, and the City Council, by resolution can impose the last, best final offer. I also want to recap some of the impacts on the employees. There are no changes to the employees salary or seniority as a result of this proposed action. There is no change to their bargaining unit and the SOS will retain peace officer status. The CEOs will also receive the necessary training to carry out their duties. In addition to the core curriculum proposed, the CISOs will also be eligible to request the following post certified courses that are listed. In summary, the Fact-Finding Fact-Finding Panel recommendations. I'm sorry. The Fact-Finding Panel consisted of three panelists. The IAM represented, the city represented and a neutral representative. After hearing both the IAM and the city's position, the panel found in favor of the city with a vote of 2 to 1. The panel's recommendation was that the city was within its rights to implement the final proposal. Staff recommendation is to adopt by resolution a resolution pursuant to California government code 3505.4 authorizing the implementation of the terms of the city's last best final offer described in the October 24, 2018 correspondence to the IAM detailing the scope of services on airport security division and Long Beach Police Department integration. We'd be happy to answer any questions. Speaker 1: Thank you. And Mr. City Attorney, I know there was a request to hear those. Again, I I'm inclined to allow the three public comments that were made to go again, if that's okay with you. Speaker 3: Mayor, if the public comment has been open and closed, if you if you reopen the public comment, you can't limit it just to those three people. You can reopen the public comment, period. Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I'm going to just to ensure that everyone's hearing the same information, I'm going to reopen the public comment period. I want to begin by inviting the three folks, if they would like to, to speak again. Speaker 8: So honorable, mayor. City council members. Those. I just showed up. Good to see you. First off, my name's Salvador Vasquez, 55 West. Well, I'm the president of the. I nine for seven. I just wanted to make one point that's very important here is city management and H.R. are representing the airport that they just presented. Those are international airports. By no means is at Long Beach Airport. That has also been currently performing that duty for decades. And as Brother Suarez has indicated before. Per the city the city meeting confer to give them post certify training. Now they want to take it away. So our concern is you're going to have an airport that our officers are going to have to train Long Beach PD and to the public. Speaker that you guys have missed the concern we have that people or the PD is already stressed in regards to the support they have for the streets, yet they want to pull resources from them and put it in the airport. They already have people there in the capacity. As a matter of fact, the airport has been underfunded. There's 27 allocated budget, a position. There's only 11 to 12 officers there. They they misrepresented that last time we're here. It's just concerning to me that they would fast track this, put it on an agenda on Friday, not even give us enough time to have subject matter experts here to actually properly represent the interests of your constituents, the people that elect and vote for you guys, as well as all those that serve and fly into Long Beach. That's a concern to us. Now, this unit is standing before you to ask the city council not only to think about the workers that are being harmed, but also the fact that these workers, these as a source, prefer as a place where the same uniformed do the same job at a lower cost to the city. Just just let that sink in at a lower cost to the city. Now, one more. The thing that's more important than anything else is the fact that these officers are going to have to train their replacements, do their job. Imagine the issue that's going to have with transportation, those people flying in there when RC has always had to train the people that are going to replace them, do their duties. Think about that. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 3: Next speaker Wayne Zimmerman, resident at Long Beach. I'd be interested in knowing what the issues of impasse were. Can the city respond? What were the issues that caused the impasse? Speaker 1: Mr. West. I know those. I know. I'm saying. Mr. West, you want to respond to that? Because it's a negotiation. Speaker 3: We met approximately ten times over a year. And I think the big impasse was the union did not want to work under the police department. Well, I think. Okay. Alex, you want to respond? Speaker 1: I think I think well, Mr.. Mr. West, I think part of the question is we we reached through the impasse process, through the through the negotiation process that that your staff went through. Ms.. It's Alex didn't comment on that. Speaker 5: So the two primary issues of disagreement were the training for CISOs and the continued ability for the CISOs to make red light stops. Speaker 3: Thank you. And thanks to. Speaker 8: Our honorable mayor and city council. So I just wanted to put emphasis on the issues that we're concerned about, that the training of our special service officers in Long Beach will go down from 660 hours down to 30 or 60. I like how they they play around with the truth that they're going to still get training. The key word is that they got a request to see if there's budget available. For training. I want to put I want to put a spotlight on that. And I want I want you all to realize when you guys. What's the word? Motion to put it after to wait for the recess. I want you to look at all the city employees that came after work on their own time and how respectful that is to us. Good day. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 8: I'd be curious to to know if it's public information. The homeland security and federal money from TSA that is really up for mistakes because for many people in the community, this isn't a security issue as there's never been any attack on a on or on the premises of the airport. For many people in the community, this seems like a money grab, you know, in an area where crime rates are going down. It seems like this is an opportunity to integrate a otherwise independent division of security in relation to the airport, to a the police department that wants extra police officers. That's great. However, you shouldn't be using the airport as an opportunity to do that. You know, you should maybe police the the high schools that are being attacked right now, you know, poorly high Cabrillo High, where students are being attacked while they're moving around the streets. Maybe you can dedicate those 20 extra officers that you want these special details that are just sitting around instead of going out to the unions, you can go after the real criminals, which are the people on the streets, the gangs, the gangs who are using this opportunity, you know, to burglarize our homes. And with the opioid crisis going on right now, that's not at the airport. I wish we had an airport in the Wrigley area. I wish because then maybe you guys would dedicate some extra officers and extra substation that way to police instead of trying to use this as an opportunity to, you know, I know the airports increase in Long Beach Airport is a great airport to fly through. Never had no problems, never had any problems with the CSO moving in or moving out of that airport. However, I know that as it's an increase in airport and there's increasing traffic, what is now, what is it? 15 is a 17. 12 what's now 12? You guys take it over. I know in a decade or two they'll be 30 and in another decade or two they'll be 50. So I see the game. I see it's the same thing you guys are doing at the harbor. It's the same thing you guys are doing it the blue line. You guys are trying to take opportunities to to use security as opportunities for job security. And that's not what your job is. Your job is to police the streets and make sure our communities are safe. Now, making sure that 20, 30 extra of you cops, police officers will have the opportunity to have a job at the expense of union members. So city council people, you know, you know what the truth is? They're going after the unions and they're going after, you know, ample opportunities to take federal money and homeland security money. That's not security has nothing to do with this. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. And last speaker, please. Speaker 14: Good evening, Mayor and City Council Robert Fox, executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations. I oppose the merger of the airport security with our police department on some practical grounds. Number one, if it's not broke, don't fix it. Number two, every time we do this kind of a takeover like we did with the blue line, we supposedly added 51 officers to the force when in fact, they were dedicated only to the blue line. And we're still 200 officers short. So our budget of the city of Long Beach has never been police specific as it should be. I think that's a real critical issue here. We're adding on a responsibility to the police department, which is already understaffed, and all you're doing is changing out really qualified security people who are specifically trained for the airport with people who are not specifically trained for the airport. And I believe that that is a dangerous combination for this city. We have a wonderful airport that we spent a lot of money on modernizing, and it's wonderful to fly out of. I've never had a problem and we've never had a security problem in the city of Long Beach, on our airport, on our streets. We do. So I'm suggesting that we. Rethink this. Besides which, I think it's insulting to the citizens of Long Beach to have such short notice on such an important issue. We had to go around, grumble around trying to figure out, you know, what this was all about. And, you know, if we as neighborhood activists and leaders of our communities have to scramble to find the information. How much more difficult is it for regular citizens to get this information? These are the people we serve. So I'm wishing that you will reconsider this idea, postpone it, perhaps do some more research on it. I personally would support the airport and saying precisely the way it is. They have a good grip on it. Their training is impeccable. We've had no problems in personnel whatsoever, whereas in our police department we have. I hate to tell you that. So I would suggest I'm not trying to bash the police department that you've got a 100% sterling record versus. Hmm, I don't think this is a good idea. Thank you very much for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you. That that concludes. That concludes public comments. Let me go to close public comment. Mr. West, you have something? Speaker 3: Just one thing, sir. I just want to make it clear that there's nobody's been replaced. I just want to make that clear. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. So let me let me go back guy who was trying to get through through the process here. So there is a motion proposed by staff on the floor. Is there a second on this motion? Okay. If there's no if there's no second if there's no second on this motion, then then the motion will not move forward. Speaker 3: You need a second for the special. Speaker 1: Said there's no second on the motion so. So I'm just I'm just want to say there is no second on the motion. So slow motion. We're moving on to the next item. There's no second on the motion. Okay. Our next item is. 710.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution pursuant to California Government Code Section 3505.4, authorizing the implementation of the terms of the City's Last, Best and Final Offer, described in the October 24, 2018 correspondence to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), detailing the Scope of Service on the Airport Security Division and Long Beach Police Department Integration. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: So that's that's we're moving forward. We're moving forward with that. Okay. So. If I could just get a quick motion in second for item 44. Item number 14, we don't need a presentation. We're just going to go in and take a recess till 630. Can I get a motion in a second? Any any public comment, please cast your votes. Please cast your vote. Speaker 10: Community survey. That's really good. Speaker 0: Councilmember Sabrina, Councilwoman Mango Motion carries. Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to take a recess because we have a we have a 630 time certain. Speaker 3: Streamline. Speaker 11: From the album. Hello. Tomorrow. That's Dave Cars and he's got the top down. I saw him the other night. He's he's a great guy. I've been a friend for a long time. And I told him, I said, man, we play your tune, putting the top down all the time on gay jazz, because I think it's a wonderful tune to ride around with. You put the spell. If you've got a convertible, Dave tells you to put the top down. We can all cruise together listening to K Jazz. The music continues right after the break with Count Basie and Joe Williams. And every day they got the blue. Speaker 12: Thank you for financially supporting jazz. Your gift can be twice as valuable to jazz. Many employers have an employee matching gift program such as Ford Motor Company, Albertsons, Coca-Cola Company, Disney, JPMorgan Chase and many, many more. All you have to do is ask your employer's human resources or community relations department for a matching gift form. Complete the employee portion and mail it back to jazz. Or call our membership department at 310 4785061 for more details on how your membership dollars can go farther. Speaker 6: Hi, this is Sarah Zorich and you're listening to America's number one jazz station, Key Jazz 88.1 streaming live at Jazz and Blues Talk. Speaker 10: Every day. Every day I have. Speaker 13: Every day and every day. Speaker 3: I have the blue. Where do you see me? Where? Me, baby? Because it's you I'd hate to lose. Nobody loves me. Nobody seems to care. Speaker 13: No. But in. Speaker 3: Nobody seems to get. Speaking of bad. Speaker 9: Luck and trouble. Well, you know, I've had. I'm going to back my name. Speaker 13: I'm like. Gonna fight much on down the line. Well, the man, no matter where it can be. I did try. Seems to be an indicator for me. Three days. The British. We may recall you. But. But he loved me. And, you know. Oh! Ow! Ow! Ow! Moving down my. And really nobody very. And they know, Bernie. I am in. I have. I have seen where they've. Speaker 10: Gone and few. Speaker 13: Every day and day and every day. Speaker 10: At 88.1. This is listener supported Public Radio KXJZ, Long Beach, Los Angeles and KCRW. HD one Long Beach, a service of California State University. Long Beach. Also worldwide at Jazz and Blues Dawg. Speaker 11: Steve Gyro, thanks for joining me on your ride home here on K Jazz. We're going to start our two off with Eric Clapton and a song that won the Grammy for the Song of the Year back in the day, I don't know, not that long ago, but probably seven or eight years ago. Anyway, it's a wonderful tune called Change the World, and it's going to get us started an hour or two. Speaker 10: Hit needs to start. Speaker 13: Oh, one gun. Shine. So you could see the truth. Gurney's Love. Speaker 10: Island's. Speaker 13: But for now. Only. Speaker 10: So. Speaker 13: It runs on. We're seeing phone. Some? Never. But. My. Speaker 10: And now the purple dust of Trump. Steels across. I think this guy. Five stars climb. Last. Speaker 13: Fine. You can't blame. Speaker 10: Leaving is. Speaker 6: London is now. Speaker 10: Stardust and yesterday. Of the long. Sometimes I. Not why you spend the lonely nights. Just dreaming of a song. The melody. Huntsman referee. And I again, he. When I loved one. And age kids and inspiration. Of five must go. Now my constellation names in the stardust of a song won't be. So I got. Where stars shine. One, Mom. Fun and games. Oh, she sings Fairytale of Paradise Ferociousness. Though I dream. In. In my heart, it will make meaning. From the start. I mean, the memory of illusory. Maybe sound. That garden. Where storms shine bright. Well, your momma. I'm not gay. Oh, she sings fairy tale. A Paradise Where Rose is. Low on drink, making it in my heart. It will remain more focused on the. The memory of grief. It's just different. Is it souvenir to say just lay down for school. Whoever does you have piled up and it shows it's home. The souvenirs should tell. This movie, Nicole. To tell people a. Speaker 13: Moms feel good. Speaker 10: She left. Speaker 13: Last. Let's go get some. Speaker 10: Suzanne. The. There's nothing to share. Speaker 13: Share them on the Hong Kong. Speaker 10: To British journalism. Speaker 13: Me, Mocktail. Evelyn. So that. Speaker 10: Some fans. Speaker 13: We? You share them on a phone call? Speaker 10: Yusuf Islam left plays the. Speaker 13: Meanwhile, Teddy. All of us have better. Oh. Speaker 11: Hey, it's me, Steve Carell. And that was Emily Clare Barlow. Dream A Little Dream of Me. That's from her album, Very Thought Of You in 2007 and Sun in Mr.. Gospel was before Emily with Stardust. Bobby Darin joins us next on stage as softly as I leave you from collection from 2004 called the legendary Bobby Darin. Bobby's next on. Speaker 13: Softly. I will leave you. Speaker 10: Softly. Speaker 13: Good brain. If you should wait. Speaker 3: Time to see me. Speaker 10: So I'll leave you. So please. Speaker 13: Long before. Long before. Big mistake. For. J. Speaker 10: You. Speaker 13: I can. The team. So song. Speaker 10: Place. Speaker 13: I'll leave you. I'll leave you. Zaire. After. The. I can't bear to. So. Please. I'll leave you. As Eileen. I'll leave you. Speaker 9: Never knew how much of. Never knew how much I care when you put your arm around me. I get a fever. Speaker 3: That so hard. And you give me a fever when you kiss me. Fever when you hold. Speaker 9: Fever in the morning. Speaker 13: Fever all through the night. The sun lights up. The daytime. Running lights up the night. When you call the name and you know what he does, right? Speaker 10: You give him a fever when he gives me a fever when. Speaker 13: You hold me times fever in the morning. Speaker 10: Oh, fever all. Speaker 13: Through the night. Everybody's got a fever. Speaker 3: That. That's something that you should know. Fever is a symptom. New thing. Fever started. Speaker 9: Oh. About Romeo loves you here, huh? Juliet She felt the same. When he put his arms around her, he said, You, baby, you're my friend. Now give it to me. Speaker 13: With that you feel. Pocahontas had a very manifest. But when her daddy tried to kill. Speaker 10: She said that at their heaviest Mrs.. Speaker 13: But when it. Oh, yes. Right now. You heard that story. Speaker 10: Oh, it's your story. Speaker 13: That. This chick was born to give you a fever. That's right. Be it Fahrenheit. Speaker 3: Great. And they give you fever. When you kiss them live, you tell your. Speaker 13: I have one. I love the rain. Speaker 3: Yeah, I tell you. Speaker 10: I love live way. All right. What a lovely way to burn. I love that one. I love the way. Right. Right. Speaker 11: From the Grammy Award winning album Genius Loves Company. That was Brother Ray and Natalie Cole. That album kind of. It was right after Ray died. It was a shame that he won the album of the year and he wasn't around to collect it. But we'll be around to listen to it forever. Like all of his other great stuff. That was fever. Both of them are no longer with us. And they were both classic, classic artists, Ray Charles and Natalie Cole. The music continues after the break on K Jazz with Kenny Rankin and his wonderful version of On and On the Stephen Bishop song. Speaker 12: Support for Jazz is provided by the Jazz Cruise Festival style cruise vacation featuring award winning. Straight ahead, jazz artist by Jazz Cruises, 20th anniversary sailing from February 1st through the eighth 2020 features nearly 100 jazz musicians on the ship and over 200 hours of music, including concerts by Dianne Reeves, the Christian McBride Trio, Arturo Sandoval, Joey DeFrancesco , Trio of Charles McPherson Quartet, Kurt Elling and more. Space is limited. More information, including about jazz packages, is at the jazz cruise. WSJ.com slash k jazz. Speaker 10: You're looking at the skies. Speaker 12: And gay jazz is throwing its annual summer benefit concert at the Music Center's Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday, June 22nd at 8 p.m.. And we have a very limited number of VIP tickets. Donate $400 and you'll receive a pair of tickets for the best seats in the house in the front orchestra section of main. Why not do headlining will be triple Grammy winner, Tony Winner and jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater. Opening the concert are acclaimed vocalist, guitarist, role model and Leona Lewis. You'll also be invited to join us for a post-show reception with dessert, wine and coffee at the Founders Room at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Tickets include valet parking or donation and one year membership. VIP tickets are only available through K Jazz. Call one 310 4785061 or pledge online at Jazz and Blues Dawg Forward slash Disney. This will be an evening you won't want to miss. Speaker 10: Hi, this is Dee Dee Bridgewater. I want to say thank you for supporting Kay Jazz 88.1. We appreciate you. Speaker 13: Down in Jamaica. Speaker 3: They got lots of pretty women. Steal your money and then they break your heart. No. So, Sue, she's in love with old Sam. Speaker 10: Take you from firing. Speaker 13: To the right. He just keeps on. Speaker 10: Lonesome. Jimmy sits at home. I saw his woman kiss another man. Speaker 13: So he takes. That it takes. My. Got the sun on my shoulder. Speaker 10: In the same. Speaker 13: My mom left me for some problem that. But I don't just dream. Speaker 10: I'm still. Speaker 11: That's Wes Montgomery on gay jazz. Willow Weep for Me. And this is the Steve Tyrell Show on K Jazz 88.1. Tony Bennett and k.d. Lang are next from an album called A Wonderful World, which was Tony's salute, really, to the great Louis Armstrong. And their version together of Exactly Like You is exactly fabulous. Speaker 3: I know. I've waited. Speaker 13: I know what I've been doing. Speaker 3: I've prayed each night for some. Exactly like you, you know. Why should we spend money on a show or two? You know, no one does those love scenes exactly like you. You. He feels so grand. I want to hand the world to you. Speaker 10: You seem to understand its first scheme. Speaker 3: I'm scheming. Speaker 10: Dreamer. I'm dreaming. Yeah. I know why my mama. Speaker 3: Taught me to be true. She met me for some. Exactly like you. Speaker 10: I know, I know. I've been read each night for someone exactly like you. Now, why should we spend money on a show for two? No. Does his love see? Exactly like. Speaker 13: What? Make me feel so grand. Speaker 10: I want to. You made. Speaker 13: Me understand. It's foolishness. Speaker 10: Schemers. Scheming dream. A dream. Oh one. Speaker 13: My mother taught me to. Speaker 10: She met me for some. Speaker 3: Exactly like, you know. Speaker 10: Exactly. Speaker 3: Exactly like you. Exactly like you. Exactly like. Speaker 6: Exactly like you. Speaker 3: Yes, dear. You are to be in picture. You're wonderful to see. You ought to be in pictures. Speaker 13: Oh, what a. Speaker 3: Your voice would thrill a nation, your face would be adored, and you'd make a great sensation with wealth and fame. Your reward. Speaker 13: The way you is when we are all alone. Speaker 3: You have every girl in Mandapam worshiping at your throat. You are to shine as brightly as Jupiter or Mars. You either read in pictures. A staff. Speaker 13: Of staff. For five. And if you should kiss the way you. Speaker 3: Kiss when we are alone. You have every girl. Speaker 13: And man of mass worshiping at your throne or. Speaker 3: Even your slight drop ball. You ought to shine as brightly. Speaker 13: As Jupiter. Mars. You ought to be in pictures. My. Oh. Speaker 11: That was the Boilermaker Jazz Band. You ought to be in pictures. Great version of that song. It's from an album called I Love the Rhythm and a Riff. And Linda Ronstadt joins us next on K Jazz. With Nelson Riddle and his orchestra and little girl Blue is my man Bob Mann. In her start in all off he plays you listen to how beautifully he plays the verse on guitar and how well Linda sings it. Speaker 10: Sit there. And count your fingers. What can you do? Oh, girl, you're through. Sit there. And count your. One thing. A lucky little girl. Speaker 13: Cynthia. And counting drums. Speaker 10: Going on. It's time. Speaker 13: Can count on his and. Speaker 10: That from one little girl. No use. Oh, good. You may as well. Surrender. Speaker 13: Your hobbies get. And so under. Well also. Speaker 10: But is. To change. When I was very young. The world was young. As Merry as. Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to call this meeting back to order. Speaker 10: The circus tent was strong. Speaker 1: We're calling this meeting back to order. Speaker 3: And if I can, please have. The roll call. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilmember appears. Councilwoman Price. Councilmember Supernanny. Councilwoman Mango Weiss. Mayor Andrew's. Councilmember Muranga. Councilman Austin. Councilman Richardson and Mayor Garcia. Speaker 1: Thank you. We're all here. So we have two items not on the agenda. We're going to go back to the item that we were on and then we will be moving on to the last item which had a time certain at sometime after 630.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the 2018 City of Long Beach Community Survey. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05212019_19-0502

Speaker 1: Our next item is. 710. Speaker 0: Item 17 Communications from City Attorney Recommendation to DEQ to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Minister Code relating to tenant relocation assistance. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading City. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Let me turn this over to Mr. West or someone from staff. Speaker 3: Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, the city attorney is going to walk through a presentation of the ordinance and then staff will be available for questions. Speaker 15: Honorable Mayor, members of the council. As you know, on April 2nd, the council directed our office to prepare an ordinance establishing a tenant relocation assistance program, requiring that, among other things, and under certain conditions, landlords make relocation payments to tenants upon termination of their tenancy. The that motion adopted at the previous council meeting was as detailed as could be reasonably expected, and it provided our office with specific direction on substantive provisions to be included in the ordinance. And I, on behalf of myself, of course, and our office and staff would like to thank Council for taking the time to provide us with that detailed direction it provided. Very helpful in drafting the ordinance. With that said, the Council direction understandably did not provide detail on all aspects of a relocation payment program and the implementation thereof. So therefore we added certain provisions which were not discussed at the previous council meeting and which were not included in the previous direction. We are we are very sensitive to and appreciative of the fact that both supporters and opponents of this ordinance, many of whom are here now, hold their opinions dearly and are otherwise passionate about tenant relocation. So with that in mind, our intention was to make such additions and tweaks to the provisions of the ordinance as proposed by the motion, as reasonable and fair as possible, without unduly favoring either landlords or tenants. And we hope we did that. I'd like to briefly point out the additions and tweaks that I just mentioned and explain the reasoning behind them. There are three in particular that I'd like to highlight. The first one is section 8.90 7.020 gee, which is the definition of a tenant in good standing? The council motion directed our office to define good standing as a tenant who has been in a unit for more than one year. That provision has not changed and the motion directed our office to attend in good standing would be more than one year. And then the second component would be that the tenant had not violated or or committed any of the nine valid causes for eviction as outlined in by state law. There was quite a bit of discussion about those nine causes for eviction as outlined by state law. I think we were all a little misguided in that, in assuming that maybe the California civil code or code of civil procedure outlined in one place nine different reasons for eviction. That's not the case. They are sprinkled throughout the state law. And because of that, we didn't think it made a lot of sense to specifically call out each of the nine causes for eviction as a reason why a tenant might not be eligible for relocation. A lot of them had to do with specific things like engaging in cockfighting, dogfighting, the illegal discharge of ammunition in the unit. Those are basically have been simplified and boiled down into one just saying a tenant would not be eligible for relocation if they have used the unit or the surrounding property on which the unit sits for an unlawful purpose. That was while it could win against what you directed me to do. I think it was within the spirit and I think it made things simpler. There was also a fair amount of discussion regarding if a tenant had violated one of those provisions, had committed either been late in the payment of rent or had committed unlawful activity while on the premises. Would there be any way to cure that in so many words, so that if they made things right, they would thereafter be eligible for relocation assistance? My me working with staff made the determination that it would be fair. Things that are reasonably susceptible to cure, like the payment of rent. If a tenant had been late on rent several months or years prior to the trigger event, that would give them relocation and they had otherwise made things right. Paid late fees, brought rent, current, and anything else the lease required them to do. They would still be eligible for tenant relocation if the tenant in the past, however, had committed an illegal act at the property had her. And so on and so forth that would permanently render them ineligible for tenant relocation assistance. The second thing I want to highlight is the timing of the payment that Section 8.90 7.0 30c as in Cat. No specific direction was given to our office regarding when relocation payment would be paid. However, effectively, it was required to be paid on the last day of a tenant's tenancy because of the fact that failure to pay relocation would be an affirmative action to to an eviction. So a landlord would have to make payment on the last day in an effort to provide more specificity on on when tenant relocation payments need to be paid and to ensure that some of the money is paid earlier than the last day of tenancy, but also to incentivize the tenant to actually leave after they've received half of their or a portion of their tenant relocation payment in 8.90 7.30. See, I have split the baby, so to speak. Half is due within 14 days, more or less depending on the trigger event 14 days after the trigger event. And then the other half is due five days after the tenant vacates the unit. The third item I'd like to point out is that the landlords this was not discussed on April 2nd and through nobody's fault the landlord requirement to pay relocation. I think it's important that if the county or any other government agency were ever to require relocation of a landlord to a tenant, that the relocation payment due under this ordinance would be reduced by the amount that that landlord would have to pay the tenant under some other provision of law. I don't think it was anyone's intention to place two relocation payments upon a landlord, and it was something I had not considered until I reviewed some other ordinances that other municipalities have recently adopted that are very similar to what is before you tonight. That's it. As far as things I wanted to highlight in the ordinance, it's been public for some time. I'm sure there'll be some comment regarding other provisions, but I'd finally like to note that another item that was discussed quite a bit on April 2nd was an additional $2,000 in benefit payable to disabled and or and or senior citizen tenants. That is not included in this ordinance, and that's by design, because I believe that the council's direction on April 2nd was to make that a city funded program. So I just wanted everyone to understand that it wasn't left out on purpose. That is still something it would be inappropriate to have it in the ordinance. But my understanding is, is that more detail regarding that additional $2,000 of funding, therefore, will be brought before the Council at a later date by staff. That is it for my presentation. Myself and staff are standing by to take any further direction that you might have with respect to the audience and or answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilman Gonzales. You want to go to public comment first? Okay. Public comment on the ordinance is proposed. Please come forward. Please come forward. And so we will go down to. There's more than ten folks. So unless there's any objection from the council, we're going to go to 90 seconds. Oh, there's there's no objection from the council. So we will go to 90 seconds. Speaker 3: Got it. Speaker 9: Stop listening to paid speakers bustin here to tell you exactly. Speaker 3: What they claim. A problem is there is no problem in Long Beach. Speaker 9: For affordable housing. Look at other beach cities. Look at Manhattan Beach. Look at Malibu. Look at these places. You're fixing a problem that doesn't exist. What you're doing is you're driving out landlords. If you go ahead and pass this ordinance, my property will lose easily. Speaker 3: $100,000 in value. If there's 1000 such five plus units in Long Beach. Speaker 9: You're taking away $100 million from property owners. The persons here. Speaker 3: That you're harming are going to be the tenants also. Speaker 9: You're going to cause problems between the tenants and the landlords. Speaker 3: In Santa monica, you will have. Speaker 9: Tenants that are paying $800 for a property because they've been there since the 1980s. Speaker 3: Their neighbors are paying $4,000. Speaker 9: This is going to happen in Long Beach. You're going to have tenants that are paying extremely low rent. Speaker 3: And the landlords are going to make up for it by charging. Speaker 9: Other tenants more. You're harming the exact people you're claiming you're supposed to be saving. Stop this. Just be shamed at yourselves. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 4: Next week. Speaker 6: Hi there. I'm Linda Olsen. I'm a small property owner in Long Beach. Also, thank you for allowing me to speak here. One thing that hasn't been factored into this discussion of tenant relocation assistance is the law of unintended consequences. If you are going to ladle on to property owners and their operating expenses an additional 40 $500. Speaker 5: Per unit. Speaker 6: Per year potentially there's only one place for that money that's got to go into the operating budget to come from. It's only one place it comes from and that's from the rent that is collected from the tenants. Therefore, property owners are going to have to increase rents to cover that cost. Speaker 5: So landlords throughout the city who otherwise might not increase rents, you know, maybe more two or 3% are going to have to increase 10% every single year in order to make up. Speaker 6: That cost of 40 $500 per unit. The law. Speaker 10: Of. Speaker 6: Unintended consequences. This does not make for better housing for tenants. Every tenant in this room, every tenant in this city is going to see their rent go up more than it would have gone up if you had let this be the law of unintended consequences. Thank you. Speaker 4: HUME Let's pick up. Speaker 3: Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilmembers. My name is Mike Murchison. I'm here on behalf of quite a few rental property owners. The organization, as you know, a spot. I think one of the big concerns that I have tonight is, is that we spent a great deal of time since April 2nd when this first came up to try to get the rental property owners and the various groups on the same page. And we accomplished that. We've had significant number of briefings. We've had communications with all of you individually, and there are just two items that are left that we are advocating for change. One is 180 days notice in lieu of reload, and the other is the four units to five units. And we settled on a middle ground with that argument, too. I'm asking that after you get your viewpoint from the city attorney tonight, if it's deemed substantive, if Charlie deems it substantive, those two items, then you postpone this first reading until June 11th. There's no reason. There's no reason to not do that. There's nothing that I can figure out that makes sense why this needs to be voted on tonight. Those two issues are critical to rental property owners, and these are rental property owners that have all come together to throw away their differences, narrow it down to two items, and try to keep it as simple as possible so that the tenants and the rental property owners can move forward. But if we jam this through tonight with some promise of a future date, it puts at risk everything that the rental property owners have been discussing since April 2nd. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Next week. Speaker 9: Hello, City Council. My name is Bob Stallings. I'm a broker owner of Remax, real estate specialist in Long Beach for the past 32 years. Very concerned about private property rights as everybody that owns property should be. I'll read very quickly since the time is short. I'm representing, by the way, not only my company, but I'm speaking on behalf of our association, Pacific West Association of Realtors. The passage of just cause eviction laws eliminate property owner or operators right to serve on a non non-renewal notice on a resident at the end of lease term unless in case the property owner pays the tenant to move. Speaker 3: This only creates additional housing and. Speaker 9: Financial burdens for everyone. We respectfully request that the Long Beach City Council take a look. Slow down there. As the gentleman just said, you don't need a rush requiring because the ordinance requires means. Speaker 3: Testing for tenants to. Speaker 9: Receive relocation benefits, increasing the number of units that trigger tenant relocation to five units or more. We'd like to see that. And removing just cause eviction elements in order to protect the good tenants that we have from bad tenants. Very important. So please postpone any vote until you have further study. The city government should take care of hurting people from public funds, not from an individual landowner. Speaker 3: Thank you. Good evening. My name is Joshua Christian. Speaker 8: I'm an attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of L.A. I work in the Long Beach Office and our homelessness prevention department. I wanted to comment on a few provisions that we propose that we do not believe are substantive to the ordinance. First, I want to talk about splitting the baby in terms of relocation assistance. Right now, the ordinance says that relocation should be paid in one piece before a tenant moves on one piece. Afterword. I think this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the ordinance. Relocation assistance is necessary because tenants do not have the money to move. It's not a reward for moving. Tenants don't have the money for a new apartment. Now my clients don't have $1,000 for a security deposit and for some last month's rent. They need to have the full relocation prior to moving if they're even going to apply. So we proposed two straightforward and effective timelines. One is, if there's a 60 day notice, the landlord pays relocation in full within 15 days. The other one is if a landlord raises the rent and the tenant chooses to leave, the tenant lets the landlord now and the landlord pays within five days. This means that the tenant is empowered to search for an apartment immediately upon payment. I also want to note that a landlord's failure to notify a tenant of relocation rights should be added as an affirmative defense to eviction. Civil damages and penalties by themselves do not effectively enforce the ordinance. A small claims judgment and a civil penalty 18 months down the line does not help my client 18 months later when she's been evicted and she's living on the pavement. So thank you. Speaker 3: Good evening. Speaker 8: My name is Alex Flores. I'm also a staff attorney with. Speaker 3: The Legal Aid Foundation. Speaker 8: Here in Long Beach. I want to start out by. Speaker 3: Giving you a reason why we need to vote on this tonight and have it go forward. Just last week, our office was contacted by Ms.. Gloria Varanasi. She is a tenant in Councilmember Andrew Soucek in the sixth District. She received a 218% rent increase. The only help that she could get was contact LaFleur. This is why we need this. And this is why we need this now. As my colleague explained, we have suggested three, three things that would clarify the law to make it what it's supposed to be, to allow tenants to actually leave, but do so on their feet and not evicted, not straight to the pavement. Obviously, we want this ordinance to go to be passed as soon as possible or else. The longer we wait, the more that there are. Gloria's out there, elderly, not being able to find a place to move should any of these changes be deemed substantial. I think that there are different things that we can do to be able to work with that. I would ask the. Speaker 8: City Council to please inquire. Speaker 3: With the city attorney to see what we can do in order to keep these. Speaker 8: Possible suggestions alive as we move on with the statute. Speaker 3: Today. There are other options, like removing some of the problematic language, like the 14 day requirement, like the like the requirement regarding when the realtor has to be paid by the tenant, by the landlord. Thank you. Yeah. Joe Soto, you've got my name and number on file. And, you know, I'm an investor and there's two fellows who spoke before me would scare the crap out of me. As an investor. I wouldn't come to Long Beach to put money into this this city. I wouldn't do it. I'd go somewhere else. I'd go somewhere else. That city wants to continue to grow and upgrade and make it a wonderful city. Long Beach used to be a Navy town and people bought properties, investors bought properties and they knocked down old buildings, they attracted new businesses, and all of that was capitalism. You can't put a cap on our rent and say, you're a capitalist. You can't you're not. You can't do that. In fact. You all gave your word to P.W. Ah. When you interviewed them for their support and. And their endorsement. You all said that you were against rent control. This is rent control. It's an aspect of it, but it is rent control. Now we're going to see who keeps their word tonight. Thank you. Speaker 9: Good evening, Council. And the mayor who's just coming back. My name is Rob Feldman, my wife and I, Debbie and Rob Feldman. We've been with Keller Williams Coastal, but we've been in the real estate world for. Speaker 3: Over 28 years. And we've seen. Speaker 9: Ups and downs, seen it many, many times. And I could go over all the specifics tonight, but it looks like we're on the tail end of this. And all I really want to say is that the current. Speaker 3: Proposal I. Speaker 9: Believe and we believe excuse me, in the realty world that'll make housing crisis worse and will only have unintended consequences that will hurt our communities for years to come. At its most basic premise is government control and regulation of how much property owners can charge, undermining the key provisions of landlord and tenant relationships. Let's not forget that. Speaker 3: Excuse me. Let me speak. Speaker 9: We recognize the various goals and policy options the City Council is trying to balance and are confident that upon more robust discussion, a long term solution that addresses the concerns of housing, industry and homeowners and tenant groups can be achieved. A policy of this magnitude needs to be discussed more in depth, and hopefully you all will see it tonight. Speaker 3: I understand there's going to be the vote, but love to see it discussed even more. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: My name is Jim Meyer. And we have we're we're a mom and pop operation and I'd like to address the Andrew sent me a letter on a response. I sent him and he said things like unusual, large number of rent increase. How many is unusual large number ten for three. Now, if you want. And you also want all your tenants here, your constituents. Well, you didn't bark when when the city raised the tickets for street sweeping 20%. But you only allow us 10%. There's something wrong that you do this to your constituents. And I know because I got property in your district and these people scramble every day, you should see them scrambling like like ants to move their car so they don't get that big increase in your in your penalties. So why are you rate able to raise it 20%? And you you say we can only raise 10%. This is the case of the the camel getting his head under the tent. This is all it is. So let's just let the land we get along. We have people have been with us 25, 26 years. We get people Christmas presents, we get people hams. Whenever there's a tragedy in the family, this is what individual landowners do and this is what we do. We're not the big guys, so why penalize small people? Thank you. Speaker 14: Good evening, counsel. Robert Fox, executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations. I'm here to speak on the just cause eviction aspect of this. Number one, the city attorney has made it very amorphous in terms of nuisance behavior. Very difficult to prosecute in court. We have council members who are attorneys who actually know what civil procedure is. I'm here to protect the neighborhoods. When I founded Alameda Speech, it was a drug infested, thug, gang infested neighborhood. It was not considered quality when we went to evict tenants. We had to have tenant testimony in order to have a preponderance of the estimate of the evidence. However, we forgot that there's a 3 to 4 week lockout period. These same tenants that were so brave to testify were beaten within an inch of their lives. We cannot morally ask tenants to testify when it puts their lives at risk. So I wish that we will reconsider this, take more time to not read this into the into the record tonight. I think that you have serious things to discuss. I was a tenant for 27 years. I know exactly what this is all about. I agree that we should be careful with our rent increases. But let's let the neighborhoods protect themselves. Because if we go down this path, it'll be like going back to 1990. And that was not a good year for Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 5: I call loosely. I'm the president of the East Side. Voice My address is on file. I just wanted to talk for a moment about just cause eviction. I was at someone's house one day that was a property owner and his property manager was there. And a phone call came in and he looked frantic and he was going to run out the door. And I said, you know, what's the problem? And he said, Oh, I just got a call from a tenant. Speaker 10: Saying There's bugs all over the apartment. Speaker 5: And he grabbed his stuff and ran out the door. I happened to be there when he got back and I said, What was that all about? And he said, There wasn't a single bug. That was a guy on crack. And these were nice apartments. These weren't, you know, junky apartments. So that made me think about what would you do if you were the landlord in that situation? How do you prove. Speaker 7: Somebody is on crack? Speaker 10: Do you get to. Speaker 5: Go to a get together urinalysis, walk to the door and ask for that to get a blood sample? How do you prove it? Speaker 7: In the end, what happened is, you know, the other tenants have to be brave enough to join you. Speaker 10: And I can. Speaker 5: Tell you from having bad neighbors myself, I was the only person willing to take them on. People are afraid of going up against someone who's working in the drug world. Imagine the cost of trying to move them out. The lawyers fees of 50 K. What ends up with your apartment building? When that happens, the other people move out. Speaker 7: The good people move out. Speaker 5: So just cause there's so many unintentional. Speaker 10: Thank you. All righty. Speaker 3: Kozol. Chuck Brewer, proud Long Beach resident since 1976. I love the city and I love what you have done to the city. So I remember the council. I like to say thank you. The place looks a lot better, but use of what's going on now will be consequences. It'll come back to bite us in the back and. But five, ten years from now, I deal with investors, and I'm a firm believer that investors are going to do exactly what we've seen in the state where you see Toyota leave Nissan, leave, Nabisco, leave, 16,000, 16,000 businesses have gone out of state. I know of investors that are all right now talking about a credit I'll get a listing of. But after that, you're going to get other people coming in to buy and they will not. Speaker 9: Be able to keep up the places because of rents go with repair. Speaker 3: And I'm saying to you. The landlords that I know want to have a good, solid community. Speaker 9: To work with. They do not. Speaker 3: Want to buy into rent control. And this is right on the edge of rent control. Don't say it. It. So it isn't. And I wish you the best in this decision. But one other item is I do not understand why in the provision and it has a 1 to 3 units are exempt. And the fourth is not that loans are not sold in that manner. Thank you. Speaker 8: You already know, Ms.. Andrews. I'm a proud sixth district rat that took the magic school bus. That took the Magic School bus of righteousness to be here. And I'm so happy I'm here. I'm here for the tenants, you know, I'm here for the people who who pay for these. Fortune 500 companies are behind us. Coldwell Bankers, that's a Fortune 500 company owned by Realogy Remax. That's a Fortune 500 company. These are not small business owners. This is not mom and pops behind us. This is crony capitalism. Excuse you. This is crony capitalism. Who's ask? Excuse you. You need to be quiet. You need to be quiet when I'm up here. That's. That's called decorum. Please, you. Speaker 4: Guys, please show some respect for this. Please continue. Speaker 8: Thank you, sir. You know, proper decorum anyways. You know, we learned about that in the you know, when those hand out the the hands and everything. But, you know, here we have crony capitalism that complain about communism. Right. But they're asking for government intervention to prevent the market from doing what the market says. So it's okay for you to get Prop 13 and it's okay for you to get the inherited tax breaks and in tax incentives. But it's not okay for me to inherit the fact that the communities that I grew up in, the communities that sustained you while you talk about the nineties, well, we had to live through it. We had to live through the gangs and the crack. You didn't want to you don't want to put any money into the buildings now and now that new people are moving in. Now you want to pay an okay, guess what? Thank you. That's my time. Thank you. Well, that's something you can borrow. Speaker 10: Oh. Speaker 7: Hello. My name is Kathy. Speaker 6: Edam, and I am a street minister for the last seven years living here. I moved from Lancaster. I love Long Beach. My compassion is for the homeless, the elderly and the disabled. Speaker 10: And right now. Speaker 6: With the relocation I have seen, many of the elderly and the disabled be displaced because of the buildings that have been made and created. Their buildings have been destroyed. They were told to leave within 60 days. Speaker 10: They have no money. There's no way. Speaker 6: That they're able to pay the the deposits, the rent. That's enormous. You have to have high credit scores. You have to have triple the amount of for your money for what you make. There's a lot of people don't make that kind of money. So I also have compassion for the people who have rentals. You know, it's not easy to be a rent, you know, to own businesses and have people respect your properties and stuff like that. So I think what we need to do is that we need to have equality on both sides. But with the relocation, the money needs to be right away because they can't get in apartment without the money first. God bless you. And I hope that you really think about this. Speaker 13: All right. Thank you. Speaker 9: Hello. Council mayor, not mayor. Okay, council away. Murchison. I'm in the second district and the lady mentioned law of unintended consequences. And I was talking to a landlord outside one of these small business landlords. They're good landlords. There's a lot of good landlords out there, too. And it's the ones that are the investors that don't really give a crap that are ruining it. And, you know, it's not good money for them if they got to attend to things properly. The good landlords do do that. If if all good landlords were good or all the other landlords were good, we wouldn't be looking at this now as regulation comes because there's not good people and it hurts. As the lady said, the law of unintended consequence hurts smaller landlords in a way. But maybe they should join with us and fight with us against these people that are giving them a bad name. I mean, they feel bad that come out of this meeting. They feel bad or were beaten up on them. No, they're good landlords. And, you know, but there's not. And that's why we're here. Speaker 7: Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. I'm Elsa Tang, seventh. Speaker 6: District resident and research and policy analyst at Long Beach Forward. First, a huge. Speaker 5: Thank you to. Speaker 6: City staff and mayor and council for your leadership in bringing this ordinance forth in such a timely manner. After Council adopted the motion last month, your urgency today echoes the urgency of our housing and homelessness crisis. Long Beach. Speaker 5: Forward has been working. Speaker 6: Alongside Long Beach residents, empowered housing. Speaker 7: Long Beach Legal Aid Foundation and. Speaker 6: Many others to support a strong. Speaker 7: Tenant relocation assistance ordinance. Speaker 6: As a critical homelessness. Speaker 7: Prevention. Speaker 6: Strategy. We want to see the ordinance adopted tonight with three common sense procedural improvements that are. Speaker 7: Within the confines of Council's original motion and essential to the. Speaker 6: Success of the ordinance. First, tenants should receive full. Speaker 7: Relocation assistance upfront. Speaker 6: Before they move out so they can. Speaker 5: Actually use the funds. Speaker 6: To help them move. Common sense. Speaker 7: Second, to. Speaker 6: Comply with state law, tenants should give landlords notice. Speaker 5: When they intend to. Speaker 6: Leave, not when they intend to stay. Common sense. Speaker 7: Third, if landlords don't. Speaker 6: Notify tenants that relocation assistance is available. Speaker 7: Tenants facing eviction can use this as an affirmative defense in eviction court. Common sense these limited common sense approved minutes align with Council's intent to. Speaker 6: Protect our vulnerable neighbors and are not substantive enough to warrant an additional first. Speaker 7: Reading. Thank Council members. Speaker 6: We urge you to ask the city attorney why he believes so. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Christine Pettit. I'm the executive director of Long Beach Forward and a member of the Everyone Home Task Force on behalf of Long Beach Forward on my task force colleagues who signed on to the letter I sent you earlier today. We appreciate the quick work of city staff and the Council to bring this ordinance back for consideration. The letter and my colleague before it touched upon three procedural issues that need to be addressed in order to ensure that the tenant relocation assistant reaches qualifying tenants and doesn't place an unreasonable burden on those that this ordinance is intended to serve. I'm going to focus on the first one of those now. It is imperative that we ensure that tenants receive the full relocation assistance payment prior to vacating their unit, regardless of when the notice is given by their landlord. Many renters, those who are low income seniors, have disabilities, etc. are living paycheck to paycheck or on fixed incomes and do not have the ability to save up for moving expenses and the equivalent of three month's rent for a new apartment. Relocation causes many disruptions to one's finances, work, school and overall well-being. It's really stressful to find a new place to live in Long Beach, given our crisis. Those who oppose tenant protections are attempting to further weaken this ordinance by proposing more exemptions. Already, the proposed ordinance excludes duplexes, triplexes and all units built after February 1995. If anything, we need to be working toward a stronger policy that will apply to more renters and protect the most vulnerable from falling into homelessness. Thank you for your leadership on this. Speaker 5: Good evening, City Council. My name is Adriana Wences and I'm an organizer with Laundry, Long Beach resident empowered. Thank you for your votes to get this important an ordinance moving in April. I want to request that you continue to do the right thing by supporting a tenant relocation assistance policy that truly protects tenants. We want this policy to ensure that tenants receive the funds before they move out. As well as failure of notification from the landlord regarding their right to the relocation assistance must result in affirmative defense. We also want this ordinance to protect tenants from running the risk of losing their homes if they if they do not provide no notice to the landlord of their intention to continue their tenancy despite a rent increase of 10% or more. Thank you. Speaker 6: My name is Marlene Alvarado. I'm District one and I am here for tennis. And I'm a landlord. I'm a small landlord. I haven't raised the rent to and I on my little condo in ten years. And it's great because as far as fixing the apartment goes up, they my tenants will help me fix the apartments up. I will buy the thing. They'll fix it. They put in a new sink for me. There's so many other things. Also, I get I get allowance. They're paying my mortgage. They have paid off my mortgage. I get I get exemption for depreciation allowances. Any time I do anything in the apartment, they cause, I get a tax write off. I get tax credits for taxes. I mean, this is absurd. Speaker 7: To. Speaker 5: Say that somehow. Speaker 6: We poor little people who own properties are being somehow taken advantage of. We're taking advantage of our of our renters because they're paying off our mortgage. I lived in in West Hollywood before I became a property owner. And we had we had rent control. And I lived there for ten, 17 years. And gradually my rent went up, but it was okay. And guess what? West Hollywood right now is one of the wealthiest cities in in the in the in Los Angeles County. So rent control works. This ordinance is going to help your tenants. Why would you? They want to leave if you pay. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Excuse me. Excuse me. We'll get started. We're going to cap it up. Are you the last one? Young lady in the back? What about you? Please. Yeah. And need. Speaker 10: Oh. Speaker 4: Guys got to get in line, please. So we can't keep it up up there. Speaker 3: I don't know. The man. Speaker 4: Oh. Okay. You want? You want to start? Okay. I'll go ahead. You can speak. Speaker 3: Good evening, Honorable Council members. My name is Fred Sutton. I'm here on behalf of the California Apartment Association. We represent housing providers throughout the state of California and here in Long Beach. We continue to have very deep concerns as it relates to this ordinance. Although well-intentioned intentioned, the actions being taken today will have broader negative effects that will make this city more expensive in the long run and hurt tenants. The termination control provisions commonly known as just cause, have serious implications and are putting housing providers in a position of facing litigation or paying relocation to individuals who are creating nuisances in the community, as has been said prior. Property managers are your first line of defense on protecting the quiet enjoyment of the residents of this city. We urge the Council to reform aspects of the just cause provisions. If housing providers are fearful of making mistake, they will respond by raising tenant screening through screening standards. That would be counterproductive to all of our goals. It is also essential that this Council takes further steps to protect independent rental owners. Providing housing is not only an essential service to the city, but it is a vital step in the economic ladder as individuals seek to secure their own retirements and financial security. We appreciate your time and thoughtfulness on this. If it needs more time to fix these just cause issues. That's what this council should do. Greatly appreciate your time. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Okay. We're going to stop you right there. The young lady at the top. It's a black and gray. And it was. So you know. Okay, fine. We're going to stop. Okay. Well, how many in the world? Okay, fine. Would you hold just 1/2. We have to get the wheelchair. Yes. Yeah. Could you speak from that side of the wheelchair and you be right up to him? Young lady, please go ahead. The wheelchair up at the top. Okay. Fine, go ahead. In this you can speak. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 7: Good evening, councilman, but. Speaker 4: Excuse me, but we're stopping in right there at the young lady in the gray sweats there in the black T-shirt. You're the last one. Thank you. Okay. Go ahead. Speaker 7: Excuse me. Okay. Good evening. City council members and city staff. My name is Christine Bass and I serve as the government affairs manager for the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. I'm here tonight on behalf of 800 members, leadership and community stakeholders, many of whom are property owners, to stress the need for the more robust review of the wide sweeping potential policy. Although we recognize the various goals and policy options the City Council is trying to balance, we continue to have concerns regarding the proposed tenant relocation policy. Earlier today, we signed a joint partnership letter to the council staff detailing our concerns and solutions for the city in the interest of time. A Summarize and reiterate a few of those points for your consideration tonight. We encourage the city to extended no cause noticing period of six months in lieu of the four cause provisions and relocation. And we encourage the city to extend the vesting period to two years before just call it just cause policies apply. And we encourage individuals to become housing providers by protecting independent rental owners. As you know, we face a severe housing shortage and the city should be looking for ways to ensure individuals that want to become housing providers can get to the market to do so. More regulation will only create a deterrence. A blanket exemption for buildings up to four units is an incentive to get into the market and would increase independent rental ownership. We look forward to working with all the stakeholders in order to ensure Long Beach remains an attractive place for business while seeking for ways to create extra housing. We appreciate your time and on these considerations. Thank you. Speaker 6: Good evening, honorable counsel. My name is Manuela martinez. I am a resident and voter in District two and a member of Long Beach Residents in Power. I am here to ask that you continue doing the right thing and please revise three aspects of the Relocation Assistance Ordinance. The first tenants should receive the full amount of the relocation assistance within 15 days of notice to vacate and within five days after tenant informs landlord of move due to rent increase. This will ensure Tenant has the money and resources needed to relocate. The second tenants do not have the burden of notifying a landlord. They will stay in the unit after increase. Some tenants may not be aware of this requirement as it is different from state law in which tenants only are required to inform landlord of intent to vacate and that if the landlord fails to notify tenants of relocation assistance, this should serve as an affirmative defense to an eviction process. Thank you for your time. Speaker 10: Good evening. My name is Lily Ocampo. I live in First District, and I come here to thank for the. Speaker 5: For the ordinance, the tenant relocation assistance. And to ask you to give support. An ordinance that will help for low income and below low income families to ask to stay in their houses and not become. Thank you. Speaker 7: And hello, Council. My name is Alice. Alice? I'm a proud resident of the second district and a member of Libra. I want to thank you first for the step that you took last month with the tenant relocation assistance. But our work is not done despite the callous tactics of the apartment association and landlords. We are all too aware that the housing crisis we are facing is displacing hardworking people. It is relegating people to the streets and draining people of their financial resources when they're forced to move. I encourage you to show your renter majority city that you care about their dire situation and see an ordinance that includes one timely payment of rhloh too that tenants should not have to notify landlords that they are staying in their unit following a 10% rent increase. And three, that failure to notify tenants of their right to reload allows for an affirmative defense in the eviction process. Renters are overdue for some support. We need your leadership tonight. Thank you. Speaker 10: Good evening. Speaker 5: Council members and staff. My name is Wendy Henning. I have had the pleasure, along with my husband, to own small properties in Long Beach for over 40 years. Speaker 10: We have had. Speaker 5: Tremendous respect for our tenants as they have for us, and that is because we've been very careful to not raise rents. Too much in the 40 years we. I object to any kind of rent relocation fees and I also object to any restrictions that the Council have put on rents for us, because that will make us. Speaker 10: Continue. Speaker 5: Make us make us raise rents every year to our tenants, which we don't want to do. Thank you for your time. Speaker 8: Union members of the City Council. My name is Josh Butler, executive director of housing Long Beach. And I've heard for now a number of years stories, just like the woman before me who come here and say I never raise the rent on my tenants. But if you create any rules, I'll be forced to raise the rent on my tenants. These are the kind of threats that we've been hearing now for years. These are the kinds of threats that tenants have been living with for years. That we're going to raise your rent. We're going to throw you out if you ask for anything to be fixed. If you want relocation assistance, we're going to throw you to the curb. We're going to make you homeless. They want to maintain the power and control the power. They want to control the city. They can't do that anymore. They have picked the wrong time. They may not realize that there's a housing crisis going on right now. If they are if they haven't realized there's a housing crisis, I encourage them to pull their heads out of the sand and take a look around. Last week there was an article. I know you all read Long Beach Post that said Long Beach is one of the most favorable places to live in, but it's also one of the most unaffordable. And the number one complaint of residents is the lack of affordability of living here. We can do something about that here right now, today, and take the city back for the residents, for the people, and out of the hands of the landlords who are squeezing us with every last drop in the middle of a housing crisis, in the middle of an economic crisis, in the middle of their tax cuts. They still want to squeeze us even more until the city is bone dry. We got to stop that tonight. We encourage you to take action. Thank you. Right. Hello. My name is Norberto Lopez, and I'm involved in various community organizations here in the city of Long Beach. And I urge to support I urge you to support the relocation assistance policy being reviewed today, but also raise the question of the policy as approved. What is going to happen to all the people who get eviction notices from now until the day of implementation? Because there will be an increase on evictions and rent increases that cause people to move before the policy goes into play. After doing housing work for eight months and seeing the many unjust evictions and high rent increases, in some cases over 100% rent increase, there should be something to help tenants until the implementation of the policy and look further into tenant protections to help keep families in their homes and make sure we save Long Beach. People should receive a relocation assistance prior to moving. Tenants should not have to let their landlord know whether they will stay or not in 14 days and tenants should be able to defend themselves from an eviction if landlord fails to notify a tenant of the relocation assistance. Right. As many of you know. Right. The Cedar Assistance last year as well. Right. Took on their property management company and they had to delegate that company in order to get some money out of them in order to be able to move. I believe that it's only fair that the tenants receive the money before they move. Right. That's the only way that they're going to be able to do that down payment that they need to put in order to get that new unit. I urge you to support this policy and really look into further tenant protections and thank you for your time. Speaker 3: Good evening, council members. My name is James McGrady. I've lived and owned rental properties in Long Beach since 1992 and I wanted to say when I first started saving up money to get my rental properties, minimum wage was 475 and I was pretty young. Since then, inflation has caused a lot of things to go up, including rent and including the minimum wage. It's well over $12 now. I just wanted to say, if I could do it, anyone can do it. I see both sides of the issue here. But I wanted to say that. If government intervenes with any type of my rent, I will have to increase the rents. I don't increase the rents, hardly ever. But if you guys intervene, it also forces me to take my money that I need to invest and invest in other areas of the city. I don't want to do that. I love Long Beach. I've lived in Long Beach for many years. I've invested in Long Beach. I can tell you a quick story. I had a renter that was with me for 16 years and she got separated. She could no longer afford a full rent. So what I did is I cut her rent by $800 for six months so she wouldn't have to leave. So there's landlords just like me that do that for the renters. So if you guys intervene with our rents, we have to invest somewhere else. That's all I have to say. Speaker 10: My name is Silvana Arreola. Speaker 14: My address is on file. I've lived in California since 1958 when we came to this state. Speaker 10: And I have to. Speaker 14: Say that I come from a real estate family and I have seen the progressive. Speaker 10: Diminution of. Speaker 14: Ownership rights, which concerns me gravely. A lot of people, a lot of my clients are now taking money out of California rather than developing in California. I see the future of real estate ownership, income, property ownership to go be going towards large syndications. Who can handle all these problems? I would counsel and beg the council members to consider, well, what you do postpone a decision until you've really worked out all the details that are so punitive towards owners and not considering the fact that the problems are a shared problem. So it isn't just a landlord problem, it's a shortage problem. Can we address that in some way? Can we create a body that would lend the tenants funds to help them through the crisis and. Speaker 7: That way work with both owner. Speaker 14: And tenant rather than impose the entire responsibility for making the move on the tenant. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. And I think I'm just I'm I'm going to cut the speaker's list. I think that is that Ms.. Where's in the back or now? Okay, then the lady over there in the glasses will be the last one. And then the speaker's list is closed, which is where? And then the lady in the back and then the speaker's list is close. Speaker 9: Hello. My name is Ray Mailer. I've lived in Long Beach for 30 years. Owned some residential properties for 21 years. Excuse me. Landlord ing is, as a small property owner, is fundamentally a personal business. We know our tenants well and they often become friends. We have long since we have all long since forgotten the Great Recession of 11 years ago, when low rents naturally occurred through the market. As the economy slowly improved, rents recovered. At a point, my wife and I noticed that market rates were exceeding the comfort level of the incomes of our tenant applicants. We decided to hold our rents below market. The threats of rent control, particularly the county action and the proposed ordinance here, have prompted us to stop these low rents. As each unit has turned over. All our units are now at market rate. There are now five fewer below market rates in Long Beach. Our city has experienced some excesses from some big money that came in that found our city to rehabilitate units. The ordinance under consideration moves well beyond regulating these big money interests and affects many small property owners. Like the previous motion you considered regarding airport security. I urge you to scuttle this overreaching ordinance. Thank you. Speaker 1: Next. Next speaker, please. Speaker 8: Hello. My name is Benjamin Chow. I am a ninth district resident. And I just want to thank Council Member Rex Richardson for really identifying the housing crisis and homelessness as an issue in our district. And I, I'm definitely in support of this Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance and preventing homelessness in our district. I've spent many weeks knocking on the doors of renters and the ninth. And, you know, in that time I have found that investment in our district is leading to increased displacement due to rent increases and eviction notices. And so I would really recommend the council member and other council members to really to investigate the unintended consequences of investment in commercial properties in our city. Because, you know, just just put yourself in the situation of a working class family and having to after receiving 60 day notice to find a new place to live if you're living paycheck to paycheck, raising a family, having to take your children to school while, you know, working, working day after day, finding a new place to live that is affordable to you and going through the process of moving can be very stressful and puts an unnecessary toll on the lives of the people in our city. So thank you for listening to me today. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Hi, Linda. So, Beau, I live in the fifth district and, you know, kudos. I think the thing that strikes me with all of this is that we keep taking a big, broad stroke to solve issues. And it seems to me we're going about this wrong. I honestly think you should throw the whole thing out. And it's not because I don't. Not because I don't care about the tenants and the rising rents. But it is those big conglomerates that came in and are raising rents 218%. It's not the mom and pops as far as Fortune 500 companies. I knew several people who got up who. Speaker 7: Were accused of that tonight. Speaker 6: They are not Fortune 500 companies. They have nice things because they've done it under Sweat and their hard work and they're still working in their eighties. So you just all take a chill pill. I looked at rent control today and the first thing that popped up was a company called California Tenant Tenant Law dot com. And the first thing it says is rent control is a special set of laws that particular cities adopt. It generally includes rent increase limits and eviction restrictions. Some cities rent controls require relocation assistance to be paid to tenants under certain circumstances and interest on security deposits. So again, it is rent control. It is tied in with rent control. The other thing is I found something that was very interesting and said the American founders, our forefathers understood clearly that private property is the foundation not only of prosperity, but of freedom itself, human being. Okay. And thank you very much. And thank you. I provide housing for human beings and I don't raise rents. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: Thank you for having me here. I saw many of you in the parade I was in last week, the pride parade. Thank you all for that. Now, getting down to the point here, in fact, we talked about the law of unintended consequences. Somebody brought that up. Well, the way the landlords want to keep it now is so we have the law of unintended consequences, which is evictions without any kind of protection being forced out and having to spend money to try and relocate without any kind of benefit to help do that. What we see is a lot of, quote, unintended consequences, which are intended consequences. Now, you almost always speak when I come to these things, not about how much money or the interest rate, but the fact that when we have stable neighborhoods and children grow up to be better people, when we take away stability from families because they can be evicted easily and because of this, because of that or old people get put out on the street. What we are doing is destabilizing our society and a possibility of having a good life for many families and many young people. Now, I don't say the landlords want to take that kind of thing against young children, but they do it and there has to be some kind of protection so that we have a way of working out the different strings that come on in neighborhoods and through housing. And it's one of our biggest problems. And what I want you to do is take and make go forward with this thing because it's a good idea and then try to make it as fair as possible. But do it so it protects families and those children we have growing up that we need in our society to be healthy and good. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: Hi there. I'm a resident of the seventh District and I fully support the Tenant Relocation Assistance Policy at its full power. I just want to say, we've heard a lot of people say they don't raise rents. If there wasn't a rent increase issue, none of us would be here tonight in the first place. I want to say I just want to spew some statistics here. Long Beach ranks number seven, least affordable city in the entire country. Recent report came out just a few weeks ago. 8.1 guys, everyone over Long Beach is population. I really think this is important to hear. 58.1% of Long Beach is population is cost burdened by housing. That's nearly 300,000 people in our town. Let's also talk about the homelessness crisis here, because housing and homelessness are interrelated. Let's look at what's happening in California, Long Beach's numbers. In Los Angeles, numbers are yet to come, but in Orange County, 43% increase in homelessness from 2017. In San Bernardino County, that number jumped 23%. In Riverside County, 22%. Ventura County, 28%. In San Francisco City alone, 17% increase in homelessness. We control we are. Speaker 1: Seeing guys on both sides. Please, on both sides. When someone is speaking, regardless of their position, please let them speak. Speaker 3: Thank you. Do you mind? I got a little bit run over here, but I'm going to try and finish this up. Basically, what I'm trying to say is we need to think about the human problem here. We need to think about the people, the old people, the young people, the people who cannot move out of their homes , who are at threat every day of being evicted of facilities. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Speaker 3: And I incentivize you to please. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: Hi. Good. My name is Richard Keller's city attorney. I take great exception with your attitude of simply splitting the baby. That's a very, very casual solution to a very real problem for many of the tenants who advocated tonight. You said we need the money right away so we can move. I get that. I really understand that. But for the landlords tonight, you do happen to be split up side by side. But anyway, for the landlords tonight, our concern is if we give you that money up front, then guess what happens in the next 30, 60 , 90 days? You don't pay rent, you trash the unit, you move out. We lose twice. Not fair. So, you. Speaker 1: Know, guys, we just let the speaker speak so everyone can speak. Continue, sir. Speaker 3: So somebody else talked about unintended consequences tonight. When the ordinance is written so poorly like this, the unintended consequence will happen. The tenants will not be served. The landlords will not be served. There are there is a way to address this that can serve both sides. It's called an escrow account. And the escrow landlords can immediately, immediately fund the escrow account. The tenant can take that account to the next landlord and say, I have the money. Here it is. And they that the landlord heard that payment will come. I strongly recommend that we back up, take a little time and figure out how. Speaker 1: To thank you, sir. Speaker 3: Right. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thanks, Speaker. Speaker 7: Good evening. My name is Juanita Gallo. I am a lifelong renter. Five of those years in New York City. And my experience in New York City firsthand with tenant relocation assistance is it was a lose lose proposition for both renters and landlords. First of all, there is upfront discrimination when screening tenants. Secondly, there's no guarantee that the tenants will depart. So it's a lose lose situation on both sides, as the gentleman just said. And also, the tenants lose out because eventually the rents get so high, there is nowhere else for them to go, even if they get relocation assistance . So it increases homelessness all the way around. It's an endless cycle. This is really a policy housing policy issue which should be taken up at a higher level. It's a Band-Aid solution for a lack of affordable housing. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 3: Thank you, David Clement, third district. When I came here to Long Beach in 2002, Long Beach was not such a desirable place to live as it is now. It's improved drastically. And a lot of that is because of our property values have gone up and and our taxes are paying for that. I own a few properties in Long Beach. I've lived in each of them, fix them up with my own blood and sweat. And I have only raised rents very irregularly. I fully support keeping families in their homes. And and I think it's the big corporations that are really giving the small mom pop operators like myself and the rest of us here a bad name. So if we're going to you know, I'm opposed to this because 40 $500 is a lot of money. And and it shouldn't be a burden on me. This is an excessive burden. Okay. So I think we're good at raising taxes, sales taxes. One, we just add a quarter to our to our sales and be done with it. I'm kidding, by the way. Thank you. Speaker 1: Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Good evening. My council and mayor. My name is Laura. I am a tenant at a building where all my neighbors and I received a rent increase at the time the property was being sold. We all expect that a, uh, a fair increase. Instead, this is what we got. A two bedroom. We have an increase of $550 a tree, which is 48% for a three bedroom. We got an increase of 775, which is a 67%. I believe this increases are too high and only work to price our families. These families, my neighbors and I deserve relocation assistance and fully support this lot to pass today. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Okay. Speaker 10: Great. Speaker 3: Okay. We know Rafael Castillo is tearing up la la la lay there as he stays here. Then move onto. If you have the assignment, we will leave on the in. In a kilometer. He'll be on that one. You need to think of all the red tape. Not a puzzle. America. Your long travels story. This ability to read that he. He built up. Okay. But he's sympathetic to Malala like a. A lot more than that, he says he. I thought, Oh, gracious. Speaker 10: And never. Okay. Speaker 14: Good evening, counsel. My name's Kevin Yeager. I'm a resident of District two and a member of Democratic Socialists of America Long Beach Chapter. I want to echo a lot of the points that tenant advocates have already made, and I just wanted to emphasize the aspect of the hap now half later, relocation funds. It's really concerning to hear city staff proposing that landlords could withhold relocation assistance from tenants until up to five days after vacating in order to incentivize tenants to leave. That seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of this ordinance. The purpose is that low income, fixed income, senior disabled folks, etc. There are tenants in this city who don't have the resources to relocate. The ordinance is supposed to help those tenants and make sure that they have the money to get into another place and not end up falling into homelessness and on our streets. And so this compromise where a tenant could be kicked out of their home and fall into homelessness, but only up to five days, and then the landlord could get the funds for them in order to relocate five days later. That's not preventing homelessness. We need to act immediately and make sure these people have somewhere to stay. So I just want to thank City Council for acting tonight and recognizing that this is a crisis with 58% of tenants rent burden in the city even higher for women of color. So thank you for acting. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Hello. My name is Andrew, a community organizer with Long Beach Forward working on the best art center, a Long Beach initiative working on issues related to the birth to five population. Housing was recently identified as one of the top issues our groups wanted to work on. What I found working with parents, caregivers and children is that displacement is all too apparent in their lives. It's important that you ensure these families are given relocation assistance at an appropriate time, are notified of their right to relocation, ample time to see if they still can reside in their homes. And the next time a five year old comes up to me crying, asking why they're being uplifted, uprooted and displaced from their homes, I'm gonna ask you all to explain, because it shouldn't be our burden as black and brown folks to explain. It should be you and your privilege. And the next time and the next time. Speaker 1: All right, let's let the speaker speak. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 9: I don't know how you think you can properly manage property. Can't even manage to spell destroys on your signs. So thank you for your attention to this important issue. Mayor and City Council, I really appreciate it. And hopefully we can get this resolved. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. And before they get before our before our next speaker, just as a as a general reminder, please, when we're addressing public comment and you're addressing it to the body, so think please to the body and next speaker. Speaker 6: Hello. My name is Vanessa. My building is currently facing the crisis of eviction. On March 20, 21st, 2000 1919, families and my own receive 60 day notice. It's around 8 p.m.. All our families woke up to displacement in this sit in and this. It is only reasonable that all 20 family receive relocation assistance and all families facing this tragedy. I support this law because it means we will get a chance to find a home and most importantly, not become homeless. Pass passes today. And we thank you for our leadership. Your leadership. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Good evening, council mayor and members of the public. My name is Maria. I'm a proud one resident since I migrated here at the age of three. I'm undocumented, unafraid and unapologetic. Plus, I am the director of Community Organizing for Housing Long Beach. It has been my pleasure and my pain for the past three years to work with loving, hard working, responsible tenants that are being evicted, tactfully pushed out, and maliciously increase the rent by 50, 60, and even 90% to price them out. Today, on behalf of all those renters, we applaud you for taking up this policy and urge you to pass something today and then work along community to give it shaping based on community needs and for the benefit of community. And I must remind you for when eyes cities thrive. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Our next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Good evening, Council. My name is Johnny Weir and I'm with better housing for Long Beach. And I was told by my attorney to let you put you on notice that this what you are passing is not constitutionally sound and that you should revisit it and not pass it tonight. If you pass this tonight, you are breaking the law and you're encouraging people to break the law. It's not okay to push something that is illegal. So I want to show you something. These are the petitions that we collected throughout all of Long Beach. We have 10,000 petitions of tenants in this community that do not want rent control. I want you take a look if you want to look at every one of these petitions. So we have them here and I made a copy of them. You got to look at your community. You're pushing stuff that is not supporting the community. You're pushing rent control, Robert. This is not a dictatorship. This is a community. This is a democracy. And you're pushing your push, your policy. But the people in Long Beach don't want. So I don't understand why you would do it. Why would you push something you told everyone you didn't want? Rachel, this is Rachel Alston. Bird says this is rent control. The woman that spoke earlier said this is rent control. Why push, Rachel? If it's going to drive the tenants out, it's going to drive the tenants out. It's going to raise rents. Tell me a city that has Rachel that has affordable rent. People. Speaker 10: Google. Google. Speaker 5: Highest rates in the nation. Google it. San Francisco. Santa monica, New York. What other ones? Highest rent animation. And they all are sorry for hurting your ears, Susie, but I'm passionate. Thank you. Speaker 1: Very much. Speaker 6: Good night, everybody. Speaker 1: Time's up. Thank you. And then our last speaker. I'm sorry. I didn't see the gentleman here, so. Sir, why don't you go ahead and go speak, sir? Speaker 3: Just. This is perfect, right? Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I just. We've been to this place so many times. I just wanted to say. Not this side. Not this side will be happy tonight. Either way it goes. My thing is this. I totally understand all those renters. When they get this large corporation, when they buy the place, when they get to 200% whatever increase, let's slow down. Let's sit down. Let's discuss what needs to be done to have this site and this site. This is not going anywhere like this because you're really going to piss somebody tonight. Not only that, the previous one, the airport guys and everything else. You guys have no business to get in that business. Thank. Thank you for doing what you did on that one. Please do the same thing on us tonight. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. And our last think. Our last speaker. Yes. Speaker 7: My name is Ben Damascus. I live in the beautiful second district. I'm here today to speak to you as a tenant. I'm also disabled. I am a mother of four children. And like everybody else, I'm not going to ask you, Mayor Garcia or anybody else on here, if not congratulate you, because this is a very difficult matter . You have two sides that have different points of view. And I'm going to be real with you. No matter how many times you go back and forth. We're never going to agree. We're never going to agree. And. Q for coming up with this. It is the grace. The best thing possible that we as tenants have right now. And I just want to urge you guys to. Speaker 3: Really keep doing. Speaker 7: What you're doing. You're always going to hear bad things no matter what you do. Being in leadership comes with a lot of burdens. And I just want to commend you guys and also just wanted to clarify real quick something that we noticed and I just wanted to mention that is that while all those opposed to the tenants are up here speaking. Speaker 10: I didn't see. Speaker 3: Nobody. Speaker 7: That resembled anybody that I speak to on a daily basis that is getting displaced, that is getting evicted. So I just find it hard to see their point of. Speaker 3: View. Speaker 7: When you're not living what I'm living or my tenants or my neighbors or my children or anybody else's child. So thank you very much for your time and I won't take any more of your time. Speaker 1: Thank you. That concludes public comment. So we'll close from a comment. There is a motion on the floor for the ordinance. And so we'll go first to Councilwoman Gonzales. Speaker 6: Thanks again for everybody for being here. So I'll be pretty quick because I know we don't want this to be a very long night, but I'll just be short when I say very, very quickly that I do support this as it stands. And I do have a quick a few quick questions, but I'm going to be supportive of this. As mentioned in the statistics, you know, we know that 60% of our city are renters. So we have an obligation, I believe, as elected leaders, to ensure that renters have a voice and a very strong voice. And I hope tonight we we we make you proud and making sure that we push something forward that really will be able to support a lot of the strife that we've been seeing, and especially in places like we've seen in downtown that have been incredibly difficult for renters. So a couple of questions I have for a city attorney, and I know I love that you've brought this back very quickly, and I really appreciate that from on behalf of my office and city staff. Thank you very much. A couple one question on the repayment, because I do think to that to the points that we've been hearing, I do believe the repayment should be done quicker than later. And I know and I'm not really of the mindset that we should split the baby in half of it, should be before, should be up front and then the other half afterwards. That also wasn't discussed in detail by the city council. So can we. Propose to include that repayment be done within 15 days to ensure that it's done before someone receives a 30 or 60 day notice. Speaker 15: Certainly that would not be a problem at all. If I could address generally there were a lot of suggestions made by members of the public without writing down every one of them. I've also received a lot of suggestions in writing from various interest groups and stakeholders. For the most part, all of those suggestions are reasonable. They're policy decisions. None of them give me any trouble as far as they would violate the law. However, with respect to every one of them, and I know this is disappointing to people on both sides of the aisle and maybe many people behind the dais. However, all of those changes would be substantive. They could be made. If I'm given direction to make them by the council. But that would require a second first reading of the ordinance. Whenever the next meeting is. But but certainly I stand ready to take direction from any of you, particularly on the payment issue. I am not wedded to half and half. It could all be paid at one time as you so direct. Speaker 6: Okay. All right. So I want to make sure that for because this wasn't discussed at all. So I'm just trying to understand this in the beginning because we didn't discuss the relocation payment at all in the very you know, when we took this up back in April. And so why would that trigger a another reading? Because that's what I do not want to do. Right? Speaker 15: Well, primarily because it wasn't discussed the first time the public saw it was on Monday or whenever the ordinance that I drafted went public, there would be I would consider that change, a substantive change to that ordinance. And and it needs to it would need to be read again. And the reason why generally we take this position our office takes the position is three reasons, really. Number one, it promotes transparency. Number two, it minimizes any legal risk that someone challenges under the Brown Act, that they didn't have the appropriate notice. They didn't know what was going to be voted on tonight. Something changed. There's really no downside in reading. Having another first reading on June 11th, exactly as the ordinance is to be, is to be read based on the direction that I receive from this body. And then the third reason is it's consistent with the position that our office has taken for several years when it comes to making amendments to ordinances. We require a second first reading before the second reading, which effectively becomes the third. Speaker 6: Okay. Well, thank you for the explanation and I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues. But I do like the ordinance. I want to make sure we push this through. We absolutely owe it to our tenants and our residents here in the in the city of Long Beach. And I also am looking forward to hearing more about that. We we also discussed seniors and people with disabilities. We know that it's so much more difficult for them to move. I have someone in my office who has a wheelchair. And not only is it more difficult or more costly for her to move, the options are limited, especially with an older housing stock. So I want make I want to make sure we remind ourselves of that. And what I'll also say is, you know, to our landlords, you know, I certainly respect every single one of you and what you're doing. And to the mom and pops, if you're not raising your rents, this need not apply to you. This need not apply to you at all if you're not raising your rents. And I just hope that you hear us out that this is not rent control, this is certainly a protection for tenants. You can you know, you can laugh at that however you'd like. But we see it very differently. And this is something that our residents and we were elected to to to represent our residents and to do. The city has been very mindful. I will just mention as well, affordable housing plan, land use plan. Homeless shelters. And many times we've been set. We've been told, no, not in my backyard. Now this time, we're going to say yes, yes, in my backyard. So I will just leave it there and I will just say thank you so much for your time. And I look forward to moving this forward a. Speaker 7: Thank you. I really think everybody that came out tonight, I didn't necessarily appreciate the catcalling on either side because it did make it hard to follow. But I appreciate the passion that you guys bring to this and recognizing that it's a really big issue for a lot of us, for landlords. I recognize that you have bought a piece of property and you're allowing strangers to come in and live in something that you own. That is something that I don't think I could ever do because that would make a night with anxiety. So I applaud you for that business decision. And for those that have decided to make Long Beach their home renters like myself, we often feel at the whim of what might happen and not having any control over that. We know that stress when we talk about mental health, when we talk about how we as a as a community live together in a healthy way, those little stresses, like not knowing if your rent is going to be increased, not knowing that tomorrow you're going to get that $500 increase is a big deal and it is a big deal to be removed from your community and moved somewhere else, often outside of Long Beach. So while we're doing rent control to me, while we're not doing rent control, while we're doing relocation, you guys got me what we're doing relocation. This is not rent control because it does not keep people. This is a way for you to relocate people. And so I do not want us to get the too mixed up whenever we do this. I want to applaud staff. I know that we have nine of us up here, a mayor and lots of stakeholders in the community. So I want to applaud you for heard with us. I do want to just echo the same concern that Councilmember Gonzalez brought up in my mind when you say when we said we want to go forward with a relocation policy that provides relocation funds, that those are funds that are supposed to help somebody get into their next place. And if it's five days later, how in the world is that supposed to help them get into their next place? So I recognize the position of the landlords and wanting to make sure that they have a guarantee. I mean, there are lots of mechanisms to do that, and so I don't want to make that vote tonight, but I would like to revisit that in the future. So my question is, if we vote tonight and we come back with, say, a cleanup item that not only includes that, but possibly the six month or some other items that the landlords would also look at, what is the quickest timeline that that could happen, that it would get into the ordinance? Speaker 15: Such an item wouldn't be appropriate before the second reading, but after the second reading of the ordinance, once it's adopted, any Tuesday thereafter would work. Speaker 7: Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Speaker 15: The ordinance is not a while. It goes on the books after the second reading. It doesn't become effective until August 1st. Speaker 7: So great. Speaker 15: You can bring anything back after. Speaker 7: The session, after the second reading. Wonderful. And one of the items that we talked about in detail when I met with you and also when I met with city management today, was around the one pager that we, the city, would be drafting, that landlords would be required to provide to tenants. Can you walk through that one more time for us and just some of the things that would be in there so that we can make sure that both landlords feel like they have something that protects them in getting out a bad tenant and tenants have information that protects them to move forward with legal action. Speaker 9: Councilwoman. First and foremost, we would have to summarize the ordinance so that it was readable by both tenants and landlords. We would spell out the process in detail and we would include information on our website. In addition to that one pager. But but that would ideally would help both tenants and owners navigate the ordinance. Speaker 7: So I know city attorney, when we spoke, you were able to give me some more specifics about what you wanted to have included in there? I think it's in the ordinance, but just for community members that are here, if we could. Speaker 15: Well, yeah, there's one other one other clarification. Part of the motion on April 2nd was to include information. And I think it may have been in you one of your your substitute, if I recall correctly. And I think there were two things needed to be included information to each tenant about the availability of renters insurance, information to all tenants, about the possibility that their landlords could report on time payment of rent to credit rating agencies, and that would become part of their credit score. That is not in the ordinance, but we intend, based on your motion and direction, to put that into that one pager. Speaker 7: Great. I appreciate that. I also wanted to make sure that the legal language is in that one, that tenants legally know that they can go forward if they do not receive reflow, and that that's included in the one pager. And that landlords will have spelled out that if as defined in the ordinance, if someone is a bad tenant, that they have the ability to take action without a very long, drawn out process before they get to court. Thank you. That's what I wanted to clarify. One other thing I wanted to mention is I do feel like this is a balanced approach for those mom and pop landlords. We made sure to include a mom and pop. Exclusion. We've lowered the original amounts as proposed by staff. Staff originally proposed that landlords pay an additional fee for seniors, and that is included that the council will create their own fund. We still have to fund that, but the Council will do that. And so we have really not tried to split the baby on those things, but figure out where the government can can play their role and where landlords can play there. So I'm really proud of the step that the council is taking today. I think it's important that we take the vote tonight, move forward, and we can come back and make sure that we have a little bit more time to kind of finesse some of those other details. But I'm pleased where we're at. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So it's been a it's been a long evening. I want to thank all of you who've come out time and time again on this issue to speak with us. I'm tired. I know that you're tired. And so we won't take a lot of time speaking this evening. Want to lift up the last young lady who spoke who said, you know, we've you know, every time we come, it's sort of the same two factions are never going to completely agree. We understand that. That's why we have to not be confused about what it is we're doing tonight. We asked city staff to prepare this ordinance as defined by the motion, that one, and that's what city staff brought forward. And so I'm supportive of what was brought forward tonight. I think that I appreciate that there were some you know, a lot of feedback has come in, but I want to lift up two letters that I think made a lot of sense to me or some recommendations that made a lot of sense to me. The whole first reading, second reading. This allows us to get feedback and figure out how best to tweak it. So there is an opportunity, I believe, to move forward with this tonight, but take some of this feedback that we've received and make this ordinance better. So just to raise up some of them, I'm looking at this this everyone home task force letter signed by a number of community leaders, from clergy to community members, and the three things that were asked were already raised by the last two speakers. And I think that that makes sense. I think the idea that, you know, someone gets a portion of their the reload at some point and then the second part would come at turn in the moment you turning your key that that kind of makes sense. And this conversation that I know that there's always a risk. But at the same time, we do know that the landlord also holds a deposit. So there is something to back it up if 50% of that is is sort of taken. So, you know, there's always a little bit of trust on both ends on who's going to do the right thing about money. So so I understand that. So that's something that I think makes sense. I'm supportive of doing in some other iteration. This these clean this clean up. Now, it seems like it's reasonable about removing the the, you know, wording that's not consistent with state law. I think that makes sense. I think some of the the things that are raised up by some of the landlord groups, you know, I think there's something we can do there. So particularly this conversation about, you know, I think the trigger of rent remains in place. I think the 10% rent remains in place. I think the trigger on if you're being displaced because they're turn around the property makes sense. And then if you're relocating someone with a 60 day notice for no reason at all, give them a little bit more. Heads up in, Lou. I think that makes sense. That came up last time in the conversation. I said if it's legal, if it's feasible, that's something I'm open to. So I'll reiterate that tonight. But I don't think that's something I think we should pass the ordinance as written and then bring it forward sometime in the next few months. There's there's you know, one other thing. This conversation of switching from, you know, 4 to 4 plus, there are simply just too many for Plex's to exclude that . I'm not comfortable with that. I did lift up res up the conversation about the mom and pops and there were some, you know, good conversation that's happened since then about expanding that definition of mom and pop. I'm open to that. I'm completely open to expanding the definition of mom and pop. If someone is buying a duplex or two duplexes, I mean, four plex or two, four plex is. I completely get it. Those are some of the only opportunities you have as a residential person to use conventional financing to to buy for plex. That just that makes sense to me. So I'm okay with having another look at the mom and pop provision. But I think the integrity of the ordinance that's in front of us is what I support. That's what that's what garnered six votes last time. That's what I'm going to be supporting tonight. And I'll just say I'm open to where if if there are councilmembers that feel like this needs to get a little bit better. If we're talking about within the framework of the five things we just mentioned, I'm willing to, you know, in the next few months work together on item to help tighten it up. But it's important to me that that, you know, we've heard a lot of things take place in the last few weeks of people being displaced. And so I don't want to delay that process. I think people need benefits as soon as possible. And this ordinance in front of us provides that. And so I will encourage the Council for us to support this tonight. And we work together to see what we can do to adjust it in the future. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Counsel. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 6: Thank you. I want to thank everyone who came out tonight and everyone has passion for this topic on both sides. But one of the things that I'm getting a sense of is that there is an urgency to pass something tonight. I've heard things like, let's push it through. Things like there may be ways to tighten it up, but let's wait to do it in the next few months. This is a major, major policy change for the city of Long Beach. And I don't understand why it's not effective until August 1st anyway. So I don't understand why we wouldn't try to tighten it up tonight and vote on it on June the 11th. It still won't go into effect until August 1st. So I'm not really sure. Maybe there's something going on here that I don't know that somebody needs to to use this outside of this room for some benefit, I don't know. But the ordinance would not be in effect until August 1st anyway. So coming back on June the 11th really wouldn't put us behind in terms of this issue of displacement. Now, political win, that's a whole other issue. But the issue of displacement, this law would not be in effect until August 1st. So I would I would recommend that we take the time tonight to have a conversation about what tightening it up looks like and what people are open to, and add that as an amendment and ask the city attorney's office to come back with a recommendation that not while not everyone will like, we'll be a little bit more in line with what good policymaking for the city would be, because we're all in agreement tonight, even if we vote on it, that it's not where we want it to be. So I'm not sure why we would vote on an ordinance that we're all saying is not where it needs to be. I don't understand that. But if there is but if there's people out there who feel like that's a huge political win for whoever votes yes tonight, for an ordinance that they're agreeing as they're voting yes, is not the full policy for a major policy change regarding displacement. Then, you know, I guess we all have a different definition of of what progress is. But I think what I would like to do is continue to hear from my colleagues regarding this idea of adding in some amendments that we agree with or maybe not agree with, but having that discussion and coming back on June the 11th for a first reading. I also want to reiterate that there are three triggers under this ordinance that. Put relocation fees into play. The triggers regarding a rent increase I have zero issue with. I think that's a very fair trigger. The trigger regarding a major rehab and relocation being necessary. I have no trouble with the trigger that I have trouble with that. I already stated at the last meeting and I'll reiterate today is the 30 to 60 days notice still triggering relocation? Because there are many situations where a landlord should, in my opinion, have the control and the freedom to be able to to determine the type of living spaces they're creating for the other tenants. And right now, as it is, unless it's one of the enumerated sections under state law, they cannot get rid of a tenant. So if the tenant is doing something that's detrimental to the other tenants, that's short of one of the enumerated sections in the state code that landlord has to pay a penalty to ask them to leave. This is just cause eviction because we're asking the the landlord to pay a penalty. We, we can't say, oh, sure you can, you can let them go in just cause eviction. You can't let them go in our statute. You can let them go with a penalty. That's still a deterrent to being able to exercise your rights as a landlord. So I think it's an it's an intellectually dishonest to say that it is something other than a ban from being able to exercise your rights because. Yes, right. But you have to pay a penalty. And that, I think, is not fair. And so that's the one that I don't like. And that's something that I feel if we had more time as a council, I really think we could reach some resolution on that. I really do. And I would vote for this in a heartbeat if we could find some resolution on that trigger. So that's where I'm at on this topic. And again, I thank my colleagues for coming forward with their thoughts. It is a passionate issue. We're going to have to agree to disagree. My request would be for more time for us to be able to put in some of the suggestions that were made by some of the advocacy groups. I think those were great suggestions. The tenants advocacy groups. I think there were some great suggestions. Why wouldn't we put those in tonight? I'd vote for them on some of them. So that's where I'm at. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Next, guys, please. Thank you. Next up is Councilmember Herring. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mary. You know, I really have a lot of respect for my colleague from the second district. But however, everything we do, whether it's a yes vote or a no vote, is political. Everything we do is political. And everything that we do is going to have one effect or another, whether it's on the right side or the left side, whether it's affirmation or a negative, it's political. What we do here, we get elected by people to do a job. And because we are here to do a job, we really have to lay this over and talk about it a lot. And, you know, this is not a new issue. This this has been an issue that's been. Speaker 9: Going on for a great. Speaker 3: Number of years. Getting here to tonight is not something that just happened in April. And we're here with an audience tonight. It's been a long time in the making, so I'm very supportive of the motion on the floor. One question in terms of the the senior financing that was discussed earlier, I think Council Councilmember Jenny Pierce brought it up. Is there a timeline for that? Is there a plan? It's really an action that we can take forward. But what can we do with that, if anything? Yes. So, Councilmember, we reported back to you based on the direction that we got. So if you remember, the council considered a number of options of how to do senior or senior or disabled payments and chose to look at the city fund rather than putting that on the landlord . So we provided some information in order to from forum. And it really is it comes down to money. So what we have outlined is that we try to estimate how many people might be eligible that are living in housing. And when said, if 1% of those people or up to 5% of those people would need to use this fund going forward on an annual basis, what would that cost be? And so we came up with a cost of about $600,000 if one person, a 1% would use it, and up to $2.5 million if it was that 5% every year. So we're really kind of looking for direction from the council. We don't have those funds identified, given that there's an ongoing shortfall that we're dealing with. And therefore, at 20 budget, we can continue to look for funding sources. But or it can you can go a different route either tonight or in the future. So we'd be looking for direction. Thank you very much. And I was looking down the down the day I met third district colleague, not second. So but thank you for being here. Civic engagement is very important because you tell us what you're saying, what you're thinking, and we need to know what you're thinking. Thank you very much here. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Next up is Councilman Mongo. Speaker 5: Thank you. City Attorney. I know that the current. Speaker 6: Timeline is before us. Speaker 5: Would you be open to communicating. Speaker 6: What that current timeline is if it were to pass tonight and then. Speaker 5: My understanding is. Speaker 6: If it were to pass on first reading tonight, maybe I should just say what my understanding is. My understanding is if it were passed at first reading tonight, the second reading would be June 11th with an implementation date of August 1st. Speaker 3: That's correct. Speaker 6: If we were to make some substantive changes tonight, the first reading. Speaker 5: Would be June 11th with the second reading. June 18th with an implementation date of August 1st. Speaker 3: That's correct. Speaker 7: So it sounds. Speaker 6: Like we're all on the same. Speaker 5: Page, that there are some challenges with the ordinance. Speaker 6: And that we're all on the same page, that we want it implemented August 1st. Speaker 5: And so I'm going to try to bring some things into. I think we all agreed on Mr. Anthony. On our previous council meeting. Speaker 6: We discussed an item that was. Speaker 7: Determined. Speaker 5: In a memo. Speaker 6: You sent out to be legal in the case that. Speaker 5: I've spoken with some tenants and some landlords and both were in agreement, that time's the biggest barrier is not financial. Oftentimes the biggest barrier to finding a new place is time because there are challenges. Speaker 6: Related to availability. There's a very, very low rental inventory available. And so I had asked whether or not a a. Speaker 5: Friendly amendment of a six month. Speaker 6: 180 day noticing would be possible. I know that at the time the motion was being handled by Councilmember. Speaker 5: Richardson and there was. Speaker 6: Concerns about legality. But I believe that you made an opine on that. Speaker 15: Yeah, that's right. If the council were to adopt a provision which allowed a landlord not to pay relocation, if they gave six months notice to a tenant of their intent to terminate tenancy, that would be legal. Speaker 5: Wonderful. Then I'd like to make a substitute motion to include my. Speaker 6: Original friendly amendment. This would still mean that the first reading would be on June 11th. Or would that be able to be included tonight without a substantive change? Speaker 15: No, that's a substantive change. Speaker 6: Great. So the first reading of that item, which you've already determined to be legal, would be on June 11th with the second reading on June 18th, and there would be no impact to the implementation. We would still be able. Speaker 5: To implement this and help renters. Speaker 6: Effective August 1st. Thank you. Speaker 5: I appreciate your work on that. I know this was an extremely. Speaker 6: Hard lift for you and your office to get back to us very quickly. I appreciate the hard work done on that. I had thought that my friendly amendment asked the legal language to be available and as an option tonight. Speaker 5: And that it wouldn't have had to have been a new first reading. And I apologize for that. But I'm also open to friendly amendments from my colleagues on both sides of the issue to make it more agreeable to everyone. And so I'm open to hearing more from my colleagues. Speaker 1: Next up is council member not. Speaker 3: Okay. I would like to add to that. So technically, this would be a substitute substitute motion that we add the change from 4 to 5 units. What we're calling the 4 to 5. Speaker 15: I'm not sure I'm clear on exactly what that means. Could you could you provide some more detail on what part of the ordinance is switching from 4 to 5? Speaker 3: Okay. Page three, subsection H. But the vernacular we're using is the threshold being I'm sorry to use the shorthand, but the five units as opposed to four. Speaker 15: Got it. So. So the tenant relocation payment regime would completely exempt four unit buildings. Speaker 3: Correct. Okay. Speaker 15: And otherwise that motion was everything that council member Mungo's motion was the sub sub now added that change to 8.97.0 20h. I think it's, it's clear to me what the sub sub is on the floor. Hopefully it is to everybody else. Speaker 1: I think I think I think that's a subset subsub. So we have a sub sub on the floor. Let me just keep going down the line. Next up is Vice Mayor Andrew's comment. Speaker 4: Yes. Thank you, Mayor. You know, I've been listening the most and I believe the most landlords are responsible and they're fair in their dealings with, you know, our tenants. But I also don't believe that that the tenant relocation measures, you know, are really rent control. You know, but under this ordinance, I think landlords will still be able to charge as much as they want, ask people to leave whenever they choose, subject to any lease agreement. The only difference in this is when people enforce the tenets to their tenants, the tenants that they're from, the convenience of, you know, landlords, that the lenders will have the financial assistance of tenants and their relocations. So further, this ordinance will only apply to the narrow number of situations such as mass eviction, high rental increase. People are asked to leave because of the reason beyond their control and only in the rental for five units or more. This is a very, I think, situation. And the problem that we are having in seen in my district and across the city, I think too many residents have been, you know, evicted. But for reasons that landlords wish to raise rents beyond the capability of the current tenant to pay. And we've seen a lot of that. But the thing about it, I think a landlord you don't really see really very fair in a lot of these situations because I'm hoping that our tenants and landlords can, after we tweak a lot of this, will come together and try to find out because I think a lot of the individuals see what we're going through with this day and time. You know, they said we're going to have a massive eviction and we're going to have, you know, homelessness. But that could go either way. It just all depends the way individuals if you have a place that you're renting, I think you should be able to understand that is your place at that time. Take care of it. And I think a lot of these landlords, we don't really understand to keep the rent the way it is. I heard the individual say he hadn't raises rent in ten years. That's fine and dandy, but we would hope everybody else will understand because you guys realize everything is going up. And I'm hoping that tenants really seriously will understand that we have a responsibility, just like our landlords. And I'm definitely going to vote on this measure tonight, you know, because it'll be able to stabilize some of the enjoyment rent and increase on any other thing. So thank you very much. Speaker 1: Next up, thank you, vice mayor. Next up is Councilman Austin. Speaker 9: Thank you. I've been entertained by public comment here this evening and I learned a few things. So thank you very much and also with my colleagues. I appreciate it. Councilmember Granger's comments regarding truth in politics and sometimes, you know, that gets confused in reality. You know, people want us to tell the truth. But if the the the truth is and what they want to hear is not the truth. So there there there's been much discussion about this issue, a lot of public comment for for several months. But what I've heard here tonight from both sides is that this this before us is not perfect. I've heard from my colleagues that, hey, we want to make it better. I've heard staff compliment it for, you know, bringing this council, this this item to council at like a rapid pace. I don't think I've ever seen a item with this this gravity come back so quickly. And so they should be commended for their their work on this. Obviously, they're taking it very seriously and understanding that this is an issue that is important to not only this council, but the entire a lot of people in this city on one side or the other. I want to be reminded of our goal here. The goal was to provide a tenant relocation policy, but also protect tenant tenant protections. Right. And what it was one of the the the individuals who council members who voted to bring this or this policy to to the city attorney's office for for drafting , but also expressed some reservations about it, because I expressed it that I wasn't completely comfortable with what was in front of us. There were a number of questions posed to city staff during that last meeting a month ago. Right. And then the last couple of days we received answers to those questions. Right. One was regarding the impact on on cost of Hawkins. Another was regarding the legalities of creating a a an extended noticing from 60 days to 180 days as an option to tenant relocation. And and those answers, I think, have. Merit in terms of the policy that we're looking at tonight. They're significant in terms of impacting the policy. I think some of the points raised by the Legal Aid Foundation and some of the tenant rights activists or advocates were duly noted in terms of the the when the relocation payment is actually made. That is that's significant and I think should be massaged through this process. I'm not completely, again, comfortable with what's in front of us, but I do support I will say I do support the and I do with the second on the motion to provide an option in terms of a 180 day notice. I think that is is fair. And I think it does add an element of protection for for our our our tenants. I'm a little disappointed that this policy before us also came back empty. On disabled the benefits for the extended benefits for the disabled and elderly. Because when I signed on to this as an initial cosigner on this issue several months ago, that was a priority, kind of lay it out and for us to come back empty on that is disappointing. It also sends a message that it's okay for for for for the burden to be on you, but not for us, except on our end of the burden. I thought that was an excellent, excellent addition. I think it was a creative point. I think Councilmember Pearce brought that forward. But I think we need to to really show our commitment as a city council to making this policy whole and in protecting and creating extra protections for those who are disabled and elderly. Our seniors are are vulnerable. Those with disabilities are most vulnerable. And I know that that was a a foundation of the policy that we set to create. The timing, I think, is is unique for for a lot of reasons. I personally don't know that that moving this two weeks is going to be a big difference. And in understanding that staff went and made significant changes, put together a policy in one month. I think the additions could certainly be be worked out in the next couple of weeks. And so my my objective is to make sure that we come out with a good policy, a well, big policy. If you put a put a. A cake in the oven and you take it out early. You don't have a good cake. So I think you have to to make sure that we bake this fully. And one thing that this continues to continue to struggle with, I know that we're going to create some and I want to say ten protections. We will create a policy that will trigger relocations if if if anybody or property or landowners landlords abuse. But at the same time, I think the question that keeps kind of bugging me is, does this policy make housing in Long Beach more affordable? And I'm not sure that that that it does. And we still are going to continue to have substantive and ongoing conversations about this issue moving forward. I know. So on with that. Those are my comments and I look forward to taking this to a vote. Speaker 1: Councilmember Councilman Price. Speaker 6: Thank you. I appreciate all the comments. I want to to just comment on the the point about everything being political. I have deep, deep respect for my colleagues. But I will say this is local politics, which is supposed to be mostly about doing good for the community and focusing on community needs that are very specific. And so we are. Speaker 10: All. Speaker 6: Talk and I get it, everything is political. I completely agree with them. I have nothing but respect like in District seven, but I do hear that a lot is that everything is political, but it's true. But what we do as a city council is we're setting policy that involves day to day lives of people on both sides of this particular issue. And so we have to look at factors like the fact that Councilman Austin just said there was an aspect of the item that's not even included in today's ordinance and we're going to vote on it tonight is is surprising to me because we had a long debate and we tried to listen to all the stakeholders. So my recommendation is, is that we we wait. I'm going to be supporting the subsub and the sub. The one thing that I will ask my colleague who's made the sub sub council. There are two things that I would like to ask you to consider as a friendly for the sub sub. And the first is that the tenant should not have to notify the tenant that they are staying. I mean, the landlord that they are staying. I think that is a fair request, and I would ask if you would consider that friendly. Speaker 3: Okay. And then what's the second? Speaker 6: The second one is that the landlords would have to notify the tenants of their rights to relocation. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 15: So those are intercepted. Hold on a second. Ordinance already requires the landlord to notify the tenant of their rights. I think without putting words in your mouth, I think what you're getting at is that failure to provide such notice should be an affirmative defense to eviction. Is that right? Speaker 6: Yes, I think that was one of the requests that the tenant organizations made. And I think that's very fair. Speaker 3: That's correct. Yeah. I anything on the disabled there. Speaker 6: Oh. And that we include the disabled provision that Councilman Austin had asked for and made as an issue when we last discussed this. That didn't make it into the current ordinance. Speaker 15: I'm. Well, that shouldn't be in the ordinance unless you're proposing that the apartment owners fund that, which I don't think is what you're proposing. That's a city funded program that wouldn't be in an ordinance. It would just be at the direction of the council. Speaker 6: So would that still be included tonight or are we not voting? Voting on. Speaker 15: That? Not voting on that. Speaker 6: Okay. So we couldn't vote on that tonight anyway because that's not agenda. Speaker 15: That's right. Speaker 6: Understood. Okay. Thank you. So. Speaker 15: So there's two friendly amendments. I think I understand them. You're good with them. Mover, council member. Speaker 3: Both. Both accepted. Speaker 15: And I assume that the since the secondary was Councilwoman Pryce. You're good with them as well. Okay. Yes. As amended. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Consumer prices. Anything else? Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you. I initially cued up to highlight that point that was just highlighted that when we initially brought up the conversation about the disabled program and the senior program, it was that we intentionally said we wanted to keep it separate so there wouldn't be discrimination on the part of landlords on who they're going to, you know, lease to seniors or disabled, but that the city would create a program and not place that burden on the landlords. So I'm glad that was clarified. I also want to say that, you know, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. This is a good ordinance in front of us. It's good enough to pass today, and we can always improve on every single ordinance on the books. The question for me is did staff do what we asked them to do? When we made this motion. And they did. And that's what's in front of us. And we voted for that with an expectation that this is what's going forward. Now, we've learned that there are some pieces that we didn't give direction on and it wasn't clarified. So. So the city attorney's office clarifying on some of it, like when the relocation is paid, we didn't give direction on that. And that's a tweak that we can do later, but by no means should we slow down the process of moving forward. So in my opinion, what we should do tonight, what we should do tonight. I've already said that I am willing to work with council members on both sides to bring forward something, something different, you know, a tweak from both sides of the issue. Right. To come together and address some cleanup because it will it's not something it's something that will need a little bit of fine tuning. The angel is in the details and I will do that work over the next month or two to make to make it happen. But what I think we have tonight is an ordinance that's ready to go. It's ready to go. So I would encourage so I would encourage right now that we get back to the main motion that would be a no vote on the substitute substitute. A no vote on the substitute. And I vote on the motion that yes, motion. And the other thing is to assume and I'll just live in the room to assume that someone who has been a good ally and champion this issue, that they might want to actually vote on this. You know, Councilwoman Gonzalez, I think that's okay thing. Right. She's going to be elected to the Senate. And and to do that with this ordinance, I think it's okay. And we don't have to dance around it. I don't think we're shortchanging the process. We have plenty of time, you know, to have more conversations. But the ordinance today is it's an ordinance that's ready to the city attorney put his stamp on it already is ready to go. So I would encourage a no vote on the sub sub a no vote on the sub. And I vote on the main motion made by Councilwoman Gonzalez. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilman Austin. Speaker 9: Thank you very much. I just wanted to to address the elephant in the room. And first of all, let me just say congratulations in advance to Councilmember Gonzalez for it. And what was that? The the and I don't know what the timeline is. You know, there will there will be we're dark on June 5th. Fourth. Okay. June the fourth. Yeah, I forgot the date. So we're dark on the fourth. There's no reason why we can't be here to to vote on this on the 11th. Right. Well, in the question is, Councilmember Gonzales, will you be here on the 11th? Keep. Maybe that's a question. Mr. Mayor, can I can I pose that question to my colleague? Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I don't know the answer to that. Speaker 9: Do you plan to be here on the 11th? Speaker 6: Here? I will be here on the 11th. But I would like to move this forward today. Speaker 9: Right. So I would just like to say. I think that that's. Either way, Councilmember Gonzalez will have an opportunity to vote on this, whether or not we we work to fine tune this with the motions on the floor. And and I will just tell you, you know, I've been in tricky situations. I've understood how these votes go. I will not be voting no on any of the items before me, because that's always twisted against you in the truth of politics. Excuse me. Just excuse me. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 1: Well, thank you. We had the first vote. Right now is a is the sub sub, which is council member supervised motion. So it's councilmember supervised motion. Please cast your votes. Guys. We got it. Thank you. Speaker 6: I'm. Speaker 0: Push and fail. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. The. The next. The next motion is the substitute motion, which is Councilman Mango motion. So this is the councilwoman mongo motion. Speaker 0: Motion fail. Speaker 10: Okay. Speaker 1: And the last the last motion is the main motion, which is the Lina Gonzalez motion. Speaker 7: How many? Speaker 6: Motion carries. Speaker 3: Great. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. We are we're we're we're going to go ahead and. Thank you, Renee. We still have a little bit of the meeting left, so please, people can just please exit quietly. Would appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.97 relating to Tenant Relocation Assistance, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05142019_19-0460

Speaker 6: . So we'll be moving those two items to the top of the agenda and then going from there. So let me begin by doing hearing item number one. Speaker 0: Report from Public Works recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and adopt a resolution amending the master fee and charges schedule relating to the Shared Microbial City program. Declare Ordinance Amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to Shared Micromobility. Read the first time and lead over the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and extend the current electric scooter pilot program citywide. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. West. Speaker 4: Mayor, council members, the public hearing the buzz word here is microbial city, but it's mostly about e-scooters. I'm going to turn it over to our public works director, Craig Beck, and the traffic engineer Eric Wickstrom. Speaker 9: Thank you, Pat. Good evening, Mayor. Members, city council. Just wanted to remind you tonight's hearing is to adopt a micromobility ordinance and an associated fee schedule. So if we could have that clicker. Hold on 1/2. Okay. So we wanted to start by just giving a brief update of kind of a background on how we got here. If you recall, we issued a pilot program for E-Scooters in July of 2018. We've been monitoring and managing that pilot program ever since. We currently have five operators in the city and about a thousand scooters deployed in different zones across the city. We've had a call center that's been active throughout our pilot program that allowed us to track questions, concerns, comments about E-SCOOTERS. And the data has shown that it's it's been overall a successful program with about 60 rides per month. And at the time we made the presentation back in February, staff made a number of recommendations for implementation of a permanent program. And really what we are here this evening is to adopt those recommendations. So as a reminder, E-Scooters, there are some laws in effect and rules that govern our program here in the city, including riders, must be 18. You are not allowed to ride e-scooters on the sidewalk and you need to make sure that you're appropriately parking them when you're done and that they aren't in conflict with Ada in within our right of way. And even though the state law has changed in January of this year, not requiring helmets for the riders to say, the city still continues to encourage helmet use for riders safety. So what are we talking about for a permanent program? We are bringing back at council's direction. We are limiting the issuance of permits to only six vendors and initially that would be for 4000 total units. Those units would increase to 6000 after six months, assuming everybody are following the guidelines and safely operating the devices. Vendors will be required to provide anonymous data to the city. To our third party vendor. We want to be able to track where scooters are being used, how they're being deployed, making sure that they are appropriately following the requirements and the limits to to align with the permit that they're issued. It's also very important that vendors have the ability to geofence their devices. We believe that this is an important component, and we know now that we will be restricting rider access to certain areas. Parks are an example. Belmont Pier is an example. So there's going to be certain areas within the city that we want to restrict where scooters would go. Vendors must create an incentive for parking within the designated drop zone. So this is proven to be successful. During our pilot program is the placement of drop zones and placement of the scooter devices within those drop zones as they balance them every morning. But we wanted to take that a step further and follow something similar to what we do with our bike share program, and that is actually to incentivize the users to park in a hub. And if they do that, we'll leave it up to the vendors to create that incentive, whatever that may be. It could be a credit for a ride or however they want to do that. But we will be looking for that incentive to ensure compliance with this important component of our program. It's important that they come up with a fair that reduces costs to our low income community that we have in the city. We want riders of all incomes levels to have access to the SCOOTER program, and we'll be looking for the vendors to create that that rate structure. We want to provide support. We want the vendors to provide support for the deployment of their devices and their customers so they can't just drop them in the city and disappear. We want to make sure that they have a presence here and work with our staff to promote safe usage and also educate their riders on safe usage. Vendors must work with the city to provide data. As I mentioned, that's going to include a whole host of things, not only the heat maps of where they're going to be written, but we want to know about maintenance reports. We want to know that the writers are following program rules. We want to know if they have accidents. So if writers are injured, we want that to be in the data. We really want to get a full picture of the usage and what's working well and areas that we may need to focus on for improvement. Lastly, we want to make sure that they work with us for special events that may be moving scooters out of the way for special events. For example, filming in a given area. Or redeploying more units if we have a large event and need more access. We also want to make sure that they'll quickly respond to emergencies and remove their devices if we so desire. Part of the action tonight includes the adoption of new fees. And just as a reminder, when we brought this item forward in February, council requested staff to take a look at our fee structure and look for opportunities to reduce our fees. If you recall, at that time, we were proposing a $120 annual per unit fee and a $40 annual per unit fee in our disadvantaged communities. After we've spent some time reviewing how this would be implemented, we found challenges to add to the fee structure in our disadvantaged in our disadvantaged communities, meaning how would we know what scooters were within those areas and what scooters weren't? And so we're proposing this evening that we have a flat fee of $100 per unit annually, and that that would allow us to fund the necessary elements for this program, including what we would need for staffing to manage this program. Council also asked us to confirm what fees were being charged in other cities. I think that there was an indication at the time that maybe other cities were reducing those fees. We've checked with the cities in Southern California listed here, and the information we received back is that those fees have not changed since we presented in February . And as a reminder, those fees are in this table here. So to successfully implement this program, the fees are an important element. When we looked at the data that we received through the pilot program, we're estimating that the vendors earned about $1.6 million in revenue on about a thousand units that were deployed throughout the city. And we feel that it's important to include the fee elements so we can achieve some of the goals that council has tasked staff with, ensuring that that we're addressing scooters that are parked in inappropriate areas that were there to address concerns expressed by our community and also to do special enforcement. We want to work closely with Long Beach PD to say, for example, to do special enforcement, to address any riders that are using scooters on the sidewalk as as an example. So what are our next steps if council moves forward and adopts this ordinance this evening? Staff will work to implement the new permit application. All current vendors will have to reapply. They'll need to apply under the new permanent program guidelines and rules. They'll have to affirm that they're going to follow those rules. They will be assessed to ensure that they meet all of the program requirements and then issued a permanent permit. So we will also ask staff through the hiring of the the MICRO-MOBILITY coordinator will take on the responsibility of the drop zones. So under the pilot program, the vendors where we're placing the decals. The city wants to take that on to ensure that the decals are kept up and maintained. We're finding that some of the decals out in our communities are getting worn and we want to ensure that they are appropriately placed. A But B, we also plan on changing some of the information in our drop zone decals. For example, we're going to add information to remind scooter riders that they cannot ride on the sidewalks. So the decals would then say no riding on the sidewalk. So that would be an element of the program as as council directed. Once we get this up and running, we would come back to council with a report in six months. And if at that juncture, everyone seems to be in compliance with all the program rules and requirements, we would then move from an authorized number of 4000 units to 6000 units citywide. So that concludes our staff report, and we're available to answer any questions. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. Beck. Let me turn this over to Councilman Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So and thank you, Mr. Beck, for the presentation. And we've been following the conversation around scooters for a long time, and we see them distributed and being utilized. And thank you for bringing this this this hearing tonight to adopt this resolution, this ordinance. So we raised up the conversation. And it's not new that we want to make sure with everything we do, we place a lens of equity, economic equity, environmental equity on how we deploy these technologies. And we've seen some examples here in Long Beach where with Bikeshare, for example, we said we will go out and ultimately get to other parts of town, North Long Beach, things like that. And, you know, for one reason or the other, a vendor or whatever it was, things happen and it doesn't. And it never the bikes never made it to North Long Beach. And we have an opportunity and I think we need to. The lesson I've learned from that is that we need to put these things in the policy on day one as we design and build the program. And so I wanted to talk through some different components here, and I'm interested in moving forward with a first reading tonight , but I will have some, some tweaks to the ordinance here. So one, you know, at the conversation at SCAD and you know, I'm involved at SCAD, we're we're we're noticing that these ordinances across the region are intentionally calling out equity. How are we calling our equity in this ordinance, in this program here today? Speaker 9: Councilman Richardson? I think we're we're approaching that in two ways. One, as I mentioned, we would be seeking the vendors to create a rate structure to ensure that those of low income in our inner city have access to the scooters. The other is we would deploy across zones and the zones in the city would allow us to authorize X number of units in a zone. So we wouldn't simply, as an example, say vendor A gets a thousand units to deploy wherever they want to. Vendor A would get approval for a thousand units X number in zone one, x number in zone two, X number in zone three, etc. And by doing that, it allows us to align the distribution of our units across our city and across those. Speaker 7: Sounds great and I think that's a good foundation and I may want to take it a bit further and just sort of call out some goals or some requirements here. Now, in paying attention to LA's Department of Transportation, they've required their providers to have insurance and liability. Do we have that? Is that a requirement or program that the providers have insurance and liability insurance? Speaker 1: Yes, it. Speaker 7: Is. Okay. Great. Is and I noticed you referenced that we want them to remain committed to the community. Is that going to be codified in the plan? Speaker 1: I believe that's something that will be implemented by staff as part of their program that's so specifically addressed in the ordinance. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 9: So I guess if I could, I think the answer from my perspective would be that if we find that a vendor isn't committed to this program and the program rules, that we would withdraw their application and their permit and they would not be allowed to operate in the city. So I think by doing that, it does achieve a certain element of commitment to Long Beach and success in Long Beach. Speaker 7: Certainly. And so the Los Angeles program has it requires the insurance and liability. It requires a community engagement plan. So they call out what their commitment is going to be, and then they measure. And based on that plan and then thirdly, an equity plan. I think we touched on most of that here. And so my hope is that we get an opportunity for them as sort of for us to look at what their plan is for ensuring that they have a rate structure and all those things. The other thing that I think is really interesting that I think we should apply here is that so in LA's program, they set a goal for disadvantaged communities and in 62% of their scooters in the city of L.A. are required to operate in these disadvantaged communities. So they called out 62%. They looked at how many disadvantaged communities that they had in L.A. and said, look, it should be proportional, right, to the disadvantaged communities. And so here in Long Beach and they use the cal enviro screen, they use the Calvin Great Enviro screen, 3.0. Now, what I'd like to see is, since we already have since we already have zones, I'd like to see a goal of 40%, a requirement of 40%, not 62, like L.A. would do 40 in zones that overlap with the coronavirus green rating, 70 or 80 and above. I think we'll give you some flexibility on how you programmatically design that. But I want to set a requirement here in this in this in this motion. So that will be in my motion, hoping for a reaction. Bart's response reaction? Speaker 9: Are you asking for a second or are you asking for. Speaker 7: It's not emotion yet. I want your feedback. Speaker 9: So I think that that is something we could certainly implement. As I mentioned, when you start to look at the zones, we could easily align our zones within our disadvantaged communities and that would allow us to to both implement and then monitor the success of that implementation of a goal or a target for distribution across those communities Speaker 7: . Thank you. And I think the way that the ordinance is structured, we should be able to put in a requirement without triggering in the first reading again. Is that correct? Speaker 1: I think if you do it as part of the implementation plan by staff, I think that it wouldn't trigger it wouldn't trigger a new first reading. I think if we amend the ordinance, that's not currently something that's in it and it probably would trigger. Speaker 10: In the first. Speaker 7: Reading. So we can require it as a part of the program. Speaker 1: So you can you can direct staff or request that staff implemented. Speaker 7: Great. That's what I like to do. And then and then finally, in terms of I know that we initially proposed sort of a two step program in terms of fees where, you know, there were sort of two rates. And now the staff proposal is come up with one rate, $100, and then the programs come up with their all their other fee schedule. I would like to see. So when do we plan on coming to that? Coming back in the next six months. Speaker 9: That's correct. Speaker 7: Yes. Okay. I would like. I would like to see not just the low income discount, but those operators who are who are operating within those zones that we describe, those disadvantaged zones. I think they should get a discount for having operating in those zones, as well as an incentive to make sure that sort of there's no gaming of the system and that sort of we're incentivizing engagement in these areas that really have been left out of the mobility conversation. So that's something we can do. Mr.. Back in the next six months. Speaker 9: Yeah. And I think, you know, the challenge that staff is is faced with currently is that we're not getting good data from the vendors. And so for us to implement a discounted rate structure for X-number of of scooters that align with our disadvantaged communities, we don't know how to verify in an audit that data. So I think the request would be, from at least as perspective, is that we move forward with the $100 rate that we get the data from the vendors as we're were requesting through the program. And assuming that that data is as extensive as we believe it will be, it would allow us then to kind of verify and have kind of a milestone where we would know how many units were within those areas that they are meeting, the targeted goal that's adopted tonight. And then we would come back in and share that with council and then at that time, maybe council could adopt a reduced rate program that would be staff recommendation. Speaker 7: Thank you. So I think that satisfies what I need. I think the motion here, the conversation here, we have to intentionally call out the outcomes we want to see in the policies we put forward. And we've, you know, we've done the the hopes and dreams. We hope that the market drives things to go in certain areas. And it just you know, there's too many factors. The technology changes too fast. There's problems with vendors. We have to write into the policy on day one to make sure that, you know, this is, you know, something that's useful to people who actually need it as a transit solution. And in north lobbies, for example, you know, a lot of the technology is being deployed, is considered last mile, but we're well over a mile to connect to the blue line. You either have to head south to the Waterloo Station or you have to head west to the Compton station. So we're really thinking about not last mile, technology's last two mile or last two and a half mile. And so we have to make sure that we're inclusive of all our areas of town when we create these policies. And this is consistent with the movement that's happening all across the region, this conversation on on transit, transit, equity and mobility as as an equity as it relates to mobility. So that's my motion staff's recommendation with the 40% goal of with 40% requirement in disadvantaged communities as defined by cal enviro screen. And we'll leave some flexibility there on whether it's, you know, 60, 70, I think 70 or 80 is the range. And then secondly, that we we come back in the next six months after collecting some data with some sort of incentive fee program for those those operators. So that's my motion. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Vice Mayor Andrew. Second that motion. I think we're gonna go back to Vice Mayor. Right. You said okay, considering. I'm actually I apologize. I was scrolled down there. So. Councilmember Pierce, then Councilmember Ringa. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think I spoke a lot on this whenever it was in council. The last time I've read through everything, I've had many conversations. I think, is that a good place? I support the motion on the floor by Councilmember Richardson. I did want to just clarify and then ask one one question for the six vendors that could eventually include e-bikes. Is that correct? Speaker 9: Yes, Councilwoman. That's correct. Speaker 0: Okay, wonderful. And then I wanted to ask. Oh, sorry. It's hard to talk. Thanks. I wanted to clarify that on the decals that we're putting that the city will be implementing those. We had a conversation with your team and one of our neighborhood associations, District one around decals and trying to make sure that we are cohesive, that we don't have five different types of decals on our sidewalks, that there's not enough room for that, that it's ADA compliance. And I believe the conversation was taking a similar design, at least in the downtown area, where it's explicit that you can't ride bikes or scooters. Would that be included in this program outside of just the where they're the parking station? Speaker 9: I think right now our recommendation is we're concerned about the proliferation of decals on our sidewalks. Speaker 4: Mm hmm. Speaker 9: And that we should do that in a cohesive way. And what we're what we believe we can do is accomplish some of the goals of the neighborhood communities, which is to remind riders, both bicycle riders and e-scooter riders, that they're not allowed to ride on our sidewalks. And we think we can do that within our drop zones. We're going to revise the one that we use during the pilot program and shrink the footprint a little bit, but add more information about not not riding on sidewalks. I think that hopefully answers your question. Speaker 0: Yes. And I I guess I wanted to make sure that as we come back down the road, that we continue to have a conversation if we feel like those decals are enough, because we did have neighborhood associations that wanted to pay for them themselves and put them on. And so to keep from making sure that we don't have four different kinds out there. I would rather the city do it with the city logo on it and that you manage the entire program. So I just wanted to make sure that we talked about that publicly. And then the other component, I just want to echo Richardson's comments. I mean, I know that we've seen that some people are riding these up to seven miles, you know, distance. And so I again, for that reason, I support the motion that he's made and look forward to hearing the council comments. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Councilman. Your income. Speaker 11: Thank you. For clarification, this is this continues to be a pilot program. Where we with we actually putting it out to RFP for people to apply and get more of a permanent contract. Speaker 1: With the adoption of the ordinance. You will be entering a phase where it's a permanent program. I think staff's recommendation tonight is to continue the the the pilot program until the ordinance becomes final. Speaker 11: And then at that point, we're requiring those who have already been in the pilot program to reapply for the permanent. Speaker 1: Correct. Speaker 11: License or whatever. You know, right now you have of what bird line readership and spin and you. We have up to six. So that's five. Is there a61 available or is there one in the loop? Is there an RFP for one or what was the process? Speaker 9: So to address that, we purposely are calling this a micromobility program because we we look at the guidelines that we're proposing here this evening would apply to a vendor that wanted to bring in e-bikes as an example. So our goal would be that we would have the ability to go up to to issue up to six permits citywide for both e-scooters and e-bikes not to exceed assuming everything works out after the six month period of time frame. 6000 units citywide between both E-Scooters and e-bikes. We're not saying that the the vendors that are currently operating in the pilot program will get a permanent permit. They're going to have to display that they can implement all of the requirements of the permanent program that they have geofencing as described that they're going to achieve the need for delivering data and that they're going to be responsible for managing their system within our city. So, again, we're not making any guarantees. We're going to take applications on a first come, first serve basis. We're going to evaluate them for compliance with our program and then issue the permits from there. Speaker 11: I'm glad to hear that because in your report you did mention that there are some of these vendors who are having been I don't see that compliant but have not been providing some real good data to you for you to evaluate. So I'm concerned that these vendors who already have a track record of perhaps not being as open and cooperative with you and providing you data that they're going to be rewarded with a contract. So, I mean, I don't want to see that. I hope that during the review process that you will be very strict and very forceful in asking for compliance with all facets of the program that we have put in place and that we will get a very good program here in Long Beach. I basically agree with the comments of my my two previous colleagues in regards to the equity components and having the availability of more scooters in other parts of the city that are not traditional for these types of mobility transportation options. I'm talking about the West Palm Beach area in my side of town, and so I'm hoping that we can address those sometime in the very near future. And that's it for now. I'll continue. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 8: Thank you. And I think a couple of my questions have already been answered. So I'm going to do what I can to be efficient with my time here. The. The the term. Abandoned Scooter can cause somebody to define what that actually means. Speaker 9: I guess from staff's perspective, an abandoned scooter would be a scooter that maybe was tossed in the Colorado lagoon or was thrown on top of a building. Those are not just misplaced or parked poorly. Those were intentionally. We're using the term abandoned. You could say, um, I don't know, vandalized or something, but. But we're trying to ensure alignment that we're taking care of any wayward scooters out in our community. Speaker 8: Okay. Well, it seems to me that that that that that particular term can be misinterpreted by by anybody. Right. It can mean something different to somebody else. And so it probably I would feel a lot more comfortable if we could kind of find that out and be clear specific on what that means. Because I you know, we get constituent calls and, you know, if a scooter's parked in front of somebody's home, you know, there's a neighbor who may may view that as an abandoned scooter versus being found in a Colorado lagoon. So just my comments on that. And in light of just some recent. Current affairs. Is there is the city indemnified for any. Criminal acts that may be. Use for scooter or a scooter may be used for. Speaker 1: The city is not not currently the language in the ordinance does not currently address criminal acts. No. Yeah that kind of isn't a standard part of the of public right of way permits. Speaker 8: So if somebody assaults somebody with a scooter. Right. Would the city be liable or not? Speaker 1: Well, if it's if it's there's I mean, I guess it sort of depends on what area we're talking about. But if there's a criminal act, I would expect that the first thing that would happen would be that the police department would take care of whatever that is. And if there was a subsequent civil lawsuit that involved the city, it would have to get addressed from there. But since that's sort of a circumstance that's not terribly common in this kind of public right of way permit, that's not something that's addressed in the ordinance. That would probably be addressed kind of on a case by case basis as it arose. Unless people anticipate that this is something that will be happening more often. Speaker 8: Well, I. Never thought that I would think it was. So some things happen at their unthinkable, but but then they happen. And so you have to think about that as well. And so I think I would love to see an indemnification clause if possible in this, and I'd be very interested in hearing from my colleagues as well about that. And then to Councilmember Richardson's original motion regarding the equity, I certainly support that. You know, we want to make sure that this mode of transportation and these modes of clean transportation are available to everybody in our community no matter what their income level is. And so if there's a way to add in, I think this this ordinance certainly addresses much of that. I did have a question regarding the 40% number and whether or not that is that goes far enough. And how did you arrive at that, that number? Speaker 7: Councilmember Thank you. So in looking at the Cal enviro screen, the higher you go in the column virus, Green says, you know, the more pollution or more polluted the environment is in those areas, 70%, 70 or above on cal enviro screen essentially covers all of downtown west central Long Beach and north. 40% go there already doing that. I'm pretty confident they're already doing that by being in the in the downtown. The hope is that the way that staff designs the program of it is distributed across the six zones and prioritized, you know, that 40% is met by making sure that sort of the three or so zones that will overlap north central west those coronavirus green areas have some some goals called out in those areas. So that would be sort of required to operate sort of equitably across town. So that's the idea. So 40, it could potentially be higher, L.A. to 68. I think given this is a new concept, I didn't want to go too aggressive here. I think if they can meet 40 in the next six months and we see data, we can have a conversation about, you know, whether that number needs to be adjusted. I think 40% is. It just seemed like a fair number. Speaker 8: So I applaud the effort. I guess it would probably help me if I had a coronavirus screen in front of me. That data in front of me. Okay, I don't need to see that. And it is that is that B and is that the only methodology that we can look at? Speaker 7: Now, let's just Los L.A. do what he did. And it made sense. And it's the conversation at SCAD. So this is just sort of a measurement. There could be others, it could be poverty, it could be a number of different things. But CALLEN Virus screen the environment typically tracks along the same indicators as poverty in others. And actually Cal Virus screen actually is a little bit more fair because it says whether you're in poverty or not, if you have, you're dealing with a bunch of automated, you know, a bunch of pollution due to mobile sources, then you need these scooters too. So I think it's a little more sort of bizarre. Speaker 8: So you're going to have to share that screen with me. Speaker 7: I got you. Speaker 8: And then they sent in a spirit of moving this this item. I certainly will support this. But I think we also have some time over the next six months, a year to recognize and tweak the program if necessary. So the ordinance. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 3: Thank you. Excellent comments from my colleagues. And I support anything we can do to incentivize distribution of the scooters throughout the city. Because if I'm not mistaken, the deployment and activation of the scooters thus far has been mostly in council districts two and three. Is that right? Speaker 6: Mr. Beck. Speaker 9: Council member we have distribution across the city. There have been the majority of them tend to find themselves along the coast line. Correct. So one, two and three. Speaker 3: So I think that the biggest concern for my district is, of course, the abandoned scooters. You know, they are resembling a type of litter. In terms of what the residents are experiencing. They're in the middle of sidewalks. So we've had residents trip over them. They end up in planters, roundabouts, traffic circles, Colorado Lagoon, all manner of places. So I think once they're utilized more actively in other districts, some of those impacts might be felt more prevalently by some of my colleagues. And they'll understand that the need for some of the the concerns that I have and the protections that I'm hoping we have in place. We did have a number, a call center number for residents to call and address violations. And my understanding is that that call center is no longer active. So if we roll out this new program, what what is the city going to do to help facilitate resident concerns? Speaker 9: So. Councilmember That's correct. We had a POW with a third party vendor that was operating a call center for us and that PO has hit its limit. So we are looking at how we would re-implement that. We'll either do a a new PO for that vendor or B, take it in-house. And we're looking right now at what that would entail to bring the call center in-house and make that decision once we have that data. Speaker 3: Okay, that's excellent. Speaker 9: But definitely to answer your question, we absolutely believe having a call center is important to the success of this program. Speaker 3: Excellent. Thank you. Is it possible for us to be able to add abandoned scooters or dump scooters to the Go Long Beach app as one of the options? Speaker 9: I'll have to check. I believe it's on there. I could be wrong. Speaker 3: It's well, we have dumped items which, by the way, I use for just about every category that I can't find. Speaker 9: But if it's not on there, we can certainly add it. Yes. Speaker 3: Okay. And thank you. And the reason for that is I know a lot of the scooter companies like Bird, for example, has a really great feature on their app where you can report dump scooters. But the problem is expecting the residents to have, you know, all six apps on their phone is a lot to ask. So if we could have a go along beach access, that would be fantastic. What I know we talked in the past about selecting vendors that have geofencing, technology available so that we can have some control over speed limits and of course, access points for the scooters. Is that still a priority for us and what's our status on that? Speaker 9: Yeah. Not only is it a priority, it's an absolute requirement under the new program if if a vendor does not have the ability to limit or restrict scooter access in certain areas of the city as we designate, then they're not going to be issued a permit. Speaker 3: Okay. Excellent. And are they the vendors required to carry insurance? I think Councilman Austin just asked about this, but just a little bit more directly. Is is there is the scooter company required to have insurance? Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. Speaker 0: Okay. Speaker 3: We have talked a lot about. Resources for enforcement and using the revenue collected from this program to put it right back into enforcement. Is that still our plan? And what does enforcement look like? Speaker 9: Well, I think the first goal of staff is to hire a mobile MICRO-MOBILITY coordinator so we can ensure that all the things that we're talking about this evening are being implemented. The goal is that we would hopefully still have some revenue available to a to work with PD to do specialized enforcement. And what I mean by that is it would depend on the chief's direction on how he would deploy this, but maybe either officer overtime or a special unit that would go into certain areas and enforce things like riding the wrong way on the street and not obeying traffic laws, writing on the sidewalk, etc., and kind of do an enforcement zone to ensure we have compliance. Speaker 3: And that's great. I would like to take that a step further and ask Councilman Richardson if I can add a friendly to his motion. And the friendly would be that for the first six months that this project is rolled out while we're. Working with the 4000 number. But before we go to the 6000 number that the chief of police work with his command staff to identify one day per month where directed enforcement is conducted on sidewalks or business corridors for scooter enforcement. And the reason I think that's important is because for a lot of our business corridors, this impacts the businesses being able to have clear sidewalks. And the chief of police can determine, based on the hotspots what areas are getting the most use and once a month direct a directed enforcement action in a community where there's a lot of use and so that we can have that data. Speaker 7: So I like the idea of doing some enforcement. I would want to hear from staff specifically about the count. So. Yeah, so. So anyway, in the past we've always been careful not to direct very specifically, but in more in general to say work into your work and enforcement program in if you want to make it general and they can respond to it. I'm happy with accepting that, right? Sure. Speaker 3: I mean, it would be the chief that would make that determination. But I just want to make sure. Speaker 7: That, no. Speaker 3: I'm not begging for directed enforcement every month. If I feel like there's a need that it's baked into this policy, that we have some resources that we're setting aside for that. Speaker 7: Chief, would you like to just respond. Speaker 10: And I'd like to jump in there a little bit. So we like that direction. Please let us know that, you know, in general, you'd like to do that. We'll work that. And I'll let the chief talk in a second. Work that into the program as possible. We will also be bringing back in the FY 20 budget an actual plan for the number of positions that we're going to be hiring. So if you saw in the staff report, we are not going to wait to the 20 budget to bring the first person on and who will bring on the staffing. We need to get this going because we need to be ready day one when this gets going. But then you'll see in the Fy20 budget what our what our enforcement plan will be and the various components. Speaker 3: Great. Speaker 7: Yeah, except it. Speaker 6: Okay, so I think motion's been accepted. Councilman Richardson, you're not sure? Speaker 7: Just one more thing. I forgot to. I forgot to mention to raise up. So, you know, I saw a presentation where Uber showed how they're preparing the Uber app to be able to show not just their vehicles, but the transit time on the bus, the transit time on the, you know, the blue line and on bikes and scooters all integrate in one platform. So when someone pulls up, let's say Uber or Lyft, you'll see, okay, it may take me 20 minutes in a car. It may take me 30 minutes on a scooter. It may take me this long. And what the what the prices are. And that's the future of like fully integrated multi modality. That's where things are heading. But we have to make sure that we're starting the conversation now with this ordinance to set some, you know, start thinking about as that technology comes online, how are the vendors we're working with today ready to participate? Should that technology be created? And even metros thinking about doing the same thing where you have one integrated app where everything else can kind of feed in and so have you. Are you familiar with this? Speaker 9: Mr. BECK Yes, Councilmember. I think that that not only the app you're talking about, but Google is doing that as well as they start talking about drive time and different modes of travel. And I think one thing that I would add, while we're talking about transportation this evening, many of the companies that are engaged in this are really technology companies. And so they're striving for the latest technology. And and it's a competitive marketplace. So early adopters are going to tend to be more successful in tech as technology changes. Speaker 7: Okay, great. So I know there's, you know, more questions and we'll have another bite at the apple on some of this when we talk about the phasing to 6000 bikes. But I want to make sure that we do have the opportunity should technology become available to require require this in the future. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Councilmember Super. Speaker 7: Thank you. I had a brief follow up on Councilman Price's issue about retrieving scooters via the Go Long Beach app. If that could be, I'm not sure how you would do this, but if it could be brand neutral, then someone who spots a scooter at the curb or on a front lawn in the middle of the night wouldn't have to go outside and identify the brand prior to reporting. It may not be doable, but it sure would be ideal if we had a system that way. The other hour I'd just like to ask staff. So my understanding is that the fee was reduced to the vendors. Did that go from one tow to 100? Speaker 9: That's correct. At the stats recommendation and when we made the presentation back in February that we would charge $120 a unit per year and that we would charge $40 a unit per year in our disadvantaged communities. Speaker 7: Okay. So so my question is, what for that reduction? If that was in negotiation, what did we get in return? If anything. Speaker 9: Staff are recommending the $100 per unit annually, and it certainly counsels discretion to amend that and come up with a different amount. Speaker 7: Okay. It. Was there anything? Can you give us any background on on why that was reduced? Because we're just looking at a different figure today than we looked at it February. Help you understand my position. Speaker 9: Yeah, certainly. So when this item was presented to council in February, the staff was clearly directed with the adoption of the item to go back and review opportunities to come back with a lower fee. We looked at different opportunities and I want to remind the Council we're not negotiating a contract with these vendors. We're outlining a permit process which vendors can apply for. So this really isn't a negotiation we're going to detail. This is our program. If you want to operate in Long Beach, this is what you're going to have to comply with. And so trying to meet council's request, we're coming back with a recommendation of $100 annually. Speaker 7: Okay. So there are not enhanced services or anything like that that that have a nexus here in the reduced fee is just what what staff has set as what would be ideal moving forward. But it's not contractual. It's a guideline at this point in my understanding that I do want to put words in your mouth. But is it fair? Speaker 9: Well, I wouldn't say it's ideal or that it's a guideline. It will be the permit fee that we charge a permit to or a vendor that's issued a permit. So what council's adopting tonight would go into the fee ordinance and it would be a fee that is charged for anyone who operates under this program. Speaker 7: Okay. I guess maybe I'm mystified how this is reduced from February to today's date and I'm just don't have a good feel for supporting something with with what we an agreed upon amount in February and now it's less so I remain mystified thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Gonzalez. Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you so much for the report. Just a couple questions clarifying here. The data sharing, when. Speaker 0: Would be the soonest. Speaker 3: We'd be able to see any data come back and what does that look like? Speaker 9: Councilmember Our goal is that we would receive reports monthly. So the ordinance I think would go in effect 30 days after the second reading. So yeah, so sometime in, say, late June, the ordinance would be in effect. Our goal is that by that time we would have the applications out. We anticipate already having permits in hand that we would be reviewing or applications in hand that we would be reviewing and ready to issue those permits. So in general terms, we anticipate starting to receive reports in the August, September timeframe. And then we would build that data and come back to council six months after the ordinance goes into effect with a report. Speaker 3: Great. And then the drop zones, there's 230 drop zones right now. I know it's mixed, you know, all over the city. Do we have a general did we get a map before? I'm trying to remember whether we had a map of where the drop zones were at. Speaker 9: Yeah, I can provide a map to you. When we came in February, there was a report that detailed some of that, and it also included, I think there was a good page that showed a heat map, so where people were starting and concluding their ride and it really showed some of the more popular routes that people were using scooters on. 230 is what we have today. I don't anticipate that number or I do anticipate that number will significantly grow as we work to achieve all the goals that we've talked about tonight. Speaker 3: Okay, great. So I guess we'll look forward to that. More information coming back in August or so. But it'd be good to have an idea of, you know, if anything is changing with the drop zones and where they're located. Speaker 0: Exactly. Speaker 9: And if I could add just for information for everybody, I think part of the goal here is that we need to work with the vendors. So if a vendor comes to the city and says, we were really interested in deploying on Corner X, that we would be flexible enough to work with them to determine that that is an appropriate location for a drop zone. So maybe they put a couple scooters out for a couple of weeks. They evaluate the success of that location. They come back to city and say, Yeah, this is successful location for us. We want this to become a drop zone. Then the city would go out there and formalize it and put down the decals. Speaker 3: So it's it's changing and evolving. Great. Thank you. And then the last comment and I, I speak to a lot of the comments that my colleagues have made as well in terms of ensuring that we're cleaning up our sidewalks. And I know we're on top of all that, and especially the equity piece and making sure we can expand into areas that will absolutely use utilize these these scooters. But my last comment is for I have received a lot of comments, especially with people with different abilities. If there is a way for us to engage the Citizen Advisory Commission on Disabilities, just to put it on the agenda and maybe as we are, you know, working through the various drop zones and with the vendors just to ensure that they have some opportunity to weigh in on this would be very helpful, I think. So thank you very much for the report and I look forward to seeing what we can do here. Speaker 6: Thank you. Any public comment on the hearing? We have one on the top. So let me do the one on the top. Go ahead, Mr. Rockwell. And then if you're going to speak, please come forward. Speaker 5: I've had problems with the. Speaker 6: Mr.. I actually I don't know where the mic is on up there. Yeah. Keep going, Mr. Rockwell. We can hear you, but it's okay. Got it. Speaker 5: Some of the scooters have been left in various locations along this street between Magnolia and Pine Avenue, in front of my apartment and front of the building next door to mine at 439 West Fifth Street, also in front of 225 West Street, they've been left in front and blocking the access to get in to Rite Aid at Six and Pine and Walgreens at Saks and Long Beach Boulevard. They have blocked the way to get in to other businesses and get along the sidewalk in front of many businesses on Broadway as well as first while not first Street, third straight. And they have I have found them over my target on Bellflower and Stearns and blocking the access to get off the curb cut at the south end of that mall to cross the street Cross Stearns Avenue, going across to the mall on the south side where it serves as that has been a real pain in my psyche as far as these scooters are concerned. I've seen two people riding the same scooter at least five times within the last two weeks. I had one just of two people, two scooters coming directly at me. One night, about 10:00 at night, as I was going home from First Congregational Church and going up cedar between third and now between fourth and fifth Street on Cedar. And now scooters are coming directly at me. I had no way to go and I didn't know what I was going to do. And both of them helped me one on one side and one on the other side. Not bad enough to cause major damage, but it was very disconcerting and was scaring me half to death because you see these two lights coming down the sidewalk. You know, it's scary. And I feel that for those of us in wheelchairs, that's that's really bad and especially one. And one day I found six of the scooters. Speaker 4: Left. Speaker 5: And the middle of the curb cut back. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. Rockwell. Thank you very much. We have I'm going to close the speakers list. So I have the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven folks in line and the speakers list is closed. So no one else, please. And go ahead. Speaker 4: Larry. Good. You address on file. At first. An objective person looking at things for a city like a Long Beach, they'd say the very concept is divorced from intelligence. But of course, on that, they'd be wrong. They'd be wrong. Because that implies that at some point, at some point, it had a nexus to intelligence, which clearly it does not in a city. Such as Long Beach. And you just heard some very, very solid reasons why not. Insurance is not an issue. Obviously, they get insurance. But the person that's permanently disabled or seriously disabled for months or weeks. That's irrelevant. Simply irrelevant. There's absolutely no reason why with proper planning. People can not get it. It would stop them from going about their daily routine, whether it be on a bike, at a bus or train. This, though, is just. Absolutely. A financial catastrophe for the city. Period. You can insure just to a certain point that it will get to where it's beyond that is catastrophic. There's no reason why the people can't rely either on the Buster Brown Express to get them from a train or a bike. You've just heard all the other reasons why. But this is going to be a financial disaster for the city, if you imply if you implement this. Consider moving, encouraging people if you have to develop a plan for people, showing them, all right, if you're in this area, you can take this bus, stay there, take the train or take the bus to Brown Express. But this city does not have the money. To cover the liability that will fall upon this city. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks. Speaker 1: Jared and Karen retired, a resident of District one. And Councilmember Richardson, thank you for reminding us that we need. Speaker 0: To look forward to what. Speaker 1: Our mobility issues are going to be in the future. They're changing very, very rapidly. We're talking about scooters next year. They'll be totally something different. And I have a lot of faith in Eric and his staff to be thoughtful about what kind of mobility issues we're going to require. Speaker 0: In the future. Speaker 1: You've talked a lot about the technicalities, but not about the people costs. As I was waiting to catch the bus last night over on Fourth in Orange by the senior center, I saw a young man with spy on the scooter. With his dog. It's very dark over there. And I heard a laugh that the dog wasn't laughing. Turned out he had his probably five year old daughter in front of him on the scooter. This is not the first time I've seen parents that are willing to jeopardize their children's lives. To give them a ride on the scooter. I've seen children as young as six driving these scooters. So I think whatever instruction that there needs to be to the community really needs to be emphasized that these are not for children or people under the age of 18. The medical staff that I work with. When I inquired, have Akin indicated that they're seeing more entries, face fractures from scooters because people are not wearing helmets, so they lay on face first. And it's not necessarily with car collisions. It's because the scooters still stop abruptly or they have dramatic drops or shifts in the speed level of the scooters. So people need to understand that these can be dangerous, they're not secure. So I would like to see in the ordinance that. Speaker 0: Dogs are not. Speaker 1: Allowed to be running alongside the scooters where they can't be seen or anywhere. And that there are the equity provisions include older adults and the disabled so that they have opportunities. Speaker 0: I saw that the electric bikes. Speaker 1: Have been dropped, were dropped a couple of weeks ago and they're in heavy use. And I'm always surprised about the number of older adults that I talked to that have tried the scooters and really, really like them, but they'd like the more stable platform once so that they can ride them to. And then in the studies they looked at, the lower income communities generally use the devices more prevalently because they're less likely to have cars. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 5: Hi. Good evening. My name is Michael Parish, member of District seven. I really do support the idea of a micro-mobility for the city. However, I think regulating it to the degree that we expect it to be the regulation that we're expecting to levy on it isn't going to provide those affordability metrics necessary for these companies to be profitable. Just looking at the the earn value they had last year was 1.6 million. As mentioned, there was a thousand units in operation. It's only about 1600 dollars per year for each of these units to to to make. Then you start adding in the acquisition costs of approximately $350 per unit. And in my research, I found that most of these units only lasts for 30 days or less. So these companies are going to have to continually by and by and replace broken units. But then we're going to be placing a very hefty per unit burden on them to continue operations. There's got to be a point where they're going to decide that this isn't really feasible, remarkable for them. And the city is going to be left without a solution. I think the city really should consider reducing the fee per unit for these units until we can understand what the point of the fee is. I understand there's a coordinator coming, but last year we put in coming years are potentially going to raise $400,000 of just unit fees plus the continual licensing for each company to be allowed to operate in the city. And I don't think those fees are going to be. I don't think they're going to account for in what the value is that we're going to receive as a citizen. And then eventually the the companies are going to walk away from the city altogether. And then this affordable solution is not going to be available and people are going to have to go back to driving cars, taking the bus or other mechanisms like writing their own personal bike or own personal scooter. So I think we should really consider the the fee and maybe consider lowering it so that they can stay in business longer. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Eric Garcia Garcia in council. My name is Morgan Roth, and I'm Byrd's community relations manager here in Long Beach. First, I'd like to respond to yesterday's act of violence and say that the entire Bird family is deeply saddened by what occurred. Our thoughts and hearts are with Ms.. Fernandez's family, and we will work with law enforcement to help with the investigation process surrounding the horrific tragedy. Long Beach has proudly been home to a bird for the past nine months. We applaud the mayor, Mayor Garcia, city council staff and all those who worked on the Dockless pilot program for their efforts in bringing forth this ordinance, one that will further expand upon the successes of the pilot program, continue to increase ridership to public transit, and help move the city closer to its sustainability goals. With new shared parking spaces to mitigate sidewalk challenges and an increase in availability of e-scooters and expanded service to more Long Beach communities. We have no doubt that the next phase of this program will continue to positively impact Long Beach residents and visitors. We do have one suggestion for tonight's discussion. We request that council require that all operators physically demonstrate their technology around show speed and geofence before approving being approved to operate. We understand that this has been an important issue to the city and including this provision will ensure the most qualified operators will participate in the program. Bird has already eliminated thousands of car trips here in Long Beach and thus have helped the city reduce its traffic and emissions. Benefits to all who call on beach home. We look forward to the opportunity to continue to operate and serve Long Beach as a committed partner. I want to thank the mayor and council members. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 12: My name is and I can. Fair success. You know. The school is pretty fine. I don't know if you guys are in this new Broadway corridor. Thank you, Miss Pearce. Councilman Pearce. It's pretty nice. If the road's nice, it's pretty nice. I'm not going to lie. I took a scooter to get here. If you're going to fix one of these decals, I would suggest you fix the one outside because it's trashed. So maybe I'll be the first one, the shoes of, you know, the 230 around I've written now 333.8 miles on a e-scooter. You know, gas right now is $4 a gallon, so it's saving me some money. Thanks, guys. That being said, I think that six vendors might be too much. I think that's what the bird guy was hinting at. You know, the qualifying vendors, you know, maybe we could shorten it because truth be told, people on this anecdotal evidence , because they haven't given you guys the data yet. But, you know, truth be told, I think people are only using bird lime. And thankfully, now that they've gotten the the e-bikes now raised, they probably bumped up a little on the market share. But outside of that, I don't really understand, you know, to the point of Councilman Supernormal, what what's the point of making a drop in price? You know, this city has all the leverage. I highly doubt that any business is going to leave a city of over 470,000 people because the prices are too high. If anything, you know, they'll pay more. If we eliminate some of the vendors, which is probably what will happen if we, you know, have a proper negotiation there. That being said, the affordability. You know, I rode a scooter the other day. I went to one to Councilman Richardson's amazing community meetings at Ramona Park. And I rode a scooter from Ramona Park all the way down from Artesia, all the way down to Anaheim. And I didn't pass one scooter. I look at the map. I was using a lime to be to be frank. But I didn't see one scooter in that 7.6 mile journey that was available. That is a clear sign that they are not coming to up to the standards that are agreed upon in this pilot program in regards to the affordability map. You know, and I think I think 40% is too low. For example, you know, I got the weekends off. I rode a scooter from Vermont and sunset all the way down to South Central. I wrote it to 86th. And when I was in L.A., I rode from Vermont in sunset all the way down to 86. And Vermont. Once you hit south, south, central, south L.A., there are no scooters for over a ten mile radius. You can look at the map and it shows you. And it's amazing that even with that specs, which you said is a 62 or 68%, that they're failing. So clearly we need to make we need to be more stringent and, you know, we need to penalize them for not making this accessible to low income users. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Speaker, please. Speaker 1: Good evening, everybody. My name. Speaker 3: Is Carlo. I am here on behalf of Lime as their community affairs manager. Speaker 1: For the region. I would like to start off by. Speaker 3: Thanking Council for. Speaker 1: Allowing me to speak today. Lime is proud to be serving the Long Beach community by providing thousands of residents with affordable, sustainable modes of transportation. Since we began. Speaker 3: Serving the city in. Speaker 1: August of 2018, the scooters are proven to be a great new addition to the transportation network, as evidenced by the nearly 250,000 rides that have taken that have been taken on lime since then. Lime is constantly evaluating the effect of higher fees, as they could limit the ability of firms to provide our riders with the affordable and convenient rides that they desire. While we can appreciate the adjustment in the fees and the reduction to $100 per scooter per year, we're still a little concerned that this would add significant upfront costs to the operators. We respectfully encourage the city to once again consider a per trip fee that has been adopted in other cities such as Phenix and Portland. This allows the city to capture revenue from all rides and encourages equitable distribution of scooters across the city. If ridership. Speaker 3: Numbers from recent months are. Speaker 1: Taken into consideration, the per trip. Speaker 3: Fee will in fact. Speaker 1: Generate more money than what is currently being proposed. We would also like to point out some concerns with the legal language as it stands. We want to know how to best serve you. Speaker 3: And therefore need to have some. Speaker 1: Idea of what the city's expectations are. We want to operate up to the level which the city intends, but an ordinance that doesn't clearly outline these expectations will put us all at a disadvantage. To continue a healthy dialog into this permanent program. Speaker 3: We're happy to provide staff. Speaker 1: With additional comments if necessary. We remain proud of the impact in communities around the globe, and we really look forward to maintaining a meaningful partnership with the city of Long Beach. Again, I would like to thank Council. Speaker 3: For your time and for. Speaker 1: Allowing Lime to be a part of this decision making process. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Last comment, please. Speaker 4: Good evening, council members Mayor Garcia and city staff. Appreciate the opportunity to come speak to you. I'm a resident of the third district. I live in Belmont Heights. And I wanted to say I do. I am for this program. I'd like to embrace the technology that's behind it. And I think that there are some big benefits for the city. But there's a couple of concerns that I have with regards to risk. And I don't believe it's as as risk that's throughout the entire city. But I do believe there are some areas in regions that you have identified. I just want to confirm that those particular areas are going to be geo fenced or for that matter, I, I don't use the word policed, but but I do think that there are some areas that need to be looked at and regarding management of risks. I'd like to reflect back in October, I think I made contact with a Councilwoman Pryce office. Mr. Cunningham did inform me of some of the requirements at that time of the pilot program was my understanding that there was a staff report prepared. It was dated October the second that specifically wanted to address scooters on the bike path and the bike path adjacent to the marina. Those are where I see my most, I should say. My impacts were most, most of the time where I am actually engaging in the scooters is on that bike path. And if it weren't for the few errant ones who seemed to go in packs. It might it might be a little more understandable. But any time I've seen two, three or four of them together, it's a race. It's it's not like a bike path where it's safe. With what was pointed out in the staff report, you have all the different types of users with roller blades, walkers, runners, the bike paths, six and a half feet wide in both directions. And I'm concerned when I see a scooter coming behind us. Bicyclists will usually say on your left or on your right and you're trying to inform me they want to pass. That's not the case with scooters. I'm not witness that any way. And I'm just hopeful if in the future there is more of a policing effort or more of a I say oversight of the scooter users that that that it becomes. More more observable in some of the areas where I traffic. I'm just curious can anybody tell me did this. The City Council. I believe this staff report was sent in October. Was this passed? Did the city attorney's office banned scooters on the bike path, or is there an effort to make sure that it's geo fenced? What is the status now? Can I ask that question? Speaker 6: Thank you, sir. Public comments. We have noted that maybe we can get a response to that, or maybe if now is the time or we can do it separately. Mr.. Mr.. Beck. Speaker 9: Yeah, certainly there currently there is a restriction for any e-scooters to be on the bike path. I think we addressed that when we made this presentation back in February. Part of our goal in Geofencing would be to address that until council if council were to adopt a change to that. But in the interim, we would have the companies geofence and restrict access to the bike path. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Please, members, go and cast your vote on the motion. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Now we're going over to item number, hearing at a number to.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution amending the Master Fee and Charges Schedule by adopting new fees relating to the shared micromobility program;

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05142019_19-0474

Speaker 6: Thank you. And now we're going to item 17. Speaker 0: Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive a report on recommendations for streamlining city council meetings and request the city attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code governing the City Council meeting citywide. Speaker 6: Thank you. The first customer she recommended do a staff report. First, do I have opening comments? Speaker 7: You know, in the spirit of this item, I'm going to make some opening comments, but they're going to be extremely brief. And then after the report, I reserve the right to make a few comments after that. But those will also be brief. So what I'd just like to say is that this item first came to council on October 23rd. So I just went back to my newsletter that we wrote on the 19th, and I just like to read what we posted then. And this is October 19th, 2018. I have authored an agenda item asking the mayor, city manager, city clerk and city attorney for a report on ways to streamline and shorten our council meetings with a third of the meetings lasting more than six and a half hours this year. It is unfair to expect the public to wait through the proceedings to speak on important issues. I just want to re-emphasize that that has always been the intention of this item, is to give the public greater access to these meetings and have their voices heard and to try to curtail the long waits they have. So with that, thank you to staff for the report and look forward to hearing it. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember. With that, we'll go to the staff report. Speaker 10: Thank you, Mr. Supernanny. And so we have a staff report. We will also try to be brief. We'll go through a little bit of the history and the outreach we did, and then I'll walk through the recommendations. So for the beginning, I'd like to introduce Stephanie Zavala, one of our management assistants who helped us with the research Speaker 1: . Mayor and members of the City Council. On October. On October 23rd, 2018, Council requested a report back on best practices for streamlining council meetings. The City Manager's office, City Clerk's Office and City Attorney's Office conducted outreach and best practice research to prepare recommendations for a council consideration. The Council Meeting Streamlining Outreach Survey was launched on November 18th and it was open for a month to obtain feedback regarding current meeting structure. The the survey contained six questions one asking for feedback on streamlining the meetings, and five related to demographics. There were 218 responses to the survey. Speaker 3: These two charts. Speaker 1: Demonstrate the breakdowns of who responded to the survey by council, district and ages. Survey results from the public resulted in the following themes limit public comment during high attendance meetings. Limit Councilmember discussion. Limit repetition of praise and agreement between council members. Adhere to agenda order. Establish time limits for agenda items. Limit presentation. Slash ceremonies at the beginning of meetings. Publish hidden agendas and estimated times for each meeting at at least a week in advance. The city clerk's office also reviewed all city council meetings in 2018. Out of 35 total meetings, 12 meetings lasted over 5 hours. For each of these meetings that went over 5 hours, they found that public comment took less time than council and staff time. In addition to the survey staff also reached out to specifically the ten largest cities in California to find best practices for council meetings. The city clerk's office reached out to other Southern California cities to see if they had undertaken any streamlining efforts for their council meetings. From this outreach and research, the this presentation contains ten recommendations for immediate implementation, three recommendations for future implementation, and five options considered but not recommended. Speaker 10: Thank you, Stephanie. So I will walk through a little bit of the recommendations that we came up with. But before I start, I just would like to say that we were really looking for a direction tonight. We came up with some ideas and concepts. These are really your rules. So as a body you really need to decide what you're comfortable with doing what you would like to change. There may be other things that you're interested in, or some of these that you believe are inappropriate and just want to say these are ideas for debate and discussion. So the first one we came up with was just to continue to encourage the city council to reach out to staff prior to the council meetings. Any questions that we can help answer before the meeting? And we always are willing and able to do that to help you make an informed decision when you get to the council floor. Second, we'd like to suggest that we set schedule time and time limits for ceremonies and presentations. We often have the public come and that means a whole lot to them to come and be able to present to you or be honored by you. And so having a set time to conduct those presentations would provide some structure. And we we recommend setting a limit of about 5 minutes per presentation so that we normally have about two or three of those. And it would really be a structured part of our agenda. And we'd like to the city clerk to help keep us all on schedule by creating a timer for presentations to keep that on track. We also recommend that when we do get those meetings where we get lots of speakers on an individual item, that we basically continue the practice that you've put in place over the last year , which we think is working very well. Essentially, we would codify that when there is more than ten speakers identified for a specific issue, that the allocated time drops down to 90 seconds for everybody. We would then formalize this practice in the code. But of course, with exemptions for language access and ADA exceptions. We continue to encourage use of the consent calendar. If you've noticed, over the last year we have been putting more items on the consent calendar and I think that's been going pretty smoothly. We'd even look to do more as it makes sense. And those would be things like grant applications, contracts, receiving file items. And of course at any time if you think that needs to be on the regular agenda, any council member can pull those for discussion. Number five for content calendar. We'd really like to get those done before 630 as a matter of practice. Those are fairly routine items. I'd also like to say that often those are the items that we have some of the junior staff here who are there to answer questions and a lot of them are on overtime. So we'd like to have them if they need to be. Give you some information. Do that by 630. You can this item, you would still be able to do consent any time you'd want to if you needed a push it back. But we would just release the staff after 630 and then any items that we couldn't answer, we would just hold those over to the next council meeting. Number six. Where possible, we'd suggest keeping to the posted agenda order. But we know that that a lot of times you'll have different groups come up and that we do need to be flexible. So we're not saying not to be flexible, but where we can try to create some predictability. And part of that pairs with the idea of times certain. So where we know we're going to have big groups try to set a time certain so that that group can prepare and the groups before them know to be able to get there either before or after for their item. Number seven, we are suggesting kind of helping the council keep track of the discussion and creating 30 minute timer after city council or after the the public have spoken that we just create a timer for ourselves. And then at 30 minutes, basically the clerk would remind us and say to the council, would you like us to continue debate? Would you like to vote or would you like to table this and move on so you could continue debate and continue debate. But I think this would help us create some sense of, you know, that we've discussed for 30 minutes and let you come to a decision point on that. Number eight, we have a number of city council committees. When we do have items that are really lengthy, we expect lots of debate. We would encourage sending those items to committee. They can be heard in committee and we can get a lot of that debate at a committee level. Sometimes those meetings are even at times where the public can attend. That's not a normal Tuesday night. And then when it would come back, if we already had that opportunity for a lot of debate, we would be looking at a lower amount of debate level. So maybe a minute if it had already been hurting committee and is just being reheard at the council level for item nine. I want to take it back to the supplemental agenda and when it was created, this council created the supplemental agenda and it was designed to really handle those issues that were time sensitive and couldn't get on the regular agenda. So it was designed for really the emergency items are the ones that couldn't be done by that in that for eight days, which is what we try to do for all of our regular agenda items. Over time, we've seen more use of the supplemental for routine items and regular items, and that provides less time for you as the council and also staff and the community to kind of ask questions and debate. So we encourage kind of getting back to what the supplemental was originally designed for. And by doing that, you would add a statement of urgency on your council letters. Just to clarify, this is urgent because so if I'm putting it on the supplemental, I have to because of the following reason. Number ten. Sometimes our close sessions tend to go over. I think this council tries really hard to have them done by 5:00. But if they do need to go longer than that, we do have the option of continuing those to the end of the meeting or continuing it to another another day. So those are a short term recommendations. We do have a couple ones for future implementation that we'd like to let you know about. One is to hold a Robert's Rules of Order refresher. But there are also some additional council rules out there. There's Rosenberg's thank you. Rosenberg's rules that some of the cities are looking at. There are Roberts rules just a little simpler. We'd also like to really look at some use of technology in the new civic center. For example, some agencies, especially Metro, have sign up devices that you can sign up either on your personal device or at a kiosk, or you bring it down to the city clerk and you say, I'd like to speak on these items. That allows the chair to actually have a list of people who want to be able to speak. And then you would be able to do that at any time until it's time that the item is heard and then it's cut off so that there's a sense of how many speakers that we have. So we're exploring that technology. We can do a little bit of that with our Granicus system, but it would probably mean creating a new system as well. So we're looking at the metro system. We also, just as a fun idea, thought, you know, a lot of our a lot of you want to make sure that you're talking to the people that show up and letting them know that you support them. There may be other ways to do that through emojis or other kind of fun ways to let them know that you're supportive of what the speaker is saying. So we we can look at that. And finally, electronic board to announce the council meeting agenda order. So when we do need to move it around that we can electronically let the council know that. So I'm at the end of the presentation. I do want to point out a couple of areas that we looked at, but we aren't recommending. One was shortening public comment. We actually tried that as a council back in the nineties and that wasn't very well supported. You could also move public comment all the way to the end of the meeting. You know, that is an option. You know, it doesn't normally take that much time. So we're not recommending that you could add additional meetings. We heard that in the community outreach we actually found in the city of Austin that it didn't result. They tried that, they added it, and it actually resulted in more meetings and more discussion because there was just more time to have all that debate. So that actually didn't shorten meetings. Timing. Councilmember Comments. A number of cities have tried this and none of them actually found that they enforce those rules. We really didn't feel that, you know, that that would stifle debate. So we didn't feel that that was something to recommend and then stopping it at that time. Long Beach also tried that to set a curfew and that, you know, didn't really help move the meeting along either. So with that, we tried to keep our presentation presentation brief and we're ready to answer questions. Speaker 6: Thank you so much. Let's start with conservatorship or not. Speaker 7: Okay. Thank you. I'm anxious to hear my colleague's comments. Just one point there on on Robert's rules and maybe the city attorney would like to weigh in on this. And we are required to follow Roberts rules. Is that correct? Speaker 4: Under our ordinance, we have adopted the council has adopted Roberts rules unless they conflict with the Brown Act. Yes. Speaker 7: Okay. So it's a matter of how closely we adhere to those rules. I believe this is the point in the presentation. Speaker 4: That's correct. Speaker 7: Okay. So I guess part of this motion would be to, you know, adhere strictly to Roberts rules in our meetings. The second was on the. Well, not in order of priority, but. The the thing that wasn't added to the city of Austin trying additional meetings, I think I said in October, that's counterintuitive to what we're trying to achieve here. You give us more time than we're not streamlining our meetings. But beyond that, what wasn't mentioned is cost. And that would be a significant cost to the city, I assume, to add another meeting per month. Speaker 10: We would expect each meeting. We have security costs. We have a cost for all the staff to be here where I'm doing free parking, all those things. So yes, we would expect each meeting there would be a cost probably in a couple thousand dollars. Speaker 7: Okay. Thank you. Well, I promised my comments would be brief, so I'm going to defer to my colleagues now. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman Austin. Speaker 8: Thank you. And I if I had an emoji, I would give a thumbs up to the staff's report. I think it was very thorough. The outreach and survey results are here and very, very telling. I support, I think, most of what has been recommended by staff to help streamline our meetings. And I want to thank councilmember member Supernova and my colleagues for bringing this issue forward. Obviously, we are here to do the people's business and oftentimes our city council meetings, I would say, devolve into theater and presentations in front of the council as opposed to public comment. But also what I'm seeing here from the the survey results is that our residents believe that the city council should be talking less. And so whether or not we put this in a policy, I think we need to govern ourselves accordingly. So I'm going to hurry up and get get through this. And with respect to transparency, I think obviously this is the place of the people's business. And so we should be as transparent as possible. I'm definitely always interested in hearing public comment. I learn something new every time we go through that. But limiting the time is, I think, makes a lot of sense and is consistent with what many other public agencies do. I think we're very generous here as a city council and compared to other other public agencies, other city councils, the county and others. And so thank you again for bringing this forward. And I look forward to supporting it and hopefully having more efficient meetings in the future. Speaker 6: Councilman Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 0: Hello and thank you for this item, Darrell. I support staff's recommendations. There's a couple of comments that I do need to make. I appreciate that for number three, you've kind of laid out for us today of a formal way that that would be done. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't done on an ad hoc basis and that there was a standard in place for reducing the time the council committee items is. I think it is something I support, but I want to recognize that it's a challenge. And so as much as we can try to schedule those so that we have full committees and we have full conversation and that it's not a 20 minute presentation and doesn't allow for community members to engage is really important. I think one of the things that was brought up by some of the committee members I met with was full time council and recognizing that cities that have committees where they do a lot of work in committees are full time council and that it is challenging to have real debate all night long till 1:00 in the morning without having a full council in a city that's trying to tackle some big issues. So I wanted to just say that publicly that doing the work in committees can be challenging. The other parts that I'd like to just comment, you know, for the presentations and for the hearings, I'm fully supportive of having those at 3:00 instead of 5:00, having them before a full council meeting start. So I'd be curious to hear from others, mayor council on what their, their thoughts are. But as much as we can here earlier, recognizing that we have working families that need to come at five, but if it's a presentation or we're giving a certification that those things can happen with with people that that need to show up for those specifically and absolutely in the staff reports in the council agenda, I've seen other city council agendas that do include staff reports in full or in those binders so that we're not looking and receiving the information for the first time or the Monday before so that we can really digest it. I think that that for me is the most important part too, is that the comments I think that was made around limiting the discussion and questions with staff on the floor. It might look like theater, but it's part of making sure that everybody that can go back, look at the videos, know that we've asked the questions, it's memorialized and that they have the answers to that. So I don't have a change on the motion, really, just making sure that that we have an ordinance that doesn't limit council engagement. I don't believe there's a price you can put on community engagement. We're here to govern for everyone. And so making sure that it's accessible and I'm hearing councilmember supervisors comments, there has been some conversation out there that this is about limiting public engagement and it's about making sure that public engagement is accessible and real for every single person in our community. So I really do appreciate this item on the floor tonight and I look forward to hearing my council colleagues comments. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 1: I'm going to start with a compliment. I know that we talked about. Over complement each other. One of the things that I often hear from my colleagues I'm sorry. From my community and. I agree as well as many of us have really successful newsletters. And I know, Jeanine, you're a Councilwoman Price or Pierce your newsletters well-written and I try to memorialize my comments through the newsletter instead of having to do it at the dais, because there aren't as many community members who want to spend the time fast forwarding and rewinding, but hopefully through some of the recommendations I'm making, it'll be easier for them. So having reviewed a lot of agendas and dealing with long meetings over the years, I'd strongly suggest the following. Friendlies Council consider that the order of agenda items are based on the attendees present with big agenda items given a time certain. So if we have 100 people here to speak on one item, that item shouldn't wait until 10:00 at night. Those 100 people who are here should be at the front of the of the agenda. And I think that the mayor's done that pretty effectively, but it hasn't been required. And I think that if it was required, it would give the public some knowledge and understanding. I recognize that there'll be additional resources available at the new City Hall at whether it's Metro or Coastal Commission or County Board of Supervisors. You can register that you want to make a public comment so that the staff know how many are coming in advance. But I don't think you should have to drive down to City Hall to register. So if it was possible to. Speaker 0: Register for. Speaker 1: Public comment when the agenda comes out stating that you plan to be there, I think that would be helpful so that we'd be able to get that picture further in advance. I don't know how you work that out, though, because oftentimes people then no show and so that gives a false number. So I don't want to people to game the system, so I don't know what that looks like, but I'll pass that to staff. But I would like to formalize that in the new city hall. Since we have a system for queuing that day, maybe that day you come and you click. I'm registered here. I attended that. The items with the most attendees or the groups of attendees should be at the front end of the meeting. I would like to have council consider moving any discussion of non agenda items to the end of the meeting and here's why. The first priority of the council at a regularly scheduled meeting to be do is to be doing and discussing the business of those things that are on the agenda. And we should give priority to the people who came and waited and want to speak on items that are advertised to be discussed. Because we aren't able to take action on non agenda items anyway. And so for that that would be my an additional friendly. Public participation on general matters, not agendas, are important, and we need to be able to have those opportunities. While many council members have a lot of community forums, not everyone from every other district goes to each other's community meetings. And I can understand why this forum is appropriate. But I also don't think that if there's a ton of people here on agenda items, that they should have to wait. I've had many business owners and community members wait until ten, 11:00 at night to make a comment on an agenda item that they were planning on, on commenting. So I think that those are important specifically to council. I am sorry. Staff Recommendation number seven. I would be in favor. I appreciate the point of order at 30 minutes. I would be interested in having a count up clock on these screens for us to see what that looks like. I would also be okay with every council member having the unlimited amount of times to queue, but for them to only speak in five minute increments. And so I think that that helps because if you're going to have a 30 minute clock. What I would be concerned about is a filibuster of one council member, not necessarily intentionally, but that they have 30 minutes of things to say and the other eight council members don't have that opportunity. So I would recommend a count up clock with five minute limits and then you can recue and get back in line with with no penalty. I would also feel strongly that the number of signatures required to be placed on a. A supplemental agenda. If you would like to be a supplemental agenda and you feel it is an urgent item, I think you need to get 200 signatures because there are way too many items have been active. So it is actually not against the Brown Act. I'm not saying you'd be signed onto the item. I'm just saying that you would sign to open the discussion. Is there any way that that's possible? Speaker 4: No. Speaker 1: Okay. That's okay. Well. Would it be possible to take a vote at the beginning of the meeting of whether or not all agenda supplemental items are able to be tabled to the next week? Speaker 4: You could take an action that night once the agenda has been published, you could take an action to table or continue and item anything. Rolonda. Yes, I. Speaker 1: Will put that in my personally. But just one thing for us to think about. Speaker 4: Over here taking notes, I'm not sure I'm going to be. Speaker 1: Writing at the end for an acceptance of my friendly. Yep. Okay. First friendly council member. Super. Now would you be open to formalizing that agenda? Items with the most speakers would be moved to the front of the meeting. Speaker 7: Yeah, okay. It. Since we're into Robert's rules, does the chair recognize me to speak? Speaker 6: Yes. Council member. All right. Speaker 7: Thank you. Yes. Speaker 0: Wonderful. Speaker 1: Would you be open to my friendly that there's a 30 minute count up clock of point of order with a five minute friendly for each councilmember. Speaker 7: Yeah. I would like to ask staff if if that's something that's feasible. I think it sounds like a great idea, but. Speaker 10: So we could do a count up clock. We could do count up or count down. I'd actually need to ask the clerk about, you know, whether you know what that would mean to track each council member and whether we could do a sub clock of 5 minutes. Okay. Speaker 7: So if the friendly is. Let's explore this. I'm on board with that. Speaker 1: Wonderful. And then and. Speaker 10: Just if I can get some clarification, what happens at 5 minutes is the chair is supposed to then cut the council member off and move to the next. Speaker 6: One. I'm happy to time it myself. Speaker 10: Okay, so 5. Speaker 4: Minutes at. Speaker 6: 5 minutes, the next person cued up would go and the person that spoke the first 5 minutes is welcome to cue back up. But other people get to go first. Speaker 10: Understood. Speaker 1: Wonderful and then giving first priority to agenda items and second priority to people who want to speak on items that are not agenda item. Speaker 4: And if I could ask for clarification on that, is are you we're discussing public comment here on non agenda items. So you're you're recommending that the public comment on non agenda items is moved to the end of the meeting. Speaker 1: I actually would say that, yes, I feel that the number of people who come here to speak on agenda items, or at least if we have a system that shows cueing, that if there are a number of agenda items that have no one here to speak, then of course speaking on non agenda, these items could come. Speaker 4: So if I understand correctly, currently we have kind of a hybrid where we allow the first ten members who sign up and then our second public comment period is really a continuation of the first one. We just allow ten at the beginning. So if I understand your motion, an amendment would be to move all public comment to the end of the meeting. Speaker 1: I'll wait on that one, but I would just like to hear my counsel colleagues ideas related to. Speaker 4: Well, it's. Speaker 1: Hard for. Speaker 4: Me. I'm not sure we can wait. If you're making a friendly, it's either making the point or withdrawing discussion. Speaker 1: I'm not going to make that piece of friendly. I'm just open to hearing my colleagues here. It's hard for me to see many members of our community here to speak on a specific item and have to wait for non agenda item. So just something to think about. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Councilwoman Vice Miranda. Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank Coach and Superman for bringing this. I just want to say that. That the intent on this item is very thoughtful and that I do appreciate all our public speakers and that's what it's all about. I think certainly it's about the public. It's not about we want to do it dices because we say what we have to say and I think we should get it over with. But it's all about the public. This is why you had us, you know, to be your, you know, our individual that you chose to be your your your our council person. But what I'm saying is that I like to listen to the public more than like to listen to ourselves because you make a lot more sense than we do. That's the way I look at it. So I want to thank you guys for your engagement and your involvement. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Vice Mayor. Councilman Richardson, I. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So there's a lot that I first of all, I want to recognize staff. They got their staff report in in 10 minutes. Good job, staff. That was a lot of slides and got it done. So I recognize that few a few thoughts, a few notes. So one, I'm not sure that our compliments are really that big of a time. Drainer saying saying nice things to each other goes a long way. I remember some councils when they had very few nice things to say and I know sometimes we get reprimanded for being positive sometimes, but I think I just want to say I don't think it's that big a deal to give someone a compliment. It's not gonna take that much time. Secondly, on the on, I support all of the recommendations that are listed and I want to raise up one issue about the committee meeting times. I feel that the committee meet when we start committee meetings on Council Day, you can't get through a lot of work, especially when they're big committees, economic development, budget oversight. These are these are committees with a lot of conversation. And so I think we need to we need to implement a time certain to end those. When you use your bucket of time, your 30 minutes or whatever it is, your committee meeting, you can't take any more items. Is there is there a way to do that? Speaker 4: Mr. PARKIN Yes. The committees could decide that on their own, or we can. Speaker 7: We as a council set that as a policy for the committee. Speaker 4: You could set that as a policy for your city, for the council. Committee for committees. Yes, you could add that. Speaker 7: I'd like to I'd like to add that as a friendly. Councilman Huebner So can you restate so this is if there's a committee meeting taking place prior to council, you cannot go beyond the time that you are budgeted like you were scheduled. I enthusiastically okay. I think that helps. And then in addition to that, I think that the council committees in almost every city in most cases should meet on days other than council Tuesday, and that should be lifted up. I don't know that we can that we should make that the law, but we should like we should use other days and evenings to come in and do council committee meetings. And I know because that's the real opportunity to get people to come give public input if it's a canned one hour before the council meeting, I don't think that that's realistic and people aren't off work then. So we need to think about taking at least setting one additional evening per month where we just do, you know, council committee meetings, something like that. So when you think about that, is there something we can sort of work with on that? How can we hold people to that or encourage that if that's on the clerk can do when we schedule them? Speaker 10: I think really that's up to the nine of you and what time you have available. So right now we really know that you're you've got other responsibilities. So we try to put things on Tuesdays, but the chair of the committee can call that time for whenever they want to do. Speaker 7: It in the way I see it with the structure of our council, if we have, you know, you know, folks work and all that, I think it's not too much to ask for one additional evening. Like doesn't have to be a Tuesday to try to get your committee work done. And then the next thing I would say is I love the friendly amendment that Councilman Mongeau put forward about sort of we're moving up the folks who brought out a bunch of people because I think it rewards civic engagement and it rewards organizing. There's been a lot of times when we've had a bunch of people from North Long Beach, but their item, their issue just wasn't as hot as some other item with fewer people, and they've had to wait til ten, 11:00 at night because their issue wasn't really that sexy citywide. Right. But they turned out and they did it and they deserve to be be brought up sooner. So I support. Speaker 4: That. If I could ask for clarification on that is that if we're trying to write that into the ordinance, it's going to be more than 75 people. It's more than 25 people is more than 50. I, I just want to stress. Speaker 7: I think it's the discretion of the chair, but there has to be a mechanism. We're going to have to figure out what that mechanism that I don't think 75 is the number. Speaker 4: And I don't know what I'm asking. Speaker 7: I think it's like a show of hands, right? If there's 30, 40 people in there at the end of the meeting, they raise their hand. That's something the chair has got to recognize. Speaker 4: So it'll be we'll write it as the discretion of the chair. If there's a crowd, the he or she, whoever the chair is, can call that item up. Speaker 7: That's the current policy we have right now. Speaker 4: And I don't know. That's what I'm asking. Speaker 7: We need we need it to be codified somehow. Speaker 4: Well, you need to give me. I need to have some way to codify it in that we can. Speaker 6: Let's what? I said we keep going. I think I know where committee member and Councilman Mongo trying to get to. So let's clarify that in a minute here. Speaker 7: Okay. And then the last thing I would say is, you know, I think two or three of us probably might be some offenders on being a little long winded. You know, it's okay. I get it. Recognize that might be one of those offenders. And I'll say I think the five minute clock could work. I think in cases where it won't work and we just need to call it out, is when the maker of the motion is making a presentation. And I don't think they should be making 30 minute presentations. But in all honesty, if you put something together, we can say if you're the maker of the motion, you have 10 minutes. But every comment beyond there's five. And if you want to queue up after your ten, but you've got ten to get your presentation, I think that's really reasonable. So would you accept that, Councilman? Super now. I'm seeing some nodding heads. Well, I'm a little unclear on this when that starts happening. This term not accusing you of gaming the system. At a certain point, we're going to look at who who's conducting the presentations. And I didn't want to go there tonight and have a count on, gee, which council office is doing the most presentations and whatnot. So that's a little bit of my concern there, if that makes sense to you. Well, this has nothing to do with tracking. I think we should be, frankly, tracking how much time council members are taking. That's not one of the friendlies right now. Okay. The friendly right now is simply I'm concurring on the five minute clock and I'm saying the maker of the motion, I think is a bit different if you are sort of making the motion and you're making a presentation. Staff got a really efficient presentation done in 10 minutes. I think council members and the public, I think really realistically, if you come with a motion in 5 minutes and the mayor says it, that's 5 minutes, it's going to happen a lot. And so I think having a reasonable cap and saying ten is fair. Speaker 10: If I can add a suggestion. Speaker 6: Yeah. And I, I understand where Councilor is going to go to the city attorney really quick. I saw people, people queued up. Speaker 4: For clarification on the maker of the motion. I think if I hear it right, it's if that's their item, they're bringing their item and they're introducing that. I am not. Hey, I signed up as the maker of the motion for this item, so I get 10 minutes. Speaker 7: No, no, that's. You're right. If you're present, like you prepared this item. Speaker 10: And the intent of the item here was that the speaker, whoever it is, whether it's the council member or the staff, the 30 minute clock happens for debate. So that wouldn't apply to that. You know, the council member presenting or staff presenting it wouldn't apply to the public. It's when we say, okay, we'd like to have councilmember debate. That's when the 30 minutes would, sir. Speaker 6: I think that's right. And so I think that clarifies the point. And so the 30 minute clock is on debate. And so if you're presenting the motion, the clock's not on during the understanding. Okay. All right. Got a. Speaker 7: Five minute clock. Speaker 6: As well. There is no five minute clock if you're presenting a motion. Speaker 7: That. Speaker 6: Is not part of the debate. Speaker 7: Thank you for clarifying. Speaker 6: That's helpful. Councilman Ringo. Speaker 11: What's nine times five? 45, 45, nine council members hear 5 minutes each as 45 minutes and then the mayor always has to put in his is just 5 minutes. So you're talking 50 minutes, a five minute thing or 3 minutes? I love it. Just like the crowd. Just like everybody else. Just like everybody else. And without. Without rescuing. Because you're going to go into another person's time again. I don't know. But I'd like to refute the fact most council meetings when we like going to midnight is because we're having a healthy or a robust debate. There's point, counterpoint, recue, kind of the point substitute, substitute and substitute a substitute that takes long. I mean, there have been council meetings that I've been here. In fact, it was more so in the beginning because we had a lot of inexperienced rookies. Speaker 4: Or. Speaker 11: Sophomores who didn't really or were not really aware or trained in Robert's Rules of Order. And I really, totally agree with the Robert whose order I saw some comments that saying it would be a waste of time. It is not. We need it because there's a lot of people who haven't gotten formally through it that works with it or within it, but not fully trained in how it works. I'm saying that because it's I've had 20 going on 20 years of this, but the bottom line is that if you want to make council meetings efficient and streamlined , it's something that we have to monitor ourselves and, you know, and and when we get into a debate or we get into a a robust discussion or whatever it is that we want to make a point, you know, there's got to be a time where we have to agree to disagree and move on. And if it's such that we can't come to a consensus, then let's table it for the next for the next meeting. If it's not time sensitive, that is I mean, I know sometimes we have time sensitive issues that we have to absolutely deal with that now. But if it's not time sensitive, then we will move on. As many of you know, I also belong to a coastal commission and how we handle those meetings basically is that it's a time set for public comment. And I'm not I'm not in agreement. We're moving from the comment to the end of the meetings because some people are here precisely for that. They want to come to make a public comment in the beginning of a meeting, put in their their comments, put it on the record and then leave. And for a lot of individuals who are here, even for controversial items that we have to have a lot of interest, we could probably move that up also to to get them to have their say and then they could move on. So, I mean, there's a different there are various ways, obviously, of of using time more efficiently. And another recommendation this would be more accurate to the public than to us. If there is a item out there that is highly controversial and there's going to be more than ten people would say 15 to 20 people with 3 minutes each and then going out to one or two, they could, you know, do a group presentation themselves, you know, like like consolidate themselves to say that, you know, if, if we are part of a of a I see, I see. I know. Kilkenny as an example, there's five of you here, you know, you want to make one presentation for maybe 4 minutes, that's it. And not each for again need to speak for 12 minutes. You could have one presentation for four just as an example. The, the other parts, you know, and there's, there's going to be a lot of other controversies. I mean, we deal with controversies every, every, every minute, every, every council meeting. So that's going to that that city that I know. I'm getting the word over here from American media that I don't I think I read about 5 minutes. I think a right. About 5 minutes. If you would interrupt me, I'll finish up. But but the bottom line is, is that there's other ways of measuring and counting our time, but we have to self monitor ourselves. Speaker 6: That's making council member Councilman Gonzales. Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember. Super not for bringing this forward. This is a great item. I'm an agreement with one through seven on the city staff suggestions, but I will emphasize a few of them and get through it really quickly. Of course, one thing I'll add is absolutely, I think we need a better guidance and proper use of consent versus supplemental versus regular agenda and committee meetings to so that we're not, you know, crowding the regular agenda with. Things that could be added to the consent calendar. And I think we just, you know, need to be maybe told a little bit more directly that that could be a potential versus adding more and more to the agenda number to the public comment side, I would be in preference of keeping it in the beginning just because there are people that, you know, want to get through public comment first and not hear all of the back and forth through council comment. And given that we're talking about potentially 45 minutes plus, I mean, I think public comment deserves to be first and we keep consistent and ensuring that and what I'll say to. Speaker 0: Believe. Speaker 3: We were going back and forth about like what would the limit be for people in the audience? And I think we could possibly keep it consistent, keep it consistent with what we've said here in the city. Staff report that after ten people we reduce down to 90 seconds. So that could be where we move it up in the agenda as well. That could be a potential and. I'm also in favor of closed session at end of meeting. Sometimes it's hard as working full time as well to get to closed session at 330 or 4:00. And I know city attorneys like, no, don't do that to me, but I'm sorry. Sometimes it's it's really difficult having another job and having to come in and kind of rushing to closed session. That's just the fact of the matter with many of us. And then lastly, I will emphasize that the city staff presentations, a lot of times I know that I'm caught in speaking, you know, on some issues on the dais and asking more of the technical questions. Because I haven't seen the city staff report and I haven't seen it until I sit down in the dais at 5:00 and I have to kind of thumb through it beforehand. So it would be really great to have that. And I know a few colleagues have mentioned the same 1 to 2 weeks in advance, if possible. So we can have some time to review and digest and we can come a little bit more prepared to council meetings with that information. That would be helpful. And I know we have staffs here, too, but you know, again, many of us. Speaker 0: Work. Speaker 3: Other jobs and it's a little difficult. And I'm also of the same mindset as Councilmember Muranga on the 3 minutes. I'm totally great with that. If we want. Speaker 0: To go along. Speaker 3: That I think the public has 3 minutes. I think we can also, you know, work with 3 minutes as well. So that's what I will say. But I want to thank Councilmembers Hooper now again and city staff for bringing this forward. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you. I actually wasn't going to queue up on this topic because I like all the suggestions. But I will say that sometimes the process of debate takes a long time and a lot of times we're asking questions of staff and I want staff to give detailed responses. So if my clock is going for 5 minutes and staff takes 3 minutes answering a question which I want them to answer, then it limits my ability to talk. And I'll tell you, I mean, this is great. These are all great guidelines. But I was elected to be an advocate on behalf of my residents, and I'm going to advocate in the way that works for me. And I'm going to take the amount of time that I need to advocate for my residents so we can set these as guidelines. But I am I'm not going to be limited from queuing up again. I'm not going to be limited from asking questions. I'm not going to be limited from being heard. I'm not going to be limited from asking questions. I have a right to be heard and advocate so we can set the standards as guidelines. But there's just no way that, you know, we always talk about language access and making sure that everyone feels included and all this stuff, you know, it might take people a little bit longer to articulate what they need to say. It may take people the opportunity to hear from all of their colleagues before they might change their mind. They might hear something they like a colleague say and say, you know what that makes? That's a really great point. It's not about rushing through. I understand the intent of this, and I think it's great, but. I'm going to advocate and I'm going to represent the way that I know how in my time frame. That's the bottom line. So if the chair wants to hold me in contempt, the chair can do that. But I'm going to advocate for my residence. So I think these are all great guidelines. I think we can definitely stick to try to stick to the 5 minutes and really try to respect that spirit. And I think it was Councilman Richardson that said, you know, we monitor each other in the spirit of what we're trying to do, but there's no way in hell anyone's going to limit what I have to say and how I have to say it. Not going to happen. Speaker 6: So thank you. Let's go to the public comment and they're going to come back to the council. Speaker 4: Oh. Yes. Speaker 1: It's. Speaker 4: Larry Goodhew What I'm adamant about is returning to work to what worked so well for so long in terms of public comment, i.e. after the opening Pledge of Allegiance and any special recognition of various different paradigms and so forth. The first ten people that signed up to speak will speak. And that has always been the process until we had our criminally complicit mayor come in and jerk the council speaker list and the council items around like Seinfeld's Kramer enters and leaves room period. Stick to work what works so well for so long. Then you'll have the you'll have the backing of the community. Once you start doing what the mayor is doing. You lose the support of the public. Thank you. Speaker 1: Karen replied. As someone who regularly comes to the council meetings, I was pleased to see that a lot of my suggestions were adopted. I was one of those that wanted to limit the council member time because it's obvious when you haven't had time to read about the issues that you're kind of just talking, and that's not a productive use of time. So that's my comment on that. The awardees, you know, I come and I see the same awardees year after year after year. I don't think that's necessary. I think there should be a limit to the number of times when the awardees come forward. All the nonprofits want to be honored. All the nonprofits in our community do valuable work. So it's really painful to see somebody come up here five years in a row and be recognized that many times when other organizations are excluded. So that would be a suggestion for that. One of the few issues that I agree with, Larry Good Yuan, is that the ten people should be able to speak at the front of the meeting. Speaker 0: However. Speaker 1: I don't want those ten people to all be for the same organization presenting the same position. A lot of times that blocks some of us that come and can't get here early enough from being allowed to speak in those comments on the non agenda item. Sometimes we have important things to say that are time sensitive and that blocks that out. So I'd like you to think about that. And then the other suggestion is, you know, I handled the legislation for the Gray Panthers and I utilized the register. They have a system where you can sign up to be notified when legislation is coming forward that you have an interest in. I'd like to suggest that the city look at doing something like that. So I was watching a public safety committee online yesterday and I would have liked to have been at that meeting. They were talking about the group grant. I was one of the original four matters of the group grant. I would have liked to have been at that meeting. I didn't know that that meeting was happening. So my other pieces, we need a full time city council. You guys do amazing work for part time staff and I know you probably all put full time in. I think we need to recognize that as a community and work to making that happen. Speaker 6: Thank you. And our last comment. Speaker 12: To make sure it wasn't like 15 people bothering me. I agree with Karen there. Um, you know, some of us, me personally, I work 60 hours a week, so it's kind of hard for me to get here at 2:03 p.m. and sign up with 1015 of my friends that we're all going to talk about the same exact thing. You know, I think that's just like a clear abuse of the system. Um, I agree with Councilman Mongo in relation to you said something about figuring out some kind of app or a way to register our comments beforehand so that you can see the queue and judge in amount of how many people are queued up to move agenda item up or down and due to how many people are outside waiting for it. Personally, I would say that it would be great. You know, I know there was a lady the other day, she was complaining about some million TV or whatever. Maybe you'll be great whenever that TV screen comes, you know, as soon as it goes, you know, over the time limit, it just sounds like like a nuclear bomb. Like this starts blinking. And then you can just cause I see, you know, the the mayor and the vice mayor, you know, these some of these people, you know , they don't got a lot going on in their lives. So it means a lot to just be like yelling at you guys for whatever the 90 seconds or whatever. So it's like, maybe you can just shut off the mic. You don't even have to say, excuse me or whatever you can. Maybe you can queue up, Madam Clerk, you can just like shut off the mic and time's done. You got to get out of here because it's just it's it's crazy. In relation to maybe the awards. Yeah, maybe. You know I know it's good to see the children with the, the Boy Scouts and a lot of these non-profits. I'm not technically opposed to it. I do think if we're going to be trying to figure out a way to be timely, maybe maybe on another day from 35 minutes , 45 minutes, you can just knock all them out. And, you know, you can open up the time for more, you know, retirees and come out here and be young. And but in the meantime, the friendlies, if I see people, you know, you know, that's us over here. As far as you guys. Yeah, some of these friendlies, it's crazy. Like, it's like nine friendlies that are friendly, that are removed. The friendly. So I hear, councilman, you're wrong. It's like, you know, and not to minimize, of course, public discourse as important as our representatives to, you know, use you are representing us. But sometimes I'm like, I mean, where are we even? I like the semantics of where these things are. Sometimes I'm looking at the city attorney and like, do you know where where the position is or the friendly is at this moment? And I'm looking at him. He's confused. He's looking at his notes, too. So, you know, we can just figure out a way to streamline. I'm with you, Mr. Supernormal. Time is of the essence, and time is important. And I would like to be leaving here at maybe like 8:09 p.m. instead of, you know, these midnight hour. So it's like this are. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. That closes public comment. Let me go back to the council. Councilman Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. I'll be quick. Just two things I want to clarify with our city attorney. So, number one, we have the process of let's say that an item here warrants more debate or whatever. We could suspend rules or move to extend debate on all those. That council has the ability to do that, correct? Speaker 4: That's correct. Under the current municipal code. And we would imagine doing it similar in a in a revision to the municipal code. The first section reads The Order of Businesses City Council. It all regular meeting shall be as follows unless otherwise waived by the consent of the Council. So with the consent of the Council, you could waive your rules. Speaker 7: Okay? And I think that's important to say. We can, you know, we can go along with these guidelines, but if we're going to break them, we should just try to get consensus or approval from the council to do it. And I think if it's an important issue, council will approve that. And then secondly, in terms of committee work, just one thing I want to clarify I think is a bit redundant when you know sometimes it's okay, but sometimes redundant if an agenda item starts, that council gets referred to, a committee committee does work, refer back to council and and the distinction between our commissions and our committees. I understand work can originate at the committee level. It ultimately has to come to council, but it doesn't have to initiate at council and go back to a committee and back to council. And there's been some, you know, some questions about whether you know about that process. But it happens all the time. The B or C has originated work has ultimately made it. The Council Economic Development Committee is rejected works ultimately ultimately, you know, made it to council and it cuts out council time having to come back for those two bites of the hat. Speaker 4: And council member. I agree, but it's not a very clear bright line in the origination of the work because if if you have a chair that starts directing staff and starts accumulating and using a bunch of staff resources in time or in the city manager's opinion is excessive. Then that work would have to go to council and have it be referred back to the committee in order to do that work. But but generally speaking, on small items. Yes. Speaker 7: So and that makes sense to me. What I mean is the ability for a council, for a committee to refer work to council committees, have that ability to refer something. The Council doesn't have to direct staff to build something or do a lot of staff time, but simply referring work, the council committee can do that. Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 7: Great. That's wonderful. Thank you. Speaker 6: And actually, Councilman Longo is actually cued up first and we did public comment and didn't go back to her. So, Councilman Mongo, I think Councilman Austin. Speaker 1: Perfect. I just want to appreciate one of the comments that came forward about legislation you're interested in. One of the items that I brought forward was about how to better. Pull in community input. And I would love for members of the public to be able to register in our new system that says, I'm interested in anything related to the elderly or housing or whatever it is to notify them of those key words in an agenda item. I think that that's a really important second. I am completely supportive of the recue idea. I think that I want to support a lot of the things Councilman Price said in that we each have different ways to advocate for our residents. I've actually even heard through the grapevine that she's defended the way that I advocate for my residents. Speaker 0: And I appreciate that. Speaker 1: I also recognize that sometimes each of us spend a lot of time writing up a list of questions. And I know I've done this before where I will go through all my questions and then. Sitting next to me. Daryl's like crossing off the same questions. And so I think that we can gain some variance in the way the questions are asked if we go through a campaign process. And I also believe that the count up timer is just a guide, not necessarily a hard and fast. And so I appreciate the comments Councilman Richardson made on that as well as for the other days of the week and meetings. I can't speak for other residents, but it is a trek for my community to get downtown. It's a trek. And so if there is an agenda item on the city council meeting that they might be interested in. That's one of the values of having the Budget Oversight Committee meeting right before so they can kind of speak to both components of it. I'm open to exploring other days of the weeks and meetings, but I also recognize that that can be a challenge. And I often, instead of having committee committee meetings, I try to just do community outreach meetings in the neighborhoods that are impacted and then gather that information. But one of the components of that is that the EA comment, the number of characters allowed is very limiting. So I don't know if there'd be a friendly to explore both the number of characters allowed and what an appropriate number would be. And second, the community comment period is too short. People want to spend time writing them out. And I know that the city the city clerk has made some exceptions on big agenda items. But I would love for even when the agenda item isn't posted, they're often people who have very distinct comments. And what they do is they then email all of our council offices, see all of us, and I think that it would be much better for it to go to the city clerk and have a place that we can all log into and check that the public can also check, too. I think that transparency is really important. So if you'd be open to having the city clerk look into that, that would be great. Speaker 7: Um, okay, so we just talked about staff time, so we have different entities who've weighed in on this. So I guess we have to ask the city clerk individually if that's something feasible that she can look into. Okay, then we'll accept that. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 8: Thank you. I have a question for the city clerk regarding this. If this is voted on and approved this evening, this will go to you to create an ordinance. Is that correct? Speaker 4: Yes, sir. Speaker 8: And in terms of it being an ordinance with the the I keep hearing guidelines, but I don't feel like they're guidelines if it's an ordinance. Speaker 4: Right. That's correct. This would be come the new order and proceedings for the council meeting. So I'm not going to ask again on some of the clarifications on the 5 minutes and the 30 minutes. Are we putting those in there? And I've heard they would be guidelines. They would be a recue for the 5 minutes, but there's unlimited recues or so that would then become part of your rule unless you vote to suspend that for a particular item. Speaker 8: You know, I do appreciate Councilmember Price's comments and all of our my colleagues comments regarding this. I know that we all endeavor to to to have more efficient meetings and and council members who bring our brought this forward. I seconded the motion this evening. But I'm I'm a little concerned that we may be over restricting ourselves if we put this in an ordinance. And so I would just ask if, Councilmember Suber now, would you be friendly, open to a friendly to to create created council policy that that that does all that we've discussed here this evening as opposed to an ordinance. Speaker 7: Well, if I understand what we have in place right now, Mr. Parkin, just an example. We have a moment of silence. It wouldn't make sense to eliminate that. We wouldn't gain a lot. But by ordinance, we're required to do that. Would that be correct? Speaker 4: You currently are required to do it unless waived by consent of the Council. So right now all of these are how the meeting your rules that the Council has approved to how you're going to conduct your meeting so that the public has an understanding of what we're going to do. So we do the moment of silence. We do the Pledge of Allegiance, we're hearings, public comment, etc. All of those can be changed by a vote of the Council or consent to the Council being moved around. But this lays out the framework for how you're going to conduct your meeting. So if we're directed to make these changes in the staff report, we would come back and come back and bring an amended ordinance to you with the revised rules. And the first sentence will say, you can waive these if you with consent of the Council, and if you like them, we will adopt it. If not, you can send us back and tell us what to change. Speaker 7: Okay, so that that was my point. That was my starting point, if you don't mind me saying our city attorney suggested I start there. And just as that is a guideline, we're working with a current ordinance. So my proposal was let's bring forward a new ordinance. And I think some of these things are still a little bit fuzzy. We need to sort them out tonight. But at the end of the day, you're coming back with an ordinance that we still have a second shot at. Speaker 4: A second and third shot. Right. We would bring back for first reading. And if you make changes, we'll bring it back again. And until you're satisfied with. Speaker 10: And our understanding from the council direction tonight is that you'd like this to be flexible. So, you know, we would create that 30 minute time period, but then you have as a body the ability to decide what you want to do. Those 5 minutes would be there, but then, you know, it all is within the 30 minutes where then we would get direction from you. Do you want to continue debate or you as a body want to stop debate? So we think we'll bring back something that has a lot of flexibility for you. Speaker 7: Okay. Thank you. And then just just to well, I think the overarching point here, the overall goal is that we would we would exhibit self-discipline. We would try to adhere to these. And I think there's more pressure on the chair of every meeting to adhere to these. And if he's agreeable to that, I think I think we've got a winner here. So I'd like to stick with the ordinance. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember Country Ringo. Speaker 11: Just out of curiosity, how much time we've been spending on this so far? Speaker 10: So, Councilmember, we actually looked at the debate, that original debate before we went to council comments, believe it or not, was exactly 30 minutes. Speaker 11: There we go. We're almost downtown. Sorry. Had to recue when I think another thing a lot of this has to do with the the the the agenda itself some of the agenda items that we have in here can be in hour long. And there are some agenda items here that we can basically maybe even flavor into the consent calendar without having to. A vote on them at the end of our debate, because I know some of our council meetings have gone on and on and we still have a we still have an agenda to deal with at the end of a long debate. So I think maybe staff can look at these agenda items much more carefully and make more of a of a call whether we could put more agenda items on the consent calendar. And as states are here in number four, you know, we can always pull an item from the consent calendar if if any of us feel that we need to talk about it a little more. So I think pulling some items from the from the general regular agenda into the consent might help streamline some some of our meetings as well. Speaker 4: Yes, sir, that would be. Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Councilwoman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you. I agree with that. I think that's an excellent suggestion. I want to go back to this flexibility that we're writing in about the debate time. And here's the problem I have with, you know, with consent of the council, we can extend that. What does that mean? Do we have to then vote on it? And it has to be by majority vote? It's kind of sounds to me like a call for the question type of process. And that's a problem to me because every member of this council should feel like they could they should be included in the process, even if they're saying something or advocating a position that others don't agree with. Obviously, when we have people here who are advocating for one position or another, the council members with whom they agree, they'd love to hear more from the council members with whom they disagree, they'd love to hear less from. So I don't want it to turn into, you know, a popularity contest where we do. That's why I hate that call for the question, because even though I may agree or disagree with my colleagues, I still respect the fact that every single one of them worked really hard and makes tremendous sacrifices to serve in this position. And I want them to be able to say what they need to say on Tuesday nights. And and so for me, you know, it's not I don't who's the judge of if what you're saying is significant enough to continue talking. I don't. So that's the part that I really don't. Don't like is that fact that we'd have to take a vote. And by consent of the majority, a person would be allowed more time to talk. I just. I don't understand what we're trying to achieve with that. And I would I would I would ask the maker of this motion to rethink that, because I think, like like I said, I mean, there's no. I don't know what the deterrent would be for someone to violate that policy. Speaker 4: I if I could answer just a little bit of that question, the the way I would interpret the if you wanted to suspend the rules for that evening or for that particular item, that would be done by consent. If there was if someone objected to waiving those rules, then there would be a motion, a second, and it would be a simple majority vote to either suspend the counsel rules or not to end the debate at the end of the 30 minutes you would need, unless it was by consent a motion, a second and two thirds vote to end discussion. It's similar to call for the question. So you would need as a majority to and discussion not just I mean a two thirds majority supermajority, six votes, not just a simple majority. Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, I would just ask my colleagues to really think about that. What are we trying to accomplish there? How much time do we think we're going to save? And can you foresee a situation where we are? Excluding a member of this body based on either their content or their style or their tone. And is that fair? And so that I would just ask my colleagues to think about that. I do not think this should be an inclusive process where every single one of us who's worked, regardless of whether we agree or not, we all have families at home. We all you know, most of us have other jobs. We've all worked really hard to get here. It should not be a popularity contest. And not that this would ever happen in this body, but. Political bodies have been known to have filibusters and random things like that that happen. This is part of the democratic process. It takes time. It takes time to have debate and get through that process. And so I just I don't want to feel I don't look a lot of people here know this. Maybe they don't. English is my second language. Sometimes it takes me a little bit longer to process what I'm thinking. I have to hear from other people in order for me to get to the point where I need to feel comfortable in my decision. It might take me longer to articulate what I'm feeling, thinking than others. I shouldn't be at a disadvantage because of that. And I'm not just talking about me personally. Put someone else in my position who also English as their second language and needs more time to process. I just I don't want to feel rushed because there's a timer on, on on me. And I want to be able to listen to my colleagues because there might be a possibility that something they say changes my mind and requires additional debate. So that's the only problem with this that I have, is that it limits our advocacy abilities. And I do believe that it puts some at a disadvantage based on their content, their tone, their style, or possibly the way they think as adult as adult learners. And I don't think we should do that. Speaker 6: Thank you. We're going to we're going to go to a vote. The one thing I'll add to what the and then and I want to make sure we we get to the vote, I think and I you know, I can support what's on the table, as is councilman. Maybe what we do also just to address some of Councilman Price's concern is we do keep the five minute, but instead of doing that hard stop at 30, we just allow for now to continue that process going so that people feel they can come back to an issue. And we're not limiting that. I could support that. And I think that at least that is heard. If the council's okay with that, councilman. Speaker 7: Yes, ma'am. I just want to make sure the city attorney is on, if that's that's clear enough. Speaker 6: So we're not. Well, the staff recommendation was at 30 minutes. Will there be an automatic point of order which the council would then have to extend debate? I think with were what we're saying is there wouldn't be an automatic point of order, but the five minute clock would continue. Speaker 4: So I'm not sure. I just need a little clarification. I think that there would be five minute. The way I understand it now, at 5 minutes, you would move to the next speaker and everybody can read. That's correct. At a total minute of 30 minutes. Then there would be some sort of notification to the council and you make a decision whether you continue. Speaker 6: I think what I think. Speaker 4: Going to eliminate the 30 minute I. Speaker 6: Think I think what we're saying is we keep a. Speaker 4: Five minute, 5 minutes, but we're. Speaker 6: Not doing the 30 minute cap. What people feel comfortable, they can come back in and continue if they need to continue. Speaker 4: Okay. So we'll take the 30 minutes. That's correct. Five minute caveats. That's correct. As many times. Okay. Thank you. And then the the other amendment was that at the chair's discretion and that's subject to override by the council, the chair will determine the order based upon attendance. Speaker 6: I think I'd like you guys to come back at that first reading and make that and make that suggestion of how we would do that. But I think we're trying to basically enshrine the practice we already do. Speaker 4: Okay, we'll put something together and. Speaker 6: Then count from super or not. Nope. Please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 6: Great. Thank you very much. And thank you, Stephanie, who is also obviously putting a lot of work into that. With that, let me move on to item number 16.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive a report on recommendations for streamlining City Council meetings; and Request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code governing the City Council meetings according to staff recommendations and City Council direction. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05142019_19-0447

Speaker 6: Great. Thank you very much. And thank you, Stephanie, who is also obviously putting a lot of work into that. With that, let me move on to item number 16. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilwoman Price, Vice Mayor Andrew's Council member. The recommendation to receive and file a report requested by Councilman Price from CSU L.B. Anthropology Department on the topic of Long Beach homelessness and outreach efforts. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you. For the record, this is not the debate portion yet. I am presenting the agenda item. So I'm so glad to be receiving this report today. So if we can have our Long Beach State students come down, I'd really appreciate it. It was over two years ago now that we began discussing this research and the important role it could play for addressing homelessness in Long Beach. I want to thank our homeless outreach team and the Health Department, as well as our quality of life officers in the police department and our heart units in the fire department for working so closely with these students to ensure their research and information was strong. Focusing on the incredibly difficult question of why some people experiencing homelessness refuse services could have a huge impact on the way we conduct outreach. It takes 17 interactions on average to convince and build the credibility with an individual to accept services. And those 17 interactions are over months and sometimes years and mean city staff has to spend time and work to conduct this outreach and to build that credibility, focusing on how we can reduce that number and tailor outreach to get people to accept the fantastic services we provide here in Long Beach not only helps individuals, but improves our community and could save us money for classes from Cal State. Long Beach's anthropology department worked on this project for over two years. Over 550 hours of outreach and field work went into this report. They had 487 documented outreach encounters. Information on the use of global tickets and their potential benefits to getting people into services was very interesting. They did interviews with service providers that we partner with as a city and provided details on various hurdles to getting into services that can be studied as a city as we look at making our services and our outreach more efficient. So I'm going to welcome our team from CSU. I'll be to the podium. I want to thank you for your patience tonight. The students got to see how democracy works and to be a part of that process. Thank you. Speaker 1: Honorary Mayor and member of councils. AUDIENCE Good evening. My name is Mitra Baghdadi. I'm from Department of Anthropology at California State University, Long Beach. And with me, I have a department chair, Dr. Karen Quintilian. Two of our students, Acacia, Adel, Anton, know one and two of our undergraduate undergraduate students, Phenix, Pedro and Iris Salazar. Homelessness got my attention. And when the movement of not in my backyard started popping up on our news feed and I noticed substantial number of close consultation and meeting by city officials and police officers were being held in the different communities across this city and neighborhood, and it was a part of process of how to do that , increasing part of process to deal with, you know, increasing number of homeless individuals in the streets. Since I live in District three, I also work in District three in case State Longreach and I have witnessed how Constable Missy Price product proactively was working to address homelessness issues around the city. Therefore, I approached her with an idea of creating a project that is mutually beneficial partnership between City of Long Beach and Department of Anthropology in California State University. Long Beach. Addressing a critical issue like homelessness, which is very important for our city and community. Councilwoman Suzy Price as she mentioned, invited and introduced Dr. Quintilian and I at. And our idea of this collaboration to meet with. And Ms.. Ms.. Theresa Chandler, city manager. Bureau of Helping of Health Services. And also with Ms.. Shannon Parker, Homeless Officer, Service Officer in March of 2017. I want to acknowledge that both of them are here. Thank you very much. For two years of collaboration. They they've worked with our students very and the entire two years. And our students were very fortunate to basically get many guidance from their. We listen to some of their challenges and we discuss a plan to conduct conduct. Ethnography research. Councilwoman Suzy Pryce wanted to make sure the project is a city recognized project and is specifically wanted to make sure that our students get the recognition for working on this project with the city and experience that needed to get our project. And our research is focused on understanding why many individuals who are experiencing homelessness don't regularly take up services offered to them by the city or government service providers. We tried to understand this question from multiple perspectives. We tried individuals, including individuals who are currently receiving services with individuals who are refused services. And more importantly, we talked with the authority members who attempt to address each client unique circumstances. In past two years. Dr. Karen Quintilian and I, in anthropology department with 12 graduate student and 14 undergraduate students, worked on a collaborative research project with the Department of Health and Human Services based and many of the continuum of care partners including. Quality of life officers in the police department and health and and fire department, homeless education response team, heart team and many other service providers, including faith based organizations that they play a really important role of giving service to the homeless population in Longreach and. Six of us here. Yeah, six out of six of us here, we are presenting our research, the booklet you have in your hand. We divided our talk into different things. We promise we won't take time. That's much. I know. You have a long night. I would like to invite Dr. Quintilian to share some of our funding findings with you. Speaker 0: Good evening and thank you, Mayor Garcia and council members. And it's really hard to follow a debate about how long a presentation should be. So I can assure you we did make sure we were, in a word limit. Just so you know. And with that in mind, I do want to really express, you know, sincere appreciation for making this possible to present these research findings on homeless outreach in our city. You know, with four of the key students that prepared this report, there were several other students involved that conducted the research that was described by Council member Susie Price in the number of hours that went into it. And I want to just point out some of those key findings and then invite them up to do a brief description of their research posters and some other key findings that they worked on as part of this report. I'd like to emphasize that this report is really meant for you to read as a whole, to really understand the inner workings of the street team. We examined the professional qualities and skills of this team in creating the conditions for service acceptance, both short and long term, and the hurdles they helped people overcome in that process. So I'm just going to outline for you to just, you know, cue up when you read the report, some of these key findings today. First, service acceptance is a continual process. Almost all of the 487 outreach encounters, documented and observed, led to the outreach team goals being achieved in one way or another. Building trust and rapport, for example. Assessing needs immediate and longer term. Determining eligibility. Acting as a liaison to service and guiding people through the hurdles to care. Second, multiple contacts between outreach team members and those experiencing homelessness is critical to under overcoming the lack of trust in, quote, the system that people may possess and believing that personal change is possible. Faced with hurdles, some people simply give up. Clients describe specifically accepting service as a matter of being ready, being able to meet service criteria. Finding a program that fits their needs. And having the support of people such as the outreach team to meet their goals. Third, as the frontline workers, the outreach team are responsible for addressing the hotline, calls and emails from the Long Beach community members. They use professional skills to negotiate and manage the needs of both the larger Long Beach community and people experiencing homelessness. They conduct outreach in a manner that fosters communication and trust. In that regard for the outreach team innovates to facilitate people experiencing homelessness to take the first step to accessing services. And lastly, further research is needed to identify how the factors that contribute to successful service acceptance can be adapted and how the hurdles to access to services or gaps in services can be addressed. The outreach team has critical knowledge and expertize in understanding both of these areas that can inform practices. And now I'd like to invite up the students just to share very, very briefly some of the highlights of their research posters. And thank you very much. Speaker 1: Hello. Speaker 3: My name is Ira Salazar. Speaker 1: I'm an undergraduate student and I'm part of the anthropology department at Colby. I'm also part of the Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity Program, which is a mentor based research program. Speaker 3: Which has given me the. Speaker 1: Opportunity to be part of the homelessness, homelessness, ethnographic research and Education Lab. My part in the homeless outreach research was assisting in the data analysis and also writing the report that you are being provided today. My poster titled Let Them Get to that Place Understanding the role of outreach staff connecting homeless individuals to services focuses on the quality of the outreach members need to possess in order to effectively. Speaker 0: Perform their jobs. Speaker 1: And I encourage you to read pages four and five to learn on the report to learn more about the qualities outreach members need to have in themselves in order to effectively connect individuals to services. Thank you. Speaker 0: Hello. My name is Phenix. Pedro and I will be graduating next week with my bachelor's degree in anthropology at Cal State Long Beach. And then in the fall, I'll be attending a Ph.D. program at Notre Dame University. My project in the here lab revolved around analyzing field notes in interviews to identify the types of obstacles or hurdles that individuals experiencing homelessness face while attempting to obtain services. Many of these obstacles are things like acquiring the proper documentation and identification in order to gain access to services. There are strict rules and regulations around services, insufficient amount of services, lack of transportation and lack of trust. These are the types of hurdles or obstacles that the outreach team assists people in overcoming when possible and when they are ready. And this can be seen in the barriers portion of the report on pages 16 and 17 in the report. And this research poster here, which is titled Barriers to Accessing Homeless Services in Long Beach, California, which is one of three that have been presented at multiple research conferences over the last year. Speaker 5: Hello. My name is Tyne and I'm a graduate student in the Applied Anthropology Program at Cal State Long Beach. For my research, I honed in on looking at quality of life police officers to work with the outreach team. And what I learned was that they handle most, if not all, of the division service calls that involve people experiencing homelessness. It alleviate some of the pressure off of patrol units and helps the police department provide the most public, good possible quality of life. And the street team work together in coordinated outreach. The officers ensure the safety of the team and provides access to locations the team may not visit. Normally, enforcement is conducted very rarely and strategically. In my personal field work sample of 109 outreach interactions, only 15 included some form of enforcement, like a citation or arrest. Instead, the quality of life officers focused on building rapport, learning what their needs, the needs of the people they're meeting are, and figuring out how they can help the people they meet. There's a lot more detail on page nine that I invite you to look at. Thank you. Speaker 0: Hello. My name is Acacia and Alan. I'm a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology. My contribution to this project was examining the transitional period between living on the streets and becoming housed and highlighting the lack of transitional assistance or retention services for individuals experiencing homelessness. It was while conducting this research that I became interested in homeless material culture. The items that individuals collect, keep and dispose of, and how they how they use these items to manifest their idea of home on the spaces that they occupy. Taking this as my thesis project, which is my poster right here. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Okay, you guys, that was amazing. Amazing. First of all, I want to say this booklet that you've created is so dense with information. It covers so many different topics that we have studied here as a counsel in our study sessions on homelessness. It talks about housing. It talks about the importance of outreach. It talks about obstacles to getting into services like the lack of identification alone, just not having an ID. What that does for individuals who want a service. This document right here is just unbelievable. I mean, I'm going through it here. You talk about some of the legal hurdles we've had, some of the changes in the law and how that's impacted our homeless population. I really think you should apply for some sort of an award for this research project because this summarizes a lot of what we see every day, and it's just it's just chock full of information. So thank you. This exceeds any expectation I ever had when we first partnered. I mean, it goes above and beyond. And I just have to tell you guys, I wish I wish there were more people here to hear this presentation because this is unlike anything we've seen from it, especially from a college, you know, department with student labor. So thank you. And I want to thank our homeless outreach team. I've had the opportunity and feel incredibly blessed for the continuing opportunity to be able to join the Street team on some outreach efforts. And the work that the street teams do is just unbelievable. Anytime anyone reaches out to me about a not my backyard type issue, I say, Would you like to go on a homeless ride along? Because I think once they do, it really changes their perspective about what it takes to get someone into a service. So I just I'm so impressed by this, you guys. Thank you so much. You have no idea how valuable this is going to be for us in terms of policymaking and making informed decisions based on data. So thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Vice Mayor Interest. Yes. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank Councilwoman the price for bringing this forward to our diocese, because what I'm seeing and you guys, first of all, I just want to tell you what a tremendous job you guys have done, because sometimes when I go out and speak to individuals, especially when dealing with homelessness and they're not homeless, and I speak in my various, you know, community groups, you talk about those people where you have put yourself in a position there to be a part of that. I have to give you kudos because the fact that I just can't even imagine what you went through to try to go to get the information that you have. Each and every one of you individuals, the job that you've done, it shows people that just not in the third district. Homeless is a worldwide problem. We have you. And I just want to thank Mrs. Price for bringing this forward. And I just wish we had more people here in the council to be able to see this, because you guys don't realize what a great job you're doing and the picture that you're showing to the community, to the city of Long Beach. Fantastic. And go beach. I just have to say that. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Councilman Ringo. Speaker 11: Thank you, Mary. And I, too, want to extend my my, um, thank you to Councilmember Price for including me in this item. I had a a meeting a couple of weeks ago with the lottery, with Wetlands Authority, and there they have, as you know, a very serious homeless problem that goes into the wetlands and in those areas . You missed that meeting. But but I was there and we had a presentation done by the Quality of life officers from that Long Beach PD there. And what they basically brought forward was the fact that it it it can become a law enforcement issue, but it's a quality of life issue. And for many of those homeless individuals that were there, their compassion and their ability to communicate with the homeless people that were there was just absolutely phenomenal. They were able to have that those 15 or 17 point of contact, but more like ten or even less because they were they showed such an amount of of humanity to these individuals that it helped them reconnect with family, reconnect with society, get themselves cleaned up and get back into into the mainstream. And a lot of a lot of what we deal with with homelessness is not you know, we look at it as a law enforcement issue or maybe in an economic issue or socio economic issue, but it's a human issue. And if we are able to treat our fellow human beings more with more with greater sense of humanity, I think we would go a long way in addressing the homeless issues that we have in the city. But I was looking for the chief a little while ago because I want to get those names of those officers that that work in that area. Because they made a presentation that was just heartbreaking. I mean, it was it was it showed so much. Those guys really need a badge, not a badge. Merit medal for for all the work that they do out there, because they were doing phenomenal work in reaching out to these homeless people and getting them back into the into the mainstream to make them back into society. So this report here is absolutely wonderful. It basically documents what a lot of us already know. But you did the research and you did. You collected the data that just basically proves what we may already know or or perceive. And it's in it's all right here. So I agree with Councilmember Price that this could be a good policy document for us to look at and to determine what directions we want to take and where do we want to spend our money. And obviously, one thing that I can glean from this right now and how you worked already with with these other officers, is that we need to basically put a moral commitment into quality of life issues and quality of life efforts that would do a more direct outreach into the homeless community so that so we could bring in bring them back in, into society and connect them with their families and with the mainstream. So I want to thank all the work you've done. Thank you very much. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 1: Excellent work. We have had the quality of life officers and the outreach team to many of our community meetings. But one of the things that I think is poignant is when a encampment is in a particular community, that's when the community adjacent is most open to understanding and listening and hearing the difference between perceptions realities. We have a lot of crossover jurisdictional issues between Long Beach City, Caltrans, L.A. County, who's in charge? When L.A. County, when Long Beach goes through to offer services. Oftentimes, they won't take the services till the day before the cleanup. How do we work on that efficiency? Is there an opportunity for us to work with, say, L.A. County so that they're noticing requirements match the adjacent city? Because one of the things that we consistently have as a challenge is as the city resource team goes around and meets with different individuals and cleans up those areas. They move to areas that have longer notice periods and then the neighbors who live adjacent to those area areas have different levels of frustration. And with that frustration comes a reduction in tolerance and compassion. And so we need to kind of be able to figure out and balance the ways in which we can interact and solve this as a whole. So I really appreciate this. I would love a digital copy so that I can do a better job sharing this with my network and our community leaders. I think that this is a great document as a starting point, but it also love to meet with any of you or all of you about your policy recommendations on how we could better pull together. Because I know in my district and actually in almost all of our districts, we have so many cross jurisdictional issues where it's, councilwoman, why can't you do something? And the area they're asking about is not within our jurisdiction. And then the frustration of where the funding comes from and how it can be used and what it can and can't be used for. Excellent work and we have a lot more work to do. So thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilmember. Super now. Speaker 7: Thanks. I'd also like to thank Councilmember Price for bringing this item forward. I agree. Just an awesome publication. Great job. I would say at the highest levels of professionalism, it's hard to believe this was done by students. I did see on page four that it's titled The Street Sharks. That has nothing to do with the new mascot for coastal languages. Speaker 0: You know, I thought about that and I think we're all aligning here. So we're all we're all about the beach now. Speaker 7: Okay. Well, President Connelly is going to be at my next community meeting at the end of the month. I'll make sure I point that out to her and to Teresa and Shannon, thank you for being here tonight. And we all know on the dais here how important they are. In fact, let me just say this. I never thought of your outreach team as sharks, but let's let's explore that a little bit. But the rapport with the council office is so key and because we communicate all the time. And so I just want to acknowledge that and thank you for assisting the group. Speaker 6: And finally, Councilman Gonzalez. Speaker 3: I just want to say thank you so much for your work. I see the methodologies that people really need to understand when we're out there reaching, you know, the most vulnerable of our populations. So thank you very much for this work. And also to Shannon and Teresa. I know you're amplifying a lot of their work. And oftentimes as a councilmember, when I'm explaining this to downtown residents, it doesn't come off very well. They're just thinking that I'm just, you know, not explaining it or they don't understand it or they don't believe me any of the above. But I think this will be a really good way to present it. And I would love to invite you to some of our meetings in downtown to just talk about this report. It would be really great to do that. Thank you very much. Speaker 6: Thank you. Is there any other public comment outside the presentation? Please come forward. Speaker 1: Can I get. Speaker 6: Out? Let me go ahead, please. Speaker 4: Let's do that. Speaker 6: Actually, no, I mean, I meant one of the professor. Please come forward. And ma'am, please come forward also. Speaker 1: I just want to emphasize then this. I we as a group and a department, we want to we really appreciate what it was offer to the collaboration, the partnership. It didn't cost that much, but what we gained was priceless. The experience of having our students in a real field, what we did in our class, we designed a class two way that our students, they study all of the, you know, logistic, all the city decisions, everything was happening in the city. And we went and we look at the news nationally and internationally. We let the students sit and do all the forms, one by one, to figure out what the homeless individual has to go to do good services. And then as a result of that, many of our students, our students, they presented their work in three national conference . One No national one of a student got the first prize in the post there they had in the very prestigious conference in anthropology. Well, we just want to thank all of you and say this kind of research. Basically, we are educating our students to be the agent of change in a community, and that's what we like to do. I know as educated as you are, looking forward to it to. Speaker 6: Absolutely. Please come forward. Speaker 1: Hello, counsel. My name is Nita Chopra. I am the community development coordinator of Mental Health America of Los Angeles. Speaker 3: And we are based out of Long Beach here in the community. We have many. Speaker 1: Programs targeting, you know, people of the homeless population today, which is our transitional age. Youth and even veterans actually came here specifically today to hear about the issue. I'll be anthropology department report. We have a two innovations, two grant funded projects through the Department of Mental Health that were approved this year. One is targeting transitional age youth within the Long Beach community who are homeless or at risk of being homeless. I came out here today to make you aware of this program that we have and to gain community partners going forward. Because as the anthropology department stated, it is all about connections within the community to make sure that we know of the resources that we have available to us to provide towards our. Speaker 3: Members that we have. So I think it. Speaker 1: I just wanted to let you know that we have our next collaborators meeting coming up next week on the 22nd at one of our community partners, the LGBT center of Long Beach. Again, this is for transitional age youth who are 18 to 25, who are homeless or at risk of being homeless, who have experienced some form of trauma from being homeless, experienced poverty, being a LGBTQ community. And we. Speaker 3: Also have another one that is. Speaker 1: Our Workforce Development Innovations grant, and that is for anyone 18 and over, and that is another sector that we are doing. Speaker 3: And it is to provide. Speaker 1: Stabilization for people's lives going forward, not just in our services, but past our services as well. At Mental Health America, our goal is to give people a life. We don't want to just give them a service and see them out the door. We want to give them stability and we want to give them a reason to move forward. So I invite you all, encourage you all, please to come to our collaborators meeting next week on the 22nd. And again, that is 12 to 2 p.m. at the LGBT center of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Brice. Speaker 3: Thank you. I just have to end it. I want to thank Mental Health America and fact check. Cunningham from my team is going to reach out to you right now because we know that you guys also expressed an interest in our homeless work program that we're trying to roll out. So thank you for that. Thank you for all the partners to our Cal State Long Beach team. Thank you again for everything. You know what I love about this document here is a lot of time and I want to thank my colleagues. They started their comments with with a lot of thank you's, which is kind of customary. But what we do here but I just want to say there's no thanks to me. There was an opportunity for me to collaborate. And I love that this document here that you created is not political. It doesn't have a, you know, politicians logo on it. It's about you and your work product. And it's a document for us as policymakers to use. It's not any one person's initiative. It's not any one person's effort. This is something that's going to help the entire city. It's for all of us. So I brought the item tonight, but it could have been any of us. You did the work. So I want to thank you for giving us some tools. We're really lucky to have Cal State Long Beach in the city. I'm really lucky to have the university in my district and opportunities to partner on this cost us nothing. We didn't have to give money from the taxpayer dollars to commission the study. We didn't have you didn't have to have 100 people in here asking for money. You did this on your own because it's a research project that's going to enhance your students and it's going to enhance the city that the university is located in. And I wish we could have more endeavors and projects like this. So this is so positive. I'm very, very excited about it and I'm so grateful to our city staff for working with you and really driving this project. I just put it on the agenda. I didn't do any of the work. You did everything. So thank you. Speaker 6: I think it Councilwoman. And I just wanted to close say, first of all, you guys did a great job. Amazing that this has been both graduate and undergraduate work in partnership. I think obviously you're doing this graduate level research and just really great. There's there's so many partnerships that the university has with the city, similar projects like this with other departments, whether it's engineering or the innovation work happening or with business. And so many projects where students are getting hands on experience and doing work that benefits one the city. But most importantly and I think your faculty got it exactly right, the the folks that are benefiting the most are the students that actually get to do the research that is applied. And it goes back into that classroom and that field experience that you're all getting. And so that's really exciting. And so congratulations. And with that, everyone, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: We hope. Thank you again. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a report requested by Councilwoman Price from the California State University Long Beach Anthropology Department on their recent research and findings on the topic of Long Beach homelessness and outreach efforts.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05142019_19-0454

Speaker 6: Great. Thank you. Next up is item number 22. Speaker 0: Report from Human Resources recommendation to receive and file the 2018 City of Long Beach Workforce Demographics report citywide. Speaker 11: America. We're going to do the report. Speaker 6: Yeah, I think staff is going to the report first. Speaker 4: Mary Council members, this is our annual diversity report for our citywide hiring between the city's H.R. department and also civil services. In the honestly, I've got David Honey behind me, the acting director of Civil Service, Alex Vasquez, our director of H.R., and Christina Kostin, who is one of our managers in H.R.. So I'll turn it over to Alex. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor, and members of the city council. As indicated, I'd like to introduce Christina Kostin, who's a human resources officer who oversees our city's Equal Employment Opportunity and training division. Christina will give a presentation today covering the 2018 City of Long Beach Workforce Demographic Report. After our presentation, we'd be happy to. Speaker 0: Answer any questions you have. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor. Members of the City Council, thank you for this opportunity to present to you the 2018 Workforce Demographics Report. In 2017, members of the City Council requested the city manager to report on workforce and applicant diversity data on an annual basis until such time an online dashboard is implemented. Since presenting the 2017 Workforce Report to City Council, H.R. and the Technology Innovation Department met to discuss potential vendors for the online dashboard and next steps for moving the project forward, noting the dashboard will not be ready for public release until 2028 and Civil Service worked diligently to release this report, which we are here to present to you today. The 2018 City of Workforce Demographics report examines the city's workforce as of December 31st, 2018. The report covers all city employees summarizing statistics by gender, ethnicity, age and salary as an enhancement to last year's report. Civil service applicant flow data is presented by EEO job categories. Looking at the data on the city's workforce. The city remains one of the largest employers in Long Beach, with 6104 employees represented across 23 departments and 2018 employees, earning a median annual salary of $72,401. It is noted that in 2018 the city increased ethnic minority representation in the workforce from 59% to 62%, a 3% increase. Currently, 60% of our workforce is classified. Ah. Sorry. Currently, 6% of our workforce is classified service. As such, human resource collaborates with civil service because our ability to have a diverse workforce is dependent on the availability of a diverse and qualified civil service candidate pool. Drilling down on race and ethnicity. The city's ethnic minority workforce is divided as follows Asian, 14%, black, 13%. Latina, 34%. And Native American 1%. Recently, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission revised racial categories to include two or more races. The city anticipates incorporating this new category after the launch of LBE Coast. In terms of gender. 38% of our total workforce is female. Compared to City of Los Angeles, city of Santa monica, city of Sacramento and City of Oakland. The city of Long Beach ranks number two for female representation. In comparing our 2017 and 2018 Workforce Demographics report, we identify several areas of improvement. The data indicates we have made great progress with workforce diversity to include increasing our total minority representation in the workforce from 59% to 62%. A 3% increase. Increasing staffing levels by 8% through strategic succession planning. And streamlined efforts to decrease timelines for filling a vacancy. Decreasing the pay gap between women and men for permanent full time employment from $0.81 to $0.85 a 4% increase. Increasing total ethnic minority representation in police recruits from 60% to 70%. A 10% increase. And increasing ethnic minority representation in top management from 28% to 46%. An 18% increase. And increasing representation of female applicants for police recruit by 6%. And females hired by 2%. The city's ultimate objective is to establish a diverse workforce that is reflective of the relevant labor market in the community we serve. To achieve this objective, the city will continue outreach efforts in recruitment to obtain a qualified applicant pool that is representative of all ethnic and gender categories. While the overall picture of city workforce demographics is headed in the right direction, we drove the data down further to identify areas that warrant an additional look in an effort to be proactive in our efforts, creative in our approach, and adaptable to the ever changing demographic realities of Long Beach, the city intends to monitor the following four areas for opportunities to grow. One Hiring and retention of black and Latino employees. While other ethnic minority groups held steady or increase, blacks seen relatively slow growth, with nearly 2% decline in overall representation in the workforce. Also, hiring of black applicants into classifieds service decreased by 4% despite the reduction in black workforce. Citywide representation of black employees in the civilian workforce still meets or exceeds relevant labor market data for the Latino population. The city experienced a 4% increase in citywide representation. While this is a step in the right direction, the city has yet to align current staffing with relevant labor market data for Latino populations. The city will continue to monitor progress in these areas to ensure adequate representation compared to relevant labor market data. A second area we identified is the recruitment of females into male dominated fields from 2017 to 2018. The total female representation in the workforce remained unchanged at 38%. This is largely due to the city having several male dominated job categories, such as protective services, technicians, skill, track, skill, craft and service maintenance. In 2018, these categories accounted for nearly 59% of permanent full time hiring. Moving the needle for female representation and closing the city's pay gap will require strategic recruitment of FEMA applicants into male dominated fields, such as sworn and skilled craft. A third area we identified is the fire recruit diversity. In 2018, the number of ethnic minority applicants for fire recruit increased by 3%, despite a growth in the number of ethnic minority applicants. Representation overall hiring decreased. Currently, the city manager's office is collaborating with the Fire Department and Civil Service to review the selection process for fire recruit. This includes seeking to identify and implement best practices for improving diversity. As the fourth area we identified. We looked at retirement eligibility as of December 31st, 2018, 16% of the city's workforce is currently eligible for retirement. This number is expected to grow to 25% or nearly one in four employees within the next five years. This presents opportunity to increase diversity. As part of the 2017 request, Council requested the city work with Technology Innovation Department to implement an online dashboard. Currently, the Technology Innovation Department is diligently working with Openserve, the vendor used for budget LBE to build an online dashboard that will allow data on employee demographics to be easily visualized through interactive charts and graphs similar to those on the City of Portland and City of Boston's website. Staff anticipates going live with the dashboard no later than January 1st, 2020. So that concludes our staff report, and we're available to answer any questions. Speaker 6: Thank you. Let me first going to the contrary, Ringo actually brought this to the council. First, let me start with the contrary, Ringo. Speaker 11: Thank you, Mayor. This is an excellent report. It's something that I've been waiting for for a long time. I remember when I first brought this forward a few years back. It wasn't quite at the level that it is now. So I'm very happy that, you know, sometimes some reports are worth waiting for, and it is one of them. One of the things obviously that came forward is that we're still hiring more. Well, just explain to me a little bit. On page 91, you have the breakdown in white, Asian, black, black, Macs, Native American. When you say white in that category, is that white, male and female or just white male? What is it? What does that category explain? What point out. Speaker 1: Are you referring to the bottom graph. That's race and ethnicity. Yes, that is concludes male and female. Speaker 11: Male. Female. White? Yes. Okay. Male. Female. Everything else? Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 11: Yeah. So, I mean, you could see those numbers that still more whites are being hired at twice the level of any other ethnicity by itself and more than all combined. So we still have some work to do in this area. Obviously. I think we still need to have outreach out there to into the people of color and the and disadvantaged communities. We need to reach out more to them. And obviously that this this needs to go through that. Obviously also is the fact that, you know, when we look at the hiring practices, it's no secret that we hire those that look like us. So I think we need to improve also our representation in the management ranks of minorities and women and people of color so that we can make some changes in those areas as well . Seeing the other the other data that's there, it's it stands out as well. So but overall, I can say that it's well done. I still would like an explanation as to what the dashboard would exactly provide and how it will be used in the future coming 2020. And what would that be? How meaningful will it be for the city council and having a dashboard of this nature? Can you can you sort of give an orientation as to what it's going to be or is it too premature? Speaker 1: Well, last year when this item was brought. Speaker 0: Out, there were a couple of examples that were given to us to look at. We also looked at other agencies that well as well. I think we're still working with Open with. Speaker 1: T.I. and will be will be developing. Speaker 0: What that dashboard is going to be. Speaker 1: Is going to look at. Speaker 0: But primarily what we're aiming for is. Speaker 1: To provide that data so that individuals can go to the website and access the data. Speaker 0: Readily, very. Speaker 1: Easily. And we are also looking at having some ready made tables and graphs that are. Speaker 0: Very popular for. Speaker 1: People to access with these as well. So again, the goal is for is to allow folks to access the data and slice and. Speaker 0: Dice it to suit their needs. Speaker 11: A lot of the information that we have in here is about classified positions and jobs. I didn't see or be overlooked it in regards to how we're doing in the at will position to the non-classified positions. Is that information in here as well? It may put me out to it. Speaker 1: So we also the report also contains. Speaker 0: Information about. Speaker 1: Management positions which. Speaker 0: Are primarily. Speaker 1: Unclassified. And in this area, we did report that we have significantly increased the number of ethnic minorities in this area over last year when we compared 2017 and 2018. Speaker 11: Yeah, that's management. But I was talking about other unclassified positions in the general workforce, such as and classified analysts. As an example. Speaker 1: Just for. Speaker 0: Clarification, are you asking for the. Speaker 1: Data to be provided. Speaker 0: As on page 91. Speaker 1: Or because they are included in the. Speaker 0: Other charts that are is the bulk of the. Speaker 11: Oh, you're in general speaking like for example, I would classify positions like refuge worker or recreation specialist. I know there are some administrative analysts who are assistant analysts positions out there that are unclassified. Are those also included in this report somewhere? Speaker 1: Yes. So if they're. Speaker 0: Full time employees, they were included in the report. Speaker 1: Yes. Part time employees as well. Okay. Speaker 11: All right. Thank you. In recruitment, there's are we still having people go visit colleges and universities and community based organizations to let people know about job opportunities with the city? Speaker 4: Yes, Councilmember, we are actively attending. Speaker 5: Job fairs, community events. For example, recently we were out at the Cambodian New Year Festival and a number of community events and job fairs each week. Speaker 11: Okay. We are going to be having a table at the Long Beach Parade. Speaker 4: Yes, sir. We will be out there all weekend. Speaker 11: Wonderful. Glad to hear that. Well, one last thing. I know there was a statement made about the some of the positions are male dominated, or at least not many females go to those types of jobs. I think that especially when talking about public safety positions like police and fire, I think we can do better in those areas by having a targeted recruitment to get those individuals into our police and fire departments. One of the other things about that is that, generally speaking, I don't public safety has taken a big hit in the last couple of years, especially with all the incidents that have been taken or been taking place across the country. So maybe that a lot of people are not looking at those as as viable professions or careers. But I think that it's important for us to have the face of law enforcement and public safety out there. So I'm sure that you have some representatives from the police and fire departments who may be able to join you in some of these recruitment efforts so that they can provide a greater opportunity for explaining what they do and how they do it so that we could put more people on on that track for that kind of career. So are you working with the police and fire departments to have recruitment teams work with you and go out into these these areas? Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 5: Councilmember, we are working closely with police and fire at these. Speaker 4: Events and whenever possible we do bring out members of the police. Speaker 5: And fire department who are representative. Speaker 4: Of the groups that we are working to to target. Speaker 11: Okay. Well, that's a lot of questions I have, but thank you for your report and looking forward to getting a dashboard to see how to how it comes out. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Speaker 3: Thank you and thank you so much to Councilmember Ranga for bringing this forward from the beginning. And I love this report. It's going to take me a while to them through it. But I will say the two data points that stuck out to me and we've addressed it in the beginning was the pay gap, $0.85 to every dollar on the woman and man side and then just the female representation. I would like us to look at, you know, just especially emphasizing the departments that I kind of listed here that are under that 30% representation overall, both in the management and the Non-Management side. I mean, I'm seeing some that are pretty big outliers. Like the airport only has 8% female employees fire 10%. Of course, public works 19%. Tech and innovation, 27%. Economic development, 17%. And I know we're working on that. But if there are specific. Specific marketing tools that we could. We can work on that could be specific to women in attracting employees women employees. That would be really great and know. Just recently, the tech and innovation team was at the Women in Tech Conference, which was really great and I hope to see more of that and I know we will. So I'll just emphasize that. But thank you again for the work. And I know that we're going to continue to create a profile that evolves here in the city. Thank you. Speaker 6: Councilmember. I skipped councilmember austin who was a second or the motion. Speaker 8: Thank you. I just want to thank staff for the great report. This is a lot of good data to digest today and tomorrow moving forward as we understand our workforce here at the city. I want to just say that one couple of points jumped out at me, and one is that we need to be developing a good bench when it comes to management. It shows that within the next five years, we're going to lose, you know, over 40% of the managers here in the city. And so certainly we need to be developing a good, good bench as folks are planning to be retiring. There was I agree with that. The number on the gender pay gap I think is improving, but shows that we still have room to improve significantly. And the one demographic group that I don't see here and would like to see in the future is disability recruitment. I mean, those with disabilities and how are we recruiting and providing opportunities for those in the workforce as well? Those are my brief comments. I want to commend Councilmember Durango for for his tenacity and making sure that this information was presented to us. I know this has been a pet project for his for for several years. And to have this report is is quite an accomplishment. So congrats. Speaker 6: Thank you. On price. Speaker 3: Thank you. I, too, want to thank Councilman Saranga for initiating this work. Staff did a great job. I will say that I feel that the city manager has really tried to make this a priority in recruiting. Of course there's more work to be done, but I want to commend him on understanding that this is a goal, while at the same time trying to find the best qualified candidates for each of these positions so that we're being efficient with our use of resources, not exposing ourselves to unnecessary liability and things of that nature. So I realize that, you know, his his ability to hire the type of diversity that we're looking for that represents the diversity of this city is really limited to the type of candidates he gets in the pool. And so anything that we can do to help proactively train, recruit. Route folks to these professions as a city, an early stage, I think we should do taking advantage of people who have interned here, people who have worked in staff positions and learned the culture and are looking forward to come back. I think that those individuals should really get some priority in terms of being considered for employment with the city, even if they are not an outside candidate. That has more qualification. I just think that's important. So thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. I think this is a great report and and it's come a long way. And people have said this has come a long way since the beginning. You know, thank you, Councilman Ranga. Thank you to the H.R. department that prepared this. I think this is a great start for a good conversation. There's a few things I want to lift up just because I've found here. So. So the question is this. So tell me about the EEO plan. Are we that's that's the guiding document, right? The EEO plan. We have a EEO plan as a guiding document. Right. Speaker 1: So we do. Speaker 0: Have a EEO. Speaker 1: Plan. Speaker 0: Report and we're expecting to bring that next year. We brought. Speaker 1: That to the council. Speaker 0: With this diversity report in 2017. Speaker 1: And again. Speaker 0: This report was asked to be brought. Speaker 1: Annually until we go. Speaker 0: Online with the open data and the EO report is scheduled. Speaker 1: To come back next year. Speaker 7: And so the EEO plan will be what guides the movement. Right. Because the last EEO plan was 13 to 17. So the next one helps guide the movement, sort of how we move the needle in the future. Correct? This is a point in time report. But the EEO plan is where we make, you know, our suggestions on where we go. Is that correct? Speaker 1: Yes. But the EEO plan also. Speaker 0: Provides data a little differently. It does a more deeper dove by job EEO category. Speaker 1: And we look into and compare the. Speaker 0: City's workforce compared to the relevant labor market data. Speaker 7: And the reason I ask is because when we look at the gender pay gap here, the appropriate place to set a policy or a goal around closing gender pay gap, what the appropriate document would be the EEO plan. And that could be a question for the city attorney. Speaker 4: I'm sorry, counsel. Could you repeat that? Speaker 7: City attorney or H.R.? So if we wanted to put forward a goal or a policy around closing the gender pay gap so it would be appropriate in the EEO plan or some other document. Speaker 0: So I think it probably would be appropriate with the AEO plan. We can also take that back and come up with some recommendations. Sure. I will share that some of the challenges with the pay gap for a government. Speaker 1: Agency like the city of Long Beach and we have looked at. Speaker 0: Other agencies, is when you have a workforce that's heavily male dominated, especially in areas of. Speaker 1: Public safety, which are usually higher. Speaker 0: Paid positions. Speaker 1: That can skew the. Speaker 0: Data. So it is important when we look at this skill gap that we take account of that. Otherwise we. Speaker 1: Could be. Speaker 0: Skewing our data. And so we have to consider all those factors. Speaker 7: Thank you. And that's that's why I think in the EEO plan, you look at specific like classifications where you can compare apples to apples, whereas this there cluster with officials, administrators or non-management management. So you can't really tell where the swing of the skew is. But in the EEO plan, you can see what women police officers make versus female police officers, white male versus female. And so that's where where I think I'd like to see how we can be creative about putting forth a goal or a policy or something when that comes. Next thing I'll lift up is on page 31. The Health Department, I think in most departments you'll see, you know, male dominated. And then on page 31, you see that it's incredibly, you know, female dominated. And I don't know that health is necessarily an issue that's, you know, gender specific. I think it's health. But why do you think that is? Most departments, many of these departments are really male heavy. And then the Helping Human Services Department is completely flipped. Why do you think that is? 87% female in officials, administrators and 73% in non-management. Why do we think that is? Speaker 1: Well, that could be due to a number of factors. Speaker 0: There are some job categories that are female dominated. If you look at, for example, office clerical type positions or accounting type positions. So there are some areas where like it's it's completely opposite. So I haven't dug deeper. Speaker 1: On health. Speaker 0: Department. Speaker 7: But I mean, is it deep? It's it's. Speaker 1: You know, I'd have. Speaker 0: To look at the different job. Speaker 1: Classifications. Speaker 7: Well, I think I think they're doing something right. So we can we can certainly learn from that. The next thing on page 78, I just see a deep a deep racial pay gap in the harbor department. And so I'd like to just call out the Harvard Department. They should they should be thinking about are they under the same EEO plan as we are or do they have their own local plan? The port. Speaker 0: So we do include them in our EEO plan when we report out. So we include all our city departments. Speaker 1: Including Harbor. Speaker 7: But they don't have their own local strategy that they deploy or they are accountable to this. On the plane. Speaker 0: I'm not aware if they have there. Speaker 7: We should look into that or else or just express that. I see a you know, a more significant gap here than other departments. Not quite sure why, but it is something I think we should address. And let's see. I think I'm fine. I'm pretty good here. I in general, I think there's again, this is this has been a really a, you know, really informative item. And I really look forward to the conversation around the the EEO plan where you can sort of set some set, you know, sets and take a look at the policy around what we do in terms of recruitment. Oh, I remember the last thing was, I think we need to be I know there are some plans list listed on fire fighter diversity and I see the issue here. But I think. I think we need to take a closer look at that and and make some, you know, make some changes some make some real changes to to the recruitment process and the fire department to make sure that we're you know, that we're putting a real emphasis on diversity in our fire department because it's our police department. Looks like they've got some really positive progress from numbers. But I want to see better. I want to see more come out of our fire department. Thank you. Speaker 10: So I do want to point out with fire that that is something that we recognize. We have a full effort going underway right now to do research on fire diversity. What can we be doing better? Where can we be doing outreach? How do we make sure we're bringing more diverse people into our fire department? So that's an effort headed up right now by the fire chief. Speaker 6: Thank you, Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. First of all, I would like to thank Councilman Elanga for bringing this report, you know, forward, because the fact that, like he said, it's a long time and we've been kind of waiting on it. It's here now. And so I think and and also the report is a fantastic report. You were just also. But I would just like to say in some of these and reading just quickly through this, I think some of these things are very, very, you know, way out of balance here. And so now that our city manager has a chance to see a lot of them, I think in time we will be able to bring a lot of these things closer, you know, where it should be. And thank you very much for this report, Councilman Durango. Speaker 6: Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to first thank Councilman Herring. I know you have really pushed and and pushed on this issue. And I think having the state in front of us is really important. And so I want to thank you for that. A couple of things I just wanted to ask staff of all the department from a I can see the the improvements happening on on the gender on with gender. And I love seeing that progress that we're making as relates to pay. I think there needs to be obviously a focus of us moving forward on ethnicity and on what what department is having the most issues around diversity. Is that? Which one is that? Speaker 4: It could. Speaker 1: I it's kind of difficult to answer that question because. Speaker 6: When it comes to like the non man, the, the non management which is the largest group. Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? Speaker 6: Of the Non-Management category, which department is having the hardest time recruiting diverse candidates and hiring them? Speaker 1: So I would say fire department is challenge with diversity. I will just tell you that from my experience, fire service is one of the areas that's most difficult to improve. Diversity is especially with. Speaker 0: Gender. Speaker 1: And and diversity in general. So there has to be a concerted. Speaker 0: Effort to try to. Speaker 1: Address that. And as Tom indicated, we city manager is working. Speaker 0: With the fire department to to to work on. Speaker 1: That and take a closer look at what are the challenges and how how we can address that one or the other. Speaker 6: So and so we have our largest challenges that you're seeing in the fire. And I think that, Mr. Monica, you had mentioned that there's a an effort within that department to to look at that as an issue. And I want I want to just echo that. That effort. I think, you know, it should be obviously supported. And and I'm sure the chief is pushing on that. Let me just also say, I want to lift up the police department. And I think that what I see here with the with the police department is really great diversity. And I think that's not always been the case. And I think one of the things you hear from the community is that that the department represents the community of which it serves. And I'm not saying that we have it exactly right, but I think that there is clearly been an effort from the leadership and from the the the recruitment that is that is quite impressive. I that's not something that you see everywhere. And so I just wanted to note note that and I want to thank the chief for for his efforts in that area. Let me also just ask. This the. And maybe you said it earlier and I missed it. Speaker 4: Is this. Speaker 6: Report? How are we tracking this? I feel like we should be getting an update regularly with this type of data. What? What what's the process for this? Speaker 1: So we brought this report in 2017. And so this is the second time we brought this report. This this report. The data would change after you do hiring. So, you know, if you're looking at frequency, I think it is appropriate to look at it on an annual basis so you can capture and look at any meaningful changes one way or another. Speaker 6: And I'd like to ask Customary Ranga for a friendly that this type of data and report be made to the council at a council meeting on an annual basis, and that we review it with this level of detail and that. Speaker 11: What are the my concerns about the dashboard is that, you know, it would probably take that away because it's going to be readily available. Speaker 6: I support and I support the dashboard. I have no issue to the dashboard. I think it's important for for this body to, on an annual basis, review the data as presented and so that we're able to track the progress and the goals that the management has set for the organization. So if you accept that as a friendly. Speaker 11: Amendment, absolutely. Speaker 6: Great. Seeing as there any public comment on this item. Speaker 10: Mr. Mayor can make one comment. You mentioned about police and fire, if we can comment about that. Sure. So earlier this year in the past year, we really turned the Office of Civic Innovation loose with a partnership with the police department to really look at overall hiring. How do we speed the hiring process for police? How do we streamline that? And we also really looked at diversity. So we're taking that same model and using the diversity component for the fire department. So we're really getting into the data and that that'll be something that would be happy to report to you on later. So we are really excited by the progress that you noted in police and looking to replicate that in fire as well. Speaker 6: Thank you for public comment. Speaker 12: I just wanted to thank the city staff for the presentation and the report. It's good to see that as the demographics of the city overall is changing within time in time of the census into more minority representation, it's also being reflected in the workforce. Some of the points I wanted to bring up, maybe if you're maybe you guys, whenever 2020 it comes into public, I can look at it. But it was curious to see like the impact of means testing in regards to minority representation and hiring. I know that within certain departments. I spoke to Chief Luna a couple of weeks ago with him and I think I don't know Wally English. English. I don't want to speak his name about the impact of means testing in minority applicants to the police department. I'm sure that also impacts also the fire department and the fact that I don't believe that there is a African-American recruit recruitment officer there. So I was just curious to see how things like student loans or, you know, the impact of housing or lack of housing in a lower credit score impacts how many minorities actually pass rounds of the application process. And also in regards to minorities being reflected better within the workforce. Was curious to see what are incentives that city staff or the city workforce in general uses to bring, you know, younger minorities into the workforce. In terms of housing, I think like there's a maybe that might be a big issue why a lot of minorities don't come into working within the city because of the current housing crisis that we're living in right now. And the last thing I was wondering was also in response to the Latin next representation within the the workforce demographic was curious if this is or is this counting a non non-Hispanic what is the delineation between white Hispanic and non Hispanic white in terms of the makeup of it? So other than that, thank you for the report. Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 1: Thank you. I want to say that I appreciate the comments of my colleagues. I went upstairs to pump and I could hear all of everything, everything said except for when I was in the elevator. So I really appreciate the staff report. I really think that an excellent job was done. And I am also very, very proud of the work our police department has done. I mean, it is really phenomenal when you read the numbers on a national level and see what's being done here in Long Beach, it's actually phenomenal. I think that another point of clarification with regard to fire is that the fire workforce and when we onboard people has a definite impact because most of our police and fire participants stay in our agencies for a considerable amount of time. And so that change takes a considerable amount of time. And something that L.A. County has recently visited is that the requirements for becoming a police officer and a firefighter have changed because the duties and responsibilities and technology available has changed. So an example of that is there's a current test component that the L.A. County fire chief was discussing that used to be required of firefighters because of the way that the equipment was made back in the seventies. And yet that test component had not changed. And that test component was the number one fail component for females joining the agency. And so I think that not just the recruitment side, but also the qualification side and making sure that the tests that we have are in alignment with the actual maneuvers that are performed on the job on a daily basis, so that once they become a member of our team, that they're successful, but that they're also not barred from becoming a member of our team by not being able to do something that's no longer necessary. So thank you for all the work on this. I think it's an exceptional report and I'm glad we postponed it a week so we could have the appropriate amount of time to weigh in and read the details. So thank you very much. Great work, everyone. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilman Supernova. Speaker 7: Just want to quickly commend the Long Beach Fire Department for promoting the very first woman to battalion chief this year. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 6: Absolutely. Thank you. And I want to as we go to as we go to close, I just I know it's been said a few times, I just have to say it one more time that these police rank and file numbers, comparatively to other cities are are incredibly impressive. So I just hope, Mr. West, that, you know, the chief's not here, but I just hope that you and I will personally just uplift that work and and support that goal. It's been, I know, important for many communities in the city for a long time. And so I want to uplift that work. So great work and look forward to the update a year from now. Councilman Ringo. Speaker 11: Councilmember Mungo brought up a point. Maybe sometime during the future we could have a civil service give us a general presentation as to the testing process for police and fire so that to get a better, we will get a better understanding. Ever since we did the wood fire one on one, we haven't had an orientation like that since. So maybe bringing a civil service up here sometime in the near future to talk about the testing process, police and fire would be very helpful. Speaker 6: Thank you very much. And with that, please cast your votes for the receiver for final report. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file the 2018 City of Long Beach Workforce Demographics Report. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05072019_19-0417

Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to do hearing item number 2/1, please. Speaker 1: Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing. Declare Ordinance Approving Zoning Code Amendment a-19-002 amending Title 21 of the Long Beach Municipal Code read for the first time and late over in the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and Adopt a resolution directing the Director of Development Services to submit the ordinance amendments to the California Coastal Commission citywide. Speaker 0: Can I get a second, please? Okay. There's a motion and a second. Mr. West. Speaker 5: Oh, the staff report will be given by Linda Tatum. And Alexis, thank you. Speaker 9: I'd like to introduce Alexis Oropeza, our current planning officer, who will provide the staff report. Speaker 7: A brief staff report. Speaker 9: Good evening, honorable mayor. Members of the City Council. This item tonight contains a range of nine zone text amendments for a variety of code revisions that are intended to streamline the zoning code, as well as provide clarity for areas of the code which previously were not as clear. We are asking for all items to be to. Speaker 1: Take action on all items, with the exception of item. Speaker 9: Number four this evening due to a clerical error. We'd like to request approval of all modifications except for the strike out references. Speaker 1: To commercial. Speaker 9: Zoning districts for the c0ch zoning districts. With that, we would ask City Council to take. Speaker 1: Action and are available. Speaker 9: To answer any questions. Speaker 0: Is there a public comment on this hearing? Seeing no public comment on the hearing at Concern Richardson. Anything? No. Councilwoman Price. No. Okay. The members, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Q Thank you. I'd also like if I can get a motion also to our postponing hearing at Edinburgh one to the next meeting on May 14th. If I can get a motion in a second, please. Is there any public comment on the postponement?

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Sections 21.15.3060, 21.21.501, 21.21.504, 21.25.101, Table 30-1 of Section 21.30.040, 21.31.225, 21.31.235.C, 21.31.255, 21.31.265, 21.32.020, 21.32.110, 21.32.120, 21.32.205, 21.32.210, 21.32.220, 21.32.225.A.1, 21.32.235, 21.39.030, 21.41.253, 21.52.206, 21.52.263, 21.52.283, and Table 54-1 of Section 21.54.170; by adding Section 21.32.275; and by repealing Section 21.32.130, and Tables 32-1A, 32-2A, and 32-3A, all related to the Zoning Code, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05072019_19-0451

Speaker 0: Thank you. Next item is going to be. Speaker 1: Item 32 communication from Councilmember Pierce. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Mongeau. Recommendation to direct city manager to work with the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department to implement the Compassion Saves model as the operational approach for Long Beach Animal Care Services. Speaker 0: Keith. Thank you. Let me this is item four, Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 2: Thank you. This item came up fast. Appreciate moving it up in the agenda. I want to first and foremost say thank you to our team that has come on board and new to Long Beach to come in and help us not only our Parks and Rec, but with our animal shelter. And it means a great deal to me. And I know many of those that have worked hard for the last ten years to make changes in our shelter, to have staff that they can pick up the phone and call and brainstorm with. So I want to start it off with that and that that sentiment that it goes a long way. And I know I had a conversation with I won't call her out today, but someone that's in the audience about what does it take to make change? What does it take to build trust and to build lasting change? And often it's those one on one conversations where we get to be creative. And they really gave a big shout out to you, Stacey, for being accessible and for coming on to something that everybody has a different priority. And it is your task, too, to be on the front lines for that. So I want to first just say how much I appreciate that. When we had staff's presentation on Compassion Saves, I listened. I asked questions. I thought it was a great presentation on a vision that staff has on where they'd like to go. I recognize that there are lots of challenges and lots of pieces that need to move forward and that unpacking anything like this is a daunting task. So I also want to say how much I appreciate the task force that has come together as a community member that has served on task force and committees and commissions before. I know how frustrating it can also be to serve on a team that you don't know what the outcome will be. You don't know if your hours of volunteering is going to go towards a tangible outcome. And so I have a couple questions for first staff in a minute, just around the task force. But I hope that this process can really assist in giving the task force some confidence that this council, whatever way they direct staff today, will support them in making meaningful changes. The process I know a lot of people have asked questions about the process. The process is really we heard the staff presentation on the current state of our shelter. We heard some ideas around where they like to go, things that Stacey is already putting into place, like a volunteer program, attempting to get foster program up. And so I want to say that that process is moving forward and that today we hope to give a little bit of more direction and that that task force is really going to do the work. And so whenever that you guys come back is when we can prioritize and identify what resources and and what that looks like . So I know that we are in good steps moving forward. I have a couple of quick things to go over, but I'd like to hear from public comment first and then take it behind the rail and ask some questions of staff before we give our final our final vote. So I think this is a great step forward and in making sure that we reduce euthanasia rates in our animal shelter. And when I appreciate everyone who's been involved. Speaker 0: So great, we're going to do public comment first. So if you have public comment on the item, please come forward and line up up on the on the dais. And if there's more than as this more than ten folks were to go down after that to 90 seconds. So please, if there. Unless there's any objection. Looks like the council wants to start at 90. Are there any objection? Okay. We're going to begin at 90 with the amount of people to speak, so please come forward. Madam Clerk, we're going start the clock at 90. Go ahead. Speaker 9: Hi, I'm Anna Wong. I am a task force member and I appreciate the appointment. I appreciate the progressive thought movement and the compassion saves. However, I am asking and begging this council to vote no on it tonight. The reason being is that we are not ready to set a label on what we're doing. The task force is just now getting ready to start working. We just got now just appointed subcommittees. We are not ready for this. Most importantly, it is too ambiguous with regards to the tradable animals. 2 to 3 years ago, our shelter was killing kittens and cats with mange 3 to 5% on their body. Thank God we're not doing that anymore. But where are we going to to cut this off? What does it mean to be a tradeable animal? What does it mean to you? I know what it means to me. I know what it means to the majority of these back here. I know what it means to Stacy. I need to see more. Something in writing, telling us what is a treatable animal and we need to be in agreement on that. So please, please, please vote no and concentrate on the SPCA problem, please. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Good evening. I'm Beverly Lifer from District two. I'm thankful that the city council is finally publicly recognizing the issues with the Long Beach Animal Care Services. However, I oppose compassion saves in its current form and oppose a city council vote on the related agenda item tonight. I wish for it to be postponed. Neither addresses the major issues, including the lack of a full autonomous adoption program. The agenda item and compassion saves does not make animal adoptions a priority. It does not include an autonomous adoption program. It allows SPCA, L.A. to continue status quo and process more than the majority of the adoption of live animals. It allows SPCA, L.A. to use their restrictive adoption policies, which prohibits the adoption of many pets to good homes. This agenda item is not a first step to an independent adoption program. It places the onus on the community transferring not only the city's homeless animals, but responsibility for them to rescues who are already beyond capacity, as well as the costs for caring for these animals. Long Beach needs to be accountable and provide the funding needed to have its own full, robust adoption program. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Thank you. My name is Laura Selma. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, for bringing this to this place. I would like to talk about the Long Beach spay neuter trust fund. The spay neuter fund can be found in municipal code 6.04.070. I paraphrase for adoptions, a spay neuter fee is assessed and all such fees are deposited in the spay neuter trust account. Municipal code ensures the fees goes directly to our own mandatory spay neuter fund. So what's the problem? We learned our city manager has directed our bags not to do adoptions in SPCA. She'll continue with all our Auerbach's animal adoptions. This directive from the House of Management diverts established collectible fees to a city trust account. Speaker 8: To. Speaker 9: An outside entity. The diversion of money has to stop. City Council in the 2019 budget provides $120,000 to start adoptions. It's not a city manager's role to circumvent municipal code and divert revenue from a municipal trust fund. Please direct the city manager to rescind his directive, allowing all banks to put up adoption signs and develop its adoption program. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Alex Armstrong. Good evening. That was a great speech by Laura. I'd like to also talk about some municipal codes. I'd like to talk about municipal code 6.046.04.050. It's titled Impound Care of Animals. Municipal Code, says the director shall safely keep all animals, and I quote shall furnish all necessary food and water. Looking at the Outback's financials. It is not furnishing all necessary food. It might surprise you that SPCA furnishes the majority of animal food, which the city is by law required to furnish. This amounts to a gift to a city agency of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This hefty gift, again worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is not reported anywhere on Lubbock's financial reports. Worse, SB Sklar does not submit state manager mandated reports of gifts to our city clerk. The problem with handshake deals like this is that they violate the state and city's code of ethics. We keep hearing that city management wants to sign a formal agreement with SPCA and is already working on it. But with huge unreported gifts, it constitutes real bribery. But none of this is reported to the city clerk. Clerk. I hope you will direct the city manager to authorize emergency funds to uphold municipal code and furnish all necessary food until the public can be assured the SPCA gifts are not government bribery. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next week. Speaker 2: Hi. Good evening. My name is Joanne Quast. Thank you, honorable mayor and City Council for your time devoted to this very passionate issue. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, for bringing an experienced shelter manager to our city. These are huge steps. I look forward to working with all of you to get the next steps right. Thank you to Suzy Price and Janine Pearce for being the first council rep in 11 years to agenda is this item. Compassion saves would not be the words I would have chosen, but the name is not. In the long run, the concern what is is the collective programs that are put in place to save animals. We don't need to reinvent this. We have shelters all across the country who are successfully doing this. Let's leverage the best practices and use our time and resources to adopting out animals as that is ultimately what prevents shelter killings. We can adopt our way out of killing. Let me say that again. We can adopt our way out of killing, as that is ultimately what prevents shelter deaths. That's an independent adoption program is a must large adoption signage equivalent to SB plays adoption signage is a must because passion says without an independent adoption program is status quo, you will not get volunteers or funding without putting this in place. I've left you a red folder at your seat, so I think hopefully you all have it. It is a package that outlines eight serious shelter issues that we are asking City Council to re to consider addressing in your motion today with both audits and the public homework, we know a lot more recommendations have be provided that will set the shelter on the path to success. Thank you for covering the following eight issues that are in your packet. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Mayor, vice mayor, council staff and audience. Speaker 7: My name is Christy Maloney from the third district. So far, this administration has excluded anything to do with no kill, whether being left off the task force hiding no kill advocate comments on city officials. Media Pages Ostracize No Kill at public meetings. Or completely left out of tonight's Compassion Safes policy. We would like to request that the city council delay voting on this new policy in order to have all of the. Speaker 9: Information from all available. Speaker 7: Angles. Why would the city deny us this right before this new policy is voted into place? It is painfully obvious that no skill isn't being considered and that this Council has not been fully informed in the positive aspects of Nokia. We respectfully request that this Dyas hear from a Nokia expert on the insights it gives in saving animals before any vote. A no kill expert. According to four separate polls in Long Beach, an average of a full 91% of respondents asked for no kill for our shelter. Let's bring in a no killer expert to get definitive answers about it before you commit your vote tonight. Clear the air about SPCA, L.A.. Let's be moral about this. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Carol Patterson, fifth district. I can't support this. It's not the ordinance we wanted. It's not the resolution we asked for. It's simply an item pushing the compassion saves model, which, in my opinion, is just a nice sounding name for the status quo. We can't end the killing in shelters if we continue thinking that it's a necessary evil. One of those hard things in life you just have to accept. Well, I can't accept that. No kill advocates can't accept that. We want the killing stopped. In order to do that. We need to challenge the status quo. Yet exercising our right to free speech has had advocates being characterized as vicious. Speaker 1: And if they're not. Speaker 9: Quite vicious, they're just so negative. At the beer and politics event a couple of weeks ago, the Stacy's told the audience that it would be more helpful to stop telling negative things. I heard that to mean stop telling the truth. Here's one truth. Nobody wants to close shelter. Even more stains confirm. Speaker 1: That it's not a tenant of no kill, and I haven't seen. Speaker 9: Statistics to prove otherwise. But evidently Miss Mungo is so opposed to no kill that she makes stuff up again. At the beer and politics event. She stated that pet retention program is code. Speaker 1: Vernon Open Admissions. Speaker 9: Not only is her statement wildly inaccurate, but it shows she is misinformed. What concerns me is that others voting for this item may also be misinformed and that our animals will suffer as they have been for years. If Long Beach really wanted to give every animal. Speaker 1: A chance as the. Speaker 9: Slide read Ms. Monkeys presentation, you would. Speaker 1: Vote to implement no. Speaker 9: Kill rather than to bash it with beer. Speaker 0: Next speaker please. Speaker 9: Patricia Turner. I'm the director of Nokia. Long Beach. Nokia Long Beach opposes compassion saves because it does not address the key problems that are actively blocking our backs operations. First, it does not address the issue raised in the audits of the constraints that SPCA continues to place on our backs. City staff have told advocates that SPCA, L.A. will not allow our backs to have its own adoption program. Yet a comprehensive and autonomous adoption program is absolutely critical for the city shelter to operate, to scale and meet the needs of the residents of Long Beach. The audits recommended that the city review and formalize the operational agreement, which is verbal only between L. Bax and SPCA. L.A. We believe that this agreement must not only be formalized, it must establish Lubbock's autonomy from SPCA, L.A., so that it can be fully a fully operational, effective, life saving shelter that aligns with the humane values of the people of Long Beach. Without this key provision instituting a dog's autonomy, the programs Saddleback puts forth will continue to be undercut by SPCA. Therefore, we ask that you delay the vote presented this evening or vote no and ask that a national authority on no kill animal sheltering be given time to make a formal presentation to City Council and answer the questions from council and the public, the majority of whom support no kill programs and policies at the Long Beach Animal Care Services shelter. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Hi. April Devane. Task Force Member While I appreciate you bringing this new policy to the forefront because we haven't seen anything like this in years, I think this is a little oh, we're a little bit too soon on this. We haven't even had a chance, as Anna mentioned, to go over things in the task force. It's premature. And I think we need a little more time to vet out some of the statements that are in the compassion saves policy. And I really would ask you to vote no or maybe postpone the vote on this so we can actually flesh these things out a little bit clearer. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Nick Speaker, please. Speaker 9: Good evening, Mayor. City Council members of Long Beach. My name is Sharon Logue and I am a resident of Huntington Beach. I am the plaintiff in Logan versus Oakley. Animal Care. Logan versus Animal Care was a game changer that brought much needed shelter reform to O.C. Animal Care. Our team of attorneys obtained a complete overhaul in O.C. animal care, intake policies, healthy animal care training, euthanasia practices, and the. Speaker 2: Subsequent resignation. Speaker 9: Of O.C. Shelter Director. I have fought tooth and nail since 2012 for the animals of O.C., just like the animal advocates are. Speaker 2: Fighting tooth and nail for the. Speaker 9: Animals that help us today. To the rescue, animal advocates and committee members that are currently fighting this. Speaker 2: Battle for. Speaker 9: Shelter reform in San. Speaker 2: Bernardino instead of Cleveland right here. Speaker 9: In Long Beach. Keep fighting. The animals need your voices. To the residents and community members here in Long Beach. I am living, breathing proof that your voices do matter. Your voices does make a difference. That animal advocacy works. This community and the residents in this city have the power to successfully reform and transform elex. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Hello. It's Julie again. I'm wearing sunglasses because I forgot my other ones. No, I'm not on drugs. I'm here today to ask you also to postpone your decision about instituting the Compassion Saves program today. There's just too many loopholes. There's too many generalities, things that aren't explained, things that can fall through the cracks. We're all just asking for a postponement, which I've seen you do many, many times here. Whenever the an issue needs more review. As we all know the. Task force hasn't really had a chance to make decisions. I don't know if they ever will. We all know that the strategic planners aren't done making their recommendations, and also the community only has like 3 minutes here and there to let you know just exactly how we feel about the Compassion Saves program. But I will say congratulations to all of you for hiring the most qualified shelter manager that we've ever had. And I mean, she's fantastic. She was under the gun. You said write a program. She did it. It just needs more review. It needs more time to work the bugs out. And there are plenty of them. And also, Suzy, excellent questions that you gave, but I would encourage all the others who remain sanely, like Mr. Yarrawonga. Speaker 7: Mr. Austin. Speaker 9: Well, and Leena. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Speaker 9: Okay. To speak more often in favor. Thank you. Speaker 0: So much. Program next speaker, please. Speaker 7: Hello, everybody. Nice to see everybody again. Thank you again. Thank you, Mayor. We're both educators. We talked about that and therefore we're data driven. Do you agree? So when we cited all those polls, I mean, there's all kinds of convincing research that tells us that people are not comfortable volunteering or even working in a in a kill shelter. When I brought that up at beer and politics. Speaker 4: There was just dismiss. Speaker 7: With I disagree. You know, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. We get a lot of that in on our, you know, national administration. The other thing is, is that the business about animal behaviorists, this is a recognized, discrete profession that is helping. And believe me, I know I've got a little dog that we picked up at a Fix Long Beach event who has an attitude? He's a growler. It would have been curtains for him at Lbc's, because when I brought up the profession of animal behaviorists, which is part of the no kill nonfungible 11 point formula, I had Stacy Mongeau say in a kind of a cartoon cowboy action Armageddon. What does that mean? She brought up B.F. Skinner. Come on, now. B.F. Skinner is a recognized animal behavior who did a lot of work with. Speaker 0: Pigeons. Speaker 5: And. Speaker 7: Like that. But. But we need, you know, to keep animals alive. We need some behaviorism. Compassion saves. What it is, is it's a way of giving killing. Speaker 5: Ownership. Speaker 7: To the public. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker before we speak, give me 1/2 to have I think Ms.. Case will be the last speaker. So I have anyone else, so my case will be the last speaker. Okay. Go ahead. Speaker 9: Hi. Ashley Summers of District two. I'm also a shelter volunteer. I think that Compassion Saves is full of a lot of great intentions. But those intentions won't mean anything unless our shelter has its own comprehensive adoption program. During my orientation, I heard something really disturbing, which was that if we have our own adoptions, SPCA will not do any spay and neuter for us. First of all, as somebody who is an organizer for an animal rights organization, I find it completely unconscionable that such a wealthy group would deny basic health care to any animal who needs it, regardless of the circumstances. But also, I find it equally disturbing that in a city as wealthy and prosperous as this one, we can't afford to provide basic preventative health care for the animals under our care. I mean, wouldn't if we're worried about money, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to make sure that we have the funds to spay and neuter and the resources to spay and neuter all of our animals rather than dealing with all the offspring of the animals that we did not spay and neuter. And finally, I have one more thing to say about the fact that we do have breeding laws on the books. And I want to thank you for that, because a lot of cities do not, but we need to enforce them. Too many people on Craigslist are flagrantly disobeying the laws and they need to be punished, not the animals that they're bringing into the world. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 5: Hello. Vince Poggi in Third District. And I truly appreciate the effort that was taken by council members to approach the problem we have. However, I would almost always prefer passion over apathy, but there are times when our goals can get in the way of communicating. It seems like semantics has complicated the issues concerning the approach to animal welfare. Stacy Dean Excuse me. Stacy Dean seems to understand the shared belief that no healthy, adoptable animals should ever be killed in shelters in our shelter. This is not just a government problem. It's a community problem. Best Friends Animal Society is the largest no kill animal shelter in the country and probably the world. Their goal and slogan is to save them all. By 2025, the number of communities have achieved this goal is just south of 4000. The number of partners in the Coalition is also in the thousands and grows daily. Many, if not most, of these communities have significantly less resources than we do in Long Beach. But they are open minded. We accepted the challenge and accomplish their goal. In short, no longer business as usual thinking. Long Beach unfortunately, has a unique obstacle in the form of SPCA, LA. Of all the credible and worthy adoption rescue organizations that exist, best friends comes to mind. Unfortunately, we seem stuck with them. I think if Stacy has a chance to succeed, she needs to be in charge of our animal care services and they need to answer to her. And I don't know how that's accomplished, but it needs to be looked at. Thank you for your effort. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 9: Hello. Speaker 7: Mayor Garcia and council members. My name is Andrea Hunt, third district. I would like to ask all of you, would you not. Speaker 9: Agree that the best way to. Speaker 7: Get animals out of this facility alive? Speaker 9: It would be to have a. Speaker 7: Very active adoption program. It has been said over and over and over again. These animals that are now declared not claimed by their owners because of the time that they have to be available for the owner to be picked up. That time is not utilized afterwards to groom the animal, to spay and neuter the animals so that they are ready for adoption. Time is wasted and I speak from personal experience. I took animals from a person who couldn't keep them any longer to the shelter. I had my name and number there and I said, Please let me know if you have any trouble adopting them. To animals were beautiful white cats, one long haired, one white short hair. They were not shown. They were in a back corner. They were disheveled, looking. Speaker 9: I took them back. Speaker 7: Out as a rescue where I can come back in. And I did. Speaker 9: Run them. Speaker 7: Myself. I wasn't satisfied. I took them to the groomer. I took them to the Irvine Shelter Adoption Fair. And they were taken and adopted as beautiful animals. Speaker 0: Thank you so. Speaker 7: Much, personalities. Speaker 0: Thank you so much to you. Thank you very much. Next week, please. Speaker 9: Hi, Anita Porter, second district. That's on a hunt. She is like my other mother now. And that woman has adopted thousands of cats. So you have to listen to what she says. I also want to point out that there have been mismanagement situations that have been going on in the been reported. There's been over 173 items that need to be addressed and there are specific problems with the leaseback. And it comes down to that situation that's going on with SPCA. We need to be separate from them. We need to I mean, I didn't realize that we were that as a city that that's a special thing, that we have our own shelter and it needs to be a shelter and it needs to be our shelter. As I said it last time I was here. We are Long Beach, and we're going to do this the right way. But in order to do that, we need more time. We need financial mismanagement to be addressed. We need the problems with the SPCA to be addressed. And we don't need. This is an excellent outline, and I am so thrilled that Stacy is here to do this. But what we need is more guts to this because there's just too many things that aren't answered yet. And without them in writing, we don't trust you. And that's what it comes down to. We. And if we don't trust you, we aren't going to turn our animals over to you. We're going to keep taking care of them because we know they'll be okay. And I'm you know, I got more cats than I should. I would love to be able to take them to to the to the shelter. So thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Don't do this next speaker, please. Speaker 7: Hello. My name is Pam Machado. I've been a volunteer at Long Beach Animal Care Services for four years. Before that, I was a volunteer for 11 years at SPCA, L.A. I live in the First District. I support Compassion Saves. I think that is reasonable and responsible model for shelter. And it puts most, if not all, of the programs in place to not only save, but also to help improve the lives of the animals that come into the shelter. And it is also a hopeful model. It is hopeful that the people who care about the animals will step up and help the shelter to achieve this. I think this is the crossroads that the audit was talking about, and right now is the opportunity to really improve the shelter and make it a place that the community wants to go and adopt animals. If all we do is complain about the shelter, nobody wants to go there. I I've read on lost and found page. Everybody says, oh, they'll be killed. Don't take the dog there. Don't take that cat there. So everybody thinks it's a horrible place. We can make it a good place, but people need to step up and do the work. And I think it's a time to call a truce to all of this and everybody just get together and actually do the work that needs to be done to make the shelter a good place . Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker, please. Speaker 9: Good evening, everybody. I'm Judy Crumpton and my address is on file. I agree with everything Pam said. You know, you guys hired Stacy Danes to do a job. And what she is doing tonight is her job and she believes in compassion saves. And I'm asking you to believe in it, too. I have to agree. It was a little surprising when it came out and it didn't go before the task force first, and we didn't get a chance to look it over. But nonetheless, I think it goes along. It's just part of perhaps what we are going to do with the task force. We still have work ahead of us. There's no doubt about that. Only 90 seconds. Listen, I don't agree. You can adopt your way out of this mess. I agree. Adoptions are very, very important to do and I support them wholehearted. But we can spay neuter our way out. Please, let's. I'm used to this 12 years of these people. Nothing shocks me. They've had more than enough time to bring their specialists here. And they brought plenty of people to say plenty of stuff. You would think by now they would have convinced you guys, but you're too smart and they're not going to do it. So please never support no kill. And you main education is very important. This is just ridiculous. This is what they do on social media. This is what they do to people who visit our shelter. I was one of them that was bullied and I think we need to do something about that next. So thank you. And please go forward and support compassion saves. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Hi. Speaker 9: I'm loving this vest that I have on because I think every one of you should be a volunteer. Because the reason why is we will not get enough of. Speaker 2: These programs without more volunteers. And I'm almost here on tears right now. Speaker 9: I was the one that spoke to Janine. Speaker 7: It's really hard, you guys. Compassion. It's not. It's not. It's in the right direction, but it's not the ultimate goal. I'm sorry. I am for a lifesaving difference. Speaker 2: I will always be, you know, kill. Speaker 9: And and but I have to thank you for what you're doing and thank the women. I wish we would have more men who would support us. But thank you for. Speaker 2: Listening to us. Because I have three cats. Speaker 9: I have all three. Speaker 2: Special need cats. I have one currently that's my own. That's at Primary Animal Care because it's having issues. But what we're doing here, like what Anna Wang said, is true. I'm on the task force. None of us brought this to our attention. Speaker 9: We want to be a part of this equation. I'm part of the equation of being at the shelter, being. Speaker 2: Here at city council, being on the task force. Speaker 9: I do support the compassion saves to a degree. Speaker 2: Because I've been told by certain individuals that that's a step. It's not the ultimate that we're going to move forward. Speaker 7: For more. Speaker 2: More security. Speaker 9: I don't believe in SPCA and the direction that we have for relationship with them. There's definitely. Speaker 2: Something there. Speaker 9: The way that we currently do adoptions. I love that Stacy is making change, but she can't do it alone. So Devin and I are here to help. And so please, I ask. Speaker 2: You guys, we need more volunteers. Speaker 9: Thank you, Jenny. Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes public comment. Let me go back to Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 2: Thank you, everybody. And I want to say thank you so much for keeping your comments focused on the item that's in front of you. So I want to first I want to say that I would like for this item to for the compassion saves model to be given to the task force to review, to evaluate and to give direction on that is the intent of this item to give kind of the box so that you guys have something to work on. It was not the intention to write policy and to do the fine tuning of a department. We never do that as council direct every single detail of a department. So I hope that you guys walk out of here understanding that that is the goal of this, which is exactly what you've asked. And it took a lot of work to get here. It took meetings with, I believe it's four meetings with the note kill group and phone calls with people and coffee and people's homes nine in the morning going line by line. And so your commitment and your passion is why we are here today. And so I want to thank you for your comments because it does pay off. Specifically, I would like the task force to to look at what it would take and hopefully get us to a place where we have an independent adoption program. An independent adoption program. And I know that that is a tough task sometimes to think about, but we are not going to be able to get to an independent adoption program. And so we do the very first step, which is understanding the relationship with SPCA and our shelter. And I know that my co-lead on this item, Council one, the Councilwoman Price, is going to give some of the the details to that and trying to get that information to come back as soon as possible. We need to have that information that we don't have. And I'm going to let her so we don't echo our comments, talk in detail about that. I will say that I hope that whatever we have come back from the city attorney that comes from as councilwoman pries, that that comes back at a reasonable time, 30, 60 days, so that we can really understand where we're at with that so independent adoption program that we have open admission and that that that is defined by having reduced or no fees for relinquishing your pets at our shelter. We know that that has to happen to be able often when people have a pet, particularly dogs, it's expensive, it's time consuming, it's more work than some people understand. And they need to know that they can safely take their pets somewhere that will not euthanize them. And so that is what an open admission shelter means to me and I think means to many of you. So this is hopefully a step to get us there where you feel that trust and that we get that put into policy down down the road, clear as day. I would like also to have the task force and city staff look at what is currently happening with our adoption fees and making sure that those are going to our spay and neuter fund and understanding what that balance is and what. What we need to do to ensure that everybody, including the SPCA, is paying those adoption fees so that we can have a spay and neuter program on the front end. That will be meaningful. I do not believe that any one solution, adoption or fostering or spay and neutering, not one of those is going to get us to a no kill shelter or a 90% rate. But it is going to take all of these measures to get us there. I also want to make sure that we call out in this again. And this was general for that reason, because it's not my intention to direct policy in that way. So I appreciate the task force and you guys will have a chance to go through this. I also want to make sure that we when we talk about our robust communication program, that we have an understanding of what our communication team at the shelter has right now. How are we relaying that information to our constituents, to the neighboring cities about what animals are available and that we have an understanding of the resources that you have now that we gave you in the last budget. Is that enough and will it take more? My expectation is that you guys do the work in the task force looking at the compassion saves model and defining what the compassion saves model is. It is not for staff to define. It is not only for council to define, but is for us as a community together to define. And that is why we wanted to start this conversation. So you have that work ahead of you in the next several months, along with the community members that come to the task force. I look forward to having the conversation about all of these programs. I look forward to the budget conversation on what it's going to take to make this real. And I asked that my colleagues join us in voting yes to ensure that a compassion saves model is something that really does save lives and gets us to the lowest euthanasia rate possible. So thank you again for my colleagues for working on this with us. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to first start out by thanking my colleague, Councilmember Pearce. We we joined forces on this item. We actually had two items that we merged into one and were both kind of leading a different part of the item. So I'm happy that we're having this conversation. It's been many, many years that we've heard from the various groups. And and to be quite honest, it wasn't until recently that I actually understood how the conversation should be framed. And I've shared with the advocates that sometimes when we feel passionately about something, conveying what it is we're trying to say in a way that allows us to be heard is difficult because there's so much passion behind it. So I appreciate the respectful dialog that those who have requested to meet with me have had with me. It's allowed me to see things from a from a different and I think clearer context. So and I think that's the reason we're having this conversation. So you know who you are. Thank you for allowing that respectful dialog to get us to this point. I echo what Council Member Pearce has said in regards to this being a starting point for us and us being able to work in collaboration with the task force to further define practices and policies as we move forward. I do think it's a good starting point. I'm grateful that we have our new director with us, animal care services director with us. The portion of the item that's mine and one that I intend to follow up on at every step of the process, is understanding some of the details of the discussion. And let me tell you what I mean about that. A lot of times we behind the dais and even out in the community have debates with people about various issues. And what I have always said is that I'm happy to debate anyone about anything and agree to disagree if that's the case. But it's important that we're all operating on the same fact sheet because if we're having a debate and somebody is under one set of facts and someone else is under a different set of facts, look, given my profession and my training, there are some things that are gray areas and some things that are disputed. But there are a whole lot of facts that are undisputed if we take the time to ascertain what they are. And from there, I think we can have a solid foundation for a debate. And the problem that I've had with this issue for a long time is that there is a lot of assertions or allegations or statements that are made that we've never actually been able to fact check or ascertain, allowing for us who are not experts in that industry, to not be able to get into the weeds on some of the things. And not that I'm saying, I want to get into the weeds. Trust me, I don't that's why we we hire staff that are special specialists in this area. You don't want a prosecutor making decisions about animal care services. You want an animal care specialist to be making decisions about animal care services. We're here to get data and help lead policy, but we're looking for direction and leadership from Stacy and and her her supervisor, the director of their division, to help us lead. That framework. But I do think there are a few issues that have come to light, whether they have merit or not, I don't know. But I cannot continue to have this conversation without for myself knowing some pieces of information. So the portion of the agenda item that that I wrote up and one that I hope to continue and I will I expect staff will keep us updated with this. I do expect we'll get a report back, but if not, I'll probably agenda is another item to get this information. And I'll tell you why. What I wrote in the agenda item is the city has welcomed a new director for the Animal Care Services Division, and this development presents an opportunity for us to review our existing relationships , practices, commitments and policies and to realign the same as we develop a strategic plan. Accurate information regarding the inner workings of the agreements between the Allied partners will help set the framework for a solid foundation from which to engage in discussion and debate. Without this information, speculation and implication may lead to poor policy and or distrust in the direction we determine is the best course of action for the city of Long Beach. What do I mean by that? And also I'll express it very clearly so. When I talk about specific information about inner workings with we've talked and Stacie touched about in her presentation to us a few weeks ago about that the just in general she went over the lease relationship and the relationship of the parties. We do have allied partners, obviously, and I think it's important for us as a council to understand the terms of the lease agreement with a little bit more clarity. So what and I'm not saying we need to know necessarily the terms of the lease agreement, but in general, we need to know what are the terms of the lease agreement? What are the responsibilities of each entity? Is there compliance from each of the entities in regards to the expectations and the understandings of the parties in regards to their various obligations under the lease agreement? So that's something that I would like included in this item in terms of a report back and whether that's the city manager who does it or whether it's the city attorney. We'd like to identify, you know, where we're at. And are there opportunities for us to have a little bit more compliance with the terms of the agreement in terms of the different facilities? You know, I would like us to understand what is the allocation of space in the context of the intended use of the two facilities? Are we exercising best practices in terms of the allocation of that space? And that can come back as a report. Back with the opinion of our Animal Care Services Director. I do think I was here when we went through our spay and neuter policy and enacted that. I think it's an interesting point that has been raised regarding the spay and neuter trust account. I'd love to get a report back on that. What is that account or what? What or what are we using it for? What options do we have for the future? And then there's one thing that and I don't know what the answer to this is, but there has been repeatedly allegations that there are aspects of the lease that have been kept confidential. And I don't know if that's true and I don't know why that is. And perhaps that's the subject of closed session. I don't know. Mr. Parking, are you aware are there aspects of this lease that are confidential? Speaker 5: There are no aspects of the lease I'm aware of. They're confidential. Speaker 8: Okay. So that's what I had heard as well. And that struck me as odd. You know, I don't really read anything into it because even if there were aspects that are confidential, I'm mindful of the fact that there are legal agreements at times or for protection of the parties. Things will be kept confidential. That's not an issue for me. I just know that we've heard that allegation repeatedly, and I'd like some clarity on that. So for me, what I would like is, you know, we get a lot of reports back from city staff with a lot of information. And sometimes the reports back that we get are very general and somewhat vague and more have a theme as opposed to actual data. The report back that I would like on this item is actual data so that to council, so that we can have if we're hearing something at the podium that is not accurate, we'll be able to know that based on the data that we have. If we're hearing something that is accurate and there's an opportunity for us to improve, then that allows us an opportunity to grow from the data that our staff is providing us. I want the staff. No. No disrespect to the audience at all or to the advocates. I want the data from our staff because it is that data that's going to drive our policy so we can debate the data once we get it. But let's get that data and the methodology that was used to get that data. Let's trust that methodology together. So if there's a question as to the methodology, we can talk about it. But let's start with the same set of facts. And from there we can build because one thing in this debate that for five years I have felt very strongly about. Is there's a lot of allegations, but there's not a lot of data and there hasn't been. So we need to know that information so that we can move forward. So I am requesting as part of this item that we receive a report back within 60 days regarding the specific items that I mentioned in regards to the lease agreement, the facility evaluation, the spay and neuter trust account. And that's it. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Guys, please note nothing from. From the dais, please. I mean, from the audience right now. Speaker 8: Yeah, and. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. Of course, I forgot when I was talking about the lease agreement. I know that each entity has responsibilities in terms of what they're responsible for, maintenance payments, that kind of thing, what utility bills, things like that. So what are the different responsibilities and are we all in compliance? If not, is there an opportunity for us to improve? So I just want to get a handle on that because that information, I believe, has to come to me from our staff. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 9: Thank you. I agree with a lot of what Councilwoman Price said. My methodologies are a little bit different. And again, it's unfortunate that both the current shelter manager and I have the same name because oftentimes I can't tell if you're making false statements about me or I didn't hear something she'd said, and that's unfortunate. I want to thank a couple of quick people. Ashley, I cannot tell you how much I agree with so many of the things you said. I think you're very bright and poignant in the things that you said and specifically how you said them. Pam, thank you for the work that you've done. I think the overarching thing that we all can agree on is two parts. One, save all the animals by 2025. And I think that we could get there. And I think that the goal of the Winograd methodology of no kill is saving every adoptable animal with a standard of adopting out 90% of the animals and having a really high live release rate. And I know that it can be frustrating when so I bring all my animal stuff that I've had from all of you. And I read that stuff and I look into it and I want to agree with Councilman. Price apps that even within your own information that you provide us, there's conflicting information. And so it's very difficult to get to the bottom of it. So I want to do a couple of things. This Council did not write the contract with SPCA. And I think this council would agree that in the current economic climate and the current. Success of the city of Long Beach. If we were going into an agreement today, it would look very different. But the city, the city, as it was then, was a very different city. And and animals might not have been as high a priority to that council. However, in looking at this agreement, the document that continues to be stated as confidential is cited on page five of the agreement listed as Exhibit B, and I would be interested in reviewing it if it is confidential. I'd be interested in reviewing it in the city attorney's office for me to know and understand and read what's in it. But if it is not. Speaker 5: I believe Exhibit B is a floor plan and it's a public document. Speaker 9: Okay. In some of the information provided by some of the volunteers that is listed as one of the complaints is that they can't see the specifics of a specific page. So maybe I misunderstood that. But specifically on the notes it says, where's exhibit B? And that parts of this are confidential. So I'm happy to go into that again. If I if I wrote that down again, we go we went over like 200 things in an hour and a half, so maybe I'm missing what part of it was confidential, but it says if the city attorney says it's not confidential, I'm happy to figure out what the group still thinks is confidential. I see that. I see the document you're showing yet it's still listed. So. To get to our own adoption program. The first step was taken by this Council with the support of Councilmember Austin and Councilman Price. Budget oversight. Last year, when we first funded a full time adoption coordinator, that is the first time in a long time that the city has had a person who is dedicated to that, and that person has only come on board within the last 60 days. And so I know there's a lot of training. I read the staff email that went out. I have a lot of issues with the current. The current strategy of the adoptions between the two facilities and the signage. However, I also recognize that Ms.. Staines has been on on staff for just a few months. And while I was not bringing this item forward, I want to thank Councilmember Turanga, who is also working on a similar item. And many know that I try to work directly with the shelter manager and the Parks and Rec director consistently, and I don't always think that an item is necessary. However, I appreciate my council colleagues, Price and Pearce, for asking me to be a part of the item because I am involved in some of these things, some of the reports that are being asked for in this document. Ms. Daines has already started on and started on them right after she met with each of us back when she came on board. So I expect that a lot of these reports will be coming soon. I also feel very strongly that the definitions really need to be decided through a community input process. There are lots of tools to do that. I think that we've consistently said that that's the direction we want to go. I think that's the direction that Ms.. Daines and I communicated a few weeks ago in our open forum. I know I've received a considerable amount of criticism for the type of set up for the forum, but I was a guest, as was she. And so I hope that that no one thinks less of her for the way that the forum was managed. But we are guests and we were there as their guests in the methodology in which they allowed us to be there. And I have never said no to a meeting with any of you. Not to mention the number of times I've been stood up for meetings where I sat around and waited for people to show up or they canceled on me with no notice. And so I want to meet with you. I am happy to talk with you. I'm happy to go to the bottom of what different documents are and and the criticisms of the shelter. I'm there often. I know. I just missed Alex walking to his car two weeks ago when I was walking in. But those dialogs don't happen at 90 seconds of you saying similar things over and over again that we still misunderstand because there's so much conflicting opinions about what that is. So I will state what I have stated for five years, and I know that Ms.. Daines and I have an understanding that this is coming more quickly. She's the first shelter manager that has a a real understanding of the chameleon system. But all of that data should be on our open data portal. There should be no need for public records request. You should be able to click on it and see specifically what's in Chameleon. It should be available to you immediately. And we've said that over and over again. There are open data being portals that have been built by other agencies that can be overlaid on the system we have. I spoke about it with our prior IT manager who was reluctant and the Open Data Task Force was not. Excited about animal data, but I am appreciative that both Leah Erickson, our new TY manager, and Ms. Daines are very excited to give the data freely and if there are mistakes with the data that we can correct it because unless we're all looking at the same information, it's very frustrating. So I want to end with thanking the more than 150 active volunteers at our shelter. We are getting, on average, 30 applicants a month to work at our shelter, and a lot of that is because of the the word of mouth of those who currently volunteer there and are feeling very fulfilled. We know it's not perfect and there's a lot we can continue to do. But I guarantee you, if you volunteered there five years ago, it's a different place already. It's a different place than it was two years ago. And we're still making strides. And I agree it is not fast enough. My method is to continue to provide suggestions on how to make it better. And if your method is not that I understand and respect it, but please don't disrespect the methodology that I use for for my advocacy for making a difference. So thank you. Speaker 0: Now some are super not. Speaker 10: Thank you. First, I didn't plan on saying this, but of all the items I thought would be brought up here tonight, I didn't think gender would be one of them. So I want to assure you that there was a male involved in this. That was myself. I think I held the very first community meeting where Stacey Daines appeared. Is that okay? She's given a thumbs up. And so we've been involved in this from early on. I want to get into the issue that Councilwoman Pryce brought up involving the contract with SPCA. And I guess I would like to get into the weeds a little bit here. So, staff, can you tell me, is there a possibility there are business units in existence that are not licensed? And do we need to look after that? Or is there a plan moving forward to get into that? Speaker 5: Yes. Councilmember So there was a question on business licensing raised about a month ago about whether or not a specific grooming license was was at the right location. So staff took a look at that and found that it was more of a ministerial, just needed to be added to the description. But today it was come to our attention that there's also the potential for a retail license in a really quick look. We don't see that on record and on file, so we'll be heading out there tomorrow to make sure we know exactly what's going on and get the right licenses. But we are going to look at that and come back to you. Speaker 10: So I endorse or I support the notion of sending everything to the task force, but this is something that I think can be addressed immediately. I think that if there are revenues to be collected, whatnot, we need we need to get right on that. Also, just in terms of the contract. The discussion is like this is an ironclad document and I'd like staff to weigh in on, on, on it. I don't think that's a fair description of what we have going right now, that it is a I don't want to say a work in progress, but it is something that we can make adjustments on on the fly. Would that be accurate? Speaker 5: Councilmember I think that is not accurate. I think there's an existing agreement and to change it, amend it or modify it requires the consent of both parties. Speaker 10: Okay. Thank you. So that would lend itself to the notion that this this needs to be vetted at the at the level that was suggested by Councilwoman Price. I think that's it. And this might be a Brown violation. So pick up. Charlie, you know, of all the things that have come to our office over the years, the policy on barking dogs has been one that just seemed to be not working at all. So if that's something that the task force could look into, that would be wonderful also. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Andrew. Speaker 4: Yes, thank you very much. I want to thank you, Congressman Supernova, because the fact that I've been here for every one of these and I want to thank everyone of the animal activists, you know, because the care and compassion that you have for your animals and I think everyone should have that same form of compassion, because, remember , that's something your animal becomes some of the individuals who don't have kids become like your kid. And that's what I really applaud you, because the fact that I see your compassion, I feel your compassion. But I think here, because my office has been numerous and, you know, cause concern and compassion, save and kill and Nokia. But but I believe that we can do better in the management and the Animal Control Service. And I'm looking forward to report, you know, for my city manager. You know, I'm very pleased with the appointment of Mrs. Dion as a new head of the Albuquerque couple, because she strikes me as a very compassionate and professional manager who can help us, I think, through these tough, tough times, because the fact that you wouldn't come here every Tuesday to, you know, to express your opinion, your feelings about your animals, and I think everyone deserves animals. So that's what I really will stay and listen to and because I am compassion about it also. So with her leadership, I believe that we can get to these, you know, get to the point where the animal activist can be happy and with the service provided on behalf of our animals in Long Beach. So I want to thank you again for coming out and giving your concern and compassion. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 10: Just wanted to chime in and thank everybody for coming out and speaking. You know, we had a good study session on this. I learned a lot during the course of that study session. I look forward to really seeing our new director in action and seeing how she engages on this on this issue and supportive of the motion . Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman Austin. Speaker 11: Thank you. I just want to weigh in as well. I did have a little bit of concern early on listening to the public comment in terms of the the intent and need for this this item. But after I thank you, Councilmember Pearce, for for and price for for explaining it a little bit further. I will be supporting this. I do think to the the no kill advocates, your passion is is something that is very, very admirable. And we we very much appreciate you. Your advocacy is saving lives and raising the consciousness of of everybody in our city regarding animal care. Spent a lot of time at the dog park. I was there just this weekend and talking to two neighbors about and one guy I met who actually rescued about six little dogs. And he comes to the park every single day and he has just a great heart. And so what we're dealing with here is with advocates with with huge hearts. And so, again, I commend you all. I do think that our new director or bureau chief of the Animal Care Division or Ms.. Danes needs an opportunity. And from what I hear, there's a lot of confidence in her ability to turn this department and this program around. I think we need to give her that opportunity to do that, give the compassionate care, an opportunity to succeed. I heard from many of you. We're headed in the right direction. And let's let's keep that in mind. We're a lot better today than we were a month ago. Two months ago. And your advocacy, I think I think we are. I think we are. We're moving in the right direction. And at the end of the meeting, I'll I'll announce, but I'll announce as well. We will be having a Holstein Ms.. Dame in the eighth District at the Expo on Monday. If you want to come out and have a meet and greet, for those of you, particularly my constituents who haven't had an opportunity to weigh in or to meet her. We're inviting everybody to do that. But I will be supporting this motion. And again, I thank you for coming out and sharing your thoughts. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. And before we have Councilman Pearce kind of wrap up and then we'll go to a vote, I'm going to make a couple a couple comments. The first is I want to, again, thank everyone for coming out. That is has shown consistent passion and love for our animals and our family members of which they are a part of. I want to just again say something I said at the last time that this we discussed this issue. And I think we have hired an excellent manager for the department. And I want to make sure that she knows she's heard it from me both in private and in public, that she has my complete confidence and I believe is going to prove to the community that she is going to take our shelter to an even more progressive place and in a more progressive direction. Long Beach has a strong tradition of implementing progressive policies, and I think this is another step in that direction. I think that, Ms.. Daines, everything I've heard from her this in this process, I think has been admirable. And I think her ability to work with the community is is important. I also really appreciate what Councilwoman Pearce, Council, Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Mango, everyone has said as it relates to giving the manager an opportunity to actually manage and develop our programs. What we have in front of us today is a broad policy policy direction about supporting a model that the manager has asked and wants to implement at the shelter. So I think that that the the kind of broad strokes that are in this agenda item, I think, allow that flexibility for the manager and also allow the flexibility for the task force to engage on many of the items are within the policy. I want to say a few things because the task force has been brought up a few times. Number one, I want to thank them again. These folks are volunteers and every single one of them loves our animals and wants to save lives at the shelter. And so I want to thank them for their service. And I think that they are consistently at the table listening to comments and trying to navigate a very complex and passionate topic. And so I know some of them are here, and I just want to thank you guys for your work. I mean, it really means a lot to the city. And you guys have been doing this work for a long time. No one is are you guys, you know, our, you know, receiving a handshake and a pat on the back for all that you guys are going through. And so I want to thank you for that. I also want to remind folks why the task force was formed. There is a process that has happened. When the audit was called and the audit was completed. One of the key items in the audit. Was to ensure that the community was a community process to develop a shared vision for the shelter. In creating the task force that is part of that recommendation. In addition to that, the the audit speaks to the strategic plan, which is also being developed and being worked on by the task force. The City Council will always retain the broad policy direction to direct and provide overarching policy to our departments and to the city. That's part of the responsibility of of the body, and it always will be. I also want to say that I support completely the recommendations as they relate to what's being listed in in this motion. I think Councilman Councilwoman Price's questions and request of data is exactly right, because I've been saying I think the same thing, Stacey, to you. It's like we have to all be using the same. There is a we don't we haven't even agreed on what the facts are and what the and what the correct data is. And we have to get there for us to make the right decisions. And I think the I keep hearing that we're not going to have a robust adoption program. That is what if Stacy's top goals is to implement as strong, independent and robust adoptions program. And that is something that she has verbalized, I think, to probably all of us on this body and is working to develop. And we are supported and supportive and looking forward to that process. On on the other issues that are on here, I just the only one that I will mention and I'll mention this because Councilman Pearson, I've had some good conversations as part of looking at the adoptions programs. One of the things that I'm excited for the task force to look at, I think it might be even being brought to your ad at your next meeting is Long Beach. Unlike most cities of our size or even the county allow less adoptions per household than most jurisdictions. So if you look at, for example, most cities, whether it's the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San, you name the city. Almost all. Speaker 5: Cities. Speaker 0: Provide more opportunities for people to adopt per household than the city of Long Beach does. And to me, that isn't easy. We need to come up with what the right number is for Long Beach. And that's something that I hope the task force also helps give us, gives us direction in this it within the scope of looking at adoptions as it's listed in in this in this item. And there are there are small changes like that in many others that you have advocated for that are all going to lead to a better shelter and better program and better department. I know there's a lot of folks that are frustrated. I get that. But I'm actually optimistic. And I've been optimistic since this work started. And if you go back from the work of advocating from I mean, Joanne, from the early days of you coming and advocating and others to the audit, to people being frustrated because it wasn't being done fast enough to getting good recommendations. To my commitment to ensuring that we have a qualified, excellent leader at the head of our department to the task force. Work to the engagement. This entire council, everyone on this body cares about animals and is working very hard to ensure that the work is happening to the advocacy. All of this put a big pot together. Is going is going to come out a much better shelter. And I want to also not lose lose sight that while we have been developing this shelter, the overarching the overarching work of continuing to decrease euthanasia and continuing to increase adoptions and continue to reform the shelter has been ongoing through the staff work. And there are we have staff members at the shelter and volunteers at the shelter today that also need to feel supported. And so I want to again publicly thank every volunteer and member of the team that is currently at the shelter that is working hard to save animal lives every single day. So I want to give them a round of applause for their amazing work that they do. And I'm great and I'm very, very grateful for them. And so I think this is an important step forward. Thank you to Councilmember Pearce, Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Mongeau and Councilwoman Gonzalez, who presented this and everyone else who I know supports as well. I think this is an important step. And and we should pass the baton to our shelter manager and to the task force so that we can continue moving this forward. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to Council Member Pearce. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor, and really thank you to this council. I think often we find ourselves where we repeat each other's moments or we have some debate. And I think what was great about this item tonight is that each of us lifted up an area that was important to us that reflects some of the concerns that everybody in the community has had. As much as I believe from meeting with the majority of the people here, that this council has done a great deal to reflect those concerns and to be strategic and organized and methodical about how we continue to move forward. I'm really at a. Very pleased to be at this point tonight to feel that momentum going forward, to pass the baton. And I look forward to the next several months of that work coming back. A couple or just closing closing thoughts? I support everything that the council members have asked for and said in the 60 day report. I just want to make sure that I call out the code number 6.04.070. Speaker 5: I'm not sure that's the right code section, but we'll certainly look at the code. Section 007 is. Speaker 2: The one around this. Speaker 5: One business at two locations. I think you're asking us to look at two businesses at one location so. Speaker 2: That that. Speaker 5: Looks okay. Speaker 2: So that's one of the codes. The other code that I took a photo of the actual code and I'll make sure you have it, but it's the one around the spay and neuter fund and making sure that adoption fees go into that fund. So just to clarify and I'll say anything that's worth doing is going to be difficult. It's going to be hard, and that means that it's worth doing. As a mother of a six year old having compassion for animals and working really hard to create a shelter where people want to come in side and volunteer and spend their time is really important. And so I do believe I don't often refer to things like God's work, but I believe this is God's work, making sure that we are caring for those that are the voiceless. And so I want to just read out loud the motion, the recommendation one more time for four staff. I also want to thank those that signed a letter today. So there's several members of the community that signed on that letter in support. So I want to verbalize my appreciation for them. I want to make sure that we're directing the city manager to work with the Parks, Recreation and Marine Departments to implement the Compassion Saves model as the operational approach for Long Beach Animal Care Services and ensure the direction is reflected in our strategic plan. Providing a report that the existing relationship and recommendations for improvements in policies and practices between the SPCA and Albuquerque maintain facilities and financial conditions which are most conductive to promoting increased adoptions at the box facility. Devin I'm sorry. I wrote on a different page I had. See what happens whenever you write too much. Yes. Thank you. Approve the recommendation to implement compassion, saves approach and have staff work with the task force to assist developing the policy in items listed. And so with that, thank you guys for continuing to make history and make sure that our city is moving forward to save as many lives as possible. Speaker 0: Thank you. Please cast your votes. It was up there, just. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Well, thank you very much. That concludes that item. And we will move on to the next item. Let me get back to we're actually going to take the fireworks item first. Next, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to direct City Manager to work with the Parks, Recreation, and Marine Department to implement the Compassion Saves model as the operational approach for Long Beach Animal Care Services (LBACS) ensure that this direction is reflected in the LBACS Strategic Plan and provide a report on the existing relationship and recommendations for improvements in policies and practices between SLCAla and LBACS to maintain facilities and financial conditions which are most conducive to promoting increased adoptions at the LBACS facility.

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Speaker 4: We please have a vote on our place in public. Okay, fine. Now we're going to move on to item 27 seven District Money. Would you please read the item. Speaker 1: Communication from Council Member Your UNGA recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund in the City Manager Department by 3000, offset by the seventh Council District one time district priority funds for a contribution to fix to fix Long Beach who will be hosting a spay and neuter event in the seventh Council District. Speaker 4: Thank you, Councilman Young. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mayor. And that is an item that actually I read. I didn't say anything during the the last discussion without baggage because I had an item on the agenda that specifically addresses spay neuter. So I hope that I could get the support of my colleagues to make this transfer so we could have the spay neuter activity coming up in July eight. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 4: That is a. Speaker 5: June, sir. Speaker 4: Okay, fine. Conspiracy. You got it. Okay. I got him right here. Speaker 2: You also got it. But just thank you. And I know that you've worked hard for animals and so I really appreciate it, even though you didn't make comments earlier. I know it's in your actions and I appreciate it. Speaker 4: Fine. Do have any public comment on this item? CNN, would you please cast your vote? Now we're going to move to item 31, if you please, with the item.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund in the City Manager Department (20) by $3,000, offset by the Seventh Council District one-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department (70) for a contribution to Fix Long Beach, who, in partnership with Friends of Long Beach Animals, will be hosting a Spay and Neuter Event in the Seventh Council District; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund in the Citywide Activities Department (70) by $3,000 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department (20).

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Speaker 4: Fine. Do have any public comment on this item? CNN, would you please cast your vote? Now we're going to move to item 31, if you please, with the item. Speaker 1: Item 31 Communication from Councilman Austin and Councilwoman Mango. Recommendation to request the City Council to oppose Senate Bill 50. Speaker 4: Councilman Orson. Speaker 11: Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. So, first of all, I'd like to thank Councilmember Mongo for joining me on this item. I believe it's very important that the council weigh in on one of the most significant bills this session that could have a long term impact on our local land use in our city. I'd like to thank city staff for working expeditiously to prepare a very detailed memo that I believe each of the council members received. And that memo was under iteration because this this bill has been amended a couple of times over the last couple of weeks. So they worked very, very hard, even over the weekend, to prepare that for the council. And as I mentioned, the memo came out today as well as some maps. I'd like to have city staff provide a brief summary of the memo for the public that may have not had a chance to to to see the memo as well as the council. Speaker 5: So Diana Tang is all up to speed on this. Speaker 9: Sure, Mayor. Speaker 2: Members of the city council, as you see before you, we have a short memo on SB 50. This is based on the May 1st version of the legislation. Speaker 9: And so very briefly. Speaker 2: I'll provide an overview on that and then perhaps go over the maps because that might be the best way to through illustration show what is in the bill as it currently stands. So SB 50 is state legislation that's proposed by Senator Scott Wiener. I believe that the. Speaker 9: Purpose. Speaker 2: Of this legislation is to help address the state's housing crisis, which we all agree is an issue. SB 50 proposes to do this by enabling density increases, particularly here in transit oriented corridors. Also, major transit stops in what they're defining as job rich areas. And then there is a program that would allow density increases in single family neighborhoods that are not historic districts, flood control channels in a flood zone or along a fault line as well. So in short, that is what SB 50 is. It would supersede local land use control even in charter. Speaker 9: Cities to to allow. Speaker 2: These density increases. And again. Speaker 9: The bill does propose to. Speaker 2: Increase housing supply in an effort to increase affordability, which is something the city generally supports. The bill also. Speaker 9: Would supersede. Speaker 2: Local land use authority and. Speaker 9: Prohibit us from. Speaker 2: Doing studies that. Speaker 9: Would look at neighborhood compatibility. Speaker 2: Design standards, everything that the city councils done through our land use element as well. And so generally we would oppose legislation that. Speaker 9: That supersedes our local. Speaker 2: Land use authority in that way. Speaker 9: I'm really briefly, I'll go over. Speaker 2: There's a chart in the memo that has been provided. One column is the Neighborhood Multifamily Housing Project. The second column is the Equitable Communities Incentive. I'll go over the Neighborhood Multifamily Housing Project first, because I think is the most expansive portion. Speaker 9: Of the bill. Speaker 2: Neighborhood multifamily housing projects would be eligible in all single family residential units that are not located in a coastal zone wetlands high fire zone, historic district, flood zone, or along a fault line that is recognized by the state. This program would allow up to four residential dwelling units on vacant land or through conversion of an existing home. The legislation currently would require at least 4.5 parking spaces for every housing unit on site on heights. This is where I believe the Senator is recognizing that local cities would like to keep, at least as to the extent possible, the look and feel of a single family residence. And so height limitations and things of that nature would stay the same. There is a streamlined ministerial approval permitting process for this type of project if it qualifies. And it is important to note that if a single family home has had a tenant living in that home any time in the last ten years, it would not be eligible. Speaker 9: For the. Speaker 2: Density increases that I just described. So that is the neighborhood multifamily housing project portion of this bill. The second portion of this bill is the Equitable Communities Incentive, and this is in areas that are a quarter mile from a high quality transit corridor, a half mile from a major transit stops over four alignments that would be the blue line stops. Speaker 9: And then. Speaker 2: Within jobs rich area again which jobs which area will if this bill passes be defined by the state. And so we don't have those particular areas in Long Beach, if any, at this time for you now. Speaker 8: But if density. Speaker 2: Increases or housing developments that qualify for density increases per the Equitable Communities incentive would receive density waivers through projects in high quality transit corridors, major transit stops and in job rich areas. So. These would not be allowed to require more than 2.5 spaces per housing unit built. We would not be able to set maximum height limits below 45 feet for projects within a half mile, but outside a quarter mile of a major transit stop. And we cannot set maximum height limits below 55 feet for projects within a quarter mile of a major transit stop. There is similar to the previous program streamlining ministerial permitting approach. There is inclusionary requirements in the Equitable Communities Incentive program if there is more than 20 units proposed in the housing development. In the Equitable Communities Incentive Program. The tenant protections are seven years. So if you are working on a parcel where there has been a tenant in in the home for the past seven years, that would not be eligible for the benefits that I have just described. And the affordable housing that affordable housing requirements that are required from this program are included in a tenant or I'm sorry, in the inclusionary inclusionary housing ordinance portion of the program. So for Long Beach, I look in your pockets. Do you have some maps for a Long Beach? We'll talk about the neighborhood, multi-family housing projects first, and that is it in all of your single-family residential neighborhoods. And I believe we all know where those are. But that does exclude your historic districts. It does exclude the fault line that runs sort of north west along the corridor there through districts. Speaker 9: Three and. Speaker 2: Four. It looks like it does exclude the flood zones. So areas near Naples, Belmont Shores, the peninsula that all is excluded. And then, of course, we don't have housing in our wetlands or the rivers, but those are also areas that are excluded. So that is where the neighborhood multifamily housing projects would apply in Long Beach. Speaker 9: For the Equitable Communities. Speaker 2: Incentives. We worked very closely with Lummi to translate, and so I'd like to thank them for their assistance on this map. Based on the definitions. Currently in SB 50, a major transit corridor is defined as one that includes a fixed bus route that has ten minute headways or less. And so for us, that is Anaheim Boulevard. And so that is in the map there. The major transit stops, as we had mentioned earlier, is along the blue line at each of the blue line stations. And in these areas. Speaker 9: The the. Speaker 2: Housing developer would be eligible for density increases, particularly. Speaker 9: In multifamily. Speaker 2: Stops. And that concludes my report. I'm available for questions. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. A great update, Councilman. Speaker 11: All right. So thank you very much. And Diana, I appreciate your your diligent work. I think we can all acknowledge that California has a housing crisis and Long Beach is no different. Like other cities throughout the state, our residents are experiencing overcrowding and is in need of significantly more housing here in our city and throughout my tenure on the city council, my record shows that I've supported building new housing and adding residential density, even in the face of opposition. The land use element maps that the City Council approved just last year after an unprecedented public engagement process significantly increases the opportunity for housing density along our corridors. In fact, the development services now projected that the elderly alone would accommodate more than 17,000 additional units in our city over the next couple of decades. That may not be enough, but that is in addition to the more than 11,000 units that will be accommodated in the city's downtown plan and Midtown Plan, among other land use plans . However, based on the overwhelming feedback of the residents of Long Beach, our residential neighborhoods were left largely intact. Long Beach is a diverse city, and and that is why many people love the city. That's why we live here. We are a beach city. We're an urban community with a thriving, growing downtown. But we're also a suburban community with many strong single family neighborhoods. This is the diversity of neighborhoods, each within their own distinct characteristics and charms that make Long Beach such a great city. And that's why the one size fits all approach that SB 50 has handed down by the state does not work, and it's not good for our city. That's one of the primary objectives of Long Beach's state legislative agenda is also to oppose legislation that preempts the city's existing control over local matters. That's why the city opposed SB 827 last year by Senator Wiener. I had the opportunity to meet with Senator. Winner last year, and we discussed with him the Long Beach's concerns with this approach to creating housing throughout the state. Long Beach is also working to create more affordable housing and is working with implementing many other policies adopted by the Council as part of the plan for production of Affordable Workforce Housing. But SB 50 undermines the entire local planning process for the city to determine how to best fulfill its housing needs and obligations. In particular, SB 50 would allow high density housing of a minimum of 4 to 5 storeys within a half mile of the blue line stop or high quality transit stop even within single family neighborhoods. This density would also be allowed near job rich areas, which wouldn't even define unless B defined. Unless the bill becomes law, they will have to go through a rulemaking process. Just about any neighborhood in Long Beach, with limited exceptions, would be required to allow a minimum of four units per property. Long Beach cannot not require more than 2.5 parking spaces per unit has mentioned for any of these new housing developments in some cases could not require any parking to be provided. These measures would undermine many of the principles and decisions that this Council has already made in its land use planning and do away with a lot of our local control. That's why dozens of cities throughout cities throughout the state, such as the city of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the American Planning Association and the League of California Cities and in the South Bay Council of Governments have all opposed this bill. And I would like to thank my colleague, Councilmember Urunga, who is also on the board of Lead California cities for voting to oppose this measure in just recently as well. As I stated before, the state has an important role to play in addressing our housing crisis. It can provide resources to smaller cities that have don't have the planning expertize of cities such as Long Beach and largest cities to update their general planning zoning codes. And it should hold these cities accountable that are not working to accommodate their share of the new housing. But for Long Beach, which is working to accommodate new housing, including affordable units. SB 50 is only counterproductive and can have a disastrous long term consequence. I'd ask my colleagues to join in opposing this legislation and giving our state lobbyists and our our our team the ability to work in Sacramento to oppose this this legislation. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Before we get to Councilwoman Mango, we're going to go to your public comment. So please come forward through any public comment on the item. Please come down some public comment. Speaker 5: Courtesy of Harrison record. I'm here to voice opposition to SB 50. SB 50 is nothing but the discredited trickle down economics applied to housing. SB 50 is being proposed or talked about as a means to fill the huge gap in housing, primarily affordable housing in the city. And in the state. Except that the effect will be to add. To the already huge gentrification that is being caused in part by the city's pay to play atmosphere. The same corporate developers who stand to benefit from the SB 50 windfall are the same who contribute to the mayor and to the council members campaigns. There is no question that we need affordable housing. But this isn't an issue about NIMBYism as. Councilmember Gonzalez. I mentioned last night at the forum, the city has identified a deficit of about 28,000 affordable housing units. And and that deficit is not being closed at. Given the gentrification that is existing, that is occurring. At best, it's going to take 150 years to fulfill at the pace that we're going. But, you know, gentrification continues apace in part due to those corporate developers. Yet yesterday we heard from Councilman Councilmember Gonzalez that she created 2000 affordable units. In downtown Long Beach. That kind of caught me by surprise. I. I don't know where she pulled that number out of, but I would like to see. Because I haven't seen 2000 units of affordable housing being created by her or by the city of Long Beach in downtown or anywhere else. It would be fantastic if it was on the line. Coincidentally, I see that she's not here to ask for the vote. I'm sorry, but I don't trust you guys had the dice. I urge you to vote. In unequivocal terms, opposition to SB 50. Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. And then, Ms.. Ley, you'll be the last speaker, I think that's. Speaker 7: Good evening. I want to thank the council members and persons mongeau in Austin for having the backbone to agenda SB 50. I only hope that other cities have the strong council people that are that are that brave, regardless of what some of the clarifications are on what will be exempt and what aren't exempt. Let's talk about what SB 50 isn't and what if it isn't is many people think that the crafter, Senator Winer up in Sacramento, crafted this benevolently with, you know, you know, and minimalist people in his mind in affordable housing, in his heart. And it isn't. That's not what SB 50 is, as we know, is also not considered is also considered to be a blanket for the whole state. And it isn't. Again, it doesn't blanket the whole state. It isn't for everyone or everywhere in California. Senator Weiner conveniently exempted many affluent people and affluent cities. Most of them are oceanfront. This includes places like Malibu and Manhattan Beach. So evidently, if you or your city have enough money, you don't have to comply with any part of SB 50. I think an acronym is in order, don't you? SB 50 is meant to take over governance for all cities that aren't. We'll call him Nim Rocks, Nim r0c, which stands for Not in my rich oceanfront community. What it is according to Senate Committee on Governance and Finance. SB 50 also allows developers to choose choose friends, choose council people the density at which they build, potentially allowing them to maximize profits by building large luxury units instead of smaller, lower price units. It does exactly the opposite of created needed affordable housing as we FIFO also takes away all local control. And according to the author Joe Fox, this controversial bill is designed to grant state authority to override. I used the word override all local zoning laws in order to build density. And who approves our local zoning laws? You do? Councilman Richardson, you were quoted in the Long Beach Press recently as stating how excited you were about involving your community in the revitalization of your business corridor. I was excited when I read the article for you and your community. But if you do not opposes SB 50, you or any of your other council people who want to get your city and community involved in revitalization will abandon your community involvement in any development project in your community. Miss Gonzalez, who conveniently is not here, finally stated her position last night to oppose SB 50, but she did so with a cortisol ad. She said, As it is written today, that's a lot like me serving you raw eggs and telling you, go ahead, eat them tomorrow. I think they'll be an omelet. You must vote to oppose this as the bill is written in front of you today. In conclusion, terms like override bypass cities that can that cannot limit state controlled developer sugar. All of them result in one thing. Sacramento overreach. Do not make us Sacramento South. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 1: That's a lot of energy to follow. Ray Gavlak, eighth District. I want to thank both council members, Mungo and Austin, for putting this on the council agenda. I wanted to see and I was hoping to see a90 vote tonight, and now it'll be eight oh, unless Miss Pearce isn't coming back. But all ten of you, which also includes our mayor, you saw the concerns of thousands of your constituents. When our local Luy was in the limelight, thousands of people came out and told you what they didn't want in their neighborhoods. You each may have your own political reasons to not be a leader on this or on any other state issue. You may not want to step on any toes in Sacramento. You may feel more comfortable having Sacramento tell you what to do so that your hands are clean. However, you were elected to lead. You were elected to understand what your citizens in Long Beach want to see as the future of Long Beach. So I ask you to say no on SB 50. I've had the opportunity to talk to a couple of you about well, maybe not the way it stands, but maybe it could be . I believe you said. Guten Amend, Rex. No, we don't want any amendments to SB 50. Mr. Weiner should not be allowed to drag our cities through this horrible process and get any credit for it whatsoever. Last year, the state large committee brought before you, the entire council, the motion to oppose all. Isolation that interferes with local control. You voted eight zero to support this recommended action. I hope that you will stay. What you. What you. What your decision was with what your decision was last year. I'm sorry that Jeanine is not here, but SB 50, I believe she probably does support it. It attacks her verbal concerns for parking. The Broadway project is a nightmare. It's an accident waiting to happen. If you know anybody that lives down there, have a conversation with them, I would ask her that she not add this to the list of mistakes that have already been made. Lina last night said that she was against SB 50. As it stands, unfortunately, she chose not to be here tonight to put it on the record. And Rex, I just think that anything that you could hope to change would be too lenient. It's not a party issue. It's not a union issue. It is a quality of life issue for all the residents of Long Beach and the state of California, please vote no on SB 50. And since I do have 30 seconds, I'm going to change the subject. I'm not coming back next week to talk about streamlining agendas or your meetings. I think that this is the only opportunity that you have for public participation. And I am so offended when the talk when the talk time for public is reduced from a lousy 3 minutes to 90 seconds, try saying what you had to say. You took public comment for 25 minutes and you talked about the issue for 55 minutes. So, you know, please consider that when you have that discussion next week. Thank you. Speaker 5: Natalie's job guide. Joe Sopko, fifth District. And I. Speaker 10: Want to thank. Speaker 5: Al Austin and Stacey Mungo for bringing this issue forward that we all face it here together. I know how your constituents feel on it. I hope you vote that way tonight. You know what? One of the biggest mistakes this city ever allowed to happen was building those cracker boxes in the later 1980s, I believe. And then we suffered in trying to find a way to get rid of them, to turn them into single family residence, to have someone buy them. But we really couldn't do that because there wasn't enough parking. The the issue about 0.5 parking per unit, it's not even talking about bedrooms, at least right now. What do you have to provide? One parking space per bedroom, something like that. People living in these low income housing units, they're going to have cars. And if it's anybody's district, it's going to be a real problem with parking, because we know how difficult it is in the second district right now. And it will probably always be a problem in the second district. We like to think about the future. Don't build more cracker boxes. Don't allow that to happen. Don't give up your control. If you give up your control, you're giving up our control. You're there representing us. This. If there's eight of you here tonight, we want to see an eight oh vote against this. You know, I was wondering why it was so late on the agenda. Now you understand that Sacramento is in the same timezone that we are and they're not sleeping right now. So they're going to see how you vote. You know, how your your constituents would like you to vote. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Next place. Speaker 5: Point of view. And I think my I just might be on record somewhere. Well, I applaud those council members that have realized that SB 50 is essentially a handout for developers, as difficult as that may seem to the rest of you, I hope you all vote against it. I know that many of you are receiving contributions from many of those developers that will be greatly appreciative of this SB 50 if it does pass a bill that SB 50, a bill that as many of as many of the other ill planned city or state initiatives such as the rent control or relocation assistance, will have an incident and intended or unintended consequence consequences that are not in our city's best interest. SB 50 will take away local control, local planning that all residents of Long Beach demand. It essentially takes away our ability to plan our future. It waters down our democracy. My greatest concern is that SB 50 will gentrify. Speaker 7: Long Beach at an even faster. Speaker 5: Rate than is already being taken. It's already happening, especially in District one and downtown area, and it will this and it will continue to. Speaker 7: Disproportionately impact. Speaker 5: Our low, modest income and working class minorities and residents of Long Beach. So I urge all of you to please vote no on SB 15. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Next year. Speaker 9: Good evening carelessly District five. I also would like to congratulate Stacey Mungo and Austin for getting this on the agenda tonight. We really appreciate that. I got into the weeds a little bit on this bill and went and looked at the bill analysis of SB 50. And I thought we had two areas here in this city that would be a problem. The high quality transit corridors, as has already been discussed, is along the blue line. But along the blue line, we also have the Callan, VA, Carol, and viral screen scores that are in the top 25%, which means that they have really bad air down there and they already have problems. This would increase their problems. You know, if you add more buildings, you're going to be adding more cars, you're going to add more pollution. So on behalf of the West Side, you know, I'm sure they don't want it. And I can tell you on the east side, I've looked at the jobs rich description and part of it says high area median income relative to the relevant region and high quality public schools and then close to jobs. So the jobs rich thing is just a trick of messaging. This is really saying, yes, we're going to invade the areas that don't normally have multifamily buildings in them. And I can tell you the east side does not want this. And Stacy knows that. Well, parking and traffic are always the two biggest issues brought up when you talk about high density. And this would bring a nightmare of parking and traffic. If this is really about creating more housing, especially more affordable housing. The city of Long Beach needs to lead that effort. As Mahatma Gandhi pointed out. I don't know of any people that would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an outsider. So this council has affirmed each year that they will oppose state legislation that reduces city controls. And with that, all of you should oppose this law. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. That concludes public comment. Let me go back to the queue, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 9: I just want to make some clarifying points. I want to appreciate everyone who's called my office and the many discussions I've had over the past several weeks. This council's state legislative agenda as it stood when I was on the committee, which I am no longer on the committee. Thank you. For those of you who have clarified that misinformation that was in the in the public discussion and dialog. Our position has always been to maintain the local democratic process in everything. So whether that is ordinance related to zoning or what types of businesses you can have in your city, all of those things really should be , in our opinion, as according to our current state legislative agenda. Decisions made locally. And so when we are silent on an item, it doesn't mean we're silent. We have a state legislative position that we always prefer local democratic processes and neighborhood input. Many of you remember that over a year ago I attended an item about the gathering of input from our community. Actually before our Louie process, because I feel as though we could be a a best practice across the country of a methodical and consistent way that we communicate with our community and that we receive input from our community on items. The current version of this SB 50 is not what it will be on the last day, and we need to be able to communicate out to our communities regularly, and we each have different methodologies for doing that because every community is different. But the city as a whole also has that responsibility. Separate and apart from the council members responsibility to do that. So I want to thank Council Member Austin for joining me, for joining joining together on this item. We served on state ledge together. I learned a lot from him on that. I continue to learn a lot from Councilmember Austin and his comments both publicly and in closed session on many items that come before the city. And then also the collaborative spirit that he took with our KOA, our op ed that we put out recently. I think that it's really important to be able to communicate clearly the detail that's necessary, because unfortunately, the world we live in today is in six word increments, so, so much so that even though individuals have seen the headline, I've received messages that said, I can't believe you support SB 50. And I said, Please, please. Click here to read that. And they wrote back. I did read it and I said So I think that a couple of things just need to be said. Today, many members of our public asked us to oppose SB 52, oppose SB 50 I. Asking my colleagues for a yes vote tonight. A yes vote means opposing SB 50, and that can be very confusing to the public when they're not clear what the motion on the floor is and the current motion is. Please councilmembers join us Councilmember Austin Knight in opposing SB 50. With that, I appreciate everyone's comments and for coming out tonight and I look forward to hearing the comments of my colleagues. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 10: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a lot of thoughts on this bill and this entire conversation. You know, I've been having this conversation. So I serve on a subcommittee for RINA Regional Housing Needs Assessment as a my role as CAG. I serve as second vice president SKEGG and we in a Southern California Association of governments. I represent six Southern California counties. And their regional planning agency. They take on the conversations that are a bit broader than cities take on. And and I think what I think we should be thinking about is maybe not having, you know, every response to every crisis, not using the same type of instrument on every certain situation. I think this is a this bill is not ready. This bill is not good. I don't support it. But I also want to say that we already took a position on this. It's in our state legislative agenda to oppose bills that take away local control that's already there. And currently, we're tracking 1500 bills in the state legislature. To assume that because we haven't lifted up all the scary ones, because there are some scarier bills out there, because we haven't lifted up this bill to assume that we're not taking our position or advocating publicly. It's just false. We have a very, very, you know, a very limited sort of staff here. So we have to be strategic in how we do it. I think there's been enough public outcry on this issue. So thank you, Councilman Austin, for raising this and Councilman Mongo for raising up this in this particular bill. I think it warrants some conversation. So here are my thoughts. So the conversation we're having at Sky AG and the regional housing needs assessment is about this concept of regional equity and that essentially, you know, we acknowledge that there's a three and a half million home deficit in California and the housing crisis crisis is real across the state, but some cities are not doing their part. As a matter of fact, they're, you know, are trends that cities are taking taken on that essentially are, you know, an example here. Some cities are actually taking steps to limit housing in their city. There are some modern trends that are fairly new that essentially say we only want single family residential in our city or we won't adopt a land use plan that allows for growth or considers growth. And in those cases, I think that's considered an abuse of local control. And on the other hand, Long Beach has been a leader. People look at Long Beach and what we've done in terms of thinking through and planning for our growth, trying to attempt to have this conversation or equity not perfect, but we're ahead of a lot of other cities. And as relates to this conversation on equity and we're having a very robust conversation about what else needs to happen. SB 50 is not a solution to any of the problems here in Long Beach in terms of the need to produce housing and the need to produce housing that is affordable. Also, I think how we send the message makes sense. There's no way that we should let these cities off the hook that are essentially conducting modern day redlining. They're essentially saying, we want none of you people in our communities. And there was some of that that happened in our land use element conversation. So let's not say let's not pretend that our process was perfect. We got through it as a community, but it wasn't perfect. That activity is happening with sort of no opposition here in here in Southern California. And in those cases, the states should take action and say cities like Long Beach who are already complying with transit oriented development requirements, who are already looking at transit rich communities, who are already planning for growth. We want to encourage you and incentivize you to continue doing responsible planning. And you cities who are creating or essentially have bad habits. We want to limit your ability to continue to do that and encourage you use so carrot and stick. If you plan for growth, if you're responsible about it, you can maintain all the character of your community and all those different things. But if you don't plan for plan for growth, there is a stick and that stick could be tied to your your local control. And so that's that's the conversation, a very delicate conversation that's happening on a regional level through the arena process. And so and so I support that. I think that's a regional approach to this. So here's what I think should happen. So I think we should vote together and have one position. I think the position should be we should sharpen the pencil on it a bit, and the position should be we issue a letter or statement that essentially says, here's why we oppose it unless amended. And it needs to say something very clearly that Long Beach and communities like Long Beach that are doing the right things or planning for growth and being responsible should simply be exempted. If anything, incentivize just help us fund some of this planning. We should be incentivizing these communities and we should put our put our focus regionally on those communities that are simply, categorically, categorically opposing any housing project that happens because that's what's actually happening in these communities. So that's what I think we should do tonight. What do you think about that, Councilman Austin? Speaker 11: I think that is consistent with the spirit that we are moving forward with again. I don't want to be completely unreasonable to standpoint where we are just saying no, we are saying no, we want to maintain our local control. And I certainly would would support doing a joint letter from the councilors, the alleged committee supporting an amendment that exempts Long Beach. Speaker 10: And I think that's important that our message is is is very clear and that we pay attention to the conversation, because the reality is, you know, the polling shows that 60% of Californians support SB 50. And the reality is they support it because of the affordability issue. And people expect that this is a solution to that. But in reality, it's not. It's a one size fits all approach to planning, and it will change as as it moves forward. And what I hope to see is that Long Beach cities like Long Beach, as defined by cities who are doing the right thing, planning for growth , creating pathways to housing, they are exempted and actually incentivized. We give more resources to those cities and those cities who are not doing their part, not approving these documents, not embracing this reasonable conversation. Those cities are the ones where we should, you know, place a real focus on. So that's where I think we should go. But thank you so much. Those are my comment. Those are my thoughts on this issue. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember, your income. Speaker 5: Thank you. One of the things that that happened that occurred at the League of Cities when I attended the board directors meeting last month, was that Senator Weiner did come to the board and did address the concerns that many of the cities had in regards to the Senate bill. And at the at the at that meeting, there were questions directly related to the well, what about those cities that are moving towards dealing with gentrification, that are dealing with homelessness? We are dealing with changes in their zoning so that you will create more opportunities to create housing. And his response was that those cities will not be affected by it, by the Senate bill 50, because you already have working toward making progress towards addressing housing. So the the end result of that discussion was that the vote that was taken at the League of Cities was to oppose unless amended. That was concerning to me as well, because obviously what were the amendments that we're going to be address? And there was it was very clear in regards to what what the amendments are. So I just had one question to a to. She's lost her name already having a moment. Diana and Diana, the you put in your last note here in terms of next steps that the Senate appropriations will be hearing it before May 17. Is there an estimate as to actually when it will be heard and as well as whether there have been any amendments made to the to the bill as it currently stands? Speaker 2: Councilmember the. Speaker 9: The. Speaker 2: Bill was amended on May 1st after robust discussion in Policy Committee right before. And so it is unlikely that new amendments will be made available before the vote in Senate appropriations. I do not have a date for when that Appropriations Committee will take place, but May 17th is the deadline for all fiscal bills to pass the fiscal committee, otherwise not move forward. And so we are expecting that the bill will be heard in Senate Appropriations before May 17. Speaker 5: In its current form. Speaker 2: Correct? Yes. Speaker 5: Well, that that's something that obviously I think that Councilmember Richardson's amending motion here to include a letter that was a friendly, friendly amendment. Excuse me. Let's use the proper terminology that would have us address a letter saying that those of those the cities that are already in the loop for making those adjustments should be exempted. Because the bottom line here is that, you know, there are cities that are abusing it. We saw Governor Newsom come, what, two months ago and basically chastise the city as Huntington Beach for their not making any kind of progress or effort in addressing their housing issues. And we also have dealt with the issues of the armory in North Orange in north San Diego County, who also are making moves like this, although cities are getting away with not having to address their their housing issues. So this bill would basically reward them, if you will, if if or not rewarded, would actually force them to address the housing crisis that we have across the state. But at the same time, penalize cities like us who are doing our best to try to address this issue. So I'm a supporter of the other friendly amendment. Speaker 0: Thank you. On price. Speaker 8: Thank you. I am supportive of the item which is to oppose SB 50. I agree there's a lot of legislative proposals pending in the state legislature and certainly we can't, in the words of Councilman Richardson, you know, we can't lift them all up. But certainly if we see ones that are concerning to us or ones that we think are beneficial for the city, we should, in my opinion, call them out as we have in the past. We have on numerous occasions as a body supported legislation that's been very much in its infancy and amended multiple times after we voted to support. So I think it's it's the it's the intent or the the concept that we're proposing to oppose or support. It's not necessarily the exact language because we know it's going to go through changes. I don't support the concept of this particular bill, not because I don't support additional housing, not because I don't think we need more affordable housing. But I do not believe that a city like ours, a charter city, should be giving up local control on issues of land use and development. When we have the opportunity to maintain local control and still effectuate the goal that the state has, which is to build more affordable housing, we can do that. We're continuing to do that. We as a city are committed to that. But I don't want us to lose control over what, when, where and how these developments will occur. I believe that is very much a city function. We have a team in place that is able to make those decisions and implement those necessary land use changes and less Ussery housing changes with the unique nature of our neighborhoods in mind when it does it, you know, I really don't care what the polling suggests. I know where my residents are on this issue and I am a solid no. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilwoman Vice Mayor Landrieu. Speaker 4: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. You know, I truly myself, you know, I oppose SB 50 because I think reading it in SB, you know, 50 is designed to provide for new housing in the state of California, which is a worthy goal. But I think it goes about it in the wrong way. You know, I think it would tie the hands of the city council and our Development Services Department by denying the right to use our judgment in setting a new housing loan, which had done a great job in approving new housing projects. In fact, like they said during a governor, you know, even praised the effort of several weeks ago when he came in, spoke about the need for new housing in California. We have been very careful in the development of our new land use elements, the balancing of demands for new housing against the concerns of our neighborhood. SB 50 would destroy those efforts. And in our past, we have seen what has happened when we ignore our neighbors. My district has suffered the effort, the overcrowding. When the crack of boxes was built in the sixties and seventies, single family neighborhoods was designated in in a hodgepodge of the density without the concern for our adjacent homes . We should not ever make that mistake again. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Hooper. Speaker 10: Well, I don't think you to express it any better than Councilwoman Price and Vice Mayor Dee Andrews. I'm in complete agreement with them. And since the vice mayor mentioned the sixth district, that's where my grandparents home was. Beautiful California Bungalow 21, 20 Locust Avenue on the eastern edge of Wrigley. And that was destroyed. And a triplex went in. And Councilman Allen on call back in 95 expressed that one of these buildings can destroy a neighborhood. And I totally agree with that. But we don't talk about the families that are destroyed by this movement. And I have very personal experience with that. So I'm a solid. No. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Speaker 2: Thank you. I was not here for the stock presentation, but I was listening as I was having another conversation. So I have already said that I support in concept the idea of SB 50. I think that we absolutely have to figure out ways to build more housing, particularly around transit corridors. I think the comments made by my colleagues around local control and the fact that Long Beach has stepped up and done more than a lot of other cities is an important point to make. I support the idea of opposing SB 50 as is, and I understand that is always challenging when when these state bills come to us , because it's always a conversation of, well, what might change and when might it come back for us? But it's an important to send a message that we need to do policy. The right way. I think the balance in California is that we have a lot of areas and a lot of cities that are not stepping up. And so sending a message that we support more affordable housing, we support more density, more construction is important. But in Long Beach, we are moving moving the dial. I do want to say, you know, I appreciate the the years of effort that went into the land use element. And while in my district, we did increase density. I was frustrated because I do see that we still have a housing crisis and we will continue to have a housing crisis for the next, you know, decade. We're not going to build ourselves out of it quickly with the density that we have now. I will close and say I'll vote with my colleagues in opposing SB 50 as currently written, and I will continue to have conversations after it comes to vote at the state to see where we're at and how we can continue to improve it. Speaker 0: Thank you. Then before I go to Councilman Awesome to close this out and we'll go to the vote. I just want the one thing I'll add and listen to the conversation is Long Beach is doing incredible work in building. I think you just drive around, you see all the construction we're doing. There are it wasn't mentioned, but I think it's important. There are there are over 250 housing bills right now active in the legislature. I believe it's 250 bills that are active in the legislature. And, you know, I think it's my hope and I certainly think it's most mayors wishes that these that are building housing, that these bills would be directed to the cities and communities. They're choosing to not build actual housing. And for those of us that are that are doing the work, there is an onslaught of bills that are consistently coming down. And I think the attention needs to continue to be on the majority of communities out there, both rural and those that are closer to the coast, that are not meeting, not not just some are building housing, but building no affordable. Others are choosing to build nothing. And and these and these communities are both communities of both high income and low income. And so I just think that we're going to continue to see hundreds of bills each legislative cycle until these mayors and cities step up and start doing some of some of the work that we're doing. So with that, let me close with oh, actually first Councilman Mongo, then we'll close with Councilman. Speaker 9: I think you. Councilmember Richardson. I guess I have some challenges with understanding the incentives that would be offered to the smaller cities, because we did it without incentives. I'm up to an open to some ideas related to cities taking on that process when they work with their neighbors. Because what I also would like to see is if state funds are going to a particular city to do this planning process that they are mindful of the city they're adjacent to. So you and I border more cities than anyone else. And what I would like to do is I currently border a city that's putting some things out of what they'd like to put on our border that we're not okay with. But they don't have to currently listen to us. And I would definitely not be okay with the State providing them funding to do such things, if that makes sense. And I know you're in similar positions with a couple of cities. Speaker 10: Yeah, I would just wanted to keep it simple that I think the intent of the bill I get it. There is a housing crisis and cities are doing some very sneaky things to get out of building housing. We don't want to let them off the hook. That's the point. So I think we oppose it. We take the position of opposing it as a city like Long Beach, but our message is oppose. You know, we acknowledge the intent, right? We say we acknowledge with the state trying to do oppose unless amended to reward cities like ours and and essentially place your focus on the local control of the cities who are not behaving the right. Because it's a real it's a real regional issue. Hours and hours of conversation at a regional table, at regional tables about this in Long Beach. As a leader, we should at least acknowledge that when we take this action and if anybody is watching this, they should know a city like Long Beach, as large as we are, as forward thinking as we are, we you know, we're leaders in the region. Speaker 9: So as long as we're clear, because I think that some people were unclear on what was said earlier, that our letter would state our clear opposition to SB 50 as worded today, and that we believe that in any version of SB 50, the city of Long Beach and other cities like ours that have taken on planning processes would be completely exempt from SB 50. Yes. And that that still maintains to me and my Eastside voters and my community. We've already gone through this, and the hard work of the Louis shall not be forgotten. Speaker 10: I can't see how we would oppose a bill that takes some of the burden or the pressure off of a city like ours to deliver all the housing. So that's why I oppose. Unless you fix it, you need to go fix it. Don't apply it to our cities. Exempt not just Long Beach cities. We're doing this right. That's the idea. Speaker 9: Understood. And as long as those adjacent cities that are potentially getting the incentives would also I. Speaker 10: Think we just leave Diana. I think she gets the city. Speaker 9: I think she does as well. I just wanted to be clear. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman. Austin, to wrap up. Speaker 11: Well, I want to thank for all my colleagues, I want to thank the public, want to thank everybody for their thoughtful colleagues comments around this very important issue. I think we're clear moving forward that we are hopefully unanimous in opposition to SB 50. I just wanted to speak on the smaller cities as somebody who served on the Council of Governments. There are a lot of cities who don't have the professional technical expertize that we do as a large city. And so if Sacramento is going to impose these planning standards, I think it's important for them to provide some. And this is where where I may be speaking for those small cities. Some some some support to them to help them develop their plan so that they can they can build those housing and meet the needs throughout the region. And so that's it. Thank you for your attention to this and request your unanimous vote. Speaker 0: Thank you. Member Chip Brown. Speaker 10: Thank you. I'd like to request clarification because it's confusing to me, so I can't imagine how confusing it is to members of the public. And I go back to this because there is a major misunderstanding on the item. When it came forward, I got emails. Why aren't you supporting this? Well, there's there's a reason. If I'm not asked to sign on to an item, I can't sign on to it. So it might have appeared that I wasn't supporting the original item. So I appreciate the people who actually emailed me and asked me my position. I have a very strong track record on this topic and please look to my record, but I guess I don't understand the very premise of the friendly. We are Long Beach. Speaker 5: We are speaking for Long Beach. Speaker 10: Long Beach is opposed to SB 50. Why are we trying to set policy at the state level? I don't think that's our job. We want to speak for our city. So I just think the original objection to supporting SB 50 is the right message to send for our feelings, and that will be completely understandable by the public . Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. There's a motion and a second on the floor. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 11: Oh, clarity. The clarification, in my opinion is that we are taking him to oppose position to SB 50. We're asking also that that Long Beach be exempted from the process. There's been a whole lot of other conversation, but we be exempted from from any any, any, any bill because we do have a planning process in place. Speaker 0: Okay. Please cast your votes. Thank you. Motion carries and Q Motion carries. Next we're going hear item 39.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request the City Council to oppose Senate Bill 50 (Weiner), which would preempt local zoning laws to allow higher density housing near "transit-rich" and "jobs-rich" areas, including in single-family neighborhoods, and take a "one-size-fits-all" to addressing land use for housing throughout the entire state.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Others in motion in a second. Any public comments now? Please cast your votes. Thank you. Back to item. Sorry. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Back to item 29. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilman Austin, Vice Mayor Andrews, Councilmember Younger Councilmember Richardson. Recommendation to request city manager to work with relevant departments to review the feasibility of implementing a vacant commercial property fee to address long time vacant commercial properties. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Any public comment? Councilman Austin. Speaker 11: So I think I just need to explain this. Speaker 0: No, you do. Because I thought it was a Starfighter person. I'm sorry. Personally, I need to slow down. Councilman, I'll thank you. Speaker 11: And I think we're going to get out of here at a decent hour tonight. So, first of all, Long Beach is retail economy is strong. Our as our sales tax revenues continue to exceed projections and overall commercial vacancy rates remain low in much of our city. However, there are some very clear retail properties along a commercial corridors that have remained vacant for four years. I've seen that, witnessed that in North Long Beach and in other areas of our city. Even other retail properties as other retail properties in other areas of the city are filled. This can result in blight conditions and send a negative message to adjacent neighborhoods as well as the business community. Cities throughout the country such as Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Oakland and San Francisco have recently implemented or are considering adopting vacant property taxes to address chronically vacant storefronts. A fee on chronically vacant commercial properties can provide an additional tool for Long Beach to incentivize property owners to take more productive or proactive role in leasing their rental spaces or retail spaces, rather than being content to let them sit vacant for a very long time. Most vacancy fee policies allow for exemptions for properties that are undergoing renovations or are going through entitlement processes with the city and where the property owner is showing that progress toward leasing the space is being made. I believe this is an intriguing idea, one that is merits some some review and getting input from our Economic Development Commission . We're requesting that the city manager work with relevant, relevant departments and Economic Development Commission to review the feasibility of implementing a vacant commercial property fee policy in Long Beach and report back to the City Council with findings and recommendations and try to come back within 120 days. I ask for your support. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice managers. Speaker 4: Yes. Thank you very much, Mayor. You know, in my district we have numerous commercial properties and vacant lots that have been seemingly abandoned by their owners. I'm not sure whether any owner would let this property fall into disrepair. It's a waste of valuable property and an insult to the surrounding communities. These are an eyesore and a magnet for good, greedy, homeless and other less savory activities. I'm hoping that it be would create an incentive for owners to re and re engage in the activities and the stewardship of their properties. So rent them, sell them, or otherwise use them for the purpose for which they were intended. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 2: I think this is a fantastic idea. Councilmember Austin, what I've seen a lot of on Broadway over the last several years are small businesses having their rent increased excessively. Then they end up leaving and then the property stays vacant for two years. So I think it also incentivizes people to keep small businesses in in that location until they maybe have a plan. I know that we are working with economic development, hopefully in the next month to come back with some other small business retention ideas. But this is definitely one of the ones that I support. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. No public comment on this item. Some members, please cast your votes. Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with relevant departments and the Economic Development Commission to review the feasibility of the City of Long Beach implementing a vacant commercial property fee to address long-time vacant commercial properties, and report back to the City Council within 120 days on findings and recommendations.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: 35. Speaker 1: Please report from Health and Human Services recommendation to adopt a resolution preliminarily approving the engineer's report and mailing of benefit assessment ballots for the mosquito and vector control program to property owners within the boundaries of the proposed Benefit Assessment District. Setting the date of Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019, for the public hearing. Adopt a resolution adopting proposition to one eight assessment ballot proceedings procedures and authorize city manager to direct the city's consultant SDI Consulting Group to proceed with the mailing of the VCP benefit assessment ballots on May 17th, 2019 citywide. Speaker 0: Here's the motion in a second. Is there any public comment on this item? See? None. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Councilmember Richardson. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Item 37. Actually, I think I am 36. Let me actually do. I am 37. Let me do 137.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution preliminarily approving the Engineer's Report and mailing of benefit assessment ballots for the Mosquito and Vector Control Program (VCP) to property owners within the boundaries of the proposed benefit assessment district; setting the date of Tuesday, July 2, 2019 for the public hearing on the proposed VCP benefit assessment;

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Speaker 0: Item 37. Actually, I think I am 36. Let me actually do. I am 37. Let me do 137. Speaker 1: Okay. Report from Public Works recommendation to adopt a resolution authorizing city manager to execute a contract with Pennzoil for the design, fabrication and installation of the city's Police and Fire Memorial for a total amount not to exceed 687,500 District two. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me just add to this. If I know we have actually a lot of our our police officers and those are involved with the with the memorial or actually watching it. I've been anticipating this item and including some of our fire guys and women as well. Oh, and our chiefs here as well. So let me let me just say that, first of all, you know, this great this morning, you know, joined, of course, both of our chiefs in our annual memorial service. It has moved around over the last few years because of the construction at City Hall. And this is this allows us to move forward. We have in front of us today with really a really important part of our city. And it really important part of our tradition and honoring are the men and women that have given the ultimate sacrifice to our community. And, you know, we noted, of course, this morning just the tragedy. So it's been about a year since Captain Rosa left us as well. And and his name will be on this wall, the newest name on the wall. And so I thought. STAFF Maybe, Mr. West, you can kind of walk us through. I think it'll be good for the council, too, to know what the city is planning as it relates to the civic center and the memorial. And then we can take it from there. Speaker 5: Mr. WEST Mayor, council members, this is a as you said, this is a really exciting item tonight. We've been working on this for many years with with our colleagues in the police department, the fire department. As you know, we lost our previous memorial at the Civic Center today. So right now, we're in the process of putting together a new memorial that will be strategically placed at the convention at the Civic Center. It will be an iconic memorial. We couldn't be more excited about it working with our employees in the sworn departments without them to turn over to Craig Beck, who is the lead project manager on this, and he'll give us some images and tell us what we're going to be doing. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. Members of the city council. I'm privileged privileged tonight to share with you some of the work that representatives of the Fire and Police Department, Public Works Team and our design team for the Civic Center have brought forward. And we really believe that we've identified an opportunity to showcase and honor those fallen in the line of duty here in our city of Long Beach. So what you have before you in this particular slide is a layout of the new Civic Center project. And at the ellipsis or the southern side of our new council chambers, we've identified a location where we believe the memorial will be appropriately placed. So you see on the right side of the screen a layout that shows where the memorial will physically be located. The item before you this evening allows for the development. There we go. The development of the memorial sculpture that will place be placed in this garden area of our civic plaza. The design of the sculpture represents a folded flag, which is a tradition that honors someone who has lost their life in the line of duty. And the you'll see in this next slide, the folded flag represents a triangle, and the names of those fallen would would be inscribed on those different triangle elements. And the thought process behind the design is that you would create a backdrop that is also visible through the structure with a bunch of these triangles. And so this is an image of what the sculpture would ultimately look like. I think it gives you a representation of the size and scale of what we're talking about. Again, we're hopeful that no additional names get added to this wall, but if the opportunity to do that over time and to have a place honoring the men and women of our public safety services here in our new civic center, I think is appropriate. That concludes the staff report, and we're available to answer any questions. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Beck. You guys have done really excellent work in this. And I also want to thank our our police and fire departments. I know that all of you have been engaged directly with Mr. Beck and staff to ensure that the design and the outcome is it was appropriate and it was something that was being supported by by your teams. And so thank you for all of that. Councilman Pierce. Speaker 2: I thank you. And I want to thank everybody that put on the memorial this morning. It was really beautiful and I was honored to be there with everyone as we remembered those that have passed before us in the line of service. I think that this design is fantastic. It's interactive, it's engaging. It has people come up and and and engage with the with the art. Anybody anybody watch Game of Thrones on Sunday. I thought I would get wrecks to pay attention. So I think one of at the very beginning, whenever he's talking about waiting until making sure that we memorialize those that have risked their lives for us until the last human draws his last breath or whatever that statement is, is poignant right now. And so I think it's wonderful that we have a memorial that is not one small statue, but again, is engaging for for lots of folks. And so I appreciate the time and dedication that the staff put into this. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 8: Thank you. I echo those comments. I want to thank staff and the stakeholders for being involved in this. The design of the project, I think it's very tasteful and and creates a memory that is fitting for the what we are trying to remember as we erect a memorial in honor of our heroes. So I thank you for bringing this forward, and I look forward to its completion. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 11: Thank you very much. Well, this is, I think, a special day as we celebrate it or memorialize the fallen fire and police officers earlier today. And I just this item is very timely, but also I can recall when we were planning the Civic Center process, the the the the direction from this council to have more public art , you know, in the in the the the the around the building there in in a visible way. I think this accomplishes that but also memorializes our fallen service public safety individuals. So I'm very much supportive of this and can't wait to see it. Speaker 0: Councilman Mangum. Speaker 9: I want to thank the staff for working collaboratively. Collaboratively. I think that this is a great outcome and I'm really excited for the opportunity to honor those that have so bravely served us. Speaker 0: Councilmember Richardson. Speaker 10: I really like the design on the new memorial. I look forward to seeing it in action. The clean lines, the triangles, the ways integrated into the larger plaza. You know, before the memorial was sort of off to the side. I think this is more appropriate right there next to our civic chambers, a daily reminder of the sacrifices that our public servants make every day. So thank you to all involved. I'm really glad to see this. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Supernanny. Speaker 10: Thank you. Great job. Staff and police and fire on the new memorial. You know, my very first day in office was Cinco de Mayo, 2015, and it was the day of the memorial. Remember, Chief Luna? He had some nice comments to me, and I really appreciate that. I remember it to this day that you recognize me my very first day in office. So thank you for that. I will say also that police and fire have done a spectacular job with the temporary location. I think today's memorial was just outstanding and thank you for all the efforts in that. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Andrews. Speaker 4: Yes. I also, you know, echoed those sentiments. And I just hope it is just a miracle and no and never, ever be another name upon it. So I'm just hoping and praying for that. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman Pierce. Speaker 2: I was curious. I know we lost a K-9 a couple of years ago in the line of fire. Any placed on this memorial for our canines. I have a dog park that the people are very excited about trying to name after. Speaker 5: At this stage, no. Chief Luna will tell us where our canines are resting. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 5: Councilwoman Pearce, members of the council. Excellent question. We actually have a canine memorial park at our police academy, if you'd like, or any of you an invitation. I'll personally take you guys out there and walk you through there. I have one of my former. I used to be a canine officer once upon a time. Susie was my dog's name, and she's buried out there. Speaker 2: Thank you for that. Speaker 0: Thank you. Any public comment on. Speaker 3: This dog. Speaker 0: Seeing no public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 8: She had a lot to say. Speaker 9: She was a mouthy. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Item 38, please. Speaker 1: Did you want to go back to 36 or continue on to 38? Speaker 0: We're going to skip 36 for today. Okay. Just kidding. We'll go back to 36 there. Now, 36 is an important one, I think. Right. Let's let's get these little ones out of the way. And let me go back 36. Let's do 39 three. Go back to 36. It's probably our last item because I know it's I know it's important.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to execute a contract with Penwal, of Rancho Cucamonga, CA, for the design, fabrication, and installation of the City's Police and Fire Memorial, in the amount of $625,000, with a 10 percent contingency in the amount of $62,500, for a total amount not to exceed $687,500; Increase appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotion Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $123,500, to transfer to the Capital Projects Fund Group; Increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $123,500, offset by a transfer from the Special Advertising and Promotion Fund Group in the City Manager Department; Increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $64,000, offset by donations received from the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, the Friends of Long Beach Fire Fighters, and the Long Beach Police Foundation. (District 2)

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Speaker 0: Let's take the procurement LGBTQ procurement item from Councilwoman Gonzales. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Gonzales. Councilmember Pierce. Councilmember Suber now recommendation to request city manager to work with the Financial Management Department to recognize businesses that are majority owned by people who identify as LGBTQ plus veterans and people with disabilities in the city's procurement and purchasing process. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me first turn this over to Councilwoman Gonzalez. Speaker 1: Yes. So I first want to thank Joe Mendez, president of the LGBT chamber. Esteban Gomez, vice president of the chamber. Eduardo Lara, a member of the chamber as well, Porter Gilbert, Jonathan Levitz from the National LGBT Chamber. And Mary's in the House as well from the The WHO wrote a letter of support. I am very excited to bring this item forward and ask for the Council's support. This has been a few months in the making and I want to thank every single person for being here. As we know, Long Beach is one of the most diverse cities in the country. That's no secret. We're proud of our inclusivity and our efforts to work with small business owners, especially through the everyone in conversation citywide, led by my colleague and friend of Councilmember Rex Richardson. We're in equals inclusion. We've done a lot to engage small business owners, disadvantaged businesses, and my own minority and women owned businesses in the city's procurement and purchasing process. We actually have a small business certification program, a disadvantaged business enterprise program, and a Long Beach Business First initiative, all designed to provide our local businesses with an opportunity to work with the city. But we also know that Long Beach has a thriving LGBTQ plus community veteran and differently abled communities. And there are a growing number of businesses owned by these community members. And we know that nationwide, specifically with the LGBT owned businesses, they contribute over $1.7 trillion to the economy. And locally, we have amazing business owners that we should be able to recognize. So through this item, the intention was to increase outreach and make our city's procurement process inclusive for these businesses. We've been working with the local chamber and the National Chamber, as well as other organizations like the National Veteran Business Development Council and Disability. In offering third party certifications to verify that businesses are majority owned by people who identify as LGBTQ plus veterans and business owners with disabilities. So we'd like to just expand the options here in the city. I look forward to hearing more council discussion and I single one of you for your efforts and keeping this on our radar to make sure that we do the best here thing here for Long Beach, especially our local businesses. Thank you. And I think we have a few other councilman. Speaker 0: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, let me go ahead and take their their comments first. I can actually get you to take a seat just as we finish the the agenda and I will call public comment and have you guys come up. Councilmember Super now. Speaker 6: Thank you. And thank you to Councilwoman Gonzales for inviting me to sign on. It's my pleasure to do so, and congratulations for making it here. And I'd like to speak specifically about Joe Mendez, who's the board president. Joe's been working on this item for so long, and I don't know how long it's been, Joe, but I remember us having a discussion about it at a Christmas party in 2017. So that's that's been a while you've been at it. And also. Speaker 10: What people may not. Speaker 6: Know is Joe has been such a valuable asset to the organization, generally speaking. So he's done a great job. So thank you for all your hard work, Joe. And also just for the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce have one of the great mottos or if you call it a mission statement, I'm not sure, but it's joined for the business, stay for the community. And that's exactly what you epitomize. Thank you. Speaker 0: Excellent Council, Pearce. Speaker 3: Yes. I want to thank my colleague for inviting me to sign on to this item and for bringing it forward. I think this is a fantastic item. Obviously, in District two, I think we have a large percentage of businesses that are owned by members of our LGBT community, from tax services to food and restaurants. So I definitely love to see this come forward and fully supportive of it. I wanted to ask a question of staff just on the disadvantage program that we already have. Can you enlighten me? Does that program include previously incarcerated? Speaker 8: I believe it does now. Speaker 3: Would you be opposed to including previously incarcerated and just along with veterans as well? Speaker 1: Sure I would. Speaker 3: Like whether it fits here or whether it fits in the we can bring it back to a discussion. But I think being that we have the the disadvantage when already I was under the idea that had already included incarcerated previously incarcerated folks. So if you could just let me know, get back to us and we can reevaluate it being included under that one. Fully supportive of this. Fully supportive of making sure that we have a procurement process that includes these communities that have been identified. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 6: Gottesman Richardson Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilwoman Gonzalez, thank you so much for lifting up this important constituency. And so we're having a broad conversation about economic inclusion in the city and inclusion means everyone, right? And so our LGBTQ community has, you know, thriving business corridors, a number of thriving businesses. So it's important to make sure that they're called out and lifted up as we review all of our procurement strategies. I mean, Councilwoman Pierce, so there's a there's a large conversation taking place now is not fully cooked yet, but the conversation is really taking place across the region about setting, you know, reforming the procurement process and in setting some aggressive goals. L.A. County, for example, has a new supplier supplier to diversity program where they set a 25% goal. They specifically call out, you know, veterans, disabled individuals. And so I think, you know, as we continue this, everyone in conversation, there's certainly an opportunity to look at pre-leasing incarcerated because we really we should be thinking about inclusion from a standpoint as we bake it into what we do, not sprinkle it on top like not sprinkling on this groups frequently. We should really bacon inclusion and rated throughout all of our systems. The conversation now is really, you know, financial management. You know, it's a it's a big conversation about a really big overhaul. And what I think will be great is if they fall from here, from the full council very soon, that this is really incredibly important to really get the procurement conversation right. Councilwoman Gonzales, you have my full support here. Thank you so much for for lifting this up. And I also want to raise up the disabled piece. I think that's incredibly important. If if we have the biggest thing we can do to make sure people are included in our local economy is the way we spend our money. And so that is something we have direct control over. So we should take our time, think about it comprehensively. But thank you so much. You know, and obviously I'm supportive this item. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Ringa. Speaker 11: Thank you, Mary. And I, too, want to thank Councilwoman Gonzales for bringing this forward. I think that bringing these sectors of our business community into the forefront and into the procurement process is long overdue. And I'm strongly supportive. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Speaker 1: I also wanted to recognize John Newell, who is here as well, past president of the AIDS food store. And thank you so much for being here to. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Orson. Speaker 5: Yes. I'd like to just obviously lend my support to this. I think this is a great and great item. I want to thank my colleagues for bringing it forward. Certainly, we want to include everyone into our our our fabric and into opportunities in our great city as we celebrate our diversity. I did have a question for staff in terms of just intent. Can you can someone tell the city manager in terms of what this item adds to already that we we already do in terms of providing recognition to minority owned businesses and protected classes? What does this add to from. Speaker 8: From what I understand, we already do that for minority businesses, women owned businesses, and we'll be reaching out to guarantee that the businesses we're talking about tonight get more representation and planet bids, that we reach out to the more local community groups so that they're more familiar with what we're what the city is bidding for, what we're procuring. So everyone has a better opportunity to apply for these bids knowing they're coming. And a lot of it is going to be communication, working with the right groups, having the the disadvantaged communities and everyone understand planet bids and get help on planet bids so everyone can be fair and bid on everything that we have. So everything's out there. So I think believe that would be the primary thing that we're looking at right now. Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to get clarification for those who may not have heard the whole item or may not understand what we're doing here. So thank you. You have my full support. Speaker 0: Give me your. Speaker 7: Address. I wanna also thank Councilwoman Gonzalez for bringing this to the forefront, because I think this is what makes language. You know, look, the way you look when we look at small business and let them know that this is the way our city should always look and thank you, guys. And I'm truly supportive of this idea. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a there's a motion and a second. I'm going to comment and call for public comment. I just want to just think, Councilman Gonzales, but also Councilmember Pierson, Councilmember Superman, this is an excellent item. I know. I know. Councilwoman, you've done a lot of work on procurement issues in your time here. And I think this is another great example of ensuring that we are inclusive and continue our, I think, really strong record of LGBTQ inclusion. And I think this is another really important opportunity and in a way for the city to do even more to ensure that this population within our community continues to grow and also be aware that there is still in this country a lot of discrimination against LGBTQ business owners, businesses and LGBTQ entrepreneurs. And so it is critical that these types of programs are in place to ensure that those business owners and community members have access to the same types of opportunities that everyone else does. And so I'm very supportive and you've all done a great job and the Chamber has done a great job of advocating for this. And so with that, please, if that public comment and. Speaker 10: Great. Thank you so much. I just wanted to just right off the bat. Thank you, Linda Gonzalez, councilman, for bringing this to the city council and to the other supporters of this this measure or this policy. As I mentioned, my name is Joe Mendez. I'm the president of the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. And we are also the affiliate chamber to the. The Chamber of Commerce as an organization. We have been in Long Beach since 1992, formerly known as the Long Beach Community Business Network. And once again, we are in the process of changing our name to the Long Beach Community, LGBT Chamber of Commerce, to be more inclusive in our diverse community across the USA, not just in Long Beach. Our organization has been in the diversity and inclusion space many years. Our corporate members like Southern California, Edison Socalgas, California Water, Southwest Gas out of Las Vegas, Comerica Bank all have diversity initiatives. So I know that adding LGBTQ businesses, veterans and members of the disabled community to Long Beach list of vendors and suppliers will only increase opportunity. Moving forward with this policy will be will be good for Long Beach City contractors as well as for the many entrepreneurs in our city, many of which are ready to do business with the city of Long Beach. Our chamber currently broke the 200 mark and we have about 24 to 30 businesses are certified through the NGOs. You see Jonathan Jonathan Lovett from the NGOs has provided you with with a letter which speaks to the what certification has done to LGBT businesses across the nation. Opportunity is what policy is, what this policy will bring. Equality in business is good business. Long Beach will make history tonight by being the first city government in California to add LGBTQ businesses, veterans and people with disabilities to the list of vendors and suppliers. It will increase the city's supply list. It will encourage greater innovation and competition. This is why all of these other corporations come to us because they want our help to increase their supplier and vendor and vendors and suppliers. It is time for Long Beach to be a respected leader in the business community. Diversity and opportunity to take its place as one of the most inclusive cities in for minority business owned in America. We are excited. Soon to for Long Beach. Among those who believe the power of inclusion not just as the right to do, but also has an economic imperative that benefits every citizen in our state. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Any other speakers? Speaker 2: Hello, everybody. My name is Estevan Gomez and the vice president of the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. I'm also the co-founder of Keen Social, a certified LGBT. So first, I would like to thank Lena Gonzalez and her staff, Corey Tyler. Jennifer and your staff has been amazing. So I really thank you guys all. I also would like to thank Darryl Zupan and Denise Pierce for sponsoring us. So I want to tell you a little story of a person that I once knew. When I was in college, I was pretty depressed. Add to options. One was to commit suicide. The other was to live a fake life. The third option of me being up here was not bankable. And luckily I have a supportive family. Who have inspired and encouraged me to become an entrepreneur. But there are so many others that aren't so lucky. They ended thinking. That it doesn't exist. So today, if you prove this, yes, you're providing opportunities for others, but you're doing a lot more. You're providing light. And Hope. That somebody you can become an entrepreneur, a leader, an employer. So I'm proud to live in Long Beach, and I'm proud to own my own business. I also want to tell you a story of one of our members. Her name is Chris Christie and she owns Chris Industries. Unfortunately, she cannot be here today because battling cancer. So my thoughts and prayers go out to her. But she is a certified LGBT and with the private sector. Last year she received half a million contract with Turner Construction and then Sony. So whenever a small business lands, you know, a nice piece of business, they can keep going and plan another piece of business and another piece of business. So if you're approved today, you can pave the way for other businesses like Grace Industries to bid on contracts they wouldn't have done before. The City of Long Beach can make this can really make that business. So today, I hope you lead our nation in becoming the first city in California to recognize LGBT BS, but also certified veterans and certified people with disabilities. Thanks. Speaker 8: Good evening, council members. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Speaker 10: Good to see you. My name is John Newell. Speaker 8: I am as well as the past president of AIDS Foodstore, a member of the LGBTQ center. I am on their board of directors, honored to be there and wanted to. Speaker 10: Kind of represent. Speaker 8: The center and let you know what what we're thinking about the agenda item. Speaker 10: The center strongly supports this agenda item to recognize LGBTQ majority owned businesses in Long Beach. Speaker 8: As part of the city's procurement and processing. The agenda item utilizes the existing certification through the. Speaker 10: National LGBTQ. Speaker 8: Chamber of Commerce to increase the equity. Speaker 2: Of LGBTQ owned. Speaker 8: Contracts through the city's existing. Speaker 10: Contract and bidding process. The Center is incredibly grateful to Council Councilwoman. Speaker 8: Lena Gonzales for her continued leadership in increasing. Speaker 2: Equity with. Speaker 10: LGBTQ residents and business owners for our city. And furthermore, we'd like to applaud the Council Women's Initiative. Speaker 2: And also seek. Speaker 10: Increasing economic opportunities for veterans people with disabilities through this agenda item. The Center would also like to thank all the council people who have supported this agenda item, and we thank you so much for your continued support. Speaker 2: Of the LGBTQ community. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Laura. And then we're going to go to a vote. Speaker 10: Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the City Council. My name is Eduardo. Lara and I live in the second district. I also serve as a board of director. Speaker 8: For the LGBTQ center and a faculty member in the. Speaker 10: Sociology department at Cal State Long Beach. Speaker 8: I'm also here to strong support this proposed agenda. Speaker 10: Item in recognition that LGBTQ majority owned businesses in Long Beach as part of the city's procurement and. Speaker 8: Purchasing processes, as well as veterans, and in particular those with disabilities. Or as one of my visually impaired students, this semester has gladly shared with me those that have diverse abilities. The best moment that. Speaker 10: I can share with all of you in terms of highlighting the importance and importance of initiatives like this, really goes back to a short little vignette. Speaker 8: That I want to espouse to all of. Speaker 10: You. About two. Speaker 8: Or three weeks ago, our dryer broke. Speaker 10: And. Speaker 8: We had to call someone to come in to take a look at the dryer. And it was quite obvious to us that the person who checked out the dryer was very homophobic. Speaker 10: Not even 30 seconds into going into the home. It was very visually apparent. Speaker 8: To us with his mannerisms and lack of communication and really his observance of me and. Speaker 10: My husband's pictures all around of. Speaker 8: Us, that it made him quite. Speaker 10: Uncomfortable. And so. Speaker 8: In that moment was a sobering. Speaker 10: Reminder of how rampant. Speaker 8: Homophobia, unfortunately, still. Speaker 10: Continues to. Speaker 8: Permeate through our society. So that is just one of many countless examples. Also, as I go to some of my colleagues. Speaker 10: Here of how important it is to create. Speaker 8: Policies that move the needle forward when it comes to representation for historically marginalized groups. And if I can also take a moment. Speaker 10: To echo the importance of also including those that been imprisoned, but then have also made their way out of prison in order to create opportunities for those highly vulnerable populations. I like to also. Speaker 8: Put my sentiment forward here in supporting initiatives like that that try to, as someone previously said, create a braided approach towards. Speaker 10: Equity within the city. So I applaud this effort and I commend the city of Long Beach in terms of leading the charge forward to creating a more. Speaker 8: Diverse and inclusive. Speaker 10: City. Speaker 8: And I look forward to the vote. So thank you very much. Speaker 0: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Lora, and thank you to all the speakers. We have a motion in a second on the recommendation. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: We're going to move on to the so-so item here, which is next on the agenda. So if I can have the clerk, please read the.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Financial Management Department to recognize businesses that are majority owned by people who identify as LGBTQ+, veterans, and people with disabilities in the City's procurement and purchasing process; Furthermore, request City Manager to return to City Council in the next 180 days with a report showing how many LGBTBEs, DOBEs, and VOBEs have signed up on the City's PlanetBids database, information about outreach to these businesses, and how many of these businesses apply to and are awarded projects over this time-period.

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Speaker 0: Let me let me just real briefly, if I can have. Hearing one. I know it's very quick. We can do that really quick so we get that out of the way. Speaker 10: Item one as a report from Economic Development recommendation to receive supporting documentation and to the record conclude the public hearing and declare ordinance approving the change to the East. Anaheim Street Parking and Business Improvement Area Methodology and assessment for the first time and later over to the next regular meeting for final reading districts three and four. Speaker 0: Great. There is a there's a motion and a second. Mr. City Manager. Speaker 10: Yes, this. Speaker 7: We need to administer an oath. Speaker 10: To the clerk. Speaker 7: To administer the oath on this one. Speaker 10: You or anyone watching to give testimony, please stand. You and each of you. Do you solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Speaker 2: Intuitive presentation, right? Speaker 7: So the staff presentation. Speaker 10: Today will be done by Eric Romero Economic Development. Good evening, Mayor and Honorable Members of the City Council, the Zakaria Business Association Board of Directors, which serves as the advisory board to the City Council on matters related to the East Anaheim Street Parking and Business Improvement Area made a formal request to the City Council to add new business classifications to the East Anaheim Street Parking and Business Improvement Area method of assessment. The proposed business classifications include financial institutions, which are banks, insurance companies and nonprofit organizations. Approximately 14 businesses nonprofits would be impacted by the change. It is estimated that the changes to the method of assessment would bring in roughly 2500 annually in additional revenue. And the ZAFIRA, a business association, is proposing to add the additional revenue to the organization's marketing budget. Speaker 7: At its April nine, 2019 meeting. Speaker 10: The City Council adopted a resolution that declared the intention of the City Council to add. Speaker 7: New business type, new business classifications, and that today, as a public hearing date. Speaker 10: A copy of the resolution and public hearing notice were mailed to all businesses that pay into the Business. Speaker 7: Improvement District and were also published in local media as required. The recommended action for this item would amend. Speaker 10: Ordinance ten 0012, which established the East Anaheim Street Parking Business Improvement Area by adding the new business classifications to the method of assessment. State law provides that the City Council should hear and consider all protest. Speaker 7: Against the proposed changes to the method of assessment. Speaker 10: If written protest are received from area. Speaker 7: Business owners representing 50% or more of the proposed assessments, the City Council shall not. Speaker 10: Approve the change to the ordinance. This concludes my report. Thank you. Speaker 7: Good idea. When very public comment on idea. No. But these guys went from an idea. Guys, it's like speaking to Mr. Soprano. Speaker 6: Stand in support. Thank you. Speaker 7: Mr. Conspiracy. Speaker 5: No, my second. Speaker 7: One. Would you please cast your vote? Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending Ordinance No. ORD-10-0012, modifying the assessments to be levied within the East Anaheim Street Parking and Business Improvement Area, read and adopted as read. (Districts 3,4)

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Speaker 7: Now we're going to move to item 26. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Andrews, Chair of Housing and Neighborhoods Committee recommendation to approve naming the new chamber at the Civic Center to the Bob Foster Civic Chambers. Speaker 7: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yes. In March, the housing in our neighborhood committee voted to name the new Civic Center chambers after Bob Foster, the 27th mayor of Long Beach. Can anyone think of a better candidate for this honor? Bob, is the reason why we're having our new civic center being constructed next door. He led the city in Long Beach through the darkest days of the Great Recession. There's been a friend of mine, a mentor and my mirror. In short, Bob was a space in my heart and in my esteem. I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing the leadership and accomplishment of Mayor Bob Foster by naming a new chamber in His Honor. Do have any public comment on this item? Speaker 8: Larry. Good to work. Speaker 10: As the U.S., I thoroughly support this. It's a he's an he was an absolutely great mayor. Speaker 8: It's unfortunate our current mayor. Speaker 10: Is so far below him in terms of character and all honesty. But yes, I certainly support. Speaker 8: This and I think it will have the full support. Speaker 10: Of this entire community. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. See no other public comment. Please, members, go ahead and cast your vote. It just went through, I believe, Councilman, both the harbor end committee as well as the committee. Great. Thank you. And I look forward to to the Bob Foster Chambers opening up when the city when Civic Center opens up. I'm sure that Nancy is is watching and a great honor I think for for for a great a great mayor. With that, we're moving up to item. 27.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve naming the new chambers at the Civic Center the "Bob Foster Civic Chambers”.

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Speaker 0: I'm sure that Nancy is is watching and a great honor I think for for for a great a great mayor. With that, we're moving up to item. 27. Speaker 1: Report from Energy Resources Recommendation Receive and file a presentation on the status of the Long Beach Community Choice Aggregation Feasibility Study Citywide. Speaker 8: Mr. Mayor, council members. This is a report for the. It will be provided by our energy resources director, Bob Dole, and also manager Tony Foster. Speaker 10: Yes. Thank you, Pat. I'll turn it over to Tony Foster. He is our business operations manager for the department. Good evening. Mayor and Council Members. On October 23rd, 2019. Speaker 7: Council authorized commencement of. Speaker 5: A feasibility study for the establishment of Community Choice Aggregation, also known as K in the city of Long Beach. Speaker 7: On that date. Council also requested. Speaker 10: That we return to present a status report. Speaker 5: On the study's progress, which is the purposes of our presentation this evening. This feasibility study is to evaluate the. Speaker 10: Economic and technical. Speaker 5: Components of cooperation to assist Council in making an informed decision of whether to proceed in the formation of K in Long Beach. To undertake this feasibility study, we have engaged three. Speaker 10: Highly experienced consultancies and three. Speaker 7: Subcontracted consultancies. Speaker 5: Each specializing. Speaker 7: In critical. Speaker 5: Aspects of analysis. We have with us this evening Mr. Mark Fulmer, principal of M RW and Associates, the lead consultancy overseeing the methodology and integration of the analysis in our study. Mr. Former's expertize lies in a deep understanding of. Speaker 10: Wholesale power markets. Speaker 7: In California rate making at the California. Speaker 10: Public. Speaker 5: Utilities Commission and CCR formations. Mark and his teammates have completed feasibility studies for Alameda and Contra Costa counties. They have. Speaker 10: Performed peer review and risk assessments for numerous counties. Speaker 5: Cities. Speaker 7: And towns as they consider CA formation. Speaker 5: These include the City of San Diego. Santa Barbara County. San Mateo. Speaker 7: County. Santa Cruz. County. Sonoma County. And numerous cities and towns considering. Speaker 5: Joint joining marine clean energy. Furthermore, numerous active cases in the state. Speaker 7: Including Marin Clean Energy. Sonoma, Clean. Speaker 10: Power. Speaker 5: Lancaster Energy Choice, Clean Power, S.F. and Redwood Coast Energy Authority, as well as the statewide K trade group Kalka, have been MWD clients and continue to rely on MMW for regulatory advice and insight. Speaker 10: I present Mr. Mark former. Speaker 8: There. Thank you, Tony. What I'm going to do tonight is quickly walk through the status of the report that we've been working on and some of the issues that we faced and how we're addressing them. First, a quick background on the Community Choice Aggregation program. It allows cities or other cities, counties or other jurisdictions to effectively buy power on behalf of all of the citizens in their jurisdiction. There are various motivations for doing this, including having a greener portfolio, working towards meeting climate action plans, as well as providing lower rates than they would with their host utility. To be clear on what exactly the Kia services are is shown here at the far left is the standard what we would call an investor owned utility would be Southern California Edison. They purchased and procure the power or generate it using some of their own power plants. They moved the power through their own distribution network. They own the wires and all those types of equipment and provide the basic customer service, which is often metering and billing and interface with the customer as they move and have other types of issues. A CCAR takes that takes over only that first part. They would purchase and procure the power from their chosen sources. Southern California Edison would remain the owner and the operator of the distribution and transmission systems, and they would provide the metering and billing. At the far end of the spectrum would be something like you have it, your neighbor to the north of Los Angeles, where the municipal agency does all of those services. So we're looking at that middle option. The primary goal of the study is to forecast the costs and identify up. Thank you. I turn my own page, but not yours to look at the costs and benefits and risks with forming a K program here in the city of Long Beach. So far there was a number of data type issues that are key to the modeling that we worked to overcome. And moving forward will be looking at some of the other key pieces that you all would be interested in. From the general macroeconomic benefits to how it may impact some of your key large customers. The bottom line is that we will be presenting the financial benefits and risks of CCR formation so that you, as the decision makers , can lead your community forward in whatever direction you feel is appropriate. A quick overview of our team. M RW As the prime contractor, we will be doing the financial modeling. We'll be getting input from the others here, including specialists in the wholesale power markets and predicting pricing at that level. Another group that's working with crunching the data that they can get from large customer. There are loads are a group that's looking at biggest that is looking at geographically what the city looks like for renewable energy options as well as a group that specializes in doing macroeconomic analyzes, in particular understanding what the impacts of public investment projects are on the local economy. Some of the big challenges that we're facing are here. The first couple are really addressing the low data. In order to know how much this thing may cost, you have to know what you're providing, the number of kilowatt hours and when those are used. And that can be a challenge. Southern California Edison provides some amount of data, but not enough to get a a precise idea of what is being served. There are ways it or working around that that I'll talk about later. There are the it's a complex process. There are lots of moving parts. The key changing both as more and more cities do it, that causes other regulatory changes. And we're effectively in a moving river here. So that adds a level of challenge to us in the analysis. The things that we've been working on over the last few months are particularly a deal dealing with the data issues as will going to a little bit more data a little bit more. In a moment, we have what they call the smart meter gap, though the there's lots of great information on how people use their electricity due to improved meters, but that doesn't flow down to us. So working around that, again, data integrated into a to a system where everything is considered consistently and works and as well as tracking what the many changes are to make sure that we're completely up to date on the kind of regulations and requirements that would be facing when it began in the next couple of years. As. The next the near-term activities after that is actually getting the financial models completely populated and run and to start quantitative the risks. Now, what can go wrong and how does that actually impact the bottom line? In addressing the data there are we have a couple helpful things that have happened. First of all, I've been in communication with the. Clean Power Alliance, which is the K Group in Los Angeles and the rest of Los Angeles County and Ventura County. And they kindly provided some high level, aggregated, low data. That's better than we could receive from Southern California Edison for the large accounts. This is particularly important here. Effectively, 1/10 of 1% of the customers consume nearly half of the load. So there's very few. There's a small number of very large customers. And knowing what they are interested in, what they want and how they use their electricity is critical in assessing the okay for Long Beach in particular. Other cities don't have this challenge. They're more balanced in their load. But here in Long Beach, we have that challenge and we were working to work around that. We're doing that by reaching out to these customers, talking with them, having them provide some of their. So that we can better incorporate their preferences and their loads into our analysis. Beyond that. Once we have a good eye, once we know what load is being served, we have to think about how that's going to change over time, in particular as more people put solar on their rooftops. That changes what has to be provided. From that, you have to figure out what type of electrical resources they will need to be buying, what type of car with, what type of resources. And then you have to add up those costs along with the cost of operations and compare that to what the service would cost if the customers remain with Southern California Edison. And that's the bottom line of the financial analysis, is that comparison. Now, in addition to that, we will undoubtedly have great uncertainty in a number of key factors, and we need to explore that to see how robust, whatever our results are and then where the risks in sensitivity analysis are. And then lastly, once we have a preferred scenario, we can provide that to the macroeconomic team to see what type of implications for economic development for the city that might mean. This just summarizes what we're doing. I will leave it to you to look at the individual boxes and not burden you now. But there's a lot of pieces going on and you can see. A team that had very specific expertize to be able to pull this off. So this is just a little preview of some of the load analysis. Is the load on a typical summer day? You can see along the bottom we have from our one two hour, 24, 24 hours in a day and the total amount of kilowatts that the city would be using with the different customer classes. And there's it's more this is more just to give you an idea of the kind of analysis we need. We have we will need to be doing these kind of charts for literally every hour of the year to understand what type of power we would need to be buying. A big piece that can impact the financial analysis, but very much impacts the risks. And some of the more or less quantifiable elements are some of the regulatory changes and the market changes, in particular. The first bullet there, the legislature and the other regulatory agencies, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission. Are changing the regulations and rules as we sit in as we go forward. Recent changes are to a particular fee that all customers have to pay. That's being reformed and is a subject of great analysis at the Public Utilities Commission. There's also requirements for kids to do some very specific type of planning and purchasing. And while that is helpful for the state and for the planning, it also puts a fair amount of constraints on the CCI as they think about how how the resources are going to be acquired and what type of resources. There's also various other things going on. While, for instance, the Pacific Gas, the PGE bankruptcy doesn't necessarily directly affect what's going on in Southern California, there could be precedents that are set in the bankruptcy court that could ripple through here that we have to be cognizant, cognizant of as we move forward on this. Some of the risks that we're that we're studying and we'll have to flesh out are listed here. In particular, we will we will undoubtedly not be able to precisely predict what the power markets are going to be in 2032. So we have to take that into account and run scenarios with different pricing to see how the costs change versus what the costs for Southern California Edison would change under those same scenarios. You have to have a certain amount of money to start up. That is, you have to make investments before you start providing any power. And before you start getting any revenue from any of the customers. For the most part, those moneys are generally provided by the agencies that are supporting the CCI. They are a short term loan that gets immediately repaid once revenues start coming in. So it's a risk to the organizations that are supporting the CCI, and it's not a not necessarily a trivial one. Can I point out that there was one group, the Desert Community Choice, which covers the Coachella Valley and Palm Springs. Were to the point where there were within weeks of launching and beginning to serve. When they chose to delay for 18 months. So effectively that loan that was made to get them up and going now has a pay gets paid back 18 months later, assuming that they do indeed move forward. So. It's it's something that can get glossed over. But there's a number of these things that are that that haven't really necessarily been a problem for a lot of kids, but can potentially be. And you have to keep that in mind. Another quick one that I want to highlight, Humoresque. That is, customers join and start taking service and then three years later leave for a normal car. That's probably not too big of a deal. But for here, because you have such a concentration of load among a small number of customers, that could be a significant risk. Again, 1/10 of 1% of the customers account for nearly half of the load. On the plus side, there are a lot of kids and they're getting smarter and working together. They're understanding what they need to do to manage the risk of energy procurement. They're doing a lot of innovative things that can be learned that we can learn from. And were you all to pursue this? You all would be able to learn from a lot of collaborate, a lot of collaborations between the keys and the utilities. They are not at all adversarial and can be can work hand in hand very well. An interesting point to also consider is. The fact that you're considering it now in the middle or early part of 2019 with implementation in the early 2020s is different than the large rush who formed KAS. And we're considering it five years ago and, you know, 2013, 2016 timeframe. There's a lot of changes. The one that I'll highlight is the second bullet, which is Senate Bill 100. Effectively, a lot of communities were excited about CCI because they had very aggressive climate action plan goals and said, this is a great way where we as a city can reduce our carbon output well beyond what the state is saying. Well, the state's noticing that people can do it and they are accelerating the whole the state's electricity GHG emissions mandates such that with the goal of being carbon free by 2045 and interim goals that are also very aggressive. Thus, if your goal was to reduce greenhouse gas via the formation of the K, you'll still do that. But it'll be four fewer years and the amount of savings is going to be reduced simply because the baselines moved. The other guys are going to be doing it well also. So things are things have changed. And when you're thinking and talking with people who were in cars that formed a couple of years ago, the landscape can be a bit different. Lastly here, this is a simplified chart showing the tasks that we're working on as well as the ones that we've completed. The first few tasks are generally data analysis and gathering, particularly the load data. You can see 1.2 is for getting the data from the large customers. That took a while to get underway, but we're now underway and getting good data. And then over the next few months, a lot of it will be the detailed financial modeling and with the final part being the macroeconomic analysis and the reporting, with respect to the reporting, I would envision that being an iterative process with the city staff as to make sure that we're providing the information that you all need to make a good decision for the city. At this point. I'm going to turn it back over to Tony for any questions. Speaker 10: All right. Thank you, Mark, for the thorough presentation. This point, this concludes our status report and we're available for any questions. Speaker 5: Great. Thank you for the great report, Councilmember Pearce. Speaker 3: Thank you. I also want to thank you for the great report. I know that this was just a step to what you outline is coming back in August. I did have a question on the timeline. If if the city did decide to move forward with the car option, what is the timeline to do that for 2021? Speaker 10: We would probably still be in line with that. If council did make the decision to move forward with this, the next step would be to conduct a business modeling effort because we still need to understand would it be more advantageous to develop our own form of JPA, join one of the existing ones? Or, you know, there's another handful of options. So the business model aspect would follow suit with that. It typically doesn't take as long as the feasibility study. So that would put you some time into early 2020. But that wouldn't preclude us if we made the decision to go forward with filing the initial implementation plan data with the CPC pending. You don't have to disclose at that time whether you're going to go forward with joining want or whatever. So it would still be feasible. Speaker 3: Great. That's a pretty short process, as I understand it. I had a question just and I don't want to get into a lot of questions because we can do that at a later time. But I did have a question about the our users and understanding at San Diego seems like a similar city to me when I think about they have a port, an airport, things like that. Are we comparing usage to other large cities like that? Because it seems like they would have the same issues. Speaker 8: Each city has a unique profile. I've done so. I did the work for the City of San Diego in reviewing their feasibility study and their while, they also have a number of large users. The situation is a bit different in that they are already taking power from someone other than their host utility. San Diego Gas and Electric and wouldn't be considered part of the CAA work to form so that risk of volume. Loss isn't an issue for San Diego because it's not there to begin with. Looked at also the city of San Jose. And again, they do not have. They've got some amount of industry, but not nearly what we see here in Long Beach. It's unique from the cities that I've examined and looked at. Speaker 10: And if I if I could add really quick to that, too, the single largest consumer typically of electricity is the movement of water. We've got our esteemed colleague over here, Mr. Gardner, in his department. But I will tell you that the operations offshore move a lot more water than he does, and that is the single largest customer of Southern California Edison CRC. So we have two big users of moving water, which are the largest consumers of electricity. So that is really one of the unique features. And we also have the port. The port is moving to an all electric port and that load has to be built into this and and be part of the comprehensive study. And so there's there's three big consumers right there that most cities do not have. Speaker 3: Right. Right. And I had assumed and I thank you for sending me the list. I mean, I know I've had conversations with the port as well. And, you know, I recognize that we're in the very early stages of this and there's going to be a lot of data that we can kind of pull over and look at . But I appreciate being able to compare our city to other cities and understanding what have they what have they done with those larger users? How can we, you know, exclude or make sure that we include them? And is there a timeline that we can do that in? And so I know you guys are doing all the work. I appreciate the report. I appreciate, you know, there's a goal of 2021 that I kind of have a mental cap on and that we're making those steps forward. So I appreciate this today. Thanks. Speaker 5: Thank you. I was going to reserve my comments and allow Council Member Richardson to queue up. No, he had a couple of questions. Speaker 6: Thanks, Councilman Austin. I think that was a way to tell Stacie to go back to her seat. You're not slick, so, you know, great presentation. Thank you so much. A lot of information will take some time to process. I guess my general sentiment is I support this generally. I need to have a clear understanding of when our decision point will be. And and and simply there was a lot of conversation about whether or not there were there are risks. And we're not at that point at that point yet. So at what point will we have a clear understanding of when we will have a risk? We will understand those risks. Speaker 10: Yeah. Our hope is that when we make the final presentation to council that it would include a discussion of those risks, potentially what they could incur. I think it needs to be understood that forming a CSA is a long term financial obligation for a city. This is this is very serious because these contracts are 20 to 30 years out many times, and billions of dollars are involved. So those need to be understood because they are long term decisions. And I think that will be fleshed out with the pros and cons of of all that presented. And that will be enough, I believe, for you to make your decision. Speaker 6: And when you bring that back, we'll have a recommendation. Speaker 10: It is our intention to have a recommendation. Speaker 6: Okay. And and what was the timeline one more time. Speaker 10: When we get the report in late August? I would think there would take some time, probably a month to to formulate some things. And then I think what we need to do is have a discussion is should there be public outreach on this? We're making decisions that the taxpayers are on the hook for for the remainder of these contracts, but we really haven't involved them in the process. So I think that should be part of it as well, that we get out in front of them many times. They're not as informed about this. They they if you form associate they by default they go into it. But I think there probably needs to be some kind of communications effort. And so that would take probably a month if we scheduled those two. So now you're looking into the October-November timeframe, which still should give us enough time that should we make that decision to go forward, you would be able to we would make a decision whether we file the implementation plan to move forward from. Speaker 6: Just, say, a month of public outreach. So I think all the rest of departments can learn from you if you can get that done. Speaker 10: Well, that's a very aggressive. But if we start scheduling them in early August and getting them set, we might be able to do that. But I don't know. It may take longer. You're the best way to how we get in front of your constituents to present the data so that they are informed about what a case is , what it means to them, should we go forward with one and the ramifications for generations to come? Speaker 6: Sure. So the last thing, two things I would say I would want to understand the other case that that was established, what level of public engagement those agencies did. And then secondly, you know, the big opportunity for me separately from being able to select and determine the level of clean energy your community utilizes is really the economic opportunity I'd like to see when this comes back, you know, some some real information on tangible examples of creating some economic inclusion opportunities by utilizing this. I know that some CCAS are looking at this, but I'm you know, I'm thinking about what San Francisco is doing around their utilities in general. They have a whole community benefits plan built out around their their water, their gas, their utility program. And so there's an opportunity here, given we have some of our own utilities. But separately, if we're going to begin this conversation about SCCA, really the driver should be how to create more economic opportunities here locally for the people who live here. But thanks a lot. Thank you for the report and thanks. Go. Tony Foster. Speaker 0: Councilman Gonzalez. Speaker 1: Yeah, Bob. Tony, and thank you to our consultant as well. I really appreciate this because I was given a briefing two weeks ago and this is a very thorough report, although it's we're still waiting for the full feasibility study. It's nice to get this update in the meantime. And specifically, I like, you know, obviously that we included everything in this, specifically the regulatory changes and state mandates because we know that, you know, they're hammering down hard on an it's apologies to get it together and create ambitious goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions. So I just wanted to say thank you for this. I know there will be a lot of questions. This is a very thoughtful report, and I know we have a lot more to come and I'm looking forward to more community input when we get to that point. If we get to that point. And also just continually speaking with each of you about any other updates that we have in the interim. So thank you again and thanks to our friends at IBEW and all of our community partners for being here. They've been a part of this process and we thank them as well and Jeanine Pearce for bringing this forward. Speaker 0: You got it. Speaker 4: Thank you. I just wanted to say I appreciate your information related to community outreach. It's really important to the neighbors of my district, and I would not feel comfortable going forward until community outreach was deployed because our neighborhoods have so much at stake. Thank you. Speaker 5: Councilmember Pearce. Okay. Well, thank you. I just wanted to thank the staff for the great presentation. It's so really encouraging and gives us a lot of confidence knowing that we have a great consultant on the honor on the job here, an experienced consultant that has actually studied these and implemented these cases in other municipalities throughout the state . I'm looking forward to understanding the options in front of us. One of my questions is how is your Long Beach unique from from the other cities? And I think you guys have answered that. And I do recognize that that our uniqueness may, may present some challenges, but also some opportunities. I want to just point out that the city is committed to exploring CCAS. And, you know, the last several months and the staff resources that have come and gone into doing so is evident of that and this report as well. Just the question, Mr. West, what are we committing toward the feasibility study? Speaker 2: What was the question? Speaker 5: Well, in terms of financial resources, what is committed toward this feasibility study? Speaker 8: Mr. Dow. Speaker 10: Yeah. We had a slide that it showed that council authorized us a $300,000 amount with a $50,000 contingency. But our projections are at this point in time, that will come in at approximately $285,000. Speaker 5: Okay. And just just really quickly understanding that that the cars are really a changing dynamic in terms of utilities in California. How are the the investor owned utilities adjusting and responding to to this change in dynamic in any way? Speaker 10: Well, there's a couple of things. The big the big concern for them is the sharing of the cost. So you saw the power charge and indifference adjustment, the charge the commission has provided so that the financial impact for the fewer customers that remain on the IOUs don't get burdened with those longer term contracts. Those costs get pushed over to the case. So their concern is really on that side of it. They're kind of net neutral. There is a law also where they they have to hold back on any opposition. They really don't state opposition one way or the other from the IOUs. So you won't get any comments from them regarding that as well. Sempra down in San Diego did form a separate little unit that's funded entirely with shareholder moneys, no ratepayer monies. So they have a little campaign. But as you might know, both the county and city of San Diego made their decision to go to the next level with their case, and they have moved ahead with that. So the up in the PGA planning area, it remains to be seen. They're undertaking a lot of change right now. I will tell you that Edison, the service territory where we reside in with SoCal Edison is our provider, is very different than the other two. Edison has been more consumer friendly in that sense that their rates are tougher to beat. I believe the county's program, when they went through their difference in rates, was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 to 1 and a quarter percent lower than what you could get from Edison. So they weren't as aggressive as some of the ones, the early ones, it all started up in PG territory because of the rate structure that was evident up there. So there are a lot of challenges, but most of the times the utilities are just taking a neutral position on this and it's really hard to read them one way or the other. Speaker 5: So are they buying or pursuing different sorts of energy, different types of energy sources? Speaker 10: They still have the same mandates that the state has put out there. And depending on how you describe the types of power that they get, there are well, they have to meet the established dates that have been set forth in the state laws. Speaker 5: Okay. And then my last comment would be just I agree with my colleague's point that regarding the community outreach, I think that is going to be an essential part of this this process. Probably the most important part of this process, because I would venture to guess that most of our residents are are clueless about the the benefits or any relationships to AIDS. And so I think there's going to have to be an education process, but also a robust community outreach process. And so hopefully, you know, your budget savings can go toward toward that. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce, you get the last word. Speaker 3: Thank you. I just wanted to comment on the community outreach. I know before I agenda was this, that there was some community outreach done just by community organizations that were talking about what is a K. And so I know you're here and you don't plan on speaking tonight, but as much as we can before the feasibility comes out, just educating just on that basic what is a K and then whenever it gets here that staff can really make sure that we spend a month, maybe two, God forbid, a year, please know, just going out there and educating on the feasibility study itself and doing some workshops around that I think would be really fantastic. So one is educating just basic what is a K? And I think from the conversations I've had with with Edison, they've been good conversations, you know, and that they've said to me, look, we just deliver it, you know, and I don't expect to have any behind the scenes pushback. I know that that happens sometimes, but I want to apply done the work to get us to this place and think for your work. And thank you, counsel, as well. So appreciate it. Speaker 5: So is there any public comment on this? Speaker 10: Yeah. I'm sorry if you guys weren't wanting public comment, but at Children's Day USA this year we're launching an a comprehensive green energy initiative. One of our partners of the initiative is Greg Stewart. They've developed a a what is a geothermal energy system that as a second benefit, decontaminate water. We're actually proposing in the PGA territories and the recent fire damage is to help restore some of those cities. If you come to Children's Day, I would love to be able to has the engineer, the scientist that actually developed the Stirling engine will be actually I can have him be at Children's Day to talk to your people if you'd like to. Thank you. Speaker 0: Please, can we have two more for public comment to close the speakers list? So we'll have our next two speakers. Then the speakers list is closed. Speaker 3: Good evening, mayors, city council members and city staff. I'm Alan Stephens, resident of District four and a member of the Climate Action Group Long Beach 350. Thank you very much for tonight's presentation. We Long Beach 350 strongly believe in community choice aggregation because it allows for local control on energy issues. That means we as a community can have a say in energy priorities, such as building a portfolio of clean, renewable energy sources to reach net zero carbon emissions quickly. That has huge long term benefits. Renewable energy projects can provide good green and union jobs, allowing folks to live and work in their community, which is our city, and while strengthening our local green economy when implemented to serve our community rather than private investors, a CCE can address, assist and empower the vulnerable sectors of our city in which poor air quality is a fact of life for way too many residents when it shouldn't have to be. During this time when the city is working on its climate action and adaptation plan, I hope you'll consider implementing Community Choice Energy as a necessary part of the solution to reduce our carbon footprint on a grand and fully possible scale while providing local jobs and securing our city's economy well into the future. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next week. Speaker 1: Hi. Good evening. My name is So Connie. I am one of the co-founders of Long Beach Environmental Alliance and one of our alliance partners is Long Beach 350. So thank you for inviting me to be here. Unfortunately, I don't have any jokes to tell tonight, so I know, I know. I'm just so pooped. So I just want to say that we support Kay. I think it will help achieve our sustainability goals. It will help improve jobs and financial benefits for our local economy and have us to use clean energy resources. Okay, we'll invest it. Well, if we invest it, it can provide local jobs programs and economic development and also improve the resiliency of the grid within our city. It is your job to improve our quality of life, so help us make the right decision by supporting CC. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that, we have a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the status of the Long Beach Community Choice Aggregation Feasibility Study. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Hearing to. Speaker 1: Report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record, conclude the public hearing and adopt a resolution amending the master fee and charges schedule citywide. Speaker 0: There's a motion in a second. Mr. West. Speaker 10: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Speaker 7: Grace Yoon, Budget Manager, Financial Management will conduct a presentation today. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. So the City Council's approval is being requested for mid-year changes to the master fee, fee and charges schedule for departments. I propose a total of 12 fee changes to the schedule. This includes the addition of eight new fees. The master fee in charge schedule is updated at least twice a year to allow departments to meet City Council stated policy on user fees, which. Speaker 3: Calls for a full cost recovery whenever appropriate. City Council last. Speaker 1: Approved an amended the master fee. Speaker 3: And charges schedule on September 5th. Speaker 1: 2018 as a part of the Fy19 budget process. Some examples of midyear fee changes in this report include a lower new fee for a site plan review of facade remodels to encourage additional applications for facade remodels and to distinguish the level of effort to review these remodels compared to new building constructions. A new annual registration fee to ensure charitable food operators are complying with health and safety code. A new fee for the operation of onsite catering companies or mobile. Speaker 3: Food operators at at host. Speaker 1: Facilities and new fees for the Catalina parking lot, which the city has assumed operations in line with the city's policy on cost recovery. The proposed fee changes are set at full cost recovery. The full list of fee changes and deletions are available in attachment A to the Council letter. This concludes my staff report and department representatives are also here to answer any specific questions you may have on the proposed fee changes. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion. There's a motion. Okay. There's a motion and a second Councilman Bong go. Speaker 4: So I just wanted to add a potential. Speaker 0: Option to limit first. Is there any public comment on this hearing? Okay. See none. Councilman Mango. Speaker 4: So one of the things that we've talked about at length is accepting credit cards at Eldorado Park. This last Sunday was, again, a large scale event at Eldorado Park, which is Easter, where people want to enjoy it and we still aren't able to accept credit cards. So I'd like to add one additional fee item to the schedule in case there's some kind of cost recovery necessary to implement this, that it would be the current fee plus the cost recovery amount. So if our current rate to get into the park is $7 and it cost us a dollar 50 transaction fee, then I'd like there to be an added line item for credit card processing or whatever it needs to be to be $9 or $8. But I just want to give a general update and you can bring that back in a two from four. Speaker 0: And I just want to add, Mr. West, I've been talking about this for four years. Why can't we get a credit card reader at Eldorado Park? I take credit cards. I don't understand why we can't do that as part of this. So I know it's not part of the fee schedule, but she just brought it up and it just, you know, it's it's getting there. So, Councilman Bango, is that is that part of the fee schedule? What what Councilman Mangum mentioned? Speaker 8: We cannot add a fee tonight. We have to do a study. Speaker 11: And you have to come back to add a fee to the fee schedule tonight. Speaker 8: So if it's direction to. Speaker 4: We can't modify a fee. Speaker 8: You cannot increase the fee without your study. You can recommend or tell them to do that. You could eliminate a fee tonight. Speaker 2: You could. Could we lower a fee tonight? You can't raise a fee and. Speaker 4: They're eliminating fees. That's my favorite thing to do. So I'm going to just direct that. It comes back with the October fee schedule adjustment. I know that there's an independent park fee schedule study, blah, blah, blah. This has been going on for way too long. We have the ability to do this through labs. We have the ability to do it through some technology that's available in public works. I'd like to have it on board something, even if we use the current fees this summer because backing up the 605 Freeway to the Alamo is just not acceptable. Speaker 0: That's every weekend, by the way, Councilman Austin. Speaker 5: I second the motion and I like the idea of lowering fees. But this this fee schedule report is pretty voluminous and it would take some some serious time to do that. But the one one question I did have for for staff in terms of fees, can you speak to the hardships that that that, you know, our residents may face and how they're dealt with in terms of fee collections? Speaker 8: Councilor, let me take the first shot at that, then I'll get back to Grace. We've already implemented and we'll probably we probably owe you a two from for on that, especially in the homeless arena. Whenever we whether we tote a car, whether we've sited cars, and if paying those fees or getting their car back puts the onus of someone going into homelessness or losing their their vehicle or not making it to a job and losing their job and losing their income. We have a policy between Fleet and the city manager's office to waive those fees, at least for the first time, and get that vehicle right back as soon as we can. In addition to that, we're very in fact, we're going through a situation right now where Broadway opened just recently and we advertised it street sweeper in time again to get tickets. But a whole bunch of people get tickets and are complaining that should we have gotten should we have got a little bit more notice? So those are things that we're certainly looking at, those kinds of things that just pop up. But other than that. Grace, do you have anything? Speaker 1: I know. I'd just add that. Yet, depending on the fee, there. Speaker 3: Are various. Speaker 1: Programs that are set up, such as? Like the ambulance fees, there are waivers, programs that people can apply to, as well as the financing plans and things like that. So those are evaluated and looked at by department on a case by case basis. Speaker 5: I think it was a question I had and I appreciate the answer and appreciate that our staff in city is being compassionate and understanding, sensitive to the challenges that are that are our residents face. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Is Dennis done here? I know. I can recite is Karyn public comment? And Larry Goodhue for the comment.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution amending the Master Fee and Charges Schedule. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. And that concludes public comment. I'm going to item T. Three. Speaker 1: Communication from Council Member Your UNGA recommendation to receive and file a presentation in honor of the. Speaker 4: 25th anniversary of. Speaker 1: The Children's Day USA. Speaker 3: Festival. Speaker 0: Johnson. Ringo. Speaker 11: Thank you, Mayor. I think we could use a little levity at this point. It's been a long meeting. Well, I like to bring up summer hats. And if you can, I'd like to congratulate her on her 25 years of putting together the Children's Day. For 25 years, the Children's Day has provided a safe and positive environment for kids to grow and play. Children's Day reminds adults that our future generations rely on us to be good stewards of the earth and of nature. The goal of Children's Day is to do something wonderful, to make our world a better place. And the motto of Children's Day is Be community friendly summer. You have been the embodiment of that motto. This year's Children Day Festival will take place on Sunday, April 28th at the Eldorado Park, Downtown Duck Pond. The event will include multicultural shows, children's choirs, dancers, singers, drummers and lots of wonderful young folks. I hope to see you there. I am proud to have partnered with Summer on many children's day events and I look forward to working with her on in future events. Summer, thank you so much. For 25 years of putting Children's Day together and for everything you do in the community and I have a certificate of recognition here that I would like to to give to you and and congratulate you again. 25 years. Speaker 3: What? Well. Thank you. And and I want to thank all of you. Who were on or who were elected people. My goodness. You guys are great. It seems like it's getting better and better. I mean, even the stuff that's on television of your well shows wouldn't be the right word. But it's really interesting. And you guys work very hard and. I think we're all learning and we have such a great community. I know. I keep saying that. It's so true. Anyway. Oh, and the motto for Children's Day. I mean, you you got it, you know, is do something wonderful to make our world a better place. You'll know what your project is because you feel it in your heart. Oh, my gosh. You know, there are so many good things that are happening. And what is that new motto that's on the website for the city? What is it? It's like, let's all pledge. What? Please help me with that. How does that go? Let's make all the pledge to do take care of the environment. That's and we. Well, we got to do that anyway. And Rex Richardson. Oh, my goodness. The kickoff for Children's Day was at Shearer Park, and it was fabulous. Speaker 5: And right around the corner from my house. Speaker 3: Right. I mean, it was great. And I loved that idea about that, about the, you know, the poetry and everything. So let's just keep all those good ideas coming. Share them with one another. Encourage everyone to have projects that are in their heart. Tell one another. That's the custom. That's a custom. That's the thing that that is really worth supporting. And for generations to come, just think of all the good things that are showing up when everybody does that. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 3: Okay. You know, there's so many people who helped. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 10: We have certificates for that. Speaker 3: This is great fun. What's your last name? Thumb. Thumb Burg. Oh, my gosh. She's she's a she's going to get the Nobel Peace Prize almost for sure. And she is affecting children and young people all around the world. And we're talking about it at the thing that was at Cher Park. You know, we all talked about what everyone was doing. I mean, you know, all the good things that are happening and the promise. I mean, we all know about the promise. The Long Beach Unified School District, the best school district in the world as far as most of all of us are concerned. And look at these wonderful kids. Oh, my gosh. I mean, you know, they were on Democracy Now! Saying, let's get we got to get the green deal. Right. The big green deal all over the world they committed. The kids are really taken in. Speaker 5: And if you. Speaker 3: Want to serious, they care about their future. And we know that all of you do. Speaker 5: So thank you so much for this beautiful presentation and all you do. Councilmember Mongeau, did you want to say a couple words? Speaker 4: Just thankful for the opportunity to have this in our city. Thanks so much. Speaker 5: Yes. And I'll just add while you're taking a picture. Sure. Park is right in the middle, in the heart of the eighth District. And I could hear the festivities from my backyard as I was embroiled in a big project over the weekend. Summer, you've always been about love and the kids, and we appreciate you. And I have a story about Summer Hanson back in the day. Right. If you were in any of the night establishments in Long Beach, she was always the person bringing love because she would always bring nice red roses for you to buy for your loved one to to purchase. And I purchased many of them over the years. So thank you for that, for your for your great contributions to my love life in the past. Speaker 3: And to DH Andrews who when when he was first getting ready. Thank you. I first getting ready to be you know, to run for office. One of his ideas was to make a wonderful. You know, fathers are helping fathers to be better. We movement. Speaker 5: We look forward to 25 more. Speaker 3: He did so great. Speaker 5: Children's Day happening here in the city of Long Beach. Thank you very. Speaker 3: It's going to be up to the rest of you. Yes. Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 5: I know we have to move on. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 5: Thank you. So next up is item number 24. Speaker 2: We need a public comment. Speaker 5: Any public comment on Children's Day? I think we just had it. Speaker 10: I think so. All right. Members of Long Beach City Council, my name is Jim Oberst. I am with an organization being developed called the Creative The Climate Change Creative Committee of Children say we're made up of a series of of energy and issues of of renewable energy companies of we at your park, we formed a relationship with Miss Cherry of the Boy Scouts of America, which will be launched in 30 different schools of kids, basically helping to develop energy projects, renewable projects of various sizes from rooftops to geothermal projects. That will be that that'll be shown at Children's Day this year. Children will be given scholarship funds for participating in the program, but most importantly, they will be applying their knowledge that they're learning in schools to actually implementing these projects, which grades K through 12 to learn basic math and how that goes into sizing systems. English for persuasive arguments, music to celebrate the coming of the green economy. But most importantly, Sun Projects is a company that is licensed in about eight different states. They want to take this program as we are developing the pilot project in these 30 schools to be replicated within the scope of of some project. And as I have said in a previous statement, Greg Stewart, who is a local resident of Long Beach, who runs a company called Noble Therm but is a geothermal energy company. We are participating in a project in in restorations of different cities that were damaged and destroyed in fires in Northern California and turning and having them rise like phenixes to be completely green and sustainable. What we would love to be, what we would love to be able to do is engineer who developed the Stirling engine that is both doing the geothermal power as well as the water filtration cleanup at paradise that we're proposing in Paradise, California. We would love to be able to introduce that here as well and raise money for our scholarship initiative and our homeless housing programs. Thank you. You'll notice that actually in the flier that I gave you, which is right here. Speaker 5: Thank you for the reinforcement. Appreciate your comments. Any other public comment? Harry Nunn members, please cast your vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation in honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Children's Day USA Festival.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 5: Okay. Moving on to item number 24. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilmember Jago, Councilwoman Price. Speaker 3: Councilwoman Mongeau. Speaker 1: Recommendation to cancel the City Council meeting of August six, 2019 due to National Night. Speaker 2: Out. Speaker 5: Councilmember. You want to. Speaker 11: Seems like every year we never have an opportunity to join our neighbors out in National Night Out. So I think this time we will try to make it happen this time. And I hope that I could get the support of many of my colleagues. Speaker 5: Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 4: I would just like the city staff to take note that this is a big event in the city and that there's lots of neighborhood association and block events that we should be attending and perhaps some planning the 2020 calendar to take notice that we've been attempting to every single year make the same item to make sure that we can be out in the community with our residents. So I look forward to seeing the residents of the fifth District, but I also hope that we can plan better, that the council officers don't have to make this every year. Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to doing it as well. See no other council comment, any public comment on this? CNN. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to suspend Council rule contained in Long Beach Municipal Code Section 2.03.020 (B) relating to the meeting schedule of the City Council to cancel the meeting of August 6, 2019 due to National Night Out.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 5: Item number 30 Please. Speaker 1: Report from Human Resources Recommendation to adopt resolution amending the water salary resolution and adopt a resolution amending the city salary resolution citywide. Speaker 5: Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Can we get a brief staff report on this? Speaker 8: Dana Anderson. Speaker 12: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. The salary resolution creates certain offices in positions of employment in the city and fixes the amount of compensation by incorporating the city's personnel ordinance, civil service rules and regulations and applicable labor abuse. As a result of the completion of the media cover confer process with the Long Beach Supervisors Employees Association regarding the creation and changes to classifications, staff requests that the Council adopt the attached salary resolution amendments which reflect the following changes establish the salary range for the new Electrical and Instrumentation Supervisor classification in the Water Supply Resolution, which will provide direct oversight to the new Electrical and Instrumentation Technician Classification. Increase the salary range of the water utility supervisor one in the salary in the water salary resolution from range 582 640 and level two from range 622 660 to align the salary commensurate with adjustments authorized for subordinate job classifications in the water department. In addition, increase the salary range of the gas maintenance supervisor one from range 580 to 564 and level two from 6 to 622 630 in the city salary resolution also to align the salary commensurate with adjustments authorized for subordinate job classification in the Energy Resources Department. The City and Long Beach Supervisors Employees Association have reached a tentative agreement to the new classification and salary range adjustments and it is staff's request that Council adopt both the city and water salary resolution amendments. I am available to answer any questions you may have. Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you for that staff report or any questions from council here and not any public comment. Great. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution amending the Water Salary Resolution establishing the salary for the Electrical and Instrumentation Supervisor classification and adjusting the salary range for the Water Utility Supervisor I-II; and

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Speaker 2: Councilmember Schubert now and then. Speaker 1: Thank you. And there were also item 21, which was pulled from consent. So we'll do that one very briefly when I read that item and a quick. Speaker 2: Report from Long Beach Police Department recommendation to determine that the application serves the public convenience and necessity and receive and file the application of the Deuces for a premise to premise and person to person. Transfer of an ABC license at 2222 East Anaheim Street. Submit a public notice of protest to ABC and Direct City Manager to withdraw the protest if a cup is granted. District four. Speaker 1: Councilmember Superdome. Speaker 8: Thank you. I'd like to make the motion to withdraw the protest. We stand in full support of this establishment. Speaker 5: They have a great they are great operators, great community members. They have. Speaker 8: An establishment in the second district. Speaker 5: That I believe Councilwoman Pearce would support. So thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Vice managers. Okay. Councilman Pearce? Speaker 3: Yeah, I just wanted to. To lend my voice. Jim has been fantastic in the district. He's made every change possible to ensure that his establishment meets with the neighborhood. And so congratulations on having a wonderful business owner in your district. Speaker 0: Kim. Speaker 1: Any public comment on this item? Seeing none. Members, please go and cast your votes. Speaker 2: Motion carries. Speaker 1: Okay, great. And we have three items that have been that have all been cued up to be moved up there, the item on commissions, the the Latino economic profile and the play items. So those will all be heard first. The first item will be the non charter commission appointments, which should be which will go pretty quickly. Can you read an item, please?

ABC License

Recommendation to determine that the application serves the public convenience and necessity, and receive and file the application of Rice & Bean, Incorporated, dba The Deuce, for a premise to premise and person to person transfer of an Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) License, at 2222 East Anaheim Street, submit a Public Notice of Protest to ABC, and direct City Manager to withdraw the protest if a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) is granted. (District 4)

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