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Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions for Entertainment without Dancing to Long Beach Tiki, LLC, dba The Bamboo Club, at 3522-24 East Anaheim Street. (District 3)

LongBeachCC_05032022_22-0375

I think it's our only hearing tonight, and that's hearing 12, which is a Bamboo Club entertainment permit. So let the clerk read that item. Report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions for entertainment without dancing to the Bamboo Club District three. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and turn this. Over to. Our city staff. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. We'll have a presentation on this item from Mala Camerino, our business license analyst. If the clerk could administer the oath on this one. I think this needs an oath. If you can raise your right hand to 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. Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of city council. Before you tonight as an application for entertainment permit without dancing for Long Beach Tiki LLC, DBA, the Bamboo Club located at 3522 through 24 East Anaheim Street in the third Council District, operating as a restaurant slash spa. The business has a valid ABC line has valid ABC licenses as follows Type 47 on sale, general eating place, type 58 Caterer Permit and Type 77 event permit. These authorize the sale of beer, wine and distilled spirits for consumption at the licensed premises. Among other things, all of the appropriate departments, Health and Human Services, Development Services, Police and Financial Management have reviewed the application and provided their recommended conditions as contained in the hearing packet. The following conditions should be noted, such from section two of the additional conditions section. Condition one Entertainment activities shall be restricted to no later than 10 p.m.. Sunday through Thursday 11 p.m.. Fridays and Saturdays entertainment can begin at 12 p.m. every day. The business applied to requesting entertainment to be permitted from 11 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. And the Long Beach Police Department recommended the restricted conditions. Condition five to permit the permit has been requested to develop and maintain a plan to address neighborhood concerns related to the operation of the business. Business, for example, meetings and attending. Attending meetings and adding information on two newsletters. Condition eight The Speaker Volume in the patio area shall be kept at a low level so as not to disturb any other businesses or residents. If any noise or disturbance complaints can be attributed to the speaker volume in the patio area, the committee shall modify or remove existing existing speakers at the direction of the Chief of Police. Along with Tara moore, I, along with Tara mortensen, business service bureau manager, logged in virtually and Commander Lance from the Long Beach Police Department are available to answer questions that you may have. This concludes my staff report. Thank you. We're going to we do have some public comments before I turn this over to Councilman Price, one of your public comment first. Okay. So I'm Clark and we have two members of the public. Two members of the public are signed up to speak, Eric Verdasco, and said, I can faith you can line up at the podium. Eric Verdasco And so and I can say. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Members of the council. My name is Eric Produce CO and this is my business partner, Brett Gallo. We are the very proud owners and operators of the Bamboo Club at 3522 East Anaheim Street. We are here to answer any questions that you may have for us. Additionally, we would also, as was read on the record, would like to respectfully ask that one of our conditions be changed, and that's a condition related to 2 hours. As was mentioned, we we respectfully ask that we be allowed to provide entertainment until midnight, seven days a week. But we do want to clarify that that request is only for indoor entertainment. That is, with all the doors closed, all the windows closed so that we don't bother neighbors, you know, in ways that are detrimental to to our surroundings where we're. Collectively between three business partners. We have probably over 20 years of restaurant and bar operation experience, so we know how important it is to make sure that we're always aligned with the needs and of our neighbors, that we be respectful and mindful and address any issues there that that may come up immediately so that, you know, everyone's happy. We are here again. If you have any questions, we'd be happy to answer them. Thank you. Next speaker, please. It's the 1960s for president. I'm here in support of this entertainment license coming for the Bamboo Club. Speaking of respect, as a musician and creative myself, I think it's imperative in order for Long Beach to elevate and transcend our small town origin story into a major metropolitan city. We we have to comfortably come to an agreement and compromise with, you know, our residential spaces and our our emerging nightlife. And I think this is a great example of such as the previous gentleman just stated. I think the conditional agreement with respect to what the staff report says about the midnight, uh, time, time slot, I think that that should be raised to midnight and not 10 p.m. because just holistically speaking with respect to the Anaheim corridor there, there's already five other businesses operating in that space that are open later. So it wouldn't be too egregious of a thing to ask. Also, you know, just with respect to maintaining businesses in the area, uh, this is a, this is a restaurant as well as a, uh, an entertainment space. And so there's a lot of jobs and potential hours that could be increase with respect to a later hour and later timeline being instead of 10 p.m.. So just thinking about as residents, younger people are more and more, uh, operating in this and this part of the Anaheim corridor. I don't use the term zafira. I do say Anaheim Court or. I think that this would be a boon to the area as a whole, both on the tax element and respect to residents, because these types of businesses bring younger residents into the area not just to spend their disposable income, but also, most importantly, to live in, you know, potentially become greater, um, tax revenue. Uh, uh, I don't know, you got to take the money from this, but whatever that term is called at the moment, I can't think of. So I'm a I'm a fan. I've, I've operated for many years with respect to Mr. Jim Ritz and and others have been since he's had. And so and my father was a big fan of Liquid Lounge. And so, you know, I think that this is just a continuation of such it's good business so here in support. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Thank you. Let me turn this over to Councilman Price. Thank you. And thank you staff for your presentation. And I know you guys have worked really hard on this and we did put it over till tonight and we were going to do it earlier. So I really appreciate the presentation. I really appreciate it. So a couple of questions. What are the measures that we have in place to address some of the noise complaints from the patio? Good evening, Mayor, and members of City Council. My name is Tara mortensen and I'm the Business Services Bureau manager for the Police Department, have put in measures associated with the patio to ensure that there is discretion from the chief to be able to address any noise complaints that come in and to be able to take immediate action without having to return to council. We also have the the restricted hours also as an additional measure, but specifically from the patio, it's the chief of police discretion to be able to address the complaints and to be able to either remove the speakers or address other measures. Okay. So what could could we can we have a requirement that the speakers on the outside be pointed away from the residents and towards Anaheim St? Is that something that we can work with the business on? Yes, ma'am. Okay, perfect. I think that would go a long way. So I am supportive of this application. I read and considered the letters that we received in opposition. I've also read and considered the letters that we have received in support and I do support this application. I do not at this time feel comfortable accepting the modification that the business owner shared with us tonight at the podium to go until midnight, seven nights a week. What I would like to do is approve the application with the hours that have sufficed, recommending approval on and be open to revisiting this in a year and assessing whether there has been calls for service an increase in nuisance activity. Hopefully not anything of that nature. But it is my understanding that this is a business owner that is responsive, especially to neighborhood impacts given where they're located. We want to make sure that the Zafira business district continues to thrive and that they that they support the operations of the various businesses that are operating within that corridor. And I very much support that effort. But I do want to be very sensitive to neighborhood impacts, and I just want to let the business owners know and I know they're here, that, you know, nothing impacts people's quality of life more than the impacts of the surrounding neighborhood. So I know you guys are going to be good business partners to one another, but also to the community. And I think that's really important. And we want to make sure that we stay vigilant on that given given the potential quality of life impacts that could come from a business that has extended hours like this. So wishing them the best. And I would ask my colleagues to support the staff's recommendation tonight. Thank you. Councilman. Super now. I stand in support of the councilman's parameters as stated. Thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas. Just to just some clarification. So what we're voting on tonight is see what Councilmember Price said. And also we won't be modifying but actually reducing the hours, am I correct for the business? Is that what we're. Sorry. I was waiting to see if Tara was going to speak again. Oh, sorry. Yes. Uh, what we're modifying is the original application. So the item before you tonight is. Is exactly what you're going to have to go ahead and vote on, which is the hours that are provided and the conditions that are within the packet. And those are the hours that that were presented where. Sunday through Thursday, entertainment will end at 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday entertainment will end at 11 p.m.. And so that's what's been approved by the Long Beach Police Department. Okay. So we're not really changing that. It's the original application. No, the what the Long Beach Police Department has has recommended is reduced from the original application. And then this evening, the business owner has requested an additional change to the recommendation that's been provided to you tonight. And I believe Councilmember Price has said that she is not supporting that and won't be entering that additional item. Okay. I just you know, one is to be very fair, I know that I've had a, you know, a lot of, you know, upset residents in my district to really address a business that has been completely a nuisance in our business. I mean, in our district. And that the community feels very, very against that business. So I just wanted to ask that because we want to make sure that we're uplifting good business owners and those that are not such good business owners, that we don't let them, you know, continue doing their bad behavior. So I just wanted to make sure that we keep an eye on this and and that we are fair with everybody across the board. Thank you. Councilwoman Allen. I yes. I just want to say, I'm very familiar with your business. You guys are great operators. I would support absolutely support it going to midnight. It sounds like that my colleagues and it's not my district are 211. But I think this is a good compromise. Let's see how you guys do. And I'm sure you guys are going to do great and you can extend those hours indoors. So thank you for being a good business and our community. Appreciate you guys. Councilman Mongo. I go to the comments of my colleagues on the dais and excellent business owner, great partner. Thanks for being here and thanks for taking on this location. It takes a lot to be a business in today's environment. And we really appreciate you. Thank you very much, Richardson. Just want to take a moment. Just thank Eric and your team for continuing to just care and invest in our city. You have a great establishment and look forward. I wish you much success in the future and that you're you're able to continue to build, you know, support with the community because we want to see you be successful. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm going to I'm also just going to add, I think I think everyone has said really nice things about both of you and Bret Eric as business owners. And I just want to add also, I think you're you both are stellar business owners, not just at the Bamboo Club, which for those that don't know is really have become really one of the premier tiki bar and restaurant locations in the entire region. I know that you both have folks that are coming from pretty long distances in some cases to come visit and spend a week tonight, night with with all of you. You've done a phenomenal job at the space. And I want to congratulate both not not just on this business, but the other restaurants and bars that you have in Long Beach. You have chosen to invest in Long Beach and you've chosen to open up multiple locations in Long Beach. And I think that says a lot about your commitment to the city, which I know you both have immensely invested in the city in a variety of other ways. And so just thank you both for your your commitment. And I'm happy to see that you'll be acquiring this entertainment permit to expand the already great entertainment you're providing folks who are coming to your to your locations. I want to just I'm going to add one thing that I had learned recently in a conversation I had with both of you, that a lot of folks are now , you know, Eric Brown have been such responsible business owners that they purposely during the pandemic, when a lot of restaurants were opening up restrictions and filling the restaurants back up completely full, the two of them chose at their businesses to keep pretty significant distancing in place. And even when they were allowed to bring a lot of folks in into the bars area, they kept more of a restaurant floor plan, how to folks sit down, try to keep their customers and most importantly, I think their staff safe. I know you and I, both of you put a lot of thought into how you would operate in many and oftentimes at a loss. I mean, you could have filled your your bars and restaurants with a lot more people and you chose not to do so for the sake of your employees. I know that that's very appreciated by a lot of folks. So thank you both for all you do. And with that, I want to turn this back over to vote. So members, there is there is a motion and a second for the hearing. Please cast your votes. Motion is carried. Thank you. And next up, we have, I think was one member of the public for general public comment.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Table 41-1C of Chapter 21.41, relating to Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_03052019_19-0159

So Councilman, thank you for for helping guide this project. Please cast your votes. Councilman. The motion carries. Thank you. And I know we have a second hearing. That's a short one as well. So. Madam Clerk. Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record to conclude the public hearing and accept categorical exemptions and statutory exemption. Declared ordinances amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to alcoholic beverage manufacturing definitions and accessory dwelling units. Read the first time and lead over 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 amendment to the California Coastal Commission citywide. Mr. Modica presentation will be given by Linda Tatum and Christopher Koontz. Okay, actually I'm going to introduce Alexis again, who will do the honors of making this presentation. Good evening again. The item before you tonight consists of a handful of zone text amendments resulting from the California Coastal Commission's review of several ordinances adopted over the last couple of years and were submitted to the Coastal Commission as part of a local Coastal Program Amendment. The ordinances that were included were the Alcohol Beverage Manufacturing Ordinance Zone tax changes to reflect changes in the building code, as well as state water efficiency regulations and the accessory dwelling unit ordinance. The California Coastal Commission considered these changes at their October meeting of last year and certified the LCP amendments with changes in the following slides. I will briefly recap those changes and which must be adopted and recertified and resubmitted to the Coastal Commission for Certification. The first of these changes relates to the Alcohol Beverage Manufacturing Ordinance, which was reviewed in 2016 and adopted changes. The Coastal Commission's action on this item simply provides clarification for parking related to office areas that are equal to 25% of the gross floor area. In response to the triennial building code update and state water efficiency standards, a number of zoning changes were made to create consistency between zoning, building code and state law. The California Coastal Commission, in their review, made a number of modifications to clarify code and eliminate references to code sections outside of Title 21. In the case of the definition of rebuild and demolish and a unique definition for within the coastal zone was adopted here. Staff is recommending that a single definition of rebuild and remodel be used throughout the city. The purpose of this is to create clarity for developers, contractors and homeowners. In 2016, the state legislature made sweeping changes to address the state's housing crisis, which effectively reduced the city's abilities to regulate accessory dwelling units in an effort to tailor some local standards. An ordinance was adopted in December of 2017, providing minimum lot size, basic design standards and parking for 80 to use. At that time, the city council requested an update a year following the adoption of the ordinance, and then this slide briefly will provide a snapshot of where we are today. Since January of 2017, 146 building permits for 80 use have been issued. We have currently approximately 9982 planned trucks in various stages of review. The majority of those that have been permitted are resulting from conversions of existing structures, and we have seen the legalization of approximately 10% of unpermitted structures through these 80 permits. The Coastal Commission. Reviewed the accessory dwelling unit ordinance and made changes, specifically changing the minimum lot size to 4800 square feet to reflect the state law. In addition, they revised the parking standard so that parking is exempt. All Excuse me, so that once parking spaces is required, except when the location meets the exemption criteria prescribed in state law. The amendments made by the California Coastal Commission to the minimum size and parking standard for ADAS were made to be consistent with the state law for the purpose of creating parity of standards between lots where 80 use can be constructed. A modification mirroring the state's change is proposed throughout the city by staff. Having the same minimum lot size and parking standards will help to reduce uncertainty in the standards for architects, contractors and homeowners as they negotiate the code. With regards to the parking. State law prohibits cities from requiring parking when an ADU is in. Any of the following is any of five locations, including when it's within a half mile of a public transit. As the City Council may recall, nearly the entire city falls within this category. So parking would effectively be eliminated in this case. But it is. These changes are consistent with the state law, which is why the Coastal Commission made the action. Public noticing. Public notices were published in the Press Telegram on February 15th, and additional notices were sent to persons who had submitted written communication on the draft edu ordinance. No comments have been received to date in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act. These changes are all either categorically or statutorily statutorily exempt. Staff recommends that the City Council adopt the zoning code amendments as presented and direct staff to submit the changes to the California Post. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this item? Please come forward. You just want I'm going to close public to the public speaker's list for answer. Thank you. My name is Brian Wolf. I live at 5015 East Third Street in Long Beach. I'm speaking as a private citizen. Homeowner. Appreciate the opportunity to provide comment for the accessory dwelling unit ordinance amendment. Just briefly, ensuring quality and affordable housing in our diverse populations. Important goal for the city in the general plan. A well-crafted 80 U ordinance utilizing form based practices will contribute strongly to the school while maintaining neighborhood character. Further, the scale of it's kind of a grassroots level as opposed to larger affordable housing opportunities and encouraging individual owners occupants to invest in their communities. For me, I've been a proud homeowner in the Belmont Heights neighborhood for over 15 years. My wife and I love our neighborhood. It's zoned r one and along with a lot of area in the city and where we're moving into retirement, we very much want to be able to stay in the neighborhood and constructing a native view on our property will allow us to age in place, supplement our fixed income, and provide additional affordable housing in a great location. We really love it. Others, you know. You know, it's a great form of additional density for us, you know, able to provide housing for surviving elderly parents, students, mixed family, extended family accommodation. And, you know, we broadly have an aging demographics. So making those provisions for people to stay in their homes and downsize is really important. As a practicing architect here in the city, I've looked closely at the requirements and believe the current ordinance as well. Well-considered with a couple of following exceptions, I was very happy to see the amendment for reduced lot size to be broadly applied to the city beyond the coastal zone. So that was great to see. I would argue, you know, the established form based controls and what I mean by that height limits, setbacks, lot coverage, open space for area ratio and unit size range are fairly extensive in the ordinance and the lot size limitation I would argue, should be removed entirely because it's not necessary and discourages innovation. I definitely reverting to the 4800 square foot size recommended by staff for all areas in the city is a move in the right direction and I would support that strongly. Parking I I've a little district in agreement we really ought to keep the. Thank you some. Thank you so much, sir. Oh, time's up. Sorry about. That. Really? 3 minutes. I thought it was 2 minutes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Good. Could I have just 15 seconds? Sir, we have to keep the time. But if you want to conclude your thought, go ahead. I would just add the parking. We have a mobility plan strategy in the city. And and keeping the. The parking, as stated currently in the ordinance would be better. Thank you. Supportive to those strategies. Thank you very much, sir. Let me go ahead and go to Captain Richardson. Support. Councilor Pearce. I want to thank staff for their hard work on this. I support the recommendation, the changes that you guys have outlined in this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. So my residents were the ones who were big advocates for the 5000 square foot lot. And I appreciate that staff are looking for consistency across the city. Would you be able to remind us on what date we we adopted the initial. Requirements. When to say it was? I want to say it was in November of 2017. And have there been many individuals who are somewhere between 40 805,000 square feet where they were eliminated because of the ordinance, the way it was written with community input? So there have been a handful of cases. I don't remember any of them being in your district council member, but certainly we've received calls from folks living in council districts two, three and four that are in that situation. There's approximately 5000 impacted properties in that range, between 4850, 200. You see the number of properties again, I'm sorry, there's a lot of numbers and. There's approximately 5000 across the entire city. So if there is a 1% chance of an EDU being constructed in a ten year period, we're talking about, you know, in the 50 to 100 additional ideas. So I guess my concern is this ordinance hasn't even been in place for a year yet, and we're already coming back to the table with a note. Respectfully, that was 2017 that this ordinance of November 2017. And we we've seen fewer than anticipated 80 years constructed in that time. And Councilwoman, I would also. Indicate that the initial recommendation that we're coming to city council tonight was based upon the the feedback from the Coastal Commission. There. Their feedback for the coastal zone is one thing, but you're asking us to apply it to the whole city. That's correct. Because we are as as Alexis stated, the idea is. That. We would have two different standards in the city and in the interest of parity and lack of confusion. Staff's suggestion is that we think that it makes more sense to have one standard rather than a couple of different standards. Would. I'd be open to this ordinance if we could just maintain the original 5000 for the rest of the city. I just feel as though there was so much community input and residents in the fifth District felt so strongly of a number significantly higher than 5000 that to make such a change. On an item that really appeared to be around some other types of municipal changes, I think was just a little. I could have done a better job informing the community had I known and understood that this was the breadth of it. So, Councilmember Richardson, would you be open to a friendly to maintain the 5000 for the rest of the city? So I don't feel strongly one way or the other on this. I'll be clear, but I do want to hear from staff the intent of doing this with a streamline it in the middle consistent with other well with other codes. So can can we hear from the city attorney or whoever is working on this was the implication? I just want to add that for clarity, the number is actually 5200 square feet, not 5000. Right. So Alexis explained it very well. The Coastal Commission made this suggestion because they're interested in promoting a to use as a means in the coastal zone to have more people have the ability to be in that area. City wants to do it to keep it consistent citywide. You couldn't keep it. There's no legal requirement that you reduce it to 4800 citywide. But I think stats made clear that they feel that that's the better course. And so of those 50, how many units, how many parcels did you mention, Mr. Cook? There's approximately 5000 impacted parcels. And how many of those parcels are in District five? I don't have that information at my fingertips. I would be confident that it's a large share of those. I can name 1400 of them that were all built by SNF properties that are almost all on properties that are 5064 feet or 5000 to 5100 feet. So that is a huge impact of a particular group. I don't see that they're very aggressively looking to put it to you then, but I think that some outreach or some information to those neighborhoods I would have done a better job of had I recognized that that component of the recommendation was coming. And so I appreciate that we had ten days on this, but this is a huge implication in potential items. So it is a policy decision for the council to make. We did notify everyone that participated in the process the first time around on the ADA ordinance and whatever decision the council makes tonight. If you could just orally explain the basis of that decision. Every time we touch the ADA ordinance, we have to send it to the state, to HPD, and to the degree that we place restrictions on ADA use, those restrictions need to be based in sometimes some compelling citywide goal and not meant to deter the construction of needed housing. So it is a policy decision for the Council to make, and you can go either way. If you could just we'll have to have that discussion with our friends in Sacramento. So anything you can give us to help defend that decision, we appreciate that. I appreciate that. I would have to go back and watch the meeting. When you talk about informing anyone who participated the first time, does that include people who came to public comment or emailed in public comment to the city? If they had emailed, we have their emails. When folks come to the dais at a council meeting, we don't have speaker cards, so we don't necessarily have contact information for them. So it's the folks that we do have contact information for. So again, it sounds like we need a compelling reason. I'm comfortable making staff's recommendation. I didn't anticipate jumping into a policy discussion. If you want to sub me out, that's fine, but I think I'm going to stand on. My intent was to support the staff recommendations. Is there a a compelling reason why there's a timeliness to approving this tonight? No. No. Would we be open to continuing this item until. I'm open to that. Absolutely. I would be really more comfortable and I'm happy to reach out to the neighborhood associations because I really want to know and understand what their point was. They actually had asked me for a much higher number. We settled on 5200. But I would like to go back to that research and look at it and talk about it and maybe even have one. I mean. I think that's fair. So a month. 30 days would be great. Lay it over 30 days. So if we can hear that item in April, we do need to provide an update to the Coastal Commission within six months, which will be at the end of April. So if we continue with. The. First week of April would be. That. Any time during the month of April will be acceptable. Great. I'll leave that to the city manager. Thank you. Kay, there's a motion to extend that. Is that is that the council which is new change that. Okay. That's that's an that's an emotion. There's a motion and a second on that. We will take a vote when you do public comment again on that on that piece. Mr. Mays. No. Okay. So, members, please cast your votes on an extended. Thank you.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the hearing and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions on the application of Rice & Bean, Inc., dba 4th Street Vine, 2142 East 4th Street, for Entertainment Without Dancing by Patrons. (District 2)

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Item one report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions on the application of rice and beans located at 2142 East Fourth Street for entertainment with Dancing Without Dancing by patrons District two Moffat. Mayor. Members of the council, Jason McDonald will do the staff report. Mayor Councilmembers Chase McDonald for the Business License Division. This is the receiving the supporting documentation for the entertainment permit with conditions on the application of race and being TBA fourth street fine two one for two East Fourth Street for entertainment without dancing by patrons in District two. We're here to answer any questions. Councilmember Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to actually move to postpone the hearing until July one due to receipt of letters from residents adjacent to the operator expressing concerns with several noise related issues. I did not get these letters until just shortly before our study session started, so I'd like to have time to vet that and review their concerns and consider how best to address them. So that's a motion to move to July one. Thank you. All right. We have a motion move. July one, any member of the public would just counsel item on hearing, item number one say none of question's members. Cast your votes. Motion carries seven zero. Okay. Thank you. That's the only hearing we had. And by the way, I mistakenly didn't call for an oath, so we have to do that next time. We're not going to move to public comment or to members of the public which address council with.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to evidence (i) a loan by the City of Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific Corporation of up to $2,154,000, from the Tidelands Operating Fund Group, (ii) the acceptance of the prepayment of an existing 2017 loan by the City to the Aquarium, and (iii) the prefunding of the Challenge Grant by the City to the Aquarium; and, approving related documents. (District 2)

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Okay. Thank you. That concludes the first item on the agenda. So an and an important one. So thank you all. Let's we're going to take a couple of items now. The next one's going to be item 27. Report from financial management. Recommendation to execute all documents necessary to evidence a loan by the City of Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific Corporation of up to 2,154,000 from the Tidelands Operating Fund Group District two. Councilmember Pearce. This is a staff report item. Okay. You cued up. So let me let me turn to staff first. Yeah, I just motioned. Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Modica. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, yeah, we would like to give a short staff report from our finance director, John GROSS. You know, the aquarium, which is a city asset, is also not been immune to COVID 19. They've had some significant loss of revenue, and they've come up with a creative solution to be able to continue to work on their on their issues. So I will turn that over to John GROSS, who will give the report. Thank you very much. The as the city manager indicated, the aquarium has been impacted by the COVID 19 and it's been closed. And to help ensure that the aquarium successfully weathers the pandemic, staff and the aquarium have and do recommend approval of three transactions that are for your consideration tonight. The first one pre pays the balance of the challenge grant that council had put forth a few years ago for 15 million and has 6.2 million loans yet to be paid to the aquarium that would be paid immediately in fy20. At the same time, the aquarium would prepay their loan that we made to them for 11 million. So we would pay them the balance of the challenge grant for 6.2. They would give us 11.1. The net transaction is that we would have 4.9 million in cash from the aquarium. Now that money will be needed in the future as part of the funding to pay the debt service on the city's 2017 bonds that would otherwise have been paid through the aquarium loan payments. So these transactions excuse me 1/2. I think we've got an open mic on somebody. If everybody can meet their phones, please. Thank you. The net effect of these transactions is to impact the Titan's cash flow and the appropriation needs, but otherwise have little financial impact. The aquarium, on the other hand, wants these two transactions to give them financial flexibility so that they can use the challenge grant for operating purposes if they need to do so. The third and last transaction is for a potential tidelands loan to the aquarium in case they need to need a loan to pay the 2.154 million that is due to us in October as rent. The aquarium hopes that they'll have enough customers to make that payment, but if not, and I suspect they won't, the aquarium will borrow some amount of money between 012.15 4 million that they need from Tidelands, and they will use that to. Pay the rent. To the city. It's neither in the aquarium's interest nor the city's interest to have the aquarium default on that rent. So that's why this proposal is being recommended. Either way, a loan for an aquarium default. The Tidelands Fund would be paying the same amount of money. Hopefully there is not a need for a loan and hopefully if there is a loan it will be repaid soon. However, there is no assurance that the aquarium will be financially sound enough to repay that loan. I do want to note that in your packet, the promissory note schedule, debt service schedule should have been noted as Exhibit A. It's out of order and it was marked as Attachment A, but it is the correct schedule. We recommend this transaction because it's relatively neutral to the city and it helps give the aquarium a major financial, a major city asset, the financial flexibility to weather the crisis. And that's the end of our report. And we stand available for any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. GROSS. Councilman Pierce, you have a motion? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I want to say that I support this motion. I know that I talked to Tom about it. This was one of the first things that I did on council. So I have been wondering how the how the aquarium was doing. I believe that, Tom, you said that this would actually give us more cash on hand up front. Is that correct? Correct with the where we front them the loan they pay back the other loan. It does present us cash on hand upfront, provided everything goes according to the aquarium's plan. All right. Thank you. And I know none of us are fortune tellers, but I think that this is the right move the aquarium for the city. And I'm glad that we're in a position to make sure that they don't default on that on that grant. So I hope that my colleagues will support this item. Thank you. I'm sorry. The councilman, Councilmember Pearce. That's a motion. I said councilmembers and De Vos is second at the motion customers and they have to have any additional comments. I fully support this motion. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayer. You know, I support this motion in the sense that it feels like we don't have a whole lot of other options, but we have thus far leverage our pilots operating budget. To support efforts of the Queen Mary and now the aquarium. And I know that perhaps there will be an ask at some point in the future for the convention center, which which are all city assets that we support. And we want to continue to support with the understanding that when we leverage those funds, there's less of those funds available for the districts that rely upon those funds to be able to have operations on a regular basis to be able to continue those operations without disruption. So to the extent that we're trying to support operations happening throughout the city and we're relying upon private funds to help some of those operations continue so that we don't have to tap into the general funds. The Titans operating funds are critical, but I don't really feel that we have much of a choice on this. I'd like to hear from John GROSS. So do you feel like we have much of a choice in regards to this item? Councilwoman Price I think there's always a choice and that's why it's before you. But it is my recommendation and I think you expressed it pretty well, that in order to support the aquarium and to minimize any potential damage, I think this is the best choice we have. There could be some pain here. And you are correct that the Tidelands is ultimately supporting this. And but I don't see a better choice at this point and hopefully it will all work out. I think this best positions us to have it work out. It may not. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate the honesty and you know that I very much appreciate when staff give us an honest opinion, even without sugarcoating what the realities might be. Because I think that when we think about some of the activities that we have along the coast that are part of the city's fabric, if we don't have Tidelands money to fund those, then we have to start looking at the general fund. So hopefully that doesn't happen. But whether it's District two or District three, there's a lot of relief that comes to the general fund by virtue of us using Tidelands dollars to upgrade bathrooms, run activities, support ongoing operations, including public safety lifeguards and police . And to the extent that we don't have money to support, you know, our critical functions in the tidelands, including police and fire. And lifeguards. I think we'd have to tap into the general fund, so hopefully that doesn't happen. But I know that our police officers and our lifeguards and our firefighters who service the typhoons area look forward to having an operating budget that supports their efforts as well. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Next up is Councilman Ringo. Just totally, completely in support of this item. Okay. I don't see anyone else cued up. Why don't we go ahead and do a roll call vote? There's a. And it's a. Council district. What can you do? I. District two. I. District three. I district for. I. District five. II. District six. I. District seven. District eight. Hi. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Motion carries on item 26. Let me go through a couple other of these that are shorter ones. And then I know we have another another item as it relates to cannabis that there's going to be some discussion on. So let me let me get into some of these other items or more quicker. Item 26. Madam Clerk.

AS AMENDED, a bill for an ordinance amending Article V of Chapter 2 of the Revised Municipal Code pertaining to financial disclosure. Revises the Denver Revised Municipal Code regarding financial disclosure including eliminating the requirement that candidates for municipal office make financial disclosures, modifying the definition of “gift”, “immediate family” and “officer”, modifying the date for submitting the annual financial disclosure statement for city officers, requiring semi-annual gift disclosure reports by officers and annual gift disclosure reports by employees, modifying reportable gifts and increasing the reporting threshold from $25 to $50; making the financial and gift reports of officers publicly available online and the gift reports of employees publicly available on request, and modifying the remedies for violations of the ordinance. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 11-29-16. Amended 1-3-17 to remove the minimum $50 threshold for reporting gifts in the covered categories, resulting in the reporting of all gifts received in the designat

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Did. Okay, great. Thank you. I just letting the public know. Great. All right, Councilwoman, can you please put. Actually, you don't have to put that on floor. We're going to go straight to your your bail councilwoman can each, which is 919. Would you like to make a comment first or would you like to. Thank you, Mr. President. I will be offering an amendment on this bill to which pertains to financial disclosure to first remove the minimum $50 threshold for reporting gifts in the covered categories, resulting in the reporting of all gifts received in the designated categories, regardless of value. And the amendment also clarifies, number two, that the new rules for gift reporting will not apply to gifts already received in 2016, but which won't be reported until our 2017 report. Rather, the new rules will take effect upon passage in 2017 and will be applicable for all gifts received from this time forward, but not retroactively to prior years that have already concluded. The first time gifts will be reported under the new rules will be in the reports due in July of 2017 for officers and in January of 2018 for employees. Great. Councilwoman, can you please put the bill on the floor? Yes, I move that council bill 19 place be placed upon final consideration and do pass. All right. It has been moved and seconded. Counsel, can each your motion to amend. Thank you. I move that council bill 919 be amended in the following particulars on page one, delete lines 37 and 38, and on page two, delete lines one through five, striking in its entirety the definition of gift and remembering subsections as appropriate on page two Line 28. After the word required, ADD officers shall file their annual financial report for calendar year 2016, no later than January 31st, 2017. Under the reporting requirements in effect during 2016, beginning in 2018, comma on page two, line 35 after the word required. Add the following beginning in 2018. Comma online to line I'm sorry on page two, lines 39 and 40. Delete the words in excess of $50 comma, either individually or in the aggregate period. And then on page two, line 40, delete the word only on page four, line 24, add the following before the first word. Every employee shall file their annual gift report for gifts received in calendar year 2016, no later than January 31st, 2017. Under the reporting requirements in effect during 2016, beginning in 2018, comma on page four, lines 27 and 28. Delete the words in excess of $50, either individually or in the aggregate. All right. It has been moved. I'm looking for a second. All right. It has been moved. And second, it comments from members of council. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to take the simplest change first, which is just making sure that we aren't trying to re collect data that has already occurred in 2016 under new rules that we didn't know were coming or in effect, when you create a new rule, it's generally easiest to apply it going forward. So that's what this the timing changes involve. The other change regarding the $50 threshold, this has been a really long conversation in committee for those who've been following the committee conversation. And I want to commend, first of all, Claire Johnson and her staff and the city attorney's office for really bringing this issue to the council and really causing us to have this conversation. We thought that it was most important to report to the public things that were coming from folks who may have an interest in the city. And so we did that narrowing. We also thought, oh, you know, we have these other, you know, types of categories. And so we had a discussion about raising the threshold to 50 to keep up with the cost of living having changed, not really realizing that with the new reporting, it's very difficult to talk about value in the aggregate when you have two reporting periods in the year. So is it the aggregate within one six month period? Is it the aggregate within the two six month periods? Even though they cross different reports, it would be very difficult for the public to monitor whether or not we were keeping up now that we're going to do multiple reports each year. So, you know, our city attorney made the point, you know, if you're going to limit the gifts that be accepted, it's impossible to monitor whether you're exceeding the limit or not if you are not reporting all of the gifts. So that was the simple kind of logic behind just eliminating the $50 threshold. Many of us, you know, receive, you know, gifts of small value that we'd struggle to value anyway. We don't know the value of the flowers that show up or the, you know, the tickets to to the zoo lights that may show up. And so rather than, you know, trying to guess, is it below or above $25 or $50 in this case, you just report them all. So one of the things I wanted to clarify for both the public and my colleagues is that the amendments that I'm suggesting for tonight are really necessary for the bill in front of us . And I think to make the law that is in place clearer. Should Councilman Flynn bring forward a bill later? We have drafted these amendments to be consistent with his bill, but they are necessary. Even if his bill doesn't come forward or doesn't pass, they really are for the bills before us. But we did try to anticipate and make as much consistency as possible. With that, I'm happy to take questions, but I hope that my colleagues will approve these amendments tonight for a simpler, clearer, more transparent reporting process going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you. You know, I've I have appreciated very much all the discussion we've had in committee, and it's very serendipitous and very fitting that we are doing this on this day. The City Council of Denver is strengthening its ethics rules, ethics rules and its transparency. Right as some members of the U.S. Congress were trying to make their is less transparent and less strong. And so I couldn't think of a better night to bring one of, I think, several bills that Councilman Flynn has worked on and Councilwoman Kennish to bring it on this night to show that it's just another example of cities leading the way in many policy decisions and in many innovations. And I am very proud of what we are doing, although I know I argued a lot in committee about various detail things. I am very proud that we are strengthening our ethics rules and strengthening the transparency of those and appreciate the work that my colleagues have done on this. And I'll be voting for this tonight. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to amplify just briefly. Councilwoman finishes remarks. When the committee adopted the initial amendments to the clerk's disclosure bill, I think it inadvertently had created less transparency by raising the threshold to $50 and then also narrowing the field of people for whom we would report going to lunch, etc.. If, you know, heaven forbid my church choir would ever give me a $50 gift certificate to a restaurant for my birthday, I would under the old rules, I would have to report that. But the public's not really interested in that. They're interested in the lobbyist lunch or the contractor lunch. And so I think the Councilwoman Canisius amendment rightly removes any threshold. The threshold is now zero. So that means every time. And every six months the public will get to see online our financial disclosures. So I think this amendment is a necessary step to to clean up some of the the some of the opaqueness that may have inadvertently been put into this bill in committee. So I urge every one of my colleagues to vote yes and support this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flint. Councilman, can you back up? Yes, thank you, Mr. President. My apologies for chiming in a second time. First, I just want to thank all the members of the committee, enormous amounts of time spent thinking about these topics. And secondly, before we vote to make sure folks understand that because this amendment does affect the title of the bill, it's going to require republishing afterwards. I just want to make sure folks knew that before we voted that that will be the result and we will then have this bill would be back for final reading next week. So I just wanted that to be on the record. Thank you. All right. Amendment is on the floor. 919. Madam Secretary, roll call. Can each. I. Lopez I. Knew Ortega. Sussman Black eye. Clark All right. Espinosa Hi. Flynn Hi. Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman. Hi, Mr. President. I please close voting, announce the results. 3913 Eyes Council Bill 919 has been amended. Councilman can each. We will need a motion in order to order it published as amended. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council Bill 919 be published as amended. All right. It has been moved in second to. Madam Secretary, roll call. Sorry. When? Moment. Can each I. Lopez I knew. Ortega Assessment. Black eye. Clark. All right. Espinosa. I. Flynn I. Gilmore, i. Herndon Cashman, I. Mr. President. I. Please close voting in as results. 13 Ice. 13 Eyes Council Bill 919 has been ordered. Published as amended. As amended. All right, Madam Secretary, this will come back January 9th, correct? Yes, that's a consideration. Okay. This concludes the items that need to be called out. We will now move to the block votes. All other bills for introduction will be published. Council members, please remember, this is your last. This is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call it an item for a separate vote. Someone can each where you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills for final consideration on final passage on the floor, please. Yes, Mr. President. These are all series of 2016 still. So I have 1291, 1292, 13, 11, 13, 13, 13, 14, 12, 68, 1271, 1272 1304 1305 1308 953 1132 1206 1208 1210 1267 1275 1307 920 1172 1258. All right. Oh. Well, I couldn't see which I'm sorry my screen didn't distinguish. Which are for a final consideration. Which for adoption. I'm sorry. That's okay. That's okay. You're supposed to read them all. Okay. All right. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, Roll Call Black Eye. Clare Espinosa, i. Flynn, I. Gilmore, Herndon. Catherine I. Carnage, I. Lopez I. Knew Ortega. I. Susman Mr. President. I just close the voting and announce the results. 13 813 As the resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. So there are no public hearings and there are no objections from members of Council. We will not take a recess on Monday, January nine, 2017. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 1071, adopting a new Article 17 of Chapter 53, the Revised Municipal Code concerning property taxes dedicated for the purpose of purchasing services for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Recommendation to declare ordinance granting to Southern California Gas Company, a corporation, the right, privilege and franchise upon terms and conditions herein set forth to lay and use pipes and appurtenances for transmitting and distributing gas for the purposes as specified hereinafter under, along, across or upon certain public streets, ways, alleys and places, as the same now or may hereafter exist, within the City of Long Beach, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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The second hearing for the evening hearing number two, or I think it was hearing your number. One report from Energy Resources recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record to conclude the public hearing regarding the natural gas franchise with SoCal Gas. Declare an ordinance granting a limited natural gas franchise to SoCal Gas to transmit and distribute natural gas within the city of Long Beach. Read the first time and lead over the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. I think, you know, I can have everyone in the audience. Please, we're still conducting the meeting. Just please. If we can have the conversations outside, that would be great. Thank you so much, Mr. West. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The staff report will be given by Bob Dow, our director of Gas or of energy resources. Yes. Good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor and Council Members. On June 12th, 2018, the City Council received supporting documentation into the record, concluded the public hearing regarding the natural gas franchise with Southern California Gas Company or SoCal Gas, and declared the first reading of the ordinance granting a limited natural gas franchise to SoCal Gas to transmit and distribute natural gas within the city of Long Beach. The second reading. The audience was laid over to October 9th, 2018 to allow for CPU sea approval of an additional 1% surcharge of the imputed value of transport gas volumes delivered to the SoCal utility customers under this franchise agreement. CPAC approval was still pending on October 9th. Therefore, the final reading of the ordinance was late over to tonight's council meeting. CPC approval for the additional 1% surcharge was approved on November six, 2018 and became effective January 1st, 2019. And staff has requested the adoption of a second ordinance reading this evening. This concludes my report and I'm available to answer any questions that you may have. Okay. I think I think that we're we can continue chatting but we've we've lost quorum so. Okay. So let's get so we've concluded that let's go into the public comment on this item. Or we can't continue can't. Continue until we. Have a quorum in laws. I was hoping we can interrupt. Okay, we're back. Any public comment on this item? None. Public comment. Close. Actually. Hold on a second. Any. Can I get a second on this motion, Councilman Pierce? Anything now, Councilman Austin. Then with that, we're going to continue to do a roll call vote. Councilmember Pierce Councilwoman Price, Councilmember Supernova. Hi. Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilman Austin. Councilmember Richardson. The emotion carries. We're going to move on to public comment. Mr. Goodhew. And then I have Carole Peterson and Christine Minnelli, and then I have two others. We'll go as we as we go. Mr. Goodhew, please.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute a contract and all necessary amendments, with Southern California Edison, to participate in the Charge Ready Program, which will provide the electric infrastructure required to install 90 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and up to an additional 210 for a total of 300, if the Charge Ready Program is expanded and the City is awarded additional incentives; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all required documents and easements pursuant to the requirements of the Charge Ready Program with the right to quit claim; Adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to execute a contract, and all necessary amendments, with ChargePoint, of Campbell, CA, to provide, install, and maintain up to 300 (EV) charging stations, on the same terms and conditions afforded to the City of Santa Monica, CA, in an amount not to exceed $4,200,000; Increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund (CP) in the Public Works Department (PW) by $2,622,220, offset by a $622,220 transfer of Mobile Source Air Pollutio

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Next remove item 24, please excuse me. Report from Public Works, Energy Resources and my recommendation to authorize a city manager to execute a contract with Southern California Edison to participate in the Charge Ready Program. Authorize the city manager to execute all required documents and easements pursuant to the Charge Ready Program and adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Chargepoint for 300 electric vehicle charging stations in an amount not to exceed 4,000,200. Citywide staff reporting. Now we have Craig back to answer your questions. Craig, can you do a quick staff report? And we have Southern California Edison representative here as well. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Councilmembers. I did want to highlight this item for you this evening. I know it's. Late, but just real quickly. This item will allow for the installation of 300 EV charging units providing greater public access and supporting. Expansion of the city's electric. Vehicle fleet. We'll continue the partnership that we. Have with Edison to implement. Important. Projects that align with the city's sustainable. Efforts, including LED streetlight conversion, battery, store storage and this charge ready program. If you recall, last year Council approved us moving forward the Charger Ready program that installed about 13 electric vehicle chargers in our downtown garage. See, it's been a great success. We've seen over 3800 different charging instances at that location and we anticipate we'll see even more at the locations that would be installed under this program. And I want to remind you that it helps for a cleaner city by reducing greenhouse gas. Emissions. And concludes our staff report. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilman Ayariga. I'm going to public. Thank you, sir. Good evening. And I'll make it quick and sweet. My name is David Hannam and I work for Southern California Edison. I'm a senior advisor for key accounts. I work with other municipalities, but specifically with the city of Long Beach, our Working Energy Leadership Partnership. I lead that effort for Southern California Edison and I lead the effort for the Charge Ready Program. You guys been part of a pilot? The power has been successful. You guys have implemented just one of the first applications to participate and be implemented. Craig mentioned that already, but we have additional funding coming in from the CPSC, additional authorized funding. It's a proposed decision has been approved to extend the pilot until we get our actual formal program. When we get our formal program, which will kind of call the charge ready to program. We're looking at we're looking to install 48,000 charging units across our service territory. So by you by the city taking advantage of this. You guys are definitely setting a tone leading and leading the other municipalities that we work with in the area. But you guys are leading the way and helping the communities adopt zero emission electric vehicles. And we commend you on this effort and hope that you vote in the affirmative. Thank you. Thank you very much. So just real quick, I saw the news this morning that our our president is looking at incentivizing electrical users. So I think we're going to be out there, going to be some challenges ahead. Fine. And you want response from that or just. You want to take it? I was watching CNN this morning and there was a marker set in there that President Trump is looking to reduce or remove the incentives for electric vehicles. I think he is threatening and I believe he's threatening certain manufacturers and some of the incentives that are happening there. But there's so many other manufacturers are coming along, we're going to see a massive change in the future. California is definitely leading the way. The PUC has directed the utilities, not only Southern California Edison, but PGA, to move forward in transportation electrification to try to enable these efforts. The model that we have that we're working with our customers is this charge ready model where we do a lot of the work and cover the cost for the upfront installation of these units. And then the vehicles and the consumers, the vehicles buy hopefully will still see some tax credits. We also have other incentives that are through our utility to to offset the upfront costs for the vehicles, for the consumers. They can all be found at etsy.com. But the intent is here is that, you know, California is definitely leading the way. And the only way for California that we feel California to meet its emission reductions goals is to put about 7 million vehicles, electric vehicles on the road by 2030. And we're all for it and we're pushing however we can to get that done. So even though the federal level might see a little bit of hold up, I still think the states really pushing forward and we're going to be there to help out. And like I said before, you guys are definitely leading the way. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Council members. Committee vote. Please call for the vote. Councilmember Pierce. Councilwoman Pryce? Yes. Councilmember Supernova. Hi. Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilmember Younger Councilman Austin. Hi. Councilmember Richardson.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 3275 Denargo Street and 3315 Denargo Street in Five Points. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 3275 & 3315 Denargo Street from I-B, UO-2 to C-MX-12, DO-7 (industrial to mixed-use) in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-4-20.

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Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. First up, council member say advocate, will you please put Council Bill 105 on the floor? I move that council bill 20 dash 105 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded the required public hearing for Council Bill 20 dash 0105 is open. May we have the staff reports? Good evening, Captain Brandon Shaver, senior city planner with Community Planning and Development, presenting an official Map Amendment application for 32, 75 and 3315. Donato St going from IBP Wo two to CMC's 12 DEO seven. The subject property is located in Council District nine in the Five Points neighborhood. Zooming in a little bit closer to the site is approximately 3.82 acres currently used for mini storage and warehousing. The proposal here is to rezone TMX 1207 to enable mixed use development. Current zoning on the subject property is, I believe of two which is general industrial with the billboard use overlay. The zoning can also be found west and south of the subject property to the east. Current zoning is a02, which is light industrial with the billboard use overlay and AMI 30 with waivers and conditions. Relevant waivers limit maximum height and allow for a zero foot setback. Pdg 12 is directly north of the subject property and was approved in early 2015. This beauty is based on the C-Max 12 zone district with altered building form standards that anticipate future public open space abutting the South Platte River and the realignment of the Argo Street. Current land uses on the site include commercial retail in the form of mini storage and industrial warehouses. Vacant land uses exist to the north and west, with more industrial uses to the south and multi-unit residential to the east. These photos give you a sense of the building form and scale and the immediate area with the subject properties shown on the top left. This comparison table shows the design standard differences between the existing versus proposed zone districts. The proposed zone district. Again, this IMX 1207 introduces the shopfront and townhouse building forms which allow for a maximum height of 150 feet and includes more stringent build to transparency and ground floor activation requirements. With the river north design overlay. Greater detail of these standards can be found in the staff report. Concurrent with the rezoning, the applicant is also executing a voluntary, affordable housing agreement that will that has been signed and recorded prior to the city council public hearing. This agreement would apply to the entirety of the site, and general terms include a commitment to construct at least 10% of total units affordable to residents earning 80% or less of area median income. A minimum of 25% of these units would have at least two bedrooms. The income restricted units would remain affordable at this level for a minimum period of 99 years. Speaking to the process. Informational notice of the application was sent in mid-September. The applicant then made revisions and resubmitted in early December. Planning Board voted unanimously to move this application forward, and today two letters of support have been received from the nearby registered neighborhood organizations. Now moving to the criteria there for plans that impact the subject property beginning with current plan 2040. This proposed rezoning is consistent with many strategies in the plan which are organized by vision element. This rezoning is consistent, consistent with equitable, affordable and inclusive goals and strategies, as it would create a greater mix of housing options at different price points. Similarly, the proposed rezoning would allow for a broader variety of uses, including housing, retail services and employment. While the D7 overlay would require enhanced building form standards at an intensity consistent with the desire for an urban, walkable and mixed use community, which fits into many of the strategies and goals in the strong and authentic neighborhoods. Vision Element. Therefore, staff finds this request to be consistent with Plan 2040. If you could hold on just a second, Zach. It looks like you're making a move to help us fix the view here. Is that possible? There we go. Thank you very much. Go ahead. But moving to Blueprint Denver, this property is located in the urban center neighborhood context. This context has a high mix of users with good street activity, activation and connectivity and buildings are usually multistory with a high degree of lot coverage. This is in a high residential area and these areas we find commercial uses to be prevalent. Buildings are generally the highest, the tallest of residential places in this context. And the future street types in this area also denote the appropriate, appropriate appropriateness of the CM sub zoning, as Argo Street is a mixed use collector and Park Avenue in Berkeley, Brighton Boulevard or nearby and serve as mixed use arterials. This fits into the growth area strategy and blueprint Denver as part of the high and high medium residential areas and D and been downtown in urban center context where we expect to find 15% of new housing and 5% of new employment growth by 2040. And the River North Plan in 2003. The subject site is recommended as residential mixed use or commercial mixed use zoning or a combination of both. The vision is to create a compact, mixed use and pedestrian friendly environment. And furthermore, the goal in the plan is to ensure the urban design reinforces the pedestrian oriented and transit supportive character of the area. Therefore, the requested zoning is consistent with the River North Plan moving to housing inclusive Denver while not officially adopted by council, this does provide guidance and strategies to create and preserve strong and opportunity rich neighborhoods with diverse housing options. Kroger's and this plan include creating affordable housing in vulnerable areas and opportunities in areas of opportunity. A recommendation of particular importance is to promote development of new, affordable, mixed income and mixed use rental housing. And the executed housing agreement fits with this plan. Moving to the next two criteria, the proposed rezoning is consistent as it would implement the adopted plans and facilitate increased housing density near services and amenities while fostering the creation of a walkable, mixed use and urban neighborhood within close walking distance to downtown. This application as to justifying circumstances, change or changing conditions and the river north area, generally speaking, and the application of supplemental zoning regulations with the design overlay. Seven Lastly, the proposed rezoning is consistent with the neighborhood context, which is urban center and the zone district purpose and intent statements. With that, CPD recommends approval based on finding all review criteria have been met. Thank you very much. Tonight, Council has not received any written comments on Council Bill 105. And if I could ask you, we're going to have we do have one public speaker. So maybe if you can give a little bit of space there, even in the second row. There you go. Thanks. So our one speaker this evening is Jesse Pearce. Good evening to members of council, those at home and those that are president. My name is just Allyson Paris and I ran for city council at-large last year, got almost 15,000 votes with no money. And I'll be running again to be your next mayor in 2023. And the slogan still stands just for the poor people have a profit and I am represent for Denver homeless out loud, black socks, the Movement for Self-defense, Positive Action, Commitment for Social Change as well as the Unity Party of Colorado at Mile High knows where to begin with this. It meets all your criteria, so there's nothing I can say that's going to change this vote. It's obvious in appearance you have dotted all your I's and cross all your teeth. My question is, where do you get off thinking 25%? Am I level or 80% and my level is affordable in reference to the 2020 2040 plan. Comprehensive plan is not affordable. Affordable for who? This whole area has been rapidly gentrified. It has become a yuppie oasis. It is sickening to my stomach to know that I have moved all kinds of people that do not look like resemble me in any shape, form or fashion into this area. It is not affordable and you are a steady person, are unhoused house neighbors out of this area. So of course I'm going to vote no on this and I ask that the council have some sense of a conscience vote no as well. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers on this item. Are there any questions from members of council? Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to ask the staff person from CPD to come back up, please. Can you tell me if the applicant was given the information and report on the railroad work that CPD committed was going to be part of the zoning process? It's supposed to be part of the design review and development review. When we have projects that are going in adjacent to rail. Yes, the applicant is aware of those processes. They were usually informed at the Pre-Application process and I think it is a developer that is familiar with the area and familiar with those processes as well. So the zero setback applies even abutting the railroad. Is that correct? Is that a year setback? I believe the. First spoke to the setbacks being zero setback. And I'm just asking, is that for the entire property? Does that also apply to the adjacency to the railroad for property? All I have on the table is the primary straight setback as 0 to 10 feet. I'm not looking at the maps and I've scrolled through all of them. It looks like the prob the project can build right right adjacent to the tracks. Is that your understanding? That is my understanding. I can double check on those numbers back to you. So this is very concerning to me because as we have tried to pull data from CPD on, I mean, I could say this from my comments, but we're just not seeing that any of this is being adhered to by the developers. I'm not sure our city agencies are taking this as serious. I've had conversations with where. We do have a few more questions. Do you want to add if you have anything else? You know, I get to question and then we'll get to you in comments. That's fine. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Brandon, if you know, maybe, maybe you don't have the whole development agreement down, but the affordable housing portion of it, 10%, a minimum of 10%. All of them had 80% or less. Question first, is there an actual project proposed here? Do we know how many units are being proposed? So 10% of what is it, 10% of maybe ten units or a thousand units? Do we know? I'm not aware of the project specific numbers. The applicant as president might have that information. Oh, great. Okay. Could this present class the applicant to come up? Please do. Thank you. Applicant, please come up. Thank you. Can you introduce yourself? And yes, I'm Chase Hill with Cypress Real Estate Advisors, the developer and applicant for this for this reason. Okay. We anticipate actually having two buildings on this 3.8 acre site. 650 units in the aggregate. So 65 affordable units. Okay. Thank you. Very good. Brandon, one last question, and that is and I think I know the answer to this, but I just want to make have it out so that I know it. So I understand it correctly. But the area median income is uniform across the across the area. And is it Denver Boulder or is it just Denver, Aurora? Am I? I believe it's just Denver. Just Denver County. That's my understanding. Yes. Okay. And it's it's applied uniformly, no matter whether it's the most expensive neighborhood in the city or the. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Cashman? Yeah. Councilman Flynn asked most of my questions. Around the. Affordable housing. I would just. I'll save it for comments. Thank you. Member We will get back to you during the comment section. Councilmember Hines Thank you, Mr. President. I also am interested in affordable housing with the 10%. Was that just volunteered by the borough applicant or was there something that was given to to obtain the 10%? That is a voluntary housing agreement that was worked out with the Department of Housing instability. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Customer and customer, we are taking you sitting here for another question or just for comment. Common question. Go ahead. So, Brandon, do you know if the commitment is for both rental and for sale housing? I believe this is a rental. So if they do for sale, we're not holding their feet to the fire. I'm for sale. Just on rental. So let me ask the applicant if he would mind coming forward. If you could tell us if you're just doing rental or if you're planning to do any for sale housing. Yeah. Again, Chase Hill with Cypress Real Estate Advisors, it's all it's kind of to be 100% for rent. Okay. That's what we've done across the street. We've never developed condos. It's a good question. I believe the agreement that we've negotiated and signed authority housing stipulates that it's, I believe is actually residential of any free. So whether it be for sale or for rent, the 10% would apply. Are you looking to access like tech funding or any other city housing resources to help offset the cost of the affordable? We are not we're proposing that that is our cost. Okay. Can I ask you a question about the adjacency to rail while you're up there? Is this something that you all looked at? Did you review the report that was handed out about railroad safety, adjacent development adjacent to railroad addressing safety issues? Yeah, we have we've actually looked at extensively with Union Pacific, who had some building restrictions related to residential in particular. And we've negotiated to have those restrictions removed on account that the most proximate line that's at grade behind us is actually a spur that is extremely rarely used as a turnaround point. There's an elevated line farther back up above, but the lines that are at grade adjacent, the site aren't really used. And furthermore, we have to have a perimeter fire access road on the back end side anyway. So our building will be stepped back 40 feet from the existing real spur. Okay, that's good to know. I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you. I have no further questions at this time. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. I don't see any other questions. The public hearing for Council Bill 105 is closed. Comments by members of Council member state advocate. This one's in your district. Did you want to go first? Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. I strongly encourage my colleagues to not support this rezoning tonight. I do not believe that it meets the criteria, because I do not believe it is consistent with our our plan goals, especially around equity and housing and health and safety and connectivity. I think that there are some major issues to overcome and to address, including with some of the real issues that Councilwoman Ortega brought up this evening. But I also think that this process for public engagement was cut short by COVID. I have two letters of support in here, neither from residents, both are from business associations and the art district. And so and I also have been talking to the neighborhood and residents in the neighborhood who have been participating in the development of an equity plan, that they reached out to this developer and requested to meet with this developer, shared equity plan goals with the developer. And so to see a 10% commitment to housing in the context of one of our most vulnerable neighborhoods, and looking at that Reno plan that has less than a fourth of it designated for housing, and this project itself is about a 16th of that fourth, and it's still only 10% . That doesn't feel like it's consistent with what we're trying to do in this area. This is also a couple it's just steps away from our crossroads shelter. And we've been concerned about how development that area is going to honor, support, connect that project, which is a city owned project now. And so we haven't heard any responses. I don't believe there is a development agreement, am I correct? Is there can you nod your head? Is there a development agreement there? There's no there is not a development agreement and so on. On principle, I do not think this is consistent with the plan and does not meet all of the indicators required to support this tonight. So I will not be supporting and I hope that my colleagues can respect that this is in my district and nobody knows our constituents more than we do. And follow suit. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah. So another development, 650 units. So 595 market rate units in 65, slightly below market rate. I don't have a problem with a developer trying to make a profit. That's what a developer's goal is in the course of doing business. But I have a problem that we keep taking this 10% number like it's it comes from the sky, from God. And I know other jurisdictions are being more demanding in their requirements to meet their housing goals. And I think we need to do that. Yeah, ten, 10% is not going to get us where we need to go. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I am troubled by the comments that Councilmember CdeBaca had mentioned. In some ways, our process doesn't really afford us. I can't ask questions anymore because questions are over. I would say I would agree with Councilmember excuse me, Councilmember Cashman. We have turned down or not turned down. Sorry. We've pushed back on projects with 10% affordable housing in District ten. And. And while I hate it, what am I trying to say? Celebrate that this is a voluntary commitment. I know that that we have a lot of need for affordable housing in the city. And and as we continue to take up real estate that is of in historically underserved neighborhoods, that that makes it even more difficult to. We only have so much land. We're landlocked. So I just want to put those thoughts on the on the record. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Torres. Thank you, Mr. President. The question for the developer around the equity conversation, if you. Can come to the make. On check with legal. We did closed the hearing for questions and we were in the comment section. So I just want to double check before we start bringing people back up for questions. What? Remind me, we haven't had one of these for a little while. Are we clear? There are, because the hearings aren't even closed and we're just in the comments. Is it too late for that? Jonathan Griffin, Deputy Legislative Counsel I believe that's fine. Okay. Thank you. And so, Councilman Hines, since you also referenced that, I wanted to make sure that we had clearance on that. Go ahead. Thank you. What's your can you respond to that issue around some of the neighborhood interests in an equity plan and what your recollection on that was? Yeah. So we reached out to all the people nose spent the most time. Some of them were unresponsive. Those who did respond we met with on multiple occasions for the most amount of time with the River North Art District here in their thoughts and concerns, several people within that organization at their office. We felt like on this location the fact that it's currently a dilapidated, self-storage facility and we weren't displacing any existing residents. It's not adjacent to single family. It's not casting shadows on any people's backyards or having an impact on any residents in the immediate area. In fact, our only neighbors on all sides or other apartment complexes of the similar size and scale as far as what we're proposing. So that's why we feel in talking with River North, our district and other organizations that issue letters of support that they wanted to steer growth and density here. So we did not meet a lot of opposition. Candidly. Respectfully, of course, Candy did mention some concerns and voiced opposition, but it seemed that the organizations and individuals we reached out to, if they were going to have to steer the development and growth of Rhino, it was better here than the other side of the tracks is what we kept hearing. So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but that's that's the conversations we had with the various stakeholders. So Councilman CdeBaca referenced neighbors bringing an equity plan to you. You don't recall. That. Can you can you. That that is the communication that I've had with the Globeville Swansea residents. They've reached out and CPD is well aware because they're a partner with us in the equity development plan. And so that has been something that's come up. We've mentioned that and that they have stated goals in there and I recognize you don't have a development agreement yet, but this the 10% is a slap in the face to the goals that they've outlined. And this project, the size of it impacts the whole ecosystem, even if it's on the other side of the tracks, if that makes sense. We addressed whatever was asked of us with the organizations we met with in order to get their letter of support they wouldn't have issued. I would have ignored their requests. 10% at 80% might not be perceived as enough to some, but to the organizations we discussed, they saw it as a voluntary gesture. And if the city was to mandate more than we would, we would have to do more. We just thought, given that our competition across the street on all sides has none, that was probably the most we could bear to have this project come to fruition, which is still challenging in this environment. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. So we're back in comments. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I will attempt to stay there at this time. Yeah, I am a little concerned about just kind of where we're going with the whole railroad safety issue. We're actually working on an ordinance and we'll be meeting with not only CPD, but with development folks around the city. We keep building and building right next to rail, not always addressing the access issues so that if there is an incident with the various types of material, mostly flammable liquid that are on the tracks, the railroads need to be able to have access to the tracks, and so do our emergency responders, because they're also expected to show up and contain a situation. These are also adjacent to storage yards. Not only is it close to where some of the trains turn around, but it's very close to where a lot of the trains are staged, meaning they sit in the you know, in these areas. And I don't know if this particular development is anything like some of the others in the area that have roll up windows like garage doors where they can sit and overlook the train tracks. That's an accident waiting to happen. And I am not sure, you know, if this developer, even with a 40 foot setback, is looking at any additional kind of buffering. But. Those are some of the details that we want to make sure are being addressed by our agencies as well as by the developers of these projects. And when we tried to pool data to find out what kind of input we had from the agencies and what actual improvements or how they were addressed by the developers, there was no data. We could not find any information. And so what that says to me, and in the conversations with CPD, basically they said they didn't have anything that holds the agencies feet to the fire to make sure that these issues are being addressed. So what that means is when you let it be done voluntarily, it doesn't happen. So I think we need we're at the stage where it's been two and a half years since we did this study and have had very clear recommendations for trying to see that these issues are being addressed. And I you know, in pulling the data, there's there's nothing to be seen. And so I think we're at a stage where we have to do an ordinance which we're working towards. I don't think 40 feet is is adequate in protecting life, but I'd have to see the development plan and the fact that there is no development agreement. I don't know how we as a city hold feet to the fire on ensuring that the 80%, the 10% at 80%, which you know anymore, that's not addressing the affordability needs in our city. And I don't know why our city keeps negotiating so high instead of trying to get more affordable, truly attainable units for so many people that are struggling because we have enough at that range, at that higher end range already throughout our city. So I am struggling with being able to support this one tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Sandoval. Yes, thank you. Council President. So in the plan, in our packets, it talks about one of the adopted plans being an affordable Denver. And I think that we could all read that plan and pick and choose pieces that would go with any rezoning. And so today I got a very thoughtful text message and it said there can be no equity of opportunity in the United States so long as poor children are segregated in neighborhoods. And there is only one viable solution building affordable housing in affluent neighborhoods. And Reno has turned into a very affluent neighborhood since I was born. So with that, I think that we can pick and choose any adopted plan and we can make pros and cons. And I would say that if I looked at building an affordable Denver that are 10%, although it is somewhat generous during this time of COVID , I think all bets are off. I think everything needs to be reevaluated. I think our entire infrastructure needs to be reevaluated. I think housing projects that were once moving forward before Monday, March 16th, need to be evaluated because we will be getting out of COVID on the backs of my grandchildren. And so with that, I cannot support this rezoning and do so for public record. I do know someone who represents this neighborhood and the applicant did meet with them and they did give them their equity plan. And this is someone who I trust and I have worked with since 2012, and they recommended 30 units at MMI and the applicant disregarded them. And this person has worked and represented this community and fought for global variance frontier for as long as I can remember. So with that, I will not be supporting this application. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Black. Thank you, Mr. President. And I absolutely agree with everyone's comments about our great need for more housing and more attention paid to our equity plans of our neighborhoods. Unfortunately, we don't have the tools to require this now. We all know there was an. Offered at the state legislature to pass a bill that would allow municipalities to require developers to put in a certain number of affordable units. But we don't have that law right now. It it didn't make its way through the state legislature before they temporarily adjourned. And so we actually don't have the tools to do that. I look forward to it coming back next year and hopefully it will pass. Our job is to look at the criteria, and I believe that. Brandon did a good job. Showing that this project does meet the criteria. So I will be. Supporting. It, although I do agree with everything that everyone else has said. And I do hope that our society as a whole will be moving toward a more kinder, gentler and generous society. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. So you had mentioned to Councilmember Ortega that you wanted to stay out of question, so. I know you had brought it up. If there's something that you need to ask, then get get it going. Get it going. All right. May I ask the applicant to come forward? I just want to. I have one question about. You had mentioned the I think it was about the Reno Arts District. I think the comment was it is better to have it here than on the other side of the tracks. What's on the other side of the tracks? Yeah, let me address it. That I thought you might mean the tracks right behind the site. Well, we heard time and again from a number of constituents in the district was that if we're going to concentrate development, it's better here where you're surrounded by raw land and other apartments than went out to the other side of tracks. I mean, Blake Wilton, Larimer, the other side of Reno, where there's been rapid gentrification, as there has on our side as well. But on that other side is where you have a little more history. There's historic buildings that maybe they're not deemed historic, but it could be argued they should be in here with a self-storage facility. We just kept hearing time and again that, well, where where is it in Reno? And we'd have to explain where exactly it was. Honestly, some of the constituents were not fully aware this is within Reno. And so that's what they meant when they said it's better that you concentrate on development and growth in this high residential area as part of the 2040 plan than others. Okay. Thank you. I'm glad I misunderstood my I when I was growing up. I grew up poor and I literally grew up on the other side of the railroad tracks. And so I was like, he couldn't be saying what I did. So I misunderstood and I'm glad. So. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Cashman. Yeah, thank you, Mr.. Mr. President, just one last comment. I agree 100% that we need to pay attention to the criteria, and I might debate with you one, two, four and five. But three speaks to furthering public health, safety and welfare. And that that's where I think applications like this continue to fail us. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Is there anybody that I missed? Sorry. I keep forgetting to look up and realize some of you can't press the button to let me know. Adjusting to the new normal. Okay. Thank you very much. Am I seeing nobody else in the queue? I wanna say thank you to staff for being here, being our first hearing back and coping with our getting caught back up with how this all works. So thank you for that. Thank you for your hard work. I think, you know, lots of tough discussions. And I you know, I think everyone makes good points on both sides of this. And I think that we do need to take a bigger picture, look at what our requirements are, not just from what the state can do, but also what our requirements when it comes to linkage fees are so that we create a space where people understand what is it that we want to happen better? Because it's a little I think it's a little unpredictable for what do we want on any given Monday when these come for me, I think that staff did a good job showing that this meets the legal criteria. And I think that while I would love to have 650 units that were all 30%, am I or below 650 units and still 650 units? And if those aren't built with 10% of them being some of affordability, then that is more people competing for fewer units in Denver, which doesn't help the price of any housing go down . So I think that this has met the legal criteria and for that reason, I will be supporting it this evening. Madam Secretary, roll call. CdeBaca No. Black. Flynn. Hi. Gilmore. Herndon. Hines. No. Cashman? No. Kenny Ortega no. Sandoval, No. Sawyer de Torres know. Council President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please. Because voting in those results. Seven days, six and seven days. Six eyes counts below 105 has failed councilmembers CdeBaca Tobacco, will you please put Carlsberg one of six on the floor?

A MOTION requesting that the executive develop a regional operational plan for extreme weather centers and disaster sheltering, with a special focus on the most-vulnerable King County residents.

KingCountyCC_07062022_2022-0197

Your call. See no further request. We will go on with our agenda and close public comment. The first item on our agenda is the motion sponsored by Council Member Zahoor ly requesting that the Executive develop an operational plan for sheltering the most vulnerable King County residents in the event of extreme cold heat or wildfire smoke. This is proposed motion 2020 20197 and Jennie Giambattista will brief us. We also have, I believe, from the executive branch, Mena Hashemi, Brandon McCluskey and Caroline Wayland. If there are any questions as. Go right ahead. Jennie unless Councilman Basile, I would like to say anything. First listen to the staff report first. Chair Coles. Thank you very much, Jennie. Thank you. Good morning. Chair Caldwell, the members of the committee, Jennie John Batiste, council staff, the staff report for this item begins on page seven of the packet. Given the very full agenda today, the Chair has asked me to provide highlights from the staff report. There are a few key points in the background section of the staff report. I'd like to highlight and provide some context for the discussion of the proposed motion. First, what's happening now during an extreme weather event? The Office of Emergency Management works with King County agencies and partners from other jurisdictions to identify and share information on available sheltering options. The Office of Emergency Management posts information during an event on the sheltering options, including links to other jurisdictions on the King County Emergency Blog. But OEM does not have an operational, extreme weather sheltering plan that details the shelters that are to be open, the hours staffing or other operational issues. Director McClusky from the Office of Emergency Management reports. The Department of Local Services has started working in the unincorporated area to find community based facilities that are suitable and willing to open in extreme weather events and to identify the operational needs for opening those facility. The background section of the staff report on page eight also includes some information on the extreme heat event in the region experienced last June. I've highlighted this event because, according to the National Weather Service, heat events are the most deadly weather related emergencies for King County. The heat dome was the deadliest climate related event in the region's history, with 32 with 33 deaths, an average age of 75.6. Based on data from public health, 91% of the fatalities occurred in the persons resident. June 28th of that heat dome also set a record for the highest number of EMS related calls in the history of VMs. There are more details on the EMS responses that can be found in a PowerPoint on page 21 of the packet that was prepared by EMS for a countywide summer hazard seminar hosted by the Office of Emergency Management. I've also included a presentation in the packet from that same seminar from the National Weather Service on page 42 of the packet, which notes some of the challenges that Seattle region faces with dealing with extreme heat events. The Seattle region has the lowest rates of any metropolitan region for air conditioning. Additionally, homes are built to keep the heat in in the northwest with added insulation and many have south facing exposures. Additionally, the National Weather Service noted that many community facilities don't have air conditioning in the heat dome event. The temperatures peaked late at night, which meant indoor temperatures stayed hot. The National Weather Service noted that these indoor evening air temperatures need to be taken into consideration when planning for the operating hours and cooling shelters. I'd like to now turn to the discussion of the motion, and that discussion is on page 12 of the packet. The motion requests the executive to develop an operational plan by February 28th, 2023 for sheltering the most vulnerable residents during extreme cold heat and wildfire smoke events. The motion defines the most vulnerable residents as including, but not limited to, unhoused people, low income people who live in housing without adequate protection from extreme weather and theater. Senior citizens or those with disabilities without adequate protection from extreme weather. The motion requests the executive coordinate with King County agencies and work groups, and the King County Homeless Regional Homeless Authority to develop the operational plan. The motion calls for the executive to strive to begin offering expanded extreme weather sheltering no later than June of 2023. The cost, information and the staffing requirements for such a sheltering plan are requested as part of the transmitted operational plan. I'd like to highlight some of the key actions requested in the motion. First is to conduct community outreach in low income communities and unhoused communities and unincorporated King County to gather information on the community's preferences for the location and features that result in the highest utilization of shelters during extreme cold heat and wildfire smoke events. The outreach efforts should also seek to identify other community needs in responding to extreme weather events. The next action requested is based on the information gathered from the low income communities. Provide a listing and map of King County owned or operating office operated facilities in King County that are recommended to serve as extreme weather shelters. Another major action requested is to develop a plan to offer hotel vouchers during extreme heat events, to offer temperature controlled accommodations to those living in unincorporated King County who are the most vulnerable to the effects of heat, including the elderly, families with infants and those with underlying medical conditions and opportunities to stay cool. Additionally, there are two requests to coordinate with the Department of the State Department of Social and Health Services to identify any long term care assistance facilities or family care homes in King County that do not have air conditioning. This is intended so that in the event of an extreme heat event, outreach can be done to these facilities. Additionally, there is a request to maintain a website with updated real time information during extreme weather events, which includes a listing of all available shelters. Where to Go to get help and public health tips for staying safe during extreme weather events and how to volunteer or donate resources to organizations providing support during extreme weather events. Those are the components of the motion. There are a few issues identified in the staff report on page 13. First are the challenges with extreme weather shelters. These include the staffing, particularly for overnight shifts. Community partners have also expressed concerns over the operating costs and security in addition to staffing, and that's been reported by DLS and some of their current work. Additionally, some shelters reach capacity while others get few occupants. However, I would note that we don't really have data now on shelter capacity to what extent are being utilized. Not all community facilities in the region have air conditioning. And then lastly, the COVID 19 pandemic continues to complicate things. The staff report also notes that council staff have requested additional information to better understand the extent to which the proposed activities could be achieved using existing resources. They also want to note that on page 77 of the packet, you will find the changes suggested by executive staff that were provided on Friday afternoon. Staff analysis of these changes is ongoing. Madam Chair, that concludes my staff report. I'm happy to answer any questions or go into more detail on some of the topics that I did go over quite quickly. We also, as you indicated, have executive staff in the meeting to answer any questions as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jenny, for the excellent report. Did you mean to say page 77 of the report? That I think yes, that includes page 77 of the packet is where you will find the changes that were suggested by the executive stack. Excellent. Thank you very much. Are there any questions about Jenny at this point? I can get my remarks if you're okay with that. That would be fine. Go right ahead. Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, Chair Caldwell's. Thank you, Jenny, for that great report. I'll start off by saying that earlier this year, I read an alarming story in The New York Times about a deadly heatwave in India. Imagine week after week, unrelenting temperatures between 110 and 125 degrees. No AC, no relief. Just suffocating, scorching heat. Dozens of people died and continue to die. It's a devastating human made disaster and people are suffering because of it. Then I thought about our fates up here in the mild, mild Pacific Northwest. Last year, we saw three of the five hottest days in King County history happen not only in the same year, but in the same week. As Jenny reported, we also saw dozens of heat related deaths. On a personal note, I didn't have AC in my home. My home got up to 110 degrees and I felt like I was choking. Then I thought about all the people in King County who are living in dense apartment complexes, senior facilities, encampments with no HD, who are all vulnerable to heat waves and who face greater and greater environmental threats every year. I read in Cross that Washington historically sees only four days per year the average 90 degrees or above. But by mid-century, in our lifetimes, without emissions intervention, this number will stretch to 17 days and it'll only go up from that. Extreme weather is going to affect every aspect of our daily lives. Extreme heat, extreme cold, wildfire smoke. And when you combine that with our housing crisis, the fact that we have the lowest number of housing units per capita of any state in the country, we are in a particularly unique and dangerous situation here in Washington state. So as Jenny described, my motion asks the executive to develop an operational plan for sheltering the most vulnerable in our region. The bread and butter of the motion is creating a regional network of indoor facilities that are constantly developing and that we're building on that map of indoor facilities. I'd like to see three categories. Category A Here are the buildings that King County currently owns and is already using for extreme weather shelter. Category B Here are the buildings King County owns and does not currently use for extreme weather shelter, but that we potentially could with proper staffing and upgrades. And here are the costs and the plan for those staffing and those upgrades. Finally, Category C, here are the buildings that King County doesn't own that are maybe owned by other government jurisdictions or the private sector. Here is our engagement plan for working with those entities that own those buildings with those third parties. Think of a public school, for example. And here are the costs in the plan for staffing up and creating the upgrades needed to create extreme weather shelter out of those buildings. The motion also asks the executive to do a few other things that Jenny already described, like conducting outreach in unincorporated King County. You may have read recently in the Seattle Times, but we do not face heat waves in an equitable way. There are areas that face more higher impacts of those heat waves than others. I've noticed that Skyway is one of the areas that faces one of the highest impacts of heat waves waves in King County. So South King County and many other places. So I'll end by saying nobody needs to die of heat waves. Nobody needs to die of wildfire smoke inhalation. Nobody needs to freeze to death. These are all preventable deaths and ones that we can help prevent by making sure that we are as prepared as possible and using all of the resources that currently exist at our disposal. I urge your support and I'm thankful for everybody who worked on this motion, including Jenny, Jake, Tracy, Rosa, my, my, my staff, my staff, team member, and also the executive branch who have been very helpful and collaborative during this process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmembers. I really appreciate the thoroughness and as well as of the thought that you put into this, really identifying a major issue which appears to be coming exacerbated with our climate issues. I have a couple of questions. First, I'd like to say I'm very pleased that you included language pertaining to long term care facilities and collecting the data on which ones are how many but which ones really do not have air conditioning. A family friend of mine who was living in a long term care facility with the brain traumatic brain injury and who died two years later, had no air conditioning. There were no windows that could open in the facility. And this was just a couple of years ago when she died. And so fans were used and it was totally inadequate and what they needed. What they need is to have an H VAC system so that they can have the air conditioning. And it was really horrible. So I very much appreciate that you included that. My question is, I as I understand the executive came out with a plan a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago or so. How does your legislation differ from what's already in place? The thing that I haven't seen is what I described before, which is that a map, a regional network of indoor facilities and the plan to staff up and upgrade buildings that either we don't own or that we don't currently use as extreme weather shelter. I haven't seen that and I haven't seen that accounted for. And so that's probably the thing that I would say is the most different. And then Jenny can maybe chime in as well. Okay. Thank you very much. Councilmembers. Hello. Jenny, would you like to add anything on that? Sure. Thank you for the question, Councilmember Colwell. I think you're referring to the executives at press and in recent weeks about the plan to develop an extreme heat mitigation strategy. And I did ask the executive how that extreme heat mitigation strategy, how that complements or works, would work with this proposed motion. And on page 12 of the packet, you will see the executives response that the extreme heat mitigation strategy will not specifically address the sheltering needs, but the sheltering plan that's proposed in this motion could be a complement to the extreme heat mitigation strategy and about as well as they note, while the strategy will identify a new and that's the extreme heat mitigation strategy, while the strategy will identify a new or enhanced short term actions that we could be taking to support response. The bigger focus of the executive's heat mitigation strategy is examining the longer term built environment changes we should be taking to mitigate heat risks. Kate. Thank you, Jenny. And I do want to get to our executive staff, but I see that Councilmember Bell Duke, she has a question. Thank you, Chair Colwell. I want to first also express my appreciation for this proposal. It was a terrible, terrible outcome and terrible time during the heat wave of last summer. And so I really do appreciate this forward thinking. How can we make things better in the future kind of proposal? The question I have is. As with most emergency responses, there's a heavy component of inter jurisdictional partnerships that happens when we respond to weather events, earthquakes, any kind of major emergency. And I was listening carefully, and I don't think I heard an element of this proposal that would survey the available partnership shelters, spaces or ways in which we could partner. I think back to that very long term power outage we had some years ago, and in the cities here on the east side, we supported each other different . You know, there were maybe shelters in some parts of Bellevue that served a lot of Redmond and vice versa. So I would wonder if that's possible to include an element of that sort of very critical partnership potential in this proposal. Councilmember Bell, did she there there is a specific provision to call an action requirement or request, I should say. It's a motion to coordinate with city, state and federal agencies to identify any public or private facilities in King County that could serve as shelters in the event of extreme cold heat and wildfire smoke events. That's right. That's very helpful. Thank you. The only thing I guess I would add to that is that the focus on facilities is understandable and really important. We need places for people to go. That that clearly is why some people, you know, have preventable deaths during these kinds of events because they had nowhere safe to go. But I think that there's there's probably operational elements, too, like perhaps depending on the type of weather event and how it's hitting people, we might identify different shelter. There might be different configurations of response and different different kinds of partnerships. So just like let's not overlook the operational aspects as well. I think this is a very thoughtful proposal. I'm happy to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Bell, did she chair call us? Yes. I'm sorry. The one councilmember who's with me here. Council member Bill Perry. Thank you, Chair Colwell. So I, I also I share the appreciation for this proposal. And I'm aware in our last heat dome, there were 33 deaths. One of those deaths was in district with it was in my district, district three. And the senior citizen community, senior resident community in our district was very strongly impacted. We had that same question about hours of operation for shelter spaces, cooling spaces. It wasn't available on the weekends, it wasn't available after hours. And so I'm wondering, I'm glad to see a look at the staffing and facilities and partnerships with nonprofits, churches, temples, mosques, other municipalities to address this. I know at that time, the fire, the Eastside Fire and Rescue wanted to make sure we had an sort of on the ground network knowing where our folks in our different communities were most at risk. I would love to see a breakout by district, as you mentioned, council members ally. There are certain districts that are more impacted, certain areas that are more impacted. And I'd like to see a breakout of the actual the areas where the actual deaths occurred and the age demographic as well as the ethnic background . I think it's really important to to look at the data and to make sure that we are responding to the areas that are most impacted. I'm also wondering if beyond the shelter, there are many people that are not mobile that are at risk. And so I'm wondering if there are cooling units that would be made available. One of the things that was brought up by you said fire and rescue is just are our senior citizens that were most fragile, not having a cooling unit in their home, a small cooling unit or whatever, whatever might be available. I'm wondering if that's something that we're looking into. And I'm also aware that when western and Eastern hospitals closed, there were different locations set up around our neighborhood, three different locations set up around our neighborhood for folks that were living with developmental disabilities, Down syndrome and and others in these group homes. And it was really they had no no cooling opportunities and it was really dangerous. And that was something that Eastside Fire and Rescue also brought up as just needing equipment for these vulnerable spaces and places. So I guess analyst Jenny Giambattista, I am wondering if you can share a little bit more about the possibility of equipment, not just a movement to a location, but this multipronged approach that might include equipment and if that's spoken to already. Thank you, Councilmember Perry, for the question. The motion as it's drafted now does not specifically address a requirement for equipment, but I would note that as part of the requirement to do outreach to. Gauge the community's needs and preferences for shelter. There is also a requirement to address other needs as well, and certainly equipment could could be there. I would also note you also ask for information on the location of this of the deaths that occurred. Council staff have been working with public health. Where there is public health does have a concern about releasing the data and has noted that the heat related deaths occurred throughout the county and that any apparent pattern or distribution was not able to be identified during what they consider an extremely small number of deaths. That said, council staff will continue to work with public health to see if we can find a way to provide a spatial mapping of those deaths to provide the information that you're looking for. Council Member I would appreciate that. Thank you very much. And I think that that data helps to drive our actions and so be the more specific we can be, of course, without sharing private information that would otherwise be inappropriate. I think really recognizing where we have the greatest impact and see the greatest impact throughout King County. Having that data helps us make better decisions. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Perry. Are there any other questions of councilmembers, ally or Jenny? Okay. I would then like to have some comment from the executive branch, I'm thinking Brenton McClusky, director of Office of Emergency Management. But we also have Mena Hashemi, Director of Council Relations, and Caroline Whalen, Director of Department of Executive Services, with us. Thank you, Chair. Call Wells. I believe that. If. If you'd like, I would offer. Comments from the executive. That would be fine. And chaperon with us. Thank you very much for having me. The executive. Supports a regional approach to extreme weather, sheltering. And heating and cooling centers and county agencies. Have been coordinating internally and with cities and now with the Regional Homeless Authority. To reduce. The amount of. Heroics required in our. Response to extreme weather. Since discussions with sponsor council members Charlie, which began earlier this year, we've increased. These efforts with an. Eye on the potential need for warm weather response this summer. The introduction of. This proposed motion has had a very positive result. By elevating both our internal and external coordination. There is much in this legislation to. Which we agree, and we look forward to producing a quality product. In response to your future adoption of this motion, or by completing the. Work we have already initiated. Since the Motion's introduction. We've collected executive branch, and I would note that there. Are at least six. Executive branch. Departments involved in this. As well. As information from. Our city emergency partners. And. Gather their input. And we have. Compiled that in the form of amendments that. Are in your packet today. And we provided those late last week on Friday. To the sponsor and his office. Our chief concern is the. Deadline by which an. Actionable operational. Plan can be completed. We look forward to further discussions with the sponsor on the amendments. That we recommend. Thank you. Thank you very much, Director Whalen. Council members are right. You have any response? I want to thank OEM and everyone in the executive branch. They have been extremely responsive and collaborative on this motion. They've been sharing their expertize. I want to say that they have already been doing a lot of the stuff that's in the motion. They have comprehensive responses. I'm hoping that the recommendations we make through this motion are additive of their efforts, and I'm definitely willing to look at their amendments and make changes, especially on the deadline. You know, you're the ones who are doing the work. And so I will I will be fully deferential on the deadline piece to make sure that we do this right and not just do this. You know, I do think we need to do it fast, but we also need to do it right. So I'll agree with you there and looking forward to working with you on all of the other amendments as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. And is there anybody else either Mina Hashimi or or Brendan McCluskey, who would like to make any comments? Thank you, Circle Wells. I don't have much to add to Director Whalen's comments, but will echo the executive's support for a regional approach to addressing extreme weather events. We appreciate the sponsors, intent and attention to this incredibly important issue and thank them. As Caroline shared, we've begun conversations with several executive branch departments regarding implementation and have shared some of this feedback with the sponsor and look forward to collaborating with him and with council to implement the motion if passed by council. Thank you. Thank you, Director Hashemi. And what about Director Brandon McCluskey? Any comments? Thank you, Madam Chair. I also don't have anything else to add other than to echo what both. Caroline and Mina have have stated already. And we're looking forward to working with the sponsor on this the council, the cities and other. Departments of King County on creating a plan that. Works. And does the right thing. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the three of you being here and council members. It appears that the best course of action now would be to hold this until our July 20th meeting, at which we can take up a striking amendment, possibly, or light amendments. And we'll look forward to working with you on that. Does that meet with your satisfaction? Yes, they can check. Okay, terrific. Well, that closes our discussion and hearing a proposed motion. 2020 20197. We will now turn to item number six on our agenda, something we all look forward to with a briefing by Dwight Lively, director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, and basically is our Budget Director for the county.

AN ORDINANCE relating to facial recognition, prohibiting the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology by County administrative offices and executive departments, including the department of public safety; and adding a new chapter in K.C.C. Title 2.

KingCountyCC_04212021_2021-0091

Okay. Thank you so much. And we will move to item eight on today's agenda. This is an ordinance that would prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from using facial recognition technology. I understand that there is a technical striking amendment. We have Nick Bowman from Policy Staff to provide a staff report. Mr. Bowman, the line is yours. Morning council members, for the record. Nick Bowman, Council Central Staff. The materials for agenda item eight begin on page 18 of your packet. As the chair mentioned, proposed Ordinance 2020 10091 would prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from acquiring and using facial recognition technology or facial recognition information. Facial recognition technology or CRT is defined as any computer software or application which assists in identifying an individual based on the physical characteristics of the individual's face. Facial recognition information is defined as any data or information obtained or derived from facial recognition technology. Violations of the proposed ordinance would constitute an injury to which a person is subject to the violation may seek judicial release. To start, I'm going to provide some background on what our t is, how it is used, and the concerns it is raised is a category of biometric software generally defined as a method of identifying or confirming an individual's identity. Using their face. Facial recognition can be used to identify people in photos, videos or in real time. While specific methods vary depending on the system provider, FRC generally includes the following processes capture, which is the process of finding visual space and removing the face from a larger image analysis. The process of mapping an individual's facial features conversion, the process of taking the analyzed facial features and creating a standardized facial template or mathematical representation which can be compared to other facial templates housed in a reference database, often referred to as a gallery, and then identification or verification, which is the process of comparing a facial template against a gallery of other facial templates for an identification task. The facial recognition system is provided a probe image and attempts to match it with a biometric reference in a gallery for a various verification task. An individual already enrolled in a gallery presents their face or image. The system and the system that attempts to match the face of image with the claim template in the gallery and either verifies or rejects the face of revenge. An automatic automated facial recognition was developed in the 1960s but did not really become widespread until 2010, when computers became capable of training neural networks required to make facial recognition a standard feature. Today, facial recognition is used across the globe for a variety of purposes, from the relatively mundane, such as unlocking a smartphone or tagging a friend in a social media post to the highly sophisticated such as targeted advertising, law enforcement and surveillance. A Non-Exhaustive Non-Exhaustive list of efforts uses include accessing personal electronic devices and or secure locations. Social media, law enforcement, which includes such applications as collecting arresting mug shots and comparing them against local, state and federal databases. Querying mugshot databases to identify individuals in an image, verifying the identity of one of wanted criminals or those suspected of a crime, locating missing persons and or victims of trafficking. And there's also identity theft and fraud detection, streamline travel with biometric passports at border crossings and airports, event registration, individualized and target advertising and marketing and employee time and performance tracking. The rapid advancement and sophistication of theparty in the last several years has raised concerns primarily focused on the accuracy of the technology, demographic biases and encroachment on civil liberties. FRC has proven effective with relatively small populations in controlled environments for the verification of identity claims, where again, an image of an individual's face is matched to a preexisting image on file associated with a claimed identity. According to independent tests by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, or new study between 2014 and 2018. The failure rate for finding a match in a database of 12 million portrait photos fell from 4% to 2.2%. However, accuracy decreases when there is no standardized photo for comparison or when the comparison comes by a photo from an uncontrolled environment such as a face in the crowd image or a still from a live video feed. Everybody works best when a picture is head on and has no movement. Additionally, because faces change over time. Unlike fingerprints or DNA, the technology can trigger incorrect results by changing hairstyles, facial hair, body weight and the effects of aging. Research has also indicated that FRC may not be as accurate in reading the faces of certain demographic groups. FRC biases can occur when neural networks of the system are trained on dataset datasets of images which are not demographically balanced. When the system learns from a demographically uneven pool of images, the error rate for the demographic groups less represented in the dataset increases. Some research has found that these demographic biases may be the product of a geographic region. The effort to use developed. According to a 2011 and I and I study of FRC algorithms developed in Western countries and algorithms developed in East Asian countries. Western algorithms recognize Caucasian faces more accurately than East Asian faces, and East Asian algorithms recognize East Asian faces more actively than Caucasian faces. More recently, studies have shown that demographic biases persist despite the general improvement in FRC in the last several years. A 2018 study testing three commercial face analysis services found that datasets were overwhelmingly composed of lighter skin subjects. As a result, the study found that darker skinned females were the most misclassified group with error rates of up to 34.7% compared to the maximum error error rate of 0.8% for lighter skinned males. The use of FRC by governments and private enterprises wherein individuals may have their faces scanned and added to a system's dataset unknowingly and without consent, has raised concerns over the infringement of an individual's right to privacy and other civil liberties. Civil rights and privacy organizations have argued that individuals have an expectation of anonymity in public settings and that few are privy to their identity and personal information. They are used to erodes this expectation by allowing the user to identify an individual by their face and associate that individual with internet behavior or travel patterns or other personal information . Recent instances of FRC use by law enforcement agencies have been cited by organizations such as the ACLU and the Electronic Freedom Foundation as examples of the threat posed by efforts to civil liberties. In 2016, the ACLU of Northern California reported that during protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Police Department ran social media photos through efforts to identify protesters and monitor them. Also in January of last year, the Detroit Police Department wrongly arrested a man named Robert Williams based after being falsely identified by the department's efforts system. Now, proponents of the technology point to instances where FRC has aided law enforcement in investigations and the apprehension of criminals. One says insincerity by proponents is the August 2019 arrest of Larry Griffin's, the second, who was arrested after being identified by a detective in the New York Police Department's face ID section on charges of placing fake bombs in Lower Manhattan subway station. More recently, federal court documents show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used FRC to assist in the identification of individuals who participated in the January six, 2021 riots at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Citing many of the concerns listed above. Several U.S. cities have banned municipal agencies from using FRC. As of November 20, 2013, cities have enacted some form of FRC ban, including San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Oregon and Jackson, Mississippi, among others. Okay. Moving now to the proposed ordinance, as I mentioned earlier, proposed ordinance, 2020 10091 would ban the acquisition and use of FTE by county administrative offices and executive departments. The proposed ordinance would also prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from issuing any permit or entering into any agreement which authorizes a third party to use facial recognition technology or obtain or access facial recognition information on behalf of the county. However, evidence relating to the investigation of a specific crime that may have come from FRC may be used by a county administrative office or executive department, so long as the evidence was not generated by or at the request of that county office or department and for the committee's benefits, county administrative offices and executive departments include all county agencies except for the prosecuting attorney's office and the courts. The proposed ordinance defines facial recognition technology as any computer software or application, which assists in identifying or verifying the identity of an individual based on the physical characteristics of the individual's face. Efforts. He does not include the analysis of facial features to grant access to an electronic device or the use of redacting software to protect the privacy of an individual depicted in a recording intended for release or disclosure. Facial recognition information is also defined as any data or information obtained or derived from facial recognition technology. The proposed ordinance would establish a process for account for county personnel who inadvertently or unintentionally use or access facial recognition information. This process would require county personnel to notify their direct supervisor that they received, used or gained access to facial recognition information and that they immediately delete the information subject to applicable laws. Any facial recognition information collected or derived in violation of the established ban would be considered unlawful to obtain. Violations of the established ban would constitute an injury to which a person subject to the violation may seek relief in court. And furthermore, a prevailing plaintiff in any such court proceeding would be entitled to award costs and reasonable attorney's fees. That concludes my report, Mr. Chair, except to say, as you mentioned earlier, there is an amendment amendment S1 makes a series of technical and formatting corrections to the body of the audience as recommended recommended by the code. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions for. Mr.. Bowman. Mr.. Council member. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I do have a couple of questions. Thank you, Nick, for the really outstanding report on this. Very thorough. I would appreciate it if you would describe to us how the ordinance before us differs from the legislation passed last year by the state legislature, and also how it differs from the bill passed by the Seattle City Council. Sure. The state law, which goes into effect on January 1st, 2021, requires that any state or local agency that wants to acquire, develop or use NRT must first of all say they do use different definitions. But for the committee's benefit, I'll just continue using the definitions that I've described. If they want to acquire developer use FRC, they must first give notice to the state or local authority that it intends to do so. That agency must then develop an accountability report for how the FRC will be used and its impact on privacy and civil liberties. Then that accountability report must be sent to the local authority who must make it publicly available. So in the county's case, a King County agency would need to notify the Council of its intent to use or develop FRC. And then we need to develop an accountability report and send to the council. And then the council will need to make that report available on its website. There are also in the state law. There are also prohibitions on the use of FRC by state and local government entities, as well as specific prohibitions on the use of FRC by law enforcement agencies. Under the state law, no government entity may use FRC to engage in ongoing surveillance, conduct real time or near time identification or or start persistent tracking. Unless a warrant has been obtained, exigent circumstances exist or a court or is detained for the sole purpose of locating or identifying a missing person or identifying a deceased person. For law enforcement agencies, they are prohibited from using the results of FRC as the sole basis to establish probable cause in a criminal investigation. However, results from FRC may be used in conjunction with other information lawfully obtained, and they are also prohibited from using FRC to identify an individual based on a sketch or manually produced image as to state law. Seattle Surveillance Ordinance Requires City Departments to prepare surveillance impact impact reports on all new and currently used technology that meets the ordinances definition of surveillance. The reports must include an in-depth review of privacy implications, especially relating to equity in community impact. And the reports must then be reviewed by the City Council, who then vote to approve or deny the use of the surveillance technology. So in both the Seattle and state laws, there is a review process of the proposed technology. And. Whereas, proposed ordinance in 091 before you would outright ban in county administrative offices and executive departments from using technology that meets the definition of FRC or using facial recognition information. That would be the primary differences. Thank you. And just to clarify, if we had this situation where there were a missing child, for example, perhaps in another state or another county in the state or whatever. Would the county then not be refraining from being able to use that and notice if we had reason to suspect that that child was being held here? Know that we will not it would not be prohibited that. It would not. Be I would not be prohibited from using any help in the identification and location of that missing child. And to. See no further questions. I'd like to actually invite Councilmember Caldwell's, if she would like, as prime sponsor, to make any remarks before we take questions and more general questions and conversation from colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I would like to make a few, and I hope you'll indulge me. I think we can time. I'd like to speak for several minutes because that's some, I think some very informative material. First of all, as was mentioned by NEC, this ordinance would ban the use of facial recognition and code for King County Sheriff's Office and other county agencies. And unless I'm mistaken, I do not believe we have heard from the sheriff's office opposing this legislation. And as you heard, a ban would not affect the private sector. It is strictly applicable to county government. The what really concerns me here, get down to the bottom line here. Without the rapid advancement and sophistication of facial recognition technology, and I'll just refer to this effort to in the last several years has raised concerns over issues. It certainly raised concerns on my part. And these concerns focused on the accuracy or lack of accuracy of the technology, demographic biases and encroachment on civil liberties. But also, I'm concerned about what is being done with the data. Have you ever thought about this when you got into a store and seen a camera tracking your movements while you're in that store, including your face without your consent? Now, this likely in almost all cases, is harmless, but the technology now exists that can harvest those video feeds and run them against photo databases and social media posts . And now, in our Zoom culture, we have yet another avenue for our spaces to be captured digitally. But where does it stop? And it can be taken place in so many different modes. Well, not an example of facial recognition. One thing that I have really hated that involves technology and tracking has been when I've been continually exposed to ads interrupting my trying to read a news article online. But what really bothered me a couple of years ago was when I found out that these ads are tailored for me based on my preferences being tracked. So if you are reading the same article online, you're going to be interrupted by ads, but they'll be different ads based on a new contract and your priorities. So where does all of this lead? What happens when the technology screws up, which it does. And this identifies an individual, particularly when there can be dire consequences and effects for that person. And we've heard how racial bias is so prevalent within this technology. And 2018 study, and I think Nick referred to this, showed that darker skinned females were the most misclassified group with the error rates of up to almost 35% compared to the maximum error rate found of 0.8% for lighter skinned males. And multiple studies have demonstrated that it's up to 100 times more likely to identify black or Asian faces compared with white faces. And black women in particular, they are misidentified at significantly higher rates than other demographics, and the technology is even less reliable, according to research that's been done when identifying transgender individuals and entirely inaccurate when used on non-binary people. Now you've heard the harrowing stories about a lot of people. One is Robert Julian BAUCHER Williams, who went to jail for 30 hours after the Detroit police arrested him in front of his wife and children. Think about Nigella Parkes was jailed in New Jersey for ten days and spent over $5,000 in legal fees to defend himself. Michael Oliver lost his job and car while being held in a Detroit jail for three days on a felony larceny charge. Now, these three black men were wrongfully arrested due to false facial recognition matches for crimes they did not commit. Robert Julian boy, Chuck Williams is now suing the city of. For damages. So for me, government agencies should not be allowed to display known racist, anti-black facial recognition technology in communities that are already, I believe, over surveilled and overpoliced. Now, we could argue that facial recognition can be beneficial, and it probably can be, but we have to really find the right balance here. And I think the evidence shows that it remains unclear whether facial recognition technology has contributed to the arrest or prosecution of riot participants. Even at the January six capitol, insurgents. We just know that there are a lot of issues that are continuing here where there are mistakes made many times grievous, many times life threatening or even deadly. So I think we just need to take this situation. We have in place a ban on this, and we can always remove that ban through future legislation if we know at that time that privacy concerns the incorrect charges that can be made. And civil rights, civil liberties concerns are fully addressed and there's no reason anymore. But I'm sorry. I'm just too concerned about all that can go wrong with what we have now. And that's why I've offered this legislation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Thank you, colleagues, for the questions conversation. Mr. Chair. Council member done. I for some reason I thought this was on for discussion purposes. Are we planning on voting on it right now? Checkpoint This is this is the first time it's been on our agenda. My intent would be to have a discussion today and probably take action at our next meeting. Okay. Thank you. I want to make sure people have an opportunity to raise issues, concerns, support, thoughts. In this discussion, Lala Kent remembers a whole lot. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nick, thank you earlier for distinguishing the legislation from the state and city level legislation. The explanations felt a little bit itemized to me. Is there a way for you to kind of give a more high level couple sentence difference between what the state is doing and what the county is doing? You know, for example, ours is more restrictive than the states are. Ours has different requirements that just along those lines, because in my head, I have one list of what this one does and another list of what the other one does without really kind of. Summarizing it all. Absolutely. Council members. So in the highest possible level, the state law and the city of Seattle's ordinance allowed for the potential use of R. Should the local approval that they provide. Both of them provide transparency and public notice that this technology may be used by a city, a city or State Department or local agency , whereas the counties is far more restrictive. And just in just saying that, you may not use this technology. Thank you. Lambert Council member LAMBERT Thank you. I have a couple of quick questions. Earlier, you talked about sketched images not being included. Could you explain to me what that means. So that as as mentioned in the earlier background, the technologies are more accurate when you have a standardized straight a picture. And so the state law prohibits any law enforcement agency from using SRT that uses the basis of deface attempt to match from a sketch. So essentially that you must have an actual photo of the person you're attempting to identify. Okay. So, you know, if you're a victim of a crime and you go in and they make a photo montage, kind of for you to say that that's what it looks like, you know, and then they could run it through our teeth to be able to see, you know, which people might be likely to look like that to narrow it down. We wouldn't be able to do that because the whole thing is banned. Under the state law. You would not be able to a law enforcement agency would not be able to do that once it goes into effect on July 1st of this year. So I agree with Council member Cole Wells on the idea that I'm very concerned about how much data is out there. I too have gotten specialized ads on a product about six months ago that you only buy like once a year. And I have been deluged with that same thing and it's driving me crazy. So is there any date by which the state law or any other some of this data says you must delete all this data within five years or anything like that. Is there any final date of of that? Some cities have taken the approach of banning or restricting the use of private enterprises and using FRC. But the Washington state law and this county ordinance does not. Okay. And my last question is this. Where in the in the Bill Digest today does it show the information on the state? I didn't see where that was all written out. As I did not include as there are quite a difference in as I mentioned earlier on, what was I did not include a background on the state law, but I'm happy to provide you a summary if you would like that online. Yeah, I think following a councilmember there, my Zala, I would like to see a side by side of the two. And then in the report on page 18 of this, it talks about data up to 2010. So I'm wondering from 2010 to 2021 what the data changes were. So if you could get that or at least tell me why we're using over a decade old tech data. So that that that refers to. While the facial recognition technology has been around since the 1960s, it only became prevalent in 2010 when computers became powerful enough to manage the massive galleries that the systems required to do this sort of machine learning to make the technology work. Okay. So none of the data is matched on that. The data that you gave us about the 34% and the point 2%, that was all the data based on data from 2021. That's based on from a 2018. Nice study. Okay. And there's nothing more recent than that. I do not. Not that I have reviewed in this research now. So my my concern that I'd like to see in our next briefing is. What will this do if we decide to be different from the state and the state wants to collect data as being the largest state county? What will that do to being able to really collect good data? Because I think, as Councilmember Crowell says, we really need to know more about all of this data, not just facial recognition, but lots of data collected on us and our analytics and our buying habits and how we can protect ourselves and our constituents from lots of information floating around forever. So if you could talk a little bit about that, what the comparisons will be, what impact as being different from the state will have. I'll be wonderful. Thank you. I want to make sure that we're not leaving anybody with the impression that this software, a ban on facial recognition technology, would address tailored ads to individuals that I believe was used as an example of deep reach, perhaps overreach by technology, of analyzing the individual person's activities, as some would compare this software to doing as well. But this banning facial recognition technology would not affect the current use of ads in social media streams. And so I want to make be clear about that. And the audience before us, if I'm not mistaken, would only affect King County government entities, not any private use or other entities within the counties boundaries. And also clarify, if I can, Mr. Bowman, that the state legislation putting some strong sideboards and recognitions of civil liberty and other concerns when it goes into effect the first in July is applies to King County government entities, the very entities that this legislation would affect. Correct. So both of those states and this ordinance only deal with government entities. There is nothing related to private companies and how they use facial recognition technology or tracking across advertising and marketing. And there there really is just sideboards primarily related to law enforcement coming down from the state law and also transparency and review from state law to local governments. Which is certainly a avenue and quarter that as Councilmember Caldwell's introduction documents have is concerning in our community when we have the power of law enforcement to our image, our obligation to make sure that we're using it justly and well in it and not in equitably. So I certainly recognize the wanting to make sure that the technology, if it were to be used, is used well and not. In error. Mr. Chair. Council member Lambert. Thank you. Would you just check? Does the state law require, as part of the work an agency needs to make public before using SRT? They must define what the retention period is and the date of the recent process. So I believe that that is in the state law. So if you could check and make sure that we have that accurate, that would be great. I'm sorry, sir. Could you repeat that one more time? Are you saying so? How long in the accountability records the agency must define how long they intend to retain that data? Yes, that's correct. It is correct. Okay. If they intend to use that type of technology, they must include in the accountability report how long they intend to hold on to that that. Excellent. Thank you for the clarification. Further questions. Conversation Council member Belge. You're on mute. There was somebody. Thank you. I was listening carefully to Councilmember Caldwell's remarks in support of the legislation, and it's a very compelling case and the public testimony. It's a very compelling case. When you have technology that is has been shown to have these kinds of impacts and then the risk of rolling it out in ways that could cause harm to our constituents and that that cannot be undone. And so I think it's a very compelling case. I want to ask if the sponsor would would take a question. Yes. What I if you could just explain, because this issue of sort of the state went through a process to come up with a piece of legislation . There was a great deal of work that went into that, as my understanding in your thinking. What is the what is the the justification for us? Like, why is the state law not sufficient to meet the need that you have so compellingly identified? Thank you very much for the question. For me, it really comes down to protection of civil liberties. And I think there's just too much evidence currently that the potential for harm to individuals is so strong that it would be preferable to ban the use of this technology. I've looked at a lot of the at least research summaries, some coming from M.I.T., computer science researchers, employees of technology companies, and then some are comments, scholars and even corporate stakeholders that facial recognition use by governments. We're not talking about private entities here, just has too much potential harm that I don't want it to be used by our government. Now, I said earlier that maybe in the future it could be refined so much that we could we could amend action here. But I also think that there is a potential for making the problem worse if the facial recognition systems were to become totally accurate. How much surveillance power by a government do we need? Do we really need to track people by their race? Do we need really to profile and monitor people based on really secret algorithms? And do we really need to create databases that can be exploited by ICE in our immigration systems and other government agencies? I'm very concerned about the direction that we're going in, and I believe that we, as the current government have a we should have a policy to lead with racial equity as the driving force for how we develop laws and priorities. That's what we're about. But this is an ordinance that I think really would put equity into action. The technology is out there that is just too potentially dangerous, I believe. And it is our most vulnerable and already marginalized populations that are suffering disproportionality from its application. Now. So I feel very strongly about this. And I, I think it's very appropriate for our county to take this step and impose the ban. If something changes, we can undo that. But I'm concerned with all that's the momentum that's going forward and it seems to be so quickly going forward. How much do our citizens want to be tracked by government? And. Especially when there's such a high mistake rate for darker skinned people, especially darker skinned women. And. Thank you. Thank you for answering that question, Councilman, because I appreciate it. And I'm also moved by the fact that we're watching kind of it in real time, a terrifying experiment and the the hyper hyper surveillance of an entire population of people in another part of the world. And I'm not going to get into that right here, but I think sort of placing guardrails around the technology here makes it less likely that we will end up in that kind of an extreme situation, like when you see persecution in other parts of the world. So I thank you for that explanation. It's helpful. Thank you. Further discussion. Thank you so much. Colleagues will look forward to taking on this legislation and our end of items on our agenda today. Madam Clerk, did anybody miss any votes today?

A bill for an ordinance amending the Denver medical marijuana code of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to regulate and implement medical marijuana research and development facilities and to modify provisions to conform with state statute. Amends the Denver Medical Marijuana Code of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to authorize a new local medical marijuana license to regulate and implement medical marijuana research and development facilities and to modify provisions to conform with state statute. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-17-20.

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Madam Secretary, please. Both following up through the 13 hours, 13 eyes, accountability. Your decision has passed. All right. Please put the next item on our screens and you'll be ready to put up to six to on work this. They were supposed. To go to six to Series two 2020 to be placed upon final consideration and do that. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Are you going to move? We're going to go to council member. So the market. You are in use. You are. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Councilwoman Cohen, each for delaying this last week so that I would have an opportunity to speak on why I would like to vote no and strongly encourage my colleagues to vote no on this ordinance. I think it's really appropriate that it's coming on the heels of our discussion around the new dispo ordinance. We've had legalized marijuana for almost a decade in our state in its different forms with medical, recreational, and to date, we don't have a disparity, a completed disparity study to reveal to us where the gaps are. We only know anecdotally that there are less than ten license owners that are black or brown in the state of Colorado and even less in the city of Denver. We have a major equity problem, and that is why I supported extending the the moratorium or the date until we start our new lottery. On the other ordinance, what I don't feel is appropriate is passing this ordinance tonight. This is an ordinance that opens up an entirely brand new license type. We know from experience that we did not plan well for other license types. We know that we had such severe inequities we needed to place a moratorium and caps on different license types in specific with gravity. You can find really good. No. Can you hear? Yup. And so now I believe that if we're going to delay the lottery for the other license types, we must delay the lottery for this brand new license type. We must delay opening the license type until we have an equity plan in place. Unfortunately, what this is going to do if we do not maintain it as a pilot, is that it opens the floodgates for outsiders, people outside of the state, to invest and participate in this industry. Because we've had the we've had those changes happen at the state level that allow for this to happen. All I'm asking for is either that we treat this initial license as a pilot and don't allow any other licenses of this type until we figure out our equity plan or that we pause on this license until we have an equity plan. The only thing being proposed is a mechanism for obtaining information. No benchmarks, no requirements, no expectations around equity that we would have for a new licensee under this license type. And so I'm asking my colleagues to think about the responses to the questions that we that I raised and how there's nothing in there that's going to protect our marginalized communities from the same thing happening again. That happened when we opened up our medical marijuana licenses and then our recreational licenses. Please vote no on this tonight. Give it one year to to become a part of our equity plan. Give us a year to think it through or treat this individual licensee as a pilot. Thank you. If you can't remember, don't see anybody else in the queue. So. Madam Secretary, I go to you for. Roll call. All right. Black are. Herndon can h. Sawyer. Torres. CdeBaca. No. Gilmore. I kind. Hi. Cashman. I. Ortega, I. Sandoval I Council President. Secretary Bruce $100,000. To advise. 2012 as well as to have passed that does include the little of numbers. Remember that this is a concern because this is your last chance to vote for a resolution to the document. No consideration on the floor. It is unusual for you. You. Go ahead. Good to go. Thank you. I move the resolution to be adopted and those final considerations are placed upon final consideration and do pass and block for the following items. All series of 2023, 42, three, 47 and 348 340 9301 300 340 208 237 230 8303 220 73043 ten 312 262 and two 9262 four. Just voted on. Not on. Right. Sure. Okay. So much to do. But everything else. Is that correct, Victoria? That's correct. Okay, great. And second tier. So. I'm secretary. Black. Black. Flynn. Herndon. Sawyer. Torres. CdeBaca. I'm sorry. Stuart. About the Gilmore Girls. I can't. I Cashman. I Ortega. I want. Sandoval High Council president. Voted. 1313. On the resolutions I've been adopting and the bills have been placed on final consideration and due to council will not take recess as evening and single the business for this body. This meeting is adjourned.

A bill for an ordinance amending the Denver medical marijuana code of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to regulate and implement medical marijuana research and development facilities and to modify provisions to conform with state statute. Amends the Denver Medical Marijuana Code of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to authorize a new local medical marijuana license to regulate and implement medical marijuana research and development facilities and to modify provisions to conform with state statute. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-17-20.

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Night eyes, three nays. Council Resolution 260 has been adopted. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens in Council Member Gilmore, please. For Council 262 on the floor. I move the council bill to six to be ordered published. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Councilmembers and Barca. Thank you, Mr. President. This one is a very problematic bill in front of us, and it's part of the two marijuana pieces of legislation coming before us tonight. The first one is to delay a year for allowing new licenses to enter the space. And this second piece, I support the other piece. The second piece I do not support, because there have been several years of people really challenging the city to do better. As far as equity goals, we have almost a thousand licenses for marijuana in the city of Denver. I live in one of the most disproportionately impacted neighborhoods and we have less than five owners of people of color. And so the delay on the lottery to get a equity plan in place is appropriate. However, this second piece is opening up a new license type for research and development. I've encouraged them strongly to have this as a opened up as a pilot for the current organization trying to get the license. Because if we open it up now, we're basically doing what we did when we first legalized. And we're only allowing we're taking an inequitable situation and deepening inequity because the only people who are allowed to have this license for research and development are people who currently have a license. That's a group we already know we have issues in and a lack of representation in. And so we're basically giving the companies that already represent inequity. We're giving them a head start on this type of license. There's also several things that have changed in the Colorado ecosystem around marijuana. We now can there's no residency requirement, Colorado residency requirement for marijuana licenses. And you also can invest from outside of the state into marijuana licensure. So we're opening up ourselves for big pharma, big tobacco to come in and dominate this space if they choose to. And I think right now is the time to. If we're recalibrating on equity goals for the other piece of this, then we should also be putting this on pause and only doing the pilot part of this, not passing an entirely new license type without an equity plan in place. So I'm a no on this tonight and strongly encourage this bill to be pulled and turned modified to be a pilot for the one business applying right now. That would be a social equity applicant if we had that defined. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember. Thank you, Mr. President. I, too. I. I've been reaching out to cannabis and, and I haven't heard any comments about Big Pharma or big tobacco entering the state. Should I? I guess I know that we don't have any. We're in a very limited, you know, skeleton crew tonight. I would say that I am. And I'm intrigued by that statement. I haven't heard that yet. And I want to I want to better understand that if that is the case. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Torres is going to come up to the microphone. Thank you, Mr. President. In a similar vein to Councilman Hines, I'd like to be able to ask a couple of questions around the equity piece and why that may or may not matter with this particular bill next week, but I'll be supporting the introduction of the bill tonight. So I'd just like to see if Ashley or somebody from XYZ can come next week. Oh, look at that. How do you make that light flash? Ortega. Your microphone is not on over there, though. I think you have to press the button on that one. It's just one more. Yes. Thank you. I received email communication today from a gentleman who is right now, I guess the only applicant in the in the wings waiting who is. A Denver native that grew up in northwest Denver, happens to be a Latino owner and is planning to move forward as soon as this bill passes. And so the concern being expressed about equity, the only one lined up to do this is a Latino owner. So I have no problem with this bill moving forward tonight. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Rocky, did you have something else that. Yes. Just wanted to clarify for Councilman Hines and Torres. Part of what we didn't do the first time when we legalized is plan ahead. We didn't speculate who would get involved, who would have the capital to be able to step into these spaces. And so we missed an opportunity to recognize that this is an industry that's dominated by people who come in with significant amounts of capital. We know how research and development spaces are dominated. And so when we're thinking about the future of the marijuana industry, we know that big tobacco is waiting in the wings to take over when this is federally legalized. And so now that we've changed the statewide requirements around who can invest and who can have licenses, this is something where we might have to extrapolate a little bit and prepare for. And while Councilwoman Ortega is on point, about the only person in line for this right now is a social equity applicant. I think that that is why it needs to be a pilot so that we're protecting the space and learning from it, because he's one of the only ones who can apply for it right now because he has a license already. But that's already such a limited amount of people and there's such a lack of representation that we have to recognize that we're immediately putting people of color behind if we open up this space without it being tied to an equity plan. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. So nothing else on this one. I'm sorry to hear on. And again, this is on introduction. I also ask that people have questions and wanted follow up. Let's see how much of that we can get answers ahead of the meeting that we can relay to the public what the questions asked and answers were to again, minimize the need for people to be in this room. If they don't need to be, if they need to be, then that's what we're here for. But if they don't, let's attempt to get those questions answered in the interim between first and second reading Council. Madam Secretary, Roll Call. CdeBaca. No black. Flynn. Hi. Gilmore. Herndon. Hi. Hi. Cashman. Kenny Ortega. Sandoval, I. Torres. Council President Hi Madam Secretary. Please call the voting announced results. 11 nice one name.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 16.60, relating to the payment of living wage to workers at the Long Beach Airport and the Long Beach Convention Center, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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I'm going to go ahead and just quickly move item 18 up to the to the next item, because I know we have a group here, Mr. Clark. Item 18 is a recommendation to regarding audits, amending the municipal code relating to the payment of living wages to workers at the Long Beach Airport and Long Beach Convention Center read in its adopted as red. Cargo motion because of a motion and a second. Any public comment on the item? Please. Good evening, Vice Mayor. City Council. My name's Christine Pettit. I'm a resident of the end voter in the sixth District. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community in recognition of the recent passages of labor, peace and worker retention policies at the Long Beach, the Long Beach Airport and Convention Center. And in anticipation of tonight's final vote to increase the minimum wage for workers at these publicly owned tourism hubs, we'd like to say thank you. Thank you for taking a cue from the majority of Long Beach voters in every district who approved Measure N with 64% voting in favor of the ordinance, it's clear that your constituents want a strong tourism industry with good wages and conditions for its workers. By passing labor peace, you took action to protect the cities and taxpayers investments in our tourism industry by ensuring that operations will not be disrupted. With the worker retention policy, you provided workers with a window of opportunity to demonstrate their value and work ethic when new contractors take over operations. This also ensures that visitors are met with skillful and quality service. And the issue before you tonight. And thanks to councilmembers O'Donnell, Garcia and Johnson, a vote to raise the minimum wage at the airport and convention center will mean a higher standard of living for workers, less employee turnover and more money in the pockets of workers to spend locally. In the first year alone, an estimated $800,000 plus will be generated in Long Beach through the economy. Your leadership on these issues will benefit workers Long Beach's tourism industry, visitors to our great city and our local economy as a whole. Thank you for taking these important steps for Long Beach and for putting forth a vision that recognizes when our residents thrive, our city thrives. Thank you. Thank you. Thank speaker put. I will just be translating. We will not just close a key commercial center. Good evening. My name is Carlos. I work in the convention center. And then one or two of the platters we saw last night, I think went that. I I've been working as a dishwasher for eight years and I make 950 an hour. So we are keeping an eye on the clock tomorrow. I'm here tonight to thank you for the leadership you've taken. As a wonderful ambassador. I will not go into the world, but I quote Americans here. Now with this living wage. I can begin to start a savings account for any emergency. Item if I'm here. The deal came on the floor of the Commons, well known in West England. I can also begin to help my family out and save for my retirement. That's something they couldn't do with my my wage of 950 an hour. It's the content of work. Yeah. Upwork couldn't be more just matters getting to me without in a million years for an opportunity went unnoticed. I'm I'm very happy to be here because I am now going to be able to accomplish many goals I have for myself and my family. Thank you very much for your support and good night. You're going to miss the best. Cordless psychic. Glasses, but goodbye. Thanks for your work. Thanks. See no other public comment would nor the public comment appear. Sorry. Yes, please. Oh, hey, I am Frances. Emily Tyson Harris and I reside in District one, and I wholeheartedly support this agenda item as written. And I do trust that you will also agree that this is the only thing that needs to be done. And it is essential that as many people as possible do have a living wage. When people work hard, they deserve to be paid for their hard work. When you look at the catastrophic situation that's occurring on the federal, state and ultimately affecting the city in terms of cuts such as unemployment, in terms of cuts, in terms of our food stamps and various other matters, I do believe when people have the opportunity to have more wages, that's going to reduce the effect that's going to have on this city, the state and the federal government in terms of having to find a way to help individuals. So by them having a little bit extra money, they'll be able to move forward in their life in a positive direction. And I also believe that is ultimately going to be a blessing, particularly to their children who deserve to have the best future that they can. Thank you very much. I think we have another speaker up there. No. Okay. That's great. Then we're gonna go ahead. And is there any other comment behind Braille scene? And we do have a motion on the floor. Remember to cast your votes. I mean. Yeah. Motion carries eight votes. Yes. One vote. No. Thank you. And, Mr. Clerk, next item. I didn't mean as a report from financial management with the recommendation to receive and file the fiscal year 2013 year end budget performance report.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.120, temporary enforcement of Long Beach Health Orders related to COVID-19; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Communication from City Attorney Recommendation Declare Ordinance Amending the Long Beach Municipal Code related to temporary enforcement of Long Beach health orders regarding COVID 19 and declaring the urgency thereof. Read the first time and later the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading City Wide. And I get them and I get a motion in a second place. I have a motion by Councilman Sunday House and seconded by Councilman Richardson. Councilman and de Haas in the comments. Very supportive. I'm sorry, Richardson. Any comments? No comment. Our countryman prices queued up. Any comments. Kieran? A price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank Monica and Taylor from the city attorney's office for working with me this week to get the language to become more narrowly focused and for their efforts in putting this together. I really appreciate it. Thank. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Any comments? No comments. Okay. Thank you. District one. I. District two. I'm District three. No. I district for. All right. District five. They? District six. I. District seven. I. District eight. Yes. District nine. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. And then you can now read item 17. Is. Communication from city attorney recommendation declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to the sale of unclaimed property read and adopted as read citywide.

AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending sections 6-206 and 24-508, Denver Revised Municipal Code regarding the hours of operation of retail marijuana stores and medical marijuana centers. Allows licensed marijuana stores to remain open until 10:00 pm. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 4-3-17. Amended 4-17-17 to clearly communicate to the public and to the marijuana industry the first date upon which any retail marijuana store or medical marijuana center may remain open until 10:00 p.m. will be Monday, May 1.

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Nothing has been called out under bills or from consideration. Council Bill 324 as amended concerning hours of operation of retail medical marijuana centers has been called out by both Councilman Ortega and Councilman Herndon to offer some new amendments under pending. Nothing has been caught up. Madam Secretary, please put the first item on our screen, Councilor Herndon, where you put Council Bill 324 as amended on the floor. Mr. President, I move that council bill 324 as amended, be placed upon final consideration and do pass. All right. It has been moved and second it. Councilman Ortega, will you please offer your first motion to me? Sure. And let me just first say that you all received a copy from me last Friday that showed them as one amendment. I separated them out both A and B as separate amendments. So let me start with the first one. Mr. President, I move that to amend Council Bill 17 324 in the following particulars on page one after Section three, add the following subsection and letter appropriately for any location where there is a pending application on May one, 2017 for a new retail. For marijuana store license or a new medical marijuana center license. And there is an existing retail marijuana store or medical marijuana center already operating on the premises. The existing retail marijuana store or medical marijuana center shall remain subject to the former 7 p.m. closing time unless and until the license is granted based upon a determination that the applicant is in compliance with all applicable state and city laws. All right. It has been moved and seconded comes from the county council, one or two. So what this amendment does is it says that for those applicants that are pending going through the process of awaiting the issuance of a license, they would not be able to expand their hours to 10:00 until they are granted a license and shown they are in full compliance with state and local laws. Okay. Comments by other members of council. Questions by other members of council. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Councilwoman Ortega, just in reading the. The unless and until it occurs to me that if an applicant is, say, is applying to add a retail license to an existing medical marijuana center. But then that is denied. Let's suppose that is denied. The way I read this, the existing medical marijuana center would not be able subsequently to a denial to to then extend its hours until ten. Is that your intent or is that do you read that the same way? Yes. So as you know, in some cases we have single locations where it's just either a medical or a retail license. So in the case where somebody is wanting to in the case of the medical, they want to add a retail. Correct. They would not be able to expand the hours until they can show that they have complied with everything for the new license at that location. And I would just ask that if there is any further clarification from our city attorney that I'd ask David Bardwell to weigh in on this as well. Okay. David, can I ask you then to give your opinion? If the new if the license is being applied for is then denied? Would the existing medical marijuana center be able to extend its hours the way under this wording because it says it shall remain closing at 7 p.m. unless and until the new license is granted? That means if they don't get the license, they can never open them. Told them that. David Broadwell, Assistant city attorney. I think that's a correct reading of it. If and if the new licenses denied, I think it's based upon the fact that something is deemed to be wrong at the premises or or in terms of prior behavior of the licensee or lack of qualification for the new license, which is intended to be part of the objective of the amendment is to keep them at seven because some reason arose showing they didn't merit a new license in that location, presumably traceable to some problem at that location. Okay. I might suggest it could also simply be because there was no need or desire established for a retail component at the medical location. I don't know why that would handicap the hours for the medical. So I but I do understand the lay out the circumstance you outlined. Thank you. That's all. All right. Thank you, counsel. Councilwoman Blake. Thank you, Mr. President. I. I was out of town all weekend. And I know you e-mailed these out late Friday afternoon, but we've spent months talking about this store hours and had hours and hours of community input. And I don't feel like we're going to have any sort of discussion except for what we're doing here. And so. I find that problematic since we spent so much time coming up with a good, solid compromise. But for this particular amendment, I'm wondering what what problem we're trying to solve. I don't understand what this actually does that is beneficial. Mr. President, may I respond? Yes. So this is basically focused on ensuring that people who are going through the pending application process and there are only 30 of them. So we're not talking about the entirety of applications or licenses that we have in the city, locations that they are in full compliance with, state and local laws that every licensee is obligated to adhere to. There is no extra cost. This is part of the costs that the city is already incurring in reviewing these applications and doing the inspections and all the other things. I got a letter today from somebody that said we'd have to create some new task force to to look at these pending applications. It's part of the process that they have to go through. But it basically says that until it's deemed that they are in full compliance and issued a license, then at that time they can expand their hours. Yes. So. In my district, I have a medical center that has been operating for years. I have recently applied for a license to open a retail store. But if they're if they have problems, if they're breaking the rules for their medical license, they're not going to be awarded that retail license. So if they're breaking the rules. To have it. So I don't know why we there. So if they're breaking the rules, that's where my Second Amendment comes in. If they're if they're following all the letter of the law, then they'll be issued their retail license at the same location where their medical is. And they would be granted the opportunity to extend their hours at which time their licenses issued. Okay. And then who is going to ensure that they are saying closing down at 7 p.m.? It's it's going can be part of the enforcement of our excise and license department, as they do with all of our establishments. Though they don't currently inspect that now. So then they're going to you're going to add that, well. They know which 30. Our going through the pending process. And I don't know if those 30 are standalones. Actually, in order to apply for a retail license, they already have to have a medical license. So. It's it's a matter of them having to demonstrate that they're in full compliance. As they do today. I again, I would feel more comfortable if this is something that we had heard pros and cons from from exercising license from the police from. Well, unfortunately, we don't have anybody here tonight from accessing the license. At least I think so. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman, can each. Thank you, Mr. President. I will not be supporting the amendment because I. I believe that it tries to create new leverage for something we already have, which is a process to make sure folks are following the rules. I don't believe connecting the hours to it makes clear sense. Right. So the goal is if you aren't following the rules, you don't get the license. That's the consequence. Connecting it to the hours, I think is just confusing, particularly for the public, you know, and for the store owners, too, to really be able to to keep track of. So but I chimed in because if this amendment does pass, there's a typo in it. I think Councilman Ortega caught it when she was reading because she kind of paused at it. But there the first line has a four at the end of it that shouldn't be there. And so I think we can wait and see if it passes and then amend it at that point. Or we can do a friendly amendment if the we haven't done a lot of friendly amendments, but in other bodies they serve on if the if the mover in the second degree that that four is a mistake, then we could perhaps strike it. Now I'm getting the thumbs up from the city attorney. So, yes. Okay. Is the second or third agree? Are you okay with that, councilman? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Finally, a moment to strike that for. Thank you. Mr. Brough. I just want to be clear. We just did a friendly amendment to strike. Is there anything that I need to do procedurally? No, I thought that was fantastic. So just. Keep going. Great, great public. You just want to make sure they're good with your lawyers. Okay. Tell Councilman Lopez you're up. Thank you. Mr. President, I think my question was answered and then the series that that was asked. So. Great. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. I also won't be voting for this amendment. I think it is. As Councilman Kennish alluded to, it's redundant. The exercise in license looks at the behavior of people in their stores. You have to renew your license every year. So when if people are having problems with the stores of the store as a bad actor, there are already a lot of processes in place so that they would not be able to open another store and they would be under some kind of probation, probably at their original store. And I also agree with Councilwoman Kennish that confusing bad behavior with the time you are open doesn't seem to be connected as well as it as conceptually as well as others have said. So I won't be supporting this amendment. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. I have Ortega and Flynn in the queue. Okay. Councilman Ortega, are you. Yeah, I just wanted to add just a little bit of statistical information that I think is helpful for the listening audience. So when this. Request originally came to us from the industry. The request was so that customers would have the ability to shop in Denver as opposed to going to our neighboring jurisdictions to buy their product after hours. So if you look at the information that I passed out, we have only two jurisdictions that close at seven to close at eight. Two of them close at nine for close at ten, and only three close at midnight. In total, there are 92 locations throughout the metro area that range from two locations by jurisdiction to the largest number next to Denver, which is 23. That's in Aurora. Denver has 218 locations. And as I shared with you earlier, we have 30 pending licenses and only 12 show Coors licenses, which we'll talk about in the next amendment . So I would just respectfully request your support because I think this is a reasonable amendment to the ordinance. And really it's just making sure that everybody is in full compliance. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. Councilman Fletcher. Councilman Espinosa just popped up and he hasn't said anything. Do you mind if we go to Councilman Espinosa? Councilman Espinosa? Yeah. It's too bad somebody from Excise and license isn't here. Do you? Councilman Ortega, do by any chance have a sense about sort of what some of the issues outline, what what sort of the questionable issues are with some of the some of these licenses that that are that would be maybe potentially subject to act action on this. Are you talking about the Second Amendment, which I haven't read yet? Are you talking about the pending applications? More the Second Amendment. The reason why I'm asking, can we. Deal with that when we come to it? Okay. Yeah, we'll deal with that just second. All right. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. I did want to try to get a clarification. And also I join Councilman Espinosa in bemoaning the fact that we don't have exercise in license here to address some of this. But Councilman Ortega, do you. You keep saying 30 pending licenses. The last report we have that I had was as of April 1st, there were still 60. Are you saying that there are 30 of those 60 that fit the circumstances and you have that figure from excise. Information that I received from exercise on a license. Okay. I just wanted that clarification, Mr. President. Thank you. All right. It's been moved in. Second amount of secretary. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Brooks. I wasn't quick enough. I wanted to get a quick point of clarification from Councilwoman Ortega that we're only talking about the the 7 p.m. closing time, that there still is the entire needs and desires hearing process as well. So so you're proposing to also have the needs and desires hearing process, either a daytime or an evening hearing for these pending licenses, but then also restrict their hours of operation to 7 p.m. until they're approved. Is that correct? It is already part of the current ordinance that they have to go through. I'm not adding that as something in addition because it's already there. So all I'm saying is that as people are going through the pending application process, they have to demonstrate that they're in full compliance with state and local laws before they can expand their hours. And it would be after the licenses issued. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Here we go. Council. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. And I apologize for having so many questions here, but didn't get a chance to review it and have the discussion. I'm also echo that I'm sorry we don't have staff here to answer some of this, but as I'm reading through this, in my reading, you write that if there's somebody who's in good standing but they have a pending license, they could be stuck at seven. Even if there's somebody who is in who has something that they're working through that they're in trouble with, and they could automatically go to ten because they don't have a pending license. So this could snare somebody in good standing because they're pending. Well, somebody who's not in great standing is able to open the ten while they're working to come into full compliance with whatever they're in violation. It's based on the location. David, do you want to add anything further? Councilman Clark, I was listening carefully to your question. When you say not in good standing. The next amendment that the councilwoman is going to propose regards a similar sanction on people who are pending some disciplinary action. And if they have some sort of show cause or disciplinary action pending, they too will be stuck at 7 p.m. unless and until the disciplinary action is resolved. So so would that one would ensnare, whether it's at the same location or not. Anyone who has pending would already get snared in the Second Amendment, and this amendment might snare someone who is in good standing but happens to have something pending. Yes, but. But. But both. Both relate to the specific location, either the specific location where a new license is pending or the specific location where a disciplinary action is pending. Both categories, if both amendments were to pass, would be subject to staying at 7 p.m.. But if somebody was going through disciplinary action and had something pending, this one doesn't pass. The next one does. They would still be stuck at seven because they're under disciplinary action. Correct? Okay. Thank you. All right, Councilwoman Sussman. Well, thank you, Mr. President. I think this discussion is an excellent example of why bringing amendments to council night puts us all into confusion. We have a regular marijuana committee that meets regularly and asks people from both sides or not as if there were two sides from all sides of issues like this, so that we can help get our questions answered to think carefully through what the what the implications are with their unintended consequences. And that's why I think it's very difficult to be doing committee work on the bench. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Uh, Councilman Espinosa, you back up? Cashman, can you go to Councilman Cash? Yeah. Yeah, let's go to Councilman Cashman. Abstinence from the thing. As an escort. Okay. Councilman Espinosa, you're back up and you're not in your seat. You know, this happens in Washington. You know. That's as close to your back up. I'm trying to. So I wish I could ask that other question and understand all these proposed amendments collectively because. I support these in concept. But, you know it's it creates. I'm more interested in the next amendment, which is the disciplinary action, because this would if if an amendment on the front end hours is is passed by this council, as has been discussed previously, you could with this one amendment when there isn't disciplinary action involved, could essentially squeeze in the inner you know in this the reduce the total number of hours that these current licensees could operate. So I wish I understood how I mean, I wish we could ascertain all three together. So I miss Mr. Bradwell because I wasn't totally following your in council and Clark's discussion. This. This this amendment that is currently on the floor. Is is agnostic on whether there is disciplinary action or not. Correct. Correct. But this amendment does not. Passing or failure of this amendment does not preclude anything in the subsequent amendment that Councilwoman Ortega is proposing. Correct? Correct. Thank you. All right. It has been moved going once. And second to Madam Secretary, Rocco. Ortega, I. SUSMAN No. BLACK No. Clark No. ESPINOSA Asim. Flynn. Gilmore No. Brandon Cashman, No. Can each. LOPEZ No. New. ESPINOZA Hi. Mr. President. No. Please close voting against the results. Sorry. I'm just making sure. I think we got everybody. Okay. Five eyes and eight knees. Yeah, that's. Okay. Councilwoman Black voted no. No, and she turned up as a yes. We have to run, but. Okay, I'll change it to and May. And so we have Espinosa earned in New Ortega as. Yes. News. No. Two only changed that one. So it should be I think it should be three. Feet. Three, ice, ten. You said he was nine. You were ninth. Okay. Four ice. And nine. Yes. I believe, councilman. Just for the record, councilman who said no, but he is an I. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Great. So verify that it is. The amendment fails. Um, and Councilman Ortega. But your second. You have another motion, so please read your second motion to. Mr. President, I move to amend Council Bill 17 through 24 in the following particulars on page one after Section three, add the following subsection and letter appropriately for any location where there is a pending disciplinary action in regard to a retail marijuana store license or a medical marijuana center license on May one, 2017, the retail marijuana store or Medical Marijuana Center shall remain subject to the former 7 p.m. closing time unless and until the disciplinary action is concluded, including any judicial appeals from the disciplinary action. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Your explanation of the amendment, Councilwoman Taylor. So this. Amendment prohibits extending the hours for a licensed marijuana business from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m.. In cases where there is a pending disciplinary action against the business, let me also clarify that this changed from the previous copy that you received. We had someone raise a question about whether or not we were talking about the holder of a license, and it was not my intent to have the holder of a license that may be named in an LLC with another location. To be affecting any other location is only the location where the disciplinary action has taken place. So that's what this would do. All right. Questions. Comments. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. So I guess my concern my question on this one is, in my district, we've had a couple of of locations that have been bad actors. And in an effort to get them out, someone else has come in to that location, taken over the licenses and turned around to be very positive, contributing to the community, working with the neighborhood associations. So if my reading this right that the new person who's coming in to try and fix the problem because it's tied to the location would be essentially penalized because that location was under review. I guess that I didn't quite catch what you're talking about with the location versus the person. But I know in my district we have had some actors that weren't doing a good job and were able to replace them at that location with really good ones. So it's. A let David chime in, but it's the location with the people that are operating at the time. That the new operator where to come in is not so. So, David, could you clarify between location in license. It is location and the the requirement to stay at 7 p.m. is during the pendency of the disciplinary action. After the disciplinary action is resolved, however it's resolved it then goes to ten. If the disciplinary action is a revocation of the license, there's nothing there anymore to stay open till ten, seven or ten. Right. But but the way it's worded, it's only staying at seven while the disciplinary action is pending. It doesn't forever run with the land, councilman, if that's why one of your concerns is just during that finite time period. Okay. And then my second question is with this during any appeal. So if they're if they move out of this, can a positive hey, now the disciplinary action we've resolved that be appealed or is that again, I'm confused and concerned if somebody fixed the problem, could someone raise an appeal against them in in an attempt to keep them closed earlier? I'm not too familiar with the appeals process. That the use of appeal in this context means that some sanctions have been imposed against the licensee. They decide to take it to court, to challenge it. And as long as that court challenge continues, they're going to be stuck at 7:00. As long as they continue to fight the discipline. But that would mean that the court has decided that they should be disciplined, not that they've been off the hook. They've said, oh, no, you're good. You can't appeal. You can't get stuck in and appeal that way. Only if the court has ruled that you were in violation and should be punished. Yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. A similar question to Councilwoman Ortega. You had mentioned earlier that there were about a did you say 12 locations or 12 existing medical marijuana centers or retail that are currently in this? I caught up in this amendment that had pending disciplinary action. That is correct. It's 12. And that came from excise and license. Correct? Okay. Thank you. I just wanted that clarification. All right, Councilman. Thank you, Mr. President. So I actually wanted to ask, when I was working on our cap bill last year, I learned that there is a very wide range of issues that you can have with the license, ranging from not having a plant tagged to like black market trafficking out the back door. And we spent a lot of time last year thinking about that and defining it very carefully. Now, when you see I just am curious, because this language just says pending disciplinary action, it doesn't say for a year, it doesn't say for a show cause hearing, and it also doesn't say for a serious matter. And so I just wanted to check with, you know, Mr. Broadwell to see whether or not this is adequately narrow language to really be as narrow as you're describing it. Because we might as my understanding, you needed to use much narrower language to get at just serious offenses versus at any given time. You know, we have dozens and dozens of folks who have small issues that, you know, maybe a reporting error, a lag in a report, which are, I think in a class that I think we would all agree is different than, you know, having serious concerns. So I just wanted to ask about that issue. And I know it's hard without the department here, but. So let me just address that very quickly. The list that I received from exercising license does not give me any indication what the type of violations are. I would assume that they are looking at very egregious violations to create a show, cause hearing and warrant somebody to have to come in as opposed to not having a plant tape, you know, without having somebody here to answer these questions. And I'm not sure why we didn't ensure that somebody from exercising a license was here is a little concerning. But, you know, I'm happy to share this document with you, but it doesn't clarify what the offenses are that put them in this condition. Of. Use and disciplinary action. Is the term used in the code, both the medical code and the retail code, to apply to any rule violation, any statutory or local city ordinance violation. So it is a generic term that encompasses both major and minor to get to your original point. Okay. So I get the idea of, if I may, Mr. President, yes, I get the idea of serious violations, which I'm guessing if there's show cause hearings, there are. But the language is not narrow enough and I cannot support it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Canete. I think we have. I'm sorry. Our list, Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Brooks. I wanted to I on the list that you had sent out Councilman Ortega for the show cause hearings. The there's a step activation date and then an expiration date since we don't have someone here from excise and licensing. Can you answer what the step activation date and the expiration date? How how those if you could explain those a little bit more, that would help to make a decision on this amendment. So when I requested the data, this is what I received. There wasn't any clarification or explanation provided. That gives me some clear distinction to adequately address your question. Okay. Thank you. So I guess looking at this, I share the concern that Councilwoman Sussman had talked about, that it's really hard to make a decision on an amendment to a piece of legislation without having a conversation and without having to. Without being able to ask excise and licensing exactly what this means, how it's going to be enforced. And all of those questions that I think in making good legislation would be asked. And so I just wanted to put that out there. And. Thank you, President Brooks. Yeah, thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Down to Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. Councilwoman Ortega, I told you earlier today in an email that. In concept, I'm not opposed to this, but I think there's too many unknowns. Again, there's a lot of questions that we're not getting answered. It's also not honoring due process. I'm also concerned about competitors. I in my district, we had some issues with some competitors accusing a another business of something that might have been unfounded. And in in that situation, someone would not have their due process. I, I feel like in concept I could get behind this, but there really are too many unknowns. And if we could have a larger discussion about it and hear from all the sides and have. Talk through what those questions are and get the answers to those questions. But as it is tonight, I just feel like there are too many, too many unknowns. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Martel. You mind if I get to Espinosa a little bit? Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Lopez was actually second to chime in, and for some reason, the system is going in. It's going haywire. So I defer to him. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, sorry about that. Okay. Well, I just my question was, how many? I'm trying to figure in concept I'm supportive of the idea. I'm just trying to figure out how many how many licenses at any given time are in some kind of disciplinary. Procedure or what has been the majority of disciplinary actions? I mean, have they been serious? Have they been. Small. I mean, I think I'm thinking a disciplinary action could possibly be, you know, serious violations like saying to a minor or, you know, not securing a door. But I'm wondering if it was maybe if someone can be disciplined for lighting or for storage or. I'm not too sure. I just kind of want to understand the range of of of disciplinary actions and what the majority has been. So, again, this is where somebody from excise and license should be here to help answer those questions. And I just want to very clearly state that if you recall, at the last meeting we had, I passed out a document that had some amendments that we didn't have time to discuss because there was a rush to get this ordinance filed and bring it forward. So we didn't get to have the discussion in committee as opposed to having it on the floor now. This is a different take from what I brought forward at that meeting. There wasn't an appetite for some of those recommendations that I made. But, you know, it's the prerogative of any council member to file a bill or an amendment to bills at any time. And so I think it's important that we ensure that as a city, we are doing the due diligence that is required to ensure that we have operations in full compliance before they are issued a license and then allowed to extend their hours. And if we have people going through the disciplinary process, they shouldn't automatically get to expand their hours until those issues are resolved. And so that's what this does. I'm sorry, I can't answer your question about how many and what all are the various types of ongoing disciplinary incidents that, you know, come through exercise and license on on a regular basis? The information that I've shared with you is what I receive from excise and license about the number that are in process right now. And that's 12. In terms of those that are going through the disciplinary process and we'll have a show cause hearing. Councilman. You want to. If I may, would you be open? There's a thing I think there's a lot of unknowns and I think in concept. Councilman Ortega, I support something like this. I mean, in a lot of ways. And, you know, I've been going back and forth and. Okay. Do we regulate like alcohol and keep to the spirit of kind of regulating like alcohol? But I look at the alcohol regs and they're totally messed up. That's nothing to model. Right. It's for me, it's like that's really nothing, the model, because it's very weak. And it was written with with no business owners only in mind. But when I, when I, when we compare something to like like this, I mean, I bring that up because this is something I would definitely be interested in for other. Purposes for even alcohol, retail, alcohol. I think for us there's a lot of issues and when and with that side of it and when I look at when I asked the question in committee of the Denver Police Department, can you show me any crimes related to properties or what are the crimes related to properties of dispensaries versus retail alcohol? By a long shot, it was retail liquor stores that were like completely problematic. Right. And if we had something like this to be able to punish it and say, okay, well, you know, the problem is, is that it's all state legislation, right? And we can't touch it. So I guess that's my point being that, you know, the regs for alcohol totally are lame. And I think we're getting a little bit more thoughtful when it comes to marijuana. So when in saying that, Councilwoman, would you be open to. I would I would love to hear the excise and license chime in on this. I would love to hear some of our questions on this. And I don't know if maybe you'd be open to a postponement rather than see this go down in flames. Well, it doesn't mean that if it goes down, we couldn't bring it back and have further conversation about it. That's just my only concern is I would rather hear that information and data. Yeah, it's sad that we didn't. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. As you know, a bill can come back any time for amending it. So, Councilman Espinosa. Thank you, Mr. President. So I think part of the reason why the MJ businesses is better off than are better actors than the liquor industry in some cases is because of the rulemaking that has been done to date , both by this body and excise and licensing. But I wanted to sort of first speak to the councilman. Clark used the word penalize. And I just want to say that I don't actually see this as penalizing Asian because, you know, these businesses currently thrive in the in the with the 7:00 window. So being stuck with that 7:00 window during disciplinary action just means that you probably have greater incentive that if you if everyone if the windfall and incentive mean the windfall that everyone believes going to later hours is that's incentive to sort of rectify your disciplinary action, you know, in a sort of strong and an enduring way. I have one question for councilman and then a follow up with David Broadwell. Councilwoman Greenwich, you had used some phraseology about what we I can't remember what it is about the sort of degrees of discipline. What was the terms that you just used? Yeah, I was just looking to see if I could get access to any of my records from the first marijuana debate last year. And I don't they're all archives. But as I recall, there was a class of violations that were considered safety sensitive and they were eight of them maybe that Marley had identified and, and then everything else was more administrative. Not that it, you know, not that tagging plants is an important, but it's not quite the same safety risk as, you know, serving two minors, for example. And so so so there was a clear line and it was a line that excise and license themselves had used in internally. But it wasn't something as as I think David has confirmed that this language captures. So so there is a there is a line out there and I and I believe that correct me if I'm wrong, David, as I trying to find this, I couldn't I think we might have written it into the standards for the lottery. If the lottery was ever to occur, then folks who have a violation in that class of those safety sensitive violations is not eligible to be in the lottery. I think that's where we used this distinction, if I'm not mistaken, and apologize. That's a very good reminder, I think. I think that is accurate in terms of why we were making the distinction in that ordinance. So I wish we had that exact language because the question I have for Mr. Broadwell is if we had if if there was a simple amendment of the amendment to after it says for any location where there is pending pending disciplinary action and we inserted and the manager has determined the vehicle manager of exercise license has determined the violation is is is a safety suit since sensitivity or whatever that language is does that you know. You know what? What I'm trying to do is is there an amendment that could be offered that would actually both require them to be having pending disciplinary action and leave some latitude for the manager of excise and license to have rulemaking on their side to sort of determine when when it is the threshold is crossed where it warrants restricting maintaining these hour restrictions versus not. Councilman. What you just said is doable. That's not how I was directed to draft. But there would be ways to make distinctions or nuances in terms of who has to stay by the 7:00 hour and who doesn't. This is this was designed whether whether we were to scramble and make some sort of distinction or pull the code and see how we've done it in other contexts. It still is only relevant to those that are pending on on May 1st. Do I have the right May 1st of 2017? Right. This is to say, everybody on if if the bill passes, everybody on May 1st is going to be able to go to 10 p.m.. The purpose of both of the Ortega memos was to suggest, but there will be some exceptions. The one you're debating now is for the really small number that are facing some sort of disciplinary action right now. And unfortunately, we're all kind of at a loss in terms of. Councilman, your question. Knowing of that number, how many of them would be in the serious category versus how many wouldn't? We just don't know. You know, in terms of as we sit here right now. Thanks for that. Because it's sort of overlooked the date definition because that's that's sort of where I guess this this rule fails is that if there's this is if there's disciplinary if I understand that part, if there's disciplinary action later, you can't actually go back in and reduce hours. That's right. This amendment wouldn't cause you to have to roll back to seven. Next year or the year after pending disciplinary action. This only has to do with the ones that are in the pipeline now with some sort of disciplinary action as the law goes into effect. That's the way it's drafted. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I see let's see here. Let's go to Councilman Antioch. If we go to Councilman Clark in Flint. Yes. Actually, in New and her goodness OC clerks. I think he was the president and Councilman Espinosa almost asked my exact question. So thank you for that. You know, I will stick with my word penalty because I think everyone else is allowed to do something. But you got in trouble and you're not. Sounds like penalty to me. But other than that, your question was what underwear? What I was wondering. So, you know, I in theory, I have like this idea. And, you know, as we dig further into it, I have more unanswered questions, which makes it really hard up here making a decision now. But I do worry about the same thing when I had similarly overlooked the date and then went back to it and said, Wait a second, so this is only for these 12 people. What about the people who get disciplinary action on May 2nd? There can still up until ten and I guess I would prefer we have a broader conversation about is a penalty of going to 7:00 a good method of getting bad actors to play by the rules and be good. And if it is, then it's broader than just these 12. These 12 seem to fall into a weird snafu of you happen to have discipline on this date. That might not be a very big thing. Maybe it was a plant tag that you were in trouble with on May 1st and the next day somebody got some black market trafficking and they can stay open until ten. Again, I think, you know, I like the idea. I'm just struggling with the details and the nuance of of how it would work. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Let's see here. I'm losing weight. We're having some issues with our Flynn. Are you are you next? Yeah. Mr. President, I just clicked out because Councilman Clark actually spoke to some of what I was was going to suggest. And I just wanted to say that I now understand why exercising licenses in here. And I think when you're. Well, we'll save that for another day. Councilman, new. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I think all of us are frustrated because we don't have enough information. We don't have the right people here to answer our questions. And and we didn't get a chance to talk about it in committee. And so I hope that I echo Councilor Lopez suggestion of postponing this and hopefully both of these bill ones that failed. And when this one can come back and have a can be further defined and discussed at Councilwoman Blake's committee, and we can bring forward something that that we can all agree on. So thank you, Mr. Brennan. Thank you, Councilman. And I look at Councilman Ortega, and maybe you want to wait to the rest of the comments. But that suggestion of potentially bringing this back to this idea to committee, are you open to that? I'm open to that. I'd like to hear the rest of the comments. Great. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Ortega. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Brooks. I had tried to pull out my comment because Councilman Clark had asked my question. And so it won't let me they won't. Let me know. So thank you. Thank you, Granicus. Okay, um, let's see. Uh, Councilman Espinosa, did you pull out, too? No, I didn't. I'm back. Here. So I wish we had a sausage making committee so that we could. We could do this. You know, when when there are there things because there's a lot of merit to I see in this. And and so my kneejerk reaction was always, yeah, I support this sort of thing. But now after just hearing the conversation and dialog among my colleagues, which we can't do, and unless it's a public meeting and if we didn't touch on it at the committee meetings that we had, you end up in this situation. But so the two things that I would like to see, you know, and I could offer them in motion and amend, but I don't I would rather have the council, the sponsor, take this up if if she if she chooses is. Yeah, I would like to see inclusion of the manager of excise and licensing in determining the level of violation and then to make this work both now and in the future. It should simply read on May 1st, 2017, or after. And once you do those two things, I sort of think that for me, you capture some latitude by the manager who is more who is tremendously more versed in the subject matter. And it makes it so that this disciplinary action is a tool that is, in fact, there for subsequent violations. Thanks. Okay, Councilwoman Ortega. So the only problem with that recommendation is make first is next week. So trying to address any of these applications that are going or operations, I should say, that are going through the disciplinary action means that they will automatically get to expand their hours to 10:00 unless we postpone the entire ordinance tonight. And the fact is that when we had most of these discussions. Until we specifically and until I specifically asked excise and license to provide information and come to committee to answer certain questions. They were not part of the conversation. This was city council making these decisions, which, yes, we are the legislative body, but we have to have input from excise and license to be able to understand what the full implications are of some of these things that we're talking about and without having the information readily available to all of us. It is hard to make these decisions. And so, you know, yes, we get to do this, but we can't do this in a vacuum. And so I am more than happy to withdraw this amendment, but I would respectfully request that we change the date of the. You know, the enforcement date or the activation date of when we extend the ten PM hours. Otherwise, this conversation tonight is a moot point if all we're going to do is see every one of them get to expand their hours to ten o'clock. And we're not going to do anything different with folks who are. Currently in review for various disciplinary actions, which again, we don't really have clarity on how severe or how minor those issues are. All I know is that we've got 13 of them in the process right now. Okay, Councilman Ortega, I'm going to I'm going to say this and I'll let Councilwoman Black, this is your bill so you can chime in, too. Is there any appetite to move the date at all? Councilman Black. Not on my part. I mean, we've been talking about this since January. Okay. I'm of. Conversation. I'm going to suggest that we move forward then and just vote this up or down. Councilman Ortega and I will I will say, just as my comments, that I love the idea of this, because you and I both sat in a public hearing to until midnight for not so good actor. I do not believe it's in the right context in the Times. There's other ways for us to get after these bad actors. And so I wonder if bringing the whole conversation back to committee to see if there's another area where we can address this. But in spirit, I will. I'm supportive. But if you want to move this. Let's vote it up or down. Because if we're not really going to deal with this because we're not changing the date. Like I said, the conversation is a moot point. In terms I think there are other things we can talk about dealing with those applications that are going through the, you know, review process. But let's just vote on the amendment. Okay. It's been moved in second. Madam Secretary, Raquel Ortega Sussman. No. Black. No. Clerk. No Espinosa. Pass. Flynn. No. Gilmore, no. Herndon, I. Cashman can eat. Lopez No. No. No. Espinosa. Hi, Mr. President. I. All right, please close voting in US Results. Four eyes, 94. Eyes, nine nays. The motion to amend fails. Okay, Councilman Herndon, will you please read your motion to amend? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 324 as amended, be further amended in the following particulars. On page one lines 19 through 20, delete 8 a.m. and substitute with 9 a.m. and also delete 10 p.m. and substitute with 9 p.m.. Then on page one, line 28, delete 8 a.m. and substitute with 9 a.m. and then delete 10 p.m. in substitute with 9 p.m.. Um hmm. Councilman, I'm curious what amendment you're reading from. This is a new one. It is, Mr. President. And I will explain and I will explain in my comments. On the fly. Okay. Councilman Herndon, please explain the rationale for your amendment. Thank you, Mr. President. My amendment that I was originally was going to bring forward was shifting the hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.. When I had conversations with my council colleagues, I did not garner enough support to do that. So it didn't seem prudent just to do a vote on that to when I knew it wasn't going to be successful. So I don't and I'm not suggesting that I know that 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. will be successful. But as I was sitting here listening to the conversation and thinking back to why some of my colleagues had challenges with the 10 to 10 window, I thought this might be something that B strike that would strike a balance. So let me start with the rationale behind it. So right now, this is the option. If you want to purchase in the city and county of Denver, you have a8am window to 7 p.m. That is the current window right now. And whether you vote with this amendment, you will have 12 hours or whether you vote with the amendment that Councilman Black had, you will have 14 hours. So no matter what happens today, you will have the ability to purchase more marijuana at later hours within the city and county of Denver. But as we have had this conversation and I want to applaud Councilwoman Ortega for being a champion with pushing back about the speed of this bill and the fact that some of her amendments were considered. Because I do agree with that. I'm I'm not sure why. There has seemed to be a rush, in my opinion, to move this forward. But the question that I have asked is, well, what if the window was wrong? Why not shift it? But to do that, you need to know the data of how our current dispensaries are open. And that data we didn't even get in the marijuana committee. I had to reach out to excise and license and say, help me understand where the current hours are right now. And I appreciate excise and licensing that I sent it to all my council colleagues. We got data on just under 200 stores. There were some information that excise and license was unable to get, but they gave us the start times that they opened as well as the times that they closed. And as I was looking at this data from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., 99% of the stores were open. So they were they were diligently trying to maximize the tail end of that. There was one random store that closed at 530 for some reason, not sure why. But then as we turned and looked at the front end from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., approximately 20% of the stores are open, and that's it. And so I was reaching out to some people in the industry that aren't open at 8 a.m. and say, well, why aren't you open during this time period? And I don't pretend to say that they speak for the entire industry, but as they conveyed to me, well, there's not there's not a market at that time. And maybe some of those that are open at 8 a.m. are doing it because they need to capture that revenue because we don't have hours that go late enough in the evening. And so as I'm sitting there thinking, because as soon as you say, can we have more a community, a community that I represent that has had some adverse impacts that this industry has impacted on them? How do you make sure that they are a part of that conversation? Because I feel as if that community has not been heard. When we had the conversation about shall we have the pending applications go through? Community came out in droves. Globeville, Swansea came out. My fellow came out of the communities and said, We are saturated and we have not felt the we have had adverse impacts. And since that time where we move those pending applications forward, I thought it would be interesting to find out to the industry how if you better engage that community, which is why in committee I asked the question, could you give me an example of a good neighbor agreement that is in my district? Because that to me is a testament to, hey, we're reaching out to the community. Since then, I couldn't get one. And that's troubling to me. But I also I also believe that there is a case that there should be hours that are extended. So I have a community that I represent that does not feel that they have gained the benefit that people talk about and an industry that hasn't engage them. But you also have a very valid concern as you look at the data that says there's probably a case for later hours. So that's how I try to strike a balance. I thought a ten the ten would work, but some of my colleagues had concerns about that. The data that I talked about, 22% open at 8 a.m.. But guess what? 45% open at nine, and that would impact that 45%. So, okay, let's shift it forward. You have a 9 a.m. to a 9 p.m.. The industry gets there later, hours to additional hours on the back end. We're impacting less because now the only and I say only, but I do recognize that 22% that's open at 8 a.m. this will impact you. But I'm also trying to represent a community amount below a Northpark Hill and he's Colfax is my district was a city we would have more dispensaries than Aurora. Based off of the information that Councilwoman Ortega gave. And so I'm trying to strike that balance. And I believe that a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. is a way to do so. And I just, I, I am I'm, I am waiting for the liquor argument to come up and I just sit there and say, we're talking about marijuana hours and this body wants to create a committee of the whole to address liquor. I'm game. But the reality is we're talking about marijuana hours. And I want to find a way that we can strike a balance, because I don't believe the community has been heard during this conversation and I'm trying to be the voice of the community. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. I think I would disagree with Councilman Herndon about that. There wasn't enough time or that this decision was rushed. I recall that we had several committee meetings about times and we had public comment from the community and we had people around the table talking about this. As I recall, it began with the proposal that the stores would stay open till midnight and the committee decided at 10:00 was a compromise. Instead of midnight, I was very interested in the data that you relayed that there might not be a market for this or a market for that for this time or market for that time . It's another reason why I'm a little concerned that we are trying to micromanage our businesses ability to do their business and that they themselves would know what market they have and they would have staffing considerations and things like that. Edit We did have data about crime related to marijuana locations and as you and I know, we only have a couple along Colfax and the many neighbors there say the places where the marijuana stores are safer than other blocks along Colfax because they are guarded and they have video cameras. It's also true that we got information about crime. That crime happens in marijuana stores when they're closed, unlike perhaps the crime that happens. It's that liquor store that, again, you and I are familiar with and the bad actors in the liquor stores. Those happen very often. While the liquor stores open, crime in marijuana stores happen more likely when the marijuana stores are closed. So allowing them to be open a little bit longer seems to make sense from that point of view. I am in favor of the ten hour at 10:00 time and the original opening time and will not be supporting the amendment. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Councilwoman Sussman and Councilman Herndon. Councilman Herndon, thank you for bringing up the community input. When we had our conversation last year about locations and number of licenses, we did in fact, hear loud and clear for from hundreds of community members who felt very strongly about that. And we really tried to address it in that bill where we cap locations. In this particular case, we did not hear from even dozens of people. We had, as Councilwoman Sussman said, we had three public comments. We had one hearing last week for an hour. We didn't even fill the hour. Many of us reached out to our constituents. I reported back that many of my constituents didn't even know what time the stores closed. And we did hear from the inner neighborhood cooperation, which was in support of 10 p.m., and that is the compromise that we all agreed to. And I'm really proud of the work we did. I see Aubrey Le Viso shaking his head back there. He was one of the community representatives who supported the 10 p.m.. Had we heard a lot of opposition, we might not have agreed to that 10 p.m., but I, I didn't hear it. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah, I am pretty clear. I was at the committee meetings that weren't televised, actually, they all were. And, and prior I was always clear that I was in support of that shift that you had proposed, but that was there was always 10:00 to 10:00. And my constituents largely have coalesced around the 10:00, the idea of 10:00. Now, I know that I would have some constituents that would absolutely love me if I were to support a 9:00 hour. But that is really that is really sort of a very select few that are directly impacted by these businesses, which I feel for them . But, you know, I've always been supportive of that 10 to 10. This one was sort of a little bit by surprise. I would certainly support it. If you're trying to capture that 45, certainly support a 9 to 10 extension. But sort of I just want to be clear, since we hadn't talked about that, you know, it wasn't the hours shift, it was the hour shift to ten that I always was in support of. And so just I just want to be transparent in that. So because I don't want people to think I'm going against my word when I said I always supported a shift of the hours, but I was always coalescing around that 10:00 hour. So unless we amend back to 10:00, I suddenly find myself in a weird position where I can't necessarily support this. This amendment is now put on the floor. Sorry. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Ortega, you were first. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to speak in support of this amendment and first start out by saying that. You're correct, Councilwoman Black, that there were not a lot of community residents who came. Having talked to many of them who came during the last process to share their concerns about the number of licenses which we did not cap. Some of us tried to do that, and the number of locations that are clearly targeted in predominantly lower income communities across this city. And, you know, this is especially so on the growth side. But even when you look at our demographics on the store side as well, and I talked to some of the residents who had come to previous meetings who felt like because we're we hear more from the industry folks than we do from residents, that their voice is far overshadowed and our decisions are made based primarily on the input that we have from the industry. And, you know, they feel like their input falls on deaf ears. So I just think it's important to ensure that we do have a balance of discussion. It's why I insisted, as well as some of my colleagues, that before we move the ordinance forward, which there was a push to move it out even before we had a chance to hear from exercise a license, to hear from the community so that it wasn't just the industry. And I get this was a request from the industry. It's something that we have, you know, moved through the process. We've had folks, you know, share their concerns and their thoughts about the whole thing. But the reality is, I don't believe as a whole and as a city, we continue to have a balanced conversation. When we talk about the fact that I made a request early on when this committee was created to have a discussion about THC levels. It has not been regulated at the state house. Whether we will do that or not, I don't know. But we should at least have a discussion about it because I have data from Denver Public Schools on the fact that we've got six schools right now that have school based clinics that are seeing children for cannabis use disorder, alcohol use disorder, hallucinogenics and. Disorder, stimulant disorder, opioid disorder. So they are they are seeing kids in these schools. They want to expand this to include six more high schools where kids are consuming not only alcohol, but. They have such easy access to. Cannabis that, you know, we don't talk about the unintended consequences. That's a reality of what is happening in our community. You've heard me talk about the fact that we've got more young people living in our city that are on our 16th Street Mall. And we, some of us, get hounded by the downtown Denver partnership, wanting us to solve the problem of homelessness on the 16th Street Mall. Councilman Brooks and I have been to community meetings where even our residents who live downtown refer to these folks as urban travelers. They even say these are not our homeless. So, you know, there are some unintended consequences. That needs to be part of the conversation that we're having around the impact of marijuana. Are we operating in a way that most operators are responsible? I believe that to be true. But at the same time, does it mean that every time we get a request to push, the floodgates opened wider and wider and wider that we need to do that? I mean, God, we have 218 locations in Denver compared to our neighboring jurisdictions, you know, a total of 92 combined in our neighboring jurisdictions. You know, my suggestion was let's do a lottery like some of them have, and figure out how we allow them to, you know, decide who gets to expand. There wasn't an appetite for that. So we've got all 218 on the table that now get to expand as of next week when the ordinance goes into effect . And we're not going to treat pending applications any differently. We're not going to treat any of the bad actors any differently that are going through the the whole show cause process. And I just think as a city, we need to be a lot more conscientious about the unintended consequences and especially about the impact on our kids. And I'm looking forward to the meeting that we have where we can have Denver Health and Children's Hospital and some of the other entities that are dealing with kids, especially ending up in emergency rooms who are, you know, consuming edibles or smoking pot because the THC level is so strong in the product. So I'm going to stop at that. But I'm going to be voting for this amendment tonight. Right. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. We have too much marijuana in the community. We have too much alcohol in the community. We have too much opioids in the community. But I'm a believer that we've learned the lesson that prohibition does not work. There are a whole lot of other things I think we need to be doing to address the addiction and substance abuse crisis we have in this country. I don't believe monkeying with the hours a little bit is going to do that one way or the other. If we set the hours tonight, as this bill suggests, at 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. as Councilman Herndon's information that he was kind enough to pass on shows us we're not going to have 200 and some dispensaries operating from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. They're profit making businesses. They're going to set their hours as is appropriate as they best see that their customer base is asking for. And that's that's been my position all the way along here. I want to make it reasonably convenient for consumers to if they work one shift, they've got a few hours into the evening that they can pick up their product. If they work another, they can go in the early morning and pick that up. I don't think there's a person on city council that isn't I don't think there's one person on this council more concerned about our children than another. The. One of the main benefits that I see of legalizing marijuana for recreational use is the hit we've made on the black market. And all the information I'm looking at tells me that we're doing a pretty good job of making a dent on the black market. So to. Like I say, to to open the door. From for more black market infiltration doesn't make sense to me. I support those and have for for a while who are concerned about the potency of the product. I hope we can take a good look at that. And I also last thing I'd like to do, and I do want to thank Councilwoman Black when we had the presentation. From the industry on the case for extended hours. I felt that that was a little unbalanced and I asked the councilwoman, could we have another session and give the other side an opportunity to present their case and which which we had. And I think we've. I think we've heard the information from the industry we need to hear. I think the the the public has had the opportunity to weigh in. I am amazed at how few contacts I've had. On both sides of the issue. I will say I have not received one call. I mean, before this all came up in committee of someone saying, hey, I can't can't get my weed. You know, would. Would you extend the hours and get one call? I've had. A few people in the community contacted me directly to weigh in about the hours. So. So what I've got to say. I'll be voting for the the original bill of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Espinosa. See you back in the queue. Yeah, mostly because my comments prior were sort of pretty absolute. And I'm just going to say that actually I'm going to do what I just did on the prior two amendments and pass until the end. And I just want to be clear that if I end up becoming the seventh and deciding vote because of that, I actually will support Councilman Herndon's amendment on this idea, because what few people know is that my own notes on at the marijuana meetings was that I support later hours, 11:00, but my constituents were very clear that that was a bridge too far. That said, you know, I don't mind taking a cautious approach to 9:00 if that's where six and six of my colleagues end up, because I still have a lot of question marks on the consumption side. We haven't formalized those rules yet. We haven't adopted them. And so, once again, it would if we did have that reduction in hours, knowing full well that there's my support for 10:00, other support for 10:00, it gives us that latitude to sort of expand, you know, again, but mostly after the consumption, we see how consumption plays itself out because to Councilman Cashman's comments, I'm not a believer in prohibition myself. So that's no. I just wanted to explain why, if that transpires, why I went from being essentially a no vote yes vote things. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Hearn, do you mind if we go to Councilman Gilmore? Absolutely, Mr. President. Thank you, President Brooks. I so I've been talking with the community that I represent in the the portion of Montebello that I represent and Green Valley Ranch. And it was really interesting, you know, in talking with my community cabinet, asking them what their thoughts were. There were very few of them who were concerned with the opening hours. It was more the the, you know, how long folks would be able to be open. And, you know, we talked about the 10 p.m. of course, we talked about the midnight. And it was a consensus that 10 p.m. made good sense just for for their feelings and where they thought it could go. And it did come up around having areas that are activated later into the evening. I Councilman Herndon, you know, drive home on Nome Street right by the post office. And so I drive by a cultivation and a retail and medical site right there. And it's really dark at 830 when I'm driving home and having a place activated longer. Hopefully would make it safer and impact that gray market. Impact folks trying to access marijuana illegally versus doing so legally. And then we get the tax revenue as a city for it. And so that was a big conversation with the group of community members that I engaged and I share. Councilman Cashman's sediments I'm I was really surprised about the the lack of outcry from either side about the hours of operation. And I do share councilman Herndon's want to have more community engagement with the businesses. And I have to say my first experience with a retail or a medical site along Tower Road, they agreed to every single component of a good neighbor agreement that we brought forward and we engage the community. And so I think there are some really good examples out there of businesses who are trying to operate as a business and that where we're treating them as a business, allowing them to set their their opening time. Makes it easier to manage personnel. I think there's a lot of logical reasons for it. And so, you know, I was under the assumption, Councilman, that you were going to do a 10 p.m. to 10 p.m. I think we were all surprised that that it was 9 p.m. to 9 p.m.. And I guess I just need to ask if you would be. Willing or interested to look an amendment that would possibly be. 9 a.m. to. 10 p.m.. To to open that up for folks so that these areas, especially in the industrial side of the Montebello community, are truly activated later in the evening so that those businesses aren't targets after hours for folks trying to break into. And then also addressing that gray market piece. So I just respectfully ask if you might consider that and then would love to partner with you more as these licenses in Montebello come up for renewal that we're really looking at, asking these businesses to consider good neighbor agreements going forward so that truly the communities voice in Montebello can be heard through the Good Neighbor Agreement and that they really have some teeth within those licenses to make sure that folks are acting within compliance for this. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Sorry. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. And Councilwoman Kim, I really appreciate your comments. And this is this is the challenge that we have, Mr. President, because the idea of a ship wasn't even brought up in committee. There wasn't even a time to have the conversation, because if we simply said, well, there's an idea for a shift or even consider Councilwoman Ortega's for one one committee meeting to talk about it, we could have done that. Now, I am certainly my my purpose in this amendment is to ensure that the community has felt heard in this. And then 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. to me does not say that simply because the industry comes with midnight and we say ten doesn't mean the community has had a voice in that. And it's interesting, I my offices in my bell and my churches in Mount Belo, I mean, my bell, my staff, we volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club. So we haven't just been talking about marijuana this year when the hours conversations come up. We've been talking marijuana since it since it was passed. And what we have done is we have put this in targeted communities and a target the community that I represent. And it's interesting that we hear the conversation about we're not restricting, we're not doing that. Whether you support this amendment or the next one, there are additional hours. I would absolutely entertain a 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. But at the same point, we I don't want to do that if I just know where I don't want to waste more councilmembers time because we haven't heard from everybody. So it would be great if we could say this gets pushed back to June or July, but it doesn't seem as if the sponsor of that is willing to do that. So I would certainly make an amendment, Mr. President, to 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. I don't believe that will get me there. And as I I know, Councilman Espinosa, because we had originally said ten and I was trying to find a way to strike a balance. But I'm I'm happy to do that. But I want to be respectful of people's time as well. So I'm kind of torn. It would be nice if we could just simply say we'll postpone final and final consideration for a month so that we could have a conversation. I know this is we are having a marijuana committee meeting May 1st. I know Councilman Flynn is bringing something forward. So would there be a huge harm in having that conversation? I will I will look towards Councilman Black to see if that would be something she would reconsider. Councilwoman Black. I. I don't think we should postpone it. I you did bring up that shift in hours several times at at meetings. And I know you've talked to everyone about it. And again, I don't think any of us have heard from the community that they would like them to open later. That hasn't been an issue. I feel like I responded to people's requests to hear from different groups. Thank you, Councilman Cashman, for acknowledging that. I asked. People want to hear from the opposition. I asked what opposition you wanted to hear from, and I brought those people to the meeting. We've heard from community members that in our neighborhood cooperation supported 10 p.m.. Margie Valdez has spoken four times. Gabriela Viso, community representative, has spoken. We did not hear that outpouring of opposition as we did in last year's conversation we had about locations and licenses. I think we should move forward tonight and we can continue the conversation. We do have meetings scheduled for the next few months, but we can switch them around and, you know, have new conversations and and amend this bill down the road. Thank you. Councilwoman Black Espinosa, I see you in, but I'm not going to go. Councilman. Councilman Herndon. Yes, Mr. President. If Councilman Black is is not going to allow that, may I amend my amendment to go from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and we'll just vote on that? Is that with your. Yup. Your second increase? Okay. I'm happy to reread it. Mr. Broadwell. Fine. Councilman. Mr. Braswell He just needs a reread and we can we can amend right now on the floor his prior amendment. Okay. So I wrote this down. I'll make sure that I get this right. Mr. President, I move to amend Council Bill 17 0324 in the Pauline following particulars on page one lines 19 through 20, delete 8 a.m. and substitute with 9 a.m. and then on page one, line 28, delete 8 a.m. and substitute 9 a.m.. So I'm just changing the start time, 9 a.m. and a no need to state the reasons why again. Okay, Councilwoman Sussman. Do we have a second? Just. Yeah. Hee. He. We got a second from Ortega. So this is comments and questions. Okay. I want to just reiterate, first of all, I think Castle Gilmore for understanding to the activation streets is something that it was is important to Colfax, too. But I just want to say that making legislation like this on the fly is disconcerting. It isn't deliberate. It doesn't provide enough time to weigh all the considerations. It's much more vulnerable to unintended consequences. And it seems irresponsible that we're having back and forth because this one isn't going to work and a vote we're going to change it. Right now, we haven't had any input on the change of the beginning hours of these businesses. And we we don't have really a good process for asking what this means. And I'm not sure that opening hours are going to have any effect whatsoever on the good or bad behavior of a of a marijuana store. I can't imagine what the effect is. So I'm just very disconcerted that we're doing legislation on the fly. Thank you, Councilman. Woman Sussman. Councilman Herndon. Mr. Fred, I was going to say, then let's postpone. If we're concerned about this, I'm not sure why the May 1st aid is such a such a concrete date. There are conversations that haven't been had a month I don't believe would make a difference. But if that's our argument about we're rushing on the fly, then let's bring it back to committee and have a conversation. Thank you, Mr. President. Councilwoman Sussman. The decision to make it 10:00 was not made on the fly. What I'm saying is the change that is being requested is one that is being made on the fly. But the one to help to keep it open at ten was part of several committee meetings and several public comment periods and several input from neighborhoods. Okay. This has been moved in, seconded the last motion that Councilman Herndon read. And we are voting on that motion to amend. Madam Secretary, roll call. Is this the 9 to 10? I just want to make sure I got it right. All right. Name two. Okay. Herndon High. Cashman. No. Kenny Lopez. I knew Ortega. I. Susman. No. Black? No. Clark, no. Espinosa, I. Flynn. No. Gilmore, I. Mr. President. No. Herndon's motion to amend Council Bill 324 fails. Councilman Hurt. Councilman. Councilwoman Arteaga didn't vote in the system. Sorry. Councilman Ortega. Okay. Thank you. Mr. President. I have an amendment. It's let's let's deal with this issue right now, Madam Secretary. The bill dies six. The amendment dies six. Seven, correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay. The motion fails before we ask for a motion to pass this amendment. We have an amendment amendment on the floor by Councilman Espinosa and Councilman Espinosa. You're going to have to read it, but you need a second. You just made of. You sound okay. Let me make my amendment first. Mr. President, I move to amend Council Bill 17 03430324 and the following particulars on page one line 30 delete May 1st in substitute June 21st. So. So it's okay. So sorry. It's been moved on often, Councilman Ortega. Okay. It's been moved by Councilman Espinosa. Signature by Councilmember Tiger. And essentially we are delaying the bill. Is that correct? Make a motion. Yeah, that's correct. I think there's merit to the disciplinary action amendment that should be sort of metered out and moving to the longest day for longer hours. And things make sense. And it gets around the notion that we are doing legislation on the fly. Okay. David. One quick technicality here as you continue to debate this amendment. Listen carefully. If this amendment is adopted, you will not be able to act on final adoption of the bill tonight. You will have to postpone final adoption of the bill till next week because the published description indicated that it was going to have a May 1st effective date based upon the amendment that occurred last week. Right. So so whenever a floor amendment changes something in the description, it requires it to be republished. So you'll have a combination of delaying the adoption of the bill and delaying the effective date. If you approve the amendment. Okay. Does it matter that they picked a Wednesday date, June 21st? Is that. So what's the question. Now is when it goes in effect. It's May 1st as a monday and June 21st as a Wednesday. It matter. Yeah. I'm sorry. I understood the motion to be to delay the effective date of the bill, not the final adoption of the bill. The effective date to replace the current one in the bill, which is May 1st. So it could be it can be effective 1a1 can be. Effective any day. Okay. So we're going to get this going. Thank you for the rationale. Councilman Espinosa. Councilwoman Sussman. I am confused about what is being amended and what Bill is on the floor. Can somebody please tell me, is the amendment only about the effective date or is do do we have the original one on the floor to push it forward that is an amended. It after this. Yeah. Amended because the amendments. Lost we had yeah. The amendments tonight the three amendments tonight lost. Right. We amended the bill last week. So it's actually council bill 3 to 4 as amended. Oh I see. Last week. Yes, it's on the floor but we. Now have another amendment on the fly to change the effective date. Yeah. Um. Yeah. So have Councilwoman Sussman. I just think this is not a good way to run a legislative action or body. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman, is there any other comments? Okay. Uh. It's been moved in second it and this is. There since there needs to be a. There's a second from Ortega. Okay. I'll put it in. No, it's not in there. Right. Councilman Ortega. Yes, that is correct. Okay. Um. Oh. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. I would just like to ask Councilman Espinosa the the purpose of the delay is to take it back to committee and to do. To debate what? Yeah. So I think that would then come unfortunately next week is to then push this back to committee so that we can discuss essentially the amendments that are that have traction or potentially have traction, particularly the disciplinary action legislation meaning amendment currently. Okay. Thank you, Councilman. You know, I'll just say that Councilman Cashman said when we were in March, when we looked at the hours of operation, he said, you know what, we need to get the proponents in here and the opponents to our extension. And when he did that, we waited, I believe it was two weeks. I believe you wait two weeks and get the information out. I know I talked to my constituents, particularly the ones who are most sensitive to this, and the response was pretty underwhelming. Matter of fact, the people we got to speak were individuals who didn't even who were opponents, who didn't even live in the city and county of Denver. And so I feel as if we are beginning to waste a little time. There's nothing we're going to accomplish by going back to. The committee to have a discussion on 30 minutes here or an hour there. So this is just my rationale to say let's, you know, move to oppose this motion, move this bill forward. And if there are real concerns and disciplinary issues, which I believe that there are, let's deal with them in committee and ask the chairperson to schedule them. That's that's just my rationale. Okay. Now, we got a lot more people in here. Okay. Let's go with. Sussman You already got in. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. A couple of comments. I neglected to mention that we also heard from Sabeco said several meetings, which is another community organization. In regarding the disciplinary issues, I would be more than happy to have XYZ and licensed come to a committee meeting and and educate us on these show cause hearings they have and as Councilman Brooks said, if we need to then further amend this to address that, we can certainly do that. But they already have a process in place and businesses can have their licenses revoked. They currently have that that process in place. But I'm happy to schedule a conversation about that at a committee meeting. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Black Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. Look, I am in our deliberations tonight. I think it. I think it's absolutely fair to have these questions answered. And, you know, I see folks in the dining room in the night. I see folks in the council chambers regularly who have a bill up. And I'm looking at them. I'm like, you know, your bill is not controversial. You know, nobody's going to ask. I mean, I love how dedicated there are, but I'm like, nobody's going to call your bill out. And it's just pretty small and pretty solid. But they're there anyway. They're there just in case there are questions. And I you know, I know that. I know I don't want this to be an attack on exercise and license. I'm sure that if they knew how much we were talking about them, they'd show up lickety split. I don't think that memo got to them. And but I also don't think. We should wait another month or two months, I think. Look, I know we've deliberated in committee. I know we've deliberated here. And I. Absolutely. Just for the record, and I with all due respect, this is how every ounce of legislative legislation is sausage making . And it can happen here or it can happen in committee. I've seen bills amended on the floor and they've ended up. Good pieces of legislation. I've seen a couple of my colleagues down here do it and they do it well. It's just. It's what we do. It's our job. It's in our job description. And it is a power and a right that we have. So I don't want us to to knock the process. I think we have that that that power. And through charter and through our rules. Let me just be clear about that. But I also look I support looking into the hours I. Look, I'm. I'm down for compromise. I'm down to see a. A tinker to a bill. To a regulation. Basically a regulatory framework that is solid. People are watching Denver as we legislate. There are cities who haven't got there and we're in the microscope. On the good in a good way. And I want us to do this the right way. Now, do I believe that 2 hours would make a big impact? I think it depends on the end. We've heard numbers, and I really appreciate the the homework and everything that was done to really show that a majority of that business is at night or in the evenings. I believe that. However, I think I don't think we need to delay another two months. I think we can. I would love to get answers in between now and next week. I would love to see movement on that. I think I didn't go two weeks, but a month is two months is. It's kind of far out there. So no disrespect to anybody that said anything. I just think it's a long way to go. It just was just one. I mean, for just a few questions that I think could be answered. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. I'll just say that, you know, whoever is proposing a bill, this is this is a city council sponsored bill, and it's incumbent upon them to make sure everyone is here. This is our bill. This is not an executive office bill. And so while some folks show up, sometimes we've got to make sure for our bills that we have somebody here for further explanation. Did we I'm sorry. Did we? Was there communication sent for access and license to be here tonight? I think you're going to have to ask the bill proposers. The amendment proposal is in the bill proposal. Because it would say something if there was communication. There's nobody here. That's a big deal. That's that's a that's a no no. Yeah. But if there. We just didn't reach out then. Yeah. Okay. Let's see here. Councilman Herndon, I. Think, Mr. President, as I said again when I was trying to the purpose for my amendment, it was because I don't believe that the community has had a voice in this. And I know I know people will disagree with that. And I'm not one to debate that. But if we can have a mechanism in place, because up until this point, because I asked the question, give me a good neighborhood agreement in my district. Out of all the dispensaries that I have in Montebello, Northpark Hill, East Colfax, give me one. And they couldn't. Don't tell me that you're a good community steward. It's not as if I'm not Glendale, where I've got one or Edgewater with six. Give me one example. So in my eyes, the industry has not been a good steward, so I would be okay delaying this so that we can have a conversation about why this industry hasn't engaged these saturated communities. And what can we as a council do to ensure that they do that? I would be fine with that. And I think that that's I don't think that that's such a difficult ask to make sure that the community, the saturated communities, because we didn't say to the industry, you could go anywhere . We said you could go to these particular neighborhoods. And so these particular neighborhoods have been grossly impacted. And how do we make sure that they feel heard? And I'm I would love for Councilwoman Gilmore to come to committee and use the tools that she that utilized that worked in Green Valley ranch because I would love for that to happen and part of my district. So I am comfortable with the delay for that very reason because if people ask the question, what can we talk about? How about we talk about finding ways to ensure that the industry engages the community that they're impacting? Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. Councilman. No. Real quick. Just clarification. What we're talking about is delay in the bill to delay in the bill, and that doesn't affect bringing back amendments to address the disciplinary action that we need to do. That doesn't affect that at all. We can still bring back amendments later on to do that, whether we change that, the delay, the implementation date or not. Is that correct. Councilman? I think, you know, generally you can bring an amendment back to any bill that we have, what Councilman Ortega intends, what I'm taking out. Let me take yours out of your mouth. But I believe she was saying that if this passes today, we can't react retroactively, go back and adjust those times for those applications with disciplinary issues. Well well, I think that I was thinking that the time was a separate issue from the district reaction to issues. So, I mean, okay, you know, I was thinking that the primary concern tonight was the hours. That's right. So if you vote on that, then we can still bring back amendments to address the important issues that she addressed the disciplinary action. That's right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. An additional clarification. The motion is to change the effective date of the new hours. Is that correct? To June 21st instead of May 1st. But there is not a motion to postpone final consideration. So this would come up again on final next Monday. That doesn't give this time to come back to committee because we don't have a marijuana committee. We have one next week. So we would have to have an extensive discussion right before this meeting next week and we'd have to have all the data by then. I just wanted to remind folks of that. Okay. Thank you, sir. Councilman Espinosa? Yeah. Yeah, I would I would think that if for some reason this this motion passes, I think we would immediately follow up with a motion to postpone that vote on final consideration, sir. All right. The I'm going to start calling these motions and amendments by everyone's last name. So the Espinosa Amendment are motion on the floor to postpone to an effective date of June 24th has been moved and seconded. But I'm secretary roll call. 21/21. What I say June 21st. June 21st is what it meant. Espinosa Hi. Flynn No. Gilmore No. Herndon. Cashman, no. Canet. Lopez No new? No. Ortega. Susman No. Clark, no. Clark, no. Mr. President. No. Please call the voting and announce the results. Make sure you remember it. I think we got him. Got it. All three eyes. Ten nays. Three eyes, tin nays. The Espinosa Amendment to postpone to the 21st June 21st has failed. Councilman Herndon will need a motion to pass. Council Bill 324 as amended. Mr. President, I, I did do that initially, a long time ago. And since there were no amendments to that, it should just still be. It's still on the floor. Correct, Madam Secretary? Yes, we can do that. Yes. So, Madam Secretary, can we just vote on Council Bill 324 as amendment? Yes. It's been moved and seconded. But I'm sick. As amended. We have a. Uh. We have to comments. Councilman Herndon. Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. I will. I will. I will not be supporting this bill. And as Councilwoman Ortega said eloquently last week, the industry had been very successful in Denver. And the comments that people have said imply that by proposing an amendment that you were anti industry, that's actually not the case at all. I'm just if I have to prove if I have to side with an anti or a pro, I just say it is pro community. And as we have had these conversations, I once again stress that I don't believe the industry has been as good of a steward as they could be. And I recognize that there are certainly good players. I don't want to blanket it. But once again, where are the good neighborhood agreements? Where are the ways that we are helping communities feel feel good about? And that's probably a bad way to say it. But from what I've heard in my district, they have been adversely impacted and I have not seen how the industry is trying to help mitigate that. And if the industry wants to be, I think they have the ability to do much more than they're doing right now and I would like to see that. And so currently, I cannot support the bill that is written. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Espinosa. I may blow a few minds here, but as Councilwoman Black knows, ever since we've gone from midnight to 10:00, I have been in support of this bill as it is. And so I just wanted to to to let everyone know that I will be voting in favor despite everything that has transpired tonight . But the beauty the beauty of this body and the reason why I respect the different and Meredith points of view that have resulted in other amendments is because they have the potential to improve the legislation. So we heard that there might be more time, which was why I offered the amendment that I did. I have no fear of that. I mean, the fact that we picked May 1st is just because that's when we decided to conclude it. So but that said, I've always been in favor of the 10 hours extension to 10:00, so I will be voting in favor of things. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. No one is surprised. Okay. Let's see. I'm sorry, because our machine is not getting an order. Councilwoman Black was next. Thank you, Mr. President. So I had some comments for tonight, and now they really don't apply after this lively discussion, but they kind of do. So last week, Councilman Brooks had a great little speech about policy versus politics. And if it was just about policy, I think we would align with the state laws. And so, you know, our state allows for marijuana stores to stay open till midnight. So when people say it's the industry pushing it, well, that's actually our state law, but it is politics and we are all up here. The funny thing is, as I've written down all the comments people have said, because I want to bring all of these topics to our committee meeting, I would love to have a meeting on community engagement, Councilman Herndon and good neighbor agreements and have a conversation with how these businesses can be better neighbors. Love to have a conversation about disciplinary action and show cause hearings. Councilwoman Ortega I do have a meeting scheduled on THC. But the funny thing is, with the exception of maybe Councilman Herndon, no one is actually opposed to 10 p.m. so despite all of this conversation we've had, none of it has actually been about 10 p.m.. So I'm I'm pleased with the 10 p.m.. It was a compromise. The bill had originally started with midnight. We did have three two hour meetings and we had three public comments and a hearing last week. I responded to the requests that everyone made and I think everyone for their time and their interest. I think excise and licenses, I think the police for their time all of them, any community members who participated I NC and people in the industry. I'm really proud of the dialog we all had and the compromise compromise we made. And I will be supporting the bill tonight. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I mean, I know that we've been we've been at this for a while. You know, I think the 10 p.m. was a good compromise. It is baby steps. And, you know, that's what's really worked in Denver as we take the time to really to really think things through. Right. And in part, because of the heartache that we have and that we still got work to do and we do. There are a lot of tinkering. There's a lot of tinkering that we have to do with with regulation of marijuana. There just is. You know, I had an interview. I had a guy who interviewed me and we were first regulating it. He's from Sweden. I mean, we had Germany, Latin America, Sweden. The one topic I mean, I stand for a lot of things, a lot of my favorite policies and issues that I like. And the one thing they all want to talk to me about and answer the phone is like, I know we want to talk about we. My damn. Can you? There are other cool things going on. We want to talk about marijuana regulation. So I take the call. Don't have to. It's not my committee, but I take the call and defend our policies whether I voted for them or not. Because all in all, it's the right way to move forward. And here's the thing. I don't the one thing that really turned me in is I'm very and paying attention to it is criminal activity. As we operate and as we regulate. You know, I always walked in very skeptical and I as I should be, I'm from the west side and we have more liquor stores and you can shake a stick. And we have a lot of problematic liquor stores. We have a overabundance of access to things like this. Right. You won't find a Whole Foods or a cute Trader Joe's or anything like that, even though I've asked people to come and say, Hey, come on, once you kind of take a look at some of these spots out on the West Side, we don't have those other uses. You know, I love The Green Mile on Broadway because there's other uses. You know, saturation is different there than it is in in parts of my district. And so we really have to look at things in its entirety. And it absolutely is. You look at home values, you look at sidewalks, you look at everything else in some of these other either complete or. They're more complete. You have other choices and it's access. So I wanted to make I want to make sure that any impact that we have doesn't impact that in a in a horrible way or in a negative way. And when I pay attention to crime and I paint it to crime stats, lo and behold. There's really nothing going around around these dispensaries in comparison to some of these other uses. It's not that we shouldn't keep our eye off the ball. But at least that's one less worry I have, and I've been happy to be able to say, okay, let's move to 10:00. And so I do support this bill. I think this is something that would help the industry, help customer base. And it really does make sense. It really does make sense. I think the black market doesn't kick in at eight in the morning, especially marijuana. Very many people are up around that time. But it is the after hours, right? I was supposed to be fired anyway, but I support the bill moving forward. Good work. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. I think we're past funny now. Okay. Let's go to Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Brooks. So essentially right now, we're talking about a difference of eight versus 9 a.m.. And so with that morning hours difference, I will be voting in favor of the bill as amended. But I think that authentic community engagement is so important, instead of just providing maybe $1,000 contribution to a community event or putting a monetary donation forward versus really engaging with the surrounding community and asking, how can we be a better neighbor? I was one of the co-founders of a registered neighborhood organization when our mayor was our city councilperson below 2020 and never had any marijuana industry. Folks reaching out to us, asking to come, asking to find out when the meetings were, how they could get involved. And, you know, so so that just has not really existed in communities of color, honestly. And so I look forward to at upcoming committee meetings having the conversation about really how does the Boys and Girls Club in the Montebello community have our young people sharing with the marijuana industry? How have you impacted their lives? Have you impacted their family's lives? How can you be a better neighbor? How can you be authentic in your community engagement? And that it's not just necessarily a check, but it's really being there and being accessible. And so, you know, upon renewal, educating the community to request a hearing and I wanted to throw out for those who are listening to this debate tonight, this is a microcosm of our community. It's a microcosm of Denver. And I'm glad that it wasn't just a rubber stamp. We all got it through. And there it is because it's messy and I'm glad that this is messy. And so I want to throw out to folks who are listening that the inner neighborhood cooperation, the ANC, they're going to host Denver's first Marijuana Citizens Academy, and it's May 8th and May 22nd. And I'm not quite sure how we can get this information out, but if all of us as council folks, would would agree to share it to our constituents, because it's a complex topic. And the more that we can educate our community around how their voices can be heard, I think it just makes our neighborhoods and our constituents that much stronger because they know how the system works. And so I just wanted to share share those thoughts and thank you. President Brooks. Yeah, thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. This bill is dealing with expanded hours, which, in light of the data for the cities that surround us that allow marijuana sales, makes sense. This is a move for the customers, for the clientele of the marijuana stores. And to use this as a vehicle to try to address other legitimate I underline legitimate concerns that councilmembers Ortega and Herndon have raised. I think this is just the wrong vehicle to to try to attach. Other issues to this. I would like to see them come to the marijuana committee and just meet them head on. For instance, we have last year we amended the retail marijuana code to require community engagement plans not only for new licenses, but for renewals. And if that's not being done, then that's a problem we need to address in committee. Is that being done? And, Councilwoman Black, I like to see that addressed in the committee. I don't see the same provision in the medical code, but when a medical center comes up for renewal, should they also be submitting a community engagement plan ? They do that on renewal, not just on new applications. I would, but as far as extending the hours of the 13 jurisdictions around us that have medical or recreational sales, actually 12 excluding us. 11 of them, 11 of those 12 have closing times after our 7:00. So I think it only makes sense to deal with this in isolation and then directly attack those other issues head on in our committee. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. We have no more comments for this bill. And I think it's a I think it is important to to say and someone did say, but I want to underline it again, the state has approved hours of operation to midnight. And so I don't know many. Businesses or organizations where the state grants a privilege. And we come and tinker with it. And so with this bill, we did, and not with a lot of great evidence either. But, you know, folks felt like there was a compromise on the 10 p.m.. So we went to that support. But I got to tell you, I mean, my issues in District nine are around liquor stores. They're around liquor stores that do not have any security. So we can go and handle that if we'd like to. Can I go to your committee, too? And I especially do not like lines of people at A.T.M. in my liquor stores. So that's why from the beginning, I've been supportive of the of whatever the state requirement was. And the people in my community know that because that's a just a policy consideration for me. That being said, the will of this council is 10 p.m. and see, you know, support the city and and I'm glad to support it. Ten. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black Eye. Clark. Hi, Espinosa. Flynn. Hi. Gilmore. Herndon. No. Cashman. Hi. Kennedy. Lopez. I knew Ortega. No. Sussman. Hi. Mr. President. I. Please. Cause of our income. The results. Lebanese. Two days. 11 eyes, two nays. Council Bill 324 as amended passes. This concludes all items to be called out. All other bills for introduction of order published were now ready for the Bloc votes on resolutions and bills and final consideration countermeasures. Remember, this is your last opportunity for consent or block vote and will need to vote I. Otherwise, it's your last chance for a separate vote. Councilman Herndon, where you put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on a final consideration for final passage on the floor. Yes, Mr. President, I move that the resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed on final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. I believe all of these are series of 2017 395 341 364 383 384 390 3405471 ten 381. All right. It's been moved in saying it. Did you say 349 for second one? Did I say I think you did. Okay. Did you? I thought I read them. Spread on scrolling back up. Yeah. Yeah, he said it. Okay. He said, all right. It's the second, second term. My recall. Black. I. Clark. I. Flynn. I feel more. I've heard in Cashman I can eat. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Sussman I. Mr. President, I. Please Kosovo renounce results 1212 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass tonight. There will be required public hearing. Yes, we have a public hearing tonight on Council Bill 311 proven text amendment for the Denver Zoning Code comprised of multiple substantive clarifications of usability changes across the entire entirety

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 21.66 relating to an Unpermitted Dwelling Unit Amnesty Program, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_01052021_21-0013

Thank you very much. Let's begin hearing it in 13. Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and determine that the project is categorically exempt from CEQA. Declare ordinance amending the zoning code or related to unpermitted dwelling unit amnesty program. Read the first time lead over to the next regular meeting of City Council for final reading and adopt a resolution to submit amendments to the Coastal Commission citywide. Turn this over to staff. Good afternoon, Mayor. I'd like to introduce the Development. Services new planning manager, Patricia Defender, and she. Will give some overview, comments and introduce the staff making this presentation. Good evening, Mayor and council members. Hello and happy New Year. This is Patricia Devendorf here. I'm actually going to be giving this presentation, so I'll go ahead and start. This item is a code amendment to introduce an ordinance that would create a pathway for legalization of existing, unpermitted dwelling units. This this ordinance creates a pathway that doesn't exist currently, but only in a very limited circumstance. And it's a way to preserve existing housing units and preserve existing housing stock. Similar other cities have similar ordinances. Some of the cities that have a similar have adopted a similar ordinance recently include Los Angeles, West Hollywood and San Francisco. A couple of those cities have had them for some time. The proposed program implements previous policy direction that was adopted by the City Council, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. The program will help the city meet its 26,000 unit regional housing need assessment requirement, which is through the year 2029 and will be part of the upcoming housing element that the city is working on currently. The Planning Commission did hear this item back in September of last year and did recommend approval that the City Council approve this item. So some of the goals, some of the policies that have already been adopted that this ordinance helps implement are the Everyone Home recommendation to expand the number of rent stabilized units. And it also implements policy 1.1 of the revenue tools and incentives for the production of Affordable and Workforce Housing Study, which is to encourage the preservation of existing housing stock. One of the benefits to the city of this ordinance will be that it will ensure that through the legalization process, that the units are brought up to building code and safety standards and just ensure that we have safe and habitable units. So currently I mentioned there is a very limited provision of the zoning code that allows through an independent zoning administrator process legalization of such existing units. They have to have been built prior to 1964. This is does it really provide a very big kind of opportunity to legalize, again, units that already exist that were perhaps carved out of existing spaces within multi-family buildings? The proposed ordinance would allow for these units to be legalized through a ministerial site plan review process. It would allow appeals, but only by the applicant to the Planning Commission. Some of the particulars of this ordinance is that it targets those units that cannot qualify for legalization through the accessory dwelling unit regulations. So there's a pathway for the garage conversions in those kinds of units. But this is targeting a group of units that would not qualify through those regulations. These would be eligible in most any zone other than heavy industrial zones. The date of occupancy you have to the applicant would have to prove that the residence was in occupied prior to December 31st of 2016. So the idea is these are existing and it's not a pathway to create new units. One of the other benefits to the city is that there's a requirement to have an affordable affordability covenant for a period of ten years. So an applicant who seeks to legalize such units would have to record a covenant on the property, retaining that property for a period of ten years for income levels of moderate income or below. If it's if the unit is occupied by someone of a lower income level and it effectively waives zoning requirements of it waives requirements of the zoning code like density limitations, parking, other such standards. It does not wave, of course, building code, fire life safety standards. So just a quick overview. There was a public outreach conducted on this consisted of a study session with the Planning Commission and it was composed in some outreach that was done on the housing element update. And we did the usual and required notification for hearings before the Council. Some of the kinds of comments that were received were just largely inquiries about the ordinance in general and what it was attempting to do. There were some concerns expressed about that. This ordinance would encourage illegal construction of units, which I addressed previously, and just concerns about ensuring safety of the units and that the rent restrictions are adhered to. So with that, the environmental this project is or the ordinance is exempt from secure and basically the recommendation is to declare the ordinance and establish this or adopt this ordinance and the resolution that would allow the director to refer this to the Coastal Commission for review and approval in the at the appropriate time. Thank you. That concludes the staff report. I am happy to answer any questions. Is there any public comments for the hearing? Yes. Our first speaker is Jim Cook. Hello? Yes, please begin. Hello. Yes. I guess I'm coming into this pretty late since the ordinance is already written. But I see a lot of hurdles that a lot of people that would be interested in this probably will not be able to. Comply or get involved. Because it doesn't seem to address the fact that most of the people that. Like. Fixed income seniors that. Might have a room or something that they did in a while ago, they need that. Income to pay taxes or insurance or whatever. It seems that adhering to law. More than to have. Flexibility. For humans, and. I would encourage amendments that. Create. Easy to obtain variances. The big developers got massive variances downtown. Let's have some for the humans. I mean, the people. No sense, say one, that some code infractions could be. As small as not being. Far enough from a law with a toilet or shower or too small. Those are things that should be overlooked so. That people can. Maintain their businesses. And. People have access to. Non-Corporate. Rentals because people are going to have to get out of the business. Of renting. Rooms because people aren't paying and we can't afford to carry people that don't pay. That's part of the problem, of course, from COVID, but also long term. When things stabilize, people need. Variances. And not more. And more hoops because it costs money to tear out things and put them back. For instance, they might want to, but as long as it's safe. And any kind. Of. Variances go into maybe a written statement on the sale of the house. Another stumbling block might. Be ten years. That's a long time for an elderly person to commit to a covenant. So good luck with that. I hope we can get something together. And I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for the sun. Thank you. Let me go and go through the council councilman's and house. Thank you, Mayor. I actually want to make a motion to. To set this. Perfect. I see a second that. A second by Councilwoman Allen. Yes. Okay. Did they have to have any comment? Yes. I actually went, first of all. Thank you, Patricia. Congratulations and welcome. I look forward to working with you. I wanted to say thank you to the staff for working hard on this. I think that this is this is exactly what is needed at the time. And I think that anything any obligation we have to improve our housing stock is a great thing for our city. I know that this report has been a long time coming and that it has that lately, as has caught up speed. So I'm really excited about that. I also want to say that I know that when talking to staff, I did ask a couple questions on this beforehand. And one of the things that I was concerned about is making sure that that we make it. That we make it not a tough process for this to for everybody to be able to come up to code. I think that that's very important, especially for those that might have financial constraints. I think that that definitely is important. But I do think having this and providing an avenue or a way for those who are already existing units that that could become part of their property legally is a great opportunity. So thank you again for everything and I'm very happy to be able to support this. So I just look forward to to this coming this coming before us he on council TV and I hope that my colleagues will support this as well. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Councilman Allen, please. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, want to thank the staff for putting this together. And I do believe like councilmen, member as and has, that this is an opportunity to keep housing units on the market that are currently being occupied. And this is going to be especially critical during a housing crisis. And also, I like the fact that the program the program will offer a clear pathway to bring units into the safe. And I have a will condition and also bringing the dwellings up to code, which is going to be really important. I do also have some questions and I think what I'm going to do here is just I'll just ask them. You can just ask all three and then if you if you can answer those. So my first question is how do we work with what the owners whose units are not up to code and they may have challenges bringing the dwellings up to code. If they join the program. And also, I want to also understand how do we ensure that landlords are in compliance with the affordability cabinet? And also my last question is what happens to a current tenant if they do not qualify for the affordability element, like if they're planning on staying there five, six, seven, eight more years. So if you could answer those for me, I would appreciate it. I'd be happy to. Councilmember And thank you. Councilmember Sanders. So the first question about how to work with the owners, so one of the things that staff is working on in conjunction with other bureaus in the Development Services Department is an advisory bulletin that will guide applicants and help them understand how to go through the process and what to expect in the process. So one of those features is likely to be a a, you know, an income. They will be encouraged to retain a third party in inspection. So contractors, architects, engineering firms can be hired to perform an inspection and issue an inspection report, essentially, that tells people what repairs will be needed in order to make the unit up to code and what that cost will be. It's at that point, this whole program is also a voluntary program. I think it's important to understand that. But at that point, once they have that in hand, it's really up to the owner to decide whether they want to take the next step and come to the city. But that helps the city kind of safeguard, you know, the any its position in terms of knowing about a unit. And then also it helps the applicant know what they're going to be in for in terms of process and expense before actually coming to the city. As far as ensuring compliance through that would happen, obviously through the process, the formal process of legalizing the unit, it's at that time that the applicant will have to get a building permit and then ensure that the the unit will meet building code standards. And then as far as if a current tenant is not of a moderate or lower income to the ordinance is written in such a way that there would have to be a covenant and recorded on the property that would essentially defer that tenure for affordability restriction period until a time when a tenant is in the unit that that does meet the affordable that is of a lower moderate or lower income. I hope that answers that your questions. Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Next up is council member Ringo Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank staff and customers in then home for bringing this forward. I was bringing it to the questions that I had with several brought up my path from reality and spread to some of the conditions. That are. Put out there in regards to these dwellings. As you probably know, sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness and permission. And so my concerns would be in terms of some of these dwellings that already exist, that might not be qualified to bid under this program. So I was wondering what the the safeguards were in there, but I think they were somewhat addressed by the questions that Councilmember Allardice. So I'm good with it and supportive of it. However, I'm just a little leery about the some individuals who would have again, rather asked for forgiveness and permission. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongeau. Thank you. I had a couple of additional questions on slide four. It talked about a process through the Planning Commission. So I think that at least in my briefing, we talked about they'd fill out a form. They would have had an independent inspection from a private inspector that they would provide when submitting to the department. What is a step that it goes to? Yeah, so that's correct. This is a staff level approval. This is Christopher Kuntz, Deputy Director. But because it is a staff level decision, we need to provide the applicant due process if they disagree with the decision that's made by staff. So the applicant only has the ability to appeal, for example, a denial to the Planning Commission. That's the only role that the Planning Commission has on this process. Okay. I just wanted to make sure it was an easy process that didn't require the Planning Commission's approval, because I thought I understood in our briefing that it was an administrative or an administrative change, so that that's perfect. What if the unit is in a historical district? This is Patricia Defender for. I think the same rules would apply. I mean, these are, you know, existing units already. So presumably whatever construction happened has happened and happened quite some time ago. So it would be treated similar to other, you know, examples that would come that would come before the city because it wouldn't be wouldn't involve any new construction. It would be construction that already occurred. So it would not require any additional hurdles for a unit that already exists in a historical district. Correct. Correct. Excellent. And then my last question was on Slide five, which Councilman Allen kind of touched upon, which was the affordability covenant. So it's based on the tenant at the time and not on the amount charged for rent, correct? It is. It is based on the income of the tenant at the time. But a moderate unit is is defined as a rent that is affordable to a person of moderate income. So there's a rent level and there's an income level. And that's how you determine what the income level of that person is and what the rent should be. So if, for example, you had a zip code 9081. Renovate 136 district and bring to the housing standard. The the in the. I'm sorry I'm tongue tied. The rent that would be deemed affordable for low income in that area is let's say, 1300 a month if the rent being charged is 1000 a month. But the renter is. It's not low income. Then the years that that unit is at a low rent would not qualify. I just wanted to clarify. Is that accurate? That is correct, yes. Okay. However, if the current renter is paying 1500 a month, but they are low income, then. The unit would qualify because a low income renter is there? Or would the tenant then need to reduce the rent to the affordability standard through the Housing Authority matrix? So there's some items go in the ordinance and some items are implementation regulations that are done at the state level. It's hard to answer that question. So conceivably, what would happen is the owner would know that situation going in and if they chose to apply to the city to legalize the unit, once they recorded the covenant, they would need to adjust the rents to the amounts required under the affordability covenant. We would work with them such that if it's encumbered by some kind of a lease arrangement that expires on a specific date, the rent would not change until that specific date because I don't think the city can abrogate the lease. Right. But at some point in time, they would be receiving the benefit of legalization. So the cost to that or the responsibility of that is to adhere to the conditions of the covenant which would occur at that future date. Great. Okay. That answers my questions and I am in support of the item. Thank you. Thank you. My next step is. Who is the vice mayor? Richardson and then Councilwoman Sorrell. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think this program is a good, meaningful approach to try to take a problem and turn it into an opportunity. And so to be clear with residents, I think what what should be noted that if you're concerned about this program being used or abused, that sort of go around or avoid quality of life considerations. Two points should be highlight, highlight. So one, this is really for most of these units are already built out, occupied and are substandard. They're not safe. So this is not amnesty for health and building code. This this actually brings these units out of the shadows and makes them safe. And we have, you know, our 80 ordinance did that for illegally for the garage and things like that. This is for everything else. And I think that's a good distinction for people to know multifamily units like that. This creates the pathway for these substandard units that are commonly already occupied for them to come out of the shadows and become stable and actually count toward our. And for those reasons, I think it's a great program and it has my support. Thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Sara. Good evening. I want to thank Patricia for the presentation and staff for their hard work on this. And I think that this comes at a great time, as my colleagues have shared and in a time when affordable housing is in demand. And I think it's also a great example of efforts to preserve existing affordable housing. And I and I am curious, though, I know that we've heard about ways to make it easier, but I'm also curious about hearing how do we make it as punitive as possible, knowing that this is a voluntary program. I'm just wondering if my question is how what would be the incentive for owners to come out to apply for this? Councilmember. This is Patricia. So I one of the incentives really, as we discussed, is the fact that currently these units don't have they're not they don't have a valid building permit or a certificate of occupancy. So if a property owner owns a and a unit apartment building, but the certificate of occupancy actually says it's seven units, then they technically, you know, have to sell and that property is probably valued at the seven units versus the eight units. So this enables the property owner to kind of take full advantage of their, you know, of their asset in that way. How can you be sure that it's not a punitive approach if they do come out? It's harder is just knowing that they've been this program is in place for that much easier path. But how can we assure owners that there is protection in place so that there is an easy, a safe way to to come to compliance ? So, council member we tried to strike the balance between what what is as flexible as we can be while still protecting public safety. So we have to have our building code provisions in there because we don't want to legalize a unit that then has a fire or has some kind of life safety issue. So we've tried to structure as much flexibility as possible. But in addition, Petros had talked about before the applicant ever comes to the city and lodges their formal application, they're going to be required or encouraged to work with a contractor, architect or engineer to give them an estimate of what's going to be involved in this legalization process . And if that estimate, let's say it's $25,000 worth of work and they only have $5,000, they will then have the opportunity at that point to say, no, this is not going to be the year that I applied to the city. I might come back in two years. The city continues to not know of that particular unit and won't be taking enforcement action because we don't have the information regarding that unit. But the process has still been positive for the owner because now they know what's involved and maybe it is a possibility for them in a future year . The other piece that we haven't talked about here is we do find these units. We find them through the code enforcement process sometimes as a result of an unrelated inspection and sometimes as a result of a complaint. And then it is punitive because that is the way the current law reads. So our inspectors have no discretion other than to write the citation. The way to clear the citation is to vacate the unit and convert it to no longer be a unit anymore. That's not a good public policy outcome for anyone. That's not desirable for the city, for the owner or the tenant. So we do feel that one of the benefits of this program will be in those enforcement situations where we're already in an enforcement situation. This gives us a relief well, this gives the owner a way out, a way to legalize that unit that doesn't exist today . So there is going to be some process, there is some expense. We have to protect building safety. But at the same time, compared to the status quo, it's a it's a quite market improvement. And we think it'll be valuable. We think some owners will come in voluntarily, but we know it will be especially valuable when we're already in an enforcement situation and this gives them additional options. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I'm in support of this item. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Yes, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues for some very good questions. Actually, I've been checking them off as they been as they were and asked by my colleagues. I was specifically interested in understanding the incentive for property owners to participate. I think the question was answered. I think, you know, that it actually adds value to the property, maybe more property taxes as well. But I'm also interested in the the impact of the decision on this particular item. Do we have any idea how many units or what what we will what we could potentially gain? I mean, how many of these units actually exist currently in the city? Do you have any any estimation whatsoever? Council members. This is Patricia. Defend her for that. We really don't know because, you know, these are units that are unpermitted. We did make an inquiry of the code enforcement group and we learned that there were 157 code enforcement cases where building permits were required to remedy the issue over the last eight months or so. But those represent many different kinds of code enforcement issues. So it's not very easy to extrapolate, like how many of these units would actually come forward. And it's likely the experience of the accessory dwelling unit regulations also has sort of proven that people don't come out necessarily right away and they they that there might be more people that are willing to come through the process after it's been in place for some time. And there's more certainty about the process. Thank you for for answering that question. And I would I would just say that that makes sense. I am certainly a supporter of this. We all are experiencing and have witnessed that. We know that in our districts that people are getting creative with housing and we have to understand the climate that we are dealing with, with the housing crisis. And so I think this is a this is a policy that that makes a lot of sense. And so it has my full support. Thank you. Next I go back to Councilwoman Mongo and then councilwoman in the house and then we'll go to a vote. Thank you. I really appreciated the comments from Councilman Sorrow and thought I might ask the staff when additional units are brought online by developers. There are funds available from the Housing Authority. Is there any possibility that there could be funds available to bring units up to code if necessary? As I believe a unit could already be up to code and they would just need to file a permit fee. Has the discussion taken place of how much it would cost to purchase assets from the city side, not the construction side, but the application fee? Those would be my two items. Councilmember taking them in reverse order. The application fee is cost recovery, so it won't be zero, but we're looking in the neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars, so we don't expect it to be prohibitive in terms of assistance there. There may be assistance available to some owners, but not to all owners. So with our CDBG and home programs, some of those dollars are geographically restricted. So there might be a building in Councilmember Sorrells district that could be eligible for housing rehabilitation. But an owner in your district may not necessarily be available for those same programs. So I can tell you that there are funds available through our federal housing dollars. We do today support rehabilitation of existing housing, but it depends on a number of factors. So it be available to some building owners, but not necessarily to all. Excellent. I would just hope that we look for additional opportunities for that kind of funding because as the person who called in for public comment mentioned. There may be a person in my district or any other district that has a desirable unit that they would be willing to rent to a low income renter for ten years or longer. And that would be an ideal place for them to live and an ideal place to add the unit. And there's often criticism that units are not added in these parts of town. So we might want to look at that, especially because, as the caller mentioned, a lot of the individuals who own these units, especially in my district, may have once lived in them. And they have a single family house that had a back unit that they themselves may have lived in or their children. Now they live in senior care and that unit could be available to a low income person. So I look forward to also exploring funding opportunities that can help throughout the city because I know that the burden of additional housing cannot just lie in areas with CDBG funds. Thank you. And customers and they had. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to all of my colleagues for all of their questions and comments and support of this item. I think there are a lot of good things we brought up that made me question. Have a couple more questions for you. One, that one is definitely to to look for more funding or funding for those that don't have the means to be able to bring their unit up to code. And who actually would really like to do that? Because I do believe that there are a lot of people who have already these units in their buildings and would like to bring them up to code. And maybe it is financial restraint that's keeping them from this. But another thing that I was realizing is that when looking into affordable housing and the covenants, that most of the things that we have in place right now as the city I know we have, but some of the ones I've been looking at recently that have a covenant of like 50 years for affordable housing. So I was wondering, you know, I think that ten years that may be too little. So I wanted to to see if we could probably bring it up. I'm not saying 50 years, maybe that would be great, but I would at least try to double it. So I would like to see it, but I would like to add to the motion that we add make it for 20 years if possible. And also so with in. In the motion to. To try to. Seek funds that would allow those people with limited incomes to be able to do these upgrades and make their units legal. Councilwoman Zendejas, this is Mike Mayes from the race office. If part of. Your motion is to increase the. Affordability period from 10 to 20 years, we'd have to bring this back for a new first reading because that would be a significant change from the ordinance. Hmm. And I'm sure Christopher Patricia. Can wait here. I think. The the thought process on the ten years was they were trying to develop again, as Christopher and Patricia both mentioned, an incentive to get people to come. Forward and legalize. These units. And I think. If it were. Made 20, 40, 50. Years ago. Fewer and fewer people that would be willing to come forward. Sure. Council member it is council's prerogative. But as Mike mentioned, we're trying to design a program that incentivize people to bring these units out of the shadows. So the ten years was determined by us to be appropriate. Incentive wise counsel can consider a different number, but another option would be to try the ten, and we can come back in a year and tell you how many people participated in the program and make adjustments at that time. It is very different than the 50 year because in the 50 year scenario, typically the city is investing funds in those affordable housing projects and there are not funds contemplated to be contributed to these individual units that will be legalized. And on the funding side, we certainly can come back. That's part of our housing element discussion and our housing action plan discussion, which are on a little bit different track than this zoning code amendment. But we hear your comments loud and clear, and we share the goals not only of funding, but being able to have that funding access throughout the city. As Councilmember Mongo alluded to. So again, it's council's pleasure, but just want the full council to be aware of the downside to increasing the period of affordability could be that fewer applicants utilize the program. And unless applicants utilize the program, we don't achieve any level of affordability because we don't bring the units forward. Thank you. Thank you both very much for your comments. And that helps me sort out the thoughts in my mind and most definitely want this to be an incentive rather than a disincentive. And that's why this whole ordinance was proposed to be an incentive. But I do like the idea of coming back in a year so that we can see how it's going in it and if indeed it is being an incentive, I would really like that. So thank you again for clarifying that. And and we can we can if we could just add the funding source to the motion, that would be great. Okay. Thank you. We have now a motion in a second on the floor. Let's go ahead and take a roll call vote. I. I was. I'm too excited. All right. Council District one is an I. It's District two. Now I'm an AI. District three. AI District four. AI District five. Yeah. District five. I. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. District six. I'm District seven. I. District eight. All right. District nine. All right. Motion carries.

Recommendation to receive and file Fiscal Year 2019 Year-End Budget Performance Report and increase appropriations in several funds across several departments for various purposes to reflect final expenditures and carryover clean-up. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_02182020_20-0161

Washing cars. Thank you. We are going on to the next item. Item 19 is a report from financial management. Recommendation to receive and file fiscal year 2019 year end budget performance report and increase appropriations in several funds across several departments for various purposes to reflect final expenditures and carry over cleanup up. I thank you. I think actually Councilman Mongeau is going to this is the BSE report, I think. Mr. Monica, did you want to start or do you want to turn over? My God. Sure. This is a staff report that's coming back from the Department of Finance. And then it was heard by the Budget Oversight Committee last Tuesday, I believe. And I think they have some recommendations as well. So I will turn it to Grace Yoon to give the report and then we'll hear from the U.S.. Evening, Mayor and members of the city council. This is the year end performance report for FY 19 for all funds. We have some good news to report as the general fund ended the year with approximately 7.98 million surplus and the Uplands Oil Fund ended with 222,000. The general fund surplus is less than 1.5% of the general fund budget. However, the surplus is larger than typical this year, mostly due to higher revenues than budgeted. Major contributors to this surplus were unexpected one time revenues in general positive economic growth and sales tax, as well as proactive management of the budget to generate departmental savings. One time sales tax revenues typically come from construction materials and from equipment purchases by companies, but can also be due to other factors. In the past, one time revenues have not been built into revenue projections due to their volatility. However, in a strong economy, one time, revenues as a whole can repeatedly occur, typically by businesses continuing to make major capital investments. This is what's happening in this economy and a change in projection methodology to provide some consideration of one time sales tax revenues is appropriate to consider. The budget staff is working with our sales tax consultants to develop a methodology to project and include one time revenues in the budget in a prudent way. The Performance Report provides a list of recommended uses of the General Fund and Uplands Oil Fund funds available. In summary, the funds are recommended to be allocated towards addressing homelessness, operational carryover, underfunded council approved initiatives and infrastructure and other liabilities. The ability to fund some critical projects is great news, but many important needs still remain unfunded, including the operational cost of funding. The FY 20 labor agreement costs currently estimated at 12 million. Only a small uplands oil fund surplus has been allocated towards these labor costs. To pay for FY 20 costs associated with labor agreements, the city will need to use as first priority any surplus generated in FY 20. And if that is not enough, the city will need to draw down from reserves. There's also good news with measure revenues, as with the similar sales tax measure. Revenues have shown excellent revenue growth and one time patterns at FY 19 year end, there is 4.3 million of unallocated measure surplus funds. The recommended uses of the surplus are to support a police academy class costs associated with converting a former landfill site to the new Davenport Park Eldorado Field Turf Conversion Project, 100,000 for irrigation pumps and 100,000 for tree stump removals in accordance with the direction of the City Council and the Bossie as part of the FY 20 adopted budget. In addition, staff is recommending that the first 3 million of unallocated measure a FY 20 surplus funds be allocated to support the Police Academy Building Project. These measure recommendations will also be reviewed with the Citizens Advisory Committee on March 20th. The report provides additional information on key non general fund funds. Overall year in spending came in under budgeted appropriations for all other funds. After factoring in technical adjustments requested in the performance report. This concludes my staff report and I'm available for questions. Thank you. Let me turn this over to B or C chairperson councilman, mongo. Thank you. I want to thank the staff for their diligent work this year. I also want to thank the voters for their approval of measure. And I further want to thank my colleagues for their continued support of important projects. I'm the Bossi met and reviewed all of the priorities as listed. We grilled some of our department heads on their questions and priorities, and I'm very comfortable with the recommendations before us now. I'd like I as at my understanding, I need to read these recommendations. Yep. Great. They're a little lengthy, so bear with me. First, I'd like to make a motion to approve the staff recommendation in the FBI 19 year end performance report with the following clarifications for the 100,000 allocated to irrigation pumps under measure, recommended uses of unallocated funds include that the funds can be used for filtration, circulation and irrigation . When the appropriation request comes to City Council, allocate the 100,000 to the appropriate department. Has that been completed in this allocation here today? A Council member. The actual budget appropriation will come back in our first budget adjustment report for FY 20. Great. That's slated in March. And for my colleagues, that is some of the work will be done by public works. Some will be done by Parks and Rec. In the past, there's been some back and forth that has caused delays. And so financial management is getting ahead of the game by making those allocations in advance with a recommendation that the first 3 million of unallocated measure, a fiscal year 20 surplus funds be allocated to support the Police Academy Building Project, and that the recommendation should that if the recommendation should come in under cost, that funds can be spent in the areas adjacent to the facility for improvements for the 200,000 allocated to support the work of the Office of Civic Innovation as it addresses homelessness under the General Fund, the recommended uses for funds available. As you may have seen, staff recently provided a report to the City Council on those proposed uses of the funds, so they have met the requirement of that before spending for the 100,000 allocated to the preparation of the Strategic Vision for 2030 Plan . Under the General Fund, recommended uses of funds available staff should provide a report to the City Council on how the plan will benefit the entire city and what steps will be made to ensure city wide impact. Included in the report include in the report any elements of the communication toolkit that can be utilized to ensure city wide involvement and impact city manager is also is to also request support from other departments, including harbor and water as appropriate to support the effort and provide a report to the City Council for all elected officers of their five year budget and actuals. Ensuring that any accounting errors needed to be corrected are corrected in advance of the circulation of the report. Those are my motions and I'm also available for questions. Councilman Austin. Thank you and I appreciate the staff report. I want to just say to the entire team, city manager, financial management, as well as the city council, congratulations. Because, you know, we don't get this kind of good news each and every year. This is close to $13 million of a surplus, which is pretty, pretty amazing. And I think that speaks to a lot of the good decisions that have come from this council, the conservative budgeting that we've put forward, and estimations in terms of returns, but also some great progress with our economic development work throughout the city. And so congratulations to the entire team all the way around. Does it mean that we don't have great needs still and every bit of these surplus dollars are now accounted for because of many unexpected issues that have come up priorities for this Council over the last year, year and a half as well. And so I'm glad to see as committing resources to improving our building homeless shelter and continuing to be innovative with the on the services of the magnolia trees is something that I'm hearing more and more about from constituents. And I know other council offices are well are as well. And so to see that we're committing resources to dealing with that, that issue is something that I know is going to be welcome to many of my constituents and as well as a thank you. I certainly support this because we do need funds to complete the Davenport Park Project, which is also called out in this in this recommendation as well. And so I'm encouraged with that. And then the police academy, these are one time funds and we've been doing and funding our police academies and fire academies for the last several years with one time funds. And so this is, in my opinion, appropriate use because I'm hearing from constituents that, you know, police public safety, safety services are extremely important to them. They maintain and continue to be a high priority. And of course, I see Chief Espino there in uptown. We want to replace Fire Station nine. There's no money in this particular recommendation, but in the last budget through Measure A, we have appropriated, I think, a significant amount of money to to put us in the right on the right track to to making that happen expeditiously. And so I certainly support this this item. And again, I want to congratulate the entire city team for being able to to realize a surplus in FY 19. And and I think we are are spending this these resources, these public resources wisely as priorities have been set by this council as well as the public. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I don't have the list of those folks that signed up for public comment. I know that. I do. You have it. I did see it. It was a. I think it's for members of the public that sign up to speak. It's Larry Goodhue and Cantrell carelessly and John Shultz in that order. So please come forward. Why don't we have Miss Cantrell mostly come forward? May I make a comment while they're coming forward or. It may also be supportive, supported by our colleagues. I really appreciate city manager, acting city manager Modica and his support and recommendation for the divide by nine. Many don't know that when we did the budget last year, every council office was very supportive of how lean we were and how tight the budget was and we did not have any available. And so the ability to fit in just a little bit of that funding is a big help to many of the council offices and I know they're appreciative. So thank you again for that. Mr. Modica. Thank you. Let's hear from the public. Lose control. Good evening. In control. And I'm pleased that you have a surplus this year. This is wonderful news. I agree with all of the things that you have come up to spend this on, except for the $1.5 million for an artificial. Turf field in Eldorado Park. As you remember from this poster, I have been fighting artificial turf for over five years. Professional soccer players prefer natural grass. In fact, the Women's World Cup complained because the men got to play on natural turf. They had to play on artificial artificial turf. Creates more injuries. It is so hot that it has to be cooled with water on even a mild summer day. My grand daughter, who plays soccer, says that her feet burn through the her the soles of her shoes, even with cleats. I agree. We need a new soccer field in Eldorado Park. The one that's there is full of gopher holes. It's dangerous. But for the $1.5 million, you could put in a natural grass field that's well prepared. You could put in two so that they could be rotated. And there could be play year round. Eldorado Park uses reclaimed water. This cannot be used to cool or wash artificial turf. So I'm assuming that the 1.5 million is going to pay for a new sprinkler system. Also, the plan includes boulders around the size of the field to keep out bikes. These are a hazard for play for soccer players. Long Beach Unified is putting artificial turf in all the high schools and many middle schools. NYS O should be allowed to use these fields on weekends. Plastic is bad for the environment. It shreds and washes into the gutters and storm drains which go into the ocean. And disposable of these feel the spoils of these feels after 5 to 7 years when they're no longer usable is becoming a huge problem. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. There are better uses for this 1.5. Thank you, Ms.. Control. Mislead. Please come forward. I'm also pleased to see there is a surplus this year. Let's see. Where am I? Here. Okay. If we have surplus funds, they should be spent on bringing back the police and doing the street maintenance. That was what was originally promised with Measure eight funds or the two things that people are most interested in. If you look at what we've gotten back for that money, we only have 22 officers funded, 19 of those positions filled and three of the positions being used for overtime. But GLASSIE Mailer said 200 less police equals a lay, a less safe Long Beach. And that's true. So I'm pleased to say that the police academy is going to be funded. But what I don't like is looking at the transactions and the use tax spreadsheet that shows that there's 22 million going into public safety maintenance in 2020. Public safety maintenance was defined for me by the Finance Department as being wages and compensation for existing officers, not new hires. So I feel like the people didn't get anything for that 22 million that was supposed to have come out of the original general fund streets. If you look at street maintenance, we only used 15% of the money that has come through so far on streets and that's looking at mobility. 43 million of the 222 million received since inception. And that's another thing that I hear repeated over and over again by the people. Let's see if we have more funds. I'm also opposed to the artificial turf soccer field, mainly because I'm a part of of the group, the Friends of Eldorado Park East. And we've submitted extensive documentation on what's needed at Eldorado Park. And we have big maintenance issues. We have non ADA compliance and we have dangerous conditions. I personally fell in November trying to take a picture of it. So, you know, it's that's for real in terms of visioning this artificial turf soccer field seems to me like it's another case of commercializing park space. The real beneficiary of it is the air. So contractor, not the kids, not the players. So if we're going to do visioning, we should include the neighborhoods. There haven't been any outreach meetings on this that I know of in six years on this artificial turf soccer field. And if we're going to be doing I've also seen the RFP where there's additional commercial enterprise being sought. And right now there's 12,000 people have signed a survey for Save the Parks having looked at this. Thank you. So it's serious. Next week, police. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Council members and city staff. My name is John Schulze. And I'm a 19 year resident of Council District five. I'm chairman of Play Long Beach. Which stands. For Parkland Advocates for Youth. Play Long Beach was formed to partner with the city and its playground projects. Our next being Long Beach's first all inclusive playground built in Eldorado West. Not too far from the proposed turf field. I look forward to working with all of you on this and other future projects. I'm also an Eldorado Park annual pass holder, but spend most of my time outside the gates with my 11 year old son, JT at Eldorado West. I'm here to advocate. For the proposed state of the art artificial turf playing field. It's beautiful, thoughtful, accessible and safe. Design would be a major improvement to the current rundown space. Our youngest residents deserve a quality field to learn, play and compete on. I've spoken to leaders of local youth organizations, and their members are overwhelmingly in favor of this project. This includes my family. Other local residents who support and appreciate the investments our local leaders continue to make. I'd also like to note that the Parks and Rec Commission also voted to approve this project. In closing play Long Beach not only builds playgrounds, we also support quality, open play spaces for our youth. We support and encourage. Your approval for and construction of the proposed artificial turf field at Eldorado Park West. Thank you for the opportunity. It's really been an honor. First time speaking in this big room. Thank you. Let me address you this evening. And for your part in making Long Beach a better. Place to play. In live. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Mr. Motorcade had a couple questions. Maybe a park staff wants to answer, if you can answer, because I've had a number of conversations with parents and kids that play extensively on the other fields that we've installed in our other parks are artificial, and in fact, they are heavily used, heavily welcomed . I constantly get parents and young kids asking to install more of these fields across the city. The school district is putting in these fields all across the school district and have been they've been wildly successful as far as I can tell. I also know that the kids are playing a WYSO at El Dorado are are a complete reflection of what the city looks like and the parents and the kids involved are looking for more places to play. The one thing that I've always believed in when it comes to Parks and I and and I said this oftentimes at the Coastal Commission when we talked about park space in the coastal zone, is that to really activate our public spaces, including parks, you have to create spaces that people want to come to and that people want to enjoy. And oftentimes it's passive space and it's open space, and often times it's rethinking our spaces to ensure that we're bringing in young people that can experience the types of activities and sports and and and and interactions that encourage them to wants to be within that space. And so the fact that this addition to Eldorado Park, in my opinion, is going to bring a lot of new people to that site and a lot of young people and a lot of young kids that are reflective of this entire city. Do we think that's probably the case? I can have Steve talk about more of the specifics, but I absolutely believe that that's the case. We have seen several of these being done. This has been about a five year program where we started this concept. We actually started it at Eldorado Park was one of the first discussions. And but we've moved throughout the city. I want to remind everyone that this park was actually originally funded. And then because we did additional community outreach and discussion, we actually delayed it and the council member actually donated those funds or said we can move on and do the ones in the other areas, the cities that we have constructed, many of these, they are very well used. Now this is coming back in and creating the one in Eldorado Park. We do hear from the users that they love them, that they are fantastic. We again, we went with a Corgan sand model rather than some of the chrome rubber, which definitely helps with the heaters. We don't have that black material that sometimes can can warm up. And so the one thing to remember is when you have fields, you have to take them down for maintenance. So having a field like this up has it the ability to have much more play all the time rather than having to take it down for maintenance as much. So I will ask Steve if he has anything else to add, but we think your comments are. Spot on and. Mr.. Exactly. Mr. SCOTT. I know that these this field work will actually ensure longer play and longer use of the space because you don't have to actually tear it down or replace the field over, over multiple months. And so if the goal here is to activate the park more and bring more children from across the city and more users of all types to the park, this is going to achieve that, in my opinion. If the goal is to not do that and to keep the space more passive and maybe not encourage these young kids to come to the park, then we can continue to not create these additional types of spaces in across the city. So I strongly support this effort and I also really want to thank Councilwoman Mongo for spearheading this project. It's been something she's been working on for, for many years, and I would go beyond just that, that we need to continue these types of creative uses. I believe that soccer and those that play soccer currently is the height. We have the highest need and requests for more soccer fields across the city right now in our public and park spaces. Is that correct, Mr. Scott? Mayor, members of the city council soccer is probably our largest sport in terms of play, in terms of play both at the youth level and the adult level. And we have four artificial turf fields already in our rotation in the city, and we have heard nothing but positive comments about those spaces. As the acting city manager mentioned. It allows for greater playability because we don't have to take the fields down for maintenance to keep the fields safe. We would need to take them down for six week periods at a time. With artificial turf fields, we don't need to do that. That downtown downtime, maintenance. And we'll be able to use those fields year round. And so certainly it provides for greater playability, but it also provides a safer playing environment. And I think it was mentioned earlier about gopher holes on fields. And, you know, that's something that artificial turf fields really help us avoid are some of those trip and fall injuries. And so certainly we are excited about the opportunity for a field for artificial turf because it's a safer environment and it allows for greater playability in a sport that is growing. And it reminds me of the discussion that we had, for example, over the additional running, walking on the beach or adding additional active space. And in places that maybe have been passive, there is absolutely a place and a time to to preserve a complete passive space. But there's also an opportunity for us to bring more people to that space and activate them in new ways, particularly with young kids. And so I'm very supportive of that. And I thank you guys for your work on this. Councilman Marengo. Thank you. Mary and I have an artificial field in my district in the Advocate Park, and I like to thank the EEOC and more specifically, Councilwoman Mungo, because she sacrificed her field before I got mine. And I can attest to the fact that that field is used from daylight to day night to nighttime. And rise to something. Still too dark. And it's been utilized a lot. And I think that it's been basically a a nothing but a positive influence on what went on in the West Long Beach area, especially with these kids who want to play soccer and also for the adult teams as well. So a very supportive of this. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I just want to clarify that measure A and the promises of Measure A have consistently, year after year been fulfilled. The promises that this diocese, this board made were for infrastructure and public safety and maintaining our parks and libraries are as important as our streets. You will hear me at community meeting after community meeting, fighting for streets, streets, street streets. But one of the frustrating things about street repair is it's a long planning process and we can only do so many streets a year because there are only so many asphalt vendors. I'm very fortunate that the fifth District has had nearly 200 streets repaired, but we were also double the detriment of other streets in other districts. So I think the next close is at the time when I was elected was Councilmember Oranga with about $20 million in street repair need and I was at $40 million that I inherited from my predecessor. Additionally, in relation to the extensive amount of maintenance and repairs needed at Eldorado Park, both west and east, I've consistently helped form friends groups I have consistently requested, and the groups to maintain a list of their needs and the items on the lists that are easily identifiable and maintained and communicated to our office have been funded. We're doing a $2 million duck pond restoration and enhancement. We've replaced and funded new tables. There were 40 tables identified throughout the park that were in disrepair. I went to one of the friends group meetings and proposed where we should place them and talked about the different strategies on how we could repair other benches throughout the park. I'm not using injury funds, but using council district funds for something that was on their list. And then the 100,000 in filtration pumps that were allocated tonight with this vote, that will be helpful. And then millions of dollars throughout the city. But several of them will be for park bathrooms in Eldorado Park done this summer. So that's about $6 million in investment in just Eldorado Park, east and west. And that is with a list that's just not maintained as actively as some of our other groups like Play. And one of the things that that's very helpful is when a group like Play or Friends of Wardlow Park get together and keep a list. When funds become available, it's really easy to find out. This is a small dollar amount. What small dollar amount items can we make significant progress on very quickly? Even so much as say that it's been almost a year and we allocated over $10,000 for trashcan lids, but the group hasn't really come together on what solution they want yet. And so those moneys are kind of tied up. So I look forward to meeting with those groups again potentially as early as this Friday. But I hope my colleagues will support moving forward on these items tonight because the community, as I have heard them, are in huge support. So thank you very much for that support and and your leadership on many things in the city. John. Thank you. Councilwoman, there's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. Motion carries. When do we think this project will start? But in a few weeks. The the artificial turf in Eldorado Park. I'm turning to our partners in public works to see how quickly we can start. I know there's still the funding vote that's going to be required coming up shortly. Um, it's about 30 seconds away for that funding vote. So we'll get back to you on when that will be. I had heard it would be about six weeks. Is that correct? Okay. Okay, great. So then how long is that going to be? Mr. Modica and Apr.

A bill for an ordinance establishing a "Social Impact Bond" fund in the General Government Special Revenue Fund and the means for authorizing expenditures from such fund. (FINANCE & SERVICES) Approves the creation of a new fund in the General Government Special Revenue Fund for Social Impact Bonds to provide a multi-year reserve to make performance-based payments to contractors providing housing and case management for chronically homeless individuals. This is a companion ordinance to the Long Bill. The Committee approved filing this bill by consent on 12-4-14.

DenverCityCouncil_12152014_14-1017

It has been moved and seconded. Comments from members of Council Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. This ordinance establishes a social impact bond fund, essentially a counting place hold to put money that we will use for this mechanism. Now, I don't recall City Council formally approving this mechanism, which ironically does not involve actual bonds. It has an intriguing spin and one I really thought long and hard about. The sales pitch is that we contract with investors to start a program and we pay only for success with all the money taxpayers will save. However, put another way, it's a mechanism to debt finance social programs. Let me say it again. I believe it's a mechanism to finance social programs. Now, it's justification is the same logic I heard when Mayor Hickenlooper promoted Denver's road home for the homeless will save millions because will howls and treat the high expense individuals really costing taxpayers . That was what we were told and council voted to assert that program. Ironically, the plan first use I was told about for Denver using social impact bonds was to establish a program for high expense homeless individuals. And we'll save enormous amounts of money so we can fund the program and repay investors with interest, of course. Why not just serve those individuals with the program already promoted to serve them or just the program? Well, undoubtedly have specific contracts coming up where we can talk about the problems unique to each purpose that the city wants to use social impact bonds for. And if you I feel certain if this fund is established. The causes will grow and grow and grow. One teaser, though, is the difficulty. During the pilot program of correcting course midstream if that's warranted, you already have research criteria out there that's been established to prove a specific program caused an outcome and thus should generate payments to the investors. I mean, there'll be a whole lot of other issues I believe, that people will be raising as this goes forth. But right now, I'm being asked to create a fund to put money in for this purpose. At this time, I'm not ready to create an investment market for social programs. Let me say again, it's basically a new concept for expanding and debt financing. Social programs. Thank you, Councilman Fox. Councilman Brooks. Yeah, thank you, Mr. President. And I want to make sure that the public here's another version of Social Impact Bonds, which is one of the most innovative social funding mechanisms that cities are beginning to do nationwide. And I just want to make sure that there's someone here from Department of Finance that can is Tyler here at all to speak to that? Councilman Brooks. Guys start for the mayor's office. Tyler is not here tonight, but we have a briefing scheduled on the entire social impact bond program and what's being proposed in Safety and Well-Being Committee, I believe, on January 13th. So there will be more information provided at that time. Okay. You know, thank you. I appreciate this guy. I really would have liked Tyler to be here because this has been a program that the city has been working on in conjunction with a lot of private partners in the city of Denver for the last year. And we are kind of voting on the fund tonight. So our hope that he can be here. But I would ask that for those who are tuning in, we're going to ask a ton of questions. We're going to try to specify some specific projects in which the city will go after. But this is an incredible opportunity for the city and county of Denver to fund programs not from our general fund, but some innovative ways outside of that. And so I hope that we'll get that opportunity to to have a robust conversation there. Thank you. Reading. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Mr. President. I have also given a lot of thought to this, and some of my thoughts have gone along the way. Councilwoman thoughts went like, How does it really work? How do people really get paid back? Why would they invest? I hadn't thought of it in terms of of course we'll pay them back. But I did attend a couple of the I don't know whether they were interest sessions or seminars outside of the city and county building that were hosted through, I think, the Strategic Partnership Office. And it's very technical. I feel like there are a lot of measurements. I'm not saying that I could do the measurements myself. I don't understand them quite that well. But there are there is an independent advisor. We could legitimately ask, well, how does that person get paid? But. All of that, said Skye. My question is, you know, I'm still very open to this because of the size of the problem. But my question is, why are we setting up the fund before we're briefed on the exact program? The fund is just a mechanism. I get it. Right. It should have. Been established in the long bill and it was an oversight. It should have been established for the 2015 budget as part of the long bill. And why, if we haven't decided on the program, should it have been established. That the way the program works, you have to hold a reserve to pay back those funds if we. Do see a savings. And so we need to create a mechanism to do that. If we move them forward, if there are individual actions, they will still come to council for approval. This is just to establish that fund within the but the budget process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Robb. Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to, as chair of finance, I did allow this to go through. I'm concerned with the condition that we get the full briefing. And so so that was a condition of this going through. And on the substance, I will say, these may not be the same kind of investors you're thinking of from Wall Street who put in $100 and want to get 110 or 100 and whatever back. The most frequent investors in social impact bonds are foundations who generally invest $100 and they get zero back. So if they invest 100 and they get ten back, 15, $20 back, those are funds they can then reinvest in growing outcomes. So I think that's a really important distinction for folks to have even just tonight, even just for the generic mechanism with no program to go with it, which is that this opportunity does bring and grow resources to the city that we would not otherwise have, i.e. outside investment from foundations. And in none of these models do you really pay back more than what you received. You're just paying back something to an investor that's typically trying to do good without getting a single dollar in return. So that may help to shift folks thinking a little bit about why this is an opportunity to city should pursue. And in terms of the return, I mean, I think that this is one of those things where it doesn't mean that you're not going to have other people who need similar services but jail nights and hospital nights , for example. And, you know, if we're dealing with someone who is homeless, are more costly than the housing that has been well-established in many cities throughout the United States, Seattle in particular. And so I do believe that even though it doesn't mean you don't have to continue providing other homeless services, those however many folks you have, you are saving dollars. So we'll learn more about that. I apologize for the timing of this going through, but it was conditioned on the committee hearing on the substance. So I do encourage folks to vote yes for tonight for a fund structure so that the financing pieces is done. But we then can can debate the program. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Canady, councilman rep. Yeah, I'm still stuck. I want to be clear, we're establishing the fund, but we're not putting any money on it. So why do we have to have a reserve? Because we won't have a reserve. We'll have a fun number. Mm hmm. I'm sorry. I don't know the details of why exactly it had to be done at this specific moment in time. I can have Brendan reach out to you. This is first reading tonight. Okay. I can have Brendan and Tyler. I think we really have to explore this. I'm very serious about the proposal, but I'm perplexed about how it came forward. Great. Thank you, Councilwoman Rao. Councilwoman. Councilman Brooks. You know what? I just wanted to this is this is on first reading. So I just want to make sure that we have Tyler and Brendan and some folks from finance here for second reading this. I have my vote tonight. I wish they'd have been here tonight. But to make sure that they're here for the second reading is going to be critical for this passage. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, any other comments on 1017 C None, Madam Secretary. Roll call. But no. Carnage. Liman, Lopez. Montero. Nevitt. Ortega. Rob. Abstain. I Susman. Brooks Brown. No, Mr. President, I. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting and have the results tonight. Two nays, one abstention. 10 hours, two nays, one abstention. 1017 has been ordered published. Madam Secretary, you want to have the next one, which I believe was 950. Councilwoman Fox called that one out. Wait for technology to catch up, but also ask, what would you like for us to do with this?

On the message and order, referred on March 2, 2022 Docket #0314, for your approval for a short term extension of nine (9) of the fourteen (14) remaining urban renewal plans in Boston, the committee submitted a report recommending that the order ought to pass in a new draft. Councilor Baker moved for substitution. Motion prevailed.

BostonCC_03022022_2022-0314

Thank you, counsel. Clarity. Docket 0313 will be referred to the Committee on Community Preservation Act. Mr. Clerk, please read Docket 0314. DUNCAN Number 0314 message in order for your approval. In order for a short term extension of nine over the 14 remaining urban renewal plans in Boston. The chair calls on District City Councilman Frank Baker. Counsel Baker, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make a quick announcement about this. This talk a number here between council block and myself. Council block. Had we had a hearing scheduled to talk about some of the powers of BPD. A lot of them fall under urban renewal. So we've decided to cancel next week's hearing and roll it and roll it into this 0314. So just so people have a little bit of clarification. Thank you. Thank you, Counsel Baker. I could 0314 will be referred to the Committee on Planning, Development and Transportation. Mr. Quirk, can you please read docket 031640319 together? Yes. Mr. Corrao, please read Typekit 0315.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4201 East Arkansas Avenue in Virginia Village. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 4201 East Arkansas Avenue, 4040 East Louisiana Avenue and 1380 South Birch Street from CMP-EI2 and S-MX-5 UO-1 UO-2 to S-MX-8 UO-2, S-MX-8, S-MX-5, S-MX-3, and S-MU-3 (campus, various districts, to suburban, mixed-use various heights), in Council District 6. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-9-18.

DenverCityCouncil_10222018_18-1075

No items have been called out under pending. No items have been called out. Miss anything? All right. Looks good. Secretary, will you please put the first item on our screens and councilman new, will you please put Council Bill 1075 on the floor for publication a move the council bill 18 1075 be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded. Councilor. Councilman Cashman, your motion to postpone. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that first reading or publication of Council Bill 18 1075 be postponed to Monday, November five, 2018. That has been moved. Can I get a second? Thank you. It has been moved in second questions or comments by members of Council or Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate my colleague's consideration of this request to delay first reading for Council Bill 1075. I want to explain that my request for a delay is not intended to be a slam on anybody. There have been a whole lot of folks working hard to move this proposal to a place where it can be fairly evaluated by this council. City staff has been engaged in productive negotiation with control group for four months on a critical development agreement that the Planning Board noted was so important to this process. That agreement, still awaiting city signatures hit my desk this morning. Neighbors are negotiating a collateral neighborhood agreement with the developer. And I have been working with all sides to craft the project team structure that will provide ongoing dialog between all parties council, the city, the developer and the community at regular intervals should this rezoning ultimately be approved? Once a development, the scope of which can grow is proposing is re zoned. The real hard work for a community begins. We need a formal structure in place to see that work gets done in an appropriate manner. All of these elements are moving toward completion, but none are yet finalized. Those those dotted i's and cross t's are critical, and I believe council and the community deserve adequate time to study those documents before we consider the proposal. Pros and Cons. A smart chef does not serve dinner until it's fully cooked. I want to take a minute to explain why I'm taking such a cautious approach to this rezoning request. I believe it is unique that such a large piece of property, 13 acres, goes from a sleepy, decades long use to a high density mixed use development. Councilwoman Sussman is project up at ninth and Colorado was historically a hospital zone that was active seven days a week, 24 hours a day for decades, generating some 30,000 car trips a day. The new use under construction will actually cut the hours of operation on the site and the daily car trips approximately in half. The growth in Cherry Creek, breathtaking as it may seem, has been incremental over decades in an already existing commercial district, the Lowry and Stapleton commercial districts have been born of a comprehensive planning that intentionally fit retail and office uses into the overall residential context. The scene on site historically generated some 670 auto trips a day, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, basically 835 trips going in in the morning rush and another 835 going home in the late afternoon. By the developer's own estimates. Should the request be approved, traffic will increase somewhere in the neighborhood of 800% to something like 11,000 trips a day, seven days a week. This equates to that same morning rush hour every hour from morning to the middle of the night, depending on how the final site plan and uses come together. I live eight blocks from that site. I'm intimately familiar with the infrastructure by which it is served. To say that there are challenges to get pedestrians, cyclists and automobiles safely and conveniently to and from 4201 East Arkansas is an understatement. I'm committed to doing everything within my power to mitigate impact proactively. I want to thank Cantrell, the Community Planning and Development and Denver Public Works Department, as well as community representatives for participating in unprecedented preemptive discussions on traffic concerns. I want to thank all the city agencies for working so hard with Kantor on the development agreement, and I want to thank all the neighbors who have participated thus far in expressing their thoughts on what is being suggested in trying to craft a neighborhood agreement to further guide work on that site. In spite of all this hard work. There's a bit more to be done before this cake is ready for council to taste. I asked my colleagues to join me in voting for this postponement. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Brooks? Yeah. Just got a question to Councilman Cashman. Obviously, we just had this in committee. Councilman, and I know that we said some of the items. I hear what you're saying, but the substantive work of why we're postponing was not really laid out. So, I mean, this is the first time I'm hearing about this, a little more information. When this year, Speaker Quinn, this issue was before the Land Use Committee. There was considerable discussion about whether or not it should be postponed at that time, awaiting development agreement, which, as I said, planning board has recommended an important part of this discussion. At that point, our attorney said that the development agreement would be done within a couple of days, and it's taken longer than that. We're now almost two weeks down the road, and I just saw it today. And it while it looks like it's final, it's still awaiting final signatures. I'm not comfortable with trying to predict when things might be finalized as a lot of things in the mix. And as I say, I think this discussion deserves a completed product. Okay, Councilman. And I just let me add, I made the developers aware of my intended request this morning, and they're not objecting to the delay. Okay. Councilman, I was just curious, because this is this is before us and four weeks. It'll be delayed two weeks to I don't know. But I'm saying to as of today without delay it's before us in four weeks. And you don't think that the development agreement will be buttoned up in four weeks? I'm I'm not in the position to mind, Reed. I'm taken, as I said, a conservative approach to give the city plenty of time to finish the development agreement, the neighbors and the developer to work on the neighborhood agreement. And as I said, I'm working with public works and planning and development for for several weeks now on trying to craft some sort of a structure. So this is an extremely impactful development on my district, and I just think it deserves the time to be for us to all have plenty of time to consider it completely and carefully. Mm hmm. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. Unfortunately, I was not here for the committee meeting, so. I'm sorry I missed that. I, I thought. I didn't realize there were issues with it. And so I guess I'm curious about the development agreement. I thought it was done. And the good neighbor agreement is we we don't weigh in on that. So but I guess I have a question for Nate Lucero. My question is. Just from moving city business along. Is it is it better to postpone publishing it or is it better to publish it tonight and then postpone it for date certain two weeks later than we already had planned? I mean, is there a way that. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. That decision is purely within your discretion, whether you postpone it now or postpone the public hearing. That being said, this is a quasi judicial reasoning that has been applied for by a private party. And at some point they have a right to come to this council's decision up or down on the matter. But again, the decision is yours. Whether you postpone now or if, if, if at the public hearing, which which currently is scheduled in four weeks, the decision is to delay that public hearing, then obviously you would be able to do that within your discretion as well. So from. Your perspective. Does it matter if it's done one way or the other, or is it one way better than the other? Doesn't matter from a legal perspective. And what I would tell you, Councilwoman, as far as the neighbors, the development agreement was put on my desk this morning. I haven't had a chance to look at it. It's a critical part of this. And while we don't vote on the neighborhood agreement, it was my understanding that in the negotiations over the development agreement, there were elements that I believe the developer had hoped to get into the neighborhood agreement that the city decided were not appropriate to be in that agreement. And so trying to incorporate that into part of the neighborhood agreement. So I think there's a lot of work to do. I mean, I'm confident it's moving in the right direction. I think all parties are working in good conscience and good faith and very hard to get it done. Thank you, Councilman Black, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. In response to the council members questions and in support of. Counseling cash and I'll answer the. Question that was put to the lawyer since he indicated it was a political rather than a legal question. It is much. More convenient. For the public to postpone on first reading rather than to. Wait and see if the development agreement is finally approved. And if it were not to be approved, to have to cancel an already announced public hearing on the eve of it or the or the Friday before. It's much friendlier to all parties. To start the process. With the clock. Ticking at the first reading, politically speaking rather than legally, to do it the way Councilman Cashman suggests. And I would remind the Council that when this came through Land Use Committee, that we were told that the planning board had approved this, not with the condition, because they don't do a conditional approval, of course, but the observation that their their approval was based on the development agreement being in place at the time of public hearing. And since we're not sure right now that it will be for the sake of the public, I think it's only prudent that we that we honor the four week calendar and do an official notice once. We've published it on first reading. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn, Councilman Espinosa. And Councilman Flynn took the words out of my mouth. I just sort of wanted to. To inform my colleagues who weren't able to attend that. Yes, there was that planning board recommendation for for this agreement to be established, and that our our discussion at the committee table was about postponing to a date certain that committee. And it was a decision of the of the committee that actually this was the appropriate time to to suggest that delay. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. I think two other questions I'll just ask quickly if somebody from the development team could just come up and speak to the delay on the thing. Any estimated timeline for the development agreement, anything else? I know Councilman Cashman has had a chance to chat with you, it sounds like, but I don't know if everybody else did. I didn't. So just let us know a little bit on timelines and the delay on your end. Are there also some deadlines? We're working with Wassenaar and the city purchasing. I'm off the top. My head. I can't. Remember. Yes. Thank you, Councilman Clarke, and thank you. Good evening. Council and Councilman Jimmie Boyle, office Kraft, Arkansas applicant representing tonight. And ideally, you know, the delay is not ideal, but I think we're willing to accept Councilman Cashman's request. We do have some timelines in the contract that we've signed with the city and county of Denver. Currently, the contract, as it reads today, we're supposed to close our due diligence expires November 17th, which would have been a day before our zoning contingencies. So now we're kind of locked in a period where it will be naked, we won't have our zoning and our due diligence has been expired. We are working to amend the the the dates of the closing, but that has not been done yet. So right now we're going to be going into a naked a naked period where if this gets postponed to December 3rd, we're you know, we basically have gone hard on our earnest money with the city. And and now we don't know if we have our zoning in place. So what we're asking for, if possible, is is to set a public hearing for final consideration on December 3rd, which is two weeks out from the November 19th date that is currently slated. And I don't know if council can approve that tonight. I know there's sound it like from the city attorney Nate Lucero that you can do. You can have it either way. So I don't know if that's possible, but that's that be our request. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. That's. That's my intention. The first meeting in December. And is that within our notification deadlines if we postpone till. November 5th is the. I've been assured by the city attorney that we're in good shape. Kirsten Crawford legislative counsel Nate Lucero can speak more specifically to the requirements, but we have the 15 day notice in the charter and then 21 days in the zoning code. And I do believe that December 3rd fits within that time frame. Thank you very much. Mr. President, one last comment. I fully appreciate Cointreau's position that as Mr. Bill office states being in that kind of unprotected realm, I can't emphasize enough the potential impacts of this development on my community and the communities in a similar space of what's going on here. So I just think this I appreciate Castro's willingness to to assume that position and give the neighborhood the time that they need. All right. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Seeing nobody else. Madam Secretary. Raquel. Cashman I. Black. Eye. Brooks Clark. Sorry. Espinosa. I. Flynn I. Gillmor, i. Herndon. Kinney. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Right. Desmond. I. You, Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting, announce the results. 1339 As publication of Council Bill 1075 has been postponed until Monday, November 5th. Excuse me. I believe it's the third, sir. November 3rd. But not correct. The fifth is a monday and I killed her. So we're good on November 5th. Okay. Madam Secretary, if you please put the next item on our screens and Councilman, will you please put Council Bill 1134 on the floor? A move against the bill 1018 1134 be ordered published. It has been waiting for the screen to catch up. Yeah. There we go. It's fun. Moved and seconded. Councilwoman Sussman your motion to amend.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 8504 East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 2962 North Central Park Boulevard in Stapleton. Rezones property located at 8504 East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 2962 North Central Park Boulevard from C-MU-20 to M-RX-5A (commercial, mixed-use to master planned, residential, mixed-use) in Council District 8. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 5-23-17.

DenverCityCouncil_06262017_17-0565

All right. Thank you. And then, Madam Secretary, can you now pull up council bill 561. Councilman New has called this out for postponement. Councilman Flynn. I'm sorry. Yeah. 565. Councilman Flynn, we need a motion to take this out of order. Yes, sir. And I move that council bill 565 series of 2017 be taken out of order. All right. It has. My screen just went blank. It's been moved in second it. The motion to take out of order is non to marble. Man of surgery. Roll call. New Ortega. Hi. Black Eye Clark Eye Espinosa. Flynn. I Gilmore. I. Herndon. I. Cashman. I. Can each. Lopez. Mr. President. I. Very nice. Results tonight. All right. Ten Eyes counts for five of these. Five may be taken out or councilman new your motion to postpone to final consideration. A move the final consideration of House Bill 565 with its public hearing be postponed to Monday, July 24th, 2017. All right. One moment. Well moment for the mover and seconder. All right. It's been moved. And second questions. Council members of council and councilman do. Thank you, Mr. President. Postponement of an exploration of this resulting video before Easter. Martin Luther King Jr Junior Boulevard and 2962 North Central Park Boulevard is required since there were delays in posting notification of the original public hearing date. Okay. Councilman Flynn. Thanks, Mr. Brown. Just a quick question, Councilman. New if we know what the reason for the delayed posting was. Was it on the part of the applicant or was it on agency part? Just so we don't avoid this in the future. Is anyone here to be able to explain their great cause here? Thank you. The Kyl daughter here to explain why it was delayed. Good evening. I'm Kyle down with the Department of Community Planning and Development. In this case, staff provided design to the applicant on time, but the applicant just failed to post the sign on their own property in a timely manner. They informed us of that. So we ask that the the hearing be postponed. Great. Thank you. Good thing you're here. All right. Madam Secretary, Raquel knew Ortega. I. Black eye. Clark. I is. Let's see. Flynn. Hi. Gilmore, I Herndon. Hi, Catherine. Hi, Carnage. Hi, Mr. President. I please call the voting and US results tonight. Tonight's final consideration of Council Bill 565 with its public hearing has been postponed to Monday, July 24th. Okay, that concludes all the items to be called out. All of the bills for introductions are ordered published. We are now ready for the black vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item. First of all, Councilman Flynn, will you please put the resolutions for adoptions and the bills on final consideration for final passage is on the floor. Yes, Mr. President. I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass any block for the following items. All series of 2017 663670 671. 672. 673 677 681 629 674 675 647 654 660 5666667668669 653 526 520 7528 529 646 658 six 3652. All series of 2017. You already got that. I did. All right. It has been moved in second. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye. Clark. Flynn. Hi, Gilmore. I heard in Cashman I can eat new Ortega. I. Mr. President. I. Please, please the voting announce the results tonight. Denies resolutions have been adopted in the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 613 amending Ordinance 902 series of 1995 by modifying the legal description of the area covered by structure for preservation located at 1942

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 3225 Denargo Street in Five Points. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from I-B, UO-2 to C-MX-16, DO-7 (industrial to mixed-use), located at 3225 Denargo Street in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-27-20.

DenverCityCouncil_11162020_20-1159

Yes, Madam President. I move that council bill 22 at 1159 be published. Thank you. It has been moved. And second, Ted. Bagon. Thank you. Council member Salem Barker. Your motion to postpone. Thank you, Madam President. I move that publication of Council Bill 20 Dash 1159 be postponed to Monday, February 8th. All right. Thank you. It has been moved. And may I get a second? Okay. Thank you. Questions or comments by members of council. Councilmember Herndon. Memories. I was I didn't know councilwoman say to back. I wanted to list her reasons reasoning for the postponement. I wanted to hear that first. If I. Perfect, perfect, great. I looked up and saw your hand raised. So Councilmember say to Barca, go ahead and and share with us why. Thank you, Madam President. And thank you, Councilman Herndon, for asking for the clarification on our last opportunity to hear about this proposed rezoning. I was under the impression that they had worked with the neighborhood. Group. While the neighborhood coalition of several groups. And it came to my attention before this evening's vote that there has not been good faith negotiations. I believe that there might be a representative. On the phone call. Listed as Alfonso Espino. If we have any questions regarding their meeting, I am asking to postpone it past the holidays to make sure that we give them ample time to come together and figure out a resolution to what feels like major disagreements that could lead to another voting down of their rezoning. I would like to see them put a little more work into the meeting the community needs. All right. Thank you. Council woman said Abarca. Councilman Hernan, did you have a follow up question? Yes, ma'am. President, I like to know Nate Lucero has been promoted. And while Nate is coming up, I this is, you know for rezonings it's quasi judicial. So council members are not allowed to make a public weighing in on this until we have the public hearing by requesting a delay. That's not coming from the applicant because, as councilman stated, backfill there hasn't been enough community outreach. I feel as if that's being done, which would be in essence against what our are charges. And I just wanted to and I'm curious too about the timeline for rezoning because this is something at my time alluded that I cannot remember happening. So, Nate, any anything to add or just correct me if I just add something incorrect. Good evening, members of Council. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. So it sounds like to me the reason for the reason the postponement is being requested is so that the applicant could continue to work with the neighborhood. And that isn't something that is that we're going to find within the review criteria, which council is charged with reviewing for rezonings . And it would seem appropriate that since this application was deemed to have sufficient information to move forward to the full council, that a public hearing on this matter, on the merits should be had. But it's certainly within this council's discretion to postpone it if they find an adequate reason for the postponement. The Native. I heard you correctly that the applicant wishing for it. We can certainly grant it. Because that has happened before. And Councilwoman, to back at the applicant requesting this delay or is it. No, the actually the community organizations that have set up a time to meet or was trying to meet with the applicant, they made the request and they made the request because the public hearing is on December 14th, which only leaves them about a week or two to to come together with Thanksgiving coming up. And that is a challenge with multiple RINO's who are part of a coalition. So we were just asking to skip over the holidays and give us some time to be able to pull them all together. Is. Thank you. Councilwoman is the applicant here today. We do, I believe, have the applicant in the attendees and we can go ahead and promote them. But I want to make sure, Nate, that you're advising us correctly, since this is quasi judicial and that we might be hearing from the applicant outside of of the the hearing. Yes. And council president. I'm not weighing in on the merits of the case. I just wanted this because I believe a property owner has a right to be heard before the full council. And so I was just going to ask the applicant if they're wanted to request a delay. That was my only that was my only question, Madam President. Perfect. That that sounds good. I just wanted to put that out there in case Nate had any issues with it. And so I'm fine promoting the property owner in to answer that question. Councilman. Do you. I think that was Chase or Alfonzo. Mm hmm. I think we've got him in. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Council President Gilmore, Councilman Herndon. I'm Jamesville with Cyprus, the developer of the. Proposed. Rezoning. We do not we are not requesting an extension. Okay. If I can speak to the carry out, which I'm happy to, but I. Just I would respectfully I would ask that we just wait until the community to the public hearing as that's when counsel should hear all of the all of that. So I appreciate. I have a question. So, colleagues, I would I would vote no. I believe a property owner has or an applicant has a right to have their case heard before the full council. If if we feel and the public hearing a month from now that there wasn't effective community outreach, we should vote it down. No, but to delay, I think, would be inappropriate. So I'll be voting no. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilman Herndon. Councilman Black. Thank you, Madam President. My questions were answered. Thank you. All right, Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to ask Councilwoman CdeBaca if you had facilitated a meeting between the developer and the community. In your role as the councilperson, you can bring both sides together, you know, before the application gets filed to try to, you know, work some of those issues out. And is there a reason why it wasn't some of these things weren't brought up at the time that it came to committee? We were actually our office was under the impression that they had worked it all out. And then we got notification today from the community that they were requesting an extension because there was not resolution. We did not facilitate that meeting. We are happy to try and facilitate if we were able to get an extension, but we did not facilitate the the previous meeting. And normally, once it's filed, it's not appropriate to do that. It's before the filing that it's very appropriate to do that. So that's what I was trying to clarify. Right. And this is round two for them. So this is a persistent issue with their developments. We were not involved before the filing or after the filing in convening a meeting. But if we get an extension, we will absolutely. Try to make sure that we help convene. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I want to follow up on what May Lucero was talking about in response to Councilman Herndon and suggests that this hearing is still a month away, four weeks away, even though Thanksgiving Day is next week. There's still a month's time for the community and the owner applicant to talk. And if I would suggest that delaying this for three months might have the effect of taking pressure off as opposed to having a hearing a month from now, keeping pressure on on when this hearing comes up in December, we always have the option of extending it at that point. So I will I will vote no on the postponement at this time, but be open to it later. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Madam Secretary, roll call on the postponement. See the vodka? Yes. Clark. No. When? No. Herndon. Now find. No. Cashman No. Kimmich? No. Ortega of. Sandoval. No. Sawyer now. Torres. No. Black. Now. Madam President? No, Madam Secretary. Close the voting and announce the results. One I 12 nays. One I 12 nays. The postponement has failed. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 20 dash 1159 to be ordered published. Black. I. See the. I. Clark. All right. When I. Herndon. I. Hi. Hi. Cashman. I. Can I? Ortega, I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. For us. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 39. 13 ays Council Bill 20 dash 1159 has been ordered published. That concludes our items to be called out. All other bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Council Member Cashman. Will you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Madam President. I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in the Bloc for the following items. All series of 2020 1172 1239 1240 1241 1242 1243 1212 1213 1214 1199 1245 1191 1238 1358 1362, 1181, 1150 1141, 1178 and 11 7914. Thank you. It has been moved. And second, Ted. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. I see the vodka. I'm Clark. I. When I. Brendan, I. Hi. Hi. Cashman. I. Can I? Ortega. If I. Sandoval. I swear. I. Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. 3913 ays the resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass tonight. There will be a one hour courtesy public hearing on Council Bill 113 to approving and accepting the East Area Plan. Which plan shall become part of the Comprehensive Plan 2040 for the city and county of Denver pursuant to the provisions of Section 12 Dash 61 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code. Anyone wishing to speak on this matter must go online to sign up during the recess of council. If there are no objections from members of council, we're going to take a 15 minute recess. Council members, please remember to turn off your cameras and mute your microphones and we will return at 7:05 p.m.. Girl then. As part of. Denver's recovery effort, the city and county is. Providing free COVID 19 drive up testing. Testing for COVID 19. Is a very important part of keeping our city and county safe. Specimen collection for testing has improved since the pandemic began. Unlike previous COVID tests, the collection of this nasal swab can be. Performed by a. Patient in the presence. Of a health care worker. Each individual will be responsible for administering the nasal swab themselves to expedite the. Process and increase safety. If someone is unable to administer the swab themselves due to a disability. Staff will assist to receive a test. Residents should register before. Coming to a testing. Site. Just go to Denver, gov dawg. Miners may be registered. By their. Parents when visiting a testing. Site. You'll need to bring a document that verifies your name, such as a photo ID, RTT, pass card, school ID. Phone or utility bill or library card. While on site. Please keep all vehicle windows up. Observe all signs. And follow the directions of the. Staff. Patients will be asked to hold up ID to their vehicle window. 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We've taken some serious steps moving forward to provide this access for those that are underinsured or have no insurance, have no access to a health care provider, then, you know, yeah, come to our sites and we'll be happy to get you a COVID test. Living in Denver just got a whole lot easier with pocket gov. Your direct connection to city services. See a problem with pocket gov. You can quickly report the location and even add a photo with just the touch of a button with many useful and informative links. Pocket gov offers a wide variety of. Tools and information directly from your PC. Or mobile device to make your life and living in Denver easier. Denver's hop crosswalk signals are helping us cross streets more safely. Just press the button to activate the flashing yellow warning lights so drivers are alerted to slow down and stop giving pedestrians a safe way to cross. Visit Denver gov dawgs vision zero. 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The Kirkland Museum is extending the celebration of printmaking to the end of the year, highlighting and explaining some of the processes and techniques used to create fine art prints. And that's a quick look at what's happening in Denver this week. One public hearing tonight. Speakers should begin their remarks by telling council their names and cities of residents. And if they feel comfortable doing some so their home addresses when called upon. Please wait until our meeting hosts promote you to speaker. When you're promoted, your screen will flash and say Reconnecting to meeting. Please do not leave the meeting. You will be reconnected and will need to turn on your camera if you have one and your microphone. If you signed up to answer questions only, please state your name and note that you're available for questions. Speakers will have 3 minutes. There is no yield in time if translation is needed. You'll be given an additional 3 minutes for your comments to be interpreted. You will see your time flash on the screen when you have 30 seconds left. Speakers to stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct your comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. And we have our public hearing guidelines up on the screen. And I do need to make an announcement. We right now have Spanish and Karen translation services. But unfortunately, Arabic and Burmese are not working right at this point. We're having issues with Zoom on the Aramaic and Burmese, but we do have Spanish and Karen and we're continuing to try to address that. And so we appreciate folks patience. Councilmember Cashman, will you please put council Bill one one, three, two on the floor for passage, please?

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.91, relating to grocery workers in Long Beach, and establishing labor standards requirements for premium pay for grocery workers working in Long Beach; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Citywide) (Emergency Ordinance No. ORD-21-0004)

LongBeachCC_01222021_21-0065

Councilman Austin. Your Vice mayor, Richardson? Yeah. Mayor Garcia. And I'm here. Thank you. Let's go ahead and read the. We have one item on the agenda. So. Madam. Report from City Attorney. Recommendation to declare the ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code. Establishing premium pay for grocery workers. Read the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading, declaring the urgency thereof and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately citywide. Okay, Mr. City, Attorney. Thank you, Mayor, and members of the Council. Thank you. This item was presented to the City Council and voted on unanimously on the second on January 9th and Tuesday. It has been brought to our attention that the intention and the staff item was a mandate and to adopt this as an urgency item. When the item was voted on, on Tuesday evening. We only took one vote. I apologize for that. I should have caught that. They, in order to adopt as an urgency and as a ordinance, regular ordinance, we take two votes, one on the urgency and one on the adoption of the ordinance. The city also adopts this as a regular ordinance out of an abundance of caution. So today we are asking you to confirm and ratify that it was your intention to adopt this as an urgency ordinance effective the 19th of January 2021. And we would ask you to, if that's your intention, and to ratify that by a motion and a second on an urgency vote. And we will take a second motion in a second and a vote on the ordinance itself. I apologize for bringing this back to you, but I think if we can clear up this ministerial mistake, we will have more clarity on the ordinance. And with that, I'm open to question. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney, and don't have any questions. We will be taking two separate votes. And is your public comment on either of the two votes on this item before we move forward? Yes. We have Derek Smith. Derek Smith. Oh, yes. Good afternoon. Mayor and City Council. My name is Derek Smith and I represent us. UAW Local 324 and I want to speak to the necessity of urgency and the requirement of hazard pay. We have 1350 members who work in the grocery industry in Long Beach now estimates that this is roughly 50 to 60% of all grocery workers eligible to receive hazard pay under the ordinance passed by this council. I think it would be safe to assume that that's around 2500 total workers that will be affected. Currently, 152 of our members have tested positive for coal since the beginning of this pandemic. That's 11.6% of our Long Beach grocery membership. I think it's reasonable to assume that this number is representative of the industry at large and Long Beach. Since December 1st, we've had 113 new positive cases. So roughly 75% of our total cases have come after the winter surge. And so it's clear to me that urgent action by this council was needed by mandating hazard pay urgently. This council has given workers some financial flexibility in this pandemic. This is important for working families who have childcare issues. Urgent hazard pay is critical for nonunion workers who don't have access to affordable health care. This will help ensure that workers make the best decisions possible if they are experiencing symptoms. Urgent hazard pay will help maintain a steady workforce during the next four months. Given the recent spike and the unknowns with respect to the success of vaccination. The city should have confidence that the food supply line will not be compromised by illness by requiring this action to take effect immediately. You're giving hardworking men and women who desperately need and deserve this hazard pay the means to put that money to the most effective and responsible uses possible. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. So, Mr. City Attorney, just read the first item we are voting on, which is the urgency. Correct? That is correct. We need a motion in a second to move on the urgency necessary for disorder. I have a motion. Can I get a second, please? Kevin motioned by Vice Mayor Richardson any second by councilman that day has a roll call vote. District one. A district to. All. District three. I. District four. All right, District five. I District six. I. District seven. I. District eight. Hi. District nine. Hi. Hi. Motion carries. Thank you. And Mr. City Attorney. I want to read the second vote we're taking now. The second item will be a vote on the ordinance itself. Okay. I need a motion any second to please. Kevin. Motion by Councilman and I need a second, please. And second by Vice Mayor Richardson. Let's go ahead and do a roll call vote. District one. I'm district to my district three. I district four. District five. Hi. District six. I. District seven. District seven. I. District eight. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Okay. That concludes both of those votes. And that is the only item on the agenda. And so, Mr. City Attorney, I believe that there's nothing else needed for this meeting. Correct. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all for attending the special meeting.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.91, relating to grocery workers in Long Beach, and establishing labor standards requirements for premium pay for grocery workers working in Long Beach; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Citywide) (Emergency Ordinance No. ORD-21-0004)

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Thank you. And now we're going to be doing item number. 27. Item 27 is communication from City Attorney. Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code. Establishing premium pay for grocery workers. Read the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading, declaring the urgency thereof and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately. City y. Okay. We're going to go out and go to public comment. I'm not sure of any objection to that. First, to get through that. Madam Clerk, please keep up a comment. Our first speaker is Victor Sanchez. Council members. Honorable Mayor Garcia My name's Victor Sanchez, director of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs in a Healthy Community. I urge you to vote in support of this item. Grocery workers are the unsung heroes of this pandemic and have been risking their lives and been on the front lines for months, providing a lifeline for our communities and keeping us fed. We owe them our strong support to ensure they are fairly compensated for the risks they have undertaken, as well as able to adequately provide for their families during this uncertain time. Long Beach is well within its power to take the recommended action tonight. It's an authority and a responsibility that is extremely urgent given the severity of this current surge in the virus. We vote in support of this item does not negate other workers from other sectors being able to benefit from similar action in the future. This has to be viewed as a first step in providing direct relief to frontline workers, not a last one. The rational basis for supporting this item is clear. Your support will help protect public health, support stable incomes, and promote job retention. At a critical time for the city to protect and support grocery workers is to protect and support all residents during this emergency. We commend your leadership, especially council members and the House, for bringing this forward in recognizing the challenges workers are facing at this moment. Long Beach was the first in proposing this kind of relief for grocery workers. Let's finish the job and get these workers the support they need. Thank you. Thank your next speakers. Anthony Campanella. Anthony Campanella. Our next speaker is Christine Boss. Hello. My name is Christine Banks and I serve as government affairs manager for the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. I'm speaking on behalf of our 678 members, representatives and community stakeholders. We're in opposition of this item and ask the Council to. Consider the. Following. Though well-intentioned, this ordinance has been rushed and inadequately studied. An economic impact. Survey has not taken place, so the Council would. Be creating policy without proper understanding of the impacts on our grocers, the workforce and our community. Furthermore, is our understanding that the grocers. Were not given a seat at the table when this ordinance was proposed. This item was placed as an emergency ordinance on the supplemental agenda. Friday before Council not once. But twice. This is not how policy should be created. We urge the City Council to pass. A vote on any wage increase ordinance that. Has the potential to create unintentional consequences and possible inequity. Across our city. Until an economic impact study is completed. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Your next speaker is Cody Walsh. Hi. My name was. I will give. People this in Long Beach. And on. The dairy court. And afterwards the night grew. And when you first read, you have to put in all these hours with the workload getting. Heavier and heavier with. Everybody in the palace and everything. And yeah, it's frustrating finally that I was at the cutting of the people at sanitizer school. So I'm afraid to, you know. Never to work at night without, you know. Catching the virus again. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But. Yeah. Oh, well. Pretty much. I'm sorry. Well. Thank you. Our next speaker is Christina Min here. Huh? Yes. Hello. I please begin. Okay. Oh. Hi. My name is Christine. I'm here. I work out food for less, and I'm an essential worker during this pandemic we're currently living through. I believe me and my coworkers. Deserve hazard. Pay. After almost a year of enduring these hard times where this violent, deadly virus is among us. We don't know who is carrying the virus. When? Just last week alone, my store had 18,927 customers. Many of those. Customers can be carrying the virus a lot of the time. Social distancing nor face masks are being enforced. How they should be. We are risking our health and our family's health when all the company is concerned. About is profit. Having a record year in sales throughout this time Hazard pays. Shouldn't be a question or a debate. This is something we deserve. From the start. I believe during this. Time it should be people over profit, not profits over people. I'd like to thank you for your time and. Appreciate the opportunity. To be heard. Thank you. Thank. Think your next speaker is Derrick Smith. Good evening. My name is Derek Smith. I'm the political director for S.W. 324. And on behalf of my union, I want to extend our appreciation to the mayor and each city council member for their support for restoring zero pay for grocery workers back in December, and particularly to council members in Dallas, Richardson and Ranga and the city staff for their hard work necessary to bring this to a final vote. Tonight. Up and down the state of California, city councils and Board of Supervisors are beginning the process of mandating hazard pay for grocery workers. I know 13 already. And many more are going to follow. The significance of this is enormous. It's given workers the opportunity to talk about conditions on the job and the necessity of restoring hazard pay. It's giving elected and community leaders a chance to express appreciation for the local clerks. And it's a clear message to the grocery industry that it's not enough to call the men and women who have spent the better part of the year keeping families fed heroes. You actually have to treat them like heroes tonight. My hope is that the city of Long Beach will do just that and that your action will be the catalyst for other cities across the country to follow suit. Thanks. Thank you. Your next speaker is Doreen Bonner. Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Doreen Bonner and I am a resident. Of District one. I first wish to thank you all for voting to bring this ordinance to the table in support of our great work here in the city. As a conscientious citizen. And former service industry worker, and furthermore urge you to finish the process and declare the ordinance immediately. This pandemic has devastated lives. Across our communities for nearly a year now, and many of our grocery workers have not only been exposed to or infected. With COVID 19, but have also. Dealt with many cases of people denying the reality of this pandemic and thus compounding the challenges they already endured. Considering that many grocery workers are black and brown people, this becomes an issue of racial equity as well, because they are already the most disproportionately affected groups by this pandemic. We are all relying on the bravery of our essential workers. And especially our grocery workers, to keep our fridges. Full and our families said. So please. Recognize the urgency of the situation and show. Them that we value them enough to make sure they can do the same for their own families by giving them the hero care they deserve. Thank you very much for your time. Think your next speaker is Elizabeth Leone. Hi. My name is Elizabeth Leon. I work at the facilities and. I am in Redondo. I have been at this store for about five years. I have work record for last for six years. I would like to start also by thanking the mayor and all of the council members for taking the time to listen to my concerns. And have our backs on. These very uncertain times. Take the last. Council meeting that. Took place in December. I spoke about the fear of getting COVID 19. On December 27 was the last day that I work due to COVID 19. I was out for three weeks. I was ill. I was stressed out. It was around the time that I needed to make a decision. I was told that I would get emergency COVID pay, and when I spoke to my boss, she said it was going to take a little time. I then took the time to think of what I was going to do, and I decided that I would not pay my rent. I would feed my kids. It took 19 days for food for us to pay the emergency pay. We are so overworked, exposed ourselves to thousands of people. The committee is essential, so nobody should ever have to choose between feeding their kids. Thank you. And having any. Your next speaker is Anthony Campanella. Yup. I'm Anthony. Please begin. Yeah. I worked for Ross for 43 years, lived in this city for 55. And I just wanted to say that. I've never gone to work in so much fear in my life and my coworkers all said the same. I'm their shop steward. It's it's just phenomenal how this company. Has decided that they do not consider us a risk factor. So I just wanted to really emphasize. How much this would mean to us if you reinstated our hazard pay. That's kind of it. That's all I wanted to say. Think your next speaker is Jan Michelle. Carl. My name is Tony Michelle and I'm a proud at Long Beach City resident and a Long Beach essential worker. I work for Gelson's. In Long Beach. I have been in this. Business for. 25 years. But these times are the scariest. And while granted, I am so incredibly grateful for my job. These are the scariest times for us. And at this point, we are all worked eight, ten, 12. 15 hours a day. Six days a week. I see my customers and my coworkers more than I see my own family. And at this point, we're all telling. Ourselves, just one more day. One more day. Are we going to make it one more day? Will we get it? Will we. Make it this one last day if we are making. Ourselves available to our communities? It's so critical for us to do this work and to keep our our people fed. And with every place being closed right. Now. People are eating breakfast. Lunch and dinner at home, which I'm here to tell you that these grocery jobs. Continue to be busier and busier, which means more. Hazardous by the day. My coworkers and I have been at this for the last. Thank you to our next speakers, Marcus Williams. Hello. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for allowing me to speak. My name is Marcus Williams. I've been working for Albertsons platforms for about 12 years. I'm a front end cashier. I'm also a father of four, and I caught COVID late November, which changed me from hugging and kissing my kids. I don't go anywhere. I go to work and go straight home every day. So. There's no mistake that. Okay, I got it from work. They come in contact with more people than the medical facilities right now. And we don't know if these people are taking precautions, you know, washing their hands and things of that nature. And in this pandemic, the grocery stores have never closed. They've been open through the whole pandemic. So business is booming. So I feel that every day somebody is dying. And literally one of our coworkers that caught the disease has actually passed away. And. In the last couple of months like. It's a numerous amount of people that are just catching the virus and there's no way that we can stop it. We don't know who's touching what in the stores, and it's impossible for them to sanitize everything in the store. So. I just want to say that life is priceless. And this $4, it is going to help. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mary Dong. Good evening, council members. Honorable Mayorga. S.M. is Mary Jung Am, a faith organizer with clergy only at United for Economic Justice, also known as crew. COVID Outbreaks Skyrocket at SoCal supermarkets in NBC News the other day reported that there were 146 outbreaks in supermarkets in December alone, in L.A. County, in Orange County. So, of course, you workers are at the front now facing the risk of being contracted with COVID daily to ensure all of our children, families and community members have food on the table. And so if we call them heroes, we need to show that with our actions, it is the right ethical theme for our city to ensure the grocery workers are fairly compensated for their dangerous work and. Sustainably take care of their families. And I believe that supporting social workers is supporting our whole city to survive and move forward in this health crisis. And as people of faith, we believe all labor contributing. To the building. Of community has dignity and worth. So vote in support of this item is a vote to support community health, community safety and community sustainability. This is the first step to provide. Direct relief from those workers. So I want to say thank you for the council's leadership, especially council members, and for moving this item forward. And I. Urge you to finish this. Job and provide support for our workers. Thank you. Thank you. Your next speaker speakers Terry Mulder. Terry Mander. Terri mander if you're there please and yourself by hitting star six. Gerrymander. Right. That concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and go back now to the city council. And let me just begin with, Councilman, is that that's. Thank you, man. I just huge, huge thank you to our city staff, especially our city attorney and his team for bringing this is doing this amazing work and bringing it back so quickly. It is absolutely a matter of urgency that we reestablish these benefits for our heroic grocery store workers during this incredibly difficult and dangerous time. They are doing essential work and are entitled to basic benefits so that they can provide for their families and have the financial security they need and deserve for working in a high risk environment. And as our frontline workers during this pandemic, I think we can all unite behind celebrating the work being done by the essential workers right now. And it's absolutely necessary that we take action to make sure that our workers are not only receiving our praises, but the essential benefits that that that represent the very least at these at these times. I know that during this time I views this industry is bringing in enormous profits, profits even to the point of 100% for last year in some cases. And and they're doing so on the shoulders of all of our grocery workers who are risking their lives every single day. This is why this was brought urgently, because we don't have time. There are some lives that are depending on this. And it's it's it's very hard and it's very emotional to hear all of the public comments, all of the workers that have spoken here today, and to know that they are risking their lives for us so that we all can have food on our tables. And so with that, I just hope that that my colleagues support this item and that we can vote on this item and make sure that we that we. That we really consider our heroes who are our frontline workers in our grocery stores. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman's in the house. Customary Ringo. Thank you. And I. Want to say that Councilmember Senate has some comments who are spot on. And they split. THOMPSON We ran. I think we lost two. Okay. Let me go. To out here for some reason. Okay. What I basically said was that I agree. With the. Comments made by governments and then. You would read it. They were spot on. And I'm going to. Give you. That. You hear. Richardson. Thanks, Mary Garcia. Just wanted to chime in and say, I think this is the right thing to do. I know that. And I want to acknowledge councilmembers and Bay has and Durango for their leadership on this issue. I know that these are unprecedented times. It's not the type of measure the lobby city council has done historically. There are some examples. I mean, we did support 50 miles an hour, you know, our voter supported measure. And there are some examples. But I think this is even this is different. Hero pay, we know, was established, you know, on the private side during the summertime. And it was certainly the right thing to do. But we're all sort of concerned about the greater economic condition of our economy and low wage workers. And we know that, again, it's a k-shaped recovery. People that make under $27,000 a year are showing that unemployment rates are increasing and they're having economic burdens and just trying to hold on. So I think that makes I think it makes sense. I don't think we need to change it. Change it. I think we need to stick with what's in front of us, adopt it, move forward, and also watch and see what the region, how the region responds to react. So no West Hollywood adopted hero just tonight. So so I'm happy to support this and I encourage and I wrote thank you. Q a Councilwoman Allen. Thank you, Mayor. I also want to thank the staff for getting back so quickly. This is an important ordinance. And I also want to thank Councilwoman Sun Hoss for her leadership on this. Some of the highest rates of COVID 19 transmission are seen in grocery store workers, and so many of the courses to our workers have already had COVID. And I just pray for everyone's safe recovery. These heroes don't have a choice to work from home, and largely they can't control the actions of members of the public that are in their personal space. They, like the gentleman said earlier, they just faced so much fear just to go to work. But they do it day after day to make sure that all of us get fed. I support them. I'm with them, and I think I'm all for their service to our community. Thank you. That concludes council comment. I'm going to make some comments just to wrap us up. I want to just start by thanking the city attorney team. I know in my conversations with him and the team, they worked really hard to get this out as soon as possible. And I just want to thank them. I know that it was it was really a really tight schedule for them. So I appreciate their work. And of course, to our our city team and really all the advocacy on this issue, I just want to just say that I, of course, absolutely have supported this initiative from from day one. These folks that are working at these at these markets and these these grocery stores are heroes. This is nothing new. They have received this type of additional pay in the past. And if they deserved it in the past, I deserve it. Today there are if you look do you think about all the essential workers that are out there? It is hard to name a group of folks that have as much contact with different individuals in that level of proximity that that these folks have. So it is unique. I mean, there's a lot of essential work, but this work is also very unique. And on top of that, unfortunately, a lot of these workers are harassed and they have to deal with folks who don't want to comply with the rules, and they're trying to protect themselves and their family. And they don't have the choice to not work or to work from home. These are these these folks make up the backbone and working class community of our city. And I'm really, really proud of them. They they are they are our neighbors. I, I there was a worker on here who said I believe she said she was from Gelson's and I was just there. Maybe a week or two ago I was doing some shopping and I actually had a chance to talk to some of the workers and workers who came up to me and words just honestly, they just they were so grateful and they just said, hey, thank you so much for this proposal. And you have no idea how much it means to us. And it's just great to know that there is there are folks that are watching out for us and understand how difficult these jobs are. And so, you know, just to the workers at Gelson's, that that I that I love so much and across the city and all the other great supermarkets where we are, we got your back and we're really proud of this tonight. And I especially want to thank Councilman's and De Haas who really led this this issue. And, you know, she continues just to be such a champion for working people. So congratulations to her and the whole council. And what that was a roll call vote. Councilwoman, City Councilwoman Ellen. I. Councilwoman Pryce, I councilman's opener. All right. Councilwoman Mango. I. Councilwoman Sara. I. Councilmember Oranga. I. Councilman Austin. Councilman Alston. I Vice Mayor Richardson. By. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Richardson, I think you have the last couple of items here. Sure. Let's take a moment to so I can reset. So let's start off. Madam Clerk, I believe the final items we have are 17, 21, 24 and 28. Is that correct? 17, 20, 21. 24. And 28. Okay. So we're going to go in that order and and for the council, we're going to do voice motions. But the clerk has the Q for the order of of comments. So I'll recognize the motions. And then as we proceed through the debate, the clerk will cue to the next speaker. And that's how I will proceed, since I don't have access to the Q system. So we'll start with item 17 and I'll make the motion on that one. Let's hear item 17, please.

Amends the Denver Revised Municipal Code by adding a new Article XII to Chapter 10 concerning construction defect claims in common interest communities.

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owners in a common interest community to institute a claim for construction defects. Taking out the words at least, makes it very clear that a simple majority is all that is required, and that no more than, say, a supermajority or even unanimity can be required to proceed under our ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, any other comments on the motion to amend? CNN. Madam Secretary, welcome. Oh, I'm so sorry, Councilwoman Gilmore. I looked away. Go right ahead. Thank you. You make fun? Microphone. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to ask David Broadwell with this change. Any issues or how will that affect when you're talking about deleting the words at least and simple majority, how how that affects this ordinance? David Broadwell, assistant city attorney. I believe the meaning of the ordinance will be the same with with the words in or with the words out because and I went back and kind of did some reality checking on this in terms of some other state laws and so forth. And often a law will say you need at least a majority to do such and such. Meaning the same thing is you need a majority to do such and such, right? It's just a different way to express it. I think Councilman Flynn and perhaps some others were concerned that the use of the word at least might appear to green light something beyond what the ordinance intended. But but I think it's still, at the end of the day, has essentially the same meaning. And if you all agree, it's a clarification worth doing. The intent here absolutely is to say city law requires in future common in interest communities that there be a simple majority before a claim is brought. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Gilmore. Councilman Espinosa. I apologize if I got something. Clarification on this. Was there a clarification on how ownership would be handled in multiple building situations? Not in this amendment. There was some other offline discussion about that issue with a couple of your colleagues. But unless something else happens here tonight, that that issue is not subsumed in this amendment. I understand that. I may be asked about that comment on that issue a little bit further later on when you get past this amendment , there may be other discussion of the bill where we'll talk about the issue of multiple building type condominium developments. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Spinoza, Councilman Flynn, you back up. Thank you, Mr. Brennan. Just to clarify for Councilman Espinosa, he's exactly correct. We did have some discussions and we may have some down the road about the ability to separate out a multiple building project. Mostly, we've had in mind with this bill, we've had in mind single buildings, high rises, etc. But I have some projects in my district that consist of 30, you know, 25, 30 buildings and where defects affect only a portion of that. We wanted to maybe look for a path forward to proceed with how best to deal with resolving those, but it's not necessary to do that tonight. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Any questions? Comments currently on the motion. And then we'll get to the bill as amended, seeing none. And I'll wait a second. I'm Secretary Rocco. Flynn. I Gillmore. I Cashman. I can ege Lopez. I knew Ortega. I Susman Black. Brooks Clark. All right. Espinosa. Hi, Mr. President. I. Councilman Cashman. I thank you, Mr. President. Got it. Thank you, Madam Secretary, please. Because of only now, the results. 3939 as councilor 811 has been amended. Now, Councilman Ortega, we a motion to pass has amended. Are we not going to talk about the the bill before we pass it as amended? You have. We have to first put on the floor. A move that council bill 811 be ordered published as amended. A place on final consideration. Be placed on final consideration and do pass as amended. Got it. Moved in second. Councilwoman Ortega, you're up. I wanted to speak more about the issue that was just raised a few minutes ago about the multiple building situation. We've got a number of large developments that will be happening that have been approved by this body. Those projects have not yet been constructed. We don't know what the ownership is going to look like. So several of us were engaged in conversations with our city attorney, looking at how we might address that particular issue, where multiple buildings are under the same ownership or the same way, where a defect may only exist in one building. But in conversations with our city attorney and I'll let David speak in just a minute. He was explaining that even though the so you would have to engage the whole way for the entire complex, even though it might only affect one building. But the fact that a claim would be filed through the highway, in turn affects all those other buildings. And, you know, there may be some things that the state legislature will be looking at related to this or some other concerns, because this particular issue was raised by one of our state senators, and we know that more than likely they're going to be dealing with this particular topic again in this next legislative session. And, you know, whether they get there or not is yet to be seen because we know they've been dealing with this particular legislation for the last couple of years. But, David, I'd like to ask you to just elaborate a little further on the conversations we've had about why it would be challenging to try to do an amendment that really would not have the effect that we're hoping that it would have where we have multiple buildings under the same nature. We. Yes. How come it briefly and then be happy to answer any follow up questions as well. Bear in mind that the 50% consent by the unit owner unit owners applies to claims brought by the association so that the Board of the association can't just would not be able to do it unilaterally if if a claim is going to be brought in the name of the entire association. That's what would trigger the need for 50% consent. So that's exactly what the bill applies to and all that it applies to. Now, a couple of nuances of this that we didn't talk about last week. There are some situations in large and more complex developments where there may be such a thing as a master association and sub associations of unit owners. And if that were the scenario in a particular development, then the majority consent would potentially be in one of these sub associations, right? That the entire legal framework and structure of the entire development might allow for the vote to occur in some smaller unit because it's hierarchical and broke broken down that way. So that's a possibility. But but in those kinds of arrangements, but something else to emphasize, again, it's only majority consent for claims brought by the association on behalf of the association and not so other scenarios where it's conceivable that you could have claims by individual unit owners or by a group of unit owners regarding defects in the portion of of their unit they happen to own. There's no majority consent associated with those kinds of claims. Those are just being brought by the individual unit owners. So the whole 50% thing doesn't even apply to that scenario. Now, the main global legal explanation that we gave to Councilwoman Ortega and to others who have asked this question is that is that bear in mind that the purpose of one of the main purposes of the majority consent requirement is because in an association hall unit owners fate is tied together. They have a legal relationship all with one another, including assessments to pay for repairs and so on and so forth. If there are problems in the entire association, when an association brings a claim, even if it's related to the defects and only a part of a building or in one building and not others, all the unit owners are brought along in that claim. If they're all part of the same association, whatever cloud or whatever cost might be associated with the claim or borne by hall, even if the defects are only in a portion of the project or in one building and not another. So the rationale for the bill, having informed consent of everybody in whose name through the association the claim is being broad, would apply even in the multiple building scenario. Everybody's unit is going to be tied up in that. If the if if a claim is brought in the name of the association because they're all bound together index in that sort of a legal structure. So we urge you all to consider that and say and understand that the purpose of the bill still applies, whether it's one building or whether it's multiple buildings. And we urge you to to keep that particular provision intact for majority concern. Mr. President, if I may, I just wanted to clarify that some of us were concerned about how challenging it might be for people in one particular building that was affected where other buildings might not be. And again, we don't know what the make up of the buildings are going to look like for some of the future development . But in the case where that might exist, the concern was that to get 50% plus one of not only the people in your your building per se, but the entire h.O.H. To then move forward with a claim would be a little more challenging. And that's why we were looking at this as sort of a solution to not make it more difficult and more challenging for those folks in that particular building that are affected. Having heard the explanation, I chose not to move forward with an amendment at this time because it doesn't appear that it's going to make a difference. And I think it may be important to continue to look at other ways to try to solve this. I mean, I also want to make sure that other people who would be affected have the opportunity to know that a claim is coming forward and the entire complex, if you will, would be affected by the the fact that a claim is being filed. And if somebody wants to sell a unit, a unit there, they're not able to do so. So, you know, this may be a conversation that we continue into the future, but at this point in time, I am not bringing an amendment forward. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Cashman, you're up. Thank you, Mr. President. As with most of my colleagues and probably most of you out there, I've tried over the last couple of months to come to grips with this issue of how we can nudge the development community into constructing well-built for sale condominiums by reducing the risk of high award lawsuits, while at the same time maintaining or bolstering protections that allow redress for homebuyers who are victimized by quality failures in the homes they've purchased. Hmm. Excuse me. The bill. The bill's been crafted clearly to stimulate construction, to provide additional home buying options to those who want to make Denver their home. While it does give a small nod to the interests of home buyers. When something goes missing in the construction process, the bill is not designed with protecting homeowners interests as its prime directive. The element of the bill that that's been discussed of informed consent does make it a bit more difficult to file legal claim instead of a simple vote of board directors. I recognize that the positive side of this is that homeowners won't be caught unaware of the situation that impacts them. But Section ten, Dash 203 that talks about this goes into great detail on the seven consequences of filing suit, all of these conditions, except one that lists an approximation of an award. They might look forward to focus on deadlines, costs and liabilities that point out the potential downsides of filing an action that might dissuade someone from going forward. This requirement of informed consent for me doesn't follow to the other side of the equation. Section ten Dash 204 states that by taking title to a unit, each owner acknowledges and agrees that the terms of the declaration requiring alternative dispute resolution of construction defect claims are a significant inducement to the declarant willingness to develop and sell the units, and that in the absence of the alternative dispute resolution provisions contained in the declaration, declarant would have been unable and unwilling to develop and sell the units for the prices paid by the original purchasers. Ten Dash 204 goes on to say in harmony with the Village Court decision that the ordinance, quote, expressly prohibits any future amendment to the declaration that would modify or eliminate the requirement for alternative dispute resolution absent the consent of the declarant. My my researches has brought forth the fact that these declarations often include provisions that might tilt arbitration in favor of the builder by limiting the scope of the arbitration proceedings tend to allow for means that not only can the HRA not remove the requirement for arbitration, as was the landscape possibility before of LIGO. But it also means as well that any conditions that are part of the declaration that may limit the scope of the arbitration may not be altered either. With all of these warnings in mind, I would think similar codification of the seller's responsibility to inform homebuyers, with similar emphasis about the precise meaning and implication and limitations that might be inherent in the arbitration agreement. In the sales agreement in a true way declaration, including in-depth explanation of the fact that arbitration is a means of dispute resolution, does not necessarily carry with it the same protections of a trial in a court of law and may carry with it substantial costs, not necessarily attendant to a court proceeding. It appears to me that the things that I'm looking for that would provide the consumers the most, the support they're craving require changes to Colorado's Uniform Arbitration Act. It is this act is my understanding, that allows the arbitrator to establish the format that will govern dispute resolution. And that format has no requirement to follow the structure. You may be. Miller with in a court of law important to changes important changes to state law are needed before I will be able to play the role I had hoped to play in support of this bill. So I will be unable to support it this evening. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Espinosa. So, you know, there I, I have several developments in my own district that have a sort of combined two building scenario, one where one building is, in fact, bigger than the other. So if you had a problem in the smaller building, meaning in the let's say the larger building, you could, then what you're saying is get get the majority of that one building. And then if they're all part of the same H okay, encumber the other building. Is that correct? The vice versa. If majority consent, if there's one association and majority consent is obtained from the unit owners in that association, a claim can go forward. Okay, so then can the covenants, the initial covenants be written to prevent sub associations from being created? It's sorry to prevent what from being created by association. So say you say you're in that situation where one building is is is got the problems and the other building doesn't because maybe there was a contractor change after recognizing that the failings of one and so let's just say that everyone in the development is altruistic enough to sort of agree that we're going to let we're going to we're going to split our away. We're going to hit our 51% and divide one building from the other. Could could the covenants be written to actually prevent that from happening? Well, at some point I may have to beg off in terms of some of the technical hypotheticals you're raising. But as I understand it, they basically, if it's hard wired in originally to the covenants that there's going to be one association you buy in this development, you're a part of the association and you wanted to change to a different structure that would require an amendment to the covenants. And the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act very specifically says amendment can occur without majority consent or up to 67%, depending upon how it was written originally. Right. But but you'd have to go through the an amendment process for the original covenants to be able to go to a different governance structure. I think in answer to the hypothetical that you're raising. No, that's good. And it means the same threshold to subdivide is the same threshold to to agree to to get into the claim to file a claim. Well, just to be clear, hypothetically, it could be more because Kiawah allows covenants to put in in order to amend has to be at least 50 can be up to two thirds. So and I understand and others, again, have more real world experience in the room than I do, but that that is fairly common to have a higher threshold for amendments to the covenants, because Kiawah allows that to to be true in Colorado generally. Hmm. Okay. Council President, are we offering our comments at this point? Yes. Okay. So that's that's good information, sort of. Uh, I'm still that's not going to change my own thoughts on this matter. So I'm going to say my sort of prepared remarks here, because this directly, my concerns, I do have concerns based on what we were just talking about. But I do think that there's an opportunity to correct that down the road if, in fact, these manifest themselves in some sort of way. So the current defect, the current construction defects laws have not stopped construction in this boom. We have built lots of single family homes, townhomes, commercial low rise to high rise. One market segment is lagging behind the one market segment that's lagging behind as condos. So this really is, in my opinion, condo defect reform. There are no guarantees, but this law is at least an attempt to break the stalemate, making the development process more predictable for the buyer and the contractor alike. I am strongly pro-consumer and pro homeowner, so I will play. I will pay close attention to the market and the industry. And if it becomes apparent that buyers are being taken advantage of by this change in a way that is negatively impacts them, I would advocate that Council revisit this law when that if that starts to occur, because I, I do think, you know, there are things like this that that give me pause, but not enough because of the sort of strength and transparency of this proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilman, do. I want to thank David Rowell and our work on our amendment to craft this fine amendment? I think this ordinance would do a great have great effect on increasing the number of condominiums we have constructed for especially for middle income families, as well as for senior citizens. I'm looking forward to this passing tonight. I think the thing to remind is the state law schools is closed here. There, gives full protection to homeowners. And this law has no effect on the protections given by the state law to homeowners. Homeowners must be protected and they will under the construction defects legislation by the state. I'm hoping that our will be a are willing go along with other municipalities in encouraging the state to look at the state law and and make changes. I intend on supporting this tonight and I encourage my colleagues to do so. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to add that why is this important? It's because right now for many people who are wanting to buy. There. There is limited new construction for sale housing being built in this city and. We have an inclusionary housing ordinance. So anybody that's building over 30 units in the city of for sale units would have to include affordable units within that development. I don't have to tell any of you what a challenge it is for individuals who are trying to purchase in this city, what the price of housing has done to making it unattainable for many, many families. And by allowing this to move forward tonight, it ensures that as our development community moves to build more condos in this city. And our hope is that this legislation will assist to some degree in addressing the insurance issue that would then allow these units to move forward. It means it it opens up other opportunities for individuals and families who are trying to find something they can afford. Besides the fact that the city has worked very hard and I want to commend my colleagues. Councilwoman Connie Chung, Councilman Brooks, in working with the administration to identify resources and to look at a dedicated revenue stream that will assist us in producing more affordable units in this city. It takes time for the units to come online. And, you know, as I indicated earlier, we've got a number of development projects that this body has approved that have not yet been constructed. There's a potential that some of those developments can be for sale, as well as rental housing. But it's important that we have a mix of different type of housing in this city that increases or creates the opportunity for a variety of income levels of people to live in this city. I don't want to see us become like a manhattan where the only people who can live in Denver are the people who have high incomes and can afford the price of housing. I think it's vitally important to having, you know, the kind of diverse city that we have always been to have that mix of income levels. And so that's why I will be supporting this tonight. I will also pay very close attention to the effects that this will have on the purchaser, the consumer. We know that this legislation won't do anything for people who have already purchased and who may have been dealing with issues. This only deals with projects moving forward after the legislation is adopted. And so some of us will will look at that carefully. And if we need to bring this legislation back in and deal with it further, will do it. We'll do it at that time. You know, some of us are crossing our fingers and hoping that this will result in more units being constructed. We've heard some developers saying they want to wait until there are further changes at the state house before they will, you know, take any steps to build for sale units. But, you know, this is all kind of in hopes that this takes moves the needle a little bit further in encouraging developers to take that step and build these for sale units. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I made most of my comments when we were in the as I chair the business committee. But I just want to again and my support behind this bill, I think I want to thank David Bravo for putting a well-crafted bill together, one that I think sets a great example for other municipalities who are dealing with this in the in the state and also. Sheds light. To our to our state. Capitals. The folks in the legislators saying, hey, our capital city has taken a bold step in the right direction. You know, in light of the conversation tonight, though, I do want to say that the Business Development Committee would like to revisit this in June after let after the legislature meets so that we can review how we're doing on our folks coming to the table on construction and some of these issues and. Concerns that I think. Council members have that we can address. Some of those as well. So I stand. Support behind this and I hope that all the colleagues as. Well can get on board. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Any other comments? 811 as amended. Steve Nunn Madam Secretary, roll call. Flynn I. Feel more. Cashman. No. Kenny Lopez. I knew Ortega Susman. I black Brooks Clark. All right. This Wednesday. Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. Announce the results. 12 eyes one day. 12 eyes one day. 811, as amended, has been placed on final consideration and does pass. I believe that was all the bills that were called out. So we were ready for the block votes. All of the bills for introduction are ordered published. Councilwoman Ortega, will you please put the resolutions on the floor for adoption in a block. And move that the following bills be placed on final consideration and do pass in the block vote? Council Bill 829 eight 3839 eight 4841. Councilwoman Um, those are the right ones, the ones I'm looking at. Are you reading bills on final or the bills for introduction? Resolution URIS You're in. The bills were final. Councilwoman Okay, we're gonna get to those right now. It's just the resolutions. Oops. I started backwards. Okay. Resolutions. Council. Will they move for the adoption of Council Bill 867. It's 857 858, 859 868, 64, eight, 66, eight, 55, eight, 61 and 69.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 301, 303 and 327 South Harrison Street in Belcaro. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 301, 303 and 327 South Harrison Street from B-4 with waivers, UO-1, UO-2 to C-MX-5 and C-MX-8 (former Chapter 59 zoning code to urban center, mixed-use) in Council District 10. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-27-18.

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Let's see, 11 up on one. All right. 11 eyes counts. Bill 171 has passed. Councilman Herndon, will you please vote caliber 172 on the floor. Mr. President, I move the Council bill through 2018 017 to be placed upon final consideration and to pass. It has been moved to get a second. Thank you very much has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Carlsberg 172 is open. May we have the staff report? To Sally Sara with community planning and development. This is another map amendment. It is for property located at 3013303 and 327 South Harrison Street. The proposal is to rezone from before with waivers. You are one and you are two to urban center mixed use five and urban center mixed use eight. Property is located in City Council District ten in the Belle Carrero neighborhood. It is about 31,000 square feet, a little, almost 32.7 acres. Currently a car wash and vacant property. Again, the proposal is to rezone from an old code zone district b4 with waivers. You are one is the adult use overlay and you go to is the billboard overlay to urban center mixed use five stories and urban center mixed use eight stories. The purpose is to redevelop the property. So again, zoning current site and a lot of the surrounding properties are that before with waivers you will want a new oh two. To the north is GMU five general urban multi-unit five stories South and west. Before with waivers, you were one you own to an east on Colorado Boulevard urban edge mixed use three with the other one and you own two overlays. So again, the land use is a carwash and vacant property to the north, multi-unit to the south, another vacant property, but then a multi-unit structure to the east commercial on Colorado Boulevard to the west, an office building. So this gives you an idea of the scale of the area and the location of the property. It is relatively at the Alameda and Colorado Boulevard intersection, and this gives you an idea of the scale of structures in the area. The center top is the property itself. The property to the north across Alameda is top right. And then the property on Colorado Boulevard is a gas station that's to the east. And then lower left is the apartment building to the south of the property, and then upper left is the office building to the east, to the west of the property. So urban center mixed use is just that mixed use. The commercial and multi-unit residential are generally the use types. They are pedestrian oriented, diverse areas and are meant to be improve the transition between commercial and residential. The process for this one, it came in in October of 2017, an informational notice went out to council and the registered neighborhood organizations. The planning board hearing was held in February of this year and there was a unanimous vote to recommend approval. And then we cleared the committee in February of this year, and at last week's city council hearing, this matter was postponed until this evening's public hearing. So the rhinos in the area have not commented on this and nor have we received any other letters on this application. So, you know the criteria. There are three plans that are relevant in this area. Current Plan 2000 Blueprint Denver and the Cherry Creek Area Plan from 2012. And staff believes that this application conforms with our current plan in 2000 strategies as detailed in the staff report. This is in on the Blueprint Denver map, an area of change, the areas of the city where we want to channel growth. It is called a regional center as part of the Cherry Creek area, where you want to balance retail, employment and residential and have many uses concentrated in a small area. Street classifications for Harrison Street and other designated local street. East Alameda is a mixed use arterial and an enhanced transit corridor. Those, of course, arterials are our major streets connecting the whole city and the enhanced transit corridors are where we want to concentrate, hopefully transit, supportive uses and policies. Colorado Boulevard is a commercial arterial south of Alameda and a residential arterial north of Alameda and is also an enhanced transit corridor in the Cherry Creek Area plan. There is a framework plan that talks about Cherry Creek in general and basically says that we should acknowledge that to prosper, Cherry Creek needs to grow and change. Cherry Creek Plan Did Update Blueprint Denver. You can see on the maps in front of you that the map on the right is the update and the this property remains in an area of a change. The Cherry Creek Plan also did modify some land use and zoning regulations and design guidelines for the area, hoping to have positive change for the area within the sub areas of the Cherry Creek Plan. This property is called part of the Cherry Creek Triangle. Where there is it is does remain an area of change and where we want to have growth and reinvestment and new development should continue to be a mix of land uses should should respond to surrounding conditions of parkways and greenways and other development, and should transition to the neighborhoods adjacent to Cherry Creek. So in the Cherry Creek area plan this these maps show that it is part of the regional center and the height recommendations out of the Cherry Creek Plan are five and eight stories. So staff believes that this application is consistent with the three plans that govern the area or recommend the area, and that by using standard zoned districts, we are being consistent in our zoned districts. And so there is a uniformity of our district regulations and that by allowing this redevelopment and changing conditions that we are furthering the public health, safety and welfare changed circumstances is of course lots of change happening in Cherry Creek area and staff believes this is consistent with the urban center context, very pedestrian oriented, very mixed in uses both vertically and horizontally. So with that, staff recommends approval. Thank you very much. We have three individuals signed up to speak this evening. When I call you up, please come up to the podium to make your remarks. First up, Mark Johnson. Mr. President, members of the council, my name is Mark Johnson, a month old post development company, where at 999 18th Street here in Denver. And I'm the applicant and available to answer any questions you may have in our rezoning request. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Jesse Paris. She has a Paris like star action moment. Under further consideration, I renounce my opposition to this bill. We know that. We know it's the people's champion. So we are for this. Thank you. And our last speaker tonight, Chairman CQ. German say God bless the Irish and movement for self-defense. Representing poor, working, poor, homeless youth and senior citizens. I take great pride. And this project happening, especially in council the news district. We honor his work that he is done to make sure that folks who are out the loop are included in the loop, especially when it comes to contracting and jobs. He is headed up many subcommittees around this issue. He's got in your support on these things. And so because we know him personally, talk to him any kind of day, he'll pick up the phone, he'll talk to me. And because of that, I can talk to others and tell them honestly. He has never, ever lied to me, even when we disagree. So. We know that this already is the criterion. We know that. Hands down. Nothing special, nothing slick going on here. It's the way they do what they do. And we know that CAZENEUVE Manu's going to hold them according to what has been happening because he makes the extraordinary effort after the zoning changes to be there for us to find out what are you doing, what this is going to do? Are they including us? Are there jobs for people? One, two, three, ABC. We can get that from him. And he's a sterling example of what a city councilman needs to be about, whether it's male or female. People call, make sure they can pick up the phone and talk to a person, not a machine. And that creates the bonding. Because the truth is. It takes teamwork to make the dream work. And you're the only team I got. I'm just going to talk about straight up. You all I got you all the people got. Because we voted for you all to be here and all that opposition and people talking about you about this and that. And we'll do voodoo. Hey, they don't do what you do. They don't have no clue about how this works. So the name of this game is this. This is for the masses of the people and all those folks who got opinion about what you do. No investigation, no right to speak, because you have no data to back it up and you're spreading chaos. And Chairman Jim Insecure, can you can you stay on on the topic of this? That's all it. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions from members of Council Councilman New. Well, first, I want to thank Sharon. Thank you for those kind words. But I didn't hire him as my public relations service. Anyway, thank you. I would like to see Mr. Johnson. Next question, please. Thank you. Thank you for developing this property first thing. Looking forward to it. Could you tell a little bit to council a little bit about the uses which you're going to be developing there? Yeah. So what we're proposing as a senior housing project will be mostly independent living and assisted living units 148 total. It'll be eight storeys. We'll have an amenity deck up on the eighth floor to take advantage of the views to the West. There'll also be some activated spaces on the first floor facing Alameda with restaurant and bar area for the residents. We're going to have roughly 67 car parks below grade one level, and we'll have another eight spaces on the first floor level. And the operator is Soltero. There are group out of Phenix, Arizona, but they also operate a facility down in Castlerock. They currently on and manage about 950 units, so they're very seasoned and experienced in this product type. We plan to get started, hopefully this August with construction and we had complete in February, March of 2020. Thank you very much. Senior housing is very needed. So appreciate what you're doing. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman. New Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Mark, on the. Rezoning application, you are the owner, the representative of the owners of the property. Correct. Which are Shea and Kwame and Joseph Mix-A-Lot put on the suit. I'm sorry, but on the third page where the owners are supposed to verify that you are their representative, you signed as the owner. Also, can you explain due to I'm just trying to make sure that we have the consent of the owners of the property. For that one of the owners is here so. Okay and I'm sure he would you would. That would be helpful. If you're going to be come on up to the podium to answer Councilman Flynn's question. My name is Joseph MC Sood. I'm the owner and I totally approve of this project. I think it's excellent. I've been waiting for this for almost 40 years. When I built the car wash. So I think it's time. Mm hmm. Okay. You built. You built a car wash instead of a senior living. Okay. That's correct. And is someone here from Shea? Who. Who is Shea? And and and Shea Properties owns a small portion, I think it's about 6000 square feet. The vacant parcel, you know, they're a large honored developer based in California, but they have an office here in Denver. Right. They've been in support of this from day one. So I'm surprised that they're not here. Okay. Thank you. You know. Just. Teresa, can you. Can you explain, you know, the page I'm looking at where it says if you're the owner's representative, you have to have the owners sign that you do represent them. Right. And so further back in the application, there should be letters from the owners authorizing Mr. Johnson to represent them. Okay. In this matter. Thank you. I will look for that. I didn't immediately see it. Thank you. That's all, Mr. President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Quinn. Are there any other questions? All right, Zenon. Public hearing for Council Bill 172 is closed. Comments by members of Council Councilman New. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We look forward to the development of this property. The senior housing is such an important issue in that whole area around the city as well as especially Cherry Creek. So. So I really appreciate what they're doing with this property and look forward to your starting up this project as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. New Ortega. Like. Sussman I Black Flynn, I Gilmore, I Herndon, I Cashman can eat Lopez. Right. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting, announce the results. Lebanese two days. I think we have. To absent. Two absence of 11 eyes, zero nays, zero abstentions, two absent councilwoman 72 has passed. On Monday, May 14th, 2018, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 18 0325 Changing the zoning classification for 2391 South Sherman Street in Rosedale. Any protest against Council Bill 18 0325 must be filed with Council officers no later than Monday, May seven, 2018, saying no other business before this body. This meeting is adjourned.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 16.60, relating to the payment of living wage to workers at the Long Beach Airport and the Long Beach Convention Center, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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M23 is a report from the city attorney with the recommendation to declare an ordinance amending the municipal code relating to the payment of living wage to workers at the Long Beach Airport and the Long Beach Convention Center. It read the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. But I hear emotions moving second. Mr. Barton. Mayor, members of the council. This ordinance is being brought back to you for first reading. At the last council meeting we were requested to change the ordinance that was before you to include retail or retail portion of the ordinance. We have done that and that is the. Motion before you today. Can you more thoroughly explain what this does for everyone involved? Yes, Mayor. And members of the council, the the at the request of the city council, we were asked to prepare a living wage ordinance that would be in effect for future contracts at both the airport and at the convention center. That would follow the same guidelines as the measure in which adopted the living wage for hotel workers, for hotels, over 100 units. We had just I did have a question by someone who was looking at a restaurant, the restaurant pre security at the airport, maybe in it may be renovated or potential change of operators. Would this measure, if it's adopted, apply to that change? I think the answer. If the contract is amended or we enter into a new contract, then yes, this ordinance would apply to that facility. That is correct. Okay. So I want to make that clear. And remember, the public was just council on this issue. Please come forward. Okay. Mr. Mayor, we're on 23, correct? Correct. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Any council discussion? All right, members, cast your vote. Motion carries seven votes. Yes. One vote no. Thank you, members. Good item ten. CLERK three.

Order for a hearing addressing civil rights in the creation of sanctuary safe spaces in Boston.

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Certainly Docket 0197 council in the. He offered the following order for a hearing addressing civil rights in the creation of sanctuary state safe spaces in Boston. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The chair recognizes counsel here called. Thank you, Mr. President. And I'd like Councilor Lujan to join me as a co-sponsor. Ma'am, please. At the consulate, Louisiana's original co-sponsor. You have the floor councilman here. Thank you. And I would also like to move to substitute the language of the docket to reflect updates we've received from BP since the original filing of the Stockett. The stock. It is basically a referral from our office and. Counsel over here. I don't mean to cut you off. I apologize, madam. Could I just confirm that all of the counselors have received the amended budget? I believe so. I know I have it. And I believe it was sent to everyone. It should be on their computer. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk. I want to let my colleagues know that this this information was sent to your email, and it should be in your inbox. Let us take a minute if you want to check, just to confirm that you have it. If you don't have it, please, please raise your hand and we will make sure we get it to you. But it should be there. Actually the city message had distributed them at the beginning of the meeting in the chambers. Okay. We got a copy on our chairs that our guest. On. At this time, the the chair recognizes. Councilman here. Councilman, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. And this is basically a refile from my office first hearing order. We hold a hearing on this back in December, and we wow. Many, many, many. It feels like forever ago. And we've been working with amazing teams of advocates ever since. And we plan to file something in addition to this in the near future. But in the meantime, we're just we follow this docket. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Hill. Would any other counsel like to speak on this matter? Would any council let you add their name? Please raise your hand. Now. Madam Kirklees Ad Council. We're all. Please add counsel. Laura. Please add. Councilor Bach. Please add. Please add the chair. Please add. Councilor Braden. Please, Councilor Murphy. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk. Madam Clerk. Darkened 0197 will be referred to the Committee on Civil Rights and Immigrant Immigration Advancement. Right. Right. And. But. Okay, madam, let let me go back. 0198 will be referred to the Committee on Education. We, haven't we? We're going to read Sarah one. Okay. Thank you. Do I could 0198 Council media offered the following order for hearing addressing sexual assault and harassment. Boston Public Schools.

Rezones property at 195 South Monaco Parkway from E-SU-DX to S-MU-3 in Council District 5. (NEIGHBORHOODS AND PLANNING) Rezones property at 195 South Monaco Parkway from E-SU-DX to S-MU-3 in Council District 5. A PUBLIC HEARING WILL BE HELD AT LEAST FOUR WEEKS AFTER PUBLICATION. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-4-15

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That is not what you're considering today. You're just looking at a straight zone district and I would ask the applicant to answer questions regarding that potential restrictive land use covenants. But we are looking at is our review criteria. So we have five different criteria that we look at with the zoning code and review a map and then that application comes in. We'll first look at consistency with adopted plans. In this case, we have comprehensive plan 2000 and Blueprint, Denver, our Integrated Land Use and Transportation Plan. And with a comprehensive plan there is. This proposal is consistent with many strategies identified in Denver's comprehensive plan, including the Environmental Sustainability Strategy, two of which speaks of conserving land by promoting infill development within Denver at sites where services and infrastructure are already in place, designating mixed use design and mixed use communities and reducing sprawl so residents can live, work and play within their own neighborhoods. Laney Strategy three B which is encourages quality infill development that is consistent with the character of the surrounding neighborhood, that offers opportunities for increased density and more amenities, and that broadens the variety of compatible uses. Ebert Strategy one e. Modify land use regulations. Ensure flexibility to accommodate changing demographics and lifestyles, and allow in some places to encourage a diverse mix of housing types and affordable units in neighborhood strategy. One F to invest in neighborhoods to help meet citywide goals and objectives for a range of housing types and prices that Moore in the blueprint Denver which is again the land use transportation component supplement to the comprehensive plan. It is a single family residential designation in Blueprint Denver and an area of stability. It can be seen as a reinvestment area, though. I'll go into a more detail that in the next slide the nearby land use concepts, single family, the park and also with Buckley Annex just to the Northeast as actually employment with an area of change that features reclassification, which is also important in this case. South Monaco is a residential arterial, cedar is an undesignated local. Uh, back into the reinvestment area concept. That is an area of blueprint. Denver If you look the area of stability description of reinvestment area, it speaks of being an area of neighborhoods with a character that is desirable to maintain, but that would benefit from reinvestment through modest infill and redevelopment or major projects in a small area. These areas would encourage investment, but in a more limited and targeted way than areas of change. So there's definitely a thought there that there's a place for reinvestment in in areas of stability. There are strategies in blue for Denver that speaks to addressing that type of idea. Here's a list of a few of them. First one address and cap incompatible zoning and land use issues. Denver's zoning code identifies that single unit residential uses are primarily located away from residential and commercial arterial streets, whereas multi-unit, residential and commercial uses are primary located along arterial and collector streets. The City three zoning would allow that multi-unit development along South Bank Parkway, which is a residential arterial. The existing East Udc's zoning does not allow that compatibility between existing and new development design or development standards. The SMU three does have siting and design elements standards to establish compatibility between existing and new development, addressing edges between areas of stability and areas of change. I mentioned there's an area of a change just to the Northeast. The property is located on an edge of that area of stability. Assuming three, zoning can improve the edge of the single unit residential to the west of South Monaco Parkway, essentially creating a stronger buffer diversity of housing type size and cost . The SMU three will allow a variety of housing choices to strengthen the area of stability. So in that, we do see that CPD finds a rezoning consistent with the comprehensive plan and with Blueprint. Denver regarding uniformity of district regulations. The assuming three is adjacent to this. I mentioned that just to the south and is zoned district is found at similar locations along residential arterials within the city to further public health, safety and welfare. SMU three does facilitate redevelopment. The site removes a poorly maintained structure and improves character along Monica and residents have access to recreation, jobs and commercial activities. We're just buying circumstances. We look at change in changing conditions. States, the land or its surrounding environments has changed or is changing to such a degree that it is in the public interest to encourage a redevelopment of the area or to recognize that changed character of the area. If we look at the site in particular, the structure on site has been deteriorating and the properties and and reinvestment area within that area of stability. There has been a lot of change in this area with Lowry Town Center and the Annex activities. Multi-unit residential is typically located along arterial streets such as Monaco, which is the building type that is allowed in the SMU three zoning, but not the existing zoning. Consistency with neighborhood context, zone, district purpose and intent. It's important to know that, you know, we're going from one context to the other here, from an urban edge to suburban with the suburban neighborhood context. Again, the multi-unit residential is primarily located along arterial and collector streets, and it is typically separated from single unit residential. If we look at the map, again, not only it is Long Monaco Parkway, but the park itself creates a significant buffer, kind of isolating this property from the remaining part of XMR Park . So the staff felt that the suburban neighborhood context did fit the site more so than urban edge. With that, we recommends approval of this application to reason 195 South Monaco Parkway three students, two SMU three based on finding all review criteria have been met. I have four. Questions. Okay. Thank you, Madam Secretary. I understand we have 71 individuals signed up to speak this evening at 3 minutes per person. No, some have six. Some have six. Okay. So we have 71 individuals signed up to speak this evening. So I'm going to go ahead and call up. The first eight speakers. We've reserved the front bench for the speakers. So when I call your name, if you can go ahead and come up and we will do our very best to run this efficiently. Our first speaker is Peter Cutler. He has 6 minutes. Second speaker is Michael Warren, 6 minutes. Next speaker is Rick Peterson. Next speaker is john stafford. With next speaker is john fisher. Next speaker is denice reit h. Next speaker is Sean Maley followed by and KIRWIN. So if you can all please come up and have a seat in the front bench and we'll go ahead and started the. Peter Kudlow, if you could please begin. Good evening, Madam President. Members of the Council. My name is Peter Cutler. I reside at 2450 East Alameda Avenue. House number ten, Denver, Colorado. Madam President, we were informed that we could not do our earlier point this evening, and I was wondering if I could have permission to pass out a hard copy to members of the council . Certainly my. Would you like to continue? Yes, I. Would. Thank you. Madam President, I want to thank the members of the Council for this opportunity to present our plan. For this neighborhood. It has been a lot of great hard work. I'd like to thank the City Planning Department for its professional approval and guidance through the guidelines. I'd also like to thank the Planning Board, who also did a very thorough review of our plan. Tonight, I'm joined by Michael Warren, our development associate as architecture represented by Rick Paterson. Here's KOFLER Smith, civil engineer and traffic engineer. We're joined also by North East DeLay, landscape architect Foster Graham, our land use opportunity with David Foster and CRL associates, which are merely a developer representative. I'm basically looking through partner pages one through six. As noted, I founded Beacon Hill Investments in March of 1984 and also Metropolitan Homes in 1994. I am the sole owner of those two businesses. Our business forecast. Our business focus is to develop, build and manage investments that I am a partner in. We build, develop and operate for sale condominiums, townhomes, patio homes, single family homes. We build for rent communities, including condominiums, townhomes, patios and single family. And we also do a mixed use office retail, entertainment, restaurants. We have built 37 different projects in the overall metropolitan area. This has been in nine different municipalities. Some of our most notable opportunities and proud developments include new Sears in 1989. 90 Loft Rentals on 16th Street. 1997 Granite Ranch Condominiums. Townhomes. Single Family Patios for sale at Bolles and Wadsworth. 2002 Mayfair Lourie 120 townhomes and condominiums just west of the town center and second in Quebec. 2003, we built Lowry North Apartments to 208 residences for rent at 11th and Quebec. 2004. We've had the great fortune to develop 56 single family residence for sale eight in Quebec of Lowry Heights, 32 Condominiums for Sale, 11th in Quebec. 2005. We are very fortunate to have been a leader in the mixed use transit oriented development with Bellagio located Dry Creek and I 25. It's a development including 928 residences. It's a blend of for sale, villas, lofts, condominiums, townhomes and for rent apartments. Currently, we are developing property in Thornton, developing a parcel with Evans and Eagle Bellagio. Very notable opportunity for all of us during some very, very interesting times. It was recognized as the transit oriented development of the year in 2007 by the Denver Regional Council of Governments. By 2011, through very difficult times, we were also recognized as the live work play neighborhood of the year 2011. Our plan was and still is committed to neighborhood enhancement. A lot of people have asked me, why did I invest in this parcel? It is a public record that I have purchased the the site prior to any rezoning efforts. Why? Because I have believed in neighborhood enhancement since the day that I started development and building. I believe in providing diversified housing types. I believe in the city and county of Denver in its guidelines for growth. The planning department and the city officials and all of the individuals involved in making healthy decisions. I do believe in myself as a responsible developer and builder. I take a look at the Mickey Ziplines of the world and I'm fortunate to be around. That's great company. I have always believed in our integrity and we understand needs and we understand demographics. We utilize objective data. We respect all neighborhoods, no matter what the differences may be. I am financially responsible and committed to this plan and I think everyone for their hard work over a period of 17 months. And I ask for your support in the neighborhood support this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Michael Warren. Thank you, Madam Chair. Other members of the council. My name is Michael Warren. I live at 3831 West 25th Avenue. I'm a development associate with Metropolitan Homes, and we were presented this opportunity back in November of 2013. We started our market research and immediately made some observations of the neighborhood. There's a strong level of respect and protection for Chris Moore Park. There's a strong sense of pride of ownership. People who live here want to stay here. We found that there is a limited supply of housing choices and diversification. And in reviewing our existing zoning and studying the adjacent properties to the north, the south, the east and the west, and further studying our location along a major arterial Monaco and have just north of another major arterial Alameda that our site invited an opportunity for housing diversification with for sale and for rent residences. From this, we established goals and objectives to address these observations from the area. These observations are included, but not limited to improving the pedestrian walking connectivity north and south along Monaco and east and west along Cedar into the park. So heavy traffic and vehicular access concerns, minimizing surface parking and the impact that that has. Being respectful of high quality architectural design. Height and size of the building. And responsible density and site development. So starting in January of 2014, we held meetings with neighborhood leaders, neighborhood groups, associations, and many individuals in the community. We evaluated a number of different options, including retail office and various housing choices, and arrived at our initial plan of a four storey age targeted building with 120 residences. We submitted our application for an SMU five zoned district with the waiver to four storeys in October of 2014. After conducting additional meetings and continuing our neighborhood outreach, it was apparent that the height of the building was still a concern. So we went back to our land plan, revised our rezoning application in December of 2014 to an SMU three zoned district. We enhanced access points and traffic management lowered the height to three stories. We continue to have multiple meetings with city and council or I'm sorry, with city and County of Denver planning staff, all of the referral referral agencies to confirm utilization of the existing curb cuts on Monica. So there would be no access points off cedar or locus. We increased the parking counts and we kept the density at 120 units. We took that plan through planning board in January and received approval. We then continued to meet with neighborhood groups, leaders and a mediator. There were still concerns regarding the density, parking and traffic, so we asked for a continuance in March to further enhance our plan. We continued our neighborhood outreach, made additional enhancements to the plan to increase parking to a 2.02 parking ratio. We enhanced the design of the buildings and further revise our plans from 120 residences to 25 for sale townhomes and 50 age targeted residences for rent. So in summation, again, our plan evolved from our initial plan of a four storey building with underground parking and 120 residences to a plan with a three storey building, 120 residences, improvements to parking, traffic and accessibility. Then in April of 2015, we revised our plan to what we are presenting here today, consisting of 25 for sale townhomes and 58 targeted for rent residences. In your package, you'll find a picture of an aerial of the existing site. As David mentioned, the site is currently 2.33 acres. The total developable site, including the roadways along Cedar and Monaco, is about three acres. There's significant park distance between our site and Kearny and to the north, about 1000 feet between our site and South Moore Drive. The current zoning for our site is Eastside, which allows for single family homes to the northwest corner of the existing townhomes are zoned at 2.5 to the east. The old cross Moore Downs is an are two A with waivers which allowed for over 700 units. It includes two story and seven story apartment rentals. The zoning for the parcel on the southwest corner directly south of us is SMU three, which is the same zoning we are applying for today. If you will look at your site plan elevation please. In the packet should be page 11. The orientation on the bottom of the page there is Monaco on the left hand side of Cedar Avenue and Locust above. We have our main building, which, as are the larger building, is a three storey residential building with underground parking. That's 50 age targeted residences. Then on the left hand side, the south portion of the site are 25 for sale townhomes. And I'd like to speak to a couple of things regarding this site plan. Access to the site is from two existing curb cuts off of Monaco. There is no access to the site off of cedar or locus, and that was deliberately to eliminate or mitigate cut through traffic in the neighborhood. Setbacks in the parkway enhancement. We have set back our apartment building 94 feet from Monaco. We have a parkway enhanced about 44 to 48 feet running all along. Monaco screened by a massively designed landscaping plan. Then we have our townhomes are set back about 44 feet from Monaco, 30 feet from Cedar, an additional 22 and a half feet from locust. Sidewalks. There's an eight foot detached sidewalk along Monaco. A five foot detached sidewalk along cedar. And a five foot attached sidewalk along locus, which doesn't currently exist parking to the site. We have 152 spaces, as I mentioned before, which is a parking ratio of 2.02. There are two attached parking spaces for each individual townhome. There are 58 underground parking spaces for the main building, and there are 44 additional surface parking spaces which we believe will continue. I apologize to interrupt, but your 6 minutes. Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate your consideration. Our next speaker is Rick Peterson. Thank you. Good evening, Madam President. And Council Members. My name is Rick Petersen. I'm a representative of Ares architecture, the designer of the project. And I would like to pick up where Michael left off and primarily focus on the architectural style of the proposal. As he mentioned that the project is built up and broken into eight different buildings of two types. If you want to go to the next page after the after the. Site plan. You'll see elevations of the townhomes we have been following, the crest market filing to design guidelines and that call for an acceptable ranch style. And in doing so, we really are inspired by the subtypes of a ranch style, which are prairie and craftsman style. The townhomes are a mixture of three and four unit buildings. As I mentioned, there are seven of them and they really are represent a mixture of both the craftsman and prairie style. The next page that you have represents the elevations of the age targeted building. And as Michael. Mentioned, that is 50 units, it's self parked underneath. And this too follows the the crest more design guidelines and is a little more primarily targeted towards the prairie style. Finally these are these buildings, as he started to mention, are set far back from Monaco. And that really gives us a lot of opportunity for a landscaping buffer. It's quite generous and we feel that it's really going to result in an enhanced and an. Improved experience along Monaco. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is John said with an you also have 6 minutes. Thank you, Madam President. If I knew I was coming to a sign, I would have worn a towel. But you wouldn't want to see that. My name is John said with I live at 245 Carney Street and I'm president of the Crest Moore Park Second Failing Homes Association. The Crest North Park Second Filing Homes Association is an organization representing 490 covenant controlled single family homes, developed as a Denver neighborhood in the 1950s. And by the way, we are the closest R.A. to the north and to the west of the proposed project. Our community was originally built as ranch homes in large lots. By Denver city standards, there are no alleys in the former neighborhoods and by design, no sidewalks. The streets are wider than most Denver streets, and the covenants forbid the building of any structure and the front 30 foot setback of any home. Unlike our neighbor hilltop, by the way, we are not hilltop, we are customer park. There are no fences in the front of homes, thus maintaining a wide open, sweeping vista. As one looks up our streets, one of the greatest amenities of our neighborhood is the adjacent crest Moore Park. This park has a walking and has a walking and biking path mature trees, baseball fields, tennis courts, picnic areas, a children's playground and soccer fields. The eastern edge of the park borders on Monaco Parkway. And except for about a ten two story townhomes, the park is surrounded by single family, one and two story residences. During the spring and fall, the park is teaming with youth soccer teams competing, and the surrounding streets are lined with the park cars of parents cheering their teams. On some days, the congestion of cars and child pedestrians can feel overwhelming, especially as eager parents cruised the area looking for scarce scarce parking, illegal parking space or not. Our neighborhood is very walkable, and on any given day, one can encounter families with children, the elderly and the exercisers. Utilizing our wide open streets for access to the park and its paths. Dogs are walked, children are taught how to ride bikes, joggers jog and others leisurely stroll, admiring the landscaped gardens and beautifully kept homes. I hope the above gives you a feel for what is to be what it is to be. A resident of our neighborhood, of wide open lawns, wide boulevard like streets and single family homes. Now imagine a huge mixed use development. Lowry's Boulevard, one being constructed just across Monica Parkway from our neighborhood, as traffic from that development seeks to go west towards Cherry Creek and downtown and return in the evening where to find quicker access to arterials. It has found a shortcut through our neighborhood, the adjacent streets that development Quebec, Alameda and Monaco Parkway are overly congested by any measure. And as Boulevard one is completed, these streets will only get even more congested. There are no two ways around this conundrum. The cut through traffic will only get worse. This brings us to the proposed rezoning of 195 South Monica Parkway, as currently proposes to development, would add a minimum 75 units of townhomes and apartments and three story buildings. No comparable buildings at this density in height exist directly on Monica Parkway, nor is there any similar construction heading west from this construction site. It's a one reaches the Cherry Creek neighborhood. The developer of 195 South Monica presented several plans to the neighborhoods that surround this proposed development. The neighborhood organizations that are most affected by this proposed rezoning are unanimous in their opposition. But is this opposition just a NIMBY reaction to progress? To analyze this question properly, one must examine this application of the wider context of the development of Boulevard One and its future effect on the neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods are concerned about the same issues that arise and arise again when development is proposed density, height, parking, traffic and safety. But even more important to our residents is their way of life. The tranquility and walkability of the neighborhood and the wide open vistas. Look at our covenants, protect our neighborhood is not opposed to all development and in fact, welcome smart development that enhances our property values and adds to our quality of life. A suburban feel. Yet within the minutes of a vibrant urban city, our Neighborhoods Architecture Review Committee works with every developer building in our neighborhood to preserve and enhance our neighborhood. We have worked together on hundreds of remodel scrapes and pop ups to develop a win win project for developers. It creates more. The neighborhood characteristics of six more apart have been described above. We cherish our park, its openness and the feeling of serenity it brings to those that stroll its path and play on its fields . True buildings of this size proposed to him in that part of the eastern perimeter will change the characteristics that make this place this oasis in the middle of a vibrant, bustling city. The special place that it is. Our commitment to future generations of Denver sites is to preserve preserve these greenspaces at all costs because they can never be replaced. A parkway is defined as a broad landscaped thoroughfare. The proposed development would change the nature of Monica Parkway. Even the Boulevard One project maintains berms, grassy areas and detention ponds to separate its buildings to the parkway. Nowhere in Monaco Parkway from Liesl Drive to Smith Road are there any structures of the type that development proposes. Just as we must preserve our parks, we must preserve our parkways, our nature. Friends are meeting after meeting at survey after survey of sounding overwhelmingly rejected the developer's proposal for this 2.3 acre property. A survey taken across more second farming homeowners in January and demonstrates the residents concern and overwhelming opposition to this rezoning. The survey resulted in 218 households, not individuals, opposed the rezoning 54 in support and 14 with no opinion. At the Chris Moore Second Family Homes Association annual meeting held May 27th, attended by more than 100 homeowners representing 66 homes. Both sides of this issue were allowed time to make presentations to the residents. The presentations were followed by a question and answer period. A vote was then taken by households, not people. The vote with 73 opposed and one in favor of the current rezoning. To conclude, please vote to preserve our neighborhood and Monaco Parkway and to allow us to continue to enjoy our streets, our park, and our homes. In a unique Denver neighborhood, a neighborhood of stability and preserved open space. A neighborhood that is proud to call Denver home. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay. Politely, I'm going to ask you to refrain from applauding. We have several speakers this evening and I think it's fair that they speak and we get out of here before tomorrow. But do you say okay. Thank you, Mr. Said with Mr. Fisher. My name is. My name is John Fisher and I'm the president of the Crest Ma Homeowner Crest MA Homeowners Association first filing. I live with three, three, three, five, three, three, three, three. Ivy Street was the original farm home for all of Crest Ma Park. And if you're ever in the area, come on by. My wife is a gardener. She's expanded the gardens somewhat. And and it's it's a look like an English cottage. But the character of our neighborhood is pretty much, as John said with has very rapidly told you. I've known John for 16 years now. I have never heard him talk that fast for 6 minutes. But he said a mouthful and he said some of the things that I would say in in order to avoid redundancy, I'm not going to repeat any of what he said. But I want to underscore and emphasize a couple of things. First, our neighborhood, the first failing was built in the early 1930s and it was indeed belt built to be a very residential neighborhood. The second filing was built during the 1950s, primarily as ranch homes. If you're coming to the first filing, you'll see a lot of two story homes in the second filing, mostly ranch style, until they were made into McMansions over the last few years, but beautiful residential neighborhood with about one third acre lots. And this is the character that we are trying very desperately to preserve. These kinds of neighborhoods are never going to be built again. And I think we all know it and we all recognize it and we accept it, but we want to preserve what we have. Up until recently, the character has been preserved by the city and by the neighbors themselves by making sure that we because we're covenant controlled communities, you can't subdivide our properties and we preserve that whenever we redo our covenants. And the city preserved our character with redoing the zoning code in 2010 and making sure that all of our properties were zoned single family. So how do we arrive here tonight to debate why we should rezone a parcel of what, when you look at that, at the map that you've been provided, that is that is being considered now for rezoning, you see that it is actually contiguous to all of Chris Moore part. It is not contiguous to anything across the street on Monaco Parkway. Monaco is actually a buffer and we consider it one. And bigger development is going on across the street, especially Boulevard one. Yes, that's an area of change. Chris Moore Park across the street is not an area of change. I think the planning department got it wrong. And I will tell you, I haven't been involved in this kind of stuff until the last ten years. And during those ten years, I have learned that anybody can can take facts and they can change them to their liking to try to to try to convince people of what they want to convince them. And I think that is what is happening here to a large degree, because we are definitely an area of stability and that's what we want to preserve. I want to point out that one of the that that all of the residents of Chris Moore Park that recognize that this parcel should be redeveloped because it can be considered a blight. It's definitely fallen into disrepair and needs to be changed. But what we are opposing is not development, but over development. We would welcome, welcome with open arms, working with Peter Kudla to try to put in an all townhome community. We have proposed that two metropolitan homes and we have been denied that opportunity because they have made the financial decision. I believe that they need the 50 apartments and yes, they have made some concessions, but the concessions took us down from 120. That was, we think, absurd down to 75, which we think is still too dense. But we were we have worked hard. The community has the communities, the neighborhoods have reached out and held community meetings. We have invited the developers to come. We were reaching out more than the developers were reaching out to hold these meetings, inviting them to try to come to work collaboratively to find an alternative design that would be acceptable to the neighborhoods and acceptable to metropolitan homes. So let's begin with what we have in front of us. We have in front of us the proposal for 25 owner occupied townhomes and 50 apartments. We believe that that they what they did in a sense and I know this doesn't sit well with some people there is a developer's handbook. I think that is that happens in in some cities. It certainly happens here in Denver to a degree. When Buckley Annex was was first being redeveloped, the plan was for 1200 living units they came down to. 800 that is still being opposed is too dense. That was a one third reduction. Metropolitan homes started with 120, came down to 75. That's a 37% reduction. But there's an awful strong similarity between the two. And with that as a concession and then the others that you've already heard described, we still think the fundamental issue is this project is too dense for our neighborhood. The timeline, I think, is of critical importance. How did we get here? When when Metropolitan Homes looked at this site, they came first before purchasing the property to Councilwoman Sussman. They told her what they were thinking of doing. She explained that they would face an uphill battle because the neighborhoods got together and opposed a prior development that was proposed about six years before. That would have, in the end had 58 leaving you in a sense, in commercial space because of the opposition by the neighborhoods. That proposal was withdrawn. Your time has elapsed. Your 6 minutes. I miss the yellow, huh? Well, I think I got to the main part. All right. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Denise Rich, followed by Sean Maley and and Kerwin. My name is Denise Rich. I live at 125 Ivy. I have been a realtor in hilltop and cress more over 40 years. What is needed in the neighborhood? No one asks that question. We need senior housing, main floor, masters, patio homes, people that move out of their homes that are they can no longer maintain their yards or take care of those. I used to carry a snow shovel in the back of my car for the older people because there were no townhomes, main floor masters being built in the area. We do not need another three storey apartment. Or rental complex. There are 7300 units in this city that are on the market. Another 3700 units are coming on with a total of 11,000 units in the next two years. That's an incredible absorption rate for rental units. I have seen Denver boom and bust four times and we're in the state of it can never happen. When the market is top heavy with so many apartments being built and I'm not going to dispute all these people that are going to come in and rent. My opinion, it's a myth. The first part of the market to fall is the rental. It creates an inevitable disaster for the future safety and stability of a neighborhood. We already have 710 units directly across the street. Those units, there are ten currently to be rented that are anywhere from 1300 to $2000. And those are one bedroom. But there are also in that same complex. The Luxe eight two bedroom units that are to be rented with 13 acres of ponds and amenities swimming pool across the street. What is the planning board thinking? I mean, we already have it. Why do you have to ruin another neighborhood with density? There are five subdivisions that have nothing available for any kind of main floor living. There are sold out Hempstead selling at 8 to 900 in Lorry Carriage House. You never get an available unit there. The Biscayne Subdivision is the patio homes and those are on Florida and Monroe. Those are selling at the last one, just sold for 500. So if there is a need, it's a need for patio homes. The developer has not been honest in the valuation, nor has the planning department of what is needed and wanted by the community. Why should the city allow the developer to establish yet another unneeded, overbearing apartment complex? If the application is a lie, you have got to deny. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sean Maley. You have 6 minutes. Thank you. Good evening, Madam President and members of Council. My name is Sean Maley. 1660, Lincoln and Denver. I've been working with Metropolitan Homes for over a year now on this process. First thing I want to talk about is the process and we've held a lot of meetings. I won't go into detail, but we've tried very hard to be honest, collaborative and open minded to input. This was not a process where we started high seeking to settle in the middle or low. We started with a very honest 120 unit age targeted proposal for the site, which Peter Kudla and his team felt was the right decision for the market and for the site in the neighborhood. We made a number of changes to that site, but when concerns remained regarding the density and the all for rent aspect of the project, we continued this public hearing for about two and a half months so we could make additional changes and responses to the community. And that's ultimately how we landed at the 50 edge targeted apartments and 25 for sale townhomes. I want to talk briefly about Blueprint Denver. David Jaspers did a good job as always in a staff presentation, but we know areas of stability does not mean no change. Blueprint has a number of strategies for areas of stability. Talking about addressing incompatible zone districts edges between areas of stability in areas of change and promoting a diverse mix of housing options type, size and cost. The zoning code talks about locating single family zoning away from arterial streets and locating multi-unit zoning on arterial streets. Monaco as an arterial street. David also talked about reinvestment areas, and I bring that up again because I think the definition fits the site to a tee. Reinvestment areas are in neighborhoods with a character that is desirable to maintain but would benefit from modest infill or major projects in a small area. I wouldn't consider this to be a major project, but I do think that the 75 units we're proposing is modest infill. It continues in these areas and can encourage investment, but in a more limited and targeted way. In order to limit and target our redevelopment, we have limited the density to 75 units and we've targeted the for sale townhomes to Cedar and Locust and locating the apartment form on the more challenging Monaco frontage. The definition concludes with these areas face a variety of challenges, including concern about deteriorating or poorly maintained properties. Inappropriate land uses, inadequate buffers between uses and maintaining affordable housing. Again, I think if you look at this site and some of the challenges and opportunities it presents, it meets that definition quite well. And it's remarkable to see some of the foresight that the drafters of Blueprint Denver had in drafting these concepts, as we've been grappling with them for the last 18 months. The next thing I'd like to talk about is context, which is very important when considering the zoning of the site. This site is the only corner of the intersection of Cedar and Monaco that does not have multi-unit zoning. The the southwest corner is zoned SMU three, which is what we're seeking. The northeast and southeast corners are zoned are to a which is an old code multi-unit zoned district, which, as you've heard, allows for over 700 units of apartments ranging from 2 to 7 stories. Our corner is still zoned single family, which is likely a remnant from the original 1950s zoning code. A lot has been made about the context of Monaco being primarily single family on the west side of the street between George Washington High School up north to 38th Avenue near I-70. And that is true for the most part. However, what's interesting about those single family homes on the West Side is that except for a school. On Mont View. Not one of the single family homes on the west side of the street does not have a matching single family home on the east side of the street where single family exists on the west side. It is always met in parity with a single family home on the east side of the street. And for more than two thirds of this corridor, there's that gorgeous center median parkway between sixth and 38th that greatly aids in that single family context. When you look at our site, there is no center median parkway. There are no single family homes across the street. And instead you have that large suburban 710 unit apartment community ranging from 2 to 7 stories tall. Health care services and a little bit northeast. You have the Boulevard one redevelopment. This section of Monaco between Alameda and first is much different node than the rest of Monaco and that I think it is unfair to expect this site to perform as single family or even townhomes fronting Monaco. When this node again is unlike any other section of Monaco. Furthermore, many of the single family homes on the west side of Monaco, south of that median parkway, have over time turned their back to Monaco. And we've seen some of the architectural models that the Friends of Crest Marc Group have come up with. And in a number of their concepts, even their designs turn the backs of single family homes or townhomes to Monaco, which doesn't comport with the zoning code. And it also kind of proves the point of the challenge that fronting Monaco in this section is. Lastly, I want to talk briefly about customized zoning. We first sought to limit the density to 75 units via a waiver and condition. However, as the Planning Department has recently discussed, waivers and conditions are more suitable for items in zone district with a broad or citywide implication, such that they seek to address this in a future language amendment to the zoning code. And again, they're intended for items broadly applicable across all zone districts, not site specific. So limiting density on this site does not fit that purpose. And as for a PWD, the code requires unique and extraordinary circumstances to justify the use of a pad. Again, limiting density does not qualify as one of those unique and extraordinary circumstances. In closing, I would just like to say that the current proposal of 50 apartments in 25. Year time is lapsed. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Our next speaker is. And Kerwin. And you have 6 minutes. Yes. Hello. Good evening. I am Ann Kerwin. Our neighbor, a man named Aaron Swartz, could not attend tonight's hearing, but asked us to share some comments with you. You may have seen his piece in last Thursday's Denver Post. It was entitled The Human Cost of High Density Development on a spring afternoon last year. Aaron's pregnant wife and their three year old son had walked him to work at a nursing center at East Alameda and South Monaco Parkway a couple of blocks from their home. It was about 2 p.m. when he kissed them goodbye. After walking inside, Aaron said he heard the wail of sirens. There's a fire station nearby, so the familiar sound didn't raise any alarms for him. It should have. As Aaron's wife headed back to their house with their son falling asleep in the stroller, she crossed Monaco and then was waiting on the sidewalk to cross Alameda when she heard a terrifying screech. A car heading straight smashed into one turning left. That car spun, hitting Aaron's wife and throwing his son from the stroller onto the street. Aaron knew nothing of the accident until he received a call a couple of hours later from Denver Health. His wife and child were in stable condition. He raced outside and saw their blue stroller lying on the sidewalk and smashed cars nearby. He started screaming No, over and over. Aaron's mother took him to the hospital. As it turned out, his son had road rash all over his body, a deep gash on his head, and a broken collarbone. For weeks, the three year old had to be in a sling and could not run or climb. Remarkably, Aaron's wife had escaped major injuries. Through all the chaos, the little light shines through and ultrasound showed that the child in her womb was okay. And for the first time, they learned they were having another boy. Aaron Swartz family survived this harrowing ordeal, but he tells how their accident still haunts them. The older son is more hesitant and, of course, wary of cars. They like to walk me now every time they cross a. As these street fear grips them, they stand far back at intersections looking for cars that might hit them, Erin says. I hear Denver is one of the most popular cities in the country for young people like us. It's nice to live in a city that is thriving. But growth in Denver is also putting pressure on neighborhoods like ours. Developers and city officials seem to think that our city must stand, which in high density buildings everywhere we can. They know traffic will increase. They say the growth has to come first, then solutions to terrible traffic someday will follow. What they're forgetting is that poor planning leaves real people vulnerable in our relatively quiet neighborhood of single family homes. We are facing two proposed Joan zoning changes this month that could bring hundreds of new units and thousands of additional car trips a day. An Englewood developer wants to tear down a church on Christmas park and build townhomes and a high density apartment complex on this small 2.3 acre site just across from Monaco Parkway. The Lowry Development Authority wants to add 800 units. Aaron Swartz said he would love to know that an accident like the one that hurt his family will never happen again. The truth is, it can and it will. We desperately need safer, more efficient transportation in this neighborhood. It doesn't make sense to allow high density urban development here. We should add lower scale developments like townhomes and single family homes that fits our area. Let's build bigger projects near light rail lines. Let's plan for better bike and bus routes. Let's keep pedestrians safe. Aaron Swartz's family experienced the direct effects of too much traffic. He's lucky that his wife and son survived. Let's not put others in jeopardy. Please join me in asking the Denver City Council to stop allowing big high density projects and assuming the traffic solutions will magically follow. Thank you, Ms. KIRWIN. Okay. Our next round of eight speakers, I'm going to call your name and again, if you can come up to the front reserved bench. The first one is David Foster. Scott Robinson. Marty Reps. Patricia Hutchinson. Thomas Craven, Mark Siddall, Meg Sharp and John Huggins. You have 6 minutes, Mr. Foster. Thank you, Madam President. Members of Denver City Council. My name's David Foster. Address 360 South Garfield. Denver 80209. Here on behalf of Metropolitan Homes, thank you for the time this evening. I will try to beat the 6 minutes as Mr. Maley had identified. Well, let me start with the the lawyer in me, so I'd like to incorporate by reference into. The into. The hearing tonight blueprint Denver and comprehensive plan. 2000. In addition to that, notwithstanding what my friend John Fisher may have said just a moment ago about planning staff and the planning board getting it wrong, I actually thought that they got it right. And I'd like to enter into the record this as well. This is the CD from the January 21st hearing, you know. It's a CD from the Jerry 21st hearing before the Denver Planning Board. I also have a multitude of copies here. One more handout. And this is what Sean was beginning to address in terms of the land use covenant. So I will focus almost entirely on the document that you may have in front of you and that you'll be seeing here shortly as we have articulated the project. Notwithstanding the fact that SMU three has doesn't have a density requirement or a. Maximum amount of units that could be built. We have imposed that. Limitation on us. We have also imposed. A access. Limitation on us that all of access would come off of Monaco. We've also identified that on the site itself. We have both a planning area, A in planning R and B. Where certain forms, building forms will exist. And you will see that on sub area A, it's the exhibit B, sub area will have the townhouse building form. And so very a B will have the apartment building form. But very quickly, what I'd like you to understand is that this land use covenant will be recorded against the property , will run with the land. It has multiple parties to this agreement, both the landowner and a number of individuals who have either already signed or we are having them signed. Everybody has agreed to have their names associated with this land use covenant. It will in fact limit density to 25 individual townhouses on sub area A, it will limit density to a maximum of 50 apartment or condos. On sub area B it will. This property will only be used for residential development. There will not be more than a maximum of 75 units on its entirety. There will be two points of ingress and egress to this entire site. Those coming off of Monaco, there shall be no ingress and egress to and from the property from either cedar or locust. That was a very big point of contention with planning staff who wanted to drive the traffic off of Monaco and Cedar. And that was an issue that was raised very early on. In our conversations. We have identified what the setbacks will be. That's in 3D and in 3D discussion of the height limitations. A couple of other components to this land use covenant that I believe are important. The the paragraph five covenant running with the land. That means from owner. To owner, it is. Restricting the land and there are parties to it who can enforce. I'll get to that in a moment. That and I'm just going to read this language because there's been some talk in the community that, you know, the developer isn't willing to live by the bargain and certainly their lawyer isn't going to draft anything to have the developer live by the bargain. So I want to read this that notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein, if after all the townhomes and apartment or condominium units that are to be built on the property as contemplated by Section three have been completed and certificates of occupancy for all such units have been issued and the expiration of 20 years thereafter in the event the property is then re zoned, this agreement and all covenants and or restrictions contained herein shall automatically terminate. So that is the termination provision 20 years down the road after the property. Potentially, if it does get rezone 20 years from now, dispute resolution, all disputes will go to mediation, binding arbitration. All of those costs will be borne by the owner, by Peter Cutler. And then another issue that was raised early on is this is terrific, but we don't have the funds who are neighbors to enforce this. We have we will be placing within 30 days if the city council approves this rezoning, $25,000 into escrow in order for the neighbors who are signatories to this agreement to enforce this very agreement. So back two months ago, it was in the beginning of April, I submitted a draft of this document to a neighborhood, a group of neighborhood leaders. I did not hear back from any of them as it relates to any of the terms with good fortune. There are a series of neighbors, some of whom are here tonight, who will likely speak to their participation in this agreement, who reached out, hired their own independent attorneys, because, of course, nobody is going to believe a developer , nobody is going to believe a developer's attorney. So they have hired their own attorneys to review this covenant. Two independent attorneys have reviewed this covenant on their behalf. It's enforceable, it will be recorded. And so if I've heard it really once I've heard it many, many times through this process that the developer is really seeking to rezone the site, he'll sell it. And then nobody will live by the promise of. That he's made. I'd like to put an end to that particular conversation tonight. People may disagree with the ultimate project that Mr. Cutler is seeking to build and the rezoning that we're seeking tonight. But the conversation about whether or not he can build more than what he has represented tonight really should end with this particular land use covenant. I will say I have also been a part of this process for the last 17 or 18 months. The project that was submitted initially to two neighbors, to the planning board, to the planning staff of 120 units that did receive planning staff support and planning board support is not as good of a project as a project that is in front of you tonight. I think the process made this project better. I think the diversification of housing has made this project better. And I think we are the beneficiaries of that 18 month process. And I hope that you will see fit to support this project tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foster. Our next speaker is Scott Robinson. And. You have 3 minutes. Thank you, council members and thank you for your time and effort that you put in down here. My name is Scott Robinson. I live on Cross Moore Park. I'm at 21 South Kearney. I've seen this project since the inception. I've seen it, you know, when there was access off of the side streets. And I want to tell you that I really appreciate the the neighborhood and the developer working together to lessen the impacts. And I really think they've done a good job with that. And I think that's important because it shows that everybody is working to make it right. You know what currently is on Monaco near the site, we had single family homes that were built probably ten or 15 years ago and they are blighted and have not worked. It's right on the north side of Alameda and it's just been an eyesore the whole time. The reason is nobody wants to live on Monaco and face Monaco. I understand why, you know, apartments work, but single family, you're not going to pay that much for a house that that looks out on to Monaco. It just doesn't make any sense. So I really I mean, I think, you know, more developer men or smarter development. I mean, I think you want smarter development. I think that's what this proposal is. There's a little bit of the the little Chicken Little. I mean, I went through the rezoning or the change on Fillmore when they took away the pedestrian access. And people said that that was going to, you know, make this place horrible. I'm in the office building next door to that. Cars go in and out. It works great. I don't understand, you know, what the outcry was that that how could you do this to our neighborhood? This is another one of those, I believe. And I really think that that what we're proposing here is right for the neighborhood and it makes sense. Lastly, I'd just like to say that, you know, some of the some of the misrepresentations of this has been astounding to me. I know that the homeowners association gave you a plan with or a a thing about how many residents were against something and all the comments for it. And I appreciate them doing that. But that wasn't even for the plan that's proposed tonight, and that's misleading. And I think that's a horrible injustice. So thank you very much for your time, and I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Our next speaker is Marty Ripps. So you have 3 minutes. Thank you, Madam President and council members. And thank you very much for your attention. My name is Marty Rapp's. I live in Denver. I'm a realtor, a former lawyer for ten years in a past life. And I'm here as a concerned citizen. I'm here to urge you to uphold the rule of law, or specifically the law of rules. I strongly object to the erosion of blueprint Denver. Rules exist to to protect everyone and to guide decision making by everyone. And that's you and me and my clients and attorneys who advise my clients. Development can certainly upgrade an area, but it also can certainly degrade it. The proposed development is in an area of stability, yet the developer is proposing varying apartment complexes on a plot of land zoned for single family residences only, regardless of the ways you can wiggle and squirm to justify a change. Per the planning department, the issue is not whether you can, but whether you should. And whether it's a good idea to do so. We're told in The Denver Post that the developer took a risk when he purchased this property. Let's be clear. It wasn't a risk which can sound kind of edgy, kind of sexy. Maybe it was a gamble. And that gamble was a gamble that if the laws were flaunted, flaunted. And the system was played. Then that developer would get personal gain. Now, in a conservation easement context, context, if someone purchased a piece of land that had been protected by a conservation easement with the idea that everybody else had failed to purchase it, but gee, if they purchased it, perhaps they could get that easement vacated and then they could do the development and then they would gain. I think everyone in the room would say that's really kind of unfair. Well, this is exactly the same thing in an urban context. Protecting our existing neighborhoods is of critical importance and is the major stated goal a blueprint? Denver To approve this zoning change would be to undermine the certainty the blueprint Denver provides to foster confusion and to encourage rampant gambling by developers, since all rules would be considered mere suggestions. And that, in my view, would be a disaster. I also would like to comment on something that Mr. Foster said about his covenant. I believe in paragraph four. You can see that it says if the application and proposed development of the property by owner is abandoned. Now that could mean sold to somebody else. This agreement shall terminate and thereafter shall be known. Void for the time is up. Thank you. Our next speaker is Patricia Hutchinson. Patricia. Our next speaker is Thomas Raven. You have 3 minutes. Thank you, Madam President. Fellow council members. I'm Dr. Tom Raven and I live at 45 South W, which is actually in Hilltop. But I really came because I'm concerned about the traffic that is going to be developed around this whole area. Having lived in the neighborhood literally all my life, 74 years so far, with a few years in the military away. I've lived in Hilltop, so I've seen development from the Robinson Dairy with a barn on it to whatever is going to happen there now. And because I live on, I am exposed to and have seen over the years how how the development around is around us has driven traffic down down here. First of all, it's a connection between Leeds Stale and Glendale. So the traffic comes up, the stoplight and it's coming down. Delia, as the development goes around, it just gets busier and busier. And for a street that was really a rural street, it's almost a freeway now. And it's no one's everybody has sort of said, well, it doesn't make any difference. You live pretty far away from that development. But no, it doesn't. Every time another car gets added to this pile, it's adding up to traffic on an Alameda traffic at Monaco. And I can tell you that I drive through that intersection fairly frequently and I ride my bike through there fairly often during the summer. And I can tell the story that I heard about the crash. There is a happens or potentially is there. Almost every time I cross this cedar, Monica, I get that light. So I'm and I can see that is not going to get any better with any kind of development there, although I think there needs to be something done with the property and I'm all for it. I just think that what these people are trying to propose is a little bit much for this area and that neighborhood and is going to drive traffic down cedar one way or the other to get around that corner of Alameda and Monaco. So I really have a lot of reservations about this from the side. And since I've seen this development go on for years and years and get worse and worse. I'm I'm sort of feeling it. And I need to be verbal about the problem. And I don't really have any great solutions other than to say, let's be cognizant about what when we open up areas to more and more cars, there's going to be more and more issues around the whole neighborhood and not just this isolated area. Thank you. That's perfect time. Gosh. All right. Mark Sindel is next, followed by Meg Sharpe and John Huggins. Hi. Good evening. Thanks. Madam President and council. I hope not to use all of my time. I live at 201 Ivanhoe Street. I'm speaking in support of the project. So I'm a Chris Moore resident. I love my neighborhood. I love my neighbors. It's really this process and all these orange signs that popped up around the neighborhood that got me to really engage and pay attention. And I think this is a great example of the process at work. And I encourage you to to support the project. It's, in my opinion, a great example of the neighbors making the project better. I think until I learned, I didn't really know what was going on as I dug in a little bit. I think the vast improvements by restricting the access to Monaco and let's see, I like the investment in the neighborhood, especially at a kind of challenged corner there. I like the addition of housing options into the kind of palette of crest more. I like the building architecture. Reminds me a lot of third and Holly, which is very close to where I live. I kind of wish I could walk over this way like I can over there to a little bit of retail where I frequent the restaurants and shops and the cheese company and the like there. So that that would be nice. But I understand some people didn't like that. And I think this is a nice compromise. I think it's a terrific amount of setback and a lot of beautiful landscaping that I see in the picture that I've seen that separates the the street from the from the front of the project. You know, I heard about this restriction kind of self-imposed to eliminate the concerns of, well, what if they go put as much as they can in this three storey bucket? And I think I think it's a it's a great job. I commend everybody that worked on it. And I just want to remind you that Monaco's an arterial street, and I think that's exactly where this belongs. And thanks for your hard work. Thank you. Our next speaker, Meg. Champ, you have 6 minutes. Thank you. My name is MiG Sharp and I own a home at 430 South Newport Way, Denver 802 to 4. I live four doors north of the Denver Green School on Virginia Avenue and just a few blocks east of George Washington High School. I have raised three children in the Winston Downs subdivision over the last 20 years, purchasing a home twice within the same neighborhood. Today, I come to you as a member of the Winston Down Homeowner's Association, which represents over 550 homes bordered by Monaco, Quebec, Alameda and Lewis Dale. We are a mere two blocks from the proposed Mt. Gallia development site. We appreciate a councilman, Councilwoman Sussman, attending our annual homeowners meeting in April with a vote of our members showing overwhelming opposition to a 75 unit development currently proposed. Over 75 members attended, and out of those in attendance, only two members were in favor of the current proposal put forth by Mr. Kudla and Mr. Birkhoff. Many of us were also involved in the Lego Project and learned a great deal about considerations needing to be made before any zoning changes would be acceptable to our association or R.A. members. I would like to add that while these. I'm wondering whether some of the restrictions that we're talking about have been finalized and approved by the fire department or by traffic. When we look at looking at those zoning restrictions, we're so grateful to Councilwoman Sussman, who attended the Friends of Chris Moore Park early in May. Our meeting presenting several options with Legos, including the current proposal by the developer. My younger children are now 14 and also attended attended Lourey Elementary School during this time that Lowry homes were just beginning to blossom. I know it is important for us to develop appropriately properties around here that will improve our neighborhood. But tonight I come to you to say the proposed zoning change on this Mount Gilead site is not the appropriate alternative or in the best interests of our various communities that use the surrounding corridors and park. Well, there are numerous issues to bring up regarding this proposal. Out of respect for your time, I want to just speak of the traffic and more specifically the parking issues, which will be a huge challenge to several stakeholders whom I have known for many years as an active resident. In my neighborhood, schools and community, primarily, my children have grown up using Crest Moore Park as a place to go multiple times during the week, during soccer season and during bike riding season. We also live in an area with a large number of Orthodox Jewish families who use our streets heavily. From Friday, at sundown through late Saturday evening, the multiple use of our park and the surrounding streets adds exponential, exponential risk and liability to many. Streets are already quite congested. Add to this group of stakeholders, the children and families at the preschool directly across the street from this proposed and likely 120 unit development with rentals of apartments that may overlook some of the kids in the playground just across the street from this proposed three storey apartment. Both the increased traffic and high density development could cause the concern that that we see as a potential liability for children who may be in danger from either park parking or traffic problems, or are potential perpetrators located conveniently across the street looking down into the play yard. Emergency vehicles would be hard pressed to easily or easily or conveniently enter any of these apartments or preschool in the event of a fire or emergency. I see this as a perfect storm, which will impact these various stakeholders, including our children. This perfect storm may not affect the developers as much, though. In closing, I'm I'm also most concerned as a park advocate and visitor to family and friends in the surrounding park area about the parking. While two spaces have been promised for townhomes as required. I'm concerned that there will not be enough surface parking for visitors to this high density development, leaving guests to take up valuable and sparse available parking in the outlying neighborhoods. My concerns can all be wrapped up in the commitment that you, as representatives of our neighborhoods, have made to maintain the highest quality of life for the neighborhoods and your constituents. Our neighborhood will not benefit from such a potentially high density development, which is located a stone's throw from another 800 unit development whose building will coincide with this 195 South Monaco development at Lowry Boulevard one. Please do not approve this zone change nor use covenants or restrictions. They will not adequately provide protection of the character of our stable neighborhood. In my humble opinion, it will not enhance the livability of our neighborhood. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service to our city. Thank you. Our next speaker is John Huggins. Thank you, Madam President, and members of Council. My name is John Huggins. I live at 35 Eudora Street in Hilltop. I'm here not representing the project, but just as a neighbor. My daughter and I are frequent users of Crest Moore Park. My four year old. We love to bike there. I'm very familiar with this area and the adjacent neighborhoods based on my experience and community and economic development. And as you've heard tonight, the site is not appropriate for its current zoning. That is, the current zoning is not does not allow for plausible development of the site, given that it must be resolved. And I think that this 75 unit proposal is an appropriate amount of density, an appropriate mix of uses for the site. Most importantly, I think having more affordable housing choices, a broader range of choices, the townhomes and the age targeted rental units will be a positive benefit to our neighborhood. Zillow reports that the average home value in the neighborhood that includes Crest Moorpark is $855,000. That's up 53% over the last four years from the bottom of the real estate cycle. And I think having less expensive, more affordable choices for people who wish to stay in this community and continue, continue their family life there is very important. And therefore, I would hope that you would support this proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Our next round of speakers Derek Coco. Venus. Bruce O'Donnell. Keith Whiteman. Richard Farley, Alan Singer, Monica Martinez, Marcus Werther, Amanda Cook and Jack Blumenthal. If you could make your way up to the front bench. Okay. Is Derrick nearby? Coco. Venus. Let's go on to our next speaker, Brousseau. Donald. You have 3 minutes. Thank you, Madam President, of members. Of the council. My name is Bruce O'Donnell. I live at 128 Eudora Street in Hilltop, and I'm here to speak as a neighbor in. Support of this rezoning application and urge your support of it as well. I would not have been in favor of the prior iterations of this. I think they were inappropriate in to dance and to intensive on the neighborhood. But this one has kind of been customized appropriately to fit into the Blueprint Denver niche that anticipates that there will be some change even in areas of stability. I want to speak with that in. Mind to two important topics tonight. I think in the general land use discussion in Denver, we often hear about how. Developers are unresponsive to neighborhood input. And that there's no way to hold their feet to the fire and get them to live up to their commitments. And this project. Which has been reduced by 45 units in. Reduced from four. Storeys to three and has targeted parking on monarch or excuse me, access on. Monaco. And in fact, capped density at 75 units is all in direct response to neighborhood input. And so this project is actually a good example. That neighbors can be heard and their good input can be valued in better results can be achieved because of it. Regarding the ability. To get developers to live up to their word and to. Protect their commitments. But not for your consideration tonight. But hand in glove with this entire effort is a protective covenant and a deed restriction. That the developer is proposing to place upon themselves to be bound by the commitments. Made this evening. And again for a city wide application. That's proof that there are tools available. The city doesn't have to. Enter into a contract. And the development that's been discussed. Tonight can be memorialized by a protective covenant, which in fact is what many of the neighbors and Chris Moore, the first few speakers tonight talked about that they have benefited in Chris. Moore filings one and two from the fact that covenants exist. That for the long term ensure the type of development that can occur. So the very tool that has made Chris Moore such a great neighborhood is available this evening. I also feel that. As has been discussed, Monaco is a busy arterial. This is not a place where single family detached homes facing. Monaco are going to work. One speaker earlier talked about how just a little bit south of here, closer to Alameda, there's been attempts at that that are failed. And this mirrors the scale of development on the east side of Monaco. And I ask that you approve it this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Donnell. Our next speaker is Keith Whiteman. Mr. Wightman. Key points. What is it? I can't hear you, Keith. Okay. Well, that's fine. It's. Yeah. Come on up to the podium. It's your turn. Yeah. And you have 3 minutes. 6 minutes. Oh. 6 minutes. I'm glad we have that straight. I'm Keith Whitelaw. My wife and I live at 6300 East Cedar Avenue, 200 feet from the parcel under consideration. However, given some breaking news, I'm going to interrupt my planned talk and add a couple of points to the proposed and incomplete site agreement. Covenants just revealed minutes ago. The status of this site agreement and its terms are new to me and to the community at large. So much for developer collaboration. This thing evaporates in 20 years. 20 years is nothing to a community. Started in the 1930s and carefully protected for 70 years. As to the dollars 25,000 for enforcement. Thank you. Litigation is expensive and enforcement case like this could last years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I think the deficiencies of this notion would go on and on and hopefully others will speak to it. Back to the text. I'm a Colorado attorney with 40 years of experience practicing real property law. I've studied the facts, law and circumstances relevant to this case. I oppose this application as fatally flawed, legally and factually. It fails in the light of common sense. It mocks reason, the facts. The applicant, a multi-unit residential developer, bought this small parcel with no zoning contingency having despite having legal knowledge and actual no knowledge that it has continuously been zoned for single family residential use for decades. Further, he was informed by Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman that a previous attempt to rezone it for overly dense development had been vigorously opposed and and defeated. Yet he pursued it, assuming all risk, economic and otherwise, apparently assuming that as a developer for some reason he is entitled to a rezoning. He is not. You are mindful of the city's adopted plans and that as a matter of law, an application that fails to prove consistency with all of them is dead on arrival. In his overzealousness, the applicant has crafted an application that asks you to find all required consistencies. In this regard, this application deserves a very close reading. Some examples regarding criteria one consistency with comp plan 2000. In Exhibit F, Page 25, he claims that the rezoning will accommodate, quote, the needs and desires of Denver's current and future residents. The application applicant is merely reciting unsigned, unsubstantiated statements in order to fill in the blanks. He is feigning compliance. He cannot possibly offer any evidence of the, quote, needs and desires of unidentifiable future residents. An exhibit in Exhibit F, he claims that a, quote, change in zoning to SMU three not only increases the density on the site , but allows for more amenities like landscaped areas, places, plazas and open green space. Close quote foolishness. A simple review shows that the existing one storey church occupies less height and mass and space than will the proposed development. The truth rezoning will result in fewer of these and other amenities. The application is rife with such sham. Don't know how much time I have to give you the law, but it is important. In his unsuccessful attempts to to satisfy review review criteria to the applicant beginning on page 25, cherry picks requirements he addresses. Notably, he utterly disregards proof of compliance with Blueprint's key strategy at page 41, ensure quote compatibility with new and existing development and its Prime Directive in its quote, guiding principles. On page 141, respect valued attributes of the area, close quote. Recall Denver Zoning Code Division 3.2 Paragraph F Whenever this code places quote whenever this code places the burden of proof on an applicant, that burden shall be met by, at a minimum, a preponderance of the evidence. Here, the applicant offers absolutely no evidence. Skipping forward common sense. Consider the definition in the zoning code 13.3 dash for quote compatibility or compatible the characteristics of different uses or activities or designs that allow them to be located near or adjacent to each other without adversely affect compatibility. Oh. Some elements affecting compatibility include height, scale, mass and bulk of structures. Compatibility refers to the sensitivity of development. Development proposals in maintaining the character and context of existing development, close quote. That's the long look at the proposed development. I'm going to look at Chris Moore. This application is insensitive in the absurd. You have no duty to this risk taking applicants profit projections. Rather, the application fails on the legal requirements and you have a solemn duty to deny it. I respectfully request that you recognize the fatal factual and legal deficiencies, the inequities pervading it, and the abandonment of common sense it begs and denial. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Richard Farley, followed by Alan Singer and Monica martinez. Good evening, Madam President, and members of the Council. My name is Richard Farley. I live at 2500 Walnut Street in Denver, and I'm a professional planner and urban designer. And I'm and I'm an independent. I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm not quite sure why I'm here, but I do. But I'm not connected to the developer or to the neighborhood. But I do have a, um, you know, a love for Denver and for Monaco Boulevard. My Monaco Parkway. The Parkway really ends at this point. And it is more of an arterial than than a parkway. It's very difficult to have residences to be developed along it. And we can see the, you know, the aspects of that. Um, so this development I think is appropriate to the site. It's across from townhomes and seven storey apartment. It's matches the scale of the arterial. Um, you know, it's, um, you need to have something that's a greater scale next to a larger street. It's not really that high density anything. Small unit small parcels tend to get high numbers just because you get a few, you get 75 units on a little bit of property and all of a sudden you have a very high density number. But it's not it's not applied over a long, a big distance. So, um, you know, I think that the, you know, the development is a good one. It's within a half mile of the Lowry Town Center, within walking and biking distance. Uh, the architecture is sympathetic to the neighborhood, and, um, I think it would be a good, uh, entrance to the neighborhood just because it has parkway landscaping and the townhouses, uh, provide a detached walk and streetscape going into the neighborhood. So thank you. And I do support the project. Thank you. Mr. Farley. Ellen Singer. You have 3 minutes, Mr. Singer. Thank you, Madam President. Members of the Council. My name is Alan Singer. I'm a Denver resident. I live at two and five South Kearny Street, several blocks from the proposed development. I've lived in this neighborhood since 1999. Councilman Brooks, earlier today, I heard you speak when the council was discussing the vacating of work right away at Elliot Street. And you mentioned that a petition of 20 people in favor of the vacation was a ton of support. Well, look out in the audience here and look at the number of 300 letters that have come in opposition to this zoning change. And I will tell you that that is a ton of opposition. And now, Councilman Brown, I heard you speak earlier about barbed wire, sir. Yes. I heard the council speak about barbed wire boulevard. We do not live in barbed wire boulevard, and we have not asked anybody to come in and enhance our neighborhood. Now, I would like to speak about the issue that I came to speak about. There are many religious and observant Jews that live in this neighborhood. It is one of three communities in Denver that has an era of we don't need to go into what that is. But its purpose is to allow observant Jews to observe the Sabbath and walk and carry things. We do not drive on the Sabbath on any given Friday night and Saturday. You will see numerous women, children, men, women pushing strollers. You will see young children riding their scooters. We do not have large sidewalks like in downtown Denver or other large cities. This is a single family zoned area with either no sidewalks or very small sidewalks. And as a result of that, we often have to walk in the street. This proposal upsets the delicate balance that currently exists between pedestrians and cars that are parked on the street. Now, I know we're not here to talk about Boulevard One, but that development factors in to the consideration about this one because it adds on to the density and it adds on to the number of cars that will be transferring through our neighborhood. And it's for that reason that I ask the council, even though you may have under the authority of certain zoning rules and proposals and development planning to approve this zoning plan, I ask you not to approve this zoning plan. The members of this community do not want this zoning plan. It is something that is being forced upon us in the name of community enhancement. No one has asked anybody to enhance our neighborhood. Thank you, Mr. Singer. The next speaker is Monica martinez, followed by Marcus Werther. Hi. Thank you, Madam President. And City Council. My name is Monica martinez and I live in Hilltop and I'm here tonight. My my daughter is actually at her grandma's, and I thought I was going to have a romantic dinner out, but instead I'm here and I'm here because I feel compelled to talk to you and to my neighbors about why I think this is an important project for our community. I'm concerned about affordability in Denver. You can look at the paper if if you still read the paper. I do. And see that affordability is an issue here. We have historically low vacancy rates in our rental properties and our home prices continue to increase year over year. And I think we actually are only second to San Francisco in terms of our home appreciation last year. So I as a resident, I'm concerned because I don't think that middle class families will continue to live in Denver . I don't think our seniors will be able to downsize and stay in Denver if we do not add supply to the mix. And so I think this project would do that. I also felt compelled to come because I wanted to remind people that we had the Great Recession, and it does feel like we're being besieged by development . When I drive through Cherry Creek, I do. I do not like all the traffic and the congestion of the development and the construction. But then I remember that for four or five years we had no development in the city. I remember there was one crane in downtown for a good number of years. And so I need to remind people I felt compelled to remind people that we had nothing for many years. And so right now, while we feel besieged, it's actually because we're playing catch up. And so I wanted to come and talk about that. I also wanted to come and talk about that. I do feel like this design is compatible with the neighborhood. I feel like the developer who I don't know I just met tonight has made concessions to the neighbors and worked back and forth with them to go from an initial plan to now 75 units with a mix of housing, of rental age restricted 50 units and 25 townhomes. And I heard our community planning development person talk about how this is compatible with the, the comp plan and blueprint. Denver And so I feel like our zoning documents allow for this development. So it's not it isn't a surprise. It shouldn't be a surprise. I feel like it's consistent with what is there. There's high density apartment across the street arterial I think we've heard this word before tonight so I think it makes sense there. And then just before I go, I just I want to say something about the rhetoric that has been going on. I think the discourse has been very negative. And and I would ask council to not be swayed by that. I do I do respect the passion of these neighbors. But I think that the discourse has not been civil at times. And I would ask that council recognize that, because if this zoning proposal isn't accepted, I do think that it could be used as a template elsewhere. And I'd be fearful of Denver if our neighbor to neighborhood discourse becomes very aggressive. Thank you. Thank. Thank you. Our next speaker is Marcus Werther, followed by Amanda Cook and Jack Blumenthal. Good evening. Men and women of the city council. My name is Marcus Werther and I decided. To throw South Monaco. Parkway, which is also known as Lakeside Lowry, which previously was known as Berkshires, and before that was Chris Moore. It actually recently was taken over by new management. I'm providing this testimony over here, not as a homeowner, but as a renter. You have heard or continue to hear pertinent testimony from homeowners about maintaining the integrity of this community. But there are other stakeholders. I think one of them wished to share my view. Denver is facing unprecedented growth and due to myriad of. Factors, has an extreme housing shortage. I'm acutely aware of this issue. As I've been subject to rate hikes of over 20% per annum and living in a in a state of constant uncertainty. I'm at a stage where I ought to be looking at buying my own home, but I can't. Housing. Housing is my single greatest source of stress. Of stress. And I'm not alone. This is why I was really excited to hear about Peter's development project. But when I heard when I attended the original meetings, it became very clear that it was not intended to help young people. It originally wasn't intended to help out old people. It's intended to be luxury units. His original price was 1600 to 20 $600 a unit. Originally, there was discussion about whether there'd be an elevator in the complex. That was when there was 120 units. Now there's 50 units. If this is going to be for the elderly and there's a lot of older, elderly, my complex, there's at least there's five people that I deal with between the age of 85, 95 that I help out regularly. These are people that, you know, they have to park in the garage. And parking is an issue because there's no parking on the street. They park in the garage because they need a spot, but they can't shovel their snow. And what happens is, because of their vulnerability, all of a sudden parking was just free. Four or five years ago. Is now like $75 per spot per month. And that's my fear really, is that if we're going to go ahead and build a complex over here aimed at old people at the elderly, and this is a new this is new. This wasn't addressed at the last meeting that I was had. You really subjecting the vulnerable in a very tight market, people who aren't able to move very easily. And, you know, I think there's a lot of issues here that need to be addressed. It's nice that, you know, he that that there were concessions brought on, but they're brought on at this meeting, at least to the knowledge of most of the people here. And I believe that's very unfair. And in my mind, there's no doubt that we're in an exciting period of Denver's history and the growth is happening and and things will change. But the way I see it is that this project is a litmus test for our city council, because whatever is built here will likely be here for a very long time. This will define the history or the future of Denver, to be precise. Most of because this complex over here, once it's built, will then go and be a way for more complexes to be built over. Monica And that in itself lends itself to a plethora of of of stuff. You know, I guess. You were there. Your time is left. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Amanda Cook, followed by Jack Blumenthal. Amanda Cook. Jack Blumenthal. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. And City Council persons. My name is Jack Blumenthal. I reside at 60 Ivy Street, Denver, Colorado. Professionally, I led the largest CPA practice in the United States related to the issuance and the restructuring of tax exempt housing bonds in the United States. We had a market share of over 90%. So I understand what affordable housing is all about and the importance of it, because that's how I built my career. I'm opposed to Project Cedar and Monaco and the really two issues. I've heard a lot of other good things, but I'd like to come back with with two things. One is that the problem with the proposed project is it's not consistent with maintaining the architectural vista and community atmosphere of Monaco Parkway as it extends from I-70 on the north all the way really down to Greenwood Village. And there are just no apartment houses that are three stories high. What's on the street across the street at Lex or what used to be Chris Moore Downs or really townhouses and the high rise buildings or are set way back so that people can't see them. And so this would impact the quality of life and the image of Denver to people who use Monaco Parkway, both residents and nonresidents. It's a crown jewel of the city. The second is that I believe in an extension of the existing townhome complex of the ten. Townhomes which are on the adjacent property would provide increased density. Without impacting Monaco Parkway. So I respectfully request that the current zoning change be denied at this time, so that a pod resulting in appropriate and smart housing rather than destructive development can be put on that location. And finally, I'd just like to make one other observation after having been here this evening, and that is if the neighbors believe that the developer has reached out to them and has talked to them. Why are they. Out here in so much force objecting to it? Thank you very much for your time and have a good evening. Thank you, Mr. Blumenthal. Okay. Moving along. Our next speakers are Gloria Cohen. Miss Ghana. Test Failure. Bob Cohen. George Swan. Mike Kabuki. Gary Tessler. Stacy Decker. Virginia White. And Bob Moody. Our first speaker is Gloria Cohen. You think she's down the hall? Please. Okay. Gloria Cohen, we're going to go ahead and see if she comes in. Okay. Up there she is. Oh, there she is. Okay. Thank you for letting me know that. Hi, Mr. Cohen. You have 3 minutes watching TV downstairs. Thank you. We think. My first impression of this metropolitan hommes crew was they were very professional. It was a project, was well-researched, well thought out, well presented. They have compromised and downsized and and followed a lot of instructions. I and there is no way that I can think of them as criminals. Excuse me for coming upstairs. So maybe they make a profit. What's wrong with profit? This is. And this is America. It's an enterprise system. And I hope they do make a profit. I think it's a it's a wise idea. We live on Monaco. It's called Christmas Place. It's a little circle of townhomes that are set back from from Monaco itself. So we it's it's a nice, quiet little area. We're blessed with the view from our bedroom window into that that foundation that was dug seven and a half years ago. It's been full of trash. Before that, it was a nice, peaceful, vacant lot. At least now it's white weeds broken. And then to the north of us, the daycare center, which is okay, uh, and that unsightly church with its broken slanted sidewalks, the weeds, the truly unsightly. So we think this is the most exciting idea that's come along in years for us. We've been there for 20 years and then Hilltop before that. So we're in the neighborhood and yes, there are changes. Yes, there's more traffic. It's city. It's going to change. Oh. We are very, very much in favor of this development. We think it's a it's the ideal situation. It's the ideal answer to get rid of the mud puddles and some of the unsightly other things as far as the endangered Jews in the streets. They will have nice, wide, flat sidewalks instead of the weeds and and the trash. So I would encourage the city council, please, to approve this rezoning. We think it's a wonderful plan and it's exciting. Thank you, Miss Cohen. The next speaker is mosque is Miss Ghana. Test failure. How do I do? I pronounce your name. Mr. Garner testified in this class. Madam President, City Council, thank you very much for allowing me to share my thoughts on this rezoning application today. My name is Mr. Qantas Fire and my wife, two year old daughter and I recently purchased a single family home at 260 South Lyon Street, one block west and one block south of the property which is being considered for rezoning. Before we were married, we had and we had a child. My wife and I enjoyed city living. We embraced high density areas. We were big proponents of urbanization and efficient city living. We embraced my wife. Being a lifelong Denver resident, having grown up in North Park Hill, and I grew up southeast Denver, a little bit south, of course, more Moorpark. I personally lived in a condominium on the corner of 16th Street and Larimer Street for over seven years and served on the association. Board of Directors, Board of Directors four over four. We both enjoy city advantages such as public transportation, car sharing, bike sharing, and even the occasional ride sharing for a night on the town. In fact, I took a car to go to this meeting tonight. We're also huge fans of the Blueprint Denver Plan, which has designated this site as a stable and area and not on the table for rezoning. We relied on this plan and the zoning to buy our property because we knew Denver communities and officials mapped out a smart growth plan. I'm here today to oppose the rezoning of 195 South Monaco Street. I oppose this rezoning because of the things I just mentioned. Our city and state have invested a lot of taxpayer funds into public transportation and infrastructure that has made smart, smart growth possible. That infrastructure is not present in the area where this proposed development will take place to add unnecessary and unplanned and unwanted density to an area that does not have the appropriate public transit infrastructure simply reduces the quality of life for those that are already in the area. For example, based on my observations over the past year, living in a home on the intersection of South Lyon and Alameda, it will become a shortcut for the residents of this high density housing development during high traffic times. This increase in traffic could put my small child and other children on our block at risk for auto pedestrian accidents. These accidents are not hypothetical. They happen in our area as recently outlined in a Denver Post op ed. This is a very real danger for me and my family. Most of our lives we have wished to live in such a great Denver neighborhood like Crest, Moorpark. Many other young working professionals in Denver wish the same thing for when they settle down and raise a family. There's nothing wrong with having a low density areas within a city to allow for such a lifestyle. In fact, people pay premiums for real estate that can give them the location and family friendly environment provided by the Hilltop and Crest Moore Park neighborhoods. Rezoning this property will change the basic environment of the immediate surrounding development, surrounding area of the development. It will leave my family's real estate fundamentally different than what we planned our future on. Although this zoning change might provide a great investment return for a single real estate developer, it will leave those of us who made our real estate life investments based on historically stable, single family neighborhoods with much uncertainty. This is an inequitable proposition for us as Denver homeowners, based on the fundamental purpose of Denver's adopted plans alone, including Blueprint, Denver and the existing zoning code. The purpose of these plans is to provide predictability and stability and not uncertainty and speculation. We love Denver. We love Denver and that it's growing. We are glad people all over the world are waking up and recognizing how amazing this place is. However, Coloradans and Denver rights are smarter than just sticking as many residential units in every open, empty lot in order to make room for new residents. Therefore, I respectfully request that this City Council deny this rezoning application and defend the Blueprint Denver plan and the concept of smart city growth. Thank you. Thank you, Bob Cohen. You have 3 minutes, Mr. Cohen. Thank you, madam. Yes, my name is Robert Cohen. We live at 245 South Monaco Parkway. So when everyone is talking about Not in my backyard, this project happens to be a half a block away from our backyard. And we all myself, we do support. Or you've already heard from my wife. She supports it as well, too. And there are several reasons, but I think what's important is I've sat through today or this evening so many objections that have been raised by people and many of them very concerned, very sincere objections. But let's deconstruct a few of them. Number one, the issue of let's save the existing building. Well, that one's gone away because the existing building is frankly an eyesore and basically needs to be removed some way or the other to save that piece of property. Two, it's going to bring additional traffic. I'd like somebody to tell me what project any place and in this city and county get Denver wouldn't bring additional traffic. There's one way to stop it. Tell the car dealers to stop selling cars for two years. We might have less cars on the road, but that is not going to happen. By the way, I might add that I've lived in this neighborhood for 40 years and I've lived at the current address for 29 years. So like many other people, and I do think it's very nice and appropriate to see so many Bronco fans here in front of city council this evening. And I think I do appreciate that. I'm a loyal fan. I think part of the issue is that we don't want renters apparently in the neighborhood. Well, look across the street because we do. It's right across from where we live. And there are over seven and I believe it's actually over 800 rental units that have been there because I used to live there many years ago myself. So there are a lot of renters in this neighborhood. The I might say that the and I do think it's a very sincere issue that and I'm looking at a picture over here that city council probably has not seen yet that was in the newspaper indicating a group of apparently Orthodox Jewish people on the way to the synagogue. There's no question that many people live at LAX, cross over Monaco and walk to the synagogues. And this is an important issue. The issue, however, is that, in fact, the block that we're talking about, which is one block right now with cracked concrete, with weeds growing around it and whatever. That's the one block that is going to be developed if this zoning is approved. So to say that and by the way, that picture was eight blocks down the road. I checked it out today. So the truth of the matter is that the picture that you're going to be shown is eight blocks away from where it is . I do request that you support this rezoning. I think it's appropriate. I think we need to zoned it right. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Our next speaker is George Swan. Thank you, Madam Chairman and council members. My name is George Swan and I have lived in Lowri since 2007. Had 180 Poplar Street. It's in a condo. We have about 160 units or so there. I am opposed to this bill and I think you should be too. I drive on Monaco and Quebec and Alameda every day. The traffic is a problem right now. The problem is we're looking out on 50 acres of development. Barclay annex has got 800 new units coming up. It's an unknown. When that was approved a few years ago, they said that the traffic was going to be a wash. There were 2000 cars that went to work there every day. And this wasn't going to be any problem because that's a dynamic situation. It's an unknown. And we're facing it right now. And, you know, we need at least a couple of years to digest the impact of this new development. If you approve this bill, then it's going to happen and which is going to be a double unknown on top of an unknown. If you oppose it now, we digest it. There's always time in the future. And that unit that's there now, that's an eyesore could get developed under the current code anyway. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mike Moody Judy. And while you're coming up, Gary Tessler, Stacy Decker, Virginia White and Bob Moody. Hello. Mike. 3130 or Night Street, Denver. 802200. I'm going to make this really quick. Okay. I live in the neighborhood. I live in Mayfair Park. Just on the north side of Boulevard One. And I'm in favor of this project. I think that it is a good addition to the neighborhood. I never mind having options. For housing in the neighborhood, and I think that it's a good. Asset for the community. Thank you. Thank you. Gary Tessler. My name is Gary Tesla and I live in Winston Downs, which is catty corner to the area that we're talking about. I want to congratulate Bellwether City Council. You are rules are such that they're much more stringent than the Congress of the United States who isn't necessarily always civil to one another. I my I have no knowledge of development. I'm not a builder. I was a talk show host. But I do know what happens in neighborhoods with traffic. And I've watched it happen in our neighborhood. And we're getting to that perfect storm that people that people have talked about right now. If you try to make a left or right turn off of Virginia, on to Quebec, you may sit there ten or 15 minutes if it's during high traffic. Right now, we have people cutting through our neighborhood because they can't go straight on Monaco during high traffic areas, during high traffic times. We're creating a tremendous traffic problem and we're not facing it. We're not dealing with it. Quebec is two lanes from lete stale to Alameda from six. It becomes two lanes all the way to Stapleton. Monaco is a parkway on the other side of first with houses that face it and it's 30 miles an hour. You're not going to carry heavy traffic on that street. I want to know what the city council is thinking about in developing both those streets and spending that tens of millions of dollars it's going to take to buy right away. And to pave those streets because that's next. And that's what's coming up. And it better be faced. You can't just keep putting in small. This is a small development. I'll agree with that. But you can't keep putting in developments and not expect the problem to occur. And it's coming up very quickly. We don't know what's going to happen with the development in Lourey. That's 2000 cars. This is another two, 300 cars. With that much more traffic. What's the problem going to be and what kind of bills are you going to have to pass and what kind of money are you going to have to raise to pay for changing the traffic patterns? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tessler. Stacy Decker. I'm going to shake your shoes, your legs a little bit. I brought my own problem. I think I might be the only biker here today. My businessman knows how good I am. Thank you so much. Tonight, Madam President, and the entire city council. Your patience is amazing. I don't know if I could do your job. So, first off, I'm in support of the rezoning, mostly because of the changes that have happened from the original development through to involvement by the community. Having been through the ninth in Colorado redevelopment. I know what a blighted area looks like for a long term and you have no idea what's going to happen. I also know what the fear is with regards to having thousands of new people move into your neighborhood over a short period of time. This is a very short period of time. That's not me. This redevelopment is relatively small, yes, but it brings in a necessary infill. I've learned through years of experience everything that's happened in Denver, all the change, everything that's gone on, we adjust, we adapt. We are Denver and we do really well. I believe in density and I believe in fewer cars on the road, obviously, and I believe that we should have fewer parking spaces to actually enforce that. So thank you so much for staying out here tonight. Take the remainder of my time to please stand up for 2 minutes and shake your legs because you got to worry about deep vein thrombosis. All right. Thank you. Virginia White, followed by Bob Moody. My name is Virginia Annette White. I live at 255 South Kearny Street within four blocks of 195 South Monaco Parkway. The site under consideration for rezoning. I'm a third generation Colorado, and I raised my four children in Chris Moore. I have two grown children who live within two blocks of this site. My older daughter and her family, including two children, live on South Monaco Parkway at Nevada. My youngest daughter and her two children live at the luxe apartment complex at South America Parkway, Cedar Avenue. I'm an active member of the Orthodox Jewish community. My husband and I walk to sit and go every Saturday, and on each of the many holidays, I take two of my grandchildren in a double stroller with me to synagogue. I am very concerned about the safety in our neighborhood. I see cars running, sign running, stop signs on Cedar Avenue. I have trouble making it across the intersection of East Cedar, Monica, East Cedar and Monica Parkway before the light changes. I actually have to run pushing the stroller. This is difficult for me. A grandmother in high heels on a couple of occasions. Cards. Come very close to hitting me and the stroller holding. Two of my grandchildren crossing the intersection, pushing the stroller itself. Monaco and Alameda is even more hazardous. This is a dangerous intersection not only for pedestrians, but also for drivers. This is a. High accident intersection. And I won't go through. You've already heard about the baby, the woman that got hit with her baby in this stroller. And that is really the human cost of identity. I do have a concern with safety while walking along the streets, crossing intersections near this site, considering that considering current traffic hazards we already have and considering the . Increased hazards if this site is re. Zoned for high density housing, the fact of reality is that the Jewish Orthodox community works on the Sabbath on holidays. Many are pushing. Strollers and. Though they shouldn't, many walk in the street because they are in large groups. We have children and adults with disabilities walking elderly people in wheelchairs. Grandparents. With their grandchildren. I am grateful to live in such a wonderful community, a community. But I remain very concerned for its safety. In addition to safety of the Jewish community, I am concerned for the well-being of all the families. Playing organized sports in Chris Moore Park to walkers and joggers and bicyclists, dog. Walkers, children attending the preschool directly across from this site and their parents and the school staff. Those enjoying the parks, playgrounds, baseball fields and tennis courts, and folks at the Chris Moore Swim Club. Safety for all is a reason to oppose the rezoning. My family and I greatly enjoy the character of Colorado. Denver Chris Moore. We enjoy the peace of the neighborhood and the. Chris Moore Park. This quality of life is the reason that I live here and will likely remain here for the rest of my life. When I purchased my home, I was told that Chris Moore is an area of stability. I believe that I made a contract with the city of Denver. I pay my taxes on time. And the city in turn preserves and protects Chris Moore's stable environment for. My children, my grandchildren, for me and time. Also great grandchildren. I feel that if this rezoning is approved, the city will violate this contract. The city will be changing the rules in violation of its adopted plans and doing so against the wishes of the great majority of the citizens in the neighborhood. I have walked the neighborhood canvasing and soliciting input from the Chris Moore neighbors as well as in the surrounding neighborhoods, including Mayfair. What I discovered was overwhelming opposition to this proposal. To this proposal. Although I'm very opposed to the current proposed rezoning. I am actually much more concerned about what a rezoning here would vote for the future if this rezoning is approved. A harmful precedent would be set with harmful consequences, increased congestion, greater likelihood of accidents, and a diminished quality of life for us and future generations. I respectfully urge you to do the right thing. The thing that fulfills the bargain that. City. Has made with its. Citizens and the thing that is clearly. Desired by the vast majority of the. Residents. Of this and surrounding areas. Please vote against this rezoning. Also, I wanted to say that Monaco Parkway is is a national registered historic site or a historic property. And to put this on the corner of Cedar and Monaco. It's just not right. It doesn't fit there. It doesn't fit the character of our neighbor hood. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Miss White. Bob Moody. Good evening. Her late evening, I guess. Madam President. Council members. My name is Bob Moody, and my wife and I live at 122 South Locust Street and we are the town homes immediately adjacent to the subject site to the west. We are original owners and the residents most impacted by the proposed development. And I'm here today to testify in support for a number of reasons, many of which you've already heard tonight. But first off, the site, as you know, is an unkept eyesore that we have tolerated for 18 years. It has been used for bus storage and occasionally in the winter bus sleeping quarters with generators that run all night. The parking lot is unpaved and the muddy drainage runs over our property and has caused our to make numerous fence and landscape repairs. The site needs redevelopment, but a redevelopment that enhances, not detracts from our property. Based on 45 years experience in real estate. I do not believe that single family development at this location on Monaco would be successful for many reasons that you have heard about tonight. We do not want the failed single family or townhome properties that exist to the south at Alameda. That would be a disaster for us. People will not pay premium prices to front on Monaco at this location with no views to say nothing of the access issues that you've already heard about. Again, based on many years of experience and specific discussions with former colleagues, I have come to understand that more and more of my generation are opting for rentals as opposed to the hassles of ownership. We applaud Metropolitans efforts to accommodate seniors, Jewish residents and others who want out of the home ownership conundrum. We also believe in Denver and its growth and vibrancy and understand that as a landlocked city we must embrace some increased density. Denver is in a housing crisis. Issues around density, construction defect law and other issues cloud the debate. Supply can't keep up with demand, and affordability is definitely an issue. The proposed project will, in a small way help in addressing these issues, in our view. I do take some exception to claims by the opponents that they have huge majorities of residents that oppose this project. They have never. They don't talk to the people or survey those who disagree with them. And many who are in favor are so afraid of the score in a report, reprisals that they don't respond and are unwilling to testify. My wife and I and three other of our residents have or will have signed an agreement which puts money in an escrow that you've already heard about from David Foster. This is to be used in the event the developer does not abide by his stated Maxim Dancer. Moody, your time is up. Thank you. I appreciate your support. Appreciate it. Um, our next group of speakers Kim CU, Sarah K Shanahan. Susan Stretton, Mike Ruder, Chrissy Estes, Faraci, Katie McCrimmon, Don Hambrick, Mateo Prado and Sean Walsh. Did you please come to the front? This to Sarah. Quickly, I have a letter. From another supporter who wasn't able to stay, if I could just add to that. And the record. Kept 3 minutes. Thank you. Hello. My name is Kimberly Sara, my husband, two children and. I live at 6210 East. Cedar Avenue, approximately five houses from the church currently located at 195 South. Monica. Before I go any further, I want to. Disclose that I am currently employed as a senior vice president at Kroll Associates. Our firm is representing Metropolitan Homes. Who is the owner of the site in question? If, because of the circumstance you believe I have. No right to speak tonight, then please ignore the remainder of my remarks. I have a whole lot to say and 3 minutes. I'm going to save time by reading my comments. When we moved into our home in November of 2012. We were greeted by friendly neighbors all around. We met neighbors while shoveling snow. Our neighbors, who live across the street share gardening tips with my husband as they toil away together most days of the summer. We built a permanent steps. To all along our back fence so that our kids can talk to our neighbors kids whenever. They like. This is a great neighborhood. We enjoy the park, the mature trees and the generally quiet atmosphere, except, of course, during the frequently. Noisy parties at the Christmas Swim Club. In this, I think we share a lot of values. With our neighbors. As I watch. This project unfold over more than a year, it has become evident that there are extremely strong feelings in our neighborhood about this proposal. It is clear to me that my neighbors love their. Neighborhood and they are. Deeply frightened about the possibility of negative. Change occurring. This is understandable and I respect their desire to protect a place they love. I see this development very differently, though I see it as an asset to our community. Since the day we considered buying our home, I was disturbed by the dilapidated appearance of this church. It is common to see cars parked on the weeds. Last weekend I saw a mattress. Propped by the door for several days and the roof is peeling and appears unstable. I am a strong proponent of appropriately rezoning the site because it will help replace this dilapidated structure and we will gain something, I believe, to be very important. More eyes on the park and hopefully a great new. Set of friendly neighbors. You see, I am the mother of two daughters who want to spend time on their own or with friends in this beautiful public park. Outside of the few hours a day in the spring and. Fall when lacrosse, baseball and soccer practice and. Games are happening. Denver's Cress More Park is. Extremely underutilized when the time comes for them. To be on their own. I would feel a whole lot better knowing there are more guardians of the park. I also want to share our experience in a neighborhood we love dearly. Platte Park. In our former home, we lived across the street from a fully vacant block. When the time. Came for townhomes to go up, we feared the worse the street would get busier, our views would be blocked and the architecture would be poor. I am happy to report that while some of those things were true, the impact was far outweighed by the benefits of new neighborhood friends who helped watch our house when we were away and added to what we loved in our neighborhood. As a direct neighbor, I have reviewed the plans and renderings for this project and at the end of the day, I feel strongly that this redevelopment will be a benefit to my neighborhood, and I ask you to support. This rezoning in front of you tonight. And given my involvement. With the city for many years, I am aware of the criteria for rezoning. For the record, it is clear cut that this. Rezoning meets the Denver Comprehensive Plan and Blueprint. Denver and. As such is fully supported by CPD. Staff. Thank you for this time for your time this evening. And for those. Of you who think I shouldn't. Have an opinion as an impacted neighbor because of. My employment situation, you can safely. Turn back in now. Thank you. All right. Our next speaker is Kay Shanahan. You have. There you are. You have 6 minutes. Thank you, Madam President. And council members. I have two parts to what I'd like to share tonight. And I am against the. Rezoning to SMU. Three. My name is Kay Shanahan at 140. South Locust Street, Chris Moore, Vista Townhomes. Right between the church. Property and Chris Moore Park, Ground Zero, so. To speak. The proposed zoning change to allow a three storey apartment building with on limited units therein is in our backyard, literally. My husband and I own one. Of the nine townhomes on South Locust Street, just 60 feet from where this. Project may. Be built. Our Chris Moore townhome owners. Want a good new appropriate neighbor to replace the church property. Denver City Council. Please think of where you live today and imagine being in my shoes if you could on this. Looking east at a three story apartment building. 60 feet from where your back door is the same height as George Washington High School. There would be an. Additional approximate 12 feet of height. For roof objects. On this building. We townhome residents will be subject to the apartment. Resident smells. Noise. Sound of cars in and out of garages. Not to mention facing a sea of. Balconies and possible views into their. Bathrooms. The ability to grow vegetables, sun loving. Flowers behind our garages will be curtailed, most likely due to black sun from the height of the buildings. There is insufficient parking. With overflow parking. That goes right on to and will go on to our South Locust Street. And Cedar Avenue. Change is inevitable, but at what cost? I'm asking our quality. Of life and Chris Moore Park will be forever changed with this inappropriate. Development planned at 195 South Monaco Parkway. To make matters worse, there will be a life energy overflow. From all needed density and traffic. As a result of the 800 plus. Homes being built across Monaco Parkway Boulevard. One development The Old Berkeley Annex. A zoning change. To SMU three is just too much, in my opinion. Not a fit. For the stable, single family dwelling Chris Moore neighborhood, which blueprint Denver deemed solid. As recently as 2012, senior citizens could have their indicated desire. For single family patio homes. Here. Right on this. 2.3 acres of land area numbers showed that the need for apartments. Has been fulfilled by the lex previously Chris Moore downs across. The street, another Denver site. What is needed is the church gone and. New appropriate development of landscape townhomes, single family houses or granny. Cottages. That fits the setting of Chris. Moore Park. Please consider our neighborhoods desire for a development. Benefiting this stable. Residential area, not a plan to only line your developer's pockets. City Council Members. I close by asking you to ask yourselves why this developer refused to consider a project that the. Neighbors could support. Partner would with and would give a good return on investment. Please vote no on this rezoning to. Assume you three I have part to do this for the rest of my minutes. I'm also against the rezoning of SMU three. This zoning category does not limit the number of units that the developer can build on this site. If metropolitan homes gets the zoning change they are seeking, they can build a large apartment. Complex immediately. Adjacent to Chris Moore Park. And at one point, the proposed building is going to be as large as the Monica wing of George. Washington High School. The newest plans call. For an apartment building about as large as Sunrise Assisted Living. Building a cultural. Boulevard and Alameda. Avenue. The developers. Have said their building would be 260. Feet long, 70 feet wide, 40 feet tall, plus an additional 12 feet for roof objects. It is not appropriate to have a large monolithic building or on a site zoned for single family homes. Some questions I would like you to think about. Before you vote this evening. Why are the developers proceeding with a high density. Proposal when the opposition is overwhelming? Four separate surveys have shown. Overwhelming opposition, ranging between 76% and 90% of. Host Why is. This density appropriate for this area when there's. Nothing like it anywhere in Chris Moore Park, the prevailing density. In the Chris Moore areas. 2.6 units to the acre is. Proposed. Density is nearly 33. Units to the acre, triple. The proposed density. At Boulevard one and Lowry, just east of Monaco Parkway. Why won't the. Developers consider a project that neighbors can support? Neighbors have met with an. Architect and created. Lower density site models that would blend with our neighborhood of single. Family homes and develop a profit. Why did. The developer proceed with the purchase. Of $1.6 million of the property last October, when he knew. That the site was zoned for single family homes and that Chris Moore is an area of stability. According to Blueprint, Denver neighborhood leaders. And our councilwoman, Mary Beth Sussman. Have met with the developers. Far prior to the purchase and shared her many concerns. Why are the developers. Proposing inadequate parking and inadequate parking will force residents. To share. And your time is lapsed. Thank you. Susan Stanton. Good evening. My lack of a shirt probably, or an orange shirt probably gives you an idea of where I'm coming from on this issue. My name is Susan Stanton. I live at 87, 20/29 Avenue. I was actually one of the first residents in Lowry when Lowry was rumored to be many things that it hasn't become today. And my story is really my mother's story, because when we moved to Lowry, she left her community and called us Springs and moved to be with us. And so 17 years ago, she started on a journey in East Denver with us. She's moved six times. Because there there is no. Sorry. It's an emotional issue because she's now living with us, because. There are very few options. For seniors in East Denver. And so I encourage you to really think about the silent voices who are sleeping in their beds and. Would be the eyes watching the children at Crescent Park. And that would be my. Mother up on the third floor if there's an elevator, Mr. Cutler, I don't know if there will be one, but senior housing is so important in East Denver, and I've watched her move from the. Junior officer housing. That then was scraped, that was a rental. And then she moved to Amalie in Lowry, which was rental. Then she tried Stapleton rental product. And then we were lucky enough to be able to buy in Legends of Lowry when when construction defects hadn't really stopped condos. And she lived on a second floor unit. It was the only apartment we could find or the only condo we could find at the time. At 80 in December, she can't live in a second floor unit anymore. And so her choice was to move into our home. It's not her choice, probably her choice for the long term. And so you're really talking about shaping Denver for seniors and the adult children who are taking care of them. So I would. Encourage you to support this project and. Bring more senior housing into the area. Thank you. Mike Ruder. Madam President and fellow esteemed City Council members and neighbors. My name is Michael Ellen Ruder, but some people used to call me Mike, so that's okay. But I'm older now. I live at 245 South Locust Street, one half blocks south of the 195 South Monaco Parkway Parcel. And Susan, I'm so glad that I can follow you. We have a vision. We have a solution. I and I'm going to go through it, which is perfect timing. I oppose the steep rezoning of the current application of the parcel to SMU three. Our neighborhood is in favor of redevelopment of the parcel. We are yimby's. Yes, too smart growth in my backyard. We were eager to push the dialog beyond the simple know to the current proposed rezoning. So we put on our brainstorming hats and we launched a community wide effort to explore how to best redevelop the parcel, drawing on the many and diverse talents of our neighborhood residents, including expertize in land use planning, real estate, brokerage, real estate law and architecture. We performed a rigorous exercise which with, believe it or not, Legos. Our architecture expert guided us through the can that took the construction of different types of developments for the parcel. You can see them on this poster here. Our objective was very clear. We wanted to say yes to a plan that would be innovative 21st century. Provide a vision, provide a new solution to a growing housing challenge for Denver, and be consistent with the precepts put forth in Blueprint Denver which protect, preserve and enhance neighborhoods like ours , which are designated as areas of stability. We can. We constructed four models which are shown on this poster. We explained these designs to the greater community at a neighborhood meeting on May eight that became MH synagogue. We asked the 200 attendees for their feedback, soliciting both comments and also their preferences in the form of a ranking vote . Most preferred or first place to second place. The third to the least preferred or to fourth place. I'll explain the models first and then I'll share with you the results of the community's rankings. I want to point out that these are simply models. These are building blocks, Legos. These are not permanent ideas. These are for brainstorming. It's a point of departure. Model one, please. On the on the top left shows a bird's eye view of a design that includes five single family homes plus a small park. That's this guy right here. This model is consistent with the current single family zoning designation of E dash. As you dash d x, the parcel can be redeveloped right now. Tonight, we can break ground using this type of plan because there's no need to rezone. Model two on the top right shows a perspective view of a design which is similar to that of the developer. It includes an apartment building and townhomes. 75 units in all this design is the one that requires the steep rezoning of Shenmue three the proposal before you tonight model three on the bottom left shown here is a perspective view of a design of townhome structures which cover the entire parcel 26 units in total. This approach would require an up zoning as well, but a much more moderate designation of E than 2.5. Finally, model four on the bottom. Right. This is the one that's really cool. Shows a bird's eye view of a new approach to single family housing with what we call a granny twist. I wrote this before I knew that you were going to be talking. Really? There are eight single family homes which are shown in yellow, plus the five, the single single family homes with auxiliary dwelling units. These add use or additional dwelling units are what we're so excited about. The homes in with the ADU use are actually zone in a manner which requires the homeowner to live on the property, either in the main house or in the granny flat or the carriage house or the adu that's in the back. The other building can be used either as a home office or as a home for an aging relative who wants to live independently, but maybe not to an independently or even for a boomerang child who comes back home in their. Twenties. This is a solution which does require an up zoning but is moderate. It's consistent with Blueprint Denver and with our neighborhood. So when we asked everybody what they thought about it, that fourth option was the one that won. It garnered 70% of the first place votes. We were surprised by that. We really expected the status quo to win and it didn't. This shows that our neighborhood is saying yes to my backyard, yes, let's do something. We all want to see something new, but let's make it right for us. So let's partner let's partner with you. And let's build something that is 21st century. It's going to answer an extreme housing problem that we do have. And it'll be and an avenue to your being able to have a whole new niche of new developments that you can build all over the city in many different synagogues, temples, churches that are all that that may ultimately get sold. It's a whole new opportunity for you. Please reject this zoning proposal. Let's find one. That's right. For all of us. Thank you. Okay. That woke me up for sure. Okay. Just kidding. Okay. Chrissy Estes Faraci. And she left. Katie McCrimmon. Hello. My name is Katie McCrimmon and I live at 200 South Kearney Street, just a few blocks from this site. And I am a representative of the Kress Moorpark R.A.. It's a little confusing. And Chris Meyer, we actually have three rhinos. So you heard from two of the others at the very beginning. And our R.A. actually includes this property. And we went door to door. I even surveyed I don't know where she went, Kim Cassara, my neighbor, we had a great chat about how she really liked higher density and how we disagreed, but we went door to door to survey. The results were overwhelming that our neighborhood opposed this and then we've done more surveys. So the gentleman was concerned that we haven't offered people the opportunity. We did an online survey that was open to the public. Anyone could fill it out. That too was overwhelming, with about 94% opposed. And we had we were really impressed. We had people who provided their names because we wanted you to know that these are real people. And we turned in some of the comments from that. So I really appreciate your patience, most especially our councilwoman. This has been a marathon. It's a marathon tonight. And I'm sorry because we didn't want to do that. But it's also been a marathon for the past 15 months, and she's hung in there with us for some many, many meetings. But one thing I need to tell you is that, unfortunately, as much as they say they've been working with us, that hasn't been the case. They have never held a public meeting. We have. I've paid for them and so did some of my neighbors. We had public meetings when we did this Lego project. We were really excited. We invited them to come and unfortunately they did not. So when they've told you that they've been working with us, it's important to look at the details because unfortunately they have not. We did first hear from Mr. Kudla and Mr. Foster about 15 months ago, and unfortunately he had his mind made up on a project at that time, and he came in and he told us, this is the project we're going to do and we just may have to disagree. And we were really surprised to hear that since the site was owned, single family, as you know, Mr. Foster also at that time shared with us that his kids had played soccer for ten or 12 years in Cross Moore Park, and he was well aware of the congestion problems on Saturdays and even said to us, you're taking your lives in your own hands. So, you know, on those weekends. So it's surprising that they would want to add high density when we already have a situation like that. I want to clear up some of the of the facts that you've been hearing. Well, some of the unfortunately, their myths that you've been hearing tonight. Let's talk first about this issue of the deed restrictions. They did come to us a little while ago and showed us this document. And unfortunately, it has this very big exit clause. It has a hole. And so nobody from any of the RINO's was willing to sign this. It's also like private zoning. I think that they wanted a different zoning category, but because they wanted to move this through, they didn't want to take the time to start over. And I can understand that that would be frustrating. But it's it isn't fair to our communities to expect us to become zoning and planning and enforcement officials. That's why we have our city government. And so they couldn't find folks among the representatives in the leaders to sign these documents. And they found a couple of individuals who say they'll sign them. And I feel they have a very big responsibility if they're going to try to enforce them. So I don't know that I think that's a bit of a distraction and I hope that you'll see it for what it is. OSTER Also, Mr. Maley referred to context and I think it'd be great if you took a close look at that because the context of our neighborhood, the entire crisis in our neighborhood, with the exception of a couple of sites that they cherry picked, is the context where the urban edge and they picked, says suburban zoning. And we think that was because they wanted to do a bigger project. There's really appropriate urban edge zoning. You've heard about it tonight. Probably the most appropriate would be the th2 point five. But, you know, we we do have good opportunities and there are good zoning categories or a PD. I understand you're not crazy about PEDs, but it's a possibility that we could do it. I also want to talk about this myth of and that this is going to be affordable. What he's doing, I wish it were. We had a home and Chris Moore that went under contract in an hour for like $800,000. It's the original ranch and that isn't affordable. I mean, I have plenty of friends who would like to buy and Chris Moore and the young man who spoke who's at the Lex Mr. were there. He said he'd love to buy a single family home on Monaco because it might be a way to get into the neighborhood. So in addition to maybe finding opportunities for some of our elders to have, you know, the opportunity with the carriage house, a home on Monaco might actually be a more affordable option than these rentals. He is not doing affordable rentals. So we have to look at some of the details on that. We're concerned about the parking. You know, the overall numbers on the parking might look a little better. Each townhome has two a garage spaces. That makes all the sense in the world. That's great. Unfortunately, the apartment complex part of this only has 58 underground units for 50 units, and that's underground spaces. Sorry, for 58 units. And that just isn't enough. I wish we had light rail. We don't there's no plan for it. And so this parking just isn't enough. Thank you for your incredible patience. Thanks for looking at the details. And we appreciate you. Appreciate it, Don Hambrick. Mateo Prado. Prado. Pardo. Madam President. Council members. I'm Matteo Pardo. I live at 6130 Cedar Avenue with my wife and 15 year old daughter, and I'm against the proposal for rezoning at 195 Monaco Parkway. The entire premise it rests on is flawed. The parcel in question is not an infill. Despite what others have said. It's not. It's an integral part of our neighborhood. We don't suffer from rundown housing or poverty. We don't have you know, our vacancy rates are are low. So is unemployment. Public facilities are not are not distressed. We're not in a transportation corridor. We don't have transit stations. Our public facilities are not distressed. And I said we don't meet the criteria for a small area plan. And according to Blueprint Denver, our neighborhood, including the pastor, is an area of, as you heard many times before, an area of stability. We walked through all of this with with Councilwoman Mary Beth Sussman. And the current zoning, the zoning that was reviewed, just reviewed just a few years ago is is appropriate and it shouldn't be changed . Now, recently, Mr. Gaspar, the Planning Department has floated the idea that every neighborhood should have a small area plan. I really don't know what that means. Does it mean that the criteria don't matter? Does it mean that you, you they matter when you want them to and not when you don't want them to. Doesn't matter. Does it mean that you can pick and choose? I don't know. In any case, I just wanted to say something else about the church. It's. It's it's the work. The main part is. Is the work of a remarkable modernist architect. It's the venue of a thriving Baptist congregation that saw the integration of our African-American and Jewish communities. So please don't let it be replaced by a wall of of apartments that'll only add to our traffic part of our traffic problems. Now, I don't want to go on and on about traffic, but Mr. Cutler hasn't even given us a credible traffic study. I, I guess he's relying on the 2012 Matrix Report that was commissioned by the Lourey Redevelopment Authority. The Matrix report, of course, wasn't meant to to analyze the traffic impact of Boulevard One, not this proposed project. And furthermore, it's flawed just two ways in which it's flawed. It doesn't provide us with the output numbers. The numbers that it bases its conclusions on are not in the report. And it doesn't analyze either the vehicular or pedestrian traffic at the intersection of East Cedar Avenue and Monica Parkway, the intersection where this parcel where the rezoning is being requested is located. And that alone should make the report useless, so far as this is concerned. Now. One of the things about this dispersal that puzzles me is the way the intersection of East Cedar Avenue in Monica was the only direct outlet onto Monica for our neighborhood. It's also the only one of only two places where cars can enter or leave the Lexus at Lowry. And it's the only one that has a traffic signal. And it's right next door to the 800 residential units that are coming coming online at Boulevard One. So this raises several questions. How are cars going to enter and leave the proposed development? Is transportation going to allow cars exiting the apartments to cross two lanes of southbound traffic on Monica in order to enter the northbound lanes or allow cars to enter the site from the northbound lanes on monica, is the fire department going to demand a curb cut on locust or cedar? Jim Bishop, Mr. Cutler's architect, told us that the fire department, instead of asking for a far lane, would, would, would using it alongside a fire hose really, anyway? To make matters worse, there was a gang related double homicide at elected Lowry this past March there. There's a lot. It would probably it probably involved the Crips and the Bullets. Two young men were killed. What are gangs doing in the legs? Anecdotal evidence. Rumor would have it that they're fighting over new turf. Well, now, crime in the Hilltop Statistical District, as defined by the Denver Police Department, has gone up by 119% this year . Burglaries alone have gone up by 350%. That's a much greater increase than any of the statistical neighborhoods around us. A very inconvenient 2010 University of or Indiana University study found that, quote unquote, high density housing units promote serious violent crime while there they put neighborhoods at risk as poor as Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner, recently put put it in The New York Times. When big money moves into a desirable neighborhood. It destroys the things that made that neighborhood desirable. Well. All right. I've heard. What, Mr. Pardo. Your time is up. Well, I thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sean Walsh, and you have 6 minutes. Wow. Good evening, Madam President. Council members. My name is Sean Walsh. And I live at. 1065 Emmerson Street. I'm here mostly on behalf of all of my all my own behalf. But first, I'd like to read a letter into the record from my mother, Sharon Walsh, who lives in filing two at 475 Carney. Street, which also happens to be the place I grew up and lived for for 20 years. Dear Denver City Council Members. In 1972, I. Bought my Crest Moore home at 475 Carney. Street and have continued to live there ever since. Gone are the days when a big wheel. Fixed every kid's bike Allard's drugstore provided ice cream sodas. And filled prescriptions. The Texaco station filled our gas tanks $0.36 a gallon. Bob's Barber Shop cut our hair and the bookstore kept us reading. Yes, a lot of things have changed in the. Past 43 years. Nixon is no longer president. Other things less. Tangible have changed as well. The retail, which we embraced in the past, is hard fought today. Third in Holly and Cedar and Holly both faced overwhelming opposition, which thankfully was unsuccessful. Two new, thriving neighborhood neighborhood businesses that cater to young and old. These amenities attract new families to our neighborhood, which is evidenced by the continual new housing and reinvesting. Reinvestment in the housing stock. Today we are face facing the same. Opposition for the development of. A needed housing mix development. On the end of more park. I currently live. In a single family home, but I appreciate the opportunity for a living situation where I could live affordably. Into retirement in the neighborhood I've called home for so many years. I strongly support the proposed rezoning of. 195 South Monaco. And I encourage you to do so as well. The time has come for Denver to zone all. Of Denver in an. Intelligent and. Insightful manner. Sharon Walsh 475 Carney Street. And if I could just add a thought of my own as a long time resident, there have been lots of periods of build. Out during the 1970s and of this sliver of the neighborhood were appropriate for single family. We would have seen it by now. Thank you very much for your time. And please, I encourage you to. Approve this rezoning. Thank you, Mr. Walsh. Our next group of speakers, if you can come up to the front bench. The first one is Patrick Allen, Stacie MacDonald, Barbara Volpi, Michael Hicks, John Tyrone's, Rick Stoddard, Chris Davis, Amy Hook and Mark Nestler. Hi. Hello. Madam President and members of the Denver City Council. Thank you for allowing me to make a few comments about the rezoning application at 195 South Monaco at the busy intersection of Cedar and Monaco. My name is Patrick Allen and my wife and I live at Increase Moore Vista. Ground zero, right in the middle. 60 feet from where this proposed apartment building is going to go in. We very much love living there. We've lived there since 2015, but I've seen some changes really sadly here in the last few years and especially these last ten months like to chat with you about. I'm very opposed to the rezoning and relieved that this decision hour is upon us. These last ten months has really divided our neighborhood. Ever since Metropolitan Homes brought this property some ten months ago, our beloved community and neighborhood is starting to come apart, and understandably so. We are talking about our homes, our community and our neighborhood. The only good thing that has come out of all of this turmoil is that our neighbors have grown closer. You've met a lot of bright people, and I got a chance to meet with them and I enjoy that. Regretfully, in some cases, we've become much further apart. It seems like we have development lobbyist and retired development lobbyist. Living in the neighborhood or friends or business associates of the development. They're not they're very out of sync with what this neighborhood wants. I want to speak with you a little bit about community and what it means to live in one of Denver's legacy neighborhoods. I'm an Army Reserve officer now, retired. But in March of 23, I, along with thousands of military reservist, were ordered to active military duty for our country's invasion into Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan . I had two weeks to get my affairs in order, which meant closing down my business and laying two of my employees off. I gave them as much severance as possible and transferred my clients to one of my trusted competitors. My duty assignment was at the Pentagon and at the Army headquarters. I was only supposed to be there for six months, but obviously Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz, Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney's idea that the Iraqi war, that we would be welcomed as liberators way off the mark. Within ten days of our invasion, it was obvious that I was going to be there more than six months. My six months turned into two and a half years. We sold our home here in Washington Park and Park Hill and moved to beautiful Alexandria, Virginia and bought a townhome. It was a privilege to live in our nation's capital, but we missed Colorado and the communities we lived in. Washington Park and Park Hill. DC is very transit. Military members coming and going. Government workers coming and going. Every time the administration changes, the whole neighborhood changes. Political appointees coming and going. And thousands of lobbyists. Living there. It was not a community and we didn't know each other. Soon as we came back to Denver, I had a great real estate agent who was our friend and I asked her that I wanted to live in a community. She immediately knew what I was talking about. We looked around, but we came to Crest Moorpark, and I knew about Crest Moorpark. It was always up there, one of the places I wanted to live in. And Councilman Brown, it reminded me of when we both lived together in Washington Park on Vine Street. That was a community. We knew each other, took care of each other. I was very happy. We were spot on since we moved in. My neighbors had a very nice welcome. Who are you? Welcome. We had older people. We take care of them. Invite them over. Make sure that they're. When their husbands passed away, we would just jump right in like they were our own. We did our due diligence on the property and we knew that that property next to us. What's the deal here? It was zoned for one acre or whatever. Single family homes. That's what we bought this place. Now we're going to change the rules. Come on. No one wouldn't want somebody doing that to you. We can. We want the place developed. But as for single families townhomes, we met with the guy who developed our townhomes land, Cheyenne. He had a beautiful layout. How it was done. This idea that people won't buy homes on Monica. I'm not buying into that. Just walk over to Fourth and Josephine. Those townhomes are right on a very busy street. They have a berm. They put some time into that. They did a good job. I'm sure those people love living there. What I really liked about where I'm living is the diversity. And just the park itself. That first weekend, I watched Mayor Hickenlooper. Mr. Allen, I'm sorry. Your time is up. At three or 606. Minutes. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Stacey MacDonald. Thank you. Distinguished Council members. My name is Stacey MacDonald. I live at 5022 Mont View Boulevard, which is also. A historic. Boulevard. As a matter of fact, the property in question is not on the historic boulevard, and the Monaco. Parkway runs from first. To Mont View Boulevard. With that said, I am a certified residential real estate appraiser. I have been so for 17 years, and I've been in over 10,000 properties. I live within. Three miles of this property and I want to be make something. Pretty clear. I understand everyone's concerns about saying that Chris Moore should be zoned single family. This particular property, though, that is not a question. When highest and best use is being delivered or being developed by a residential real estate appraiser. We do not pay attention to zoning. We look up and down both sides of the street. And find out what's around. In this situation, there are no single family residences to speak of that would indicate that highest and best use for this property is single family residence. With that said, if a property was there and it was zoned single. Family residence, the appraisal would be marked highest and best. Use is not. Single family and most likely. There would not be financing done on this property, which indicates that if a single family residence was to be on this property, there would be no conventional financing for that property and someone would have to pay cash. A very unlikely scenario. It not only in this price point, it would have to be well over $1,000,000 for that to take place. And I think that we're all pretty clear that $1,000,000 property is not going to be profitable here on this property. With that said, again, I live in on Mont View Boulevard and we were equally as concerned about this Stapleton development negatively impacting us with traffic. And that just has not been the case. We still have the same charm and the same great neighborhood that we always had in South Park Hill. And I think that a lot of fears and concerns are unfounded. I think that most development that has happened, at least in my neighborhood, we have found. Even though that it has come up against great opposition. Now, those. Are beloved properties in my neighborhood. So thank you so much. Thank you, Miss MacDonald. The next speaker is Barbara Volpi. Madam President and council members. Thank you for staying awake. This is really amazing. And lest my people confuse you, I'm one of the orange guys, and I'm asking. You very seriously to vote against this zoning change. I'm one. Of the council. Members was quoted in the paper this weekend as saying that 10 to 15. Years of development has happened in about one and a half to two years in the city, and everybody is overwhelmed. And I think that's a very astute observation. I want to say just refute a few things that have been said. I don't think there's a need for this kind of diverse housing in that spot, because all a person has to do is. Walk across Monaco to Boulevard one. Which is a. Huge. Very dense development that has a wide range. Of housing opportunities and housing prices. There. So I think I think that's not a valid point. And I. Also think. We need to let the dust settle a little bit on the huge development of Boulevard One, which is now just coming online and the huge development in Cherry Creek because Chris Moore is. Right in between those two. And certainly when Lowry came on, it hugely increased the traffic through the Chris Moore neighborhood and Boulevard. One is going to do the same thing coming right out First Avenue, straight across into Chris Moore. So I would invite you to consider taking a deep breath and saying this zoning decision can. Wait until we we let. Some dust settle. I don't think it's a. Choice of a single family versus this. Very high density thing. I think there's something in between that can happen. It hasn't happened yet. And that's why I ask you very respectfully to vote no on this. And thank you again for your patience. Thank you. Michael Hicks. It's getting late. Madam President. City Council. I've been here a few times. Talk to you about development. I hope John Elway is watching Channel eight. I haven't seen thus much orange in the room in a long time. I am for this development. I came here as a volunteer. I'm an architect. I live in Observatory Park University Park, about two blocks from my neighbor, Charlie. And what you're going to vote on tonight is critical is critical for this city. And I am afraid of what's happening here. You've got a developer, Peter and his partner, who have tried and reduce the density and come up with a design. Peter, who has developed a walkable, livable community in the suburbs. He's hired an architectural firm with a 50 plus year legacy of award winning design. It's a beautiful design. It's a great site plan. It does a lot of things that the neighbors have asked. And you want to tell him? No. And your staff, your staff, professionals, urban planners, architects, landscape architects. They work for 17 months on this project. Blood, sweat and tears. They work with you on a lot of different projects and you want to say it's not good enough. And the message you're going to send to the world, whether you're a local architect, a local planner, you come from out of town. You develop and design a beautiful scheme on a great site. And you're going to allow the neighborhood to come in with their Legos and play Mr. Potato Head. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? This is not right. This is not correct. This is your decision. And I will tell you. Be careful what you do tonight. Think about this. This is about the future of Denver. The architecture outside of this building was done by visionaries. Single visionaries. If you want to take a racehorse and if you want to get a committee to redesign it, you're going to wind up with a camel. I am telling you, visionary architects, developers who listen to the community, developers who know what they're doing. You can't take a piece of property and revision it unless you own it, unless you take the risk. To fix your time yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. My next speaker is John DeRose, followed by Rick Stoddard. And you had. A good evening. You have 6 minutes. Thank you. Good evening, John de Wrongs. I live at 40 Kearny Street on the north side of the park. I also happen to be a longtime real estate appraiser. That's amazing. We have two here tonight. I I believe that zoning, in a sense, is a compact with the community. This was a compact made just in 2010. It was affirmed. Single family. You want to let neighbors know what they can expect and ensure some compatibility of use. Now I like to measure stuff, but I'd like to share some numbers with you that are shown on this chart. The applicant is talking about confining 50 units to one acre on this site. So what is the density increase more? It's three units per acre. Across to the west in Lowery Smart Growth Community. A wonderful place. Five units. Are we at 50? Not even close. How about New Lowry Boulevard? One proposed houses going their way. 11 units. I mean, the LAX, the only multi-unit community is half the density of 50 units per acre. Where do you find 50 units per acre? We know where it is. There's a project at 16th in Colorado. It's on a state highway to Colorado Boulevard. Those arterials can handle the kind of traffic that this that these kinds of projects where you where you condense and you can find population to small areas can handle. This is a residential parkway. Other zoning categories can guarantee compatible use on this site. This category is suitable for commercial areas or an established multi-unit area, or Colorado Boulevard for that matter. Not in the XMR neighborhood. There's no doubt that multi-unit uses would dramatically change the character and. Okay. This is two blocks from the historically designated Parkway. Nobody. Nobody looks at it that way. And why shouldn't we extend that historic parkway 4 to 3 blocks to Alameda? We've got a project on one side that's brand new, new, new, new trees and so forth coming in. We can extend that historic parkway. Single family homes have been the use for over 100 years along there. Some will argue that Monocle Parkway is no place for single family use. But guess what? In the last two years, since 2013, there have been 58 single family sales on this section of Monaco. That's two per month. It's one of the most active residential areas. And why? Because lots of folks find that they can afford a home along Monaco and be in some of these neighborhoods. They can afford it within the area. The lonely house that somebody met mentioned a couple of times. That's in the bottom left hand corner. Somebody said this was blighted. Well, tell that to the buyer. They paid 510,000 for this at the end of 2012. The reason that it's it looks strange to people. It's sitting there by itself. Now, some people say this isn't a sustainable use. And I think there's an argument for that single family like this. But single unit means also townhome. It means some of the alternatives we've described here. It doesn't it doesn't have to be multi-unit. It doesn't even have to be detached homes. It could be attached homes. And it could provide some alternative. By the way, with what is a 40 foot high structure look like on a half block of Monaco. Somebody alluded this before. I mean, keep in mind that we have four homes on South Locust that are about 20 feet high, just on the block south of this project, 25 feet high. If you confine confine 50 units, this is what the kind of density and look you're going to get. Does that seem compatible? The eve right here is 44 feet slightly higher. But you get the idea. I mean, this is when you can find it to an area on Colorado Boulevard. This is perfectly compatible. A monolithic structure like this. But. But no homeowner here should suddenly have to live across the street or next to a structure of this size. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is John Studdard, followed by Chris Davis. Madam President, members of the Council, thank you for this opportunity. My name is Ric Stoddard. I live on Jersey Street. And Chris Moore. Several years ago, a close friend of mine, a former member of the city council, told me the secret to being a good council member is learning how to sleep with your eyes open during a public hearing. My congratulations on your stamina and thank you for your devotion. I'd like to talk for a minute about process. I, for one, am disappointed in the tactics that have been come popular in our city in these development battles. The first meeting has been labeled by the project opponents as contentious with subsequent meetings and getting more civil. That's because anyone who came to that first meeting and was open minded or let alone positive, was shouted down immediately, almost threatened. I think a close look at the record shows that any project supporters simply did not participate. After that, they did not want to exist in that kind of a hostile environment. I would suggest you look at the emails. Look at the survey itself. If you said you were in favor of this project in that survey, you were not allowed to fill out any more questions, any more answers. But don't take my word for it. Look at the email. Look at the survey. This was simply a lobbying effort to turn out opponents of this project. I really think that's too bad, because if I was in your position, I'd be very interested in what a true objective and impartial analysis of the residents of Crestwood think about this project and particularly this particular intersection. This type of intimidation is not the way to govern a great city. And don't misunderstand me. I think everyone in this room should be allowed to lobby fully on whatever their belief is. But what you should not be allowed to do is cast yourself as an impartial observer of an entire neighborhood, when in fact the process you engaged in was anything but. The opponents of this project say they would like to serve the suburban character of the neighborhood, and I love that, too. But we have to remember that 60 to 85 years ago, this was the suburbs. It no longer is. It is squeezed between two great urban developments, Cherry Creek and Lowry, which are success stories in our nation. It's a bladed side. Mr. Stoddard, your time is up. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Amy Hook. And then Mark. Christie. Apologized to Chris Davis and then Amy Hook. Thank you, Madam President, and members of the council. My name is Chris Davis and my wife and two children. I reside in Fourth and Monaco Parkway, just three blocks north of the park, of course, Moorpark. I'm a practicing architect of 20 years and an owner of bus architecture here in Denver. Actually, one of my first projects in Denver was an adaptive reuse project for Mickey's Zeppelin, where we converted the old Yellow Cab building into the original taxi building a phase one taxi. So my livelihood depends on development. I support thoughtful and intelligent infill projects, urban density change and creative thinking when it comes to zoning. However, I'm here tonight to express my passionate opposition to the proposed up zoning, or so we call it spot zoning and the proposed development by Metropolitan Homes. Because unlike Mickey's Uplands project, this is like lacking in the visionary component. I've been active in the neighborhood meetings and was present for the initial six hour planning board meeting several months ago and never before have a witness such an organized and resounding opposition to a proposed project. My hope is that you will listen to the United Voices of the Crescent Neighborhoods and vote against the proposed rezoning of this property to begin with, the existing church structure on site while in need of some TLC is a historic gem designed by one of the most prominent and important modernist architects of the 1960s, Jean Sternberg, who actually taught architecture side by side with Frank Lloyd Wright. He was responsible for designing several notable buildings throughout Denver, including National Jewish Hospital, Arapahoe Community College, and from master planning several historic neighborhoods such as the mid-century modern Arapahoe Acres. The church that he designed on the site that is going to be demolished is a relic of old press more. It was built in 1962, the same year as my house. It's a landmark and a reflection of the history of the neighborhood in the park and should not be allowed to be demolished. To disregard our city's history and to allow our public municipal buildings to evaporate is shortsighted and a crime in the truest sense. To put it bluntly, Metropolitan Home proposal is offensive and there's nothing to gain from this project. For the residents of Cress, more new development should add value to a neighborhood instead and to the contrary, this requested change in zoning is 100% inconsistent with our neighborhood. Excuse me. If a developer. If a developer wants to develop high density living units, which is his right, let him do so in a neighborhood that already has adequate existing zoning designations in place. The proposed rezoning is so inappropriate that I was shocked the planning board voted in his favor. However, after their decision, someone on the board said that it isn't the board's job to preserve neighborhoods, nor is it their job to preserve history. The board's job is only to interpret and enforce the zoning code. While this may be true, it's unfortunate and it does not give them the liberty to consider the bigger picture here. That person on the board, on the planning board went on to encourage everyone in the audience to attend the city council hearing, because he said that is the forum at which history and neighborhoods can be preserved. For all the reasons mentioned before me and for some, I'm sure that you'll hear from others speaking out for me tonight . This proposed project would be devastating for my already stable and amazing neighborhood. And more importantly, this project and the developer's actions are shortsighted. For the bigger picture and the greater context of the growth of Denver as a thriving city, as not only a resident of Creston, we're failing, too, but a property owner of an original 1962 single family home located directly on the west side of Monaco Parkway. I can speak very specifically as to the desirability of single family home living on Monaca Parkway. We love it form more than any other home or neighborhood we've ever lived in. So much so that we consider this house our forever home. To say that building. One more. To say that building more single family homes on Monaco Parkway doesn't make sense because no one wants to live there is ignorant and arrogant. I can also speak to how the Parkway itself contributes in a positive way to my family's quality of life. Just one block north of the part of the proposed property. More Monaco Parkway. The parkway itself is listed on both the Colorado Street State Register of Historic Properties and the National Register of Historic Places and for good reason . It's a very important piece of the historic fabric of Denver. It's a beautiful, majestic procession strengthened by its mature trees and plantings, its historic homes, its consistency and its lack of projects like the One Metropolitan Homes is proposing. And it's where I live. We are all here tonight to focus on the potential rezoning issue. And while that should be the primary topic of concern, Metropolitan Homes has also posted a sign on the property requesting a right away vacation for the Monaco Parkway edge of this property. This effectively this effectively means that the developers are requesting that the city owned portion of the land along Monaco be vacated or donated to the project and added to the usable, buildable portion of land for the project's development. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman, for constructing the public works right away. Services to momentarily put a hold on this vacation request, this vacation request and the actions. You know, we've had a little. Problem with a timer, but I think that you've used up your 6 minutes. Except that it doesn't, is it? No. He still time. Okay. I can wrap. It up yesterday. Sorry. This vacation request in the actions of metropolitan homes and their proposed development is evidence of a much bigger picture problem here. The approval of this vacation request would erode the edge of Crescent Report Park and Monaco Parkway. It would erode the historic structure on site. And truthfully, it would erode our ability to trust in the leadership, which was ultimately put in place to preserve all these critical elements of our city. Rather than allow these arteries, i.e., Monaco Parkway, to be chopped up right to the edge of a historic designation, we should be looking for ways to extend them and stretch them into the city, reinforcing the strength in the history of Denver as a world class city with history. This project, if approved, would cause irreparable damage to my neighborhood and I'll be the one paying the price for it as long as I choose to live where I do. Please do not support this rezoning. Please do not support metropolitan homes in their endeavor to make money despite the lasting negative consequences that would be paid at the expense of Chris Moore Park, Chris Moore neighborhood neighborhoods and its residents. Please do consider the sanctity of your citizens livability over the grand plans of one single developer. You have the chance to do a great thing here tonight. Please support your constituents by voting against this proposal and against this rezoning. It's wrong. And it's so clearly wrong for our neighborhood. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Davis. Amy Hook. Thank you, Madam President. I really appreciate your attention. I'm Amy Hooke and I live at 245 South Locust Street in Denver. You can tell by my shirt that I oppose the zoning of 195 South Monaco to SM three. I live about one half block from the site of this proposed rezoning, and I'd like to make some other comments about the traffic, transportation and parking impact of this up zoning proposal. I think we all accept traffic and parking increases as a natural byproduct of smart, healthy growth in Denver. However, tonight we're. Considering a rezoning of a small. Parcel of land within the single family XMR neighborhood, an area of stability depicted in the poster. Rezoning is requested in order to accommodate a high density apartment complex. This is not smart growth. The traffic and parking consequences on the neighborhood streets of Chris Moore will be severe and potentially unmanageable. To explain these concerns to you, I'd like to go back to some basics of Blueprint Denver. Blueprint Denver is an integrated land use and transportation plan that, as you have already heard, has a primary commitment to preserving and enhancing areas of stability, such as a more neighborhood to blueprint. Denver This means never creating density for density sake, just to create more housing as being as is being proposed here, but rather matching desired density with appropriate surroundings. The density proposed here is actually equivalent to an urban density designation. And therefore, according to Blueprint, Denver should be paired not just with a parkway but with matching transportation, mixed use resources such as pedestrian or shopping corridors, light rail or commuter rail, HGV lanes, BRT, park and ride or mixed use destinations within. A convenient walking distance. Monaco Parkway does not have these resources, and otherwise this high density development is actually paired with small neighborhood streets such as Cedar Avenue and South Locust Street. Blueprint. Denver actually makes a specific commitment to minimizing traffic impact on neighborhood streets in areas of stability, such as the quest for neighborhood blueprint, Denver emphasizes managing pedestrian safety, traffic speed and traffic volume on residential streets such as Cedar and South Locust. Blueprint Denver specifically warns of traffic problems such as high speed cut through traffic and congested local intersections that will endanger residents and severely compromised neighborhood livability. There are already traffic problems in our neighborhood over the past two years. Denver's accelerated growth and therefore traffic impact has exceeded projections. In the XMR neighborhood, we already experienced the effects of increased traffic volumes such as crowded local intersections and high speed cut through neighborhood streets due to backups. On Monaco, Alameda and. Cedar. The congested intersection at Cedar in Monaco is the. One shown in the photos blueprint. Denver warns that these traffic symptoms already call for better traffic management, not for adding more traffic to already congested intersections and dangerous cut through traffic. There's also heavy use of more park for recreation, pedestrian traffic, as well as children and adult sports teams of numerous types, including soccer and baseball. On the weekends, the park area and surrounding streets are already a sea of cars, posing problems for parking and a hazard for children and families crossing the streets, such as the family involved in the tragic accident at the intersection of Alameda and Monaco. A high volume, very congested intersection. The proposed up zoning. And high density development will create additional negative impact on traffic patterns. At 195 South Monaco entry exit access options to the proposed development are limited and create predictable traffic impact problems. If access is confined. To Monaco, traffic engineering considerations suggest that the construction of auxiliary turnout lanes may be necessary to mitigate peak hour turning volume, and that northbound apartment residents will not be able to make hazardous left turns on to Monaco and therefore will need to U-turn on Monaco or cut through neighborhood streets such as Cedar and South Locust in order to proceed north. If access cannot be confined to Monaco. Access will be forced onto South. Locust and cedar, which have little or no capacity to absorb high density access traffic. It is also important to keep in mind that the traffic impact of the nearby Buckley Annex development will cumulatively. Cumulatively affect congestion on South. Monaco and on the crest more neighborhood streets. A 2012 traffic study of the impact of development at Buckley Annex projected a very poor, borderline unacceptable rating of the functioning of Alameda, Monaco intersection. Where the family was hit. Other than that. 2012 Buckley study, there are surprisingly no further traffic studies available describing the impact of this high density development on congestion at neighborhood intersections. Or how this impact could be managed. One such already congested intersection is Cedar in Monaco. Already shown to you in the photos. This intersection represents one of the few East-West alternatives connecting to Holly Street and already sees cut through traffic when there's congestion at Monaco and Alameda. Other currently hazardous intersections include Monaco and Bayard, or left turning on in Monaco currently causes frequent near accidents. Also, as has. Been pointed out, the. SMU three development currently. Proposed provides inadequate parking for residents and their guests, resulting in overflow parking onto our already crowded neighborhood streets. In conclusion, one If South Monaco should not be resolved zoned SMU three This deep. Up zoning to. Accommodate high density development is not supported by Blueprint Denver. It will cause a predictable worsening of current traffic problems, which will severely compromises safety and livability of the Chris Moore neighborhood. Thank you very. Much for listening. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mark Nasr. No. Okay. Let's move on. Our next group of speakers begins with David Schachter. Michelle Breslin's Jennifer Shearer LA's Bella Gratis Meg White La Brian Blakeley, Laura Pitman, Molly ECHLIN and Chris Crew. If you could all come to the front bench. Oh. See his David check tour here. He's gone. Okay. Thank you. Michele Breslin's. But, you know. But Michelle's whereabouts? No. Okay. We'll keep moving on. Jennifer. Sure. Okay. Keep going. Lars Bella guarantees. No, it's okay. Yeah. He's Lewis here, but he. No Lewis's whereabouts. Okay. Meg White La. All right, come on up. My name is Margaret Whitelaw. I live at 6300 East Cedar Avenue and I live very close to the proposed building site. Whatever else is. Said this evening, in the end, the decision of this council must be made by the rule of law. Zoning is a legal concept. The Church. The council may approve a map amendment only if the council also finds that the application meets one of the listed justifying criteria as well as the four general three general criteria of equal importance. The applicant. The developer on all these points bears the burden of proof, quote, at a minimum by the preponderance of the evidence. Under all these criteria and the facts. This application for zoning must be denied. It should be plainly stated what the legal. Standard is not. The legal standard is not that the developer could have built a five storey house in our neighborhood, so we should be happy that he is now coming down to a three storey building and reducing the number of units. So he is compromised and the neighborhood should just accept it. That is not. A legal standard. It is a statement of entitlement and presumed inevitability that one particular landowner in our neighborhood believes he deserves. He purchased he owns a single family owned parcel in our neighborhood. However, in doing so, he did not purchase all the legal rights in the neighborhood. Each one of us has rights, and we purchased our homes with the expectation that the zoning we counted. On and the character of our quiet. Neighborhood would not be upended. What are the facts about. Our neighborhood in this parcel of land? The facts in the form of the map and descriptions presented by the city are simply wrong. As blueprint, Denver accurately states, quote, easily identifiable borders help distinguish each neighborhood, unquote. Nothing could be truer of the crest more and hilltop neighborhoods, these neighborhoods and. On the west side of Monaco. To produce a map as the city did, that bundles this single family zone church on the West with development on the other side of the street and with the zone district to the south that the city has very recently drawn and inserted is highly inaccurate. Why has the church been zone single family in the first place? Obviously it is because all the housing across Cedar and for blocks and blocks contiguous to the church on the West are also single family. The large apartment complex, the Lex has been on the east side of Monaco since the late 1960s. Having the legs there all these years did not change the zoning of the church on the West Side, and it doesn't change it now. The church is part and parcel of our community park, single family neighborhood. The applicant is correct, though. The Chris Moore and Hilltop neighborhoods are an area of stability. The map affixed to Blueprint Denver clearly bears that out. The current zoning is consistent with the applicable plans, and the proposed suburban zoning is not. Blueprint Denver concludes wisely that growth in density should be directed to areas of change. Areas of stability are further divided between committed areas and areas of reinvestment. The Christopher Park neighborhood is most definitely not an area of reinvestment. Moreover, the church site is not an. Area at. All. It is. One. Parcel within a vibrant, desired housing area. A dissenting member from the Planning Board agreed with us on this point. One parcel does not an area make, and this parcel could be fruit fruitfully developed under its current zoning. The justification for rezoning given by the city was that the parcel was in, quote, a better state of repair. Five years ago, the correct legal justification standard is as follows The land is changing to such a degree that it is in the public interest to. Encourage. Redevelopment of the area to recognize the changed character of the area. There is no law that permits rezoning on the basis of deferred maintenance. The truth is, the developer continued to rent this, quote, poorly maintained church to its congregation up until one week ago. The city did not forbid the church as a place of public gathering due to safety concerns. This site functioned despite the fact that it needed sprucing up. Finally, nothing could be further from the facts than calling our vibrant, healthy neighborhoods areas in need of reinvestment. We strongly challenge both the applicant and the city and their assertions in Exhibit G that in order to facilitate the integration of Lowry, it is important to address the aging, urban, urban residential areas such as the Chris Moore and Hilltop neighborhoods. Exhibit G goes on to say that Hilltop and Chris Moore residents face concern about, quote, deteriorated and poorly maintained housing stock. Under no circumstances should the council endorse or approve assertions such as these or allow anyone to bootstrap these. Statements to bolster further. Incursions or claims into our neighborhood. They are, quite simply. False. Thank you. Thank you. You do not approve this, Tony. Thank you, Miss White La. Our next person is Michelle Breslin's. You have 6 minutes. Hello. My name is Michelle Burns. I live at 3229 Columbine. I'm personally in support of this rezoning. However, I am here tonight to share a statement from my friend Aileen Torres, who is a Lowry resident, and she is not able to make it this evening. She apologizes that she's not able to attend. But I do want to let you know of her support in this. These opinions are her own in and it's not in any professional capacity. And they're her personal opinions. She's a very strong supporter of the Lowry neighborhood, and she knows that, you know, a lot of these surrounding neighborhoods have been at the table with the Lowry planning process, as well as making. Excuse me, making their opinions and comments known for over 20 years in the same spirit as a surrounding neighborhood. She would like to offer her comments in support of this project. She knows you're familiar with the site and the huge eyesore that it is today. Like somebody just recently said, Mr. Stoddard had mentioned that the survey presented via the neighborhood based websites, did not provide an opportunity for support, let alone constructive comments regarding the potential pros of a buffer project along Monaco. The way the property sits today is an embarrassment for Chris Moore, for Lowry and for Denver and Schwartz. In the interest of time, she and I both appreciate your support and courageous consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Brian Blakeley. That evening, madam president, members of the city council who is Brian Blakeley live at 510 Grape Street in the. Hilltop neighborhood not far from the project. We'll keep it brief since it's late and a lot of the comments that have made in earlier kind of summarize quickly. I'm hearing the opposition, I think there's going to be detractors no matter where you go. There's always going to be someone who's not happy. You've got a project. That has been thoughtfully created and fits with with with the. Neighborhood, I think in a in a good way. You know, proposed changes are always, always controversial. But in the end, I think that the neighborhood is. One is is missing affordable. Product. It's missing homes for some of the, you know, older neighbor or older residents. And it's in this location. Long Monaco. Seems an ideal place to to put that kind of a project. Project and most of the increased traffic seems to me would be easily going along Monaco and not, you know, into the neighborhood where I think, you know, even if you did manage to stop the project, you're not going to stop the project or the increased density. So I encourage you all to look at the big picture and support the project is something that is needed in the city and needed in that area. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Laura Pitman. Hi. Thank you for saving the best for last. You know, I own the priest. I'm not the last. Oh, bummer. Okay. I own the preschool that's right across the street at 2 to 5 South Monaco Parkway. And we have 80 children enrolled and 80 sets of parents. In my issue is safety, and I think I hear a lot of talk about money and progress and things like that. But I'm not hearing a lot about the children that spend 3 to 12 hours a day on that corner and our community that spends time at the park. We had a scooter accident a couple of years ago right out in front of our property where somebody was killed because it's a terrible intersection at Cedar in Monaco. We also had a car that came through our fence and landed on our playground. Playground. We used to walk to the nursing home once a week on Fridays to visit the elderly, and we're not allowed to do that as much as we used to because of the traffic is so bad and we fear that our kids will be injured walking across the street. There was somebody that spoke earlier about they wanted their mom to live on the third floor to look over at the children. You know, that they we should trust her mother in the third floor of an apartment. And I don't trust anybody looking out of a window of an apartment building. It matters that a family was injured on the corner of Monaco and Alameda. It matters that a car flipped through our fence under our playground, and it matters that safety is an issue here. I respect the fact that this is about money and it's about progress. But is it worth for a child to be hurt or killed on that corner? Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Molly Eklund. Anybody know where Molly is? Okay. We'll move on. Our next speaker is Chris Crew. Okay. All right, let's keep going. Our next speaker is Joe Reese. Let's see if they're downstairs. Coming up after Mr. Reece is Marcus Faulkner. And Laura Pittman. I had you down twice. You've already. Okay. Thank you. All right, Mr. Faulkner. Good morning, council members. My name is Marcus Faulkner. I offer 70 to 90 East First Avenue. I also live in Hilltop, so I go by. And near and through this site on a daily basis. I just want to say I'm one of the last supporter. Here this evening, so I'll probably talk a little bit in summary about the comments that have been made. First of all, I just want to very quickly clear up a few things. We think not that Chris Moore is an area that it. Is a very stable. Neighborhood. It is not all an. Area of reinvestment. We are talking about this site. This developer has been remarkably collaborative and working with this, and that's evidenced by. Three changes that have been presented to you. And lastly. After an 8 to 1 vote of planning board to support this for full plan support, the developer said, I have not gone far enough and voluntarily entered into a contract with nine units that share the zone lot to. Further restrict their. Zoning. It's not appropriate to do in the zoning code. They voluntarily entered into a contract to reduce that. All of you know better than anyone in here the pressures of development. Councilwoman Sussman made an incredibly astute observation. It feels like ten years of development in the last year and a half. The difficulty of all this emotion on both sides is, unfortunately, the fear of change. Combining this with Lowry. We have to strip that all away. And we have to talk about zoning. We have to talk actually. What's in front of you tonight. And I just want to encourage you to take one last walk around this site. Immediately. Across the street. Across the street. So out of Chris Moore is a proposed conceptual five story GDP that's been approved. There's Chris Moore down, that is seven stories and then a nursing facility. And then since we spent a lot of time talking about walking. Walk with me one last time on. Chris Moore side along Monica. You start with three abandoned lots. Single family does not work on Monica. It does not work anymore. It works north of here, not on this site. From there, you go to eight condos that have. Turned into each other. And don't face Monica because it doesn't work. Then you get to a daycare that is ironically zoned some, you three, the. Very zoned district that is being requested tonight. This zone district. Already exists in the neighborhood. It's right across the street. Then you get to this site and we have heard all of. These things, all of this description of what this site should be. Actually, I have to say, I think the. Chris Moore neighborhood in character. Has been described remarkably accurately. It is primarily. Single family homes that then make a remarkable transition to Monica, a street that's an arterial that has a lot of traffic that is. Hard to cross, all of those things. So here's a great. Solution for sale product that embraces the for sale product. It embraces the park. With this project, you will see eight new single. Family homes. On the park, eight on Cedar. To allow for a new pedestrian crossing. You will see. Seven. For sale pedestrian units that you will. Walk by and enjoy and embrace. The street. Only from Monica. On a site that engages only Monaco. Is the 50 unit. Apartment building. You will work. Hard to see this from the park. That's because it. Is what everyone's described. It's Monica Boulevard. It needs to embrace it. And I'm sorry, the last thing that I observed tonight, if it's not single family, what is this site? There's SMU three and there's SMU two and a half. What's the problem with SMU? Two and a half or urban edge? Two and a half. I'm sorry. Yes, yeah. I went to SMU. So I'm saying that too often the difference between two. And a half and three is for sale or rental. The same reason single family doesn't work. It's hard to add. To park New Year. Thank you very much. Please support this project. Okay. See, our next speaker is Gordon Palmer. Mary Valdes. Are you? Very. Come on up. Oh, she. She. What did she say? Okay. Pass. Thank you. Paul. David. Elizabeth Lund. Randy Nakagawa. I think we are you, Elisabeth. Okay. Let's see. Is Paul David in the mix? Okay. You're up, Paul. Yep. And Elizabeth will follow you and Randi will follow Elizabeth. And while you're getting started, will Carlyle call up Kevin? DHALIWAL. All right. So good. Good morning. Thank you. Madame President and city council members. A lot has been said here, and I've changed my comments about 25 times this evening just because I don't want to be repetitious. But there were a few things that were said here that I think needed addressing, and I'll try and get to all of them within 3 minutes. My first point, though, was actually, with all due respect, towards the city council. And then one thing that we are here is to impress upon city council the wishes of the neighborhood and the citizens. This is really our only chance. By asking us to not support fellow speakers, by not applauding. I thought it was a rather strange request because it's really our only chance to express how we feel about it. I go to the symphony and I applause and it's civil. I go to lectures and I applause and it's civil. I think we can applause our fellow citizens here, and it can be still civil. So that's just a side comment. And I hope that doesn't turn the city council against me. But I just had to get that off my chest. Now, the next thing is that we had a couple of comments here, and I would start by going back quite earlier this evening. There was. A presentation. I didn't get the name of the gentleman, but he was with the Planning Commission and one of the comments he made is that the XML park itself provides a barrier to the neighborhood. Well, I happen to live at 210 South Local Street. It's the second street away from the proposed development. Less, less than a few hundred feet away. So I'm ground zero, but on the south side, not on the north side, there's absolutely no barriers between my house and between the park. So that was one comment that I thought was rather strange, that there is a barrier created between the park and my home. The other comment that was made by the Planning Commissioner Gentleman, was that this kind of proposed apartment building will fit in with this type of structures that are on that street. And several people have noted that there is a building of seven stories of Chris Moore Downs, but it is not on Monocle. There is actually a row of townhomes or several rows of townhomes that separate that building. So it's not actually right on the street. So and also the comments were made that it's completely on the other side of the neighborhood. So I thought that was worth mentioning as well. Moving right along, I think that one of the things that people got to realize here and I'm going to speak on a free hand here is the t shirts are orange. They're not red. Nobody here has. Well, there's a few people who want to maintain things, the status quo. But a lot of people in this neighborhood are quite progressive and are really willing to work towards a solution. And these shirts do not say, and I just got mine tonight. But they do not say. Mr. David, your time is lapsed. Oh, sorry. You had 3 minutes. All right. Thank you. All right, Elizabeth. Thank you, counsel. My name is Elisabeth Lund. Please bear in mind that I am not personally at fault for. Speaking to you at 1230. You do have 6 minutes. I do have 6 minutes. I won't take it. But I live at Lowry. I live at 203 South Pontiac Street. I am very distressed about Boulevard one, but that's a different issue. I belong to the Crest Moore Community Association, so I use the park and the tennis and swim club a lot, and I'm very concerned about the traffic. But tonight I am here on behalf of Lund. Lund stands for Lowry United Neighborhoods. So it's kind of an umbrella registered neighborhood association. And on January 30 of this year, Lund voted at its annual. Meeting to. Submit a formal opposition to this rezoning application to the planning board, and then did so on January 21st of this year before the planning board. So the Lowry United. Neighborhoods are stand with Chris Moore. The City Council can act to protect crests, more residences and all. These wonderful people here tonight. With proper zoning, it is unreasonable to expect Kress more residents to have to go to court to enforce covenants. If covenants, which are restrictive in nature, are placed in deeds, and there's $25,000 in escrow. For that purpose. Why go that way? Why make citizens have to go to court to enforce their rights? Why can't this city council make the right zoning decision now so that nobody has to go to court? And the people here from Chris Moore are wonderful people. The last thing they want to do. Is be here at 1230 in the morning before a city council who they think will just blow them out of the water. They don't want to be here, but they feel. They need to be here because their voices are not being listened to. This developer with this present rezoning application is seeking to capitalize on what Chris Moore residents have built. Chris Moore Residents have lived in Chris Moore for decades and they have paid property taxes for decades and they have supported this city for decades and they have . For decades made Chris Moore the very special place that it is. And they are very nice people and they are here to protect their property. Please do not approve this rezoning application. Just say no. Look at. The Legos. And for the record, this city council is placed on notice that it does know of the already dangerous. Streets which surround this proposed rezoning application. And also finally, I would ask that you please consider rescheduling. The Boulevard One rezoning application, which is currently scheduled for the last. Monday of this month, because otherwise we will all be here past midnight again. If you could please reschedule that, it would be appreciated. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Lind. Our next speaker is Randy Naka. Nakagawa. Nakagawa? Yes. Thank you. Madam President. Council members. My name is Randy Nakagawa. I reside at 240 South Locust, about a half a block from the property under discussion. Living in Chris Moore for 24 years, but in Denver for almost 55 years, you've heard and may hear some more. Many rational and appropriate reasons why the proposal on change to an SMU three should not be approved. So what's a couple more at this time? I'll, first of all, address a small area of plans. Those of you were on the Neighborhood Neighborhoods Committee heard Councilwoman Sussman address this. As you know, small area planning is another key concept of Blueprint Denver and Plan 2000 outlines which neighborhoods should get small area plans first when we increase more asked about get in our own small area plan, we were told that we were not eligible. Councilwoman Sussman asked planning officials about this and was told We are not eligible because there's no evidence of blight, poverty. No plans for a transit station and no significant infill in our neighborhood. We don't have these change characteristics because Chris Moore has been a stable neighborhood for many decades. Planning officials later told Councilwoman Sussman that Chris Moore might someday be eligible for a small area plan, but that would be at the bottom of the list because we just don't meet the criteria. So simply the Chris Moore neighborhood does not meet the criteria for a small area plan. Then we are without a doubt established as a stable neighborhood where steeply up zoning, a small parcel of the neighborhood of single family homes to an SMU three. That only does not make sense, but it violates the basic objectives of small area planning and plan. 2000 and Blueprint Denver. You've heard a number of very good arguments in opposition to the proposed only change, and so I don't have any more arguments, but as opposed to I'll quantify some of those for you briefly, the crystal ball park neighborhood, as you know now is comprised of three neighborhood associations consisting of 786 homes. And in all our surveys, of the 786 homes in the entire Chris Moore area, 648 or 82% are opposed to the zoning change. Not to development, but to the zoning change of the 200 homes in the neighborhood organization that includes a church property, 184 or 92% are opposed to the zoning change of the residents of Chris Moore within 200 feet of the property. 22 signed a city petition to reject the rezoning of the property and that includes six of the nine owners of the townhomes that are joining the property. Not all of those town home owners signed a deed or an agreement with the developer, by the way. So that was erroneous before. One of the persons, I suppose, or groups did not sign happens to own the Lex outside investment group across across Monica Parkway. And by the way, Monaco Parkway, the LEX there are townhomes on Monaco. The apartment buildings are set back at least 90 yards and more to the interior of the Lex complex. So that needs to be corrected. Also, you heard about the largest neighborhood association, Chris Moore filings to and their vote, 73 households, two one in opposition. And in our separate online survey using SurveyMonkey, we yielded 1179 responses from not only Chris Moore but from Hilltop Lowry and former Chris Moore residents living as far away as Stapleton, downtown Denver and West Aurora. And in response to the question, Do you support the rezoning of the 195 South Monica property? 94% or 1008 respondents answered no and to correct a previous allegation that there was no way to make comments. If you voted yes. You actually could. Leave comments because I had to compile those comments sifting through a thousand 1107 nine excuse me surveys. So even with this level of opposition from Chris Moore, Park residents, the metropolitan Toms owner and paid representatives, they continue to press on. They continue to defy Chris Moore residents who are hardworking folks in all areas of commerce and. Fashion's summer single summer families with children range from infants to college age. Some are empty nesters and others are elderly. We are not gated community NIMBYs because if we were. We'd all be at home in bed by now. Actually, we'd be at home. We wouldn't have to worry about density, we'd have to about traffic, would have to worry about public safety. But because we're just public roads running through our neighborhoods, there are concerns. So we want the 195 South Monaco site developed, just not how Metropolitan Homes proposes to develop it. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison says. Government has been instituted because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint. In our situation, the desires of one man should not be able to negatively impact the lives of more than 700 families who are Cress Moore Park residents. So we appeal to you or council members to stop the proposed zoning change so we can actually work for appropriate development design from current neighborhood density out, not from a number of units pulled from the sky and put down upon us. We would like to see responsible development that starts with the neighborhood and complements it, not development that is imposed on it. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker is Kevin Galois. He left. Okay. He left. My goodness. Okay. That concludes our speakers questions from members of council. Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Madam President. I have several. One. The first one is for CPD staff. Oh. Now he. He's here. Just. At least. No. No. Good morning. David Gaspar, CPD. Thank you. There was a reference to signatures for a protest. Why did. Why did the signatures not meet the legal protest requirements? The signatures was not the issue. It was the total amount of the square footage that was required to meet the protest petition was not met. So there was, I believe, if I remember right, at pricing 95,000 square feet required and the protest petition reached 82,000. Thank you. And for the developer, a couple of questions. Concerning the other proposals that have been given to you by the neighborhood, whether it's been in Lego form or other kinds of redevelopment, what is your response to whether those are workable plans? Thank you for the question. It's a great question. We got to spend a little bit of time with a few of the members of the community evaluating those plans. And there were a couple of the concepts, in particular the one that received the highest votes for or the most favorable from the neighborhood. And there were certain issues with that plan that conflicted with the current zoning code. For instance, the single family homes that were along Monica had their garages fronting Monica and the buildings need to actually front Monica. Then those fronts of those single family homes were actually facing the ADU units that they reference and the other five single family homes fronting Locust. So there were several issues with that. In addition to that, some of the other plans that they had proposed had access points off of cedar where access points off of locust. And that was one of the concerns from the neighborhood that we worked very hard to address. So I hope that answers some of your questions. Could you also just describe for me a bit more what you mean by age targeted? I mean, I'm thinking that I should have a right to be curious. So I want to know what benefit would it have for a person like me? Yes, absolutely. So. Age targeted is not assisted living. It is what we call active adult living. And we're coming to find is that people are starting to live differently than they used to. People like to move on from the responsibilities of ownership and deal in a low maintenance environment. They want to surround themselves with people of a similar demographic, similar interests. And so we design a product that we think attracts that particular demographic, and it's something that we've had a lot of success with at our previous developments. Currently at the Bellagio, we see people who are attracted based on the amenity package that we offered. So, you know, this may draw some criticism, but, you know, we don't offer a pool, we don't have the rooftop decks, we don't have certain amenities that would attract more younger, professional type of a demographic. It's something that is specifically designed with that age targeted demographic in mind. Thank you. Good. Councilman Ortega. I have a couple of questions as well. Let me start with. What's the status of the property right now? Is the church an operating church? Is the building completely vacant? Help me understand what the status is of the use of the building right now. Sure. Absolutely. So we closed on the site. We executed a short term lease with the existing congregation so that they could remain in the site and allow them enough time to find another location to relocate their congregation to. As of June 1st, they vacated the property. So as of last week, they have vacated they have found a new location temporarily, while they still seek to find a more permanent location. So the property is currently vacant. It is not being used. Okay. Part of the reason I asked is because someone had referred to. It's something about 18 years in in looking at different uses for this site. And so that that sort of threw me off. I wasn't clear about whether or not that property was occupied. I'd like to ask someone from the neighborhood that represents one of the associations. How long ago the last proposal was that you all saw on this particular property? Not by this particular developer. Someone made reference to that as well. And I just wanted to just get an understanding of how long ago that was. I just want to make sure I heard you right. You wanted to know about the previous developer's proposal? I want to know, when was the last proposal on this property? How long ago was that? About eight years ago. It was 2007 that Albert Ising was the group and it's actually the same architect. So they know well about what that was and it ended up being a 56 unit condo proposal and they withdrew before it ever came to council. And then after that, we, the Mount Juliet Church has been thriving there for many, many years. If we wanted to keep them there, our neighborhoods actually worked with them to try to help them get financing. We were hoping they could maybe build a newer building on the other side and do townhomes, financing it through townhomes. Okay. That answered my question. Thank you. And Mr. Tessler had talked about traffic. And I'm just curious, has a traffic study been done based specifically on the proposal that's on the table right now? And and what is that traffic study basically say? Yeah. So a traffic study has been completed on our proposal and ultimately what they have derived is the total trip counts generated per day is 329. And to break that down further so that I could at least understand it better, they told us what the trip generations would be during the peak hour in the PM peak hour and during the AM peak hour. That's one car every 2 minutes and 43 seconds entering or exiting our site and during the PM peak hour, that's one car entering or exiting our site every 2 minutes and 13 seconds. And to give that a little bit more perspective, there is currently approximately 30,000 trip counts on Monaco per day. So we are accounting for slightly over 1% of the total traffic generated on Monaco. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to ask David Foster to come forward. I want to address the agreement and specifically the covenant on the land. And I want to refer to page two, Section four, regarding the provision that basically says if. The city does not approve. So, first of all, let me ask, has this been signed by anybody from the neighborhood? Yes. Well, I think. You from there are a couple of pages that are blank. Yes, I did see signatures, but I don't know who those people are. Yes. So I needed that clarification. So in in this section, it says if the city does not approve the zoning or if the development. If it's if the property is abandoned. Help me understand what abandoned means in this particular case. So to begin, this is only a. Covenant that runs with the land, because the. First sentence there is really important that was skipped over by the woman who spoke earlier. So this agreement and these restrictions. Shall only be. Binding if and when. The rezoning of the property to Smith three zone district is approved by the city. So if it doesn't happen. Then this is no out. That second sentence is really as it. Relates to the fact that people have already signed this agreement in anticipation. Of a. Potential rezoning. And if it doesn't take place and at that point we. Would abandon the. Rezoning process because we would have been denied. We just. Wanted to put everybody on notice who was signing this, that we're not living. By these by this land. Use covenant because the property. Was not zoned. Right. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. At this time, I will yield to my colleagues. I may have some additional questions, but that's it for right now. Thank you. Councilman Ortega. Councilman. Commish. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. My first question was for the developer. Miss McCrimmon mentioned that the there were only 58 underground parking spots for 50 apartment units. I have a very different number in one of the documents associated with the project, so I wanted to understand whether that was an accurate statement. Yes. Thank you for asking that. That is not accurate. So as I had described earlier and if you'll reference in your site plan, we have a total of 152 parking spaces for the entire site. For the townhomes, there are two attached garages for every townhome, for the apartment building or the age targeted building, it is 58 underground parking spaces. That was correct. However, she neglected to mention the additional 44 surface parking spaces that serve the site. Okay. And is there anywhere where the parking itself is since these are above the code minimums, is there anywhere that this is documented, the parking commitment or it's just kind of is where does this commitment lie? The commitment was not documented in our land use covenant, but this is something that we are committed to building, just as we have committed to everything else that is in the land use covenant. Okay. Got it. Thanks. My next question was regarding the commitment to limit access to Monaco. I looked in the staff report and this one might be for planning staff report. Has the zoning going to all the departments? And I did look and see and it says fire. No comment. But the covenants restricting the access. I don't know that fire saw that because that's not in the zoning. So I guess I wanted to ask planning whether or not fire has specifically seen the access limitations and indicated that it would be okay. I don't know if there's any other code requirements such as public works, that might also need to weigh in on that. But I just want to make sure I want to understand whether that self-imposed limitation would would fly with the city. Sure. Well, there's always the distinction between planning services, review for zoning and development services on site plan. So from the planning services standpoint and the review of those other agencies towards this MAP amendment, that requires no comment because it wasn't tied to a specific development. I believe the applicant has gone through some site plan review and may have received comments there, but I'm not privy to that. Information. With the applicant. Like to speak to that and. Yeah. Thank you. So we have had I honestly lost count four or five pre-summit meetings with development services and all the referral agencies. And they have seen the site plan and they have approved of what we have here. So fire has reviewed this. Joe floors with fire and they have approved of this. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your forbearance, Madam President. I think I have one more question, depending on how that one goes, but planning again. There's been a lot of commentary about the context for this site being limited to the crest, more a statistical neighborhood. And so I guess I wanted to ask in in our. Law or rules. Is there anything that limits the context to the statistical neighborhood versus, for example, some portions of the statistical neighborhood are four or five times further away than areas in the neighboring statistical neighborhood that just happened to be across the street. So is there anything in the rules that limits the context to the statistical neighborhood, or is there has there been a practice? I feel like in other zoning, what we see is the vicinity. And so I just wanted to clarify whether. Where we were. At with that. To my knowledge, we are not limited to looking at statistical neighborhoods, but the vicinity of the area within the context of what is the appropriate neighborhood context to choose. Okay. Thank you. I'll go ahead and yield. Madam President. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Madam President. I will try to get all my questions in. And is John Sandwich, is he still there? Okay, great. Sabbath sandwich. Sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to call you John. I'm sorry for butchering your last name. You you talked a lot about stability in the neighborhood, which which was really good. And I just wanted to ask you a question around. And also, you talked about the covenants, neighborhood covenants. You know, one of the things we've noticed in the press, more neighborhoods is a lot of scrapes. And I'm just wondering, how does the neighborhood deal with the scrapes and are there covenants? Because we don't have any zoning requirements around that. Are there are there covenants against certain scrapes? The covenants. The covenants require approval of a budget by our Architecture Review Committee, and then there's an appellate process to the full board, and there are design guidelines that were adopted by the neighborhood a number of years ago. So when a if somebody wants to scrape, they have to come in with the plans. And the kinds of things we look at are the preservation of the front setback, the 30 foot front setback. We don't have fences as Hilltop does. There's no nothing in front of the houses. The we look at the side setbacks. We look at the material used. Those kinds of things. I don't know if that answers your question because I'm pretty tired. But none of that does answer my question. Has there not been any kind of community back? You know, in some of our communities around Denver, scrapes are a big issue. And so just wanted to know, does your guidelines set it such? So there is not that much of a community backlash. There's not a community backlash against the scrapes. It depends. But the the how do I put it? The the important thing to the community is that the proposed building where that scrape has occurred fall within or be designed within the guidelines of the covenants. Okay. Thank you, Chris Davis. So, yeah. Hey, Chris, you talked a lot about, you know, this kind of apartment building being an issue on Monica. And just help me understand this. There are, I believe, nine condos on locus. The townhomes. Oh, townhomes. I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. On Locust. And then the Lux Apartments. You know, as as as we're starting to look at this site plan. I know there was you talked about, you know, the this development being near the park. You talked about, you know, a number you know, a number of developments being right there on on. Monica, I just wanted to hear you talk a little bit about there's already some of that development there and how this particular development you think would adversely impact what's already there. Well, I think that the context Monaco Parkway primarily is a historic parkway, and it's primarily single family residential. I think there is a distinction between the east side of Monaco Parkway and the west side of Monaco Parkway, and there isn't a development of this scale on the west side of Monaco Parkway. It's literally attached to Crest Moorpark, which is a big component of, you know, its location as well. And the blue was called the Luxe Apartments. How how many how many units do they have there? You know, I couldn't answer that. Okay. Does it? I don't know. 725. Okay, great. Thank you. Sure. I appreciate it. Just a quick question for gas first. You know, the the neighbors are bringing up something that is relevant. And I feel like we have the conversation every single time in on a review and it's it's traffic. But given our scope tonight, we're looking at zoning. And have there been conversations with zoning to tie kind of traffic studies to approve zoning? And I know that we have a very strict guideline. But have you all had that macro conversation? I mean, the. Conversation with transportation and land use is a very important one. And I mean, blueprint Denver is the document that helps guide us there. And that that document does focus on the not just the designation material or a a local street, but the character. So that's where the mixed use for Main Street or residential designations. But that's as far as it goes from a guidance from our adopted plans. And it's important to note that when you're looking at zoning, it's it's the zone district that you're adopting, not the project. So that trail is always tackled at the site plan review level where they are evaluating and having things like traffic studies done. But but in. In our review, you talk about the public safety and welfare of a community. And so. Does that include any of kind of traffic impacts and things like that? I mean, we talk about this all the time. Well, I mean, obviously, I think furthering public health, health, safety, welfare is a criteria that we evaluate and the opportunity for redevelopment. The site does give some to have better sidewalks, etc.. But from a traffic standpoint, again, if it's we're not approving a specific development, it's very hard to nail down what those impacts are, just zoning. Okay. Thank you. And just last question for the developer. I don't know if you want to. Can you just kind of say for the record what the original plan was and what you all decided, what the current plan is for the development? Sure. So we we originally started with a SMU five zone district with over waiver four stories, and that was a 120 unit building in the shape of an L. It preserved a lot of the open space connectivity to the park. We then changed our application to an SMU three, but we kept the density at 120 units. We added a wing to the building, then we further and where we are today is 75 units. It's 25 for sale townhomes along cedar and locust and 50 age targeted rentals fronting Monica. Thank you. And if. Can you equate what that concession would be in dollars. I'll try. So when you look at a land. Development and you're trying to assess a monetary value, you typically will do it based on a per unit basis. And so when you look at comps, what Untitled Zoned Land sells for for multifamily, it's typically 35 to $40000 a door. So if you were to take that number, $40,000 a door and multiply that by 120 units, if anybody has a calculator, I, I think 4.8 million pretty close. Is that number. Okay. So if you were to look at it then in just a gross number and reducing the value or reducing the number of units from 120 to 75, if you take 75 units times that same, $40,000 per door, that number is. Three $3 million. So so that's a $1.8 million difference. And and there there are many other factors that go into play. If you're just looking at on an A gross number, that's one way. But with horizontal development, obviously, if you're spreading those same costs, the demolition of the building, the environmental abatement, those spread across a fewer number of units obviously impacts that significantly as well. So is that. A that's enough? Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm done. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, Councilwoman Robb. Thank you. Madam President, pro tem. Just a couple questions I thought I heard in some. Of the later testimony. Tonight. We've gone back and forth with whether we should have covenants to cut the number of units down or whether we should just rely on straight zoning. I'm fairly confident that covenants are effective, but I heard that this project, I think this is what I heard, that this project could be built under a townhome 2.5 and I checked the zoning code. That's, that's an option under both suburban and and edge urban edge zoning. Could this project with the multifamily building be built under either of those zoning? Maybe. Who wants to answer? I'm seeing people nod. You know, obviously, the the number there, it indicates the height. So with the SMU three, that allows that three storey apartment building to be built. So the 2.5 would be a it's actually two stories with some. I'd have to look at the exact details, but allow some three story elements to occur. But you couldn't really even do a multifamily building under a row home or townhome. So. Okay. Then my other question was, I want to understand why there's a need to vacate right away along Monica. I think that's a question for the developer. I heard we were going to have an eight foot sidewalk. Yes, ma'am. So when we were working with development services and planning stuff on our initial proposal, it was brought to our attention that the right of way along along this section of our property actually extends further into our property than it does anywhere else along Monaco to the north or to the south. And in our research, what we were able to conclude was that the right away had been vacated after Monaco had been expanded on the north, to the north of our site and to the south of our site. And for whatever reason, the right of way just wasn't vacated along our portion of the site. So what we were actually requesting was to align the right of way with the same line of right of way along the adjacent parcels of both to the north and the south of Monaco. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. I think there may be a lot of reasons for trying to figure out why the right away hadn't been vacated in just that section. So we we heard it and I was checking that on my iPad that Monaco is not a historic parkway this far south, but is there still a parkway set back in this section of parkway? And what is that parkway set back? Yes, ma'am. So the parkway setback that we have proposed runs between 44 and 48 feet. And so the parkway set back by code is only 25 feet. So we are actually going beyond that. Okay. I think I understand where you're going to put a bigger set back in than required by code. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And how does a right away vacation affect that? Does that give you more feet for that set back? It does a similar feat for the step back. Yes, we we are honoring the 25 foot setback for the distance between the parkway and the beginning of our surface parking fronting Monaco. So the surface parking fronting Monaco there as we propose it here is not within the parkway setback. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Kill some of it. Thank you, Madam Chair. The in in following all the. The arguments made tonight. Some were more persuasive than others, but I followed them all. The only argument that I couldn't follow, and I kind of want to follow up and see if I can understand it. Mr. Singer made this argument. I think Mr. Singer is still here. There you are. And Ms.. White also made this argument. I don't know if she's still here. So you both referred to the. Orthodox Jewish community that's here and that on the Sabbath, they obviously can't drive to temple. They have to walk to the temple. And and they're. Walking to temple through this neighborhood that by covenant has no sidewalks. And that was a source of anxiety. But looking at the diagrams of the project. This project appears to be the only thing that will have sidewalks. In the neighborhood, you will actually be a sidewalk for the first time from Monaco heading towards the west and along Monaco. So how is this project making that situation worse? I think the issue wasn't following. I think the issue was one which apparently is not available for consideration by the council, which is the issue of traffic and the increased amount of traffic that will occur in the neighborhood and people coming down cedar. And then also using the side streets. It wasn't necessarily that this particular development would have an extra piece of sidewalk on Monaco. We were talking about more the entire area surrounding the development itself, not just some new sidewalk that might be built where the church currently exists or on the on the Monaco side. But it was more of the increase in density of people contributing to the number of cars impacting our neighborhood. Listening to the comments of the council tonight, of course, that's not something that factors into the zoning. It was just something that we were more concerned about from a health and safety consideration. Got it. So. So the change in the built. Environment would have to be viewed as a positive because there's going to be a sidewalk there where there isn't one now. But the increase in the number of human. Beings living there and the. Associated traffic, that's what you were referring to. Not not the not the. The project itself, the people who are living there. That's the problem. First of all, I think there's confusion. We do have sidewalks. It's failing to that does not have sidewalks. So there there are sidewalks. All. The way from, uh, Monaco to Holly. That was I was looking at the pictures y'all were showing and they showed miserable, attached sidewalks of, like, you know, three feet wide or something. It looked pretty pathetic to me, but yes. Except for, you know, the were the proposed sidewalks. There's already it's the sidewalk there. I mean, I don't think that that's. He's having to slip through his large file. Yeah. Like and then there's a beautiful sidewalk. They put that curved in it and you walk through the park. So there is a sidewalk. Behind. That picture. I see. May I clarify? Sure. Of. Sorry. This is our now on. Let's see. That's not the picture of the folks walking into this picture. The city recently. Probably within the last ten years. Added a very wide sidewalk on the south side of Christmas Park in order to accommodate the safety of the Jewish community. There you go. That's it right there. So there's a great sidewalk on that south side and then excuse me on. Yeah, that's outside of the park. On the other side of the street is a more traditional small sidewalk. Our R.A. has sidewalks across more filings, too, which is just to the north. Does not. So that's the confusion. Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Brown. Well, thank you, Madam President, who's on the rendering committee over there. Would you hold this one up, please, that you showed about three days ago? Feels like with the traffic. I mean, on on Monica, with the town, with the apartments in the background. And I would like to know, could you come to the microphone to ask about this? No, it was one it was one bites that dominated the whole. Board, the. Colorado. Boulevard. The Colorado the. Sunrise. Oh, it was it was no, it was a rendering for what you said, how close the development would be to Monica. And you asked would anybody like that and it showed cars. Yes. That's that's a it's a project on. That's it right. There. No, no. In your right. Hand. No, you just let go of it. The one that's on Colorado Boulevard. It's a project on Colorado Boulevard. There you go. Oh, so that's Colorado. That's not the. Okay. Example. Okay. Yeah, I know that project. Okay, I get it. Is hanging around my. Is Rick Stoddard still here? They haven't. Okay. Michael, let me ask you the question that I don't that I don't want to ask, but I will. What happens if this fails tonight? And what are the plans? We honestly hadn't considered that. And that's just because we are focusing all of our efforts on working with the neighborhood on a proposal that we think is the best, highest and best use for this site. So ultimately, you know, our answer would be we would have to go back as a team and and reevaluate, start the process over. Sit down with city and planning, city and county of Denver's planning staff. Go through the process again as to what zoning they would recommend for the site, continue the neighborhood outreach, and ultimately go from there. You cannot bring this back again, as is for another year. Correct? No. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Brown, Councilman Ortega. I wanted to ask a completely different question. And, Mr. Gaspar, if you wouldn't mind coming to the microphone, help me understand when it is. That. CPD requires a site plan and a traffic study and that level of detail. I sat on a council that used to see that level of detail on primarily most zoning applications. This one is a little different from all of those that we've been seeing since I've been back on the council. Many of them require a general development plan. So help me understand when CPD is requiring a site plan with some of the details that we're seeing here tonight versus, you know, when we're seeing a general development plan, is it based on the size of the site? Is it help? Sure. This is those have a review processes would occur in the site plan review, which is as a project manager or project coordinator in development services who coordinates a an internal staff meeting with the applicant present to review all of those issues. So that would be fire right of way access, stormwater, etc. So they'd be going through that process. On the development services side of CPD. What is said generally before or after the application. But an applicant can, you know, start that process at their own risk that if the zoning that they're seeking for their development does not, you know, come come forward, that they would be at a loss for for all work put into that. And I guess part of the reason why I'm raising this point is because I think oftentimes neighborhoods are expecting us to look at that level of detail. And and I appreciate what has been shared with us here tonight in terms of the level of information that we've received on the property, on the project. But many other neighborhoods don't get a chance to see this level of detail, and that gets worked out through planning office staff with the developer. And I don't know how much input once the zoning happens that neighborhoods actually get to have in that part of the process after the zoning has been done. So can you clarify that point? Yeah, that's an internal, you know, site plan review process that is administratively, you know, conducted. So it wouldn't have that public review process for those type of things. And there are certain instances a general development plan does have a public meeting. So if it would constitute that larger scale plan process, you would have public meetings, but typically on a site by site basis that is administratively approved. And generally, how large does a site have to be to have a GDP versus just. There's no set size for GDP. It's a case by case basis. Okay. Thank you. I just needed that clarification because we were not seeing the kind of detail in other applications that have come before this body since I've been on the council. Thank you. Any other questions from members of council? The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilman Sussman. Thank you, Madam President. She comes. Well, I guess I'll get started anyway. Thank you all for being here and for being here for so long. I just read that. And maybe it's not just because it's my district, but you also kept my interest for the last time. Both sides of it. To my fellow council people, this isn't a big project. It's not going to mean much to the overall picture for Denver. It's only a few acres. It's not an affordable project. It doesn't have some of that issues that we have for a bigger project. But you can see what it means to. My constituents in my neighborhood is what this little acreage here on the end of this park means, even though it's not very. Big and it doesn't mean. A whole lot to the city. I'm going to come back to this, but I think you heard that it also points and I and Councilman Brooks brought this out. It also points to the though the worry and the primary concern people have about traffic. I had the opportunity to speak to one my very thoughtful constituents. I said, Would you be opposed to this if it only meant more people and it didn't mean more cars? And this constituent said, Gosh, I never thought about that. What if it were just more people but who didn't have cars? And of course. That's. Not the reality of the situation, but it is what the what the issue is. And I think it helps perhaps my counsel people understand. What has happened in District five. Most of the development that has occurred in the. Last 20 years to. 515, let's say ten or 15 years have happened at Lowry and Stapleton and out by the airport. All of it in the Northeast. And so the amount of traffic that has come down, Quebec and of course, Quebec never even went through when the pace was there. And the amount of traffic that's come down Colorado Boulevard and the amount of traffic that has come down Monaco has been enormous. And you wonder, like, where did all. These people come from? And it's true. I did say that, you know, we've had a long time that we haven't had development since Stapleton and Lowry, but suddenly we've had Cherry Creek and suddenly Ninth and Colorado Boulevard is coming on and suddenly Berkeley Annex is coming on. And so it feels. And then Cherry Creek, I said, Cherry Creek. It feels like something that we thought might be five or ten years away have happened in about a year and a half. So I think what you're hearing about this is that. We don't we don't want this to happen right here because of the way we feel about our neighborhood, our concern about traffic. But it's more than that. You can look at a piece of paper and you can see, oh, well, we're going to build or, you know, Buckley Annex is perhaps coming online. And and it's got it's an area of change. And you've got you've got the apartment house, the Lex partner's house across the street, and you've got the daycare center here. And if you look at it out a piece of paper, it looks like, oh, looks like you could have an s-max or a three storey building here. But if you go out there to cross more, you'll see that the feeling of Christmas goes all the way to Monaco. And Monaco is a big moat. It's what I usually call it with very fast alligators. And the the thing that is on the other side of Monaco, the cross, more people don't feel like it is they are neighborhood. And I know people can point to the fact that we have big high rise projects on parks like the pinnacle at City Park or the ones that we have at Wash Park. But all of those are across the street in the in this particular project. It will look like that project is in the park. It will not look like it is across the street in the way in which the other places do so. So it is a feeling about one's neighborhood and how one feels about it and what the context is. But but you have to kind of be there to understand it. And somebody mentioned tonight and I have to we're never going to build another crest more in Denver, a neighborhood like this close in or another hilltop or the beautiful neighborhoods on the west side, because we just don't have the land mass and the land and land is very expensive. And actually, we know also that these the these kinds of single family detached homes on large lots aren't very ecological, and they don't do very much for our ability to create transit. And it just never going to happen again. So in in a way. And and, of course, much of our city is made up of these kinds of neighborhoods. And so in a way, we have to think about the preservation of them because we aren't going to make anymore. And I think that that is the feeling that people have about this particular project, even though it's a very small project. It. It it's very it's very closely held. In their hearts and in their imaginations of their. Of their. Their environment. And the last point I'd like to make, and I think this is really important and I think you heard this also a little bit from the developer. I believe there is still a compromise waiting to happen. They aren't saying no development. They're just saying not this one. And I do believe there is a compromise waiting to happen. And for these reasons, I will be voting against this zoning, and I urge my fellow council people to do the same. Thank you. Um, our next speaker, Councilman Fox, followed by Councilman Nevitt. Thank you, Madam President. You know, council has been criticized in the past for courtesy zoning. And the definition of courtesy zoning, as I understand, is when you just simply defer to the council person in the area and everybody automatically goes that way. Tonight, I want to give some reasons why. I hope, Councilwoman Sussman, you don't see this as discourteous zoning, but I cannot go and come to the same conclusion that you have. And I want to explain why. First of all, I really do appreciate the fact that the developer has downsized this to the third iteration. I mean, to me, I would have had more difficulty had they come in with their original proposal than I very well might have been with you. But I think at this point it actually has been sized for the space. I need to tell you the story of a neighborhood. We have the tale of two cities. Well, here we're going to have the tale of two neighborhoods. I look out and I see the people who are sitting here from Chris Moore. And it reminds me of a neighborhood in my district, in fact, very similar, quite quite similar in age, I would say my neighborhood may be slightly more ethnic, ethnically diverse. But other than that. Profession's much the same. Arbiter You've heard the term Pinehurst. I one of my areas is Pinehurst Estates and the residence. If I were to bring them right in here sitting next to you, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference except for the orange. And Pinehurst Estates is a single family area, primarily ranch. And it has the same kind of configuration that is being discussed tonight. You have the single family homes, a large area of single family homes. And then because Sheridan is bordered by Sheridan and Quincy to the south, so you have two arterials. You have multifamily density. Next. There is not a barrier. There's not a park. It is like some of the people said, well, gee, it comes right up to my house. Comes right up to their house. And then there is another large spot. And Mike Shanahan, you'll like this one. It is a sunrise assisted living right on the corner. And folks, it works. There are not complaints that come out of there. This works for the community. And Sunrise Island has been an asset in our area because we have people who have their parents who are getting older and they are already to the assisted living stage, or they have actually had the wife still living in one of the Pinehurst areas. And then they go into that assisted living. So. It's hard for me to identify with the fears that you are expressing, because I have that in my area and I know that it works for the citizens. Frankly, I like your plan even better with the age targeted home than the sunrise. But either way, I. I don't believe the fears are going to come about and my. My residents. Are happy with their neighborhood. It is still a neighborhood. So from that reason, I just can't get to the point that I can say no to what I consider is a reasonable proposal. And so I will be supporting it tonight. Thank you. Councilman fights Councilman Nevitt. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I want to. When things like this happen, I want to thank everybody for being so engaged in participating and staying here. I mean, not not everybody that is still here, but many of you still are. And I know how hard those benches are. So it's a testament to how much you care and. Your eagerness to participate in this. So thank you for that. And I totally understand where the opponents of this project and this rezoning are coming from. Everybody loves their neighborhood, and when you love your neighborhood, you don't want it to change or. You only want it to change in the direction of the things that you already know and you like about your neighborhood. But this is precisely. The the. Kernel of the problem that we face as a city. And indeed, this is the kernel of the problem that we have faced in America. With urban development. Since the availability of the mass availability of the automobile. We have an image of the good life. A quiet street of single family homes, a large yard for kids to play in space in the back for a garden. And this is an entirely. Reasonable image of the good life for anyone to have. It's reasonable for anyone to want to seek out. And frankly, as you have tonight, it's reasonable for anyone to want to protect and. Defend once they find it. Unfortunately, we have a problem of scale. A problem of scale at the level of the individual. The pursuit of that image, of the good life is wholesome and positive. Unfortunately. When that image of the good life is multiplied across a large enough population. The result is far from positive. The result is sprawl. And we know what this looks like. It looks like Los Angeles. It looks like. Phenix. It looks like Northern Virginia. Nobody here wants to be those places. But nobody wants to compromise their. Image of the good life either. As was famously said by, I think it was the mayor of Salt Lake City. Our citizens. The only thing our citizens. Hate more than sprawl is. Density. That obviously is. Cognitive dissonance. And that kind of cognitive dissonance is not a formula for success. And we need to resolve that cognitive dissonance or we will fail as a city and we face particular pressure here in Denver with respect to that cognitive dissonance, because people. Are moving here in. Droves. People are moving here in droves. We can complain, we can lament. But since most of us are. Immigrants ourselves and we all know damn well why we came here, because it's such a great place and. Few of us have any interest in leaving it. We can hardly blame them. We are going to add in the next 20 years. You have a kid today, your kids. We going off in college. There will be a million more people here. A million more people. The population of the city and county of Denver is 650,000. We're going to add a million people in the next 20 years. Where are they going to live? I think we face one of three paths. The first is to maintain our cognitive dissonance. We hate sprawl, but we hate density more. And we're not going to sacrifice our image of the good life. We will keep Denver. A relatively low density city, and the bulk of the population growth will simply have to go somewhere else. The million. People who will. Move to Denver. They will move. To Denver, but they will have to live. In the surrounding suburbs, but they will still. Come into the city. To work. They'll still come into the city to have fun. And most of them will drive. And it will be awful for all of us. This is the secret formula, the secret sauce that makes Los Angeles such a wonderful place. Phenix is such a great. Desirable city to live in. We'll have preserved the built. Environment that we cherish, but we will have destroyed our quality of life. I don't think we want to go down that road. The second path is to make a radical course correction. If density is the solution to sprawl, then we'll have to. Dramatically densify our city. We can't be guided by sentimentality. Single family homes need to be replaced with row houses. Row houses need to be replaced with towers. The million people that are moving here can be accommodated in a much more dense, much more sustainable. And much more radically urban environment. And that, too. Frankly, it would be awful. That's a that's the secret formula of China. We'll have avoided. Sprawl, but we'll have lost the soul of our city in the process. And I don't think we want to go there either. The third path is the path. That I prefer and that in many ways we are already on. We are already executing this in Denver. We need to preserve and protect the homes. Of Denver's existing stable family neighborhoods. Denver's old neighborhoods are a key component of the character of Denver. What we love about Denver and they need to be defended. But at the same. Time, we need to take advantage. Of every single opportunity that we have to maximize density with redevelopment in the areas around light rail stations, along transit routes, on our major commercial districts and along major arterials. We need to maximize density. The million. People that are moving here can be accommodated. In more dense, more sustainable urban structures. But we don't have to sell our souls. To do it. And everyone needs to contribute. There is no neighborhood so precious and so perfect that it should not be asked to contribute to this enterprise, to solving this problem that we need to solve. In my own. District in South Denver, I have been a staunch defender. Of our stable, single family neighborhoods. I led the first neighborhood scale down. Zoning in Denver. But at the same time, I have. Also been a. Relentless advocate for dramatically greater density around our light rail stations, along our commercial corridors, and along our transit routes. This site that we're looking at. Is not in the interior. Of the neighborhood. It's on the edge of the neighborhood. It lies on a significant transit route. It's a block from another significant transit route. It's adjacent to an important amenity. We need to site the density we need at sites like this. I have the greatest respect for my colleague, Councilwoman Sussman, and I understand the difficult position that this decision. Puts her in. But I cannot stand idly by. And indulge the cognitive dissonance of abhorring. Sprawl. But refusing to do anything about it. I've chosen the third path for my own district. I believe this site and this development project represents that third path here. So I will be supporting the rezoning tonight. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Nevitt. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Madam President, I. If there was ever a moment to record. Chris Nevitt That's probably it right there. I think you did a great job in summarizing that. But I think we're going to end up in totally different spots tonight. And I say that because. I think of that argument and I think of density and I think of or it's appropriate and I do think of that soul of Denver and where it's at and it's all over our cities. We tend to look at things when it's brought in front of us through a zoning code and this stream of code and ESU, suburban form, general urban, things like that. We tend to really hone in on that and geek out on that and just see the city like that. There are plenty of arguments that were right on point on both sides tonight. And I listen to every single person who came up to the microphone, took notes. And try to gauge where we were at back and forth and also just to feel the energy in the room. Now, we've had folks come in these chambers. And say, we got to stop this rezoning and oh, my whole neighborhood is opposed to it. And there's only maybe three or four people in the neighborhood, in that neighborhood, but in the chambers, they speak for the neighborhood. There is a few times that we've been up at night like this when the community really turns out and it's something that's very serious and we listen. The last time I can remember. Not supporting a rezoning. That I can remember. Was when I asked my colleagues to not support a rezoning at 645, Wolf, in 2007. There were other conditions at stake. Just traffic, but safety. It was the not the most appropriate use or request for density in the area. We just had way too many police calls. Yeah, way too much responsibility by the property owner. Completely different from this. And that's what I really, really want to hone into tonight and a message for a lot of the folks who are here from the neighborhood. I know that there are issues in your neighborhood that are serious. And I've heard folks talk about gangs. I've heard talk about a crime wave. These rezonings don't happen in a vacuum. I'd ask you and invite you to come into some of our other neighborhoods and see what it's like when we truly talk about gangs. And truly talk about violence and break ins and lack of police response time and property values. I can't see that right now because everybody's private values up in Denver, mostly. But when you hear these sirens that you hear outdoors tonight all the time. It's a completely different scenario. I don't want to belittle you when I say sometimes we have to look at our own privilege and understand where we're at. Right. But I also. Here. What you said tonight. And see you all here tonight. And how organized you are, how passionate you are about this. And, you know, I have friends on both sides of this of this issue, and I respect people on both sides of this. This vote tonight is wrong reasoning to me, but I couldn't agree more with Councilwoman Sussman. These are your constituents, Councilman, but they also are all of our constituents. And I respect what you have done and I respect your voice tonight. And the one thing I really have to say in terms of some of the testimony I really detest, when somebody belittles our community and belittles folks who come into this chamber and spend their time away from their families to come in here, and they're not paid to do it. I detest that. And I detest being threatened on city council saying or else. I really do not enjoy that. And the comments that were made tonight that belittle the community for using Legos, for using something creative, for understanding zoning. My community understand zoning that way. And we don't have the privilege to go to architecture and planning school to learn what you may know. But I detest that. I don't like it when folks belittle people in these chambers. It doesn't matter where they come from or who they are. I detest it. And that's what cost you the vote tonight for me. I think it says something that you all came out here. I think it says something that it's not. You're not the only neighborhood that's feeling this pressure. And yes, we have to figure that out. Yes. We got to determine what is. What is it that that makes Denver so valuable? And what is it that we keep and where do we put place density? Absolutely. I truly detest when folks belittle good community organizing and participation. So with that, Madam President, I am going to also vote no and be in solidarity with my colleague, Councilwoman Sussman, in this vote. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you. Madam President, pro tem. And thank you to all of you who are still here and looking at your listing quite intensely. This has been an evening of extremes. Number one, it's extremely late. But the other thing that I hear is single family homes or single family homes with granny flats or 120 units or maybe 75 units. But the difference that each side seems seems extreme that each side sees. I've heard that we need this density so that the so that we can have more affordability. And I've heard these units won't be affordable enough. I've heard that this conforms to blueprint and I've heard it defies blueprint. I have heard misstatements of fact. I have heard things that I agree with and things that I disagree with from both sides. You know, like Councilman Nevett, I was very involved in the 2010 zoning code in a good part of Capitol Hill that was zoned for multi-family high rise. We did indeed down zone. And we had our criteria and other in other situations, we did what I might call right zone. We looked at what the development rate was on that property and we tried to match it with the form in the new code so that it was about the same amount of square feet of development . And when I hope I not to take your name in vain, Councilwoman Shepard. But when Susan Shepard first came on to council, she faced an extremely difficult situation in her neighborhood, probably every bit as difficult, if not more than the one in front of us tonight. And she came to some of us on council and she said, The neighbors want me to downtown. Could you support me in that? I said, You know what? I feel sort of like we've had a compact here. I feel sort of like we gave our word that we we rights owned it. Unless you can convince me that we didn't, rights own it. I don't think I can change that. So among all the things I heard tonight, that term, while it's not a criteria for rezoning or not rezoning stuck with me. I have voted for numerous up zoning in my neighborhood, in other neighborhoods across the city, some very contentious, some really old are producing, some where I know I really disappointed friends and constituents in my district. But let me tell you how tonight's rezoning is different from those. First of all, there is not a plan for this neighborhood. It's different from a from a rezoning we did on South University that had a University Hills plan that said it could be that along that edge you could have 3 to 5 stories. We don't have a plan like that. We can sort of guess at that. We don't have that. It's different from Cherry Creek because in Cherry Creek we worked two years on a plan that, while controversial, got support at council. Would no one, as I recall, maybe one speaking against it. Secondly, this is an area of stability. Granted, there there are areas that are vacant that need development, but it's not an area of change like Cherry Creek. Thirdly. We did end up zoning. It was, I think, a PUD in northwest Denver for eligible shrine. I had some some quandary about that. It was an area of stability. It was a site. That, you know, they were loosely leaving an institution, but there was a real positive for the neighborhood because that particular institution while we up. So that particular institution was worth saving. So I see this as a rezoning where the neighbors have made a case for their opposition and that it conforms to criteria that I have seen. It's hard. I went back and forth during the meeting tonight as I listened to all of you. And let me tell you, be careful what you ask for. I did turn down a rezoning early in my time on council. I think it was probably as early as 2003 or very early 2004. Well, within the first six months I was on counted on council. I voted against the development at 55 South Garfield. There was Cherry Creek East. There were townhomes on the block, not single family homes. This rezoning would have been 28 units per acre. And it was a local street. The last project 12 years later just got built. There were only four city lots there 20, 28 units per acre, and it took 12 years and four different projects to get that done. So you better decide what it is you want there. I think this is an attractive project. I admired the developer for compromising and I really. Have. It's hard to decide on this, but I think the case is there that this zoning does not meet our criteria. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Canete. Thank you, Madam President. I'll end this suspense by starting with the fact that I am undecided. So there you have that. I'm hoping a couple other people chime in because I'm not going to break the tie here. I guess that I want to start by thanking everyone for being here and for the thoughtful work. I do want to clarify, I feel like a couple of my colleagues have left the impression that the community is united against this zoning, and I actually don't think that's accurate. We had residents of Cress Moore, we had residents of Hilltop who are across the street and closer to this site than probably some residents of Chris Moore who testified today and others who are in the vicinity. So so I called what I the way that I describe this, I can list that I see a lot of people shaking their heads. But the Cohens are residents of Chris Moore. You have Bob Moody. You have people who've seen this. So there are residents of Chris Moore who testified in favor of this zoning tonight. So I don't want to see heads shaking. You have residents who are divided on this project. They are on the record. We have their addresses. You have a divided community. And that to me is important to note because I don't appreciate it when people say where United and the council voted against us. You have people with differing opinions in your neighborhood, some of whom have emailed us, some of whom were here tonight. So I think that that's important to acknowledge. So let me go through the points on both sides that that I'm I'm struggling with. So to me, the weakest part of this application is the changed circumstance. I do think that the change on this site I mean, I drive by this site probably four or five times a week . And it's clear to me that this site is struggling. It's you know, many of you described it. It's not an attractive site. It's in decline. And that is a changed circumstance in the same way that the base left. LOWRY That site changed, right? The hospital left ninth and Colorado, that site changed. But that's not really the same as describing an entire change in the area. And I think that point was well made by one of the speakers. And so I am struggling with whether there's enough changed circumstance to justify the legal criteria, which is really my job. My job is not to count residents for and residents against. It's to hear that input and use it to analyze the criteria. That's that's what the code tells me to do. Politics, you know, is is another piece of this. But but the code says you're here to help me interpret the criteria. So that's how I'm using your testimony tonight as well as the rest of the record. So that's the thing I'm struggling with the most. On the other side of it, I will say that it has always been my position and I feel like I've been fairly consistent in describing it, that I always look to see whether and how a community has impacted a development project. But it is never my belief that a community gets to decide what a landowner does on their property. Right. So those are two different things. I do not believe that any landowner who doesn't do what the community asks them to should not get their zoning. But I do believe that there has to be evidence of impact. And in this case I see a lot of evidence of impact. I see a significant reduction in the number of units. I see major access concessions, which I frankly think might be problematic. But if everybody's agreed that they're okay, I think that's a major win for this community. No one will be entering and cedar. No. Won't be entering on the back side. So I see some major concessions. And to me, that's that's the threshold. It's not does the community get to decide what a private landowner does? It's do they have an input? Do they have impact? And in this case, that's clearly met for me. Secondly, another clarification. You know, I know Councilwoman Sussman was very eloquent in her remarks, and but I did I felt a little concerned about one of your comments about the fact that this looks like it's rising out of the park. Nothing. This development doesn't actually touch the park. I think that's really important for us to kind of put on the record, on the on the on the north side of this project is a maintenance area which is not the prettiest part of the park . There's some trailers, there's some equipment. Again, I drive by the site a lot. You know, on the the west side, you have townhomes that touch the park that already exist. And then, you know, on the on the further west side, you've got you've got the street, you've got locust. So nothing on this development actually touches the park. And I just I think that that's a little missed. I feel like it's a little misleading to describe it as, you know, right in the park, because the truth is that there's already other things that buffer it, the maintenance area, the other townhomes and then there's street. So that's a point in favor in my in my opinion in my analysis of the zoning that that there is actually already homes closer to the park than these apartments will be. The third factor in this one, I will be very honest, might actually be the deciding factor is it really concerns me, the anti rental sentiment that I hear and not as strongly in some of the testimony tonight, but it certainly came out very strongly in the early communications from the neighborhood with the earlier proposal. And it certainly was a factor for the developer in making the decision to change from apartments to more for sale product. I have a strong believer in homeownership as a path to building wealth, and it's a really important factor. It's why I worked on the inclusionary housing ordinance. It's why I believe in more condos. But I really I mean, we do have a need for rental. Many, many seniors who want to downsize don't just want to get rid of the yard. They also want to rent. There are many of your children, my future six year old when he grows up someday who need rental as a transition. Or there's people who work service jobs in our city who may be able to afford a market rent but are never going to get the down payment for a house. And I have to say that if the deal breaker for this community that has been opposed is that they just don't like rental and they don't think rental belongs in Chris Moore, that just does not sit well. I really do believe that. And this is where I agree with Councilman Nevett that every community has an obligation to provide a mix of housing, and that mix needs to include rental. And so, you know, if this were restricted rental, it would probably be a very easy call for me. But, you know, we're talking about market rental. But I think about the traffic point here. And if I had a choice between 25 for sale units for families where there's likely to be two earners coming and going to work . And I had 50 units for seniors who are likely to be retired, whose cars probably state parked most of the time. You're probably going to have a lot more traffic with the single family home, with the dual income earner to afford the 500 to $800000 price tag than you will from the senior in the housing, just in terms. So I think that somehow the reputation of rental has really gone awry. And again, again, I see heads nodding, but again I have emails and I have testimony and we had a commitment from the developer to reduce the amount of rental and switch it to for sale. That came from somewhere, right? Those emails exist. That conversation, you know, it was brought up by several of the speakers tonight. Not by all of them, but by several. So. So that concerns me. So. So that's kind of what I'm dealing with. I have some concerns about the criteria being met. But I see a lot of places where I believe this is an arterial. I believe that the context closest to it matters most. I see a buffer for the park, and I also believe that rental is a part of a very strong community, that a mix of individuals is a fair representation of our city and a fair representation for each community. So hopefully someone who speaks after me will shed some light and help me make my decision. But I remain torn. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman McKinney. Councilman. Ah, take a. Well, I think this is. There were a lot of really important points that were brought out on all sides of this issue. And so it makes, I think, the decision a little bit challenging. But I want to hit on a couple of key points in some of them were related to some of the questions that I asked because. In the rewrite of the zoning code, it drastically changed how this body looks at zoning compared to how it used to. And tonight is an example of the kind of zoning we used to see and on a consistent basis. We were here pretty late dealing with the details that were in the application similar to what we're doing tonight. The Planning Office has, as you heard stated earlier, looks at these details after the zoning is passed. And and I think this is where some of the angst is that neighborhoods are feeling across the city where they don't really get to see this level of detail. You all push that envelope by, you know, hiring some of your own folks to look at details. Other neighborhoods, many other neighborhoods in the city don't have the luxury of having the financial tools or the expertize within the neighborhoods to be able to do that. But you all were able to force the issue of having this level of detail brought forward as part of this application. One of the things that that I'm struggling with a little bit is that we have many, many churches in single family neighborhoods that sit on large lots with large, you know, large parking lots where we've seen some of our churches struggle. And, you know, it it could be easy to just sell off that property. And then, you know, this could be seen as a precedent setting kind of move where churches now become the prime spot. Because, you know, if you look at our city, we don't have a lot of vacant lots where larger developments could take place. We have things that are happening more like what's occurring in my neighborhood where existing. Residential structures are being purchased of land assemblages happening and they're completely scraped and you're seeing the density changing and the character of the neighborhood changing quite drastically. I mean, to the point that we've got, you know, a Highland neighborhood coming forward with three overlay zoning because of the concern of the kind of effect it's having on the single family character of the neighborhood where they felt that part of that area was already, you know, a stabilized neighborhood. And so I think this this development pressure and as I was, you know, campaigning across the city, this issue was heard all across the board around, you know, density and development pressures. And in all of that. Councilman never hit part of the nail on the head in terms of the fact that we have a saturated market right now. We don't have a lot of available housing, both for sale and rental. And we've been building rental like crazy. But as fast as they're built and open, they're filled up. That's right. We've got people gravitating to this city. I'm struggling with the issue of the fact that we've we've got so many churches in our city that are in single family residential neighborhoods that are considered, you know, stable neighborhoods where we could see this kind of thing happening and in affecting the character of those communities. I appreciate the work that the developer has done in going the extra mile with the neighborhood, really trying to work through finding something that is is doable for you financially and doable for the neighborhood. Clearly, this project with the details on the table didn't get there based on the kind of input that we heard from so many neighbors tonight. So I'm I'm struggling with where I'm going to be on this vote as well. And it's it's not an easy one. I have tried to weigh this all out in my mind on all sides, looking at, you know, what's in the best interest of the city, the neighborhood, that particular location. But then I look at what we're dealing with across the city and other neighborhoods where the pressures are so great. They're dealing with their neighborhood just changing drastically. In in neighborhoods are coming out saying, okay, we want a historic district, we want an overlay zoning. We want we want tools to try to protect the residential character of our neighborhood because we've been identified in Blueprint in Denver as an area of stability. And so when you look at that, you've got to look at all of the details and, you know, the different tools that are available. And so in this case, I'm, you know, I'll wait until the vote comes down, but I'm I'm just sort of right on that teetering edge, trying to figure out what's what's the right the right call on this one. So I'll just stop at that. Madam President, I know I've got other colleagues that want to speak it, so. Thank you. Councilman Brown. Thank you, Madam President. I know where I stand on this issue, and I'm for it. And I'll tell you why. Because I 14 years on this council, I've heard much of the same comments that I heard from the folks who are against it on other projects. Like someone said tonight. Our way of life is at risk. Really? You don't believe that a? For the last couple of weeks, I've been driving around my district and looking at projects that I had. That were highly controversial. And that people thought the world was going to come to an end. If they were approved. And it was interesting to see them because you drive by you look at the landscaping as it has matured and. You just say, how can people be so upset? At this at this project. There was one last week, and I had my favorite tape of Garth Brooks. In his song about back when the old stuff was new. In this. These projects now look old already. After seven or eight years. Five years. This project on the ground. You wouldn't even think about it. It will blend right in XML Park. And I had the same problem in Washington Park. Washington Park is not a country club. Chris Park is not a country club. It's a public. And when comments are made, we cherish our park. It's not your park is a public park. So we need to start with that as a premise. And. I listened tonight to Scott Robinson, to Marx, Adele, to Bruce O'Donnell and Bob Cohen, and I think they hit it right on the head. That you guys. I worked with the developer. I think he bent over backwards and made considerable compromises and said, I've always said compromise is not a four letter word. And I think that thanks to you guys, this is a better project. I would not have liked the first proposal. Peter. And I'll tell you now, I could not have supported it. It was too much. But I think thanks to these neighbors working with you and you listening. It made it a better project. And that's why I'm pleased to support it tonight. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Brown. Councilman Brook. Thank you, Madam President. And I want to thank everybody for being here to AM. Obviously, this means a lot to you. And you talk about two groups or quick the neighborhood. You are well prepared for this debate. You work really hard. You you organize incredibly hard. I got a Facebook request from your neighborhood that's never happened before. So you all know what you see up here is a lot of turmoil, a lot of weighing about where our city is and which which direction do you go. And I think you should be proud. I've never seen this dais like this before. So well done. I want to thank the developer. You know, I think developers get a lot of heat in the city and $1.8 million is nothing to snuff out, especially when it's not your money. And so I know that the developer tried their best to get a solution that works. Here's what here's what I'm here's the major issue I'm walking away with. And it's traffic is transportation issues. Here's the good news, bad news scenario. The bad news is this is this is not our scope to deal with all the transportation issues and traffic issues in your neighborhood. The good news is we can deal with it. We had a budget conversation a year ago. Colleagues, you will remember this. We granted CPD 35 FTE, which they needed, by the way. And public works were not meeting their. Basic requirements. And we at that point in that budget meeting. Ask for more FTE for public works specifically around transportation. And. And the mayor did make an increase, but. Our our development is outpacing our transportation infrastructure improvements. That's that's one of the real issues that's going on in this city. You're articulating it. I'm hearing articulate in every neighborhood I'm downtown. So I use multimodal. But when I drive my car to Daegu, I realize how much traffic is going on in the city. I went we went to the the Hirsch Hirschfeld had an event in councilman assessments district. I went down, believes I was six and made a right on Quebec and it took me 45 minutes. What you are saying is real? My belief is this site will not dramatically increase it. But you are facing some severe traffic issues and we need to address it. Our our call, our legal obligation before you today is are the plans consistent? Are they in contexts? For approval. And for me, as I look at that and I think you've heard some some of my colleagues say. They believe they are. They believe they're not. As I look at this whole context as well as I look at this existing site, it reflects the context to me. Now, that's not the information that you want to hear, but it's what I believe is in front of us. 150 or 120 units was way too much. We came down considerably and you guys got them down. Is that the right makeup? We will see. The developer has gone on to make some more concessions to work with the neighborhood. And I believe they will have to live up to those. The developer will have site plan review. I hope that he's working with neighborhood representatives and you can ask for that now to continue to work with them on that. So I am I am voting in favor of this. I am torn, though, because you all made an incredible. Case tonight. This morning. And so, you know, I'll be I'll be supporting this because I do believe that it is an. In line with our plans that we have with the city and county in Denver in this area. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, any other. Any other comments by members of council? None. Madam Secretary. Roll Call on Council Bill 56. Susman No. Brooks, I. Brown, i. But I can each. Fast. Layman. Paz? Lopez No. Nevett I. Ortega No. Rob No. Shepherd I can each a layman. I. Ortega. Already voted Tory. Rob. Madam President, I. That's right. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. Nine eyes. Three nays. Nine eyes, three nays. Council Bill 56. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I voted one way and I hit the wrong button. So what was your goal? I don't know if yours is reflecting the way I voted. She voted no. You voted. No. Eight for. Doesn't change the outcome, but. I'll change it to a no. For the purpose. Of the ADA. Accurate nays. By Monday, June 29th, there'll be a required public hearing on Council Bill 346, changing the zoning classification of 301 South Cherokee Street. Any protest against Council Bill 346 must be filed with the Council offices no later than Monday, June 22nd. See no other business before this body? This meeting is adjourned. Denver eight. On TV and online. Stay connected to your community, your city, your source. You are watching Denver. Eight TV's Your City, your source.

AN ORDINANCE relating to fireworks regulations; amending Ordinance 3139, Section 601, as amended, and K.C.C. 12.86.500, Ordinance 4461, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 20.22.040, Ordinance 10870, Section 331, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.08.040, Ordinance 10870, Section 548, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.32.110, Ordinance 13332, Section 43, as amended, and K.C.C. 27.10.360 and Ordinance 17682, Section 48, as amended, and K.C.C. 27.10.580, adding a new chapter to K.C.C Title 17, repealing Ordinance 6836, Section 1, and K.C.C. 6.26.010, Ordinance 6836, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.020, Ordinance 6836, Section 3, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.030, Ordinance 6836, Section 4, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.040, Ordinance 6836, Section 5, and K.C.C. 6.26.050, Ordinance 6836, Section 6, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.060, Ordinance 6836, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.070, Ordinance 6836, Section 8, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.080, Ordinance 6836, Section 9, and K.C.C. 6.26.090, Ordinance 6836, Section 10, and K.C.C. 6.26.100, Ordinance 6836, Section 11, and K.C.C. 6.26.110 and Ordin

KingCountyCC_03172021_2021-0057

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. And colleagues. That takes us to item six on our agenda. This is proposed ordinance 2020 157, which would ban the sale and discharge of fireworks in unincorporated King County. We will receive a letter from council staff and we received a full briefing at our February 17th meeting and will receive a briefing from Jake Tracy. Just a brief update in a moment, but is the sponsor I wanted to offer some initial comments and then introduce Mr. Tracy in July of 2019. Mr. Roland, Sonny Kennedy, a 70 year old veteran, and his two dogs were killed in a house house fire in White Center. It was caused by fireworks. In addition to the tragic loss of life, two homes were destroyed and 12 residents were displaced. While there are plenty of reasons to support an Army full ban on consumer fireworks in unincorporated King County, I'm motivated to do so because of my center's loss. We never want this to happen again in any community. The injuries, death and destruction caused by fireworks year after year are preventable. The overwhelming majority of jurisdictions within King County cities, park districts in the national forest understand this and have already banned fireworks. It's time for King County to do the same. Residents in unincorporated King County deserve to have the same protections that the majority of their counterparts in incorporated areas already enjoy. We've heard from residents and from first responders across unincorporated King County, overwhelmingly expressing support for banning fireworks. They've told us again and again that they're fed up and they want our help. And the King County Fire Commissioners Association has been clear. It expressed their support for a full ban on fireworks. And I know that representatives of the fireworks industry have voiced their opposition and concerns and are trying to tell us that a full ban won't work. I'm not surprised they benefit from financially from the sale of these products that don't have to deal with the fallout from fireworks have on our residents and first responders. It makes sense that they try to confuse the issue but urge you to see through those tactics. I look forward to our discussion and our work today. Mr. Tracy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jake Treacy, council staff. The materials for this item begin on page ten of your packet. Since I gave a D. Can you hear me okay? You can. And, Mr. Tracy, if I can also interject, in addition to the package, we have a council amendment package that was emailed out this morning. I would call the members attention to it was sent by Ms.. Stedman at 807 this morning. So if members haven't already, I'm hoping that in front of them I would call their attention to that. I'm sorry, Mr. Tracy. No worries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, since I gave a detailed briefing last time, I'll keep this short. Proposed ordinance 2020 10057 would prohibit the retail sale and discharge of consumer fireworks, as defined in our CW Rule 70, 77 and unincorporated portions of King County. These consumer fireworks are shown in the handout on page 49 of your packet. The legislation would raise the fine for fireworks violations from $250 per violation to $1,000 per violation. It would also move standards for public displays of fireworks in unincorporated King County to a new chapter, align definitions in state law, and limit public displays of fireworks to two per property per year with permits from the fire marshal. As I mentioned last time, council members previously provided amendment concepts for super review and public notice. The concepts are listed on page 13 of your packet. If this legislation were to move out of committee today, I would need to be informed of any additional amendment concepts by close of business this Friday, March 19th, so they could be included in that council hearing notice. I would like to note an error in the staff report. My apologies. The correct date for the deadline of concepts is this Friday, March 19. There are also two amendments for discussion today, but I will pause there for any questions first. We also have Jim Chan and Chris Ricketts from permitting here. Questions for Mr. Tracy. Seeing none. Mr. Tracy. Okay. Amendment one starts on page three of that amendment packet that the Chair just mentioned. Amendment one would allow for the sale, possession and use of fireworks that are defined as ground and hand-held sparkling devices in the Washington administrative code. These include. And if you go back to that handout that I mentioned, that is on page 13. Those are on page 49 of your packet. You'll see some of these listed there. So the ones that would still be allowed under Amendment One are the wire, sparkler and dipstick. Cylindrical fountain. Cone, fountain. Illuminating Torch wheel. Round Spinner and flitter. Sparkler and toy smoke device. Other consumer fireworks, including aerial devices and multiple tube devices, would be banned for sale and use. The amendment would retain regulations that are proposed to be removed as part of the ordinance that pertain to fireworks stands and would also retain existing code language and limits on the dates and times during which fireworks can be sold. So to summarize, this amendment would retain existing quota balance for the sale and use of ground and hand-held sparkling devices, but would ban aerial devices and multiple tube devices. If the amendment is adopted, there's a title amendment to one that would go along with it. Would you like me to bring Amendment two or pause there? Let's pause there. We don't have anything. We have no motions before us at this time. Are there technical questions on Amendment One that Mr. Tracey has just briefed? See none. Mr. TRACY If you give the a the same level of briefing to Amendment two and then we'll take up the legislation. Sure. So Amendment two would make changes with references to penalties and enforcement. It would retain the existing $250 fine for fireworks violations, which is proposed to increase to $1,000 under the underlying proposed ordinance. It would also delay issuance of penalties for violations of the ordinance pertaining to use or discharge of consumer fireworks for one year after the ordinance was effective during that one year period. Warnings and education would be given to violators rather than monetary or criminal penalties. Finally, the amendment would request that the executive conduct the study on and make a recommendation for a way to provide an immediate, unarmed non-police response to fireworks violations during the 4th of July season. That study and recommendation will be due by June 30th of 2022. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any technical questions on Amendment two? Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. We had this discussion years ago when we were talking about not having police due enforcement of handicapped parking places. So this is not a new discussion, but who would we get to do the enforcement? And that that would be the question about who would have the authority to do that and under what code would we be able to give them that authority? Thank you, Councilmember. So the objective of this amendment, as it is written, would be to have the executive do that study and come back with a recommendation and possibly code amendments that would, if necessary, to allow whoever they recommend to do that work. So it's not identified in this amendment. It's just requesting that the executive study that and come back with a recommendation. Well, they might want to look at the body of work that was done before because it came back with some very interesting results. Thank you. Any other technical questions of amendment to. See none are without a recall on Councilmember Bell duty to for the purposes of making a motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move. Adoption of Ordinance 2020 10057 with a do pass recommendation. Thank you. Councilmember Bellevue, she's moved adoption of ordinance 2020 157 amendments. Councilmember Yvonne Roukema. I believe Amendment one would be in order. But, Mr. Chair, I'm sure I'm sure this Councilwoman Boesky, a lot of questions asked that wasn't of a technical nature. Okay. I understood the opening to be of technical and leave. So it would now be an appropriate time, is it? What I was doing was what I was trying to do is encourage the actual debate and discussion about amendments when they were before us. If if you but you're welcome to ask your question now, I would expect both amendments to be offered and fully debated and discussed. Again this is in the regarding the underlying legislation and in the staff report. Just I'll just ask it to my head. Mr.. Thank you. And you've been very good about this idea, and I think it's been a trend that we're trying to do here, and that is to include equity in social justice analysis in terms of impacts of legislation in our staff work. The legislation here would impose a new criminal penalty. And I'm just I didn't see in the staff report any analysis of the impacts of that from a from a racial and social justice perspective. And I'm wondering if it's there or not. There was no ESG analysis done on this legislation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the debate. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember by Rick. I thank you, Mr. Chair. I move adoption of amendment number one. Amendment one is before us. Council number one right there. And thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want to thank you personally and professionally for your work with this issue. I think it's an indication of how sensitive you are to your district and how you responded to the bystander tragedy. There's not one of us on this floor or on this podium, which does not feel that what happened there was a tragedy and we never want to see it repeated again. And I thank you for responding so quickly to the center issue time and time again during our discussion this morning. Many of the speakers talked about their Community of Rights Center, and they clearly have a great deal of pride. Today, we're not just dealing with White Center, however, we're dealing with Kane County as a county. Ever since this proposal was introduced last year before COVID 19 struck. I've been working with concerned parties on both sides of this issue, including constituents, nonprofits, first responders and the fireworks industry. In fact, I was on the phone late last night with a local fire chief as well, who is very much supporting what you're trying to do. I feel that this amendment strikes an appropriate compromise that is workable for all parties. As you know, Mr. Chairman, my district has both unincorporated urban and rural areas. I have Auburn and Better Way who have two different directions dealing with fireworks. We frankly frequently hear from constituents who complained about fireworks around the 4th of July, as well as during Seahawk games. Let's hope this season is also going to be an opportunity for fireworks on the field. The complaints are almost always directed out loud. Aerial fireworks often shut off during the time of year where they are or are not permitted. My amendment would allow for the continued sale and use of only ground based fireworks. Boughton wheels ground spinners in unincorporated Kane County during the current permitted period for sales and use. Which sale is June 28? The July 4th use is July 4th. My amendment does not include aerial fireworks such as roman candles, mortar shells or parachute, resulting in those aerial fireworks being banned in unincorporated Kane County. The amendment as drafted is modeled after the city of Auburn in my district. After consultation with Mayor Bacchus and others. This proposal currently allows for ground based fireworks during specific times of the year. In addition to the city of Auburn. Leigh Ann Geer in the City of Civic also and my district commit ground based sale during conversations with the community and colleagues alike. I've heard a variety of concerns and I feel the same with the concerns raised. But enforceability is important. While still there, there will be enforcement challenges. This proposal clearly distinguishes between what is allowed, ground based and what is not allowed. Aerial. Response to community organizations and nonprofits. And if ever there was a time we've needed the help of the nonprofits to provide a safety net for so many good causes in our community, it's been during COVID 19. They rely on fireworks sales to raise money for their organizations by allowing for the continued sale of ground based fireworks during that period of time frame. Mr. Chair, again, I want to say to you, you've done yeoman's work in trying to bring this issue to the forefront. I believe this is a positive step forward. We want to do good, not just feel good. We want to do good, not just feel good. And I believe this amendment does good. Thank you. Council member of Great Power. I appreciate the work you've done in crafting this, in talking to so many people throughout the community and bringing it to us for discussion today. However, I do need to oppose it now. Ask my colleagues to join me in not supporting it. It essentially allows the continued sale and discharge of what the industry might term in some conversations. Safe and sane fireworks. What I might refer to is so-called safe and sound fireworks. Many feel that these products might be safe, but there's certainly evidence to the contrary. Smoke bombs with which would be allowed under this amendment, supported the 2017 Eagle Creek Forest Fire in Oregon. It burned nearly 50,000 acres and cost an estimated $40 million. The fire destroyed several structures, including homes where residents lost everything. Hikers had to be rescued in the fire, which happened during the peak of the tourism season, negatively impacting businesses in the area in 2000. Just last year on the El Dorado Fire in California was started by a smoke bomb used to the gender reveal party. This fire resulted in 23,000 acres burned, multiple homes destroyed and the death of a veteran firefighter. And even some of the products that we think of or people want to believe is the most safe. Sparklers. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, sparklers are typically heralded as safe and sane. They make up 12% of firework related injuries. They burn at a temperature of up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt some metals and ignite clothing and cause third degree burns in a matter of seconds. And a partial ban continues to compromise the safety of our first responders and our residents. I believe it's really essential that we listen to fire commissioners, first responders, medical professionals who deal with this every day. And in fact, we received a letter last month from the South King Fire and Rescue that covers much of unincorporated and urban areas in South King County. They say this city they cover said away in Des Moines, among other cities. And in the letter, they say these cities, like many others in King County, have banned the retail sales and use of fireworks. The lack of a uniform regional approach to this problem causes confusion in our population and reduces the compliance in areas that are actually banned. So I would ask members to join me in not supporting this amendment. Further discussion. Other councilmember closed debate coalition base, please. Yes, unless you want to finish your for me. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you again and again. You've done it. Really. And I hope people in the White Center area understand that, because I was speaking from the heart. We both are strong advocates for our communities. We've been in politics because we know that that's our job, is to be an advocate for our community. And you have truly done that on this issue. But time and time again, I heard the folks from White Center talk about their community. And I am very sensitive to their committee and I make sure that the commissioner is home on July 4th. That said. This is a county wide proposal, and it works collaboratively with the industry to find a workable solution that does not result in a county government legislating small businesses out of existence. Most importantly to me was the addition that one of our colleagues pointed out. It's about the opportunity to educate the public and a full commitment from the industry to partner with King County, to sponsor a safety and education program to better inform the community on the difference between aerial fireworks and the proposed safe and shame ground based fireworks and deregulated novelties in closer fields of proposal as a workable solution. It's enforceable because it deals with ground based as opposed to aerial, and it improves community safety but does not result in undue hardship. Itinerary. Nonprofits or small businesses in unincorporated King County. Thank you. All those in favor of Amendment One, please signify by saying hi. All right, I. Those opposed nay now in the opinion of the cheering the needs of it provision. The provision. Madam Quirk, if I. If I could have the clerk, please call the roll on Amendment One. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember WG now. Councilmember Dombrowski, i. Councilmember Dunn. I. Councilmember Coles now. Councilmember Lambert, I. Council member of the ground now. Councilmember Brown right there. I council members online. No. Mr. Chair. No. Mr. Chair, the vote is for EIS Council members Dombrowski, Dunn, Lambert and Bond mate Bauer and five no council members. She called Wells up the ground for her line. And McDermott. Thank you. The amendment fails an amendment to. Council members are alone. All right, that's for me. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I've grappled with this issue a lot ever since we first heard it last year. I've always said repeatedly that the public health aspects of this are super valid and that everything that Councilmember McDermott has been saying has been true in my district as well. I hear from countless residents about the pollution, the noise, the impact on pets and veterans. But the other side of this has been the concern, essentially that Councilmember Dombroski brought up, which is the ESG concern, and specifically the increase in law enforcement contacts between law enforcement and communities of color, the high fines and fees on a low income community, the interferences with cultural practices, and the revenues that are that our nonprofits and churches would take. My amendment would fix all of these things entirely, but it would be a step in the right direction. First of all, it reduces the fee from $1000 to $250 to just make sure that we're not having insurmountable fees for potentially low income people in that area. And also, it requests that the executive create a plan for using non-police, unarmed enforcement. And we don't know exactly what that looks like yet. It could be code enforcement officers. It could be something else within the sheriff's department that's unarmed and civilian owned. But I think we have to be really careful, especially in light of the environments we've seen in the past year or more about creating more contacts between police and communities of color, especially for something that may not require an armed response. And this, of course, would only apply to the things that we as King County are making illegal. If there are state level things that are illegal, like firecrackers in the eighties, the things that make cars shake, we don't have a say in who enforces that . So the law enforcement sheriff's department would still be able to enforce that. The other aspect of this is the fact that it would delay enforcement by a year. So in the year where this would otherwise take effect, instead of finding people or giving them criminal penalties, we would request that our sheriff's office do an educational campaign instead . So instead of imposing penalties, go around with informational information, informational packets, and telling people about this new regulation and the impact of fireworks. I think it's a compromise legislation. I don't think it addresses all of the ESG impacts fully, but I do think it's a step in the right direction. And I ask my colleagues to support it. Councilman Rizal. My staff is suggesting that you should formally move adoption of the amendment. Don't move. Mr. Chairman. Sticklers on things like that. Thank you. Council members. Hello. The concerns that you voice and the voice you bring of your constituents is true for people across the county. And your amendment does it, I think, does an excellent job in addressing the concerns both of of fireworks in that that we've heard from constituents, but also of fair enforcement and equitable enforcement in grappling with how to do that better than we've done it in the past. I appreciate your amendment very much and look forward to joining you in supporting supporting it today. Their Council member, Lambert. I will be supporting this amendment. I do believe $1,000 is a very high fine, and I do like the idea of making sure that people have some time to get used to it. 4th of July Fireworks. This is a tradition that people have enjoyed for many, many years, and it will be difficult for everybody to know that there's been a change. So I like the but for a year I am concerned though and so I'm okay with it being a study, but it needs to in that study, look at what would be the issues that come up when you are taking something away from somebody. And I know that there are people that spend thousands of thousands of dollars on fireworks. And when you tell them you can't do that and you take it away, it has to be somebody that has some authority that is respected. So I'll be interested in seeing who that group is. And also in light of the experience we've had before when we tried to do something similar. So I agree this doesn't solve everything. I wish the First Amendment had passed, but I will be supporting this. In discussion. Council Member Col Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I answer in supporting this amendment. I think it's a smart one that applies the sensible equity lens to enforcement energy commission around the new regulations. But I think even more so. I think it's clickable to people across the unincorporated King County. I have had some real concerns about enforcement, and I believe that the way that Councilmember Sol Hawaii has presented the intent of his amendment really satisfies me that we will be able to reach a good solution for this kind of vexing issue on enforcement. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion. And Dombroski Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The increase in interaction between law enforcement and young people who I think are the primary users, I would say, of these fireworks, has been a grave concern of mine with respect to this legislation and the additional criminalization of of contact and increasing young folks connection to our criminal legal system. And the adverse consequences that to often follow has been a real concern of mine. And so I think this amendment, which, as I understand it, would decriminalize the offense of violating the ban in terms of discharge, convert it to. And I'd like to be correct ma'am wrong is just a civil infraction fine of $250 plus the additional study for non-police response is helpful because my customer one right. Bauer's amendment also did to that and in a little bit of a different way. I still think that the response of when folks will call 911, assuming the spangles into effect and the police will come unless we come up with another system from the study. And I think that concerns me in terms of what follows from that, in terms of increased interaction and with our young people. So I'm definitely happy to support this amendment. I think it goes a long way, if not all the way in addressing some of those concerns. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Dombrowski requested that the this amendment would keep the status quo, which is a $250 fine and or a misdemeanor. Oh, I see. So it would still be a misdemeanor? It could potentially be charged as a misdemeanor, yes. Okay. That is what is in the existing law today. And that's what would continue with this, with the exception of that one year period in which there would be no fines or criminal penalties. All right. Well, I'm going to support the amendment, but I think that continues to be a serious concern of mine. On adopting the ban Is the criminalization of this conduct primarily engaged in by young folks during a limited time of the year? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the discussion. Council members are allowed to close. I urge your support. Thank you. All those in favor of Amendment Two, please signify by saying hi. I call on those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Amendment two is adopted. Discussion on ordinance 2020 157 as amended. Councilmember Banducci. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I, as you know, join Don as a co-sponsor of this measure early on. And this is I know that this is challenging for some, but for me, this is almost a no brainer. Prior to serving on the King County Council, I served as a city councilmember and one of those cities that has had a ban for a number of years. In my district, almost all of the cities have bans, and about the only place where there isn't one is the unincorporated Sammamish Valley. And so and there's a reason for the bans. We've heard about it a lot. It's and it's about public safety. The statistics have been quoted by our fire commissioners, by you, Mr. Chair, by others. And the anecdotes are tragic and happen every year somewhere. They happen to use or using fireworks. Property damage happens every single year. There are dozens of fires in Washington. Thousands of injuries started. And there's an argument to be made that this kind of restriction is even more important in unincorporated King County, which tends to be more forested. And this activity happens during a dry time of year when outdoor fires can be very easily sparked. The psychological impacts, quality of life impacts, and just the list goes on and on. And there's a reason why many, many cities in King County and elsewhere have have enacted these bans, except they do not ban public displays. They allow for permitted displays, but not the kind of unregulated use that leads to the damages that we've seen and heard about year after year. I've heard the arguments and I've listened carefully. I've read all the emails, all the letters. I've listened to everyone who's come to public comment. This has been pending for quite a long time, so we've had very ample time to think through the ramifications. And I will say, the idea that people can still buy fireworks somewhere else is not really the point. The point is that we need to try to make sure people don't use fireworks in a way that is dangerous and damaging to themselves and the community. The idea that prohibition doesn't make a difference is just simply not true. It's just not true in our experience in cities where there have been bans. The amount of fireworks don't go away. And crime doesn't go away because we have laws, but it goes way down. And I especially like that we're thinking more thoughtfully these days. And one of the things I like about this legislation that differs from the one in the city where I used to serve is that we're being more thoughtful about how to address making sure we get the benefits of the law, how to educate people, how to do emphasis and engage with the community to to achieve compliance and the benefits of compliance without necessarily making a criminal case out of it. And I really appreciate that that part of the amendment that we just passed and the idea that there's not enough enforcement has been raised. If you do rely on sheriff's deputies or place to enforce and, you know, it's such a targeted activity that happens in certain places at certain times, I think it would be very easy to do emphasis regardless of whether you have a whole police force at your disposal or not, if that's the way people choose to go. After we receive back the study that we've now included asking the executive to do to think through other ways of compliance, I've heard people talk about jobs and the loss of jobs, and that's real. And I hear that, and that is compelling to me. But at some point you have to take a balance when you have to look at the balance between jobs and the safety of the community at large and say that the safety predominates. And in this case, I believe that it does. And then finally and this this really this really was meaningful to me, hearing about nonprofits and the challenges. I mean, we know nonprofits are suffering. Councilmember Yvonne, right. Our speak Ellen spoke eloquently about that. I agree with him completely on this point. We now have a fair amount of time between when this would take effect and today to allow for some some real lead time, too, for nonprofits to look for other ways to raise money. And we should take that seriously and we should be engaged in our districts if there are organizations that are truly going to suffer to try to do what we can as leaders in our communities, to try to help them. But it's not going to happen this 4th of July. So there is quite a bit of time for folks to adopt adapt. Yeah. And for all those reasons, I've been a strong supporter of this legislation from the beginning. I remain so and I'm proud to cosponsor and I will be voting yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the discussion. Dombrowski. Thanks. I didn't want to jump in. This is a closer call for for me on this chair. I've heard and listened carefully to the debate and looked into it pretty deeply as well. And the concerns raised by residents like Ms.. Dobkin and others from White Center and North Highline are resonate with me. And the risk is certainly there and there are injuries and and things like that. And so when we have a public policy problem like that, I wonder what is the answer here? A proposal is to to ban them. And I agree with Guzman about to achieve that. A ban on say on discharge will likely reduce their use. But I don't think it eliminates that. I mean, I live in a city where they are banned and they go off, you know, all the time. I supported Councilmember One right by his amendment because I thought it was aimed at the most egregious of these. You know, the the new fireworks, I call them new. They're relatively new. We didn't have when I was a kid. The aerial murders, I think, are what really people are bothered by the PTSD in our veterans, if you will, the harm to pets and the jarring nature of those. That's a relatively modern advent in fireworks compared to when I was a kid using them in the cul de sac in unincorporated King County. We didn't have those, you know, we had the little cones, sparklers and things like that. Or if we went down to the reservation, you'd get a bottle rocket, which were which were illegal, of course. So I like councilman one requires precise amendment there to say, let's get rid of the real nasty, dangerous ones and but keep the the on the ground ones I don't think because of just observation around for July were as you say a majority of the cities I think in our county but not all have banned them. That that it eliminates that. So I'm not sure it's it's a totally effective solution it might help at the margins but got to weigh that against the other impacts and whether it be it was increasing fines and sanctions from our roads division which I opposed to, you know, Councilmember Dutton's zoombombing legislation where we took out the criminal penalties. This is an activity where young people primarily do it because we grow out of it. So we get older and the response is going to be 911 calls with police showing up and a new criminal penalty. And I at the end of the day, I think I'm in just a very different place on that. And I think that the harm that results from that increased interaction is is something I'm very concerned about. Councilmember Xilai's amendment really helped got us going in the right direction. But I think that maybe this should be decriminalized entirely and maybe I can get to a yes or council if we can continue to work in that direction . I do think also that this, you know, with respect to bands not working, the Eagle Creek Fire, which has been mentioned a couple of times now started by smoke bombs, was started in September. In Oregon when a ban was in place. So, you know, as to that's an example of the efficacy of bands, you know, not solving the problem. I looked at, you know, Snohomish County, where they have a live band and then an urban part where there's denser housing and more concentration. I think that that could be something here that might help. In my district in Bothell, it was put to the voters a few years ago. They voted to keep them. They did not vote to ban them. Other jurisdictions have it's kind of a split question. So primarily, Mr. Chair, because of the concerns about the efficacy, my concerns that folks, when you can't go by a safe and sane firework and under councilwoman right bars amendment, which would have been limited to ground stuff locally, you will go folks that want them will go to our tribal communities and then they will have the full panoply, the aerial rockets and mortars, the stuff we really that are problematic. I think that and really with the criminal penalty, that's that's a deal killer for me on this legislation despite my concerns and sympathy for what is bringing forward the legislation and the motivation for it. I understand what you're trying to do. So for today, I'm going to be a no. But maybe if we could decriminalize this, this new conduct that we're outlawing for council, I could be a yes thanks to I'm trying to share my perspective. Lambert. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I agree with everything the previous speaker said, and I am very concerned about the criminalization. I am concerned about a lot of things here. You know, we just had a horrendous fire in my district, which took out an apartment building, displaced many families. And it was because of cigarets. We not too long ago had another tremendous fire that was horrible. That was started because of a candle. So we're not banned. Can't banning candles and cigarets. And it's kind of a personal responsibility to educate yourself and your family members about how to do things in a safe and sane way. I appreciated the work that was done by council member by night. Also, prohibitions haven't worked in the past and I don't think it's going to work here. It's a tradition and I'm sorry to see so many American traditions being wiped out. So I would like to see us do two things before a final vote at council. One is to decriminalize. And secondly, it is to potentially limit the number of days when you can shoot off the fireworks. I think if it were limited to just the 4th of July and just New Year's Eve, that that would make their animals or dogs or horses our safety. And I think that that would really help a lot in reducing the number of days. I'm not that you can sell even some of those days, but the discharge being limited. So I think there's work to be done between now and Tulsa, and I hope that we can consider those ideas . Thank you. Further discussion. I too close. I want to thank my colleagues for their thoughtful work over the more than a year since I first introduced legislation to accomplish this goal. And our work in discussion today. We're here because Mr. Kennedy shouldn't have died. His death was a tragic accident and heartbreakingly preventable. After after learning about what happened in North High Line, I was determined to introduce this ordinance banning the sale and discharge of consumer fireworks in unincorporated King County. Fireworks are dangerous. That's why 25 jurisdictions across King County have already banned them. And the King County Fire Commissioners Association and others who serve on the front lines during the 4th of July holiday have been clear. Ban all consumer fireworks. That bright line would help with the public's confusion in enforcement and with enforcement itself. And I'm not naive. I don't believe that it will stop every firework. I live in a city with a ban. There are fireworks that are ignited around my. In my neighborhood. Few very few laws, if any, have 100% compliance. But the risks posed by consumer fireworks are too great for us not to act. And there is a demonstrated reduction in fireworks use in jurisdictions with bans. We actually heard somebody today offer testimony that they live in a jurisdiction with a ban and they travel to another jurisdiction hours without a ban in order to ignite fireworks. Further compounding the issue in unincorporated King County. We have a therefore, we have a responsibility to send a clear message to residents that fireworks are banned because they're not safe. And I want to emphasize the risk to family, neighbors and the environment for a minute. I've heard some people claim that it's not fair to be told what they can shoot off fireworks in the run on their own property. But it does affect the entire community. The chemicals in the smoke and fireworks may affect people with asthma and other respiratory issues. It affects people with post-traumatic stress disorder, veterans, refugees and others. We've heard from someone who is a mental health counselor in today's testimony speaking to that very point. The need to address. This is real and this is the opportunity for us to step up and to be look provide the same level of protection for our constituents for whom we are the local government. But so many others have. Throughout King County previously, I think members for their work on this issue and recognize that we'll have more conversations before we bring it up in full council. Just over a month from now without Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member Banducci. I can't remember Dombrowski. No. Remember? Done? No. Well, I. Council member Lambert now council member of the group of. Councilmember Yvonne. Mike there were. No. Council members on the line. I. Mr. Chair. All right. Mr. Chair, the vote is five eyes, four noes. Those voting no are council members. Dombrowski, Dunn, Lambert and Von. Right there. Thank you. By your vote, we have given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 157 as amended, which will be sent to full council on it. If there is a 30 day notice requirement so on, it will not be even recorded, of course, but after a 30 day notice is given. And again, I'll remind colleagues what Mr. Treacy has said, that when we take this up in April as part of the advertising, we need to advertise amendment concepts. So please have those amendment concepts to Mr. Treacy by this Friday, March 19th. That takes the status of seven inches. Today's agenda motion 2020 131, which would appoint Janice Case as the deputy director of King County Department of Elections. Ms.. Case is here with us today. But first, Randall Randall Askin from the council staff will provide a brief staff report. The one is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, Council members. For the record, Randalstown and the council staff and the materials for this item begin on page 51 of your meeting packet. As noted by the Chair, a proposed motion 2020 10031 would confirm the appointment of Janice Case as the deputy director of the King County Department of Elections. Ms.. Case has worked for the department for many years, most recently since February of 2020. She has served as the interim deputy director of the department. Prior to that, she has also served the department as an election operations supervisor, a project or a project program manager and an election services manager. With regards to professional certifications, Ms.. Case is a Washington State certified election administrator as well as a national certified elections registration administrator. Additionally, she received a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Oregon State University. I'll wrap up by noting that county code requires the appointment of the Deputy Director of the Department of Elections to be confirmed by the County Council as such approval of the proposed motion. Before you would fulfill this requirement and we are joined by Ms.. Keith as well as Julie Wise, the director of the Department of Elections. And, Mr. Chair, that concludes my remarks. Thank you. Director Wise, would you like to make any introductory comments? And can Mr. Chair and members of the Committee for the Record, Julie Wise, your King County Director of Elections, I am exceedingly happy to come before you today to present Ms.. Janice case for confirmation as our elections deputy director. With over 15 years of election administration in both Washington and Alaska State, she brings an incredible amount of depth of knowledge and operational experience to this position. To be frank, she is one of the most talented individuals I have ever met. Janice has served us so well this past year, which surely was the busiest, most challenging and strangest election cycle to date. It truly is Janice's leadership and her organizational skills that kept everything together. Her ability to see both big picture and literally millions of details is astonishing. She is fiercely driven. And always looking. For us to improve. Her creativity, knowledge and dedication are unparalleled. Unparalleled. I simply couldn't think of an individual better suited to serve in this role, and I'm truly grateful I get to work with her every day. I hope you'll confirm Ms.. Janice Case as our King County elections deputy director today. Thank you. Thank you, Ms.. Case. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for your patience. And a few words in your defense, perhaps. Yes. Good morning. For the record, my name is Janice Case, deputy director, designee for the Department of Elections. I'd like to thank my council member, Councilmember McDermott, for sponsoring this motion. I am excited for this opportunity and honor. Director Wise has selected me to fill this role. I discovered my passion for working in elections early in my career, and I'm excited to continue to work with Director Wise and the elections team to continue to remove barriers to voting, increase voter engagement, and ensure our elections are secure, accurate and transparent. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Questions in this case. This case, what you think might be some trends or things for policymakers to be aware of and watch in elections in particular will election administration. I'm in the coming years. I think one of the biggest things we're looking at right now are signature alternatives, alternative options for validating. You are who you are who voted. Young people are very unfamiliar with signing things, and we've also seen discrepancies in signature challenge rates in communities of color and would like to come up with alternatives for for validating signatures. That's more fair and equitable, you think? That's one of the biggest things. And then also, obviously election security and ensuring that people have correct information about how our elections are processed in a secure and accurate manner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was member done. Thank you. Thanks so much for painting the house today. Thanks so much for your willingness to serve as deputy director and a very fine elections director. We all respect you out here in District nine, partly because she lives here. One of the things that I wanted is a serious question. Normally, I would have given you a heads up on this, but I want to hear your thoughts. One of the things that happened as a result of the election of 2020, the presidential race is, you know, one candidate screamed from the rooftops that the election was stolen and certain media picked that up and promoted that either message. And and, you know, I have a long history of working with the Department of Elections. I've served on the canvasing board. I've walked through and inspected the cages. I've seen a lot of elections there. And I worked closely with your office over the years. I have a lot of confidence in the department. But there are people right now out there who don't. And for right or wrong, there is a significant trust factor that's gone on there that I think that your office needs to be sensitive to. For example, if you're talking to a certain political party right now, they don't have faith or confidence in it. I've done my level best to sort of explain, you know, my experiences there, but they're not necessarily believing it. And so the question I have for you is how will you reach out to certain groups that don't necessarily trust right now the elections generally and more specifically, King County elections to do what you can to earn their trust back? That's my question. I think we've done a lot of work over the years and will continue to do so and in building the trust of voters and the integrity of the election that we have. We're always happy to invite people into the elections office to watch the process. We have our webcams that are displaying the election process 24/7 so folks can watch from home and watch that we're accurately and transparently processing their ballots. And we also have a fantastic communications team that helps get the word out to everyone about how we do process their ballots. So educating them on what our process is and of course, always inviting that feedback and that conversation to have with individuals to help build their trust in our elections process here in King County. Member. I can't move Daniel on you. Sorry. Sorry. Thanks. I'm almost done. Thank you for that response, Kathy. You could be next. I just have a suggestion. Kathy Lambert and I were on a call. Was it last night? Night before? Anyway, one of the things that I think would make sense is if the election senior elections leadership met with both political parties and. And really get gave them an opportunity to walk through the elections, building in the election processing centers yet again to answer questions, to kick the tires, and for you guys to be responsive. I think that would be really good if, for example, we allowed Joshua Freed and the delegation come through there and just begin to build trust again in the process, and it will just help everyone feel more confident in the next series of results. And I think it's a positive step and I hope you consider doing it. Thank you. Member Council member LAMBERT Thank you. So we have been on numerous calls with people that have concerns, and a lot of it has to do with educating what does happen, what the rules are. When I was on the canvasing board, one of the things that really made me pleased was when there was a vote that should have gone Democrat. It was usually the Republicans that were fighting for the Democrat to have the vote and when it should have gone to the Democrat Republican, the Democrats were saying, yes, that's a Republican vote. And it happened so many times that I was so impressed. And when I when they commented about it, they said, the people who are on this board are so interested in making sure elections are fair, that that is the prime goal here. And I saw it playing out time after time, and it really gave me a great feeling about that. That is not how everybody feels right now. And so I think that that's really important that and I know Julie already does this that she needs on a regular basis. And in our conversation she offered it to happen, to continue to happen with both the chairs of the parties. So I thank you for doing that. The one suggestion that I would make is I know you give an annual report and in the annual report, there is no place that I see for a minority opinion. And I know that there was the minority opinion this year, and I think it's important for our voices to be heard . And so I think there should be a minority opinion section so that it alerts us to where are places where there are concerns and whether they are totally valid or partly valid or invalid. They are still concerns and need to be addressed. So I would propose that we have a minority opinion on decisions that would be in the annual report. Thank you. In this case that he cut. Any response? Any comment? I will add that Director wise and I need monthly with both parties and have for the past few years. And we absolutely value our observers and value those relationships and will continue to have those meetings. Colleagues for their questions. I had one, Mr. Chair. Ms.. Director Wise, thank you so much for the great leadership of the Department with respect to the November election. You reconcile every ballot that comes in and we've held in the past 100% reconciliation. I mean, we're talking millions of ballots, literally. How did we do last time on your reconciliation percentage? Councilmember Tim Bousquet. Do you want me or do you want our damage in this case to answer. Whoever whoever wants to high. Janice congratulations the James go for it. It's it's it's. Exciting. I we reconciled once again. Our department has an amazing history, as you said, of of reconciling. And we were also really excited to have more than a million ballots tabulated on Election Day, far surpassing our previous records. And with that many ballots, so completely reconciling is a huge accomplishment for our team. And they did a fantastic job, as always. 100%. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chair. You're very welcome. Further questions. I will obtain a motion to approve ordinance 2020 131. We have before US Ordinance 2020 131 appointing Janice Case as Deputy Director of the Department of Elections. See no further discussion. Madam Clerk, would you please call the wrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember. Did you i. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. I. Councilmember. I. Councilmember Cox. Hi. Councilmember Lambert. I. Councilmember up the grill, I. From number one right there. I. Council members are high. I. Mr. Chair. I. Mr. Chair, the vote is no, not zero nos. Thank you. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 131, appointing Janice Case as deputy director of the Department of Elections. Thank you very much for joining us today. We will expedite that to full council and barring objection, we'll put it down to consent as well. It'll be on consent. The consent agenda for council a week from yesterday. This coming Tuesday. Thank you. Next item is proposed motion 2021 12, which confirmed the executive's appointment of Taylor Atkinson to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee. The application materials were sent out to council members separately.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute agreements with the Long Beach Unified School District for the operation of the After School Education and Safety Program at Burbank, Edison, Garfield, Grant, King, Lafayette, and Lee Elementary, and Hudson K-8 school sites; authorize the required 15 percent in-kind match of $207,929 in the form of Community Development Block Grant and General Fund monies; execute any future documents, including amendments, necessary to accept, implement, and administer the agreements; and increase appropriations in the General Grants Fund (SR 120) in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department (PR) by $1,103,000. (Districts 1,2,4,6,7,9)

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Item 17 Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine. Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute agreements with Long Beach Unified School District for the operation of after school education and safety programs at various schools and authorize the required 15% in-kind in-kind match of 207,000 in the form of community development block grant and General Fund monies and Increase Appropriations in General Grant and General Grant Fund in the Parks and Recreation Marine Department by 1,103,000. Districts one, two, four, six, seven and nine. Can we have a clarification? Who was the maker of the motion in the second floor of the city clerk? It was moved by Councilmember Andrews and seconded by Councilmember Miranda. Thank you. Thank you. There's been a motion and a second. Is there any member of the public that wish to address the Council on item 17? And I'd like to recognize. Board L.B. USD board member Megan Crowe. That's in the audience. Thank you for being here. Members, cast your vote. I mean. Yes. Motion carries nine zero. Thank you. Item 18 Madam Clerk.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 2000 Blake Street in Five Points. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from PUD 329 and B-8 with waivers, UO-1, UO-2 to C-MX-8 (planned development to mixed-use, 8-stories), located at 2000 Blake Street in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-7-21.

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I move that council bill 20 1-1455 be placed upon final consideration and do pass again. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Seconded. Councilmember Herndon, your motion to postpone. Thank you, Madam President. I move that final consideration of Council Bill 21, dash one four or five five with this public hearing be postponed to Tuesday, February 14th, 2022. I could. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded and thank you for correcting the day of the week on that. Comments by Members of Council. CNN. Councilmember Herndon. Yes. Thank you, Madam President. This we're postponing this public hearing at the request of the applicant. Very good. Thank you. Madam Secretary. Roll call, please. Herndon. I hines. I Teshima. I can eat. I. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I swear, I. I. Black. I see tobacco. I bark. All right, fine. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. Thursday nights. Thank you. 13 Ies Final Consideration of Council Bill. 20 1-1455. I just want to double check something here. One, four, five, five. With its public hearing has been postponed to February 14th, and I do have that. That is a monday. And so I want to clarify that for the public. On Monday, February 14th, 2022, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 22, Dash 0003 changing the zoning classification for 735 North Milwaukee Street in Congress Park and a required public hearing on Council Bill 22, Dash 0016 Changing the zoning classification for 1974 and 1990 South

A bill for an ordinance amending the Denver medical marijuana code of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to regulate and implement medical marijuana research and development facilities and to modify provisions to conform with state statute. Amends the Denver Medical Marijuana Code of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to authorize a new local medical marijuana license to regulate and implement medical marijuana research and development facilities and to modify provisions to conform with state statute. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-17-20.

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Well, I have confirmation that Janet can see all of us. I'm not sure that they can see the Zoom people. So I'm going to go ahead and call it out and we'll see what happens. So I'm secretary. Please put the next item on our screens. Councilmember Black, will you please vote? Council Bill 262 on the floor. Yes, I move that council bill 20 dash 0 to 60 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded, so this was called out by Council Member C to walk into my understanding that they are not going to be able to be seen by generally and so are not going to be up. So unless there are other comments on this item tonight, then we are going to. Vote. I can hear people. We can hear them a little bit there, but they're not they're not going be able to be heard by the public, is my understanding. So just to get clarification from our secretary and legal. So we are just voting on this item now probably. May I ask a point of order? This is a council bill and it is on final consideration and do pass. Can you talk about the time sensitivity of this and whether we should delay it for the council member who chose to vote on it and hope that our technology works next time? DeLay it to a date certain of next week as a courtesy to ensure that she has the chance to make the case about the concerns she had. So I will make a motion to delay. Council vote 20 dash 262 for one week. Is that you seconding or Councilmember Flint or did you want to make a comment on that? Okay. All right. So we have a motion on the floor to delay for one week. A second for that. Skye, do you want to come up from and just answer? Is there any time sensitivity on this that would that we should consider before a postponement? Sure. Sky Stuart Mayor's office. There is not a huge time sensitivity, but we do have an applicant that is waiting. I will remind people that this is a license that the state passed in 2017. So it's been a couple of years. And there is an applicant out there who I believe has spoken with many of you about their work to get prepared for this license to move forward. I know they've put a significant amount of capital into being able to move forward. So while one week is not a delay that will, you know, kill the license from being available to people, it will cause an additional week before we can get this up and running for the applicant that has been anxiously awaiting us moving forward. Okay. Thank you. All right, Councilman, are you still in the queue for making the motion or did you have something else you want to do? I want to. Comment. Okay. Go ahead. So I am fully in support of this bill. I believe that the concerns expressed last week were about the equity program not being in place, but the fact that we have one equity applicant, this is very difficult. And so but I believe that because this is the first time we are trying this form of democracy, it is critical for us, even if we can anticipate that the votes will be here to pass it this week, as they were last week, that we cannot have technology be the barrier in a situation like that, because I think it's so important that the trust be in this form of democracy that we are evolving. So for that reason, even though I'm fully in support, I don't want that applicant to wait a week. Our democracy needs to be as robust as we have promised the community it will be. And so hopefully a week we'll solve the technology issue or we can get council members back in the chamber. So I'm sorry for that applicant, but I do, you know, and obviously if the motion fails, it fails. But that is why I'm going to I'm going to keep the motion in, even though it potentially impacts an applicant. And I regret that. Thank you, Councilmember. And I'll just add that I agree with you. I am in support of this. It would be a yes vote and will be a yes vote next week. But I agree with everything that you said and I think we should postpone for one week. So with that, Madam Secretary, roll call. Okay. So the motion would be for Council Bill 22, 62 to be postponed until Monday, April 13th? That's correct. Black I. Flynn. I but my system is not. I wasn't able to log in. Gilmore, I. Herndon. I can each. Torres, I Council President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting in both the results. Seven days. Seven eyes council bill 262 has been postponed to April 13th. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Black, will you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, I move that resolutions be adopted and bills and final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. 20 Dash zero 290 1027602890065019702050256027702260283028402870294029503130261025102530267. Back I. When. I. Gillmor. I. Herndon. I. Can each Torres. I. Council President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please cause voting and notes results. Seven eyes. Seven eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. We will not take a recess this evening and see no other business before this body. This meeting is adjourned.

A bill for an ordinance making supplemental appropriations from the General Contingency Fund to the General Government Special Revenue Fund. Approves a $4 million supplemental appropriation from the City’s General Fund Contingency to the Office of Economic Development to support the Business Incentive Fund’s support of a general merchandise mass retail store on the 16th Street Mall at 1601 California Street in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-21-17. This bill was approved for late filing by Council President Brooks.

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Thank you, Councilman Espinosa and Councilman Flynn, I just want to clarify, you had said asking everybody for your vote, but you're still okay with us going on the block vote. You want to call it out for voting no. Okay. All right. Madam Secretary, if you could please put the next item on our screens. And, Councilwoman Blackwell, you put Council Bill 156 on the floor for passage. Yes, Mr. President pro tem. I move that council. Bill 17 DASH 156. Be. Ordered published a final consideration in due pass. Thank you. We placed upon final consideration and do pass. Excellent. It has been moved. Can I get a second? All right. It's been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Mr. President. We had some discussion about this bill last week, so I won't repeat that. We had two different bills last week. One was a contract to make the investment with the developer, and the second was the contingency fund allocation to transfer the money in the budget. So that's a two reading bill. This is the second reading of that bill. And I continue to have concerns both about the fact that we do not have a direct contract with the retailer as well as the fact that we. Do you not have high enough quality, full time jobs for me to feel like this is an appropriate investment of this level from this particular fund? So with that, I will vote again this week to decline to support this. And thank you for your time, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah, I wasn't here last week, but. And she only touched on it. But I do agree with everything that Councilwoman Cannick mentioned last week and then the structural portion portion that she mentioned this week as well. The. The the and I wish people actually were able to have heard the public comment. There was a pretty a pretty harsh criticism of this that I think deserves to some degree, some bit of airwave airtime. I wish I could speak as well on the subject as that person did. Yes. In my past life before I was here, I was an architect and I was involved in a bit of urban planning projects and things like that. And so, um, you know, there's a lot of, if this was in fact an eight to 6 to 8 year project effort to get to this point, I would have expected a far more thorough and robust sort of understanding and explanation on how this really is the catalyst that we need for the 16th Street Mall. And so there is a large effort. A lot of public money goes into that corridor, and I'm just not convinced that this is it. And so for that reason, I'll be voting in opposition as well, because when we make a public investment like this, we should be getting good, stable jobs and a thriving community as well. Too much money going into this corridor without adequate support for the the why. So thank you. Thank you, councilman. Seeing no other comments. Madam Secretary. Raquel. Can each new Sussman. I black I. Espinosa. No. Flynn Gilmore. I. Herndon, i. Cashman. I. Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. Eat ice. Two nays. Ayes, two nays. Council Bill 156 has passed. Madam Secretary, can you please put the next item on our screens? And, Councilwoman Black. Will you put please put Council Bill 153 on the floor for passage.

A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed Lease Agreement between the City and County of Denver and the State of Colorado Department of Revenue, Division of Motor Vehicles, to lease office space for driver licensing and related services at the Arie P. Taylor building at 4685 Peoria Street. Approves a lease agreement with the State of Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles for $356,531.49 and for five years for approximately 2,583 square feet of office space for driver licensing and related services at the Arie P. Taylor building located at 4685 Peoria Street in Council 8 (FINAN-201841987). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 11-19-18. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-16-18.

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Thank you very much. I'll do a quick recap. Under resolutions, we have nothing called out under bills for introduction, Councilwoman Gilmore is called Accountable 18 dash 21146 for a comment under bills for final consideration. No items have been called out and under pending. No items have been called out. Madam Secretary, will you please put the first item on our screens? And, Councilwoman Gilmore. Go ahead with your comment. Thank you, President. Clerk. I thought it was going to be comments, but I do have one question. Is that okay to go. With go for it. But but you're not calling for a vote still. I understand. Okay. Just a question. Go for it. All right. Great. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question of Lisa Lumley with the Division of Real Estate. She's coming. Yeah. Hey. Sorry, Lisa. We got here a little quicker than I thought we would. I had a question about this lease arrangement and just wanted to understand what are the requirements of an organization who is maybe leasing space within a city owned building? What stipulates their participation in building wide safety protocols? Anything that has to do with with the entire facility. Lisa Lumley, Division of Real Estate. I apologize. I was actually trying to get some answers out in the hallway just now. So in general, all of our leases require that our tenants adhere to all applicable laws, state laws, city laws, municipal codes, etc. where I have a number of phone calls in right now, including to Chief Manny and Tony Caro. What we're trying to confirm is, is a fire drill a true requirement in every building other than, you know, it may be high rises, but since that's only a two level building, if it is a requirement, they would be required to participate any tenant. Your email today was the first that I was ever aware that there was an issue and I've already spoken with facilities about that as well since your email, just to understand what's been going on or who they've been communicating with. So all I can do right now is defer that we are trying to understand what is truly a requirement or a regulation. Code issue versus a building protocol. And from there, if it's protocol, we'd still want to work with them and talk to them about that to understand. But if it's anything else, then no, that is part of the lease. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you for your work on it. And look forward to to the follow up. I will. Thank you. Thank you. President Clarke. Is that everything for this bill? Yes. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. That concludes the items to be called out. All other bills for introduction are ordered published, and we are now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration.

A bill for an ordinance amending the annual salaries of certain appointed charter officers. Amends Section 18-91 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to adjust annual salaries for appointed charter officers in accordance with limitations set forth in the Charter and applied retroactively to January 1, 2022. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 4-5-22.

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12 nays. Resolution 22, Dash 366 has failed. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens for us. Councilmember Flynn, would you please put Bill eight three excuse me. 383 on the floor for final passage? Yes, thank you. I move that council bill 20 2-0383 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of council. Councilmember CdeBaca Yes. Just calling. This out again on. Second reading to go on record as a no vote for this. I do not support this change without first addressing the pay inequities for non appointed members of career service employees throughout the city. So I'm a no on this tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 22, Dash 383. CDEBACA No. Clark Well. I. Flynn High. Herndon High. High cashmere. I can eat. I Ortega. I. Sandoval. I swear. I. Torres. My black eye. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce results. 12 eyes when they. 12 eyes, bill 20 2-383 has passed. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Flynn, would you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Madam President, I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in a block for the following items, all of which are series of 2020 2403404 393 390 44084 5256 390 9405406407368 371, three, 73 and 374. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn, it has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. I see tobacco. I talk. I. Flynn. High. Herndon. High Cashman. Kenny Ortega. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. All right. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close vote and announce results. 13 813 ies. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Our pre recess announcement tonight there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 22, dash 246 changing the zoning classification for 2039 South William Street in University.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution continuing the Fourth Street Parking and Business Improvement Area assessment for the period of October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018; and, authorize City Manager, or designee, to extend the agreement with the Fourth Street Business Improvement Association for a one-year term. (District 2)

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But we do need to do the hearings. So and if there's people here for any other items, we should get to those out of respect for folks that are here. So can we hear the next the hearing? I think I'm going to not sleep for the breakfast in the morning. I'm going to just stay up. Standing together, you and I are going to just sleep over and just stay for breakfast. Oh, man. Okay. We're going to do a little later. There's a big labor breakfast in the morning. No, it's here in Long Beach. Go ahead and read the next hearing. Item number two report from Economic and Property Development Recommendation to conclude the public hearing and adopt a resolution continuing the Fourth Street Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessment for the period of October one, 2017 through September 30th, 2018, and extend the agreement with the fourth Street Business Improvement Association for a one year term District two. Mr.. MODICA Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We have a very short staff presentation from from Eric Eric Romero. Good evening. Good morning. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. This item is. The annual approval of the Fourth Street Parking and Business. Improvement Area Annual Ongoing Assessment. On August eight, 2017, the City Council approved a resolution granting approval of the annual report and set today's date for the public hearing. The recommended action on this item continues the assessment. For another year. There are no proposed changes to the basis of assessment nor significant changes in proposed activity. Therefore, staff request that the City Council receive the supporting documentation into the record, approve the resolution. And continue the levy of the. Assessment, and authorize the city manager to extend the agreement for one additional. Year. That concludes. My report. Okay, great. Is there any public comment on this item? Okay. Seeing none any council customer appears. I've got lots of comments, guys. Now, this is great. Thank you, everybody, for your work. Okay, Councilman Gonzales. Fantastic. Okay. There's the motion in a second, and please cast your votes.

A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed Contract to Exchange Property between the City and County of Denver and PHC Mixed Use, LLC for payment and exchange of property for park improvements. Approves an agreement with PHC Mixed Use, LLC (PHC) to exchange city-owned property located at 2863 Fairfax Street for PHC-owned property located at 2868 Fairfax Street, and to include $650,000 from PHC for certain park improvements on the newly obtained city parcel in Council District 8 (FINAN 201842934). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 9-10-18. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-7-18.

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Speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilwoman Black, will you please put Council Bill 855 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 855 be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Council Bill 855 is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening. Lisa Lemley Division of Real Estate. So we are here. Real Estate is representing the team to discuss the contract that is coming through is an exchange contract. The city currently owns the property at 2863 Fairfax Street and we would exchange the property for like size with the property across the street at 2860 Street I'm sorry , 28, 68 Fairfax Street included in this transaction, PHC would also. Paid to the city $650,000 for future but determined park improvements that will be deposited in escrow. That is the sum of the transaction. I'm talking about the park improvements. Yes. Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director of Parks and Planning. So this this project was started back in 2015. Xcel Energy had to transfer stations that they were decommissioning. I was able to talk talk to Excel. They had one. And on Fairfax, this is the one we're discussing now. And they also had one in Westwood, the Westwood neighborhood. So we were able to acquire those two parcels for $50,000. I would add I had attended some public public meetings at the Greater Park Hill community meetings to let people know that I was working on this, trying to acquire these properties, and that our goal, the Park's goal, Parks Department's goal, was to build a park in this community that basically has a park desert. There's not a lot of parks in this neighborhood. So this was something that we were just trying to do and trying to do to build this little pocket park. So we were able to do that. In 2016, H&M Capital approached the city and said, Hey, we are redeveloping the east side of the block. You guys have a pass on the West Side, and that's the map that you have on 20/29 and Fairfax. We would like to contribute to building a park on this block. We want to make our development better. We want to make the block better. And so we we started discussions with them and we we talked about a possible swap of land. They take the West Side parcel and then on the east side they would actually work with us to build a park within that within that block. And so we've moved forward and this is where we're at now. So they would actually give a $650,000. When this if this moves forward, $100,000 would be immediately available for us to actually move forward with the design. At this time, we basically just have some concept designs. The city did have four meetings in the community to work on some concepts. Also, the Park Hill community had four meetings. The Park Hill, Greater Park Hill community actually had three meetings. They came up with some concepts. These are actually pretty good concepts and they've got some really good bones to actually start the actual design process, to move forward to eventually get to a construction document. Right now we do not have any design that is finalized or anything, so this moving forward would actually give us funding, which we do not have at this time, to actually start the design of this project. So that's kind of what I wanted to bring up. Thank you. Does that conclude this staff report then? Yeah, for now, yes. If there's any other questions, we are here. Thank you. We do have 29 individuals signed up to speak this evening. This is a one hour courtesy hearing, so we'll have to stop after one hour. So while you do have 3 minutes, if you're saying things that someone else has said or you can say them quickly, please do to allow time for us to get through as many of those 29 as we possibly can in one hour. I'm also going to ask if you're sitting in this first bench, if you could please find another seat, because I'm going to call up five speakers at a time so that we can try and get through people quickly and don't lose a lot of time. Turning over. So when I do call your name, come up to this front bench and then be ready in that order that I call you to pop right up when the speaker in front of you is done. I will now call the first five speakers. I do apologize if I mispronounce your name and then the first speaker can step up to the microphone. We'll get started right away. So the first five that we have is Robin Fishman, Christine O'Connor, Jesse Parris, Benjamin Shaffer and Alison Larson. If you could all five come to the front bench and Robin Fishman, the microphone is yours. Thank you. I really did not want to be first. But I go for it. My name is Robin Fishman. I live at 2665 Forest Street. It is roughly four houses down the alley from this development. I have watched a lot of change in this neighborhood. And I. For those of you who. Tend to vote with. Your registered neighborhood organization, I want to really speak to you. Tonight. I am a former board member of the Greater Parkfield community. I am the. Former executive director of Gated Park Community. I'm very familiar with how they work. And I have great respect. For the members here. Tonight who volunteer and work very hard with them. I typically agree with them, but on this case I feel like they have really missed the boat. They have done absolutely nothing whatsoever to survey the housing or membership. That lives directly. Closest to this park. I'm four houses away, as you will hear, and I hope you will ask. The people that come up to speak post tend to live farther away from the development. I and my neighbors live very close to the development. We are most affected by it. They did nothing to survey the membership. I have participated in park design programs. Through them where I had a very open mind about whether the park should be on the east or west side. Of the street. I was told we were looking at a ballpark of $750,000 to fundraise to privately build the park on the West Side. Which I actually volunteered to do. But as my mind started to change and I started to lean toward the east side, gradually I was left out of that process. I was no longer included. On emails to even deliver fliers about those meetings. And is very clear that they have a very specific agenda about wanting it. Only on the west side of the street, the park itself. Will be built between residents and a retail development. On the West Side. It will be. Long Table Brewery. Which is a great establishment. But it won't. It will be between. Retail and housing, regardless of which side of the street it's on. Some of the concerns. That have been raised have been about. Gentrification issues, people feeling welcome to the park and will it really feel like a city park. Versus a plaza? I feel strongly that through the work of the developers and. Through the work of the. Neighborhood, we can work with the city to make sure that it feels very much like a park that is open to all and make sure that the permitting is through the city to make sure that it feels open. And welcoming. I have certainly participated in processes where I have encouraged naming it after a park resident and making sure that it is something that is less than a plaza but open to everyone. My concern is if we wait for the West Side. We are fundraising probably for a private park, which that funds those funds could be put to. Much better use, such as helping the people. I'm sorry, but your time is up. Oh, thank you very much. Next up, Christine, come on. All right. Well, anyway, I'm in favor of the swap. My name is Christine O'Connor. I live at 144 South Ulster Street in Denver. I'm going to ask you guys a rhetorical question to start with. So just can you just hold this in your head while I'm speaking? But how do you expect me as a voter to support a park, a sales tax for increasing revenue to parks by 47 million over our 74 million? If you're giving away park assets. Just hold that for a minute because this is really serious, this giveaway deal. I mean, the developer, as other people will explain, is getting money hand over fist. He's going to benefit by increased property values on the east side. He's doubling his holdings on the west side. He can reason. You all know that's going to. Come. I mean, we weren't born yesterday, so I'd like you to think about that. I also have a serious ask for you, something that you could do. And I think that the city and parks have bent over backwards to work with the developer and, you know, get an agreement in writing. Meanwhile. The community, which worked really, really hard for over two years, has no guarantees in writing. None. Park grader Parkhill asked for a board to be set up. A community board? That's not even done. There's no guarantee that the extra profits will go into this board for maintenance of the park. There's a number of things it can do. I've heard you're eluding meeting. I know that many of you have valid concerns about gentrification and who this park will serve. And being on Lowry, where we have a plaza in the middle of the shopping center, I guarantee you it's not an open public park. This one also isn't labeled a park, and I know DPR is going to take control, but if you really think that there isn't going to be racial profiling and there aren't going to be neighbors and restaurants complaining if it is really publicly used, then I don't think you really know anything about parks. So I'd like to ask that you postpone this until you've required the mayor and the administration to make agreements with the neighbors as part of this deal. And I know some of you are going to say, oh, we can't do that. That's out of our purview. Then why have a city council if you can't direct the mayor? I'm just not sure what our purposes. So there's other people who are going to talk. But I also have concerns about the future of our park. I love plazas. I've been to Siena. That plaza is wonderful. We have them. You know, they're all over New York City. But there's no guarantee that this is going to feel like a public park. And there's no rationale in the game plan. All we need to have. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but your time is up. Thank you very much. Jesse Paris. Jesse pairs Black Star Action Movement for Self-defense and the City Council at large candidate for 2019 Black Stars and more for self-defense. We are a for profit. Which is for the poor, working, poor, elderly and senior citizens in the homeless and those that are just thrown off broke. We do not agree with this at all. As a Denver native, I grew up in Parkview. This neighborhood is being gentrified just like the rest of the neighborhoods throughout this whole city. And just to sit here and listen to you all try to justify this by saying that this is going to be a public park, all while having an urban camping ban which criminalizes the homeless on the streets of Denver. It makes it illegal for them to even sleep in the park. You think that the answer is more parks instead of affordable housing? This place could be used to build affordable housing. Transitioning to transitional housing. All the above. But instead you want to build another park. Like we don't already have enough parks already. Like we'd already have enough dog parks already. We have more dog parks than we have public restrooms in the whole city of Denver. We are definitely against this. You are being very disingenuous in the way that you are going about this process. The community has literally told you they do not want this done and you still want to go through with it. You still are in bed with the bedbugs, the business developers, and you still are following the lead of Michael Hancock, who is not fit to serve. So Denver homicide allowed Blackstar some movement. We are against this. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Benjamin Schaaf. Benjamin Shariff. I live on 26 block of forest, so half block away from the development. I am in favor of the land swap. I have attended the the meetings and I, I to me it is it is a funding issue. There's funds available for a park. I and I have I have not heard from the GP agency any, any form of funding available that they have. They just have been said that they will find the funding available for that. To me, as a neighbor of the park with young children. I would like to use this park. I have seen this said. For two years without any development and I'll keep a brief with that. But I am in favor of the land swap. Thank you. Next up is Alison Larson and what Alison is coming up, I'm going to call the next five to come to this frontbench, Christina Cryer, Karen Engel, Ford, Jason Cline, Hayter, Blair, Taylor and Alison Shah. Sorry about some of those names. I apologize. Alison Larson. I'm Ali Larson. I'm a resident in Park Hill. As you can see, this is a heated issue in our neighborhood. Park Hill is experiencing gentrification at a massive rapid rate. And the people that are here opposed to the land swap, as I am, are not opposed to a park or oppose it. The way this process has been handled, which is have been extremely and equitably and with no transparency. I am urging you, as our city council members, to recognize that the city is paying attention to how we are gentrifying. Are we doing it respectfully? Are we doing it thoughtfully? Are we thinking about citizens who don't take online surveys, which is one of the ways that they were doing community feedback here? Are they showing up to meetings? Not necessarily. And we need to be listening to all of our community members. If you walk around Park Hill, I will tell you that the school a few blocks to the east of this has an Afro rate of over 90%. The school several blocks to the south has an overall rate of 13%. Park Hill is very divided. There are people here that will tell you that it is one Park Hill, but it is not. And these types of things happening continue to make that divide even greater. We are asking you to put a hold on this. Recognize that there were other offers on the table to develop this land that were not given consideration. That has not been mentioned here. There were developers that people that were bringing money to the table as well. As you heard, this whole thing was started because this developer came to the table, made the offer, and nothing else was considered. That should be a red flag to you as city council, as our city is gentrifying. Developers should not hold the power. When we were at the previous committee hearings, developers, the developer, held all of the power. Happy Hands even mentioned the term a gift. This was a gift from the developer. That should not be happening in city buildings. We should not be talking about gifts from developed developers that actually are not gifts. We are giving the developer a lot of money. This would be a plot of land in the middle of a fancy development in the middle of North Park Hill. North Park Hill is a special place. It still has some diversity. It still has a rich culture. If you have not been on this block recently, there has been a long standing black owned liquor store on the south side of the block that many of our neighbors have complained about because it gets frequented by lower income African-American patrons. Yet a brewery was built at the north end of this block, and no one seems to mind that there are drunk, white, rich people hanging out on that corner as well. I just want to point out that this is a sensitive subject. We care about our neighbors. We care about what is happening here. I'm a longtime resident. I care about neighbors. And I care about how we as a city are doing things. Are we doing it well? Are we doing it thoughtfully? This process has not been done equitably, nor thoughtfully, nor transparently. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Christina Crier. Hello. As you mentioned, my name is Christina Cryer and I live with my husband and my four and six year old boy at the corner of 26th and Forest. I'm also representing multiple other Park Hill families that weren't able to be here, including my cousin's entire family and my brother's entire family, all of which live within a block of, you know, this proposed park, whether it's on the east side or the west side. I've been to multiple meetings now trying to kind of weigh the pros and cons and hear from both sides. And in the simplest form, I mean, it just seems fairly obvious that it is a win for the neighborhood and we get a park sooner rather than later. The last information and data that I received was that the park could be, you know, 5 to 10 years down the road if we do not go through with the land swap. I don't know if that's still the updated numbers. We saved taxpayer dollars by helping, you know, partnering with the development. We still keep the entire. Piece of land with the city of Denver. And the park is going to be identical, whether it's on the east side. Or. The west side. I think what we're hearing is. Frustrations that aren't necessarily related 100% to the park. I've heard that there's been some. Mistrust or perhaps people wanted to be a little bit more included. And maybe that's the case and perhaps things could have, you know, developed better. But that doesn't change the fact that the park is going to be either on the east side or the west side, and that we can have it sooner without using taxpayer dollars. If we go through with the swap. I've also heard a lot of issues or concerns might be the better term on the development itself, and that is not what's up for vote right now. We can't necessarily change what's going on around the park, whether it's on the east side or the west side. We talk about things. That are there right now, whether that's going to be there in the future or not, I don't know. But those are things that is not being voted on right now and things that we can't change. I also don't think that there's an entire person. In this room that doesn't think that there's room for improvement on this block. You'll continue to hear from other people that live even closer than I do and some of the issues that they face. I know that we have faced some issues as well on my block, and I also understand that change needs to be thoughtful and that it really does need to benefit the neighborhood. And I think that the process has been going on for months and months. So I think that suggesting that not a lot of thought. Has not gone into this yet would be. False and wrong. And I also think that we can use this as an opportunity to. Shape the block. You know, I've reached out to, you know, my neighbors. I've reached out to, you know, councilman, I've reached out to the developer and I've reached out to on a couple of occasions the greater Parkdale community, you know, and I've had a lot of conversations and tried to bring up some different ideas, you know, whether it's bringing a social enterprise into the development or creating different park activities. But the Greater Park Hill Group has not exactly been open to those conversations. Thank you very much. Next up, Karen, anger fought. You are doomed from the beginning. It's current and graffiti. When I was nine. I got to live in Park Hill, 2258. From Area Street. Grew up at 23rd and Bel from 1970. My cousin lives on Fairfax and 26. I am opposed to this swap in the developers pictures of the development. It looks like a 3 to 4 story building overlooking a private piece of land does not feel very hospitable, and that has been a very key point. This is not hospitable to the neighborhood and it is not respectful of the neighborhood. Just because you live close by. It's a park. You don't own the park a block from your house. That's a neighborhood park. It is a park. Desert. So it should serve the greater area. I work at Park Hill Clinic at the Denver Health Clinic. I'm a physician. Most of my patients live in the neighborhood. They. Would benefit from having more open space. I think the city has a great asset here and they should think twice before giving away this open space. I know the developer would want to put another building and looking at how it would be, the park would then be surrounded by three sides because then the developer would have the opportunity to put in another large building. So it would be three large buildings surrounding a very small park. I can have concerns about the heat. Island aspect of it. When I went to the horse and pony shows of the that the Parks Department put on, giving us four options and no input into anything other than comment on these four options. They said they would not allow that a playground was okay and there was a lot of it. What we came up with as a community at those meetings was discounted. Uh, one more thing. Or maybe in the interest of. Time, I will bow out. All right. Thank you very much. Next up, Jason Cline had her very good. So hi, my name is Jason Cleanser. I live at 2615 four, so less than a block away. We've been in the neighborhood since, well, 1/29 and Holly and then here. At 26th and Forest four and so on. And obviously I've seen a lot of change of the city. I'm sure. Anybody that's lived here for. 20 years plus you've seen a lot of change in the city. This block has not seen much change. In fact, the only change that has come has been through buildings B, becoming empty, subsequently encouraging crime and delinquency in our neighborhoods. I've seen cops shoot at kids in my neighborhood. I've seen other kids shoot at other kids. I've seen a tremendous amount of drug use. And and that's not what this neighborhood's about. This neighborhood is about community. It's about family. It's about being respectful to its neighbors. And because of the dilapidation that happened on that block. Over the years, that it's. It's not turned into an asset that the community can really value. The developer has taken on his his wings to to to put this in play, put attainable housing in the market. And he wants to. Give the community $650,000. At the cost of a $25,000 lot. That the city paid for. Congratulations, Scott. That's a hell of a good land deal. The reality is, is that the city is not. Out any. Money. With this. They're out 25 grand, but they get a $625,000 asset because of it. The city did a tremendous. Job of really programing this project, finding out the ins and outs of what makes a park community. And I commend their group for really being forward thinking of finding the assets that that that would make that a central part of our neighborhood and our streets. Because I do think it matters that you live there because I've seen it. I've been awoken by gunfire too many times in that neighborhood. To have it keep being a. Problem. And the fact of the matter is that if you live at 20th and Glencoe or if you live in Lowry, you don't know the issues that come down here. I we do. I've seen it. I've rolled up my windows at night because of it. So I honestly, hopefully you guys consider that as part of this thing and respect to somebody that's making an investment of millions and millions of dollars to make our neighborhood not only better to take away some of the assets that weren't being used and really make. Our community a piece that we can all be proud of. Thank you. Next up, Blair Taylor. Hello. My name is Blair Taylor and I live at 28 Glencoe Street. I am the District five representative for the Greater Park Hill Community Board. The Greater Park Hill Community Board is made up of more than 20 residents of Park Hill. We have not officially changed our position made in November of 2017 opposing the Fairfax land swap. The city has demonstrated determination to force this deal no matter the description, discrepancy of value or lack of foresight. This deal gives land to a developer whose tenants on either side will clearly have the advantage of this plaza for their use . The developer's own website furthers this evidence by having both designed it without any neighborhood input or actually naming it the Square at Park Hill Commons. That's not a public pocket park for Park Hill. The Greater Park Hill chair requested in July a pause for decision makers to include provisions which would provide equal opportunity for added community value . Some of the things that we requested were building the park in the first phase of development. Right now the contract states the park will be developed in 2021. That's six years from when it was purchased. That would have given the community plenty of time to look at go go co-funding, which is what Westwood Park, which was completed last week, went last weekend used. Building the community produce design. It was a process that was inclusive of a really diverse group of residents. Establish a neighborhood board that would oversee and ensure the park rules accommodated all of the residents. Establish a good neighbor. Agreements with all of the adjacent tenants. Provide some truly affordable housing in perpetuity for those residents who are displaced. And promote leases to minority owned businesses. One of the residents has drawn a comparison to this deal being reminiscent of the purchase of Manhattan Island. The natives are given $24 worth of trinkets and told to be thankful in exchange for their loss of land, culture and livelihood. I hope that you've truly considered the repercussions of gentrification in a neighborhood that is so rich with history that you've not chosen to sell out to make the rich richer. We hope that the vote that you cast today reflects to your constituents your value of community, because in May we will be casting our votes. Thank you. Next up, Alison Shah and I'm going to call the next five up, Tracey McDermott, Karen Williams, Shonda Harrison, Tiffany Knapp, Snyder and Hank Boots. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Alison Shai, live at 3014 for us. So just two blocks from this development, I think that there are some very significant issues in our neighborhood regarding gentrification and a very strong minority in the neighborhood that is vehemently anti-development and anti developer. And I think that some of these issues are getting mixed in with the park. For some people, these are inseparable. I actually favor the park being built by the developer and being part of a larger complex that enables the development to include commercial restaurants and cafes as part of the development. Without the park on that side, we lose the opportunity to have a new commercial expansion of that neighborhood. I think that the concerns that people have are ones that people in our community can come together to address and work on. I think that we are a strong community of committed people, many long term residents of new residents who could actually commit to making this a neighborhood park by working on all these kinds of issues that people have raised who are opposed to it. That doesn't they don't require us not to build the park to undertake these kinds of community works financially. I think it's a it's a great deal for us to get the park built with a developer who's willing to put the money into it. Does he benefit? Yes, he does. Is that a zero sum game? That means we don't benefit. No, I don't think so. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Next up, Tracey McDermott. Right. Karen Williams. Hello, I'm Karen Williams. I live at 26, 23 forest half block from the proposed park. I am for the land swap. I think as many others have said, it's a great deal for the city. I think the Parks and rec money that they would spend on the West Side could better be spent in other neighborhoods where they don't have someone giving them $650,000. I attended a meeting. Councilman Herndon put on bat way back in october last year. Two other park meetings, three greater Park Hill meetings. The developer has said that he will work with the design the community came up with, which we I appreciated. I'm a senior citizen in the neighborhood. I would love to be able to take grandchildren there and I just think it'd be a great deal for the city. So thank you very much. Thank you. Shanta Harrison. Sean to Harrison. All right, Tiffany Knapp. Snyder. Kent, I'm sorry. Okay. Well, thank you all for hearing from neighbors. And I also wanted to thank Councilwoman Nature coming out and speaking with some neighbors who are for the land swap for the park to be built on the east side of the street. I live at 28, 34 sits. It's Mid-Block just a block away from where the development is happening on Park Hill. Resident for 12 years. I love this neighborhood. I love Park Hill and I feel I'm here tonight because I just feel sad at what this has become. I feel, unfortunately, that it's it's become a racial issue. I believe that it has pitted neighbors against neighbors. And I, I have to say that I think that the Greater Park Hill Community Board has been a big part of that. I have friends and neighbors and people that I care about on both sides of this issue. And so it's hard to get up here and talk, you know, to talk about that. But I feel strongly that the issues that are being brought up and the concerns that are being brought up are are good. It's good conversation. I think that we need to be having more of these conversations. I think people are very sensitive to the issues of gentrification in Park. Hill, specifically. North Park Hill. I, I have several neighbors of color who I have had. Discussions with about this, both for and against the the land swap. And so, again, I think these conversations are really important. So I'm thankful that we have an issue to talk about. What I don't think is that this park in where it is placed on the east or the west side will, A, provide healing for those issues. Solve the. Issue at hand? And I think what we're dealing with now is we need to move forward. I think we've been at so many of these meetings. We need to move forward with a park that has a has funding in place. It has a timeline in place to serve our community better. I have three young kids and I'm worried about the safety of the block. And like so many people have mentioned, there has not been change on the block for years. So while I don't think this is maybe maybe the development is not the. Perfect solution. For the block of Fairfax. I recognize that and I want to be sensitive to that, but that is what is happening. And so I feel strongly that a park can serve our community, can serve our neighbors. And I just feel like already it's been, you know, almost set in stone that it's going to be inclusive if it's on the West Side and exclusive as if it's on the east side. And I just don't feel like that's the case. Thank you so much. And could you just state your name for the record? Tiffany Camp Snyder, really excited. All right, Hank, Boots and Hank is coming up the next five. If you could come to the front, Brad Burdick, Lehman Knowles, Moira Stiles, Maria Flora and Paul Nordquist. Go ahead. Thank you. My name is Hank Boots. And I agree with Tiffany that the process divided the neighborhood on this issue. And the reason it divided the neighborhood is because it was a very dishonest, undisclosed process. We have heard there is a letter of intent. There's not a letter of intent. The city is going to build this park. The developers couldn't build this park. We've heard so much. I suppose I'm supposed to watch my language here. But you know, what we've heard is dishonesty. Dishonesty from Parks and Rec. Dishonesty from where? Where's the contract on this deal? And all of a sudden, it shows up. Now, everybody in this room, I got a feeling if you're selling your house, you want to get as much as she can for it. And there is nothing in this process to indicate that the city had any interest in maximizing what it could get from this land. It sold to one person. It didn't put a for sale sign up. It didn't ask for bids. There's no fiduciary duty whatsoever to the people that actually own that land. Which one of them is me? So I'm very disappointed and I hope that if the city continues to swap land, park, land, what could be park land for apartment buildings, then we'll have honesty next time. We'll have people that come to us to begin with and say, We have people interested in buying this. Is there anybody else interested in buying this? That's how I was sold a car. And maybe that's too difficult a concept, but I'm really let down. And this was not a clean, honest, forthright deal for the citizens. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Brad Burdick. Hi. Good evening. My name's Brad Burdick. I live at 2631 Forest, about a half a block from the proposed development. I reiterate all the things that everyone before me has said in support of the park. We've had concerns. I've been there for about eight years and I can honestly say that I've heard. Immediate sirens or sirens as a result of gun violence from that block more than a dozen times in the last eight years. So anything that will bring people together on that block as far as businesses, foot traffic will be an improvement for the block. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Lemon Knowles. Hi. My name's Lemon Knowles. I'm a Park Hill resident off 30th in Cherry, and I'm also the president of City Park Friends and Neighbors. This is my third courtesy hearing concerning park issues. The only issue I have or the concern I have is the process where the civic engagement was not as strong as it could be. We do need development. We do need improvements in the neighborhood. But the citizens who are there, long term citizens like myself, who know the history of the community, we really should have been more engaged from the beginning. So I was really upset when I saw the construction fence. I didn't know that that the deal had even taken place. I read about it in the Greater Park Hill News. And so, you know, it's just been very stressful for the last year and a half where the citizens just don't feel like they've been respected. So what I suggest in the future is that the civic engagement be stronger. Thank you. Thank you. Moira Stiles. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is Maura Stiles. I live at 2859 Forest Street, which is directly behind where the park is planned to be, if it is going to be on the east side of Fairfax Street. My battery's dying here. So on my notes, I just want to say a couple extra things on top of what's already been said tonight. I really have been appreciating the conversation that has come up because of this issue. The conversation and the dialog that does need to be moving forward in our community. It is valuable. It is rich. It is something we should all be a part of. One of the benefits of having this park be on the east side is that we see that happening in the very near future versus an undisclosed unknown date . We really would like to have this be a much more cared for. Eyes on it. Watched block for the safety of three children, 14, 12 and nine for the safety of them on this block. I just also want to say that we do hear and care deeply about the history of pain and exclusion and marginalization that this kind of discussion triggers in our community. The issue of inclusion will be an issue that we need to care about whether the park is on the west side or the east side of Fairfax. And our hope is neighbors, as we've been discussing this as neighbors, is for the forward movement of completing the park on the east side in the very near future as a space for interaction and healing to happen. If this can get moving forward, it creates a space where the conversations and the interaction can begin rather than just there just being an empty space. That reminds us of the polarization. We as neighbors are committed to lean into those conversations. We moved to Park Hill 11 years ago because we wanted to raise our boys in a racially, ethnically, socioeconomically diverse community. And I truly hope that my boys. And all. Of our kids can see us as a neighborhood and as a community, carry the shared value of it being really up to all of us to be inclusive and to care for our neighbors. So, again, we are for the land swap. And thanks for your time. Thank you, Maria. Flora. Good evening, Maureen of Florida speaking against the measure. I'm a Park Hill resident. Denver Parks and Recreation advocates for the land swap as a way to build a pocket park fast, cheap and good. But it's none of those things, and I urge you to vote against it. If the swap is approved, we insist that DPR build the park that was designed by the community. The swap is not fast. Happy Haines was at Greater Park Hill earlier this year and said that the pocket park would likely be built in two years. So say the beginning of 2020. The city isn't going to start construction under this contract until the early until any time before October 31, 2019. And later, if this contract drags out, I could build a park in the same time on the West Side. The swap plan is not cheap. The major is one of the major selling points. Was this $650,000 so-called donation by Tim Papp capital from Park Design and Construction. But H. M is getting value out of this. They're going to get increased rents because the park is embedded in the development and they're going to get a tax deduction . They're getting under this contract a $10 a month lease to store up to 10,000 cubic yards of dirt on what's now the plaza. And there's a great deal of value in that. That lease is open ended. It doesn't end until construction starts. And it also saves what it would have spent developing the plaza as it was initially depicted in its plans. But most of all, the swap plan is not good. The neighbors are concerned that the plaza embedded in a Jim's upscale, dense development will not be the park that the neighborhood wants. The Greater Park Hill R.A. held three community design meetings where anybody could speak their mind unmoderated. First and foremost, the community wanted play features for all age kids, specifically swings and climbing structures. A park design was created and given to council with a conventional play structure. DPR duplicated the park process came out with a set of plans that did not have a single swing or slide, no play structures other than rocks, and one of the plans didn't even have any turf. We're disappointed. We're reduced, insisting on swings and slides. So to ensure that the neighborhood gets the park it wants, we request that DPR give the R.A. a seat at the table in the park design process, and we insist that it build the park that was designed by the community. Thank you. I have pictures of the community design. I'll give them to the clerk for distribution. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Paul Norquist. Thank you. My name's Paul Norquist. I live at 2885. Dexter. We're three blocks west of the proposed development. I'm here to speak for myself and my family and my neighbors in favor of the land swap. I think. We just believe in the facts of it, that it's a like for like exchange. Of land, that there is a $650,000 allotment that the development or developer is giving to the city to build that park. And like was said before. The money that Denver Parks and Rec. Would. Have to use then can be used in another underserved community. I think we just need to. Look at the actual facts of the land swap and. Unfortunately we have to put some of this other stuff. On the wayside until. Those issues can be addressed in another. Manner. But for the land swap itself. We are in favor of the. Swap. We want this thing going. We want the. Block to change as quickly as possible and. Get this thing moving and become an asset for our. Community. Thank you. Thank you. I call the next five up, Andrea Robinette, Dan Shaw, Eric Penn, Darren Bloom and Miguel Cabezas Reese. Is there. Andrea or Cindric. Sandra. Sandra. I apologize. Good evening. My name is Sandy Robinson and I live at 2875 Birch Street. And I opposed the land swap. I have been in attendance at several neighborhood meetings addressing the land swap and placement of the park on 28th and Fairfax. I've heard comments made by several residents expressing support for the land swap because of their belief that the land swap will ease some of their safety concerns. As an African-American Latina, I too have concerns. I feel that not only are these comments racially biased, but will perpetuate the pattern of racial harassment. We people of color are experiencing in the country today. I have concerns that those who express these safety concerns, those moving into the development and specifically the retailers that are proposed to surround this public park, will be given unjustified reasons to harass, call the cops and unnecessarily risk the lives of people of color. Despite the resurgence of gentrification in Park Hill, there is still a strong presence of people of color. We long term residents should not, under any circumstance, live in fear of our new non-ethnic neighbors. We shouldn't have to worry that the police will be called on us because we want to have a birthday party or a barbecue in what will be deemed a public park. And let me just say, when we are in public parks, our barbecues are not the same as other people's barbecues. My music is loud. My music is in a different language. My music is not only in English, it's not country. I listen to salsa is merengue is cumbia, and it's in Portuguese because I speak Portuguese fluently. By placing the park within the development and allowing the land swap, the city would. Not only allow. But encourage the harassment we are experiencing today. But let me be clear. I'm prepared for the harassment. I strongly. Believe. That by allowing the swap, Denver will soon be on the news and social media with our own permit parties and bet in barbecue. Becky's. So please. City Council developers and future residents and retailers know that if there is one. And I mean one, unwarranted harassment phone call made. On a single person of color, we will witness protests far reaching anything Denver has ever experienced. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Dan Schorr. Hi. I'm Dan Shaw. I live at 30th and Forest and that's very hard to follow. I think this is a really very difficult issue. For Park Hill. And a couple of people have mentioned that this has brought forth some really important things that need to be resolved discussed. I would just urge the city council in whatever it does tonight that a process be embedded to continue the conversation. There was a very good conversation, an excellent moderator that one of the councilman heard and convened several meetings about the park. There was a moderator from U, c, d and he did a great job really enabling people, giving people a voice. And I think that really more than anything else for me about this East or West is that it's an opportunity for us to to get to have that opportunity to to talk about these things. And so if if it wherever the park is, there has to be a really intentional process for designing it and for and for and for creating something where it is really, truly inclusive. So I mean, I think that's my really one. I want to say thank you. Thank you, Eric Pen. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, there could. Her name is Eric Penn. I'm a community advocate and a resident and mom. Some may wonder why a resident of mom Bella would show up at a parks meeting in a Park Hill, especially when I have a pretty nice neighborhood park. I can walk a block and go to Silverman Park. Like I see families that are having barbecues and quinceaneras. The streets are always packed. They play football. We have a pavilion, we have a playground swings. And that's why I'm here, is because all of these things are the things that this city is or this neighborhood is asking to be put into their neighborhood so they can experience the things that we experience. In my neighborhood, in Montebello. And I don't think that's unreasonable. I think that's what this community deserves. It is a park desert, which is ironic being named Park Hill. But. There are some things that happen in this process that I think we've heard tonight brought out some of the disdain in the neighborhood, some of the ugly sides of people. During the community meetings, people feel that they are pitted against each other by the moderators that were hired at a $30,000 expense. They felt that there were issues of gentrification that helped divide people based on race and that the city wasn't clear and wasn't transparent in its efforts to make this park a reality. So I think what people are saying is true. We have two issues here. One is about what is an actual community park look like? What is the intention of parks in this city? What is the purpose for putting them where we put them, and what do we intend people to use them for? And then how does the city council, how do the city agencies actually interact with the residents? What is it that they expect from the residents who follow through in all the community meetings that they're asked to go to? They got resources to build architectural plans and designs. They went through all of the processes that they're asked to do and still came to find out through an open record request that a deal had already been signed with a developer. And so I ask the City Council to look and work to create new processes in outreach to the community, to develop new procedures when land development is taking place, and to vote this measure down. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Darren Bloom. Good evening. My name is Darren Blum. I live on 29th and Fairfax, two houses up from where this this commercial development will be. I, I work from home. I have multiple dogs. I'm out on that block every single day. Whether it's summer or winter, freezing hot doesn't matter. I think it's imperative that we approve this park. We let the construction go through. We let the the developer proceed with the plans that they had at the they've outlined with the commercial on top of the residential and mixed use, which will bring a vibrancy to the to that part of the street, the community. I understand there's some concerns from the long term residents. And and I think in my interaction with the developer, he's been quite accommodating and understanding of some of the issues there. And I think if there was perhaps some more dialog, we can get through this. But the short of it is I, I would like to go forward with the swamp and get this thing built. Thank you. Next up, Miguel Cabezas Reese. Why are we here? So I was. You know, I've heard a lot at this meeting so far. I've heard some residents urging for broken windows policies which are failed. I've heard some colorblind racism, and I've heard advocacy for certain things that, you know, that we have to wait to talk about gentrification, that we have to wait to have the concern, the conversation about the displacement of communities of color. And we can't have those conversations here in front of the council. Where can we have those conversations? I have heard of City Council, Parks and Recreation Director say that there is no money to build this park and that the $650,000 to build this park by the developer is a gift. I object wholeheartedly to that characterization. This land swap is no gift. The way that this deal was made and is being pushed through council is no gift. The way that Greater Park Hills are now and the community was sidelined was no gift. And please note is that all of the people of color who testified here against were against this. This bill is not about a park, but is about a park. But we cannot ignore what else is being built, the development being built. The housing does not include any affordable housing, much less low income housing. Initially, the developer wanted, I understand, to make this a private park. That is regrettable, but more than that it is telling telling of who will be welcomed at this park, who will have the police called on them, whose children will, in the words of tenant housing, coats, commands and so entire sidewalks with their tricycles, people of color are being kicked, kicked out of the city by what some have regrettably called natural market forces. There is another term for this, which I would like and which I refer to it as economic racism. The concern from the community and communities of color is the exponential displacement of communities of color from areas that we have lived in, areas where our roots have taken hold and grown deep. I regret this bill and I urge a no vote. If this were a development that had sustainable, affordable units, substantial affordable units, I might feel differently. What we need are affirmative action, like policies that act as a tourniquet on the loss of people of color from Denver, policies that require all medium to large housing developments to include affordable housing units. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll invite Ben Maxwell, Patricia Iwasaki, Matt Emmons and Jeanette Fidel up to the front. And Ben Maxwell, you're up. Hi, Matt. Hi. My name is Ben Maxwell. I'm the with H.M. Capital. I'm the owner of H M Capital and also PHC next year. I just wanted to come tonight and say thank you all for all for your time. Thank everybody in the community for their input. We're very regretful that this has turned into a into a fight over gentrification. We came into this I used to live in the Park Hill neighborhood at 30th and Cherry, and we came into this with let's do a neat development that supports retail, which supports local businesses, things that are owned locally in the neighborhood. People can live in the neighborhood, people can work in the neighborhood, people can own a business, have a restaurant, things of that nature. Our biggest goal with this project is to unite the community. So it's very sad that that's going the opposite direction and we hope that we can do whatever we can to repair those relationships. We are. Looking, you know, we're not trying to do even though, you know, good design does not necessarily mean upscale development. We're looking at trying to keep all of our rents at an affordable rate for both retail as well as residential. We are looking for small businesses. We have turned down large national franchises to go in this block because we really want locally owned Park Hill, Denver businesses to operate in this space. It's been our goal that this is a community center for the Park, for North Park Hill and all the yield the rest of our time to do. The neighbors who have a lot to say. Thank you. Next up, Patricia osaki. Thank you. My name is Patricia Iwasaki. I live in northeast Denver. I'm on the board of taking neighborhood. Health to heart. And I have been working with Greater Park Hill Community for the past three years in terms of their sustainability efforts. I am a social worker by training. I have been working. On environmental justice issues in northeast. Denver. For the past. I'd say ten years. I really urge and echo a. Number of sentiments. That there are strong feelings that this. Ordinance and the action of the transfer. Of. Land with across the. Street has lacked transparency with the neighborhood. There are a number of. People of color and older. Residents who have lived in the Park Hill area for the past. 40 to 50 years that have. Very strong feelings. But city council in the city is not concerned about the issues. That residents are concerned about. It is not a matter. Of being for. Or against. A park or park. Systems, but it is a matter of having the. Voice and listening to people who live in the area. I'm the kind of park. That they'd like to see. There is a concern that what will be built will exclude longtime residents and people who have been a part of Park Hill for a number of years. Being comfortable to be able. To utilize the outdoor area. And despite all of the best intent of developers, I think this is a major issue of concern. I won't take any more time, but I urge. The City Council to listen to. This is. Just a small fraction representing. The voices. That feel very strongly about this issue in the community. Thank you very much. Thank you. Matt Emmons. Thank you. My name is Matt Emmons. I live at 2880 three fourth Street. I back up immediately to the proposed development project, Fairfax. I lived there for 15 years. It's the only home my kids have known. I have a daughter at East this morning, a son of McAuliffe and then a dozen kids on the half block that we run around on the front yard and have since they were very small. I want to thank Councilwoman Kenney for coming out today and meeting with some of the immediate neighbors around the project. Perhaps less vocal, but no less passionate about the project. We are for the swap. Almost. Almost to a home. A lot of emotional speeches, a lot of emotional topics, many that I honestly can't relate to. But I'm a more pragmatic person and have a more pragmatic approach to this. And there are a series of facts here that cannot be disputed. One is there will be a park on this block. Parks and Rec is committed to that east or west side. There will be a 15,000 square foot park there. It will be eventually flanked by commercial development on either side. That issue remains the same, and it will be built and maintained by the park by the city of Parks and Rec. The issues are, when does it get built? Who built it and who pays for it? We feel like this is a bird in the hand. With the step with the developer stepping up to pay for it to provide the funds for Parks and Rec to do it. The design of the park is something that I am not concerned about, frankly. Open space, grass, trees, play structures. It doesn't matter to me, but it bears repeating that this park will be between commercial developments, no matter where it is. Be the same size. No matter where it is, it will be on the block regardless. So if we focus on those, I think we can reach a conclusion that this is good for the neighborhood long term and good for us. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Jeanette Fidel. She met Fidel. All right. Thank you all very much for being concise and respectful with your time. We did get through everybody with a little tiny bit of time to spare. That does conclude our speakers. Are there any questions from members of council? Councilman Herndon name is president and thank you, Mr. President, for getting through that so that we can get everybody through because I appreciate them coming in here. And I'd like to call Parks and Rec up to the few questions. Things that I'm just in other people in the queue. So I'm just going to ask a few questions and I will bow out. I asked these at committee, so these should not be surprising. We keep hearing that the neighborhood is not going to be involved in this process. You said this and Gordon said this. You're going to create a design committee that will who will be a part of this. Yeah. So the design committee, which we will put together, will be, of course, have some park staff on it. We do want we have committed at the meeting, Gordon did commit to having a greater greater Park Hill community member on that committee. This is going to be a public process. So we would bring that group together to actually select a design firm to actually move forward. The design at this time, like I mentioned before, there is no design of the park. There are some concepts, you know, there was a mention of swing sets and slides that is still all on the plate. We are not saying this is going to be one thing or another that is still to be decided. Thank you. And second question deals with this being a designated park. So this will be owned. This is Denver Parks. And my understanding was there was even going to be conversations about the community being involved in the naming of the park. And I want to make sure that that was correct as well. Yes. So what we would do is if this passes, if council feels that this passed and move forward, we would actually begin working on rezoning this parcel to OSA, which means that would become a public park. Once that's done, we would move forward with the design. We would work on constructing the park and wants to. The construction is done as as I've done with many other parks in this city, over a thousand acres. We would move forward with the designation of this park, which protects the park from ever being developed as anything else and anything that is not a park purpose. The other thing that I did want to mention is this would be a public park. So that means all park rules and regulations do apply. Everybody is welcome to this park. This is the community's park. So that is something that we would we would definitely stress. Again, two more questions, Mr. President. There was a conversation about not taking he to any other offers. I only know of another one which came from the owner of the brewpub who was just to the north of the XL Parcel. And I could you just speak to that offer and why that was not considered. So there was an offer that came in. You know, we had started this discussion in early 2016 with H&M Capital. The brewpub was moving forward, it was being designed. It was doing everything they knew about all these discussions. Early 2016, we actually did go to a Greater Parkhill community meeting and we actually had a presentation about this whole development. So everybody was aware of the possibility of having a swap and building the park on the east side in November. We did get a proposal from the beer pub that is on the corner and what that proposal was, there was two pieces to it. The first part of it was they offered, I believe, $150,000 to actually buy the parcel from the city and to build a private park. And then they would actually allow the city to possibly use the park, or they would actually the other part was they could maybe help us build a park. And so that was the proposal. And at that point we had already been discussing and we had a firm commitment from H&M Capital on what funding they would provide to this space. And so the two proposals just were not even close. Thank you. And my last question, Mr. President. Timing. So we should just go through we will start the process of designing a community designed park that will go on the east side. If this does not go through, then we are we are going with the Xcel substation. Do we have a funding source for the Xcel substation to develop into a park? No. As most of city council, everybody on city council knows, we have a process in parks. We actually have a sip list, a planning list. And so what happens is we put all projects on our capital improvement project list, and that is all the projects that are in all the districts, in all the city. And so those are projects that we want to get to. And so that this if this did not move forward, this project would go on that capital improvement list and it would actually have to just jockey for position and then we'd have to, you know, dirt, we'd have to see the priority and what was being done in the city. And we would just it would fall in with all the other projects in the city. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. Councilman Lopez. Discussion of parks. My allergies are going haywire here. Mr. Gilmore, I just wanted to ask you a couple more questions. When you acquired the park in 2010, was it an Excel substation? 2015, I'm sorry, it's the end of 2015. 2015. And it was an Excel substation. Yes, it was exactly like the one in Westwood that we purchased there. So Excel substation became city owned. What is the if you would, if we were to build that out? Designed. So we've already paid for it. We've already paid for it. If we were to build that out. Design, build. I mean, I'm asking you to speculate, but what would the budget be for a built out park like that? For a park that size, even though it's a it's a smaller park. Can you talk. About like a family structure swings? Yes, slides. So the design process, a park about that size as a as a pocket park between probably $750,000. $10 million. Right. Which. Okay. Talk to me a little bit about the process. I know that, you know, in the chambers I heard that we were testimony that the process wasn't clear, wasn't transparent. And so what? Walk me through the process as that's what's. So I have to take some responsibility for that. And back when I first started this job, I traveled to L.A. with Gordon Robertson. And we were we were traveling to L.A. They have a project where they're building pocket parks all over the city. And so when we came back, you know, my thought was we can just look for possible opportunities in neighborhoods that desperately needed them. And so when this these Excel transfer stations came up, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to possibly build parks and build a couple of parks in neighborhoods that desperately needed it. So when it was when it was available, we actually purchased it. I was attending meetings at Greater Park Hill. I was going and letting them know that I was working on this project, that I was hopefully going to purchase this parcel and that it was on the east side. And at that time we had no funding and that if we could do anything with that parcel at that time, you know, there might be the possibility of, you know, maybe taking out part of the wall because there's a big stone wall around it and possibly creating maybe a dog park. We didn't. What my commitment to the community was is that we're not just going to take a parcel on that block and just grass it and then actually maybe make up a space that just was not activated that actually could end up being more of a detriment to the community than than an asset. So we really wanted something that was going to activate the space and make making sure that that park was going to be a positive draw for the whole community. And then H.M. Capital, as we were just holding on to the parcel because we did not have any funding. H&M Capital did approach us in 2016 and said, Hey, we have purchased the East Side of the block and we'd like to possibly just discuss with you the possibility of us helping you guys build a park on the east side. This was there was never an I heard someone mention this that H&M Capital was going to build a private park. There was never once any mention of this being a private park for H&M Capital when they came to us and said, we want to help. This was always to build a public park that was going to be available to everybody. So we did get other proposals way back from other developers that never moved forward about building up a private park. And so that may be where that came from. So we did start the discussion with H&M Capital. We kind of were discussing this. I was very clear with the community that this process right here would be what would have to happen if this moved forward, that the swap would have to be approved by city council and this project would not move forward unless this this city council approved it. So really, this is now on city council to say, do we want to move forward with building this park on the east side of of the street of Fairfax with somebody else's money? Or do we want to wait and build it later with city funds on the West Side? I mean, that's what it boils down to right now. Right. So let me look. I appreciate that, Mr. Gilmore. I know that there was somebody from the neighborhood association in that area that spoke. I forgot your name. If you can come up and I wanted to ask a question of the neighborhood. Yeah. We were representing the neighborhood association up there, and. I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Blair Taylor. Blair, I'm sorry. Ms.. Taylor, on this. On that block. I'm looking at it right now. So 29th to the north, 28th to the south. You got Fairfax. You got the east side in the west side. I'm looking at the zoning in that area and that in that whole neighborhood. It's all zoned. Just on that block, the whole neighborhood's different. Is residential on that particular block. It's all Main Street. Main Street two. So it's commercial all around. Right? Yes. What's the difference between. A park on the West Side and the park on the east side when they both have mixed use kind of commercial on both sides. What's what's the difference with what the name would you feel based off of your conversations with the residents in that area? What's the main difference? I think one of the large differences is the sort of intent of the users. So the west side of the block is owned by a minority landlord. It houses a lot of nonprofits at Howard Houses, Greater Park Hill Community Board. It has a new ice cream shop that's used by families. Well, you know, it's very residential. It's one one story. It's very welcoming. There's a lot of mix of people and diversity. And I think a lot of the concern comes from when you put a green space. That is abutted on both sides by brand spanking new development that's owned by a single developer. The people who've been there the longest aren't necessarily going to be migrating over. A lot of the concern is come with what types of businesses are going to go there. We've heard it heard high end grocery stores. That's not really what the neighborhood needs. We need like corner stores. We need things that are our residents can use. We've lost laundry mats. We've lost just sort of like everyday places. And I think that people were really hoping that the park would be a place where. Families and old residents, new residents. The people who showed up at our community design meetings were such a huge range of residents and it was like an open palette. And what we're seeing when you look at the supporters, it's sort of one faction. We're not seeing a big diversity. The people who are opposed to this have real concerns and they come from a diverse background. I hope that's what you saw. I appreciate the response. And if I can add. Thank you. Can I get Mr. Maxwell right. Ben Maxwell, you're the owner of the properties, correct? Yes. Now. And your reason why? Why would you want to do the land swap? I mean. I mean, why not enjoy the park from across the street? Yeah, altruistically, it was. We looked at the whole block. We got a good portion of the block on our contract. We looked at the park on the other side. We initially had a commercial design, so we owned the park directly or the parcel directly adjacent to the Excell substation as well on the west side of the street . So we initially looked at doing commercial there and what we decided was we really wanted to support and when we were doing that, we were looking at doing 100% residential on the east side of the street and being in that neighborhood. I knew and I felt like. Retail office and residential was a better fit for that bloc than just doing a large scale residential project on the East Side. With that right now is not really a great time to build retail property. That's just not it's it's not as profitable, it's not as economical. There's just lots of downsides to building retail over building residential. So we looked at it and said, okay, well, what? Is there something that we could do that would be a differentiator and also give back to the community? And so really that was our decision on the park was not to not to get increased rents because I don't think we're going to get a dollar increased rents, but just to attract more tenants, attract more community, attract more of a well-rounded, balanced development for the block rather than what makes the most financial sense, which is residential . One more question, if I may, Mr. President. So you approached 650,000 plus commitments with build afterwards as well to. Well, initially. So it's kind of evolved over time. Initially, we we went ahead and did a design on the park because we knew that the department didn't have the money to do a design. So we went ahead and said, all right, well, we'll just design something to get the concept out there. So we did that and we also tore down all the properties that were on this this land. We've also spent quite a bit of money on the land that we're trading dollar for dollar and where we initially were going to build it. And then once we were done, go through this process of transferring it at that point to the city and doing this land swap after reconstruction was built. If you don't build the park, if the park isn't built on the site, if this land swap doesn't go through and the site that you have and envisioned for a park. We're giving the money at the time of the swap. We are giving the money the six. If this if the swap doesn't happen, yes. What happens to that property, which would be 28, 68, Fairfax? We would probably start over from scratch on our design for the whole block. And there would be no greenspace. Or no we have. So in my zoning there is a zero requirement for any open space. It's not we're not required to have 10% open space. We're not doing this to meet any city requirements. Would you still donate to Parks and Rec? Unfortunately, all that money would go to redesign the new buildings. It would have to go there. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. Is anyone from community planning and development here? That would have been helpful for a land swap discussion. The question I'm trying to answer is on the parcels on the West Side, is there anything that anyone wants to talk to in the zoning code that would limit development on the West Side from possibly at some point becoming akin to development on the East Side? Okay. Thank you for that. Mr. Maxwell, I have a few questions for you. Sir. So. There's relevance at some level. These parcels that we're going to swap. What would you estimate each parcel would sell for if you're going to sell a third of a .36 acres? I think it is. This are the last parcels that we purchased. It was two independent parcels and then a portion of a third parcel. And I believe we paid about 1.5 million for the land for that, for just the piece we're giving to the city and that the city is giving. Okay. So about 1.3. 1.5. 1.5. Thank you very much. When you talk about affordable rents, you have any clue what that means? Yes. I mean, we looked at we looked at affordable housing on this instead of paying the the linkage fee. And unfortunately, because we have 22 micro apartments and 21 three bedrooms, micro apartments don't qualify or didn't initially when we were going through this process a year and a half ago for consideration in exchange for a linkage fee . So we went through that process for about two months with the Office of Economic Development, and basically it got to the point where just it wasn't feasible. Okay. Well, but I mean, do you know, are you planning two bedrooms? Three bedrooms? So we have one bedroom units or basically micro apartments that are about 400 square feet with a loft bedroom. Those are going to be 12, 1300 dollars a month range. So one bedroom is very affordable for this city and crazily enough. And then we have three bedroom units. Average rents for three bedrooms around the city are pushing above $2 a square foot in many apartment buildings. We're going to be at a dollar $60, 65 a square foot. Do the math for me. Was that going to mean. 2400, 2500 for a three bedroom? Thank you. So when you developed this park, how close? Would your buildings be? How close can you build the edge of your buildings being. According to zoning? We can build right on the plot line. There is a section of our building about 25 feet that is right on the lot line. The rear 30 feet is parking. So we're not there's no building adjacent to that in the front. 70% or so of the building has patios that face to the park. So your access to this park. The access to the park is all through the street. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. The rest of my questions are for community planning and development. Who's not here? Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Espinosa is up for the question, but I think he also had an answer to your first question that he thinks he could answer. Would you like an answer from Councilman Espinosa? All right, Councilman Espinosa, take away for everyone. Here's the graphic. So the yellow is the single family rose mean the surrounding residential. The red area is the zoning the the current CMS two zone district. It covers both sides of Fairfax and so since both parcels mean both sides of the street are the same depth. Essentially, they're both capable of the exact same sort of development approaches. All right, Councilman Espinosa, also up for questions. I didn't then I didn't do the math. So what is this square footage? I mean, the square foot cost on residential sale, sort of the commercial. I mean, the the value of residential development, new development in this area per square foot. If we were to sell the. Townhomes, yeah. It would be a guess because we haven't looked at it on a for sale basis, but probably in the 325 to 350 range. Okay. Are there any so for anybody else, are there any realtors in the audience that do work in this area? Just sort of corroborate that. Okay. Thank you. And then, Scott, I've got a quick question for you. Is there anything sort of legally preventing the developer from giving $650,000 for the design and construction of the park on the former Excel site? No, I do not believe so. Okay. So it's. No. Okay. Thank you. My attorney said no. All right. Thank you. No further questions. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. Scott at the podium already. Would you be willing to put into writing what that board advisory board would look at, would look like when designing. The design committee? Yep. Yes. We could put something together. By next week. Yes, we could. Okay. Thank you. I have a. Question. I'm trying to figure out how to. Scott, can you can you. Again, I'm going to take us back to the meeting that we had on committee. And you you know, I think there is a conversation in here around gentrification, displacement, as if you don't interact with that. Right. And so I feel like I'm hearing two different things, right? I'm hearing something from the community and something that you don't understand. I know specifically that you've helped me with inclusion with Brick City at Curtis Park. And so but for whatever reason, we have missed the ball here. And that's what I'm really trying to understand. And so I want you to respond to that. And I also want you to help me talk through and help the community think through opportunities of inclusion, just like what we've done on the East Side. Yeah. So I have to take full responsibility as the deputy manager of parks. I mean, I was my goal was just to try to get a park built in this community. And, you know, if anybody made some missteps, I probably made some missteps. And and I should have been probably a little more forthcoming on how this whole process was moving forward. We were just trying to move forward, and I saw a great opportunity to get a park built and a community that desperately need it, needed it with somebody else's money. So I kind of moved forward, you know, when we got to the point and and when I got questions from Greater Park Hill or any community members, I was responding in June of 2017. There was some questions about the naming. And I know Robin Councilwoman Canete was really involved in that and there was some questions about naming it after community member. And, you know, we thought we realize that we would do that and we could work on that and that could be a community process. And that was one of those sticking points, it seemed like. And so it continued to move forward and I continued to try to engage. And then as the development started to coalesce and H&M Capital had purchased the block and then building started to come down, that is when this really, really became an issue. And I think people started seeing that this was happening. And I think the park became a target for the bigger issues of gentrification in the neighborhood and just some of the displacement and the affordable housing and all those things. And I tried my best to explain to people that I'm building a park for everybody. As you said, you know, I've worked on on community issues and in neighborhoods downtown and communities of color, making sure parks are built in communities of color, that we are building the best parks we can in all communities, because everybody in this city deserves a high quality park in their neighborhood. And that is what I'm shooting for with this. We made some missteps. We stopped we stopped our process and we slowed down. We started to engage. We you know, we went to some of their community meetings. They started a community meeting, and we went to those we started our own process. And I believe through those two processes, those community meetings, the seven meetings that were were had, that we do have a good foundation to build a park that everybody could be happy with. Okay. Thank you for for answering that. And I just say that the next step of inclusion when it's built is I think we're the, you know, the. You know, it really has to be that way. Yes. And I hope that and I agree. I hope that Gordon, as as we talk through that, that there even next week, we can start thinking of some implementable items from the jump that the community can put into. To and be that. One thing I do want to mention and I want to stress. Yeah, great. Parkhill did a really good job on these meetings and this concept that they came up with are very valid and we want to start our process with this community led design, and so we're committing to that. Okay. Thank you. Is there an attorney with Parks here? Turney. We really say, Oh, great. Good evening. Jason Moore, city attorney's office. Jason, I see you everywhere. And I think this is the first time. I think it's the first time like this, brother. I hear that. Okay, good. Jason, here's the crux. I think of the issue. There's a ton of mistrust in the community, right? Ton of mistrust in my community of five points and all over the city. And we as government, I think it's our responsibility to continue when there's mistrust, to be even more transparent. Right. And so that the issue for me is on this is that we don't have any, it seems to me, legal issues on refugees when we're trading land and things like that. I've seen us do our eyes to try and get, you know, what is a request for inquiry to just see if the land works and we'll get a bunch of folks and then we'll take it through a process. So there's no you did a backroom deal. Tell me about our policy is and I know it's not but but is there anything that can. Help us to improve this policy so we don't have to go through this with the community. Yeah, and it'll be a split answer. So I have my answer to what the general review of the advice I'd give the parks but real estate as a policy as well. The XO eight and XO 100. I think that's real. That's an executive order. So everybody's phone. So I apologize. Executive Order three. Executive Order 100. Deals with competitive process in contracts. And then, of course, the charter Nicole deals with competitive process and construction. Depending on the deal, depending on the dynamics of the deal, depending on what parts wants to get done, I might advise that they do requests for information or some kind of RFP process to do to cover some of the political issues that might come up. So there are the rules, there's the code. But, you know, sometimes the policy is going to kind of win the day. If if if that is what you need to make folks happy. And so on. This situation, what did you. Advise? I was I came late to this party. So this this was pretty far down the road. So Parks had begun to negotiate the contours of the deal that they were going to do, land swap, etc.. The issue of a competitive process for this did come up. I'll let Lisa Lumley finish out that answer based on some unique characteristics of the deal. I, I didn't see that a competitive process was required. But, you know, again, there there was already a lot of momentum behind the deal anyway. So this is. No legal issues with this. Strictly speaking. I don't think so. Okay. Lisa would like to. Lisa Lumley It is not often that we do an exchange and the conversations had started. By the time real estate was brought in, because it was exactly parcel four, parcel square foot, four square foot, literally across the street. That is why we thought that we could justified the unique situation of going out to a true RFP, RFI, because everything was exactly the same zone, the same. The values would have been the same. So the executive order is it's not a suggestion. No, it's not. And what it does say, though, is we would still do our clearance and releases, which we do. We do our environmental due diligence, which we do. So from that standpoint, it's the disposition that would be called out on how we would do it. And or and I will say there are certain other dispositions through our tax title that we we may handle a little differently. So everything else in Executive Order 100, though, we would absolutely be following. Last question. If you would have gotten a deal that was comparable to competitive. Would you would have reviewed that deal. Looked at that deal because there's many received the email today saying that there are three deals. Yes, we would have. And I will say I'm only aware of one other offer as well. We did see that. That is why we actually slowed the process down at that point when I was made aware of the second offer. So we did look at it to compare those. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilman Scott. Skye, let me get this guy going to give you this ring. So that's the handout we have received today. And on the back of that, it has designed features that I assume that you're talking about as part of the design that came from the community. Is there any design feature that's listed there that is out of. Ordinary would not be considered as part of the design committee? No. Okay. So it all seems to be very in line with what you're saying with the design coming from the community. Yeah. I mean, like I said, their design process, that Greater Parkdale community had actually had some very valid suggestions and were going to, like I said, were committed to taking that design effort and utilizing that to build this space. To be clear, this is a third of an acre and this is a very, very small parcel. So everything that the community has been suggesting, it will not all fit in this park. So the site limitations. Are being assessed. All those will be considered. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Ask your question, please. Yeah. Yes, sir. There's been a lot of discussion about development of a good neighbor. Agree with the neighborhood, don't own the park or and develop there. Is there something you'd be amenable to? Absolutely. We we definitely want that with all of our tenants. And at the first meeting we presented to in the beginning of 2017, I mean, it was our hope that the greater Parkdale would really help us create a neighborhood group and take over really planning events at the park, things of that nature that. Permanent through the city parks department. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman new Councilman Flynn. And thank you, Mr. President. Christine O'Connor. I. First of all, I wanted to thank Maria Flores, Flora and Carrie to get in. Nancy Francis, who had given me a tour about a month or so ago of the sight of Christine. You had testified that this would that on the west, on the east side, it would be a private park. And I'm curious why you why you believe that would be a private park? No, I know it's going to be owned. I've heard like everybody else that it's going to be owned by DPR. So you feel it would be treated as a private. Treat it as and I have the same fears that Sandy Robinette and others have expressed that even though it is considered public. The intimidation factor of having restaurants and high end retail or maybe not high end. So the developer says we'll see. I'm not sure that it really is going to draw the same way, say Turtle Park draws or the park up on MLK, the block size. Right. So what is really confusing me is why the neighbors feel that the park on the west side would also not be a private park when it would be surrounded by? Eventually by. And is it H&M? I'm sorry, H&M. H&M. Yes. But it's not being it won't be developed. It would be developed by city money. Right. But on the north side is the brewpub. Yes. Which one of the folks from the resident community testified is a gentrifying factor and that would front right on the park. And in fact, the owner we have the letter offer that he made. His first offer was to buy it and make it a private park that he would regulate. Yes. That that would give me more concern than what I've heard here from Mr. Maxwell. And on the south side would also be a a an h m capital project. So it seems to me that they would be identical. So I'm wondering, I'm having a real confusion figuring out why. Why it matters. Why? You see, it seems to me that everything that was testified, the residents fear increasing gentrification, not being inviting exclusion applies to either side. And so that if we went if we killed this and kept on the. West Side. You would still have those same impacts. And tell me why you. See this as fundamentally different. I don't think the city explored options like going in trust for public land and other funding to do it themselves. I think Scott just landed on this because it was easy and he did, and DPR didn't do its homework right. I think that the fact that this developer is paying 650,000 to develop the park in and of itself indicates that he will have a say in the design. He will have a say in what happens there. He will be considering very carefully what kind of park goes in. It is not really a Denver public park that's been developed over the years and then got a slot, then found a land it. I think it's fundamentally different. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you very much. Scott, can I follow up on the question you were asked about the community design? Because I feel like I got a slightly different answer. So when I had originally asked you and I think it was Kelly who I don't I can't see who else back there if Kelly's here. But about the community design, you had shared that it didn't meet some of the specs. So because the question why not just adopt the community design? And the answer was because it didn't meet the Parks and rec specs for, you know, maintenance, but you had a number of specs that you look to for how to design a park. So can you just help bridge for me? That feedback I had gotten with the statement that everything here is on the table. So you're talking about this design right here? Yes. So this design, like I said, has some great actual some great input and it has some really valuable things. We just as we build parks and I do want to mention something really quick. H&M Capital actually supports its design more than the design that actually the Parks staff came up with. So he actually is really supportive of moving forward with this type of design. The thing that I meant about standards and making sure that things are done and in those. Department standards is making sure irrigation and making sure the benches are the type of benches that are consistent throughout our park system. Just all the amenities, making sure ADA is taken in count. So all those items that as we build parks in our city, all the items that we have to take into account, we have to make sure that those are part of this design. So this is concept. This is really, really high level. So we have to take these concepts and actually put together the construction designs. And so that takes time. So a lot of people think we can just take a design like this and just go start building. It takes quite a bit of time to actually put together construction documents and get them through the city system. Because you do 30% construction design, 60%, 90%, and then 100%. So just moving through that process takes the time and then all the departments have to actually buy off on what those standards in those designs are. Got it. And I just I think it's specificity and really being I think this is not the time to do shorthand. And so I think that that's a pretty different answer and it's a more specific answer and it's important. One of the things that's occurred in this process is setting of expectations and then not meeting them or not being clear. And so to say, the spirit of this is on the table, but that there's numerous features that don't meet the city standards for potentially legitimate reasons. Right. It's not that the community's ideas weren't good, but I and so I just wanna make sure I'm saying this right. So. So you might not be able to have a wall here, for example, because it might prevent access for people with disabilities or it might prevent drainage from working properly. But so so there are features here that are not possible. And I just think we got to be really clear and I just so so if things are not possible, we got to be clear. And that would be that would be something that would would take place during the design process where we actually really start hammering out what's going to be in this part. Like when I look at this, I see the stage shade structure and it's a it's one of the cloth shade structures as we have done parks throughout our system. We have done these and we're realizing that these are really, really delicate and they're being ripped off and they're they're being destroyed. So those are the types of things that I would really want to make sure that we're doing. We're putting in a shade structure that actually we don't have to try to change out every year because of weather. You know, there was a talk of building a wall around the park and kind of walling it in. Well, we want to really make sure that the park actually has access and that you can get in and out of it. And you don't want to build walls around the park. We want to make it as open as possible. So just some of those items, we want to just really make sure that we're working with the community hand in hand to make sure that everybody's input is being taken. But they also understand that there's constraints and things that we have to do to make sure that the park is up to our standards. Got it. So I just wanted to clarify that record. Thank you. Thank you. Can you clarify whether there is anything you know, there are equally sized parcels, but is there anything in particular that changes the design from the west side to the east side? Are there any constraints that would make it such that the park would have to be or would need to be designed differently if it was on one side or the other? I actually don't believe there would be any different design. They're exactly the same size. And as Councilman Flynn mentioned, both both of them are going to have developments on either side. What we were excited about, to be honest with this parcel, is that there will be eyes on the park and this is going to be immediately you're going to have restaurants there and people will be able to watch this space. People will be able to come to eat and their kids can play on the playground. And I've heard some other comments that we didn't have swings in our in our design or slides and we can that's simple to we can add those to the design. So we want to make sure that those items are in this design, the things that the community want. And if that's swings and slides and a barbecue pit, those types of things, we can do that. So I just want to say back to some really clear that everything there's there's the idea of all these things can be considered, but you won't fit all of them because of the size. Yes. And that the way they're done may not be the exact way the communities design them, but for for reasons you can and will explain in the process. Yes, we will. Okay. I guess the second line of questions I wanted to ask, I guess I'm trying to think if I want to start with the developer, the community. I'm going to offer this to like Lemon or just Sandy. But I guess I was thinking about whether or not there has been any discussion at all with the developer, not so much about this park, but about the ways in which businesses can be culturally competent and the way that you might train, educate, interact in ways that minimize. So I'm just curious if that dialog has occurred throughout this. You guys probably have had many meetings aside from the parks. I'm just curious if that conversation has begun yet. So that's the other part is, you know, if this land swap is approved, the other part is looking into the type of businesses that will go into the complex. And Ben and I have been talking about that. And we do want to make that a community inclusive process. So any time we can get that started. But Ben appears to be conscious. He did say he was not interested in chain stores and franchises. He was definitely interested in some of the historical businesses that were. On the block. Who are no longer. And then culturally sensitive type businesses. Great. And then just just to be really clear, what if. Did you talk at all about you know, we've had a number of companies who've had to train their staff and talk about. Right, Wendy, to Sandy's point. So beyond just who the businesses are. Has there been any conversation yet about cultural competency for all of the businesses? Perhaps they may be white owned, perhaps they may be Asian owned, they may be owned by someone who's maybe not an African-American business or the employees might be, you know, of different backgrounds. And so have you guys started that conversation? We will. And that's going to be part of the conversation. Okay, great. And so I'll just ask Ben to stand up and maybe speak for yourself on this. You know, I think that there is this concept of bi right zoning where this project started and it's a kind of like we can build it and we don't need anything from the city. And then the park changed the conversation, right? In the sense that there is now you're here in front of city council and you wouldn't have been otherwise. And so, you know, sometimes that comes with an acknowledgment that where you want something from the city and you've acknowledged some places it could benefit. It changes the conversation. So I guess for you, where have you changed or where are you willing to change? Where you go on what's quote unquote on the table with regards to the development? Yeah. Given that this is no longer just a buy right situation, you're here asking for a very important privilege, which is to to to incorporate public space in the middle of your development. Right. I think this this process has definitely been eye opening and never gone through anything similar to this. So it's been a very eye opening process. And we are open to to anything that the community comes at us with. We've always thought of this as we wanted to do it as part of the community. And if we didn't want to do that, if we weren't here for the right reasons, I think we would have given up on this plan a year, year and a half ago and gone a different direction and. Our commitment has always been to what we feel. Was that? You know, developers always talk about highest and best use. And I can't stand that term because a lot of times the highest and best just don't. They're contradictory, right. And to me, the best use for this block is a mixed use development with retail, office and residential. And we've been fighting the whole time to. Preserve what we think is it will benefit everybody equally throughout that and not just build what makes the most financial sense. So we're here. We've committed to this process. We've committed to everything about it, and we look forward to all the community engagement that we can get and really putting our best foot forward and being as transparent as possible. So let me ask you about another issue of equity that was raised. You and I had some conversations early on, and you were hopeful that you could incorporate some affordable housing. I was surprised to learn that the conversation had changed. That was not something I was told about by our department, which is a common challenge I have had from this dais recently. No fault of yours. But I want to just be and I know they're not here, so I'm not even going to ask because I know they left. They were here for another bill. They weren't here for this. But can you just be very clear with me? Were you told that you cannot count units as affordable on this site, or did you make a decision that the way that you would have had to do it was not possible? I guess I want to understand whether or not inclusion of affordability could be back on the table. Yeah. Whether it's a legal issue or it's an economic or a policy issue. So technically, we've already paid the permit fees and we're already through that process. We've already paid the linkage fee. Yes, I believe so. Okay. But to that process, all of our micro units actually fall under the studio affordability. Level that's required to get the points, though. But because of the square footage, there was some when we went through that process, it was brand new. The linkage fee had just passed. And so in on fairness to officer economic development, they were unsure of. How that was going to play out, I guess, you know, I don't know the technical terms of it. So we had to make the decision of which way we're going to move forward. And, you know, even though our units all technically follow all the micro apartments technically follow under the affordability, the it didn't make sense on the whole block because of the three all the three bedroom units, the office space, the retail space. So that's why we moved in a different direction. We do do a lot of affordable housing. We do group homes all over the city that are renting out to nonprofits. So we do do our part on that and we full heartedly believe in that. We've got two that are run by September. We've got a couple that are run by Catholic Charities. We purchased the building that Catholic Charities used to have their headquarters in so that they can take advantage of $1,000,000 grant and build the 100 woman homeless shelter. Overall for Smith Road, we closed in two weeks so that they could meet a deadline for city council to get $1,000,000 grant from you guys to do that project. So we're fully on board with affordability and just didn't the technical affordability on this one just didn't work out. So I just want to be really clear. If you according to the to the Army levels, it wouldn't have brought down the rents in those units. Correct. Okay. So it wouldn't have gotten to the goal that the community was asking for. It sounds like it wouldn't have changed the rents down to like $800 or anything like that. Technically, it would it would have raised the rents to be at the affordability level. Okay. All right. I think I think that's it, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman, can each. Councilman Lopez, I'm going to skip over you to go to Councilwoman Ortega before coming back. That's right, Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. Let me let me start with Scott. Scott, is there any reason that a playground could not be there? I heard there was a desire to have a playground there. There was some question about whether or not that would be supported. But if it's adjacent to residential. No, I. Just as a challenge a problem. So no, I mean, I would I would gather that this this pocket park is going to have a playground. And I just I had mentioned that what a amazing space this could be. If you could go as a family, you could go and have dinner. And actually, your kids are playing on the playground right there and you can watch them. You know, it's just what is going to be make up that playground. Is it going to be nature play or is it going to be traditional play? Or and those are the things that we have to determine what's going to go on this park. But I would gather that this space will have a playground for sure. So I heard your commitment to Councilman Brooks about putting together a committee to help look at design for the park. Who makes the final decision? The final decision on that committee or the final. What that is, is that ends up in that. Park. So what we would do is actually put together a committee. We'd get, you know, one or two community members on that. And what they would actually help us do is actually select help us go through the process of selecting a design firm, taxi design, this park. And that would actually get us to the construction documents that would then go out to bid two for construction. Okay. Let me see if I have any more for you before I go to Mr. Maxwell. So on the price, Councilman Lopez asked, how much is it normally to do one of these pocket parks? Your answer was between 750,000 and a million. So we have 650,000. Who fills the gap? We as the Parks Department, we have committed to fill in that gap. If the. It depends on what's going to go on in that park. We could do the park cheap, probably, and build a park for half a million dollars. Or we can build a park that truly this community deserves. And then we buy it might go to, you know, $800,000. So we as a department. Is there a cap on what we. You can't really. I mean, I would hope that we don't go over $1,000,000, but. Okay. You just don't know what the cost the final cost is going to be until you get those design documents and it goes out to bid. And then a company gives us the cost of what it's going to be to build that park. And typically, what percentage of that? Is the design. Design usually runs about 10%. Okay. All right. I have no further questions for you. So, Mr. Maxwell, if you can come up. So what is the total square footage of the development that you're looking at doing? Making me do math in my head. So there's about in the two mixed use buildings, there's about 30,000 square feet. So that's both housing as well as. That's the retail restaurant, micro apartments and Office. The Townhomes is probably another 30,000 or so. A total of about 60,000, roughly. Okay. Remember. And I just want to ask you a question about parking. I heard you say there would be parking off the alley. Yes. Yes. Will that include parking the commercial? Yes. So currently we have parking on the first behind the retail along the alley, as well as parking lots of inner off of the alley. And then our plan is for the immediate future for the next two or three years to turn the we on the parcel across the street to have that as excess parking as well . So we're well in excess of the required zone. So is that where you turn down the building and. That building we did not tear down. It's a it was an operating business. Okay. So you've got parking available there? Yes. Okay. And then we would also turn the existing park land or what the Excel station into parking in a short term as well. Okay. And I was pleased to hear you. Your openness to the the types of businesses and working with the community around trying to have businesses that address some of the cultural sensitivity to the neighborhood and the long term history of the neighborhood. Um. I don't believe I have any other questions at this point in time, so. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Ortega. Councilman Lopez, you disappeared when I skipped you. Are you still in line? I'm sorry. All right. Go for it. I don't know why he disappeared. He's messed up. I have a question for the DiBella developer. When you. When you. We're looking at the park and. Planning on the block that you have. So you have the entire block. Mm hmm. From corner to corner? Correct. Why? In the middle of the development? I mean, I think I'm thinking to myself, if it's if it's an issue of and I'm not questioning your commitment to parks or anything like that. I do I do appreciate you come to the table, but. Usually if we wanted to have eyes on the park and I'm thinking of the the substations that we've had of Barnum, the Barnum substation, which is in Westwood. And then there's another substation on Colfax. And I should say Colfax. And your ears should perk up. They're both on corners. Mm hmm. Ideally, a good pocket park, if we can. If we have a choice, could be on a corner and you would have community, and then you would have, you know, folks near to follow me. Kind of sharing that corner and also because it's open but on one to almost on to visible sides, that's eyes on a park. That's street light. Have you thought about about doing it on a corner that way? It's a little bit more visible. And I think, you know, we'd be able to get away with a lot more on the corner. We did look at it. We kind of looked at what we thought was the ideal location for it. And really it came down to what was economically feasible for to make it so we could do the park and have successful development that actually could thrive. Because I think the worst thing that could happen for this community as we build a project that doesn't work, that's got too high around, it's got too much vacant space that's not full with residential and not full with commercial. And, you know, we wanted this to be one cohesive neighborhood. And it wasn't just a matter of the park. It's how does it all work together as one solid block? Like, how. Do you think you wouldn't be able to fill a rental unit in this city? There's a lot maybe not in this exact market, but this exact market is not going to last forever. And and we're looking at this as a 20, 30, 40 year investment. We're not looking at this to turn it and start to read. We're not looking at, you know, selling this off to a California buyer in the next two years after we get it done. We're looking at owning this and being a part of this community for the next 20 or 30 years. And we can't look at what the market is right now. We have to look at what the market can be and will be again in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Guzman-Lopez Councilman Flynn thanked. His President, his Tracie. McDermott here. Yes. Oh, I didn't see you behind Kara. Could you come up? When Mr. Maxwell came to Greater Park Hill community a year. Saying that he made some statements that are different than what he's saying tonight. That is correct. He stated that he got to. Design the park. He would name the park. He got to decide what events went in the park. And he decided. What? What events? When in the park. What events? And how long ago was that? That would have been. November 2017, I believe. November. So less than a year ago. Possibly. My timing may be incorrect on that. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Maxwell, can you tell me why you would say something like that? Absolutely. And that was November of 2016, I believe. Okay. Our initial thought in our initial conversations was Parks has no money to do a design for the park. Parks didn't have money for the construction. And if I said it in a manner that I came across a truly regret that because that's not at all how we met it. We just said, we will design the park, we will look at some of the options to build it. We did a design on it just to kind of move the process forward. But most importantly, it was just to move this process forward and get a park built. As far when we also offered that we would contribute a significant dollar amount every year to maintain the park, but it would always be the Parks Department's park at the time. At the January 2017 meeting with the Greater Park Halle, we definitely stated that we would permit the park if we wanted to do events like Movie Night in the Park, things of that nature. I'm sorry. Let me start. You would get a permit from the city. From the city that you would issue a permit? Correct. We would get a permit from the city. One of the first things we did on our website in 2017, January 2017, was put direct link to the Parks Department permitting process on our website. I see that. Yeah. Yeah. So, Parker, our, our intention was that we really didn't want to run the park, but we would do it until the community. Let me ask you today, on one in August of 2018, what is H.M. Capital's position on your role in designing? We want zero role in designing it. We want zero role and we want to pay for it. We want to see the neighborhood get what they want. And we've always wanted that. We don't want to be a part of the design committee. Not that we don't want to, but we we don't believe it's our place. We don't want a final say on the design. We made sure in the documents that we don't get any, you know, overreaching. We don't get any design. You don't oversight. You don't intend to participate. I don't pretend to participate in that. If we are not welcome to the table, if we're welcome to the table, we would happily have somebody from our team join the conversation. But in our opinion, this is the part that needs to be designed by the residents of the neighborhood, not by us. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's almost appropriate. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman. Thank you, Mr. President. I think one of the things we're all struggling with is the idea of how you rebuild some of the trust, particularly where this is the council vote. And so I just have a couple more questions to try to lay down. I think a little more clarity of what happens. Yes. So if if this swap were to pass. Yes. We've heard from Councilman Brooks that over the course of the next week, he's going to get a greater level of detail about what the Park Design Advisory Committee I might not be saying the right name, but that that group will look like so that before we vote on second, we see what part? Advisory design process. Little more about what it looks like on paper. So I guess I'd like to get to that same point in terms of the discussion. And let's start with the East Side first. You know, would you be willing to to put on paper? And I think it would be good for you to talk to some of the neighbors who've talked about the other aspects of the development to say and maybe it's a simple we've had this conversation before that you would commit to three meetings or three discussions about, you know, the rest of the development. So things that are not in the parks wheelhouse but are in your wheelhouse. Regarding equity particularly, I think it's important we have a divide that is somewhat it's you cannot define it even though tonight it played out with with some reason some side I you know I know many of us make calls to folks intentionally to get feedback. And I know I heard supporters who are African-American. And so I think it's going to be important to get to some folks who aren't here tonight as well. So making sure so if you could think about and for the residents, I would encourage you to reach out. But would you be willing to commit to a minimum number of discussions about that topic? Absolutely. And then maybe give us a little detail next week, you know, or in an email or something to give us some sense of that detail. Yeah, I think we can do that. I mean, we've I personally have gone to pretty much every single greater part of our meeting over the past two years or so. Almost now I've publicly sat at every one of those meetings. Please reach out to me, here's my email, here's my phone number. And a lot of people have and I've had a lot of private one on one lunches and conversations with people on both sides of the fence. We're always willing to do that. And if we need to make it a formality, we're happy to. Yeah, I think I mean, I my request might be that it be a neutral ground because I think there's some folks who, you know, feel like it needs. So it's maybe your meeting. And if you want if the community wants a facilitator, you ask and we can help find someone that you choose or you know what I mean. So I think find out what folks need. And if it's three meetings and it's, you know, something neutral and and it's separate from this person. And then the other thing I want to ask about is the west side. Go back to the west side. I think this hasn't been a major topic tonight, but is certainly, I think is an undercurrent, which is the fact that you do on a parcel on the West Side at the end of this transaction. And the question about what BI Right. Zoning looks like going forward on that side of the block. So I guess I would ask what is your willingness or commitment to engage in some process on the West Side if and when that development time comes, even though you don't have to, even though there won't be a Parks Department and even though there may not mean maybe, who knows? As far as I know, there's unlikely to be a council vote. And I think that's where the trust gap has grown, is about what happens on the West Side. So. Right, so what commitments similarly can you make to some discussion process and transparency about that site so we don't end up with these same set of feelings, but no council hearing? Yeah, absolutely. I think we can we can outline something that would maybe work for the whole community. We're kind of going into that west side with no preconceived notions of what it's going to be over the next 2 to 3 years. We've kind of just committed to it's going to be a parking lot for 2 to 3 years. Our goal is that that that block can sustain more and more local retail and small these businesses. But we don't know that. And we've got to see kind of how it plays out on the West Side. So with that, I think we can commit to. Greater communication and transparency with the the neighborhood organization and maybe get some feedback and ideas from the neighborhood on what different folks would like to see on that side of the street. I just I think where you don't have enough information to do an outcome oriented good neighbor agreement, sometimes a process oriented, good neighbor agreement that says here's how we're going to meet and what we're going to talk about is at least a start. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilwoman Guzman Lopez, are you up again? Yeah, just one more. This may be for Councilman Herndon. Councilman, you you've been the councilman here for eight years. How high is this in terms of a priority? If if there's if this this particular site so this particular site where the park was proposed, that used to be the Excel substation, that would be 2863 Fairfax. It's going to take this conflation, this rounded up $790,000 to build this park. What's been the conversation that you've had with the Parks and Rec? Are they going to are they going to commit to it? Is this something that's been on your priority as a capital improvement? I know that they meet with those parks and RECs, meet with us usually to get guidance from us about those projects. Is this a priority for you? And if so, how, when, when, when does that look? What does that look like? So to make sure I hear you correctly, this parcel absolutely. It's a priority getting a park built in North Park Hill. No disrespect to the park at the corner of Martin Luther King and Quebec. I don't consider that an active park. North Park is the park desert. So bringing something to this is a huge priority. But as was discussed, every councilperson on this day can talk about see IP. That's capital improvement projects throughout the district that are frankly higher than this third of an acre. But so finding a way to build a park for the community, a community designed park is a huge priority for North Park. Is this project on your CIP for this year? Well, it will depend on how this vote goes. Thank you. Thank you. Guzman-Lopez Councilman Espinosa. And just more of a note for clarification. The EMC two zone district only allows three building forms the drive thru services, the drive thru restaurant and the shop front form. So the shop from form is going to be sort of the maximum density version of development. And it's for it's one of our most sort of more restrictive based zoning as far as what that form looks like and how it addresses the street. So it's sort of safe to say that unless it's a drive through form the formally, they're going to essentially relate to each other. Whatever gets whatever the uses on either side, physically, they're going to manifest themselves the same way. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Seeing no other questions. The public hearing for Constable 855 is closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilman. Thank you, Mr. President. So first I want to I want to give some thanks and one I want to give thanks to the community. Whether you are first time here or many times here or part of the Reno, not part of the R.A. live next door living. Lowry, I appreciate you all coming out and sharing how your your opinions about this. You probably learned a little bit more about alley vacations than you thought you were going to before this started. But I want to say that because we we hear you, because when this process started two years ago, there was not a lot of concerns about it. And then right around the middle of 2017, because I was at that great a Park Hill meeting where there were some serious concerns and frustrations. And I held a community in October, and you came to that. And then Parks said, Stop. We are going to pull back and we're going to say, what does a community design park look like? So I want to thank the community for that, because you made that happen. So no matter which side of Fairfax this is going to go, this is going to be a park designed by the community. And so I want to applaud you for that, making sure that you're going to have a say in the design of the park. And the next group I want to thank is Parks. And, you know, Scott, I applaud you for standing up here and taking the brunt. But you were part of the team that said, you know what, we're not comfortable with how this is gone. So we're going to stop and rewind. And you can we can certainly look back and say, you should have done this differently. You should have done it better. But it takes something to say, you know what, we did this wrong, that we're going to stop and make sure that this is a community design process. And you did that and you stood in front and said that this will be a community park designated because the Greater Park Hill and their original piece back in November said it needs to be designated a park. That is going to happen and it's going to be a park with community members at the table. So it's not going to be a plaza. Because it's gonna be designed by the community. And I don't think there's a community member in this diocese and the chambers that are going to allow a plaza to be built when they're at the table. So it's going to be a park. So I applaud Parks and Rec for doing that. I also want to applaud Ben and H him gavel because he could have easily said, I'm not going to do this. And by him and I actually believe because you lived in Park Hill, so you understand this community. You're not a developer that's just coming in and trying to maximize and leave. As you said, highest and best is not always best for the community. I think you have demonstrated that you are here at the table and willing to meet because you came to grade a Park Hill. You've come to my community meetings, you've come to the meetings that Steve Charbonneau and I forgot to tell to my colleagues. Steve Charbonneau facilitated my meeting as well as the ones for Parks and Rec. You have been all of that and you've committed right here that you're going to work with the community when it comes to who who is at the table when it comes to ensuring that this park will be inclusive for everybody. That's part of it is your role. The other part is our role because this park's not going to be built tomorrow. So as a community, you have a commitment from your council person, what can we do to make sure that that is an inclusive park? And so my offer to Greater Park Hill or to any other community members, let's have that conversation because the weather is on the west or the east side. We need to have a conversation about gentrification. We need to have a conversation about some of the ills that are going through residents short and long term in this community that this council is working on diligently to try to mitigate. And we are doing that in several different facets. But let's have that community conversation about that. So those are my thanks for all the people that have been a part of this. I support the park on the east side and I'm going to focus strictly on the park because this is what the question is. You're going to get a community design park east or west. You're going to get a community design park, east or west that will be flanked by commercial, whether it be a beer garden to the north or a restaurant to the north and in commercial to the south. So that's not going to change. So what are some differences between the two? We have the ability to build the park, community design park faster because we have a we have demonstrated there is not a use of excuse me, a funding source on the West Side. So we can build a community design park designed by the community for the community. For a community that lacks park acreage. Just does. So let's do that as best as we can for the community. So I applaud all the areas, the the people that I've been a part of this. Let's continue to move forward. Let's continue to have these conversations, because if it's west or east there, as Councilman Flynn, I applaud him for pointing this out. There should be the same concerns when it comes to inclusivity. So let's start to have those conversations to make sure that that will happen. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Herndon. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. So you probably saw me up here sort of furiously writing things and stuff like that. I don't have my underwear in as big of a bunch as I did earlier. And throughout this whole process, I always thought this was a three story development entitlement. And it's not. It's a two story which really changes the math for me. That said, it is not. I don't blame the developer any more than I blame Target for asking for $4 million for the mall developer asking for this transaction. But I do appreciate the willingness to sort of help with these other conversations and dialog and be present, you know, because those aren't your those aren't your burdens to bear. But it is helpful when when when developers engage the community in that way, because those are burdens that are in communities. So, you know, unfortunately, he left, but there were a lot of great comments. But I just wanted to tell Eric Pena when he was here or PEN that his comments in particular really resonated with me. But they sort of speak to all those things as well. But the so is not lost. I mean, the thing the basic premise is the money could have been given to the city to develop a park on our city owned lands, but that is not directly beneficial to the developer. So that resolution, which would have resolved all of this debate, was never offered. And so that tells you something about. What is the you know, what is the value? There's a number here and we settled on on 650. Even though the you know, Scott said the park the park that size is 750000 to $1 million. So what that means is. No. Despite what I heard tonight, the developer is not going to build this park. The city is going to build this park, but the developer is contributing significantly towards that end. But they could have. And that's what I'm going to get at. So what we have on both sides of the street is a rectangle, 125 by 125. I mean, a square. Sorry. 125 by 125 feet. City owns one. Developer owns the other. If a developer wanted to create a small open space and I don't know if this is totally kosher with the market, too, and he wanted to do a quarter of that lot. That that quarter is roughly 9900 square feet. Double that for two stories is 7813 square feet. And let's use the split. The difference between 325 and $350 a square foot go, 337. That's 2,000,635 that and $32,981 of of development potential that sits in that little quadrant that wouldn't be realized if an open space was provided within the development. So what instead we're doing is we're going to, you know, within that development. So let's put it in the block. Right. Sorry. But instead, what we're doing is we're giving you land to put that size of open space, internal to that development, and then that entirety is developable across the street. There's real money there. So while I always welcome the idea that, you know, that there was a win win in a deal to be made here, the city needs to drive a hard bargain and not just give a bargain. We basically transferred the $50,000 deal that we got from Excel and pass that savings on to the developer. Who is now poised on that development that just that will report me on that portion, too, to make one mean $2 or more for every dollar that is being given to the city in this transaction. That's what I mean by there was more latitude, there was more money, a harder bargain to drive to actually maybe capture the full $754 million. Much was being made as this being a gift. And it is. But it's for the developer without more financial equity and a good neighbor agreement. Without financial equity and good neighbor agreements, our obligations to to protect the surrounding residential or some meager affordable housing units included. You know, we brokered this deal. Sadly, these are the failings of the administration. They're the ones negotiating. This council does not negotiate this. This is this is the agencies that are in this. You know, they're the ones presenting they're the ones having this conversation on your behalf. Both sides. That's your tax dollars being squandered or being or being bolstered, however you choose. But if you look and you observe history shows in this city, the disproportionately advantage advantage disproportionately the advantage goes to the developer. And this is no different. Again. I do not blame the developer for asking. I blame our negotiators for not challenging or pushing harder. So what I'm saying is this is not the deal. I would negotiate. But it is one. Sadly, too soon that I can approve. Because this project will end. But but let's not. And actually, that's not mince words here. This project will expedite gentrification in this neighborhood. With or without the park. So this park has nothing to do with other forces that are going on there. That's why we should have had those negotiations, should have been part of the conversation. If we're not going for full dollar value. What else can we capture? What other hard commitments that could have been made as part of that agreement and not basically bantered about among council members who are struggling with the fact that, yeah, this is a ginormous giveaway and these are tough conversations that the city should have been having because you guys are having them with us. But all we're doing is approving something. We're not negotiating it. And we could push back. But we're also not privy to these steps along the way. It's executive privilege. So again, if this if I had if it if I were in the room, we'd be we'd be having a different conversation. And you can tell what some of that would be. But our role is sort of perfunctory at this point. Is this is this about is this a worthwhile, valid deal? Is it kosher and all sort of legal context? Yes. And now I worry. Because there is benefit here. So I don't I'm not interested in in throwing in scrapping everything that has been done and all the efforts that have been made. But man. My message to the administration is you need to drive a hard bargain. There's people, businesses being displaced. With no place, no option to stay. And so I you know, I will be supporting this. But this is a tough deal in my book because the math. Again worked out really incredibly in the developer's favor at three stories, but that's not what we're dealing with, two stories. So it's actually far more closer to what it should be numbers wise. But it is still an imbalance. And until. But in my questions to the administration about what sort of appraisals were done, what sort of analysis was done to calculate the real value to the developer. We're Neal. When I asked for a response on that. And so this was what was offered. It seemed like a good idea because it builds most of the park. But actually, I think we could have gotten all of the park or we could have gotten that commitment much earlier about what level of community involvement there would be . We could have advanced maybe the design of that park. So it was already sort of concurrently being built, I mean, being conceptualized, and that would actually benefit the developer because they could consider they could factor in some of the underground, some of the needs of that site, and maybe there would be some concessions by the city at that point. That, you know, in lieu of of all those dollars, build some of this infrastructure because you're going to double down. I mean, you're already doing the work in the adjacent area. But again, that's not this this council's responsibility. The administration. And I'm willing to bet some of that's going to occur. I hope is because it's there's only some more win wins to occur here. So I've gone on long enough. I think you all understand where I stand. I will be supporting it. But it's it. I just wish we'd gotten more from the get go. Thanks. Thank. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I share my colleague's concern about whether or not it was a great deal. I'm not as deep into the numbers as he is. I just see that Mr. Maxwell had a partial worth. A million and a half were trading him another partial worth. A million and a half. He's given us $650,000. He's going to get a park worth somewhere between that and a million bucks. So that that's that reality. I'm my main thoughts are along the lines of some of the things that Councilman Kenny shared. I think the issue of the design of the park is going to get shuttled to the neighborhood satisfaction. That's what I think. I don't know that I'm I'm waiting next week to hear more specifics about how that process is going to unfold. But the thing that really does concern me is that we take enough time to look at the other issues, the cultural issues that that have been talked about at length. And I don't know that that gets done in a week or two weeks. We've lost a year that that discussion should have been unfolding in a more comprehensive manner. So I'm really be looking at how that's pronounced. If this moves forward, you know, it's just. As the expression goes, it's not fully baked. You know, for me at this point, the park is not an issue for me. With due respect to the neighbors, the side of the street is is not an issue. It's it's the process that's concerning. And I get how that process gets shortchanged. I believe, Mr. Gilmore 100%. He saw an opportunity to build a park quickly, and he and he jumped at it. And I've done similar things in my life. And all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, there's this other stuff that I should be considering. And while I understand it, one of one of the critical problems we face, and I think it was maybe Councilman Brooks that talked about the issue of the trust. We're fighting in everything we do here, trying to regain the trust of the public in their government. And so we need to really be extra attentive to holding public engagement as the highest value so that that's in the top of our mind as we approach whatever we're doing here in the city. So. Yeah. That's why I've got to say thank you. Then you get some. Cashman kills me. Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. Hmm. You know, I. First of all, you know, I wanted to. Coming from somebody who has fought for as much park acreage as possible in a. Parks starved. District in Denver. And being able to. To turn that around, being able to create parks where nobody thought there were parks and to build parks where we had every advantage an opportunity to do so. I could tell you that that that for as much as Mr. Gilmore is trying to put a lot of stuff on himself, we couldn't have done that without. An aggressive. At least an aggressive mission to go and find park space wherever possible, especially in areas of town. That are. That are struggling and especially in areas of town that don't have access to park space. And so I know that the intent there is to to. To try to acquire Parkland as much as possible. And there was a part there was a time in this city where this administration did not like pocket parks and they were never interested in pocket parks. Now. That's the only opportunity we have. It. It doesn't. I don't feel as confident. And this is not on and any kind of personal attack. I don't feel as confident. And we have to ask that we're accomplishing those mission, that mission when we have to ask developers to do it for us. I mean, I really appreciate you coming to the table. And I appreciate the offer. But we have to be in a city. We have to have the priorities straight in this city with our budget to give parks. The opportunity to have the upper hand. And so we're not as a city behind the eight ball. Whenever somebody comes to us with some money to be able to say, hey, okay. We should have our own fund dedicated to be able to guide our principles. And that's a budget issue. And that is going to be on the ballot as well. Right. Whether or not as a citizenry, as a city does, is that a value that we have a healthy budget to be able to do this, not just for parks but for our infrastructure? Right. So I don't want to wage a war on our philosophy of parks or. On on the economy in our city and take it out on one side of the street or the other. Right. There is a part that's going to happen. It's going to be built on this street. And I do understand I do understand what folks are saying at the microphone. Folks have said, hey, we're tired of people calling the cops on us because we we have Spanish music because that happens to us. Right. We're tired of people watching our every move in our parks and they don't let us be because maybe it's because of the color of my skin. Maybe it's because the music I'm playing, maybe it's because the carne asada that's on the grill. I get that. I understand that. And for folks who are living in this neighborhood. And want to see this part happen and don't understand it and take an opportunity to understand that. People in this country are being the cops are being called on us, especially Latinos, especially African-Americans, just because we are who we are. We could be chillin in a park and that happens. Those are real stories. I don't question those stories because I know that happens. However. In my experience with Parkes part. And also the other thing I want to address and what I heard at the microphone and I get that there are some safety issues. In every neighborhood, we have issues where somebody's peddling some dope or there's some fights. I get that. That happens in my neighborhood, too. That happens in our parks. You had parks where that's been the case. Just because there's a park in your neighborhood does not mean safety is gone. All of a sudden, you're going to achieve safety. You achieve safety when people want to be in the park, you achieve safety when people want to be there and they want to have music and they want to be able to have a good time and they want to have their quinceaneras and they want to take pictures for prom and all that. That's that's when you achieve when you activate a park, that's when you achieve it. So it's not necessarily that we have space for a park and we have Parkland, but it's how we're going to program the park. What are we going to have in it? If all you have is a pretty little fountain and some trees and some ducks, that's not going to make an active park if you're going to have swings. A gazebo for families to have birthday parties. Right. That's what's going to have. That's that. That's activating a park. So I can tell you by looking at the zoning and by looking at the uses. It really is not going to make a difference in one. I'm seeing that it's not really going to make a difference on one side or the other if they're just both flanked right there in the middle of a main street zone district. In a matter of years, it may look like a mirror image of the other side. And we've had all this argument and fighting for nothing unless. You come to the table? You all come to the table, recognize that this is the dynamic in this neighborhood. What was said in these council chambers and try to be able to create a park for everybody. Right. And then also be aware of those social aspects of this. This is definitely these chambers are definitely the chambers that should be hearing stories about how the impact of gentrification in our city. Absolutely. We should be talking about that here. We should be talking about, you know, the undertones and undertones of racism in our city. Absolutely. These aren't issues that we're not just pulling some card up. Nobody give me a race card. We're not just pulling it out and using it wherever it's happening. And we have to address it. And that means every single one of us and everything we do, even in parks. And so I think that's that's the. I wanted to address that. But I also wanted to ask and this is my ask a Parks and Rec. Because of its location, because of the perception. Whatever the sign, whoever whatever this park is called, it should say public park. So that there is no question whether this park is part of your development or part of the community. So there is no confusion whatsoever. If it's. I don't know. Barack Obama public park. It could be Mickey Mouse, Public Park. But however. However you name it. Name it. Public. So that people understand that they belong there, that that's their part. I have already kind of expressed what I've. My suggestion would be it would be to put it on a corner so people can see it. So you can access it from from two sides, not just one. Right. And that's all design on your end. That's all up to you. But I definitely understand the angst. I understand the anxiety. But from somebody on the West Side who has made it my. Oh. My everything to try to. Create parks that reflect who we are. That's it. Don't walk away. Be part of it, demand to be at that table and make sure that that park reflects. Park North Park Hill. For every single all every ounce of every molecule. Glory and culture it is right. So I with that it's I'm I'm going to support it only because I you know, for for those reasons. But yeah. They. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Brooks. Hey, thank you, Mr. President. And thank you for everybody who stayed around to nearly 10:00 to talk about a park in the neighborhood. But we're not just talking about a park. We're talking about something so much more. So thank you. For those of you who drove paying for parking. Those of you who all came in here going through security and sitting in those hard seats, really appreciate your passion for this city. And I think that's incredibly important. And if your passion dies tonight, depending on the vote, that's unfortunate because there's a lot a lot of stuff going on in the neighborhood. I, I used to represent this neighborhood, and I'm in this on this street every week at House of Hair. Anybody know Pope? Mr. Pope is in there. So he has been and I've been hearing this about this deal for a year and a half. But let me just say something. So MLK first neighborhood that he came to when he came to the city of Denver was Park Hill. In Park Hills, a historic neighborhood of always trying to figure out the issues around race and equity issues and equality, equity, understanding that folks are starting from a bias, understanding that folks are starting from a disadvantage in the community in Park Hill has always been historic for having white allies who support that. And it's a powerful neighborhood. I got to say tonight and it's because it's not my district. And I just got a chance to sit back and listen to everybody tonight. I'm just sad because I know who are friends in here and I see you all on opposite sides. And and that's not the vision of our neighborhood. And even though. We have different opinions of what this is. We should never let this come to the point of dividing our friendships in our community, in our neighborhood. We will not allow what's going on federally to affect us on our street corner. This this country is more divided than it's ever been. We're not going to let a park. We're not going to let gentrification. We're not going to let any of that stuff divide us. And so I just think it's important for me to say that at the outset, because that is at the crux of every conversation that I have and it's at the crux of this this issue here. So, you know, I really appreciate the conversation. Obviously, you know, the development issue I was in the barbershop, I heard that it was six stories redevelopment coming next door all the way from folks who have been on the block for 40 years and was excited to see some change. And so there's some great debate and great arguments going on. But as the facts begin to come out, you know, folks started to really talk about what they wanted to see, what they wanted to see in the park, who they wanted to see coming outside of those apartments, who they want to see coming outside the restaurants. And it's an inclusive community. I think the anger that people have been hearing, especially in African-American communities, that feeling like they're losing a sense of community. So I think. You know, I appreciate Scott really talking about some of the missteps. The process was not right. And I appreciate you starting it over. Scott and and Scott. Like I said, we've worked on many of issues and continue to work on issues. And I really believe that our parks can be that great equalizer in our community. And parks is not the number one issue in this community. I think everybody see in that there's some undergirding issues that are going on. There's a school called Stedman and Hallett that are struggling right now, struggling about to close. Right. Like struggling. And so there's some big issues in our community. And I think it's important when we come to the conversation with these issues, is that we start talking about them, we start discussing them. You know, for me to support this, I was very I'm very clear. That. I want a detailed list of the process. Gordon We've worked on a hundred processes together. You've been inclusive for people to feel like they haven't been included. It troubles me. So a very detailed list of participants and what the process will look like by next week when we vote on this for full up. Been there is ready radio Radian Development actually connects people with folks small businesses who have been pushed out of the neighborhood. I'm going to give you that contact this radian. I'm going to give you that contact this week. And the person you should sit down with is is Marcus Pope, who is in the neighborhood, who because I just don't want to talk about the small business inclusion. I really want to be give you tools to say this is how we include small businesses, especially folks who've been pushed out. Of the community. You know, as I look at the. The the the swap. I don't even want to call it a swap because it makes it sounds really bad. As I look at the transaction here, dealing with a park. I'm going to say it again, there's huge trust issues and we need to make things as transparent as possible. And I think that the city of Denver, when we when we interact with these transactions, we have to have an open and transparent process with the community so that they know and I've talked to all of you all in Parks Department, I've talked to you in real estate so that they know there is nothing going on behind closed doors, that this is for the benefit of the community. And I know that I've talked in detail. I've talked about some of the issues, but the community doesn't feel that way. So we have a lot of work to do. But moving forward, I want to see those things to be completely supportive. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. So these are neighborhoods. These these are conversations that we're having in neighborhoods all across the city. It's not unique to your neighborhood. We've been having these conversations for, you know, the last eight years that I've been back here as we've been dealing with the I-70 project around some of the the inequities that are happening to those communities. Interestingly, the city is beginning to have internal conversations about race inequity. That is occurring. It's happening with our Denver Wright process, which is very important because that's going to set the stage for our city moving forward for the next 20, 25 years. It's been at least that long since we revisited that blueprint document. And I think these are conversations we need to have on the front end of these projects, not on the back end, so that we address the concerns and the impact to communities on the front end and not wait until, you know, folks have been displaced and they can no longer even have a voice at that table because they can't even afford to stay in some of our neighborhoods. And I know this was all about a park and and where that park should be. And I appreciate the input that we have received in my office phone calls, emails from folks on all sides of this issue. I appreciate you all sitting through a long night and, you know, listening to the previous conversations that we've had here about other issues. But this has been very enlightening for me to see Mr. Maxwell's commitment to trying to work through this all and sincerely appreciate your your willingness to not not only. You know, step back from the design and put money at the table, but really willing to roll up your sleeves and focus on some of these other social issues that have been the undercurrent of this entire conversation. And I'm pleased that Parks and Recreation is making a commitment to fund the gap, even though this is not a priority in Mississippi. You heard the question about if. If this doesn't happen, what happens to the park and the commitment to have a park on this block? Well, the money wouldn't be there, but we're going to find the money to complete this park at this location, because we have a $650,000, you know, contribution towards it. So, you know, I just based on what I had heard and seen, I sat through one community meeting in the neighborhood. I was leaning towards opposing this. But really having heard tonight's conversation, I am going to support this tonight just because I think this is a genuine opportunity to try to heal the wounds that have been caused as a result of of what what has been a divide. And I know there are people in this neighborhood who have worked together on so many other issues and to be kind of split off over this one issue. Hopefully, this this I'm not sure what's happening to the wall because something is falling off the wall anyway. I think this really is that opportunity to bring people back together and appreciate Parks and Rick's, you know, commitment to make sure that this is what the community wants in terms of the park that will be there. And so I will be supporting this tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Cashman, you back up? Yeah. I just want to add one more thing. Just so I could take up a few minutes of everybody's time and enjoy those lovely benches. I just. Councilman Flynn mentioned it early on. I it's it's unacceptable that on an issue this important that's been on top of people's minds for so long, that we have to vote on an exception to the rules because we don't have the contract til late on Friday. So and I'm also disappointed that, again, an issue that's been this president on everybody's mind that we don't have a representative from from community planning and development to answer basic questions. I appreciate my the input from my colleague, Councilman Espinoza, but we've got a neighbors here late and a whole lot of other people here late. And I think the administration could have done a better job in being prepared to bring this forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Seeing nobody else in line for comments. I'll just close with this. I want to say thank you to everyone for coming out here, for sitting here, for taking time to add your voice to the conversation. What I'm hearing tonight in here is the same thing that I hear every day in my district. There's so much change, so much that we feel we can't control happening in our city and in our country, that when something comes up where there is a chance to weigh in, we start having all of these really important conversations , even when they're not directly related to the thing that we get to vote on, because we are all as a city, so hungry for that conversation and for solutions to the problems that we're talking about. And they're really important conversations. And we have to find ways as a community to find more ways and better ways to have those conversations and find ways to take back some of that power and control. But looking at what we're voting on tonight. For me, this is about a park on the same block that has the same zoning flanking it on both sides. And none of you know nothing about our vote is going to change those things. So do we want one with $0 or do we want one with $650,000? And that's what we're tasked with voting. I know, Scott. I know, Gordon. I was in the trenches fighting with these guys for parks that we had no money for before I was on this council and in my former life. And I know that both of them are extremely passionate about this community and extremely passionate about delivering a great park for every neighborhood and for every person. I appreciate Scott stepping up in front of everybody and saying that he may have made some missteps along the way in the process. And I know because I know, Scott, that it wasn't because there was something else going on in the background or there was some backroom deal. But it's because he's so passionate about finding ways to deliver on these parks and on a park for everyone, that when he sees something that's a possibility, he jumps all over it. And that's because we have a huge funding issue. As Councilman Lopez mentioned, we don't have the money to build these parks, to deliver these parks. We have parcels sitting right now, today in my district that have sat vacant, waiting for funding for decades. And there's no one offering $650,000 to build that park across the street or even a dollar. To do that, we need to fund our parks so that we don't have to. Scramble all over trying to deliver a park for a community that needs one. And we need to have the money to do right by every neighborhood and every kid and every person in the city. Right now, we don't have that. And so, again, it brings us back to what are we voting on tonight? Do we want to park on this block and $650,000 to build it? Or do we want a vacant parcel on this block with no money to build it like I have so many of in my district right now? So tonight, my vote is for a park with $650,000 to build it. With that, Madam Secretary. Raquel Herndon. I. Question. Can each by Lopez. I. Knew Ortega I. Susman Black. Brooks I. Espinosa, I. Flynn, I. Gilmore Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, please close voting announce results to advice. One Abstention 12 eyes, one abstention. Council 855 has been ordered published Monday, August 27th will be second reading or final consideration of Council Bill 855. Uh, Maggie Bolden, I know you're watching on Channel eight right now.

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an Overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2016 Budget for the following: Harbor Department; Water Department.

LongBeachCC_09012015_15-0737

Okay. Thank you. Next, we're on to our final hearing of the night, which is the continuation of the budget hearing. Some turn this over now to Mr. West. Report from City Manager and Financial Management. Recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2016 budget for the following Harbor Department and Water Department. Mr. West. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Council members. This is our series of budget hearings. So tonight we're hearing from our Harvard Department and from our water department. So I see our executive director, John Sanger, up in the audience. So I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Belanger up and we'll do the Harvard Department first. Good afternoon, Mayor Garcia and members of the City Council. My name is John Slinger up. I am the chief executive officer of the harbor department. With me here today is Steven Rubin, our managing director and chief financial officer, as well as Betsy Christie, who is our director of finance. Thank you for this opportunity to present the Harbor Department's fiscal year 2016 budget. Our fiscal 2016 proposed budget is $829 million, a 3% decrease from the fiscal 2015 budget, primarily due to a decrease in capital spending. However, as in recent years, the budget continues to be driven by a significant investment in port infrastructure. In this case, $555 million is projected for next year, led by the continual, continual investments in Middle Harbor and the Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement projects. We continue to aggressively move forward with our ten year, $4 billion capital program, the largest, most ambitious port infrastructure program in the United States. In recent months, we have been encouraged by very strong container volume numbers and believe that the cargo diverted away from the port during our congestion crisis last year has now been recovered and that we're beginning to recapture market share we lost early this year. However, given global economic uncertainties in Asia and in Europe and the unknown impact of trade next year, we will remain financially prudent, which our budget reflects. The budget is the financial framework which supports our strategic plan, which was updated for 2016 and we are now working on our 2017 strategic plan. The budget reflects the new port organization that we put in place in 2014, which has allowed us to respond effectively to rapidly changing market and competitive forces within our industry. Both operating revenues and headcount remain flat for the coming year. As usual, the budget includes a tidelands transfer of 5% of gross operating revenues, which last year was $17.7 million. It uses conservative revenue projections. And we developed our budget in the context of forward looking ten year cash flow forecast. This ensures that the decisions we make today are affordable in the future and we remain focused on maintaining our very strong credit rating. Our budget reflects several key initiatives and priorities. First supply chain optimization is a joint Long Beach and Los Angeles Port Initiative to engage our stakeholders in improving the end to end marine supply chain system to avoid future cargo congestion and drive increased speed, efficiency and reliability of goods movement throughout our port complex. We also have an initiative called Energy Island, which we are evaluating as a means to create energy security, environmental sustainability and operational resiliency for the entire port, as well as essential services of the city. We need to ensure an ample supply of electricity, alternative fuels and renewable energy sources as the port moves towards a zero emission, electrically intensive future. We are investing in our team through newly developed Port Leadership Institute, creating strong bench strength and a culture of learning throughout the organization. We are also competing, completing a long term cargo forecast as part of our new strategic planning process, which is the first time we've done this since 2009. We have also initiated a land use study that will evaluate the highest and best use of port real estate assets as we continue to build our port of the future. The port continues to invest in the Long Beach community. Our Technology Advancement Program, which we call TAP for short funds, the testing of zero emission electric powered trucks and vessel emission reduction systems. As we expand tab, we envision working with the city and our local universities to develop a Long Beach Center for technology innovation that will bring together the common initiatives and goals of our Long Beach community in developing the next generation of talent, technology and jobs. This year. It's the 10th anniversary of our green port policy. We're updating our Clean Air Action Plan as a joint effort with the Port of Los Angeles. We continue our robust communications and community relations programs to inform residents about the port and how we're helping the community to thrive. As a board of Harvard commissioners has asked us to develop an extension of our community mitigation grants program. We have, to date awarded $17.4 million for 170 projects to improve public health. Let me provide some more details of the budget. The proposed 2016 budget is 829 million. This is 3.3% less than last year, primarily due to lower capital expenditures. Although we plan to spend slightly less, our capital expenditures are still the highest the highest investment infrastructure of any port in the nation at 550 million capital expenditures drive our budget. As we move forward with Middle Harbor, the Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement and critical rail rail expansion. This slide actually shows how we spend our money. The capital expenditures are clearly focused on the Gerald Desmond Bridge and Middle Harbor projects, but we do many, many other things that amount for hundreds of millions of dollars that are crucial to our port infrastructure. Now let me turn to the funding sources. Our fiscal 2016 operating revenue is forecast at $376.4 million. This is 8.5% higher than last year's adopted budget. The fiscal 2016 non operating revenue is $149.1 million and is related to grant reimbursements for the Gerald Desmond Bridge. The other significant source of funds is from our borrowing. As you can see, we have very exciting plans for building what we call the Port of the Future, which is well underway. In closing, I want to thank our customers and our partners, our mayor, our commissioners and city council members. And last but not least, our incredible port staff for the exceptional cooperation and support we receive on an ongoing basis. Together we are driving innovation, operational excellence and environmental, environmental and economic sustainability. As we remain committed to partnering with the city, serving our community and investing in long beaches, bright, bright future we stand ready to serve. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Schlanger. As always, the port is doing a phenomenal job. I know you didn't add it, but I know you're having. We're having record numbers at the port for cargo this year. So congratulations to you and your team for that. Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I want to thank the port team and Mr. Slinger for that presentation. I did have the opportunity to receive a briefing from your financial team. I don't have my notes, but my recollection from the meeting is that I was very impressed with the presentation that the team provided. You have a fiscally prudent approach to your finances and a very impressive reserve that you carry year to year, despite some unforeseen circumstances and things that have happened in recent times. I think your leadership, in terms of what you've brought to the table with supply chain optimization and other things that you've brought from your past experience to port operations, have allowed you guys to stay fiscally prudent with an eye towards the future. What I'm most impressed about is how you're able to maintain a fiscally prudent stance in policy and daily operation, while at the same time continuing to invest in community programs which are critical to our city and critical to the fabric of everything that we do for our residents. I appreciate that and also the investment that you have in your staff. Frankly, the management training program that you have available to your team that that I was briefed on during my presentation is very impressive. And the fact that you're able to do that and invest in your your department and the members of your department and still stay within budget and continue to maintain the reserves that you have and continue to plan for the changes in the industry that the port and ports around the world are seeing is very impressive. So I want to thank you for taking a fiscally conservative approach to the finances and making sure that the port always has positives to report in terms of finances. That's very welcomed and consistently we can rely on your team to deliver that. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to take this moment to just offer a few comments. I want to congratulate Mr. Singh, slinger of his staff and our Harbor Commission on a great budget presentation. I want to acknowledge also your efforts to improve your sponsorship program in order to ensure that it has a makes a broader impact on our larger community. We did pay attention to that and we're very, very glad to see the outcome of that. I want to continue to encourage you to keep going. Think broad thinking, broad thinking and being innovative, but also to make sure that, as I know that we're flat this year, but as we continue to to bring in talent into our city, we make sure that we really hire folks that reflect the diversity and the talent of Long Beach. And so, that said, I look forward to partnering with you to continue to partner with you on Fed Pledge, advocating for a dedicated freight program ongoing from our federal government. Because I know it's important to Long Beach, particularly our port and goods movement, that we have the infrastructure available to move our freight quickly. So thank you so much on your presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. I just want to say thank you. I think you've covered everything. My colleagues covered quite a bit, too. But your vision for environmental stewardship is really to be commended. And also the organizational restructuring of the port and just boosting the morale of the employees, I think is just tremendous. So I just want to thank you, John, as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. How long you've been with us now? A year. A little more. Little more than a year. Well, congratulations. You passed probation. Thank you. Barely. Yeah. No. Yeah. I want to add my voice to all the kudos that have been passed on doing your work with the. With the harbor, especially with the Clean Trucks program, continuing that and all the efforts you're doing to keep our air clean. On page or eight, where you have your capital expenditures that you have right there, the Middle Harbor, if I recall correctly. It's a is it a three phase project program or is it to where are we with with the Middle Harbor at this point? Middle Harbor is primarily a two phase project. We've released phase one this month, and it'll go through a six month testing period and be operational in the first quarter of next year. So it'll be a revenue producing phase of Middle Harbor beginning next year. Moreover, phase two will extend the Middle Harbor complex, adding another 10% capacity. Phase one adds 10% phase two as another 10% for a total capacity increase for the port container business by 20%. There is a phase three and it's concurrent with phase two and is a small part of the project related to Infilling, part of the the waterway that is is currently under underway. So it's really a two phase with a little tiny phase three related to two part of the extension of the pier. Thank you for that update. And along those lines, this is $111 million at the total costs for the all three phases. I'm sorry, what was a number? The 100. You have $111 million here. No, that's just that's just for fiscal 2016. The total project value is about $1.4 billion. And we have spent how much so far? About half approaching, approaching $800 million. So we're we're well through it, but we still have a complete phase two expansion to to yet complete. Is there a projection in regards to what the income that we might be receiving once the project is completed? Absolutely. The this is a project that will that has resulted in a 40 year, four and a half billion dollar lease to the port. So over over the 40 year term of the lease, we will receive four and a half billion dollars in income. Thank you. And what I really like about this project, obviously, is that it's very green, all electrical, and it's going to be one hell of a project. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman Andrews. Yes, thank you, Mayor. John, I think it's the exception what you've been doing, because the fact that these kind of trying times that, you know, you guys came upon you this year. But I think because of your staff and your commissioners and the way you guys have work together has really made our city of Long Beach is really look good. You know, I just have one question and I really want to applaud the port for their recent update, you know, to the community sponsorship guidelines to make process more transparent and acceptable. But how are you to ensure the organizations throughout the city are being notified about the new process? Thank you for the question. Well, our team is working extremely hard to reach out to the community and communicate the guidelines that we've come up with on a number of fronts. First of all, obviously, we're sending letters to all all the people that have requested a sponsorship support over the last 18 months. We're also doing press releases, social media and outreach to nonprofit groups and networks. We've also hosted a lunch and learn with with our staff meeting with a number of the council offices. So we are doing everything we can to reach out and personally touch our community members. You know, thank you, John. And one thing I hope you guys never, ever, you know, take out the put to it, because the fact for my community, that's just like taking a trip to Italy, you know? So keep up that, please. All right. Don't take that out of the budget. Thank you again. Councilwoman Mango. I echo Councilmember Andrew's comments. I know that this year is one of the first years where we had over 300 requests to go on the port tour. And I think that that speaks a lot to your leadership at the port and the leadership of the council to re bring life back to downtown for the neighbors of the fifth District to venture down this way for an evening and spend time learning about the port. There are lots of questions. And Commissioner Dynes did an excellent job of. Differentiating the funds that stay at the port and why they can't be used to fix our streets and sidewalks. And he also did give credit to the amount of funding that comes over from the gross amount that you mentioned earlier in your presentation. So thank you again for all that you do. Thank you for the $400 billion of trade and transportation and travel that you bring to the United States and keep doing a great job. Thank you. Your staff continue to rave about having you in leadership and it really means a lot to all of us. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, Mr. Singer, I think we're going to go on to the next budget presentation. Thanks again for that. Next up, we're going to have the water department's presentation. That's item 25. So Mayor council members, we have one of his final presentations as a Long Beach employee. Executive Director Kevin Walker. Well, the final one to the council, probably after after after the next agenda item. And so thank you. We'll get a chance to think in a minute, but go ahead. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, council members, for the opportunity to present the Water Department's 2016 budget. Let me begin by acknowledging the commission President Harry Salts gave her, who's patiently sitting here waiting for me to talk fast so we can get back to work. And also my incoming replacement, Chris Gardner. If if if the commission had acted a couple weeks quicker, he could be giving a presentation tonight, not me. But anyway, let me also introduce my two staff here with me, Anatole Fallon's our assistant general manager, and then Paul Fujita, who who's our finance manager and has our budget. So here we go. The right one in the water department. We have two unique two different funds and they're discrete and kept separate. The water fund is our largest fund accounts for about 85% of our expenditures. And then so I'll talk about that first and then later I'll talk about the sewer fund. It's what we call an infrastructure driven fund. About 70 million of the 106 million in the water fund is non-personal services. A lot of that has to do with purchasing water. And I'll go over some of those costs in a minute. Our personnel, our personal services, about 23 million, and then our capital improvement program, about 13.4 million. And I'll talk about each one of those areas in a bit. This shows you we get 40% of our water from the Metropolitan Water District, which we purchase from them, and 60% of our water we pump from our local groundwater aquifer . And when we do that, we pay a what's called a replenishment assessment to the water replenishment district. So this shows you the costs that we've absorbed in the last since from 2009 to 2016. From those two entities, the metropolitan water districts, rates have gone up, compounded 85% during that time period. And the water replenishment district's rates have gone up 87%. And during that same time period, we've raised our rates 50%. So we've been absorbing those costs for many years now, running a deficit budget for many years now and spending down our reserves. Obviously, you can't continue to do that forever. So a few years ago, we developed a five year plan to realign our costs and our revenues. And so fiscal year 2016 is the third year of that five year plan. The five year plan anticipated 4% per year water rate increases to bring the budget into balance. You can see in 2016 that even with a 4% rate increase, which is what we're recommending, we're still running a deficit budget of about $6.2 million. But then you can see how possibly as early as 17, but certainly by fiscal year 18, which is the fifth year of the five year plan with continued 4% rate increase as we come into balance. So we're right on track. In fact, it looks like we're on track to complete the five year plan in the fourth year. And so hopefully Mr. Garner will follow through on that next year. But anyway, that's good news that we're tracking hopefully a year ahead of getting back into a balanced budget situation. One of the programs we're very proud of and that we don't get up in the don't end up in the newspapers very often about is our pipe replacement program. We've had a very extensive pipe replacement program in the water department for over 20 years now. And the red line is the the success of that program. The red line is our main breaks. You can see that we used to regularly have 100 to 150 main breaks per year. And for the last several years we've been hovering around 30 main breaks a year, and that's due to the investment that we've been making. About 6.2 million of that $13 million capital program is replacing old cast iron pipe and the green bars. There you can see that we've now replaced over half of our cast iron pipe, but we still have a lot to go, lots of work to do. And we'll be replacing Pipe for many, many years to go to come. But again, our main breaks have been reduced by from 100, 150 to running about 30 for the last several years. Moving on to our summer of fun. We're again, this is our smaller fun. I get to clarify, this is the sanitary sewers. It's not the storm drains or storm sewers. Those are managed by our public works department. We the water department is responsible for the sanitary sewer system. 15% of our budget. The breakdown between the three components percentagewise is very similar. But what we're dealing with here, it's a little bit different situation. There were new regulations passed by the state several years ago that required us to increase our both our operations and maintenance responsibilities and also our capital improvement work in our our sanitary sewer fund. So we did that primarily through issuing a line of credit, in essence, a credit card. And we've been using that line of credit for several years now. We've extended it as long as we can, but unfortunately, we we won't be able to extend it again. So we have to plan now to take it out in fiscal year 2017 and convert it to a long term debt issuance. So the primary driver we have here in our sewer fund is the conversion of that debt in 2017. And you see how our expenditures increase from 19 19.5 million to 20.6 million. A million of that is is due to now having to convert that and pay both principal and interest on that, which is now we're just paying interest only in a very low interest rate so that additional million dollars is converting that line of credit to date to debt. But again, we're in we're in a multiyear plan here for percent rate increases. And again, you see how we come into balance in about 2018 or 2019 with 4% rate increases on our on our sewer fund. One of the things I want to talk about, one of our biggest driver really on the sewer funded sewer operation is preventing sewer overflows. Those are what we don't like to happen. It results in if if it's not contained can result in, you know, getting to our recreational waterways. So we take that very seriously. We have a very progressive fats, oil and grease program working with our restaurants that's been very successful, very pleased with with that and the cooperation and the way we work jointly with our health department. We're on that program. It's a very successful program. Unfortunately, we have had some increases in sewer overflows this year in residential areas. So we're going to have to work work hard to get out the word this year and hopefully work with the council and the city manager and others, too, to make sure that our that our residents understand that it's not acceptable to discharge a grease into our sanitary sewers, because it's almost always grease that's causing these sewer overflows. It's almost always grease. And again, almost all the ones we're having now are in residential neighborhoods as opposed to where they used to be primarily in restaurant areas. We have implemented some technology, what's called smart manhole covers. And through that technology we've averted we we estimated 56 or 58 sewer overflows over the last six years. So we're using technology to avert sewer overflows. And it's been very successful. We've greatly increased the inspection of our sewers as we inspect the sewers. Using closed circuit television, this both drives our cleaning program, which is mainly an on M expense. But it also is what then becomes the input to our capital program, because it's through these inspections that we determine which sewers need to be either realigned to replace . So we as you can see, we do a lot more inspection of our sewers than we used to. We also do a lot of cleaning. We go through the whole system about on a two year cycle of cleaning the system. Some areas require a lot more frequent cleaning than that in areas that are heavily impacted, particularly by grease again. But we spend a lot of time and money inspecting and cleaning the sewers. This is a before and after picture of a sewer that was cracked that we identified in inspection and and how we realigned it. Whenever we can, we realign a sewer rather than dig it up and replace replace it. Not only is that better for the community, less traffic congestion, but also it's much more cost effective to rely on a sewer working from manhole to manhole rather than tear up the whole street. So this is what we do, if at all possible, is realign relining as shown here, getting to the you know, what are the rate increases? Again, our recommendation is 4% for water and 4% per sewer. What does that mean on the typical monthly bill? This shows you what the typical monthly bill would bill would do for a single family home in Long Beach using 12 billing units per month, which is what our typical single family home uses. It's a combined increase of $2.20 under the water and sewer bill. I believe it's $0.44 on the sewer bill and a dollar 76 on the water bill. How does that compare to our peers and the rest of large cities in California and our neighbors? This graph not only includes the payment that our customers make to us, but it also includes the payment that our customers make to the L.A. County Sanitation District through their property tax bill. So you can see that when you add those together, we are the lowest combined water and sewer bill of any large city in California, or what's called the L.A. County Average, which is a grouping of several of the cities in Los Angeles County. And then also one private operator, Golden State Water, which does provide service in a small part of Long Beach. And we have another one, Cal Water Service, which has similar rates to Golden State. So our our combined water and sewer rates are some of the lowest of any large city in California. And that completes my presentation. We have answered the questions. Well, thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. I know this doesn't sound exciting, but the idea that we have done such a remarkable job of maintaining the assets that we have underground is really remarkable. Because if if we did spend all the money that we are allocating millions of dollars a year to repave our streets and then to have to go back and deal with those issues later. You've done a remarkable job, and we really appreciate that. Thank you for the presentation you gave to my office the other day. I thought it was quite informative. I also want to take a moment to appreciate the technology that you have deployed recently. I know we discussed that I was one of your pilot programs and you quickly sent me a letter letting me know that I had a leak I didn't know about. And that leak caused me to immediately call a plumber. And we did a quite a extensive investigation to find out that just a tiny bit of water was leaking every single day through a flap in the back of the toilet. And so to be able to see this technology in action firsthand has been remarkable. And I really appreciate the innovative things that you've done. You will be missed greatly. We are looking forward to the leadership of Mr. Gardner, but you have some very, very large shoes to fill. So thank you very much for all you've done for us. And thank you to the commission that has been a leader along the way, because without a board of interested neighbors who are looking out for everyone, we wouldn't be in the position we are. You guys have been just such a group of financially conservative individuals that have put us in a remarkable place. So thank you. Thank you. Very much. Councilor Richardson. Thank you. I just wanted to chime in and just say that although, you know, these things may not be in the newspaper, it's a good thing when your own water department is not in the newspaper. Secondly, if you're not in the newspaper, maybe you should talk to your board member. Harry Salts gave or about that. But in all seriousness, thank you so much for your for your presentation. And we do have this conversation every year. It's great to see you're making the investments in our water mains. We would hate to see water main breaks in our community. These are important to our residents. They're important to the safety, the health and safety of our community. So we're glad to have you here and we're sorry to see you go. Thank you, Councilman Pryce. Thank you. I want to echo all of those comments. I'm curious, in the time that you've been with the water department, have you ever had a water situation such as we have now in the state of California? And how how has it been for you in terms of your leadership in these times? Because, you know, we get a lot of concerns from residents and whether we're using reclaimed water and our parks and that kind of thing. I'm just curious in terms of how that experience has been for you. Well, there's no question that this is that when you consider the the impacts of the drought we're in, this is the most serious that anybody has ever lived through in California history. But hydrological, it's not that much more severe than other droughts. But when you consider the population increase that we've had, I mean, the last drought that we had was. Perhaps similar to this, we have, I think, about 9 million more people living in California than we did. Now that we did anything but that, that's more than two cities in Los Angeles that we've added to our population. And since the last drought, that's fairly similar to this hydrological. The other thing is, you know, we've had additional endangered species restrictions put on our imported water supplies. So those imported water supplies are under a lot more restrictive conditions than they were in any previous drought. So there's no question this is the most significant drought in terms of impact that California's ever experienced. And it's it's been exciting. We'll talk about that later. But I mean, Long Beach has just stepped up and done a tremendous job. And it's been a tremendous pleasure for me to be able to help lead Long Beach and provide the leadership that Long Beach has provided for the whole state. Well, you've done a tremendous job, and I appreciate the budget report that you've given us. And again, similar to the comments made with the harbor department, I appreciate the attention to to responsibility and and proceeding prudently. And I think that that's appreciated by council. And I share the sentiments of Councilman Richardson in saying that it is it is a good thing when your water department is not in the press in this day and age. So thank you. Thanks to your team. Thank you, Councilman. Well, thank you. I'd like to join my colleagues in complimenting the water department, Mr. Guardia and your entire staff for great work. It shows here that we are being very fiscally responsible. It's well-planned out. The rate increases, I believe, are fair. And we still remain a leader in the state. I'm concerned. Understanding that this is your last budget presentation, I'm a little concerned about the brain drain, no pun intended, from the department, from the top level, but also from its labor force as well. I see that there. Is there any significant change in terms of personnel, the personnel situation over at the water department today? No, our staffing numbers have been flat for several years. But as as you are correct, we are in a increasingly competitive market and retaining staff is becoming a very serious issue for us. I appreciate that. And I because we talked about this in our present briefing a week or so ago. Can can you just elaborate on what the competitive market means and how that is impacting staffing at the water? Well, it's interesting. I didn't want to brag, but I've use this as a lead in. You know, we talked about our water main breaks. And, of course, you always read about one other very large city in Los Angeles County in the newspaper that has a lot of water main breaks. Well, they have five times as many water main breaks per mile of pipe line in that city as we do in Long Beach. Well, they've apparently decided that it's time that they should do something about that. And one of the things they're doing about that is they're in a very extensive hiring binge to hire employees who know how to install and fix water mains and. We're the victim of that hiring thing that they're on. We've lost several of our best rank and file employees to them, and we have a number of a large number that are apparently on the next round that they're going to be making offers to us. So they're they're rating us. Yeah. Okay. So thank you. I don't need 25% more than we do, so there's only so much we can do. Did you say 20 to 25% more? Yes. Well, that's pretty significant. I know we have a we just hired a new h.r. Director, and so I know that that'll just be on the list of challenges for for that individual to deal with. Thank you very much. I always appreciate your candor. Thank you, Councilman Andrew. Yes, thank you. You know, first of all, I'd like to thank you and your department because of the fact that, you know, with the parks I have in my district, they still are green. I don't know where the water is coming from, but they still are green. And so I would just like to say it's one. Yeah. Know, one question is what about the impact, you know, to your long term rate outlook? Yes, thank you for that, because that's a question we get all the time. You read about it all, all the time in the paper that with conservation and reduced sales, that water utilities are going to have to raise their rates. And of course, the public hates that that you're raising rates when you're forcing them to conserve. But again, we're right on track. We're right on track. In fact, it looks like we may complete this five year plan in four years. So there's been no changes to our proposed five year financial plan in those 4% per year rate increases as a result of of all the things we're doing with conservation and in addressing this drought. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Rank. Thank you, Mayor. Brain drain. Yes. Mr. Garner is going to have a challenge there with the making of some of that brainpower, as well as some of that some of the employees that are leaving. All joking aside, Mr. Worry, I want to thank you for your leadership with the water department. That was very pleasing. I know it was said about keeping the water department out of the out of the press, but out of the press that I saw was always very positive in that Long Beach was ahead in its conservation of water with other municipalities up and down the state. So that was due mainly because of your leadership on that. And I want to extend my congratulations to you and being very prudent with our water resources, with being very prudent with their rates, keeping the the enterprise that we had that we call the water department balanced and working forward. So I guess I sort of contributed to that too as as well as I see my front lawn getting browner and browner. So I guess, you know, I have contributed to that to that to that concern conservation. So I want to thank you again and I wish you well in your retirement. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Just a congratulations on. Your retirement as well. You've left us in a really great place. And seeing the budget, as my colleagues mentioned, even with a little increase, it still looks great. And again, you've left us in a in a wonderful place. So I just wanted to thank you for that. And also the steps we're taking internally as a city I think is is wonderful and reducing our water usage. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to thank heaven not just for his presentation tonight, but really for his years of service. How long have you been with. Let me try to lower 14. Okay. So I've known Kevin before. Long Beach Water from early, early days of consulting and Metropolitan Water District. And so many of you heard me talk about us having the finest general manager, water general manager, and not just in the region, I think in the entire state. And what we lose when Kevin leaves, which I know we have a great person coming in, Chris Garner. There's something about the industry that it's very difficult to have that kind of institutional knowledge, and so I will definitely miss that. On the budget piece, I think you covered how we have kept our rates low and kept our increases minimal. And I know you don't like to toot your own horn or even that of your entire department, but during the years, during the three years, the metropolitan raised rates by 20%. We actually did not raise our residents rates by any amount we held at zero for those three years. We felt that it was important to recognize our residents for the work that they're doing, the conservation efforts that they're making. And really, they our residents are the leaders in certainly, I believe in the Metropolitan Water Districts Service area of all those counties and entities and cities within that service area, six county service area. And many times we look to Long Beach residents and ask other communities to follow suit. I wanted to touch on the sewer fund a little bit, and I know that you have created a plan to ensure that our pipeline replacement is on track. I think many of us read the article this morning about how the decreased use of water and decreased amounts going through these pipes causes cracks and and surges and all those other things end up being really costly. Can you address that here for us and how that might be different here? Because we've been conserving for a very long time. Yeah, I read the article. I think I've for the most part, I think I agree with Lester Snow's comment, which was most of that was a bunch of nonsense. Yes. But, you know, I was. Hoping you'd be direct. I always like to be direct, but I think, you know, it may be first of all, we're not seeing the tree root issue that some others claim they're seeing. We're not seeing septic water in our sewers that others claim they're seeing. But it could be that the accumulation of Greece that we are seeing is related to lower flows and that the grease isn't getting flushed out. So we do need to ramp up our public outreach and make sure that the residents know that they need to properly dispose of grease and not dump it down the sewer so that that may be happening. There may be a little accumulation of grease that otherwise would have gotten flushed down and not accumulated in the sewer. And that's the greater problem, not the unintended consequence of conservation. It just it illuminates what that original problem is. So thank you for that. I too want to bemoan our losing key staff members to other agencies. It is a salaries. War of the salaries. And when other agencies pay more for the same level of work, that's it's difficult to stay competitive. So I will look to our new H.R. director and really this council to take a look at various positions and and see how we can ensure that our investment stays in Long Beach for Long Beach residents to benefit from with this kind of expertize. And Councilmember Your Honor, letting our we used to say that Brown is the new Green, but it's really the California gold. We don't say Brown. If you look at your grass, it's really golden on the yellow side. So that's that's what that's what our state slogan is. California gold. Thank you. Thank you. Council member, supermom. Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for your service to the community and congratulations on their retirement. And thank you for all your presentations to committees and commissions that I've been on before because you do a lot of duty other than prison. The council here. Years ago you had an outreach program on fog. And I guess that's probably your option that you can do. Now, just just to get the word out there again on this. Yeah. But I think, you know, we want to work through the council offices and city manager offices. You know, we want to use every opportunity we can to get to get that message out there to the residents about proper disposal of grease. So it wouldn't be a water. I mean, it wouldn't just be the water department. We need to work through all those venues. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. But your presentation, that concludes the budget. But we're going to go straight into item 20 because I believe it's a continuation of that. Mr. Parker, did you have an announcement. Public comment on the budget? I was know I was going to do it after this, but we should probably do it in between public comment on either the budget presentations we just heard. Please come forward. I just want to address you directly. What a resident should do when in their apartment, the shower and the bath continues to run. Code Enforcement Per Amy Burdick, Craig Wong, Carmelo Baca. They did an expression on June 23rd. They were in the bathroom with me physically. Over a month ago they did witness the water wasting and it's been over a month and it's still running. They've done nothing about it. Her Stone Community Foundation, the apartment owners have yet to remedy it. I don't know why they're being exempt from compliance. They do own five complexes in Long Beach, so it would be high impactful to have it investigated. I've come to as many people as I can, including council Robert and is still running is still waiting today. If you go to right now, 600 hours of the windows are boarded up with wood over 90% boarded up. The water is in there running and no one has done anything about it. Again, the address is 1600 words of a9004 apartment. Number six, Craig Wong told me, Well, you're the only one to complain, so please, if you can look into that for me, for the community. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment saying I'm going to go directly into I believe it's item 20? Madam Clerk. 25.

Amends the Denver Revised Municipal Code by adding a new Article XII to Chapter 10 concerning construction defect claims in common interest communities.

DenverCityCouncil_11162015_15-0811

768, as amended, has failed. All right. Next, we are moving on to we are moving on to 811. Councilman Flynn, will you please put Bill 811 on the floor? Mr. President, as I move. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 811 be ordered published. You got it. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing on Council Bill 811 is now open and we'll wait a couple of minutes. Just to make sure that everyone can hear. That's right. You know. Maybe. Maybe we have a staff report. Yeah, there are priorities. Mr. President, I will take a few minutes to give the staff report. I'll try to be as brief as possible in light of the hour that we have a full written record of the rationale for the bill in the file. So that that allows me to be somewhat brief. And Skye, Stuart and I will be available for questions about the the proposal after the folks have a chance to make their comments. The can we ask that the doors be closed? Can we please shut the doors just so that we don't hear the noise outside? Go ahead, David. Thank you, Mr. President. As you all know, this proposal comes forward from the mayor's office. If council proceeds with the ordinance has proposed or some version of it, Denver will become the ninth home rule municipality on the front range to adopt an ordinance addressing the issue of construction defects. We understand from conversations with our counterparts in other cities that there are others about to come online testify. Colorado Springs is considering a bill next week on first reading on the same subject, which in fact borrows some of the elements from the bill in front of you tonight, particularly the new elements regarding building permit building codes and how they're used in construction defect defect litigation. All the cities who have been seeking to address this locally, including the mayor's proposal before you tonight, are motivated primarily by one thing. And that's the dearth of condominium construction currently in Colorado and what efforts can be made by municipalities to reinvigorate and catalyze once again, the the the condominium construction industry in order to provide that as a housing choice for our residents. As we explained to the committee a couple of weeks ago how we illegally analyze this whole thing as a matter of mixed state and local concern, where you're you have some opportunity to regulate and legislate at the local level, as does the state. The interest in quality and affordability and availability of housing is something that really knows no boundaries. The state has laws on this subject to municipalities can as well. We've talked about the particular interest in Denver in incentivizing our condo market because of our basically we're the most urbanized and popular populous city in the state where a lot of our growth opportunities are going to be vertical, not horizontal. And if we want our home homeownership opportunities, inevitably they're going to have to be in a condominium format in a more urban environment, as well as our obvious character as a transit hub with lots of opportunities for transit oriented development. While we're obviously experiencing significant construction boom in Denver right now. Virtually all of the vertical residential that we're seeing in town is apartments, is not condominiums. And this is an imbalance that the ordinances has designed to try to effect to the positive in terms of, again, incentivizing more condominium development. To the extent we're having condominium development in Denver, it's all on the luxury end of the scale because of the risks and costs associated with condo development. Again, one of the major rationales for proposing the bill. The hope is that if we have more condominium construction in the future and somewhat more normal percentages of our new available housing stock, that it may have a moderating, in fact, impact on housing costs, both on the for sale side as well as the rental side. Because even though we have a lot of cranes out there, a lot of vertical getting built to the rental that is getting built tends to be at a very high end as well . So if people have more opportunities for for sale units in a more urban environment, in a TOD environment that may have a moderating effect on the high rents that we're seeing. I won't go. I won't go. I don't need to speak at length about how Denver has been at or near the top in terms of housing inflationary costs as compared to peers, cities all throughout the United States over the last several years. The the as we've discussed in with each of you individually and in committee, the premise behind the bill is that construction defect litigation trends over the last ten years is one of the leading causes of the dearth of condominium construction. Nobody is claiming that it's the only cause. There are other economic factors. There are other market factors in play as well. But the premise of the bill is certainly that condominium defects, construction litigation and claims in the condominium market, in particular in common interest communities based upon all kind of evidence we've received from people who work in this area on the ground is one of the main causes that we aren't seeing. The product getting built are getting built in a wider variety of price points. So, so very quickly, the contents of the ordinance we try to address to the extent a municipal ordinance can to try to address some of the legal landscape in which construction defect claims are brought in and common interest communities. There's the element of the bill regarding how our building codes may or may not be used and defect litigation. We believe there's strong case law supporting your ability to influence the manner in which code violations can be used either either as a sword by the plaintiffs or code compliance can be used as a shield by the defendants, as explained in our written materials. And this proposal that's kind of maybe the centerpiece of the proposal is to urge you to adopt. Specific, specific local legislation talking about how our codes are used in these battles. Secondly, the major theme of the bill is to support alternative dispute resolution, particularly arbitration in lieu of litigation as a way to more efficiently and nobly and with a greater degree of certainty for all the parties and get to resolution of these claims as the ultimate end game instead of litigation promoting arbitration where the covenants have already provided for it. This bill does not mandate the use of arbitration in other forms of ADR. But it says when the Declaration of Covenants have provided for it and condo purchasers have bought into those communities, that Denver law supports the use of ADR, where the parties themselves have agreed to it under the covenants. And finally, there's the informed consent component of the bill that talks about the concept that on this most important investment, just about any of us ever make the home that we invest in. If there's going to be construction defect litigation, that there be a higher degree of buying involvement by the people whose condo units will be tied up in either the arbitration or the litigation if a claim is filed. And again, we're available to answer questions on any of these after the hearing. A couple of quick couple of quick clarifications from questions we've heard from you all. The ordinance clearly strictly only has prospective application in the future. It doesn't affect any homes built in the past. And to the extent it applies in the future, it's only in the common interest ownership situation, which will typically mean condo buildings almost always mean condo buildings in the future. New common interest communities established after January 1st with no retroactive effect on anybody whatsoever. And then finally, another really important point of clarification, and I, I want to thank House Manu for circulating. For those of you who had any interest in seeing at the the state law, which fundamentally regulates the claims process, the notice of claim process , the Construction Defect Action Reform Act, originally adopted in 2001, is not affected at all by this bill. A conscious effort was made in this proposed legislation not to interfere with her conflict with in any way the parties respective rights and responsibilities under sadara as has been balanced by the state legislature. This goes back to my original point, which we think it's essential if this ordinance is adopted and never tested in court, that it not conflict with existing state statutory law. So efforts are made here not to conflict with sadara and not to conflict with the Color Consumer Protection Act either, which is another statutory route that plaintiffs sometimes take to sue builders with construction defect claims. Well, absolutely. The intent of the ordinance is not to create any conflict with state law, although it definitely adds some additional elements locally that don't currently exist in state law. So that's my quick report. And again, a lot of detail left out, but I know the hours late, Mr. President. Thank you, David. This is a one out of courtesy public hearing, and with 3 minutes each, you can quickly do the math and the number of speakers we can have. We have 22 people signed up to speak. So I'm going to ask that you certainly have 3 minutes that there's an opportunity for you could do it. And two, to allow these last two speakers. It would be unfortunate if people had stayed late and didn't have the opportunity to speak, but we will see how it goes. First, five speakers Trinidad Rodriguez, Justin Blue, Aaron Foy, Jonathan Harris and Mr. Siku. So if you five can make your way up to the front pew, we will go ahead and begin. And Mr. Rodriguez, you can begin your remarks. Great. Thank you, members of council, for considering this very important ordinance. I am Trinidad Rodriguez. I'm a resident of Denver. I work at 1550 Market Street, Suite 300 and Denver. I'm the past chair of the Board of Commissioners of Denver Housing Authority. I continue to serve on the Board of Commission of DHS. I am the Vice Chair of Denver Civic Ventures and more member of the board of the Downtown Denver Partnership Management Group. And I'm here speaking in part on behalf of both organizations, but we have others here to address the body from the downtown Denver Partnership as well . Both DOJ and the Downtown Denver Partnership CDP are acutely aware of the dire need for affordable housing options that Denver is currently facing. DOJ has been pursuing a steady strategy to revitalize what used to be referred to as projects neighborhoods heavily impacted by poverty into sustainable, vibrant communities with more diverse, more and diverse housing options in the following communities Curtis Park, Benedict Park Place and Mariposa District. All told, this water could represent 480 units of for sale product in transit oriented development communities. Incredibly high value development opportunities in areas that, as I said, were impacted by poverty and create tremendous housing options for people of many incomes and and many backgrounds. Endeavor efforts to stall. Those are efforts to develop for sale. Housing in those communities over the years has failed. Clearly, the economic downturn and overall real estate credit crisis had major impacts on the ability to develop these properties with for sale housing. This we as an agency have a number of very attractive opportunities to develop for sale housing to create again diverse housing options at many price points. Affordable housing, affordable for sale housing was a key component of our applications to the federal government under Hope six and now in the Future Choice Neighborhood Initiatives Grants, capital grants that would provide for massive investment into Denver communities to create these for sale, condo and townhome housing opportunities. So this is yet another way that the city can support Denver housing authorities efforts to create these vibrant communities that create a range of different ways for families to build sustainable lives and and financial security. So I ask you to. Senator Rodriguez, your 3 minutes is up. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Justin Ballou. Don't see just a blue. All right. Next, we have Aaron Foy. Evening. My name's Erin Foy. I'm a principal with Boulevard Builders and a resident. Of Hutchinson's Hutchinson Hills in southeast Denver. We're a builder of multifamily for sale housing here in metro Denver. We're currently building 28 townhomes in the River North neighborhood and have a couple other projects around town. We're also looking at some other larger sites in the city and county of Denver with the hope to build as many as or more than 100 units. The lack of a de facto ordinance has created some strange incentives for companies like ours. We've seen some other competitors who. Build townhomes with no highways. Which leaves kind of weird questions about payment of water, tap bills and other things. And then and then also leads us to not maximize the density that's already built into the Denver code. Our first project, for example, is built on a CM x five zoning zoned lot, but we're only building three storey buildings. And, and in general, the current building climate makes our sort of project very difficult. It's difficult to find investors. We've had conversations with banks who at the very first conversation said we will. Not finance a for sale attached product in Colorado. And these are local banks, Denver based banks, who just won't. Won't touch. Our industry today. And as a result, we end up getting financing through private sources, ends up making our financing more expensive. We add in the insurance costs and other costs and means that the only way we can truly build this product is to build the top end of the market, selling in the 400 and $500,000, I guess, to. One of the points that I think is going to be made from some of the opponents of this ordinance. Related to demand for condos or for townhomes. When we first opened our project in River. North, we were starting our prices in the mid 300,000. Range. We ended up with a with a interest list of 200 people for our final 14 units in that project. I think if people are able to hit that price point, which I think with condominiums we can, there's going to be we're going to see tremendous. Demand and a tremendous number of projects that that take. Off. Like I said, there are a lot of challenges with raising the money and getting these projects done. And hopefully this ordinance helped. And I think that's what I saying. Thank you. Jonathan Harris. Leaving Council. Thank you. My name is Jonathan Harris. I'm a condominium owner who's been through a defer claim and also president of Build our Homes. Right. Build our Homes Right is an organization of individuals who have been. Through deferred claims or allies and legal advocates. I purchased a brand new condominium in Denver that. Leaked water from. Around windows and doorways. The concrete interior courtyard was sloped incorrectly, causing the water to run into the drains and away. From the drains and into the condominiums. Two units in our complex were so badly water damage that they were uninhabitable. Our association worked with the developer and builders for years to obtain a solution. Using and use the litigation only as a last. Resort. Denver has a problem. With the shortage of condominiums and. Affordable housing. The proposed ordinance does nothing to address those issues. It does. Create a magnet. For substandard. Design and. Construction. Low and moderate income homeowners. Homeowners are the hardest hit by faulty construction. And Denver already has some of the weakest consumer protections. The builders and developers. Tell us that they are building condominiums because the DFA claims. To have made insurance for them. So expensive and effect claims. Lawsuits common. The solution for homeowner homebuilders is to build homes free of defects in the first place, not to weaken the rights of consumers. Why is the. Building industry so afraid to stand behind their product? I became involved in this issue because I see an attempt to strip away our. Rights and privileges to a court. Trial and a defect claim. This ordinance. Singles out and discriminates against homeowners. Rights. By allowing forced arbitration weighting in favor of developers. To be mandated in in dispute resolution. Arbitration was. Originally intended for large corporations with lots of money to resolve disputes between themselves, not for large. Companies against north of small nonprofit organizations. Our courts are meant to balance the scales of justice. This proposed ordinance has no guarantees that condominiums will be built, but it does take people's rights away. The mayor. Himself couldn't. Promise more condos and affordable housing options would come of. This ordinance. In fact, a similar measure. In Lakewood. Passed over a year ago, a year. Ago now and now has no. New condo project permits have been filed. The author of the story Sorry, it's time to take a pill. Silly people didn't realize there's going to be. So it doesn't address the problem of substandard and defective. Construction, which created the large number of legal claims. Other organizations that. Oppose this ordinance are there color. Latino leadership. Advocacy and research organization. The Latino. With the Heritage Chapter? You're 3 minutes is up. I do apologize for that. Please vote no on this ordinance. Thank you. Next, we have Mr. Sekou and Mr. Sekou comes up on my call. The next five, Liberty Lewis, Jason Peck, Ashley, Doug Douglas, Justin Croft and Pat Pacey. So you can make your way to the front pew. And Mr. Skinner, you can begin, right? Earmarks. Yes. Jeremy SIEGEL of Black Star Action Movement representing poor, working, poor and homeless people. We stand with the previous speaker opposed to this ordinance and with a little bit of experience as the housing director for The View on his point Community Development Corporation in San Francisco, who rehabbed the Navy shipyards out in San Francisco. And having a little experience with with contractors. This ordinance is the abomination because it doesn't set the standards for what is normally considered appropriate. I could not build a house for somebody else that I wouldn't live in because of the way I built it. And one of the problems of this country is that we have settled for mediocrity and less than in exchange for a proper model. And then the thing falls apart and everybody wants to walk away like it ain't about nothing. Well, what happened to us, man? What happened to us? See, we used to stand for something. But now we just go for anything. And then folks come in developers and they just bully and run over our communities, man with no consequences. And then we vote for this mess with no conscience. Would you buy a house with a defect in the person who built the house to walk away from with no consequence? Are you kidding me? Come on, y'all. That's crazy. And yet we see a constant decline in the quality of life of the American citizen. The average Joe Plumber guy who doesn't have the money to fight. So we know that the interests of one in a condominium complex into some wall at the plumbing don't work for me and then go to work for nobody. So we all go down the drain and everybody just walks away like, well, welcome to the free market system. Well, that's not free market. That's capitalism. That's cronyism. And there's another word for it that I buy. Used to probably get me put out of here. Come on, Joe. No, absolutely not. Everybody's got to stay on their dime. Everybody's got to take personal responsibility for what they do, including these corporations, including these associations that do this kind of stuff. If somebody could stand up for 3. Minutes is a guy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Next, we have Liberty Lewis. Good evening, counsel. Thank you for the time. My name is Liberty Lewis. I'm a licensed professional engineer and a resident of the Berkeley neighborhood. I want to speak today specifically about concerns related to the amount of. Construction that falls outside the explicit and prescriptive nature of. The code. There is a significant amount. Of. The work that is done on a. Jobsite. That comes not from a specific measurement provided. In the code or a specific section of the code, but to designers. Interpretations of those codes. It's for that reason that both the code and the building department require that plans be. Presented, prepared, reviewed, and that's typically a multistep process. There's some discussion as to how are those codes being interpreted. How is the application of the performance standards. Of those codes being achieved by those designers? And though that lack. Of prescriptive nature, the fact that you can't go to the code on many issues and say. This is exactly how it must be constructed. Makes this ordinance challenging to enforce and to ensure that we have quality construction. To this point, I've read the Building Department's response to the recent. Concerns about this ordinance. One of the items they point out. For instance, is that the building code does specifically require compliance with the window manufacturers installation instructions. I agree that's true. However, that. Language is not included in the requirements for installation. Of stone, of bricks, of facades, of trusses. Of structural connectors. None of that requirement to meet the standard is explicitly listed out in the code. It must also be noted that the code which provides. Minimum standards. Doesn't touch on. Is in its own nature, consistently behind the times because of how the code is prepared, because of how new materials. Are brought into the industry, because those. Materials must warrant and they must be used in that industry. And regulated before they meet sort of the level that they're even considered by the code writers. Those code writers then must write the code, adopt the code, and then this body must also adopt that code. There are materials that Denver. Being on the cutting edge of many energy efficiency requirements of many. New modern materials there. There are without being used on a regular basis that are not touched in any way by the code, such as rain screens, green roofs, attachment of. Solar panels. All of these items are. Not expressly discussed in the code, but could potentially be read to be. In the wall coverings section of the code, for instance, depending on interpretation, which would then be covered in the code. So if a rain. Screen which is not expressed in the code is installed. Incorrectly, it may meet the. I'm going to lose my time. So I'll just say there are holes in the code that we address with plans and drawings. And by ignoring those things. Your time is up. Willy Falls. Thank you, Jason Peck. Thank you. My name's Jason Peck. Thank you, city council, for your time this evening. I'm a realtor, local realtor. My office is just right down the street. I also have served in a capacity with Denver Metro Association of Realtors as government affairs chair and also served on the Board of Directors, which covers about 6000 local members here in the city of Denver. That's O'Hare. What I want to share with you is actually a story of one of my clients. I can get you a long speech, but I felt is more important. I have multiple stories, but one in particular I'd like to share with you this evening. The client there was a Denver firefighter who end up losing his condo because of construction defects. His condo didn't have a defect. What occurred with his condo complex was on the north facing side. There are some ducts leaking. About 15% of the homeowners had leaky decks that were icing up on the north face. He decided to file a lawsuit. He didn't know about the lawsuit. He wasn't informed about it, so forth. He didn't find out about it until he tried to refinance back when the market crash was occurring, he found out he can't refinance. The proponents are the people that are against this ordinance won't talk to you about is the impact of war instability. When a condo complex goes into a lawsuit and litigation occurs, it's no longer warranted. Wolfer for lending. Okay. It's very limited from that standpoint once it's settled. Fannie, Freddie Mae. Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. FHA won't land for minimum two years after the lawsuit has been settled. So in his case, since he wasn't able to refinance, we tried selling his property, we tried short selling it. Reason we had a short sell. It was because his property value overnight dropped by 50,000. He owed more than what it was worth. Okay. And ultimately, he ended up doing a strategic foreclosure on that property lawsuit wise. No one in that in that complex could have been able to refinance or sell their property unless it was a cash investor or someone doing a portfolio loan. What is important about this ordinance is it speeds up the process. A lot of this litigation goes on for five, six, seven years. It gives an opportunity for the builder and the homeowners to come to the table and work it through arbitration. The other aspect that's important about this ordinance is proper notification. Why not give the homeowners a right to vote on this versus leaving it to the board of that homeowner's association? I'm more than happy to provide other stories or answer any story questions later on. Feel free to call me up. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, Douglas. Good evening. My name is Ashley Douglas and I have worked for reconstruction experts for the last six and a half years. Over the last six and a half years, I've interacted with many boards of directors and community members who are dealing with construction defect. And I know firsthand the devastating and severe impact that it's had on their lives. I have a few stories of some specific people that I've gotten to know. First would be Lorna, who loved to spend time on her patio. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and for the last few months of her life, she did not get to enjoy her patio because it was condemned as unstable. Next would be Nathan, who felt a tremendous responsibility as a board president. He lived in a community that housed mostly active duty military, and he knew that these people were living in homes that had firewalls that were inadequately rated. And he just he knew that he had to protect them in some way, and he wasn't able to do that. And then any moment the unthinkable could happen and put these people in harm's way. Lastly would be Jerry, who called me in tears as a waterfall, cascaded down her down the walls of her home. She experienced five water losses in a period of two months due to improper grading and drainage in her community. Those in support of this ordinance are putting a limit on a homeowner's ability to file a frivolous lawsuit against their builder. But are we saying that a structurally stable patio, adequately rated firewalls, and properly graded and drained communities are frivolous expectations of a homeowner? As is written now, this ordinance makes it nearly impossible for an H way to hold their builder accountable for serious and legitimate construction defect. So much money and time is being spent on getting this ordinance to pass. But where is the conversation about holding the builder accountable for proper means and methods of construction? What are the processes and procedures that are going to be implemented going forward to make sure our homeowners are buying products that are not defective and potentially life threatening to live in the current inspections and quality checks process has failed. So the answer is simple build it right. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Douglas. Justin Croft. Good evening, members of council. Thank you for your time tonight. My name is Justin Croft. I work at three, five or seven rings be caught in the taxi development. I am the president of the New Rhino Business Improvement District. I'm also the co-founder and co-chair of the Rhino Urban Improvement Committee, which essentially handles the registered neighborhood organization duties for the Rhino Art District. And I work with Mickey and Karl. Zeppelin is up in development. I'm also a millennial. A number of us are in our thirties at this point, so watch out. So I'm here tonight just to stand up in support of this ordinance. In Rhino, we have an incredibly unique community. We have a mixture of developers, artists and small business owners all working together and really have come together over the last year to form the Business Improvement District. And the tagline you might remember, those of you that were here for the Business Improvement District was Keep running wild. So there's really been this momentum in the neighborhood to try to keep what's what's there. And a lot of what's there is the artists and the small business owners who have built up kind of the soul and the culture of that neighborhood. The stakeholders in Rhino have significantly contributed through the Business Improvement District, and we also passed a general improvement district on the west side of the neighborhood to the tune of an increase in taxes of four mills, which is $580,000 for the 2016 budget for the bid. Another four mills, which is equates to $300,000 for the guide. And then an additional assessment along Brighton Boulevard, specifically for capital improvements in partnership with the city for the $26 million investment for Brighton Boulevard. And to speak to that, the city really has been an incredible partner over there with the formation of the DCC and just the significant investment that's going on in Rhino. So as part of Keeping Rhino Wild. We are planning on rolling out a number of strategies beginning next year that specifically target affordability in the district. And as you know, affordability is a very complex issue. So we're trying to figure out, you know, what different things can we put in place to impact that? That looks like we're looking at a low interest revolving loan program for small businesses. We're working with Artspace, a developer that specifically builds low income housing in neighborhoods that are historically home for artists to keep them living in their neighborhood. We're looking at art grants and commissions for artists, and we're also working on marketing events and Placemaking for Rhino specifically to try to bring dollars to the neighborhood and keep those who have really built up that neighborhood in place. For the bill in question, it's become clear to us that there are a number of people not only in Denver, but specifically in Rhino, who were there. Condos available would purchase those condos as a first entry into ownership or potentially as a second home. And right now, because they can't, the it artificially increases the price of apartments and single family homes. So we feel like there's really pressure on these different aspects of the homebuying market and that are negatively affecting affordability and rhino. So I'll just close in saying that we need the city as a partner among the variety of tools that we're working on that you all host across. Yes. 3 minutes is okay. Okay. I'll just say please vote yes for this thinking. Thank you. Next we have Pat Pasi. And as Pat comes up on a call, the next five. Tom Clark, Adam Maldonado, gymnast Maria, Flavia and Buzz Coble. And you five. Please make your way to from Pew. Pat, you can go ahead and begin your race. Yes, my name is Patricia Pasi and I'm an economist and have a small economic and business consulting firm up in Boulder. And I was retrained over retained over a year ago by build our homes right to do housing market analysis which I as to my understanding most of the members of the council have received a copy of it. What I'm going to say here tonight is basically what I said then. Markets work. Economists do believe markets work. The housing market is working in the right direction. The data is indicating that 22% of the new multi-family applications within the city of Denver have been identified as for sale properties. This is without any change in the ordinance as 22%. The data also shows in Lakewood, which was the first, to my understanding, municipality to pass an ordinance. There have been no new multifamily permits to our understanding that indicate that they're for sales since that that was passed. The basic reason for this is because the market is about supply for and demand of housing. Supply always legs demand. It's supposed to and it should. You can't expect a builder to build a multifamily condominium unit and then wait for demand to come later because they would have no profits. Their costs would be eaten up in that. So we expect demand to always be ahead of supply. It's a basic economic axiom. And so then the question is, well, why have there been high rent condominiums or high value condominiums and high rent rentals? Basically because the market would say that's where the best profits have been. That's in the past few years. That's where the best profits for builders to be and developers to be, and that's where they should be. We don't expect them to build less profitable or unaffordable things at the time. More specifically about what's going on in the market, and we said it before and people and economists are saying that now the market is moving in the right direction. Demand has to be both willing and able. Lending requirements are loosening up. Earnings for millennials and minorities are improving, although not at the levels they were in 2006 or seven, but improving. So they're more able to start buying, and so demand is going up. There are also other societal types of trends. We know that millennials have delayed marriage and delayed childbearing and have delayed homeownership. How much of that is a permanent trend and how much is that is simply a trend. A different trend from earlier generations is still not clear. But millennials are beginning to enter the market and they are becoming more willing, as are minorities. Then we turn to supply. What's been happening with supply? What we know about with supply and what we've been able to identify quantitatively. Is if you can wrap up 3 minutes. Well. Okay, that was. You want to make 1/2. Okay. All right. Next up, we have Mr. Tom Clark. I'm the city council. My name is Tom Clark. I'm the CEO of the Metro Denver EDC. I'm also a member of the Homeownership Opportunity Alliance. Three years ago, the Metro Mayors Caucus came into our office and said, We can't understand why. We can't get anybody interested in building condominiums on our transit side. Transit stops. Could you please help us understand what's going on in the marketplace? We created an organization called The Homeowner excuse me, the Homeowner Opportunity Alliance, which is now 55 organizations made up of housing advocates, housing authorities, economic development groups, chambers of commerce, all focused on one issue How could we get condos built? And we weren't interested in $400,000 condos, $400,000 condo in metro Denver today. Is the price you need to be able to pay for and 100% guarantee of litigation for construction defects. We were looking at 170 to $290000 condos. This were condos that what we called attainable housing. These were housing for seniors who wanted to move out of a three bedroom, three bathroom house and move into a condo along a transit line. Young millennials, who people are quick to say are never going to buy a home. And I'm surprised that the person who spoke before me a year ago actually said that in public that millennials don't buy houses. 80% of millennials plan to buy houses. What we found also was that construction defects were the primary cause, and most of the people have covered most of the issues in this ordinance that I was planning on talking about, and I won't go into them. But what is important to us is that this is a project that is not about expensive home condominiums. It's an issue about what do we do for young families and what do we do for seniors and what do we do? Not just in Denver, but what do we do in collar suburbs where we have median wage rates that are much higher than other parts of the region where elderly cannot age in place, stay in their community, get out of a home they can no longer manage and move into much more manageable housing. You have created in this ordinance a much better process than we have. There is a market out here and if there was not a market, there would been not we would not have set a record last year in used condos . Last year we built nine that we sell sold 9900 condos in metro Denver, but we only built 187. You will see as a result of the efforts that many people are undergoing in many cities around this community, we're over a million people in Colorado are now covered by construction defects. The classes are. 3 minutes of that. They're coming. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Adam Maldonado. Members, thank. You for your time tonight. My name is Adam Maldonado, and I'm a manager with reconstruction experts. I worked with reconstruction. Experts for a little over five years, and I spent a decade in new construction prior to getting involved in the reconstruction side of the business. I have seen construction defects. Related to all sorts of construction assemblies, building envelopes, structural. Grading, drainage. Fire ratings, you name it. We've seen it built wrong. I've seen these defects in multi-family units. As has been discussed tonight. I've seen it in single family homes. I've seen it in apartments. And I've seen it in commercial spaces as well. These defects affect all types of construction, not multifamily alone. My role at. Ari allows. Me to. See this issue through a. Lens of impacted property owners, people who have that fear in their eyes. They don't know what to do when their house is leaking or their business is suffering. One project that I worked on here in Denver was a large downtown apartment community that had significant building envelope defects. These defects resulted in structural damage. They resulted in water intrusion and resulted in mold. Personal property loss. To the tenants as well as to the property owner of the apartment complex. Every project that I've worked on, the property owners have suffered as a result of the inherent defects in their buildings. I believe this ordinance will make it more difficult and more burdensome for the victims of these properties to protect themselves, their property and their families. Thank you. Thank you. Jim Nash. Thank you. Four years ago, my wife and I moved back to Denver. We retired from long broadcasting careers the last 17 years in Los Angeles, 35 and more. Years ago, she and I met at Channel two in Denver. We went to Washington for ten years, and I'm done with that. Now I'm Grandpa and I live here in Denver, where our families fortunately live in District four, well represented by Kendra Black. Thank you. The reason I care about this is because I love Denver. This is my hometown. I don't like what's happening because trial lawyers are shaking down the whole city. The people that work on the other side of the park here, the legislature handed them a bonanza. They are suing everybody I know. I used to be the president of a homeowners association. Townhouses outside Washington, D.C.. We were being sued. No. By Mr. Nash. Mr. Nash? Nobody could see us, counsel. Sorry. The point I want to make is this. There are two running stories about Denver. Number one, it's the number one millennial destination in the country. That's wonderful that the best and brightest, young, bright people are moving here looking for occupations, futures. The other running story is that for the last two or three years, we've had the most rapidly increasing cost of housing in the country. Pretty soon those millennials are going to say, I don't know, I guess I'll go to Salt Lake City or Austin. Oh, Texas housing is cheap there. I can't afford to live with those prices up there in that Mile High City. I'm really worried about what's going to happen here. Mayor Hancock is asking you to do the job that the people that work on the other side of the park won't do. For some reason, our governor has ignored a bipartisan majority in both houses. He won't act. He won't lead. You have to. You've got to send a strong message to those people up there, get on the stick and do this right. In the meantime, as soon as you pass this. The trial lawyers will take you to court. They'll fight you for years. And who knows what judges are going to do in the state state justice system? You've got to put pressure on those people to make this law fix it. The things that are in this ordinance are what should be in that state law. Please do this for the future of Denver. Or they're going to stop coming here. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nash. Mary Livia. The thank you, counsel. My name is Mary Livia. I'm President. My H0 of 266 unit high rise condo in DTC. I'm a retired commercial real estate broker with 30 years experience in the Washington, D.C. market. Colorado Public Radio reported this morning that slow condominium development is not unique to Denver and is, in fact a national issue. Yet developers have managed to convince our local representatives condo development lags because of frivolous construction defect suits that raise insurance costs as a victim of construction defects and having that many others who've had the same experience, I can assure you these lawsuits are anything but frivolous. While your desire for more affordable housing and entry level condos is admirable, I question why you support an ordinance that does not ensure this will happen. Have representatives from the insurance industry assured you their rates will drop? Upon its passage, this ordinance requires owners to prove the defects were not built according to code. If code requires, windows must also be installed according to the manufacturer's specifications. How did the 1000 windows in my community meet code? How is the certificate of occupancy granted? The window manufacturer and architect warned our developer by not following their specs it would lead to leaks and condensation. Sure enough, we heard. Excuse me. We had leaks and condensation. We only learned the developer did not follow the specs or adhere. Of those warnings through discovery, which may not be allowed in arbitration if this ordinance passes. This ordinance allows a developer to write into a condos declaration, an arbitration clause, where he can choose the arbitrator. He can prevent discovery, and he can forbid the owners from amending that article. He holds all the cards. All this ordinance does is bind the hands of your constituents by forcing them into developer controlled arbitration and removes our right to a trial by jury. This ordinance does nothing to require developers to build it right or hold them accountable for bad construction. I leave you with this scenario. Developer builds two buildings identical side by side, ten stories, 100 units each building. He sells his condos, building b he keeps for himself as a rental. A few years after completion, defects start to appear. Same defects, both buildings, leaky windows being one of them. With this ordinance, the condo owners may not sue the developer, but the developer may sue the contractor for his rental building. So now you have created two classes of citizens, those who have access to the court system, but and those who do not. The developer wins millions to make repairs. But because of the restriction the developer wrote in to the arbitration clause, condo owners can't get it for first space passed. Where is the justice in that? Arbitration creates an alternate system of justice. What is the old adage? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please vote no tonight. Do not pave that road. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Miss Livia. Both Coble and as best comes up to call the next five brief like off John Stovall, Joe Bachus. David McLane. Mike Copp. Thank you, Mr. President, members of council. Great to be here tonight. My name is Boz Coble, president of Copeland Company. My father, Stan, founded the company in 1952, and we're considered the longest continually operating real estate community development company in the state. In 1958, we started our flagship community, which is Pinehurst Country Club, the largest at the time master planned golf course community in the city limits of Denver. We always prided ourselves on being pioneers. In 1970, four years after the condominium law was passed, he started building condos along the golf course at Pinehurst, built 140 condos over the next seven or eight years. But since then, we have been sued with no opportunity to try and fix. And as such, we will build no more condos under the current environment. Also, as co-chair of the T-Rex Election Finance Committee in the Speaker's bureau, we marched all over the metro area telling people that the light rail would create market driven smart growth and higher density mixed use at the transit stops. That was a precursor to fast tracked. The tragedy now is there's about $7 billion of light rail construction and 52 stops where I don't think there's any condos for sale that are planned on the books. We think that's that's a bad, bad thing for Denver. Our company is very concerned about affordable housing. We will deliver 400 over the last four years, 400 affordable housing units in in the in the Denver metro area, the largest in the state that a private company delivering. Every one of those is rental. None of them are for sale. Three of them are at transit stops. All of them are our rentals. We're not interested in building condos. What you'll hear from the opponent, the opponents is, first of all, it kind of bothers me when the premise is all builders are bad. Those of us that are local and work hard, we take pride in what we do and we try and correct our problems because they do happen occasionally. They also say this is simply there's just simply no demand. I don't think you can prove a negative. But I'll tell you the flip side of reality. I've already told you we will not build condos even in the two or three or four transit stops that we're currently involved with. So I think I think what you've heard tonight and what I'll say to you, listen to what the proponents have had to say. The last gentleman made some great comments. The fireman story has happened many, many times and has adversely affected people who owned condos and were had tainted title by virtue of the fact that there was a lawsuit that had been filed. So I ask the city of Denver tonight to join Lakewood, Aurora, Commerce City and the others to send a message across the way that this is a problem that is in need of a solution. I greatly appreciate Mayor Hancock, David Broadwell and the rest of the team for doing what they've done to move this along. And I strongly urge you to support this effort tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bruce Lakoff. Thank you. Members of council. I'm. My name is Bruce Lycos, and I've been a resident of Denver for 40 years. I strongly urge you to pass this bill. Really? Take a look at who the burden of our housing crisis falls on today. Frankly, it falls on young folks. You know, we call them millennials. They're not all millennials, but they're looking for their first opportunity to buy a house. It falls on empty nesters, frankly, folks like me. I'm really tired of raking leaves. I was raking him this past week and I'll be raking them again. And we have virtually no empty nester housing in Denver. And the alternative for folks who are empty nesters otherwise, frankly, has Arizona, Florida and empty nesters are an incredibly valuable commodity for our community. In addition to their experience, they pay a lot of taxes and they demand very little in services, particularly in the schools. It also falls particularly heavy on members of our society in our city of color. Getting housing is the very best chance to get your foot on the ladder of wealth building that we have in this country, thanks to Congress. But those are the policies and we don't have that opportunity in our city. And frankly, it's also falling on our merchants and restaurants and the like, because with the incredible increase in apartment rents, we have loads and loads of people paying way more than the recommended 30% of income on housing. That means less dollars available for restaurants, merchants, cultural facilities and the like. I mean, the money's, you know, coming out of somebody's pocket. The other thing I would point out is that Denver isn't a competition. Our friendly neighbors to the east and west, both of whom are in light rail lines, have already adopted these ordinances. And one thing I can tell you, because I've represented developers for most of those 40 years, is they're pretty smart people in figuring out opportunities. And so if they're looking at sites, for example, on the west side of Sheridan Boulevard and the east side of Sheridan Boulevard, and the primary difference is that on the west side of Sheridan Boulevard, their risk of getting sued and losing millions is a lot less. They're pretty smart. They're going to figure that one out quickly. The other thing I'd like to mention is a few things you heard tonight that probably need a little clarification. You heard earlier that there has been a substantial increase in applications for permits for multi-family housing. What you didn't hear is that those are virtually all townhomes, not condos. Townhomes are lovely. It's part of our mix. We need it, but they're not very dense and they're not going to house very many people. You also heard that Lakewood passed an ordinance and they haven't had any condos built yet, which may be true. But I can also tell you from personal experience that developers are at least talking to Lakewood about projects. I can't promise any of those will happen or when they'll happen. But if you don't open the door for developers, nobody will even be talking to Denver. And the last thing that I want to comment on is we heard a few minutes ago that under the current system, developers can select arbitrators with a suggestion that they would automatically be unfair arbitrators. Well, the ordinance you have in front of you tonight would require that any arbitrators be third party impartial neutrals, which is actually a very protective approach for consumers. Thank you. Thank you, John Stovall. Mr. President, council members, thank you for taking time to to listen to some opinions tonight. I'm a real estate broker, have been in Colorado for 42 years, a realtor for most of those years. I actually succeeded in retiring from that. Now I'm a resident in a high rise condominium in the tech center area, 266 units. In fact, Miss Livia is the president of our association and I am the Treasurer. Our building is one that definitely was impacted by construction defects and not just a few windows on one side, but every unit in our building had construction defect repairs that were needed in the unit. So it is something that is of serious interest. And basically the the problem of affordable housing is a totally separate problem. It is a problem that needs some solution. But this isn't it. This isn't what's going to make that happen. This bill seriously erodes a basic right of our citizens, and that is to take their grievances to court. It made a big difference in our situation. Just let me mention a couple of things that were in our original declarations, which, under this ordinance would become extremely difficult to alter. Our original documents required that we had to have permission from the developer to sue the developer. Not likely. Oh. And as long as they had one unit in the property, they had absolute veto. They just say no. And that, by the way, would apply to arbitration as well as it would to litigation. Even with the developer's permission, it would have required 80% vote of the owners. Mandatory arbitration was required, but they specified that they got to pick the arbitrator. With 42 years in real estate. I've seen arbitrations and I know they can be excellent and I know they can be harmful because the arbitrators go one way or another at times. Oh, under the declarations, Discovery was virtually ruled out until we were already into a legal action, and then only with the permission of the arbitrator, we would not have found a number of the serious problems in our building, or at least not the cause for them. Had we not had access through discovery to company records from the developer and the builder. Again, this related to windows leaking. Windows were installed so that the manufacturer canceled the warranties for every window. Mr. Sobel, your 3 minutes is up. Thank you very much. Please don't pass this ordnance. Thank you, Joe Rogers. Good evening. Thank you. The council president, Herman Herndon and honorable council members. My name is Joe Lasseter's. My address is 1430 Larimer Square, Suite 200 and Denver. I'm the chairman of the downtown Denver Partnerships Management Group. I'm here tonight representing nearly 750 downtown business members, over 400 commercial property owners, and 120,000 employees, and the largest business district in the Rocky Mountain region. I'm also here as a developer, which I'll talk about in a minute. Last month, the downtown Denver, Inc board of directors unanimously voted to support Council Bill 811. We believe that diversity of housing options and price points in our center city is essential for sustaining this vibrant 24 seven world class downtown and council. Bill 811 will help us achieve this goal. In 2007, the Downtown Denver Partnership and the city and county of Denver created the downtown area plan. This plan was the guiding vision for the next 20 years of downtown Denver and set a goal of adding 18,000 new housing units. Where are we with this? Well, in 2007, 112 rental units were constructed and 874 sale units. Now, let's flash forward to 2012. 709 rental units versus zero four sale units. And finally, so far in 2015, 1777 multifamily units have been constructed and 59 condominium units have been built. So with all due respect to, you know, previous people who provided testimony tonight, we have a problem and it is a Colorado problem. And I understand that that this this bill may not be everybody's perfect solution for this, but we have a problem. And I'd really like to see the council provide some leadership with this. Yes, we wish it could be solved at the state house, but we really need some leadership. I'll tell you, as a developer, I can't develop condominiums. The first question my insurance company asks me is Have you developed multifamily residential housing for sale in the past ten years? Are you planning on developing if I answer yes to those questions? They are not interested in providing insurance to me. So it's just simply off the books. My banker wants to know the same thing. And not only will a banker not provide financing for these projects, my banker would would see me doing those kinds of projects are putting me at risk. So I think it's really important that we provide some leadership tonight. I really hope that you vote in favor of House Bill 811. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, we have David McLean. Thank you, Mr. President. Members of council. My name is David McClain. I'm an attorney in Denver, a resident of District four, and I represent homebuilders. And I am here tonight to talk a little bit about what I've heard from some of the folks that have spoken in favor and against the proposed bill. First, with respect to Mr. Nash talked about the problem with the existing state law, and I did want to touch on that because there's a component of Bill 811 that fixes that problem and that problem. If you look at the restriction or how building codes can and can't be used in construction defect litigation. Section ten 202 looks a lot like part of the Construction Defect Action Reform Act, and it comes from the Colorado Statutes 1320 804 which is a restriction on negligence claims under sadara for alleged construction defects, saying that you can't have a negligence claim for a technical code violation unless that causes damage to real or personal property or a threat to health or safety. And the issue with Colorado law is that when that restriction was put into the law in the early 2000s, it was effective. And it was effective because at that time, builders were still able to disclaim implied warranties, implied warranties of the claims that get asserted in these cases that are have been likened by the appellate courts to strict liability for construction defect claims. In 2007, the plaintiff's bar passed or had the legislature pass the Homeowner Protection Act. So as of 2007, builders can no longer disclaim implied warranties, causing there to be a strict liability standard for construction throughout the state. So where the legislature originally had a right in including a restriction on negligence claims it didn't go far enough and that it didn't affect other claims. This ordinance does. And this ordinance kind of writes the where the legislature left off in the early 2000s in Sadara and later in the Homeowner Protection Act and I think puts construction defects back where it should be, that technical code violations should be a construction defect and should be actionable in situations where it impacts the performance of the House, causes a loss of use, causes property damage, or a threat to life or safety. A few other points informed consent. There's been some talk that that 51% is too high a threshold. And I just want to speak to that and say that on a firsthand basis. I've been involved in situations where homeowners associations have overcome that and have moved forward with an action. And then finally, with respect to the idea that there's a right to a jury trial, I just want to dispel that and say that that's not true. Mr. McClain, you're 3 minutes is up. Thank you. Please support. The bill. Next, we have Mike Cup. And after that last speaker, George Krueger. So you can come up as well. Thank you, Mr. President. Members of the council. My name is Mike Capone, the executive director of an organization called Colorado Concern. Colorado Concern is an A and an organization made of 120 plus CEOs across the state. Our main interests are economic in nature, so therefore we care about a vibrant economic outlook for the state of Colorado, which means principally, of course, jobs. And we are seeing more jobs come to the state. But as it relates to the conversation tonight, of course, new job seekers need a place to live. When you step back and you look at the fact that really it is incumbent upon policymakers, in my opinion, to set policy that will encourage things that are so fundamental to be an American, like the ability to get into a home. So my first point really has to do with availability. Policymakers can make all kinds of policy choices that do make it more difficult to access affordable housing. There's no question about this. Policymakers do it all the time on a range of issues. So for some to suggest that the decision that you make as it relates to construction defects won't have any impact on the availability of housing, I think has is demonstrably true. In fact, what we're seeing here in the Denver market, in the Colorado market, I believe, is you're seeing upward pressure being applied on housing specifically because of the policy that that we have in place now. I think the bill that you have before you is a good one. I thank you for taking it up and I thank you for putting up with a lot of folks to come out on a snowy night to talk about this. Secondly. In the last few seconds that I've got here, I'd like to speak to the issue of accountability. It's been suggested that really there are no other provisions wherein a homeowner could have problems fixed outside of litigation. And I would just I would just ask you to think about that statement or that very idea for a moment. How many times in your daily lives do you need litigation to solve problems? There are other mechanisms in place in daily life that work, common sense solutions that work, that help people get through problems quickly. You've got a good solution in this bill. Ask for your support. Thank you. And last, Speaker George Krueger. Good evening. Good evening, counsel, and thank you for letting me speak. My name is George Krueger. I live on Capitol Hill. I want to make a couple comments here from the bill that's actually come starting in Section ten, does 202 under see says the building codes adopted in Article two of this Chapter ten are intent to establish a minimum standard for safe and sound construction in Denver. And that same thing, if you go up to a in a violation of any building code as adopted in Article two of this Chapter ten, or a failure to substantially comply with any such code shall not create a private cause for action, a violation of any building code as adopted in Article two of this chapter, or a failure to substantially comply with any such code may not be used to support or approve any construction defect claim, regardless of the statutory or common law theory under which the claim is asserted, except for actual damages or possibility damages to life and limb. This does not address any loss of value in the property or any insurability. I understand this bill is brought forward to promote condo development and I can understand that we need a bunch of different solutions for people that are looking for housing. But if the developers no excuse to bust Caldwell there cannot ensure that they and their subcontractors can meet or exceed the building codes. Maybe they shouldn't be built working in Denver anymore. I would have to agree with Mr. Sekou Adam Maldonado and Ashley Douglas that if you want to build the condos, do it right. Because obviously all this litigation over the past few years and the fact that you cannot get your development's insured because of past defects, obviously is going to have to take a while to overturn again. Thank you very. Much. Thank you. All right. We got to everyone just in about an hour. Thank you all for that. It is now time for questions. And once again, colleagues, let's make sure we focus on questions and we'll have comments afterwards. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I've got several questions. And if other people well, we we have a list here of people waiting. So let me just first ask our city attorney in the drafting of this and the dialog with different parties, were insurance companies part of the folks that were talked to? And did they if so, did they believe that this language would make any change in their reduction of costs of insurance on for sale units or condos? The answer is yes. Among the many people we talked to and and pick their brains were representatives of the insurance industry who basically explained to us kind of the reality of a kind of a chicken and egg problem you've got here, where the problem with the lack of availability and affordability of insurance is driven by claims history in the past under prior law, and it reaches a certain critical mass where certain insurance underwriters choose to leave the market, are priced their products at a very high level. The problem, as we talked about it in committee, is that there has to almost be a new paradigm established on the ground where you've got new construction occurring , where condos would again resume to be built. And then you'd have to see what the new claims history is related to them and how these laws play out over time in terms of whether or not it's going to have an effect on the overall availability and price of their products there. To get to this specific thing, I think you're asking. No, there is no definite answer that this bill solves the problem in terms of the lack of availability or affordability of insurance. This bill, the feedback we get in the way we've gotten is may help, may help, but no absolute assurance that it's a silver bullet. And as some of the speakers acknowledged, it probably has to be a combination of some local action as well as state action over time. So there is no definitive answer to that in terms of saying that this this will solve the issue and cause the floodgates to open in terms of new construction from their perspective. So another question, in looking at the drafting of the language, did the issue of trained workforce come up as part of the sort of the big picture equation because. I think that plays a big role. There's so much construction going on in this city that we've had. People reach out to my office where there are builders on a particular project that are being bringing people in from other countries who aren't necessarily the skilled workers that are needed. And, you know, I don't know whether that plays a huge role in whether those folks know exactly what they're doing, that they can read the plans that , you know, they've got the math skills to measure things adequately, etc., etc.. So did that come up at all in the conversations? The availability of trained workforce was never mentioned to us by anybody as part of the problem. There is obviously substantial workforces out there building things. A lot of things are getting built. They just don't happen to be condos. But but no. It really has been a part of the conversation to date or anything. We've heard from anybody as being part part of the explanation for why there may be a lack of condo construction. David, one other question about the role of our inspectors. So I don't know today if our inspectors are cross-trained to be able to go out and inspect roofing and, you know, or if we have specific trained skills for the different sectors of the construction industry so that when they are doing the inspections, they're not all cross-trained and just know a little bit about each category versus people who are experts in their in their own field. And I'm just so so that's one question. What are what is the level of of our inspectors? And then tied to that is if we're not doing adequate inspections and we're approving work that is found to be not correctly constructed. What is our liability? So Sky Stewart Mayors Office, I'll start with the beginning of that and happy to get you more specific information. Our inspectors over the last number of years have had the ability to be cross-trained. I can't tell you on the ground if everyone is out there doing various inspections. We do have a system set up where they could do that. But our inspectors are professionals who are trained and certify work to be code compliant. So I can't say that I believe that there's a case out there where somebody's a certifying work that is not code compliant. It's their job to certify that work as code compliant or two sided if it's not and have that work corrected. As far as liability, I'm going to turn that over to David. The the liability issue from our perspective. On any regulatory matter, governments enjoy a high degree of governmental immunity in terms of our we pass laws, we do inspections, we do the best we can. But given the color of Governmental Immunity, Act explicitly says that failure to adequately inspect is not a cause of action for a claim against the government itself. That's why all of this is fought out between the private parties versus the homebuyers and the home builders and the design professionals and so forth. You know, obviously, even though that's the pat answer from a liability standpoint, the city strives to take seriously the laws that pass passes and staff up and do adequate inspections . But certainly some of the stories that are told by folks who've had claim situations in the past have to do with potentially a failure by both in both the construction site and the inspection side. Those things in the imperfect world we live in obviously happen at some time and on some occasions and are actionable when they do , but they don't tend to be actionable back against the government for failure to adequately inspect. One of the things that you all of which have provided budgetary support for. We are trying to staff up more. Our building inspections office overall because of the sheer level of activity in town. And we're probably going to be approaching record levels in terms of the commitment of resources to that. But but yes, it is definitely imperfect, but when it is, the claims tend to be fought out between the private parties. Mr. President, you want to just put me at the end because I do have other questions and I know my colleagues do as well. Okay. Thank you. Councilman, new. Question, dave broadwell as well. David, i heard concerns tonight about problems, defects that are related to violation of the building code or the manufacturer's recommendations or just really a general lack of quality workmanship. You know, there's nothing in our ordinance that prevents an actionable action against the correction of any of that. In our audience at all, is that correct? Yeah, that that's correct. And I try to emphasize that point in my introductory remarks. There are basic avenues to redress where you where you have a defect resulting from a CO deficiency or for some other reason, where you have a defect that causes damage and is traceable to negligence or traceable to some fraudulent misrepresentation by the builder or the seller of the unit. Though those statutory causes of action remain fully actionable, notwithstanding anything in this ordinance. So, you know, and I would say as your attorney, we we we couldn't give any different answer than that. The city doesn't have to have the ability to take away the basic redress that plaintiffs are guaranteed under state law. And so the state law applies. We have minimized any any protection from the homeowner by state law. In my opinion, this ordinance does not. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. New Councilman Espinosa. And Ashley Douglas. I don't know if you want to come up, but when you came up, you mentioned three specific situations an unstable patio, inadequately rated firewalls and improper grading. I don't know the specifics on the unstable patio, but I can tell you that inadequately rated firewalls is a code defect, meaning is a code non code compliant situation. Now, does our new ordinance, as I understand it, prevent that from happening? No. Does it make it against the law? Technically it already is because it's non-compliant. And so the time to address that is during the construction when that's spotted, because you're not going to spot it after the fact. Now, you could spot that, something like that after the fact, but then it's still not defective because you don't know until you have an incident whether it's going to breach or fail or whatnot. You may have a reasonable reason to fear, and that's one of these sort of caveats that you guys can litigate later. But an improper grading is a code, is noncompliant is a code. So there's certain things that if you have water intrusion from, you know, you have the loss, this law protects you. You know, that's that's the whole point. So I guess I won't ask the specifics on the unstable patio. It's just that it's not you cite these instances that are that are definite issues that you know and have ramifications. But if there's a loss, this law protects you. You know, it's not those were not code compliant installations. So the combination of both the non-compliant installation or workmanship and the loss would make you want to put you in the avenue for recovery in. So, yes. Now you get into the other aspects of this. But, Councilman. I just want to make sure you have a question. I'm just watching the minutes tick away, and I haven't heard a question yet, so I. Haven't gotten to speak all night. I know we're still in a good time. All right, then. No, I do have a question for both Pat Pacey and Mary, Latvia. So, yeah, I just but it's worth pointing because these things come across and they sound like they're they're they're issues, but they're not issues. So for Pat Pacey, the 22% for sale multifamily is that what is the breakdown of townhouses versus condos not present? Okay. That is a question I've asked and I would really like it answered. Not here. She's not here. She is not here. Mary, Latvia. Lithuania, Latvia. You had stated that rental owners can sue, but condo owners cannot. No, I didn't say rental. Well, yes, the developer can sue for construction defects in his rental property, and I cited the two buildings side by side. But the condo owners under this law. Have to go through arbitration. They don't have access to the courts. And how the developer rights that arbitration clause is can be very controlling and make it extremely difficult for the owners to to win an arbitration. Whereas under if they go to court under the existing laws, they have discovery, they have many more means available to them . How are how how are homeowners, especially in affordable. Housing, going to pay for all of this? Would arbitration have prevented you from finding resolution on the matters that were present in your property? Yeah, because through arbitration we wouldn't we were not allowed discovery in. It's in discovery. We found the emails from the architect and the window manufacturer outlining everything they were doing wrong and what. The developer did. He fired the architect. But that wasn't that couldn't be discovered forensically. If the developer chooses to write in the arbitration clause that discovery is not allowed, we will be bound by that. And he can do that through David. We repeat that nothing about this ordinance stipulates any particular format for arbitration. The principle of the ordinance is to say when people have bought into a community where arbitration is in the covenants, the city law supports the viability of that contract. Right now, the we've we've built in specific things to say, but city law supports arbitration clauses with some prophylactic claims, we say, but only if they have a neutral arbitrator who has to give full disclosure that follows the substantive law of construction defect claims and happens in Denver, Colorado. So so we've we've said we honor and support and reinforce those covenant clauses if they have that minimum level of protection. We don't talk about discovery. We don't talk about any other details in terms of what would have to be in the covenants for Denver law to reinforce and support it. So there may be a myriad of things that might be in the covenants that are that aren't addressed in our audience at all. But again, the basic principle is to say that if it's part of what you bought into and it's in it's hard wired in there, it can't be taken away later. Those are the terms and conditions under which claims in your community will be arbitrated. So I mean, that seems it seems sort of you know, you can't if I'm understanding you, right, David? Again, this goes back to the first part of this law. So basically, if if this if this if this non discovery component was there and they purchased under with those in place, at least they knew about that. And that's that's neither here nor there, in my understanding that that's I mean, it's certainly within their right. But it's the buyers. It's it's the buyer. It's it's in that contracting process that they are both made aware and assuming that that covenant or clause. That that's the principle underlying the ordinance said that that is correct. Now, let me just point out that and there's also a cross-reference to the uniform arbitration law, the Colorado State Statute, which does contemplate describe discovery and arbitration proceedings. Right. The witness is giving an example of where it was taken out in the arbitration clause in her particular covenants. But I'm as I'm saying, it's not inevitably that way. There may be discovery. There may not. It just depends upon the details of the particular covenants. Okay. And what developer wouldn't write that into his declaration in order. To protect himself seriously? Now, you know, but again, then you have to, as a buyer, have to choose. To be where. And you're talking about affordable housing. How many people read those documents and understand everything? So once again, the onus is put on the owner and I'm sorry, I why not build it right? Why not just. Build? And that's actually where I'm that's where I'm actually going, which is what is build it. Right? Is it is that code compliant or not. Build it right is to take extra time to ensure that when you mix the concrete it's not over mixed and. It to to meet code or meet some higher standard than code to me. Code. Well, to meet code because. That's all this law is saying is our expectations. For this meeting. I mean, you know, our windows met code, but no, they didn't. And we've now reviewed that. And so at the time our building was built, it was code. It was code. And then when the developer was warned, he not only fired the architect, he he, the window manufacturer, wouldn't provide a warranty. And we never knew about that until we got to discovery. Right. So, you know, I mean, we're pro-development. We're not anti-development. But I don't my my cost alone would have been $24,000. You go to affordable housing and you say to somebody, you need to come up with five grand to file this claim and then maybe they'll win something. But then you need to come up with 10,000 more to make up the difference. How many people in affordable housing are going to have an extra $15,000 laying around? So what happens? A third of them can't do it. The other two thirds have to pick up the slack. It they can't do it. First thing they do, they cut back on maintenance on the floor. Figure out a way to sort of not get into this sort of endless spiral of litigation. Yes, it goes on. So it was built right to begin with. If they would just. Write code compliant? Not necessarily. I don't think so. But how do you prove it? You know how we would approved. Ah, we had to inspect every window. They weren't. There was no thermal brake. Do you know how much money that cost to inspect a thousand windows? So it was. Speaking in the spiral. Councilman Espinosa, I just we appreciate the dialog between the two of you, but I think there's a back and forth versus do you have any more questions for Mr. Villa or for anyone else currently answering? Ms.. Livia and I thought I had one more for David, actually. Go ahead. I missed it. If it's in there, the the American Arbitration Association, is there is there a reason why we don't why we put why we put the arbitration language in a way that I mean, why we don't actually just say that it has to go through an independent third party rather than sort of let the two parties work it out. Well, there is the reference to the fact that the Denver law supports only the use of neutral arbitrators. But but if you're asking, you know, why the ordinance doesn't list a particular organization, for example, to provide the arbitration services. And in general, my recommendation as a city law, I shouldn't do that. Contracts, yes. And contract drafting. The parties may agree this is the place will go to get the arbitrators to use in the event that there's a dispute under the contract. But generally, my view is it's not proper in a law to name a particular private organization to provide a particular service. But but the concept of using a neutral arbitrator who must make full disclosure and if he's later found to have a conflict, can be basis for reversal of his award. Right. Those those key principles are built into the ordinance. I mean, we do review the code on a regular basis, as there may be an avenue there to sort of address that in a more fluid manner. Which code would that be? The building code, the one that basically this then rolls into as a standard. Of you, Bill, you will be reviewing all the all the that the new code adoptions early next year and there may be some additional part of this discussion you want to have at that time. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa, Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. Just to be clear on that last line of conversation, I just wanted to be clear. Mr. Brouwer, also in this process, just to be clear, who selects the arbitrator? Is it the developer alone? Do they set the rules or is it is it both parties? This ordinance doesn't dictate who selects the arbitrator. That, again, would be one of the myriad details that would be addressed in the covenants, the covenants. We'll talk about all kinds of details related to the arbitration process that aren't dictated by this ordinance. Again, the principle is if it was buyer beware and someone bought into a community that had an arbitration clause that we intend to support that as the contractual commitment made by the parties, whatever the details may be. So in science, in some in some examples, maybe in most examples, the neutral arbitrator will be selected by the defendant or by the by the builder. But you just don't know. It depends upon the details of the covenants in question. Would we have the right to dictate those terms, as in the audience that the arbitrator selected by both parties? Well, there's an enumerated list that I've summarized just a moment ago of. At. At Page nine of the bill that does what I described a moment ago that says the city supports the inviolability of these arbitration clauses as long as they contain these basic elements. If you wanted to add a longer list of things, the covenants would have to include to have the support of city law. Then that's where it would be. This represents some of the key concerns we've heard and also reflects a little bit Senate Bill 177, which passed the Senate earlier this year in terms of just not any arbitration clause, these basic elements of fairness. But we don't attempt to start getting into further micromanagement of the process beyond the elements you see listed here on page nine. Okay. And one final question, Mr. President. This is something that I you know, in looking at I mean, what I need to do in this committee work on the floor. But, you know, when when I was looking at the different things that were changing, one of the things that really stuck out was, I think this the notification and the idea that 51% of the tenants or owners would they would be the decision maker. They'd have to have 51% of those owners or tenants. Right. To decide whether to pursue any kind of legal remedies or not. Here's that here's the question I have. I know. Mr. Braswell, maybe you can you can help me think through this real quick or just like. Yes, the question I have is that 51% of what is it, 51% of all of the owners slash tenants? And there's a second part to my question. What if not everybody, what if not all of those tenants respond? Does that count against the 51%? The way the ordinance has drafted the consent would have to come from a majority of the unit owners. Tenants have nothing to do with their agreement. So these are the unit owners, not counting any units that are still in the ownership of the original declarant. So it's intended to be fair. Those have actually passed into private hands. You'd have to have majority consent of those folks. Now, one of the things I had a colloquy with one of your colleagues on on this key point, one thing that is more favorable to the homeowners associations in our proposal is this idea that you can take as much time as you want getting those sign offs and approvals from that number. There's no 30 day deadline. There's no 60 day deadline as there is in some of the other proposals we've heard that some of the other ordinances we've seen out there. So it's open ended in terms of how long it might take. But you affirmatively need written signoff from that majority in order to meet that threshold and go forward with a claim. Is there any kind of stipulation that goes beyond that or does it does it are we are we? I guess what I'm running into in my mind is the situation where not everybody who is a party to it or those unit owners actually responds that say the majority of them just don't respond. And you can't force somebody to say, Yeah, I want to participate. You've got my consent or not. Does that count against you? That's right. The non-response is tantamount to a no vote when a law is written like this. And there are other examples of laws that are written like this where you had to have to achieve a certain target percentage in order to go forward with fill in the blank. And that has to be manifested by written consent in a variety of contexts and other kinds of laws. Okay. And I guess and I'm sorry for having to go down this route. I just want to be clear. If there are multiple owners, let's say there are two owners per unit, it's those both of those owners individually as well. It depends upon how their ownership interest is characterized. But again, the denominator in the numerator are units. So you have so you have to have a certain number of the ownership of a certain number of units can consent. Right. And in some cases, depending upon if there's joint or mutual ownership, it may be both of them or and maybe one of them that would have to give that consent, depending upon how it's set up. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Mr.. Mr. President, I know that there are other folks that are in the queue. I think my, my, my concern is the lack of participation probably by some folks. They just don't want to respond. And I think what that does is that. Makes it even harder for someone to get that consent. And anyway, I'll bring I'll bring that up later. I do have issue with that. Thank you, Councilman Catherine. Thank you, Mr. President. David. My understanding that the ordinance that we're proposing does not talk about right to repair. Is that correct? The state law does, however, does it not. That our ordinance, unlike most of the other municipal ordinances that have been adopted, does not address right to repair at all? We have there are a number of reasons, both policy and legal, that the mayor chose to not try to tackle that issue. But but to respond to the latter point of your comment. Not right to repair, but opportunity to repair is written into SADARA the Code of Construction Defect Action Action Reform Act in the sense that the very detailed like cookbook type procedures that define the notice of claim process under that statute. And at one point in that process, the builder can offer to repair, but the homeowners association is not compelled to to accept it or to allow the original builder back into the project to do the repairs. So there's a definite procedure for offering, but no obligation that the offer has to be accepted on the other side. Some of the other municipal ordinance ordinances that have tackled this subject kind of flip it a little bit from the standpoint of giving the builder the opportunity to offer and require, and the homeowners association would be required to allow them back in. But one of the main policy reasons this wasn't included, as we know, this is a very incendiary issue among the homeowners associations who, if they feel aggrieved at the defects that they believe were caused by the original builder, they may not necessarily want to deal with the original builder in terms of being forced by a law to require the original builder to come back in. So we knew it was very controversial from the homeowners perspective. But but also, as I said at the top, we're trying to stay away from altering or conflicting with any of the details in the notice of claim process and the state statute itself in terms of the the philosophical approach we're taking in our ordinance. But but it's an often asked question because everybody kind of knows that it's a part of the mix of the debate out there. That right to repair is seen by some as being kind of a key to all of this. But we just don't go there in our proposal. Thank you. One more question, which I was going to ask you, Mr. Coble, if he's left of any of you out there who are hoping that we pass this ordinance. I'm wondering if it passes, what specifically in this bill would cause you to go ahead and start building condominiums? Anybody out there? Please come to the. Bike and come to Michael. Thank you. The rest of you are cowards. Okay. Thank you. I guess. You say your name for the record again? Yeah. Aaron Foy was full of our builders, and. And I think by mine, the one thing that. That sticks in my mind. Is this majority vote. Before I became a homebuilder, I was an attorney for ten years and and did some defense of home homeowner cases against builders. And. And in my mind, if there's something wrong, it should. Get. Fixed. The issue is that relatively minor problems turn into major lawsuits, and issues that could get fixed are not allowed to be fixed. And I think having. A majority vote of all members of the association really. Slows down the process so that someone can come in and fix it. And in my mind, that helps us tremendously. And as I said earlier, we've got investors and. Banks who are scared to death of this. Stuff. And anything that we can give them to make them feel more comfortable helps us. Sure. And the other question again, anybody. If it's you, what what I'm wondering about so it's I guess everybody's guess that if this passes tomorrow, insurance rates don't drop. They may down the line. My guess is by the time they drop that the economy will have changed and will be tough to figure out why they dropped so today. So you're going to build a $200,000 condo with the higher insurance rates. What's the price of that condo? Is it 230? Is it 410? I mean, I'm trying to get an idea of what the scope is. I think. I think this helps in a few. Ways. One is is. As I said earlier, we're building a three story, you know, buildings in five story zoning. If we're able to build five story buildings or can convince investors that it makes sense to do that, we get more density. The relative cost of our land purchase goes down as well. We will still have to pay our insurance and it does increase the cost of building. But it's not that 200 to 410. It's these other things like land cost. It's things like like who we need to get money from. I can't go to a bank and get a get a 4%, four and a half percent construction loan. I need to go to two groups that are a little more risk. You're willing to take the risk, but they charge us more for their money. So all of that adds up and and makes it difficult to build that $200,000 or $230,000 condo. But if we're able to convince those groups that the risk isn't that great and these types of ordinance help us do that, then we're able to to get to that sort of price point. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman and Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Is John Stovall still here? John. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, and I put you on a spot. Maybe you have the silver bullet. Because I think you said that you recognize that there is a need for some changes. I was wondering if you knew what they were. Oh, despite all of my glorious experience. No, ma'am, I do have it. Do you have any suggestion for changes that ought to be made in terms that aren't in this bill, in terms of affordable housing or accessible housing, whatever you want to call it? Probably the only answer in our current kind of market, which is so hot, is indeed public support to the builders, meaning subsidy, a subsidy of some sort to the builder to to get that 300,000 down to to 75 or to 75 down to to 50. You know, it isn't. And the degree of that is a matter of the ability of a community to step up for that. There are a fair number of subsidized projects in the rental business, but we see almost none of it in the ownership business. Okay. Thank you, David. I had thought that I came out of the committee meeting on this a few weeks back with a pretty good understanding of the neutral arbitrator provision. But I'm hearing something different tonight. And so maybe it was my misunderstanding, but the selection of a neutral arbitrator is not actually spelled out here. It's spelled out in state statute. We just require them to follow the state law on. Arbitration. And what I thought I heard you say tonight was that A the developer itself could select a neutral arbitrator. Is that because in my mind, that's not a neutral arbitrator? Well well, there's got to be some sort of selection process. Right. And, yes, that's possible. But the. But the way neutral is defined in the Uniform Arbitration Act means no affiliation and no predisposition with with the developer. Right. So so that selection could occur. And I guess the premise of your question, they inevitably then they're prejudiced toward the person that selected them. But the definition of neutrality means they cannot have any any intrinsic business interest or relationship with whoever has selected. Thank you. Between tonight and next week on final. I would like I'm going to look at the state statute a little more and maybe I maybe I'll send you some more e-mails over the weekend or something. It's a fact, and I'll be happy to send you that. What I was just quoting and. Okay. That would be a lot easier than some of your other questions. Thank you. I'm sorry that Miss P.C. left because I wanted to follow up. She wasn't able to finish her her presentation on her economic study. But we I think it's been granted. And David, I think you said in your presentation that this isn't the only factor that is causing the lack of construction of for sale, multi-family units , condos. What are some of the other factors? She definitely would have been the best one to ask. And you may others in the room, may, may, may, may have some perspectives on this also. But you all have probably heard and this is addressed in her extensive study that they published in the last year, that after the recession and the foreclosure crisis, there were major changes in terms of qualification standards for for for financing, for home financing. And that changes the market dynamics right there in terms of who's able to to afford and get into any kind of for sale product, including condo products as well. I think we all know that. And I think one of the speakers alluded to this is that is that, you know, undoubtedly there are overall market forces that drive up the cost of everything because we're so cool and so many people want to live here. Right. And so there are basic land economics that make things more expensive in Denver that are beyond the insurance issue. Right. And that and that affects everything in terms of the affordability issue. But but others have commented on some some more some some tangential things about the the level of college debt now, which certainly didn't exist in our generation. And that causes people perhaps to delay their home purchase decisions until a later time. And so there's a lot of theories out there about what what changes there have been in market forces, such that the kind of very, very, very low cost condos that were so common back around 1980, for example, even if condo supply resumes, it may not tend to be at that really low price point because it's a different world now. Condo projects tended to spread out more, and now we're more into an infill mode in intrinsically expensive locations, in urban environments and so forth. So a lot a lot of factors like that. So what we're. Doing is we are we're just taking a bucket of water out of a bathtub or out of a larger vessel or out of an ocean. We don't really know. And again, others may want to to add to kind of my recollection of some of the other things that have some credibility in terms of affecting the issue to me. Okay. I don't really know because of the hour. I really do want to explore this fully because this is a this is a very serious issue. And there are well-meaning people on both sides. I just want to. Sure, I understand that. So I'm going to try to go quickly and maybe keep answers short. But I'm I'm a little concerned about one of the clauses on page seven. I'm sorry, page nine. No, it's seven. I'm sorry. B, paragraph B, majority consent of unit owners required. And what I read in here is it says that the written consent from owners other than the declarant of units to which at least a majority of the total votes are allocated. Does that mean that in the covenants and this is based on something you said earlier, can the builder require 80%? Can the builder require more than 50% plus one? Can the builder require a 100% consent before a claim can be pursued under this? This is an example of where the ordinance itself is dictating the threshold and it is 50%. Okay. So the builder and under our ordinance a builder in Denver cannot in a covenants require 60% or supermajority. If 50% plus one signed on, then they can file a claim. I confess I haven't thought of that question or the answer is at least that through about whether someone then would by covenant require some greater level, that this ordinance just doesn't address that at all. This ordinance says the the policy decision of the Denver City Council is that future claims and future common interest communities should be preceded by majority consent. That you're imposing that as a requirement of city law. Right. But it does it doesn't prohibit or dictate one way or the other whether some other arrangement might be made by way of covenants. Okay. So you're saying that it is possible or it is not for a builder to require more than that? I'm just thrown by the at least a majority because we're setting a threshold, but not a ceiling. I guess it's possible again, the first time I thought of that question. Okay. This was confusion by the name of by someone who said that a builder had required maybe 80%. At one time. I thought, well, we're taking care of that. But when I saw this, at least I thought maybe we're not. But our intent clearly is that if you hit 51%, then it's valid, not higher. Okay. That is our intent. Correct? I'm sorry. Our intent is Sky is saying yes. I'll accept that. I'm a little disappointed that that both sides in this issue pushed back on the right to repair. We've gone over that extensively already. So I don't want to re re plow that ground. But I am disappointed in it because I see the end game here as being taking care of a problem. And it seems we're doing everything we can to stand in the way of taking care of a problem as Jason perched on her. He just left. He just left. Oh, Lord. Okay. I wanted to ask him, is there another realtor here still who can answer a question and follow up on? He had said that he can't he couldn't sell that firefighter's condo B, because the the association had filed a lawsuit. And I wanted to know, could that have been different if the association were merely in arbitration because it's still a claim? Does that does arbitration affect the financial ability or sale ability of of the condo as opposed to being in litigation? And if you can answer that, could you come to the. Microphone and come to Mike from. In my experience, it does exactly to the same degree as litigation. Okay. They simply will not look at financing. I will also tell you that in our project, during the litigation process and in the two years subsequent, we have been selling and financing units and we helped people find sources of portfolio loans, not hard loans. Right. Yeah, because it only affects some of the financing, not all of them. And then finally, regarding David, what you and I went over this on email, but I just wanted to get it out on the record. But regarding the provision, require majority consent of all unit owners in a case where a construction defect impacts only a few of the buildings I have a development in my district, for example, has about 30 separate buildings and where you might have a say, 500 units. I don't know the exact number, but if there were a defect that affected only three of those buildings at the low end and there's a drainage problem doesn't affect 27 of the buildings. There's obviously not much of an incentive for the owners, as Councilman Lopez was getting at, to sign and intend to sue. And since we're codifying the finding of the Velasco case that if there's an arbitration clause, that's what you must use, you can't remove that. Is there any way that this could be fashioned so that it's we're trying to steer people to arbitrate, to get to get settlements faster? Is there any way that this could be could consider an avenue that if you go to arbitration, then the board can do it? You don't need 51%. Would that change anything? Because I'm concerned about the ability of people who have a genuine issue in one or two buildings to be able to get consent from from 30 other buildings. Certainly, it could have been written differently, but the mayor's proposal is very consciously designed to say the 51% is important, whether it's arbitration or litigation. And in fact, the last comment you just heard proves the point is that both going into either route for resolving a construction defect claim has serious implications for the entire community. And so and so it's consciously written this way. And and that's the proposal. Okay. Mr. President, I think that's all I have right now. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Flynn. We're back. The council members are taking Espinosa for round two. I just have one quick question about the majority, David or Sky, any up? Are there any requirements currently in state law that require a majority? Because it seems that some council members are alluding to the fact that that's a huge threshold. So I'm just curious, in current state law, are there any mandates now for a majority, a majority of owners? Well, the biggie is that in the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act, to amend the original covenants requires at least 50% and up to 67% of unit owners to do an amendment to the covenants as basically a concept that's hardwired into the law. And it's the same thing where where you have to get you have to get to that number in order to achieve something very important. And and and, in fact, that's that's where a lot of the action has been in the courts and including some of the big reported decisions like the ISO is. That is where an owner has tried to put an arbitration provision in the original covenants. And once a number enough of the units are sold off, then folks rally to collect up enough votes to take out the original arbitration clause by hitting that number. Right. So, so, so that's the outstanding example in terms of where something like this already exists in the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act. But as I said earlier, there are lots of other kinds of laws that require you to hit a number 2 to 2, to take some significant economic action on behalf of a larger group. Great. Okay. Thank you. So this is that's not new. Thank you. I want to take you back up. I have two questions. And the first one is a point that was raised by Liberty Lewis about holes in the code. She used an example about solar panels. I received something in writing that raised questions about, you know, misrepresentation, that there are certain kinds of environmental things included in a in the unit they're buying, but yet they find out later that those things were not included. So how do we address these issues where there are holes in the code? So, David, can you speak to that? Yes. And hopefully I can say this briefly. I was listening very carefully to her comments as well. And let me just say that the language that talks about the code setting a minimum minimum standard for safe and sound construction, it's it's very it's very surgically written to to say what it says. Therefore, any particular element. Feature. Component or other detail of an improvement or real property that is specifically regulated under the city codes and is constructed are installed in substantial compliance with the codes shall not be considered defective. Now, think about what that doesn't say. If it's something about the construction that is not a detail that is specifically regulated under the codes, then people can bring to bear on whatever argument they want about what the safe and sound standard should have been for something that's not regulated under the code. You understand? What I'm saying is that for things that are a gap, that aren't addressed in the codes this language doesn't speak to at all. So you make your argument that that is not addressed in the code. And here is externally from an industry standard or whatever. What would have been the safer way to do it or the safest way to do it? If it's not addressed in the code, it's whatever creatively the plaintiff wants to argue about what the proper standard of care should have been. Right. So the point being, this ordinance doesn't address that situation. Plaintiffs are free to make their claims. But if what they're claiming about is a detail that is specifically regulated under the code and it's installed in accordance with the code, then the builder can use that as a defense and avoid not having to pay on that claim . Okay. Let me move on. The point is, this was written to acknowledge there are some things that aren't regulated under the code that the parties will continue to argue about. Okay. So my next question is, I'd like you to clarify that. My hope is that the focus is to try to cure the problem. And I'm not sure if. A person needs to go to arbitration in order to have a problem cured. So can you help clarify the the recourse or the route, if you will, or correcting a problem without having to, you know, file a claim, without having to, you know, go through a lengthy legal process. And the short answer to that is, is provided by sadara by per by the state statute, which talks about the back and forth initial sharing of information to see if the parties can can amicably agree to fix something before having to proceed to either arbitration or litigation. That interplay is addressed in state law, and it's not disturbed in any way by this ordinance one way or the other. Okay. I have no further questions at this time, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Espinosa. David, is there language about the consequences of filing a claim that can be included as a provision under the required notice to the owners? Could you repeat the question? Is there language about about is there language about the consequences for filing a claim that can be included as a provision under the required notice to the owners. So the owners for filing. You know, to to go to the claim process. They are required to get notification 60 days prior. And we have a provision for you know, for. The provision is, where's that language? Now I lost it. The deck in the declaration. So there's a in the purchase agreement, we have a provision that has substantially, you know, takes the following form, and it's the actual language of what we expect to be articulated. But if there are these actual consequences to the potential that are that are potentially dangerous in the interim, in the claim process, can we make sure that that people that are voting on on whether or not to go to a claim are actually made aware of what that potentially does, how it might encumber their property in a way that prevents them from selling, prevents them from refinancing, prevents them through the duration of that process. Well, the contents of the notice that are enumerated on page six and seven of the bill, I think include the issue that you're address and councilman, particularly on page seven. Number six, number six, the one component of the notice would be until the claim defective construction work is repaired or replaced or until the construction defect claim has concluded, the market value of the affected units will be adversely affected and it's also addressed somewhat in Southern as well. So take a look at six and seven and see if they adequately encompass what you are concerned about. But when do those get put put in front of the the buyer, the owner? Where am I at? Right. This is a notice they have to receive before they they vote to give their assent. Okay. To to filing a claim. Sorry. Never mind. That answers the question. Okay. Good, Councilman. Thank you. Hey, Councilman Lopez, you're up. Mr. President, I think mine is more in line of a comment. All right, well, we will. We will. Get you. Go ahead and chime in. You'll be first to go. Any other questions? 811 CNN public hearing is now closed. Comments. Councilman Lopez, you're up. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to really explore that question. I know this is first reading and we wanted to have this on first reading so we can hear from folks and then try to iron out our issues or any other pending questions before the final vote. I my question remains this and I ran into it because we were trying to rename a street in West Denver and we were looking at as a lot of you know, we were successful in getting a majority of property owners along Morrison Road in favor of of changing it that says it's Chavez Boulevard. And although we got the majority over 64%, what the city required was 100% participation. So it was a no by an impossible yes. And having said that, we tried to track down every property owner we could and we couldn't find them. There were some folks we had to track down outside the country and we could never get their response. And because we could never get their response, we failed, even though we had 64% of the property owners along Morrison Road support it. So what I'm trying to figure out if that if that's similar and if that applies, that's skip the road and think about a, you know, a highrise with condos right now. Is that 51% requiring 100%, 100% participation in what happens if if some people just do not respond, whether they want to pursue, you know, move forward with the lawsuit or lawsuit or not or or remedies or not. And I don't have a problem with the 51% required. And my question is the 51% of what I and that is what's what's hanging fire for me. You know, having been a labor organizer for for seven years and I, I would I'm going to spill the beans here. I liked arbitration. Because I knew I knew that if as long as we played fair and as long as that arbitrator was neutral, being that, as long as we as long with the other party were okay with a neutral arbitrator. For the most part, we came out on top. As long as we played fair, as long as the the level the playing field was level and the rules were the same, those issues would be remedied. Now, I don't like seeing it tied up in courts. I don't like the idea of of somebody who is in a project or is in a set of units, has a unit that cannot sell it or refi because it's held up in court. That's ridiculous. I don't like that. Part of affordable housing is preventing folks from losing their homes and that's being able to utilize that capital to utilize whatever tools they can to stay above water. Our market fluctuates. Those of us who were council members during the recession, we saw that property values, I mean, not even as customers, but we all saw that our property property values tanked. And then now they're at all time highs. I don't want to hold this up for the sake of that that question. Here's what I will say. I am not in the spirit of 100%. I am not 100% all the way there unless I get those questions, unless I feel I know that that's not a yes by an impossible no. But I say that right now. I know by an impossible yes. So I am I'm okay with moving this forward. But I'm not 100% on my final vote. I'm not just saying that to build a suspense is because truly that is an issue for me. Knowing how hard it was to try to achieve that just on a street renaming in Denver where we had more than a simple majority. How hard will it be for unit owners to achieve that? And that 51% sure we're in the United States of America. That sounds great, right? Majority. All of us are elected 50% plus one. Right. But imagine if they set the bar and said, well, you had to have so much participation from your district. So that that's just words. I'm I'm mean. Yes. For tonight I'm a little I'm a I'd like to get to 100% by next time, but they don't want to see status quo. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, Councilman Espinosa. And this is a little bit of making the sausage, but I think that's really the entire point of this whole of this whole ordinance is that is that it has to be a higher threshold, a higher bar to to sort of obligate the entire property. And you really should have more than half of the owners involved in that decision, not just the minority share. And if you're not going to participate, yeah, you're a no vote until and but there's no time limit. They can keep going and keep going and keep going until they can get it, you know. And so that's really the intent here is that we don't get a firefighter sort of stuck in a situation where he's been encumbered by a handful of people that were on the board. But my actual back to the six and seven items I would like to see if it couldn't be put to me. It's not plain enough language back to the sort of who who's going to be reviewing this at the time it comes through. It says until the claim defective construction work is repaired or replace or until the construction defect claim is included concluded, the market value of the affected units will be adversely affected. It's really not a question. I guess it's comment to my colleagues, which is that that sort of implies that, okay, go fix the problem and now you can sell your unit. But no, the claim is the legal process and you're tied up until that's concluded, which could be settlement, it could be repair. And what is the conclusion? Angel You know, so I don't know if I got that, that language in a letter that informed me that this is something that the I mean, the the building is trying to do that you would know that you're actually encumbered. Yes. And item seven then sort of gets into, in addition, certain federal underwriting standards or regulations prevent refinancing or obtaining new loans on projects where construction defect is claimed. In addition, certain lenders as a matter of policy, they don't actually it sort of doesn't still doesn't get to the sort of way that we look at products, you know, when we go to the to the bank and ask for this that other clause. The other provision to me is very, very clear in how it delineates what the issue is that I think could could confuse somebody. And so where they think they might have an avenue to sort of correct and and move on if their if their building is tied up in an obligation. That said, I understand that the entire intent of the law is to not get to this point. So maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. I just leave the language as it is and hope that we never get there. But if we do get there, sure, it would be nice that it was clear what the heck you were doing. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm just thinking about some of the development that we have approved that have come before this body, where we're going to see multiple buildings built on sites like the Gates property, the Denver Post site. And the point that Councilman Flynn raised about the threshold being at 51%, where everybody in the entire complex that's part of the highway has to you have to have 51% of everybody, but it's only one building that's been affected. I'd like to explore some language that really hones in on that one building, as opposed to everybody in the development having to sign on. You know, it ties up the other buildings and all of that stuff by requiring everybody else to weigh in when the reality is it's only affecting one building on the whole site. So I'd like to explore that with our city attorney between now and bringing the bill back for final reading so that we can, you know, try to correct that problem. We all know this is something that we've been needing to address for a long time. We all would like to see for sale units. I don't know that that means we're going to see affordable. For sale units. I remember when we took a trip to Vancouver a number of years ago with the Denver Partnership and, you know, we all came back, everybody was excited about density. And, you know, if we get density, we're going to see affordability. And that's not what we've been seeing in this city. We're seeing density, but they're not affordable even when we were building condos. And we know that, you know, apartment buildings are very costly now. So, I mean, we are putting money into addressing affordability as a city. And, you know, it's a partnership between the city and our development community to address some of these challenges we have with, you know, part of our workforce that can't afford to live in the city and they have to move to the suburbs. At some point, you know, they're going to realize they can find the same kind of jobs, especially for so many that are working in the service industry where they live, as opposed to having to come into the city. And at some point we're going to be struggle struggling, trying to ensure that we've got workers for our service industry. You know, so I mean, there's some challenges that that I think are inherent that we're we're trying to solve here. But in general, I think the need to get to a place where we can build for sale units is very important. I'm glad my colleague, Councilman Cashman, asked, you know, one of the builders if this language is actually going to make a difference in whether you all will start building. And, you know, I know the insurance plays a role in that and we don't know exactly what's going to happen with that. And, you know, my hope is that we don't go through all of this and we're like Lakewood and some of the other communities where there's still no for sale units being built. But I'm I'm supportive of moving this forward on first reading. Really want to explore the threshold issue, particularly where we have multiple buildings on a complex that, you know, just ties everybody up. So I'll stop at that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Ortega. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. This is this is an issue that I've read almost everything that has come our way from both sides. And and we know statistically, we know what the statistic shows about the market in Denver. I'd like to see some information about markets elsewhere in other cities to see if they're suffering the same dearth of condo construction as we are. But there's just something about this common interest community that seems to be attracting all this litigation that's not happening with single family homes or with other communities that are being built by the same builders. And just as there are, there are examples of attorneys who are not ambulance chasers. There are examples of builders who are good quality builders. And so when I hear Build It Right the first time, I know that that's that sounds really good. But I do know that there are builders in this market who do build it right. There are good quality builders in this market. They'll build it right tomorrow. They'll build it right next year. They build it right last year. But they're not building right now. Whether this moves the needle or not is something we can't know. It's I feel a little bit like I'm throwing darts in a foggy in a smoky bar room, you know, am I going to hit the board? Is this the right thing? What other factors are at play? But I do know that as we've talked about financing and down payment requirements having been strengthened since the recession, well, that applies to all mortgages. That doesn't just apply to condos. So why are we not seeing the condos being built? Those restrictions apply across the market. So there is something going on with common interest communities. Can this solve it? A lot of people think that it can that it can move the needle. It was very hard for me to come down on where to where to vote tonight, let alone next week. But just this afternoon, after digesting everything, when it occurred to me that we do have builders that will build it right and they're not building. So we need to find a way that helps clear the way to get shovels in the ground and start increasing our for sale supply of multi-family housing. So I'll support this tonight and hope to look more into the the arbitration issue before the final vote next week. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilman Kasich. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to frame this issue, I think, in a. Or a way that maybe some have. I think the goal of tonight is about ensuring that individuals still have redress when there are wrongs in their properties. But it's creating more certainty and more clarity on the process so that the outcomes are a little more predictable. This entire realm of policy, as Councilman Cashman and I were talking about last week, is all about managing expectations and fears of risk. Right. That's what insurers are doing when they set rates. That's what bankers are doing when they set insurance rates. That's what contractors are doing when they bid on jobs. And so we can't control this directly through public policy. We are just trying to create an environment where people feel like they are better at predicting risk and therefore don't overcharge. That's that's the goal. Well, no one's ever going to get a satisfactory answer on how much calculation of risk is going to change the game. So we are legislating in an uncertain environment, but it's one that I agree is necessary. After spending some time talking over several years ago, before the legislative process began with both sides, including mostly the attorneys and insurers, frankly, to cut through what sometimes is an overstated issue on both sides. So so that's my frame for what I think we're doing tonight and what we're aiming to do. And then the question is, are we doing it? So a couple of things in the language that I think are really important to point out. So first of all, where harms occur, there is redress here. And in particular, you know, folks have raised different concerns. But, you know, it's my understanding, you know, as as as a as a non-practicing attorney. But there's there is a strong case law regarding harm. And it doesn't just mean, you know, that that, you know, you had a ton of property damage because a window leaked and you had to replace your carpeting. You know, the loss of value of your unit is a pretty, you know, clear area where you could argue harm if you're if your unit value is reduced, for example , or your enjoyment, if you if you could never use your patio for some reason because it was flooded, those are all things that the common law generally recognizes as harm. So so where there is harm, there is redress in this in this approach. And that's really important. The next thing that I think is really important is that there is a provision that clearly states that if any arbitrator fails to follow the lives of Colorado with regard to construction defects, there's a redress in court. So I think that's one thing that we haven't talked about enough up here, which is that this does not close your door to court. If you have an arbitrator doesn't follow the law as they're required to do, then you can go to court and you should go to court. And that path is there. And that's important for me. If it were not there, I would have maybe different feelings about the balance between these issues. Folks have talked about the right to cure. I would not have supported this ordinance if it had included a provision that allowed a builder to repair something without negotiating. Right. That's that's not appropriate. What the current state law provides is a period of time for that discussion to occur. What arbitration creates is a framework for that discussion to occur. And that, in my mind, is important in retrieving the balance that we're looking for, saying that someone could come in and repair your unit even if you didn't agree that that was the needed repair. That's not a path I would have felt comfortable with. So I appreciate some of the restraint that the mayor has shown in this approach that I do think is quite balanced. The last comment I want to make is a little bit of a of a of an in spite of which is that I do not believe that as long as we have buyers willing to pay $500,000 for condos, that the market is magically going to produce 250 or $300,000 condos in Denver. So so I think that demand is going to continue to determine pricing. But what I do know is that we have a policy framework in Denver that requires affordability in projects of 30 units or more. I'm not thrilled that some of the folks who asked me to vote for this ordinance tonight were up there asking us not to vote on inclusionary housing. And to me to link this argument to affordability while opposing that policy is is one that I'm not happy about. But just look at the prior vote. Just because I disagree with folks on one issue does not mean I cannot agree with them where they have the merits on their side. So I would not be able to support this ordinance if we did not have a framework for affordability that underlies it. So today, that framework is an inclusionary housing ordinance. We've proposed in the future that the framework would be an impact fee. I hope and I expect that the folks who've asked us to support this. Porting the new framework, should we propose one for affordability? And that means affordability to folks, you know, at below 80% of median income. That's not something this market is going to produce with or without this ordinance. And so because we have a policy framework, though, that says when these projects are built, by definition, they'll be building affordability. I feel comfortable saying that it's in our best interests to produce more condos in Denver because I know there will be affordability. So with that, I will be supporting it tonight. I want to just signal to some of my colleagues that I'm you know, there's a few tiny details that folks have brought up more clearly delineating that both parties have input into the arbitration selection process. I myself didn't go back and reference the state law in that clearly enough until tonight. So there's a few areas I would be open to. Not very many, but little tweaks like that that if they occur between first and second reading, I would be open to considering. But fundamentally, I think this ordinance strikes the right balance for the reasons I've described, and I will be supporting it and urge my colleagues to do the same. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Kenney. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm with my friend, Councilman Lopez. I'm not there yet on a yes vote for next week. I think there's enough here that that I'll be looking to move it along tonight. We're doing two things right. I think I think Mr. Broadwell and the the administration has done a pretty commendable job at crafting something that may move our friends and the development community in a more positive direction towards building the condominiums that we need. I'm not at all sure that it's fairly balanced in assuring homebuyers that they've got the full redress that they need. One thing I'd like to see, and I think Councilwoman Kinney's you alluded to it, but I'd love to see something in the language of arbitration that prevents some of the more onerous conditions that that we've heard have been written in to arbitration provisions. So with that said, like I say, I'll support moving it forward. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman, that's another your backup. Yeah. I mean, I am curious on what Councilwoman Ortega brought up on the buildings, because oftentimes certain projects will have different contractors working on different phases, different buildings. But I don't know how that works. Will it relative to banks, because they might look at it as a whole one project anyway. So if one building is tied up. So I'd look to you guys for some clarity on that. I would also encourage us to maybe include some language that that the conclusion of the claim process be sent to all owners via certified means so that the you know, it doesn't become a problem for the buyer, for for the owner when they're moving on to something to have to track down a document that they really their banks are going to their lenders and stuff are going to need. And then I just wanted to say that, you know, there was a mention about affordable housing and accessible, primarily accessible housing. If we can get some public dollars into any one of those condo projects, that would hopefully get built by that virtue of that investment. Those are then have to be visible and accessible units per the fair housing requirements. And so this is a heck of a lot easier sort of product type to get accessible units built into than these sort of townhome forms. You know, because these are ground forming, these are accessed by elevators there. And so I think it's actually an opportunity to actually get more accessible units easier, especially if we start to finance them with public money things. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Any other comments? 811 CNN Madam Secretary, Roll Call Lopez. I knew Ortega Sussman. Black Eye Clark. Espinosa. Flynn, I Gilmore. I Cashman. I can each. Hi, Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please cast Vali Nasr. Results 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes 11 has been published and final consideration will be Monday, November 23rd. One pre German announcement Monday, December 14th will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 827, changing the zoning classification for 510 East 51st for 80 East for East 51st Avenue 4855 Perot Street 4871. Pearl Street 4877 Pearl Street. Any protests against Council Bill 827 must be filed with the council offices no later than Monday, December 7th. Same. The business before this body. We are adjourned. Denver eight TV. Your city. Your source.

Petition for a Special Law re: An Act Granting the City of Boston the Authority to Provide Legal Voting Rights in Municipal Elections for City of Boston Residents Aged 16 and 17 Years Old.

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All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. The ayes have it. Docket docket 0264 has passed. Matters recently heard for possible action. Mr.. Please read Docket 0185 Police. Numbers 0185 Petition for a special law relative to enact granting the City of Boston the authority to provide legal voting rights in municipal elections for the city of Boston. Residents age 16 and 17 years old. The Chair recognizes. Councilor Royal Chair of the Committee on Government Operations Council. Royal. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. On Tuesday, March 14th, the committee held a hearing on docket 0185. This matter was introduced by councilors Maria and Councilor Bach. I want to thank the lead sponsors for introducing this matter and for my council colleagues that were able to join us Councilor Braden, Councilor Fernandez Anderson, Councilor Laura, Councilor Louise and Councilor Flynn , Councilor Wirral and Councilor Flaherty. I also want to thank the Elections Department and our panel of advocates for their time and participation. This home rule petition would authorize the city of Boston to allow any individual age, 16 or 17 who was a resident of Boston to be able to vote as long as they are eligible under state law for other all other qualifications other than age. These individuals would be added to a separate list of voters to be established and maintained by the Board of Election Commissioners and be allowed to vote for local office and ballot questions. This would be done by having them fill out an alternative registration form. The Board of Elections would be responsible for associated costs. The petition would also grant the Board the authority to implement regulations associated with this Act. When the individual turns 18, they would be removed from the separate list and informed that they must register to vote in accordance with state law. During the hearing, we heard testimony from the Elections Department on the logistical details that would be needed to address the implement and implement this petition. Including restrictions around how information of 16 year olds would need to be safeguarded. The Elections Department also shared that since implementation of pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds in 2020, the Department has processed a total of 3720 applications, showing that there is a high interest in electoral participation among those who have not yet turned 18. Both the administration and the advocates were able to speak to practices from other cities, states and countries that have implemented similar electoral policies, as well as the impact this legislation would have on expanding the electorate in Boston this time. This conversation serves as a good starting point for this home roll petition, and I look forward to more detailed conversations about the language in future working sessions. As Chair, I recommended, this matter ought to reign out to remain in committee. Thank you, Ms.. President. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. Roya, would anyone else like to speak on this matter that she recognizes? Councilman here. Councilman, here. You have the floor. I just wanted to thank the chair for hosting the hearing and also just want to uplift massage rare, who is one of the young one of the young people that participated in the hearing. She took some time from school to participate with us, which goes to show how important it is to ensure that we recognize that the reason why we're pushing for this is that young people want to be engaged, they are mature and understand what is at stake for them. They're the ones that are working, paying taxes, oftentimes working 2 to 3 jobs just to help support their families. So we need to do right by them and making sure that we support this effort. And I really want to thank my colleagues who participated and for their support around this initiative as well. So thank you so very much. Thank you constantly here. The chair recognizes council block. Council block. You have the floor. Thank you so much, Mr. President. I also want to thank the chair and councilwoman here and all our panelists who came and the councilors. I think that, you know, this is a docket where I think we've already heard a majority of councilors and support we heard support from the elections commission. We had really good, tangible feedback from the Elections Commission about what they would need to implement it most effectively. So I'm looking forward to the working session under the auspices of the Chair. But I just want to emphasize, you know, we we had a colleague from Scotland come and join the meeting virtually in Scotland. 16 and 17 year olds have been voting for almost a decade in their local elections. And and it's been a huge driver of youth participation. It has not upended the world, but it has allowed a lot of people to really get involved in democratic civic activism. And as was brought raised on the call, when we involve our young people, it also means involving a lot of our marginalized communities. It often drives things in a direction of economic justice. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why we want to make voices and immigrant families sometimes as the only thought that you might have access to for now. And so just really want to stress that we're looking forward to partnering with a chair and making this something that the council is able to support in the near term. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilor. BLOCK Anyone else like to speak on this matter? Docket 0185 will remain in committee. Docket 0291 has been withdrawn from the agenda now at this time. Mr. Kirby, please read docket 0312, please.

A bill for an ordinance amending the annual salaries of certain appointed charter officers. Amends Section 18-91 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to adjust annual salaries for appointed charter officers in accordance with limitations set forth in the Charter and applied retroactively to January 1, 2022. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 4-5-22.

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13 Eyes. Resolution 20 2-366 has been postponed and will be back in front of council on Monday, April 25th. Madam Secretary, if you would, put the next item up on our screens. Councilmember Sandoval, would you please put Bill 383 on the floor for publishing? I move that council bill 383 be ordered published. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of council. Councilmember CdeBaca Yes, I called this out tonight. These are the salary increases for our mayoral appointees because we discovered that this is not required at this time. I think it's inappropriate to do, especially since it will be retroactive at the tail end of this mayor's term. I think we should allow the next mayor to come in and make some decisions around pay equity throughout the entire city organization before we give increases that in some places are over 20% increases. When we have employees in the city and county of Denver who can't afford to pay rent and also don't qualify for city benefits. We've got major, major structural issues that I think are making it challenging to fill many of our vacancies in the city. And so we should be looking at this more holistically. And so I'm a no on this tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember CdeBaca. Council members will. Hear things when I'm president. I think that Councilwoman CdeBaca makes some really good points, and it's something to consider. Absolutely as we look at this contract. However, I also appreciate the testimony that we heard at committee, you know, regarding this situation where we have executive directors who are making less than their than their staff. You know, we want to make sure that whoever the next mayor is, they're set up for success. They are going to have to go through a council approval process for all of their cabinet appointees. And the things that we can do to help set that mayor up for success include equal or median, I guess, pay for for their executive directors. Like I said, it's not okay that we have a situation where some of our executive directors are making less than their staff members because their their salaries are set by ordinance. So this is always an uncomfortable conversation to have, but I think it is an important conversation to have. And I will be supporting it and I. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Steuer, Councilmember Sandoval. Thank you, Madam President. I also agree that these are really important points that are brought up and talking about anyone's salary and having to vote on it is an uncomfortable position for myself. I also want to acknowledge that some of when I was learning about this contract and this ordinance, I did not realize that the appointees listed here did not receive a merit increase every year. So although our everyone in the city and county in Denver receives a merit increase, these appointees have been at the same rate this entire time. So someone from I'd say the executive director of Parks and Rec has been making the same entire exact salary for over six years without a merit increase. And that does not feel equitable to me. That does not feel fair. And that was something that I gave to consideration as I was thinking about this proposal. And I also did had the conversation, as with the mayor's office, about could the next mayor come in and we do this? Could the next mayor come in? We have a general election coming up and we'd have a new mayor in July of 23. And could they come and bring a proposal, an ordinance and undo this proposal? Yes, they could do it. Has that happened in the history of Denver? Yes, it has. We did have a mayor that came in and actually reset all of the salaries of our appointees there, the mayor's appointees. And I think we have been playing catch up since then. So I gave this contract and this ordinance a lot of thought since I got received my briefing. And although it makes me very uncomfortable to have to talk about other people and have to vote on other people's salary. I will be supporting it this evening because once again, these executive directors have not received a salary increase. And at the same time, when I asked if they had to participate in the furloughs that everyone else had to participate in. Yes, they did participate in the furloughs. So they participated in the furloughs. And most people got the merit increase in 2021 and they did not. So this is again, I'm going to say it for the record, an uncomfortable conversation to have appeared to be talking about. But given that I did give it consideration, I will be supporting it this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Sandoval. Councilmember Cashman. Yeah, thank you, Madam President. I looked at this carefully as well. And these posts are the leaders of our departments of the big city government. And we're, as with all big cities, in a position right now where we've got some real challenges that we face and we need the best people possible that we can get into these positions. These salary increases do not put these people at the top of the heap compared to other cities. It puts them in the mid-range compared to other cities. And the if you look at the total, I added it up earlier this week and forgot to bring my numbers in with me. But if you look at all the dollars that we're talking about, while in some cases the percentage increases are substantial in in face of the leadership that we're asking for and the comparatively low dollars that this bill increases, the total salaries, it's minimal. And I'm glad to support this. I'd actually wish we could get our department heads rather than aim for 50%. I'd like to look at 60% and 70% of average. Like I say, I want the best people possible leading the city. And, you know, sometimes it helps to show people a little love dollar wise. So that's where I am on this. I will certainly support it. Thank you, Councilmember Cashman. Councilmember Herndon. Think about the president. You know, I was just asked the question, what were you doing in 2006? Most of us can't remember because it was that long ago these positions in front of us, with the exception of excise and license, because marijuana was added to their job description. So you could say 2017 for that individual, that's when they last got a salary increase. And if it was not management. People would be up and like, how could this be possible? But for some strange reason, because they're part of the executive team or the C-suite, it's a it should be questionable. And that's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. People should be compensated for the work that they do. We're the third busiest airport in the world, and our compensation for our CEO is paltry. And so for the next mayor, this is actually doing them a favor because we're upping the hours they can choose to keep the people on or they can look to hire new people. And it will be a challenge to hire new people if we keep our compensations at the levels that they are for the responsibility that they have. I said this at committee and I second Councilman Cashman. I wish this didn't take them to the midpoint. They should be paid. They should be compensated higher. But I'm happy to support this and I hope my colleagues do as well. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Herndon Council Pro-Tem Torres. Thank you so much. I'll also be supporting tonight. I think our executive leadership, in addition to the past two years of what we've all experienced, have done a tremendous job. We may disagree on a lot of different individual policies, but overall the work that is loaded upon them is pretty heavy. And I do. Agree. Councilwoman Sandoval mentioned we have had mayors in the past and coming who have asked their starting cabinet to take pay cuts. That was at a time of recession. We may be looking at that again in a couple of years. Who knows what it really looks like? But we should be able to attract key folks. To these positions for what Denver needs and where it's going. I will say that cumulatively, in terms of. Actual. Raises, city employees earned an average of 18% since 2016. The average here is at about 16%. So it's not far off from what our employee. Structure. Also received in that period of time. So I will be supporting tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Council Pro-Tem Torres. Councilmember CdeBaca, we have you back up in the queue. Is it okay if I go to Councilmember Ortega? All right. Go ahead, please. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to add, I won't repeat what my colleagues have already said. This is being covered by the budgets of the various agencies. So this is not requiring a separate supplemental budget appropriation to cover the cost of these salaries. So I will be supporting it tonight as well for all the reasons that have been expressed earlier. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. Council members say the Baca thank you. I just want to thank my colleagues for their comments and also point out for the public that it was a choice of our mayor not to give merit increases annually that could have been done annually. It's a strange time to do that, given what we've just been through and what we're facing. Additionally, employees within the city who do receive merit increases do so based on their performance. That is not the case with our appointees. There is no evaluation process, no evaluation system, and often no recourse for staff in an agency when there is poor leadership or when there are things within the agency that they don't approve of. So it is a little bit different when we're talking about appointees and merit increases versus regular employees and merit increases. Additionally, when we talk about employees rights in the city and the pay inequity that's happening right here in all of our agencies, we explicitly prohibit our employees from collectively bargaining. And so I challenge my colleagues, if you truly do believe people should be paid what they are worth, to recognize that we have to then allow our employees throughout the city, not just a couple of select agencies who are some of the highest, who are led by some of the highest paid appointees on this list to collectively bargain. Everybody should have that right. And so still a no on this. And I hope that my colleagues think about the potential for creating equity in pay across our city agencies. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember CdeBaca. Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President A couple of things that my colleagues have already said about the third busiest airport in the world. It's crazy that our CEO is getting paid 40% less than than industry average. And we've had pay raises for most employees. And most employees have had several pay raises since 2016, but not these positions. Two things that haven't been covered so far are a point we just had in our budget and policy conversation this afternoon, an update on our the strength of our city in 2021. And and the appointees that we had, the leadership of the various agencies saved more money than we were expecting in 2021. And so I would say that the appointees directly did a better job in in being frugal with our our funds in 2021. But also in the same presentation, we learned that we, we collected more sales tax than for. And our income was greater than expected in 2021. So I recognize that 2020 was a tough year for everyone. But but we we found in this afternoon's presentation that 2021 was better than expected. And that's in part because of the leadership of our city and creating our recovery stronger than the state and national average. Thank you. Council President. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. And not seeing anybody else in the queue there. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 22, Dash 383, please. CDEBACA No. Clarke. All right. Flynn. I. Herndon, I. Hi. All right. Cashman Can each I. Ortega Excuse me, I. Sandoval. Hi. Sawyer. I. Torres, i. Black eye. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. When they. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes. Resolution 22, dash 383 has been ordered published. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Councilmembers remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Sandoval, would you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? I move that proclamations and resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in a block for the following items. Zip. 44142138348349350. 351375376382360361364372433365367434320. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Sandoval. And we've got that moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call black. I CdeBaca. I, Clark. All right. Flynn. Herndon. I. Hi. Cashman. Hi, Kenny. I. Ortega. Sandoval. I swear, i. Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, to close the voting and announce results. 13 eyes. 13 eyes. The proclamations and resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Our pre recess announcement this evening. Tonight there will be a required public hearing on council bill 20 2-168 changing the zoning classification for 4116 to Cater Street in Sunnyside required public hearing on Council Bill 20 2-169 Changing

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 5611 East Iowa Avenue in Virginia Village. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 5611 East Iowa Avenue from S-SU-D to S-RH-2.5 (suburban, single-unit to suburban, rowhouse) in Council District 6. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-10-18.

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We get everybody. I think we're missing one. Oh, no, that's it. Sorry. Well, have a nice two days, Constable. 788, as amended, has passed. Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? And, Councilwoman Gilmore, we need a motion to take out of order. Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 18 dash 0705 be taken out of order. It has been moved. If I can get a second. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. One woman. Black eye. Brooks Espinosa. Flinn I. Gilmore Herndon. Cashin Can eat. Lopez I knew Ortega. Sussman All right, Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting, announce the results. 1339 As comfortable 705 may be taken out of order. Councilwoman Gilmore, we need a motion to pass. I move that council bill 18 dash 0705 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. And Councilwoman Sussman, your motion to postpone. I move that final consideration of Council Bill 705 with this public hearing be postponed to Monday, August 27th, 2018. It has been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments by members of council on this one? Councilwoman SUSSMAN. Thank you, Mr. President. The postponement is requested to comply with notification requirements. Ah, right. Seeing no other questions or comments. Madam Secretary. Roll Call. Sussman. Black Brooks. Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. Hi, Gilmore, I Herndon Captain Kenny Lopez. I knew Ortega. Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting announce results. 3913. IES Final Consideration of Council Bill 705 with its public hearing has been postponed to Monday, August 27th. That concludes the items to be called out. Other bills for introduction are ordered published, were now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 18.30 establishing a Proactive Rental Housing Inspection Program, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to the proactive rental housing inspection program read for the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. I have a motion in a second by Gonzalez and Austin. Is there any public comment on the item? Okay. Please come forward, Mr. Shelton. All right. Good afternoon again. Gary Shelton, I guess it's evening now. I'm in support of the motion, but I thought you might appreciate hearing some public comment as to why. I don't imagine that it's not going to pass, but it's been a long time coming. You'll reading the back up material. The SB two was initially enacted in 2007, and that's a state law. It was known then as the anti NIMBY law and SB two is mentioned a number of times in the backup material related to this. In terms of it, the it demands in a sense that every city or jurisdiction that has a housing element include a number of items that had probably never been included before. And one of them as things wound down. What the city council back then decided to do in terms of the housing element was to actually not comply with SB two, to let it go on to another housing element sometime in the future. That was the 27 to 2013 version of the housing element. They have more detailed numbers, but that's what I call it, and that's what it was known by then. SB To ordained that there be by rights the possibility of building homeless shelters in every city and all the city had to do is determine what zone that would be allowed in, that there would not have to be a copy process. The city council actually put those sites in the port and in the villages at Cabrillo, and neither of those has proved to be an adequate. And now what I'm hoping that this event or this issue coming up before you today is opening the door for what at their review of the housing element, I believe it was in January or February earlier this year, staff said that they would work on that adjustment to the city's zoning ordinances to allow by right. Homeless shelters in certain industrial zones. That's a possible good fix for this. But I wanted to play a little bit of the groundwork about that and underscore the fact the city at that time couldn't manage compliance. Then the next housing element came along the 2013 to 2021 housing element in which we're working right now, and they still couldn't comply. So this motion that you're about to pass this evening is designed to, beyond the siting of homeless shelters, accommodate the siting of single resident or single room occupancy dwellings. And if you look at the R and R for R for an hour, for HD, an hour for you zoning areas. And I'll wrap this up in just a moment. Mr. Mayor. We actually got to wrap it up now. Okay. You'll see that there are areas in town where with a C up process, Saros can be built. That's brand new and good. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes. I want to reiterate my gratitude for everyone again, coming together to make this a a really, in my opinion, good ordinance, a step in the right direction for, uh, proactive rental housing inspection. I have a quick question as to number three in our recommendation from the previous council meeting. It seems broad, it says, to increase the frequency of administrative citations. I know we had suggested to come back or to increase the frequency of fines after 30 days and then thereafter 15 days. Is that language we can add in in section three? Just to make sure we're on item 16, not on 15. Just I want to make sure I, I don't know if Mr. Shelton was talking to 15, but. Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, we are looking at the annotated version of the ordinance that was provided by the city attorney's office. And I do believe that we did increase the frequency of inspections. Uh. Charlie Mayor, members of the Council on adding subsection F Administration Citation Schedule. It does. If the owner fails to abate the violation within 30 days, the city inspector may issue an administrative citation every 15 days for each continuing violation. So I believe we did address your concern. Apologies. I may have missed it. There it is. Okay, great. I swear I read this like three times and I may have missed it. Second question in relation to number three as well is I know we've also discussed accelerating the issue if it is an imminent danger to life or safety or health to the city prosecutor's office . Maybe I'm missing it again. Is there language that specifically mentions that? Yes, ma'am. It's actually in that same paragraph that if it is noted that the violation poses an imminent threat to the health and safety of the occupants, the city inspector will notify the owner of the violation and will notify the city prosecutor's office of the violation within 24 hours of the inspection, as we did include that simultaneously as well. Great. Thank you. And then I just want to make sure we're still on track. I know we had talked about 60 days coming back on three on a few things. So the duplexes triplexes information as well as publicizing the the bad landlords the worst of the worst list that we have put together of about ten landlords, is that correct? That's correct. We did talk about 60 days. I had asked for 90 days, and I thought that the council had agreed to that. So we were hoping it would be 90 days. If it's 60, we can we can endeavor to get that as well. Can we come back in 60 days? If needed more time, then go from there? Sure. We can certainly do that. Yep. And also the $75,000 as well. Was that going to be included in that 60 day report? It will be, yes. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. There is a motion in a second. We've done more public comment. Okay. We closed public comment on this item. You're for 16, not for 15. Correct. Okay. Come forward. We have to do a public comment at once. Typically so. Go ahead. Thank you very much for letting us have a chance to talk to you about this. My name is Sanford Simmons and we own some property in Long Beach. And I believe I've been owning property here for about 45, 50 years. And we always comply with inspectors. Inspectors come by and he says, a little paint chip over here and there's a screen here that's got a little crack in it and this and that. Or if a tenant doesn't want to pay their rent, they call the city and complain. And we take care of all the issues and meet with the inspector. I think we already have enough rules on the books. I don't know what the problem is. Do you have another problem here? That there's somebody here is not the landlords aren't doing what they're supposed to do. There's not enough already things on the books to enforce it. What is this going on? And then I read a little bit here, there that you guys want. Whoever you guys are, want to have the tenant put the money into it like an escrow account where the tenant has control, you know, or whatever. The city has control. The landlord doesn't have the money to do what they have to do to do to pay their bills. Something's wrong here. I was over in India and over in India. The buildings are all rundown and dilapidated. Why? They have what's called rent control there. Yes, they have rent control there and the landlord doesn't have any money to do anything. The people inside the very well because we have a very low rent. I don't want to see this city going to rent control. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, my name is Matthew Simmons, and I just wanted to reiterate the comments that were just made. It's I think we do have enough rules on the books and it's just a matter of enforcing what we have. I think it's a very slippery slope as soon as you know, soon as it just seems that the momentum and a lot of property owners and are concerned that Long Beach is moving in the direction of rent control. And this is not. The last stop. This is the first stop. And and I just feel that if we continue in this direction, it actually we're going to have the opposite effect. We're going to have unintended consequences. And I know the intentions are good, but ultimately, if landlords are if the funds are kept from the landlords, ultimately they're not going to have the ability to to make the property nicer. In fact, I just had some tenants who are in a property that who lived there before purchased the property and and there are gang members. There were I was getting calls from employers saying you need to, you know, get rid of these tenants. And I was able to give them a 30 day notice or actually a 60 day notice. And and they moved along their way. And if there's if landlords do not have the same rights over their property to do what they need to do to help people move on, if they're not treating the property nicely, then it's going to have the opposite effect. So just want to I think it's in everybody's best interest to keep, you know, property is a is a fundamental right and and I and it makes sense for landlords to keep their properties nice because they earn more money. So the slumlords, you know, nobody's for them. And, and, and I think we have the laws in place to have them move along their way. But I also feel that 90% or 99% of the people who will be affected by this are not the slumlords. It's everybody who's trying to do a good job trying to provide nice housing to the community. And I think those are the people who will be adversely affected. So thank you. Thank you. Your next speaker, please. Good evening, mayor and council members. I wasn't planning on speaking tonight, but I did want to reiterate that on behalf of the Apartment Association. It's a pleasure for us to work with. You, Mayor, and the council members meeting with you and having an open dialog. We're very supportive of the ordinance, were supportive of future endeavors where we can collaborate together with housing Long Beach if the opportunity arises and Josh and everybody else can get along with me and everybody else in the apartment association side. But I think the open dialog that we've at least initiated is a first start. I want to commend Councilwoman Lina Gonzales for adding the motions that she did. I think strengthen the ordinance is very important. The apartment association's behind that 100%. We don't want to have slumlords in our city. I don't think anybody else does either. So I appreciate what you all are doing and concur that we move his audience forward tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Josh Butler, executive director of housing Long Beach. And in a rare moment here, I'm going to just concur with Mr. Murchison and say that we look forward to working with him and the apartment association as well, and thank the council for strengthening this ordinance. I think we have work to do, but this is a really good start and thank you all very much. That is a very rare moment, but I like these moments. Okay. I'm going to go back to Councilman Gonzales and we're going to go for a vote. Public speaking is closed. Councilman Gonzales. I just want to clarify where this is, proactive rental housing inspection. And so I know we took up discussing rent escrow. So city staff. Real quick, just to clarify, can you go over that just a bit as to just real quickly as to what we're doing now versus what was mentioned with. Few Councils Council meetings back. So we provided an. Analysis of a program and what. Other cities do in terms. Of proactive code enforcement. And it was our conclusion that most cities in the state of California, with the exception of Los Angeles, rely on the proactive rental housing inspection programs to resolve the majority of their issues. We did do a cost analysis of the cost of a rent escrow account, and staff felt that it was very prohibitive . We presented to the City Council just the proactive rental housing inspection program to codify our existing requirements under state law and then actually to augment those state requirements with local mandates that you, as the City Council directed us and approved a couple of weeks ago. Do you want to go into more of this? Thank you. And I just want to clarify, you know, this ordinance that we're taking up as its first hearing is a proactive, proactive rental housing inspection. And so the added amendments will be for the worst of the worst landlords. And I think we can all agree here, we don't want slumlords in our in our city. And so both the apartment association housing Long Beach many other on the renter side on the property owners side we all want the same thing and I'll continue reiterating that is that these protections are after, I should say these amendments are for the worst of the worst. And so I just need to say that once again so we can really understand that. So thank you very much. Yes, ma'am. You are correct. As I said, this codifies state law. But but locally we are adding to the basic standards under state law to reflect the local needs. And so we do believe it goes far beyond what state law requires. You're correct. Thank you, Councilmember Andrews. Yes, thank you. I'm here. I also like to echo that sentiments with that councilwoman. But also, Mr. Murchison, I really want to thank you for working with us and your organization, because we know that the percentage of the slumlords are very, very, you know, few because we have so many other, you know, land owners, you know, and they they are working to make sure that we live in a safe and clean environment. And I really want to applaud every one of you, you know, home owners, land owners, to let people know that they do have that right. And this is why I think that you do such a good job. But those ones, you really have that compassion for the ones who stand in your on your property. Thank you, all of you, again, for working with us. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Motion carry seven zero. Thank you. We're now going to go ahead and go back to the regular agenda. So I think we're on item 12.

A bill for an ordinance designating the second Monday of October of each year as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Approves an ordinance designating the second Monday of October of each year as Indigenous Peoples Day. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 9-14-16.

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Assess Clean Energy within Denver. 797 Bill for an ordinance for any post contract between city and County of Denver. State of Colorado Department of Agriculture to purchase 300 Self Technology Court in Broomfield. From Safety, housing, education and homelessness. 801 April for Gordon's Disney in the second Monday of October each year as indigenous people stay great. Councilmember Is this your last opportunity to call out an item? Council on an assessment. Will you please make the motions for us this evening? I'd be happy to, Mr. President. Right now I'll do a recap. Under resolutions, we have Council Bill 72, 73, 79. All for a comment from Councilman Flynn. Resolution 778 called out by Councilman Herndon for a comment. No bills for introductions. Call it out. There will be one or two bills on final court out for a vote by Councilwoman Ortega. 757 758 And there is no pending called out, I believe. That said, I live down the road. Make sure any other. Okay. Resolution. Okay. Thank you. So, Councilman Flynn, do you mind if we pull up? 72, 87, three.

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an Overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2016 Budget for the following: Harbor Department; Water Department.

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Thank you very much. Okay. So we are now going to go into our budget presentation or budget item and. I'm going to turn this over to. Mr. West. And obviously we're all mindful of what has to get done tonight still. So let's just try to. Be, as you know. Let's get on with it. How about that, Mr. West? Yes, Mayor. Council members. Can we get to the first line? So what we're planning to do tonight, we have two departments here. We have public works is going to go first, then Parks, Recreation and Marine. Each of their presentations should be under 10 minutes. And what we want to do is we tie these to police and fire in. Our public safety continuum. We've talked about this in the past. Parks, recreation, Marine play a. Large role in the public safety of our community, providing activities. Opportunities for youth to be busy. Opportunities to have open space in our and in our areas for seniors and everyone else. Public Works, of course. Plays a huge role in our. Community, in keeping our infrastructure looking good, also eliminating graffiti and just keeping a calm demeanor. And having our city look. Good and things like that. So again, I just want to highlight that both of these departments play a. Large role in helping police and fire keep our community safe. Our Malloy and our public works director is going to go first. Thank you, Mr. West. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to provide a brief overview of the Public Works Department's Fiscal Year six proposed budget. During the city manager's presentation last week, he provided the public safety continuum. I have included how Public Works coordinates with other departments on supporting the strategy. The regularly scheduled meetings, which each of you have, has been invaluable to maintain constant communication and ensure were on the track with service delivery. In addition, I would like to thank the city manager and staff for day to day support to deliver quality programs and CIP projects. Finally, I take pride in our 442 employees. These are the silent heroes who are working diligently every day to maintain and enhance the city's infrastructure and environment for the benefit of the public. In order to maintain a structurally balanced operating budget, we focus on our key services. Although our four bureaus have very diverse functions related to quality of life and safety issues for residents, businesses and visitors. Our key services include provide for and maintain safe and adequate infrastructure for the community, provide for sustainable environmental protection and a positive service environment and safely and efficiently design, construct, deliver, protect, and maintain services for public facilities , public ride away and stormwater management. This includes building and roadway design and construction, infrastructure maintenance, refuse and recycling and stormwater management. It is through the performance of our valued employees that we envision a better tomorrow by serving and exceeding the expectation of the public. Our department is a critical component in the public safety continuum. Public Works addresses the more manageable issues such as litter pickup and graffiti to prevent blight when called upon. Our staff is trained to respond quickly with the necessary equipment. Our notable example of our safety and emergency response services are the recent Southern California Edison power outages. Public Works was one of the main responders to to support the city's EOC and field operations. Our dedicated staff worked around the clock to support the city. As a follow up to the mayor's budget message, Clean Streets team will remove litter and perform other clean up activities along major streets, such as pick up and dump. Pick up dumped items. Finally, our graffiti program removed 95,000 square feet of graffiti with 98% of a service request completed within 24 hours. In addition to supporting city's public safety continuum, fiscal year 15 has been a very productive year for public works, with the ongoing and one time funding provided by you, the City Council Public Works shortly staffing accomplishments include constructing 86 million in capital improvement projects, including airport library parks, public facilities, streetlight storm drains, streetscape streets, sidewalks and traffic improvements, completing 9.3 million and arterial street repairs 4.5 million and sidewalk repairs and 9.2 million residential street repairs. This includes 55 miles for major than residential streets and 15 miles of sidewalk repairs, repairing 42,000 potholes, trimming 25,000 trees, removing 200 tree stumps, replacing 9000 traffic signs and 700 street named signs. Repainting, repainting 19 miles of red curbs and re striping 40% of miles of streets. Continuing on our accomplishments, we have collected 183,000 tons of trash from 117,000 residents and commercial accounts responding to 2200 facility, 9000 traffic signals and signs and 12,000 Long Beach requests for service. Mobility programs continue to be a significant focus for the department. One of our recent events in the successful beach streets uptown that saw an estimated 30,000 attendees completing the Class One Beach pedestrian path, as well as Class three bike lanes on chestnut and orange. Finally, the department is currently in design on an estimated 38 miles of bike boulevards and lane miles for construction planned through fiscal year 16 through 19. Public works is nearly $140 million budget includes nine funds. I'll briefly mention a few key funds as shown on the pie chart, starting at the right side and going clockwise. Refuge and Recycling Fund is for refuge collection and contract recycling Operation Waste Diversion Programs as well as litter free Long Beach program. Public Works General Fund totals 35,000,009% of city's total general fund budget. The department's general fund expense is offset by 23 million from various revenue sources, including parking citations, permit fees and parking meters. The Civic Center Fund is for the Civic Center's ongoing maintenance and operation. This includes custodial and parking operations. Gas stock, street improvements, funds or moneys received from the state for right of way improvements in addition to capital funds also support eligible general fund street related programs such as street sweeping traffic signals and street signs. Finally, the transportation fund or monies received from the county for transportation purposes. This includes Prop A, Prop C and Measure R. Fiscal Year 16. Major changes continues to the city's focus on the importance of stormwater environment. As you know, the city is mandated to comply with Clean Water Act guidelines through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. The fines resulting from noncompliance of NYPD's permit can range from 5000 to 10000 per day. The 600,000 is a non-recurring general fund, and 233,000 is a non-recurring title, and funds will cover the required cost associated with permit compliance. The fiscal year 16 proposed budget includes transferring the Asset Management Bureau to the Economic and Property Development Department. There is a net zero citywide impact associated with this item. Lastly, positions were included in that to enhance our extensive parking operation, as well as providing clean up support for homeless belongings. In fiscal year 16. The significant issues and opportunities facing public works include implementing the street, sweeping optimization efficiencies to relieve congestion and parking, impacted neighborhood and improve efficiencies of service. We look forward to working on the first street sweeping routing in 30 years. We plan to start implementation at the end of the calendar year. Significant strides have been made in the last year to address the city's aging infrastructure with additional nonrecurring funds. However, it is not anticipated that these non-recurring funds will be available at that level in the near future. Aging infrastructure is a constant issue facing our city. The mayor requested that we include the topic of our infrastructure assessment and backlog of project as an item to be discussed in the further and further details at the September 12 City Council retreat. As one of the highlighted items in mayor's presentation, the department is continuing the effort to improve efficiency and the city's 30,000 streetlights system, including the installation of LCD lighting to achieve an energy and maintenance cost savings starting this year. Smart parking meters were installed in Belmont Shore, downtown and the pike. The miners are capable of accepting credit card payments and provide the first 5 minutes of parking free. One of the benefits of having the new sensor technology is the planned future app for drivers to identify open parking spaces. A major assessment of city stormwater pump stations, which focuses on the condition and capacity is anticipated to be completed in fiscal year 16. This will result in several budget recommendations for capital improvements in fiscal year 17 for a 23 storm rain pump stations. The pump stations are approximately 60 years old and serve as 380 miles of active stormwater infrastructure, including pipes, open channels, ditches, culverts and drains. The Traffic Signal Assessment Audit will be performed to ensure that signals have the requisite timing sheet and implemented process. So as new signals are added, that timed in compliance with best management practices as met as mentioned earlier in the presentation. Department will continue to focus on citywide mobility programs. This include initiating construction on 38 miles of bike boulevards and lanes. In addition, we're currently working on the full deployment of the city's bike share. That includes 50 stations and 500 bikes. Full launch is anticipated to take place in fiscal year 16. Finally of 16 includes a restructuring of refuse rates based on a study conducted by an outside firm to better reflect the full cost of service. These rates will be presented for City Council approval and will be subject to the public noticing and hearing requirements. In closing, public works school is to continue to provide as many of these essential services seamlessly. To put the level of service in perspective. The department's inventory includes 130 bike lane miles, 11 different share locations, 850 miles of streets, 250 miles of alleys, 1160 miles of sidewalks, 1500 miles of curb and gutter, over 400 public buildings, 147 bridges, 180 miles of storm drains, 23 pump stations, 3800 catch basin, 100 street, 100,000 street trees. 48,900 street signs, 580 traffic signals over 2500 parking meters and 117,000 refuse and recycling accounts. Thank you for your support in the past and I look forward to working with each one of you going forward. The Parks, Recreation and Marine Department presentation will follow. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present to you the Department of Parks, Recreation and Maureen's fiscal year 2016 proposed budget. This budget provides the resources that not only help our city to be recognized as a national leader in parks and recreation services. But even more importantly, it provides us the opportunity to have a positive daily impact on the Long Beach community. As you know, the department is a large and dynamic organization. The following slide provides a high level overview of our services. We provide recreational opportunities to meet the diverse needs of the community. We provide for quality maintenance of parks, facilities, open spaces, beaches and marinas to promote an active, healthy lifestyle. We ensure that our marinas and waterway facilities meet both owner and community needs, and we promote responsible pet ownership and work to reduce animal overpopulation. You go too far. One more. Here we go. During the city manager's presentation last week, he discussed the city's public safety continuum operations. And I want to give you a few examples of how the department plays a critical role in Long Beach public safety activities. The department activates the city's youth and teens by providing access to healthy recreation opportunities during the hours that they are out of school and creating a safe environment for positive development and enrichment. The following is a sample of the diverse programing we provide. So we have afterschool programing that is provided daily during the school year at 26 park sites and Fun Day program is provided during the winter, spring and summer breaks. These programs offer everything from homework help to enrichment activities. Each provide each site provides youth the support and mentoring opportunities to increase their academic success. We anticipate over 225,000 visits for youth ages 5 to 12 this year. The Be Safe program provides extended recreation programing at six parks in this city and expands the free programing to include the entire family. We expect over 40,000 visits to these sites this summer. The Youth and Sports Program provides four seasons of sports to over 7000 youth, ages 5 to 12 at 26 parks. And this year, we were able to adapt the program and increase its services to include a pilot program for teens ages 15 and 16, which focuses on good sportsmanship and leadership development through positive play. The department operates ten summer day camp programs for parents looking for custodial supervision, along with engaging activities for kids. These are very popular programs. We've seen a 21% increase in the registration this year over last in our day camps. Teens visit our 14 centers over 15,000 times each year. These sites provide a supervised safe haven for teens afterschool. And during the summer, we have three year round in three summer community pools that provide swim lessons and recreational swim opportunities to over 225,000 participants. And our nine week summer food program provides approximately 125,000 free meals each year to youth ages 1 to 18. And just as important, but often overlooked, is that each year we provide hundreds of area teens and young adults their introduction to the workforce through volunteer and employment opportunities in our park programs. Moving on. Our beach maintenance operation works tirelessly year round to protect our coastline. During the two recent power outages, the department stepped up as it would during any natural disaster or emergency response situation, and in both events established an emergency shelter and food, water and ice distribution center at Chavez Park. And our Animal Care Services promotes public safety and the humane treatment of animals through emergency response to animal related incidents 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Over the last year, we responded to over 28,000 calls for service. Very briefly on our accomplishments. The Department continues its best in the nation service models and was once again recognized statewide and nationally for our achievements, including the California Parks and Recreation Society, once again honored us with three awards in 2015. We were named a Playful City USA and the Trust for Public Lands Park Score Index rated Long Beach as the highest ranked city in Southern California and 18th overall nationally. We dedicated three new parks, and we were able to move our Alamitos Bay Marina, rebuild efforts forward with the issuance of Marina revenue bonds, which will help us complete the remaining basins. We further enhanced existing water conservation efforts by eliminating irrigation of our grass medians with potable water. And all of this as we continued strategic investments of one time resources and all of our parks in our park facilities and amenities across all nine city council districts. Another great accomplishment is the demand for our park programing continues to soar. In addition to those programs that I spoke about earlier in the presentation, we also help seniors lead active, socially, enrich lives along with giving them easier access to health and social services. Our department makes contact with area seniors almost 500,000 times a year, and we had 32,000 contract class registrations in the last year taking advantage of our diverse class offerings. These classes are provided by private instructors, which serves as an economic driver for the Long Beach small business community. For fiscal year 16. Our proposed budget totals over $55 million across all funds, with 31 million in the general fund. As you can see from the pie chart, the department also has substantial Marina and Tidelands operating fund budgets to support our activities in the marinas, beaches and waterways. It should be noted that the department does have significant general fund revenue totaling close to $12 million, which helps support our programs. The Fiscal Year 16 budget proposes for just under 450 full time equivalent positions in during our busy summer months. Our total staffing complement grows to close to 800 people. And I'd like to point out that the department continues to work hard to identify other outside funding to help sustain our park system. The Department is extremely pleased with the continued investment in our services identified in this proposed budget. This will allow us to continue all of the services and programs that the community depends on. This slide highlights some of our budget changes for FY 16. Resources have been increased fully offset by new license revenue for the implementation of the mandatory spay and neuter program. This will help us to further our efforts to reduce pounds. We will consolidate staffing at Eldorado, East Regional Park and the Eldorado Nature Center into a one campus model. Not only will this improve the oversight of the operation of this large and unique natural resource, but also will provide a savings to the general fund. Various changes will be implemented to gain operational efficiencies and budget savings in the Tidelands Fund, including reorganizing the Marine and maintenance operations bureaus to be more responsive to our customers needs. And we will utilize nonrecurring funds to assist us in the conversion to drought tolerant landscaping in our medians. Yeah. The Department's his great opportunity and continuing our efforts to seek partnerships with the community, to improve our service offerings. Our relationship with the Long Beach Unified School District has allowed us for the sharing of resources to provide a broader scope of services to the community. For example, new aquatic programing is offered this summer by the department at the new Cabrillo High School Pool, which enhances our programing already offered at Jordan and Millikan High School Pools. The department has once again teamed up with the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau to develop the 100 days of summer to help promote city recreational opportunities and the successful placement of thousands of impounded animals. Every year is dependent upon the many wonderful community partnerships that our Animal Care Services Bureau has been able to develop and nurture. We will further strengthen our community engagement and access to information through use of technology, including greater use of social media. We are going to be formalizing a turf in urban forest management plan to provide a road map for ongoing maintenance requirements, investments and conservation efforts. We will continue working in collaboration with the Department of Public Works to carry out our strategic investments in our parks and facilities. And we will continue our efforts to provide innovative new programs to meet evolving needs in the community. Honorable Mayor and members of the city council. We have a large park system with over 160 parks, 3000 acres, 26 community centers, dozens of athletic fields, 67 tennis courts, five golf courses, 54 playgrounds and three pools and three marinas. Our opportunities are many. Through all of these facilities and our programs, we have made millions of positive contacts with the Long Beach community each year. Your continued investment in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department has been essential to our ability to meet the needs of the Long Beach community. We thank you for your continued support and this concludes my presentation. Thank you and thank you both for the presentation. Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. I'm going to keep this brief, but you guys have worked so hard, I think it's worthy of a few comments for the investment that you've put into the presentation. So thank you. First of all, thanks to both of you for your reports. I think when you do the little the brag sheet at the end of both of your presentation, it really highlights. For those of us who are often very concerned about the projects in our own district, it puts into context what you're working on when you're not meeting with us individually. So it's really I appreciate you doing that because as Ara was articulating all the great things that his department does for the city, I was thinking, Huh, maybe that's why our projects aren't always at the top, at the forefront of his mind, even though I know they are. You always make it seem like they are. But you guys are really doing a lot, a lot citywide. You really are. So I appreciate that. And and, Mr. Scott, you are doing a phenomenal job in your new position. You're just you're doing a great job. And I really appreciate the collaboration, the creativity that bringing everyone to the table. You're just you're doing a wonderful job. So thank you for that. Just a couple of questions that I had or observations that I wanted to make in regards to public works. I think one of the things that you mentioned and I would like this to remain a citywide priority is for us to figure out how to keep maintenance of our city facilities and assets on the forefront of our minds at budgeting times. Because I think sometimes we, we neglect to adequately fund those reoccurring. Obligations of the city. So I think, you know, moving forward, I'll be looking for opportunities where we can make maintenance a priority for us for future budget years. To the extent possible, I think that's very important in regards to Parks Rec and Marine. You know, I think that there's there's one thing you mentioned in your PowerPoint that I think some councilmembers, most councilmembers are probably aware of, but having lived it for the last year, the Cosign Protection program that PRM engages in, it's really unbelievable the amount of work and resources that go into that program. And I think most of my colleagues and probably most of the residents of the city don't know or can't appreciate how hard your team works on that and how important that services. It takes them two weeks to build up a berm in anticipation of a storm, and they build up that berm in order to protect the homes on the peninsula from flooding. And the reason that they have to do that is because we have such severe erosion problems at that end of the city that those homes are constantly at risk and those citizens are constantly at risk. In fact, last year alone, we had several incidents where our team did such an amazing job working around the clock, building up the berms that our our beaches were safe and SEAL Beach got flooded. And that, to me, really is an important part of your department that sometimes goes unnoticed because it really only impacts certain parts of the city. I think it's important to point out that they are protecting the health and safety of those residents every single day. We did have a presentation earlier today regarding the municipal band, and I know it wasn't covered in your budget, but I'm assuming that you were here when I made some of the comments that I made. And if we were, you know, I realize that they've they've done some fundraising, but if we were to consider a six week , it's very important to me that the colleagues on council who wish to have some music from the municipal band or some sort of entertainment from the musical municipal band in their district, maybe a modified version of what the municipal band currently does citywide, maybe something that's a little more specific to their constituents that that opportunity might be a possibility for the six week if we were to do a six week. Do you think that's even feasible? I think certainly, Councilwoman, that it would be feasible. In fact, we had a program probably five or six years ago, which was a summer concert band season, which was above and beyond the municipal band season. And so we had concerts in the council districts that did not have the municipal band events within their district. So we've definitely done it before and you know, can certainly look at doing it in the future. So if we were to add a six week, that's something that we could consider maybe doing something on the West Side, for example, and tailor made for whatever if if the residents of that district wanted it tailor made for that district to some to some extent, obviously. Okay. And then one of the biggest issues we have is enforcement of our ordinances regarding animal control and responsibilities of pet owners. What would it cost if you know and if you don't, we can talk about this offline, but to add an additional enforcement officer for animal care services to help enforce things such as dog waste issues that occur throughout the city. You know, I don't have the fully loaded costs in front of me, but we can certainly provide that to you. Okay, that sounds good. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I, too, want to appreciate our our department heads who worked so diligently on both of these reports. I believe that our streets, our sidewalks, our potholes, these are the things that are most crucial to our quality of life. They allow neighbors to get to and from their jobs to and from their children's schools and to and from the places where they spend money right here in the city of Long Beach. So thank you. I really appreciate the extensive amount of work that has been done this year in graffiti removal around the parks. I know that in the fifth District we have a lot of parks and graffiti removal is a an indicator when we are able to clean it up quickly, it's it's a sign to those individuals that it will not be tolerated here and that that kind of behavior is not okay. And so I really appreciate the work that you've done on that. I know that there's some talk about the Be Safe program separate and apart from the one time funds. What is the Be Safe program? Ongoing budget. Well, the Be Safe program has been funded annually through the council office. One time funds for the proposal for FY 16. Through the mayor's recommendations, there's $186,000 identified. We look at about a $21,000 budget per site. And so working that for that could be six, seven or eight different sites. But there is no structural funding for the B save program. Thank you. And within the. $21,000 per site. That is the primary summer enforcement. Or is it weekends in the fall as well? You know. The $21,000 is for a ten week program throughout the summer. And this is for extended recreation hours at for this year six park community centers. Thank you. And then I also wanted to think. Our Public Works department on the work that they're doing with relation to our our parking meters and our street sweeping. I know that that has been something that residents have really been excited about. And we appreciate your innovation. Thank you. Councilman Braxton. Yes. I'll be very brief. First of all, I want to thank both departments for your presentations. Very well done. A job well done. And 15. I had a specific question for the public works department. Ah, in terms of the, there were two issues regarding the if significant issues or opportunities moving forward, the traffic signal assessment audit, I'm sure you explained it, but can you give me a little bit more detail on what that actually means and what that is? Absolutely. Councilmember Austin, the audit that I'm proposing is to look at every single traffic signal timing within the city and make sure that the timing is properly documented. And best management practices require that we put those timing sheets one at the center location, one within the cabinet itself, and and one is kept in the files. The reason for that is if there's an outage and somebody has to go out there and if the signal is on a blinking red and they need to readjust or reprogram it, they have the proper timing. It's a it's a purely from a liability perspective for the city. I'm trying to protect the city from any liability that could occur. I'm sure the city attorney can attest to that, that any time there's an accident at any intersection, the first thing that happens is they depose the timing sheets . So I want to make sure that all the timing sheets within the city are absolutely current. They are stamped by a licensed professional engineer and also it's programed into our traffic center. And what would they cost for that? This is no cost. Staff is doing it. Okay. And refuse rate restructuring. What is what is that in reference to? Is that for private? No, sir. I believe our rates have not been adjusted within a decade or so. A finance department has hired a consultant to look at the rates, and we will have a separate meeting to discuss the adjustment of the rates. It has to comply with proper notification and proper, proper meeting. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. And Mr. Scott, I wanted to follow up on Councilmember Mungo's question regarding the BE program. You mentioned that there currently in NY 15 is no structural funding for be safe. Are you saying that there are no there's no structural funding for be safe if why 16 as well? There is not structural funding for the BCC program in the FY16 budget. Okay. I was I'm a little confused there because in the budget presentation that we received last week, it where I was left under the impression that it would be part of a structural. I can clarify that for the budget message and it's written out there. The BC program would move from counselor discretionary accounts to the one time funded amount that's provided in the budget. That's why it's not structured. It's one time with the intention of moving that structurally in the future. That's how it's written out in the in the budget message. So it just essentially moves from council discretionary to being a funded one time dispense of the city's. So instead of being under. The control or. Of the council office, it is. Now the city. Manager. The one time. Budget or the department's one time. Budget. Right. A one time like any other one time expense. But essentially, we're still going to provide the the service. And that's the Internet. Is exactly right. All right. The idea is to, you know, prioritize that as something that's important. It's a citywide importance to focus on these parks and so to move them out of council and make it one time. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilmember Richardson. Thank you. So I want to begin just by thanking both public works and Parks and Recreation, not only on a good presentation, but on really keeping up with the community in terms of our demands. I know that we can be very demanding in terms of making sure that our our facilities are clean and maintained and ultimately being improved. I want to just. Just a few comments. I know that Parks and Recreation, we've got a very exciting year coming up in Parks and Recreation in District nine and that we're going to be taking on a master planning effort of sort of all of the parks in District nine, as well as looking at some more strategic things with with our only regional park in the area, Highland Park. So I wanted to just, you know, chime in and say, hey, I'm really, really excited. I think your budget is your budget is is everything that I've expected. And I look forward to continuing on this pace of improving our open space facilities. I want to I want to just chime in and and ask and ask for an update from Parks and Recreation on whether there's there's a focus on LED light conversion in our parks, similar to the way that we're placing a focus on our business corridors. And secondly, I know there was I know there was a discussion about improving our cameras in the parks. And I would like to just have an update on where we are. Does that program still exist and sort of where are we with that program? Councilmember Richardson, with respect to the LED lights, we are certainly on board with the conversion of our existing lights to LED lighting, where and when we have the available resources for new park facilities. Those will definitely be built into the plans and specifications. And as we're able to convert existing lights and have the funding to do so, we will certainly endeavor to do that. So I guess my question there would be is there some opportunity that we haven't evaluated in terms of exploring, maybe using some of the same resources or incentives that might be out there, whatever approach we're using on the business court or sort of seeing if there's some some crossover in our parks that we can explore, or is that something we can do? Pat, Pat, can you answer that question? Because I don't see why we wouldn't be looking at that. Tom Morello. So we are currently engaged in an effort to replace all of our lights with LED lights, and there are some financing mechanisms available to us. One is rebates from Edison and the other is an on bill financing. We are certainly going to be looking at our parks, at our beach areas, as well as all of our residential and corridor areas too. So if we are able to use those incentives to fund those, we would very much like to do that. So what? So I would my suggestion would be this. If there are and you know, I just stated it, we're going through a very intensive master plan process specifically with Highland Park. And lighting is is an element of that conversation. I would love to see that if we figure out a strategy to go. Leiby We sort of look at areas where we have synergy in our parks, where we're placing a focus on certain things so that we can make sure that's integrated into our master development process. And that's all I have to say there. Do we have any comments on the camera piece? Cameras in the park. Councilmember Richardson, over the last couple of years, we have had a pretty aggressive camera program in our parks. Those have been primarily funded through the council office one time funds. But it's certainly something that we want to continue working with the police department, the council offices and our Department of Technology and Innovation to try to maximize the use of the cameras in the parks and see if there aren't any synergies with some of the other efforts in the business districts and what have you. Thanks. So the last thing I have for parks is just a follow up. I haven't. I haven't. Forgive me. I don't know very much about the Long Beach Municipal Man. I've actually never seen one of their performances. I I've heard that they have tremendous turnout at their concerts. But since we might be talking about that, I'd love to just have more background before we actually vote on the budget in terms of, you know, how much does a municipal band concert cost, where are they held, what is the total budget of our muni band that we invest on an annual basis? And how does that compare to our concerts in the park in terms of where those are distributed, the cost per concert versus a muni band concert? What else is out there? Are we? I know that, you know, since we don't have a large concert in the district four years ago we started our Latin Jazz and Blues Festival and took a few years to get added to the city's concerts in the Park series. But I'd like to just get a whole picture on how equitable, how equitable we invest in entertainment in the parks, so that if we talk about expanding, we have an honest conversation about what we're doing. So that would be my request there on public works. I just want to say that, you know, there's a lot of excitement around, you know, you know, regional attention on Artesia Boulevard and Capital. And we talked about that. And I think that we've really I think we've met expectations this year in terms of our maintenance needs. We I think they're timely. I think we have a department is very responsive. But would you say our that we're in a best position in terms of staffing to carry out all of the infrastructure requests and needs that the council and the city requires of or requests of your of your office in terms of, you know, actually carrying out projects. How how where would you say you are in terms of staffing for project maintenance management? Councilmember Richardson That's a great question. As every department is being challenged by retirement of baby boomers, we have we're facing the same exodus of our our senior management or senior engineers. We're in that phase of recruiting. So I'm confident by the end of this calendar year, we'll be fully staffed. We lost a lot of individuals with a lot of institutional knowledge to retirement that that was the time that I guess they reached at that point in their lives that they need to retire. So I have to say, we're in that transition period that we're going from retirements and vacancies to filling them, and we're very aggressively doing that and hopefully within the next two or three months will complete that process and will be fully staffed to accept any challenges that the council officers are giving us. In addition to, we could utilize consultants, as we do now, on a project by project basis. Great. So I'm very pleased to hear that. And I personally, I've seen that you've got some superstars in your department who already you know, you I don't want to name names, but they're really taking it to these projects. I would just like to just say that if for some reason the staffing issue somehow becomes a problem, that we somehow prioritize projects that place a focus on projects where we have like imminent funding mechanisms that that, you know. That might be available from external resources. We sort of place a great a tremendous focus on those because I would hate for any opportunities that we have coming up that we miss out on those because we're not necessarily prepared. But I have the utmost confidence in your department. And so, once again, thank you to both departments and those are my comments on the budget. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes. I just want to thank you both as well. And I won't say I'll be brief, because everyone said that before and they weren't brief, though. I'm just getting I just want to get very much. Thank you both for this. These presentations. I have a couple questions. I'll first start with Public Works, so I know that we are converting to LSD, which everyone's talking about. I'm glad that Councilman Richardson brought that point forward about our parks, but I also have a concern with our alleys, our courts in a ways and lighting those. And I know, although it might pose kind of an issue because there's private property there. But I know I believe we had a program in place through neighborhood services where property owners can get a rebate of some sort. So is that something we can look into? I would love to peruse that again to see if there's an opportunity for that. As we're looking at lighting in general. I absolutely will take a look at that. Currently, we do have a program that if there are existing Edison Poles, but there are no streetlights and for 20 $500, we can install one single light if if the Edison has the capacity and and it's willing to do that. So we have that cooperation and collaboration with Edison. We can provide that service for areas that are dark. Also, we suggest that if people want to add additional lighting on their backyards to their walls and if they want to use LCD lighting, they can do that at any time without any any additional interaction with the city. But if they want something to be installed within the public right away, these are the alleys, then we can look at that. Obviously, we cannot install new polls in the alleys that are already congested. We would recommend maybe adding a single arm street light to to those poles and we can collaborate with any resident that wishes to do that. Great. But did we? I believe we had a rebate. Some sort of rebate program. Is that am I getting that correctly? I don't recall that being that in public works, that could be in the Development Services Department. It was. Through development. Services. I believe we can check with them and get back to you. Okay. That would be great. Absolutely. I'd like to look into that a little bit more. Um, okay. Thank you. And then I know for stormwater or storm drains, uh, I know our West Siders have often complained to me and have been very concerned with the storm drain issue on the on the west side. So how do we assess those and determine what is a priority city wide and how we can cast those out and get those fixed? Unfortunately, the storm drain fund is doesn't have any major funding resources. It's this is a true phenomenon with every city in the state of California, and it requires a vote of public to assess any kind of taxation in order to generate revenues, in order to fix those those infrastructures. As far as priority, basically, we have completed we're at 90% of our storm drain pump stations, which is basically the heart of the system. And then we have the arteries, which are their lines. So we want to start with the the main brain and the heart of the system and then get into the piping system. You will see maybe a presentation from me if if you're interested. And in the near future on the pump station conditions, we also have a master plan of our storm drain system which categorizes which pipes are undersized and which pipes need to be completed. It's just a matter of funding. And and we go from there. It's the same issue. Like you bring on any unfunded liability that we have or unfunded project that we have. Okay. Thank you. And I think you just in general for your work on smart meters and our power outage and and putting priority and emphasis on that. Thank you, Ira. And then Stephen for Parkes. I also want to thank you for your presentation as well. I know in the past we've had issues with maintenance of our parks and so are we doing anything different this time? Is there anything we're looking at? In a different light as far as quality and maintenance of our parks. Thank you for the question, Councilwoman. Yeah, I think there there has been an instance in the past where we had a contract situation where the contractor was not living up to the expectations of the city and the community. We did take steps very quickly in that particular situation to resolve that issue and use that as an opportunity to really improve our contract management capabilities. We have a new management team in our Maintenance Operations Bureau that is experienced and professionals in the industry. And so we definitely look forward to continued improvements in our maintenance operations and we're going to continue to look for opportunities to improve our maintenance of all of our parks and facilities. Okay. Great. Thank you. And I'll just comment as well that the Be Safe program although not structural, it's I'm I'm glad that the mayor has recommended a citywide approach because it's been so very impactful for the first district and your park staff is tremendous. I know we just had an event with the chief this past Saturday. It was so very positive for our community. So I have to thank you all for for doing that and staying committed to that. And then the security cameras I know you'd mentioned this, but just so my colleagues can know, I paid for that out of my discretionary funds, about $100,000 for 18 cameras. I'm working with tech services, parks and the police department. So it's proved to be very another very impactful point in our and our district. So thank you all. Appreciate it. Councilman Randers is thinking here. Now, it's a little after 12. I think we're trying to set another record, and I still want to be a part of that. So if you just bear with me another hour and a half from now, we'll get that done. And first of all, I'd just like to thank Bo Parks and. Public works for the fine work, both of the individuals done. Steve, I know you came on at the end, but your staff has been just tremendous, especially work with me in the sixth District. You know, I can't really tell them enough how much you guys have put into those parks that we have there. And and it's just one thing I'd really like to ask you. You know, I used the slogan, you know, keeping that little you know, keeping the kids busy is very important to me. And and you mentioned about the new team sports program. And I would like for you to tell me a little bit more about, you know, that pilot program that you have. Councilmember Andrews This is a program that we're very excited about as we were evaluating our youth sports program. Taking a look at what was working, what was were wasn't working. We noticed that we had essentially a gap in service. We weren't addressing the teens. We didn't have a sports program for the 15, 16 year olds. We had the youth sports program, which got us up to 12, but there was nothing beyond that. And, you know, high school sports are very competitive. There are limited spots. Organized leagues can also be very expensive. So we wanted to take the opportunity to use some of our existing resources to build a teen sports program that helped address that gap in service. And so we're in our first season right now. We have a six team basketball league. It's a six week program, and we really look forward to positive results from that program. Thank you. Thank you very much. And good public works or I don't need to say anything, but I just want to thank you and your staff for doing just such a wonderful job. It's just one question I have to ask. And and what is the estimate number of, you know, graffiti tags removed each year and. Honorable Andrews. Thank you. That's that's a great question. Yesterday, when I did the presentation, I mentioned 950,000 square feet of graffiti was removed. That kind of equates to about 75,000 tags. Each side could have a different square footage that gets cleaned. Thank you very much. And I'd like to thank both of you. Parks and I, you know, Public Square, you guys have done a great job. Thank you again. I'm not through because I have another hour to go, but I'll just pass it over to someone else. Thank you. Then a few other folks have a couple hours, so it's a long pause. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to thank both of you for the presentation and your patience. For waiting for us the entire night. So thank you. And I only have one question. Not an hour's worth. Just one question with the Park Patrol program, Mr. Scott. What? What is what's next for us? We have it. We have the pilot at the Bixby Park as well as in the six districts. Correct. Councilmember Field. So what would be next? Vice Mayor Lowenthal. You're correct. We had a pilot program both at Bixby Park and Shattuck Field. It's a park patrol program so different than the traditional park ranger program. These are actually recreation employees that are patrolling the park, making positive interaction and engagement with our park patrons, and then notifying the police department of any serious public safety concerns. But as you did mention, this was and is a pilot program. It was not funded in 2001. What we used were essentially salary savings from a vacant position to be able to pay for that. Looking forward in 2016, we do not have structural funding identified for the Park Patrol program at either location. And so, you know, that's something that's going to need to be addressed as we look forward. In fact, there is not structural funding to sustain the program. So when we had this conversation during the last cycle, one of the aspects of the program was an evaluation. We did commit to an evaluation, I believe. And so I'd like to know how the department will do that. Or is it already in your plan to do that? Because it wasn't intended just to have a pilot program and then it goes away. It's to evaluate it so that we can make some reference to what might be required at the parks. That's correct. Correct. Vice Mayor. We are actually in the process of completing the evaluation. We're basically about 12 months into the program. It started, I think, last August. So our team and our Community Recreation Services Bureau are completing that evaluation and we'll be providing that in a very shortly. And in that evaluation, will you be able to articulate how much it would cost, for instance, per park, to continue a program like that or to continue it at whatever recommended level you might suggest? Yes, we could do that. Okay. I would appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. And Councilor Rose Hooper not. Thank you and good morning, gentlemen. I have just two questions. One for each group. For Parks and Rec on page 17. And it's under the heading of major changes. And that's the only reason I'm asking about it is is consolidated staffing in El Dorado East in the El Dorado Nature Center into one campus. At the end of the day, are there more or less budgeted positions at the Nature Center? Specifically at the Nature Center. It will be the same. It will be the same. Really what we're doing here is we're essentially just providing a higher level of supervision for the entire Eldorado campus. But we will have the same level of staffing. Okay. Thank you. And for on on on page ten, under the significant issues for public works, the storm water pump station assessment. So I'm as I'm hearing it, that we don't have a budget for any work on these, but I just like to document that. Station number nine at Atherton and the loss through this channel, it's the terminus of the former Atherton Ditch. The pump station is great, electric is all great, but the four bay loads up with about 18 inches of water continually. So I guess there's a sump pump that doesn't work. So I guess we're saying that we probably don't have the funding to repair that at this time. That's correct. We have funding in the budget right now to take care of more imminent issues in pump stations that are in a higher need. We usually tackle about one or two pump stations per year. But what I was alluding to is a comprehensive and comprehensive analysis that will give us the priority of every pump station and what needs to be done. We did a complete analysis of every pump station and investigated the electrical system, their scatter system, the four bays and all that. We tested pumps and we have a full engineering report that also indicates, you know, can they be an emergency generator or plugged in? Some of our pump stations are so old that we cannot just in case of a blackout, we cannot just attach a generator to run it. We have to go physically run, you know, wires. So which I'm trying to make it in a way that it could be easily plugged in or be ready for the generators. So it's more of for emergency response for all aspects of service. So that is being done. It's being put in a priority list and the funding that is needed. Okay. So it's a full blown CIP for pump stations. Okay, great. And to echo my colleague's comments, you guys are both doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you. And good morning to you also. Do you think you are facing. Just briefly to follow back up with Mr. Scott in the evaluation that you had mentioned that you are working on, it's going to be critical for council to have that so that they can work that into their budget conversations. Councilmember Price and I are having our community budget meeting tomorrow at Bixby Park. It will come up and so. I need to know a timeline and I need that timeline to be before council finishes its deliberations so that we can be informed by it. They did it for me. We will be able to provide. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for the hard work and for enjoying the morning with us. Moving on. Any public comment on the budget? So is a budget hearing. Seen a public comment on the budget. So now moving on to item number 23. Thank you, guys. Yes. Item 23 on the regular agenda.

A bill for an ordinance amending the local open meetings laws to authorize electronic participation and electronic meeting methods during emergencies and making other conforming amendments. Modernizes open meeting laws to allow for use of emerging technology. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 5-18-21.

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No items have been called out under bills for introduction. No items have been called out under bills for final consideration. Council member Sawyer has called out Council Bill 20 1-0572 for a vote. And Council Member Sandoval has called out Council Bill 20 1-0592 for a vote and under pending no items have been called out. And a quick reminder for folks as we're speaking, it's easier for Alejandro to translate for us, especially as we're reading numbers if we slow down a little bit. And so just putting that reminder out there for both myself and my colleagues. And our first item up is Council Bill 572. Councilmember Ortega, would you please put Council Bill 21, Dash 057 to on the floor for final passage? And I'm proud that I moved that council bill 20 1-057 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Council Member Sawyer. Your motion to postpone, please. I move that final consideration of Council Bill 20 1-057 to be postponed to Monday, June 28th, 2021. Q It has been moved and we got the second. There are questions or comments by members of Council. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Madam President. This is the ordinance that is going to allow us to have remote meetings and hybrid meetings. And so because of the way it's written, we need to just delay it a couple of weeks so that we can ensure that the build out of the chambers is done. Like you mentioned earlier, we're almost there. It's just a couple of less tweaks that need to get done to make sure the user experience is the best that it possibly can be. So we're just going to need a couple of weeks to post this. Thank you. Madam Secretary, roll call on the postponement. Sawyer, I. Torres. I. Black I. CdeBaca, I. Clark. Right. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Hi. I. Cashmere high. Can I? Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. 13 eyes. 13 Eyes. Final Consideration of Council Bill. 20 1-057 to has been postponed to Monday, June 28. The next item up is Council Bill five nine to Council Member Ortega. Will you please put Council Bill 20 1-0592 on the floor for final passage?

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record and adopt findings in response to the March 24, 2015 decision of the City Council to sustain the appeals from Laurie Angel and Chuck Fowler, overturning the January 15, 2015 decision of the Planning Commission to accept a Categorical Exemption (CE 14-114), and approve a Conditional Use Permit (Application No. 1409-13) to allow the sale of beer and wine for off-site consumption at an existing gas station convenience store located at 5740 Atlantic Avenue in the Commercial Neighborhood Pedestrian (CNP) zoning district. (District 8)

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Motion passed on item number 13 seven zero. Item number 14 Report from Development Services Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record and adopt the finding to sustain the appeals from Lorri, Andrew and Chuck Fowler, overturning the decision of the Planning Commission to accept a categorical exemption and approved as an approved ACP to allow the sale of beer and wine for offsite consumption at 5740 Atlantic Avenue District eight. When I see we have a first and a second. Is there any comment on the idea? Anyone I speak for monetizes it. Get me started. So I'd just like to. To recommend approval of this. We we talked about this issue. It pretty we debated it pretty, pretty thoroughly a few weeks ago when it came before the council. I think it makes good sense for, uh, for the Long Beach community to approve this recommendation. Thank you. Anyone coming from the diocese, if not, won't take a vote. I just want to make sure that the motion includes approval of the findings that have been prepared by staff that are included in your packet. And the findings are what have been revised to support the approval of the appeal. It started. So moved. Okay. Can we take a vote now, please? Did you hear public comment? Yes, I. Okay. Okay. I'm aware of it. Motion passes seven zero. Item number 15 Report from Financial Management and Parks, Recreation and Marine recommendation to adopt a resolution authorizing the issuance of a marine revenue bond in aggregate amount not to exceed $125 million. District three.

AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending sections 6-206 and 24-508, Denver Revised Municipal Code regarding the hours of operation of retail marijuana stores and medical marijuana centers. Allows licensed marijuana stores to remain open until 10:00 pm. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 4-3-17. Amended 4-17-17 to clearly communicate to the public and to the marijuana industry the first date upon which any retail marijuana store or medical marijuana center may remain open until 10:00 p.m. will be Monday, May 1.

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Yep. 12 eyes can smell. 263 has passed. Congratulations. Thank you. Councilman, who will you please put council bill 324 on the floor? I will do. Thank you, Mr. President. I'll move the council. Bill 324 be order published as amended. Oh, just. I just ordered published. I'm sorry. Order published. Move the council bill 324 be order published. That's right. Sorry. It has been moved. No problem. It has been moved in second. Councilwoman Black, will you go ahead and offer your amendment, which will notify business owners when the change in hours would take place in the event this bill passes? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 324. Mr. Nutter, I moved the Council Bill 324 be amended in the following particulars on page one, line 28 at the following language. Section three. This ordinance shall be effective Monday, May 1st, 2017. It has been moved in. Second, it comments by members of Council. Councilman Black. According to the city charter, a newly adopted city ordinance is effective upon final publication unless a definite effective date is provided in the ordinance. Sometimes there is public confusion about when final publication of a bill actually occurs. The purpose of the amendment is to clearly communicate to the public and to the marijuana industry the first date upon which any retail marijuana store or medical marijuana center may remain open until 10 p.m. will be Monday, May 1st. Okay. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye. Clark Espinosa I. Gilmore Herndon Cashman can eat. Lopez All right. New Ortega. My assessment. Mr. President. I have already announced results. 12 eyes. 12 eyes, Constable. 324 has been amended now. Councilman Ortega. Would you like to speak on your proposal that you want to offer in the next week? Yes, I would. And I am introducing it so that people can have the opportunity to speak to it tonight. Although it will formally be brought forward until next Monday. So basically what I am working on is in our city attorney will have some language to me this week that I will get out to all of you. So applications would automatically be approved to the new time of 10:00, except those that are awaiting a license, that have made an application to the city and awaiting demonstration, or to show them to demonstrate that they are in compliance. And in addition to that, those that are going through the show cause process, unless and until the application is granted in accordance with all applicable laws or the disciplinary action has been resolved. So it would be, again, the pending licenses and those that are going through the show cause process that would not be allowed to automatically extend their hours until they can demonstrate that they're in full compliance. So I will be bringing that forward on Monday night. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Ortega and Councilman Hernan understand that you want to have a conversation about one that you're going to bring next week. Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. And this should serve as no surprise to those because of the emails and phone calls that I've been getting. But the conversation has been solely about whether or not to increase marijuana hours. And as we started to look at the data about the current operating window that we have now, a majority of the dispensaries in the industry aren't even utilizing the full window of an 8 a.m. to a 7 p.m.. So I was considering a proposal to shift the hours so that would be more optimal and efficient where we'll increase the hours on the back end, but we'll also shift the hours on the front end. So that is a conversation that I've had with people within the industry as well as council colleagues, and I will consider bringing that forward in an amendment next week. It seemed more reasonable to discuss all the amendments at once versus one amendment today versus another amendment next Monday. So we'll have the opportunity to discuss multiple amendments next Monday. Thank you, Mr. President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Hernan and Councilwoman Ortega. The one hour courtesy public hearing for Councilman 324 is now open. May we have the staff report? Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. This is a bill that will extend store hours to 10 p.m.. Currently, marijuana stores and medical centers close at 7 p.m., which was an arbitrary time and a holdover from old medical rules. State law allows them to be opened till midnight. The original bill proposed midnight, but after having three committee meetings since January three, public comment period. We'll have another hearing tonight. We heard from I.N.S. that recommended 10 p.m. the committee a compromise to 10 p.m.. So I was really pleased with all of the work that we did and to come up with that compromise. Many of our surrounding jurisdictions have later hours and they have not seen issues related to crime or neighborhood issues. We've heard from Edgewater and Aurora. Again, I'll say that this is a practical matter. We are not adding new locations. The stores are already open. This is about convenience. It might mean increased tax revenue for Denver. Later hours do not contribute to the black market or youth usage. Law abiding citizens of legal age patronize these stores. They are not kids. They are not drug dealers. In fact, by having our legal stores open, we are actually undercutting the black market, which is a good thing and which is one of the reasons many people voted to legalize marijuana. Additionally, open storefronts are a deterrent to crime. Businesses are broken into when businesses are closed, not when they're open. And lastly, a few months ago, the Denver Post editorial board recommended that the city council extend store hours. So I look forward to hearing the public comments. And please also feel free to comment on both Councilman Herndon and Councilwoman Ortega's proposed amendments. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. We have ten people signed up tonight. To all of our surprise. And so I'm going to call the first five speakers up. I think you can come up to the first bitch and then we'll call the next five up. So I will call up John, Eduardo, etc. and use sort of. Hiney, Leslie. Rudolfo Gonzalez. Nick Lovullo. And Tiffany Goldman. Mr. of your first. First, I'd like to thank the council for letting me speak to you about this important issue. I'm here representing said we are saying we support the extension of the hours. We understand that every hour that there's a legal dispensary open is taking time away from the black market and dealers that are actually selling to underage people. We want them to disappear and we want it to be a perfectly legal, legal, regulated industry. And therefore, we support this. Also, one of the very important things to us, two other points is one of them is businesses should decide when they open and they closed, except obviously the 10:00 closing hours for everybody. So we would like to the 2 hours that they're talking about cutting it down the morning, it would allow access for people to work in the afternoons to go early in the morning. So we're opposed to any reduction on the hours from. We want it to be from 8 to 10 because that way people that work in the afternoon can go there in the morning and get their marijuana. And same thing to 10:00. People who work during the days can go and get there. And we believe it's very important for people to have that access. And we very much do believe that dispensaries eliminate the black market. And that's why we're in support of the hours. Thank you, Mr. Kenny. Lesley. Good evening, council members. My name is Hanni Lasley and I'm one of the co-founders and the executive director of Smart, Colorado. As you all know, Smart Colorado formed after the passage of Amendment 64 in 2013 when we legalized and commercialized recreational marijuana for individuals over the age of 21, Smart has thousands of supporters across the state, including hundreds of citizens in Denver. We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that voted both for and against legalization. We formed when Public Health and Safety around Colorado, kids ranked last among our state policymakers. We've also worked closely with Denver City Council and Denver citizen groups. When Denver decided to opt in for commercialization. Our sole purpose is to protect kids from the unintended consequences of marijuana. Smart does not take any state or local tax revenues, and we receive donations from everyday citizens as well as private foundations. We'd first like to thank you for your willingness to examine the ordinance, for taking it down from midnight until 10:00. We do appreciate that very much, because our big concern about this ordinance is twofold. Number one, that it's being considered at the same time as the initiated ordinance 300. Rules and regulations are being rolled out. That is a very large policy shift for this city. And to add another one on top of it does not really allow us to properly vet the impact to our kids. So we would just like to thank you for your consideration around that. And also just the concern that we all know that additional accessibility in alcohol and tobacco do lend to greater youth use. And while we don't have the data yet around marijuana, this is a concern as we're the first to do it. And Denver is really the epicenter. So we'd like you to we first like to thank you again for your consideration on 10:00, but we would ask for your consideration to delay the implementation of this ordinance after we've had a chance to vet the impact of the initiated ordinance 300. And with that, I thank you. Thank you, Miss Leslie. Rodolfo Gonzalez. Okay. Nick Lovullo. You have 3 minutes. Hello, Nicholas, from five points. Councilman Brooks Mayor. Representative, I will say that I'm pretty disappointed after all of these meetings since January and all the input from the city and the best to come out with a three hour extension. I don't know if you didn't look at the data that was presented. We've got law enforcement officers counting on one hand the number of marijuana crimes that have occurred in the last five years. I don't understand the source of that. I don't I'm not even sure how you would arrive at the conclusion that it's a prudent decision to shut off all of the legal avenues for marijuana purchases when the black market is at its most active after 10:00 at night when people are out. I think it's frankly reckless for you to not increase the extended, extended dispensary hours till midnight when we are going to have marijuana clubs and increased people, increased number of people and number of businesses that are offering places to consume. I don't understand how you think it's prudent. I don't think you can even escape that argument. So I would say over the last three months, it was a pretty lousy rally as far as these council committees were going. I would like to submit an amendment. Let me just skip to the end because I'm. I would like to submit an amendment that the dispensaries set their own hours within the timeframe already established by the state. And you guys don't have a say in it, and the state can do whatever it wants. And, you know, this is a battle we don't have to fight every single time. And every single time this comes up, there's always posturing. You know, we always you know, we want to shift the dispensary hours. All we want to, you know, eliminate the dispensaries that just complicate things. It's absurd, you know? And then, you know, the marijuana at the marijuana special committee, we got to hear from Smart Give Smart Colorado a platform at the first of all, they're not even the topic wasn't even germane. Second of all, the prisoner no offense. I mean, I don't know when she's sitting up here and waits in line like him, like me and voices her opinion. But she's not even one of your constituents. She's even live in Denver. I don't even know why that why they were given a platform. All these quotes in The Denver Post that you guys, you know. Well, prohibition doesn't work, but 12 midnight is a nonstarter. So prohibiting sales at 10:00 will work somehow. I'm not sure how that works. Dispensaries are bad neighbors. My residents say, well, I mean, who's poppin who's popping caps off in northeast Denver? Is it the dispensaries? The drive by shooting and the marijuana deal gone bad and sunny side that that that drive by shooting happened at 1145. Maybe if the dispensary was open at midnight, the guy wouldn't have shot up a house. He would have gone shot as a bartender. That'd be something. I mean, we'll never know. It's just at this point, after all of this deliberation, I'm running out of time. But midnight to no brainer. It's not a prudent decision to shut off the legal avenues for emergencies. I was just going to say you ran out of time. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Lovato. All right. Tiffany Goldman. Hello. My name is Tiffany Goldman. I'm in Denver. Accident. I'm here today on behalf of the health center. All of our facilities are located here in Denver. And I'm proud not only to work and live in this beautiful city. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'm here today to support later hours of operation. A business should have the right of decision making for each and every aspect related to business processes. I am in support of hours of operation from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.. I understand that Denver decided to reduce these hours originally to see where the cannabis rollout would go. I do believe we can all agree it has been hugely successful. I believe we are the pioneers in this industry. I'm not completely sure why. Denver, one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, would not ground a business the rate of operating their business hours in conjunction with state law. As we know, the world is watching. Colorado cannabis should be treated like other businesses. Not only do I believe in business rights, but the increase in job opportunities would be astronomical for this city. It's my understanding that there is a proposed amendment to this bill change the hours from ten to term. This is a little concerning to me since many of my single parent family employees would lose their ability to pick up their children from school after their first shift. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Goldman. All right, the next. Aubrey Lavoisier. Margie Valdez, Kay Gallagher. Please say your full name when you're up here. Kristy Kelly. And Rudolfo Gonzalez again. It's a different person. Oh, it's a different Rudolfo. Okay, well, maybe Rodolfo Gonzales number two can come up. All right. Aubrey. Yes. Thank you, Councilwoman Brooks. My name is Doctor Aubrey Labrador. I am a member of the Order Advisory Group from Denver Health and Environment or Environmental Health, and also the Social Consumption Advisory Committee of Excise and License. I'm here to support the extended marijuana dispensary hours, and I am opposed to amendments when the state of Colorado allowed extension of marijuana dispensary hours. Denver did not follow suit. I'm going to propose to you that it was maybe a boogeyman in a closet kind of mentality, a fear based regulation about some boogeyman named crime. But marijuana related crime in Denver has decreased every year since 2012. Marijuana. And that's courtesy of Denver. Gov dawg. Marijuana adult use in Colorado is unchanged, but higher than the national average. That's courtesy of Colorado Department of Health. Marijuana adolescent use is unchanged but is lower than in 2013, and in fact, it is 21% in Colorado versus 22% of adolescents nationally. It's and it's actually less than adolescent alcohol use, which in Colorado is 30%, according to Colorado Department of Public Health. So I'm going to say marijuana is not the boogeyman in the closet. Unlike alcohol, which is a friend in your liquor cabinet, alternative will. Alternatively, Denver's 7 p.m. rule, including any amendment, is a form of command economy existing in socialist countries where businesses operate under strict guidelines of the state, guidelines that impede commerce, free trade and competition, thus creating black market economies. But Denver is a free market economy. There is a supply and demand economy functioning under necessarily minimal government regulation. Free market economies, unlike socialized command economies, foster competition resulting in better, cheaper goods and more jobs. And in the case of the marijuana industry, jobs that pay higher wages with benefits. Overly restricting marijuana dispensary hours is a socialist government intervention based on boogeymen in a closet, fear of increased crime. But stats show crime is on the decline. For over 40 years, I have been fortunate to have been an entrepreneur and business owner in Denver, a city in which I am privileged to pay my fair share of taxes and to provide jobs with benefits to my employees, allowing me to serve my community without the restrictive oversight of when I may open and close my business. I ask that City Council pass the bill as it stands, allowing businesses to operate from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Margie Valdez. Good evening, counsel. My name is Margie Valdez. I'm the chair of the AMC Entertainment Good Cooperation Zoning and Planning Committee. The Zoning and Planning Committee also has the responsibility for both alcohol, liquor and marijuana. At our February 25th, 2017 meeting, it was primarily focused on marijuana. We discussed the social consumption issues, and that took a great deal of time that even that morning after the social consumption discussion, we discussed the extension of hours for marijuana stores. One could almost say that after the social consumption, it would have been the ZAP committee members decision to oppose the anticipated bill for extension of hours. However, SAPP members are very, very astute. They understand the language, they understand the issues. We voted on the extension of hours to 10:00 at night. We felt like it was a fair compromise and that we did not discuss the extension of the hours, the 12 hours. I'm unable to speak to that tonight. We will be having that meeting on Saturday. I have always gone back to the delegates. I've always advised the delegates of what does that committee is recommended. And I we also post everything on our website. So we try to be as diplomatic and fair and transparent as the RNC can be. So with that, I, I can say that I can see that committee is in full support of the extension of hours till 10:00. Thank you very. Much. Thank you, Miss Valdez. Kate Gallagher, please say your first name, sir. Thank you. I'm Kevin Gallagher. I'm with the craft concentrates. We are headquartered here in Denver. I'm also with the Cannabis Business Alliance, and we are definitely in support of extending hours of operations for dispensaries here in Denver. I think it just all comes down to economic freedom. We should be treated just like any other business. And I think this is definitely the step in the right direction. I would really like to talk about Councilman Herndon's proposed amendment. We are very concerned with that. We think shifting hours is a terrible idea. We personally haven't heard any benefits from Councilman Hurd in that this would be a benefit. I'm not familiar with any other cities that have hours from 10 a.m. to ten p. I think that's very confusing for patients and customers alike. Also, many deliveries occur in the morning before 10 a.m. We like to deliver in the morning where it's safe. It's light outside. In the morning, there's less crime. So let's just make this more convenient for the consumers. Let's get the additional tax revenue. We also heard from Denver police and the mayor of Edgewater last meeting and they were no drawbacks with extending hours. So, again, we hope that you offer your support for extending hours from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher. Christie Kelly. Thank you again. Members of Council and Council President Brooks. My name is Christie Kelly and I'm the executive director of Marijuana Industry Group. I'm also a resident of Denver, and our organization is based in Denver. I have spoken with the other industry groups as well as a number of unaffiliated businesses in the city of Denver, as well as our membership. And we are unified in support of council bills 17 324 that would allow licensed marijuana businesses to remain open from 10 a.m. or excuse me, from, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.. We understand that there are amendments that are being considered that would contemplate further restrictions on the licenses. We welcome seeing those proposals and would happily entertain them at the point where they are proposed. However, in industry right now, there is unilateral support of the bill as it stands with Councilwoman Black's amendment as proposed today. I'd like to address the concern that was raised earlier today and in previous meetings about the earlier hours of operation , creating a portal for youth access. It's been a long time since I've been in high school or junior high school, but it's my understanding that in the city of Denver, junior high schools open sometime between 730 and 8 a.m.. It's my understanding that in Denver, high schools open sometime between 730 and 7:45 a.m.. So consistent with our earlier chain of conversations, law abiding students, just like law abiding adults, should not be affected by a preservation of the ADA. Opening time for dispensaries. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Miss Kelly. Last but not least, Rodolfo Gonzalez. Number two. Okay. Thank you. All right. This concludes our speakers questions by members of council. All right. Council bill. The public hearing for Council Bill 324 is now closed. Comments by members of Council Councilman Blackwood. Would you. This is. This is your bill. Would you like to go first or. I've already said everything I need to say. Great. This is first reading, so hopefully we can save much of our discussion for next week. But thank you. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. So I first want to make a statement about an attack that was made on one of our speakers. And I think that's totally unfair. This is an open process where everybody has an opportunity to come and say their piece, and I particularly am grateful for the input that we have had from Smart, Colorado, because I know that it is not always a comfortable position to be the sometimes the only voice in a room speaking on behalf of children and as a grandmother of small children, I think that the concern about the impact to our kids is is a real issue that we need to constantly be cognizant of. I'm not sure that we have really taken a careful look at any of the unintended consequences. You know, we know as a city we're spending a lot more money on our homeless shelters as a result of more young people who have moved here that have ended up homeless. So that's one unintended consequence. But I think that as a city, having a balanced discussion is an important part of this conversation. And to do it where it should only be the industry speaking and trying to dictate what they want is absolutely wrong. This is, you know, a forum where we always want to hear from all sides. And it's why I appreciate Councilwoman Black ensuring that we had a second public input session where we got to hear from folks from the community as well as industry folks. I think this is an industry that has, by and large done a good job and have followed the rules. I think as a city, we've been very generous. And just because state law allows something doesn't mean as a city, we have to do what state law says is allowable. And this is one industry where we know that because marijuana is not legal at the federal level, that we have the discretion to be stricter than what state law requires. So I'll save some of my additional comments for next week. But I do want to point one thing out, and that is that when you look at how many stores our neighboring jurisdictions have compared to Denver. Arvada doesn't have any. Aurora has 23. That's the largest number next to Denver. Then when you go down to Commerce City, they have four. Edgewater. They have six Inglewood. Three Federal Heights. Three Glendale. They have seven. Golden has one. Lakewood. They have 12. Lewis feel they have to. Mountain View has to. North Glenn has six. Thornton has seven. Wheat Ridge has five. Adams County has four. And Arapahoe County has two. Denver has 218. So when you look at that number, you know, requesting that we have the opportunity to ensure that those that are pending applications, those that are going through the review process, I don't think it's unreasonable to ensure that they are in full compliance before we allow them to move forward. So I'm looking forward to further conversation next week. I'm going to abstain from the vote tonight because I want to be able to have the the further conversation on the two amendments that we're going to have next week. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We I, I appreciate that. We're in the council comment period and we got to keep it that way. Council. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. This is on publication, so we're making a decision whether or not to publish the bill. I am comfortable with that. So I'll be voting in support and I look forward to the more in-depth conversation we as a body can have about the two amendments coming forward next week. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Herndon, Councilman Lopez. Thank you, President Brooks. You know, I. I wanted to make a comment. I wanted to make a comment before we. Move to the next part. On another day, we would actually I think we'll be more commenting on the on the amendments themselves. I don't want to comment on that. I don't want to comment on where we're at now. And I do understand I do understand the message and what folks have said in this in these chambers. And I do appreciate that. I absolutely do. You know, I've I keep saying this does sound like an old man. I start feeling like Charlie Brown and he was here. But I've been here to see this develop when it was, you know, Amendment 2064, the decriminalization, not necessarily in that order, but to regulate it from from day one. And you know, I have to I have to admit, I was very skeptical at first. Absolutely, very skeptical. But you got to understand, I grew up around the bad side of it. And before it was regulated, I grew up seeing the abuse, not just from from weed, I mean, from other substances. And it was, you know, like alcohol. Other drugs. I saw it. I lived it. I felt the effects of it as a kid. Right. People in my neighborhood being gunned down over stuff like that. And that's absolutely the lack of regulation. But it's also regulation that achieves a balance as well, too. There's a level of responsibility that we can't just go gung ho and say, okay, let's just do all of it all at once. Bam. You know, we're catching up to a very clumsy 80 some odd years of. Liquor regulation. That's still I think is is very antiquated because I think it's a it's a much more dangerous substance. My issue, my neighborhood has always been the over proliferation of liquor stores in the west side. And there's some people that may shake their heads. Well, it's just business. It's the economy. Don't mess with the business. Don't mess with with the market. We have to because sometimes it's unjust and it plays out in an unjust way. You try to find grocery stores in our neighborhood, you'll find more liquor stores. And that's not right. So, yes, our regulations have to have to come into play in our actions on this dais and with and folks in the excise and license have to do it as well, too. But like I said, I started with skepticism. But I find myself now when I meet with colleagues from around the country and other city councils and other counties in other states. Being a champion of what we do here in Denver. Hearing their fears, hearing their hysteria kind of is like, oh, we've been there, done that. Don't worry, it doesn't create crime. It actually reduces it. And that's the message that we're able to do. But it takes time and it takes time for any for whatever your cause may be. It takes time to convince people of that cause their own personal experience, their own hands in it, their ability to actually see it right and see how the system works. And it's working. I mean, there's a lot of kinks, don't get me wrong. There's there's a lot of little there's some minor minutia. And we'll expect this. And we said this a while back that we'll expect something like this. We expect to be tinkering with this as we go. But my point is, is that look. The hours are being extended. That's a plus. As a testament to the industry, to the responsibility, to those standards that are being upheld. It's a testament to our ability to regulate it. And you're always going to have different amendments and different ideas and different ways to tinker with it in this dais. And it should not be limited. I had a we had a bunch of folks up here that were growers. Not very many of them lived in Denver. We're very reflective of the of the makeup of Denver. Not very many people of color out here. Right. And under those stanzas, they get the heck out of here. Go to your own cities. No, we heard everybody. Right. And that's that's what I want folks to understand, is this is this isn't just something that happens in a vacuum. This is something that has been we've been working on and working on and trying to achieve this. But at the end of the day, use my example. Right? I have my own personal feelings about it. I have my own personal experiences about it. Not always positive, but it's not about what I believe personally. It's about what we can achieve as a city to achieve that balance and move forward. Because I think we are absolutely headed in the right direction. Having said that, I can't wait to debate the merits of the other amendments and everything else and hear from people in our next go round and city council. Appreciate it. Thanks for bringing the bill forward and I'm glad to be part of it moving forward. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah. I wanted it first thing, Councilwoman Ortega for her comments. The. You know, we keep talking about marijuana, marijuana, marijuana and marijuana. And I think we approved that overwhelmingly a couple of times. I don't have that level of approval in my district the way we voted for legalization on this issue. And it comes from for a reason. We don't have always the best actors in this industry operating their businesses. It is a position of privilege with this finite, limited number of licenses that it is too burdensome to operate with extended hours, whatever, in whatever capacity or or later hours if it's not extended hours. There are plenty of people waiting to take those licenses and operate that business for you. That said, we're not just talking about marijuana. We're talking when we legalized marijuana, we legalized THC. And we are getting concentrations and dosages that are off the charts. Nothing like what you smoked in the seventies. You know, this is and that's legal and it's being sold. And people are dosing far more than what you would get in a through a through a joint. And so there are consequences there unintended consequences. And so I think being sensible, reasonable and expanding our businesses opportunities rationally is perfectly sensible. And, you know, it is not like any other business. You can't take your credit card payment. You can't do this. You can't do that. It's not it's not selling jewelry. It's not. I mean, it's close because there's still a lot of the security related, but it's not. So I do I just want to be mindful of that, that as much as somebody from a with a different vantage than me, I never I never was six feet tall or white or black or anything else. I mean, I would have a different perspective. And so that's what we do when we're sitting here. We try to take in as many perspectives as possible, at least I do, as a representative of of 50,000 plus people. I need to understand where everybody is coming from to make a more measured and calculated and reasonable and rational decision. And I would expect you to want us to do that across the board. I try to. So with that said, I forgot to ask a question. So to the gentleman, I won't ask you the question. Now, I'm going to ask you the question, but I'd like you to follow up with me on email, because I didn't understand the comments about deliveries because I just didn't know if, like other businesses, they can take deliveries during their non operating hours. I didn't know if that was it was a delivery service or actually picking up stuff or there were limitations. So if you could explain that, I would truly appreciate that. Thanks. With that, I'll look forward to the next meeting. Thanks. Thank you. Councilman Espinoza, seeing no other comments, I'll just add to this is it's a fascinating conversation. I am a little bit like Councilman Lopez since the adoption. I've been in an incredible evolution of this. And I've come quite a ways as well with with three young kids and neighbors that partake regularly. You guys remember those who have been on who were on the council prior when we had the conversation about smoking on your porch, you remember that conversation that happens in my neighborhood all the time. But my kids are okay. They're eight, five and ten years old. They're okay. They're doing great, actually. And we've had great conversations around this. And I understand the fear and the paranoia if you don't engage and if you're not in a community like that. But I've come a long way personally. We up here have two conversations that are always there. We're always talking about it's a policy conversation and it's political. The policy conversation is. Should we take the hours and make it parallel with the state? And it's kind of a funny conversation because me being honest, Denver is always ahead of the state in many things, much more progressive than the state here where we're a little bit behind. But should we? The policy question, should we match? Are ours with the state? And then a political question of what does the what can the community endure? What, what, what's pal palatable to the community? And that's what we always must have the conversation around if the bill before us is extending to 10 p.m.. And I believe. We have the 10 p.m. time because that's what's palatable to the community. There's there's not a whole lot of policy for me, a whole lot of strong policy conversations around why not ten? Because why not 12? The state is set at 12. Why not? Give this business. Their legal rights as we give other businesses, too, to be said at 12:00. So it's just a question for for me to to give to counsel as we are considering this for another week and considering the amendments. What what is the policy reasoning for 10 p.m.? And let's make sure we know what it is and not just. Oh, I think everybody. I think that's a fair. Placement of time for this community, in this community and the community at large. I want us to really think about that. I'll be voting in favor of this and look forward to the debate next week. Madam Secretary, roll call. Councilor. Councilman, you need to make a motion. To order, publishers amended. Oh, yes. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Thank you, Mr. President. The Council will 324 be ordered published as amended. It has been moved. And second it Secretary Rocco. So. Black Eye. Clark Eye. Espinosa Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman. Kinney. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Sussman. Mr. President. I. Please go to the voting results. 11 eyes, one abstention. 11 Eyes, one abstention. Council Bill 324 has been ordered published as amended. Final consideration will be Monday, April 24th. On Monday, May 15. Council will hold a required public hearing. Council will three six to change zoning classification of 689 West 39th Avenue, 700 West Fourth 40th Avenue and 725 West 39th Avenue in Globeville require public hearing for

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Chapters 5.81 and 8.68, relating to electronic cigarettes and similar devices, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_03042014_14-0123

Declare an ordinance, and many of them is municipal code relating to electronic cigarets and similar devices read and adopted as read. I'm going to turn this over to Councilmember Andrews. Yes. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. You know, we've had two council meetings where we have deliberated on this issue. The facts have been entered into the records. Dr. Cushing is here with questions by the council. And I would like to make the motion to move forward to approve the ordinance as written. Thank you very much. Okay. There's been a motion any second. Go ahead. See, there's some people from public comment. So, Gordon, if you have a comment, please come forward and identify yourself for the record. My name is Dr. Fred. Grandy, and I'm a. Surgeon at City of Hope who's been treating disease caused by tobacco products. For. 45 years. I would urge the Council to follow the rule that electronic cigarets have to be treated as tobacco products. They're advertised as a harm reduction device, but it's very dangerous to accept that without proof. One of the previous harm direction harm alleviation devices was the light cigaret. That light cigaret started in the city of Long Beach with with Billie Jean King and the Virginia Slims campaign and resulted in the death of a couple of hundred thousand American women. So that's an example of how that is not a good idea. The second problem with with electronic cigarets is that they're not intended to help people quit smoking. Otherwise, why would they be selling gooey butter cake flavor, snickerdoodle flavor, licorice flavor, juicy butterscotch flavor, candy cane and gummy bear flavors. The answer is that they're intended for sale to children. They have the potential to undo the good work that's been done in the state of California for the past 30, 30 years, including by the excellent tobacco control people in the city of Long Beach, and create a whole new generation of. People at risk for tobacco. Products. So please, in your deliberations, please make sure that all regulations treat this product as a tobacco product rather than. As a medical device. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Vice Mayor Garcia, city council members in this city. What a controversial issue you have before you. I've been doing some research and I find all kinds of different information. And what I find of interest in an article dated February six, 2014, making me and those she wrote. Tom Bryant, executive director and legal counsel at the National Association of Tobacco Outlets, Inc., stated, quote, We see electronic cigarets as a new product segment for the industry, and if there are regulations, they should be reasonable, workable and acknowledge that e-cigarettes are a very different kind of product than traditional tobacco products like Cigarets. And then Mitchell Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products on November 19, 2013, stated, quote, Until now, the agency has been sorting out jurisdictional questions Should it be regulated as a tobacco product, drug or a device that this decision remains pending? Now, it's my understanding you don't have to wait for the FDA. Its decision, the state and the cities have the jurisdiction to come forward to write an ordinance. I feel that's an issue that, you know, has to be addressed. And I am not going to say that I don't support the ordinance. I'm not going to say that I do support the ordinance. What I want to say, if you go forward on the ordinance, please keep in mind that if the FDA does come back with their ruling and it's different than what you have in your ordinance that please consider amending what may be in the ordinance. And I know people that have quit smoking. I'm not going to get into all the flavors, but the nicotine level, that's a separate vapor. And you buy it if you want to have a nicotine level. And it comes in different levels. Now, Councilmember Andrews made mention about the youth, and I wholeheartedly believe that we need to look out for the youth. And the e-cigarettes are getting in the hands of the youth. I believe that e-cigarette retail business should be allowed to have vaping within their walls. And I believe that that you have to be responsible and you need to consider the public the effect on the public. And if you want to go forward and say you have to use it in a certain fashion, and so that the rights of the public being espoused, you know, that's in consideration, I approve wholeheartedly on that . But, you know, I feel that if there's too many restrictions for at least the companies, the businesses that sell it can't have the vaping lounges and be able to let people tested products in their walls that people are going to go to online buying. And that's going to be catastrophic for the use. People are going to no longer be going in the stores. They're going to go online. Then they can just get all this and online products. You don't know what sent them. It can be very catastrophic. Their contents. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name's Ken. Attorney. Long Beach. Born and raised. I like to keep this discussion relevant. We're not here to ban e-cigarettes, okay? We're here to discuss regulation of e-cigarettes as a tobacco product and throwing them in the same category. Anyone speaking about children smoking e-cigarettes or drug use or any any other fact or flavor or this. It's all irrelevant because we're not fighting or banning e-cigarettes. We. The baby company, are not against regulation of e-cigarettes, okay? We are against regulating e-cigarettes as cigarets and wrongfully applying laws that should be definitely treated as two separate entities. Appearance is the only thing that links cigarets to e-cigarettes, just to parents. It is wrong to judge by appearance alone in any situation. Cigaret smoke releases 4800 plus chemicals into the air. These chemicals have been scientifically proven to harm smokers and secondhand smokers justifying their regulations. E-cigarettes release water vapor into the air. There are no scientifically proven studies proving electronic cigarets emit any harmful chemicals to vapors or second hand vapors or into the environment. So science can't prove anything yet. It all comes down to discrimination by appearance alone. And that is wrong. Public is public health is a concern. And thank you all for questioning e-cigarettes. But let's not base our decision on discrimination, false facts. Please don't jump the gun and jump to conclusions and make decisions on lies or misinformation. One point that I'd like to bring up is Long Beach is a beach city. Cigaret butts pollute our streets and get washed into the ocean. And it's a huge problem. And the city spends a lot of money cleaning up beaches and stuff like that. And it is a health risk. E-cigarettes help eliminate that. There are so many things that e-cigarettes help alleviate public health. But the general public, I think, is prematurely jumping judgment of electronic cigaret cigarets without really realizing all the benefits. We are not smokers, we are ex-smokers. We started vaping to better our health and to be less and less insulting to nonsmokers. If this regulation is passed, we ex-smokers will be forced to vape alongside with smokers endangering our health, which defeats the whole purpose of vaping. We smokers are suspect susceptible to relapse, just like recovering addicts being forced to smoke in designated areas with smokers puts us at a vulnerable situation and endangering. And thank you for relapse. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next, be complete. Good evening, Vice Mayor and Honorable City Council. My name is Teresa moreno. I'm retired from the city of Long Beach. I have resided in Long Beach for almost 40 years and I reside in the second district. Next month marks the 20th anniversary of the passage of Proposition K by 68% of the voters. Proposition K became Ordinance 8.68 of the municipal code, the no smoking ordinance. We were the strongest smoking ordinance in public places, workplaces and restaurants and bars in the whole United States and for that matter, the world. I was the tobacco education coordinator for the city from 1994 to 2000. We were called. By cities and counties all over the nation and from countries like Canada, England, Australia and other countries to ask us, how did we do this? We are not number one anymore. And we just received a C from the American Lung Association for some of our our tobacco and our are smoking no smoking ordinance. I'm here in support of the e-cig ordinance. L.A. City just passed theirs today, their e-cig ordinance with a vote of 14 to 0. L.A. has over 8 million persons. We are surrounded by other cities that have passed similar e-cigarette ordinances. This ordinance is not bad for business. We are not saying don't sell e-cigarettes. We just don't want to allow the vaping of them indoors. It's about alignment. Aligning it with our ordinance. Aligning it with what other cities are doing. These e-cigarettes are called. Nicotine delivery. Devices. If you look up the word nicotine in the dictionary, the first definition is a noun and it is an insecticide. I don't know about you, but I don't want to breathe secondhand vaporized insecticide. Nicotine is a known addictive, highly addictive substance. In fact, former heroin addicts have said that it was harder to quit nicotine than it was to quit heroin. Also, it's been determined that at least ten chemicals identified in e-cigarette aerosol are listed among the 65 carcinogens as carcinogens. The tobacco industry and the opposition will say that it hurts business. If this don't if this doesn't pass. You're going to have a lot of people like myself and others don't want to go into businesses where there will be people vaping. And so we need to we need to understand that while our opponents or the businesses that sell e-cigarettes are saying that they'll lose business. Other businesses will lose it. For people who don't want to go in. So I say please support it. And thank you so much. Thank you so much. Next speaker. Good evening. Mayor and Council. I am Patricia ETIM and I'm a resident of the third district. I have a background in public health and have been involved in many public health initiatives. Currently, I am the governor's appointee to the state tobacco. It's called Track Tobacco, Education and Research Oversight Committee. It's legislatively mandated, and our charge is to create the master plan for tobacco control for California every other year. And the three agencies that report to the body are the State Department of Public Health Tobacco Control Section, the State Department of Education, Office of Statewide School Safety and the University of California, which administers the research in tobacco control. I come actually as a as a resident of Long Beach today, but as a component of the master plan, we are certainly focusing on e-cigarettes and making sure that they are regulated as nicotine delivery devices. You know, the I'll just focus my comments since other people have spoken. Just about. Many different issues related to e-cigarettes. But the CDC has put out an advisory in a report on the use of e-cigarettes among middle school and high school students. And it is shocking. So this really it is an issue because they are the gateway age for tobacco use. So it is really the office of Statewide School Safety has really requested that all. Districts. Utilize the letter that they have issued to really have policies in place at their school level and to work with cities and counties to really make sure that e-cigarettes are regulated. The youth are not just using the e-cigarettes for nicotine as well. There are all manner. Of. Things that are put in the e-cigarettes. So it's really a huge concern. There's a lot of dual use. You can read the CDC report, but there's a lot of dual use among youth so that they aren't just smoking e-cigarettes. They also are smoking. Regular. Cigarets. And so I will I will leave it there. But UC Irvine, also here, quite close to us, has done quite a bit of research into what is what are the chemicals and other components in e-cigarettes, among them tin and nickel. And, you know, it's not regulated by the FDA. So it's really a hazard and I hope and encourage that you to support the ordinance as written. Thank you. Thank you, Speaker. Good evening. My name's Melinda Cotton. I live on Park Avenue in Belmont. Sure. And I thank the council for bringing this ordinance this far. And we hope that tonight you will, in fact, pass it. You've heard testimony that I can't match about the problems of e-cigarettes. The doctor spoken to Patti Theresa marino with long experience. So we ask that you pass this ordinance that will both allow people who want to vape to vape in their own homes or in a place where it's safe for them to do so and safe for other people to do so. And then the rest of us can be protected from the second hand vapors and from we know not totally what is in these devices beyond nicotine, a lot of chemicals and everything as well. And also to bring them under our city permit regulations so that we have a better knowledge of what's going on. So thank you. And we encourage you to please support this in tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nick Speaker. Good evening. I'm Ron Johnson, resident of Third District. And I just want to say, as humans, we tend to ban things that we don't quite understand are even when it's probably beneficial. I believe that the ban on e-cigs is the primary example of banning something that we don't understand. I have a friend named Darren that surely would disagree with the ban. Darren came up in a house with a smoking mom, a smoking dad, and contracted a smoking addiction by the time he was 15 years old. So bad that he would have cigarets behind both ears and one in his mouth. Darren came across electronic cigarets or vaporizers and immediately quit smoking and has in turn backed for over 18 months. The fundamental the fundamental reason that cigarets are banned do not apply to vaporizers. You have two different technologies. You have combustion, you have burning, and then you have battery powered heating. Would you send a Tesla do a smoke test? Probably not. The technology is different. What I just wanted to say was. We shouldn't ignore the study that was done by Drexel University that actually accounted for 9000 people who use vaporizers and concluded that the effects were so un harmful that there was no there was no evidence for it. There is nothing they could even attach it to. So I just want to say not to ban e-cigarettes. To think it through. I feel that we're doing something without even understanding the full benefit. I think. Thank you. Next speaker, actually, conservatorships typically want to make a quick clarification. Yes. Mr. Perkins, can you clarify that this ordinance does not ban the sale or possession of e-cigarettes? That is correct. When you make that clear, nobody is banning banning these as devices. You're free to buy them in stores. And and I understand that they would be covered under the lounge act. This if they if they have a lounge like we do with Cigarets and I mean Cigarets. But with. Cigars. With cigars, it would be that is the same limitations or the same restrictions would. Apply. But they could do it with inside the store. Correct? They cannot do it inside the store. That is. Not correct. Well, I thought they were going to have the same provisions as the cigar places. That is not correct. These are regulated similar to Cigarets. And so we were not asked or we did not carve out an exception for consumption of the product within the store. I wasn't aware of that. Okay. Next speaker, please. Okay. Well, having heard that, I hope you rethink this ordinance so that you do allow. I am. My name is Donna Coats, and I am against the ordinance as it is currently written. First of all, I wanted to address the issue of selling to children. Kids will have the same difficulty buying vape devices as they do now buying cigarets. And the argument that the flavors are meant to appeal to kids is about as ridiculous as saying Wine's called Star Trek. Layer Cake and cherry pie are made to get young kids drinking. I have a basically a thesis here in three pages, and I'm not going to bore you with all statistics. But just briefly, a 2011 study on addiction delivered in Amsterdam showed that 96% of e-cigarette smokers said it helped them to quit smoking. Dr. Joel Natkin, who has testified on tobacco harm reduction strategies across America and has previously worked as a local health director, a state health director and leader of two national public health groups called the E-cigs a tool in tobacco harm reduction. While he was co-chair of the Tobacco Control Taskforce of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, he studied options for reducing tobacco related illness. He concludes that e-cigarettes are currently the most prominent and promising tobacco harm reduction option. In addition, in the Oxford journals Nicotine and Tobacco Research study of second hand exposure to vapors from electronic cigaret. The results show that nicotine resulting from smoking tobacco cigarets was ten times higher than from e-cigarettes. In fact, intoxicant levels, toxic levels from e-cigarettes were 450 times lower than in cigaret smoke. Electronic cigarets contain no tobacco and leave behind no tar. So the main carcinogenic components are not even present to create a problem like research, like cigaret smoke. But mostly I'd like to stress Dr. Michael Segal, a hard charging public health researcher at Boston University, argues that e-cigarettes could be the beginning of the end of smoking in America . He sees them as a disruptive innovation that could make Cigarets obsolete, like the computer did to the typewriter. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Vice mayor and councilman. My name is Pete Flores. I am a co-chair for the Smoke Free Coalition in Long Beach. And I go. To every other. Coalition meeting L.A., Orange County, San Diego. And I'm a project coordinator for Project Greater Southern Cal. So what I do is that I educate youth. I know that this is an ongoing battle between cigarets and e-cigarettes, vapors and all that. I am not going to bore. You with all the formalities about it, but I would just like to say that. We we would like the council. To think. Think thoroughly through it and hopefully make a decision tonight. Hopefully for the best. And I'll be going on a trip to Sacramento in April to go meet the legislators. So I hope that I can bring good news to them. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is James Patterson from the fifth District. I operate a store and I live in that area. First of all, I wanted to thank the mayor's office, the city council, for opening discussion on this topic. Let me preface this by saying We are not against regulation. We are against regulating the electronic cigaret device the same as other tobacco products. I think we're part of the downfall as people keep relating e-cigarette to tobacco. It's a nicotine extract. It's not tobacco. It's not like light cigarets. It's not a perforated filter. You're still going into combustion with light cigarets. That's where the flavors, you know, they're flavored because for the same reason they still eat Lucky Charms. But like, you know, we like the flavors, too. Just to kind of clarify. Like somebody mentioned earlier, there's like 4600 ingredients in the cigaret 4000 when burned. There's four in an e-cigarette and one of them is propylene glycol. It's been approved by the FDA since the 1940s and it's vaporize form for use inside hospitals, restaurants and schools. As a germicidal agent, some safe for human consumption. The next ingredient is vegetable glycerin. They use it in large public events or smoke machines also. So the flavoring typically comes from perfumers. So a lot of it's some of the favorites from flavor houses, some are from perfumery. So it's a lot of it is designed to actually be inhaled. And the nicotine, all the juices start off at zero. Every shop that I know around here carries zero nicotine available. The nicotine that we sell is upon customer request. The effects of nicotine itself is comparable to caffeine. In a study of 20 different juices, they found only one to have any sort of cytotoxicity. And that was a coffee flavor. It was only found in the highest concentration and they actually presumed it was to be linked to the process of processing coffee beans themselves. So and to compare even at that level, they found that the concentrate pulled from cigaret smoke was 795% higher at the cytotoxic levels. So as you can see, the e-cig is comprised of completely different ingredients than the traditional cigaret and that's that should be regulated separately. We believe regulation should grow with the industry and welcome open discussion with how they should move forward. Thank you again for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, vice mayor and council members. I'm Jeff Miller. I live in Long Beach. I wanted to say a little bit about the comparison here that people have been making. Proponents of these devices are saying they're not cigarets, so we shouldn't treat them like that. Well, please remember, cigarets have been regulated for a long time because of the fact that they are dangerous. They contain nicotine and other harmful substances. So they've been regulated. These devices, they want you to say vaporizers, but it's there. E-cigarettes is the other term. They also contain nicotine and other dangerous substances. Now, some of the people have made the comparison that the cigarets contain ten times more dangerous substances or 400 times more. But they they aren't saying because they can't say that these other devices have zero danger. They still contain nicotine. If the customer asks for it, they still contain other harmful substances. And I don't want to be exposed to that in aerosol form or in a burned form. Either way, we don't need to do that. So these regulations make a lot of sense and I urge you to support this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, this is. Is there anybody else going to chew up the speaker macchiatos speaking off here? If you're going to speak, please queue up and then we're going to end this and the speaker's list. Okay. Please. Hello. How you doing? My name is Richard Gardenhire, and recently I was eaten outside of a restaurant and a car drove past, and I smelled the exhaust. So I know for a fact the exhaust is way more than the vaporize that you can. I'm actually a testimony as far as smoking cigarets. I smoked for about 5 to 7 years and I went to a e-cig not to quit, but more of a more a better alternative way to do it as healthy. Because I do play basketball and cigarets are not good. So when I went. I actually got a e-cig was it actually. Looked like this. Now this right here is 0% basically meaning I went and I got 6% milligrams and end up with 0%. So I am a testimony as far as smoking to not smoking. So with this deal is by me being around my parents, even though they did smoke, I had an alternative to do something other than grab the cigaret and puff because I have something else. So as far as the e-cig. It is helping in actually how I got turned on as I was walking into a Starbucks and I seen an older lady. So I asked, I was like, What is that? And before that I said. Actually, how old are you? And she was like, Oh, I'm 85. And she had it easy. So that's how I realized that it's a good thing. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. Good evening. My name is Gina Celso. I am here representing Philippine USA. I do work at a local e-cigarette shop. So if the Long Beach Tobacco Ordinance is amended to include e-cigarettes and vaping, it would be devastating to our business for several reasons. One, folks who smoke tobacco cigarets and who are trying to quit or convert to vaping are most times unfamiliar with e-cigarettes and vaping. Our store and the vast majority of other vape shops allow customers to sample e-liquids and different devices that are used to vape. The proposed ordinance would prohibit this and therefore would be detrimental to our business. Secondly, a vape shop is a place where people who vape can congregate to use their own devices with other enthusiasts, as well as sample the variety of new flavors that are being continually introduced. Again, if the ordinance passes with the current language, this practice would not be allowed. In one fell swoop, the current vaping culture in Long Beach would be seriously jeopardized by the passage of this ordinance. Criminalizing e-cigarettes and vaping in light of empirical scientific evidence that it is a far safer alternative to tobacco is exactly what is not needed in Long Beach. Some would even be glad to argue that the vaping industry was not founded by Big Tobacco. It even threatens tobacco sales and future tobacco business. Finally, this is a trending technology which allows people to wean off the habit of smoking tobacco. Meanwhile, Long Beach has incorrectly categorized vaping and e-cigarettes into the same unhealthy category as smoking tobacco. This forces e-cigarette users who. Are trying to quit into the same unhealthy spaces as traditional cigaret smokers. It is a shame many other states are taking the necessary time to consider a more enlightened approach and creating ordinances in a positive and objective manner by looking for intelligent solutions. One example recently the state of Wisconsin has excluded e-cigs and vaping from their clean air and anti-tobacco legislation. I have here 692 signatures on a petition created by people in Long Beach who are really hoping that we won't classify e-cigarettes as a tobacco product. Thank you. If you want to give me the petition, you're able you're welcome to to the city clerk. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I am Rodney Johnson, owner of Beat City Vapers, which is in District four, actually live in Signal Hill. I'm actually actually two thoughts right out of my mouth, but I would like to say that we as vape store owners, we all work together. We understand that ordinances, ordinances are important. Just like the gentleman back here said, we're not completely against them. But as she said, you know, not allowing them in the stores would be really bad for business. I can't even begin to go into detail on how how much better I feel after smoking cigarets for 25 years and I'm only 43. And the amount of praise that we seem to get from customers that come in, you know, every single day happy that they stop cigarets we have a little area on the wall where we have packs of cigarets empty packs. Minder Where we pinned them to the wall. People sign their names and the date that they quit. I'm extremely happy about it. So I'm completely against the ordinance being put through as is. If it is, you know, put through. I would ask that you guys at least exempt the vape stores just like Los Angeles did, so that we can at least continue business as usual and then we can all work together to fix this later. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Nels Hansen. I live in Long Beach. I also own a e-cig store lounge here in Long Beach. I'd like to say out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that come into my store every month that are struggling to quit smoking and struggling for a better lifestyle and to be healthier, to to think that we are going to make it harder for those people that want to quit smoking. Cigarets Which is the goal here, is to quit smoking. Cigarets. I don't want to fight for the rest of my life. I'm trying to cut down on cigaret smoking. The levels of difference of different the juices. We teach people every day when they walk in how to cut themselves down, how to work down to that 0% nicotine to be able to quit. You know, I just heard just now that the banning of the regulation was going to stop us from letting people experience in trying. These these. Flavors in the store, which, mind you, in my store, it's 0% nicotine. So all the flavor trials, everything that's going on in my store has zero nicotine, unless they brought that in themselves. It's it's outrageous. It's it's unbelievable to think that. We are going to put all these people that are trying to get away from the cigarets right next to him outside smoking. That is crazy talk. I mean, everybody's going to quit. They're going to go right back to smoking. And I guarantee you, I promise you, in the outrun and out in the in the long run here, we are going to see that e-cigarettes. Might save all of us. Who are potentially in risk of being around the secondhand smoke and smoking cigarets. And that's really all I have to say. I really hope you guys could just take a little more time. On this and really do a little bit more research. I hear a lot of people talking about all the dangerous. Chemicals they've named nothing but nicotine and that nothing. Not one has ever been caused has ever been brought up. Vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol and the food flavoring extracts. That's all that's in these things. Not one person has brought up any dangerous chemical besides nicotine. Which I. It's just wrong. There's none of the facts here for you guys to ban this or regulate it like this. It's not fair. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. All right. My name is Matt Jo-Jo in the second district. I just think the way that the thing this ordinance is written as is is not right. Taking vaping away from being able to do it inside shops not only hurts the shops, but it hurts all the vendors that sell there, all the juice companies, the you know , the people that actually manufacture these e-cigarettes, all these people are going to be hurting because they won't be able to try the products. They won't be able to try the flavors that are being offered. Why not leave it to the discretion of the owners? You know, I know Carson has there been they let that go and they're letting it still be. You're able to still vape inside their vape shops to be able to try all the flavors and products that they have. I mean, I see a lot of people when they're complaining, they're talking about, you know, I don't want this smoke or vapor in my face. And a lot of it is it's such a new product that it it needs etiquette still. I mean, like when you're going bowling, you know, and you're getting ready to bowl and this guy just throws the ball next to you, you know, you get all mad because you can't you know, you can't set yourself up. But it's such a new thing that it just needs etiquette, you know, like it shouldn't be in in movie theaters or restaurants. But at that point, you know, leave it to the discretion of the owner. I mean, that's pretty much all I had to say. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Go ahead, sir. Good evening. My name is Michael Schacht, image owner, operator of E-Cig City. And I live in too and operate my business out of a district. And everybody has said everything I've already said here at city council and what we want to get across. I opened my doors on November 16th and I now have six people working for me who are unemployed. Before they came to my shop and found a job. The electronic cigaret industry is set to employ another 100,000 people. Something to consider. Something else it considers. Have you guys been to any of these shops? They took vacant shops and made them look beautiful. And I will say that my shop, it looks pretty good. Do we have any statistics about what kind of business was was done in the city of Long Beach when Victoria Toll happened? People came from all over the place to be together with other enthusiasts, other people that enjoy e-cigarettes vaporizers. And if anything else that we are small business owners trying to make it and that being able to vape in our shops, it's the blood of our business, being able for the consumers to taste what they're going to get . You don't trade on a T-shirt after you leave Ross or Nordstrom's. You try them in the store. And one more thing. If you're going to do anything, follow suit like L.A. City Council did and make an amendment to this current legislation and allow us to sample our product endorse. Thank you. Thank you. What kind of unclosed public testimony are going to take it behind the rail? There is a motion on the floor as well. Councilmember Lipski. I'd like to ask Mr. Parkin, is there a possibility that there could be a carve out, just as you do for cigar? I know you said you're treating him like a cigaret, but we allow cigar bars. I voted against it. We allow cigar bars in this town. And I know the concern is about the age so that if they did check I.D. and that that would be a requirement, they check I.D., but that they in the shop could allow what they're asking for, which is a sampling. Vice Mayor members of the council I think you're referring to we do allow or have. Smoking lounges which are defined as cigar. Lounges, hookah lounges or tobacco clubs. Those currently exist and are allowed under the ordinance. The ordinance that, as it is before you tonight, does not allow for sampling of the product within the store. The your question is, could the ordinance be amended to carve that out or to allow that? The answer is yes. We could not do that tonight. What we would have to do is take the ordinance back, redraft the ordinance, and bring it back to the council for first reading and have then a second reading after that, because this would be a material change to the ordinance as presented to council tonight. And in order to give the public an opportunity to weigh. In on this material. Change, you have to go back to first reading. With and but also could be and there are very strict provisions that it would have to be checked before they allow the sampling of the product. Well, we haven't drafted or we haven't written the exemption, but certainly that could be included in an exemption if there was a carve out asked for by the council. Well, because of the rest of the ordinance, Mr. Perkin assumes that these are similar to Cigarets. Then my understanding would be they would have to follow the law in terms of you can't sell that. That's correct. It's prohibited sales to under the age of 18. That's correct. Okay. Currently. Okay. Councilmember Austin. Thank you. And I do have a couple of questions for the city attorney as well. I noticed in this ordinance that in the terminology used by the industry folks, vaping is not necessarily defined here. Is there a specific reason as to why that is the case? Most members of the Council we defined. Electronic cigarets to mean an electronic and or battery operated device, the use of which may resemble smoking, which can be used to deliver an inhaled dose of nicotine or other substances. It includes such devices and manufactured distributed. It goes on and on. So it would include the vaping, but it's a very broad definition. I think it is a very broad definition. And I think the the what I'm hearing is the real, I guess, rub here is the fact that, number one, these these things are being marketed as electronic cigarets, which I think is counter to the the the industry argument because, you know, they shouldn't be called cigaret electronic cigarets if they don't want to be treated or viewed as cigarets. But at the same time, they are also vapor and not smoke. And I think there needs to be a distinction or some sort of definition to to distinguish the difference between vapor and smoke. You know, and I'm not seeing. The councilman or I believe that our current definition was drafted broad enough to cover all electronic smoking and vaping devices, regardless of whether or not they're used to deliver nicotine or other substances. That was the direction that we were asked to prepare on the ordinance. So I believe as written, it is a very broad definition that we believe and we've looked at other cities on how they find it. It captures the vaping activity and and then regulates it as it would as a tobacco product. And that's what we've been asked to craft. And that's what's before you this evening. Well, we could if you'd like. I mean, if there's a direction, we could further define it to to make it clear that vaping is included in the regulation. If that was your desire. Well, I'm not an attorney, but it just seems to me that to follow up on Councilmember Schiff's key question, and I think the I know the question was raised for me as well, if if we were to allow or somehow move forward with allowing this these vaping devices to be smoked inside of lounges, we're going to have to somehow distinguish the difference to be able to do that and not have them fall under a cigar lounge ordinance or a or as is. So to me, it just seems that would be in our best interests to have that more defined. And and I like to just command out Councilmember Andrews for bringing this issue forward. I think it is it's it's something that needs to be regulated that we don't know enough about this this product. The fact that, you know, he works on a on a school campus and has seen these devices in the possession of young people who don't know exactly what they're doing. And we don't know what they're doing with these things. So to to to set an ordinance that that prohibits these from from these devices, from being in the possession of kids or being sold to kids. And then preventing the secondhand exposure is, is what I'd like to see done here. But at the same time, I don't want to see us being harmful to a business. And I do think that there is some some merit to the fact that people are getting off of cigarets. And and there's probably more this is more probably more healthy for them and the smoking and the nicotine involved in that. I'm going to reserve my comments and hear from the rest of my colleagues. A Council membership scheme. Mr. Parkin is correct that the L.A. City Council put in place the regulations we're talking about classifying cigarets. However, they did allow the the sampling of product in what they called labeling lounges, provided the. Vice mayor. Remembers the council. I'm aware that the city of Los Angeles, I. Believe, today adopted an ordinance, but I have not read that order. That's what the L.A. Times said. It said that they. I believe that's accurate, but I haven't read the ordinance. So I would like to if I can make a motion that, well, how can we do this? Because there's a second reading of the ordinance. I know that we can direct him to go back to the first. That's correct. You can make a motion to amend this ordinance at this time, and we would it's a material change to the ordinance. So we would go back. And if the motion was. Successful, we would recraft the ordinance for consideration by the council at a future date. Well, I'd like to make the motion that we do similar to what the city of Los Angeles. This would be a substitute motion. There is a motion on the floor. I don't know if he wants it. Do you want to first ask if Mr. Andrews wants to accept that before we do a substitute as a as a friendly amendment? You know, really only thing that really kind of bothers me about this whole situation is because, you know, we've taken two weeks on this. You know, we can have an up or down vote either way. You guys want to do it. But I just think now is the time for us to either make a decision or not make a decision. And my decision is to continue to go along with the ordinance it's already written. Well, I'll make a substitute. I'm making a substitute motion. Okay. So there's a there's a substitute motion and one of we council worships you if you want to go ahead and read the substitute. The substitute would be that we would direct the city attorney to come back, keeping all the ordinance in place, with the exception, as in the city of Los Angeles, to allow the use in vaping lounges provided that it is checked and that the users are of sufficient age to do that. I mean, we've got pressure on the city attorney who wants to cue and they're going to go back to the Q and get Mr. Andrews and Mr. Adams, Mr. City Attorney. On the substitute motion is the exception. And I'll obviously we'll look at the Los Angeles ordinance, but does that allow the sampling of products within the store that contain nicotine? I'm I'm not going to craft it on the floor. I would leave it to you. To is it your desire to have it allow for nicotine or not? I'm not sure what it is that you're asking us to craft. I don't believe that they are allowing nicotine, but I may be incorrect. Jerry. Hold on here. We're. Give us. Give us just that. 10 seconds to an audience. We don't even know what it says. Okay, so let me actually. You don't know if this is done for 1/2. Actually, the jury actually still has the floor. What just happened now is Councilmember Andrews is going to accept that as a friendly amendment. Okay. So that is the with only councilman shift gears pulled her substitute from the floor and we now have a motion on the floor, from what I understand, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a motion on the floor to essentially adopt the ordinance we have in front of us with with the carve out that you would be you would be able to have within the stores have vaping with a 18 and over provision that I get that correct. Mr. CITY. That's. Correct. But I guess my my question still is, are you allowing the testing of vaping with nicotine. Or without nicotine or both? I would I would say without nicotine. I'm just asking so I can come back. And get you what you'd like. Because obviously, if you utilize nicotine that they get, then it goes back to the classification of a cigaret. Okay. And that's that's I'm just just saying that. So I would say without nicotine. Okay. So that's the motion that would have been accepted by Councilmember Andrews. I do have a speaker's list, so why don't we get through some of these? Did you have a comment first, Mr. Andrews? This should be. I want everybody back next week. Okay. And Mr.. Mr. Andrews would want that want this brought back next week. Mr. City Attorney. We can do that. We can bring it back for first reading next week. So I think he wants it to be on the. Agenda for coming out on Friday. So he would want it on consecutive week. So there's no one week after the other. Is that correct, Liz? Okay. It'd be based on the council schedule. Yes. Okay. Councilman O'Donnell? Yeah? Why don't we go over the motion and let's not reference Los Angeles? That's all we've been told is they did something today and we don't have any evidence of what they did. So let's let's decide what we want to do here tonight. Could I have a reiteration of the motion, please? Mr. City? Attorney. Vice Mayor, members of the Council, my understanding is that tonight it's recommended that the city attorney amend the previously considered ordinance to create an exception of sampling of the product and those only those products without nicotine within the stores, and that the remainder of the motion would remain as written. Okay. And Mr. Andrews, you're okay with that? Yes. You are. Okay. Definitely. Okay. JOHNSON Bravo. Anthony Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I am wondering if staff can let me know how many of these establishments do we have currently in the city? Do we know? Do we have a report from staff on this? We'll see if Dr. Kirshner knows. As Mayor and council, to my understanding. And of course, these businesses are opening up regularly. But the last count there were at least. 18. Vape shops within the city of Long Beach. At the last reading. It was okay. Councilmember Lowenthal. Thank you. I'm wondering from the city attorney, in terms of enforcement of this newly amended motion, how would we enforce that other than other than incurring additional costs from our health department staff? And I see them. Mr. Kushner and Dr. Kushner can attest to that. Vice Premier Members of the Council. Councilmember Lowenthal. You're correct. This will create. An enforcement issue. Because in just observing a product being sampled, we will not know whether there's nicotine in that product or not. So from a practical standpoint, it's going to create, I believe, an enforcement issue for the council. We would have to rely on the operators to for their compliance and I guess, testing of that product at some point. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. I just want to caution all of us. I it's while well-intentioned, I do think it sets up a challenge when it comes to enforcement and projecting that we aim to do something, but not really being able to do it, I think is problematic and not really the best direction for us to take if we're acknowledging that we're not able to really enforce it without throwing resources at it. And I don't know that we've committed here to throw resources at it. Thank you. To go back to Councilmember Andrews. You know, I. Can't. I hear you totally on that because of the fact that we I don't see us having that form of resources at this point, because if it's 18, it could be way more. It could be much more than that. And trying to have the resources to be able to enforce those. You know, I think it's going to be very, very hard to do. And I just. I. You know, I think this is going to be something that we're really going to have to take some more time on this because I just don't see us getting through this. I but I want to do it. And I think we want to do it right. I just want to come back. What I don't want to have to hear here are these individuals, you know, the people who got up and gave their you know, but I think that we have a doctor over here. We're not doctors. We're just giving our opinions. And when a doctor tells you certain things and I hate to come back and at the end says, Well, look, I told you so, you guys, this is a very important issue. And we talk about vaping. What do we know? Okay, what is vaping? We know what smoking is. We wouldn't know what nicotine as we know tobacco is. But this is a situation I don't think we should get ourselves caught in saying, oh, okay, because the public says, oh, this is that and about business, we're going to have to do it. I think we have to do it right and only way to do it right. I think we're going to have to listen to what the professional people are talking about and the doctors at attorneys based things. I just think we have to kind of take more time, look at what we're going to do here. And and if we do, we just have to do it and do it right. And that's the only way I think we're going to do it is get more information from this. So I don't know what we are at this point. So I think I think where we are right now is we do have we do have a motion on the floor. I have two other speakers. So let me get to these speakers and then count and then we'll go back. Councilmember O'Donnell. So the the vape shops would be the number of vape shops along which would be uncapped. Right. Yet we've capped cigar lounges. Mr.. Mr.. West. You're, you were adamant that we cap the number of those. Right. So I'm wondering why tonight we're now going to see these uncapped. There's nothing in the world this evening, right? I get it. I got some Boston. Your first time. I'd like to. I think we've had a good, good discussion here. This is this issue has been before us for at least a couple of weeks now. I think we are all a little bit more informed about the issue than when we first started. This is one of those evolving issues that we don't necessarily know all the answers to. And I think that's pretty clear. I think Mr. Andrews or Councilmember Andrews was right on point in his assessment, but I think the meat of the ordinance is still intact. I mean, this this provision prevents vaping in public places. It keeps it keeps vaporizing devices and it prohibits the sale of vaporizing devices to to children and underage. I mean, we I think we're accomplishing most of what we're setting out to do by allowing these vaporizing devices to be used inside of the places where they're sold. I don't think that we are doing anything to harm public health because the individuals that are in there are have made the individual choice to use vapor in vaping devices. And so there's no there's no secondhand exposure. There's no anybody that that is going to go inside of one of these these establishments knows exactly what they're going in there for. And so, like I said, I think the meat of your ordinance is is is intact. I think you're right. We do need to take some time. And it looks like we're going to do that, hopefully, if we support this amendment this evening to take a little bit more time to get it right. And so I commend you for for bringing this forth. And I think a lot of it is going to be better for it. You have a couple more speakers. Councilmember Lowenthal. Actually, I can wait until Councilmember Andrew speaks. To Councilor Lipski. You know, I understand we're all concerned about enforcement, but, you know, it is illegal to sell cigarets to minors. It happens all the time in Long Beach. It's not right. We don't enforce that to the fullest. In fact, the report just came out that we're a little bit short of how we go out and enforce on that . So recognizing there's difficulties in enforcement for everything. My concern is that we do actually. Mr. Ralston, I think you just are taking it very well. I just think that this gives an opportunity to regulate where we need to, but to acknowledge that this is a different type of product and that we don't want to take adults from being able to have their business and do it in a responsive, wise, responsible way, particularly if they do it for anyone over 18. Councilmember Andrews You. Know, I think actually kind of going through this tonight and listening to the, you know, the doctor on this, I'm going to reject the friendly motion. I'm going to go back to the original motion and and just leave it at that because it's the way I came in with and this is the way I'm going to deal with it. And we can vote either up or down on it and let it be like that. And that's the way I'm going to deal with it. Okay. So there the friendly was not accepted. So we're back to the original motion and your substitute was withdrawn. So what it was. So that's where we are right now. So, Councilman Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. And I wanted to thank Councilmember Andrews for reverting back to the original motion. I certainly support that. I think the difference initially we had this conversation about cigar lounges. The difference is there is a limit to the number of these lounges, and that could change at any time with the new council, certainly . But for now there is a limit, whereas with these establishments there is not. And I appreciate if anyone is able to quit smoking as a result of it. I think that does happen. But if the intent is to quit smoking, I don't know that sampling is necessary. That's a conviction that someone has is to quit smoking. And I don't know that they require a sample to do that. That's a personal conviction. It's a health oriented conviction. Therefore, it's I'm not convinced that samples are necessary to promote that. And so I all in support of anyone attempting to quit smoking through whatever methodology. But certainly I am in support of this item. And I thank Mr. Andrews, Councilmember Anders, for bringing this forward. Okay. There no other motion on the floor. So we have the main motion. And the main motion just to repeat it is to approve on a second reading the the approval on the second reading the ordinance that's in front of us was presented. Correct. Mr. City Attorney. That's the motion on the floor at this. Time. Okay. I have one more counts in Boston. Well, I like to offer a substitute motion, and that will go back to the original. The amendment. I'd like to have that at least voted on. And that would be to allow for. Can you read me what that original. The original. Substitute motion as made. By council memberships key was to adopt the to direct the city attorney to amend the ordinance before you this evening and bring it back for first reading next week with the ordinance in a to create an exception for the testing of product within the stores with testing within stores of the products, without nicotine with an ID check . Wound care. There's been a motion and a second. Councilman Lowenthal. That's okay. I'd just like to urge my colleagues to vote no on that substitute. Substitute? Cancel Boston. And then I just want to just go back to the the inconsistency of this council, because we talk about this enforcement issue, and it was the same same argument was made regarding another issue, fireworks just a few weeks ago in terms of the lack of enforcement over something that we can't deal with. And so this is the same same issue. When we deal with the nicotine issue, we're creating an enforcement issue. And you guys articulated that very well. I just wanted to bring that to your attention. Okay. We're about to get to a very last comment that will go to a vote, just as a reminder to everyone that like every ordinance that we pass, there's always information that's coming in and all ordinances can be changed or adapted as we move forward. And so on. Any given Tuesday ordinances can be can be moved forward. So we have the substitute motion on the floor, which is by Councilmember Austin, and then then we'll take a vote on that item first. Motion fails. Four votes to no. Five votes no. Main motion, please. It's the second. Just a minute, please. Sorry about that. Okay. Main motion in motion, please. Please cast your vote. Larry, could you check that vote again, please? These were councilman chips key. I think you're looking at the wrong screen. Steve. That Garcia's on the bottom. Councilmember asked that they change that. Yeah. Mayor and Councilmember Neal. Oh, no, no, no. You're fine. Yes. He voted yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're on the main motion right now. Please cast your vote. It's easier. Passage nine vote. Yes. Motion carries. Next item, please. We are done and we're not. I'm sorry. New business. Sorry about that. Sorry about. That. Not your new. Business. That's right. Item 23 is a report from the Office of Councilmember Patrick O'Donnell, Councilwoman Geri Sheepskin Councilmember Stephen Neil with a recommendation to request city manager to prepare a letter of support for Assembly Bill 1839, also known as the California Film and Television Job Retention and Promotion Act.

Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution to commemorate National Family Caregivers Month and in recognition of the importance of the In-Home Care Provider Workforce.

LongBeachCC_11182014_14-0971

Thank you very. It's a report from the office of Councilman Al Austin and Councilmember Roberta Ranga with a recommendation to request the city attorney to draft a resolution to commemorate National Family Caregivers Month in recognition of the importance of in-home care provider workforce. And before we begin, I'm going to have Councilmember Richardson make an announcement. I'd like to say out publicly, I'm going to recuse myself over legal conflicts of interest to do some consulting with this group. So if you're going to. You're going to. Great. Okay. Motions and motions being made. I'm going to turn this over by to turn this over to Councilmember Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes. This is an issue that is near and dear to my heart, as I have worked hand-in-hand, side by side with many home care workers over the years. This is a draft resolution to commemorate the National Family Caregiver Month, an important meeting in recognition of the importance of in-home care provider who who do , in my opinion, God's work. They do work that is unseen and goes unseen and often unappreciated. They work with our our seniors. They work with our our our disabled. They work they work with our developmentally disabled. And they do great work. They save the state of California millions and millions of dollars with the work that they do, working with the clients that they work with. If their clients weren't with care, in-home support services or caregivers, they would be in nursing homes or developmental centers cost in the state of California. Instead of them costing a few thousand dollars, a couple thousand dollars a month, there would be six, seven, $8,000 a month. So the work that they do is critical to our community. Many of us don't realize that we have over 100, almost 150,000 home care workers who live in the county of Los Angeles. We have over 11,000 of them right here in the city of Long Beach. I'm looking out here in this crowd, and I see quite a few familiar faces because many of them are eighth District residents. I appreciate their work and I'm proud to want to recognize them here to stay today. I keep talking. Thank you, Mayor. And also, I want to thank Councilmember Austin for bringing this forward. Having been a individual who benefited from home care, where my father in law was in his in its final days, and you see the quality of work that they do in there. It's a it's a branch of service that is very much under looking, very much underappreciated. And so I want to thank Kazu, Austin and Richard Hill for bringing this forward. I totally support it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Andrews. Yeah. Yes. I really want to thank you also for standing here just at this time of night. But you guys are really if people really knew what you individuals are doing when it comes in, Askia, I mean, the work that you do is just I mean, impeccable because the fact that it's not easy, because the fact I know that, you know, for my father himself had to have been asking, but you guys are just tremendous. And the work you do, you know, everyone would really seriously take a serious, you know, look and see what you guys if they had a chance to see the work that you go through, man, I'm telling you, they would be so appreciative. And I know I am. And thank you guys again for your hard work. But. Thank you. Council member Austin. Yes. I don't want to to to to under undervalue. What we're doing here tonight and what we're doing here tonight is also we're recognizing in-home caregivers, but we are also saying that, you know what, we're standing with them in support of of of a fair wage on their path to to earning $15 an hour very, very clearly . And there's a lot of conversation about raising the minimum wage and who deserves $15 an hour or what that should look like. I don't think that that anybody would argue that the work that these individuals are doing, the savings that they are providing the state in our communities, we shouldn't there shouldn't be an argument about the wages that that these folks deserve. And so I just wanted to make sure that was very clear. I'm going to read the last paragraph of the proposed resolution, and it says Whereas whereas whereas and I think we've covered how great our in-home caregivers are now, therefore, be it resolved that the city of Long Beach, standard support of home care workers, acknowledging the essential work and contributions they bring to Long Beach by officially recognizing the month of November as family caregivers month and supporting their efforts to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty as they fight for path to earn an hourly wage of $15. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Price. Thank you. I have a couple questions for the city attorney. First of all, no quarrel whatsoever with the premise of this item. The work that these individuals do is it's God's work. And you cannot mean arguing how much it's worth is kind of a useless argument to have because I don't think we can even quantify what their work is worth. Its its there are very few professions out there who do the type of work that you can't even fairly quantify, especially not with something like a minimum wage. But having said that, I'm concerned about this last paragraph and I noticed it was in the revised and I wanted to maybe ask the city attorney about this. So in this resolution, the last paragraph is basically. Articulating as a body that these individuals would be working towards a wage that is higher than the minimum wage. Is there any legal issue with that? Are we are we then setting a new minimum wage? No. The resolution would not set or establish the minimum wage in Long Beach. It is, as the resolution indicates, it's to commemorate the National Family Caregiver Month and a recognition of their importance. The last paragraph does talk about a path to an hourly wage of $15. I don't know that this resolution in itself articulates that the city is supporting the $15 in this particular resolution. It's supporting and recognizing their work. And I think it as a goal for that organization to get to $15. But it does not establish or establish the policy of Long Beach that there's a $15 a wage, minimum or living wage for this particular sector. Okay. And I mean, maybe I can ask the makers of the of this the authors of this item, where did that number, $15, come from? How was it determined that their worth that their their work is worth $15 and not $30, for example? Well, is that an arbitrary number? It's an it's I wouldn't say it's an arbitrary number. We have representatives here from SEIU. You will T.W., I'm sure during public comment. They will they will speak to that. I know for a fact that they have they have bargaining relationships with various counties throughout the state of California. And that is who they they bargaining. They bargain with. They their funds come from a a blend of federal and state moneys that that are that are moved through the county of Los Angeles. And they they bargain with them as the caregivers for, like I said, over 150,000 folks who they provide care to here in our county . I guess my concern is the title of the draft resolution is recognition of the Importance of the in-home care provider Workforce and National Family Caregivers month. And most of the. Resolution seems to be consistent with that title. The last paragraph seems to be. Frankly, unrelated to that title, it seems to be more of a maybe a labor support issue. I'm not sure. And to me, I think that the resolution's purpose is met without that last paragraph and certainly without placing a dollar value on it. That last paragraph really has nothing to do with the purpose of the resolution. We might want to title the resolution something else like helping this particular labor organization or something, but calling it appreciation or recognition of the importance of the in-home care provider workforce and national family caregivers. Month And then including that last paragraph in there, to me it just doesn't seem like it fits. So my, my recommendation would be that we and you know what I would love to hear from public comment and see maybe there's a link there that I'm missing. So before making any friendly amendment for fear that it will be rejected, let me just hear the public comment and I will go from there. How about that? Okay. Next, we have Councilwoman Gonzalez. Just want to say thank you all for being here, too. You've waited so long. And I know that this resolution is a step in the right direction, in my opinion. And I know the $15 is a trend that, you know, Los Angeles County had been making. I know you're onwards toward that towards that trend. And so I want to thank you for every single day you know, what you're doing for folks in our city. Thank you. Thank you. And now we'll take. Yes. Please come forward and you can just identify yourself for the record. Anyone who wants to speak to us, please come to the mic. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Leonard Camarena. I'm a home care provider, being a home care provider for 13 years. Finally got to meet you, Mr. Mayor. You hear everybody. Counsel. Thank you very much. And I am really happy that you guys are with us on this. But, Mr. Price, I will answer any questions if you need to know anything. But first of all, I'd like to tell you that I am here supporting my brothers and sisters at home care working providers. Right. And you guys are right. We do do a job that we give home care provision to to the elders, to the sick and to the disabled. Okay, so that's us right here. That's the job that we were chosen to do. This is a job that we take with a lot of pride to meet these people, to make our clients, to feel real relaxed during the days of their illness. Okay. So then I'm asking you also if you would stand up with us and fight for us for $15 an hour that the county has presented us with. Right, because it's $15 an hour. Sure. 965 an hour that we're making now. And we fight for $0.65 for about six months in 2013. Well, now we're asking you, because the job we do, you know, it doesn't pay a lot. So a lot of us live in property, you know, like we we can we always worried about our rent and our bills and our finances, but still, we don't give up. We keep taking care of those that we are we're asked to to give health care to. So I would just like to come to the county council and ask you to join us to help fight for $15 an hour. And as in January, coming up, me and my. Me and some providers. We will be. Going to the to the county legislators for tally county status for for higher wages and better dignity in life saved by being a home care provider. I mean. We were. We're not really recognized, but through you. I really appreciate it. But through others were not recognized. But now we're starting to get recognized. Now all the cities are combining together to fight, to assist us to get $15 an hour. So that's what we're asking you, if you would join us to get $15 an hour. And we appreciate it. And I'm glad to be here. Okay. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Jimmy Taylor. I'm also a home care worker. I've been a home care worker for about seven years now. I used to take care of my mom. She's passed on as well as I take care of my aunt now. So I had two clients that I took care of. I'm asking the council tonight to stand up to stand up with working families. And we demand $15. I know you said $15 not. Why not 39.60 $0.05. If you walked a day in my shoes taking care of my client, which has multiple different health health issues. Nine $65 would be nothing. 965 For a lot of folks that's in poverty or barely making it. Nine 69.65 Since I've gone to a lot of folks home, that makes 9.65 and they're barely making it. $15. We could put money back into the economy, which would give it a boost that would help. We would save the the country, the state, millions of dollars, millions of dollars that we wouldn't have to build different facility. So. 965 Yeah, it's really nothing. You ask yourself on this panel. Could you live off a 9.60 $0.05? I don't think so. Even $15, it's not a lot, but it is a start. It would help a lot of home care workers out there that really needs that. So, again, I ask you, please stand with us. Approve the $15. We thank you for your support and the recognition that you're going to give us. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Bennie Thompson, SEIU, United Long Term Care Worker Staff. I wanted to come to address some of the issues that the council. Price raised, and your act tonight would be an act of solidarity. And standing with the long term care workers as we go forward into bargaining in January with L.A. County. And just to continue with the comments of the city attorney, it would not change the minimum wage. Or set any wage here in. Long Beach. Your act is purely. An act of solidarity and standing with the over 11,000 long term care. Workers who are providing services to the elderly. And to the most vulnerable in. Our community here in Long Beach. Does that answer the concern? Are there any other concerns? No, I think right now it just wouldn't comment on. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Patsy Walton. I want to say thank you for coming out to listening to us tonight. I've been in-home care worker for 12 years. My first four years, being a worker, I did not get paid. I worked for free because it wasn't just family members, it was friends also, and they didn't have it. And if. They did, I didn't know anything about. It. Now I have two clients. I work for elder people, 95, 85 years old. We do I do the same kind of work that people in the hospital does. You know, and sometimes I do more. You know, I have relationship with my workers, my clients today. And I love my clients. And if I can get more, I will. My goal is to help any elder I can, any kind of way I can. That's what God got. Me here for. You know, and. And I wish you guys we really look at that we really need a $15 cut for real for real. This $9 an hour. The way the rate is, we can barely live. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Larry Prince. I live in the first district. Hi, Councilwoman. I was walking to school. One of the young men I mentor. To the elementary school. Here and with his mother. And we were. Confronted by a transient who had to use. The sidewalk as a toilet. And as I ushered them past that, I, the man, exposed himself and defecated on the sidewalk. And I called the police. And it just it was a a reminder how bad our. The homeless problem is. Here. They. The mother asked me later, why would he do such a thing? And I had to tell. Her that they don't have any place to go. They can't go to Starbucks. They can't go to a restaurant. They won't let them in. So. It was a tragic reminder of the human tragedy. All of you walk through every day when you walk through the park next door, any place downtown. But that aside, I was. Reminded also that the the the mother of the woman of the young boy I'm mentoring is somebody who is in need of in-home supportive services. And she's applied for such. She has debilitating effects of diabetes and also lupus. And she has. Applied to receive this care and. Has not received. An answer for this. And. I'm very encouraged by Councilman Austin's support for in-home supportive services. I think that's that's a great thing. But she has not received an answer for this. Somebody who has diabetes and lupus, I'm just wondering, does she need a third major disability to qualify for this? I'm just wondering if there's an advocate. Councilman also asked Austin or Councilman Andrews or your. I know you've spoken in support of this. Is there somebody who can help. This particular person who needs this help. Urgently? Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Just. Please come forward if you're going to. We need to get through the speakers. If you're going to speak, just please come forward. Hi, my name is Wanda Williams, and I'd like to thank you all for being here and taking a time out to listen to us. And also, I'd like to thank you guys for recognizing November as the Caregivers Month. That's a great thing you've done. And as for the $15 an hour, that's just something for all the home care workers who are striving for all over Southern California and Northern California. That's our fight. We're coming here to thank you right now for making November. I can't give as much myself. I have 25 years in a health care union health care industry, but my fiancee had a massive stroke due to his football days, so I ended up taking care of him. We never lived together. We got engaged. February 22. We had a massive stroke in May of 2000. Two didn't know who I was. So what was I going to do, walk away from him? No, I let him move in with me. So it didn't matter about the money, us, whatever we get paid, we're going to take care of our family, our friends, whoever we going to do this. So but everything costs and we need to be recognized. And I so thank you guys for what you done for November. Thank you. Thank you, Count. Oh, sorry. We have another speaker. Please come forward. Hello. My name is Donna. I'm the disabled person. I'm here today to tell you how my caregiver helped me and how it saves you money. I wasn't born with a brain damage, disabled, couldn't walk, talk or hear. As you see. To know I'm why I talk, I could hear. But unfortunately I had medical problems in my stomach. But leave me to have 15 surgeries in my stomach that left me with a cloth in me bag for the rest of my life. For now, I have a hole in my stomach. It's very hard with my hands with die with with arthritis to put my own bag on, to have one bag to mess it up at $22. Could you imagine? My caregiver were kind enough because my supply was not in and I ran out to buy me one. Not only that, I cannot do this by myself. Not only that, I want to let you know if you put me in a boarding care, if you put me in a hospital, it would cost more the state more money to care for me. So I get off my butt every day and I fight for my life and keep on fighting because not only my stick, I have a son was to rest and kicked in the brain and my brother unfortunately been hit by a car for a time that left them with a brain injury. But I get up every day and I help the workers and I give them hope that I am going to try one day to get off of Social Security and be a worker myself. This is my caregiver. She helps me. And I want you to understand the work that you do, the hard they help every day and make sure that I get my medicine taken. I have came a long way. I've stopped taking a lot of medicine. I don't want to take pain pills. I want to get up and walk. I want to crawl, I want to walk. I want to run. I want to scream. Without a caregiver, I don't know what I would do if they give me hope. I What have you told me? The child. You would never believe that I couldn't even talk the way I talked. And now, 20 years ago, when the caregiver union people met me, I couldn't write a word I wrote back was upside down. They said, Butler, you need to pick up the phone and try to call. I did it my way. I did it every step of the way for the worker because I believe the workers need to help the disabled. Please. They don't need they need what they deserve. They worked very, very hard. They even were better than some nurses. I thank you very much to listen to my story. Okay. Thank you very much. Hi. My name is Crystal. I actually want to thank God for one thing, for giving me this opportunity to work with disabled peoples. You know, I want to thank the councilor and the mayor's, my friends, that made news. And I really appreciate me. You know, I've been an assistant for working for disabled people since 2001. And some days it's hard because we get these clients. Sometimes I can really, really help. They serve. I mean, they sometimes mess up on me. So and we take the time, even the little time that we do how we do overtime to make sure these clients are accountable. What they provide is because some of us, we can't deal with a lot of these clients, but me, I'm so grateful that I'm be able to take care and not a disabled person because I don't want somebody to take care of my mother. So I'm just begging and praying on it. You think about giving us just $15 an hour because we work hard, but to help the community, knowing that there is some good people out there that will go over time to help these clients. Thank you. Councilwoman Mango. Oh, another one. Please. Hi. My name is Betty. I'm from Carson. I'm not from Long Beach. However, just to let you know, I want to let you know that the the $15 an hour is a pathway to $15 an hour. And the the council the council people of Carson have also given us a resolution stating that they are also supporting us in our in our fight. It's not from you guys. The $15 is going to come from it's from the state and the county, Los Angeles. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I am a county of employee professional. Home health care workers are an important group of health care professionals in our system. I specifically have worked on health care policy for the CEO's office for Los Angeles County, and I know the financial savings that each and every one of you provide for the system. Having had elderly grandparents, I know and understand how hard it is to care for someone after a stroke and during other times of need and the work that you do. As my colleague said, it is the work of God. That being said, wages are a complicated matter with rippling impact and we as a city are in bargaining with I am employees right now, some of which make less than $15 an hour as well. And. A resolution for your service is warranted. Asking this body to get involved in the labor negotiations of the County of Los Angeles is a different matter, and I feel that the revision to the resolution was not timely. I think that. If if the true weight needs to be behind this that you're asking for, then you should ask your council member to come here with the resolutions specifically stating only. That the city of Long Beach is asking for your support in getting involved in the labor negotiations of the County of Los Angeles. Let me also state that my mother is a member of SEIU. I am a supporter of labor. She is not a member of your particular group within. So I am not in a conflict. But but I have a significant problem with bringing. Issues of wages through a resolution process that is changed after posted to the public. And to make any evaluation of your value without having it stand on its own. Councilmember Austin. Yes. I want to thank the many people who came down, particularly from the the home care providers here who live in Long Beach, who serve residents here in Long Beach. Again, I think everybody behind this dais appreciates the work you do. And I believe most of us support your pathway to earning a living with a living wage. And so with that, I would call the question. Okay. There's been a there's one more person that wants to speak. You called the question is or a second to call the question, can the second that have called the question with one more person wants to speak to will Mr. Judy Turner will vote on the question first. Is that correct? There's been a motion and second, yes, it'd be okay. He'll withdraw. Okay. There's one other person. So, Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. So I think what this I'm gathering from the comments that that what this item is asking us to do is basically adopt a resolution. But not only appreciates the work of this class of employees, but also helps them with their labor bargaining with the county of L.A.. Mr. City Attorney, is that your understanding of what? Yes. The resolution would indicate that the city this would be a position of the city of Long Beach supporting and recognizing their importance and then also supporting their efforts in their attempt to earn or make $15 an hour. So, yes. So and I don't really think this is a city attorney question, but common sense wise, if we were to do this for this. Labor group, then we would be. I guess that would be some. It certainly wouldn't be unprecedented then for us to do it for other labor groups who are about to embark on negotiations with their employer, which is not the city of Long Beach. Right. So. So my my issue is that I think it sets a really bad precedent for us to be asked as a city to weigh in on labor negotiations in another with another entity, knowing full well that we ourselves are going through labor negotiations here in the city of Long Beach. And let me just ask hypothetically, perhaps the city manager might be able to assist me with this question if we were to support a $15 wage for all of our employees who are currently making under $15 an hour, would that have a financial impact on the city of Long Beach? Councilmember Yes, it would. And would would that financial impact possibly result in us having to cut services to our residents? It possibly could. So by adopting this resolution, we'd be saying that we want the city of L.A. to do something for its employees, that the city of Long Beach is not currently doing for its own employees. That's my understanding. And and I think that's that sets a bad example, bad precedent. It has nothing to do with this particular organization, because if we do this for this organization, we're going to be expected to do it for others. I'm not sure what other discussions are going on out there, and that's a concern to me. I think that it's important for us to think about the ramifications of passing a resolution like this. Given that we are in the process of labor negotiations in the city of Long Beach and will continue to be for the next few years, what are we saying? Are we in fact saying that this is a principle that we want applied to all the hardworking employees in the city of Long Beach as well? And if so, are we okay with the financial consequences that are going to come with that? We given the fiscal. Situation that we're in. I don't know how we could answer that question responsibly in the affirmative. So with that, I have nothing else to say. Okay. I have I have one more council comment here that's popped up and then we're going to go to a vote. Councilmember Mongo. I want to say that. Even more so. I think it is unfair that it is unreasonable to think that our council colleagues do not have an impact on us. And unfortunately, one of our colleagues is a consultant of yours and. While he is recusing himself from voting on the item. That does not take back his influence. And it just really upsets me that this is brought before us and this has to go on. And I. Would strongly request that the friendly amendment that we were hearing potentially come forward would be considered. Are there any ideas of any amendments you'd like to make? Councilmember Alston. May I call it question? Okay. Okay. There's questions being called. I think we're done with the comments, public comments over. There's an emotion. The second on the floor. The motion on the floor is to approve and move forward with the resolution that the city attorney would draft. Correct. The motion is to request our office to draft. We would bring the resolution back for a final vote. Yes. Okay, great. And Mr. Clark, everyone, please cast your ballot. Motion carries five votes. Yes. Two votes no. Okay. Thank you. That that resolution will come back to the council. And I also want to thank all of you for coming down today. Like I think everyone up here said, you guys do some really, really important work in our community. It really is some of the work that you're taking care of those that need the help the most. So thank you all for being here. And the resolution will be back to the city council. Mr. Kirk Item number ten. Item ten is a report from the city manager with a recommendation to approve the Magnolia Industrial Group Property and Business Improvement District Annual Report and authorize payment of the city's assessments in the amount of $1,488 per second.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 1.15, and by repealing Sections 2.01.210(b) and 2.01.1010; all relating to changing the regular election dates of the Primary Nominating and General Municipal Elections to March and November, respectively, to coincide with statewide elections as required by SB 415, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Okay. Thank you. We are going to be hearing item, I believe it's 22, which is an ordinance, please. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Palm Beach Municipal Code pertaining to municipal election dates as required by SB 415. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. I know we've I know we've we have voted on this and we've had four reports, so we don't need a full report, but just some updates on on recent things just to make sure everyone knows what they're voting on. Thank you, Mayor and member of the Council. The item before you tonight is pursuant to your action back in October of 2017 to comply with SB 415 and move our election dates beginning in 2020. As you know, the election dates are established by the city charter and as described in the council letter before you this evening, the amendments to the charter require a vote of the people. However, the California attorney general has opined that 415 prevails over our conflicting charter provisions, rendering the city's current charter provisions relating to the election dates void and allowing you to consider adopting this ordinance. This evening, however, there has been a recent development which has called the opinion of the Attorney General into question in a recent case, the Redondo Beach versus the state of California. A trial judge has ruled that SB 415 does not apply to charter cities. This case is now on appeal. The issue is that if the Court of Appeal eventually decides that SB 14 415 does not apply to charter cities, then the Council City Council does not have the authority to change the city election dates by ordinance. And this action, if taken tonight, would be void and the elections in 2020 would revert to the dates as provided in the city charter. And any change of future city charter relating to election dates would only be made by a vote of the people at a future election. We are continuing to monitor this case. It is on appeal. The attorney general is confident that they will be successful on appeal. However, we are waiting for a court decision on that. And in that regard, I do have two minor changes to the ordinance to make on the floor this evening. They are on page four and we we put in the wrong date, page four, line four. We need to strike November 2020 and insert 2016 and 2018. And what that section does is it extends the terms for the council members who were elected in 2016 and in 2018. They will be extended by five months to match the dates when we move the election dates to 2020. And that same date would be changed at line 12, we would strike November 2020 and insert 2016 to extend the terms for the school district members who were elected in 2016. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Any public comment on this saying no public comment. Councilor Richardson. Councilmember comes from Gonzales. Councilman Mongo. I think that it's just prudent to mention I know that a lot of this stemmed from the idea that we had low voter turnout. But if you looked at the voter turnout in June in a primary on the National with a lot of activity going on, District five had almost had over 40% voter turnout. And that's without removing many of the individuals. Yet, because L.A. County has not yet been able to reconcile the Department of Public Health's records of death records with L.A. County's voter record. And so that's 40% with the deceased still on the voter rolls. So I just want to say how proud I am of the residents of Long Beach for getting out and voting, and that when activated, people will turn out. Thank you. Members, please cast your votes.

A MOTION relating to identifying the future allocation of Puget Sound Taxpayers Accountability Account proceeds to priority educational areas and requesting the executive to develop plans to allocate proceeds within the priority educational areas.

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See, no one else to offer public comment will close the public hearing. And that leaves us with one item on today's agenda. That's Motion 2019 245. This is the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Act, which, as you know, directs $318 million to King County over the next 15 years due to spent on the educational needs of students in and youth in King County. I want to highlight the population that we are seeking to support and in fact are clear in the legislation before us today, in our previous work about who we intend, the past funds to support that would be children and youth of color, children and youth from families at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. Children and youth who are homeless in the in the foster care system, in the child welfare system, are involved in the juvenile justice system. Children and youth with disabilities. Children and youth who identify as LGBTQ or otherwise vulnerable. Children and youth. Those populations have really been at the focus of our work and our analysis over the last two years, where we've held over a dozen committee and council meetings, 21 public listening sessions with over 650 public participants, and had more one on one conversations than I think any one of us could count. It's truly a significant body of work, and today is the point where we'll be fully engaging and taking up legislation to bring all of that input together. I've shared a Stryker with my colleagues last week striking an amendment, S-1, that I proposed as a place to form and begin our conversations and. I could. Let me not go. Let me stop there only to introduce Jeff Mumm, our chief policy or to policy officer, to speak to S-1. And also let me introduce the concept of striking amendment as to since S-1 was released on Thursday, there are primarily some technical and grammatical and some clarifying of intent has been needed. And so that is shaped in as to there's no intent to have a policy change in as to. But I'll ask Jeff to present on particularly as to and the other amendments before us. Mr.. Ma'am. Great afternoon. Chair. Jeff, Ma'am. Council Staff And so yet, as you said today, only briefing the committee on the strike, an amendment as to which is substantially the same as the amendment that that you shared with your colleagues on Thursday. And as I go to the briefing where there are changes, I will I will call those out and explain them so that we're all on the same page. So the staff report begins on page seven of your packet, but I think we can probably skip to page nine. The pages prior to that are all the background information that you've already been briefed on. So on page nine, we can start with the with the analysis. And as you'll recall, the committee was briefed on the Interline Motion, which set out three educational areas for to provide future positive proceeds to those being early learning K-12 and higher education. But that that motion left these allocation percentages blank. It also called out the target populations, which you just described. And then it also asked for the executive to come up with an implementation plan that includes things such as governance, structure, financial plan, policies around facilities and evaluations. So the striking amendment makes changes to the underlying motion. And first it adds in and clarifies as more specific needs of the targeted populations. Specifically, it calls out. It also adds children or youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered to the target populations. And then it also refines the definition of low income to mean kids in families that have incomes below 200 200% of the federal poverty level. And so a family of four, that's about $50,000. Next, the striking amendment allocates future pots of resources, and at first that it allows up to 10% of the funds to be used for evaluation administration. Mr. Mom, for clarity, I'm you're addressing striking the amendment as to. That's correct. As I go I mean they're very similar in as were there are differences I will specifically call those out and hopefully that's a smooth and that's confusing way of doing things if if you want to follow along at home and if you look at the piece, if you look at the chart on page 11, this shows how the striking amendment allocates the funds. So you'll see that first there's the up to 10% allocation for evaluation, administration and technical support, and then it allocates 55% of the remaining funds to early learning programs and facilities. And included in that is facilities for early interventions. Now, of this of these dollars, the the the striking amendments, they they specify that for effort for facility. If you're just use it to build an early learning facility those facilities have to serve a population that is at least 70% made up of kids of from low income families . Of that 200 families that are at or below that 200% federal poverty level and also says that these facilities should be in access deserts, which is a term that the amendments ask the executive to more precisely find later on in the motion. And if we can interrupt. Councilmember Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Jeff. On the 70%, what was that on this staff report? I'm not seeing that number. Oh. Page ten. Yes. The chart just simply is a. Shows the allocations and then the definitions are in the stack. So how would it do that? My question on the 70% is that would use the support facilities that are comprised of at least 70% of children from families with income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. So how would we determine and or and or force that? What are the practical implications of that? I understand generally we want to aim these funds towards some communities or families or children. Narrowing it down so that who can't otherwise afford it. So how do we how do we do that? Why are we picking 70% as opposed to some other number? I have some concerns about the rigidity of that with respect to the long term share nature of these dollars and making sure that they're we're not putting unnecessary barriers to deploying these facilities and services in communities that really need it. So the motion says to the extent possible, and then do this, and then it asks the executive that come up with the way to figure this out. So it's not simply individual. But individual pre-K facility have to have 70% of its enrollees at or below 200%. Is that the intent of. That's the desire? Yes, I see. Okay. I need to share with my colleagues then that some of the feedback I've heard about that is a question about whether that works in the marketplace. With respect to having enough, I'll call the market rate children who are paying close to full tuition make it work economically. So I would want to have some more dialog with the community about whether that is practical. I share the goal of prioritizing these resources to the children and communities that need them most from an economic disadvantage perspective. But the specificity of that gets my attention. Councilmember Debusk If I can add in striking the amendment as to line 69, it does say to the greatest extent possible. And then later when we address the implementation plan, it asks as to be returned as part of the implementation plan. Thoughts on how to do more specific proposals on how to ensure that children are being served by those facilities are the target populations and at what balance. I see, that's helpful. And can somebody help me understand the choosing of the 70% numbers that in some of our client and some of our consultants recommendations or. Councilmember up the Grove? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm one of those who have been pushing for as strong of language as we can, because I have some concerns that this is that that it will not be targeted as effectively at our target to be focused as effectively in our target population. And quite frankly, I got the 70% recommendation. I was recommending 70% in part because of some communication I had received from the coalition saying they serve 50 to 70%. So it's and then the language here is soft enough that my desire is to push, I guess, into if we have multiple opportunities to invest, to prioritize those that best serve our targeted population. Would be the goal. But I so I. Might have been responsible for the magic 70 figure and it came from a rough the high end of a rough range that came from a representative, the coalition. They were not advocating for that, but that's where that number at least came from. If I might, I want to express publicly that I share your objective there and just want to make sure that we're not unnecessarily tying our hands or putting barriers by choosing that number. So I would be happy to engage and work on that. If there's some way with that, with the community that's focused on this part of the puzzle, if there is a way to achieve that objective effectively. One more question, Mr. Martin, before you continue. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. When you were talking about who this applies to. You didn't mention faster kids. But at the bottom of page nine, it lists all of them. So did you just leave that out or did you mean by to a page? And I'm still unclear. I just made a mistake. You know, you can make mistakes, but make sure that's okay. And then you said access deserts. So are you talking about this having a county wide impact or just where there are access deserts or access deserts having the priority? So the the way the motion is structured, it would say that we put these facilities in access deserts and then it then later on in the plantation plan and asks the executive to come up with them and to work with them, be working at all sorts of take all this, but to come up with the definition for access desert. So I think the idea is to put the facilities and the places of the highest need. But the motion then. Sort of. It doesn't define it and is asked for that definition to be developed later. So I would suggest that there are kids all across this county who have high needs and to to discriminate, that there would be places in this county that wouldn't even be eligible is probably not that appropriate. Thank you. In, Mr. Mom, I misspoke, but I'm sure not for the last time today. Another question, this one from Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeff, back to the 70 or at least 70% and with regard to the supporting facilities, is that about the percentage that would like be the maximum without including private paid families? Because my understanding has traditionally has been that there has to be a certain amount of private paid facilities that those who can afford the full cost in order to make the center survive financially. I don't know the answer to that question. I can look into it further. I can tell you that the consultant in the report that the council commissioned from Ken Thompson in the financial analysis, it contemplated facilities that were more of a 6040 split or 60% of low income and then and then 40% at market rate. But I don't know where between 67, where that where that threshold is. But I can give as much information for you as possible. Thank you. And maybe you addressed that already. I stepped out to talk with staff for a moment. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert. If my memory serves me right, in one of the reports that we got from that gentleman that was doing the studies, it talked about that. But I thought he gave us a range of what was viable. And I don't remember the range, but I think it was like 50 to 70% needing could be market rate. So you might want to look there to some extent. Yeah, I'll call Ken and I will call Ken the consultant. And that's when Mr. Mumm. Mr. Chair. Let's see. So we're still in the early learning bucket and just wanted to ask and you need to also call out that within the and that's the striking amendment. It sets aside 20, 20% of these funds to be for in-home care providers. And facilities there. Okay. Now, moving on to the the remaining funds of the remaining 45% of the funds. These would go to support services in K through 12 and higher education and 40% would go to K through 12 age kids through the King County promise. And this is one of the differences between S1 and S to S two makes it clear that these funds need to go through the King County promise. It was unclear under S1, but this clarifies and then also that groups that that apply for these funds also have to bring matching contributions. The same goes for the higher ed, the 40% that's allocated to higher ed and that this this as to have that going through the King County promise and then also makes a requirement for matching funds in the remaining funds which is the 20% of the of the 45%. And as that chart on page 11 makes us a little more clear, I know it's a little hard to follow. 20% would go to community based organizations that are integrated with K to 312 system. And here are a couple of differences between one and two in S2. It makes it clear that the community based organizations only need to be integrated with the K through 12 systems. In the first strike, it also had post-secondary. But this makes it clear that these funds are to go just to K through 12 activities or community organizations that help keep the 12 youth. And then it also, Striker two makes it clear that these community based organizations need to work with the target populations in it in any of the target populations. And then finally, the striker sets for ask the executives to bring an implementation plan back to the back to the council. It asks for a governance structure and a small change between its two points. One is that the government, this governance structure only requires one advisory group. The first strike contemplated multiple. It asks for a process to allocate funds and ask for strategies to ensure that funded programs are culturally appropriate and trauma informed and asked for a financial plan and ask for policies when especially specifically related to facilities which we just talked about a little bit earlier. And in that, it asks for that definition of access dessert and asks for policies to align with current county investments and priorities. So like best starts for Kids Youth Action Plan, things like that. And then it asks for policies for post-secondary system alignment and opportunities to leverage state and federal funds. And then it calls for periodic evaluations of the outcomes. The report is this implementation plan is due back to the Council in eight months, which is also a change from the original speaker, which asked for six months. But I think that this is going to be a pretty detailed body of work for the executive to undertake. And those are that's the briefing of the strike. Are happy to answer questions. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a couple questions, and I want to start on your last set of comments when you were clarifying the differences between a striker as one and as two, you said as two makes it clear that the committee wants 45% of the money to go to King County, I promise. And I interpret that to mean nothing goes for K 12. But then when you explain how the 45% that's going to King County promises 40% of it goes to programs that improve the quality of education. K to 12 And then earlier during the testimony, I heard that the King County promise is only being asked to support programs that work with high school age youngsters through 12th grade. Completely leaving out k. Okay. Yeah. So what is the truth? What is the. I'm not clear. What is the recommendation that has been proposed in terms of the 45% and the 55%? And so. Let's see here, trying to defy a council member. But yes. Of that, 45%, 40% would go to, as you accurately pointed out, higher ed activities through the King County promise. And then 40% would go to K through 12 activity to the King County promise. And as but as you're as I understand my understanding, the campaign promises similar to yours is that it's primarily focused on that high school population. But I would like to get some more information to see if there's junior high or elementary activities conceived within the King. Counties then and there just focus on the high school. So I don't know why we do a proposal where no money goes to the well and that's 45%. Well and then 20% of that. So there's there's a 45% bucket that's divided into three buckets. 40, 40 and 20 and 20% would go to community based organizations to help out that serve youth and the target population. And that would be k k through 12. K-through-12. And we don't make any distinction between minority community orientation or immigrant and refugee and other kinds, do we? In terms of the community based organization. Right. I think they actually let me know. I don't I don't believe so. But I want to I want to read the language language in Stratford a couple of times. So I need to read it to. To answer your questions with. All right. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. Well, looking up, I think I. Didn't look in answer to my question. I had two questions when they're ready. Councilmember Lambert, if I can, council member Balducci has a comment on that point. To Councilmember Gossage point, if I may, Mr. Chair. Please. Thank you. I don't I'm not sure exactly how we're going to walk through this, but some of us brought some at least attempts at amendments. And I have some half baked but proposed amendments to try to call out what you're talking about. I read it the same way you did. Councilmember Gossett and was concerned that there was not I was not seeing elementary school or middle school programs and that they might get lost the way this was written. And so when we get to that point, I'm going to be proposing to my colleagues that we actually call out elementary and middle school as somehow separate from the high school promise work and the post-secondary promise work. I just wanted you to know that that was in a green folder somewhere to be distributed sometime. Thank you. He's got it. I got it. Yeah. And. And if it helps. The intent is that of the 45%. 40% is for the King County promise work in high schools. It's worded K-12, but the assumption is it would be primarily in high schools. 40% would be king having promised work in colleges. Yeah. And 20% would be community based organizations supporting K-12. And we have correspondence. We have correspondence today inquiring about a match. No, there would not be a match required for that 20%. And. But there was an even better question about that, that this is keeping me at the moment. But even listening to you, Mr. Chair, all three categories how that emphasis on helping people to get into post-secondary. If I said that about the 20%, I was mistaken. That's not the emphasis of the 20%. But it would be managed by King County Province. No, in fact, that's. Thank you. That's the question I wanted to respond to that we have in writing as well. The 20% is not subordinate to the King County Promise program. With administered off, but. It would be allocated through the executive branch in grants. Like. Like we do another applications. It would not be overseen and run by the King County Promise Program. It would not be subordinate. Subordinate to King County promise. All right. And that was the other question I couldn't recall. Mr. Mom, were you looking for something and we were stalling for you? Or am I? Yeah, I think I believe. Customer Gauthier was also curious about whether the the nature of the organizations were combat. But it's really the nature of the work that the organizations provide. Leadership, leadership, makeup or things like that are not called out. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I appreciate the clarifications, because they're much more clear now. Thank you. So two things. So in the 20%, there's no requirement for matching funds. But in the other 40%, there's matching funds. If this be from, organizations would have to do that. Are we talking about school districts? When you're talking about the 40 in the 40 on the bottom of page ten where both of them require matching funds? I think it would be any of the any recipient of the grants through those two parties would would need to provide matching funds. So for some of the smaller organizations, providing matching funds would be really difficult. So I'm concerned about that. And then on the next page, I like the idea that we have flexibility most of the time. But if we're going to be putting money into a capital asset and a place wants to do a mortgage on their capital asset, it would be very difficult if in a subsequent year we changed the percentage formula and then they don't have the equity, not the equity, but the collateral that they had before. So how are we going to preserve the ability of the people who might be wanting to build the facilities to be able to qualify for a mortgage? Sounds like something that should be worked out in the policies identified. And I think it's part five of the employment implementation plan for facilities. Yeah, I think that's going to be really important that we allow them to do that because that's what it's all about to get these facilities built. But that is a concern that we have to prepare for. Thank you. Councilmember up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Kind of providing a little bit of response to my colleague in terms of the matching. Funds the. King County promise. The significant part of it is student support counselors in our college system, in our K-12 system, targeted at the student, at the high need population, in the high need schools. And the folks who developed it propose using the Lapp funds, the learning assistance funds from the state that go to high needs schools. Their intention is to leverage these dollars with those state funds and match it. So that's where they envisioned the match coming from to fund the student sports. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. That is very helpful because some of this is, I believe, a state responsibility and really concerns me that we're starting to do things that the state is supposed to do. And I like that answer. But I thought you also said that an organization that would get that money would still have to have that, too, if it wasn't a school. It's correct. So, Councilmember Grove, if we could tighten the language, you said I like what you said. They didn't like what he said. So we can make it changed a little bit. That would be better, I think. And just work your councilmember. To. Clarify. It. No one. Confused. If I may. Council member left it left. Within the 45% bucket. There's 20% for community based organizations at all age levels K through 12. Does that require a match? No. Okay. Okay. Say that again and again. I want you to say it again. For the funding that's provided to community based organizations in the striking amendment. Does that require a match of any kind? No, it doesn't. You know, getting better. Mr. Mom, did you have more on as to. I do not, Councilmember. All right. We'll take a we'll take more questions on this, too, but then we will move to the amendments as well. And I'll look for some advice from the committee about whether you want to be briefed on all the amendments and then take them up in turn or be briefed on them as we take them up. Meanwhile, any more general questions comes up or questions particularly? And as to Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This may be a rhetorical question. Excellent. On page seven, D under D 2d refers to a draft implementation plan being developed and reflecting the priorities identified. And one of those would be for a governance structure. So two parts to my question here. One is, I have heard that some of us have discussed the concept of having the Children Youth Advisory Board and become the governance structure, which would make some sense. And I wondering if there have been other suggestions made when this was being developed. Are we thinking more a brand new board? Is that just totally open to whatever they are? Are you asking me? Totally open. Striking and totally open. Okay. And the second part of this really is to reminder the the draft and the implementation plan that will be worked out with council staff and executive staff and others will be coming to the council. So I want to just make sure everybody knows that that there will be a final vote by the council to approve any implementation plans. So there's still a lot of room in the next few months, regardless of what we do in terms of how all of this will be implemented. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. See no other questions. Now, Mr. Mumma, if you would, walk us through the amendments to the striking amendment as to what colleagues I would propose that we go through. We have a presentation on all of the amendments so we know what's before us and then take them up in turn. Councilmember Bell, do you see a. Couple of points of order? First one. Are we going to get the green folders? I don't have one. I don't know if anybody else has one. There's no green folders. You should have this. Okay. It's the packet. Yeah, yeah. Separate us to. To compare. Thank you. Second point of order. Since I have a number of amendments, they're not all in order. And they sort of are meant to go together. And I don't know if I'm prepared to offer all of them. I would love the opportunity to just speak for a moment before or after we ask staff to brief them to and to explain what I was trying to do with these amendments. What would be most helpful to do that is as we take a beach amendment or free rein for a moment. Right now. I would I will take the opportunity to preface if that's okay, because this is my amendments are on here as one, two, three, four, five, seven and eight. Yeah, I know. It sounds terrible. That's why I want to. That's why it's not as bad as it sounds. I have questions. Circles around four of those. Just ask you. Please tell me about the intent of those. It's not as. Bad and how they work together. So thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me a moment to to sort of explain my thinking behind these. There's a few themes, and I just want to start by, first of all, thanking you, Mr. Chair, for taking the laboring or of taking all the different ideas and concepts that we have had up and down this dais and that we've heard from the community and trying to put them together into a proposal that could move us forward so we could debate it, amend it, etc.. I know I've heard you say many times, this is not the McDermott Stryker, this is the Council Stryker for us to work on. And I know that's hard to do and put your name on it. So I want to thank you for doing that. Thank you. Okay. I have these these proposals hang together, I believe, with a number of teams. First and foremost, they are not fully baked. I'm still working on a lot of these ideas. And so they may not do exactly what I say they intend to do. So I want you to know my intent. The next one is, I think I agree with those who have said we should reduce the amount of money going to administration. I think there's good justifications for that, which we can talk about when that comes up. The second theme is since the beginning, since our very first public discussion about this at our. On our. Call meeting in Kent two years ago, my hope was and I was very pleased that the council seems to agree that we would take this money and it sounds like a ton of money, but when you lay it out over a series of years, it actually isn't as much as you think. And so what I wanted to do is make the most use of this money by having a small number of areas of focus that get deep investment and deep attention so that we can move the needle. It's enough money to move the needle in a few areas. It's not enough money that it could like not just disappear if we try to spread it all over everything. So that's a theme that I will talk about. And I think some of the ways we need to maximize this is by focus, not peanut butter in the money, making sure we support all levels of education. That has been a theme of ours throughout this entire discussion, and that's pre-K K through 12, but not just high school and then post-secondary. I think it's important that all of the investments that we make are laser focused on educational outcomes. And there's three of the major educational outcomes that I think we should be focused on kindergarten readiness. High school graduation and post-secondary credential credential attainment of some kind. And it's been said here before, that's not just college to your college. It's also trades. And I think and then the last theme is that throughout this complicated piece of legislation, I want to make sure we're focusing on the target populations, but not having one target population predominate over others. So that's by way of preface. And then I'm with with that, I think I, I will want to pipe up again when you get to Amendment four, if I may. Thank you. Jeff. Counselor. So we've already talked about striker team momentum. One would it's as you see, it's sort of a place within it when it contemplates reducing the amount of money that is dedicated to administration and evaluation. However, the reduction is left blank. Mr. Chair. Council Member about duty. I thought you were going to speak when you got to four. Well, this is my topic. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you look at some of our other county administered funds, 10% is a little high. I think 5% is a little low. To tell you the truth. We don't normally we're not able normally to do the kind of evaluation and administration we want to with that. But I think we should work further with the executive branch to see if we can come up with a number that's more ambitious than just allowing up to 10%. I don't know if it's worth moving an amendment with a blank in it, but I want like sort of putting my colleagues on notice that I'm looking for a number to fill in there. The average from conversations with the executive branch, I understand the average administration valuation number for best starts for kids, veterans, seniors and Human Services levy in mid is seven and a half percent and with these beans on the high end of that range of the three and this the thought was that this was closer to BSC than the other two and therefore that's why a ten is in the striker. Yes, that's less than an ardent offense of 10%, but an explanation. Understood. And it's not an unreasonable number. I mean, I'm not suggesting an unreasonable number. I just think we could be I would hope that the administration is less complex than best start for kids, because the whole concept of being focused and targeted is that there should be fewer sub buckets. They shouldn't be a couple of dozen different programs with multiple different reps per program. That's not what we're looking for here. We're looking for very targeted chunks of investment. And I hope that that takes less administration. Right. I'm amendment. To I think we have a couple more comments on one a process question. Council member up there. We're going to say the substance the discussion for if we take action or do we want to discuss are you is the intent to discuss the amendments now. Or I would hope to combine it confine our conversations now to what the amendment would do and have the debate on it if it's offered. Questions about what Amendment one does. Senate Amendment two. It's quite all right. Councilmember Gossett has distributed four draft amendments as well. So we're trying to figure out what the new perfecting order is so I can get you a new distribution. Okay. So while we're working that out, a brief overview is understood. We may jump to gossip amendments that would have come earlier, but we will continue with this list as we have it before us now. Okay. So I will. So you. I'm sorry, Mr. Schrader, would you like me to brief a moment deeply to amendment to offer by Councilmember Banducci and would remove early learning programs from the eligible use of funds in the early learning set aside? Mr. Chair. Councilmember Balducci. The key word is programs not early learning, not trying to remove early learning from the proposal. It's trying to focus this particular bucket on facilities. The idea has been that we would invest a significant portion in early learning facilities, not programs. And that is my proposal, and I would offer that amendment. I'm clarifying questions. I see none. Amendment three. Thank you. We don't have the legislation before us. Right now we're briefing. Yes. Perfect. We look forward to you offering it. Amendment three would remove the requirement to invest the 20% of funds in the home based care facilities inherent in home based care for home based care providers from the from the motion so that there would no longer be that requirement. Councilmember up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was going to ask staff to distribute two related. Amendments at this point. I mean, okay. Them before it seems like it's related to three. That's just what just reminded them. I don't know if we were taking action today, so I was going to wait to distribute them. But to more surprise. Great. So, Mr. Chair, to clarify, is the plan to brief the amendments here and then do the ones that are being distributed? I would think so, because that's we're prepared with a list in front of us and then we'll pick up the loose ones. Okay. Armed with a question. Council Member Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeff, I a number three which would eliminate the 20% funding of early learning for home based child care. Seems to me this is more programmatic than facilities. So if a number two were to be approved, adopted, then it seems to me number three would be out of order. Is that correct? If I believe in if number two were to be adopted and if three wasn't adopted, then three, then that language would be inconsistent with the rest. The memo would be inconsistent because if we're saying we are going to only permit funding for facilities and not programs, number three, I don't think would be on facilities. Would it be more on. If you. Programs. You would have a situation where if you adopted number limit two and didn't up three. Then that would be clear. But it's just I don't know that three would be in order if it's includes reference to supportive services training. But for Councilmember Caldwell's, it's actually removing what I think you're describing as programmatic. So it would maybe be, in your opinion, more imperative to offer and adopt. Well, or. Then rule it out of order. Well, maybe not out of order is the right term, but if we've already adopted language that says this funding will only be for facilities, not for services and programs, it seems like number three then would change that, but only for home facilities. Okay. Mr. Chair, if I. May, council member Balducci. Referring back to my first thing, which is there is a not at all not not all entirely fully baked the target of these two amendments, from my perspective as the offer is not to single out home child care providers, but to make sure that this bucket is particularly focused on facilities. My understanding is that we can't really effectively subsidize home based facilities. If we wanted to talk about a separate section that somebody else could insert that would say some amount of money would be dedicated towards improving educational outcomes via investments in home based early learning. I would certainly consider that amendment, but I think that this bucket was meant to be about early learning facilities and that my my intent with both of these amendments is to return this bucket to that focus, not to exclude, although it has the intent of excluding at this point. Thank you. A moment for. I'm sorry. If I might think the. Ones that I distributed were identified as three, a one and a two. It might be appropriate time to brief them if they've made it around yet. They haven't made it around yet. It was going to be just my recommendation since they're directly relevant to that last one. You're right. All right, Mr. Muhammad, can you address Amendment three, a two and three A1? Yes, I can. 3a1 would reduce the 20% set aside to 10%. This is for the home based care providers. And then three two would reduce it from 20% to 5%. So two different meats, two different reduction levels. Okay. So, Amendment four. Mr. Chair. Amendment four. And the percentage a c this would reduce the King County promise percent from 45 to 30% of the available funds after evaluation administration expenditures. Councilmember Bell Dutchie. And. Can I ask you to comment on it seems to me amendments four or five, seven and eight are all adjusting percentages and wow, check that out. She has a color chart down there. I think we're all going to get a copy of it in a second. Mr. Chair, I will be happy to speak to those four amendments because you are correct. They do all sort of hang together. I hope I can describe in words because I don't have copies of this picture. Okay. But the idea is to ensure that we are funding programs that improve educational outcomes for all the target populations at each level of education. And it does that by calling out early learning stays the same. But then what is now? Just a second bucket that is entire all of K-through-12 and post-secondary together breaks that out into three areas, which is elementary and middle school. The Promise high school and the promise post-secondary. And for purposes of discussion awaits them all equally. At 15%, a piece of the funds is left over after you take out administration. That's the intent. I am not married to this approach, nor to these numbers. But I was trying to find a way colleagues to make sure that there was elementary and middle school kid aged youth called out in the program so that kids at that age level who meet the target populations could be addressed. And one of these buckets, maybe elementary, middle could be a place where you call out the community based organizations. But these amendments speak just are meant to speak just to making sure we have elementary and middle school kids defined as a level that is funded for some programing that is related to the purpose of this fund. Does that make sense or should I have copies of the pie charts made. Make sense to. Make copies of the pie chart or have them. Oops. There goes. Thank you. These were made by my office. They are not official in any way. Thank you. Except for their official documents of my office. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. Just clarifications. And are they copyright? I'm getting so in that bucket. You had 315, so that's 45%. Where's the rest going? 55% to early learning as as previously stated in the motion. Okay. And then the 5% is in increased strategy. So the way the math works and there's three different pie charts in it, so it stated three different ways. You take we were at this time considering 10% for administration and evaluation. If you take 10% off the top, what remains of the fund, 55% to early learning, which is the current proposal in the Stryker, and then 45% to the remainder broken out in three equal buckets of 15% each to elementary, middle, high school and post-secondary. That said, I'm not married to those numbers and I want everybody to know that. I'm just trying to I was trying to propose a counter-proposal, I guess, because there is a proposal, a way to make sure that every level of education is being addressed. For the further questions discussion on Amendment 457, eight. All right. Mr. Mum, should I be asking you to breathe a sigh of yours? Councilmember Gossett. I'd be happy to do anything. Five A's offered by Councilmember Gossett, and it would require 30% of the funds to be invested in improving educational outcomes for vulnerable and underserved K-through-12 students rather than the 40% funds to be focused on K-through-12 age, children and youth in the King County Promise Program. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Mr.. Could you say that again slowly? I'm sorry, I'm reading it, but I want to try and share. Councilmember So ID it would require that 30% of the funds be invested to improve educational outcomes for vulnerable and underserved K-through-12 students. This is instead of the 40% of the funds that are focused on the K-12 age children through the King County promise. All right. And would that equate if I'm tracking math here to a basically the 30% under Councilmember Baldacci is the effect would be 30% of elementary middle and promise high school dollars if you're amendments were adopted. Is that is that how that would correlate? Or are we dividing the pie differently here? This would take. Yes. Is Councilmember. And your question is, is this the same? It is the 30% and this the same as the 30% contemplated under Councilmember Dickey's amendment? Yeah, her amendment, which would do elementary and middle 15% after overhead and promised high school, 15% after overhead. And the 30% that seems to match. Yes, that 30% here. Would be the same again. Okay. All right. Yeah, maybe there's some agreement there. And I remember Gosset. And I want to comment about due to their math and I agree with their just completed assessment. It's about the same concern about those you put before us. Yeah. Just to repeat it. At the risk of repeating, it looks like Councilmember Gossage Amendment five allocates 30% of the dollars outside of pre-K facilities. And it looks like you're some combination of your amendments allocates a 30% to the same population with the remaining 15% going to promise post-secondary. Yeah. So I think there there may be agreement at least on the percentages. Unless. There's some overlap. I see that. Yes, I think that's right. I think it's because we all do very simple math. Three divided by three. Yeah. I thought it was because great minds think alike. And. Right. I remember I. I have not known how her great mine was. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brubaker. Thank you. Mr. Chair. The effects statement was very much generalized, it said, improving educational outcomes. But does this require some very specific body of work? And if so, could you enumerate that for the record, where the funds would. Yeah. It it and then. Does it tie up other funding for school districts also in any way. So this amendment strikes a bunch of language that's in there as to now starting at 997, on page five strikes all the language through to the next page on line 114, and then instead has the 30% that's focused on examining the multicultural curriculum and inclusion in history, science, arts, extracurricular activities, etc. Looks at reforming discipline, precede policies toward a restorative justice model, inhibits ongoing military training for teachers and administrators, and finds anti-bias training of staff at early childhood and kick off systems and then requires to access any of these funds. The districts agree to all elements of this legislation and subsequent work plans of the advisory group. A clarification to access funds for these purposes or to access any pastor funds they would need to. It's a sub under this so it's for this fund these under. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you I'm looking at the language online 15 subsection C. If you look up at line eight, it says the procedure precedes shall. And then in C number line 15, it does implement ongoing mandatory training for teachers and administrators and it gives the list that's pretty much done at the state level, ongoing training. I realize that each district can do their own thing, but in the existing language it says may. And I think it's important that each district decide what they want for their teacher training. And I like the May language and the existing language better than the shall. So I just want to point that difference and. I'm going to make an attempt to have our questions confined to understanding the amendments before us. But remember, we have no legislation before us at this point. We have just covered Amendment five a. If we can address the Amendment six. Amendment Six would dedicate at least 5% of the funds for improving educational outcomes for school aged students. For training of kinship care providers. All right. Questions on that. Councilmember Lambert, if it's. Oh, and explain kinship care. When we were working with calling people to see various ideas, one of our providers said, You know, it's really sad that family, which is kinship care in the foster system, gets $0. So when other foster kids, foster parents get information on and all kinds of different things like how to form an IEP , where to ask for an an ISP, which is an individualized education plan. You've never been through one of those before. It's voluminous and in a variety other things that they get training. So almost half of the foster parents in our state don't get that training. And so that's how I found out about it. And that's exactly what it does, because they currently get zero. Amendment seven. Seven would increase percentage of funds that are dedicated to higher education from 40 to 50% within the King County Province allocations. I think it's part of the suite of amendments that Councilmember Belge spoke to earlier. Seven a. Yeah. Seven eight would reduce the percentage of funds dedicate to higher education from 40% to 20%. Yes. All right. Okay. Amendment eight, the last of the quadrennial. I know what a trilogy is. What's for? It's a lot. Yeah. All right. And then they would dedicate 15% of the pastor funds to community based organizations to work with K-through-12 students to close opportunity gaps. Very good amendment. Amendment nine. Amendment nine would add represented representative from each council district to the list of people the executive will work with when developing the implementation plan. Amendment 9.5. This amendment would add criteria for the Advisory Board to have experience in racism, systemic racism, multicultural curriculum, childhood trauma, and best practices in corrective action. Restorative Justice. Amendment ten. An Amendment ten would add a lens of geographic equity to the criteria that the executive would follow in developing policies for funding facilities. Thank you. With with the amendments briefed, I would entertain a motion to put the legislation in striking amendment S1 before us. Councilmember Raquel Welch. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I proposed motion number 2019 0245. Councilmember calls this move to adopt motion. We give it to pass recommendation to motion 2019 245. Councilmember Caldwell's if you move striking amendments to. Thank you. Chair And I mean I know the striking amendment has to. Strike an amendment as to is before us. Are there any amendments? Councilmember Bell duty. I would like to move Amendment one with the number 7.5%. Councilmember Bell duty has moved adoption of Amendment One with the verbal amendment inserting 7.5% as the percentage. Councilmember Bell duty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We did discuss this a little bit during the briefing of the amendments. There was a blank in the amendment. I have verbally added 7.5% because that is a number that is consistent with administrative overhead for some of our other funding sources. And that, I fear is I feel is pushing as as we said we should without pushing too hard. But I would welcome further amendments further on down the road. I just think that this would be a nice placeholder. Thank you. Pence Member Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilman, about the issue, does that still include funding for evaluation? I will submit to a question. And yes, this doesn't change any of the language. It just changes the number. Okay. Councilmember approve. Thank you. I think it's a great idea. I'm open. As we get to full council to even considering a smaller number, perhaps in part because this is one time funding the role of evaluations a little bit different when we have best starts for kids or these levees that we want to renew and do on an. Ongoing basis, that. Evaluation. Piece becomes more. Critical here for providing funding for a defined period of time. It's great to get some lessons learned from it, but it isn't as if that evaluation is necessarily going to shape our investments because this investment, this funding stream stops. So there may be an opportunity to do some cost savings along the way. And I also, depending on how the money is driven out, some of our partners may also be able to provide some of their own evaluation back to us in terms of outcomes. So that I'm just sort of arguing for this being 7.5 being a maximum as we move forward. Councilmember Dombroski, thank you. I want to echo Councilmember up the Grove's comments. I would lean and there isn't a lot of science to this, but toward the 5% number, the rationale there being a good percentage of these dollars, 55%, it seems, are more will be for capital grants to early learning facilities. And I think that that is inherently compared to programing requires less evaluation and perhaps less administration. Those are probably going to be fairly significant grants. I think that there should be and probably are some efficiencies that have that we can take advantage of in our best starts for kids evaluation system, which the advocates have said. And I've also heard from providers that as part of the contracts, you know, that evaluation and reporting is built in. So I would I would lean for those reasons toward an initial 5% goal. I think if it turns out we needed to adjust that in the future, if it just was squeezing us too hard, we could. But I wanted to put my cards out there on the table for five 5%. Maybe Councilman Belushi would consider that as a friendly amendment, depending on what colleagues thought. Mr. Chair, I would prefer to start high and push lower than to start too low and have to come back higher. I just that as feels better to me so. But I'm also getting better. We may not be ready to vote on this amendment right now, so but I would just say, why don't we put 7.5 in and then work on making it smaller? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the discussion. All those in favor of Amendment One please signify by saying I name. The ayes have it. With that I'm taken as to amendment to a. Councilmember Gossett I just want to remind you that two a conflicts with 233. A1 and three dot A2 if two A is adopted, then you cannot take action on the rest of the four point of order. Councilmember Balducci. Which which amendment comes first in perfecting order two? Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett, do you care to offer Amendment two? I wanted to offer two because I thought that the 5050 5% amount that could only be used for education outcomes for early learning was too high. Given the limits of the amount of money we have available and the very significant needs we have in K-12. That's why I am presenting this lower number. And I think in the passing out of amendments, this is one we did not brief earlier. Right. Erin or Jeff could speak to it. This would reduce the 55% number and to 40%, I believe, is you correct to the amendment customer? Yes. It also modifies the where what it can go to. It strikes line 66 through 84 on page four of the S-2 and replaces it with investments in improving educational outcomes for early learning age of vulnerable and underserved youth identified in Section eight. And then there's language that ensures geographic proximity to areas of particular need are achieved when investing these funds. Demographic data of areas with highest need based upon race, income, foster care, childbirth and juvenile justice system involvement and lack of early childhood educational services will be used to prioritize the investments. And I thought these emphasis are the same ones that the original providers of this of past put forth. They put forth four or five specific categories that mirrored the ones that you just named. And I don't I'm not understood why 55% of the total needed to go just for the zero, the five. I think that 40% is higher than the other two areas and is more reasonable than the 55. And that's what I wanted us to debate. Thank you. Discussion, Councilmember Lambert. Just clarification. What is geographic proximity? I know geographic equity, but I have never seen geographic proximity before. I know what both of those words mean, but I don't know what they mean together because I've never seen them in the law together. I'd have to defer to the sponsor of that. That's an issue. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett The difference between I didn't really understand our question and Mr. Chair, the difference between geographic proximity angiographic by proximity has to do at how close you are to the affected parties. Equity is what we're trying to achieve in spending these new government funding so that we move closer to a fuller support for these population groups that have been. Or. Are currently excluded from having these equitable opportunities. And I keep thinking about all of that when I wrote it up. This point of clarification, the summary sheet that some may be working from, has it listed at 50%? It is 40%, actually. Okay. Thank you. It's it's not 55. The striker the striking amendment as to is 55%. Your amendment would move it to 40%. Yeah. All right. Thank you for the discussion. Councilmember up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not planning to vote for this today, but I am very open to it, kind of depending on how the rest of the package comes together. I appreciate the the way in which it's focused around that geographic areas with the highest need. And I would be open to reducing that amount potentially in order as the puzzle pieces come together. So I just didn't want to think my no vote wasn't me. I'm open to this as it moves forward. Councilmember DEMBOSKY Hey, Mr. Chair, I'm not going to be supporting Councilmember Goss. It's well intentioned amendment today. I've just done this particular set of funding. Given it's a one time nature, I have a strong desire to ensure an investment in a very strong and deep way in capital facilities to benefit generations of young people in King County. I take a lesson from the forward thrust investments made 50 years ago and their continual return on investment to community after community, generation after generation. And I think my dear colleague, Councilmember Gossett, I appreciate where you're coming from on this, but on that particular piece of this pie, I'm pleased that I was hoping to get we can get to 60%. I'm pleased at 55. And and I want to make sure that we do that the the language in here about prioritizing particular communities in need. I'm particularly interested in as we move forward and making sure that we get that right here for all of these investments. And I appreciate your advocacy there, but for those reasons. So I'm going to not be supporting this particular amendment today. Councilmember Gossett, that's the process. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In recent years, about two and a half years ago, we had a measure that came forth and the leadership of the King County Council, and it was in the cultural area where we said we're going to get a windfall profits. I think it was like $80 million or something. And in the wisdom of the county council, we said we want it all on a very large portion of the money to go for capital investments, maybe new facilities or improved facilities to provide the cultural services. But I raised and I'm raising again now when you are just focusing all the money on building and you're asking that the parties that apply for the money invest some themselves year by year nature of how our economic system works and urban America, disadvantaged minority communities and other disadvantaged communities who don't have the agencies, for the most part don't have very much money to put into building expansion, building development. Matter of fact, 88% of them rent facilities for cultural purposes. I don't know what the percentage is for child care, and I just don't think that much of this child care money will go to build the facilities that benefit the poorest of the poor, like the originators of this pot for money have consistently indicated. I just don't see where they end up in middle upper middle class agencies building bigger facilities. And then asking a few, oh, families with lower income kids to come in. And I don't think that's the intent and I don't think that's something that we have been very good at achieving here in our government. Thus, that is why I put forth this amendment. Others in favor of amendment to please signify by saying I oppose name no. If the amendment is not adopted amendment to Councilmember Bell duty. Amendment to. Councilman Bill Duke's moved adoption of amendment to Councilmember Bell duty. Just as a reminder, this is intended to, I believe, restore language from an earlier version that focuses the early learning segment on facilities rather than programs. And again, I want to signal a willingness to work between now and final passage on language and what might end up being a side fund of some sort that could fund things that are left out. But in keeping with our theory that we want to make strong as make strong and deep impact in each of these areas, I think that the intent here was for early learning facilities, not for programs for home based childcare. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Dombroski. Hey, Mr. Chair. So speaking in support of the amendment, in addition to the reasons articulated just a moment ago in response to the amendment to a in my discussions with advocates and experts in the earlier, I feel it's my understanding that the state is making significant investment in operational resources in this space. In addition, the City of Seattle has a particular levy for early childhood education to fund operations. And I believe, Mr. Chair, as we move toward renewal of BSC, that there will be a space and an opportunity to talk about countywide operations funding to help organizations run the space. I just kind of want to set that out there that it is hopefully an ongoing and renewable revenue stream. Again, the quasi one time nature of these, I think, provides a very special opportunity to build facilities that will invest in in multiple, perhaps even seven generations of kids in this county. And so I think this amendment is well taken, and I like the direction. I'm happy to support it. And thank Councilmember Modiji for bring it forward. For the discussion. Councilmember Up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I may be outnumbered on this one. I'm going to, even though I agree with 90% of it, I'm going to be a no vote, in part because I think my primary interest is in the family home, early learning programs. That's where I see a lot of the immigrant refugee families in my district and a lot of families get there early learning and get their child care. And while they have significant capital needs, we can talk about that at the future amendments. I think there also are some missed opportunities to make investments, you know, through B, s K, we invest in one of the strategies that the child care health consultations that writes culturally diverse coaching and training to child care providers. And I think we could enhance some of that with this work. And I appreciate the comments about if we can enhance our with this work and maybe continue to look at best starts for kids that is that gets renewed as well. So my preference in part because of my interest in the family child care space would be to keep some flexibility here. But I certainly understand the other arguments as well. Councilmember Gossett And then Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be joining Councilmember of the Grove on this amendment because the overwhelming majority of the child care facilities available more easily to African-Americans, immigrants, refugees and low income inner city people are the home based child care centers. And why we can't dedicate a minimum 20% of the funds for that portion of the child care providers is very difficult for me to understand. Yes, easier and better. If you have a institution that's big and not just based on the house you own. Or. Or in your own. Eric able to keep six kids, but collectively this is a large percentage of the current child care providers and I would like for them to have more funds available for their development to. Therefore I will vote no. On. Amendment number three. Okay. Thank you. I thank you. Councilmember Gossett. I will call on myself now. And I have this I did bring this up earlier when we first started discussing amendments that I was concerned that if we voted for amendment number two, that we would be forgoing any ability to provide any amount of funding for home based early learning programs. And I'm wondering, Councilmember Bell, do Chee and by the way, I also support completely what Councilmember DEMBOSKY said. However, I'm wondering if we could amend you have a friendly amendment to your amendment number two, and that would have the effect of this, including home based programs without giving any amount. Councilmember Upton Grove has amendments coming up that would lower the amount from 20%, which I would favor. I'm not sure what I'm being asked. Can you say one more time, please? If we were to amend your amendment with the friendly amendment for language that would exclude home based, early learning, family, friends and so forth, so that we would eliminate remove early learning programs from eligible use of funds so that we would have only capital funding. Can I try? Yeah, because it seems we're conflating who gets the money with what kind of money, and that's confusing me. Sorry. So that's right. Looking at the striker as to you on page four. Customer Duties Amendment is on line 68. So I think what you're saying has overt goals is that the investments would be for facilities that support early learning and early interventions for children, King County and for programs and facilities for home based providers. Or it could be words differently, excluding vending for home based. But I think I could be convinced to support one or both of councilmember up the clubs amendments but still want the what I think of as the child care early learning centers rather than the home based ones to be strictly used. The funding would be strictly used for the development and construction and so forth of the facilities not providing programs, not me, not providing any funds for operations and programing. My amendment is intended to direct 55% of this funding towards early learning facilities period. And you're suggesting that there would be some unspecified as yet carve out for facilities and programs for home based learning? And that is, I think, contrary in part to the intent of the amendment. So I would not consider a differently amendment. Thank you, though, for attempting to be friendly semantics here. Yeah, that may be different, but further discussion. Anything to close? Which which? No. My amendment to all those in favor of amendment two, please say I oppose. Nay. No, no. A division has been called for all those in favor of Amendment two. Please raise your hand. All those opposed. I'm reading right now. I see you, Reagan. All right. The amendment carries. With the vote 4 to 5. Yes, sir. Okay. Amendment three. Councilmember Belushi. November three Council Member Bill duties moved adoption of Amendment three. Council Member Bill BTP. To go. Ahead. Point of order. Point of Order. Council Member up the growth. Would adoption of this amendment preclude consideration of a different amendment on the same topic? Yes. Oh yeah. Is there. Is it. First come first served for motions. It's perfecting the order is the order in which we're going through. Councilmember Bell duty touches line 80 and you touch line 81. Mr. Chair. Council Member Bell Duchy. This may be for staff. It's a procedural question and it may actually be for a council member up the grove. It's like negotiating in public, which is always fun. I, I would be willing to hold this whole topic for further discussion as opposed to trying to resolve it now by a 4 to 5 or 5 to 4 vote, if you would be willing to do so. And I would yield my pole position, if you will, in order to try to figure out a way to deal with Homebase. Because I don't want the record to reflect that I am opposed to funding home based programs. I just don't think it belongs here. So if you'd be willing to do two reserve three for our next meeting, I would be as well. Council member of the Guild. Short answer. Yes, thank you. And then to, as they say, home a few bars so people understand my interest and we go on to the next next phase. As I mentioned, you know, there's a lot of a lot of families rely on these family day care providers and family home early learning programs. And I think one of the advantages of investing here is we can very much target focus at our targeted. Population, where. We can maximize our investments in the most vulnerable. And many of these family child care license providers have had challenges meeting some new state requirements that are necessary to even sustain their businesses. Things like dedicated water heaters, new enclosed spaces, and other requirements that require large capital investments there. Also, you know, our challenges meeting, training needs, there are operational costs. But I did want to be clear that these smaller family home programs have capital needs. In fact, the state of Washington funds at about an 8 to 1 ratio there, capital investments in early childhood facilities for about every 800,000. They invest in large grants to the big facilities. They spend about 100,000 on minor repairs and renovations for these licensed family based providers. So they take about 11% in terms of a benchmark, about 11% of their funds for capital upgrades and maintenance go into the smaller providers. And so that's sort of the strategy I'm interested in continuing to discuss whether it's focusing in on just the capital, whether it's a lower amount, what the amount is, what that balance is. And I'm not flexible. I just wanted to. Kind of keep that. Topic under discussion as we move forward. And in the interest of I mean, if you bars or sharing sharing interests, I'm not opposed to and might be interested in providing funding for some of the home based care. But I'm have concerns that 20% of this bucket of this allocation is significantly large, in my opinion. Councilmember Demovsky name is Chair and not having given this piece of a lot of thought candidly, but I my reaction is this the interest that I have in in kind of the child care centers and the investment in them is the semi permanency of them and the ability, again, to handle thousands and thousands of youngsters to use an old term over the course of their life. The intriguing piece of the home based system which is integral to delivering this is it can be closer to neighborhoods, right? It's barriers to starting them up can be lower and they can, in cases, provide more culturally relevant and responsive care to our individualized communities that want that. So if there were a piece of this funding stream that could help stem that up, I'm not categorically opposed to it, but I would want to see some parameters around protecting the public investment in terms of time, you know, if you're going to buy some capital improvements, you want to see in our in our grantmaking and be interesting to see what the state has, that we get a return on that investment. It wouldn't have to. As long as a dedicated child care facility. Right. But something something to address that particular piece of it. There you go. I think a free pass. Councilmember Oh. Gee, I want to retract amendment number three. Amendment three is withdrawn. Do I understand that three, a one and two will not be offered. Amendment four. Councilmember Councilmember. Mr. Chair, I am prepared to not offer amendments four, five, seven and eight on a similar theory that I withdrew Amendment three because I feel like these are major changes to what's in front of us, that people have somewhat similar ideas that they're working on, but they're just a little bit off from one another in terms of some of the expenditures, and the community hasn't had an opportunity to react to any of it. So I would like to suggest that maybe in terms of making changes to the allocations that we reserve that topic for our next meeting, whether that be another committee meeting or the final council meeting. I'm a little nervous about this because once again, because I submitted my amendments for a change on time or earlier, less, less late than my colleagues. I get annoyed about that one. Okay. No time like the. I'm giving up my pole position here. But I would like to ask that we work together with our staff between now and the next meeting to try to figure out what changes. I think we've had some good discussion about changes to the buckets that are in order, and we've heard some good testimony today, and I would like to take those into account before moving four, five, seven or eight. But I'd also like to ask my colleagues who have five A's and seven A's and whatnot, to join me in holding off until we can work through some issues. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett, as the maker of five and seven A, are you willing to hold off as well? I concur with Counselor about that. She. All right, then. Lightning speed run to Amendment six. Councilmember Lambert. 600. Thank you, Mr. Chair. End with Amendment number six. Councilmember Lambert moved adoption of Amendment six. Council Member Lambert. Thank you and dedicates to one of our groups that's important to all of us is our foster care children. And it dedicates at least 5% of the 25% for improving educational outcomes for school aged students. So for school age, students that are in kinship care with prospective foster parents provided are undergoing training and licensing. They receive training on how to shepherd the children through the K-12 system. This includes learning how to get children into the individual education program, which I said earlier is an IEP. If you haven't seen an IEP, it's not easy. And a lot of times minority parents get overwhelmed. Everybody gets overwhelmed, actually, sometimes, including the teachers, by how voluminous these things are. And so if you don't have somebody shepherding you through it or helping you, it's very difficult. And with 45 to 50% of the foster children who are placed with family members in kinship care, they get $0 zero help from the state and they have to figure this out on their own. Well, 15 to 20% of these families do seek licensure. Many kinship care providers do not. And there is no requirement they need to because it's family members taking care of families. So I feel that we need to support family members taking on the responsibility of caring for children that would otherwise be placed in regular foster care homes. Not familiar and providing funding for kinship care, educational advocacy training will not only provide necessary support to kinship care providers, but will also lead to a noticeable difference in their educational outcomes for these children. So I was really surprised to find out that these kids get nothing and they're providers. And as a a parent or grandparent, if I were to get new children coming into my family, obviously coming from a situation where they were in stress, taking on new kids with issues and starting all over again and then finding out that I wasn't able to get any help would add more stress to the situation. So I hope that we will be able to support them with about 5% of the money. Councilmember Belge Mr. Chair, thank you. I don't I don't know, frankly, whether I support this or don't support this. Obviously, I support the idea and the and the the work that needs to be done to make sure that kids in foster care have well-trained foster care parents. We also just need flat out more foster care parents. I mean, you could put a whole lot of money into foster care and still not meet the need. But this funding is targeted specifically at increasing educational outcomes for foster care youth. And I just don't know enough sitting here today to know whether these programs do that. And so if it's offered today, I'm going to have to vote no today, also, partially because I don't see any other places where we're pointing out specific, smaller, targeted programs. We're trying to is we're trying to focus on the big impacts like early learning facilities and the promise program. And and this just to me is it moves in the direction of targeted call outs, which looks like we're starting to peanut butter the money. And it also I'm not sure that it meets the goal of the money. If it wasn't offered today, I would certainly spend more time learning how it might fit or if it might fit. But if it's offered today, I'm just reluctantly going to have to be a no on this amendment, I'm sorry to say. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question for our staff. I have historically been a frequent visitor to the Atlanta Street Center programs. One of their primary programs over the last 12 years that they've been noted for is their kinship program. And when I last visited it a couple of years ago, just generally thinking back, about 60% of the grandmothers and grandfathers who were, for the most part in kinship providers were getting foster care money. The other 35 to 40% were not. So my question to you is, we already have foster children as a designated group that can receive these funds. Is that do we not have any knowledge on whether or not the kids were in foster care, but being raised by their grandparents or other relatives are included and eligible for foster care consideration and this funding. I'll have to get back to you on that, counselor. Then I have the same concerns about that you raised, though. We need to get a clarification as to whether or not this class of people are already eligible and they're off the fence. You know the question about the effect statement. I know we have a lot flying around here. Is this delegates at least 5% of the. It says 25%. I believe it's 40. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Lambert, thank you. Well, first of all, the research that we did in calling the state was that these these children and their families, kinship families, get $0 for the training to do their IEPs and help them with whatever they need help with. So if you have a child that's in a foster licensed foster care, they get certain services. And if they're with their families, they don't get those services. So that is of great concern to me. Also, I think that we could put this together with the issue that we're talking about with home daycares, because you can kind of consider kinship a home daycare, although it's longer term with more issues going on. So I'm willing to pay for this, but I would ask that we look at that as part of what we put together with the home daycare issues. Is that okay with that other. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So six is withdrawn. Okay. Taking us to nine. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you very much. I need amendment number nine. Councilmember Lambert moved adoption of amendment number nine. Councilmember Council member Lambert. Thank you. And the stroke of this executive is directed to work in consultation with council staff, service providers and stakeholder representatives. This amendment adds that they will also work with a representative from each of our council districts and that will make the process much smoother between the executive development and transmittal to the council. That way, council members can provide more formalized feedback throughout the process. I urge your support. Council Member. I apologize, Mr. Chair. I am just not clear on the is it with in our council district or with our staff. I just didn't follow the. Yes. That they work with us to make sure that we have somebody that we assigned to be on the committee to report back to us. Yes. I may need staff to reorient me. Then I apologize to the committee. Which committee? This is who the executive is required to consult with on creating the implementation plan. I think so is the suggestion that we. Appoint. A committee made up of representatives from each of us? Is that what the sponsors? I don't know if there was an existing committee or. This is part of when you do the implementation plan that when we get to the next step and on the implementation plan, that they will work more closely with our individual offices. With our offices. Okay. I think. Councilmember Dombrowski. Just speaking briefly in support, but I think it's a clarifying amendment on line 148 where we're already working or the executive will work in consultation with council staff, which typically refers to our central staff. So I think offering the opportunity for individual office staff to participate makes good sense and I look forward to supporting it. Okay. Councilmember Gossett. No, I'm cool. Okay. I know you're cool. I thought you had something to say. No, I don't have anything. Okay. Councilmember Library. Would you like to add the word office after district to clarify? Others in favor of Amendment nine. Please see, I. I oppose nine. The ayes have it. Nine is adopted. 9.5 Councilmember Gossett. Okay. Point by. A 9.5 is one of the later amendments that I put forth, and that is that the advisory group should have expertize to areas of race, systemic racism, multicultural curriculum, childhood trauma and best practices and corrective action and restorative justice. These are the kind of inputs based on best practices that I've seen work best and coming up with evaluation and operational programs aimed at serving the most at risk excluded populations in our community. And that is one summit that the advisory group members or a large proportion thereof have this kind of expertize comes. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. In looking at that. The way it's written, it looks like that's all the expertize is and there could be more expertize. So I'm wondering if online, but we could say instead of the word IRB use the words such as expertize in areas such as and then the list rather than because that makes it look like that's all the list where we may have other skills that we'd like. How about including. Ink? So it requires all of those and is open to even more. Alike, such as better. Because you may have somebody that isn't familiar with one particular area but is really good in all the others. So depending upon their skills, I'd like to see that more broadly, such as. And Mr. Chair, I'd like to follow your advice and I'd be open to including. So I hear you. I hear you change accepting and friendly amendment or change in line five of your amendment to be areas including. Race and and in the others I have listed here. Yes, they're very good. So can I ask for the. Discussion, Councilmember. Lambert? Legal question. So it does including make mandatory or does it make general. Are you asking. That? Well, we're not lawyers, but this is a motion. So. Okay, this is the attorney with their hand up where? Oh, no, I'm an attorney. I start paying my burdens this year. Yes, I know. Mr. Chair. Councilmember, the. Way I would read that language is that the when you look at it in context, is that the advisory group must include this expertize, not that each and every single member of the advisory group must have this expertize. And I agree that it would be very important that the group have this expertize at the table. So I think it's a very fair amendment and I'll support it. And that was my intent. Council member Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Perhaps to staff just the way I'm reading the amendment and the original language and striking amendment to appear on line 153. It says the governance structure to include but not be limited to two. So it seems to me that that is more inclusive of other examples. But I would for example, my concern is when we used raised systemic racism, racism, multicultural education and so forth. I mean, we may want to look at ethnicity or individual representing individuals with disabilities and so forth. So it could be much broader. But I think given that we have the language but not be limited to, we would not be proscribing any other group from being changed, being not included. Is that correct? And I think. Pat shaking his hand. I'm not sure we followed the question, but the report, the governance structure that's called for, needs to be an element of the executive's report that comes back to the council. So that would just be a recommendation. Back to you. Yeah. Then that's fine. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Dembele. Mr.. Speaking in support of the amendment but also taking the opportunity to say at a just state that as I understand this language in the striking amendment, even as amended, we don't specify or require that this be a new group and that in fact it would. And that being the case, I would hope we could look at our Children and Youth Advisory Board as the entity that would take on this work. And I think there could be some some synergies there. Understand that there may be a deficiency of expertize in the promise area. We might have to add some awareness to that. But just want to flag that for our colleagues as we move forward, maybe have some refinement there. Councilmember Dombroski, I think you were listening in to the whispered conversation council members Caldwell's and I were having a moment ago. There wasn't, but it's a rare moment of great me like again. And. Mr. Chair. Council Member Well. And just to note, I had brought that up earlier as one possibility, we would have to add language relating to postsecondary higher education. But I think the Children Youth Advisory Board is a good place to look. Thank you. All those in favor of Amendment 9.5, please say I opposed nay. The ayes have it and 85 is adopted. Amendment ten Council Member Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for backing up. I'd like to move Amendment number ten. And now from member Lambert's moved adoption of Amendment ten. Council member Lambert thank you. This amendment at the line within the policy for funding early learning facilities that will lead the implementation plan development process to utilize a lens of geographic equity doesn't mean that you have to divide things in nine districts, but a lens of geographic equity when considering considering potential sites. There are many needs for early learning facilities throughout the entire county, so geographic equity should be a consideration when moving forward. Doesn't mean that it has to be equal, but it should be a consideration. So I urge your support. Further discussion, Councilmember Dombrowski. I want to make sure I understood and maybe staff confirm this, that this would be an additional lens in addition to the other focused language in the legislation. It would not and would not be given any weight beyond the others. Is that is that how it reads if adopted right. In specifically for early setting the early learning facilities? What did you think. Its limited to the early learning facilities? Okay, I'll just say I'll support this. I think it's in a factor and I may be open to refining as we go forward, but I think it's a factor that is not unreasonable to take into account as long as it's not overweighted or predominant. Speaking for myself, I'm going because this is particularly because this is to early learning facilities. I'm not going to be supportive. I believe we've already spoken to a geographic need by addressing service deserts and don't want to. I don't want to overlay or conflate broader geographic equity with service deserts we're trying to address. For the discussion. Councilmember Gossett One of the concerns that I have is that our discussions around equity have frequently entered the arena of members saying, how come none of these programs are in my district? And the foundational basis for some of the issues we've dealt with like that are that we want to target groups that we think have been significantly disadvantaged. And if that group is not in some people's districts, that's used as a basis for objections, I'm trying to figure out how to have the broadest definition of equity possible, but that it not be significantly confined to geographic. And I don't really know if it's avoidable, but I have some uneasiness with geographic equity and there's part of our proposal that we're considering. Thank you, Mr.. For the discussion. Others in favor, please signify by saying I oppose nay. The ayes have it. That takes us to striking amendment eschew division. I'm not sure they did division. All those in favor of Amendment ten. Please raise your hand. And Reagan is on the phone. I'm raising. All right. I see you, Reagan, and all those opposed. Mimicry that takes us to strike an amendment as to as amended discussion. Others in favor of the strike. In amendment as amended, please signify by saying i. I opposed nay. The striking amendment as to was adopted that has motion 2019 245 as amended before US discussion. Councilmember Belushi. I want to suggest that whatever we do, this should be without recommendation because we left significant work on the table. But, you know. We. The the motion was made, I believe, with recommendation, with the makers permission. We will the motion would be to move it to full council without recommendation. Yeah. And I'm right, I would anticipate that being before the council three weeks from this coming Wednesday, which I believe is the 29th, but I shouldn't be guessing calendar dates in my head. 21st. 21st, if I might. Mr. Chair. Argument. Council Member Dombrowski. Just for education or knowledge, but for awareness. That would be the first council meeting after our return from recess. And I would suggest that the Chair, given the timing of that and the significant nature of this work and the opportunity for refining that a one week courtesy delay would be granted and that you could expect action on the tape if we do it at a regular council meeting and not a special. So just for to give colleagues and the community time to understand the schedule and what somebody has strong objection to that, but I'm seeing the same thumbs up for that schedule. So we would shoot for the 28th after the traditional one week courtesy delay in this chair while I have the floor. Thank you for your leadership here in the committee of the hall to advance the ball. And I feel that you've done it in a very balanced way with letting all members in the community participate openly. And we've made a little sausage in front of everybody, which is not how we always do it. But I feel that you've moved this ball forward at an appropriate pace and wanted to thank you for it. Thank you. See no further discussion and with acknowledged significant work in some key areas to be done. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council Member. Banducci Council Member Dombrowski Council Member. Done. By. Council Member. Gossett I. Council Member Cornwall Council Member Member I. Council Member of the Grove Council. Member one right there. Mr. Chair. All right, Mr. Chair, the vote is nine eyes no nos. Thank you. By your vote, we have advanced motion 2019 245 to full council without recommendation. It would be on the regular agenda on August 21st, but one should expect a courtesy delay with it coming up for action in full council a week following the week following the 28th of August. Council member Lambert Thank you. If we do what we just said, then we'll have a lot of people here on the 21st to speak to it. But you can't say a courtesy to either Kirstie Hall for a week or eight to a date certain. And I'm thinking if we say to a date certain, then it won't show up on the 21st, be on the tape. And I think that sends a more clear message to the public. The Chair is certainly amenable to that. If that's the will of the body here, I'll defer to the chair of this committee to clarify the motion timing and when it will be heard. What would members be willing to expect that we would take action on the 28th and not then have a11 week courtesy delay on the 28th? Yes. Advancing it to the following week. I'm seeing head nods. Councilmember Dunham Senior had nod, too. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right, then. Then we will move. Motion. The motion out to a date certain of August 28th. Full council and expect action on that day. And with that accomplished and no further business can before the committee.

A bill for an ordinance making a supplemental appropriation from the General Contingency Fund to purchase property at 700 West Colfax Avenue. Approves a $3 million supplemental appropriation from the General Fund contingency to purchase property at 700 West Colfax Avenue in Council District 10. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-31-18.

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Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. All right. An exciting bill that will move over to the block vote in a couple of minutes. We have one other item that's been called out, which is 746. Madam Secretary, we put 746 up on our screens. And Councilwoman Blackwell, you please put Council Bill 746 on the floor for passage. Yes, I move that council bill 746 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. That has been moved. Can I get a second moved and seconded now? Questions or comments by members of Council Councilwoman Ortega. This is a companion bill to the first one that I called out and I will be voting the same will not repeat my comments that I made last week. So just the no vote. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Seeing no other comments or questions, Madam Secretary? Raquel Ortega. No. Sussman. Black Brooks. Espinosa. Flynn I Gilmore. I heard in Cashman can eat Lopez. I knew. Mr. President. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 12 one Nay. 12 eyes, one nay Council Bill 746. Has passed right. That all other bills for introduction are ordered published except for Council Bill 80855 which council will vote separately on after the one hour courtesy public hearing scheduled after tonight's recess. We're now ready for the block vote on resolutions and on bills on final consideration. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilman Black, will you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, I move that resolution to be adopted and bills and final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. 18 Dash 0840 18 Dash 084 318 Dash 086 218 Dash 365 18 Dash 077 218. Dash 085 618. Dash 085 718 Dash 085 818 Dash 085 918 Dash 10860 18. Dash 086 118. Dash 084 718. Dash 8079 418. Dash zero. 218 dash 023 18 Dash 0837. Has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, did we get them all? Yes. Our Rights. Secretary. Roll Call. Black Eye. Brooks Espinosa, I. Flynn, I. Fillmore, I. Herndon, I. Cashman can eat Lopez. All right. New Ortega. I Susman. Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. 1313. I is. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a one hour courtesy public hearing on first reading of Council Bill 855 regarding an agreement with PHC mixed use to exchange city owned property located at 2863 Fairfax Street for PHC owned property located at 2868

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.110 relating to COVID-19 paid supplemental sick leave; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-20-0017). (Citywide)

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Okay. Let's do item 19, 20 and 21, which are just as I think, I think additional readings of items we've already passed. Item 19, please. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to COVID 19 paid supplemental sick leave, declaring the urgency thereof and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately. Read and adopted as read citywide. Okay. I see a motion that comes from Sunday House. Can I get a second, please? Second bit. Council member Ashton. Please, please do a roll call vote. District one. I. District two. I. District three. I. District four. All right. District five. I. District six. Okay. District seven. I. District eight. All right. District nine.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 3275 Denargo Street and 3315 Denargo Street in Five Points. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 3275 & 3315 Denargo Street from I-B, UO-2 to C-MX-12, DO-7 (industrial to mixed-use) in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-4-20.

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Nine eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Council will not take a recess this evening. Councilmember Torres, will you please put council bills? One of five, one of six and one of seven on the floor. I move that council bills 105106 and 127 be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Councilmember Herndon, your motion to postpone. Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bills all series of 2020 01050106 and 0107, with their public hearings be postponed to Tuesday, March 31st, 2020, in a block. It has been moved. Can I get a second on that? Thank you. It's been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Councilmember Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. Council and the applicants of these items have all agreed to move these hearings to March 31st. We just need a formal vote to do so. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. See no other comments, Madam Secretary. Roll call. Black I. Gilmore. I Herndon. I hate Cashman. Can you. Sawyer, I. Torres, I. Council President. I am secretary. Please close voting. Announce results. Nine Eyes. Nine Eyes Counts Bills. 125, 126 and 127. With their public hearings have been postponed to Tuesday, March 31st. On Monday, April 13th, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 201, changing the zoning classification for 4750 Zuni Street.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Sections 8.63.020, 8.63.030, 8.63.050 and 8.63.070; all relating to prohibiting the use and sale of single-use food and beverage containers, packaging and food service ware made of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, rigid polystyrene #6, and non-recyclable and non-compostable material for prepared food distribution, and the distribution of plastic for bio-plastic straws, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Motion carries. Item. Next item. 28 Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance. Amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to prohibiting the use and sale of single use food and beverage containers, packaging and food service where made of expanded polystyrene foam. Read the first time in the lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. Thank you. I think there's a presentation. So I'll turn this over to Mr. Modica. Yes. Craig Beck and his team will give a presentation reminding us of kind of the long history of this of this effort and what the next step is. Thank you, Mayor. City council members we wanted to bring tonight before you an amendment proposed for the polystyrene ordinance as directed by this council back in October. And we've had a lot of success with the implementation in the first three phases. And so this would be an amendment to that and then a proposal for we'll call it a phase for getting into the details of what's before you this evening is dico mokonyane and he's going to go through the powerpoint. You go. Good evening, Mayor. Mr.. And Council Members, thank you for having us back here today. As Mr. Beck said, we've had some tremendous success with the first three phases of the expanded polystyrene ordinance. And at your request, we've come back with some follow up regarding some other materials that could be affected by this ordinance. So back in October, we had well before we get to October. There we go. As you recall, the first three phases were implemented beginning in September of 2018. Phase that was for city owned facilities and events. Phase two is for large food service providers, defined as 101 seats or more so very large restaurants. And phase three was small food providers of less than 100 seats or less. And that last phase just went into effect in December of last this past year. In October of this past year, we gave a presentation updating the city council as to the progress we've made. And at that time, the City Council requested to expand the ordinance to include language that would ban the use of plastic or bioplastic straws and eliminate couplet exemption couplet exemptions. By March 15th, approximately, it was a six month request. You have before you an ordinance that's being presented today and since it was drafted, we did have some last minute discussions and based on some conversations we've had, we are going to recommend that the City Council consider an exemption for consumers who identify as a person with disability, making the use of a plastic straw a necessity for them. Also, the City Council asked that we come back with a recommendation that expands the ban into retail sales. So just to get a little background here. You can see what we're doing is fairly forward thinking, but we're not the first ones out there. There are other cities who have done similar bans. So a lot of the large companies that we'd be working with for retail bans are chains with a retail like a McDonald's or franchises have experienced this in other cities around the country. 20 cities currently have an ordinance regarding the use of straws, and 26 cities have retail ordinances that restrict the sale of polystyrene products. So the staff recommendation comes from mostly looking at similar cities as surrounding us. Like Manhattan Beach was one of the ones we considered San Diego as an area we considered, and our proposed ordinance is very similar to theirs. As you can see, no person, vendor, business or event promoter in the city shall sell rent or otherwise provide polystyrene food service where products which are not wholly encapsulated or encase with a more durable material including but not limited to cups, cups, lids, condiment cups, food trays, plates, bowls, clamshells and other food service use. We're also recommending that we extend it to polystyrene packing materials. So again, no person, vendor, business or promoter shall distribute polystyrene packing material, including things like foam peanuts, packing peanuts and packing noodles. And finally, no person, vendor or business or event promoter may sell, rent or otherwise distribute within the city. Meat and fish trays like you see at supermarkets are produce trays or egg cartons made in part from polystyrene. Again, these are relatively common materials that are included in bans in other cities. So just to celebrate some of our successes here, we have nearly an 85% compliance rate as of January 31st this year. And what makes that really extraordinary is that data goes back to September of last year and phase three hadn't even been a requirement yet until December. And we still, for that extended period of four months, have, sorry, September, October, five months have an 85% success rate. A lot of the reason some of the reason why there's a 15% noncompliance rate is because people are still expiring their existing inventory. And so while they're not in violation of the ordinance, we also didn't want to pretend like they're in compliance yet with the ordinance. So they're listed as a non-compliant side. But this is something the ordinance allows and would also allow for straws. We did a lot of outreach and promotion mailers to businesses, social media, door knocking, had some giveaways, and we did a multi-year educational program on that. And we have also resources on our website to assist businesses to comply. So what we'd like to suggest today, again, it's a slight variation and from what is in the draft ordinance and this is again because of discussions that happened since then in the last couple of days is the straws and lids would be effective sometime after March 15th, 2020. And that keeps us in line with the six month request that the council motion had originally put together. The goal is to get that in by Earth Day so that we can celebrate that as a success here in Long Beach for a day and also a retail ban to follow come October 1st. That's all I have for this evening. And I'm open to questions. Thank you, Councilman Ringa. Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank staff for putting this together and really looking at closely at what we're trying to do here and especially tried to reduce deadlines as we currently have. One question in regards to page three, where you recommend for consumers who self-identify as a person with a disability to make use of a plastic straw necessary? Is that. Well, maybe it's more to the city attorney with that amendment, to the original ordinance that we put that we proposed back in October, have an effect of basically having this as a new reading for this ordinance. Would it change that much? Yes. Vice Mayor and members of the council. Councilmember, you're wrong. That is correct. These changes would require us to come back and bring this back for a first reading. We can do that very quickly, but they are substantive in nature. And so we will bring it back for a first and second reading. Okay. I'm not opposed to that. I think it's a good idea that we include that. It would make it, I think, even stronger in regards to what we're trying to implement here. So thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you. Councilwoman, is this. Yes. I also want to thank staff for this and my colleagues for actually working really hard on bringing the system forward. I'm excited to see that Long Beeches is moving forward on something like this. And I think that, you know, as a person with a disability that can lift up a cup of glass to drink from, I thank you again for all those that are out there in my same situation who don't have the necessary strength to actually pick up a cup and drink from it, especially when it's full. So thank you for that and I look forward to supporting this item. Thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Pierce. Yes, I am super excited about your 85% compliance rate. I think that in the history of Long Beach has been a lot of times when we've had a vision, we've had a new ordinance and implementation hasn't gone that great because we haven't had the best community outreach. And that's just part of learning how to do it. And I think that you guys have really excelled and should be really proud. I'm really proud of Long Beach for this, especially considering how tough I think our very first conversation on this was. It really demonstrates how far we've come. And so I just really want to applaud you for that. And I want to applaud the city for the amendments, considering council members and de Haas's input and really just demonstrating that diversity on the council really can change policy. So thank you, guys. Thank you, Councilman Supernova. Thank you. Thanks, staff, for that presentation. And regarding the change to the ordinance. I'd like to read that exact language as proposed in a special thanks to the city attorney's office for working in the 11th hour on this. And I'd just like to add. That. The amendment would be reflective of cities such as Seattle and also California Coastal Commission cities, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. So I'll read the text as it will appear. Exemption A food provider or beverage provider is exempt from the provisions of this chapter under the following conditions. One. During a locally declared emergency, the city emergency response agencies operating within the city users of city facilities. And food providers and beverages shall be exempt from provisions of this chapter to the food provider or beverage provider provides or distributes a plastic beverage straw upon request to individuals with disabilities as needed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And I believe I need to make that as a motion for the amendment. I think you've clarified the motion that's on the floor, so you're good on that. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to add that I'm really, really proud of the work that you guys have done on this. And I'm so glad that we've been ahead of the curve as it relates to policy steering, and particularly on these issues around straws and the work that the team has done to proactively get restaurants to transition out of the polystyrene. It's been it's just been really great. And I've been personally hap as an active user of takeout and Postmates. I've seen the change that's happened just in the last year from some of my favorite places that it just I just did not like that they still use polystyrene and now they've all converted, you know, to paper or other other types of products. And so it's really great. And I'm always, you know, happy to see that. And you guys did a great job. So I just want to thank all of you for for that work. Can you remind me on the on the straw issue paper straws were are we encouraging any type of transition or what what's the the preferred model that folks are transitioning to? Or is that really up to them? Mr. Mayor, it's really up to them. We're trying not to suggest that people use any one particular product, just that it not be plastic or bioplastic. You have some restaurants that are actually offering you a paper straw, or you can buy a metal reusable straw and just keep it for yourself. Open sesame, I believe, down in the shadows then. So we have, you know, we're allowing restaurants to get creative and do whatever they want to make it happen. I also see more and more of the of restaurants just, you know, not obviously having them. And I think it's been so easy to transition to that, you know, for for most folks or even even larger retailers like like Starbucks, right. Who are now putting the the lids on on the on the top, which is really great to see. So good. Really good stuff. Councilwoman Mango. I'm a big supporter of straws generally, and I carry my own. Roberto. Durango straw in my purse. I've used it at many L.A. facilities, but I will say that as I've traveled around the country, I recently visited an airport that has an airport director that used to work here in Long Beach. And I will say that their entire facility adopted Apple straws and having used nearly every kind of straw on councilmember souvenirs lists that he just showed me, Apple was not listed on there. And I don't know if we provide a list of all the alternatives and their price points, but that was something that helped encourage this other airport by saying, here's a lot of options and here's a lot of the price points and here's how they come and here's how you can order them. Because a lot of our smaller retailers still go to like Sam's Club or Smart and Final within the city limits to pick up things. And so they've helped by encouraging those those suppliers as well. So I'm really proud of the work we've done. I can't believe I carry a straw in my purse, but I do. And when I go out of the house without a purse, the three things I grab to put in my diaper bag are my reusable straw, my sunglasses and my earbuds for my phone. So, I mean, the straw made the cut. That's a pretty high standard. Not even Chapstick made it. So thank you for helping me be a better environmentalist. And can I just get one? I have one question for for the staff before we go to a vote actually. And then I have Craig called Waldner. I think it says here, I'll call you up in 1/2. So thank you. Want make sure you were here. Can I also ask I think the one will you give me an update on any sort of ordinances or additional laws that the City of Signal Hill has implemented as it relates to all of our laws? Because I think one of the things that's interesting, I think Signal Hill still there. They still have plastic bags. Well, plastic bags are now a statewide statewide issue. The state has some legislation regarding straws that would affect all cities. Yeah. And what it says essentially is that a restaurant or food service provider must ask if someone you have, you have to wait till someone asked for a straw. So the state state law is implementing it doesn't they don't in signal health, to my knowledge. Ban plastic straws there. Okay. Okay. I was wondering if we'd. Be happy in the interest of uniformity to reach out to them and share with them what we're doing so that, you know. I think I think if they could just afford them what we're doing and it'd be nice to have that kind of uniformity as well, if possible. Reach out to their city manager there. Their own, you know, government. So I get that there's a motion and a second is, please, Craig. If Craig called, water could come forward. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Craig Cadwallader and I'm speaking on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation South Bay chapter. And I'm very proud that you're moving forward with this amend these amendments. I was going to bring in the wording in the Manhattan Beach ordinance about the accommodations for people with disabilities, but it sounds like you've got it in there. And to me it was wrong not to have it. So I'm glad I'm glad you're proactive on that. It's very important. One of the things and also the the straws part of this is not that clear. So perhaps at the next first reading, the straws could be more clearly. There's only one sentence that reads All straws must be plastic or must not be plastic or bioplastic. I think if you miss that sentence, you don't get it. And other ordinances there currently are 136 by my count, in the state. Not all of them include the straws. I almost have them all memorized, which I work on this all the time with a lot of cities. But if it were clear that the plastic, including petroleum and bioplastic based straws are not acceptable, one of the options mentioned I bring these everywhere I go. I got my own straws and utensils. It's unfortunate utensils are included in this because they are in many other ordinances, including Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Culver City, and we're trying to get regional ordinances down here. So I hope you might look at that. I don't know why utensils were exempted, but they never get recycled. They're always landfilled. And I think this is the good way to go to bring in the rough food expanded polystyrene tray ban is really important I'm glad that's included and the packing peanuts and expanded polystyrene packing items those we find on the beach all the time. We're really looking this is a good, strong way to improve the ordinance. We are working on L.A. County, unincorporated right now. What you do here is going to help define that and we hope will get the city of L.A. to match that. I also bring my own collapsible food containers so you can bring your own by state law. Now, AB 619 was signed into law. Bring your own. It's easier. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And with that, there's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Councilman's in Dallas.

A bill for an ordinance approving proposed Amendments to approximately ten Leases, Licenses and Concession Agreements in response to the COVID-19 health crisis, to be negotiated by the Director of Real Estate to provide relief for the tenants. Authorizes the Division of Real Estate to negotiate and amend commercial leases in City-owned buildings to provide three months of rent relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 5-18-20. Councilmember Black approved filing this item on 4-23-20.

DenverCityCouncil_04272020_20-0388

No items have been filed out under bills for introduction. Councilmember Connections called out Bill 388 for comment. Under bills for final consideration, the items have been called a funding void. It's been called out. Madam Secretary, if you please put the first item up on our screens and Councilmember, can each give me a quick second and then you can go ahead with your comments. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Capital 388 is a bill to extend the period of lease payments that we have for several tenants, include tenants in our city where building coffee shop or subway stop or the convenience store. It also includes several large complexes. I believe the National Weather Center has some of these leases that people who are entities are having a difficult time paying their rent for reasons that not understanding the COVID 19 crisis. I believe that rent relief is appropriate. Obviously, we did a resolution or proclamation calling for rent relief like this a couple of weeks ago. In this case, though, I think it is really critical for us as a city to be ensuring that we are combining our business system with mechanisms to protect workers wherever possible. So, for example, in this case, I have a lot of hearing questions, request of the administration regarding workers rights to be rehired. We might have a number of situations where as a business comes back into business, we want them to be rehiring for the workers that they have displaced. And it might seem like that might just happen, but we have a lot of evidence that discrimination can play into those situations. For example, is an employer going to be less willing to hire a parent with children where they know their children? Are they going to be less willing to hire someone with medical backgrounds? Right. We do not want there to be cover or an opportunity for those kinds of discrimination for workers who complained about health conditions, for example. We want to make sure that workers who are employed in this crisis began are able to come back to their jobs in that same opportunity. So I accept their right to rehire for renewal. And also the question of health care. And we know this is a health crisis. And one of the things that employers should hopefully be doing with workers that they are keeping on during this time, continuing to pay for any health care benefits. It sounds like there may not be extensive health care provision among this group of tenants, which is unfortunate in itself. But to the extent there is some payment of health insurance companies request to continue that, and I've actually suggested we may even want to instead of deferring the rent payments, folks are going to be paying their workers health care. We should perhaps forego that rent so that they can use that funding specifically to do that health care. So the administration has been very accommodating in hearing these questions. But did market science come up with any decisions? This is a to reading audience tonight, thank goodness. So I'm going to go for it tonight. Can move forward to the next reading. And I want to be transparent. I want to thank my colleagues. But a number of have expressed support for this particular request. And I believe that this is key for any kind of assistance like this that is ongoing or in large value. I did raise some of these questions about the 70 $500 businesses systems that we talked about doing earlier committee meeting. And I think that that $0.75 I would also like to see these provisions connected to, but it's a smaller amount at one time funding in some cases for very tiny businesses. So I think that in this case, though, are these different three months could be tens of thousands of dollars, even for a small tenant, that's a lot of money that they are not having to pay for and the city is appropriate. But I think our goal in this is not just to protect, this is just for the sake of it. It's to protect offices and to protect workers. So my hope is that we begin to pare more of these measures and make sure that we are keeping an eye on both sides of the economy in our efforts, whoever possible. So I want to thank the administration for their consideration. I'm hopeful to have a positive resolution of this before next week. I will be. You notice I did not call this up for a vote. We just wanted everyone to understand the conversation that was happening. Thank you so much. Councilmember. Right. That concludes the item is being called out this evening. All other bills for introduction are ordered published. Councilmembers remember that this is a consent of block vote and you will need to vote. I realize this is your last chance to call an item up for a separate vote. Councilmember Herndon, will you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Differences on whether the residents will be adopted. Policies that are in place on the work for the moment. Out of the 2000 1113663403417833334833933453473836. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary. Roll call. Black eyes when I kicked. Kitty. Hi. Sawyer. I saw. It. I. Data backup. I. I. Times I. Catch them. I. Ortega. I. Animal. I. Council President I am secretary. Please go voting announced results 1339 resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed on final consideration and do pass. Council will not be taking another recess this evening. As you know, the Business People's Party, this meeting is adjourned.

A bill for the Council of the City and County of Denver, sitting ex-officio as the Board of Directors of the Denver 14th Street General Improvement District, making certain findings and approving the issuance of $4 million principal amount of Refunding Revenue Notes; and approving and adopting a supplement to the Work Plan and Amended Budget for the 2017 fiscal year. Approves the issuance of $4 million principal amount of refunding revenue notes, imposes capital charges, and approves and adopts an amended budget for the 2017 fiscal year by City Council sitting in its capacity as the ex-officio Board of Directors of the Denver 14th Street General Improvement District in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this bill by consent on 7-25-17.

DenverCityCouncil_08142017_17-0809

Please refrain from profane and obscene speech. We don't like that. Direct your comments to the Council as a whole and refrain from individual or personal attacks. All right. Council is now convene as the board of directors of the 14th Street General Improvement District. Councilman Espinosa, will you please put Council Bill 809 on the floor? I move that council bill eight or nine be placed on the floor upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved. And second, the public hearing for Council eight or nine is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening, board members. My name is Michael Kerrigan from the Department of Finance Special District Team. We are here. Today to take the necessary steps to accomplish the refunding of the district's existing debt. The steps include a public hearing on an amended workplan and budget, which includes the refunding. Transaction, followed by an action on the. Authorizing ordinance. The district filed. The district filed statutory requirements for advertising. And posting no notices for the public hearing. The Denver 14th Street Guide was created by council and approved by the electors in response to the 14th Street Initiative, a public private partnership between downtown Denver Partnership and the city and county of Denver to create Denver's Ambassador Street. The initiative visualized 14th. Street between Market. And Colfax as a promenade and a major gateway to the downtown area. The plan contemplated streetscape enhancements and related public infrastructure improvements. Stakeholders included private property owners, public officials and business organizations participating. In establishing. The conceptual design for the. 14th Street at a chamber election in 2009. A majority of the qualified electors of the district authorize. The issuance of indebtedness in an amount not to exceed $4 million. Subsequent to the TABOR election, the district issued. A $4 million bond in 2010. And used the debt proceeds to fund. A portion of the costs for the streetscape enhancements and infrastructure. Improvements to achieve the 14th. Street Initiative vision. In the spring of 2017, the District Advisory Board wanted wanting to explore a more efficient financial structure, engaged RBC Capital Markets LLC. As a bank solicitor, RBC obtained refunding proposals from six local lenders. After review, the District Advisory Board recommends. For approval. The proposal from Vector Bank, a division of Zions Bancorp. The proposal is expected. To generate approximately $692,000 in debt service savings, benefiting. The district property owners. The amended budget includes the appropriate. Adjustments to diffuse the current debt and. Issue the proposed debt issuance. The adjustments include accounting for the movement of debt, service reserves. Bond premium, principal and interest. The transaction sources and. Uses include the movement of four $4,306,000. City staff has reviewed the amended 2017 budget and work plan and recommends it. For approval this evening. Beth Moisi from the. Is here representing the district and Michael Persky is here representing. RBC and both are available to answer questions, any questions you may have. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Michael. We thank you for also doing my job and listening the speakers. First, is Michael Persichetti there? Right. I only got it because of him. And you have 3 minutes. Michael PRISCU with RBC Capital Markets. In California Street, Denver. Just here to answer questions. Great. Thanks. Next up, Beth Maskey Denton of Apprenticeship. Hi. Good evening I'm here that my whiskey as a representative for the downtown Denver partnership and I'm the. Executive director of the 14th Regional Permit District, and I'm here to answer questions. Great. All right. This concludes our speakers for this evening. Quick question for me to you, Ms.. Moisi. What are you guys what improvements are you guys working on on 14th Street? Right now, we're maintaining the improvements that were made with the capital investment for the $40 million investment. So we're doing the maintenance, and the maintenance constitutes about $250,000 a year. Okay. And but for the for you're doing a 4 million. So this is refinancing a bond. Got it. Got it. So existing bond. Capital bond. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. What is the total amount of bonds that were issued for this? For me, it. Is 4 million. Okay, so this is the tote we're refunding. All of them were refinancing. Or refinance. And was the original maturity date 2034 also on the original, yes. So we're just we're just getting a lower interest rate about. Saving we're saving people money. I'm happy to be here tonight. Okay. Thank you. So same same term. Lower payments. Great. I like that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Councilman Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you. Just a quick question about the annual contribution. How will that change with the new hotel project that will go on across the street that's on 14th Street. That is on 41. So what happens is the distribution gets spread across all properties. I want to say there's 3540 properties and so it it all gets spread across. I don't know if Michael can do a better job explaining that, but it's it stays at the same rate and we just spread the pain across. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. This concludes a public hearing for 809 comments by members of council. This is represented in my district and this is a little shout out to Carla madison because I replaced her seat on this on this many years ago, six years ago. And so she was someone who was very influential on getting this passed through the bond. And this is a bond project from 2007 Bond and very innovative on 14th Street because you guys actually charge depending on what zone you're in, you get assessed more. And so 14th Street really transformed when we went through this. So I'm in favor of saving people money and continuing to keep up the maintenance of an incredible, incredible district. So. That's it. No other comments. Madam Secretary Roker. Clark. I. Espinosa, i. Flynn. I. Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman. Can each. Lopez. New Ortega I. Susman I black eye. Mr. President. I please cause voting in US results. I'm sorry you got in. 12 eyes. Yep. 12 eyes. Eight or nine has passed. Congratulations. Okay. Councils now convene, reconvene and will resume its regular schedule. Councilman Espinosa, will you please put Councilman 18 on the floor?

A MOTION requesting the executive establish an equitable development initiative and prepare an implementation plan.

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Okay. Our last agenda item is the motion that was introduced by Councilmember Dombroski, co-sponsored by Councilmember Bizarrely, and my father and my son, all of them we heard. I think all of the people engaged in giving public comment today speak about and that is to establish Japan wide equitable development initiative r e d i i. And is the language included right now is with the priority on unincorporated area communities? This has been a bit of an issue. We had our first discussion on our committee, the whole agenda last at our last meeting on February 2nd, and I found the discussion to be very productive. And I believe it also revealed that we still have some work ahead of us to ensure that we get this proposal right. It's an important one and I would like to see it happen. But I have had a request that we hold the I've taken the taking action on this proposal today. We are going to be having more work going on. And I think we can be optimistic that by the time by next meeting we can reach consensus on a really strong in the eye program for the county. So we'll not be taking action on this today. But we do have some new amendments that have been offered. They are included in the green folder that was sent to you by Jennie Know last night. I hope you've had an opportunity to go over that, those amendments. And what I'd like to do is have Jenni just give us a very brief overview of the motion to remind us all and for those listening in and then go over the amendments, some of which we've already seen last at our last meeting. But there are some new ones. We also have executive staff Karen Gil and Kelly Rider with this, I believe they were supposed to be. And we will have a discussion today and just. Keep working on this and take it up hopefully two weeks from now. Go right ahead, Jen. Thank you for your calls, Dana. Council central staff. The materials for this item again on page 22 of the pack in their view the staff report. In the motion proposed motion 2020 1-0467 would request the executive to establish a countywide Equitable Development Initiative, or ECI with a priority on unincorporated area communities. And the motion also requests that the Executive prepare an implementation plan in two phases that is developed in conjunction with the planning workgroup. The motion identifies that phase one of the implementation plan should include a developed EDI framework information about how the initiative would guide the Best Streets Capital Grants Program, recommendations for County and Community Structure, Capacity and resources for implementing the program in this first phase would be due June 30th, 2022. These two of the plan would include objectives and strategies to reduce disparities, utilize data of displacement risk and other metrics to determine programs and policies. Include metrics for monitoring and evaluating outcomes. Describing partnerships with outside agencies such as community based organization or regional partners. Identify funding sources that could be leveraged. Propose strategies to coordinate across county agencies and programs. Identify community outreach and collaboration process. Utilize the community direct action level of engagement, and propose next steps in a timeline. The second phase would be due June 30th, 2023. As the Chair mentioned, there are a number of amendments that were sent to you last night. I am happy to go through those amendments. I now call Walter. Do you want me to pause? It's. Let's see if there are any questions on your briefing thus far. Can you go right ahead. So the additional packet I was sent out to you, I will just go through the amendments and likely pause if there's any questions . So the First Amendment would be the striking amendment, S-1, and this would revise the two phase implementation plan into a single feasibility analysis. With the following changes. It would revise the scope to reduce disparities in communities that are at the highest risk of displacement based on risk indicators and where other EDR programs are not in place and removes a plan requirement related to the best arts capital grant. The Capital Grant Program Procurement Process. Aaron moves a plan requirement related to recommendations and next steps for the county and community structure and revises a plan requirement for providing objectives and strategies to reduce disparities to recommendations on policy implementation is to reduce disparities. It revises the plan requirement related to data and analysis of the displacement risk indicators. It removes a plan requirement related to outdoor outside partnerships and inter-governmental coordination error. Most plan requirements related to using a specific ESG level of engagement. It revises the composition of the Advisory Committee Group to be comprised of three representatives selected by the executive and more represented selected by each Councilmember office and requires a report deadline of December 31st, 2022. There is in your packet on starting. On Page eight that shows the original motion and then the changes that the striker would make, you know, a concert there. Hmm. Thank you very much. What I'd like to do is have, after each briefing, at the briefing on individual amendments, have the sponsor just be able to speak briefly on it. Again, we're not taking action on any of these to the concerned about the group. Do you have anything to say about your striking the members? Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I spoke to this at a previous meeting and the coalition that brought the original proposal hates this, but I recognize that. But I when I sat down and met and listened to the some of the representatives, the coalition early on, what I heard was a desire to create a funding source. At the end of the day, really what we're doing is this is about funding. And I thought there was a much more direct and clear way to get that outcome, to simply create a fund, because that's what we're talking about. We're going to come up with some new money. We're going to decide where it goes and who decides where it goes. And I thought that the underlying motion complicated a lot of that. And but no one seems to like this one. But I wanted to keep it there as an option for consideration and show something that I could feel comfortable supporting. Thank you. And let's go on now and have Jenny breathe this amendment line amendment point five a also buy up the grove. And I think Councilmember Grove, you have some line amendments that are would pertain to the striking amendment. But there are individual elements that were in the striking amendment in recognition that the strike amendment may not have support. I tried to zoom in on what were a couple of my areas of most interest and most concern have been to bring those ideas forward and light amendments instead. Okay. So this is a pretty straightforward. Jenny, go ahead. Oh, sure. Amendment 0.5 A is on page 12 of your packet. In this letter, the scope of the idea is to focus on displacement risk. How about going ahead and describing all four that pertain, I believe, pertain to the striking and that the next causes are not affecting the striker? This is for the underlying motion. Okay. Yes, you're right. They pretend to know what this is all about. And I'd like you to go through these next four. Oh, sure. Okay. So Amendment 0.68, which is on page 13 of your packet, this is related to the BSE case. Go in this specifies that if the initiative does not impose will not impose additional prioritization to the best or it's implementation plan. Amendment 0.7 and Page 14 revises the group composition. So the Planning Workgroup and permit advisory board composition would be comprised of 13 representatives. Four would be selected by the executive and one selected by each council member in the executive. And Council members will strive to appoint individuals with experience and knowledge on equitable development and issues relating to displacement. Go ahead. The next Amendment 0.7 B is from Council Member Perry, and this letter revised the current composition of the Planning Workgroup and Permanent Advisory Board to have equal geographic representation and adds considerations for individuals with live experience or expertize relative relevant to the initiative. Okay, thank you very much. Cut some about the globe. Would you like to comment on your three amendments? Thank you. Those weren't all mine, but my interest is twofold. Historically, our charter gives the legislative branch of government the policymaking and and budgetary authority. And if we're going to delegate that authority, I think it's most appropriate for us that to be done by council members, not have the county executive choose who will represent us. We have many other models where we do this. And in fact, this body has fought the executive tooth and nail for months on some of our other levies to ensure that our voice is heard. I trust us just as much as I trust DOE to select a good, diverse group of people that represent the values we want . My concern is when we give that appointment authority to one individual in the executive branch, to the executive, that some voices are shut out. I think this should reflect the diversity of the county, not just geographically, but in the true sense of the word. You know, we're all have different interests in focus. We all were selected by our communities to be their voice. And I think it makes sense. If we're going to delegate our authority to have the council members play a more direct role like we do with our other. Fiscal oversight committees in nominating and selecting someone from our community to represent represent those interests. So that's my thinking and bring it forward. I think it also. We're at risk of groupthink when you have one person selecting everyone and when there's a small group that's very, very interested in something behind it, I think there's a risk of sort of a group of insiders and people who are all all have the exact same vision. And I think that's dangerous. And I think we want a diversity of ideas and thoughts of people who are excited about the overall vision but but willing to bring diverse views. So that's my my interest and bring it forward. Thank you. And that's Amendment 0.7. Do you alignment anything? So those. Were. I think it went over. Others were not mine. Was that correct? Jenny We went over a 0.7 B and that's sponsored by Councilmember Perry. And I will get to her. Thank you. Okay. And you had two others there. 0.58 and 0.6 say. I mean, we have we've been briefed on those. Yes. But. Remind me very quickly which those were. Let me pull up my sheet here. 0.5. I don't think he spoke on the edas scope to focus. Yes. Gotcha. Thank you. I am. I'm just thinking the most fair methodology is to target where the need is greatest. You know, there are other grant programs. We have that kind of universal approach and target it based on need. And if we did that, unincorporated areas rise exceptionally well. They're one of the areas our urban unincorporated areas are one where all the is about every indicator and everyone recognizes. And and but there also are some extremely high need areas outside unincorporated areas, some of the areas with the largest black population, with the highest levels of displacement and risk of displacement. And to make those lower priority than the unincorporated areas just strikes me as arbitrary and not particularly fair. Okay. Thank you. End .0.6, say on best case scope? Yes, that's one we've talked quite a bit about. As you may remember, the best starts for kids tax measure. For the first time ever in King County, we have capital funds for youth programing and community centers and something there's a great deal of enthusiasm and interest all over the county. There happens also to be language in the best start for kids implementation plan that says that the grant program will be informed by and made in collaboration with any future. Ed I And my concern was that if we're going to put new parameters on this idea like prioritizing unincorporated areas that I don't think that's what was originally intended when the best start for kids implementation plan was passed, when the, you know, Sound Cities all sat at the table there and it went through the Regional Policy Committee, no one ever suggested that those funds would now be prioritized in unincorporated areas. So this would say. Yes, collaborate, share input on it, but don't apply any new criteria to those best starts. For kids capital grants, they're already targeted very much the same way. I don't have the language in front of me, but they're bipoc communities, community led projects, you know, dealing with many of these same values and those dollars are fairly limited. So prioritizing one community over another could mean certain projects get funded and others don't. So that was my attempt to try to get at that issue. And over that, I've heard some support on the council and even today from some people testifying. I think you and I may not be going through this the most logical way. No, it's great for me. I'm sorry I didn't have my amendments in front of me. And Councilmember DEMBOSKY has an amendment proposed to on that same topic. But we'll complete the first four. We've got Council Member Perry's 60.7 B, which also has to do with group composition. I probably should have had you take that up already. Councilmember Perry, would you like to make comment on that? Thank you, Chair Carl Wells. You know, I very I'm reading a lot and talking a lot with members involved in this. And and I appreciate what this is trying to do. You know, as someone who has 30% of my district in unincorporated King County, I am very appreciative of an emphasis on the voice of folks from unincorporated King County, because simply there is nobody else. If we don't speak to that, there is nobody else speaking for these voices and making sure that the focus is there. And I'm so so I'm interested in in in looking at that. And I'm glad that spring being brought forward. I do. I'm confused about some of the language, so I need to get some more clarity around the best starts for kids and whether the language specifically prioritized cities, which is also a problem. So, you know, I'd like to make sure that what we ask for and best chance for kids is actually what we use the funding for. So there's a an ethic in deciding to uphold the trust of the people. When we ask for funds to be used in a certain way, that that is in fact how we use those funds. That's very, very important. And if we need to create a different mechanism that we do. But that part is very important to me, and it's also important that we are emphasizing the voices of the community with lived experience, bipoc community and those with lived experience. That is the entire intention of EDA and I support that. I, I'm a little confused about I don't know if it's semantics, but I'm a little confused about the distinction that's being made between when Executive Constantine chooses and when the council members choose the makeup of that community group . That's confusing to me. It's a little unclear to me. I thought that the community group is formed with E.D., but it sounds like is sort of a hand-picking by the executive of those advisory members 1 to 1. I'm confused about that. So I need some more information around that, that I'll do that work on my own. But I would like to see representation from all of the districts, with those with lived experience and some bipoc community and expertize, making an equal portion, making up the the folks that decide what their recommendation is to the to the executive. So to me, having everybody in that I think is really important. And we have people who have been displaced or at great risk of being displaced in the community in each of our districts. That would be appropriate. I feel, if we're using the voice, the dollars of the city with that emphasis, that we're actually bringing in voices from each of the districts to help that that discussion happen, but that they're formed together just with the objective, that within their forming of their community group, they're working with people from each area. Thank you very much, Councilmember Perry. I would like to do now is go over the remaining four amendments and have the sponsors have actually, I don't think we actually need to have Jim go brief us on them. They're pretty specific. I'll just ask each sponsor to let us know what they're about and then just open this up for questions, comments, discussion. I perhaps could have done it topic by topic, but I started this way, so we'll continue. Councilmember Dombroski for amendment number one on the best stokes grant steps. Okay. Thank round chair. This was another variation. I think we brought it forward last time to address this little bit of a conundrum around the BSC funding. But I want to say that in general, I think Councilmember Grove has identified an issue that was triggered because of the language elsewhere in the motion that prioritized investment in unincorporated communities. And when you when that lines up with the best capital grants, it created a new a new focus, if you will, that I that I concur was not in the original proposal. And so I think we need to address that one way or another, because I wrote the wrong house language, which I think I'm pretty comfortable with. But I think we went through a very robust process there and the voters approved, you know, the plan. And I know there's a lot of excited around that. So my main message I want to convey on the BSC is I don't think we should was we would saying they don't retread that that we got to a consensus and that was there. So I think, Madam Chair, that with a little more time, we'll be able to address that issue because I sense there's consensus around it on the 1.3 existing funding sources, that's a similar issue, but just broader and I think we need some more dialog around that. The the goal in my mind here is it was to and is to go find. Sustainable funding on an ongoing basis for this initiative. But a little bit or chiseling away from other funds or a one time deal but something that makes it a real robust strong program that can meet the need that is here. And I think that there are some opportunities to do that. Perhaps most near and coming down the pike in the DSH, a cell renewal that could really, if we had this plan in place, served as a as an opportunity to inject real, real money into this. So I think that can have some additional work. And then I'll just jump to my last one. I know I'm jumping out, but it's just the deadline change. Okay. Thank you. And the last one, 1.5 Councilmember of the Grove on the advisory board will. Thank you, Madam Chair. We spoke to I spoke to this at the previous meeting. I don't know. Underlying it says it gives this group of executive appointees the authority to make policy and budget decisions. I don't know how we legally do that, how someone can make a policy decision. The main policy issues are land use and we have very specific state laws around plan updates and and timelines and the rules of the legislative bodies of county governments can do that. I. You know, we we appropriate the dollars. And so I'm worried we're setting up a little bit of a false expectation here. And I was just going to say, you know, I'm not aware of other areas in the county where we do this. We have them. We have often advisory boards, make decisions and then bring those to the elected officials. I think of Conservation Futures Board, great example. We empower them. It's led by those members. They develop a list and then at the end of the day, the county council approves that. And so we might want to either change the name from advisory board or. I think be more honest about what the practical impact is, which is that they're there to inform the executive and legislative branch on these items. I'm not wedded to this because I think it just will be. I mean, our procedures, our procedures and an emotion saying what a committee will do doesn't change those. But I think it's I just thought it was odd to create an advisory committee, but advisory committee, we delegate our policymaking and budgetary authority to them. You add to it that it's a group of executive appointees, and it makes it even more awkward for me. So that was my thinking on that one. I agree and empowering and having the, you know, people who are not elected and who bring some different experience, being at the heart of the discussion and even driving that discussion . And that's not what my concern is. The concern is that we're stating this board can do something for which under state law in our charter and things. I don't know how we really do that. So that was my thinking. Thank you very much. So these are the amendments that we can discuss right now. There may be other ones that are brought up. Hopefully we will have resolution by the time of our next meeting. But it seems to me that some of the major issues here have to do with, as we discussed last time, what? But his priority can be. I mean, we have here an amendment to 0.5 they referring to the scope of the DEA to focus. Is that the same thing as a priority or criteria? Is a term mentioned as well? And is that the same as a priority or would that be a more preferable term? This that's an issue that I think we need to come to grips with. Also, the composition of the working group and then later the advisory board and what their roles would be very important. And there are other ones too, but those are just a couple that we've dealt with. I guess another important one, though, is what's in the motion as it stands now to give a priority to the unincorporated King County areas, urban areas. And some of us have concerns about that. We'd rather have this be open to communities and organizations throughout the county, including the unincorporated King County urban areas. So with that, first of all, are there any questions of any of the sponsors of the amendments or just comments that you might want to make? The whole councilmembers are here. I thought you might want to. I have a I'll start off with a few. A couple quick ones. Can maybe central staff or maybe the sponsors share with us the difference between amendment point seven A and amendment point seven B? Are those, you know, can both of those stand or are they is it one or the other? They're both. That one is from councilmember of the Grove, one from Councilmember Perry. They both relate to group composition. Just talking through what the difference between those two is and are they either or both? They would be either or. Amendment 0.7 A would change the planning workgroup composition to four representative selected by the executive and then one selected by each County Council member. And that amendment would state that the executive and council members would strive to appoint individuals with experience and knowledge about equitable development and issues relating to displaced. That Amendment 0.7 d would maintain the language that's in the underlying motion related to emphasizing black, indigenous and people of color in the leadership. And it changes. There needs to be. There is a reference in the underlying motion about geographic representation, including unincorporated King County. This would be changed and geographic representation for each council district. And then there's also consideration for individuals with experience or expertize relative to the initiative. So there's some overlap. And I would say, Madam Chair, that I actually like Rick Perry's description of what we're looking for on their mind. I think that's an improvement from my amendment. The where we I think we disagree is whether it's the we let down the people from our districts or whether we nominate those people, select them from our districts. But I like her criteria. Thank you. That is the Madam Access Chair Coles. Is it? Okay. Thank you, ma'am. That is the distinction. And I. I want to do what's in that amendment. I'm hoping to encourage the community development as much as possible, and that together the the community would would move forward, bring forward representatives from each of the different districts for consideration by the council and that it not rest with each of the councilmembers. That's correct. Thank you. Council members than anyone else. Yes. Just I'll have a few other thoughts. But just on this point, I want to understand how having a one for one representation on an advisory board fits in with the idea of we are going to prioritize areas of highest displacement. These reports come back and they show that some areas, some districts are have way more higher risk of displacement. How does that fit in with each of us having representation on a board? Those two things for me feel like they are at odds with one another. It's putting geographic quote unquote, geographic equity ahead of displacement equity. So that's that's why I would not support these, but I would welcome thoughts on how. But if anyone has thoughts on that. I'm some member of the Globe and parents. I think it's a fair question. I think and I can wax philosophical on this. I've discussed similar issues with Fort Culture and the Homelessness Authority about the role of appointed versus elected. We have a one person, one vote. Democracy in this county and in our country where the community. The cool thing is the community gets to decide who they want to represent them and everyone has the same say regardless of income background. Everyone gets one vote and they and then the community selects someone and they've selected nine of us. All of those individuals, all of those voters have a stake in the outcome, not in the same direct degree, but they all are funding this. This is all taxpayer dollars from all over the county. How we grow obviously affects how we grow in certain areas, affects people in those areas. But I think when we're setting county wide policies using county wide dollars, everyone deserves a voice, I think using appointees and generally not speaking to this. But I've seen it be used as a way to get around the democratic process, to get around ensuring everyone in the community has a voice and narrowing it to just some in the community have a voice. And I like to define community in an inclusive way. And I sometimes hear people use the term community to define community in an exclusive way that says somebody testified today, spoke about we want people from the community. I'm trying to think of who's not from the community, who isn't from the community. I know nine of us aren't, you know, because we're now elected. But other than that, are there people that aren't from the community? And so I, I think that. All nine council members should have their views and voices and priorities reflected in the decisions made that affect the whole county. I think we should appoint people, and I certainly would from my district, people who bring unique experience, particularly maybe people have been impacted by this. I like prioritizing black indigenous people of color. But I also think that everyone, the diverse, the ideological diversity and geographic diversity, all of that needs to be reflected or else the voters, certain voters are getting cut out of the of the mix. And it's sort of my this weird populist in me isn't just on this issue I just think that we can use appointed bodies in ways that exclude members of the community in order to narrow the perspectives that are brought to bear on a problem. And I think we are better served when we have a larger diversity of views and when everybody in the county gets an equal voice. So I don't know. That was kind of a rambling answer, but it's it's why I'm often very careful about how and when and who we delegate decision making to to ensure that we don't lose that broader definition of community and the pursuit of of goals. So that's at least my thinking. And to Councilmember to Councilmember Perry. Thank you, chair corrals. I think that we are in this situation because we haven't centered people in the community who are most impacted. That's the entire reason for this conversation. And so I think it's important to call out who those community members are and to emphasize the strength and the voice of the community members most affected by the disparity. I don't think we should be emphasizing all community members because that's what got us into this. And we have some work to do to get out of it. And we do that by centering folks who are most impacted and making the decisions that will impact them. So I'm a big supporter of that. I immediately Councilmember Zoabi, maybe I am still not understanding exactly what the intention is in this space, but from for me. If it is much and like it, I would see the city of Seattle, E.D., with King County. You know, you would want to have that. I will speak to that for within King County. I do think we need to be focusing on and not prioritizing the city because the city does have opportunities that unincorporated simply, categorically does not have. So we have an obligation as King County to support those most disaffected in unincorporated King County if we're going to speak to the heart or the intention of that. So in my in my thinking about making sure that we have representation from people who are most impacted from each of the districts. It is because it is community wide in focus. And right now, we're emphasizing and ideally all along in the future, we are emphasizing those who have the greatest need. And everybody would speak to that. So I don't have an expectation that those within each of the different districts would lobby for their own space if it didn't rise to the occasion of the greatest need, but that they would be a voice for all of those most affected, and they would be a voice from throughout the districts. I think it it it doesn't help the strength of it to focus in a very narrow area for funding that affects an entire group of people that's affected throughout the entire area of King County in displacement. I think it's important to have that broad based, some lived experience with the directive that that the intention is to impact those who have the highest level of displacement and negative impact in their communities throughout King County, that everybody would be speaking to that collectively. I don't see it as bifurcating it or separating it then into nine different funding spaces. I don't know if that's coming through clearly, but that's that's my intention in that is that there is a voice for the full community in King County and that the and that the guidance is to vote to impact those that are most affected by potential displacement. Thank you, Councilmember Perry. We're running short on time. This has been a really fruitful discussion. I would first like to find out if Councilmember Sarlo was there because he is a sponsor. I'd like to hear from Councilmember Jim DEMBOSKY, the lead sponsor. And I also would invite Kelly Rider and Karen Gill to give comment. And we want to wrap this up in the next several minutes. So, first of all, Councilman Starlight, anything quick? Yes, quickly. Thank you, Councilmember Coles. I'll have a lot of thoughts later, but I want to quickly point out a place of agreement among all of us. I'm supportive of the amendments that try to decouple the BSA, how BSA is funneled through from the unincorporated priority that I've been advocating for. So with with respect to that, I think we're all on the same page, and I will support that those amendments. Thank you very much. Okay. And Councilmember Dombroski. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. And I know that there was originally some hope that we would be able to move this forward today out of this committee. But it seems to me it's the right call to have some additional work off line, because in particular, some of the amendments that are here are trying to tackle the same issue. And it looks to me like some of them overlap or get darn close to agreement. This is, well, virtual works pretty good. I think this legislation is one where we would be better off if we were all sitting here on the 12th floor so we could have those in-person conversations and work through them. But I think we're going to be able to do that quickly in the coming days. You know, just one thought on on kind of power sharing here, if you will. And this is a bit of a sea change for me. And that is there are times when having an equal voice from every part of the county is good and works. And I want to make sure that we have a wide variety of views. But one of the aims of this legislation is to not only lift up, but to actually empower, to give power to those who are on the ground and suffering the effects of this bill that we're trying to address this this overrunning of communities with big money and to help them stand up and let them make decisions and let them make investments that. The those in the communities most impacted that are experiencing this challenge are seeing and living. And that, to me, where I got to address it means giving up some of the power that I have in this office and and letting folks decide their own destiny. And it's a bit of a sea change. We just had a good discussion here today. And so I hope that I will there are as concerned rep the girl points out legal constraints from the law and the charter and whose responsibilities are. I hope that we will support a philosophy in this legislation that truly does empower to the greatest extent possible. Maybe policy choice is the wrong word, but you know that that empowers this group with real ability and real authority to tackle this challenge. There's a balance on that in that is you want to bring those who have power, like we do, to secure funding and make investments and and and have trust and kind of the voters to make this thing go. You want to bring bring us along and respect that. But I'm I'm I think that's a very important element to this philosophically. And the discussion we're having here today is good to kind of clear out the concerns and hash that out. I represent, by and large, a very wealthy district. These challenges are in my district in Pinehurst and Lake City and that part of it. But they don't predominate like other parts of our county with respect. And I do think, Councilmember Perry, we do have an extra duty as a local government in our unincorporated areas to pay special attention there and maybe even give an edge on occasion. But I think we should remember, depending on how this is funded, that it comes from. Taxpayers countywide, including in the city of Seattle, including in all of our 39 incorporated cities. And sometimes I would like to remind us that the needs in those incorporated communities can be great, and maybe even a local initiative that might be funded by a city is inadequate to address the need. And I think it's okay if King County comes in as a regional government government working across jurisdictional boundaries to buttress those efforts . I would like us to think about that as we think about where these these funds could go and the priority language. So there's a few thoughts. I'm very, very optimistic and hopeful. I hear that there is great interest across the diocese here in the virtual diocese in doing this, which is pretty cool because the debate could have been, what is this? This isn't a county government role. We don't need to be doing this. I'm not hearing that. I'm hearing people of goodwill and different perspectives and with different ideas saying, Yeah, let's do it, let's get it right and let's make it robust. And so I'm optimistic and I'll leave it out. And on that note. Thank you, Michael. A well served councilmember Dombroski really well serve. I think my scheduler is trying to make arrangements for a meeting of those partners who are involved on the council with staff. And I'm optimistic, too, that we're going to come up with a good outcome at our next meeting. I would like to see if Current Girl or Kelly Rider would like to give any comment before we sign off. Karen. Thank you. Thanks, Madam Chair. Karen Gill with the Executive Office, as we said, in support of the vision in the work. Additional clarity is always appreciated in interpreting Council's intent. So appreciate the discussion. Nothing else to add at this point. Okay. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, Madam Chair. Nothing further that. Do I have a question, though? And we had a discussion at our last meeting about the term priority and what that means. We've also talked today about the term criteria or focus. Is there more of a prevalent term that you tend to use some decent chess? Thank you, Madam Chair. Kelly Writer, government relations manager for Community Human Services. I can't say that there is. I think prioritization is pretty clear, and there are always multiple types of prioritization that we are trying to intersect and understand in our work. So we will do our best to interpret the intent of the council and will absolutely seek more guidance if we get to that point. Okay. Thank you very much. Is anybody else on the council wishing to ask a question or give any any comment? Okay with that, we will close discussion on this proposal and we are now at the end of our agenda. And Madam Clerk, I do not believe that any member missed a vote to my correct. No is correct, Madam Chair. Okay. So with that, our next regularly scheduled, regularly scheduled town meeting is on March 2nd. Appreciate everybody who participated today. I think last discussion was really helpful. And we are now adjourned.

Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP CM15-162 for the purchase and development opportunity at 3rd Street and Pacific Avenue, Assessor Parcel Numbers 7280-016-900, 901, 902, 903, 904 and 905 (Subject Property); Declare the City-owned Subject Property as surplus; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all necessary documents, including a Purchase and Sale Agreement with Ensemble Investments, LLC, an Arizona limited liability company, for the sale of the Subject Property in the amount of $6,000,000; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE 16-127. (District 1)

LongBeachCC_06142016_16-0430

So item 20 is the property in District one. So we're going to item 20, then the two hearings as soon as we finish this presentation. Just a heads up. Okay. So, Madam Clerk, item 20. Sorry. I was enjoying the whoppers. A report from Economic and Property Development and Development Services. Recommendation to adopt specifications for the purchase and development opportunity at Third Street and Pacific Avenue. Declare the city owned property as surplus and authorize the city manager to execute all necessary documents with ensemble investments for the sale of the property in the amount of $6 million. District one. Thank you. Staff report first and then I'll turn over to Councilwoman. Staff Report Mr. WEST. Mr. Mayor, council members, as you know, we've been rapidly disposing of our successor agency, former redevelopment agency parcels over the last month or so. We have several more to go tonight. We're doing the one at third and Pacific. And I'm going to turn this over to Director Mike Conaway. Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. The property located at the northeast corner of Third and Pacific is a vacant lot containing 52,500 square feet of land and is being temporarily used as a surface parking lot for the city's code enforcement division and for monthly parking for the public. The property is former redevelopment agency property and is categorized as future development in the long range property management plan, which properties are disposed through a request for proposal process? An RFP was issued and five responses were received, which are proposed developments including hotel, residential, restaurant, retail and Creative Loft Live workspace. All proposals were of extremely high caliber and offered a variety of excellent development alternatives. The review panel, consisting of representatives from the Departments of Development, Services and Economic and Property Development and an outside real estate economic firm, Kaiser Master and reviewed the proposals and interviewed key proposers. The panel unanimously selected the proposal submitted by Ensemble Real Estate Investments to be recommended to City Council for the purchase and development of the property. Ensemble's proposal includes an 18 story high rise development and a seven storey mid-rise development, providing 325 residential units and 27,800 square feet of retail and amenity space. The proposed purchase price is not the highest priced offered, but the total development cost is substantially higher than any other proposal. Over 1500 temporary and permanent jobs are estimated to be generated as a result of the project. It is important to understand that the recommended action in front of City Council this evening is to select a proposed purchaser and developer of the site not to approve the proposed development. Nonetheless, it is anticipated the project eventually heard by the Planning Commission and possibly by City Council, may have a high rise element in the high rise element of the proposal has created concern from residents of nearby historic buildings such as Kress Lofts, the Walker Building and the Dolly Barton Hotel staff has reached out to these specific parties ahead of the traditional entitlement outreach efforts to hear their concerns and concerns were raised regarding shade and shadow traffic and parking and noise and dust. Staff and ensemble have committed to a vigorous entitlement process that will include enhanced outreach, where all neighboring concerns will be heard and to the extent feasible, mitigated. A purchase and sale agreement. Is in near-final form, which includes certain entitlements and development performance milestones which are detailed in the staff report. Is anticipated that entitlement require 12 months and project construction will take an additional 22 months to complete. However, staff requests some flexibility in these timelines for unanticipated delays and with that staff request that City Council adopt specifications number RFP CRM 15 Dash 162 for the purchase and development of property located at Third Street and Pacific Avenue. Declare the property surplus. Authorize the city manager. Execute all documents necessary for sale of the property in the amount of $6 million and accept categorical exemption. S.E. 16 Dash 127 And this concludes my report. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes, thank you, Mike, for the report. I just want to say that, you know, I have the residents here from the Walker building, as well as Cress, I believe some other residents as well from downtown. And so I have a few questions to ask, Mike, because I know at first there was some confusion that this was in the second district. And then now, of course, it's we all know it's in the first district. So what? So I had been getting some questions around the historic buildings, First Congregational Church specifically. It is another block away, but there and other residents as well had questions related to mitigation. So for construction and dust and noise, I know some of this may be addressed in the downtown plan, but can you go a little bit further with answering those questions? I'd be happy to. The agenda item before council this evening is selection of the developer and purchaser of the property. This starts essentially the entitlement process. There's been no application submitted to the city at this time. Once an application is submitted and we understand the scope of the project, outreach to the adjoining property owners and other stakeholders surrounding the property will commence and ensemble will be part of that outreach effort and they will hear and respond to the issues raised by the community members. And I guess we'll pull back a bit because you do bring up a really good point, is that this is obviously the point of this is this just the sale of the of the land? And so no design, although the design we've seen is just in concept, pure concept. That's correct. Nothing is set in stone, although it looks, you know, pretty, you know, drastic for the downtown area. It is just a concept at this point. And I've met with ensemble, I've met with a few others just to talk about what the ideas are a revolving around. But would you say we would include community input? I mean, we've done that already with the two meetings we've had with both Kress and Walker. And I understand the developer is also interested in having meetings with community members once that process begins. Is that correct? That's correct. And actually, at our meeting with some of the stakeholders, so we committed to a pretty intense outreach program. And so we expect a number of meetings with both representatives of the Walker building, the Kress Lofts and other historic buildings in the downtown area. Okay, great. And let's see if I have any other questions. I know parking has also been an issue. It's always going to be an issue in downtown. There is certainly quite a number of spaces of parking. We've done downtown parking studies, but what is the situation? Should we have an 18 storey high rise? What is the parking plan? The parking plan, as currently proposed in their submittal, is both subterranean and subterranean and to a certain element. Podium parking and parking as a requirement under the downtown plan is proposed to be included in the development proposal and any parking shortfalls will be addressed through the entitlement process. Okay, thank you. And then I know density as well is it was brought up as a concern depending on who you talk to. You know, that's a good thing or a bad thing. But density, what is our perspective on density? I know that that is some of the metrics that were was included in our criteria for choosing a developer. So what what would you say the density will? Do for our city. I mean, in terms of retail and and other items. The density as proposed is 270 density units per acre. That is pretty dense. But the downtown plan, I think, supports this type of density. We are looking to create a sufficient critical mass of residents in the downtown in order to support a variety of our retail uses. So I think retail in combination with residential development is a good mixture for downtown. And I think the downtown plan anticipated this level of development and density and identified mitigation measures to address that density. Okay. Great. And I think those are all of the questions I know I have. As I mentioned, some residents here that I know will speak as well. But I'll just overall say that, you know, I am supporting this item again because it is a sale. It is a sale for this for this land. That's, you know, been for a long time just fleet services for the corner. And so as we've often talked about increasing density or adding more people to ensure that our economy gets better, but also to be able to make a stake for better retail. And I remember six or seven years ago when we were talking about the refresh project for Pine Avenue, a lot of us were talking about getting a Trader Joe's and a Target and even local retailers, and we can't do that unless we have the density in downtown. Now, how that will look like, we don't know yet because it's just a concept at this point. But I assure you, I have full faith in our city staff. I have full faith in the developers that I've met with, that this will be a really good project for downtown. I don't think that this will be a project that will go sideways. They've talked about local retail, including not just the big box, but just the local Long Beach way of retail open and public space mixed with private space, rooftop gardens. I mean, those are the things that we dream of in such a big corner like this. And I don't think we can get that unless we have some sort of density or some sort of project of this large scale magnitude. And so I think city staff are being open to meeting with the Kress Lofts as well as the Walker Building. I know they've met with the Dolly Varden as well, who's been in support and some other residents and we're open. So this again, is not anything that is set in stone. So if there are additional questions, concerns, I ask any resident whether downtown or not to write my office, to contact my office, because we're certainly available and willing to listen. So with that, I will end and I hope to get the support of my colleagues as well. Thank you very much. Councilmember Christen, you had your second. Councilor Richardson the Joe anything has a second or. No, no. Okay. I have Vice Mayor Lowenthal. And then if there's no other comment from council, we will go to the public. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to thank Councilwoman Gonzalez for her leadership on this particular project and the staff for. Hanging in there and waiting for the right development, I think I don't know how many years ago it was, but Thieves Market was a spot that we had. See, I remember the names of these places. So there was a place called Thieves Market Third and Pine, and we invited a team from Portland, a pretty amazing development team from Portland to look at it. And they were very honest with us. They indicated that there is no way that they could have a building taller than three or five stories that would be supported by the area at the time. And and by honest, it's something that we all knew, which is we didn't have the density. We didn't have necessarily the right mix for the downtown to support that kind of development at the time. And that was nearly ten years ago. And so this is what we were hoping to have at Thieves Market ten years ago, knowing that we would be a downtown one day that would be rich in that kind of urbanist texture that we need. And for those of us who had lived in the downtown since, whether it's the eighties or the nineties, we wanted all the things that all great downtowns had and understood that we also had to fulfill a municipal promise in order to have those things. And one such promise is density and quality development. And I see that this project can have that potential. It's 18 stories, I believe, including the podium style parking. Mr. CONWAY Is that correct? That's what the downtown plan calls for. I lived in the cross lofts for seven years and know what concerns might exist for other residents that might be very close to this property. But we also have to understand that we don't have air rights, even though we may have been the only tall building in town for decades. Over time, the success of downtown means that we fill in those spaces. And so I'm very encouraged by this. When we open the tort lot or broke ground for the tot lot at the promenade, as well as some other developments throughout the Second District. A couple of Saturdays ago, one of the statements that the mayor and I both made is that we have filled in all of these different urban promises that we've made to our city and residents for the better part of a decade in order to ready ourselves for developments like this. And so while this could not have happened ten years ago, and Ms.. Burdick and I desperately tried to have something like this happen despite our efforts, we, I think, had to acknowledge that we didn't quite do our part yet. So now the city has done its part. Residents have moved in and followed along with their own investment and promise. And this is just really the next step. And so I'm very happy to see this and delighted and really glad that it's happening on third and Pacific. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. I just had a couple questions from the staff report. I'll be supporting this project and thank my colleagues who spoke before me for their insight. But I did have a question regarding page three of the staff report where you talk about this not having been the highest price offered for the property, but being the best project in terms of meeting the needs of the city. Could you expand on that a little bit more? What was the highest price for the property? And and what is this price per square foot in comparison to other property sales that we've had in the area? Yes, I'd be happy to provide that information. The ensemble is offering $6 million per square foot I'm sorry, $6 million, which is $117 a square foot. We had a pretty tall building at the highest price offered for the property was $9.8 million or $192 a square foot. However, the total development costs were only 71 million compared to 128 million for ensemble. And so we had to keep in, in our minds the ongoing property tax revenue that will be generated by this property would be significantly higher with that higher development cost of $128 million. Okay. Great. Thank you. Councilman Mongo. I just wanted to applaud the city team and the council for putting us in a position where this kind of investment can take place. And I think that this is a remarkable step in showing the community how we have turned around and been more business friendly and development friendly while still balancing the important constituent needs and quality of life of our residents. And I just think that this is a glowing example of what we all can accomplish when we put all the factors at play and work together to make sure that something can be done. So acclaims to both of you downtown and the work that you've done in the community. This could not have been done, not even four years ago. I'm just so proud to serve with both of you. So thank you. Thank you. We'll take public comment now, please, before we come back and close up. Please come forward. And as you come forward, just please state your name for the record and make your comments. Thank you. Hi. My name is. Ravi Banda Puti. I've been before this council several times to talk about this property. I wanted. To. Leena, I'm glad that we clarified this to remind myself some of. Talking points I have because I have a very different view about this project I wanted to tell you about. Actually, I'm going to show it to everybody first. First of all, I'm one of the bidders. I'm a real estate developer, and I've been up to the hour in a company here called First Hill. Sir, if you can make the. Can you make the comments on the mikes? Sure. Sure. First Hill, LLC. I proposed to put a Trader Joe's or. Specialty retail, a specialty supermarket at that site. I'm going to also put 123 apartment units. All right. This is what I proposed. What I have there also includes ample parking and affordable housing, have 5% affordable housing. Okay, I got to tell you, ensemble's project, contrary to what. Everybody has been saying. We can't recorded if you don't keep talking to the mike. I'm sorry. Contrary to what everybody's been saying, ensemble's. Proposal is an absolute disaster for this city. And this applies not just Lina to your district, but to everybody in downtown. The city of Long Beach depends upon small businesses. Particularly businesses located. In historic properties. That's where the vibrancy of our community comes from. When we build new projects without sufficient parking, what's going to happen is we're going to create a traffic, environmental, social disaster where you have people driving around and we've all seen people do this driving around looking for parking that doesn't exist because the developer didn't build enough parking. This project that ensemble is proposing has less than ratio of 1 to 1 parking. The city requires 1 to 1.2 5 to 1. I'm proposing to build 2 to 1 because I want to make sure that we're building for the future. When I build this project, I want to make sure that as we grow as a community, people will always be able to come to get their groceries with their car. Because, Leanna, you brought up a good point about this project. What we want is we want to attract good retailers. As a developer, I know the way you attract good retailers is by building parking. You have to build parking. Okay. So me and my partner, Alan Kazdin, we've we've he built a Trader Joe's in Westwood that has 2 to 1 parking just like mine. We know how to do it. We've done it before. The people who submitted this ensemble proposal do not have anything in here to accommodate the environmental impact of this project. It's going to be really, really bad for downtown. It's going to kill downtown businesses. It's going to kill small businesses. And it's a really bad idea. And I think that really you want I urge his council to to reconsider this. I mean. You know, send it back to the committee, do whatever but reconsiders. Do not vote for the ensemble proposal. Vote for First Hill, LLC. That's the company. Thank you, sir. Time's up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name's Leela Noble. I live in the Walker building and we appreciated the fact that we were able to meet actually with the developer and also with city staff recently. And what I have done is prepared in writing and I'll have multiple copies, basically a summary of the laundry list of concerns that came out of this meeting . And it's a combination of concern about the process. And we understand that we were very patiently there, was explained to us the process around redevelopment and that this is indeed starting an escrow process. So we get it about what your decision is going to be tonight. We're concerned in not from a NIMBY point of view. We all chose to live in downtown. We like the idea of being in an urban environment and we also get it about density. But dang, this is a lot of density in a corner of a block. And what we are saying is that the concerns that we have are not just during construction, but they are literally concerns about the impact. And a couple of you've talked about the balance between the density and the business development and the residents. Well, we are here and our whole way is concerned about this. And we want to be an active part of this process because as residents, we are the ones that are going to live with this, with the retail, with the quality of jobs or lack of quality of jobs, with the traffic problems. And we want to be a part of the process and we don't mean just being listened to. Our understanding is that there can be specific mitigations and that there can be changes, that this is the concept and that's what's motivating us to participate. We don't want to participate just as window dressing, and we are taking you at your word that in fact, this can be a collaborative process. So I've got our list. I'm going to leave it with the clerk, and I'm sure that our councilwoman will share it with the rest of you. But we are very concerned about the level of density and all of the different impacts that is going to have on us, on our streets, on our kids, on the traffic, on the quality of life. If we're going to make downtown a dynamic place, it has to have quality of life. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I'm Richard Gere, also live in the Walker building. I've been there for ten years. We were really very shocked to learn of this project. We know that we're not going to stop development. We chose to live downtown. We support development. But at this time, we feel that the community is not aware of this project and the council is going to vote on it. And we just think everything is moving too quickly. Just this week, I ran into a local business person who knew nothing about the project. Now he probably supports it at this point, but as of a few days ago he wasn't aware of it. Additionally, many of the hope. Merchants are not here tonight because they called a meeting concerning safety in downtown. So we would we would like an opportunity to get in touch with more downtown residents, more downtown merchants and businesspeople . Also, we have some questions about the complete development process. We understand that in this case there were five proposed developments. We would like to know more about that. We'd like to know what those developments were and have an opportunity to express our opinion about them. Also, what are the criteria that the Development Department is using to eliminate certain projects? I understand the importance of property taxes, but there are other concerns as well. And finally, I think the council members, as our elected officials, should have sufficient information about all those proposals to make solid decisions. This is a good time to review the process before any damage is done to our wonderful and successful city. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. The new mayor and members of the council. I just want to say for the record that I agree with the previous speaker that I think we need to look at all the other development proposals because I think we're rushing into this one. Um, specifically, I was looking at the RFP provided by ensemble and you. Know, sir. Your name Abraham. Abraham Sandoval. Um, and I was looking at the RFP provided and they specifically state verbatim and I quote, we consider the ample surface parking and street parking within the downtown district potentially sufficient to serve the need. So potentially sufficient meaning they are not going to provide the parking that is necessary for their project. They're looking to other areas in the downtown area to suffice. And I've been driving around the downtown area and there's not enough parking. So where do we expect to get all this parking that doesn't exist? Um, I did have a chance to look at first Hill's proposal, and they're providing way more parking than is necessary for their project. So I think we do need to look at all the other development proposals and look at which one is actually going to benefit the city. You know, just putting what is a 198,000 square feet of housing in one tower and 72,500 square feet of housing in another tower and not providing enough parking. I just think that's ridiculous. And I think we need to look in greater detail about what we really are approving here today. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is Steve McIsaac and I am a resident in the Walker building and have lived there for the last 11 years. And one of the councilmembers, I think it might have been, Dr. Lowenthal mentioned how they had tried to put it. They did scoped out doing a development in that specific site about ten years ago or so, and that the only project that they could get was maybe like about a. Five. Story building or so. And so they felt, I'm paraphrasing, but it seemed like they were happy that we were finally worthy of getting a project of this scope, that we'd sort of finally arrived enough to get someone to pitch us something substantial. And I guess my perception of Long Beach real estate development over the last 11 years, just watching it as just a citizen, someone who lives here, it sometimes reeks of that kind of desperation that finally someone's looking at us, someone's noticing, and we are worthy of their attention. And I would propose that they're actually lucky to get to pitch to us, not the other way around. This is a vibrant, wonderful community, and we don't have to take the first project that comes along just because it's big. The Long Beach Courthouse is a wonderful example of architecture that fits on its site nicely. It fits into the local environment. It's a beautiful building and we don't need something. Big just because. It's big. There's a lot of ways to achieve density. We can look at density sites throughout the entire downtown over like a 5 to 10 year period. We don't need it all in one shot. And so just. Because it's big. Doesn't mean it's going to achieve the city's. Goals. Particularly when we haven't looked at data collection about how many people actually live downtown versus working. There's a lot of assumptions about how people will deal with the lack of parking, including biking to work. And there was a lot of stuff that was based on suppositions and projections, and they may be very well be true, but we don't necessarily have data to support those suppositions. So before you build 18 stories on the assumption that everybody's going to be in a live workspace and bike to their bike to their job, I'd like to see some data that would support that. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, sir. As our final speaker, I want to close the speakers list. No. Larry. Good. Okay. So these are just real quick because your last two speakers. Okay. Speaker Sir, you're the last. Speaker Go ahead, Larry. I don't live in downtown Long Beach. Obviously, I've come down here now and then. And one of the things I've learned is, particularly in the last eight or nine years, wondered, is how these people or where these people shop, period. There's right now there's really only one grocery store and that's bonds. And that's, I think, will soon be gone. So forth. RDA really. Daffy accounting. I don't think any single project should get your approval unless and until unless and until the city auditor puts her seal of approval on it. Period. And I've held that position. Since we gave away. And I'll always. Remember it because it was handed out in the event for a dollar. The Boardwalk, the old Broadway Hotel. A 62nd walk from Ocean Boulevard for $1. It's always easy to remember that because that happened at the same time that the ladies of Cartagena were holding on, holding their firm on their price at the Secret Service, didn't want to pay. When Obama was down in making a trip in Latin America. Then, of course, we had the two pieces of property that Tom Dean sold. 1/1 was a orphaned piece of property that nobody, nobody wanted. And before the ink was dry, the new owner made $1,000,000 on it. And then a few weeks later, they found a a orphan. A cousin of that orphan must have been but ugly because he only got something like $0.09 an acre profit. So if you have enough confidence in your attorney, turn it over to your professional city auditor and let her put a seal of approval on that. That way, it's not going to come back and bite you and make you look like fools. That's what the auditor is for. And if you're confident enough in your judgment, you should have no problem marching that up to her and ask her to approve it. If you don't. It does not speak well for your character. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, I'm Tyson Sales. I'm the principal for. Multifamily development for. Ensemble and we. Hope to be selected for third and Pacific and we're thankful for the opportunity. To make a proposal. First of all, I'd like to thank the. Members of the community for. Sharing their concerns and their passion for downtown Long Beach. Ensemble's been in down in Long Beach, specifically downtown Long Beach. For 30 years. And I work at Magnolia and Ocean and we care about Long Beach as well. And if we are selected, we look forward to work with the community, the council member and staff to shape a project that activates an important corner in a meaningful way, that meets community concerns and benefits downtown Long Beach. And we hope to be a part of this process. Thank you. Okay. The speaker's list, as announced, is now close. Councilman Gonzalez? Yes. Just having a few more questions. I want to thank everybody for coming and speaking tonight. Really do appreciate it for as far as the timeline. So we if we were to support this today, this moves forward. What are we looking at in terms of a timeline? We expect there to be about a 90 day due diligence period and about an 18 month entitlement period. So about a year of ah, I'm sorry, nearly two years of entitlement and outreach. Okay. And what is the criteria that we're you know, you touched on it a bit, but what when we're looking to choose ensemble for this location, what specifically were you looking at to make that selection? We were looking at compliance with the Downtown Plan, Innovative architecture. We are particularly interested in density and the downtown plan and of course the price per square foot and the total investment value as well. Okay. And what other developments, obviously, civic center that those developments are happening? What other large developments with density that are? I mean, we just approved some a couple of weeks ago. Can you talk about what is around us? Because it's not just this location, correct? If I'm understanding you correctly, are you asking for other redevelopment agency projects in the downtown? Yes. So we have third and Pacific. Mike, I think I think she also asked about other projects that have density that are being developed in the downtown currently. What are other that are in the pipeline? So Broadway and Promenade has a density of 127 density units per acre. Broadway and Long Beach Boulevard 161 density units per acre. Ocean and Pine up to 427 hotel rooms. And I think that's. That's all of the downtown projects that I have currently. Okay. And again, I know that the concept, the design isn't set, but I know we've we've talked to residents about maybe. You know, juxtaposing the the design to make the larger portion on the other side. And there's been some I, you know, talk on on some other items. Does it have to will it will have to be a max of 18 stories. Is that what was discussed or are we looking at possibly less? A few responses to that. Question one. No, it doesn't have to be 18 stories, and we will work to address mitigation measures that might result in a building less than 18 stories. I'd like to point out that ensemble has really put in some significant time in analyzing the site and how best to develop the property in context of the surrounding historic buildings. And in that regard, they have rotated the taller building in a way to give the narrowest visual impact on the Walker building, and that is intended hopefully to reduce shade and shadow relative to the impacts to the to the historic structures. But again, community input will also, I think, help inform and direct the ultimate development scenario that's being proposed to the property through the traditional sequel process. Great. And I again, I do hope that we continue discussions about mitigation as if this process should go through, go forward, and as we get closer to that 18 month and construction, etc.. Another quick question. If you know off the top of your head how many parking spaces we have in the downtown kind of area? I know we have quite a few spaces in the city place lot that are available, but what other spaces do we have? Do we have a number to identify the spaces? I don't have a number off the top of my head. I know City Place Garage is typically 50% full at any particular time. I think there's 1500 or 1800 spaces in those three parking structures. And there's other redevelopment, former redevelopment agency controlled parking spaces nearby as well in the 100 Broadway space. Can we building. So I'll request that we have a to if we can get a two from Ford that just basically identifies the parking spaces. I know we've done the parking study and there's a lot of talk about parking. I believe that there is parking available. We just have to pay for it oftentimes. And I know that's a tough pill to swallow sometimes, but I live right off Pine Avenue and I know how wholeheartedly, how hard it is to find parking sometimes. But I think that if we had a good measure of how many spaces were in that adjacent area, it would be helpful for residents to identify where those spaces are, you know, going forward with development. Just to confirm, you're looking for public spaces available for the public to park. Yes. Or even private spaces that we've, you know, connected with private owners to be able to offer for our residents. If we can provide that, that would be great. So again, I think the residents for being here, I know that there's a lot of concerns, but I do stress and I promise you that we will be speaking with you quite frequently on the mitigation parking, any concerns you may have? I know that this looked like a very drastic and striking project, and it is. But these are the types of projects we're looking to, you know, really kind of reinvigorate the great investment. So it's not necessarily that this is happening tomorrow, but a lot of investment I know will come from many of these properties and these developments similar to this. However, mitigation, parking, construction issues will be discussed, I assure you that. So we'll leave it at that. Again, support this item and I think everybody for being here. Thank you. Before we go to a vote, I just want to say a couple couple comments first. I want to just want to just echo what Councilwoman Gonzales and the vice mayor said. I think what's going to what's going to be going to happen over the course of the next few years is downtown is going to be presented with a variety of projects because of the economy. And so you're seeing, I think, a lot of a lot of projects that are much more dense than we than we've had in the past. I know you mentioned three or four, Mike, but I can think of another three or four, 18 story, 16 story, 30 story that are either in the pipeline or being planned. And so as we as these projects move forward, I think there's there's clearly some concern from some of the residents that I used to represent as well over at the at the crest and the walker. And so I'm happy to hear there'll be a you know, the community process will be thorough and that folks will have a chance to weigh in. But as a downtown, we're going to be having this conversation over and over again in the in the years ahead, because there's going to be an influx of projects that are happening not just at this site, but across the downtown. The one thing I wanted to to add for those who had concern about about what the process is, just to reiterate, the process that we went through for this is actually mandated by the state. And so the state we have to follow a very, very careful list, just a checklist, an order of what we have to do through the governor's office for us to get rid of these properties. And so that's what we're going through right now. Once the this isn't a typical process where the city brings in the developer and then we're working on developing a project together, which is what almost always happens in projects. This is us having to sell the project per the governor's mandate, and then at that point it's in the hands of the developer, and then we begin to work on developing a project together. So it's a little different. I know it's not how it typically is, but that's also what happened when all these properties went went on sale. And so regardless, I think we all want to end up with a home run project on the site that makes it downtown an even better place to live, and that provides even more amenities for all of us, all of us, including those of us that are downtown residents, more more exciting things to do in a good place to live. And so with that, there's a there's a motion and a second on the floor. Please cast your votes. Don't. Motion carries. Okay. Motion carries. Okay, sir. Thank you. Shocking. We didn't work with him. Okay. I don't even know what's next. That was Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, don't we site for littering? I mean, on his way out, he just littered. So this too? Yes. To make sure. Okay. Hearing one. Hearing one.

Recommendation to adopt resolution approving the FY 19 budget for the Long Beach Harbor Department as adopted by the Board of Harbor Commissioners on June 11, 2018. (A-1)

LongBeachCC_09042018_18-0746

So she'll be discussing those when we get to the budget as well. And so I want to thank the PSC and the members of the Council as we begin. And so let me begin, Madam Clerk, we can just read all these as we go, and we'll start with item 1.1 and go through all the way 1.17 before . Yes. No, no, we haven't put it on them yet. They're going to come up. And before we begin that, to conclude this part of the budget hearing, we are going to do public comment. So first, we're going to be doing public comment. So this is on anything to do with the budget and we're going to close public comment. So we go to the votes. We're doing one public comment period. So please come forward if you have any comments on the budget in any general nature. Thank you. Yeah. Anything budget related. Now is your opportunity to make public comment. Good evening, mayor garcia and council members. My name is Ann Burdette, proud resident of District seven. Thank you for the opportunity tonight to speak to you about the budget. I am here representing Long Beach Sacred Resistance. We are a coalition of over 25 Long Beach faith communities standing in support of the Long Beach Justice Fund. I had full funding of the Long Beach Justice Fund written in here, but apparently you've taken care of that. I appreciate it. Last night, I got a chance to finally see RBG, the documentary about the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I lived through that time period when she made most of her impact on law, and I watched her tireless efforts to educate the court about the reality of gender bias and discrimination. It's fair to say that she had quite an uphill fight. She had to face a court in which one of the members said, But, Mrs. Ginsburg, isn't it enough that we've put Susan B Anthony on the dollar? So most people at that time read that most men just didn't have a clue how egregiously women were discriminated against. Similarly, I lived through a very fierce battle for equality for my LGBT family and friends. Again, most of the leadership in government simply did not have any idea of the effect of exclusion, prejudice and bigotry on vast numbers of their neighbors and coworkers. Earlier, members of the community spoke eloquently about the impact of racism. Today, I'm painfully aware that too many residents of Long Beach live in complete ignorance of the incredible suffering of our immigrant neighbors from stereotyping, intolerance and now direct attacks from the federal government. That's why I'm so grateful to our mayor. And for all of you who support his proposals for the establishment of the Long Beach Justice Fund to provide legal representation for those Long Beach residents whose futures and families depend upon a fair day in court. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was clear that the best road to equity was the legal system she has devoted and continues to vote her entire life to defending the principles of due process and equal protection under the law. It is our last, best hope in the face of bigotry. I implore you to vote to include the mayor's allocation of $250,000 from the General Fund to establish a universal legal defense fund for immigrant residents in Long Beach facing deportation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Clayton, Diane, Ola, Jean. I'm here to address the water rate, the water rates being raised. And that is number one three. And I hope you're really paying attention. I know Susie Price is Lena Gonzales since Roberta Durango. Those are the ones who are paying attention. I'm going to summarize a. Letter from my attorney and to Eric Beneke, attorney at law. Is this a summary of a protest letter that you will find in your packets? Please be advised that this firm represents Long Beach Water Department customers Diana La Jeans and Angela Kimball. Ms.. We and I'm going to summarize it as in our own personal, we believe that the proposed water and sewer rates are illegal to the extent they embed amounts to transfer from the water revenue fund to the city's general fund based on any purported authority provided by Measure M. The basis for our contention is threefold. First, the city apparently agrees that the water and sewer fees and charges are properly real property related and accordingly are subject to Proposition 218. Basically, the California Constitution prohibits this. Secondly, Proposition 218 prohibits the imposition of property related fees if such be exceeds the funds required to provide the property related service. Embedding surcharges to fund transfers to the general fund fund violates this. Finally, to the extent the city contends that fees and charges constitute a voter approved tax, the city lacks legal authority to impose taxes on persons and properties outside its territorial limits. Miss Campbell resides in an unincorporated area of the Los Angeles County, and yet she was unable to vote on Measure M. Yet she is subject to the tax. Based on the foregoing, we respectfully request the City Council decline to declare an ordinance approving resolution number WD 1392, which raises the rates of the water that we receive. So I hope you pay very close attention to this. This is we. I am the same person who. Filed the. Lawsuit before. And you were. Forced to settle because of your illegal activities. So I am suggesting that you do not continue that and that you vote no. On this resolution. Thank you very. Much. Thank you, Ms.. Logins. Next speaker, please. Evening, Mayor Council. My name is Angela Kimball. I reside in the unincorporated county island of Long Beach. My address is. On file. And I am requesting that you decline to approve resolution WD 139 to increasing the water rates, which essentially amounts to an illegal tax. This body has no jurisdiction over the residents of the unincorporated county island. We were not able to vote on Measure M. We do not reside within this territorial limits and boundaries of your city. Yet we are being subject to the tax. And of course, now the increase that is proposed in these water rates. I have joined the lawsuit with Diana logins and you have our letter from our attorney on record. Again, I request that you oppose you decline to approve the water rate increase on not only the citizens of the city of Long Beach, but the county island residents, which represents 543 homeowners, as well as business owners who had absolutely no opportunity to vote on Measure M. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Good afternoon. Members of City Council and mayor and vice mayor. My name is Christopher Covington. I'm a resident of the sixth District. Coming to you now is a one pager of the people's budget. I am a member of the Investing Youth Campaign as well as partner of the People's Budget. And so I was prepared to come out here and raise hell and talk about all the things that you could do. But I really appreciate the conversations that have been happening in front of us and behind doors to really stay firm and commit to the mayor's recommendations on that, he proposed with a lot of your input and community's inputs as well. So this evening I want I'm not going to be able to be here the full time to watch the whole thing because I have to take students home. But I'm looking forward to listening on the radio and on my phone how the rest of the votes go. And I do appreciate all of the work and I really appreciate your you challenging yourselves not only to staying within the boundaries of, you know, the commitments you make to yourselves, but also making the commitment that you're hearing from the youth here today, as well as the community members who have taken their time to listen. There's been a long process and we've been attending some and most of the committee hearings on the budget. So we really appreciate today that being that you all commit to passing the mayors recommendations as is and if there's opportunities to increase line items looking into those as well. But on the topic of the Invest the Children and Youth Fund as recommended by the mayor and with support from City Council, it's we would like for it not to be a participatory budget process. We would not like for it to be housed in the Parks Department. We actually see it fitting in the Office of Equity under the Health Department, and they have a lens that meets and that matches the particular vision of the city, a plan that the youth who've been working on this and the youth that has been contributing to our surveys and having their voice be heard in this process, to be able to see the type of positive, healthy youth development that the city deserves. So again, we ask you to house that fund within the Health Department under the Office of Equity, and we look forward to seeing the vote this evening. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Well. Counsel, good evening. I am Mikayla or Mack Harris. I am in the sixth district, I believe are the eighth district. I don't really know for sure, but I'm here speaking on behalf of the Investing Youth Campaign. And I wanted to say, first of all, thank you for taking into consideration the all the work that we've done as youth and funding and recommending the Fund for the Child Youth Fund and all that stuff. And I'm sure that if it does get passed, it would help a lot. It would help a lot of youth. Remember, their voice matters and it would just uplift youth in our community more so than they already are. Or if they're not, it uplift them in some aspect. I also wanted to echo off of what. Chris just said. I strongly urge the fund to be housed in the House of Equity because I feel like it would. Strongly help our. Views. So I hope that you guys take that into consideration and thank you. Have a great. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Hi. Evening, everyone. I'm Helene Hoffman. I'm an immigration attorney and I am here to talk about. Would you mind putting the mic a little lower so we can. Sorry. Thank you so much. I'm Helene Hoffman. I'm an immigration attorney. I've spoken to you once before. I'm here because I'm urging you, begging you to support Maya Garcia's fully funded justice fund for non to have legal representation. Many immigrants that live or work in Long Beach, this is very, very crucial because anything less than the $250,000, it will not help very many people at all. I know about this. I do it for a living. Immigration law is a very, very difficult, complex area. Many, many cases have to be appealed. And, you know, with appeals, the legal attorneys fees, they just go up and it can take years sometimes to complete a case to fruition. It's a tremendously difficult area of work. It took me two years I coming from another field just to get myself up to snuff. And as you know, many other cities have fully fund many, much more these kinds of cases. Los Angeles has a justice fund of $10 million undocumented immigrants. Also, when they come here, they don't know English. They're thrown into a court system they're not aware of many, many of them are unrepresented and many of them don't know what's going on or they're deported. And I want to remind people, if you read about what goes on in Central America, and I've had clients like this, many of them are deported to their deaths. Okay. And I'm really, really mean that all you have to do is read a few articles about it. As for another issue that doesn't come up very often is bail that these people, if they have any money at all, they have to choose between bail, posing, posting, bail to get out of deportation, which is a horrible place to be or getting an attorney. They often cannot do both. If you with your fully funded justice fund, they can do things like that. And those who are bailed out have a far higher rate of getting successful, successful representation and are not deported. So immigrant immigrants released on bail that this is the statistic have an eight times higher average to when they're cases another issue and my final issues about unaccompanied children a lot of times this doesn't come up, but these are children who come here without any adults. They are under 18. Many come from war torn Central American countries. And the problem is they're not entitled to a court appointed lawyer, even if they're two and three years old. There have been immigration attorneys who had to actually go to court with representing two and three year old children who knew no English, who don't know what the heck is going on. It's just a horrible situation and many and half of them are not represented in court. I mean, can you imagine being in that situation or having a child? You know, in that situation in 2017, over 58,000 children. Thank you. So much. Under the age of 18. We're in deportation hearings. Thank you very much. And I hope you take my advice. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, ladies. Senior Council members. My name is Kim. In many cases, I am a resident of the sixth District. I'm also. The executive director of CCG community based organization here in Long Beach and also. Commissioner for the Human. Relations Commission. So it's great to hear that the recommendations by Mayor. Garcia are being considered, especially for the full funding of the Children and Youth Fund in the amount of $200,000. You know. We've been really looking at ways to develop strategic. Partnerships between, I think, the city community based organizations that. Specialize in youth development, community members and young people. To really come up with a plan for how to really invest long term in youth element and address some of the needs that they have as an organization. That's part of the steering committee for the Youth Development Division at the county level. We're really starting to see now the roll out of. What that investment looks like and how that's. Impacting Long Beach. And we're seeing the hundreds. And thousands of dollars that will be coming to Long Beach within. This year that is investing at the end in youth at the point of contact with law enforcement. And I think it's a really. Positive thing that we're. Looking at investing at the preventative end. The $200,000. I think is a really. Key. It's the key seed money. To get us to think about a long term strategy around investing in young people. So I'm very happy to hear that. So thank you. I also want to echo the the sentiment of what's been connected to some of the health outcomes for young people and for it to be housed within the health department. I think that that the alignment there with some of the efforts that we've already established with young people is directly. Aligned with with health department initiatives. So thank you for that. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Jackie Guerrero. I am with an organization called the Advancement Project. And I have been, you know, working closely with Invest in Youth Campaign. So thank you again, Mayor, and the rest of the Council for all the work that you've been doing and all the listening you've done with the various youth that you've been meeting with. I want to also thank again for the, you know, the support for funding with the mayor's proposal and allocating the 200,000 for in seed funding for the Children and Youth Fund. A big part of you know, the support that I've been providing has been looking at what other cities have done across the state. And Long Beach would be the first city in Southern California that has it, that has and will be looking at a holistic view of what children and youth need here in the city. And that's setting yourselves apart from what other cities are doing. And that's a huge thing. It's really being a leader in this area here in Southern California, and that's super important. Another thing I want to mention is in a lot of the meetings, the that I've been with with the young people, they're the ones leading this effort. They're the ones that are telling us what they want. And they continuously tell us that they want more mental health support. They continuously tell us that they want more support for jobs. They want to work. They continuously tell us that they want more development, youth development, to help them grow up and be, you know, productive members of society. And this is what we're trying to achieve through this. It's it would be a huge first step for the city. So I really commend you on your leadership and thinking not just for this year, but thinking in the future. You know, I again, I also support efforts to ensure that, you know, this money gets allocated to the health department, given that there is alignment of looking at how we can support youth through a health lens. So thank you all again and I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Next week, please. Good evening. My name is Mae. I am a resident of a second district. I am so. I'm here tonight to voice my support for the mayor's. Original proposal to allocate. 200 K and C money. For the Long Beach Children and Youth Fund. And I also ask that the Council act on behalf of the people and vote to keep the people's budget proposal intact. So I wanted to share some of my perspectives. Of why I think investing in youth is so important, and also why it's important that the way that we allocate the money is a youth and community. Driven process. And as other folks have said, that is housed in the health department. So I'm a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at USC. Also work as a research associate for Californians for Justice and a volunteer for my goals and action. So for many years, I've been privileged to witness. Firsthand the transformative work of organizations that cultivate the leadership of youth of color. So young people often tell me over and. Over again from different folks that they be a completely different person if they had never joined these groups. Many of them told me that they. Used to be painfully shy because they never had. Spaces to cultivate and encouraged their voice. They told me that they were once afraid to voice concerns and to speak up against the injustices that they experienced. But over and over again, I've seen how youth leadership and developing groups develop young people's skills. And provide them with the support that they need to thrive and to earn their power as change leaders. In shedding their fear, I see that youth of color and low income youth of color are able to transform not only their own lives, but also the lives of their peers and their communities. As well as their families. So you have often seen young people here bravely pushing and testifying for change. We've seen them at the forefront of social transformation. Whether it's addressing school shootings, the targeting of Black Lives Matter deportations. We need young people at the forefront of social transformation. We need this, especially because we know that systemic poverty, trauma. Racism and other forms of inequality conspire to constrict their pathways to success. And this is especially true for low income immigrant youth of color and queer and trans youth. So I think we need more youth to have access to these types of nurturing spaces. We know that growth and development don't just happen spontaneously on their own. When you see young folks here is. Because they have been brought up in an ecosystem of support that's helping them to hone their skills, that's navigating them through. The onerous process of college applications, that's helping them to, again, to own their story. And so they're truly a testament to the importance of youth leadership spaces. And to the spaces. That help them bring their massive potential to fruition. I also want to point out quickly, because I am a sociologist, that this is all corroborated, corroborated by research. A 2013 study by Tariq Aziz and Roger's found youth organizing alumni are more likely to attend a four year college and also are twice as likely as their peers to be civically and politically engaged. And so when we invest in youth, we're also investing in the healthy future of our community and prioritizing the support that young people in Long Beach need to thrive. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor. Council members. I am from Nicaragua, the National Organization of Language and Alumni. And my name is Tyler Somnath, which is a name from laws that most people cannot pronounce. But my family's from Laos, and we stay in Long Beach, sixth District, which is full of immigrants and refugees, just like my family. Now, before I begin my story about my family, that has a lot of things about Southeast Asian folks and youth that can relate to. I want to say that poverty is not a crime and that youth are not the problem, but not having resources and support or budget to invest in youth and families is now my father trying to escape war came to America and now to cope with all of that stress, he drinks alcohol. Smoke, cigarets. And now he needs me to take care of them. Now, at the age of 52. Someone his age should not be needing to go to the emergency room for alcohol withdrawal. But the lack of resources in my community includes not having local rehabilitation or therapy. And this affects my lifestyle personally now because I take care of him, I take time out of my my life, which is taking time out of school or work to watch after. Now, this is very stressful and is very painful. Seeing my dad like this. Is very stressful. Frustrating. Now this is affecting me cutting down classes and in fact it's affecting my school life overall. Now. Youth shouldn't be having to carry this burden. And we want to succeed and dream and do well and be part of a history that heals and our harms. So we should fully fund 200,000. To the Army's youth today. Thank you. Thank you so much. You did a great job. Thank you for speaking. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Amy Langhorne. I'm a resident of District six and I bring with me all my members, my community members who are not here with me today. It is my privilege to be. Here and be the. Voice. And represent my community. I am the daughter of a Khmer Rouge survivor. Growing up, that meant I had a purpose to hold my my legacy and culture, to restore this legacy that met taking care and learning how to navigate a new world for my mom and dad. I remember as a youth, I translated for them at medical offices. I even translated. With for them enrolling myself in school. I was only in kindergarten. At that age, I knew that I had to take responsibility because my parents didn't know how to get the support they need growing up. I understand now that it's because they didn't have the resources. During resettlement and the healing from the trauma. If I didn't have to translate or be a caretaker for my parents, I would have been more focused in school. Instead, I was struggling with a lot of anger. I was mad with what I had to put up with and the lack of resources I didn't get as a youth . If my parents resettled healthy, my mom would have continued her education and became a teacher. Instead, she had to deal with compounded stress of being separated from her family and not getting the skills she needed to navigate it to navigate work, school, and raising her family. Not having all these resources made. Her an easy victim. Of stroke and heart attack, which many war survivors in our community faces. When I was 15. I was so grateful to. Join my girls in action. I joined the Young Women's Empowerment Program and learned about my history and the trauma of war that has been passed on to generations after mine, after my families. I then began to heal and understood. My anger was really about not having resources and access in my community and the burden of not taking care that made me fall short. But I learned that loving my community meant fighting for what we need and what we deserve. And that is why I'm here today. Now, I'm a community organizer like my Girls in Action supporting transitional youth who graduated high school and is navigating adulthood. K.J. held a place for me to develop in my leadership, and now I'm organizing young leaders to get their communities. Out to vote. Out of the 757 people we surveyed. 83% believe that community based development programs are the. Best way to support youth. We urge council members to support the organizations who brought you here with the Investing Youth Campaign. We ask council members to show the youth love by approving the 200 K that the Mayor proposed for the Children and Youth fun to be housed under Health and Human Services Department. Which will serve the needs of the larger. Population of Long Beach, including the community. Show youth the love. Don't leave youth and community out of this year's budget. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Please. Good evening, Honorable Mayor Garcia and city council members. My name is Nurse. I was here earlier today at the Budget Oversight Committee making my public comments on the some of the recommendations from the DLC. I'm also a District six resident and raising a child in the district. So I'm here with skin in the game. As folks we said earlier today, our marriage city council awarded the young folks that were up here with you today on their accomplishments in baseball. Remember, not all our youth have the privilege of accessing these opportunities, yet they have overcome PTSD, war in genocide, displacement, unmet mental health needs, and lead with single parent households, among other training issues. Today, youth in our community have come out on their second week of school in hopes to have their labor and hard work of serving community needs awarded with our mayor's proposal of $30,000 for the Long Beach Children. The new fund. Excuse me. I'm a little choked up. Just better. They have volunteered their weekends and summers to give this city sound research, as has already been mentioned. They have gone. They have gone home today without knowing if our city council cares. But we know we can count on you all. We know we can count on you all to show you how to love and to approve the mayor's original proposal of the $200,000 for the Long Beach Community Fund. It is time we have done a lot of work and we have come a long way to move the conversation where it is now. We need you all to stand with our young folks and really fully fund an ambition and youth fund, not look at any mid-year review or mid-year reassessment, but really invest in the new young folks now. Additionally, we are fully supportive of seniors services and programs. However, we recognize that. These are two unique. Groups of individuals that have unique needs and supports. And so we really want to ensure that this fund is focusing on the needs of young folks. Additionally, we, as some of my peers and comrades have have mentioned, we really think that the most appropriate place for this, for this fund to be managed is in the Health and Human Services Department that we're open to and conversations with Kelly Calliope and other folks in the Health Department to determine where is the best fit within the Health and Human Services Department. How are we? We really believe that based on the scope of work and the expertize in strategic planning, that this is the right place for. The Lumbee Children Youth Fund has given young folks a second chance, and we want to model how the city can also give young people a second chance by investing in our young folks. I really hope that we can count on your vote. And thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, I'm also going to be I'm going to be closing the speakers list. If those are the gentleman at the back with the caucus, I want to be sure there will be the last speaker and I'll be closing the speaker's list. Yes, next speaker. Hi, everyone. So my name is Danielle. Loretta. I live in the second district and I've been living there for about 19 years, though. So I just want to talk more about why why y'all should support the deportation defense fund. So for me personally, it will benefit me by ensuring that my family members, loved ones and community members will have legal representation in courts when facing a deportation hearing. We know that folks with legal representation have a more likely chance of staying here with their families. I have friends who have lost their parents, families, family members, as well as friends because they don't have the funds to like have that legal representation for them. So the lack of representation and separation and family means to me that there are human rights violations happening within our city of Long Beach as well. And losing my loved one is a reality we live in as we live and as community members here in Long Beach City. It's important for city council to allocate the 250 K for the Deportation Defense Fund because of this, as a city that emphasizes on their diversity and also inclusion, it would only make sense for them to support their most vulnerable communities and city of Long Beach since they face the fears and traumas, the policy of being deported, who are currently in deportation process and no legal representation provided for them as well. So City Council as a community, we asked for everyone here, which works for the people of the City of Long Beach to endorse a people's state budget that includes a universal legal defense fund for immigrant residents facing deportation. Thank you. Thank you. I like your shirt. Think I like the logo on the front. Next. Bigger, please. I. Good evening. City Council and Mayor Garcia. My name is Alejandro Campos. I am a member of the Long Beach. Immigrant Rights Coalition, and I was a Long Beach resident for more than 20 years. I'm here today to emphasize. The importance of having. Legal representation available to our community members when facing deportation. As someone who has benefited from DOCA, I am privileged because the. Risk of being. Placed into removal proceedings is slim. But although I have benefited from some protections as a daycare recipient, I continue to advocate for my undocumented community who have placed in deportation proceedings is faced with not only huge financial burdens from the costs of bond and attorney fees, but are hit with the hardship of not having any legal representation period, because deportation is classified as a civil matter rather than a criminal sanction. Immigrants facing deportation are not afforded the constitutional protections under the Sixth Amendment. This is just unfair. Our communities need to know we stand with them. Our communities need to know. Need to be afforded the opportunity to stay with their families. As this affects me personally and affects my community. I am here today to ask you to support our immigrant community and approve the proposal to allocate $250,000 for funds to a legal defense fund. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next week. Please. Good evening. Everyone. Brothers and sisters, fellow human beings. I'm Javier Sanchez. I'm here. And from the ninth district. I'm here on behalf of Border Angels, Los Angeles, Orange County. Borders Angels is a nonprofit organization that's advocates for humane human rights, humane immigration reform and social justice or humane or immigrant. Brothers and sisters are coming to the United States escaping poverty and violence. Not only is it not only due in part to their country's governance, but also in part to the United States involvement in their home countries. As one of the many things that Angels does, and besides, dropping lifesaving water across the border is provide support to our day laborers in our local communities. We do this by providing water, food, hygiene and valuable information to our day laborers. And we're not sure knowing the rights should they ever be detained by ice. We are telling stories of laborers not getting paid what was agreed upon or getting paid at all and being abandoned their job sites due to threats of being deported. These people are trying to live dignified lives. It brings me great sadness to know that there be over 1400 cases in Long Beach area alone and so few have legal representation. To think that so many families could be separated, the financial, emotional and psychological strain it will cause is heartbreaking. I can't stress enough the importance to have a full $250,000 fund allocated for legal defense to residents facing deportation. What keeps me going is seeing the people from the community organizing and fighting for the solutions being presented today, which is why I'm confident that the people's budget proposal will give our fellow residents, our neighbors, the chance with legal representation to keep families together. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Hi, I'm Arlene Alvarado. I'm a property owner in the first district. I want to support the mayor's budget. I think it's very important. I'm a proud daughter of an undocumented worker, and he became legal when he fought World War Two. Right now, with the cut out. If he had served in the Army, which he did, he he would right now, he would automatically get his citizenship. People are being deported who are now working in the are in the Army. I really support this, especially with the with the cut outs. It's not very much language justice. My grandmothers and my great great grandmother could hardly speak to didn't speak English. And this is really important to to have some kind of implementation for language access, policy, safe houses. I live in the first district and how it is filled with apartments, filled with cockroaches and rats. And the tenants are afraid to even. Complain about them because if they do that one landlord rents are ready, rents are being raised horrendously. We not only need more inspectors, we need inspectors to go out without people asking for them to come. Youth Opportunities. I'm a Chicano from Chicago. I went to the very first settlement house in Chicago that Jane Addams created. It was called Hull House. Chicago had this great program. I used to go to day care that the city paid for. I went to summer camps. I wrote in a place called LB kind of North, and we would stay there for two weeks at the city. It was minimal amount of money my parents paid for. We had settlement houses in every single neighborhood. This is. $200,000. This is nothing compared to what was spent on the as a child in Chicago in the fifties. Right. Okay. The other thing is, why are we starting poor people? Because we are cutting taxes for rich people right now. And I am a property owner. I don't care about my property taxes going up. If it goes to support issues, like I think it's really greedy of many of the people in our city who want it. We want to stamp out poor people so that they rich the constituents can have tax breaks. Thank you. Thanks so much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. And City Council over here, Rivera with Libra. Try to be quick about this. We're just simply here as part of the people's. The people's budget. To to request that you uphold the mayor's recommendations. And to fully fund the the legal defense fund of $250,000. To also fully fund the youth opportunities and the invest in youth campaign of $200,000. And also consider the the recommendations or the preferences of the youth and youth organizations of where to house it and how to actually have that money decided upon. And it's youth decided upon. We're also asking for you to consider the full recommendations to follow, to give money to the language access policy, but also requesting an additional fund so that we're fully funding the policy of $210,460. We're also asking that you consider to please make the staff position of the Office of Equity, of the person that oversees the language access policy, full time and structural. Because if we're going to really if we're going to assess the language access policy, let's give it the resources that it actually needs to be fully implemented and fully carried out before we start assessing it. If we're not giving it the resources that it needs to actually get going and giving the personnel to back it, it seems it seems premature to try to assess whether or not it's been effective when we really didn't give it a good start to be to begin with. We're obviously our housing advocate. So we're in. We're here also asking for consideration to you, for you to fund additional code inspectors, but also realize that the the efficacy and the efficiency of the program depends on the system and the technology that it utilizes. I sent all of the city council members links to a a code process or code program that is being used through cities across the state. That makes it completely, completely mobile. It allows for code inspectors to be out in the field for more time. It automatically updates the system mobility and it makes the information available online to the public real time. And these are all things that we need to do, especially advocating or promoting ourselves as sort of a technology technology city. We need this type of technology to improve our code enforcement process. And on a personal note, I want to say that we're definitely and I am definitely in support of the marijuana expungement that's being recommended as well. As we know, these type of crimes or or arrests around marijuana have disproportionately affected the African-American community. And this mayor, this marijuana expungement would definitely alleviate that in our communities. And we need to start. And just one final note. I personally will be thankful and grateful when the city's budget actually reflects an equitable distribution of its funding that meets the community's needs. Until that day, I am going to be satisfied with the wins that we've gained as a community. But I will be thankful and grateful when I see that day. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Last speaker. Hello, everyone. My name is Cee Lo Ideas. I'm a social. Activist. I just graduated. I just started our culture. Analysis of education grad program at Cal State Long Beach. I just finished. My B.A. in political science. Science to me. And basically, I'm here supporting the people's budget, including safe housing, youth opportunities, language. Justice, and efforts to protect immigrant rights. I am a dreamer with outcome, and one of the main reasons why I'm pursuing grad school is because I feel safer in Long Beach than compared to other cities. However, even with my current legal status, I speak from a place of privilege. Privilege of. Education, privilege of understanding public. Agencies, including political ones, privilege of knowing. How to defend my rights and conduct research. However, many of the. Individuals needing legal counsel or. Who are facing deportation are not privileged as myself. Therefore, I ask that. You reconsider allocating moneys for the Universal Legal Defense Fund. Your constituents are counting on all of you. Thank you. We are the change. Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and close the public comment. So let me go ahead and go back to the other items. I know we're going to start with the first item. I want to start with the first item. I'm going to have a councilman, but I will go for the first item since it's the harbor and water. Madam Clerk, item number one. Report from Financial Management Recommendation to adopt a resolution approving the Fy19 budget for the Long Beach Harbor Department. Before I go, I know we have some comments. Do people want to make general comments or we want to get through all these resolutions first and then make these comments when we get to the budget? Yeah, let's do that. I want to do that. Comes, go. I'm comfortable either reading all of them or approving as we go. Does that make you comfortable? Right. We would need to, as Maria suggested, either we take the council comments now and we go through individually and vote. But I wouldn't want to read all 17 and then go back and try and figure. I think I think either we do the council comments now or we do we begin voting on the kind of items that are that are not necessarily the budget but relate to the budget, get through all those and then have those comments. Or you could council could queue up to talk to each one. We need a motion in the second on 17 of those. I think we definitely would like to do it right. Okay. Why don't we just begin going through the items and then we get closer to the budget? We'll go from there. So that item 1.1. Support from financial management. Recommendation to adopt a resolution approving the A4 in 19 budget for a Long Beach Harbor department. K There is a motion and a second. Members, please go ahead and cast your votes.

AN ORDINANCE relating to facial recognition, prohibiting the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology by County administrative offices and executive departments, including the department of public safety; and adding a new chapter in K.C.C. Title 2.

KingCountyCC_05052021_2021-0091

Tell your father good luck with the Father's Day present. I think we'll give it up. Okay. And that brings us to item nine in today's Agenda Ordinance 2020 191 that would ban an ordinance that would prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from using facial recognition technology. We had an initial briefing and discussion on this in our last meeting. I mean, we have Nick Bowman from policy staff to re-orientate us on the proposed ordinance. Mr. Bowman. Bowman, the line is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, council members. For the record, Nick Bowman, Council Central Staff Materials for Agenda Item nine begin on page 23 of your packet. I think they're missing. This is the second presentation of the proposed ordinance. So I plan to provide an abbreviated staff report that skips over some of the lengthy, lengthy background on facial recognition technology and focuses more on the proposed ordinance itself. Proposed Ordinance 2020 10091 would ban the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology or f r t by county administrative offices and executive departments. The proposed ordinance would also prohibit our administrative offices and executive departments from issuing any permits or entering into any agreement which authorizes a third party to use FRC or obtain or access facial recognition information on behalf of the county. However, evidence relating to the investigation of a specific crime that may have come from FRC may be used by county administrative office or executive departments so long as the evidence was not generated by or at the request of a county officer. Department for the Community Benefit County Administrative Offices and executive departments include all county agencies except for the Prosecuting Attorney's Office and the courts. The proposed ordinance defines facial recognition technology as any computer software or application, which assists in identifying or verifying the identity of an individual based on the physical characteristics of the person's face and does not include the analysis of facial features to grant access to electronic devices or to use or using redacting software to protect the privacy of an individual depicted in the recording, which is intended for release or disclosure, so long as the process does not generate or result in the retention of any facial recognition information. Facial recognition information is also defined as any data or information obtained or derived from. The proposed ordinance would establish a process for county personnel who inadvertently or unintentionally use or access facial recognition information. This process would require county personnel to notify their direct supervisor that they have received, used or gain access to the information and that they immediately delete the information subject to applicable laws. Any facial recognition information collected or derived in violation of the established ban would be considered unlawful. To obtain violations of the established ban would constitute an injury to which a person subject to the violation may seek relief in court. Furthermore, a prevailing plaintiff in any such court proceedings would be entitled to the award of costs and reasonable terms. In response to some of the questions raised in a previous meeting. I included a table that begins on the bottom of page 28 of your packet that compares the recently adopted state law regarding FRC and the proposed ordinance . As you will see, the primary difference is, is that the state law would allow for the use of FRC, provided any state or local agency adheres to certain provisions regarding transparency, testing and training, whereas the county would outright prohibit the use of FRC. That concludes my report, except to say that there is an amendment. Amendment S1 makes a series of technical and formatting corrections to the body of the ordinance as recommended by the compromise. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions of Mr. Bowman. Mr. Chair. Council Member Coles. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you mentioned and others have, we do have a matching national child search law. And would you explain a little bit more about the effect of this legislation on the ability for King County, for example, insurance companies to be able to use tools to be able to help search for missing children. In search of the National Child Search Assistance Act requires local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to enter information about abducted children into the National Crime Information Database within 2 hours of receiving reports. So the proposed ordinance would not obstruct or prohibit any compliance with that act. As I mentioned in prior briefing efforts, these systems have been and are currently used by law enforcement agencies to assist in the search of missing or abducted persons and victims of human trafficking. However, it is not one of those agencies, according to Ccso, and is not currently used by the Department for any purpose. Furthermore, in the 2122 Biennial Butler Council last year, the budget included an expenditure restriction which prohibited Kessler from spending any money on FRC for any purpose. Therefore, while the proposed ordinance would prevent CSO from using a property in the future for the missing persons, it would not currently disrupt any consistent practices or operations. Absolute. A question. Mr.. I think you're calling on me. I'm going to just go ahead and start talking base. Yeah. Nick, I want to just follow up on on that last Q&A because I got a little lost. So this ordinance would ban any use by our law enforcement. Except if they were complying with this one federal law. Could you explain that a little better for me? So it does not require case you so has been, as far as I know, has been complying with the National Sales Assistant Act as long as it's been in existence since 1990 and that party is not required to comply with that act. I ask yourself, does not currently use FRC? The proposed ordinance specifically provides an exemption. That means that whatever made changes may come to the National Sales and Services Act cases, so it would be allowed or any other department would be allowed to comply with that act. But in using the ordinance itself would prohibit the use of FRC for any purpose or any other county office or executive department. And that's what does make me feel that need to go backwards, because I am now familiar with that federal law. Could you explain a little bit what that act does require? So it requires that any local law enforce state or federal local law enforcement agency to enter a a report about abducted or missing children to a national crime information data database within 2 hours of receiving a report. I see. I see. Okay. But we would. But but our office but our our offices would not be allowed to use any facial recognition software of their own or anybody else's or any data produced by facial recognition software by anybody in order to locate missing children. That would not be allowed. So long as that agency did not request or offer a contract to obtain that information. If someone were to provide that information to counsel on their own, then that would be allowed to be entered or used to locate this missing person. So they can use facial recognition as long as somebody else provides it to them without us asking. That's correct. Okay. I find that really confusing. Like, I'm not sure I understand the implementation aspect of this ban. If it's it's not really a ban, right? Then if they can use it so long as they don't collect it themselves. Or request it. I mean, it prevents the any agency from using their own FRC or contracting with somebody for facial recognition information. If so, what are the reports? It includes the data that were given to KCA, so that would be allowable. So that wouldn't be a prohibition in helping investigate this missing person. Does mutual aid, the mutual aid agreements count as contracts? That would be a question I would have to follow up on. Because that's really how I mean, in reality, that's how police agencies work. They don't enter into specific contracts like you will provide me this service in an exchange, I will pay you. What they do is they enter into these very broad mutual aid agreements that we're going to support each other. We will respond when you need us. You will respond when we need you. And they're pretty they're pretty open ended intentionally, like they're there. They're intended to work without a lot of management, a lot of accounting and paying off each other back and forth. And so, you know, I'm always surprised when, you know, like Bellevue police officers end up in situations in Seattle. And then I remember mutual aid. So. Okay. Thank you. The language is written that they're not specifically. They're not it would be prohibited from contacting specifically for access or use of facial recognition technology or information. But I wouldn't want to get too down into the weeds of specific agreements without first conferring with counsel. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I could offer maybe an example, it would make more sense. So I'm just going to throw one out and let's see what you can say about your case. So we're to receive a report from the, say, Thurston County Sheriff's Office or Bakersfield, California, or Atlanta, Georgia. So some report went out around the country, around the state pertaining to a missing child, and it included facial recognition technology in some form. In my correct to say that King County Sheriff's Office used that report to help locate, if possible, that missing child. That's correct. They would be able to use that information in furtherance of their investigation. But we can use facial technology to locate a missing child. We couldn't actively do that. We were. Just. That's correct. We would be tying our hands to not ever do that. Well, if I could, Mr. Chairman, we have a it's a factual question. I'm not trying to get to the debate yet. Well, I'm not either. And I'm just trying to clarify for myself, too. But what does that mean? Again, if the skin condition samples received a report of a missing child that may be in this area, they could look at it and help them to find this missing child. Or is that is that prohibited. As long as they didn't specifically requested and it would be allowed if there's an I don't I don't want to get too much in to the how the the sheriff's office. But if they said if they requested information that included facial recognition information, that would be prohibited. Okay. Thank you. As a member of our. You're muted on our end. I know. I've received a text from Council member Van Dike, though, that he wishes to ask a question. No. You're unmuted now. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And first of all, I want to thank Councilmember Giancarlo Wells for introducing this topic. Because whether you're a libertarian or ACLU member, this technology that concerns many people, the only thing that concerns me more than the technology is the potential making a mistake with good intentions. It appears that the Act only requires the provision of written information within a given time frame. I'm concerned that the ordinance or proposed ordinance would prevent the county from using the technology for looking after the National Child Search Assistance Act. I could speak to that. There is a specific exemption in the ordinance which says that nothing in the ordinance would prohibit any county administrative office towards every department, which includes case council from complying with the National Child Search Assistance Act. That act does not require the use of that article. Nick. Yes, Nick. I appreciate the word complaint. The complaint does not require the use of technology constrained. Not. That is correct. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate again the. The mission, the audience. But I'm concerned about its application, and I think it needs a lot more review before we take action. Thank you. Mr. Sheriff and Councilmember Lambert. I have a question on page 28, and I'll just read it to you. Let's see this process where we require county personnel to notify their direct supervisor that they received, used or gained access to facial recognition information that they immediately delete the information subject to applicable laws. So so the applicable law would be the public disclosure, which doesn't allow you to immediately delete this? I don't think so. I ask legal staff and legal staff. So where you would have the I guess I should say legal subset, basically. There's a question here. Let's just say that there's a question here that I think needs to be better, better worked out, because we have two laws that may be conflicting and we need to look at that. So I point that on page 28. Mr. Chairman. Council Member Coles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Then the question of just for clarification and I know some of this is a little confusing. When we look at other jurisdictions that the net, as far as I understand, the national child missing child law does not require use of facial recognition therapy. I mean, the technology, is that correct? That's correct. It just requires that they enter information they received about a missing child within 2 hours with national governments. And if the national law were to change to an act of Congress and signed by the president to require facial recognition technology, that we have to comply with that. That's a legal question. But I would I would presumably think that the I actually I'll stop there presumably is a bad word to say. So I'd have to specifically follow up with legal counsel on the customer. Thank you. I would appreciate that. And if that's the case, then that's the case. And I'd like just to mention again, any ordinance that we pass can always be amended later if need be. Thank you. Mr. Bowman. And from our last briefing. I have the impression that the county would be allowed to use facial recognition technology in addressing human trafficking and child exploitation. What I'm coming to understand in this conversation is the county could use, including the sheriff's department in particular, but the county in general, as this legislation would direct, could use data received, if unsolicited, they could not use the technology itself to locate. A victim of human trafficking or child exploitation. That? That's correct. I guess the the the technology cannot be used by any county administrative office or executive department, which includes CSTO for any purpose other than they could use information derived from that. As you mentioned, as long as it is not soliciting. But under no circumstance could we use it, even in those cases that are identified as us. And what I understood to be exemptions last time. Okay. Yeah. Yes. If there is not a specific exemption for investigating of human trafficking or missing persons for the. So the county could therefore the county use the use the technology in any way, shape or form? That's correct. But I would just like to re-emphasize that they do not currently use it now. So current practices would not be disruptive. Mr. Chair. Council Member Lambert. Thank you. So our line 97. Page 37. It says that. That is Baqouba. Barbara, I'm sorry. It's 94 violations of this ordinance by any county personnel may include retraining, suspension terminations subject to due process requirements and provisions of collective bargaining agreement. So if we were to pass this, it wouldn't take effect until after it went through collective bargaining, which, depending upon when that could come up, our implementation plan could be years out. And so I looked back on the state law that was just passed this year, but I don't think it takes effect until like July or August . So we don't even have any data yet on the state law. So I'm I'm interested in in exactly when the state law takes effect. I think it's not until July. And and then we also have an issue with our effective effect date. If it's the bargaining issue. So and I would just to clarify, that's that is only for regarding the rules regarding violations with those couldn't be established until that collective bargaining if required workplace. But this would also change your working conditions. It would be a change if we were to implement. I guess it wouldn't be a change if we don't do it at all. But if there are getting some of it now, then it would be a change in working condition. So it might apply to more than that under our existing labor law. Right. Again, that's getting in the legal weeds, which I would have to confirm with legal counsel. Thank you. Zala. Councilmember Zavala Thank you, Mr. Chair. We've heard about the kinds of uses that people might find valuable from facial facial recognition technology, like missing children and organizations that do that fight against human trafficking. Has anybody on here heard directly from those organizations about what they think of this law? Because the only people I've heard from our industry professionals and I understand that there is often a conflict of interest with with those organizations. But how about the intended beneficiaries of facial recognition technology that we've been talking about? Has anybody heard from them, from people who advocate for missing children or people who want to fight against human trafficking? I just want to see if those voices had been heard from. Customer is directed to staff or to your colleagues? I think anybody who has knowledge on it. No, no one has reached out to staff like that. Thank you. And to member Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council members, are they. We all received an email late last month from Jennifer Lee from the American Civil Liberties Union, and she included Sunnis experts on those who support this legislation, some of which abortion and sanctions do work on. Anti Chuck Schumer Bills. Reading API. China. Black Lives Matter. Seattle. King County Care. Washington Church. Council of Greater Seattle. El Centro de la Raza. Invisible Eastside Legal Voice. La Resistencia One America, Puget Sound Stage, Real Change and so forth. It's a very lengthy list and supporters of this. Thank you, Councilmember. Once again. Mr. Chair, I want to respond to the issue. Yeah, I want to respond to that question as well. The King County Council is a pretty low profile outfit. People don't generally know what we're up to unless it gets a lot of coverage. Right. I mean, we've all seen this at the virtual the virtual room is filled with folks who are tracking us because they are tracking us. Right. Because we're doing something that they are keenly involved in because they're advocating for whatever. I think it's really fair to ask whether organizations that are concerned about human trafficking know about this. And and they may they may very well support it. And truthfully, I mean, I started with questions. I didn't start with the statement of my values because I was being a little bit literal about the process here. I am very. Intrigued. By this proposal because, you know, when you take surveillance technology out of you know, when you take that cat out of the bag, there's no putting it back in. And so a cautious approach to rolling things like this out where we don't do it until we're sure that it's manageable and that it's not God like that's attractive to me. However, I think I feel myself sort of gravitating to those who are like, Could we take a minute and learn a little bit more and maybe do some outreach to folks who may not even know what we're up to here before we take a vote? Because I think I would like to ask those questions. I'd like to ask that two groups of human trafficking. I'd like to I heard a lot in the public testimony about the state of the technology and how. Good or bad, it is at identifying people, especially from various racial groups, and that's a real concern. So, I mean, this is just like this is also me being a little bit like playing to my stereotype here, which is I just always want to take a little more time than most other people do. And so I would be happy to to do that outreach exactly that you are asking about. If I if I had a little more time to do it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair? Council Member Councils. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate council member foundations concerns and I tend to think along those same lines as well. But just to too, as we have already been hearing from organizations that work against human trafficking, and I mentioned to some of them API, China certainly has been in the lead on that front since I started working on human trafficking in the legislature, and that was many, many years ago. That's a really important central theme that us and others that look at this very lengthy list. You did get it by email last night, and I don't know if any other offices have been the same as what we've experienced and we do for office . But we've received at least 1000 emails already supporting this legislation from organizations and from individuals all over. I think there's a great deal of support and to me, well, I'll save my remarks from closing. Thank you. Dombrowski with a quick question. Councilmember Demovsky. Thanks, Roger. And Nick, I. Think in kind of went by quickly, but did you mention that in our adopted budget, the current 2122 adopted budget that we have in the sheriff's office, an expenditure restriction prohibiting the use of facial recognition restriction technology for any purpose? That's correct. I see. That will not apply to. Trafficking or any of these other potential. Uses. Yes. All right. Thank you. Colleagues further discussing. Because. Chair Shura. Council member Dunn. Nick my wife has got me painting this bathroom because she doesn't like the color. I don't know what what she means up above this pink. But my question is not about the color of this bathroom. It is about the following statement made by the industry industry representative that I saw about the the issue of just using the facial recognition for something like turning on a computer or, you know, home security, maybe entering your house through a locked recognition system or something like that. Do we have any protections in place? Because obviously that stuff is not in my mind a problem or in fact, it's a benefit. But but more broadly, of course, the facial recognition stuff does concern me. What do we have a mechanism now, today or through for council to allow, for example, our local software companies to be able to engineer those type of simple functions that don't seem to have a liberty interest detriment except for personal security. So the the definition of facial recognition technology does not include analysis of facial features to grant access or deny access to an electronic device like a phone or a laptop, because that is a common feature or the use of our teeth for the use of a semi automatic or automated process for redacting. So you could use redacting software and it also doesn't include those for social media. So there are there are allowances for the use of analyzing a facial feature to grant access to certain things, although it would not the way it's currently written would not allow access to a built. Okay. So, so to turn on your computer or laptop and grant you access to your own device, that is okay under this law and your interpretation. Okay. Okay. We're establishing that legislative record. And then for, for example, granting access to a building or for a suite of offices or something that hasn't been contemplated under the law or is it prohibited under the law, would you say, in your judgment, it would be it would be currently prohibited. Okay. So I want to remain open between now and for counsel to working with industry leaders on maybe some kind of a narrowly tailored amendment for some of this sort of gray area stuff that might be in the public's benefit or to a few individuals benefit for things like personal security measures. Okay. I think I just want to clarify on that point. I just quickly, this only applies to cap to a government entity. So it does it doesn't have any impact on the private sector. Great. And also, what do you think of the color effect? I like things thinks it thinks that. Mr. Chair and member Lambert. So I had a conversation a couple of days ago with some wonderful, very intelligent advocates who I've known one of them for a very long time, and one that was a new friend. And I got a very different answer on the reduction issue. So I think we need a little more clarity that the reduction software could be used, especially for our body worn cameras. And then could you help me know the idea about your ring doorbells that if you have information on your ring doorbell, could you give that to the police? And what what are the requirements on our ring doorbells? So the first question regarding redacting so that the ordinance would allow redacting the use of editing software so long as it does not generate specific facial characteristics, data that falls under facial recognition information. As I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not an expert, but my understanding of most software is that it plays like a video of redacting software. It plays like a video feed where it has an interface which allows the individual to click on individual faces or geographic location, such as an address and either blurt out or put a black bar over it. There are various measures of automation, but that goes into specific uses. But this would allow the use of broadcasting software so long as it does not create the facial recognition information, which, as I mentioned, does exist. So clarify on that. So I get it can do it manually, but that's too time consuming and why we haven't done this for years on the redaction because it's too expensive and too costly in time. So there is a program where you can say the space take out the whole way and then you don't have to do it manually. Would that be prohibited under this rule? So as long as it is, the purpose of the software is just to identify a human, not the specific characteristics of an individual. Yes. Okay. And then the the ring issue, the ring camera. So those again, just as that's private, but if a private individual had a crime and wanted to provide that information itself, then they would be able to do so and cases that would be able to use that in furtherance of their investigation. Great. Thank you. As a teacher. And a member of Carlos. Thank you. Has to challenge the question of neck and neck. You may not know this, but have you heard from the King County Sheriff's Office about any request to use such facial recognition technology or any questions they've had on this legislation? We have not. Not on this. So in both during the budget process, when the expenditure restriction was being considered and during this audience, I reached out to Castle. And no, their answer was, we do not currently use this. And I have not seen any request from the Sheriff's Office to obtain. And we have not heard that they've opposed this legislation either. I have not. No, no. Okay. Thank you. Further questions. I think I'm hearing some questions and some follow up members might like to do. Before taking up the legislation. I want to check and see if that's an accurate reflection of. The conversation what were what I'm hearing today or was another intention action counts member number of on power. The committee of the whole is where we come together to work on legislation before we go forward. There have been a lot of questions. Again, this legislation's mission is something I agree with. I'm just concerned that the path that we're taking to it may lead to more problems. Along the way to get accomplished the mission. So I'm hoping that we can use the committee to hold to work on this legislation. And that's why I'm hoping that you can hold it in committee. Mr. Chair? Councilmember Banducci. I would add that the fact that there's this budget, a prohibition on spending any money to implement facial recognition makes me feel a little calmer about taking a little more time because nothing's going to happen, like it's not going to suddenly be implemented while we while we work out any concerns. And so I, I'm personally comfortable with taking one more one more committee meeting if if others are. Jack Council member. Lambert. I would agree. I think that, um, you know, I've been in China and been very surprised with how much they knew about where I was and when they did, um, what cities I've been to. And I don't want that to be in my community. It was very uncomfortable for me to see. Not that I had anything to hide, but I was just surprised. So but I think the wording matters and I think there's a couple of areas where the wording isn't quite cemented in everybody's mind. And I think that also the fact that the state law hasn't even begun yet and nobody said whether that was accurate or not on the July date, which I still don't know if that's correct, but I think it is. So I think we have time to really look at this. And it's important this is very important legislation that we should take the time to start really looking at the language and beefing it up a little bit. Then Councilmember calls. Thank you, Mr. Chair. While I would prefer that we want to take this up today and understand that people have concerns about it, so that's fine with me, the way we will place prominence or maybe the whole agenda. And I can be working with my colleagues and staff to staff as well. I would I would not like because if two weeks went by and no one had done anything and we were just back in the same position. Well, if you wouldn't mind if I took a minute or two to just clarify a couple of things that I think are important, and then I will agree with whatever decision you recommend. You're welcome. You're welcome to your council member. Thank you. I just would again like to reiterate, this legislation pertains only to King County government. It does not have anything to do with the private sector. It does not cover colleges, universities, schools, nonprofits, local jurisdictions such as since the unincorporated area of King County for the residents and businesses. And it also has to do, though, with mainly this King County Sheriff's Office is where we would anticipate there would be any engagement with such technology. And we've heard no request by the the no opposition to, say, the King County Sheriff's Office on this legislation in my office has been checking on that and nothing has been forthcoming . Privacy is critical to all of this. And also, I think an important factor for us all to think about is how many times have we been notified by your credit card company that unfortunately there's been hacking taking place? Maybe you were in silent auction or auction and some of them were. You paid for items by credit card. And then you found out later that the whole system was hacked. And I've heard that on a number of occasions where I've had to change my credit card number. It's a hassle. But when we're talking about facial recognition, which we could be in a crowd somewhere and there could be surveillance occurring following our just being in a crowd of people. And I think our privacy and our civil liberties are critical, let alone that we no hard evidence exists that there is a great amount of racial and gender biases going on here. When we talked about that before, with regard to women of color having a 30%, 30, nearly 30% of the Mr. ID rate compared to 2.3% by white men. There's a lot more I can say about it. I'll stop there. And I look forward to working with my colleagues and our staff, working with staff during the next two months. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Councilmember Caldwell's. And you have my commitment that this legislation will be on the next agenda for the committee to hold and encourage, as you did, encourage members to engage in work on amendments or proposals to the questions that have been raised in this conversation today and at our next meeting and be ready to take the legislation up. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for a very good discussion. We'll look forward to discussion and debate and action that are on this legislation at our next meeting. Madam Clerk, I am not aware of any reconsideration of votes that missed votes that is needed. Are you? That's correct, Mr. Chair. There were no missed votes. Great. Then with Council member Lambert.

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an Overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2016 Budget for the following: Harbor Department; Water Department.

LongBeachCC_08182015_15-0737

We will be doing our budget presentation and first we will be hearing from our police chief and his team. Then we will be going to the fire. Department and then we will be hearing from. Disaster preparedness and emergency communications. And with that, I'll turn it over to chief unit. Good evening, our mayor Garcia and members of the city council. As you know, our public safety efforts in Long Beach are a true partnership. So I would like to start with some acknowledgments. First of all, I want to recognize the men and women of the Long Beach Police Department who work every day under very difficult or work very hard every day under very difficult circumstances to keep our community safe. I would also like to thank our city departments and the community for their partnership in making this city a safe place for all people. Finally, thanks goes to the city manager and the City Council. Your ongoing support is very much appreciated. You are familiar with our core services. These services are guided by our recently developed strategic vision, which closely aligns with the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics and Sir Robert Pils nine Principles of Policing. Our goal is to make Long Beach a safe place for all people. And our mission is simple, yet effective public safety through partnerships. Our core services include safeguarding lives and property in our community, providing law enforcement services in a constitutional manner, responding to calls for service, thoroughly investigating crimes, and proactively seeking to build partnerships with our community. This slide addresses some key accomplishments. In FY 14, officers were dispatched to nearly 170,000 calls for service on an average day. This translates to officers responding to 487 calls for service. They proactively initiated contact with our community over 1100 times and made approximately 63 arrests again. This represents activity on an average day. In addition, our daily workload includes COPS projects, which are special projects for long term problem solving, handling special events and high profile incidents incidences. And we also address many council requests for services. Many of you well know when you dial 911 in an emergency situation, officers are arriving on scene on average within 4.8 minutes. That is an incredible accomplishment. We also continue to place a strategic focus on gang suppression efforts through various investigative methods, including working with our city prosecutor, Doug Halbert. To conduct citywide enforcement on gang court orders that encompass several gangs. Partnerships with other agencies to address gang crimes. Gang detectives and a probation officer assigned to the gang enforcement section to help augment the work of our officers in the field and to highlight some of our enforcement. 90% of our human trafficking arrests. Led by our vice section, are gang members and an estimated 50% of compliance checks for subjects released pursuant to AB 109 involve gang members. In the past two fiscal years, the use of discretionary overtime and non-recurring funds approved by the City Council have helped us to focus or help us to focus our efforts on certain crime trends. You may remember in 2014, we received nonrecurring funds to combat human trafficking and conduct prohibitive possessor enforcement. Both operations proved extremely successful in FY 15. So far, we have been successful in reducing residential burglary by 19 4%, which equates to 218 crimes citywide. When it comes to our approach in addressing crime today, we devote our resources in a data driven, focused manner, as opposed to using more traditional police sweeps, which has a common which was a common enforcement tactic used in the past. In our efforts to increase the level of community engagement, we will continue to seek expanded partnerships with our community. This will enhance communications and information sharing. Some of our key partnerships include the Ministers Alliance and the organization. Why'd you stop me? We also work closely with other city departments, community based organizations and our community on the public safety continuum. The safe Long Beach violence prevention plan and to provide safe passage to our students. We are also looking forward to working with the city's new innovation team. We are grateful for our continuing academy classes because they are allowing us to replenish police officer positions as a result of attrition. Academy class number 87 graduated 24 recruits in December of 2014. Class 88 started in May of 2015 with 45 recruits and will graduate in November of this year. Testing for Class 89 is currently underway with an expected start date in May of 2016. Lastly, we also want to highlight that over the past 15 years we have improved most substations in the city and are close to completion of our substation. We anticipate moving in in early 2016. As you see, most of the police department budget comes from the general fund. In FY 16, there are no changes in our sworn full time equivalents. However, we are transferring civilian employees to another department, which I will explain later in my presentation. Grant funding is an important resource for our department in FY 14. The police department was awarded 15 grants totaling $4.8 million in FY 15. The police department continues to receive both allocation and competitive grants. There are some key changes in the FY16 budget. One of the most significant changes is the creation of the Community Engagement Division, which will increase our ability to build stronger relationships with our community. This is very important or this is a very important part of our ongoing effort to build public trust. This division will continue to explore community partnership opportunities, social media communications, manage our youth explorer program and volunteers, as well as develop a more robust internship program. Through $150,000 in nonrecurring funds. The department will continue to train officers in the areas highlighted in the president's 21st Century Task Force report. These topics include mental health issues and homelessness. Verbal de-escalation. Fair and impartial. Constitutional policing. Cultural diversity. And alternatives to arrest. In this proposal, the department has been allocated $2.2 million to fund overtime for prevention, enforcement and investigation of violent crime, as well as to address other emerging crime trends. The Academy lieutenant position will focus on new training initiatives, developing the lateral process and recruiting. We will continue to partner with civil service to identify law enforcement recruiting opportunities in an effort to hire people who best reflect the diversity of our community and who will uphold the high standards of our police department. Another change is the upgraded criminalist positions, which will provide a higher level of sophistication for investigative assistants and managing evidence collection. Because we have a large general fund budget and many grants to manage the financial bureau will be enhanced. By the addition of an accounting technician, financial services officer and an administrative intern. Lastly, as I alluded to earlier, 65 public safety dispatcher positions will be transferred to the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. The demands, expectations and the level of accountability placed on our officers have never been higher. Today, our officers are more carefully chosen, more diverse, better educated and carefully trained, and more technologically and tactically sound. In these next two slides outlining significant issues and opportunities, you will see a common theme in our efforts to build trust, increase capabilities, and have a more strategic focus. Part of that strategic focus includes our communications plan, which will involve assistance from communication professionals to better shape information about the police department with our community today. There are many emerging technologies for use in law enforcement. We have been working on several new and innovative technologies such as online reporting, a new personnel scheduling system. Our mobile AI camera platform. And we are exploring E-Ticketing, which will reduce time spent on data entry of citations. In addition, our department is in the selection process of a vendor for our body camera pilot program. The pilot program will provide the department with a better understanding of resources needed to operate this initiative. We need to point out that this program may require additional resources as the pilot progresses and as we prepare for full implementation. It is important that we employ a data driven approach to our enforcement strategies to maximize our limited resources. As part of the mayor's proposal, non-recurring funds may be added in the FY16 budget for a new gang analyst to augment violent crime strategies. We are all concerned about the violent crime increases we have seen this year, and we will continue to make focused enforcement a priority. While the city achieved the lowest reported number of violent crimes in 2014, this year, overall crime has increased by 6.3% based on a five year average. And since the beginning of summer, there has been a spike in violent crimes. I recently attended a violent crime summit convened by the Major City Chiefs Association in Washington, DC. The preliminary findings of the summit among 35 participating cities were very revealing. On an average homicide increase, 19% this year. 62% of the cities have had increases in nonfatal shootings. 40% of the cities are reporting crime scenes with shootings using multiple firearms. Almost half of the agencies report an increase in gang retaliatory violence. Synthetic drugs have reached have not reached all cities yet, but 30% reported increase in violent crime where the offender is under the influence of synthetic drugs. I would like to reiterate that these preliminary findings after polling 35 major cities nationwide. In FY16, the department will focus on improving the quality of existing resources and equipment. As I mentioned earlier, the police substations have received improvement over the last 15 years. However, other infrastructure, maintenance and repair needs have been identified. These issues these issues will require attention in future years. It is essential to provide a clean, safe, functioning work environment for our employees to enhance employee performance and morale. In addition, the Department is expanding the procurement of projectile launchers and munitions to be more readily available to police officers in the field for improved alternative moderate force options. The Police Department is grateful that FY16 will afford our organization an additional year of resource stability with minimal impacts to our current level of service. We have implemented many new programs and efficiencies with a budget neutral impact to the general fund. In closing, the police department will approach FY 16 as a year of transition. We will diligently reevaluate the department's structure, along with citywide priorities and emerging crime trends, to identify the most optimal way to guide the department through the budget limits forecasted for FY 17 and f y 18. As part of our many strategies, a police department will continue to actively seek available grants, explore technology that streamlines administrative functions. And we will continue to work with our internal and external partners to develop comprehensive programs that maximize city resources to address public safety. This concludes our presentation, and I believe we're going to do the other departments first, and then I will be available to all of you for any questions that you may have. Okay. Let's move on to fire. Good evening, mayor garcia and members of the city council. This evening, I will be giving you a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's fiscal year 16 proposed budget. My presentation will also touch upon the services provided by the Fire Department some of our key accomplishments for the current fiscal year. Significant changes in fiscal year 16 proposed budget and some major issues and opportunities for fiscal year 16. The Fire Department delivers fire rescue, emergency medical services, hazardous materials response and non-emergency response services to residents, businesses and visitors of Long Beach. We provide a 24 hour operation for which all first responders must be prepared at all times. A primary goal of the fire department is to reduce the number of fires in the city through our fire prevention efforts. These include services such as fire inspections and code enforcement, investigation of suspicious fires to our fire investigation and arson detail , the implementation of environmental safeguards and efforts to reach out to the community with fire prevention and safety messages and related information. Additionally, are training division provides essential services to the entire department. They prepare entry level fire recruits to be effective firefighters through our fire academy. And equally important is their work in ensuring that all of our first responders receive the continuing education needed to maintain skills and stay current with their knowledge of firefighting and emergency response tactics. I would like to outline excuse me, I would like to outline some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for our current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, the Long Beach Fire Department has responded to 62,000 fire, emergency medical services and other emergency incidents. This equates to more than 130,000 unit responses. We have been and will always remain a very busy fire department. Included in this number is over 45,000 medical calls and over 5000 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous material responses, airport responses, marine safety responses and other non fire responses. Earlier this year, 20 new fire recruits graduated from our fire academy. It's our plan to continue running annual academies to keep up with attrition and ensure adequate staffing levels at all times. And as you know, last year, on July 10th, the fire department implemented the Rapid Medic deployment or RMD program throughout the city. The program has been in place for one year, and I'm pleased to report to you that the data that we have submitted to the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency and the Data Safety Monitoring Board has shown has been shown by them improvements in response times and patient care. We continue to have a very active Community Emergency Response Team or CERT program. This year was unique in that we conducted the city's first ever Spanish language cert class. It was. We also conducted a teen cert program. CERT classes provide community members with practical hands on instruction and demonstrations of how to respond to emergencies. And we continued to effectively utilize federal homeland security grant funds. This year, we were able to secure funds to continue to improve our response capabilities and to improve our effectiveness in working with neighboring agencies to manage large scale regional emergencies. The proposed fiscal year 16 budget for the fire department is just over $98 million. We have a total of 485 budgeted full time equivalent staff consisting of 364 sworn muftis in the fire ranks. Another 26 full time year round marine safety first responders, over 160 seasonal lifeguards and 33 full time ambulance operators. Additionally, the fire department is supported by civilian staff in fire operations, support services, fire prevention and administration. The bulk of our budget, over 70%, is in the general fund, which supports most departmental activities. The proposed FAA 16 general fund budget for the fire department is just over $72 million. Additionally, Tidelands Funds supports marine safety activities as well as our fire operations in the Port of Long Beach. The Harbor Department provides cost reimbursement for the services provided to the port, and that is included in the $23 million Tidelands Fund budget for fire prop fund. Funds from the oil production tax continue to provide additional support for fire staffing in the amount of nearly $1.8 million per year. And along with the Health Department, the fire department provides environmental protection services that are supported by the Cooper Fund. The stands for Certified Unified Program Agency and through permit fees, it provides funding for inspection services and businesses emergency plan reviews to ensure hazardous chemicals are handled, stored and transported in accordance with current state and local standards. The Fire Department's proposed fiscal year 16 budget includes several changes that I'd like to highlight. First, as you are aware, the city has been transitioning to a consolidated and public safety communication center for the past several years. The next step in this process is to transfer the fire department's dispatching staff and associated budget to the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. A second budget change reflects the need for additional staff to provide administrative oversight and planning for the fire department. The professional administrative staffing level in the fire department is very low for a department of our size and complexity. Therefore, we are proposing the addition of an administrative officer who will be responsible for managing the department's personnel safety contracts and many other administrative functions. We are also proposing the addition of a part time clerical position to assist with the many Public Records Act requests we have been receiving. This will partially replace a full time position that was dedicated to providing these services, but was eliminated from our budget in fiscal year 2008. Additionally, the proposed budget provides ongoing funding for a CERT coordinator. We have had an increased support for the CERT program over the past couple of years, first with grant funds and then with additional one time funds for cert enhancements. The short term commitment of funds has allowed the CERT program program to grow, giving us an opportunity to train more adults and teens. The addition of the budgeted CERT coordinator will allow us to support the current level of CERT program activity on an ongoing basis. The CERT coordinator will be responsible for coordinating the activities of the City CERT Program under the direction of the Deputy Chief of Fire Prevention. Duties will include recruiting and training volunteers, developing lesson plans and conducting training and drills. The CERT coordinator will also assist sworn fire staff in the Community Services Division by planning and attending CERT program meetings with CERT team leaders on topics related to emergency preparedness under direction from the Deputy Chief of Fire Prevention. The position will also help coordinate the department's social media and website efforts, and the CERT Coordinator will have a strong, analytical, organizational, strong communication skills as well as experience working in a public safety organization. The next change in our budget is to realign the number of budgeted, total sworn positions to reflect our actual staffing levels. The Department will eliminate 24 budgeted positions that were kept on the books as overstaffed positions to reduce budgeted overtime. However, these positions had never been filled. Therefore, there will be no effective reduction in staff. The net effect of this change is a savings of $200,000. The final change in the budget is in the Tidelands Fund. This is a reduction in marine safety staffing. We are proposing the reduction of one vacant marine safety sergeant rescue boat operator position. Looking forward to fiscal year 16, the department has several significant issues. The first is to conduct a thorough analysis of all potential cost savings efficiencies and cost recovery mechanisms in an effort to maintain staffing levels for fire suppression and emergency medical services. The fire department has reduced our budget over the past seven years by eliminating four fire engines, one fire truck and one paramedic ambulance. Therefore, we'll be looking at all options for maintaining our service. Another challenge is to continue our multiyear multiphase plan to address workforce privacy issues in our fire department facilities. The Fire Department and Public Works Department have made great strides over the past several years to ensure that our facilities foster a positive work environment and provide privacy for all our employees. Our facilities are unique in that our employees utilize them on a 24 hour basis. Therefore, it is essential that all facilities offer private dormitories, changing areas and restroom facilities. Fire and Public Works will utilize existing capital improvement fund appropriations to conclude these workforce privacy projects. And finally, the Department will begin implementing the first responder fee, which was approved by City Council on July 21st. In conjunction with financial management, we will determine collection rates and the amount of revenue received. This information will be essential in determining the level of funding available from this new revenue source in fiscal year 17. And with that, that concludes my presentation, and I'll stand by to answer questions after Mr. Harrison. Thank you. And now we're going to hear the last part of our presentation from Emergency Preparedness Management. I hear. Mere members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present the first budget for this new city department, the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. I am joined in this presentation by the Fire Chief, Mike Derry, and by our police chief, Robert Luna. As we join, as we become a part of the city's continuum of public safety. This new department was created in fiscal year 2013 to centralize and bring greater focus to disaster preparedness and emergency communications functions throughout the city. This reorganization was implemented to better align Long Beach with a growing demand for integrated public safety services and strengthened collaboration between city departments, county, state and federal resources with responsibility for disaster. Prepare, preparation, response, recovery and mitigation. Thank you. In terms of our core service. Long Beach is fortunate to have miles of waterfront coastline that attract tourists and visitors from across the world. We operate our own airport gas utility and the second largest deepwater port in North America. These are great amenities for the city to have, but they also make Long Beach a complex city in terms of disaster preparation. Earlier this year, the City Council approved the updated Natural Hazardous Mitigation Plan that identified and provided mitigation measures for many of the risks we have. Therefore, our plans, exercises, training events are all designed to be flexible enough to adapt to all hazards as well as natural disasters, biological incidents, and that and national security emergencies. While an earthquake is the most probable natural disaster for Southern California, we can see from the recent power outages that a disruption of significance to our quality of life for a prolonged period can have detrimental effects on a community. We also we also administered a Homeland Security Grant program to provide training and equipment acquisition for our first responders and disaster preparedness organizations. And integral to the department is the provision of 911 Emergency Communications Services for Police, Fire and Emergency Medical calls for service during a disaster. The call center would activate a mass notification system to alert residents of the status of a pending or actual major emergency. The call center would also provide updated information to first responders, information that we receive from the public. Thanks. The new department hit the ground running in terms of accomplishments for five days beginning July 15 through July 19th and again on Friday, July 30th through August the first. The city suffered its first major power outage since the 1950s. The power outage was caused by fires in Southern California, maintained utility vaults at the height of the power outage. Approximately 30,000 residents were affected. The city responded by activating its EOC emergency operations center at its highest level for a sustained period to assist police, fire, public works and other staff to manage city resources to restore power to the affected area. This was the first activation at this level since the 2004 Verizon service interruption. And we will and we will report on this interruption in greater detail at the September 1st City Council meeting. But I'd also like to say, Mayor, City Council, as you are aware, the city's response was matched 141 by this by our residents response as well to this major disruption of our quality of life and services to our residents. We had just an outpouring of support from residents, nonprofits, the business community, just resident two resident camaraderie and mutual respect helped us to manage this major disaster and move forward. There were no increases in crime and criminal activity during this period of time, and there were no major accidents during this time. Our response was aided by almost 300 city staff and community partners that we trained throughout the year through our whole community approach to disaster preparedness. Many of those staff responded to the incident or to the D.C. Department Operations Centers or at our EOC or at the emergency shelter and food distribution points went through that training during this past year. I spoke earlier of the probability of an earthquake affecting Long Beach, and I'm really proud to state that Long Beach is one of the few cities nationally to participate in the earthquake early warning system to provide seconds or minutes of warning before an earthquake might strike. We are beta testing this technology to see how departments could use 20 seconds, 40 seconds, a minute of warning before disasters strike to put in operational changes that would save lives and property. We oversaw a $9.1 million in Homeland Security grant funds to provide training and equipment acquisition for disaster preparedness and response activities. With this equipment activities, with this equipment acquisition. We're not talking about militarizing our police department. There are no armored personnel carriers associated with this acquisition. But rather, we we emphasize our acquisitions on communications, the provision of generators and training for all hazards. Not yet. The 911 center received over 700,000 calls for service last year and exceeded state requirements for answering 90% of those calls within 10 seconds. And finally, we reduced overtime for our public safety dispatchers by 30% by recruiting and training 22 dispatchers, reducing the fire public safety vacancies to one position and reducing the police public safety vacancies to three positions. No. Our budget is made up entirely of the city's general fund. It is cost neutral to the city. As you heard, the two police chiefs before me indicated the transference of public safety dispatchers from police and fire to this new department. There is a net zero budget impact from this transference of staff. Major changes. As I stated earlier, the next step in a transition of the consolidation of the police and fire dispatch is duties as the transference of the dispatch staff to the new department. This will facilitate the ongoing consolidation and cross-training program to improve services to residents requiring police, fire and emergency medical services. We will, if approved, upgrade a public safety dispatcher to communications and center coordinator to provide oversight to the communications in our operations. And we will add, in addition, an administrative analyst one to provide support to city departments and community partner organizations in developing their development preparedness plans. This slide provides you with an update on the emergency communications consolidation and cross-training program through a phased approach. We are across train police and fire department dispatchers to improve customer service, eliminating the transfer residents calls and realizing economies of scale through staff performing similar work. Consolidation will also position the call center to handle next generation 911 technology, including receiving texts and pictures to 911, which we are currently not able to provide this service to the public. Phase one is to cross-train staff to eliminate the transfer of resident calls from police dispatchers to fire dispatchers. Phase two is to cross-trained staff, to provide dispatch services to police, fire and emergency medical calls for services. The next steps are to complete the Animal U with police and fire that address operational protocols, create consolidated policies and procedures, and continue recruitment and training successes. And then finally looking forward, our significant issues and opportunities are to maintain emergency communication staffing levels to facilitate cross training program. Continue to implement emergency operation plans that benefit the whole community and maintain training programs for all hazards response teams. With that may remember City Council, this concludes our presentations and we are available to answer questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go now to questions of the council for the department heads. So I'll start off with Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to I want to thank thank our city departments for those presentations. I want to thank Reggie Harrison for that presentation. I think that's fair. This new department is really one of the core roles of government, and I think it's smart that we aligned some of this duplicative services of services that are already taking place in fire and police department in those. I want to start with some just some comments on our police department for our chief. So so first I want to I want to just applaud a number of things in this in this budget. And so so first, I want to applaud the establishment of the community engagement division. And I think with the establishment of our community watch programs, you know, innovative things we're doing, like with the Security Committee on on the Atlantic Avenue in North Long Beach. I think that's that's really creative. Could you span just a moment on the role of this division? The Community Engagement Division. Yes, Councilman. And happy birthday, by the way. Thank you. I'll try to get out of here quickly. This division is going to be focused on making sure that we have partnerships with everybody in the city, collaborate with not only our community on a consistent basis, but to make sure that we're communicating the right way, the right message to everybody involved, and then looking for any opportunities to get better at what we're doing from a partnership perspective through the media. Just to give you an example, that division is already training a lot of our lieutenants and is going to be training our sergeants in how to give more and more rapid information to the media out at the side of events, which is going to to help us a lot in the perspective that our community has with the. So that's just one example. I could go on for a long time. They're going to be doing some great things for us. Sure. And I also want to applaud the the conversation about the 21st century policing. I've I've read the president's report. A number of the president's recommendations were were received as controversial in the law enforcement community. So I'm very proud that you're embracing it and that there are there's a proposal in this budget to actually train our police department on it. So I just want to acknowledge that next, I have sort of an anecdotal statement. You know, I've personally seen a, you know, a lot of human trafficking activity and increase personally. I don't know if that's justified or if that's represented statistically, but I've seen an increase there, but a decrease in gang activity. There was, in my opinion, more activity last year than this year. And could you just sort of elaborate a little bit on have we sort of placed more of a focus on one and taken taking a lesser focus on the other? Because I it's sort of getting disproportionately to one side. I'd love to not have either of them, but but human trafficking is is really a it's stepping up in North Long Beach this year. So what can you tell us about that? Human trafficking is an awful crime. And I'm proud to say that our department, specifically our investigations bureau, our vice unit, is a leader in the nation. They are going out and not only enforcing or suppressing the crime, but they're actually working in collaboration with many community based organizations in arresting the individuals who are involved, but getting assistance to what we formerly saw as prostitutes, but now we see as victims and connecting them back with their families. From the gang perspective, our strategies for this department have really changed over the last several years where everybody is focused on gang suppression. So for example, under the human trafficking example, our vice unit leads the efforts and gets other specialized units involved around the department. And we make these arrests. And 90% of these arrests we find are gang members that we're taking off the street for many years at a time. So they are not victimizing other people because we find that they're not only doing human trafficking, but they're dealing narcotics. They're suspects in shootings at times are victims in shootings. So all in all, it's it's a strategy that I think will make this city safer as time goes on. Well, I would just say that we're seeing more victims of human trafficking on the street. So maybe we can have a conversation off line about some of those hotspots. Absolutely. Many more victims. Whereas I can tell you, you know, I was skeptical about the cross-training approach of sort of eliminating the gang unit, but cross-training, training. Everyone and I expressed this last year, but I have to give it to you. I've seen the statistics in District nine. I've seen the direction their head and I've seen the, you know, the the arrests that have been made, the high profile arrests have been made and the lack of activity this coming summit, this past summer, this current summer, it's I've seen an improvement. So I have to I have to hand that to you. So the next the next thing is, are we at the same level of the exact same number of sworn officers? Are we at the same staffing levels this year? Last year, we have 806 budgeted. And yes, we're at the same level we were flagged. Yes. And I wanted to clarify something you said in your earlier statement that we had gotten rid of our gang unit. We actually still have a gang enforcement section which investigates gang crime on the vice side, right? No, no. We have a vice section that investigates ABC prostitution and does human trafficking and a couple of other things. But we also have a gang enforcement section that specifically is assigned all of our gang cases in the city. That section also has a very good intelligence portion of it. What we eliminated due to budget reductions in the last several years was the field enforcement portion of that gang section. No, I get it. I understand that the gang field field team was what was eliminated. But, you know, it seems that you're on the same same level of staffing. Is that from last year to this year, have calls for service increased across the years? We do have a slight increase in the calls for service that we're handling. And I know that the trend we commonly see every year, there's an increase in calls for service, not necessarily. In the past, we have seen a decrease. We've seen a decrease because in the way we approach work, especially through our patrol bureau, is we do more problem, long term problem solving and we work with the public safety continuum. So, for example, when we get dispatches, instead of going back to the same place over and over and over, we figure out different ways to approach it to eliminate the problem. So we're not going back. That being said, in the last year we have seen an increase in dispatches, which is a little different from the previous years. Okay. So in I'm a believer in the public safety continuum. If we're if we continue to see increases, I think it's unfair to expect your department to continue to do perform at this level without having a conversation about increasing staffing levels. I think that's unfair. I think you've done a great job and you're doing a great job this year, but I really want to watch that closely. The next thing is our our academies. So we have academies schedule and they are how many people are going to be in this year's academy? We currently have an Academy class that's about halfway through and we have 37 police recruits who are left in that class. We are currently we have recruited and we're in the process of hiring for the next class. And Mr. West has made it very clear to me that he wants us to over hire to make sure that we don't run into vacancy. So we're currently assessing that within our police department to see what we can maximize as far as taking on a larger class that I'm glad to hear that. I know that there's a attrition rate in the class and there's a attrition rate in the department. So we want to make sure those are actually level. And then so finally, I've learned a lot over this last year about just all the resources that the federal government has for us. And I'm glad that you are engaged in the like the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention and a number of other things. I think we should we should continue to place a focus on identifying grants that could support us. I know that Office of Justice Programs and the Department of Justice, they have a cops hiring grant that we. It was my understanding that we are you know, we haven't pursued those because of certain contingencies related to if we hire someone, we have to keep them on our on our roster for a certain period of time. I think we should. Can you tell me have we gone after that? Has that changed? Have we gone off of the cops hiring grant in recent years? So this is the grant that covers three years of staffing. It's a federal grant that helps departments hire or rehire police sworn officers. Yes, sir. We have looked at that, but we did not pursue it because were we as a city are not in a position to go out and hire more police officers because we can't just look at our budget for this coming year. But we're in the forecast, which are very well aware of in the next 2 to 3 years. I don't want to be in a position where I'm recommending to the city manager that we're hiring more officers and then we have to maybe lay them off. We will continue to pursue every angle on every grant and if at all possible. I don't think there's anybody in the city that doesn't agree that once we can afford it, we would like to have more police officers, but we have to be fiscally responsible when we're recommending those things. And I would expect that you do. You do just that. My thought is that if for some if there are conditions on these grants that make them not suitable to our city, then we should take a legislative approach and make sure that the next round is crafted to where cities like Long Beach can take advantage of. Because we are hiring. We we've done an academy for, you know, the last few years, and those are all new recruits. So I would love to see if we can offset some of those costs with federal grants. So I'd love to have that conversation perhaps at the Fed Ledge Committee. It's a an idea. Thank you. I'm sorry. It's a great idea. Thank you, sir. Certainly. Next the next one, just to mention, there's a community police community policing development grant which provides one time funding for things like our our community engagement division or the our training. So that's something that's closed this year, but that's something that I encourage we continue to look at. And then there's the, the, the OJP anti-gang initiative grant, which seems like we're doing innovative stuff around there. We should, we should look at those if we haven't already. So those are just comments. I want to thank you and all of your the members of your department for the tremendous job that you're doing. Thank you, sir. Thank you. So. So I just want to I have a couple questions for our fire chief. Okay. So, Councilor Richardson, there's been a request to see if we can do any of the PD questions first so they don't have to keep switching. Do you mind if we do that? He's up there now. I'd rather just knock it out so I don't have to speak twice. Okay. This was a request from me. Know from Fire PD. Would you mind if they. They want the command staff up. They're just doing one. Everyone else remember to talk twice. I'm just. This is a request from PD and fired. I would. Do you want to go ahead and go ahead and just go ahead. Gunfire. Go ahead. Because that's the question that everybody's asking questions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. So. So I wanted to first ask about the implementation of the fire fee. How's it coming? Councilmember the we are currently working through the process of when and how will implement that fee with the director of financial management, John GROSS and his staff. And we expect to issue some some type of memo to this council that will outline how and when that will go live here in the near future. Okay. You have an idea of a timeline. As of right now. I don't I can't give you a specific timeline, but I can tell you that between the fire staff and financial management staff, we're working diligently and trying to make this thing come online as quickly as we can, but we want to make sure it's right in the process. Great. And is there I see I'm looking at the memo from Long Beach firefighters 372 and it says that there's a proposed elimination of 24 vacant positions. Is that true? Can you elaborate on that? Councilmember The the budget solution that we put in place this year eliminates 24 vacant positions. If you go back to 2008, when we first started, when during the Great Recession, we went through a series of daily engine reductions. It started with one where we would have the engine in a station but not staff it. And then the following year we went into two engine reductions where we had two engines without that were there, but we weren't staffing them. And since that time, we've carried these budgeted positions that have been unfilled in our budget since 2008. So basically what this issue does is it makes our budget actually reflective of how we deploy in the organization every day. It makes our budget reflective of reality. So these positions haven't been filled in. How long? No, sir. Since 2008. Prior to fiscal year, 2007. So none of these have been filled since oh seven? That's correct. And and I would just be concerned about that's a cut. I would be concerned about that moving forward. So I'm going to I'm going to continue to look at that. Next, I know that last year we had the conversation about R&D, and I'm going to bring it up again. I know that we are still dependent on L.A. County EMS to approve or deny this this program. And so the question is, now that we have a fire fee, are we? If in the event that the county were to reject this program, what will be our contingency plan to make sure that there's no loss in service to our residents? Councilmember. I don't have any indication that the county would step in, given the data that has been submit to them over the past year and given the data safety monitoring boards letter that they submit to the full EMC Commission, I don't have any indication that the agency would not look at that data and see clearly that the program is effective based on the data. If the if the committee or excuse me, if the EMC agency through the commission came back to us and said, for whatever reason they were going to shut down our pilot program, we would then be required to revert per the four or seven guidance policy, revert back to the system we had in place with regard to how we deploy our paramedic rescue ambulances. But that would force us in fire management to take a very hard look at the overall system, the organization that would support those paramedics in their work. And it would require it would require probably a month or longer for us to put together a plan that I can articulate to you to tell you exactly how we would minimize the impact of that. Okay. Well, thank you so much. That satisfies my my questions. Rosemary Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have. I have a few questions. I'll start with fire. Since you're sitting there, I. And then I will ask a few questions of police as well. Chief Terry. And I know we've discussed this in briefings and in other meetings, but if you can share with us when we expect to hear back from L.A. County, the EMS agency, regarding our pilot R&D program. Councilmember the the pilot program when it was approved, when it started on July 10th, 2014, it was initially established as a two year pilot program. So we have standing a plate standing placeholder at every EMS commission meeting where the commission is given an update from the Data Safety Monitoring Board or EMS staff on an on the Long Beach paramedic program. So if anything comes up, that's where they would address it. So as it stands right now, we're still in the middle of our pilot program, although we had the Data Safety Monitoring Board submit a letter to the EMS commission at their last meeting with a report that that basically said that they felt the data that was being submit to them was coming in on a timely basis. It was stable, and it showed across the board some that they said they had no issues with regard to patient care or quality of service. So they the Data Safety Monitoring Board made a recommendation to the for EMS Commission that we stopped submitting the data to them. We then went back to the EMS agency, the director, and said, okay, well, what are our next steps? And so basically what she told us was they don't they don't know exactly what the next steps are, what the process is from here. But we're just going to stay in the pilot program for now while the county works out whatever the next steps are going to be. So are they giving us any feedback on our response time parameters or anything like that? So. The data set. I'm going to let Deputy Chief Sergeant weigh in on this, because I believe you're referring to the letter that was submit to the boss potentially by the Firefighters Association, where they call out a specific. Yes. And we'll let Deputy Chief Sergeant talk about that. He's got more knowledge on that. In regarding the two reference. 407 there was one section that stated during the pilot study the time difference between the arrival of the first paramedic. And the second paramedic should be within 3 minutes. 95% of the time. When we looked at the data prior to R&D, we achieved that goal 79 to 80% of the time after initial start of the R&D. We were remained at the same amount, 80%. That issue was discussed at one of the IMS Commission meetings. We made some changes and have improved that time difference down to meeting at. 84% of the time. We relate. To them our. Discussions as far as the ability to meet that. And they stated they they believed that it was not a realistic timeframe or time goal and that there would be no penalty for not meeting the 95%. They would continue to look at it for the remainder of the the pilot program. We would continue to try and improve the time on the timeframe. Within 3 minutes. And if there is any sign of any patient degradation that they would look at again, other than that, they considered it an irrelevant mark, unable to achieve and they would just continue with the pilot program. And Vice Mayor, if I can just add on to that. So this time differential, this get the second paramedic on scene within 3 minutes of the first was an issue that was put in through a subcommittee of the EMS commission as we were ramping this program up. We had no knowledge of it. The reality is there is no agency of the 31 fire departments in L.A. County. There is no agency in L.A. County that is held to that standard. We weren't held to that standard prior to the information implementation of our M.D. There is no agency in Los Angeles County unless they have a firefighter, paramedic or a paramedic standing on every corner that could meet that time standard. So when, as Deputy Chief Sergeant said, when we went back to the EMS commission, we said, this is an unrealistic standard that's not applied to anybody but us. It wasn't applied to anybody pre or M.D. So why are you applying an unrealistic standard that you can't validate with any sort of justify in any way? And the EMS commission unanimously agreed. They said, you know what? We agree with you. It's not applied to anybody else. It is an arbitrary standard, and we're going to keep it in the policy. But there will be no penalty if you don't achieve that. The 95% of the time they said continue to work on it. We want you to constantly try and strive for better, but there is no penalty. I think the most important thing on this, though, is that what we do know with the data is that we are getting a paramedic on scene faster today than we were prior. And I think that's the most important thing for our community. And I agree with you. I think that is paramount here based on what you said. I'm just curious what criteria they end up using to evaluate our pilot program or our or our R&D pilot program if there is no other example. Well, so this was a this three minute time standard was a unique thing. As I mentioned, they got kind of kind of put into the policy at the very end of the preparatory period before we went live. And we on it, candidly, we didn't even know that discussion was happening until it was too late. The Data Safety Monitoring Board of the EMS agency has asked us to send them 32 specific data points every single month. So they range from response times to times for specific treatment modalities, like how long does it take to do an EKG or how long, you know, electrocardiogram, or how long does it take to defibrillate a patient or how long to start an I.V. or what's? Our ROIC is a big one. Return of spontaneous circulation. What's what's how in a percentage? How many of your patients do you find in the field that are pulseless, not breathing? But by the time they get to the emergency department, have a pulse. So there's 32 data points that the Data Safety Monitoring Board looks at every month. And they're primarily they had been primarily looking at the data to determine whether or not anything that we were doing constituted either a degradation of care over the previous system or constituted anything that would pose a safety risk. The letter that they sent to the EMC Commission in May said clearly that the data was stable and poses no risk. Thank you. And, Mr. Mayor, that's all I have for fire. I have a few questions for police, if that's okay to chief. Thank you, Chief. Lana, I have a few questions from Councilwoman Pryce, who is not here today, but she did have very specific questions and hope that we could address it this evening. So for police, she wanted us to ask which officer position is being moved into prop age funds, thus reducing a motor officer? So that would be a reduction by the $74,000.20 $3. Item five Palo Alto. In NY 11, we had ten motor officers assigned to the prop fund due to reductions in revenue at that time. Half of an FTE was moved over to the general fund. This particular employee split his time between the Violent Impact Motor Fund and General Patrol functions on the motorcycle. Given that we do have funding sources for this upcoming year for the bridge fund, we're moving that 0.52 FTE back into Prop H to be funded. Okay. That's that's great. The second question we have is why does it state only 0.96 position is added when the description states that three positions will be added. Will this end up adding more officers on the street? That is an item that's required. It's quantified as $159,312. Vice mayor that's related to the addition of an admin intern over the hours related to adding interns that equates 2.967 FTE. Okay. We. I appreciate that clarification. And then an item for $210,000. What is the total fiscal year 14 budget for the red light camera program? And this program was eliminated several years ago. Therefore, what costs are remaining in FY 15 and beyond? Vice Mayor Currently we are in the process of removing that equipment from the traffic signals. I'm sorry, I don't have the exact amount of what that would cost us. I think we're anticipating that exact cost from the vendor. Okay. And that's fine. We can we can get that for me at another time. And then I wanted to go back to the. Motor officer conversation. And over the years there's been ups and downs in that area. And depending, depending on what specific crime needs exist in the city, throughout the city, we do have other quality of life issues that motor officers were assigned to, for instance. They're they're high profile issues. And then there are just simply quality of life issues that end up degrading one's peace of mind. And so if I could know how many motor officer positions currently exist or are proposed for FY16, if you have that. Mars. Look in that up right now, usually with our motor section, the majority of homework traffic complaints throughout the entire city on two different shifts. For example, a lot of them address issues or challenges, traffic challenges around schools. And then we have a separate unit on motors with what we call Impact Motors that specifically addresses violent crime and any hotspots in the city. You know, I appreciate that because I did not know that I thought that they were interchangeable. So you have a separate. Subsection of motor officers that address violent crime. They're not used interchangeably. Generally, that's the case. But if if we need to move people around for one reason or another or say hypothetically, they're working a special event in the city which may be on overtime, that's apart from what they normally do. So they may be shifted to that specific mission for that day. Okay. So I think therein lies the challenge is some of the things surrounding major events or noise issues along our major corridors. That ends up being an overtime assignment generally. Yes, ma'am. And we're we are very supported by the Office of Traffic Safety in getting grants to specifically address issues surrounding motorcycles. And I know that over the past several years, I have gotten many phone calls and emails from you about concerns about motorcycle issues in and around the second District. And our officers do periodically run operations and make it clear to people in this area that we don't want, for example, very loud muffler noise waking people up at all hours of the day. So we do enforce those sections. Thank you. And since you raised that, I'll ask openly. We know that there are fixed events that come to Long Beach. We have an editorial calendar through the CVB or any special events actually would be probably the best place to be. A sign for weekend support. You know, when we experience the influx of visitors, do we pointedly assign those officers for that time period? Generally, we do. Okay. I appreciate that. Vice mayor that in addition to the ten impact motors that we have budgeted in Prop eight, we have 21 traffic motors for General Traffic patrol and that includes police officers all the way to the rank of lieutenant. Okay. Thank you. That's it for me, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Canterbury Ranga. Thank you, Mayor. And since police is up right now, just go ahead and start with police. First of all, before I begin, I want to compliment my my colleagues for asking many of the questions that I had. So I guess it shortens my level of questioning, but it also we all have interests. And, you know, my interest is obviously with with people. Obviously, we're only as good as the people we hire and the people we recruit. So and having been the former recruitment officer for the city, obviously, I'm very much interested in how we're going to go about finding these new recruits that are going to be filling these new academies coming up. I didn't see it in your budget where you had anything budgeted for recruiting. How are you going to make those assignments, if at all, if you're going to be assigning police officers or or are you going to create a a recruitment task force of of a sergeant or a lieutenant with police officers to go out to these community colleges and police academies to to find these diamonds in the rough, to join to join the Long Beach Police Department. I don't see civil service here, so I'm not sure if it's if it's through them that you're looking at, that the fund is going to come up from budgeting those kinds of events. I know it costs money. It sometimes it costs an entry fee to go to a job fair or or to just the time used to commit the time to to go to these events. Can you I appreciate you will probably don't have an extended plan at this point in terms of how that's going to what that's going to look like. But you have to have at least an idea as to what you foresee in terms of recruiting for the next year, for the next couple of academies. Recruiting a diverse workforce and one that meets the standards of that we have in this police department is one of our top priorities. Civil service is the primary department that is responsible for recruiting, and I think they do a fantastic job. I know that Deputy Chief Beckman, who's sitting in the audience, has been working very hard lately with Candace, our civil service director, and always looking at new and innovative ways of bringing people on board. As a matter of fact, one of the things that we've changed is the entry level test for police officer, where we looked at the city of San Francisco and we looked at the fact that they were they came up with a different test model. And so we're going to be testing it or we did test it this way around. So we're going to see how that helped us. Will Consistently, we do not have an internal budget to recruit. So we use moneys that we're giving. We're given to train and to hire from the academy to fulfill that mission. We have people who who have full time jobs, and then we will hire them on overtime to go out and do it. And we try to find the right personalities to fit that mold. And I think we're doing a very good job, but we can always be doing better. And and a lot of that goes back to the public trust and the community collaboration efforts that we're going to do, our community engagement efforts we're going to be conducting to make sure that we get more people who want to apply for police officer. So a lot of things going on in this profession right now where people are kind of shying away from it and we just got to do a better job of bringing them in the fold and making them realize that they can become the change they want to see if they join us. Okay. Well, are we are we going to be hearing civil service at all during these budget presentations? Mr. West. We Civil. Services ready to. Make a presentation of the. Counsel requested. The only reason I'm asking is because obviously if the commitment is for diversity and for recruiting the best and the brightest and the ones who want to get here, we have to. We have. The only way we're going to show that commitment is by budgeting for it. And I'd like to see that we have a budget for recruiting. That's that we have to put our money where our mouth is in that respect. But it's not. I don't need an answer now, but I certainly want to see something in there that shows the city's commitment. To hiring a diverse police department and getting the best and brightest. And I want to say the same for the fire department as well. I want to see that kind of commitment. I don't see it here in tonight's budget presentations, but I certainly want to see that commitment somewhere being presented to city council. That that you are committed to that. Well. Councilmember Mayor. Both the fire department and the police. Department are definitely committed to that. And you can see that when you look at. The folks that are in the academy. But we'll talk to the civil service and. Get back to you on what the budget is. And civil service to facilitate the. Attraction of the best and the. Brightest. Not good. Another thing that last year I did not see in the civil service budget is a recruiting component either. I mean, it was the recruiting division that was there is gone. So the. I'm just curious as to how you're going to go about doing this without having a specific fund going towards recruiting. So you certainly think about like I said, I don't need an answer now, but I'd like to to have the city have a a stated commitment towards diversity, towards recruiting and and getting the best that we possibly can. I appreciate that. Thank you. The other question I have for police is that the transfer of these 65 dispatchers that's going to go from there, going from police to disaster preparedness. From police and fire to the dispatchers assigned to police. And the fire department will be transferred to the new division. And in doing that, I notice that in the in the disaster preparedness component on page 21, I guess it was talking about. Also recruiting efforts in that. In that respect, I know that the dispatching is a very difficult job, very stressful. The people who answer a911 calls are are doing God's work. When you're thinking about it because you're answering to a person, a person's call who's under distress, and that person has to demonstrate a high level of of tolerance and understanding to be able to respond to those calls. And you're talking about this cross training of of dispatchers in police and fire. Is it to understand the different protocols in regards to how you respond to a police response or how you respond to a fire as opposed to a fire type of call? I really didn't mean for you to do that. But you're there. As councilmember, I appreciate the question and in your description of the difficulties, the challenging work that these dispatches have, I often describe it as multitasking on steroids while they are listening to a resident describe what is, in most cases, the worst day of their lives, and simultaneously putting that information into a computer, a computer aided dispatch systems or into some technology. But our focus in phase one, as you described, is to eliminate the transfer of that call when that resident is in that heated moment describing the worst day of their lives, and then to have to momentarily be put on hold and transferred over to the other dispatchers there, we see this as a service improvement. We've been working at this for a couple of years now, just working on the protocols primarily and some cross training with our supervisors so that we can understand how we'll be able to accomplish this. But the major hurdle for us has been up to this point, the vacancy factors. And if council members who are part of the Public Safety Advisory Committee recall back in November when I reported out we had vacancy rates at about 30% and overtime in excess of a of $1,000,000. And so we could not begin across training program until we impacted both of those areas. And and we have our vacancy factors known as I reported earlier, are at 3% and 5% respectively. And we have reduced overtime by 30%. And over the course of the next month, we will reduce that even further as more and more of these trainees are coming out of the academy. So we're approaching this cautiously. We're being diligent in our in our in our in our approach. And we have oversight them working with us in terms of police and fire to ensure that no operational protocols are violated as we move forward. Okay. Thank you for that for that response that you said it's going to be it's so hard work in some of these consolidations. Is there any opportunities for. Well, maybe not opportunities, but any impacts on positions that would would require putting that many people into a into a different. I'm guessing there's a there's a there's a there's a transfer not only of of the positions from one department to another, but also a transfer of positions from one location to another. I think I know we used to have a dispatch center here in the in the in the basement of City Hall, which was fire with police . And then we had fire in a different, different location on the community. Is that what we're talking about as well in terms of putting them in one location? We currently the dispatchers are co-located in the emergency operations center. And that second floor level, they're they they've been co-located since that building was established about 12 years ago. Co-located, but separate on that second floor, they're separated by a wall between the two disciplines. We do not anticipate position eliminations as a result of of consolidation and cross-training. All of the skills that are currently being provided in the center will continue to be provided through the cross-training program. And as I said, it's a phased approach. So those those those staff that we have invested a considerable amount of training in will continue to be valuable assets to us on a go forward basis. Okay. Thank you. In terms of police and you still there, Chief? Yes, we have a what we have had in the past. And I see that we continue to have an agreement with Long Beach City College and providing them with the security services. Has there been any changes in that contract at all? Has there been any increase? A decrease is what what what's that looking like right now? As far as sworn officers, there has not been a change in that service that we provide to Long Beach City College. I believe if you've seen any changes. It's for the dispatching department. Have we made any changes to the contract amount? Has it gone up or down the last? Couple of years. Always remain flat. As far as I know, it's remained flat, but we'll research it. And if that's not the case, we'll get back to you on that. I mean, not that I would want to increase the fees for City College, but, you know, if it if we're making these changes in terms of staffing and and in our dispatching, that's a cost. And and there's some opportunity to recover some costs. I would certainly want to to explore that opportunity if if it exists. If not, that's fine. Yeah. And there should be. From my notes here, there should not be any changes. Changes in the last several years. My questions regarding the R&D have been, uh, have been addressed. I'm not going to ask any more on that one. The last question that I have is, uh, in the. Well, actually, I think I think I'm done. I think I know what's been asked for. And if I may clarify one of your earlier questions about recruiting. In looking at our numbers, the council mayor were generous enough to give us $1.5 million to hire the last class in this upcoming class. Part of the cost or the charges that we take from there are recruiting. That's part of it. Civil service still primarily is involved with recruiting, but that's how we pay overtime for officers, a special group of officers who are trained to go out and specifically recruit for us. I appreciate that. That's wonderful. I did find my my last item here. That was with the fire I looked at was asked already by one of my colleagues. But in terms of the implementation of the first responder fee and you're you're. Ability to try to implement it as soon as possible. There was a concern raised by the Council in regards to making it not as cost prohibitive for members of the community who may not be able to afford those fees. How well are we going with that? We look at. It. Council member. Thank you. The part of the work that we're doing with with Mr. GROSS and the financial management team and the fire department folks is working on the hardship waiver and the process by which a member of our community, should they be able to demonstrate a financial hardship, would be supported by the city through existing policies or or other other means. So that will be part of the report or the two from four. Or the. Letter that we will issue you prior to implementation. Yeah. I also asked about the possibility of a a user fee that would go into the. The building system. I'm sorry. Yes, Councilmember, the council did ask us to you did ask us to look into the possibility of a subscription fee. There are a number of agencies in the Southern California region that have implemented subscription fees to varying degrees of success. And that also that information and our research will be included in that in that communication back to council as well. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. That's all I have. Councilmember Austin. Yes. I'd like to also thank our department heads, our chief fire chief police chief and our new chief of Disaster Preparedness Emergency Management. Mr. Harrison, for great presentations. This has been a very informative and I like Councilmember Urunga. I'm short on questions because many of the questions that I had, I have already been asked. So I will do my best to be brief. In the 2014 budget. Chief Luna, we we appropriated, I think, $250,000 or so somewhere around that to work toward getting guns off of the streets from those who are classified as prohibited possessors . Does this budget address that category or do we have any specific plans in there for 16 to to attack that issue? I think we had some success was just just researching and found a press release so that we we actually took a significant amount of guns off the street through that that program a couple of years ago . Um, and I will give you credit for, for giving me that suggested a few years ago to, uh, to look at that area. Well, during our first gun back buyback program, are we working to. To eliminate prohibited possessors from having guns. In and you're right in FY14, we had additional funding that the council was generous enough to provide to us where we formed a specialized unit temporarily to address some of these issues. And just a quick recap on some of those stats. We had 30 arrests, 26 felonies for misdemeanors, 55 firearms recovered, which included six assault rifles, three rifles, four shotguns, 42 handguns, ten search warrants, 86 probation searches and 42 searches with the California Department of Justice. So it was successful. We do not have immediate plans to take it to that level. We are going to try and utilize as much of the 2.2 million in in regards to doing this part time, if we can, as staffing allows. Well, I'd just like to just comment on that and say kudos to LV PD. It shows that when we as the City Council make a commitment to to public safety in a targeted fashion, that we can have success. And and I like for this Council to give strong consideration to maintaining our commitment to to getting guns off off of the streets, that that program, I think, proved successful and would merit our attention in terms of redirecting or finding new resources. And is this budget to do that? I would I would venture to say that lives were likely saved as a result of that effort and the commitment of the city council. So I know that we'll be talking about this budget over the next few weeks. Certainly, I would ask that my colleagues take note of that and as well as our police chief and city manager. So. Thank you, Chief. That was the question I wanted to ask to the fire chief. You feel? I think much attention has been given to the R&D pilot model and I guess the jury is still out. We are moving forward with budgeting. We're making decisions based on assumptions that it will be maintained and successful. But I was curious to know noticed that you said that 21 positions were eliminated. How many of those were were identified as sworn positions? Councilmember, if you're referring to the budget presentation that I gave there, there is a section in there where we talked about some of the changes we made this year. It was 24 vacant positions that were basically not filled since 2008. We've been carrying those positions in our budget, but they haven't been filled since 2008. So it doesn't actually affect any person. It's basically making our our budget reflective of how we actually deploy every day, if that makes sense. Okay. So maybe maybe it's semantics that I said 24, 24 positions eliminated, but they were they're no longer going to be there, right? That's true. That is a true statement. Yesterday emanating from your budget. How many of those positions were sworn positions? And was there any is there a correlation with the R&D program in terms of your staffing? Councilmember All of those positions would have been our would be sworn positions. They would have all been firefighter positions. So as I mentioned during my presentation in 2008 where we did the daily engine reduction, then we went to a second daily engine reduction. We basically had the positions budgeted, but because we weren't filling them, we realized the savings. And so they just kind of lingered in our budget up until this point. So because we needed to realize about a $200,000 savings, this was a way to make our our actual deployment model reflected in our budget. So it all lined up and at the same time saved $200,000, which means they didn't have to impact any of our existing operational capability this year. Had we not done this, then I would have had to realize an operational efficiency and some way to get to that $200,000. So we're talking 24 positions. And forgive me if my my math is fuzzy right now. It's getting late, but that seems like it adds up to way more than $200,000 savings. Well, so it's it's a and I'm going to let my administrative bureau chief David Honey handle this. So the way this the way this works is we back the positions out, and then we have to put the value of the overtime back into our budget and it nets out to 200,000. But David can't answer the specific budget part. That's essentially it council member US and the way chief explained it when we did keep these positions budgeted in what we would call an overstaffed model, those positions at least budgetary reduced callback over time in our constant staffing model. So as we return these or as we would delete these positions that are or have always been vacant, the callback over time would at least budgetary would increase, but it would the increase would be less than the cost of those positions that were being reduced. Okay. So I guess I'll just just comment that, you know, I have some concerns about the elimination of positions. We still have uncertainty with this this pilot program that we are involved in. I mean, I know you feel confident that that it will will be supported and ultimately be adopted by your Ms. the county of your agency . But I think we the jury is still out. And I think it's a risky call. It just that's just my, my, my comment on that. Um, Mr. Harrison, thank you. The B and again I said I'd be sure. See? The cross-training Mr. Wanga or Councilmember Baraka touched on. Actually, part of my question, and that was the the cross training between the fire and police dispatchers. And from my experience, just working with other public agencies, I know you have a high turnover rate. Right now. You said the the the vacancy rate is only 3 to 5%. Is that correct? Correct. Well, kudos to correct. And the civil service and recruiting process for for turning that around. I mean, it's been absolutely a month or so since we've done that. And so that's good news. I'm curious to know with what the retention rate is for for for those employees. So retention. Thank you very much. I know you're you were present when we made the presentation back in November to the Public Safety Advisory Commission. And we talked about the challenges that we were facing at that time. And working with police and fire, civil service and others. We in a city manager's office very supportive. We implemented some efficiencies in the recruitment in terms of bringing in new public safety dispatchers. That has paid benefits, obviously, to us. Retention is very high in this in this workforce. The the difficulties in the early years of employment where you really mastering learning this task. But once that's been overcome, we have dispatchers that have we have a number of dispatchers that have been in the center for 30 years, which gives me some concern, because some of those are going to be retiring. But but you can see you have dispatchers with five years of experience and it is a huge jump to dispatcher the 15 to 20 years of experience. So retention levels are pretty high once they get through the training. And just forgive me, the cross training, is it the ultimate goal to have a dispatcher be able to answer any call at any time from fire or police? That's correct. We'd like to have a dispatcher be able to when they pick up that phone, they're able to initially take the call from one of four from a resident requesting police, fire or emergency medical services. Currently, fire department employees provide emergency medical dispatching, and we will continue to provide that service to our residents. So we're going to phase in we're going to work at the call taker position first. We understand that and be able to implement that piece of the of the program at a much later date. We'll look at the dispatching operations. All right. Thank you very much. Great work. Councilman Hughes. Mr. Harris, you can stay right there. Don't go anywhere. You guys can tie mine any more than 30 seconds. Cut my mike off. I like that. We're going home now. Real quickly. I just have one question, Mr. Harris, and that is, how do you educate the general public on disaster preparedness? The question is how do we how do we educate that? So we take a whole community approach on educating the public. We talk often about police and fire, and of course, they have a substantial role that they play. But our entire community plays a role in disaster preparedness, including our houses of worship, nonprofits, all of our residents, the American Red Cross, they all play a role. And so opportunities like coming out to council district offices and making presentations to the community on September the 12th, we have a large resource fair, really Long Beach. We also participated recently in resource fairs and District seven and two as well. One as well recently. We provide outreach, education opportunities in a variety of ways. On the 27th, if I may plug this one, we have a an outreach or training program that is specifically targeted to those areas of the community that was impacted by the power outage recently. We really want to get into those those those communities. They help them to better understand how they can sustain themselves for five days in a cost effective manner. Thank you. And I really wanted to let everyone know that just goes to show you how you guys jumped into service and really helped an awful lot of people during that time. Next, I'd like to have our. Thank you, Mr. Harris. You can sit down now. Now, the fire department, what percentage of the fire department, you know, calls for medical. So what percentage? Councilmember Right now, we trained about 84% of our total annual call volume is for emergency medical service. Thank you. And please. Yes, sir. What is the plan? What is the police doing to replace the officers that are, you know, retiring? Our normal attrition rate. Each year between 25 and 35 officers. And this year, we expect about the same. And again, all of your support and allowing us to recruit and hire and train new police officers with the current academy. And then the one that we plan on having for this coming year will hopefully keep us up or keep up with attrition that we're losing, the officers that we're losing. Very simple. Thank you very much, Chief. And I want to thank our yes for coming up and giving us your input on the things that we need here for the city of Language. Thank you again. Councilman Gonzalez. Okay. Look, they're all staring at me like, who's next? We'll start with P.D., Chief, since you're right there. I first want to thank all three of the departments because the work has just been tremendous for many years, but just as of late, because of the power outages and so much that has happened just lately, especially in the first in certain areas with gang activity and just shootings that have happened, although we're not at the levels we'd like to be, I think the commitment to using discretionary funding for gang suppression for me is, is, is tremendous. So thank you for that. Also the community engagement. Chief, I think your yourself your staff has really remained committed to that. The events, the the community policing has just been it's been great. And I've seen the the big impacts it's made. I have a couple questions. So some retirements and people just leaving the police department, has that impacted us at all? Has that been a big contributor to our vacancies and our staffing levels? It consistently is. It's a constant challenge to keep up with attrition. But again, the support that all of you have given us financially and we have a great team that continuously is recruiting and hiring and training officers and we are now in our third straight academy, about to hire a fourth. So I'm very hopeful that we can keep up, continue to keep up with the attrition rate that we have. Okay. Great. And thank you. And I know you mentioned that. And also, let's see here, I think there are a few things are already answered. Um, I feel like there's another question, but I'll ask this question is just, I'm just curious how many police division officers do we have? How many do we have currently? I'm having Mara right to my right. Look at that. I want to say it's in the area of about 20 something. Give me a quick second and we'll we'll take a quick look. We have 34. Cores. 35.2 assigned to the port. Okay, well, we'll keep 35. How about that? Okay, wonderful. I think everything else had been answered. So. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Thank you for your work. Thank you. And I'm our chief of fire. Chief, my three. I also want to thank you for your work and all of your especially the efforts with CERT. I think I saw them firsthand with the power outages and just seeing what they do day to day as it was. It was just great. I have a question. As far as the first responder fee, I know that when we had talked about this the last time, the first responder fee, you had mentioned it, coming back conservatively for collection rates at 50%, which is still pretty low. What are we looking at as far as improving our. I know we're looking at that, improving our collection rates. Thank you, Councilmember. When we gave our our presentation on the first responder fee, our estimation or our numbers were predicated on a 20% rate of return, which which is a very conservative estimate, given our historical perspective in that arena with regard to collection rates, that I guess that is a question that would be better posed towards our Director of financial management as that the billing folks fall under his shop. But I can tell you that we do everything we can to work with them, to submit the necessary reports to them in a timely manner so we can have the opportunity to build. And now as part of it, also part part of my question too is some of it in-house and then outsourced? How does that work? The collection rate for ambulance billing is a bit difficult and may be misleading. A lot of the ambulance bills are. Paid by. Medicare and medical at less than 100%. And when you make that calculation, you end up with a low collection rate when in fact the collection has been made at the authorized level. So Medicare and Medicaid only pay a small percentage of the total bill. So that has an impact in determining the collection rate. And it's pretty standard across the country, I don't think. I suspect our rate is probably a little better or certainly at least the same as other people. We do not have a low collection rate. To further answer your question, that in in Long Beach, we have a lot of collections from insurance. We have a lot of collections from Medicare and Medi-Cal or as but as I said, it's at a lower percentage because that's what the law is. We also have a lot of buildings that have no address and there's no opportunity to make those collections and there is no process or procedure that we can use. And I think it might be better to say, nor should we use to try to collect that money. So overall, we use the normal set of collection procedures. We send out bills. We do go where it's appropriate to a collection agency, and after an appropriate time, we write these bills off again. Our collection rates are, at the very least, pretty normal. My guess is that they are better than normal. And we and just to clarify, so it's all through a collection and outside collection agency, not through. Our. No. I know most of our collections are done in-house and most of our bills are paid in-house. It is only at the very end of the process do we turn it over to a collection agency, and we will be in the process of reevaluating and going out an RFP with it for a new collection agency within the next year. Okay, great. And then my last question is the marine safety position. What was what is the role of this vacancy exactly? And then the amount? Councilmember it's a it's 150,000 $145,000 a year that our target there that we're trying to get back to. Historically, over the past number of years, this position has been called a vacation relief spot. This position, although it's been vacant for some time, it has allowed our Marine safety chief the flexibility of staffing the organization with a 24 hour dove capability and having this position filled either with overtime or other other personnel work on our rescue boats and peak load staff in certain areas throughout the summer. So currently, although we say it's vacant, there's not a body assigned to that position. The Marine Safety Chief has effectively utilized that position for operational needs. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then I'll have Reggie come up. Reggie, and thank you also for all of your work. Just real quickly, one question. So I see that over about 250 employees received emergency response. Preparedness, I guess training. What type of training was it or what was. So we we trained to a FEMA standard. So when you when you've seen some of the national report, I was like at Hurricane Sandy or the Boston Marathon and you've seen where they've called upon the logistics section leader who to come out to talk about what are their priorities? Are you seeing the finance section chief or planning those kinds of sections? So we we we train to those kinds of standards. First of all, they put us in the best position to be able to manage an incident because we do them to standards. We manage the incident. The other thing is that by doing it to this standard, it puts us in the best position to be reimbursed for expenditures as well. So incident command structure is very, very important to us and we certainly roll that out and fell into that role as a part of our recent power outage management team . Okay, great. Thank you very much. That's all for my questions. Counsel for Super Now. Thank you and thank you to all our presenters tonight. Great job. I just had a one question. Most of the questions have been asked and answered, but I just wanted some clarification from Chief Luna on the. A follow up on Councilman Richardson's question about the field gang enforcement unit. I guess the clarification I'd like is. I think we're talking about the difference between a unit or section that exists versus the function they perform and where you no longer have the field gang unit, someone is performing that type of function still with the police department, correct. We have a variety of specialized units in the field that have taken on that responsibility because we don't have the the field unit to do that any longer. Okay. I just want to make that. It's like the unit goes away, but the function is still being performed. So I just, you know, violent crime and gangs is still one of our priorities and we're addressing it with every man and woman we have. Okay. Thank you. And the only other comment I want to make is just my enthusiasm over the community engagement division for communications. And just an anecdote on that, how important that is. This past early Saturday morning, 1 a.m., we had a power outage in the in the fourth District. And right away, within the hour, I got it. And I'd like to name these guys because they did such a great job from the fire department, battalion chief Espino and from the PD Lieutenant Bergen Camp both contacted me within that hour and we were able to get that information out to the public through social media. So I think that's one of the real keys. So I know this is under police for the community engagement, but I'd sure like to see fire and everyone involved in that because I look like the hero when I put all the information out and all the credit goes to fire police in that case, in fact, someone comment on on social media that the fourth district councilman was faster than the SC website. I'm not sure if that's a high bar or not, but I was glad to take that credit. So in fact, if police and fire can do that directly, I happened to be up at 1:30 a.m. studying the budget, of course, and but if that could go directly out from police and fire to the community, I think that's ideally where we want to be. So thank you. Thank you. And Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. Well, so much of what we've come here to discuss has already been been answered. A couple of quick compliments to our police department since you're in the hot seat. First and foremost, I've really appreciated the embracing of the Department of Justice best practices with recruitment in regards to involving the community. And a lot of the neighbors of the fifth District have really enjoyed being a part of the team that has evaluated the two prior classes of of officers. And I think it's an eye opening experience for neighbors to sit in a room with people who would like to give their life to service and and become police officers . And it really gives you a taste of the kinds of individuals that you're bringing on. And I think you're doing an excellent job. I know that it's hard to lose members of the Academy class, but above all else, I appreciate that the number one thing that we're looking at is the standards. If someone's not cutting it, we cannot put them on the streets. Our community is just too important and our community's safety is too important. So thank you for that. I have some questions about your detectives bureau. How many members are currently in the Detectives Bureau? Is looking that up for me to give you a specific number. So anecdotally, what I'm hearing is that a lot of those individuals are very passionate about what they do and they stay in that division for a really long time, which is great because the quality of service that we're getting. My main concern, though, is as as some of our most regarded detectives and professionals are are retiring. What is our plan to bring in new talent in that area over time and. I don't know the specifics of how to say it, but almost everyone in that unit is of the same tenure, and that timeline is getting close . That is something we consistently concern ourselves with. And by the way, that number is 142 and it you do lose experience when people do retire. And our best estimates are that that we probably will have probably on the higher end maybe 35 retiring not all our all out of investigations of course it's throughout the department but at the same time, it gives younger officers an opportunity to go in and and learn a new job and eventually bring in that enthusiasm and passion that everybody before them once had. The only thing from a department perspective that we continuously focus on and are deputy chiefs and commanders do an excellent job, is that we will rotate people through some of these assignments. If somebody out there is doing an excellent job, we may rotate them into violent crimes or robbery or burglary, and they gain extra experience. We also focus a whole lot on training, both internal training of the department and external training opportunities. The city manager's office really supports us in sending people out of town to very valuable training, and we realistically are keeping an eye on the future and making sure that we're we're training our employees for for the future. Well, I appreciate that. I know that when you have a team of bad guys in a community, they can have several victims. And unless the detectives and the investigations are really going forward and we have the resources to go out and fingerprint in those areas and do the things we need to do. Catching those guys can take longer and more victims can happen. And so I really appreciate the work they're doing. I know our interactions with that team has been fantastic and so thank you for what you're doing with that. I understand this is a status quo budget, which means that should. The Council bring forward a marijuana ordinance that we would be looking to allocate significant additional resources to your department that we don't currently have available. That is an accurate statement. Yes. When it comes and I've I think I'm on the record saying this, that history has shown us that having these clinics both operating. I'm not going to say legally because I don't know if that's even the appropriate term. But operating in the city, we had a lot of citizen complaints about the activity in and around these locations which increase our workload. So obviously with these clinics coming in, based on our past experience, it would increase the workload of our men and women on the street, which is going to impact our service overall negatively. Well, that's a big concern for me. I know that we've talked a lot, specifically with my East Division commander, about the quality of life issues that we're really lean on being able to address. And I know Commander Griffin and your team have gone above and beyond to increase the safety in our parks and to look at our our traffic issues that we have from neighbors who visit through the community without regard to our are our street signs that tell very clearly posted speed limits. And so as as resources, then I would be concerned about additional funding that would result from a potential ordinance of such. And I would want to be sure that should we move in that direction as a council, that you have more than adequate resources available to ensure that the safety of our neighbors is our number one priority. Because in this district we've had several drug issues already this year that I think you and your team have done an excellent job addressing. And I also want to give credit to code enforcement, because code enforcement and PD had to work really closely on some of our more conspicuous neighbors that needed to be moved along. So thank you for your work on that. I know that some neighbors have reached out recently that one of our our neighborly criminals has recently gotten back out of jail, but that I hope that we're back on the case and working hard with the investigative team again. And so thank you for coming out to neighborhood night out and keeping the neighbors up to date on what's going on, because it's really important that we know where we stand and to protect our community. With that, we move on to fire. Chief. Chief, first and foremost, thank you for what you've done on the East Side in the last year. Our response times that I've been reviewing have been fantastic. I heard from a neighbor off of Bellflower and Wood Wardlow that had the fire department been there, any leader, any leader at all, she doesn't think that her husband would have survived. And so to the great to the great work of your community, every life is important. Could you specifically communicate the reduction in mutual aid? The fifth District borders several other cities, and we used to rely so heavily on mutual aid. And this year you've done an excellent job ensuring that the the dispatch has been able to accommodate each and every call from the Fifth District at a significant reduction. Could you get us those numbers? It comes from I don't have the the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I'll do my best to go back and summarize what we found over the past year. We used to rely on the fifth District borders, Orange County Fire Authority primarily, and a little bit of Los Angeles County Fire Department. Orange County Fire Authority a year ago, over a year ago, would typically respond into the east side of Long Beach about 17 times a month, if I recall that correctly, about 17 times a month. And starting last July with our new program, we put in place because we have more apparatus available to respond on medical calls, which is primarily what we do. We we lowered that number down to one or two times a month from Orange County Fire Authority and the L.A. County side of things in North Long Beach and the northern end of the fifth District, we saw a more dramatic reduction in our reliance on mutual aid. And I don't have that number off the top of my head. And I wouldn't I don't want to make it up, so I'm happy to provide that to you. But we did see a more dramatic reduction in mutual aid requests from L.A. County Fire. We've reviewed those reports and we think that it's fantastic having our trained Long Beach Fire Department deployed regularly. The men and women that are at the stations that serve those neighbors regularly specifically, we have a few of our senior neighbors who call on the fire department often. And it's so important that our officers respond because they know those neighbors and the concerns more intimately. So the fifth District has really benefited from that. And we really appreciate it. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Councilmember Ranga. I would be remiss if I did not thank the police and fire departments for their fire. 101 police went on that you gave what you put us through the training, put it put us in the in the heat of the fire and in went with the fire department and got the feel of the the equipment and the heat that that our firefighters go through. And, of course, the the orientation that we got from the police department and and how difficult the job it can be and how easily a simple police stop of a traffic stop can escalate into something horrible. And I really want to thank you for giving us that orientation and exposure to see that it helps us in terms of orienting us in terms of what the what an important job you do. And I really and I really want to thank you for that. Thank you. And in chief, as you as you closed, I just want to reconfirm something. I know there's been some some questions in the community. While I know that we've been taking the five year average for for violent crime, and we're monitoring that. It's my understanding that on the on the very important number of of murders, which right know we track very closely citywide as of today, from what I understand, there has not been an increase in murders. It's about the same as last year. I mean, maybe give or take one or two. I mean, everyone obviously is is is an issue and we should take seriously. But I believe it's about the same as last year. Is that correct? Yes. Currently, we stand at the same level of murders that we did at this time last year. Which at which as last year was a historic low. It was. So we're still at that same from a murder point of view. We're still kind of facing a historic low number. And obviously, we're very hopeful that the fact that that trend continues clearly. Yes. And just as I stated earlier, if you look across the country, at most of the big, big cities across the country, they're experiencing significant increases. So we're we struggled a little bit this year, but our men and women are doing an extraordinary job. And and we'll keep on working and chipping away at it. And from from my understanding of listening to what's happening in some of the other urban cities, the increase in the murder rate has not just jumped, but dramatically jumped in many cases in a lot of urban centers. That's correct. I think the average was about 19% across the country, especially on the East Coast. So I think as far as for for Long Beach is concerned, to to see that level of consistency, while certainly, you know, murders, we know we want we don't want any to happen, obviously, in our community. But to have that historic low, I think stay stay the same is not just a testament to the work that the men and women of your department do, but also to the really continuum of public safety practices that we have. I think the work that's happening in the parks, in our schools, through our health department, through our non-profits, it just goes to show, even with all the additional pressures, that you guys are just doing an incredible job. So thank you for that. You're very welcome. And if I could just make another comment, there is is community support, because when we get these crimes, we need people to call us if they see something, they need to say something. And when we do get a shooting or a homicide, for people to come forward and be witnesses is a tremendous help and helps prevent further crimes in the city. And we've been getting that and we're very fortunate as a city. Well, thank you, Chief. We'll obviously keep watching all these numbers with interest. So thank you. There's a motion and a second on the floor. Any public comment on the budget hearing? Please come forward. Good evening. I'll try and be brief though. I don't know if I'll match. Kelsey, my brother Andrews. My name's Erin Fletcher on the president of the Long Beach Lifeguard Association. Thank you very much. Honorable mayor and council member for the time and leading da. Thank you, Councilwoman, for bringing up a larger than my point. The $150,000 that we're talking about coming from the Marine safety budget isn't money that's just sitting there not used. Our chiefs been able to use it to enhance the dove response for the 24 hour capabilities. So if we do can't cut that vacant position, we do lose service. It impacts the service model that we're providing to the community right now. The good news. And what I saw tonight is that the two vacant Marine safety officer positions that we have are should be slated to be filled. And so I'm hopeful that Chief Medina will be contacted very soon by civil service to be allowed to fill those requisitions that he said he's put in for as well. For that. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker, please. Thank you. Hello. Good evening, City Council. I know it's really late. I feel like we're all watching the countdown. Right? What time will we get out of here? So I'll make this as fast as I can. My name is Jen. Victor Anderson. I am with ECI Communities for Environmental Justice, and also I work with the Long Beach Language Access Coalition. In light of this budget hearing, you know, we're talking about the Long Beach Police, Fire Department and even the emergency preparedness with all the different the the blackouts that have happened, the issues have been going on in the city. And so we're here as a Language Access Coalition to talk about the importance and the need to continue to advocate for language access here in Long Beach. We want to recognize the progress that the the city has done with language access on translating documents, recognition across various departments as well as the continued funding that's been approved. I know we mentioned it in the Budget Oversight Committee to the I believe it's 80,000. It's approved for next year. Still, we do grow concerned that from the previous fiscal year out of the $250,000 that was allocated for language access, $70,000 was unspent. And it's important to note, because the community is waiting for through language access to be implemented here in the city. And while we're waiting, we wonder why was the money not spent? What were the parts of the language access policy for fiscal year 15? Where was the money spent and how are we making sure the residents from all across the city are getting access to various resources and various aspects of city? We asked the City Council to continue to fund language access, but also to prioritize public display and signage, phone lines and voicemails, front stop or alley languages. And also we wanted to note that the with the mere suggestion for a single phone line for next year's budget, we hope that this phone line also includes Latin language accessibility for people that don't necessarily speak English. We want to ensure that language access is incorporated in budgeting and planning. We ask the language access in future years is be integrated and itemized in every department. The budget has on an ongoing priority. For instance, the mayor has directed parks, synagogues and other departments to integrate funding for future years of the B.C. Youth Program. We believe the same can be done for language access. And finally, we asked the city to schedule development services in one of the upcoming budget hearings that the issue of language access can be further discussed. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Seeing no other public comment, there's a that was a hearing the motion on the floor to receive and file the hearing. Please cast your votes. Well, she carries eight zero. And we're going to go to 28 who actually was not aware that there's actually a group here for 28. So now I am so we're here 28 now and.

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2019 Budget for the following Departments: Public Works, Parks, Recreation and Marine, Development Services, Library Services, and Health and Human Services.

LongBeachCC_08212018_18-0705

Think I'm going to pick up on that? Okay. We're going to transition to our first hearing. Which is our budget hearing that we're going to have similar to last week. And as a reminder tonight, we will be discussing public works, the Parks Department, Development Services, the Library Department and our Health and Human Services Department. So all of those are up for for discussion as part of the budget hearing today. And so with that, I'm going to go ahead and have the clerk read the item. Hearing. Item one is a report from financial management, a recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2019 budget for Public Works, Parks, Recreation, Marine Development Services, Library Services, and Health and Human Services Budget. Oh, that's it. And thank you. Let me turn this over to Mr. Modica. Thank you, Mayor, and members of the council. So we're happy to be here tonight to talk a little bit about the work of a number of our departments. You heard last week, as the mayor said, from our public safety departments and the departments are going to hear to from tonight are really part of what we call our public safety continuum. So public safety is really the number one thing that a city does, but they don't do it alone. It's not police and fire by themselves. They're supported by so many other people throughout the organization. And so you'll be hearing from a number of those departments. So we'd like you to just keep that in mind is when you see public works, when you see Parks and Rec, when you see development services, they're all working on that same mission to try to keep us all safe and make this an amazing community. And with that, we'll start with public works and turn it over to our director, Craig Beck. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, mayors, city council and community members. My name is Craig Beck and I'm the director of Public Works. I have the opportunity this evening to provide a brief overview of the department's fiscal year 19 budget. Of course, services for public works include the maintenance, rehabilitation of the cities, rights of way infrastructure, including streets, sidewalks and urban forest. The department also provides services supporting a healthy and sustainable city environment, including waste diversion, stormwater management and enhancing livability. And finally, we provide for the safe and efficient design, construction and maintenance of our public facilities. For fiscal year 18, I wanted to highlight a few accomplishments, which we've had a very busy year with significant efforts to further the city's sustainability goals, including the collection of 190,000 tons of trash and 25,000 tons of recycling that was diverted from the waste stream. This equals about 19.5 million trash bags. That's a lot of work by our dedicated crews. The clean team responded to 85,000 requests. 15,000 of those came from the Golden Beach app. They collected 22,000 illegally dumped items and 17,000 mattresses. Yes. 17,000 mattresses. They address 300 homeless encampments and supported 195 neighborhood cleanups. And I want to personally thank all the volunteers who clean their communities. It makes a big difference and a positive impact. Citywide, the city continues with its conversion of our street lights to LEDs. This year, the focus will be on completing the 3000 historic style post top lights and the remaining lights in our city parks. This effort is saving enough electricity to power 350 homes and reducing the city's electrical cost by $330,000 annually. Investment in infrastructure continues as staff delivers the many measure funded projects. Some key areas that enhance livability in Long Beach include a new Bellflower Boulevard Protected Bike Lane, the new Sixth Street Bike Boulevard. Also, construction is underway for the new Daisy Bike Boulevard, connecting uptown to downtown. The city's bike share has reduced traffic by 70,000 vehicle trips as people take an easier and healthier option. Riding 200,000 miles this year on our blue bikes, keep it up. The Public Works Street Team received over 33,000 requests for service. This number of requests sometimes overwhelms resources, but crews worked overtime to deliver, filling 28,000 potholes, trimming 20,000 trees, removing 1.2 million square feet of graffiti, installing 4300 street signs, and supporting 100 road closures for special events. Last week, there was a lot of discussion about the city's capital improvement program, but it did want to re-emphasize the significant progress being made in updating city streets, completing 43 lane miles this year and 49% over the first two years of our overall plan. There are roughly 500 hardworking men and women who support making Long Beach a great city. This will continue. They will continue these efforts in fiscal year 19, implementing priorities, supporting supported by the $199 million budget. Notable changes in the Department for 2019 include the clean team as as the clean team grows as the city experiences an increase in illegal dumping. To assist with managing the tens of thousands of request of clean team support, I am proposing to add a new supervisor position to the operation. This individual will provide improved communication and coordination with partner departments as well as better engagement with our residents. The department is also working to reorganize operations, creating a team to focus on project management. This change will provide for more efficient delivery of capital projects for parks and public facilities. This budget also includes a proposal to transition construction management activities to city employees. Adding city inspectors is more cost effective, will streamline processes, help retain institutional knowledge, and to develop individuals with the skills necessary to oversee all aspects of projects in the city's public right of way. Both public and private projects. The ordinance banning use of expanded polystyrene was adopted by this Council on June 3rd, 2018. As a reminder, phase one will go into effect on September 3rd, 2018, and includes all city facilities and operations, including our leased facilities and city special events. Staff has initiated the I Choose to Reuse campaign educating the community about the impacts of polystyrene and available green options. Hopefully we've all had a chance to look at the bag that was left for you tonight. The city operates under a municipal national pollutant discharge elimination system. That's a mouthful. We just call it PDFs, which is still a mouthful, but that really regulates stormwater that enters into our storm drain systems. Under this permit, the city is now required to inspect industrial and commercial facilities that are significant sources of pollutants in stormwater staff as well. Staff has estimated that there are over 2000 facilities that must be inspected twice during a five year permit cycle. And a new position is needed to conduct this work. Challenges and opportunities. Take one look in downtown and you will notice a significant amount of construction activity. While this is good for the economy, it is also creating challenges for delivery of city projects. Because of the high demand for qualified contractors, bid pricing is exceeding available project budgets, requiring a change in scope or identifying additional funding. Most recently, tariffs are also having an impact driving up costs on imported materials. In this competitive environment, the city's traditional purchasing processes are hampering staff's ability to bid, negotiate, finalize and deliver needed projects. New strategies are required to meet new demands, and the team is working to review procedures to see where efficiencies can be added. I hope to provide council with some recommendations in the coming year. The competitive job market is also creating challenges with retention and recruitment of qualified staff. Public works and civil service are working together on new opportunities to streamline the testing process. Hopefully, this will help attract a new generation of workers. The department continues to find new ways to engage our residents and communicate using technology and social media. Our various public works social media outlets have over 11,000 followers and have become a go to channel for the community to express their questions and comments about projects. We are also beginning to utilize Facebook Live and other similar video streaming sites as a way to share project updates, educate residents on existing services and introduce new ones. Updating our online presence and improving the current Go Long Beach application is also necessary to meet the demands of increased workload. We strive to improve how public works, communicates with our residents and plan to make social media and communication in general a key goal for 2019. Lastly, I want to highlight new funding from this SB one state gas tax. The city is expecting an additional $8 million each year to help deliver much needed street and sidewalk projects, with a backlog of over 500 million a need. This funding is crucially important. In fiscal year 19, 11th Street projects are planned because of SB one. That concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions. Thank you. I think what we're going to do is we're going to break this up. And so we were here. We're going to go out and hear public works and parks and then development services and maybe do questions for those. And that way, with then all of the questions are at once. If there's any objection to that, we're okay. All right. Well, then let's go ahead and move on to public parks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We will hear from our director, Harold Mowat, for Parks, Rec and Marine. Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present to you the Department of Parks Recreation and Marine 2019 proposed budget. My name is Hit Out of the mind and I'm your new prime director. I have been your new director for just a bit over two months, and I'm motivated to provide people with the opportunity to have fun and experience delight at our parks, recreation facilities and beaches. That is why, as you just saw at the All-City Beach Day just last Thursday was a great example where 2400 youth from all parts of our city came together and had a fun, fantastic fun at the beach. We provide PR and provides the community the opportunity to have fun, stay healthy and fit and enjoy each other's company in a respectful way. These are wonderful summer memories we just gave this last Thursday to so many youth memories that strengthen a sense of unity in the community. Our aspiration is to continue to be a system of excellence that serves all of Long Beach. Our core services have yielded award winning programs for the community. Parks, beaches and humane treatment of animals is our focus. And the investments that are included in the fiscal 19 budget will help our city continue to be recognized as part of the top park and recreation systems nationally. I feel fortunate to join a team that has accomplished so much this past year. Measure a clever grant writing and other funding strategies have funded great progress. New playgrounds at Jackson Inlet, Cerritos Parks, various community center improvements, a new dog park at Bixby Park and three synthetic fields are great reasons to celebrate. This year alone, we have had we have added close to 61 new acres with the addition of the red car greenbelt, the forest wetlands, Drake Chavez Greenbelt and the Willow Springs Wetlands Restoration. The exciting and long awaited Alamitos Bay Marina Rebuild project was also completed this year. This $105 million project, funded by revenue bonds, included the renovation of 1600 boat slips with state of the art concrete floats. It is great to join a team of excellent Park Recreation and Marine employees in running the 21st Best Park System in the country. This includes the largest municipally run marina system in the nation. We have amazing facilities and waterways that bring joy to everyone who visits. We maintain and restore our natural habitats because they add beauty and health to the community. We were recently recognized by the American Planning Association for our efforts related to the development of the Uptown Open Space Vision Plan and for the urban design of Combined Park. The department continues to hit the mark with youth and family programs, concerts in the park, youth sports in swing programs. We are very appreciative of our partnerships that help us keep doing this wonderful work. Some of our partners are Signal Hill Petroleum, Port of Long Beach, the Los Angeles Dodgers, our RBI Foundation, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, the Los Angeles Clippers, the the Long Beach Unified School District, and many more. Equally important is our partnership efforts to help promote responsible pet ownership and the humane treatment of animals. We are thrilled to report that Animal Care Services has seen another significant reduction in the number of animals being impounded, with 18% fewer dogs and cats coming to the shelter in fiscal year 18 compared to fiscal year 17. Also, we continue to support spay and neuter efforts which have resulted in contributing reductions in the unwanted pet population. For fiscal year 19 are proposed budget totals over $64.5 million across all funds, with $37.7 million in the general fund. The department also has substantial tidelands funds budgeted to support our operations in the marinas, beaches and waterways. We bring in $38.4 million in revenue. The department contributes 12.3 million in revenue to the general fund, revenue from permits for facility reservations, contract classes and golf operations just to name a few. The Thailand funds brings over 24 million, most of which comes from marina slip fees. We also have close to $1.6 million in grants, primarily for youth services in the proposed budget. Over the last two years, we have been successful in obtaining almost $5.6 million in grants to support park projects. The budget provides for 438 full time equivalent positions during our busy summer months. Our staffing grows to close to 1000 people. We are proud of our role as a local workforce development engine. There are many notable positive changes in this budget, including a new a new set of measure, a funded projects to provide for more of our infrastructure needs in fiscal year 19, proposed park projects for fiscal year for fiscal year 19 were covered last week in the CIP budget presentation. So I won't go over them here, but they are included in this slide. The availability of these funds is greatly appreciated. In the ongoing quest to innovate and find new ways to understand and meet the needs of the community. The department is proposing to reorganize, to reorganize existing staff, to add a community engagement and partnership bureau. And we are so excited by the additional investments in our park maintenance activities as well. The proposed budget of $1.2 million in one time resources will allow us to to purchase the water necessary to better address our parks, medians and those in open space needs. The proposed budget provides additional facility maintenance staffing, which will enhance our ability to proactively address facility needs before they become more costly projects. Also, the budget provides the additional staff resources to allow for the nightly securing of the freestanding restrooms in our parks to prevent issues of misuse and vandalism. The proposed budget continues the investment in the Be Safe program at 11 park sites next year, helping to keep youth and families engaged in positive and safe activities on weeknights during the longer daylight hours of summer. We are thrilled to announce that almost 30,000 program visits were provided by this valuable community public safety program. The proposed budget also includes one time resources to support animal care services, adoption efforts aimed at improving upon the library release rate increases achieved in recent years. The proposed budget also includes close to $1,000,000 in one time funding for new in-water storm debris equipment, which will build upon the current boom infrastructure and utilize new technology to proactively remove debris from the water before it lands on the beaches. As we face the coming year, there will continue to be challenges to be confronted. But challenges creatively approached are often opportunities to advanced improve services. We will continue to explore a long term solution to right size the department's budget for water to irrigate our urban forest and grounds landscape. We look forward to be sure to be creative in the advancement in the improvement of our aging park facilities and collaborate in in a collaborative way with our city partners. We are and we further understand that we can better meet the social, recreational and enrichment needs of the community through partnerships in our parks. Lastly, something that is of particular interest of mine is we're looking to update our 15 year old departmental strategic plan. We are excited about the prospects of an open, transparent and collaborative process to help chart a course for the department's delivery of programs and services that are accessible, enriching and reflects the community needs. A prime core value is to make sure creative programing are respectfully responsive to the needs of the community wherever a resident lives. With 170 parks, six miles of beaches, 27 community centers, dozens of athletic fields and playgrounds, 67 tennis courts, five municipal golf courses, city, three city pools, and over 3300 marina slips. Our opportunity to impact the residents of Long Beach, both two and four legged, is tremendous. Through all of these facilities in our award winning programs, we have made millions of positive contacts this year, and we look forward to working with the community to continue our efforts to be a park systems for all our dedicated prime prime employees . And I thank you for your support. This concludes my presentation. Thank you. Next up, I would like to have the Development Services Department. And then we're going to stop for questions for these three departments, development services. Thank you. We will have Linda Tatum, our director, give an overview of the budget. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, Vice Mayor Andrews and members of the City Council. I'm pleased to present an overview of the proposed budget for the Department of Development Services. We'll start with our core services, which are to prepare and implement long range plans for the city's physical development. And we strive to create sustainable, attractive and livable community. We implement plans through assisting residents, developers, property owners and business owners with permits and development approvals. We also staff six boards and commissions, including the Planning Commission and the Cultural Heritage Commission. We improve the quality of life through comprehensive code enforcement activities, the production and preservation of affordable housing, as well as neighborhood improvement services. And lastly, we are still in the process of winding down the activities of the city's former redevelopment agency. I'd like to briefly highlight some of the accomplishment accomplishments of the department's bureaus. In the Planning Bureau. We completed a series of zoning code updates, including the Accessory Dwelling Unit Ordinance, the unattended donation bean ordinance, as well as adult use cannabis. We also obtained City Council approval for updated zoning in the southeast Long Beach area, which was resulted in a specific plan for the former sea dip area. We also completed entitlement for a project that will restore the historic low cerritos wetlands while consolidating oil operations onto a non environmentally sensitive area of the of the city. After much discussion and community engagement, we shepherded the City Council approval of the land use and height maps for the updated general plan land use element. Other accomplishments in the area of historic preservation. Our staff facilitated a Mills Act contracts to rehabilitate 20 historic landmark properties in the city. We also completed design guidelines for seven of the city's 18 historic districts. And Building Safety Bureau. We've far outpaced the activity of last year because of the unprecedented level of development in the city. We completed about 5000 planned check reviews last year and this year we're on pace to complete nearly 6000 planned check reviews. The permit center has has served more than 58,000 customers and responded to more than 38,000 phone calls. In addition, residential and commercial inspections have skyrocketed, increasing by more than 40%. Nearly 50,000 55,000 residential and commercial inspections will be completed during the current fiscal year. In the area of code enforcement. During this current fiscal year, staff investigated approximately 13,000 more than 13,000 code enforcement cases. They inspected. 132. Properties for possible illegal garage conversions, and they also inspected 30 illegal medical marijuana facilities. In addition, 612 properties were listed on the city's foreclosure registry, and those properties are continually monitored to ensure that they are continually maintained. We also launched the Vacant Lot Registry Program in 2018. And. Also completed more than 12,000 proactive rental inspections. In the area of neighborhood services, our team held more than 12 tree planting events, which included planting over 700 street trees. And they also organized 100 neighborhood cleanups. In addition, this bureau trained 32 graduates in the city's Neighborhood Leadership Program to be more effective community leaders within their own within their neighborhoods. And I'm very happy that we received a grant from Cal Fire for $1.26 million to plant more than 4000 trees, including over 400 fruit trees. Also, accomplishments in our Neighborhood Services Bureau. We assisted 100 business owners through our business startup grant and Commercial Improvement Rebate Program. This group also assistant 100 homeowners in making exterior improvements to their homes through the Home Improvement Rebate Program. And in our housing bureau, our services have included nearly 800 affordable housing units that are currently in the pipe in the development pipeline. Of those units, 235 are for homeless individuals, and those are within five different development projects. We're extremely proud to be recognized by Habitat for Humanity, Los Angeles, as a foundation partner for the ongoing work in providing affordable housing. That is being work that's being done here in the city of Long Beach. Habitat, L.A. has 14 units currently in the pipeline with the city with city assistance through the Long Beach Community Investment Company. And also, they have an additional 38 units that they are processing in the city without city financial assistance. In brief and looking at our proposed budget, our budget totals nearly 150 million, with just over 212 staff members. The majority of the Development Services Department activities are funded by fees fee for service and but there are a portion of our budget is also from grants federal grants like community development block grant and Home Grant as well as former tax increment from the redevelopment agency. The General Fund of the city contributes a very small amount to the department's overall budget. It's just shy of 5% or 5.5. $2 million. And these funds are used primarily for code enforcement activities. I'd like to talk about a few of the notable changes in the department to focus on community engagement. We're adding to two staff persons in the Planning Bureau. We'd like to increase our level of community engagement, and in order to enhance our expertize in high rise development, we're adding one planning staff and one senior structural engineer in the Building Safety Department in order to improve turnaround times. For our plan track reviews, we're adding a permit technician at our counter and as an also an electrical plant checker and also to maintain our current turnaround time on providing building inspections, we're adding two new two new building inspectors. Those would be combination building inspectors. And in terms of the challenges and opportunities we face. I'll just briefly go over some of those. We we've have been having some challenges in getting our with the number of vacancies in the department. But we are continuing our efforts to maintain qualified staff in both the Planning Bureau, the engineering and among our engineering staff and our building inspectors. We also will be continuing our efforts to expand and improve our technology capabilities, primarily as a way for us to enhance the efficiency of the service delivery to our primary customers. We also will be working to expand our community engagement and also to expand the transparency of our planning initiatives as well as our development processes. We will continue to work to preserve and to increase the the housing stock of affordable housing in the community. We'll also be working to reduce the turnaround times for our standard code enforcement backlogs. We'll also be working to improve the the inspection cycle for the proactive rental housing inspection program. And we're extremely. Fortunate in this. Year's budget that we now for the first time have a dedicated city prosecutor that will work exclusively on enhancing the code enforcement cases. This is truly a game changer for our department, and it will substantially enhance the effectiveness of our code enforcement efforts. So with that, I'd like to conclude the Development Services Department presentation. I'm available to answer questions along with our budget team. Lisa Falls and Mary Hebert are here to assist as well. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We're going to do now is to counsel questions and comment and comments on these three departments. And then we will do the other departments more questions and then we'll do the public comment for the hearing as well. Okay. So let me start off with Councilman Mongo. I'll go in reverse order since Development Services just concluded. First, congratulations, Lynda, on a great first partial year. And I know it's been tough. There's a lot of recruitment of our staff from our offices throughout the region, and I know that keeping staff is difficult, but they're doing an exceptional job. And I've really enjoyed getting to know more of the development services planning staff and permits staff and staff throughout the year. And so I'm really pleased by that. And I do have two quick questions. I when I read the budget book every year, I try to find opportunities for efficiencies. And one of the things that I see there's kind of a duplication of now is both in development services and in economic development. We're doing business facade improvements. And I was wondering if there have been any discussions related to a consolidation under one department instead of having two groups of people doing similar efforts? What I would say is that we coordinate we coordinate with that department, but we have not talked about actually formally combining those efforts. But that certainly is something that we could take a look at. I'd also encourage the discussion to include neighborhood services in that kind of kind of discussion. I've enjoyed working with them this year. We did plant 90 trees in the fifth District and likewise last year the group of individuals that work in that division are dedicated. They're there on Saturdays. They're talking one on one with residents and convincing them to put a tree in where they haven't had one for quite some time. Many know that we when we were elected to the city council, the odd number of districts, there were people in the city who hadn't had their tree stump removed and they'd been waiting for 17 years. 17 years. My staff member got a standing ovation after she removed the first 17 year old tree stump. And the reason that that was such an important expenditure and really championed by Councilmember Super now once he was elected to the Council is because you can't put another tree in when there's a stump in the spot. And so I know that Public Works does this. On my own. You ask for the money and you got it. I know that removing stumps is not sexy, but we can't have a Tree City if we don't remove them. And it's easy to just cut costs and say, well, remove the tree that's dead and dying, but leave the stump. And so that that policy has changed. I think our backlog is down to 36 months, which is phenomenal. And so development services, planting the trees through the neighborhood services, it's kind of not with any of the other potential synergies. So just something to think about, whether it's a public works or how that all fits together, it almost kind of folds into the public works component side of our clean team and other things like that. So just those efficiencies. Thank you for that. Want to praise Mr. Beck. I know I'm really tough on you because the fifth District has a lot of needs and improvements, but you guys are doing a phenomenal job and I'm very supportive of all your proposed changes. And finally, our new Parks and Rec director. This is just an opportunity for me to say publicly what I know we've talked about already. Some things were discussed with your predecessor, so I'll bring those out now at prior council, budget Oversight Committee, Parks and Rec meetings. Over the last three years, we've talked about animal licenses becoming a three year license. And I'll state that now that I have adopted a foster dog and I'm a failed foster, what I've recognized is three months ago I paid a license and then I received a bill today for a different dog. And then I will receive another bill in about three months for the third dog. And there has to be some efficiencies where we could combine my address, save on postage, save on the return envelopes and all those kinds of things. And then to be able to get people on a three year license, rabies vaccinations are every three years. And so I'm renewing your license every three years. The only thing I would ask us to take a look at before we move in that direction is when we renew our license, we have the opportunity to donate to the health fund. And if the health fund donations come in on an annual basis and we turn to a three year license, we might be losing out on those donations. So just something to think about if we're moving in that direction. I really, really appreciate the addition of the bathroom locking the staff member on a nightly basis. This has been something that my office has really championed, and many of you know that every time we don't lock a bathroom, there's vandalism and the such. And many of you have seen one of my staff members out there refilling soap dispensers, putting toilet seats back on the toilets, going to Lowe's and buying toilet seats and putting them back on. And so locking these bathrooms at night is a huge, huge accomplishment. But I do want to look at as we refurbish bathrooms. And since public works is here, we should really be moving towards the automated locks system. So there's motion sensors that are inside the bathroom at a certain time of night, 9 p.m. let's say the doors automatically lock. They would, of course, allow you to exit. And if motion was detected inside the facility, it would alert someone to come and let the person know they cannot stay overnight in our bathrooms, but that they would then unlock themselves through an automated system in the morning. And that's similar to what I have at my house, which is if you accidentally leave your garage door open and it's ATM, I gradually your clothes itself because I have a little device that just says don't leave your garage open. So those kind of technologies are out there and we really should be deploying them in our park in ways that we can monitor and ensure that they're not going to be vandalized because we do want to make an investment, a $200 lock that someone comes and breaks and breaks. And then the last thing that I'll say is, I really appreciate your advocacy, even though you've been here for such a short time, to revise the Strategic Plan of Parks and Rec. That document is old. The time has come. We've talked about it for a long time. I know that you guys are going through a study and I will only repeat this for financial management. This will be the fifth year I've asked for a the fees scheduled to come with the subvention rates. And so I hope that that will be coming forward. But as we talked about when I was first elected to the council, in many of our programs, we may charge a dollar for swimming and we don't know what the true cost of that swimming is. So I chair I applaud Parks and Rec for doing a free study on what their true costs are and then what their rates should be and can be, and where we should be providing intervention. Do I agree that we should let kids learn how to swim for a vented cost? Absolutely. But I think we as a council need to know what areas are we 17 and what areas are we not 17? And I think that's an important discussion. So even if we're not able to get it for this budget cycle before mid-year fee schedules come out, I think that the time has come and that we as a council should by mid-year stop approving anything until we've seen those subvention rates. So that would be my recommendation. Otherwise, I'm really proud of the work that all of your groups have done. Congratulations and thank you so much. Thank you, Councilman Mongo, Councilmember Yolanda. It's on the motion. My apologies. So, Councilwoman Pryce. Oh, okay. Okay. So thank you very much, everyone, for your presentations. Really impressive work. The list of accomplishments from FY 18 is is just amazing across all departments. And tonight's presentations are no exception. I wanted to go, so I'll go and order of the presentations that were made. So we'll start with public works. One of the proposed changes for FY 19 is to add an inspector to work on right of way improvement inspections. Can you explain a little bit more what that is? Mr. Beck. Certainly. Councilman Price Council, the Department of Public Works currently manages a number of different type of projects, both right of way and facility projects, park projects, many of those that we covered in this VIP presentation last week. From a staffing perspective, we utilize contract services through different consulting firms to do construction management for us. And in typical approach that's a little bit more efficient is to have city inspectors manage the construction process. So if, in fact, the contractor is not meeting the standards of whatever the work they might be doing, you can address it right then and there, as opposed to waiting to come back when an inspector sees that something is wrong. So we're really looking at efficiencies. We're looking at the money that we spend on contract services, and we can deliver those in-house more cheaply. Plus, we think it's very valuable to grow that knowledge within our own workforce. And you're starting to create a capable team that can manage a number of different type of projects, which we currently don't have that expertize in-house. And I see while there's $107,000 price tag on this new construction inspector, looking through the document, it seems to me there's a whole host of efficiencies found in consultation services that we're picking up in-house as opposed to providing working with an outside contractor. And I did notice that. So I think that's a good thing and I just wanted some clarification on that. You talked a little bit in your presentation about the gas fund, and I notice that we're going to be reallocating the pothole truck with the four person crew at the price tag of $441,000, roughly. And I'm wondering, looking ahead to future years, are there other opportunities that we have to transfer our costs from the general fund to that gas tax fund or anticipated revenue so that we can open up some some space in our general fund for additional add on type projects? Yeah, certainly that's a balance for us. We know we have a number of needs that we need to address in repairing streets. We know we still have a backlog of some very poor performing streets. I think in previous presentations we've talked about street pavement condition indexes and those streets that are poor or worse have a tendency to experience larger and more potholes. And so we do have quite a backlog of potholes. We're trying to address that by adding this crew and then also shifting some current general fund cost to the gas tax. It's it's simply a balance. The more you use to fill potholes, the less money you have to repair streets. So on that note, with the potholes and I know you're up to speed on this, but I cannot stress enough how much I hope we're using best practices in our pothole maintenance because especially with our newly paved or slurry streets, the worst thing is to have a repair that's done that isn't done well or isn't matching in terms of the color of the the patchwork that makes it look like a blemish on the street. And we're spending so much money and and energy and, you know, inconvenience to residents when we do construction that I really hope we're using best practices whatever that may be in our pothole efforts. And I know that we are I know we've tried some different things. I think Councilwoman Mungo had a project where there was some interesting science being used. So is that going to be incorporated into what this additional crew will be looking at or implementing? Yeah, I think there's a two part answer to your question. Certainly the city has adopted a moratorium, so any new street project that is in place, there's a five year moratorium for any work to happen in that street if if there is a need to do some work. For example, we recently paved Bellflower and then there was an Edison outage and Edison had to trench in our new street. They have to repave that street to that original standard. So we're very cautious and protective of that street investment. I think your question regarding pothole repair, there's two ways to do pothole repair. There's a real quick called a hot patch and we can go down a street and do a number and then there's a I'll call it a more permanent patch where they actually come in and think of it as a hot iron, where they actually put it over the pothole and kind of heat up the asphalt and seal it in that process. There's different cost factors associated with both the the quick patches is much cheaper to do. And so again, it's about. Balance of resources. Some patches make more sense to do kind of that more permanent patching style and others. It's quicker to go and hit the oil patch right away. When you in looking at some of the proposed changes, I didn't see a specific call out to traffic safety. That has been an area where I think your team has. First of all, you run a huge operation. I don't know how many people you have under you, but in looking at your accomplishments, it spans so many different areas of what we all deal with. So thank you for that. One area that I think we don't talk about enough in terms of highlighting the work they do is traffic engineering and traffic safety. They do amazing work. I'm not sure how many people you have dedicated to that task. In my opinion, we could use a lot more. There's just a lot of work there for them. Is there anything in the proposed FY19 budget that addresses traffic safety or traffic engineering that that can help us in terms of getting assessments done of areas where there might be a need for speed, calming or determination of right of way and things like that. Yeah. Thank you very much for the support of our traffic team. I do agree with you. They do a lot of work and there's a lot of requests out there. I think we've been very aggressive in in seeking grant opportunities. And most recently, we we have a pedestrian safety grant where we're going to be installing rapid flashing beacons. You're yourself and District three have been very supportive of many of those efforts. I don't have a proposal right now to add more staff, but I think with the reorganization to focus a project development team will allow us to deliver not only our traditional facility projects, but also help deliver some of our traffic calming projects as well. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for keeping that as a focus for your department and your leadership. I appreciate it. I want to move on now to our Parks Department and I want to welcome our new director as well. Thank you very much. We look. All of us are looking forward to working with you. We're all independently, very excited and collectively very hopeful. So thank you. I noticed as as part of the presentation, you you kind of outline our marinas and it looks like our slip occupancy is going back up into in FY 19 to 93% as opposed to 85% in FY17. And I think this is huge because I think this is one of the projects that this is a major attraction and asset for the city of Long Beach. This improvement project was funded entirely free from taxpayer dollars, and I don't think that's something we highlight enough those improvements to the marina that make it such a desirable place for boat owners to have to rent space was funded entirely independent of taxpayer dollars. And so I want to thank you and your team and of course, John GROSS and his team, Alveda, of course, and our city treasurer for that. On that note and kind of related to a question I had later down, but I'll address it now. I know that you're going to be establishing a community engagement and partnership bureau, which I think is fantastic, and I think that is a great citywide asset. A portion of that is going to come from the Marina Fund and a portion of that is going to come from the Tidelands Fund. And I want to make sure that if we're using money from those two specific resource bases, that there is dedicated, directed staff attention to developing those partnerships in those areas. So if we're going to have 30% come from Tidelands and 30% come from Marina or whatever the case may be, that combined effort should include outreach to those specific areas where those funds are coming from. I know that's your intention, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit further about that, because when we think about the marina in terms of partnerships, there's a lot of different you know, we may not have an established group already there, so we may need to cultivate and develop that. And so I want to make sure that we're on the same page about that. Is that your understanding as well? Yes. Okay. Because those are you know, those are coming from especially the marina funds are coming directly from marina boat owners and those who rent the slip. So I want to make sure that they're getting a return on their investment, of course. You talked on as part of the proposed changes for FY 19, a dedication and investment into supporting deferred maintenance at park facilities. Have we developed a list of what facilities we're prioritizing in terms of deferred maintenance? I think. Yes, we have. And is that list available in our materials on. We can make them available. I'm not I don't believe it is available. I don't know if it's part of the budget. Yeah, it's not part of the presentation, but we can make it available. That would be. Great. Thank you. You talk a little bit. About one of the additions is going to be a $140,000 investment into safety systems at parks. Can you just tell us a little bit what those safety systems might include and if we have a list of. The parks. Where those safety systems will be implemented? I'm sorry. Emergency lighting. And where are the other example? Exit doors. Such as those changes. Lighting. Exit doors. Those. Okay. That's what I imagine. I think that's great. I think additional lighting and parks is really a fantastic addition wherever we can add those. I'd love to see if there's going to be additional lighting put in a parks in any of our districts, if you can make us aware of that, so that we can make the residents aware of that. If it's not going to be in our districts, then it's obviously it's moot. But if it is going to be in our districts, I know lighting is something we get asked about a lot and I know we are using some some tidelands dollars to put lights into one of the parks that qualifies for Tidelands funds in the third district. You talk. A little bit about. A reduction in maintenance costs related to Sims Pond. I'm a little bit concerned about that because there's also a reference to eliminating perimeter and game court fencing. I don't know what that means, but I cannot imagine a scenario where we're going to have reduced maintenance at Sims Pond. Do you have some, Steve, if you can help me out with this one. You. Mayor, member of members of the city council. Councilwoman Price What this is contemplating is it's essentially really. Focusing the existing scope and kind of scaling back what is currently provided as we take a look at the services that are contracted to be provided there. There are things that can be done less frequently or on an as needed basis. And so what this is. Doing is really kind of addressing that. So really focusing on first and foremost those core services and responsibilities being trash removal, debris removal and non-native vegetation cleanup and removal. Okay. So and I appreciate that. And I obviously defer to the expertize of our Parks Department in determining what's what's best for that particular area. However, this is a particular area that has had a great deal of community engagement, and this is the first time hearing about any changes to our maintenance there. So I think perhaps prior to the adoption of the budget, we should sit down with the neighborhood association and talk about what the proposed changes are going to be, because otherwise I think one of the major issues has been maintenance in terms of removal of dead trees and things like that. We're really trying to work and collaborate with the community organization there to move forward in a positive way. So perhaps we can and I can talk offline with the director and his team regarding how we can communicate what changes we're proposing there. That would be great. And one of the things. We that. Is discussed here is a participatory budgeting process in the amount of $200,000 for youth well-being. Can you tell me a little bit about that project? Anybody. Yeah. Sorry about that. I don't believe it's really a PRM process. It's I think it's engaging the wider community with regards to those funds with, I believe, youth nonprofit organizations. And so I'll jump in here as well. This is something that we heard during our community outreach that we heard that there's a desire to really try to focus some funds on youth. We do a lot already for youth, but this was to kind of fill some of those gaps and do a participatory budgeting type process to engage in the community. Haven't quite figured out exactly how to do that. This is something new for us. So if the council wants to move forward, you know, this 200,000 would help us would create a process and involve the council and anyone who wants to be involved in that. How to target those dollars. Is this the. Same as this youth fund? Yes. Oh, it's the same thing. Okay, great. So I'm assuming and I know this is to be true, but I just want to ask I know it's early process. We're just setting aside the money that that is going to be a city wide endeavor where we're going to have meetings throughout the city and engage the youth throughout the city. Yes, it is citywide. Okay, great. You talk about an additional $80,000 to support a new landscape contract to to maintain landscape services across the city's 170 parks. Will any of that landscape contract go towards maintenance and support of medians? And if not, where is that highlighted? Is it a proposed change for FY 19 or are we expecting status quo for medians? Mayor Members of the City Council, Catwoman. Price So what you're referring to is an increase in one of the funding sources that funds our grounds landscape contract, the contract that was approved last week by the City Council. All told, it's close to $1,000,000 that is included in this budget to cover those costs. And, yes, the the scope of those services includes. Not only the parks and open spaces, but also maintenance of the medians. As well. Okay. One of the things we do not highlight enough as a city and this is I'm just as much to blame as anyone else is medians. When you drive around cities, you see a lot. You can tell a lot more about the city based on the condition of their medians than the condition of their parks. Because, yes, residents will go to the park, still enjoy the parks depending on the age of their children. Those things people see. But what we don't what we underestimate is the condition of the median. So if we've got dead trees, dying plants or barren medians, I think for people that don't park their cars and go into the park, they may not ever know how beautiful our parks are. They may be making a judgment based on driving through the city. So I really want to highlight the importance of having medians that really, I think, say a lot about the city. If we're going to do something there, if we're not going to do something there, then that's fine. But if we're going to plant something there, then I think we should really make an effort to keep those plants alive and make it look good. Otherwise, maybe we think about some hard escaping for the median so that we don't have to have upkeep over the long run. But when you drive in various cities, you see there's been a lot of attention paid to medians because a lot of times people don't stop and actually go to the park, they're just driving through the town and they make a lot of judgments about the town based on the medians. So I think that's very important. And and Councilmember, if I can add to that, we agree with you, medians are incredibly important and we have been challenged with medians because of some of the state drought restrictions that have been put in place that we are working on how to transition away from grass. But one of the efficiencies that we are looking at is right now we have median maintenance as part of Parks and Rec. It's just been there forever. We're actually looking at transitioning that over to public works. Right now, public works is maintaining the street, but they don't do the medians. And so we think it makes sense to have the eyes that are on the street to also be on the medians. And it's really managing that contract, the exact same contract, but through a different lens. So that is something that we're exploring in how to implement. That's great. And I think if the if the landscaping and maintenance turns out to be too expensive, maybe we do consider hard scoping because it's expensive to put in, but long term it looks good and it doesn't have to be maintained as regularly. And then finally, we have in here some money. And I think it's really it's this is out of my district, but it's something I'm curious about. And that's the repair costs of Marina Marina Green Park following special events. What are special events? Fees not include restoration of a city owned parcel of land. Post Special Event Councilwoman Price. Yes, the city is reimbursed by organizers for any break in fix items. What this is really speaking to is that ongoing wear and tear where, you know, the landscaping needs to be refreshed a little bit more frequently because of the the constant use and the type of use of that area. So this is more for kind of the ongoing maintenance, not specific to what situations where something is broken or damaged. You know, I think we might want to think about folding that into the costs down the road, but the wear and tear, because it really wouldn't get that kind of wear and tear. But for the special events, it would be, you know, so just something to think about. But thank you very much. And then for development services, just real quick, I wanted to thank you very much. You know, I have with me tonight as my staff member for this meeting, Lisa West, who's our business liaison. And I know both Lisa and I wish to thank you profusely because this proposed budget in Fy19 highlights a number of additions that are actually streamlined, business friendly initiatives that are going to help people get through the process. As a business owner who's going through the permitting process right now, through the city of Long Beach with my husband. I can tell you all of these improved. Rents are going to be much appreciated by the residents and business owners who are going through the process. And it just really helps to have a focus on moving people through quickly. And I can see just by looking at your budget that that's a priority for you. So Director Tatum is also fairly new. This is her first budget as director. So welcome to your first budget. Kudos. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Durango. Thank you, Mayor. And I also have some questions here. But, you know, I realize that I met with the director, met earlier today, and I asked him how long has he been here? He said two months. So I'm going to give you a break. I'm not going to be asking a whole lot of questions because some of that I had, I had to cross out anyway. Because you were you were grilled right now with a with Councilmember Price and a lot of good questions, a lot of good feedback. And I understand, you know, where you stand right now. And I'm hoping. And let me rephrase it. I expect that you will be fully informed by this time next year to make this presentation. So kudos to you and congratulations and welcome to our beach. We were saying that I was going to ask about was earlier this year we had a a special resolution to talk about having additional funds distributed to address our drought in the parts because a lot of our park lands were looking brown and looking ugly and and just a little bit of water probably would help restore some of those some of those facilities as well as parks. So I'm glad to see that in your budget here you have a supplemental increase of 1.24 million to address citywide park irrigation. And perhaps it would be also helpful to look at that transition for the medians to go to parks to excuse me, public works so that they can address it as well. And I had not park to take the full hit on having to water some of the the green spaces that we have and keep them alive. So that's the only thing I had for parts. The other question I have right now for it's public works. You mentioned earlier that you're going to be that you collected 22,000 illegally dumped items and 17,000 mattresses. Earlier last year, we passed a resolution regarding illegal dumping in the city. Has that the work? And I know that you're saying that you're going to add a staff person for the cleaning the clean team is will illegal dumping be a focus of this new staff member? What's the focus that we're going to be putting on making sure that we have less items picked up that are that are illegally dumped? Councilmember Arango, thank you for the question. Yeah, certainly illegal dumping is something that the Clean Team deals with on a daily basis, and we receive a number of requests from the community members to address those dumped items. The city is working through the Bloomberg initiative to work with students from Harvard to really analyze what is the phenomenon behind illegal dumping. There's a report that's being provided to us next week that a graduate student has worked with us to study that, and we're also working with the innovation team to review that as well. We think we have some good data that we're really interested in sharing with this council, so that'll be coming in in the next few months. Additionally, I think Council District two brought forward an item about a pilot locked bin program. So that's something that we've also been exploring and are working on. And we we've been able to identify that already half of the bins in the target area are locked and we're working to get the rest of them locked as well. So we are very encouraged with some of the progress we're making and some of the data we're collecting. And ultimately, I think as you're pointing out, the goal is to change that behavior and help the community be more aware that illegal dumping is not a way to keep Long Beach, the great city that it is . Is there a plan or a strategy that will be that will incorporate some kind of a fee or a a ticket citation or some kind of if someone is actually and it's going to be hard to catch somebody, they usually these types of activities usually take place, you know, very early in the morning or late at night where, you know, they're under the cover of darkness. But if there is a clear violation that anyone that somebody sees or that an inspector actually can relate back to a to an apartment owner where they know that there's a vacancy and the people that moved out are just basically throwing out their mattresses and their TVs or whatever they don't want to take with them into an alley or near a dumpster. It's really a strategy for sighting these individuals if if, in fact, we are able to identify who these violators are. Yes, I think we have a couple of tools in the toolbox. First off, we do have a few supervisors that drive around in when we find instances especially common in some of our multifamily units in the city where the trash receptacles or bins available to the folks that live in that building aren't sufficient to support the amount of trash that is being generated. We can require that that property to add either additional dumpsters or more frequent collection. So we work closely with those apartment owners to do that. If they don't, we do have the ability to find them. I think I've mentioned before to this council that we are working on developing an administrative citation process for our public works inspectors. And with that tool in hand, if they were able to see somebody illegally disposing of of debris in our public right of way, they would have that at their disposal to address it right away. I do agree that we do have a level of illegal activity, illegal dumping excuse me, that happens during the night hours. And people aren't really witnessing that. But we're also seeing that we're seeing residents in the city just putting things out in the alleyways and on the curbs. And we really believe it's important to have a keep Long Beach Beautiful campaign and and make sure that people are taking personal responsibility for their waste. Well, thank you for that, because I believe in strong communication. The more we're able to communicate with our residents that the dumping is illegal and that there are methods to dispose of unwanted property safely and without the making a nuisance of our of our dumped items in the streets or in the alleys, I think would be beneficial . So I'm looking forward to the continuing education program that we need to do for for our communities. Thank you for your responses. Lastly, we have development services for this portion of the program. And one of the things that stood out to me was a vacant lot registry, which I think is great. It's very greatly needed. We need to know how many vacant lots we have out there and especially identifying who owns these vacant lots, because some of those lots become blight. They're not taking care of the weeds growing all over the place. It's been a week when we talk about that a little later, but right now we're talking about vacant lots that basically create blight in our neighborhoods and in our especially in our transportation, those empty lots around our transportation corridors. So just to. Get a quick feel as to what this registry will be used for. Is there a can I get a brief description as to what it will do and what's the expected outcome of having this registry? Yes, Councilmember Your Honor. That was a program that the city council adopted, I want to say, early this year, maybe late last year, when they adopted this program. And it essentially requires the owner of the vacant lot to register the property and paying a small fee. And that fee is actually used for to support the staff that actually goes out, monitors that property once it's registered to ensure that it is maintained. We provide communication to the owner on a at minimum on an annual basis just to ensure that they are keeping the property maintained free of weeds secured. And just to do exactly what you were saying is to prevent it from becoming a blight in the community. Thank you. And my final question would be, why not collect more like a comment? The program continues. I'd like to see that it is continued. And the turnaround cycle what's the turnaround cycle now and what what are you working towards in terms of making improvements on the turnaround cycle for inspections? Basically. Under the current cycle that we have now with the current staffing, the turnaround is between five and six years based upon the number of inspections that occur annually. We have received in the mayor's recommendation is a comment to have staff take a look at that. And if we get further direction, we will. We have started to take a look at some of those numbers and looking at what it would take to speed up that turnaround cycle in terms of the costs of adding additional staff and what that would mean in terms of greater efficiencies as this program moves forward. So if directed, we would be coming back to you at a later date with some of some proposals to address the and a. An enhanced turnaround time. Okay. Thank you. I want to thank all three of you for your comments tonight and for your orientation. Thank you very much, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. Excuse me. I will start with. Well, first of all, everybody, fantastic job. This budget, I think, really demonstrates the leadership and the vision and the inclusion of the community voices we've heard throughout the last year. It's really exciting. All of these departments are near and dear to my heart. So let's start with development services and I definitely want to say congratulations. I know that this is your first year as director, and when I look through this budget and I see things like community engagement, it's very important to me. And I know through the process of the last couple of years, we've kind of thought about community engagement in different ways online surveys, etc.. Can you explain your vision for community engagement for the department? Yes. I think when we think about community engagement, the the recent experience we have with the land use element really opened our eyes to the fact that there were segments of the community that felt like the department and some of the bureaus in the department. Were. Undergoing major initiatives that just had not done as good a job as we could have done in terms of outreaching and engaging with those communities. So one of the things that we're looking at with the additional staff is to establish something. I don't call it engagement as much as relationship building with the community members. And it is we already have a draft outline of that that we're working through with the city, the city manager's office, to take a look at some way to provide additional engagement with the community, in addition to providing additional information about ongoing information about the activities that are occurring in the Planning Bureau, the kinds of projects that are coming through the process. What kind of activities are occurring in the building department? So again, just general information about what the what kinds of activities are occurring in the bureau. I would also say about the services that we provide. There are a range of services that we provide in our Neighborhood Services Bureau that many members of the community just are unaware of. So I would say it's an overall outreach effort to do a couple of things to let them know what we're doing as a department, to let them know the services that we provide to them and to let them, I think, most importantly, know that what they think matters to us. We'd like to hear from them and we'd like to engage them as we determine what our work program looks like and just to get their feedback overall, it's great. Thank you for that. As a lifelong community organizer, Acme Engagement, definitely. You do the work on the front end, then we can make sure that the process is much smoother. So I completely support that. The fact that you have eight new staff, that you've added some of them for high rises, which would help us in downtown, but just to get people through the process. I want to thank you for this. I know that we had lots of conversations a couple of months ago when we talked about legalizing adult use and the fact that we knew that there was a backlog with some of the medicinal marijuana dispensaries. And knowing that when we bring on a whole new industry as a city, we really have to make sure we're aware how we stop that. So can you speak just really quickly about how you feel like these eight new staff will help not only our high rises, but the rest of the entire city and some of our small businesses coming online. The the eight news staff are in different, different bureaus, but primarily they. Are in the. Planning bill, which will be the focus of the outreach and the community engagement effort. And that would be on a couple of fronts. It's not only interacting directly in the community with the community, but the other component of that is actually through enhanced digital communication, meaning posting a lot of information on the website so that residents can take advantage of some services online. So that's another component. The other ones, though, are really focused on community or customer service to enhance, for example, the building inspectors. We want to be able to make sure that when projects come in to the planning process to try to stabilize our review process, when we get particularly busy, sometimes the wait times to get a planned check through the process increases to, I want to say sometimes as high as 16 weeks. We'd like to end when it's not so busy, it can go down to six weeks. So we'd like to try to get that a little bit more stabilized. That's the goal of the additional staff to try to stabilize that turnaround time so that we can be a little bit more predictive. And when applications come in, we can at least tell them upfront what the turnaround time is. So the focus of all of the additional staff really is enhancing customer service, providing greater information to the public through enhanced digital communications and just inspection, turnaround times, all of them to our core service of providing customer service and providing it as efficiently as possible. Awesome. Thank you so very much, Linda. Now I'm going to ask you a couple questions around the housing stuff, because I know we met this week. To echo Councilmember Rebecca, your comments around pile up. I know when we spoke it was either you or Oscar that mentioned we were sometimes up to seven year turnaround. So whether it's between five or seven years, turn around for something that the council has said as a priority. I definitely would support adding staff to make sure we can address that, particularly in the fact that we've had four years of conversations around affordable housing and protecting our housing stock. And so this being one of those I know that we also talked about technology and how we're using technology to, you know, use that process quicker. Can and I, I understand that we are working to try to update the system as much as possible so it will expedite the process. How long do you think the department would need to test out trying out this system versus implementing a new system that some other cities have used? Because I know we're trying to work with technology right now to do that. That's something, Councilmember Pearce, that we are actually just now starting to look at. But I would tell you, the most encouraging thing that's changed in terms of how we look at our department is the fact that we now have a new technology and innovation department director who myself and our deputy director have already had a chance to have a very positive or productive conversation with around the very specific issue that you mentioned of us being able to actually enhance the system that we currently have to make it a lot more user friendly and to really be more of a workhorse in terms of just tracking the data that we do and being able to pull out really critical data about the performance and the metrics of the work that we do. So that when we get questions from the council about, you know, how we're doing in a particular area, we can actually access it. Right now, the system is not as robust as it it could be. So we even though we don't have any new positions or any additional funding in this year's budget to address that, I think this year will probably spend time, more time focusing on assessing the capabilities of the current system and making some determinations as to whether or not we truly can improve it, enhance it to to be more more robust in terms of getting data out of it and tracking and really being a better tool for us to manage our workflow. And we will probably be coming back to the Council on once we do a more thorough assessment of whether or not we can fix or really enhance the current system or if it's appropriate for us to take a look at other systems. Okay. Thank you for that. Yes. I also, too, am very excited about our our new director and the department and have high hopes. So I fully support trying to make sure that that technology is there fully support you all coming back with a recommendation on how to increase the turnaround time for Prep. And one other question that we talked about, which is around when there's a critical issue after a inspection, say water leakage, missing floor. We have the 24 hour model. That says that it should be addressed within 24 hours. Is that written into the muni code? Is that something that we adhere to all the time, something we adhere to some of the time? I'm not sure that it's actually in the code, but it continues and will always be a core component of our our departmental policy in terms of whenever there is a life safety issue on a project that will automatically always be at the very get the very top a priority on those we try to we strive for a 24 hour turnaround. Do other cities have it written into code that it's a 24 hour turnaround? I'm not sure that's something I can check into and get back with you on. I'm just being clear. That would be helpful. Lynda really fantastic job with the budget, really, really positive things for businesses and residents and I'm hopeful for the next step. So that's all I have for you. Sorry, that took a little long. So let's see. Public works things up. Their next public works cut back. You're awesome. Thank you for all the hard work that you guys have done in putting up with me and my team. I know that often you tell me, cut it out. Enough projects, slow down. So on top of the budget that you have presented to the entire city, I just really want to applaud you for the work that you've done in the district. I know it's taken us two years to get a light, but it is halfway up on a bed spo and it is looking beautiful and that's not your fault . I understand that. That was not an stab. I want to thank you for all the work that we've done on Fourth Street, the Broadway project. I cannot say enough how great the residents have worked with your department and any parking challenges or anything like that. I imagine it was going to be a complete nightmare and I know we're only halfway there, but just want to applaud you and everybody on your team for all of that work. So I do have a couple of questions. Knowing that we all work really hard, all of our districts have our different ideas. Can you walk through just briefly for us how you prioritize all the projects that are sn9 councilmembers and the mayor spring up and the grant funded projects that you get. So how you prioritize all that work, it's a tough question. I have a big wheel in my office and I spin it. That's kind of how I felt. I didn't want to say. No, certainly. You know, it's really exciting to have an opportunity to work on all the great projects that we have funding to do. Measure A IS has really helped us move that needle tremendously and we talked about that in our CFP presentation, but I really do strive to try to deliver projects in a balanced approach, not only in and across the city, but also different type of projects, not just mobility or not just facility projects. Park projects are important. So we really do work collectively as a team. Sometimes we stress ourselves to our limits, but that's what the weekends are for, to recharge and get ready and come back. So you have. A weekend to me. One enough. I should give you more, which my team certainly. Does, but I appreciate this for this council and we'll continue to deliver projects as best we can. Great. Okay. I wanted to ask in your budget, it says Tidelands Operations Funds that says oversight of critical citywide projects. Can you walk through for me if it's a tidelands funds, how that's being used citywide? So I think last year we worked to transition Tidelands project components to public works and we're really trying to integrate that team with our overall project management delivery. We view Tidelands as a funding source and not a whole separate activity, and I think it's important to kind of think of it that way. I know we do spend a lot of time talking about Tidelands projects specifically, but it is just a different source of money. We certainly have different challenges with certain grants that we receive and how we can deliver projects, and Tidelands has certain restrictions in how you can utilize those dollars. So we may have a little bit of money for the administration, but really the Tidelands money in our department is primarily targeted for project delivery. That's why I felt like you guys do a lot of Tidelands projects. Last tough question and then I'll give you 2 hours at the end. Can you talk about the increased budget in relation to surf? It's under your feels like you're. Stumping me on that so surface in. That would be guessing where department is where Cerf is located. So if there's a specific question, you can ask it tonight and we can follow up in writing. Okay, so on here it says Increase budget for updated user department charge. I apologize. It's okay. You have a lot of ideas. So in in Long Beach, all of the waste that we collect is taken to the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility or surf, where that waste is converted into energy that supports many of our homes in the city. And we pay a disposal fee at that facility. And that fee is increasing a little bit, but it is still cheaper to deliver the waste to surf as compared to driving it to some offsite landfill. Okay. And I would want to point out that we do have two different rates. We have rates for people who are outside of the city who pay at surf, and their rate is higher than Long Beach residents. So Long Beach registrants do get a benefit from disposing at Surf Creek. In the last two things is I want to echo Councilmember Price's comments. When I look through this budget for the first time and I saw how many new positions we were creating it just the more that we can create good jobs here at the city that are lasting jobs instead of contracting those jobs out, I think we do well by our residents. So I want to thank you for that. Parks Rec online. I will try to go fast, guys. Sorry. Sometimes I feel like I go really fast and sometimes I'm long winded. You're just going to have to sit with me tonight, guys. So congratulations again. Two months in and presenting a massive budget with all of our great ideas. I really want to appreciate that. One thing you did not mention that we saw and we were really excited about was water, storm, debris. We love that. And I wanted to understand, is there an operating costs with that? Maybe that's a public works question. I'm told, is existing resources. Okay. So we don't have any ongoing operational costs associated. Great. So that's my if I may, I do want to expound a little on that, because you're right. This is a fabulous project. So exciting. Yeah. We've been dealing with trash debris for a long time coming down the L.A. River. It's been getting less and less every year as we put in capture devices upstream. But right now, we still capture the majority of the trash when we wait for it to come onto the beach. And that is much more expensive to do it when it's already on the beach because it's loaded with sand. The dump costs are more expensive and we're also losing sand. And so the idea here as well, we've tried several other booms that certainly with with various success, we would actually use capital dollars to create a booming system out in the water when the storms are coming. So we can capture it all efficiently, move it around with equipment, using existing staff, but using new equipment, putting it on a conveyor belt and getting it out of the river before it even touches the beach. So we're really excited about this and we thank you for the support. I would love to see a video of this one because it's just so nerdy and cool. The community engagement partnership we talked today absolutely love it. As much as we can help connect you with constituents and residents that might not already be connected to our Parks Department, please let us know how we can help. I applaud you for the efforts and trying to adjust some of our bathrooms. I know that we've talked about Bixby Park and all the challenges that we've had there and your creative thinking, what you bring to the table. We appreciate that. Wanted to go on record around the partners for Parks. I'm going to ask you this question that I talked to you about earlier. A lot of us have friends of organizations in our parks that raise money. They want to invest in our parks, how we work with them and what that process looks like down the road. I would like to see us have some kind of agreement, more use of that before we invest in a project that our community partners come to us with, that we do it eyes wide open with transparency so we know how much money they are bringing to the table, who their board members are in the long term vision. So I just wanted to ask you for your commitment to continue to work on that, moving forward with the partners of Parks since we have earmarked some funds in here. Absolutely. Thank you so very much. And then the youth campaign, the funds that are here, I understand that it's here for seed kind of a seed money to talk about where we could go with our youth programing. And really, I know our community partners have asked for 500 instead of 200, and I know that this has come up really quickly. So I hope in between now and the time that the budget comes back, that we can have some conversations with the folks that brought this idea and the mayor's office and really understanding what we're trying to create, because in my mind, it's not a participatory budgeting. Let's go build another slide. It's they're asking for programs to make sure that our youth do not get incarcerated, that our youth are not dropping out of schools, that we're investing in them academically and programs that we might not already offer at our parks, and that those might need to be offered by other nonprofits. So I just before we approved the final number, I hope that we can really have an understanding about the impacts of, what, 203 hundred and what our vision is for that. I love this. I definitely support it. And that I believe, ladies and gentlemen, is all my questions. You guys have done a fantastic job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Would you say. Thank you, vice mayor. So, first of all, I wanted to just say this is a good budget, not many cuts. And so this is an opportunity for us to really just check in once a year. We get a chance to check in on the budget. So we get to think about some of the operations and programs that are important to us and our council districts. So let's start with we'll start with you, Craig. So first of all, Craig, just want to give kudos to you and your team. We set out to do something and you figure out how to get it done in Highland Park Community Center, the work that we're doing there. I know it was complex to identify different funding sources, you know, switch architects at the last minute and make things happen. And I know that you ran into some problems once you dug up the 100 year old park and took a look. There were things now in there that weren't mapped out. So good work. I know that we have a number a bigger a larger focus we've placed on traffic traffic safety. And we talked a little bit about it today. But so what are the what are some of the projects that we have related to parks, to traffic signals in the next year that we can look forward to? Yes. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you for that. Similar to what we're doing right now on Fourth Street, we will be adding new traffic, single signals up in District nine. In fact, I think we have a celebration coming up next week for a traffic signal at 64th and Downey. This is on the heels of one or two others that were placed in in the district last couple of years. And we have some planned in connection with some new developments. So not only are new traffic signals going in, but you've really championed the pedestrian safety crossings. And through our pedestrian safety grant, we will be placing a couple of those in District nine and throughout the city. And I think you funded an additional one in your district as well. So with those traffic calming measures, those traffic safety devices, that's one element. But we're also looking at corridor improvements. And Atlantic and Artesia are both important corridors that we're focusing on in fiscal year 19. And as those projects come forward and and we really look at where are the the important safety crossings for both bicyclists and for pedestrians, those will all be going into the district. So overall, it's a holistic approach to not only vehicle movement, but also the safety of folks in the in the district. Thank you. I think it makes sense to look at it holistically. Atlantic in Artesia, for example, is consistently been one of the most dangerous intersections in our city, at least the last eight, nine years. We've we've worked there. It's always ranked top three and it's no you know, it's adjacent to a freeway, adjacent to a high school and not much infrastructure. But we've seen a transformation and we see more with the new developments that's come in. And the comments Public Works has made to the developers are consistent with the conversations we've had around making the community a lot safer. So thank you for that. But along the same those same lines, two things that I have to bring up and I'm pretty sure you you know, I'm going to bring it up bike share. What are the challenges, you know, publicly? What are the challenges with bringing bike share and some opportunities to bring bike share to North Long Beach? So the city does have a bikeshare program. I think I mentioned it in my presentation. We're very pleased to see that the use of our bike share 200,000 miles ridden on our bike share bikes. Currently we have about 71 bike share hubs throughout the city and about 400 bikes deployed. We're working with our bike share provider who has gone to a kind of a corporate restructuring. They were recently bought by Uber and did a rebranding to jump. And so we're we're placing an order, but those bicycles are manufactured overseas. And I think as a company, they're going through some distribution issues with the tariffs, etc.. And there is a timeline to deliver those North Lime beaches on our kind of next phase list. It's a it's an important component. We're investing in a bicycle boulevard, again, connecting uptown to downtown. And we think bike share is an important part of that. We we are working to figure out how we can engage new technologies like E-Scooters and vendors that provide those new technologies. And there may be an opportunity to mirror what we're doing with E-Scooters and with e-bikes. Good. And with those and I understand this, the challenges with the tariffs. We've talked about how it's beginning to impact the project delivery timeline and costs on a number of things. And I think that's a separate conversation we should have specifically at our Fed Ledge Committee. But in addition to that sort of along that same line of pedestrian safety, we've done beach for a while now. It's a great program. We've done it twice in the Uptown community, but we also done smaller activations like we did activate Uptown where we took a smaller chunk of the street from Atlantic to Orange and engaged with the businesses and had a deeper conversation about mobility. And it was a lot less expensive than the beach streets. And in comparing the fact that we've hosted both types of events in our district, my small businesses for the most part don't say they haven't said, yeah, it was bring beach streets back, but they've said let's bring the smaller thing back. Because literally, like Robert Earl's for example, it was their most successful day ever had because it was smaller. It was a lot more focus on that individual neighborhood, which we don't get a lot outside of, you know, a downtown type area. We don't get that kind of citywide attention focused on a really much smaller area. So I say that to say maybe it's time that we look at diversifying beach streets a bit instead of one or two per year and all the focus is on one area. We look at smaller engagements, maybe like half or a third of the size of beach streets and really invest there. And I think, you know, those types of things are easier to leverage and received grant funds. If you look at more of a social reduction committee and SAG and others, we look at they're they're more willing to fund these smaller engagements in our businesses and our residents. We can have a more intimate experience with them. So I know that we have a beach House budget at this time, but I want you to think about how we can accomplish these mini activations like First Fridays, for example, how we can do that moving forward. I want you to think on that. Thank you. I'll do all. Right. And thank you for for your time. So let's move to planning. So another window. We're going to be working a lot closer together this year because of a plan. So I know that, you know, the vacant lot registry was mentioned. That's great. I know that we've had success with the foreclosure registry and it generated a lot of, you know, a lot of revenue and things like that. But the vacant lot registry, I would figure if the customer is absentee landlord, they're not going to be as responsive as a bank would with foreclosure with a forever thousand dollar a day. Fine. So how's the how's the response been with the vacant lots? Well, it's just actually it's just getting started. It was adopted by council earlier this year. And we're only now, I'm going to say within the last 30 days, just starting to roll it out. Okay. So we don't really have a database of experience yet, but I think with my announcement earlier that we now have a city prosecutor that would be dedicated to code enforcement. I would say that to the extent that we have a homeowner who is unresponsive, it certainly would transition at that point to a violation, a code violation, in which case we could ultimately send it over to the city. PROSECUTOR And I agree with you, the prosecutor concept, that's that's a game changer. We didn't have that on the on the verge of foreclosure, a dedicated prosecutor on the foreclosure piece. But if we think about the idea that we have a dedicated prosecutor, I would like to, you know, focus them as much as possible on nuisance nuisance businesses as a priority. I know that occasionally we do receive code enforcement violations on neighbors. I think we just need to be very cognizant of that, you know, before we, you know, let loose a prosecutor that we really go for their due process. But I believe that the corridor adjacent nuisance businesses, I mean, those are the ones that are we're getting a lot of calls from particularly, you know, along Long Beach Boulevard and some of those and in the McKinley neighborhood along Paramount Boulevard. If we can sort of deploy our prosecution efforts there, I think that would make a big difference. And also, I'll also say, you know, there was a conversation about aligning the facade work. I think that there's a lot of conversation there that makes sense. But the biggest challenge we've seen with the facade work has been the fact that it still requires a signature. If a property owner needs to request additional funding or requires an actual wet signature and outside of I don't know, in my district in particular, if there's a vacant lot or a business that's, you know, or a facade that is in disrepair a lot of times because it's an absentee property owner and it's difficult to actually track down that absentee property owner. So we need tools. So are there legal challenges or circumstances that or technology issues that that that are hindering us from allowing the use of an electronic signature as well, as opposed to a wet signature to ensure that these these facades are being deployed. I haven't actually looked into that. But based on your your comment that it's an issue, I think that's certainly something I can start to take a look at. And we can work with our city attorney's office to see if there is some viable alternative to that that the city can implement. I just don't know the response to that. But we can certainly explore alternatives to the wet signature. Okay. I mean, that's been the the largest issue in North Long Beach with with respect to facades, it's getting a hold of the landlord or the property owner. And so if we can figure that out, I think there'd be a lot a lot more support and excitement, excitement for the program. We would invest the money, but it's hard to see the difference because if you get one property owner and then the next one is the next block over, you barely see it. So I think we can if we deliver these a little bit better by addressing that issue, and I think it'll go a long way. But thank you so much for your hard work. And I think you know this. I think you have a fantastic team. Moving on to parks and recreations. So first of all, I just want to acknowledge your accomplishments that the Uptown Open Space Plan focused on open space expansion in District nine has gone on to win not one but two American Planning Association awards. And so we'll be sending the team down to San Diego with you in support of that. So we're really proud of that work. I just have a couple of questions for you. So the title on Community Engagement Partnership Bureau, it sounds great. I'm still very unclear on the purpose, the purpose of this new bureau. What is this you're going to do and how is it is it going to have anything to do with the partner development operations, grant writing operations? What is it going to do this new bureau? Yes, it will, Councilwoman Richardson. It will focus intensely on the grant development for projects. But in addition, it will have an enhance opportunity for for planning, for projects and community engagement. And and in particular, the other part of the name is, is enhanced partnerships working with partners of parks and working with our program just to increase our ability to leverage more resources and do more projects. So kind of all of the above as you just the things that you just mentioned, so will the park development officer position be shifting there or is there still going to be a park development officer separately from this bureau? The role will still be there with regards to that function. So it's just going to have an increased capacity with regards to what you're familiar with. But just it's just a recognition that we need to have a greater focus, greater resources in in that very important function. So this is the same position as the Parks Development officer, or is there an additional. I'm unclear. Are we is this is this additional staff? There is going to be a a manager overseeing the bureau a bureau manager. So this would be an increased enhanced managerial position. And the current park development officer will report to this person in that position, rather, will report to this new position. And now I think I think the plan is that it's going to be that person with regards to that role. Well, I would just say, if I can add here as well, what we're doing here is both trying to enhance that community partnership aspect in Parks and Rec, but we're also trying to streamline project development. So right now we have portioned portions of project development that are in Parks and Rec and then it transfers over to public works. We're trying to make that a little bit more seamless, that we're going to do more of the actual project management in public works. And that park development officer position is going to convert and become this bureau manager focusing on strategic partnerships, but also then providing the liaison and the design work up front. So we really see Pak's role moving forward is helping to identify park needs and then public works would build and construct and deliver the project so that we're providing kind of consistency in the development of that project. That makes sense. And thank you, Councilwoman Price. I was I actually didn't catch the fact that 60% of the position as we use land in the harbor and title lands area. Yes. So most of our parks and rec programs share their time because they do both tidelands and marinas as well as General Fund. And so we do split out their time. They also then make sure that they're spending their time in those areas as well, because we're charging those funds. So if we're charging that fund, we need to be spending time in that area. I understand they'll be able to work throughout the entire city. Understood. So 40% of this position will positions. Time will be dedicated to park development and partnerships citywide and 60% into the Titan's area. Correct. And it's budgeting as well. If for some reason in that year we don't have any projects there, we'll look at adjusting that and shifting things around. So is the current park development officer position the same way 60% there or is it general fund funded? If I recall that one charge is directly to projects or part of it as general fund and part of it charges to projects. A man, a member of. The city council, Councilmember Richardson. That is correct. It is a. Position that is funded. Through both general fund and charging directly to projects. That's how it's funded today going forward. It will be general fund in addition to some of those other Tidelands funding sources, because this position in this bureau will be in support of all of our operations, be they in the uplands or the parks areas or the Tidelands. So I just want to say I don't think that's acceptable that to limit its time only to 40% of that that position, it's a really important position. It's incredibly important. All nine districts and not a slight against any particular area. I think it's great if Tidelands gets that level of quality and that level of attention. I just think to say 40% of that position in a new bureau is separate across the rest of the city. I don't think that's acceptable. And so I would ask that we continue. Tom, whoever else needs to talk about this, I think we need to think about either funding it with a bit more of the project project costs. We need to look at that or figuring out a different way to make that opposition a bit more balanced. Because if you think about a lot of the conversations around partnerships. Just last year when we consolidated afterschool programs, the concept was that we were going to replace a lot of these programs with partnerships in our parks. For example, we're working right now on, you know, was it Campfire USA and Conservation Corps of the Forest Park that requires a lot of time and logistics to work out. So I just personally think that's something that we need to we need to resolve before addressing this budget. And thank you, Councilwoman Price, for bringing that. I didn't have no idea. I think that's good at that point came out. All right. So next I know that you are, Mr. Director. I know we've you've done a lot of interesting things. We've had conversations about what you've done in Santa Ana. What are you doing around innovative ideas, around teen teen programing? Because I know that as you look at our strategic plan, which I'm excited about, I think the reality is, you know, our team centers, the concept of teen center hasn't been modernized in a long time either in how we address teens or, you know, what experience or can you offer in that regard? Well, Santa Ana had a different kind of structure for Parks and Recreation. I also oversaw the library, but I was able to leverage grants from that. That had to do with literacy and library and digital dividing the digital divide as well as workforce resources and using web money. So I was able to do these teen space satellites in the different rec centers and added components. It wasn't just recreation and sports, but also had this workforce development as well as programs that added to core increasing the teens resiliency to some of the some of the negative forces in in the neighborhoods that they lived. So it was pretty comprehensive. But that again, that was the nature of the structure of the funding in Sandtown. And but I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to use some of those ideas and certainly for sure, and I'll let you off the hook on that. So so I think moving forward, I think that's actually a great opportunity for us while you're looking at the strategic plan. So number one, I mean, the role of libraries has changed that they serve more of a community center. I think we need to look at our teen centers and modernizing those to make sure we're looking at looking holistically at how to support youth. I'll even say, you know, with all the activity that's happening at Jordan High School out in Park and the North facility and North Health Facility, they're all in one complex, a health facility , a park. And I think we should think about while we're in the process of building the building, the community center, we should think about how to integrate those services a little bit more, particularly as we relate to responding to teens. But that said, thank you so much. I know a lot of my conversations veered away from budget, but this is I use this as an opportunity to just have a general check in on a lot of the issues that, you know, the public has brought up to me. My district is brought to me and then I've sort of seen over, you know, over time. Thank you all for your service. Yes. In 1/2. And Councilman Richardson, Councilwoman Mongeau had come before she like to help you with. So I was beginning. We kind of talked about this and I can't remember, quite frankly, whether it was at a block meeting or at another budget meeting before. I think you missed one meeting earlier this year, but we kind of talked about workforce investment and the opportunity of the teen centers. The new Parks and Rec director kind of outlined some of those opportunities. And so within the we our A program, Mr. Harris had talked about that some of those funds would be available to kind of combine if we were to go that direction. So I know that that's a more kind. Brands of memo that will probably be getting back that I. Probably could. Tell you a little about. Sure. So we should we should have a good. Yep. Yeah. Good talk on that. Thanks. Thank you both. Thank you. Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to deal with public works. I, Mr. Baca, I heard a color she gave you, which is well and the due for that because you have done a great job, but you have a lot on your plate. I know that. And I want to thank you for everything you've done in our six district. And please keep working with this. First of all, I like the idea that we had three pothole trucks. You know, can you please share how these trucks get assigned to the areas that they respond to? Councilmember Andrews Yes, we respond to potholes based on complaint. And what we do is we we look at areas of the city that, that we can kind of group those complaints and pothole repair request together and we'll send a crew out and kind of work one area. So those three crews are now able to address different areas of the city in in fixing potholes. I know this is a concern of you. You brought up in one of our briefings and we don't have a CD six pothole track yet, but we're working on it. Thank you. And yeah, that that definitely would help, you know, if we could get, you know, the heat map, you know, the areas that, you know, where the most potholes report come from. That would be great. I think it'd be a great idea there. And now that I'm, you know, asking about the heat map, can we also get a map of graffiti and illegal dumping and item and that report that we'd like to, you know, get something on that also, if that would be possible? I'll look into that. I'm not sure if we have it available on GRC, but if we do, we can certainly get you a map. Thank you very much. And the next item is also on. I understand that the ADA access ramps were selected by report by one ADA coordinator, you know, upon complaints of people with accessible issues. And we are aiming to serve 200 additional ramps. Can we have a conversation on how we can be more inclusive and in approach, in approving and denying of, you know, resurfacing these ramps? Yes. Thanks for bringing that up. I think you're you're familiar with the city settlement for creating more accessibility. And one of the priorities in that settlement is to look at any missing curb ramps. This year, we anticipate completing roughly 720 to 750 brand new curb ramps. We anticipate achieving a similar number next year. The city is in the process of doing a self-assessment and really what that means is that we're looking at all of our sidewalks, all of our missing curb ramps and any existing curb ramps that may be built and that are not compliant with standards. So that report should be done January of 19, and we'll be bringing that to council. And from that report, we will be able to share kind of your idea, which is a heat map showing where those concentrated areas of the worst sidewalk concerns exist. Oh, thank you very much. You know, in reading something very interesting in the report, performance measures that I think we should really highlight as a city, the goal for each residents not to just, you know, dispose of more than £7.6 of trash per day is amazing. You know, we can work on, you know, a campaign to help our landfill. It would be great. So I show that, especially when we're picking up 17,000 mattresses. Thank you. Thank you again. You know, I'm really glad to see that. And the some of the changes that we are, you know, postponing to replace, you know, the council can I we call it constructive service with actual staff. And I appreciate when we keep our work in-house because the people we have working for us actually knows our city and may, you know, live in it. And therefore, I think we have a better outcome. And I think that's a great idea because I love the idea when people who work here get a chance and the people who live here get a chance to work here. And I think that's a great idea. So thank you guys very much for looking into that. And I do have one more question for the Environmental Service people about how many phone calls that the refuge hotline received in a day. I I'm sure right now I don't want you to tell me I. Don't have the daily figures. But we do know we received about 85,000 requests this year and roughly 15,000 of those came over Golden Beach. So roughly 70,000 calls requested annually. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Also for the public service so we can finish. You know, replacing the lighting at the neck of the park, you know, to lay it, it would really be a great idea. So would you please look into that? And yes, MacArthur Park is on the list of the parks remaining for LED conversion, and that should happen in 19. Thank you very much. And next, I'd like to go to Parks. You know, Mr. Toronto, I think I thank you for you are considering the nature of employees, you know, which I think everyone is kind of, you know, consider about that because most of our free standing restrooms in the six requires extra eyes at night time as they do time as they do in park parks, like the longest one we call it tot lot and a park and Chick fil A would really benefit from an employee's that these you know managing these fields urgent that the restrooms everyone is speaking about the night restrooms and I'm sure everyone in this day says if they have the denied restrooms, they are having a problem with them. So having that extra person and monitoring it, I think would be a great idea and it really help our parks. And also, you know, and I'm hoping this new bill for partnership and community engagement, you know, works on reaching out to everyone in the city, including residents. Those who primarily in with the primary language may not be in English. And that works on bring in, you know, pride in year because we are a city that with many people to work to work, to want to work with it. So, you know, and I have one more question about the BSA program funding. And this is going directly to the Parks Department, or is this for a nonprofit organization to run the BSA program or out of the park? Directly to the Parks Recreation Marine Department. Thank you. And one last thing if we can bring back I know this is one of my staff's ideas and I thought it's a good idea, too, because everyone loves to work out and because when we call it bring back the track in youth sports, that would be great because because really it's a showcase esthetic field. You know, the new feel I have over them, I don't think many of the individuals had a chance to go and see that wonderful $11 million feel. You know, and I know sometimes you said, oh, boy, you know, we don't have all weather turf there, but it's really good for the kids because for soccer, it is fantastic . The track is fantastic. We have lights, you know, almost up to 12:00 at night. So you really want to stay in shape, go to Celtic field because it will be fantastic for everyone. And with that, I'd like to move over to development services. And the first question I have is, under the 18 accomplishments for this department, I am very proud to see many of the projects in this next district highlighted. And we have Habitat for Humanity, the L.A. Housing, Clifford Deer, among other accomplishments. You know, I want to ask about 80% rate of the closing code enforcement, you know, cases that is published are these cases that are actually closed because there has been, you know, corrective action or are they considered closed because an inspector went out? They're actually considered clothes and that's 80% that are close within that that 120 day time period. So, yes, that is actually closed and meaning that the issue is resolved. Thank you. And then there's also in this budget, I do not you know, I do not see any recommendations to upgrade. And it'll be called system system. You know, at least half of the time that my staff wants to report something on this website, the site is either is run. It runs into some sort of glitch. And this is the system we really need to upgrade our or is sometimes, you know, that we can, you know, work towards addressing it. So that's something I really wish you guys to take the time to look at. You know that if you had a chance to. And another thing, I really would be pleased to get somewhat some sort of breakdown of the number of, you know, property inspectors under the program in each district. And if you guys had a chance, I'd like to be able to get that if it's possible. You know, I'm trying to keep my remarks brief across this department, but I really hope that with all of these new employees, we're going to be adding to decrease waiting time. We also take a look at how many time applicants can come back to this revision Army. If we can work towards the consolidation of these processes and applications. I know a lot of the individuals who go out and looking for applications and going out looking for jobs. The process seems very, very long and I wish we would get to kind of be a little more user friendly, you know, with these jobs to go after people looking for applications. So I want to thank both of you, all three of you, these individuals for the service, if you work with me and please continue to work with all of us. Thank you guys again for the great job you're doing. Thank you, Vice Mayor Councilmember Cipriano. Thank you. You know, with the number of questions we've heard tonight, you would think that we never speak. But actually we have our my office has monthly briefings, so I exchange emails with Linda today. We met yesterday for our briefing. Craig Beck and I met last Monday and Ronaldo and I had a ribbon cutting last week. So our discussions tend to be rather micro in nature when we do have our briefing. So I'll keep everything macro tonight. And my first question is for Craig back, because the department has evolved so much just since you've taken over. We have more funding. We're doing more studies. Has anything philosophically changed? And I apologize for blindsiding you with this, but I don't think I've ever asked you this before. In your approach to selection of streets for paving and that type of thing, is it more of a challenge because you have a greater volume of work to do ? No, I. Councilmember Super. Thank you for the question. I think it really goes back to strategic planning efforts, and I think this council has been very supportive of going in that direction. A good example of that is our pavement management plan. So we come to this council, we present our pavement manager plan, and within that plan it makes recommendations of where to invest the dollars that you have in your streets. And I think our approach initially was to focus on those streets that were in good condition and put slurry out to ensure that they stayed in good condition . So I heard an interesting analogy the other day, which is if you if you were in the delivery business and you had ten vehicles and three needed brand new engines and seven only needed oil changes, you would spend the money on doing oil changes before you would repair those engines. And so we're taking a similar investment strategy where we're stretching our dollars and impacting as many streets as we can before we have to invest significant, significant amounts to actually repair streets, meaning we have to dig them up down to the base and repair the base and then build them back up. So we are now starting to pick those up and 18 and we have some more of those on the books in 19 and you're going to start seeing that shift a little bit. But we really do rely on our payment management plan and other strategic plans to help us make those kind of decisions. Okay, I know you've said this a lot, but it seems like someone there's always someone who doesn't get the message that this is a scientific approach and it's the most efficient way to pay for our slurry streets. All right. Thank you. The other thing I wanted to mention to that I have mentioned to you before is that tree trimming. We have a lot of palm trees in our district and they're on major transportation corridors. So our council offices has offered to come up with the funding so we can do that. I think palm trees are just not in the same cycle as as other trees. So if we can do that this year, we would like to do that again before the rainy season starts. Let's hope we have a rainy season, I guess. And to for development services to Linda Tatum I think the strength. If your department really lies in flexibility or adaptability or a can do attitude, I think that is really key. So thank you for your efforts in that area. And I just have one example here. I won't mention it specifically, but it's in the presentation and that's a business on the Anaheim corridor. And that was dead on arrival when that was first mentioned to my office. And to see the complete 180 where it appears as something you're proud of in this presentation, just really speaks to that ability to adapt and see what the investor or property owner wants to do. And so thank you for the efforts there. And to Director Mallette, I think all three of the partners here deal with ADA issues. And first of all, you've done a lot in your first few months, but for my office you did a lot in your first two weeks and you brought that project to fruition. We mentioned it in our newsletter last week, so thank you for that. And I think it has somewhat to do with your background. So if you could tell us about your very background at ADA issues also. I was fortunate that I was the city of sending its first ADA coordinator back in 1990 when the Act was passed the Civil Rights Act. Well, thank you. I hope we can go to the well once in a while to get your expertize on these things, because I think just that that background and philosophy can help a lot. I think that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Got to remember. Let me go to Councilwoman Gonzalez and then I'll make some comment and then we'll go back to some folks that they want to go against. Let me let me go to Councilman Gonzalez first. So first and foremost, thank you so much to all of our department heads for presenting. I think this is a really amazing project. First, I'll go to Trace Back in Public Park. I first want to say thank you, Craig, and your team Environmental Services. You took on the expanded polystyrene ordinance and I appreciate the inclusion as an administrative and I at the ordinance you implemented the choose to be campaign very quickly and it just showed a commitment to sustainability. Just wanted to thank you for that very much. Quick question for you in regards to streets of England, Long Beach, I know we had the 18 optimization study for BP and now we have the FAA 19 supervisor of reef operations proposed. How do you see the two budget elements functioning together for better efficiency? And they had issues of the beach and believe in straight people. So how do you see them sort of making our our efficiency better? Councilmember Gonzales, hello. Yes, I think the mentioning the street sweeping optimization study is important. We really have worked to reduce our street sweeping times and we focused initially in our most parking impacted communities, shifting when we when our start and ending times were. And we look to continue that as we move forward. We still do have some streets where there's conflict of trash collection days on street sweeping days. And we certainly appreciate that. That is an inefficient way to do business and we're working to eliminate all those conflicts. When you look at the oversight of that operation, it is street sweeping and it is also the clean team. So there's a lot of work that's generated there. And adding a supervisor position will not only help us be more efficient on our clean time operation, but will also help us manage some of our street sweeping challenges as well. So I do see this as a as a valuable position, and I think it'll help in both ways. Great. Thank you very much. And then the last question for you, Craig, was you just mentioned it briefly. I know that there is an increased workload for public works, and we completely understand that, you know, tons of development in downtown, which is great. But you mentioned, you know, increased cost, but that's sort of out of the market issue. Are there are are we seeing a specific, you know, a large increase in cost that would now be a hindrance to projects or delay in projects? Well, I think if you look at the presentation and you look at some of the bid pricing we're getting, what what seems to be happening is that the subcontractors have a lot of demand and they're able to to correspondingly charge higher prices. And our general contractors who are bidding on many of our projects are sometimes having challenges, having are their subcontractors who bid with them, hold their price for an extended amount of time. And so I think one of the goals internally that we're going to be working on is how do we shorten the time frame from bid opening to council approval and notice to proceed? And if we can do that, I think it will certainly help some of those challenges that we're seeing in our bid process. But additionally, just right now, construction pricing is at a premium. And so we're having to, as I mentioned, either having to reduce scope or identify additional funds to address the initial scope to be able to deliver the project. Thank you so much. And I just appreciate you providing that context because, you know, we do get out a lot about delays. And so we appreciate that. But thank you very much for that. Both which goes to art and also. Okay? Yes. So I just want to say thank you to our party in both Iraq and in part because the interim director for some time and their commitment to private equity, which is a huge initiative of our office, but really is for the betterment of the city. And we can definitely see a difference in programing and activity with are currently seeing and we look forward to the budget proposal that will appreciate that the community engagement partnership we I absolutely love that. I think relative to the discussion that many of my colleagues were talking about with the with opportunity funds from and how that would work together, do you envision that community partnership engagement person running point on that? If we are if we were to approve the $200,000 for the youth fund, that person being the one out that would do that. How would you envision that happening? No, I think I believe that that still needs to be determined. The process. I'm not envisioning the the new bureau manager having lead point. I think there needs to be further discussion on exactly the approach. Okay. Got it. And so I would just say, you know, as much as I mentioned, I think other cities have invested quite a bit more than $200,000 was definitely a start. And I think, you know, relative to what we talked about with Park Equity and just a lot of the programs that are need in Parks and Recreation , I think that is a wonderful initiative to improve. So just wanted to leave that comment. But switching gears, I know there's been a large focus on being of programing. Are we looking at more programing? I mean, we have done some pilot programs in the past, and I don't know if this would be made with a new language helping the aging center, how that little worked out. I'm just curious as to what that would look like. Let me call on staff that might have more knowledge about the scene. I think the question is about the the continuation of the senior meal program. Yes. Yeah. So I'm I'm calling on our Community Recreation Bureau manager to help me with this question. Thank you. Guardian Council. Currently, we have two providers that support our senior meal program. We partner with HCA that has our meal program at our a few of our sites, and then a recent partnership with the women empowering arm to provide meals at Cesar Chavez as well as Silverado Park. And we both continue with that because what I was going to be, I was under the impression that if those programs were pilot, so I would just continue with the proposed financing budget. I mean, as this program is planned to continue throughout the new fiscal year. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Well, I just want to say thank you to our park staff. And again, you and new director head up. I think he's made incredible progress just in the short time you've been here at the ski resort. Thank you very much for your words. And then I will switch gears to development services, Linda. I just want to say thank you for the prosecutor option. I think this is truly a huge, intangible, historic neighborhoods and blighted unit, especially in downtown neighborhoods, without even looking and calling for their service is wonderful. But what type of major issues currently do you project that this prosecutor will be handling? As we talked about earlier, I think probably that the nuisance cases would be the one of the first priorities. I I'm not envisioning that we would use them for the health and safety cases just because those we expect a pretty quick turnaround. So I would say that the nuisance cases and probably or likely some of the the prep cases as well, but we will try to assess kind of the effectiveness and just look at kind of where where he's most needed. Okay. And I would just say that and you know, we had our budget meeting last night in the first District and I remember and had mentioned that ten years ago, you know, we had asked for a, you know, may or may not need, but it possibly could is that we have a link in our Building Services website sort of buried in the website, but it has the ability to share. A few of the property owners in our city have been over 120 days. And I think as we're adding more resources for port enforcement, especially with proper cut off material and opportunity that we look at, perhaps highlighting that link a little bit more if it should marry with the square. And that's something we think that could be done. Yes, I think we can take a look at that. Okay, great. Because I think that would be very beneficial for us. Just the whole comprehensive discussion about bettering our neighbor, helping and mitigating blight. I think you and then add a couple more questions relative to the phasing accomplishment you mentioned over 13,000 cases have been eradicated within 180% of them have been eradicated. And we have more details on how some of the grant has some haven't been closed earlier than 120 days. And do we know how many of them have been critical, like quality, quality of life issues? Unfortunately, that's one of the issues I was speaking to earlier in terms of the the lack of the ability of our current database to really get a really good handle on the the types of complaints. So that's something that we're going to be exploring further so that we can get more robust reporting out of the out of our data system in terms of the types of projects that we are, that the types of citations so that we can report out on those and know where we need to really focus our energies and efforts. So in terms of your question specifically about the whether or not there are some close within less than the 120 days ? Yes, there are some. That is just the outside. And we're pointing out that that 80% closure is within that time period. But some may be as quick as a week and some may be up to the full 120 days. Okay. And I know we talked about the technology and is it the Hanson software? I remember that it was a year ago or two years ago, we talked about updating the software. Is this for the Hanson software? Yes. I think it's now been rebranded and it's called in four, but in four enhance and they're one in the same. And apparently we are in the process of taking a look at getting the newer version of that system. Okay. Great. Wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing those improvements and I hope that I can hear that earlier. But thank you very much. And I just thank all three of your your department for all of the continued work that you've been doing to make our city better. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Councilwoman. Just a couple just comments on the presentations in the departments. I want to just start by congratulating all three departments I think have done a great job with with the staff putting the budget together just for for public works. I want to just thank you. You know, Mr. Beck, you and your team, especially in light of measure, have just done just a great job of ensuring that our infrastructure plan and our five year infrastructure plan for public buildings and streets and roads is moving forward. And we're now through a little over a full year of implementation of that plan, and we're on track. Projects are being completed on time, and I just really appreciate you and your team for doing that. And so I absolutely support the additional resources to manage the additional infrastructure work. And I just want to echo I know you've heard me say this to you privately many times, but Councilwoman Pryce mentioned the issues around streets and the way that we will repair the street and oftentimes not ensure that it is left in the condition that it was found. This continues to be an issue. And so we just really need to tighten that process up so that our streets are left in the in as good or better condition when the work happens. I want to again congratulate the team on almost completing the LED light process, which is almost done, which I think is really, really fantastic . And and I think overall, I think all the work that's happening over there is really great to just the Parks Department, the two areas that I want to lift up as well. One is obviously very supportive and I've been working with partners of Parks and the team there to ensure that there's funding for there to be some support for leadership there for the next few years and to ensure a smooth process. I'm really happy that that is implemented in the budget and I want to thank the Parks Department for partnering with that great group of folks there, including all the wonderful volunteers that do that work in in parks. I wanted to also just point out two things. The first is there was some conversation about the the youth fund and the dollars there. I mentioned before, it was intentionally we didn't put a lot of detail as far as how it would be spent or the process, because we thought that the staff, along with the council and the community would have an opportunity to have that discussion. And so the resources are there. But as far as where they're spent and how they're spent, I think is really a conversation that is going to happen. And so there is no intention, I don't think right now as to how we do that or even where it lives . I think that it was an idea that was important to councilmembers as well as the community. And so we put some seed dollars there. And as far as how that's spent and the process, we put participatory budgeting just as a nod to a community process. But it really can be whatever the council wants it to be. And so I think that's I wanted to just to clarify that and then I wanted to also note that I do think an area in retrospect or and I'm not sure if it's possible in this year's budget, I know that Councilman Mongo and Councilwoman Pricer have discussed this as well, but we do need to find some opportunities to increase the senior programing that we have. And I think already there's some great work happening there. But I know that I think some council officers are funding some senior programs, which I think is great, but really that needs to be memorialized within the budget, I think, and within the Parks Department long term. And so I'd like to that burden should come off of the council offices and that should be funded through the Parks Department. And so I just want to if it's if we're able in this year's budget to find some resources to put some funding for these senior programs, I'd be supportive of that and I'm sure the PSC will look at that as well. And then I wanted to mention, let's see, on the parks works now, I think I think that's all those are. Just might just some general comment. I think the team is doing a really good job with these with these presentations. Councilman Price. Do I, I had actually cued up because I forgot to talk about senior programing and I agree. I think we definitely need to find a way to incorporate senior programing. I know Councilman Austin and I tried to initiate some senior programing in our Porter facility, which is the land bowling center. And it just it was a great idea, but we just needed a little bit more help and some resources. And we did use some divide by nine money to try to get it started. But I think that's a population that really is underserved. And, you know, our program was called the Mindful Aging Series. So we wanted to try to encourage folks to be active and. And have community and fellowship. And so if we can identify some funds and I know we'll really work on that. I think that's a great population for us to try to assist. I wanted to echo what Councilman Super and said, Linda, to to you. I don't think there's ever been a time where I've suggested something or asked a question of anyone on your team and they've said no, or even implied that the answer was going to be in the negative and not that we always want to hear what we want to hear. But they always start with, let me see what I can do. Let me look into it. Let me get back to you. And so I know Oscar and Chris and Kerry are here and your entire team is just you know, they always have a can do attitude. And if they really can't do it, you get to the point where you totally trust them because the you know, they've tried every which way. And if they really can't do it, you they have a lot of credibility. So that's something that I that councilman super now pointed out that I wanted to highlight. And to our PRM director, I, I really hope you didn't think that was a grilling on my part. That was what we call in my industry a very smooth, direct examination. It was not a cross-examination. So I know. Gathering wrongness that I. Grilled you, but that was like a friendly. But the question that I had and I just really want to echo what my colleague, Councilman Richardson, said. I think the Community Engagement and Partnership Program is a really great program. I do. And I would like us to try as a city to find ways to find ways to fund it citywide, because I share the same concern, and that's why I brought it up. You know, we're legally restricted on where we can spend money that's allocated to a particular geographic area. And and frankly, I although we would appreciate having those additional resources in the second and third district, I think Councilman Council person council member Pierson I, I and I won't speak for her, but I can say that I think there's a lot of other areas where we could really see that Tidelands operating money use, such as in areas of beach maintenance. We've asked for more trash cans there, so perhaps purchasing more trash cans so that the Tidelands operation budget can help empty those trash cans. You know, maybe that's an area where we can put some of that money because we don't have as many partnerships and community groups along the very limited area south of Ocean Boulevard to participate and engage in community partnerships. And those partners that we have south of Ocean Boulevard in large part are already established partnerships. We don't need to be giving them any money to engage with us. Aquatics, capital, for example. They're very engaged. Friends of Colorado Lagoon. They're very engaged. These are areas that fall within Tidelands that we would be looking to partner with where they don't need a funding source. So rather than trying to create the position by piecing together money from different departments where we have restrictions on how that money can be spent, I'd rather try to find a way to fund the program because I applaud it and I think it's great. And I it's very innovative. I think we should, as the city, try to find ways to fund it wholly and not from a limited use fund. So with that, thank you very much. Again. Thank you very much, Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. I wanted to make some clarifying questions to development services after hearing some of the comments of my colleagues. One of the things that I think we talked about a few weeks ago was some of our our 99 are bad landlords. And I know that one of the comments made was that inspections are only done on a currently every five year basis. But it's my understanding that all apartment owners are paying the fee on an annual basis. Is that accurate? That's correct. Okay. And then that the cycle of inspection, if there are violator, are they moved up the list so that they would be inspected more frequently than the five? If they are and if they are currently violating, yes, they would be moved up the list. So I think that that's what we talked about with the council because I don't want the community to think that bad landlords only get inspected every five years. It's the good landlords that have passed inspections. They get inspected every five years and that don't have complaints. Though if a complaint came in, they of course would be moved up the list, but that our bad landlords are on a more often rotation and the number of bad landlords as they become good landlords or sell their properties, which we've seen a lot of as well that they. Really consume the majority share of the resources of the program, because the goal really is to get to a place where everyone is living in a healthy and happy environment. So I really appreciate that. And then I also wanted to make a further comment about our Be Safe program and our our senior programs. I know that it's a great program. There's not a lot of talk about it this year because the funding was folded in. And I think that it takes some attention to remind ourselves what a solid program it is and how great it's been for the community, but also that our senior programs are crucial and that we don't currently have our own area agency on aging department, but that the C one funds, the C two funds, the activity funds, the case management funds that come down from the state really aren't being funneled into our department. And I know that I'm pretty sure this is the third year in a row that I've mentioned that we really need to work on drawing down those funds from the county better so that we are getting a larger share of it to fund some of these programs, including senior fitness and other things. But in the meantime, we are going to have to find some general fund money because a lot of our our council offices have been either directly providing the services or funding it through one times, which has been pieced together. So thank you very much. I think all of you are doing a great job. Many of you know, you're my my three go to departments because we have so many public works needs and 70% of the parks in the district. So we really appreciate all that. All three of you do. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Pierce. Yes. I just wanted to take a moment to echo the sentiments of Councilmember Price. I think having the resources citywide would be great. I know we already had a Tidelands meeting today where we talked about how much we want to see those improvements. I fully support the idea, you know, how much I'm in love with big belly trash cans, whatever option it is, and we can put some branding in the little windows on them about our polystyrene ban and creative ways and our new branding that public works just came out with. So wherever we can see some money used for, that would be awesome. Thank you. And I do want to point out that we are already taking we're not waiting for the budget cycle. We're looking at putting those out, both pig belly or the the other equivalent as well, and as well as trash cans and others along the beach. So we are actively putting those out because we are seeing additional, you know, more people coming to the beach, which is a great thing. And unfortunately, they're not cleaning up after themselves. So both are putting out more opportunities to dispose and then also having our maintenance staff go by and make sure that those are clean. Thank you. And I just had a remembering from our polystyrene conversation. I recall there was some conversations around a P3 with maybe Dart or somebody like that and that we were looking at trying to use some some funds from some nonprofits, not nonprofits from some of those corporations to be able to fund more of these trash cans . So maybe we could look back at those minutes and notes and see what we can come back with. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, that concludes questions for the first three parts of this first hearing. So now we go to the second half of the budget hearing, which is going to be library services and the health department. And then we will do questions and then we have the public comment for the hearing. For just for the budget hearing. It's going to be a late night tonight, if you like, Nathan. Walter, you are not here. I can go back to dinner. That's true, too. Okay. Let me see if we can, Mr. America, if we can go on to the next part of the budget presentation. Yes. Well, we have two more departments to hear from. One is library services and the other is Health and Human Services. So we will start with library services and our director, Glenda Williams. Good evening, Honorable Mayor Garcia and members of City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you the proposed FBI 19 budget for the Department of Library Services. We are proud to partner with our family city departments as part of the public safety continuing. And what is our role? Well, according to our police department, there are three sites for public safety prevention, intervention and suppression. So the library is prevention. You've heard that there is a correlation between literacy and crime, but it bears repeating. Again, many studies have shown that 85% of youth in juvenile hall cannot read above a third grade level. 85% are functionally illiterate. And here's another stat. It is estimated that two thirds of the children that cannot read by the fourth grade will either go to jail or be on welfare. And when I've talked to kids about their dreams or what they want to do when they grow up, not one child has said, I want to go to jail. Well, I can't wait to get on welfare. And I'm hopeful that you haven't heard this either. But the good news is that children and access to books perform better in school and have improved math scores. It's true. Kids who read succeed. Studies also show that 60% of inmates are illiterate once they are released. 70% will return to prison if they do not become literate. So you see, stats show that a small investment in literacy through library resources can a huge result yield huge results and help keep our city safe. Okay, good. This slide reflects our core services. The Long Beach Public Library is committed to meeting the learning and information needs of our culturally diverse and dynamic population. From babies and children to adults and seniors, we offer a wide selection of resources and materials representing all points of view. We also provide free computers, free Internet and free Wi-Fi access, but help address the digital divide in our city. More than ever, people need to be connected just to complete a simple task as a normal part of their daily lives. Additionally, additionally, the library also utilizes specialized technology to provide information to individuals and families with special needs. We have 12 public libraries conveniently located throughout the city to serve our community. For some accomplishments the Veterans Resource Center launched this summer at Maine Library. This public space is equipped with a dedicated computer for veteran resources, private study rooms and a collection of materials to assist veterans and their families, including information on veterans benefits. Did you know that a high school dropout costs about $300,000 over their lifetime, and most of that is borne at the local level. Our accredited career online high school launched in 2016, and to date, 34 people have graduated with their high school diploma. Not a GED and a career certificate. There's free services made possible by the California State Library and the Library Foundation. So we're all about literacy. And two new programs highlight this passion. Fantasy Cantos is a bilingual storytime event held monthly at main library and at different library branches. Families with children ages 2 to 5 are invited to explore books, songs and finger plays in English and Spanish. This teaches English speaking families a basic introduction to the Spanish language and to other cultures. While Spanish speakers get to socialize and interact with peers in their native language while practicing early literacy skills, we launched an early literacy initiative this year. Dove into reading. It provides incentives and challenges parents to read 1000 books with their child before kindergarten to get them ready for school and ready to learn. Reading together helps children develop those crucial early literacy skills. Some technology changes that will improve our Wi-Fi include updated access points and network equipment that will provide more reliable service. You may also have noticed that you no longer need your library card to access our wi fi. Just agree to the terms of use and your online. Last but not least, we're really excited about a new platform for our digital archive, which is Long Beach history. It's easier to use and you can clearly see which collection you are reviewing. All the photo, yearbook and city directory collections are available in one place with a single search box for the entire archive. Suggested subject headings are readily available with the number of relevant results. Check it out at LPL dot org. Long Beach Public Library is heavily used. We have about 4300 daily visits for all 12 libraries each year. More than half of our population is a card carrying member, and it has used about 5 million resources. Wi-Fi usage averages about 14,000 a month. E-book and audiobook downloads are almost 12,000 monthly. Just about 70,000 searches a month are made on the popular Go BPL mobile app. We have 15,000 social media followers and we've answered almost 300 requests for information. The proposed library budget is about 14.8 million, 94% of which is from the general fund and includes 428 full time equivalents, which is about 177 employees for 12 library sites and grant funds, representing about 5% are provided mainly by the Long Beach Public Library Foundation, which funds all of our family learning centers. The studio at the main library and Michelle Obama library are mobile studio and other initiatives. We would not be able to provide these critical services without their support and assistance. Our most notable proposed change includes a restructuring not expanding, not enhancing, not reducing the current library schedule. So right now, our libraries operate five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday. And four sites are open half a day on Sundays with one time funds. All libraries are closed on Mondays. In response to public demand, the library proposes moving half the libraries to a Sunday through Thursday schedule, retaining the other six libraries on the current Tuesday through Saturday schedule. So a library will be open, accessible every day of the week. This proposed schedule, as indicated on the slide, was developed using a number of metrics, including accessibility, library materials, checked out, attendance, computer usage events, programs, classes, rentals of meeting rooms by community groups. Geography was taken into account, and council districts with two libraries were placed on opposing schedules. Next, regarding technology enhancements. I'm really excited to share that the new library website is anticipated to go live by the end of this calendar year. It will be robust feature to an intuitive interface and a refreshed looks. Look, plans are also moving forward to connect the last library branch directly to main library with fiber, which will improve internet reliability. Lastly, during the last year, quite a few measure eight facility improvements have been completed and include restrooms. And this is extremely important. Lighting, painting and parking lot repaving. Current projects include hearing loops and circulation. Desk and roof repairs are anticipated. As for challenges, we have aging facilities. The average age of nine libraries is 61 years old. And while our facilities and public works staff are extremely responsive, the aging libraries require require a lot of attention in order to remain safe facilities for the public and staff. Again, thankfully, Measure eight has made it possible to find much of the required facility improvements. Another library challenge has been ensuring the public's and staff safety. Unfortunately, we've seen a steady increase in the number of verbal and physical incidents and assaults occurring in the libraries during this past year. We've worked closely with the Police Disaster Preparedness and Health and Human Services departments who I want to publicly thank for connecting staff to resources , being responsive and training staff on a number of safety related topics so staff can handle these incidents as they occur. Now on to better things library opportunities. We are gearing up for a big move to the new main library anticipated to open next summer. Yes, you can clap. We couldn't be more excited about this. It will be a world class library, not only for downtown residents, but for the entire city. In addition, the long awaited point of sale multi-phase project will finally start. Being implemented in fiscal year 2019, allowing patrons to pay library fees and fines. Also, thanks to library services and technology at Grant from the California State Library, which is before you tonight for approval, the Mark Twain Library will provide enhanced access to its adult and children's book collection by making titles searchable with the combined script and the library's online catalog. This project increases access to library resources for the city's large Cambodian community and helps us to better align with the city's language access policy. Last but not least, there is an opportunity to increase our one gig internet bandwidth to ten gigs through assistance from the California State Library. And this will really come in handy once we open our new main library next year. As with the Michelle Obama library, we expect usage to skyrocket once the new building opens. In closing, it is a pleasure to work with the women and men of the Long Beach Public Library to improve the quality of life for our residents . Their dedication, passion and support allow us to assist our community in meeting their personal and educational goals, and we are honored to have this important role in our community. This concludes the presentation. I'm available for your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is the Health and Human Services presentation. Yes, we will hear a presentation from Kelly Collopy, our director of Health and Human Services. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council Members. Thank you for this opportunity to share the Department of Health and Human Services budget presentation. First, I'd like to give a big shout out to the Health and Human Services team. There are many who are here tonight. They're really a smart, passionate and fabulous group, and I am lucky every single day to get to spend time with them. I also want to thank our city departments and community partners as well as our community members, because I know without you we would not be able to do the work that we do. The Health and Human Services Department has been growing and expanding its services. We work every day to improve the health and safety of people across our Long Beach communities. Our stand is that everyone in the city can reach their highest level of health and potential for successful life, regardless of their background and identity. All of our work focuses on this goal. We now offer 44 yes, 44 different programs, which is up from 30 just five years ago. And these are funded by over 100 grants supporting the health and wellness from pre-birth through end of life. We are a very diverse organization. I was told I only have 10 minutes. If I went through our 44 hour, we'd be here all night, so I'll spare you. However, I would like to highlight the role of the Health Department in the public safety continuum. The Department of Health and Human Services is a core public safety in our city, but often remains in the background. First, the Public Health Emergency Management Team often takes the lead with the Federal Department of Homeland Security and FBI, as well as state agencies and our city's public safety departments for planning to ensure we are prepared for large scale emergency events. The Health Department also participates in the unified command at large scale events such as Grand Prix and Pride festivities. The team is co-located in its mobile command center with the other public safety departments behind the scenes. In cases of large scale emergencies, Public Health Emergency Management coordinated. The opening of the shelter with Parks, Recreation and Marine. Environmental Health ensures the site is ready for habitation. Public health nurses and our EPI team assess all who are displaced and help address any medical needs. Our social workers provide mental health supports to ease the impacts of the trauma and homeless services helps find temporary housing. This work makes it possible to stand up emergency shelter and provide services before the Red Cross can arrive. And then we work with Red Cross once they can arrive. The Environmental Health Bureau coordinates the city's response to hazardous waste threats. The quality of life and heart teams in a very important piece of the homeless response. And I truly appreciate their new funding. But it is also important to recognize, as their successors rely on the homeless services division, strength in coordinating services and creating access to housing opportunities. We made the safe language partnerships and other violence prevention efforts and participate on high level county steering committees for mental health and alternatives to incarceration for both youth and adults. Environmental Health conducts over 7000 restaurant and water inspections each year to ensure our residents and visitors are safe in our restaurants and in our waters. We really are a public safety. Each year we provide over 350,000 free and very low cost health opportunities. These include clinical visits, health insurance enrollment, healthy, active, Long Beach events, work, public health, nursing, environmental health and much more. We really are everywhere. This year, we promoted social equity by by working closely with our city agencies and community members to develop policies such as Cannabis Equity, Long Beach Values Act, Economic Inclusion Group Blueprint. And we're working very closely with the parks to support Park Equity. In addition, we trained nearly 40 staff from seven departments and Authentic Community Engagement and trained 700 staff and stakeholders on health and racial equity. The Language Access Program saw a 22% increase in document translation and a 78% increase in oral interpretation requests for community meetings. They also trained 800 staff across the city on the language access kits and 600 on bilingual policy. We launched the first and became Youth Leadership Program and to strengthen families, we've had father friendly initiatives and improved family relationships for 360 families and our family preservation programs. Through initial health department efforts. We now have a behavioral health urgent crisis center in Long Beach that opened in the past month and allows for 2724 by seven access to mental health services in the city. In addition, through our partnerships with the county, we're bringing county supports through our attorneys to incarceration efforts currently underway at the jail . Public Health Emergency Management launched a veterinary disease reporting system designed and led the Academy to train members of the Health Department team in every response and implemented a 24 hour public health duty line for hospitals and emergency services teams. The AP Academy was highlighted as a best practice at a recent national health conference. We implemented the My Sister's Keeper View program to address human trafficking, hate crimes and community police relations. We vaccinated 800 high risk individuals twice to prevent the outbreak. We had zero cases. While other surrounding jurisdictions jurisdictions experienced outbreaks. We cleaned up 388 hazardous waste and wastewater spills. And finally, we officially launched two new focus areas, the one with the Long Beach Healthy Aging Center and the Early Childhood Strategic Plan. The Healthy Aging Center is currently seen as a model for how public health departments engage in a focus on senior services, although they are not funded to do so. The plan, developed with the feedback from nearly 20 focus groups and in partnership with our Early Childhood Education Committee, will be launched and presented to you in the next month or so. We also launched two new campaigns No More for HIV and STDs and Green Light lobby for unbiased cannabis education. The November campaign was in partnership with the Pasadena Design School. You've heard a lot about the efforts lately regarding homeless services. The city is doing so much. The Health Department is leading the way in homeless services for the city, both in accessing funding, leading inter-departmental coordination and providing services. We continue to bring in nearly $14 million in grants for prevention, outreach, social services, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, bridge and permanent housing. In addition, Long Beach will receive over 9 million in state funding that goes only to continuum of care as part of the state funds. Without the Long Beach continuum of care, these funds would have gone directly to L.A. County. When we count the housing authority vouchers specifically for homelessness, the health department generates nearly $33 million in outside resources to address homelessness within the city of Long Beach. We have 688 people, which is a 42% increase over last year, including 198 veterans, which is 151% increase over last year. We also provided 13,000 linkages to needed services, and to date we've made 13 185 outreach contacts in our streets, in our parks, and under our bridges. Through the Housing Authority, we provided $60 million in rental assistance, 800 vouchers for veterans. This is an increase of 100 VASH vouchers this year for the Housing Authority. The Housing Authority also implemented the hip, otherwise known as the Homeless Incentive Program, to increase landlord willingness to rent to people experiencing homelessness by paying deposits, fees and damage claims. The Health Department is also leading in facilitating the mayor's everyone home loan beach task force. Our core strength and opportunity is the highly effective and coordinated services with our city departments, the dinner departmental team and with our partners in the community. The interdepartmental team is a national model for coordination. The members talk almost daily. We truly appreciate each what each partner brings to the table. The increases in funding through measure age in the state, homeless emergency aid program funds of 12.3 million will allow us the opportunity to open a year round shelter as well as provide some other essential services. Through an RFP process, we were awarded $3.4 million to provide tenant improvements to a building once it is purchased for the year round shelter. L.A. County will cover the operations through Measure H. Currently, the Everyone Home Line Beach Task Force is meeting and we look forward to the recommendations, including those focused on the interplay of low income housing and homeless prevention. Our budget is over $133 million with 414 FTE is this. We receive approximately 2% from the general fund and 87% from grants and outside sources. Last year you provided us an approximately $600,000 in one time and new funds we generated 1.2 million a new program resources. Just from those funds, we doubled your investment in our city's health last year. This year, we will receive 134,000 to move the Office of Equity from a grant funded program to a general fund structural position 255,001 time funding for the proactive homeless response and 80,001 time funding the Language Access Program. Our measure each allocation is increasing to $3.4 million this year, and our HIV funding will increase by $724,000 to support early intervention services. The 370,000 comes from three for trauma, comes from three different grant resources, and will allow us to move forward with our trauma informed efforts. And my Nan, My Sister's Keeper program received 306,000 to address human trafficking. Overall, our challenges stem from increasing needs in the community that are not covered by existing funding, such as our growing older adult population. You've already talked about additional resources for older adults. We'd like to ensure that we're having a conversation across all efforts here and increasing STD and HIV rates. In addition, marijuana facility inspections in responding to unsafe and unsanctioned sites will place pressure on an environmental health team. As mentioned earlier, there's been a significant increase in the demand for language access services. We continue to be primarily grant funded, which makes it difficult to maintain and strengthen our operational infrastructure. In addition, there are changing priorities at the federal level and we are finding that grants at all levels are more competitive and it is more difficult to access. Although we continue to bring additional resources for homeless services, they are specifically earmarked and won't cover many of the types of services are being requested and that those are the kinds of things such as prevention 24/7, 24 by seven, outreach and services. Much of the funding we get from HUD maintains current levels of occupied units, not expansions of capacity. So the need remains. Low income and homeless housing access, as well as access to behavioral health services, continue to be a challenge. And finally, we are experiencing a much higher expectation for rapid response in services that are difficult to meet with current resources and staffing. On average, we get about 140 calls a month or 33 per week for the homeless hotline, in addition to requests for response from other sources. But while the challenges exist, we continue to live in a space of opportunity and hope, and we're very excited about what's coming up for the department. These include major upgrades to our main health and north facilities. Our north facility is actually being closed down for the next year. While this is happening, we're shifting services to the Miller Family Health Education Center. These improvements to the north facility will create greater opportunity to bring services to North Lambic and opportunity. We see an opportunity to develop a sustainable funding source for vector control activities, particularly in the face of increased vector borne illness. Our ongoing work to strengthen the public health emergency response capabilities is bringing in training and resources to help support our preparedness. We are planning to implement one degree as our department information and referral system. Any community member will be able to look for services available in Long Beach. This is in partnership with L.A. County. A healthy aging center will provide opportunities for increased coordination and access of older adult services across the city. We continue to seek funding to expand the center early childhood strategic plan, focus at our city and our partners on the needs of the early child, and provides many opportunities for strengthening our focus on this important population. We continue to work more closely with our community members to learn from them and to work with them to design solutions for their communities. And finally, the opening of the Behavioral Health Urgent Crisis Center and other alternatives to incarceration will bring some much needed relief to members of our community and law enforcement as we have greater access to mental health services within our city. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you tonight. This concludes my report and I'm open questions. Thank you very much for that presentation. And again, both departments. Thank you. We do have all our council members here. It's time for our questions. So let me begin with Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. I want to first start out by saying that the work that both of you ladies do with the very restricted resources is always impressive. I really appreciate having gotten to work a little bit more closely with the health department this year. Director Copley came out to community meetings and our community with over 75 standing water locations and the district is always very interested in vector and the risks. I think that one of the most reposted quotes from the director was related to how, even though a mosquito may have laid its larva and you empty out the water, when the water comes back, it dehydrates and can and cause a revitalization of that mosquito larva. And we've had quite an active group of individuals talking about that, neighbors who've really stepped up and started taking a greater ownership of the standing water and brushing it down to the next location. As many of you know, through public works to remove a standing water location costs thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to regrade the streets. And so Director Copley's outreach and information has been vital to those 75 locations and ensuring that we don't have those kinds of issues. So I'm thank you for that. The work that you're doing with seniors is always impressive and the 44 programs you have are quite impressive. And I just want to also give a special thanks to Allison in your head program. She's phenomenal and easy to work with and has really helped break down some barriers of misinformation that's been out in the community related to Section eight programs that came up during our process and some misinformation and confusion that was out in the community. So I appreciate all of you for all of that. I was hoping to ask a couple of quick questions about library. I am very excited for the restructuring, the schedule of the library. But while I've always been in favor of having libraries open seven days a week, I've really not been to out there at the front trying to push it too quickly. Because what I've also known about librarians is similar to our police officers, which is they're very hard to recruit positions and that we're competing in a market in L.A. County where multiple agencies all have shortages. So a couple of my questions are related to I'm looking at the list on slide 38 related to which libraries were chosen for Sunday through Thursday, which libraries were chosen for Tuesday through Saturday. Was there any consideration of any variance to those two schedules so that. And what input was brought together through either the community or the staff. I know that I haven't heard as much from the staff on this as I heard about Sunday library hours in their input into the process and how this was developed. Yes, Councilwoman Mango. So the schedule that was before you tonight, it was very important to for whatever schedule is chosen to have at least one weekend day, the staff can have off with their family and friends. So this was the only combination that we had landed on that would allow that, you know, work life balance is extremely important. I just wanted to make sure staff had at least that one day again with their family and friends. As far as staff input, you're correct. We are competing with other locations for library staff. That's absolutely true. But people that work in Long Beach really love Long Beach and they really love this community. So we've never had a shortage of staff attracting coming to Long Beach. It's just librarians. Do we have any programs where we are encouraging current library staff to gain additional education that allows them to qualify for the higher level positions in the library service? I know that I've seen some of those programs coming out for some of our competing agencies, and I know that we have limited resources when it comes to the education fund. So I was interested in those kind of opportunities for our stuff. That's an excellent question, Councilwoman Mongo. So there are training opportunities that come across from the state of California. We make it our business to make sure that staff are aware of those training opportunities for webinars, online courses and things like that. As far as funding, you're right, the city does not have the funds to support that. But we do have a couple of small scholarships that are being provided by our staff association that kind of help staff with some of those fees. Do we have any roving librarians that would be able to cover if an alternative schedule was made where a particular librarian, maybe lower in seniority, would cover multiple locations on a certain day so that certain libraries that, say are very, very popular. Maybe like a beach library and or one of the other high traffic libraries would be able to be open on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, this budget does not support that. And so currently in the staff, all librarians are assigned to a specific location. That is correct. And if we wanted to go in that direction, we would take, oh, I lost my what? My budget book. But I'll look at Suzy's for a quick second. A full librarian's, fully loaded cost to add one additional position. And if you did have a position at that level added to your budget in the search process, would it be something that you think you'd be able to recruit in in the first year? Or is that a how long do you think it would take to staff up something like that? We would need to go through a recruitment process. I believe we do have a current eligible list for general librarians, so that's something we can potentially recruit from that list. If not, we can do another recruitment because of the process itself. It can move somewhat quickly. So that's something that we could definitely look into. But okay, we will keep that in mind and in our discussions. APAC next week when we go into more detail, I'm looking to page 340, but if I can work with Grace to find out what those numbers are, but for next week, I know that this is something we've all been really passionate about and figuring out how and when to be able to open some of these, even if not until next summer, but by next summer. For those more visited libraries, I know that the Michelle Obama Library, the Eldorado Library and the Bayshore Library and Main Downtown Library are some of those that are the four primaries that really hit those numbers. So thank you. I think you're doing an excellent job. I was listening to a book today on my library app because I digitally download constantly and I love how it automatically takes the book back on the day that it's due and you can read, check it out . I think I'm on a waitlist for like six books right now and I tell everyone, save $20 a month, cancel your audible subscription, use your library card in Long Beach and or the L.A. County Library. Because the Long Beach library card, if you're if a book is not available on Long Beach, I can just log right into the L.A. County Library and pull the book at the same time. So it's really an amazing thing. And then I will only go one step further to say that occasionally I have the opportunity to meet with city staff members on a one on one mentoring type of opportunity when they ask about educational and learning opportunities. And one of the things that I'm a big proponent of is logging into the library and using the free lobby app. I'm sorry, not letting the go. Linda app to take classes on Excel Word How to create a website, how to hang a shelf. I mean, there's literally a multitude of certified classes on the library website, and I'm a huge proponent of everything that's on there. I know I don't spend as much time in the library as though I was there with some of our park advocates last weekend checking out the cooling center. And it's just so great to see everyone at work. I don't usually say hi to the staff, I just watch from a distance. But you guys are all just such phenomenal people and I watch the care and love you have when you talk to the the youth and the seniors about their concerns and help them through the process. It's been amazing to see you guys work. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I echo a lot of the comments of Councilwoman Mongeau, so but I do have a couple of questions and comments. So for Glenda, for the libraries, you know, I'm a huge fan of the libraries and I will say I'm a little bit too. I like that we're restructuring it and making sundaes open throughout the city. And I know I heard you when you said it's not a rejection, but it sure feels like a rejection, because what happened is we started with five days at Bay Shore and then we use Divide by nine money to add a Sunday and now we're going back to five days. And Bayshore Library is located across the street from the beach. About eight weeks of that time, we closed down Bayshore so that people are riding their bikes and walking literally across the street from the beach. It's the most opportune time for people to walk across the street and at least experience the library. And I feel like closing a library on a Saturday that's still directly across from a beach that's welcoming thousands of youth and adults of all ages is a missed opportunity on behalf of the city. So I'm going to continue to talk with city management about that. I will tell you, when this restructuring plan was initially laid out, to me, it was not it was it was laid out as the it's a it's a very, you know, kind of general idea. We're going to talk about the details and how the details come into play later. This is just a proposal, and I feel like the details are kind of being laid out. And yet some of the major stakeholders, like the council members who have spent divide by nine money to invest in additional time, haven't been consulted on the days. If we really have to go down to five days, I'd want to look at the numbers and see if it makes sense to be open on a Saturday and a Sunday and close two days during the week, although I'd hate to do that. So I really want to continue to have that conversation and I hope we can continue to have it, because I think that's a very busy library. And I'll tell you what, I think it's most busy with an I don't know if the data supports this, but every time I go in there, the computers are fully utilized and there's there's often a waiting list. So I think there's a lot of residents who don't have Internet access at home, and they're going to go enjoy the beach. They're going to go across the street and use the library. I just think it's a missed opportunity for the city to close the doors of a public facility on the beach. When we live in a city that was just designated as having the most nice days of any other city in the. atIon to close a public facility directly across from the beach in a city like this, just to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a weekend. So I really want to talk about that and I want it to feel I know it's not technically a reduction, but I want it to feel less like a reduction , so I want to feel less rejected. So I'm hoping that we can have that conversation. But I want to thank you. Absolutely. All the librarians. I just I love going to the library. It's just really office. I feel like we need to do more to encourage people to come in to the libraries and invite people into the libraries. And I've talked with Director Beck about this. You know, to the extent that we can enhance the outside of our library facilities to make them welcoming and not so outdated, to make it enjoyable to go. And I love what we've done with Michelle Obama. I know I'm going to love what we've done with Maine. I support those investments are on as a city. I think if we can do that throughout the city, whether it's adding more windows or making the doors more, you know, enjoyable to walk into, whatever the case may be, I think we need to make our libraries more inviting, you know, pops of color, things like that, that make it enjoyable for people to actually want to walk into as opposed to an outdated facility. That's an area where I feel like we're a little bit behind the curve right now. So I know Director Beck is doing his best to identify funds for those facility improvements, but access to hours goes, you know, hand in glove to that. So thank you very much for everything. So for Director Collopy, thank you very much for your presentation. You. I echo what Councilmember Mango said. You do a tremendous amount of work with, you know, almost 100% grant funds and that should not go unnoticed. You really do do a lot with the very little general fund resources that you do have. And I thank you for that. I want to just start by saying and we value every member of your team, but my staff and I absolutely love with a capital L. Nelson Kerr, we love the man. He is an amazing individual. We have a lot of health and safety issues that come up in our district. Our residents are very engaged in identifying smells and sounds that are of concern to them. And and so we reach out to Nelson on a regular basis. And I am not exaggerating when I say the man responds, regardless of what time of day it is within minutes. I've never seen anything like it. And so I want to say thank you to him because frankly, I'm. Very. Impressed and jealous of the fact that he's able to do that. I think it's fantastic. So I just wanted to give him a shout out to him and his team. His entire team is really great, too. So, yes, thank you. Thank you. On the emergency aid program that you identified as the $12.3 million of one time funds that we're getting, could those you know, we received at the Bossy tonight, we did receive a memo from Councilman Richardson and one of the items that he had on there as potentially being funded, which I think is a great item . But I'm just wondering about the source is possible $50,000 and creating a local revenue option for affordable housing and improved prevention and response to homelessness in Long Beach. Could that $12.3 million, could that 50,000 come out of the 12.3 million? Or has that 12.3 million already been identified to the last penny in terms of how we want to use it? So that's going to be item 21 on our agenda tonight. We'll get a little bit into that about where the $50,000 potentially came from. Talk a little bit about the 12.3. The 12.3 has funding restrictions on it. It can be for service provision. It can't really be for planning. So it would depend on whether that's a planning effort, which it likely is to get additional funding sources so we can look at it as part of the 12.3, but it's probably planning money. So then that would be we are prohibited from using that money for planning. Okay. So you're aware of the $50,000. Yes. That will be part of what staff will talk about at item 21. Okay. So just so you know, we were just made aware of it a few minutes before we started the meeting, so I did not know that and I look forward to hearing that and where that money could come from for the Office of Equity, since we are going to be using general funds instead of grant dollars for that , is there first of all, is there a mission statement for the Office of Equity? And two, is there a plan of how that position is going to help the city through citywide efforts? Yeah, so the mission of the Office of Equity is to educate and support city staff and elected officials to advance equity and ensure that all Long Beach residents have what they need to thrive. And the way they're looking to accomplish that is to build and strengthen partnerships with other city departments and community advocates to advance policy and systems change across the city to make injustice visible through the use of data, storytelling, critical research and supporting internal reform across the city with the focus of building capacity to advance racial equity and social justice in all the programs, policies and services in the city. Okay. So how is it that. This office is going to be working through the diverse communities in the city to identify how to meet that mission statement in each of the diverse communities that we have? Because as you're talking, you know, making injustice visible, you know, for example, we had a, you know, a hate speech forum where we had a lot of speakers come and talk about that. And really, that would have been an awesome project to partner with the Office of Equity on. So are those kinds of things that you're anticipating or. But I think there are a number of different opportunities. So first of all, we are currently doing one what we're calling one Long Beach outreach. So we have reached out to each of your council districts to see where, you know, whether it's part of holding a special community meeting or are there community meetings already being held? And to be able to listen and engage with people about what are the key, sort of the key things and the key ways that you would describe what it looks like to thrive in Long Beach. From that, we will take those those indicators and then gather the data across the city to determine where those those data are being met and where we need to do some more work to be able to to sort of help people be at the same space. So I think what we're seeing now is there really are there's an incredible disparity in the outcomes across our city. And so where we see those disparities, how do we start to increase opportunity and access to allow for all people to thrive in the city? And I imagine that in addition to having community, because sometimes you'll have great showings at community meetings, other times you may not. I'm imagining that you're probably pulling data in terms of what stressors may be in individual communities and stressors that prevent people from succeeding. Yes. And so will that be is that part of the plan for the Office of Equity? So, you know, what are the things that are causing people to use drugs? What are the things that are causing them to not do well in school? And let's let's say if we're talking about youth, for example. Is that all part of the mission? And will that be will there be some sort of a plan once the outreach is done in terms of programmatic aspects of this position? Yeah. So that we don't feel that this that this position runs a lot of programs. I mean, the focus really is on policy and really sort of like looking at the policies that we are engaging in in our programs that are already existing or that people are planning across the city to determine where they're having the impact. You know, like a lot of the times we do, you know, when we're planning for things where we're thinking about what is our greatest positive impact. Sometimes we forget where things may not have a positive impact. And so it's really starting to identify as we're designing our policies, what are the ways to move people forward? And if it if that policy may cause harm unintentionally to to to somebody, then we would then look at how do we mitigate that to strengthen the policy for everybody. So I think it's an overall conversation. So I don't see it as a set of programs aside from training and other things, but more as as our capacity to move our city in an equity land as we design the work that we do. Okay, great. I mean, if there's any additional information that that can be provided in terms of the structure of what the position or the department would look like as we move forward, I think that would mean a lot. Yeah. Right now that right now what it is, it's it's the it's the de it's the, the manager for the position, the Language Access Program and the Human Human Relations Commission. And then we have a 40% time. It's the divided between the violence prevention program and equity to help support those efforts. That is the group that is currently the Office of Equity. That's currently that. Is that is currently in end of the additional resources become available start to expand and determine. So through various grants and other opportunities, we'll be looking to expand that capacity. Right now we do not have additional capacity. I get it. So but if in Fy19, if this were to be funded, it would be completely funded. It would be completely fund out. Of the general fund. It would we wouldn't be pulling from different grants now. Okay. Got it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. You. Thank you. Council member Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues and their comments regarding the library and the Human Health and Human Services. Let's start with the library and end up with the department that most I'm very familiar with later. Obviously, you're doing a great job with the library and we're just like you are. We are very excited about the great movie that we're going to be making into the very new library that's going to be built the next year. State of the art is going to be built next year. It's in the process, going to be finished next year to do a great ribbon cutting ceremony, has worried. That's what we're looking forward to. And I'm glad to see that there are things that I'm as you might recall, in 2015 and again in 2016, I put forward a amnesty program for four books, and it resulted in the first year in 4000 people participating that returned approximately 3200 items. And then the next year, in 2016, we had approximately 6000 participants and returned right around the same amount of books and coming to a savings of about the $500,000 of recovered libraries and fines. We didn't do anything in 2017. We thought that maybe that would have been enough to recover what the what the library had lost. Is there an update on that in terms of where are we now with the last items were a need to recover books that we need to put back into circulation. Certainly books that were lost or believed to be lost that can be recovered without having the wall, for lack of a better term. Perpetuity purpose. Taking these books and not returning them back is how we do it. And would that would it be something that we could look at again for 2018? I mean, 2019 excuse me. Councilmember Urunga. That is something that we can look at in the future. I don't have the stats for you tonight as far as what's outstanding with our system. That's something we can get back to you. And, you know, other than that, I have nothing really, but kudos to you and your staff in regards to the services that you provide, and especially for the expansion of the program that you're doing with the Internet and the hours of of availability for patrons to take advantage of the library services that are there. Moving over to Health and Human Services, as I mentioned earlier, I'm very familiar with this department having served there for a number of years. And I can say that it's been quite, quite a turnaround for the department. You are now the the go to department when it comes down to Human Services. Back in the day when I was there with the elimination of the video, which was the vehicle vehicle license, driver's fee, we lost tons of of money. The department was challenged in maintaining staff. I know, because I handled a lot of what you might call pink slips to staff because a lot of the programing was being eliminated . For example, the HIV program was cut back tremendously, almost eliminated. And I'm glad to see that it's making a revival and it's making it back in the Environmental Health Services. I know you guys are closer now, but you also were being challenged with with with your budget, especially when it came to vector control. And I know you had to cut back a lot of staff in that area and in fact, practically eliminate that whole division. But I see that it's still there. And I want to give you kudos as well for the work that you're doing with especially every year that you do with the West now. And the identification of of mosquitoes and especially the last one was it two years ago, we were challenged with a Zika virus that was well, everybody was was very actually, you know, fearful that it might make it this far north to to Long Beach. And you've been your staff has been very much aware of that and has been proactive in going on certain areas. And certainly, Susie brought up the excuse me, Councilmember Price brought up the issue of standing water. And that continues to be a challenge, especially when the when it comes to our public works department in terms of some alleys and and driveways that constantly have an issue with withstanding water, especially when it comes to when we have a. Fire hoses. Excuse me. Water hoses and sprinklers out in yards. And they keep them for for a while. And then it creates standing water and it creates an issue about an opportunity for mosquitoes to to either thrive or reawaken, as it was stated earlier. So I want to thank you for your work in that area. And if there's any one thing that I can that can say about the health department is that, you know, sometimes we have to make unpopular decisions. Sometimes we have to make decisions that are not politically or politically incorrect. But at the greatest part of it is that we try to do what's right. And I think that the opening and the support that the city got with the CHC last year made it appropriate that we would be able to open a facility that is not only regional but a great service to the community, especially for those at that who have mental health issues. And here's a center that they can go to to receive those services. So I want to thank Kelly and her staff for the support in making that happen. We're looking forward to being able to address a lot of what takes place out there in the in the homeless community especially. But it's a service that is open to everybody. And I don't think that that's being pushed forward enough that this center is not only for homeless or for for for to provide a service to public safety, fire police, but also for the public in general. If if someone is experiencing a major mental breakdown, here's a facility that they can go to and get an immediate service in terms of being able to address whatever that that issue is and get some guidance for any future needs in terms of that. So I want to thank you for for making that happen. And it was a great ribbon cutting that we had a few weeks ago for that. So I know that you continue the great work and I know that you have a great staff, especially when it comes down to great writing and your staff is very proactive and looking for those grant opportunities to submit grants and bring more funding to the to the health department. And I know a great portion. In fact, more than 70, more than 70%, if not more of your budget is grant funded and based on performance and so on. And obviously the success of the department is the fact that when you apply for these grants, you are successful and you get more. So keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Pierce. Yes. How are you guys doing hanging in there? Yeah. What about you guys? Pretty good. All right, I'll try to be quick. I love both of the departments. You guys are fantastic. Let's start with the library. I love our new library. I stare at it all the time. I have a tour coming up with Craig back, which I cannot wait for. I think a million visitors to our libraries is a great milestone and I know that we are constantly talking about how we use our library space to exchange information not only books, education with our youth. It was a place that I adored growing up as a kid. And so I have a couple of questions and then just a few. I love that you guys have tried to be creative with restructuring the libraries. And remind me currently right now, our main library does not have Monday or Sunday hours, correct? That is correct, Councilwoman. Monday or Sunday hours, we do not have. So I definitely support trying to find a way to do that. And I know that I expected that there was going to be some challenges in other districts and recognizing that each library is very different and service is a different community. But I think it's a great goal for a city of half a million people to have. Councilmember I do want to point out, just to be clear, the proposal to go to seven days for our branch library so our main libraries are most expensive one. It's something like, you know, three or four times the cost of it for one library. So that would stay on the five day schedule. But anywhere else around it and there are neighborhood ones that are close to it, would go to the seven day schedule. And when we talked last budget, we talked about when the new library would be open, that it was going to be our goal to have that be seven days. So we can certainly provide that number on what it would take to get up to that seven day number. So that can be. Something that we very strongly remember that from last year's budget. So I'm a hold on to that. Got it. The one piece, something exciting that I saw that I think New York is doing. I'm not sure if I sent this over to you, but they're doing a checkout system for ties and briefcase because they have so many people that come in to the library to do resume work and everything. And that there's this other layer about what does it take to get a job. And so I think something like that would be really exciting to maybe partner with a nonprofit or something that doesn't have to be part of this budget. But moving forward, I'm not sure. Have you guys explored a program like this yet and that that one in particular? No, isn't it? Sounds fun. Now, this phone interview. Yes, it sounds interesting. Yes. We owe for workforce of. Oh, workforce investment. Pay for it. Okay. So we're going to be next week, we're going to get workforce investment. We're going to make this happen. Maybe we can get enough so we can have a full pilot program on that. That would be great. I know that you mentioned in here challenges and opportunities, safety and mental health services. I know your staff are depending on the library is often our front line when dealing with some challenging conversations. And I know that Kelly is going to be talking a little bit when I ask her about some of the trauma informed peace. Have you guys worked together to have our library staff trained on trauma informed outreach counsel, woman peers? Yes, we did have the training by the health department. Oh, trauma. Yes. Great. That's awesome. And then on could you elaborate for us just the status of where we are in the timeline for the fundraising for the main library? Or is that just the friends of that works on that? So the Long Beach Public Library is the one that's working on the fundraising for the library. They have started their capital campaign right now, I believe is still in the silent phase and will be going into public phase on next year. And they can I think we have members here tonight that could provide some more information, if you like. Well, I definitely met with staff working on that and so very supportive, looking forward to identifying a part of my work at my previous nonprofit. For a decade we did a women's luncheon and several thousand people once a year and it was mainly focused on women authors. So we would have books, we would have writers for TV, for movies. And so I'm definitely looking forward to partnering and helping to raise some funds for our main library using some of those networks. So those of you guys that are doing that work, I look forward to working with you. Thank you. So just thank you very much for all the efforts. Fully support that and for our health departments. Give me a second. Let me make sure I got my right notes. And finally, Kelly, I don't think enough can be said about how much your team has taken on. And I think going what did you say, 30 to 44 programs is a phenomenal change and know that you can do it without your great staff. And I also want to recognize I know we have some health commissioners here and they last year and this year divided up and sat down with, I think, all the council members to talk about fully funding the health department as much as possible. So I don't know any other department or team that has a commission that really feels that involved enough and connected to their staff and their council. So just congratulations on how you're working with your commission, because I know that takes it's another part of the work that you do. Thank you. Absolutely. You put in your budget the trauma informed peace. Everyone knows how important that is to me. So if you could talk a little bit about what that outreach looks like, and I know that we have talked about at a minimum, what would trauma informed look like for the city to have a similar training like you provided for the library? Whether that's in my office, one of our challenges is sometimes we get lots of folks that call our office. We also have people at the field office and we come in interaction with people that have experienced trauma. And how is my team prepared to engage with those constituents is really important to me. So if you could just highlight maybe for the legislative team what that would look like, maybe what that would look like for h.r. And a minimum barebones first step. Yeah. So we've had previous funding that allowed for a one hour trauma informed training to 80 different groups. So a lot of people were trained through that work. In addition, there were some four hour trainings that were provided. The Health Department, the entire team was trained, as was Parks, Recreation and Marine. I don't know if your full team was trained. So the so we had done a lot of that training this next round of funding that we're receiving. So it's from the California Endowment and first five L.A. And what we're really looking to do is move forward on a trauma informed approach across the city, meaning that where anyone interacts with a city member overall, that that person won't understand what trauma looks like, how it presents, and how they could respond maybe differently in that work. And so there's a lot of work to be done there. So. The training is very helpful and it sort of it helps bring awareness for what we're really looking to do is to shift the system to a trauma informed system so that everyone within that organization understands trauma and addresses differently, but also that we're supporting people within our own departments who may be experiencing trauma. I know for the Health Department we have a lot of folks with life experience who are also service providers, and a lot of people walk in the door. Almost everybody who walks in our door has had some level of trauma. So we are working one within the health department, but we're working with other agencies and we would love to work with H.R. and Civil Service as well to think about what that could look like. Great. And then the budget that you've presented to us, is there enough funds there to make that happen or are you looking for additional funds to make that training accessible? Well, the training will be being developed along the way, moving forward and through other partnerships. So during that time, we would be able to provide to provide some training to expand beyond that into a to a broader conversation. Would we may need to look at additional resources, but we have to see how this process plays out. First grade so we can have that conversation down the road. I really appreciate that. I know Philadelphia is a trauma informed city, and I think that Long Beach already values that. And so to have that as part of our cultural shift is really critical. You have done great work on the HIV work. Where did my notes go? What? You mentioned that you all are. The funding will run out this year and that you're looking for additional funds to ensure that that continues. Right. So are some of the HIV work we're actually receiving additional funding. So the HIV specific work actually will be at approximately one point, probably about $1.7 million moving forward, plus an additional $600,000 for STD prevention that just came through the county. But we don't have funding for STDs. So when you're looking and they do, though, there's a lot so there's a lot of resource and focus still nationally around HIV. The funding has been cut significantly for us. It is so we currently have approximately $120,000 for STDs. Two of those funding sources will be gone by next by next summer, which will leave us with $47,000 for the remainder of the year to do any STD work. Which to funding sources are no longer coming through. It's state funding that will be coming through. But we definitely I mean, you guys have done a great job and we don't want to see our rolled back some of the efforts that you guys have made. So anything that we can do and start to identify those funds, I would definitely be extremely supportive of. I know that part of it is providing the services and part of it is also the outreach and communication. And so if we're going to spend time and money doing that outreach and education, I would hate for us not to have the resources there. So you have my full support in trying to identify those funds. Thank you. On language access, I think it's you know, I was part of the community coalition before I ever had a twinkle in my eye to run for council that supported the language access way back when. And I have in front of me a breakdown of a budget. I'm not sure if this has been run through you all. I know there's been lots of meetings. One of the items on here is around $9,000 for signage for city buildings. And I was curious if that was a number that you had as well. Actually, I haven't seen that number. Okay. Well, I have a list in front of me. I'm not going to spring it all on you, but I know that it's got some numbers, like 9000 for city buildings, and I know that that comes through public works and making sure that we've got translation there, that we have interpretation for all of our city meetings and translation of vital documents, community outreach and translation of our web pages, which are yet to be translated as well as the program coordinator. And so I know that this has been a topic that's been difficult each budget cycle. And I think as we, especially with the development of our civic center, everything that we're doing, it makes a lot of sense for us to support this as much as possible. My bigger question rather than each dollar amount, which I do support funding as much to were able, is the way that it comes through in our budget . So with I.T., with with technology services, right. If I need them to come out to my budget meeting and they're going to do set up PowerPoint and audio, there's a bucket of money in my budget, right? So then we have like an IMU and then it comes out of my budget for $100 for this community meeting. Now it goes there. Where are we with language access and structuring the budget that way so that if I need to use translation more than, say, Stacey's districts, then that can be adjusted in our budget appropriately. Currently the way it's funded is there's $80,000 is a bucket of money that is available for any request and that's how it's currently utilized. We have not looked at a different structure for that. When those resources are gone, then individual departments then follow up and provide their own services. And only add to that. So the way we did language access was basically to prevent the system that you that you talked about. That's how we fund most systems is departments need to come up with the money to do something different. So if they need a computer, they need to find that money in their budget. So with language access, we didn't want to put that burden on departments. We wanted to make sure that there was a pot of money that they could draw from in order to do language access. So it was a way to proactively provide some funding for language access. Departments always have the ability or anybody does to go beyond that and use their own funding if they had some available to do that. It's the the $80,000 that we've been setting aside for several years. And in this budget, with the mayor's recommendations that were doubled to 160, so would provide us a larger pot for us all to draw from so that it wouldn't come out of existing programing. I really like us and I understand the beginning of the pilot program. We've been trying to figure out is it is it staying in each budget cycle? We kind of have a debate over how much is it worth? And I definitely want to support having a full time structural person to staff that full time. Structurally, I think we need to have that as a city of our size and with our diversity, but too is not having this debate every every budget cycle. If we are going to be a diverse city that that embraces our entire community, that I want to challenge us to think about the budget differently, because I know that public works translates materials and that it just seems like it would keep us from having to revisit this conversation every budget. We would never do this with it, you know, we would never have this conversation around. There's our budget for for community programs. So I, I think we're at that point after all of these years that whatever we need to do to make it structural and we can stop having the conversation after we make it structural just is that's what I have right now. I had a post now where I prioritized all my talking points and I have so many I can't find it now, but you guys are doing great work. I think that making some of the structural changes is really important. I do want to make one more comment on the Office of Equity. I do love the fact that it's around shifting the conversation. And I think the more I know that we've had the conversation with city staff a lot around what does equity mean? And one of the things and I don't know if in adopting the equity conversation, we've had this with the council, I'm sure we have. But what I loved about equity when I first started learning about governing for racial equity was up in Seattle when there was a shooting that happened. And the mayor went out to that to where the shooting happened, and it was all dark. And he said with everybody, why, why are all the street lights out? And they said, well, the people in the community are really terrified of calling the city, you know. And so they took that understanding and they said, well, how do we implement a policy that city wide that can help us change the way that we we do our lights? And so then it put it on a cycle where it was every three years they would go out and they would change their lights. So equity to me is yes, it's about all the racial equity and things that that we talk about. But it also is governing for those that have the least often is something that will help everybody on every single piece of our city, from the third District to the fifth District to the ninth District. And so those are some of the strategies that I love, having a full time person that can look at our systems with public works and everyone and say, how can we make sure we're governing for everyone? And that it's not divided up between the cities, but that we're looking at our systems as a city. And one of those things around governing for equity is something like the language access and putting it across the budget and making sure that it's not a pot of money that we're fighting over, but that it's something that just we're creating equity across the entire city and that it's there. It's part of that culture. So that's my $0.02 on that. I love the work that you guys have done and I'm really looking forward to continuing the conversations. Guys, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple of things. Glenda Mr. Williams, I got to tell you, there's you know, I'm very happy with the service, with our new library. We didn't have a library before, and now we do. I'm pretty happy with it. So keep up the good work. You know, in terms of the shifting of the schedule was it wasn't informed by my data or usage data. It was definitely informed by usage data. Data driven. Okay. And and if on Sunday and Monday Michelle Obama is not open, is the next nearest branch in Bixby. No. Is open at that time. The next nearest branch, I believe to you would be Ruth Brock Library. Data Library is also Tuesday through Saturday. I would think. Maybe we think about in Uptown Heaven since there's two libraries in Uptown, the days that one is closed, the other is open. So at least we don't have to drive too far. So when we looked at so for District seven, it has Bret Hart Library and Dana Library. So we have Hart being open on the Sunday through Thursday schedule. So we put up the Dana Library opposing Tuesday through Saturday. So that's one of the things we did. Where is Hart? Heart is also in District seven. Yeah, you know. It's on Santa Fe and Willow. So that's the well, that's on the west. Side of the city. Uptown is still closed today, right? That is correct. Yes, that's correct. North Long Beach and Bixby Knolls will both be closed. I think we should just think about maybe switching somewhere so we at least are open in every part of town. If that was the intent to make sure we have seven days, then have it necessarily be yours. But I mean, if the intent is open seven days and every part of town, you know, just North Long Beach is a fifth of the city. If you take it down to the four or five, you know, that's that's a quarter of the city, right? Two days off. So that's something we should think about, right? Yes. All right. Thank you. And then Kelly, just got to tell you, you know, since I worked as a chief of staff, I've gotten to work on a lot of budgets. And I remember when, you know, we would be asked, do you want a health health department briefing and and health department come around, say yes, ask for health department briefing. So the city city council can be informed of what's going on. And I think it really says a lot I mean, says a lot about sort of the priority that the council has beginning to give the health department. Because your program offerings are expanded. You're making good on the challenges that we issue to you. And initially, a lot of those challenges were unfunded. Last year we offered you we you know, we we provided additional funding for HIV outreach. And this year you were able to come give us real numbers and real evidence of the work and the problem that we have around STDs and HIV. And so that for that, I think you're one of the best investments we can make. What was the return on investment this year for the additional funding? 200%. We definitely double the investment. I think the Council just recognize that we double every dollar we invest. They've got a proven track record. No other department can meet that. So I'm a fan of the health department. I think that's that's pretty clear here on a couple of things. So we have the north facility. We'll talk about that. But we launched the father friendly initiatives and I thought it was a really cool event that we had out in Park. And what was even more cause that was the family friendly, father friendly principles that we established as a council. And a part of that was making sure that we ensure that there are changing tables in the male restrooms as far as well as the female restrooms and the gender neutral restrooms. You know, we want to make sure that we do that. I didn't see anything in the budget this time you to request something in the budget or something that we can recommend to the EEOC to look at. Because I know it wasn't a lot of money. There were about $400 per change in table. And to do a pilot would cost probably five, $10,000. That's something we requested. It was not something that we requested in the budget. That would be something that would likely go through public works. Okay. All right. Well, I submitted in my memo to the BRC and I'll I'll, you know, make some requests. The public works and and others. I just think that something simple acknowledgment doesn't cost a lot of money to acknowledge our father friendly efforts in the city also want to acknowledge and thank you for advocating for the place in the budget, the special projects officer full time officer equity. And you know, this is something that we've been engaged in pretty heavily over the last four years. And particularly I remember the community meetings that we hosted, we brought down Oakland and Seattle and started a conversation about starting. I mean, we literally led the conversation about starting the Office of Equity. And the point wasn't about programs. The point was you've already got a number of sort of initiatives that were that were happening in the city. You had sort of violence prevention and My Sister's Keeper and Language Access and My Brother's Keeper and all these things , CPC, all these other sort of social justice related issues that were spread out across departments. And the first thing we once acknowledged was the communities need or desire for us to be more proactive about acknowledging equity, acknowledging it, and acknowledging the fact that our city is changing and we have to be forward thinking in the way that's changing. I mean, data shows us that in 1980 Census, Long Beach was only 30% people of color, 2010 census, Long Beach was 70% people of color. And over the course of, you know, just a 30 year span, the demographics changed. 40% of our population is demographics. Change is massive. And how can we continue to be work? Our city is a city that prides ourselves on our progress, our economic development. When this whole new population of people has a different set of issues from economic issues, language barriers, health and health issues, inequities, and how can we even address that in the city and measure ourselves unless we have a lens that we place on all of our decision making? So in my opinion, I think the conversation of equity in this equity position is one of the smartest investments that our city can make. And in addition to that, an example of placed in this lens is what we're doing around economic inclusion. We are essentially taking the equity lens and applying it to how we deal with economic development. It's not necessarily about how we develop buildings, about how we development communities and people, and if those people thrive, then that's the measure of our community as having a thriving community. So that's essentially why I fully support this, and I'm proud to see that we've gone from a, you know, one time budget position and grant funded position to acknowledging that it is perfect and is in the interest of all of our residents and the interest of all our residents by making it structurally, structurally fund itself. So thank you for that. We do need to do a better job in engaging each of our communities to make sure that that we continue to educate and have the conversation about how this is this improves everyone's community and how need exists everywhere, not just in North Lombard, Central, Lombard, Islamic. It's it's all contextual to a standard. And so need exists everywhere. So I just wanted to take a moment and just say thank you and offer my support there. Just two more things for you. So a few weeks ago, we had a youth budget committee meeting. Investing youth budget hearing at my field office. And this was a number of youth based organizations, and they brought up this concept of the youth fund. And I know that they've engaged a number of the council members around this. I know Councilwoman Gonzales have engaged around this. And I thank the mayor for bringing, you know, for introducing the $200,000 into that conversation now. And I was holding off not bringing this up during parts because I want to bring it up here at the Investing Youth Coalition meeting at my field office. It became very clear that they what they what they've expressed is that they appreciate the participatory budgeting concept conversation. But what they really want to do is use this as an acknowledgment of establishing a, you know, a youth sort of fund and a youth strategic plan, use that 200 K to sort of go through a process engaging all nine districts around a youth development strategic plan. And they want to offer the equity engaged in that work. Nothing against Parks and Recreation, but they want they want it to be a little broader, more broad than, you know, recreation programs, but rather something broader about the whole. So the whole child, the whole young person. So that's something I want to just offer to you that that was, you know, good in terms of it was a good conversation we had in my office. And then the last thing I'll mention is that, you know, I'm pleased with that, that, you know, the one time funding has doubled this fiscal year for the language access plan. I appreciate that. I think we do need to acknowledge that the language access coordinator is still a 50% position. And so I think we should take steps and I don't know how we get there, but how we make that if we either utilize one time funds to make that a full time position so that you can have one person that engages in this full time, or if we look at making that fully structural and if that has to happen next fiscal year, whenever, but that's something else I want to offer. So I know that's a lot, but I wanted to sort of just, you know, jump in and tell you my thoughts kind of on my own, my own over here on this side. But I'm paying attention to what you guys are saying. I support the work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Supernova. Thank you. And thank you for the presentations tonight. And it's been very enlightening. In fact, with the health department, I learned tonight why I can never get a hold of Nelson CR, evidently talking to the third district all day long. I'm just kidding, Nelson. In fact, I emailed you this morning eight time this week. Just get back to me that be frank. I'm just kidding. I just want to follow up on the item that Rex Richardson brought up regarding the geography. You know, I'm all about the fourth District, but I'll speak regionally at this point. So you have Bay Shore Alamitos and brew it now all on the same schedule. So that would be Alamitos, I think. Is it Cherry and Third Bayshore is that Bay, Shore and Ocean and Bruin is roughly Termino and Anaheim. So if you live at Seventh and Redondo, you're out of luck. Kind of like our council and Richardson was saying about North Town. So I think this has to be rethought if if the closures are going to go that way. Secondly, I mentioned about. The other group that we have monthly briefings and we do not have monthly briefings with the library, the health department. And so I learned about these changes, and I would characterize them as wholesale changes in in the hours today, during the noon hour. That's the first time I saw any of this. So to react today and to analyze it is pretty much impossible. Our office has tried to be very supportive of the libraries. We have the good fortune having two libraries in our district, Los Altos and brew it up. I try not to grandstand on those issues, but I think I've communicated to you how much the libraries mean to our office. And I was even at it on Sunday photographing some issues we had there. I just think that should be a two way street. And we're going to make major changes like this that might you might want to share this with the council office. I don't know how these decisions were arrived at, but I don't think it was done by survey cards at the desk in the library. And I think the patrons should have some say in this, whether they want to convert to Sunday hours or not. There is a way we support the libraries is every Friday. In my e-newsletter we list the activities for our libraries. And what strikes me so much is everything at Broad happens on Friday and Saturday. Mayor Garcia has visited the Pruitt library on a Saturday. Now they will not be open Fridays and Saturdays. So that's just a lot of changes that would be hard to reconcile. As I said, just seeing this in the noon hour today. I think that's probably I guess I should ask this question. And that is, I think for our two libraries, we have a total of four full time employees. I'm not sure. And would someone working Sunday hours, would that be would an employee volunteer for that? Or how would you assign Sunday hours in the old system? So in the old system Sunday well, currently Sunday hours are funded with a one time funds and it's on a volunteer basis. So with this new schedule that's being proposed, half of that availability from staff will no longer be there. So with the new proposed schedule, people will be scheduled. Their normal workweek would be Sunday through Thursday. So what we've done to try to work with staff on this, we sent out a staff survey to see what staff preferences are for their preferred work schedule, and it's very unlikely that we will be able to accommodate everyone, but we're going to try to accommodate as many people as possible to the new work schedule. So there will potentially be some shifting of staff and there are some staff that are static about having every Friday and Saturday off and then others are not as ecstatic. So we'll be working with staff as we move forward with this particular proposal. Okay. So staff has weighed in on this. I guess you're suggesting that you wouldn't be able to accomplish this with volunteers to work Sundays, but what about the patrons? What was their data gathered from the people who use the libraries. Or Councilman Slipper? Now what we looked at was the idea of some different metrics to decide which libraries would go to the different schedule. And looking at Brentwood and Los Altos, looking at the programs, looking at the usage, looking at the classes from the data, it showed us that Los Altos would be a better fit Tuesday, Tuesday through Saturday, and that the Prewitt library would move to the Sunday through Thursday hours. Again, just based on the data and then usage. Okay. So if it was data driven, then we didn't have any survey card. We didn't ask anybody, when would you like your library hours? Yes. So that is correct. And Councilmember, if I can if I can jump in here a little bit, part of this was we wanted to start this discussion. We realized this is going to be a different a change. And that's part of what the budget is for, is to propose some of those ideas. We wanted to get that out. So the council had that ability so that the community has the ability. We had not gone through meet and confer, so we didn't have a chance to sit down with all of our employees. We still need to do that. So this is a concept. It's being put out there. It's a way kind of innovatively to look at how do we get a seven day library system for the same amount of money that we have today? If we want to add money to the resources in order to have additional hours, if we want to stay the same that we are, that's really what this budget discussion is, though. It's I know it's a little bit of cart before the horse, we didn't get a chance to talk to everyone. This was kind of using data, looking at some other systems and wanted to put that out there for discussion. Okay. I understand that, you know, it's a rollout that now is public and you have a lot of people on defense right now that that's what I would like to avoid. We've had so many experiences that way. And it would just be a lot more user friendly, in my view, if we could have some committee input on this other than the data that they're using. Also, we do a lot of things with Measure a route library has been the beneficiary of that and I just think library hours and whatnot, there might be not a great public perception of what's being done here, but it looks like when you're cutting out Saturday and Sunday, Fridays and Saturdays that you're cutting back. And I just have challenges with putting that out there that way. I think I probably want to leave there other than to say. What would be the next step then in this and how do we determine which way we're going with this moving forward? So really, the next step is here. So we wanted to get this out. We are absolutely interested in input. We expect to hear about this in the community budget meetings. We expect to hear about it tonight. I want to hear about it from the council. I think you raise some good points where you're saying in certain areas below seven, for example, everyone has the same schedule. Really, our intent was that you are able to get to a library, you know, the next available library. And so if there are tweaks need to be made, if there is, you know, ones that didn't quite make sense for the community, we're open to that. Again, we have to go through meeting, confer as well. So we don't at least I don't envision that this starts October one because we still have a process to go through . So if we need to go a little bit slower on this to to vet out this concept, to take additional input, we encourage the community to get involved and let us know what you think. Do the community surveys through calling us, calling your councilmember? We definitely are interested in community input. Okay. Thank you. I agree with that. And I think sooner rather than later, let's get the patrons views. Let's ask the exact question at hand here. You know, I, I did first of all, I did the homeless count. We did an orientation where we went out. And one of the questions we weren't allowed to ask is, are you homeless? And people were kind of taken aback by that. And I just think the first question we have here is what hours would you like your what days would you like your library open? I'm sorry. Maybe I'm too simplistic, but that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. Since I queued up, most of my other questions have been asked and execute as vice mayor, who I don't see either. So. Thank you. Let me just on a couple of small items here as well, and I want to I know that. Councilman Gonzalez, are you there? Yes, I'm here. Okay. I know she also had some questions, so why don't I let Councilman Gonzalez go first and then I will follow her. Okay. Great. Thank you. I want to also reiterate, you know, council members Cooper and I, our discussion about the library, I think all of the council members here in the main library, and I know that it comes out a day and it was a discussion last year that was very relevant. But unlike many of my colleagues, I represent a first in the majority of downtown, and we have zero library. We have library heavily on the main library. And I know we've said this before, that essentially almost 50,000 residents in my district utilize this library and we're going to have an influx of even more with so much development happening. So I see a true investment in us not being in as being open exchange for seven days a week, especially as we're ramping up for the state of the art library. So are we able to get May? And perhaps this is the last year and I can't remember, but I'm able to get a coupon for that will give us the cost on a six or seven day program for the main library. Absolutely. Yes. Okay. That would be great, just so we could have the option. But I understand it's expensive. I get that. But just so the council can can you know that I think that would be great because we are getting hit up quite a bit with with our constituents about that issue. And I think it's very important for all of our council districts and we want to make sure we're being as a bare as possible. Um, right now, I mean, library is not open Sundays and Mondays and know, but I'll leave it at that. The next thing I wanted to ask Glenda and thank you so much, Glenda, for your work. I know it had been mentioned about some programs. Are you looking to ramp up them program in the A319 budget? I know we're certainly doing some work, but are we looking at do more at a more mobile program included in that ? Councilwoman Gonzalez We're going to continue providing the same programs throughout the city at the different libraries and also in the parks to be safe. And I think we also have a partnership with dramatic results in providing STEM programing there. So we will continue to provide STEM program as much as we can within our funding capability. Okay, great. And I just want to thank you as being part of our digital inclusion roundtable and discussion, because it's very important that we have computer access like AI capabilities are getting better. And so I just appreciate your work in that. So thank you very much for that, Kelly. And I just basically want to reiterate what my colleagues said about language access. I think, you know, $160,000 is great. It is just a drop in the bucket of what we need to do long term for this issue, which has been edge and so much more. So are we also able to get a second thought about what we what the potential options are for structurally including this in our budget? Because I think that they both they cut the number of tests that every year we come to the table. And as you know, we're keeping this issue, but it's not going away. So maybe it's a question of the time, can we have that option that it was structurally funding, that. Yes, we can put together a cost for what it would cost for a coordinator to be there for structural funding. We already have one that is part time hours, but to have an enhanced version of that. And then there is the the cost that you would need for materials. So we can definitely provide those two numbers. Okay, great. Thank you very much. And the Office of Equity, glad to see that that's structurally funded and that, you know, we're doing this work. I think every council meeting we're talking about equity. So I think it's absolutely important that we're we're looking at this both on the research side and thought leadership, both in guidance for our policy work. And then lastly, Kelly, for the HIV AIDS and SCD work, I'm glad to see the uptick in this work, let's say, of ideas that we've been with work within the HIV realm. Actually, I know equity funding has gone down, HIV funding has gone up, but is there any different sort of initiatives that we're looking to fund? Well, so we have we just launched the the No More Campaign for HIV and STDs. So that is out right now. We have data on 16 bus stops and 300 busses were in schools were in all different places, doing a lot of training and working very closely with our partners at the center, bars and restaurants down in now in Long Beach and other things. So that's a starting point. We are really looking for increased opportunity for true detective partner services and data to care. So really understanding what we do is we work with with folks who come in for testing and if they test positive, we ask them to help identify. That we can reach out to for testing and treatment so that we start to slow the start to slow the spread. We are doing prep within the department which we shared last week. So we're excited that we have those opportunities and just really continue to keep people engaged in services. Our HIV planning group is currently in the middle of a strategic planning process. They've broken into a number of groups and we're working on that as well. So we're bringing in additional information in the future. And are we looking at all the with that other cities and they've been bulk sampling kit or home kit for this, and it's dramatically reduced their HIV rate. Is that something we might be looking into with that type of funding at all? Our current funding doesn't allow for that. So that's not so. The funding is very much around testing and connection and treatment. So we don't we wouldn't have the access to be able to to do this sort of kitchen, those kind of things. But it would be something to look into if we could find additional revenues. Okay. I just wanted to put it out there, but thank you both for your work. Appreciate it. Janet Reno you through? Yes, I'm done. Thank you. Fine, thank you. Yes. Now, you guys, once, once. I just want to let you know, it's really hard for an individual like me who has a wife, is a vegetarian. I'm trying to sneak and go eat pizza. It's just tough. So I've gotten that taken care of. I'm going to let you guys hope and get out of here because I want to thank councilwoman, you know, Price for appears for being able to go to the equity situation with me and the Liberians. Are you going to you do know that you guys are doing such a great work? And I always try to let everyone know that a kid that lives in the district in which I do a lot of the individuals don't get a chance to, like I say, take trips and everything. So I was let them know that if you go to the library, you can take yourself around the world right there in a library. So it's just a wonderful thing and and the work you guys are doing together. And Gary, I just want to let you know that you're helping our community so much because now I'm having so many health, you know, programs is going on in my district and with assistance that you've given us. I really want to thank both of you guys. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Couple of comments, then I'll turn over to Councilman Mongo. Just wanted to obviously our amazing work that's being done at the libraries. Congratulations and to all of our librarians. I want to also I know you guys are working also on a project with the with digitizing library card so they can be a digital card as well. And I want to make sure that that project is is moving forward. I know that's been important for office and I just think it's just to have put it up on your phone I think would be great. And so but of course, always keeping our traditional cards as well on the Sun Library issue. Just to clarify, you know, and I may have also when I when I first got the briefing on this may have misunderstood, but I was under the impression that some libraries would be open Saturday or Sunday, even though they still might remain, you know, five days, but that the libraries that were open both Saturday and Sunday would be eligible to still be open Saturday, Sunday, but it would be those days and then three other days during the week. And so I only I only just mentioned that because I do think that for the for the for libraries, is it for libraries are currently open on Sunday? That's correct. So just for the four libraries that are currently open on Sunday, I know that getting us to that Sunday opening for those libraries was a big deal that I think this council was very supportive of. And so I know what you are, what you're trying to do, and I think it's fantastic. Some very supportive of this change and transition that I know is difficult also for the department. And so I do a really appreciate that and I understand that. But I would be interested to just further that conversation if possible, you know, around those for libraries. But also just the idea that I think there's an expectation that libraries should be open on the weekend. I think for for for us. And so we have to get to the point where our libraries will ideally, obviously are open daily. But I think to have on those weekends when families are out of school, I think it's just so critical to have libraries open. And I just would hate for those for libraries to lose, even though everyone is gaining. I would hate to see those libraries lose one of the weekend days, so I'm not sure. Mr. Modica I just think there's enough interest on the council that we should try to find a solution there if, if possible. So we heard a lot of input today obviously on libraries and we're listening to all that. So we can definitely go back and think of some other ideas. We do want to try to get that balance between people enjoying them on the weekends. We also have a lot of schools that use them during the week and so we're trying to accommodate that as well. And school kids that are coming and people that are coming after work and of course, our patrons and also our library staff. So let us take a lot of the input we heard today and we'll put our thinking caps on and gives you some more information. And I know and I think that's very fair, so I appreciate that. I just wanted to confirm that. So let me and let me have Councilman Manga who will wrap up this part of the presentation. I just want to remind everyone that both the mayor and the budget staff and the BRC have been very creative. We were facing a deficit six months ago. And so I just I know it's so great that we all want to talk about we need more of this and more of this and more of this and more of this. But with every single thing that you come to the dais and ask us for, it's also just as important to say, and you can cut it from page 320 or 460 or wherever, because there isn't any new money that hasn't been programed in this book yet. And so I think that one of the things that's really important is all of the things that have been mentioned today, whether one council member mentioned it or another council member mentioned it, it doesn't necessarily mean there's consensus and it doesn't necessarily mean there's new money for it. But we all have to kind of come together and figure out where can we push and pull within those things. So the one other thing I'll challenge everyone to do, and this is something that I talked about with the previous Library Foundation director and only recently with the new Library Foundation director is we need to look at new revenue sources. And as we grow and expand any type of service, we need to find dedicated revenues to come in in the future and support them. And the Mayor and I were very vocal online against some individuals who are posting that we need to close libraries and use Barnes and Noble. And we're like, No, that's the exact opposite thing you should be doing. Libraries are the core of reading and afterschool help and online homework help and all the things that are good and wholesome in a community that can help kids stay busy as a vice mayor, Andrews likes to say. But it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be open to, hey, maybe renting out a coffee cart with a dedicated revenue to that library or a coffee cart or a I see some of the revenue numbers. And while I can't disclose specific revenue numbers of of individual coffee shops, I mean, 500 people a day visit a tiny coffee shop in my in my district, 500 people a day. And if that means five more people went to a library that never went to a library before, and that that 25 cent cup of coffee that you paid $4 for of $3.75 can fund more books and more sundaes and more everything else. I'm all for it. I'm looking for a way to as Barnes and Nobles close across the country, libraries grow and expand and continue to fill that space that's so needed. And so thank you for all the ideas. I appreciate that everyone has a number of ways to spend the money we don't have leftover. But if you come to us with revenue sources as well, it makes the discussions so much easier. And I know that you'll see that in one of our next items about the park as we close budget discussions. So thank you for everyone that's been here. And I know that as the mayor opens up public comment, while public comment is valid and we like to listen to everything you say just as easily, you can email our offices and put it on the record and email the city clerk's office to put your notes and comments about the budget into the record by submitting online comments as well. Because I know that some people had to leave because it's already 952 and we're only on the first agenda item of the night. So if you left early and you're still watching at home, please send an E comment. If you're planning to stand up and speak and you're considering that you're also here for another item later in the night and you'll you'll shorten your comments, feel free to give us the full, verbose version via any comment. Thank you very much. I will now take public comment on this hearing, which is the budget hearing. So as a reminder, these comments are only to the budget and only to the budget presentation. And so please line up and begin. I am Chris. Robson. I live in the second district. And I'm here tonight is speaking to you as the. Chair of the Board. Of Health and Human Services. It's a commission, but we're. Called a board. Just want to read a letter into the into the record if it's. Permissible to hand this to you and have it. Done that way. You all have gotten copies of this letter for the public comment. If we can get that posted and appreciate that and we'll take any more time. Thank you very much. I think I want to say. Thank you, Mr. Robson, and then we'll have the clerk pass those letters out. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Donald Mathews. I'm from the ninth District, but I am Commissioner on Veterans for the. 64th Assembly. District under Mike Gibson. Our concern is homelessness and our concern is parks. Our concern with homelessness is new funding. We want to do a partnership. We would like to do something. And Assembly. Member Price's district and the Long Beach. Veterans Hospital Center, it's got. A. Campus with buildings that are abandoned at this point. If we could get a partnership with Habitat for Humanity. The city manager, the city of Long Beach. And with Calvert, we would be willing to. Do something to. Renovate that area and in fact use veterans. The second item had to do with parks. You guys are doing. A fantastic job on absolutely everything here. My concern is the diversity of the. Parks that are being renovated and the people that are working on those projects and the public safety in the. Parks. I think that. Councilmember. Pearce mentioned something about gunfire. Well, yeah, there was there was at Panamerican Park. And we're really concerned and we are. On board with whatever the city is doing to provide better security, because that's one of the most beautiful parks in the city. And many residents. From out of our city come there to utilize it. Anything we can do to make it safer, we would be. More than. Happy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Very good, Hugh. My comments go to Parks, Recreation and Marine and I'll have a conversation with the new director. Relative to my major concern or major issues, relative to and imparting some updated information relative to the Long Beach Marine Stadium in the state within the next year should. Begin the process of replacing the Davis Bridge. It'll be state funded. It'll be a single span. No bounce in the water. In addition to that, what is an. FBI that will be at the end of the day, we will find that will be the venue. For the rolling events of the next Olympics. We Los Angeles area will hold. Whether or not those Olympics are going to be in 2028 or. 2032, which will be the 100th anniversary, will be largely dependent upon whether. Or not the MTA can get their act together and address. Those. Problems that they now. Have. But the Marine. Stadium is a it's a venue. Unlike any in the world. Travel. Up to the North Pole. Below the Southern Cross, and largely in one portion. Obviously, we're open 365 days a year that that will become the venue for the rowing events as a as was the original plan four years ago when I came to this council. They sent their people here to take a look at what they wanted. And at first they were concerned, but then they when they realized that was all because of the construction that was going on relative to the rain rate. Marina. Marina, rebuild. They. Decided on that up, and that's what it will be, but I want people to understand that and so forth. RG The Open Channel project will begin certainly within the next year, which will give continual title flushing connect up with. The Colorado. Lagoon. As I said, the I haven't had a chance and it is new, but I will sit down and go over that with the new Parks and Recreation Director of Parks, Recreation or Marine. The last thing I would suggest. I'll do that later. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Good. Your next speaker, please. Yes, my name. Is Susan Redfield. I'm with the seventh. District and I'm currently the president of the board of directors of the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. I wanted to thank Glenda Williams for her excellent presentation, much of which I was going to reiterate, but I won't. However, I also want to thank her for acknowledging the foundation, which, beginning in 1996, has raised to over $20 million toward the libraries in our city. I am thrilled that Councilwoman Pierce is interested in the capital campaign, which will be publicly announced early next year. And we are in what is called in the capital campaign business the quiet phase, which is probably not quite anymore, but up. So we would like to talk with you more about that. I'm thrilled that Councilwoman Mongo has indicated new ideas of ways to raise funds, and we would really like to meet with you in that regard. Personally, I'm a huge coffee cart snacks person. I think that even small amounts of money in that way would be helpful. In addition, the Library Foundation is asking that the City Council consider earmarking a portion of the 2019 fiscal year's budget on allocated funds to keep the new main library open seven days a week. Much of what I was going to say has already been stated by each of the council members tonight regarding this plan to restructure the opening of the libraries. But it's my understanding that the amount for 3 to 4 months of operation would cost approximately $212,000, according to the library. Now, I can be corrected as the research comes in, but that was the number I was given. Opening seven days a week will obviously help New Man to better manage the expected sharp increase in attendance. I The only other thing I wanted to say is that we received a letter literally yesterday and I was able to share it with Councilwoman Gonzalez because it's from a first District graduate student named Brant. I won't give his full name right now. And he writes, I am a graduate student, by the grace of God. But I remember when I started using the library, Mark Twain, several years ago, and especially the study rooms and the computer labs. I'm grateful that this place exists in my community because I've used the computer lab to do entire classes and tests online in a decent environment. It's worth the funding. And as my online master's program is online, I plan to use it through my master's school and beyond. I'm pleased that it exists and it's a blessing. Please make sure it's always here so I can use it. And this is the quality of people that are using our libraries. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Honorable members here, council members and city management staff. My name is Whitney Leathers. I'm the executive director for the Long Beach Day Nursery and the chair for the Long Beach Early Childhood Education Committee. The Long Beach Day Nursery represents 106 years of service to working families in our community. And the Long Beach Committee is a collaboration of 30 plus organizations serving thousands of our most vulnerable children each year. Our mission is to ensure that every young child in Long Beach grows up healthy, safe and educated. As such, our work includes much more than the educational aspect of early childhood education. Our work includes supporting the whole child, the family, the early childhood workforce, and the environments in which children live, play and learn. Investments can include much of what you've heard here tonight trauma informed care, kindergarten readiness initiatives, parks, space, recreational opportunities, health and nutrition programing, early childhood education and resources for families. All of these pieces work together so that when our young children enter kindergarten. They're healthy and. Ready to learn. Tonight, I'd like to thank you for your investment in early childhood education at the Health Department. It has been a pleasure. Working with Director Collopy and the Early Childhood Program Staff, as well as the rest of the department on matters impacting the health and well-being of young children and families in our community. We've learned we can do so much more when we work together, and your investments have made that possible. They're going. Collaboration between the city and the early childhood movement in our community is inspiring. It's a true partnership. It's inclusive of the city private education programs, non-profits, health and mental health providers, school district and groups like the committee. The Health Department has been a catalyst to this work in collaboration. Our collective work is innovative as well as supportive of ongoing efforts. Our commitment is to continued collaboration, and the priorities of health, safety and education is evident in the forthcoming Long Beach Strategic Plan. Every one of us has a role to play in helping young children and families reach their fullest potential. We work forward we look forward to working with many of the departments that were represented here tonight to support a safe, healthy and educated Long Beach. I encourage the city to continue to invest in early childhood education and more broadly invest in young children and families, particularly around the goals and objectives that will be released and the upcoming early childhood strategic plan. Thank you for your time, especially tonight, your service and your consideration. Thank you. And I just want to just that just to add, I know that this gets overlooked sometimes in the budget, but the the modest investments that that the city's making and in early childhood ed to to support the staff to do all this work. It's really, really important. And I know that that's something that the city lost during the recession and prior to that. And I think one of the great one of the great and best things that I think that we did in our partnership and the Council supported, that partnership is to bring back and establish those positions within the city to help manage that work. And along with the work the Mayor's Fund is doing and so many others. I'm really, really proud of you guys. I'm just oh, I'm impressed with the early childhood community is amazing. And I look forward to joining you guys at the kickoff for that for the strategic plan. So we can't wait. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, council members. My name is Cyndi Dela Cruz Brown, and I'm a resident of the seventh District and a community organizer at Long Beach Forward. I am also a member of the Long Beach Language Access Coalition and the Invest in Youth Campaign, which has helped put together the People's Budget proposal. This proposal includes endorsements from various individuals, coalitions and campaigns local to the city. At this point, you should have all received a copy of our proposal and we've probably either met with you already or are in the process of doing so. These issues in the proposal on prioritizing the people's budget include immigrant rights, language, justice, safe housing and youth opportunities. As a community organizer, these issues matter to me because the people in the community should be able to see their lives improve in the budget and be part of the process. So we can build collaborative solutions with the people who live, work and play here to engage. We need very good communication, though, especially when it comes to language. My day to day focus lives on building healthy building, community led efforts with parents who have children in Long Beach Unified School District. Specifically, the parents I work with are monolingual Spanish and can speak in parents or grandparents. These parents take their participation in their children's education very serious and it is important and it is as important that we do the same by supporting the ways that parents and youth can engage with the city and in good schools. How we how can we how can a parent evaluate a situation without fully understanding what they are reading, whether it be an educational plan for the children or a city bill? As a resident, all these items actually matter matter to me personally. They touched my family in very different ways. As a child of an immigrant mother who worked in factories with minimal benefits and a father who served as a police officer for over 35 years, family members who were incarcerated within my family while having limited options like afterschool programs or being displaced because of the cost of living and housing being unaffordable. These areas are all very personal to me. I have to say that part because even during jury duty, when I was doing Jury did in L.A. court, a judge actually pulled me aside and said, Are you being serious that you have, you know, a father is a police officer and someone incarcerated in your family ? And that does exist. And I represent that viewpoint. So I wanted to bring that up as well. It's very personal to me at this point. Some of us have met with your with your office around our proposal, and we're happy to see that there some sort of interest or that you've provided some level of feedback that we're definitely taking back and working with one another to take serious what your feedback has been and continue the conversation in dialog. So we hope we can continue this conversation with you and collaborative approach to supporting these individual and identified community priorities and that you to take a stance to endorse the people's budget. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Suzanne Brown. I'm a senior attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. And just like Cindy, the last speaker, I'm here with my partners from the People's Budget Campaign. And as she has said, we have met with many of you and we look forward to meeting with every council office as a result of the comments and feedback that we have received thus far from our legislative meetings. We've revised our language access budget request. We have removed our request for funds for multilingual staffing. This remains very important to us and the community residents that we work with, but we acknowledge that it will not be resolved in this year's budget process and we want to move forward collectively. Therefore, this brings our language access budget request down to just $370,000. This is a small price to pay for language justice in a city of our size. We appreciate that the mayor has proposed to dedicate 160,000 towards language access, doubling the budget from years past with the mayors $160,000. We are only asking for an additional $210,000 to make language access more of a reality for our city. This 210,000 additional is desperately needed to attain consistent implementation across city departments for language access in working with residents daily, we know that they are still struggling to access city services meetings and vital documents in their primary language. As you can see from the hand out that we have shared with you, the funds that we are asking for would be spent on critical components of language access implementation, including multilingual signage. To address Councilmember Pearce's question, these numbers came from the language access policy themselves. There's little footnotes on the handout, if you can read them, that show you where all the numbers come from. Secondly, interpretation at city meetings. And as you heard from Kelly's presentation, there's been a 78% increase in requests for interpretation translation of vital documents. Kelly also said that there's been a 22% increase in the demand for translated documents community outreach, which is needed so that more folks know about their rights under the policy translation of more web pages as we move forward with digital achievements in the city. And finally, a full time structural language access coordinator in the Office of Equity to ensure we have a dedicated staff person to make sure that the funds are spent right. I want to quickly acknowledge the comments from Councilmember Pearce and Councilmember Gonzalez about moving to structural funding with language access. That would be an absolute dream for us. That would mean that language access is part of the cost of doing business in the city and every department would include it in their budgets and we look forward to that being structural so that you won't have to hear from us next year. Thank you very much for your consideration of our comments. Q Very much. Next speaker, please. Hello. Good evening. My name is Gabby Hernandez and I'm a resident of the second District. I'm also a community organizer for the Long Beach Immigrates Coalition. And I'm here to talk about the budget, the people's budget, specifically the deportation defense fund. I think we all know that the principles of due process and a fair DynCorp are central to America's vision of justice. But there's no constitutional guarantee to legal representation in immigration court. That's a deportation defense fund here in the city. It would move us closer to the vision that all people, no matter their background, to have a fair day in court. Universal representation is not about deciding who will stay or who will be deported. It's about bringing some some type of fairness to the complex immigration proceedings that is tearing families apart. The fairest and most efficient way to bring order to this complex proceedings is to ensure that legal representation is offered to community members. We know that legal representation helps protect the rights of all residents, keep their families together, and maintain a safe and strong community. That is why I'm here asking City Council to endorse the people's budget and ensure that the $250,000 needed to start a the petition defense fund is allocated. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, counsel. My name is Juan Rosas. I was a resident of the west. Side of Long Beach. With my family from 2003. Up until recently, when my family could no longer afford to live in. Long Beach. I am a graduate of Garfield Elementary Hughes Middle School, and I went to both Cabrillo and Poly High School. Councilmembers Well, Richardson's not here, but Mary Garcia. I am. Also an alum of leadership. Long Beach, and I'm. Currently a master's student at Cal State Long Beach, pursuing a degree in linguistic. Anthropology. I'm here to advocate for the importance of language, access. And allocating the full. $370,460 for language. Access policy earmarked by the People's Budget. As a linguistic anthropologist, to put it quite simply. What I study. Is language and culture. I my research touches on. Issues of race, identity, language and language justice. Through my studies. And my research. I understand. That language access is vital forum for a more just and equitable Long. Beach and ignoring the serious need for a more thorough language access policy. Essentially bars vulnerable populations. Access to city services. Long Beach prides itself on. Being an. International city, a diverse city, and we are. Ethnically, racially, culturally and linguistically diverse. So I implore the Council to recognize that, especially against the backdrop. Of Trump's America, where immigrants, especially immigrants of color, are treated as second class citizens. Council members, again, I implore you to allocate the funds to the language access. Policy. As earmarked. In the people's. Budget. Thank you and good evening. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Christopher Covington. I am a product of Long Beach. I've been living in the sixth District for 26 years and 27 and so proud of that. I'm here as a community organizer with a Gender and Sexuality Alliance network. We're a national nonprofit supporting trans and queer youth coming together for racial and gender justice here in the city of Long Beach. We support over 100 young people throughout our amazing school district and more depending on the year. And those youth are actually working on many different initiatives to prepare themselves for college career or for their future, making sure that they're safe, make sure they're having resources and support as the Gender and Sexuality Alliance that work. We are partners of the People's Budget as well as the Invest in Youth Campaign. The Investing Youth Campaign has met with each of your officers and will continue to show up at your community hearings to share the need and the ask of young people within your districts and what the what youth needs in the city. As I mentioned, I'm a product of Long Beach. I'm a product of youth positive, healthy youth development. I was an intern and an employee with Vice Mayor de Andrews, and I'm able to pass on the same type of support and resources to youth throughout this city, and I'm proud to do that. That's the same type of support we're looking for with the investment in the Youth and Children Fund. I'm currently through the support of the mayor and the council members advocating for the youth fund. The mayor has proposed a $200,000 investment, and we know through the presentations that we've been hearing, there's $500,000 unallocated funds that are up for putting into different parts. So our task is to give $500,000 to this fund with the proposal of the participatory process. That is one option. However, many of our youth are asking for our strategic plan and how we can invest the money for a purpose that is long term versus short term. We don't want to see a sign within our city. We don't want to see a a building or like something that is one time. We want to see an investment for a long term strategy of how the city is going to invest in youth. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. For those of you who are still in this council chamber and listening. And I appreciate to see you more throughout this process. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Dawn Tidwell. I'm here with the Democratic Socialists of America. Word on the street is you all got a copy of this. How many of you read it? Can I get a show of hands? One? Well, it's. Oh, it's the people's budget. He read it, too. So, two out of five. Three out of five. All right. So first, I'll talk about the first two immigrant rights and language justice. There seem to be a lot of concern about funding its $670,000, which is 2% of the $45 million that the police are allocated total . And it's one point. It's 1.4% of that 45 million. And it's 2% of the $30 million that they're allocated from the general fund. So maybe, you know, personally, I think maybe others believe, too, that Chief Luna could spare some change for the people of Long Beach. And also the other two things, safe housing and youth opportunities. If we were to address those, I believe it would address crime in the city as well. So you wouldn't have to spend as much money on the police. Let's see what else that I have you. Someone was talking about how well the Health Department was doing. I was wondering where they make their profits from. If anyone could answer that for me. Continue your comments and I'll touch on that. Fair enough. Okay. Let's see. Gonzales asked about STEM, and I was considering what programs we have for humanities, because if we only focus on STEM, we'll have more cyborgs like Elon Musk running the city. Also to fund other things we could legalize and tax all drugs, open up safe injection sites and provide direction to rehabilitation. That's one option. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just briefly, so the health department make any profits per se. So it's, you know, government next speaker. Hello. My name is Tiffany Hooten. I'm here to speak in support of the people's budget proposal drafted by a number upon which community coalitions. This proposal is to assure that money in the city budget will be allocated in accordance to the material needs of the residents in order to create greater equity in our city and to support equity for all Long Beach communities. These include increased funding to establish an immigrant's defense fund, full implementation of multilingual language access programs, funding for housing code enforcement which protects tenants. And lastly, youth programs which disrupt the school to prison pipeline phenomenon as well as help all populations in the city to prosper. I urge the Council to consider the concerns of the people of Long Beach as a priority in place of the already bloated police budget. There's no greater investment than one in the people. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Man City council members. My name is Gloria Rivera with Libra. We are a member of the People's Budget Campaign. We are a member of the Language Access Coalition. We're a member of the Sanctuary Long Beach Coalition, which is why we're here to advocate for the people's budget. As housing advocates, we're here mainly to speak on on code enforcement and the need to improve our code enforcement department. I remember when we when we were here talking about pirate or prep, whatever we're calling it now, proactive rental housing inspection program. And at that time, we were very ambitious and we were talking about trying to cover all of our our buildings within a year's time. That has now been extended to 5 to 7 years. So obviously that there's to me, there's some staffing issues. But in the having and having very robust in discussions with the code enforcement department and with other code enforcement departments and officers across the state, also the systems and the data tracking systems and the efficiency of those systems have a lot to do with how well we can get out and get into rental housing units so that we can inspect them and properly. We're here, but we're a part of this campaign because everything intersects for us. The language access is is something that that intersects with code enforcement, because we get we have a lot of folks that come here and they're requesting reports of the code enforcement patrolling in English. Right. Or we have some code enforcement officers that don't necessarily speak the language that that of the folks that they're actually visiting. And so then we have those issues where they're requesting children to interpret this very technical language that that the parents or the residents don't even know themselves, let alone the children. And so language access permeates over into into code enforcement. And then there's the immigration issues, especially with the current political climate. As you can imagine, people are really fearful of opening doors to folks that they don't know, especially if they're wearing some sort of official t shirt or badge and things of that sort. And so, you know, it's spilled over into immigration issues as well. So and these are these are code officers. And as far as I know, the way people talk about code inspectors is that they have them up there in categories of police officers, because these are the folks that are enforcing our health and safety codes that are actually ensuring that our folks are living in health and safe conditions, that they're not going to fall through a floor, that they that that the ceiling is not going to cave in on them. These are life life safety issues as the way the way our inspectors and code enforcement department talk about them, life safety issues. Right. And so when I look at the budget and how we're allocating the budget to answer Mrs. Monga Longo's question, why don't we divert a small portion of that police funding to our code inspectors? Because they're doing the same type of work. They're keeping our communities health and safe. So we're not we're not redirecting funds. We're just shifting them so that we have a little bit of balance. We need a department that's working for us and it's not currently working. And so we're requesting more funding in that department. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. And I know Mr. Murdoch. I know that it was not called out. The it is not part of the fee schedule. I do know that there's been a request in the budget that we reduce the five, the current 5 to 6 year don't down to four, isn't that right? Yes. One of the recommendations that the mayor put on top of the budget was for a to challenge staff to look at how do we reduce that amount and bring that down from a 5 to 6 year schedule to something else that we would upon passage. Look at that and see what it would take to do that and what the different models could be. And one of the you know, not to get too into it, but one of the models out there is there are there are progressive fee schedule models out in other cities that I've looked at that that essentially there's different fees depending on whether it's amount of units owned that have worked in other and other locations. And so we're looking at that next speaker. Which is memories the most members to learn to steer this community much as personal settlement isn't going to make them and but that as well as police us and immigrants who continue to under the discrimination exploitation. But Lesley, we've because this administration in a constant state in accessing unless we live in fear is to put us in the familiar. Good evening. My name is Medium of William and yes, the witness. I stand before you as one of many people who is currently directly impacted by the anti-immigrant policies that continue. That continue to be perpetuated and perpetuating discrimination, exploitation, linguistic obstacles, dehumanization in the constant threat and having our family separated. My preschooler and two stories replicate concerns. You develop an anti-immigrant alley while at the near because of portrayal of LA yellow stress confinement, a companion length was this year. The question to on community commonly is a cover in culture leather either Potala. I stand before you replete of exhaustion in witnessing anti-immigrant propaganda as well as having to bear the pain and distress that usually accompanies the anguish I feel when my community is unjustly attacked, incarcerated and deported. Nobel. Pacifica and Impacto. Director. Going off a million quid. I sent the message for you to list every matter. Cinematical Blessed one. Yep. Remo King has a lot of momentum. It's a little illogical. Kirby Stone. I cannot testify the direct impact that a family may feel outside of the support that I have already offered them. However. It is there and affirm that caging humans is the utmost illogical action. I have witnessed. Gomorrah, Santorum. There's been a lack of monitoring documentaries to play and to not coauthor the immigration aparthotel and trauma care support most. April seven. I left that opinion, though. Get up in there, see if people. Get up in. A special place, though, if we. Or again settle for less. Coalition with Housing Disability Coalition Invest in Youth Campaign Long Beach Language Access Coalition Sanctuary Long Beach Campaign in Long Beach Forward. It is three. We'd love this interesting quantum in the original established formula the universal but along with identity mockumentaries get parliament this in Quentin and Professor Potassium as a result of the disadvantages that the undocumented community suffers. In immigration, quite apart from any of the trauma that precedes what we have to endure in defending ourselves, I ask you to adopt the city budget proposal that was organized by the Coalition's Housing, Livability and Housing Mobility Coalition, Invest in Youth Campaign, Long Beach Language Access Coalition Sanctuary. Long Beach Campaign and Long Beach Forward. An allocated $250,000 of the original fund and establish Universal Legal Defense Fund. Two undocumented residents that are currently in deportation proceedings. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Dave Shukla. On file. Just came here. Kind of get lost in the shuffle. Kind of an allocation error. But I just came here to speak very narrowly on the libraries. I am a big fan of our libraries. They are places to read, to study, to learn. And those are the primary activities. You try and corporatized them. The coffee shop. You can end up with an empty building with bad AC and crappy coffee. Every city in human history has judged itself by its ability to maintain its source and stock of knowledge. That's what a library is for. That's what we pay for them for. These are things that we can pay for. Especially if the money comes out of the general fund. I mean, it's all in the foil. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker two And declaring the speaker's list. We have our three last speakers and then the speaker's list will be closed. Anna Christiansen The these people that came tonight, I want to thank them for waiting all this time and having all this concern that each one of them have it. And I think they're the youngest group of people here. So when we talk about including and engaging young people, I think we should pay particular attention to their concerns. And driving to L.A. today, we heard another report again on the immigrant children who are still in custody, still in cages, and everything else seems to pale after that. And I think I think we should listen to them and follow these recommendations for the budget and take care of the health of our all the people who live here. If we do a census now, apparently they're going to want us to say whether you're a citizen or not. So we know how much money language is going to lose on that. Right. This is a way of depressing the way certain people vote. And now I'm completely away from the budget. But anyway, I just I just feel like we need to think about health. And I really appreciate health and human services commitment to outreach to the community. And I want to say something in respect to what the city is doing and moving forward with some policies, whether it's the $100 million pool or which I think is basically a competitive facility, or whether it's the so-called restoration project in the wetlands, I think we need to look at impacts that go beyond those projects which seem so glamorous and so wonderful on the surface. But basically when we want to talk about health, let's talk about community pools. It's fine to have a new soccer field. Even if it is plastic grass, it's fine to rebuild a rec center and have programs for seniors. But seniors can swim and they can exercise in water. Community pools are for everybody, I'm sure somewhere in a budget in the future we could find, you know, money to build a pool in the ninth district. I truly believe that that it will benefit people's health. And as far as the wetlands go, at the at the Coastal Commission meeting, a number of different tribal leaders. And in reviewing the paperwork, the majority of California Indians who have ties to this area oppose further destruction in their area of the budget. Spiritual health is connected to nature. And I appreciate Parks and Rec and everyone who's trying to, whether it's the de forest wetlands or whatever, to create a balance between nature and commerce. And on I that's all I guess I want to say for this round, but thank you very much and thank you for this long night. It's a long night. We're all still here, but thank you. Next speaker, please. I am Cory Sharpe from the fifth District. And I want to take a little moment to take a shout out to the tireless workers at our shelters. I don't know that they were mentioned tonight. And as they miss Mongo, some councilman. Woman Mongo. I'm a failed foster parent as well. Three times over and I don't think I could ever do their job. So I think they deserve not a little shout out to, unfortunately, still, at this point, countless defenseless animals continue to be put to death in our shelter. They aren't being put to sleep. They aren't being put down. They're being they're dying. And I urge the council to find even a one time fund from the unfunded of course, we've heard that talked about tonight. But I'm asking you to just find a time to put in enough money for an additional animal investor who'll be responsible for coordinating whether there's shelters that are already no kill, shelter status, foster homes or other rehoming agencies to bring language to what it should be, which is a no kill shelter. The communities around us are no cure shelters. We need to become that and we can become that. You could become the legacy of this. In the first council in the history of Long Beach to have a no kill shelter. Please be the voice for the voiceless and the defenseless. Add the funding for at least just one. One, one time ambassador. To help our animals have a little more time and a little more energy to find the final home that they need. Thank you. Thank you. Ms.. Sharpe, there's actually the budget actually does include the addition of one full time new staff member to focus only on adoptions. And so that is in this budget and that's in addition to what we've had before. So that that and other additions in the animal care budget are in the budget. So thank you. Maybe we could have another. Sure. I'm sure it's in the issue. I know. We always. We always were almost. Midnight and the machine is broken. We're hungry. We always want more. Absolutely. Next speaker. Get him a snack cart. Maybe we could get some funding. Hi, my name is Ramon. I'm from the fifth District. I'd like to honor the. Mayor for this budget that's been presented. I think it's good. I like the Parks and Recreation. That's really my primary interest. I'd like to say it like four years ago I was doing everything I could to try to get sustainability in the parks, sustainability for just keeping the park alive. Everything was dying. A lot of people were calling the dead trees, mangoes. And I don't mean that to be I don't mean. That to be. Critical. I'm sorry for saying that. One of the one of the things that confuses me is that I see the budget. And I like what it is because now we got sustainability. But I know that we have $117 million needed in. Re re piping our our parks and all of the all of the the piping has outlived. Its its livelihood. I have access to a report. And it shows that we have when Marie. Knight started her, um, you know, her tenure. There was about $550. Million that we needed just to upgrade the. The facilities at the parks. And now it is $770 million as of now. That's what this report says. And I'm saying, like. This is phenomenally high. I'm wondering this is correct. This is eye popping numbers, three quarters of $1,000,000,000. And I'm wondering. What happened to this? How come nobody's addressing any of this. Stuff in the budget. In the. In the budgetary stuff? Is there a. Plan to bridge this gap? Is this is I don't know if. I'm I mean, this these are the numbers that I'm seeing. And I'm just kind of curious that why we're missing things like this. When I was working with Marie Knight, I also gave her a plan to which she was working on to try to. Help get the permit fees, feed it back into the parks. And I don't know where. The where the parks director is, but I'd like to work with him and show him how the plan works. She was beginning to work on it, and it it kind of went by the wayside. So there's a variety of other things that I'd like to do. But I'm going to take. Councilwoman Longo's advice and maybe I'll just send something in writing. And anyways, I just like to have those issues addressed, the the piping that needs to be replaced and also the additional work that needs to be done to bridge the. Gap for the the work to maintain. The facilities, just to bring them up to normal in the parks. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I want to thank everyone for being here for the budget hearing. We have a motion and a second to receive and file the budget hearing and will be continued to the next meeting. So, Members, please go ahead and cast your votes. I mean, I. Think motion carries a. Thank you. And now we've gone through the first item on the agenda and only 26 more. So let me I'm going to take first the items that we're request to take to take early. And so that is the round up item. The outdoor smoking item in the housing item were all I had requests on those. So let me do all those first. Did you really take the emergency budget item? We were asking if we could do the. Yeah, let me do it.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the hearing and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions on the application of Rice & Bean, Inc., dba 4th Street Vine, 2142 East 4th Street, for Entertainment Without Dancing by Patrons. (District 2)

LongBeachCC_07012014_14-0441

Item one. Item one requires a note that it does report from financial management recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions on the application of rice and beans located at 2142 East Fourth Street for entertainment without them seen by patrons to stick. Thank you to all those who intend to give testimony in the matter of hearing item number one. Please stand and have the clerk administer the oath. Please raise your right hand. You and each of you do 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. I think I heard around the yeses. Yes. All right. You're going to win one. Miss Frick? Yes, ma'am. Members of the council, Jason McDonald will provide the staff report on this item. Mr. Dome. Good evening, Mayor. Council members Jason McDonald for the Business Services Bureau. Tonight you have in front of you the application for entertainment without dancing for rice and bean diva for street vine at 2142 East Fourth Street in District two, all the necessary departments have reviewed the application. The application and proposed conditions are contained in the packet provided and we are prepared to address any questions or concerns along with the police department regarding the application or those conditions. Thank you. Okay. Is there any public comment on this? Anyone wish to give public comment on this? Hearing an application. Please come forward. Identify yourself. Please make sure you identify yourself. And when you see the yellow light, you'll have 30 seconds left in your testimony. Thank you. I'm Michael McTigue. I'm a resident of that area. I moved in there about 14 years ago, bought. A small apartment building. And I want to show my strong support for the entertainment license application. And the impact this business has had on the neighborhood is measurable in many ways. Prior to their opening the Wilson Little Node on Fourth Street, the area was perceived as stodgy and was over lackluster. Since then, Fourth Street has grown into one of long beaches, most vibrant areas, and the owners of the fourth Street buying played no small part in this renaissance. The Street bustles with boutiques, restaurants, galleries has received national exposure in print and of course, the renovated art theater. This is a true synergy that is homegrown and not dependent on grants or handouts. Throughout the course of opening and operating a business, the owners have worked doggedly to support musicians and artists and have developed a unique atmosphere conducive to conversation and a place where you can meet your neighbors. There are no television sets here. It was interesting. Art shows events to cater to. The diverse nature of that has. Grown up around retro rock. Throughout this time, we have never seen a disturbance, rowdy drunks, squealing tires, vandalism that of late seems to define second and third street areas. In part, this has to do with the hours of operation, but mainly the high standards and hands on management over managers. This type of dedication, hard work, risk taking and forward thinking should be encouraged and celebrated. I do hope you can see that this application, if approved, will not only strengthen the neighborhood and this terrible loss of more jobs, more renovation, greater property and sales tax revenue, and personally allows me to attract good tenants to my property, which a few years ago these people would be hesitant to cross for a street. And Redondo. Thank you. You appreciate that. Next, please again, please state your name. Yellow light means you have 30 seconds left. My name is Porter Gilbert. I'm the executive director of the LGBTQ Center of Long Beach, Mayor and members of City Council. Thank you for the opportunity. To speak this evening. And I'm here because the LGBTQ center of Long Beach strongly supports the application for an entertainment permit, as we believe this will lead to increased public safety along the fourth Street corridor, fourth Street. Bane's presence. On Fourth Street, particularly in the evening. Hours when retail stores are closed. Is integral to the increasing sense of safety our staff. Volunteers and clients report. When entering and leaving our organization, which is just down the street. The center deeply respects and maintains. A strong professional relationship with the owners, management and staff of Fourth Street Vine. And we have never. Experienced any nuisance. From the customers entering or leaving their. Business. On the contrary, the increased foot traffic resulting from customers patronizing for street buying creates a safer fourth street for residents. Customers. And business owners. The customers Patronizing Fourth Street Vine represent the right kind of people. We want that fourth street people who support local business and our local economy conduct themselves with respect and create additional foot traffic in the evening hours. The customers of Fourth Street Vine. In addition. In addition to increased foot traffic. In the evening hours, act as a deterrent to those. Along Fourth Street. Who. Are visiting us with the intent to engage in criminal activity. As businesses keep later hours along Fourth Street, we've. Felt safer entering and leaving our. Organization and have noticed a decrease in graffiti and vandalism along the street. Many of us at the Center Patronize. Fourth Street, buying for both business and pleasure and have never experienced any nuisance associated with their business again. We strongly support this application for an. Entertainment permit. And we support our fourth street line as a thriving local business along Fourth Street and rely on their customers to serve as the eyes and ears and our community in the evening hours. This permit will only serve to improve public safety and create a stronger and more vibrant retro. Roberto, thank you. Thank you. Next to. Good evening, counsel. My name's Janine Pearce. I'm a second district resident. I'm not going to repeat too much of what I did and said. I just wanted to say I live right directly behind the establishment. I think it's a wonderful establishment and the owners have done a great deal to include the entire community and making sure that it's something we can all benefit from and and really feel like it's changing our community. So I really look forward to seeing your support tonight for this great small business. Thank you. Thank you. Actually. Hello, mayor and council members. My name is Joel Family and I'm a first district resident and also an area representative of the newly formed Long Beach Music Council. I'm here this evening to respectfully request that you approve the entertainment permit for Fourth Street Line. I'm also requesting that their permit be extended to host live entertainment at the venue starting at 11 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays as opposed to 5 p.m. so that they may also participate in Fourth Street Retro World Events. Fourth Street Vine has had a. Positive impact on both the Fourth Street Corridor and the Greater Long Beach area. Since operating at their current location, they have consistently provided a place for Long Beach musicians and visual artists to perform and display their art. Access to quality content is paramount in. Enabling a thriving art. Scene. Supporting life music is a proven economic driver in cities such as Seattle, Austin and Dallas, and with the right supports put in place for all stakeholders. The kind of sensible foundation that has helped other cities to succeed is well within our grasp, and our community has commonly held a commonly held belief that Long Beach is a complaint driven city. And although I understand the needs of residents, it is it seems reasonable to allow our businesses to freely operate within appropriate restrictions so that they may effectively provide the kinds of content that bring people to choose to spend their dollars within our city's borders. Increased traffic to areas during times when live entertainment is being provided is a good indicator that this is something our community values in terms of numbers are simply more people supporting music and art than there are people complaining about it. The recommendations provided by the Department of Financial Management Chief of Police Jim McDonnell in the Planning Bureau of. The Department. Of Development Services appear to be more than adequate to ensure that noise issues are managed in a way that is fair to both Fourth. Street Line. And the surrounding neighborhood. So we ask you respectfully to please approve the Fourth Street Band Entertainment Permit, and thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Next to. I am Jim Ritson, one of the owners of Fourth Street Vine. And I just wanted to thank you for your consideration for our application permit and just just request one change if we are granted the application for the permit for entertainment, if we could adjust the hours on Saturdays and Sundays to allow us to begin entertainment at 11 a.m. instead of the 2:00 time. Noted. Thank you. Thank you. Everyone's got to remember the window. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to thank those residents and stakeholders that came out to provide some comment. We also had just just so folks know that there were a lot more interested parties in this issue than those that were able to come today. We had several letters and emails sent to us, Mr. Mayor, just to get the conversation going, or at least make a motion. I'd like to make the motion to close the hearing and approve the permit with conditions, but also make some comments and amendments to the conditions. If I could have a second. Second. Councilmembers. And Mr. Mayor, this item was postponed from our last meeting, as you know, to allow the applicant an opportunity to work with neighbors and give certainly my office some time to consider whether any additional conditions might address concerns presented by neighbors whom we heard from last Tuesday. Those concerns mainly focused on music, volume, noise and smoke emanating from customers on the patio, open doors and rooftop windows open during entertainment and trash or recycling being emptied late at night, creating further disturbances as individuals rummaged through their containers, which is all very understandable. Those of us who have entertainment venues in our districts and certainly in the dining and entertainment district and downtown, these are similar concerns that we've heard and not unreasonable. They're very real concerns, but ones that I believe that the owners and our city staff can address through responsible operation and enforcement. We have experience with that through also the venues that have come through our dining and entertainment district. I appreciate the residents who suggested additional conditions for the permit in an effort to seek compromise. I'm also very appreciative of the owners, Jim and Sophia, who reached out to and listened to the concerns of their neighbors and are taking action to address these concerns. I've actively witnessed them doing so, and I'm very thankful for that. Those actions include moving and delineating a smoking area on the patio away from residents, installing baffling, which is a sound wall on the property line to reduce noise and installing signage and changing protocol to eliminate loitering and dumping of trash and recycling at night. I'd also like to point out that the conditions required for entertainment include language that also protects residents, such as requiring that all doors and windows, including rooftop windows, be closed during entertainment, prohibiting loitering by entrances and exits. No speakers on the patio, no dumping of trash or recycling into outside dumpsters between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.. Requiring the owners to monitor and reduce any nuisance to neighbors, including loitering and loud talking and sound, shall not be audible beyond 50 feet from exterior of the premises in any direction. These are all articulated in in the agenda item. I'm pointing them out just to illustrate that the owners are very aware of these conditions, are very amenable to them, and have been working with the community to accommodate them. I believe these actions and conditions mostly address the resident concerns but want to modify the recommended conditions in the following manner. Number one, in recommended condition number 12, it is stated that should the permits operations give rise to a substantial increase in complaints, calls for service or trash found in the parking lot or neighborhood, the perimeter shall increase staff or employ uniformed licensed security guards as directed by the chief of police. So that would be that would be something new, and that would certainly be something that is very doable and honoring and understanding that this is a neighborhood as well. Number two, I would like to amend the condition to read should the permits operations give rise to a noticeable increase in complaints or calls for service concerning noise, loitering or other elements of the entertainment permit, the permittees shall be required to make changes as directed by the Chief of Police. Finally, number three, I would also like to amend condition number three to read as follows Entertainment activities indicated on page seven of your entertainment application shall be restricted to Sunday through Thursday, and this is, as it was stated, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Friday through Saturday 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.. I know there's currently a request to have it start earlier. I think we can start that with sweeps and revisit that at a later date, but we can do the occasional event permanent to accommodate that request and then look at it again. And I'm very open to doing so and I think that that would not be problematic. If we can start with an EP, I think the neighborhood is amenable to that as well. But if we start with OPI, I think it's a good show of faith. I believe these amended conditions strike a compromise. Enable enabling live entertainment to be offered on retro road while protecting residents from the noise impacts associated with the patio late at night. This is not the downtown dining and entertainment. District or even Belmont Shore, but rather a small business corridor in the heart of our residential neighborhood. And I want to commend both the owners for being. Very. Dynamic with their business operation in an area that is really just a neighborhood and a business corridor and being very much a part of the vibrancy of that community. The hours and conditions of entertainment are in keeping with other operators on Broadway and Fourth Street, and therefore I hope that this Council can provide their support for these conditions and also provide their support for these business owners that have done a tremendous job over the last several years in growing their business and really becoming a part of a fabric of that community. With that, Mr. Maher, I'd like to call for an eye vote. Okay. We have a motion as amended. Sorry. Council discussion. All right, members, cast your votes on hearing item number one. Motion carries seven zero. Thank your members. We're going to hearing item number two, which also requires an oath clerk read.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), with the County of Los Angeles Department of Consumer and Business Affairs, to provide Right-to-Counsel services for people facing eviction, in an amount of $250,000, for a period of one year, commencing upon the execution date, with the option to renew annually for up to three years, at the discretion of the City Manager. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_12082020_20-1159

Thank you. We have item 11 that was pulled by Councilmember Supernova. And then I'm going to have some comments as well. Councilman Juvenile. Thank you, Mayor. I just have one question regarding one sentence in the discussion section of this item, so city staff could try to respond to this. My question is how the right to counsel, how the right to counsel program will result in more landlords accessing mortgage assistance, as stated in the Agenda Housing Memo. The purpose of the program is. To provide our right to counsel. But in any litigation, part of that litigation is attempting to settle that dispute outside of court. Part of what the legal counsel would provide is a potential solution with the tenant, as well as making sure the landlord is aware of all the resources that are available. That's something that we do here at the city, but the county in their program would be able to provide greater and better information as part of those dispute resolution measures that are always a precursor to the litigation hearing. Okay. Thank you. Christopher. Thank you. I'm going to make just some comments and then we're going to I think I have Councilmember Mungo cued up. So then we'll go to her and then go go to a vote. I just want to just be clear that this program was a. I was happy to include it in the budget proposal. The council also unanimously adopted the budget proposal and has already passed this item that is now in front of us. The staff has worked on how to bring forward and also just to me and I appreciate all the comments that folks said, the different opinions. But let's be clear what this program is. It's a right to counsel for tenants. It's an opportunity for for folks that need access to legal services to have those. These are people that are lower income that need assistance and free legal services. Is is a bedrock of of of of good justice programs within a community, myself included. I can I can recall moments when my own family has had to access free legal services because of not having the same resources to attorneys and to other programs. And so I think there was a comment about it's only going to help a certain amount of families. Every single family that will be helped by this program needs that help and support. And so I'm proud to support this program. I'm not sure. I'm obviously this is surprise to me that it's come up so this way. But I look forward to the program passing tonight and being implemented as well. And then with that, I'm going to turn this over to Councilman Mongo. Councilman Bongo. Thank you. I'm going to start my comments with letting everyone know that I do plan to vote yes on the item. But I think that there are some things that need to be outlined and discussed. So, first of all, my mom is someone who retired from providing free legal aid at the self-help center. I know and understand the components of how a lot of this works together. I've been present at and thankful for the many free workshops, limited legal services, full legal services that are available at these centers. They are critical to the community and I get all of that. What's difficult for me is that multiple times during our time on the council, we come up with an idea and we approve funding for it. And then luckily it's a great idea and other agencies are entities approved funding for it as well. Not just this item. I can speak to others. And then. We are not fully leveraging the regional resource before using the Long Beach funds. So I'll give you an example. When we did rental assistance up to $3,000, we had the ability to tap the L.A. CDA funding and see the funding put forward $100 million. They still haven't been able to spend all of that money by the end of December. They have 22 days, 23 days to finish spending that money to provide rental assistance throughout the region. As a part of that, we approved rental assistance and people were applying through us. And what we want to do is we want to make sure to leverage as much of that $100 million. And then the county of Los Angeles put forward $2 million of rental assistance. So then we want our residents to be eligible for that $2 million. And then anyone who didn't get part of the 100 million or the 2 million, then we want to use Long Beach funds to find the people who fell through the cracks. That is the most effective way to use resources. So when I called the County of Los Angeles Executive Office of Department of Business and Consumer Affairs today, I drew down a report from their website that showed that at the Long Beach Legal Center, they'd served 1800 people at the last report. And I said to him, Does it differentiate from a person or are they turned away if they're a Long Beach resident because we have our own program, are they counted differently? Are we going to then, bill all these people to our $250,000 first before the $8 million of Measure H funds and general funds that were set aside specifically for outreach on this specific thing through 17 agencies across the region. The workshops, the limited legal services. And in September, the Board of Supervisors approved another pot of money for the full blown legal services that this $250,000 is also going to provide. And so for me, what I want to make sure is that Mr. Koonce, is it Chris Coons, who's the staff on this, works with L.A. County to make these funds available once the other funds have been utilized. We don't want Measure H funds to be available for use for a Long Beach resident. And then instead of using that, this person's legal services gets pinged against our $250,000 and then our 250,000 dries up. The county money dries up and it's not available anymore. We should use the money in the most restrictive way, in the least restrictive way first. So the least restrictive resource is county wide funds, general fund and Measure H. Once they've expended their funds, we should release our funds to make sure that we can continue to provide those services to Long Beach residents. So I just think it's really important that from a strategy perspective of where money is coming from, going to and being utilized for. That the most money is being leveraged. So it did take some time to get a hold of the director. I only started trying to get hold of them today when someone had told me about the $8 million. And so I just think that it's really critical. And I know I only got to tell Linda today that staff go forward with this, not pigeonholing me presidents to only be able to access the $250,000, but to access the $250,000 once the other money dries up. Remember that some of these programs didn't even get into effect until March on the limited legal services and September on the full blown legal services. So I think that it's critical that those kinds of things are included. And I hope that there's no I mean, I'm open to hearing from my colleagues if they think that our money should be used first, but that actually limits how much money is accessible to let me president. So I hope that that these ideas are taken with the heart that is behind it. As I said, I'll be supporting item. Thank you, Councilwoman. There's a motion to approve by Councilmember Richardson and seconded by Councilmember Pearce. There are a couple other councilmembers on the list, but I don't know if they were cued up to speak or if they were cued up to make a motion. So customary ringer where you queued up to make a motion or to speak. But you'd have to make the motion. But I supported Councilwoman Pryce where you could actually make a motion or to speak. It was earlier to make a motion. There's a motion and a second. I see no other public comment. So the motion is as presented. Roll call vote, please. District one. District two. I District three. District three. I. Did you hear me? Yes. District four. By. District five. I District six. II. District seven. I. District eight. I. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Now we have the next consent calendar item, please. And I think that that was pulled by Councilman Austin. I think the councilmember wanted a report from staff. Is that right? Councilmember. Correct. I just thought that this was a notable item.

Message and order authorizing the City of Boston to accept and expend the amount of Three Hundred Forty Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars ($349,500,000.00) in the form of a grant, awarded by the United States Department of Treasury, to be administered by the City of Boston’s Chief Financial Officer/Collector Treasurer. This grant payment is made from the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) in the Treasury of the United States established by Section 9901 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) Pursuant to the requirements of the ARPA, the grant payment would fund COVID-19 response and recovery efforts and accelerate a Green New Deal for Boston through once-in-a-generation, transformative investments that address the systemic health and economic challenges in the areas of affordable housing, economic opportunity and inclusion, behavioral health, climate and mobility, arts and culture and early childhood. Councilor Baker offered a motion to Amend Docket #0503 by reducing the Mayor's Office of Housing by $5,000,000.00 and adding $5,000,000.00 for the

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Docket number 0503 message in order authorizing the city of Boston to accept, accept and expend the amount of $394,500,000 in the form of a grant awarded by the United States Department of Treasury to be administered by the city of Boston. Chief Financial Officer. Collector. Treasurer. This grant payment is made from the coronavirus, state and local fiscal recovery from the fund so far in the Treasury of the United States, established by section 9901 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 A are paid. Pursuant to the requirements of the AARP, the grant payment would fund COVID 19 response and recovery efforts and accelerate a Green New Deal for Boston, the once in a generation transformative investments to address the systemic health and economic challenges in the areas of affordable housing, economic opportunity and inclusion. Behavioral health, climate and mobility. Arts and culture and early childhood and early childhood. Dr. Number 0504 Message In order authorizing the city of Boston to accept and expand the amount of $40 million in the form of a grant awarded by the United States Department of the Treasury to be administered by the City of Boston as Chief Financial

A bill for an ordinance clarifying and amending the authority of the Office of the Independent Monitor. An ordinance clarifying and amending the authority of the Office of the Independent Monitor and expanding the appointment process for the Citizen Oversight Board to include City Council appointments. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 1-30-19.

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President, thank you very much. We'll do a quick recap. Under resolutions, no items have been called out under bills for introduction, no items have been called out under bills for final consideration comes from each has called out council bill 29 for an amendment under pending. No items have been called out to miss anything. Doesn't look like it. All right. Madam Secretary, would you please put the first item on our screens? And, Councilman, can you please put Council Bill 29 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 19, dash 29, be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Councilwoman Canet, your motion to amend. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 1929 be amended in the following particulars on page four, line 33 strike. Each appointment must be made and substitute for vacancies occurring on or after the effective date of this act. The vacancy must be filled and on page six, strike lines 24 through 29 and substitute the following. As of the effective date of this act, the seven members who are currently serving on the Citizen Oversight Board shall continue to serve the remaining portion of their respective terms. The two new members who will be appointed in accordance with and after the effective date of this Act, shall be appointed to serve an initial term of three years, except, as stated in subsection two below, after the initial term of three years, the succeeding term shall be for four years. Of the four members who are currently serving on the Citizen Oversight Board, whose terms expire in 2020. The appointing authority shall determined by law one of the four new terms for which the next appointment shall be for a term of three years rather than a term of four years. After that initial term of three years, the succeeding term shall be for four years. Thank you, counsel, which has been moved and seconded. Comments or questions by members of Council on the Amendment. Councilwoman, do you have anything to say on the amendment before we jump in? Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. President. The purpose of this amendment is to specify how the staggering occurs here, so that basically we have a number of folks expiring at different times rather than in big bunches. So the purpose will have two new members expiring after a term of three years, and then they will be on four year terms. And that will keep the staggering more consistent over time. Thank you, Councilwoman. And I'm assuming that as sponsors, you all would like to comment once we amend it. Not here. I will comment when it's amended. Yes. Okay. Are then seeing no other comments on the amendment. Madam Secretary, roll call on the amendment. Second. Can each I black eye brooks. Espinosa Gilmore by Cashman. By Lopez. All right. New Ortega, by Mr. President. All right. Madam Secretary, please. Because voting announced results. Nine Ice nine Ice Council Bill 29 has been amended. Now, Councilwoman, can you please vote council bill 29 on the floor for final passage? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 19, dash 29, be placed upon final consideration and do pass as amended. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of Council on Council Bill 29. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. First, I want to thank Councilwoman Kennedy and Councilman Lopez for involving me in this wonderful discussion, along with a number of the our community partners, city agencies, the mayor's office. I think what we've come up with is, is an excellent bill that solidifies the authority of the Office of the Independent Monitor to oversee the actions of not just the rank and file officers on the street, but the chief of police, the the sheriff as well. This is truly as for those of you who heard our public comment session was certainly a community driven process. And I appreciate our partners from the community side as well. So I know my partner has had some comments as well. So again, thanks as well to the monitor, to the members of the Citizen's Oversight Board for everything they do. Thank you. Councilman Cashman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I also just wanted to thank my colleagues, Kinesin Cashman and our administration. Folks in the police department and different organizations that have been part of this, and especially the community and our independent monitors office. You know, they're charged with the task that we gave them a long time ago as as is the public. And that's to make sure that we do have civilian oversight of our police force. We all do it every single level. And it's it'd be a misnomer to say that that they aren't civilians themselves. This is an opportunity for us to really make sure that public safety is paramount by sending a message and just reaffirming the message that safety, the public safety is the duty of all of us, not just folks who are in uniform. And and that kind of commitment, this kind of oversight is important. We want to make sure that folks are safe while out there doing their job. We want to make sure that folks are not afraid to trust a person in uniform, whether they are a police officer, a firefighter, or somebody that every once, once a week comes and picks up your trash and throws it in the back of a truck on a cold January day at night. So I think it's it's important. These are all public servants. And I think, you know, when we when we think about the necessary functions of municipal and county government, we think of things like potholes and asphalt and public works. And we think of parks. We also should think of independent civilian oversight as being a necessary function as well, too. And it makes us better as a city if we are able to look at the best practices across the country to make sure that we are using every tool in the toolbox to make sure that public safety is built on trust. And public safety is built on doing the right thing. And, you know, the office is just, you know, as as the community, you know, had been really looking at this and asking questions about the office. And, you know, it's the office of the Independent has been in these chambers a few times, you know, just tinkering with the first ordinance that came through charter izing in making sure that the office is taken seriously and making sure that there's trust. You know, people in the community, they think. That we speak to each other in a manner that it's a team. You don't see the difference. And that these different divisions and these different agencies work together and they expect us to that our public safety depends on it. So our monitor. Nick Mitchell, thank you for your thought. Gee, folks in the off in the office and especially our community, the Denver Justice Project, folks who are who care about this and care about public safety and care about the folks who are behind the badge and also the folks who happen to be in our custody temporarily . Right. And entrusted with making sure that they return to a life that is who enjoy their freedom and do so in a way that that is that that is filled with integrity, but an opportunity to do so. So thank you, Councilwoman Kenny. Councilman Cashman, it's good to be able to do this with you. And we got to give a shout out to the sheriff and the police chief for being at the table as well. So I look forward to this becoming the norm and I can't wait to see what the result is. So. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Kasich. Thank you, Mr. President. I, too, want to thank my colleagues for their deep, deep partnership on this bill. And I'm going to talk about all the other folks I want to thank in a minute. Tonight's legislation is really about trust and the trust in our police department and our sheriff's department. It comes in many forms. So one example we heard about a little bit earlier from the proclamation that we had. It comes about having an inclusive department that looks like the community it serves, that helps to foster trust when folks can see officers or deputies that look like them or grew up in neighborhoods like theirs. Sometimes it's about the rules that they have to follow. Many of our community members and some of my colleagues and I participated in the revisions to the use of force process, the policy that the police department uses to determine whether or not force is justified or not. And having the right rules in place helps to create that feeling of trust that we all agree. You don't use force unless these circumstances are present, and it's necessary. And then this idea that if and when there is an accusation of wrongdoing, that there's an independent set of eyes that's looking at it and making sure that there's accountability. That's that third piece. And I think that that's what this bill here is is about tonight, is about making sure that there's trust and following those rules and accountability under those rules. And I don't think that the system we had was broken, but I do think it was outdated. And I do think that there were pieces of it that weren't working as well as intended, and there was confusion about it. And so tonight's process and tonight's bill is about building that trust back, closing those confusion points and strengthening that system so that it can last long into the future. So so that's the what for tonight. But the who is really important. And both my colleagues have mentioned the who this like almost everything I work on, I'm terribly uncreative. It comes to me because someone walks in my door and says, Did you know? And for me, that person was Katina Banks. And as the chair of the Citizen Oversight Board, she said, Did you know that there are these questions and did you know that we had some dialog and couldn't quite figure this piece out on our own? And a volunteer board of Citizen Oversight Board members really worked hard to figure out if there was a way to kind of figure this all out and without maybe legislation. Because, you know, we often ask folks, have you tried talking about it? Have you figured this out? And they had they'd worked, you know, both with the independent monitor and the safety agencies. And so, you know, we heard from other community members who had been sharing their feedback through the Citizen Oversight Board. I consider them like the funnel that that helps you to tell the story to me. But it wasn't their story. They were telling the story of the votes they heard from, many of whom are here. And they spoke to us during the open public comment period. It wasn't a hearing on this bill, but some of them came and spoke and some of them spoke at committee. So one of the things that I've learned doing big complex litigation or not litigation sorry, legislation, I am not a litigating lawyer. I'm a legislative lawyer. But one of the things I've learned is that, you know, like any cook in the kitchen, you can spend so much time on your staff, you get fatigued, you may not even feel like eating it at the end. We have worked really hard. I have never quite worked on a bill that has been so detail oriented as this one, and that includes, you know, that agency, the safety agencies that Councilman Lopez mentioned, how carefully they read it. And we had to rethink everything from a different perspective, see if we all read it the same way. Different attorneys giving us perspectives, different count, you know, community members. Every line in this bill went through so much discussion and it's hard. You know, at the end, you do you get fatigued. And I know that there are people in our community who are here tonight who feel fatigued because they were talking about and asking about these changes and they feel like it took a long time. And what I got to say is it's still a really good thing we're doing tonight. Even though you get tired during the process, we are not great sometimes that celebrating as a community to say, wow, the people came forward, the people had a set of concerns and we worked through them and we kicked the tires. And the truth is that we made some some slight changes in wording with the safety agency's input, but we actually came out with almost every fundamental piece that was important that we set out to put in this bill. And that's pretty amazing. And we did it in a way that earned the neutrality or the support of the mayor and the agencies. Right. So that they were saying, we make this work when, you know. And that to me is really powerful. So as we go forward, the one thing I pointed out in committee is how much natural tension is built into this system. It is designed to be in tension where you have someone looking over the shoulder of a department every day and trying to find out what they did wrong and advising them and. How to do it better. That is always going to be tense. But I'm proud of the fact that in this process we also identified a number of areas outside the language of the law where there's going to be more dialog going forward and what's, you know, confidential or not. On the policies, what does it mean to give prompt notice? Folks in these areas, both the independent monitors, office and safety agencies are going to have to do more work after this bill passes and they're going to have to stay in dialog on those details. And that's going to be hard because there's tension in that system. But it is, I think, a tension that helps us all to keep those officers safe is the community to trust them and to keep our community safe as they are following the best practices they can and that they know there's a high degree of independent oversight and holding up the integrity of the whole system. So with that, I just want to wish you the best as you go forward to implement these pieces and stay in dialog and to just say how appreciative I am of how much work everyone put into it to get us here to a really strong bill. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennedy. Councilman Espinosa. No, I withdrew because Councilman Kennedy touched on the things I wanted to touch about. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, you back up? I would be absolutely remiss if I did not think Catena and the Citizen Oversight Board. You all work hard and people don't understand. And thank you, Robin, for bringing that up because that's what this revolves around, is that citizen oversight. You all spend so many volunteer hours hearing things that are very stressful and seeing stressful situations and having such weight right. And taking criticism from the public and from all around. And you're volunteers, right? So I have to you know that that's important. That's a key part of the original ordinance and and what we have here. So I make sure, you know. Katina Absolutely. But, but make sure that the other members of the board hear these words tonight, okay? And make sure that they understand how much we appreciate the position that they are in, the thought fulness that they put into their role. And and they have a city behind them. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Calcium can eat you back up. And cursing Crawford. She writes all our legislation, but she doesn't write it all like she wrote this one. She really, really, really wrote this one and rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it. Thank you, Kirsten. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. Each seeing no other questions or comments. I'll just think Councilman Lopez, Councilman Cashman and Councilman Canete for all your hard work in bringing this forward. Happy to support it this evening, Madam Secretary. Roll call. Can each high black high. Brooks High. Espinosa High. Gilmore High. Cashmere High. Lopez. I knew. Ortega High. Mr. President. I Madam Secretary, please close voting and announce the results tonight. 1080 Council Bill 29 has passed as amended, and that does conclude the items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published and we are now ready for the black vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration.

Grants a $1.7 million loan to St. Charles Town Company for costs related to the relocation of residents of the Shady Nook and Belmont Mobile Home Parks in Council District 3.

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Thank you, gentlemen. Lopez, can you please place Council Bill 376 on the floor for a vote? Thank you, Madam President. I move that council bill three 76/3 of 2015 be placed upon final, final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. Comments by members of council. Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Madam President. This is an ordinance that lends money to a developer for relocation costs of a project that's very important along Morrison Road. I approve of the project. I even approve of doing this relocation cost. But I am not willing to do is to lend more money to this specific developer. In a previous deal we had not only a financial deal with the developer, but there were two subsequent amendments to that deal, both of which were to the benefit of the developer, not the taxpayer. And so I am very picky about who I lend money to, and I'm going to say no today. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Madam President. I do have something to say about this council, bill. Yes? This is Saint Charles Holding Company as the developer of the site. Here's the problem. The problem is this site has been blighted for decades. And in this site, it's not like it's been empty. There have been folks who are living in these conditions that have been substandard and Denver and it's just not right. And we've talked about it for eight years. We looked at opportunities to what can we do to help improve the living conditions here for folks. And there was a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of people who how we had the ability to do it but are afraid to take the risk, afraid to do, afraid to come forward and basically not participate at all. That was true up into the point where Saint Charles Town Company and I think Charles Holding Company here said, you know, we'll do it. Will help will help not only improve the conditions here at this site by acquiring it, but will help trigger the Federal Relocation Act with the city. The city said, we will do this with you. There are folks who are living there who, because of this development, will be able to finally live anywhere else, be able to get benefits for it, relocation costs. And when all these units are built at 60%, am I going to be able to have first refusal, meaning they get the first choice to come back and this is how it should happen. And we can't rely just on VHA or some of the nonprofit folks who are already up. You know, they have their hands full. They don't have enough resources. They're begging for money. They're all fighting over the same pot of money, the same federal pot of money. It should we should actually be working with folks who are in the for profit development side that are willing to do this. And they've done it before on Alameda and Sheridan with those altos down. I mean, it's a very good project, filled a huge need in this city for affordable housing. That's what this does. And now affordable housing in the kind where you know that nobody takes care of and it's forgotten about. And when you complain, you either get kicked out or you just deal with it. Right. But this is the kind of housing these are the kind of units, units that will be maintained that are high quality standard of living, exactly what folks are needing and deserving in this neighborhood. And these are the folks that are willing to do the work. They've been doing the work with the community. It takes partnership from the city. This will help finalize those costs, help those folks find a place to live that way. They're not on the street while this develops or when they come back. I guarantee everybody is going to be standing there wanting to cut that ribbon. So that's what this is all about. And I urge my colleagues to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Madam Secretary. Roll call. Fats? No. Lemon Lopez Monteiro. Hi, Nevitt. Hi, Ortega. Hi, Rob. Shepherd Sussman. Hi, Brooks. Hi, Brown. Hi, Sussman. There's no opportunity for me to click on I. Okay, I'll do it. Madam President. I voted. I call to him. He says, When were you able to vote? No, there's no. I voted for her. Okay. And what was the vote? Yes. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 11 eyes, one nay. 11 eyes, one nay. Council Bill 376 has passed all other bills for introduction or ordered published. We are now ready for the block vote. Councilman Lopez, will you please place the resolutions on the floor for adoption? Thank you, Madam President. I move that council resolutions 383, 99, 44, 17, four, 18. All series of two 2015 be adopted. Thank you, Councilman. It's been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call, please.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and grant an Entertainment Permit with conditions for Entertainment without Dancing to Long Beach Tiki, LLC, dba The Bamboo Club, at 3522-24 East Anaheim Street. (District 3)

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Motion is. Carried. Thank you. 25 Please report from Financial Management recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude a public hearing and grant an entertainment permit with conditions for entertainment without dancing to Long Beach, Tiki, LLC District three. There's also an old Councilwoman Price. I believe this item was going to be pulled. Right. Okay. Thank you. There's a motion to continue the item. No. We're planning to remove this item and then we will bring it back in May, most likely. I'll second that. All right. Let's have any public comment on the motion to withdraw. Mr. Sun, I can say did sign up for public comment? Would you like to comment on the special withdrawal? Okay. Thank you. All right. Let's cast our vote. Motion is carried. All right. We're now going to go to item 31, Martin Luther King part.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 21.66 relating to an Unpermitted Dwelling Unit Amnesty Program, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Thank you. That concludes public comment for Denise me. Thank you so much. Now we're on to item four. Audience. Item for a report from Development Services recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to an UNpermitted Dwelling Unit Amnesty Program read and adopted as read citywide. Motion face sun has. Motion and they have their second. Second Richardson. Okay. Sorry. The second is very public comment on the site. Yes, we have Tiffany Davey. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon. Animal Vice Mayor and City Council Chairman Davie, District four resident. I am in support of this ordinance as it proposes an adequate and timely policy solution to a myriad of issues in an effort to not. Only meet. State origin requirements, but also city goals and plans such as the Have Home Recommendation and the Mayor's Affordable Workforce Housing Study Group. As a creation of Chapter 21.66 of the Long Beach Municipal Code seeks to bring to code these units already occupied. That does a great disservice to previously mentioned state and city goal by expanding the breadth of the housing qualified to be formally legalized in the voting code, which previously only applied to units created prior to 1964. As far as procedural mechanisms of implementation pass application submission, I find it to be great benefit for all seeking such amnesty , which, by building health and safety standards goes further to include their tenants as well. The affordability covenant that is outlined is a service to not only meeting those same goals, but also ensuring a just and equitable recovery from this ongoing crisis, which the city also address the conjunction of multiple crises such as the COVID 19 crisis. Housing crisis and racism as a public health crisis which are occurring at the same time, and for which policies such as this ultimately seeks to benefit all residents of the city. This element is also critical in Future City plans as it pertains to emergency preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. In closing, I believe support of this item is timely to address directly those factors that align with a true just and equitable recovery from these terrible crises. Having served as a field representative for the United States Census Bureau for the 2020 decennial count, I can attest that this ordinance would do more than simply remove from visibility, but allow our city to enact policy, which would aid Census Bureau efforts in the future to achieve an accurate count and thus ensure we, city and residents alike, have the adequate federal support needed in disasters such as this one. We're still gathering and those to come. Thank you. Have a good evening. Thank you. District one. I'm District two, district three, I District four. All right. District five. District six. Can you hear me? Yes. Received. Thank you. District six by district seven. By District eight. Hi. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Well, that satisfies our agenda. Is there any new business from the city council announcements?

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.110 relating to COVID-19 paid supplemental sick leave; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-20-0017). (Citywide)

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Communication from city attorney recommendation declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to COVID 19 paid a supplemental sick leave, declaring the urgency thereof to make the ordinance effective immediately and read the first time and later to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Gave a motion by Councilmember Richardson and a second by Councilman Ranga. Looks like Councilman Richardson to have a comment. You have just one quickly. I want to move to adopt this. There is one word that needs to be updated. The city manager, the city attorney's updated on section e general generous leave. This was the part that was amended. It was updated to bring back. It reads, If an employer has paid, has a paid leave or paid time off policy that provides a minimum of 160 hours of paid leave annually, the employer exempt from any obligation to pay to provide paid sick leave pursuant to this chapter for the employee that receives the more generous paid leave . The one change is where it says to this chapter for the employee she needs to say for to this chapter for any employee that received a more generous paid leave. So the city attorney has a one change and that's okay. And that's that's obviously substance. That's not substantive. It just keeps the. Yes, though, this will require two votes. Mayor, one on the urgency and then one on the ordinance itself. And you are correct, it will remain it keeps it as first reading tonight. Okay. So let's take the first vote, madam. District one. I district to. I. District three. Sorry. I was just excited. My new button's working in that. District for. All right. District five. District five. Eighth District six. High. District six. All right. District seven. I. District eight. All right. District nine. I. Okay. And then we'll take the second vote. And I'm first District one. I district to. I District three. I district for. Right. District five. I just try six. District six. I. I. District seven. I. District eight. I. District nine. I know she cares.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.91, relating to grocery workers in Long Beach, and establishing labor standards requirements for premium pay for grocery workers working in Long Beach; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Citywide) (Emergency Ordinance No. ORD-21-0004)

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Motion carries. Thank you. Item 26, please. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to Declare Ordinance Amending the Long Beach Municipal Code. Establishing Labor Standards Requirements for premium pay for grocery workers working in Long Beach. Declaring the urgency thereof and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately. Read and adopted as read citywide. Thank you. As your city attorney, is it just one vote or two? This is one vote, Mayor. Thank you. Okay, great. I have a most of my councilman and Diaz and a second by Councilwoman Sara. I have no public comment. Roll call. Vote, please. District one. I. District two. Hi. District three. District three, II District four, high District five. District five. I. District six. I. District seven. I District eight. I. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. We have a thank you for getting through all those. We have a couple of council items. And so let me go ahead and go through some some of these other items. First step, we're going to hear item number 19, please.

A MOTION relating to identifying the future allocation of Puget Sound Taxpayers Accountability Account proceeds to priority educational areas and requesting the executive to develop plans to allocate proceeds within the priority educational areas.

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Is there anyone else president who'd like to offer public comment today? If some of you approach one of the podiums saying no one will close the public hearing. And in 2015, the legislature, as part of the Sound Transit three funding package, directed approximately $318 million to King County to improve educational outcomes for students within King County. Those funds will start flowing into the county next year and we anticipate the funding will continue for a total of 15 years pending legislative allocation. After extensive work, public testimony, public engagement today we begin considering legislation that will frame the allocation of these resources. We have a motion in front of us that will serve as a framework for the policy document that will need to be adopted to direct this. And through the course of our discussion, the Council will determine the key elements and priorities with a overview of where we're at and the legislation before us. We have Jeff Mumm, Chief Policy Officer, to give the briefing. Good afternoon, Jeff. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeff, ma'am, policy officer to the King County Council. So, as you described, the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account is funded with an offset fee on donations with three projects we have and state law caps sound Transit's payment to the account at $518 Million over that over the course of those projects, I'm going to skip over the background information. And first, just to frame the discussion, I'd like to draw your attention to page 20 of the staff report and then page 20. This shows the there's two charts here. There's a chart that shows the the current projections of allocation of positive funds throughout the three counties from King, King Pierce and Sandwich counties. But I think what I really want to draw your attention is the second chart, which shows the fund and how it flows for the King County portion. And as you'll see, it's it's not evenly distributed over the years. And so this is this will be part of the part of the work that that I believe the motion is looking at is how to how to make sense out of a funding stream like this. And so let's move on to the analysis of the motion before you, which starts on page 21 or before we go into the analysis. I also want to draw attention that the in the during the 2019 legislative session, the Legislature clarified that that funds could be used for facilities and services, and they also put in a provision that it would allow the funds to be used for an endowment if you wanted to set an endowment up to to improve educational services. So to the motion itself, the motion identifies the three priority education areas that were previously identified by the Council. And these areas are early learning K-12 education for underserved youth and college and career and technical education. The current form of the motion contemplates assigning percentages of future funds to the priority areas. However, the motion as introduced leaves these percentages blank. The motion also identifies the same underserved populations that were previously identified by the Council. And those populations are children and youth of color, children and youth and families with low incomes, children or youth who are homeless in the foster care system or in the child child welfare system, and children who are involved in the juvenile justice system and otherwise vulnerable youth. And further, the motion requests that the county executive work with council staff stakeholders in the community to develop a detailed plan for future distributions of funds. The motion requests the plan to include a governance structure, criteria for allocating proceeds, future proceeds, and for what duration? A financial plan based on the most recent revenue estimates for in transient for the life of the account, which goes back to the charity's earlier speaking about and then policies for potential investment of foster funds for four facilities. If I think that the motion contemplates sort of a different different process, different sets of policies that if you're going to invest in facilities than with that. That concludes my staff report and I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions of Mr. Moment Councilmember Lambert. Against the chair. A couple of questions. This chart. Who made this chart. I'm not familiar with that chart again. It was on our diets when we got here. So anyway. Well, since you haven't seen it, I won't ask you too many questions. But the bottom chart where it talks about homeless and foster care. I'd like to know how many of those are mutually exclusive and how many are, you know, counted in both. Both of those. I'll get your chart because you probably can analyze it better if you had one. So that's that one. And then the governance is the first time that I've really processed the idea of the governance. So could we as a council do what we do often on the idea of one as nominating one person from each council district and then choosing like three or four people that we feel are experts in whatever communities we decide to be the Government Governance Committee. I mean, we have more range. Sure. Yeah. The state law doesn't speak to any particular form of governance, so it would be a policy decision. And then on page 21 at the top, where they're talking about the Senate substitute bill, 5851, where it says they use distributions from their count only to improve educational outcomes in early learning in K-12 and higher education, including but not limited to facilities and prayers for children and youth that are low income, homeless or in others. So it says K-12. What about early learning? It doesn't say that. And here is that in another early. Learning rate before K-12 on that. Okay. Okay, great. I'm sorry. Okay. So on that was my question on that. Okay. So it's anything we want to do in there. And I was going to have a question on that, but I'll have to come back to it because I forgot what it was. Okay. Thank you, mister. You're welcome, Councilmember Howells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeff, I understand that a recent report came in, I think, from the consultants, but having to do with an equity report. There was that community engagement report that came there that was briefed, didn't get received an oral briefing anyhow during the last committee, the whole meeting. And then it was the written version was transmitted on Friday. Okay. So will you be going over that with this at some time or with the consultant. Or I believe the consultant be happy to meet with you. I find the purpose that they'll ask me the whole meeting was that was to brief that report. Right. But now that we have an actual report, I think it could be interesting and also for the public to hear about that. That would be a request of mine that we take that up. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just had to put back the other page. So two questions. Number one, when we when I was reading about the early education, I was briefed on some of the numbers when we were calculating the early learning. I seem to remember that I was briefed that when they gave the numbers, the early learning, there was only ICAP eligible children. Is that accurate? Was this a briefing. That you think I had in my office? So we. Would you check on that? Yeah. And and you have the report that you were briefed on. I'm happy to look into it. Okay. I have my staff look it up, too. So I was a little surprised. But it wasn't all the children in the state that need this, because according to other research and the paper today, it's truly and we know from firsthand experience or I guess second hand now that there are lots of daycare needs that are not being met or people who are not ICAP eligible. And then you mentioned earlier on the chart on the previous page about the first couple of years up until about the year 2025, there's not a lot coming in is not consistent is the ability for us to bond. Okay in those early years against 28 and 29, which will be much better years. So the legislature did not provide did not specify that these funds can be bonded. It's also important to note that this isn't like a a revenue stream, a tax that you're used to seeing. The legislature has to actually appropriate the funds in every budget to the county, which complicates the bonding discussion. Yeah, that does. Complicated. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr.. Councilmember, up there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And you said the time is also right for beginning discussion filming. Okay. Thank you. At the risk of thinking out loud and deliberating in public, I know we have a limited amount of time where we're set a timeline to figure out how the nine of us get to a plan. So I thought it might be helpful for me to reflect on some of what I've heard and some of my interests and in a way that that that could be helpful, at least with understanding where I am. The some of my first takeaways are that this is a time limited fund. It comes and it goes away. It's uneven amounts of money in each year. And as was noted, it also isn't hundred percent certain. It could be, you know, knowing the state legislature, they get in the budget crunch an easy way for them to balance their state budget one year, put this money into K-12 basic and close the budget gaps. It's also not something we can absolutely depend on moving forward, and I think those factors. Shape my thinking. I think it makes it particularly. Attractive for capital investments and one time spending versus ongoing programs. Just the nature of the funding. I have an initial interest in making sure there's significant funding for early childhood facilities, in part because it's a facility, in part because it's as far upstream as we can get. And we know kids learning start shaping early part because the data I've seen shows that it serves a large proportion of young kids of color. But I do have some questions and concerns that I'm working through with the child care providers to make sure that the dollars really are being spent to benefit the students who are most in need. In terms of what those percentages are, I'm also very interested in seeing if we can go beyond facilities. There's a large number, huge proportion of families that have their kids in family, child care, some licensed, some unlicensed, particularly in the immigrant and refugee population in South King County, and the ability to provide technical assistance or capital grants or support for home based. Early childhood programs might be a way to target. I love the idea of integrating ideas. The suggestion someone made about. For example, if we have meaningful investments in early childhood, you know, targeting youth in the foster care system, targeting homeless youth in terms of prioritization or set aside. I have an interest I've met with and it really appeals to ensuring we have equity in physical education is another idea of funding that could be integrated into K-12 funding, making sure people with disabilities are served again, that could be integrated into early childhood facilities. So giving some direction even within the categories and making sure that those different, different groups are served. I think it's important. My final thought is a big picture one in a process. I think we as a council should do more than just put three percentages in this legislation. It was the council that initiated. A robust and credible community engagement process, probably unlike any. Major we've had before. And for us to conclude our work with just simply putting three figures and saying, executive branch, bring us a plan. I think we missed an opportunity as policymakers to identify strategies and conditions and priorities as a council. So I'd encourage us to maybe flesh out some strategies. With those. Percentages. And that's my big brain dump. I hope it's helpful. Thank you very much. Sharing an interesting beginning. That very real work is what we're here to do today. And I offered the legislation this before us really as a framework, as I said, and I fully expect that it will be amended quite significantly before this committee would move it to full council, particularly because it does not have percentages numbers that says x, x, x. So clearly there's work to do, but it's a framework for some of the ideas that I thought we needed to be sure to think about going forward in the work leading up to where we are today has really shed a light on and highlighted some of the things that are working well for students and some of the things that aren't working well for students, and that informs how we might be able to have an impact on their ability to succeed. I want to commend the input we've had from the community today and encourage you to stay involved and in touch with all of us about this work. And as Councilmember Up, the Grove has laid out some interests. I hope you will hear others do that today and that it will lead to a striking amendment being brought forward at the next committee of the hall on July 1st. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple questions for you. Concerned about the Grove and our staff did who provided this money to us was a sound transit, but it couldn't come to us until they develop some broad guidelines. Yeah, it's a it's a fee on sound transit. Three projects that are is sound transit pays this fee to the state and goes into a state account and then the state distributes to the county quarterly. So the sound transit three projects are just getting underway. And so that's why it's taken this time so. Long to get. Yeah. And this money is only tied to the sound transit three. Yeah. That's why the, that chart is so lumpy. Okay. But it does from listening to the commentators from the community, the potentially affected agencies and experts that have come to talk to us about creative ways to use this money, it does sound like we can be really creative with it, but I still don't understand the a one third, one third, one third, meaning that some money have to go to zero five, some of the K-12, some to post-secondary educational purposes. For people of color and the poor. There seems to be a constant theme that the priority funding is for the most disaffected and alienated and disadvantaged sectors of the population in King County, if that is true. Does something have to go to each of these three areas, or is it completely left up to the King County Council to determine the percentage division? It's completely left up to the king. Completely up to the King County. Council. That's great. Okay. Councilmember, is this what we are going to do between now and the first day of July? Actually come up with the framework. The amount of the funds that will go in each category. And then the general criteria that one would have to meet in order to secure in these funds. That's my hope. Yes. Good to be. You. Okay. And then finally, how will the representatives of the community have an opportunity to have to provide input, whether it be in writing or through testimony again? Or is that going to with this that I just we had an hour's worth of testimony today from the public and have it successive previous council meetings and members of the community will be welcome to continue to be in contact with this. I would particularly encourage them to reach out to us individually and in in email and conversation and meetings as this work is underway in the next two weeks. Okay. So our input, our recommendations as individual council persons, do we need to have it ready by next Monday for this committee or do we need to have it in writing to some other committee? The legislation is in this committee, and this committee meets again in two weeks, and it would be that's on July 1st. It would be my hope that there is a striking amendment written at that point in time. So we will all need to be doing work on sharing our interests and our priorities and working on that legislation. That's the work we're engaged in right now. What staff is the lead staff for this preparation of a strike? An amendment? Mr. Mum. All right. Thank you. And council member Belushi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hold on 1/2, please. I got to read something inside at the same time as you hear. A dog barking, I apologize. And so I wanted to start by thanking everybody. I want to thank the advocates who are here today who spent a lot of time not just today, but at previous meetings, but also everything. Do you help that the big banner about what we can do. And you've also been associated with the same level where we wouldn't have had this opportunity and we might have lost the funding entirely if it weren't for the work. Of the Advocate. Community. So I really want to acknowledge that. They've also pointed out the need for more community process and helped us put together our community process, which had meetings and additional financing until funded beyond what we initially planned. I think that'll also help us to make a better and better proposal at the end of the day. There's still an awful lot of work to do and we're talking about a framework here, but I'm really glad that we're getting to the point of thinking about how we can actually build and focus. So there is this history of work that we've done here, and I hope that the people who are still there. Are aware of. It and become aware of it. We've adopted a number of principles and goals that we want to achieve with this funding. We wanted to make sure, for example, that we make an impact, and that's why we identified the three buckets of funding, as opposed to what was sometimes called peanut butter, to give a little bit of money to a lot of different programs. Some of it can actually really not have the kind of impact we want to have. I want to share that. I'm a big supporter of what Councilmember After Girl was talking about. This is basically one time. Money is a long term, but it's one time. And that and that lends itself to one time investment. And we know that early learning will give us proven results are particularly attractive to the idea of funding early learning centers and transit oriented development, because the combination of affordable housing, a great transit of transportation with early learning opportunities are really powerful and proven methods. All three of those are bringing people up out of poverty and giving them opportunities in the K-through-12 sphere. Only and very. Supportive of investment in the focus populations that we've talked about kids and homelessness and foster care kids and criminal justice involved situation that does overlap. As we've heard today with youth of color and underprivileged, you really need the kind of supports that we can provide with this resource as an. And yet there is still a really supportive opportunity to connect youth to real post-secondary education opportunities and jobs. So that's one of the better I based on what happened at the legislature, I want to take a hard look at where those investments in live today. I remain committed to significant investment in all three areas, but I look forward to joining with my colleagues in the community agreements where we've. Got a lot to. Do here, but I think we've got a lot of opportunity and we're going to do a lot of good with this resource that came to us. Thank you. Councilmember Colwell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I thank you two council members at The Grove and Gosford and Balducci for sharing their thoughts. I'd also like to commend the communities. I mean, many I represented here today. But there have been a lot more people and a lot more organizations who've been very engaged in this topic over the last two years. The coalition that it formed representing early learning and down in the legislature and visiting legislators before the legislative session and during the legislative session, and also a broader coalition. And in fact, of all three of these group areas, the early learning, the K-12, post-secondary, higher education, working together to make sure that nothing was taken away and that effort was successful. But it was very critical to happen before the legislature. And I'd like everybody to know that with our community listening sessions that have been taking place, with people contacting us, with meetings that are have been taking place and are continuing with many of you and our organizations representative, we're taking this very seriously. I, for one, wish that we had even more funds at our disposal and that would continue. And it would be lovely to find other sources of funding for when the amount from these funds from pass through from as T3 will slow down. And that's something we can look forward to trying to do. But for right now we have a real challenge before us and our main one is to determine what the ratio is, how much percentage will go into each three of these buckets. I'd I'd like to also commend the groups that have been working together to, to bring out the overlap, the conjunction of K-12 and post-secondary. Because as we've been hearing today, there is a real nexus there in working with our K-12 schools to provide the counseling and the guidance that is needed for keeping kids in school, not dropping out, but also to provide a pathway to them in terms of opportunities post-secondary after they graduate and hopefully not drop out. When we initiated this, we referred to the promised scholarship, meaning tuition, one year of free tuition, two years of free tuition in a college in King County. And the city of Seattle is doing that now. But we've transformed into the idea of spending the funds in a different way. A lot of that based on very, I think, excellent legislation enacted by the legislature in this past session. So now we have the issue of providing services and support and getting the kids, the young people to college, especially, again, those who are of color, have been in the foster situation, been homeless, the targeted groups. But I'm really encouraged by that to say that we could perhaps have some joining in two of these different buckets or sectors. So I, for one, will continue to be very open to input that I receive as we take on this challenge, which I think is very exciting. Thank you. Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the folks who have come to participate today and also over the last many months and the public process. I don't have a lot of thoughts right now, but I thought I would, in the spirit of dialog, join in and express my appreciation for my colleagues sharing their views , which to a large degree I'm aligned with and I don't want to be repetitive, but some things that I think about when looking at these dollars are making sure that they are consistent with the county's adopted policy on youth, which is set forth in our Youth Action Plan, which covers birth at 24 year olds. This council unanimously adopted that. I think it's been helpful in guiding our work with us starts for kids and I think that we should be cognizant of that ongoing work and the investments we're making as a county government as we spend these dollars. You know, there's a new report out today which if you haven't seen it, I commend it to you from the Annie Casey Foundation, the Kids Count data book, which has some very interesting data with respect to children living in poverty. We're making some progress in the state with regard to percentage down from 18% in 2000 to maybe 14% now. But because of our population growth, the number of children, even though the percentage is down, the number of children living in poverty is going up. And I think what the studies show, the Heckman curve is early investment yields the greatest return and so on on investment in young people. So I'm particularly interested in the early childhood work and and would be pushing for the largest percentage of our doing buckets of our investment there. That's not exclusive of the other two buckets. But from a percentage basis, I think that we should follow the econ, the follow the academic research that shows early investment is a great return. And so I don't want to throw a number out yet, but but in terms of priority investments, I think we should do some there. I also think that we should be true to what comes from about. Do you remind us, which is early on we said we're not going to peanut butter this money around. And so we picked kind of three buckets. But I do think, Mr. Chair, if we can get there, we should within each bucket list some strategies. Maybe we shouldn't have three top strategies the County Council has, but for a large, to a large degree gotten out of the business of picking particular. Programs to fund. And invest in strategies. And we leave to the executive the competitive grant and allocation of dollars to particular organization and programs based on those strategies. And I think that in putting this motion together here in this legislation together, if we could think about prioritizing within each bucket where it makes sense, a couple three strategies that might serve us some good. If there was interest in doing that, I think we should be cognizant of the county's place in helping children and young people. What are we good at? What do we know? We are not in classroom teachers, right? We have this, the state handles that and the school districts handle that. We are a good and strong provider of supportive services, the wraparound services, supporting folks to make sure that they have the opportunity to succeed in school and life. So I will be looking at it through that lens. What's the on each of these buckets? What's the right role for the county to put these dollars toward? And I'm not sure I have answers today, but we are involved in helping justice involved youth pursue opportunities and and and get on the right track. We are supportive of children and young children and getting a good start with the Best Arts for Kids program. We're involved in apprenticeship programs and job training, right? So folks can have an opportunity to pursue all the economic benefits that are here in King County. And so those are kind of the at least a few thoughts as I look at this and look forward to working with you all to get to a consensus, hopefully. Thank, Mr. Chair. Thank you both. You and Councilmember up together highlighted the possibility that we might target funds within large buckets into particular strategies. And I think that could be a strong way to go in, would encourage us to be ready to be specific about what the strategies may be, whether you're ready to do that today or in the very near future. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I agree with what I've heard from my colleagues. I also would like to add to the Youth Action Plan that we also take a good look at the Women's Advisory Boards plan. They've been talking to us for two years about this. I just asked for the. Their data, how they came up with their numbers, because I haven't seen that for a while. I think that what we do needs to be something that will be generationally valuable. So doing a capital project that, you know, will be there for 100 years so that kids from many generations will be able to use that facility. I'm pretty sure that when they came to me to brief me, they talked about the kids that were used in the numbers as being ICAP eligible. And there are a lot of kids, as the speaker earlier today said, that are above ICAP eligible that weren't included. And so I think it's important that we we look at what is the need out there. And I think that's what the Women's Advisory Board did, was they looked at the total need, not just one or two segments. And I think we need to focus on all kids in this county. I have a special concern about the foster care children. If you look at the data of foster care children on this chart as well as, you know, if you're let's see. And so fewer than 3% of students are, in fact, who were experienced foster care and a four year college degree. 3% is pretty frightening. So and they have no other parents besides the collective of all of us. So I think, you know, one of our strategies might be really making sure that the foster care children have some very specific goals. And then I do like the idea of identifying the strategies. And I also am very interested in us coming up with the advisory board. I think having somebody from each of our districts that we select. And then X number three or whatever that we all agree are countywide experts that we can agree on to be on the board. I think that's a good governance. So it stays under our purview and doesn't get away from making sure that it's doing what we want it to do. And so I'm excited to work with everybody on this. Thank you. Councilmember Go. Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a status report. The Women's Advisory Board recommendations on early learning, and particularly child care, will be coming through as a transmission from the executive, a transmittal in the form of legislation in 2 to 3 weeks. So that is good because we'll be able to line that up with what decisions we're going to be making here. Thank you. Thank you. Further discussion. I want to thank my colleagues for knowing we don't have legislation to move out of committee today, having a robust conversation about where we're at, what we might want the final Stryker to look like in two weeks. I appreciate the conversation we've had and the work we've done to lead up to this. And with that, we have no other business before us today. We will meet again on Monday, July 1st. We are adjourned.

Recommendation to declare ordinance granting to Southern California Gas Company, a corporation, the right, privilege and franchise upon terms and conditions herein set forth to lay and use pipes and appurtenances for transmitting and distributing gas for the purposes as specified hereinafter under, along, across or upon certain public streets, ways, alleys and places, as the same now or may hereafter exist, within the City of Long Beach, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_10092018_18-0460

They're here. No, no, of course, I. So let's move. Let's move to here. Number mountains, which we open in second reading the audience, which we continued to February the fifth. Kirk, could you could you please introduce the unemployed. Hearing number one report from Energy Resources recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing regarding the natural gas franchise with Southern California Gas Company. Declare the ordinance granting a limited, natural French gas franchise to SoCal Gas to transmit and distribute natural gas within the city of Long Beach Red for the first time and lead over the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading and authorize the city manager to execute any and all documents in connection there with citywide. Like yes, I'd like to transfer to a mr. Assistant City Manager. Yes. We actually like to ask for a. Continuance to postpone this. Items of the city attorney will. Read that vice mayor. Members of the council. The the motion, I believe it is made by the vice mayor is to continue this item to a date certain and staff is asked to continue this item to February 5th of 2019. Yes. Do either by name first and second public comment, please. No one in the diocese. Fine. Can I please have a vote? Okay. I liked your ass. Councilman Austin. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilwoman Price. Motion carries. Okay. Excuse me, Vice Mayor, if I could just make a brief announcement just also for the audience items number four, 21 and 28 have been pulled from the agenda this evening. Those items will not be heard tonight. And also under the closed session labor relations, there is no reportable action from the closed session. Thank you. Thank you. Any public comment? No. No. No. Okay.

Recommendation to receive and file the proposed 2017 Report on Revenue Tools and Incentives for the Production of Affordable and Workforce Housing, adopt recommendations, and direct City Manager to work with the appropriate departments to take necessary steps to implement recommendations. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_05022017_17-0324

Item 17. Item 17 is a report from Development Services. Recommendation to receive and file the proposed 2017 report on regulators and incentives for the production of Affordable and Workforce Housing Citywide. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to I'm going to turn this over to our our department services staff will be giving a report, just to recap also. So a few things. So I just want to again, some of you are probably or most of you were at the actual study session where we went over kind of a lot of the details about the recommendations. I think we spent probably about four or 5 hours going over those details, which I think was very good information. A lot of questions were asked by the city council. And so today we're going to focus more, I believe, on some of the recommendations that are going to be that are going to be brought forward by staff. And I also just want to just take the moment to thank everyone that participated in any of the three roundtables or citywide conversations, the folks that participated in the Affordable Housing Task Force, as well as the numerous meetings, whether it was with affordable housing developers or private sector developers or other advocates that we're all involved in, in the recommendations that are before us today. And so with that, I'm going to turn this over to anybody, our development services director. Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, thank you very much. And to go along with that, you've probably heard enough of me over the years related to affordable housing and some of the goals that we've been trying to accomplish with affordable housing, particularly related to our housing element. I think we have gone a step further than expected with our our views on on where we should be with affordable housing. And with that, I'm going to ask Patrick Geary, our housing development officer, to give the staff report. He is our premier expert within the city on the production and preservation of affordable housing. He has worked on every single major affordable housing development project in the last ten years, and we're very fortunate to have such an expert on staff. So with that, I'm going to ask Patrick to give you this update. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. In February 2016, Mayor Garcia assembled a group of area housing leaders and advocates to form the Affordable and Workforce Housing Study Group. The Study Group worked with staff to prepare a report on the revenue tools and incentives for the production of affordable and workforce housing. The goal of the housing report is to recommend policies that may increase the production of affordable housing. The report was developed through a collaborative process that includes research input from the study group, community meetings with stakeholders and industry experts and public study sessions. Between February 2016 and February 2017, the study group held 15 meetings. In addition, Mayor Garcia, the Study Group and staff held a roundtable with housing advocates on September 19th, 2016. A roundtable I am sorry, a Housing Resource Fair and Community Forum on September 24th, 2016, and a roundtable with housing developers on October 14th, 2016. There were over 200 attendees at these community meetings. On February. On. On February 21st, 2017, the city council held a study session, and during the study session, staff presented Amy presented a rather lengthy report on revenue tools and incentives for the production of affordable housing, which included data on housing issues, housing accomplishments, best practices, and a list of policy considerations presented by the Housing Study Group. The Study Group spoke. The City Council shared comments and asked questions, and both the Study Group and the City Council asked staff to conduct additional research on a number of items for anyone who missed that City Council study session, I just want to take a moment to summarize some of the city's affordable housing accomplishments over the years and over the past ten years, over 2000 units of at risk housing have been preserved. And most of those occurred within the last four years. 1737 affordable housing units have been developed in the past ten years, including 342 units that are under construction now. The total amount of funding invested in affordable housing over that ten year period is $560 million, which includes about $136 million in city funds and $414 million in funding leveraged from the developers. We've helped rehabilitate 367 existing housing units and helped 335/1 time homebuyers purchase their first home. In addition to 342 units that are under construction, we're working with developers on five new projects with a total of 275 units. This slide provides a list of items that the staff conducted additional research on. The additional data is included in Chapter X of the final report, which you have in your pockets. Staff also conducted research on rental rates, but found that the data was conflicting and in some cases not current. The section on rents has been removed from the housing report and is included in a draft rent report that was forwarded to the City Council separately. The draft rent report is a work in progress in order to address the concerns over the accuracy of the rental rates and data presented. Staff will contract with a firm that provides professional real estate data to provide current and accurate rental and vacancy rates. The final housing report includes recommendations that are a synthesis of research, best practices and input from the study group, the City Council and the public. Those recommendations are presented in three sections Section one. Policies to implement immediately. Section two. Existing Legislative Requirements and pending initiatives. And Section three. New Initiatives for development and implementation. Policies to implement immediately. This section includes policies that are already in use or that can be implemented without additional City Council action. And these policies include the following 1.1 Encourage the preservation of existing affordable housing. One point to encourage project based vouchers in new, affordable developments. 1.3 Continue to waive developer impact fees for new affordable housing. 1.4 Promote the city's density bonus program. 1.5 Continue to partner with, partner with developers and other community stakeholders in the pursuit of funding. 1.6 explore the potential development of student housing. 1.7 tracked federal and state legislative activities and support legislation that increases funding for affordable housing. 1.8 Support. Seek a reform that encourages the production of affordable and workforce housing. 1.9 Create and maintain a database of public, publicly held properties for potential housing development. Section two includes existing legislative requirements and pending initiatives that are in process. This section includes new state requirements and initiatives that staff is already working on that will be that will be presented to the Planning Commission and City Council in the near future. 2.1 is the first item under this section, which includes the adoption of an ordinance that supports the development of accessory dwelling units. The section, this item is actually something that staffs are already working on and will be presented to the City Planning Commission in the near future. 2.2 implement state law that reduces parking requirements for affordable housing near transit. 2.3 conduct a financial analysis and Nexus study to update the coastal zone in Lee and Lucy program. 2.4 Review and update the Condominium Conversion Ordinance. A study on the update updating the coastal zone in Lee and Lucy program and the condominium conversion ordinance is already underway and it will be presented to the City Council in the near future. Section three includes new initiatives for development and implementation. 3.1 began exploring a local bond measure to capitalize the housing trust fund. 3.2 immediately began the development of an inclusionary housing policy. I'd like to point out that current law allows the implementation of an inclusionary inclusionary policy for ownership units. But the legality of implementing an inclusionary zoning policy for rental units is in question. We plan to move forward with the preparation of a study and an ordinance that includes a policy for both ownership and rental housing, with the hope that current legal issues are addressed. 3.3 investigate the possibility of establishing a local document recording fee to fund affordable housing. And 3.4 investigate the possibility of dedicating city resources for the housing for housing during the annual budget process. 3.5 Modify the Housing Trust Fund Ordinance. 3.6 modify the moderate income debt definition from 80 to 120% of AMD to 80 to 150% of AMI 3.7. Encourage the adoption of specific plans with programing hours. 3.8. Consider expanding one for one replacement of lower income units. 3.9 develop and offer first time homebuyer programs. 3.10 Encourage regulations to incentivize the use of shipping container construction for housing. 3.11. Develop a plan to include micro units as a method for encouraging housing production. 3.12. Study the potential for short term rental regulations, as are vacation rentals. 3.3. Ensure that sufficient resources remain available to implement the city's proactive rental housing inspection programs. 3.4 explore the feasibility and mechanics of using new structures such as the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District Tool to capitalize the Housing Trust Fund. 3.15 explore the and propose an Article 34 referendum. 3.16 Provide staffing resources to manage the growth of affordable housing production contemplated by these policy recommendations and recommendations through the annual budgeting processes. As resources allow. And then for next steps staff is recommending the adoption of these policies. If the council chooses to adopt them tonight, staff will take the necessary steps to implement them, including drafting or revising portions of the Long Beach Municipal Code for Future City Council consideration. And before I conclude, I would like to thank Andrew Chang on my staff, who has put a tremendous amount of work into this report and collecting data. So thank you, Andrea. And that does conclude my presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. And let me let me say a few comments. I may turn over to the council and of course, we'll have public comment as well. Let me first just begin by thanking the staff. I know that there's been a lot of community conversation, but the team has worked really, really hard on this report and the multiple community meetings and the multiple conversations. So if we can just give staff a round of applause, I just want to thank you guys for for your real hard work on this. And and I wanted to share what why I'm supportive of these recommendations. And a couple of questions have been asked and then turn it over to the council. The first thing, just to be clear for for the council that has the presentations, I wanted to make sure that you all were able to see, well, there are 30 recommendations or I think 2930 recommendations. There's a few of them that have an asterisk on those that you saw that you have in your report. So those are the recommendations that were added either by staff or by a council member at the study session that was asked to be included. And so if you had a question about that, I just wanted to point that out. And the rest, of course, were brought forward by the by the Housing Study Group. In addition to that, I just want to point out that what what this report and this process has been focused on is how we build more workforce housing , how we build more affordable housing for low income families, how we provide access for families that are here to get into homeownership and provide a long term, hopefully solution to building more affordable housing. There are a couple of items that I want to just point out, which I think are really important and I think are in particular these are what we have in front of us are some substantial changes and moving forward on this discussion in this policy. I want to point out some of the areas that I think are really important. I am particularly supportive of beginning and moving forward on on developing a policy that is that for inclusionary housing within the city of Long Beach hopefully was clarified that the intention of course, is to do a policy that includes all units. But of course we have to also wait and see what's going on with state law when it comes to the conflicts currently around around the rental piece. And so that will be studied as part of this whole this whole process. I'm very supportive of looking at trying to build additional student housing with our Long Beach City College and Cal State Long Beach Partners. And they are as well, I think, promoting the city's density bonus to all multifamily developers I am very supportive of, I think is exciting. The fact that we're talking about building micro units, which I do believe there's an opportunity to build in the appropriate areas, denser units at a lower cost. If we look at our code and what we allow as far as the size of units to be built. I also believe that and I support the idea of developing a first time homebuyer programs for not just city employees, but for those across the city to provide them access to buying their first home. And I also want to just point out here that I think that all of these items, a vast majority, came from the study group and the explore, whether it's the exploration of a bond measure, whether it's looking at changes to the current code, the way we do some of our fees, I think it's all been, I think, properly vetted. And so I just want to thank staff and I think there's some really good stuff in here too to move the conversation over to the next step. I also want to turn this over and note that I this is a there is a lot of policy in here. So I do expect that council members will have some questions and have some conversation about certain parts of this policy. There are 30 separate additional recommendations in here. So I expect that as well. And so with that, I'm going to turn this over to the council and then we'll go to public comment. Councilmember Pearce. The public comment first. Okay. Well, we can do we can go ahead to do. Councilman Gonzales, your final public comment first. Okay. So we'll do public comment first. So please come forward. Good evening, Mayor City Council. My name is Robert Fox and I'm the executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations. We have resurrected ourselves. Yeah. So we're here to participate in the city council, to give recommendation and advice and to share our problems and our concerns with you. Frankly, I was not prepared to be so joyful this evening. The staff listened to our data that we presented, incorporated it into this new proposal, and I couldn't be more pleased. I didn't think it would be that successful. And I'm shocked and amazed. And I supported 100%, except for one little thing. Of course, you knew how to be one. There is a question at the end of the Affordable Housing Report regarding conversions, condominium conversions. I want to clarify that with the City Council so that we in the staff can review that. If it's talking about converting apartments to condominiums, I can understand the point. Alamitos Beach, which is that most high density neighborhood in the city of Long Beach, has owner owns. We're probably the only city in California that has so many own your own associations. These are not condominiums and we are converting them. We started converting them when Bonilla was head of the zoning department here. I helped write that law for the city. And what that does is it converts an on your own into a condo. The reason this is important to the affordable housing plan is because the only way you get to buy and own your own is by cash. So even if they're lower priced at 150,000 or 200,000, it sort of leaves that out of the ballpark of anybody who's low income. You'd have to have a lot. You have to have a lot of money. If we convert them to condominiums, then the standard practice of having a 20% down or a 10% down to buy the condominium makes that a very affordable product. And since we have such an amount of that kind of housing, I would beg that the council reconsider a moratorium on conversions or specify it to leave on your own out of it, because I think that would do more harm than good for the low income population. Certainly, I started out with an own child. So, you know, I know how difficult those things are. So I would hope that we would take into consideration that issue. And I also support the idea of really looking at formulating a lot size and unit size for the granny flat issue. We've submitted some documentation to you all and it's high time we get that done as quickly as possible so that we can move forward in construction in the neighborhoods in a compatible way. And again, thank you so much and thank the staff so much for listening and being so cooperative and incorporating our concerns in the final report . Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, mayor and council members. I represent a group of landlords and landlady here in Long Beach and we're very much interested in affordable housing. We provide housing to the working population of Long Beach, and our housing is very affordable. Long Beach is has the most affordable housing between about the beach cities of Los Angeles or Orange County. And the distinction of Long Beach is that I don't know the exact number, but probably half of our housing is older housing, you know, built in the forties, fifties and sixties. So that means that we have to spend the rent that we take in for maintenance and for upgrading our properties so that we can compete with the newer properties, such as what you have here on Broadway, across the street from us, and also in downtown Long Beach. Not much housing is being built in the other areas of Long Beach. So we have to maintain the housing stock that we have, which is very desirable to our to our tenants. And I want to say we've just gone through a very long, extensive recession period. And so rents have really not gone up very much. So now the recession is over, they tell us, and costs are rising. Property taxes are rising, which go towards providing the services that we have here in Long Beach. The minimum wage is going up, that which we use to pay our employees. So costs are going up and rents. Modest increase in rents will be going towards maintaining our property and upgrading our property so that we can compete with the newer properties. And again, as I said, Long Beach has the most affordable properties. Rents in and of all the beach cities. So I'm saying this to say that we are against rent control. We want to be able to maintain and upgrade our properties and to keep Long Beach a desirable area for our working population. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Daniel James. Home ownership is one of the primary considerations when it comes. To. Having a safe and wonderful city. And so I strongly encourage anything that you can do to have on your own. I'm the gentleman Mr. Fox just mentioned something about on your own. I think that needs to be strongly taken in consideration of how you can encourage people instead of renting to own their own homes. I mean, that contributes to the good of the entire city. And I would like to bring back a something that you just passed maybe a month ago regarding the property on Norwalk. It would have been a perfect property to create condos or on your own. You could have had a much more dense property there, and it was near transit. It would have been perfect for the East Side to contribute to the to creating more affordable housing. And yet this council chose to make it either one and a very expensive housing at that. So what I'm seeing is you're saying one thing and doing another. So, I mean, what you're saying here in this report I think is great, but what you're doing is something very different. So please be an integrity in congruent do do in your actions what you're saying. So thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Sunil Cheng. I'm executive vice president of Link Housing. We are a nonprofit, affordable housing developer based here in Long Beach. And I want to say thank you and commend you, Mr. Mayor, and the Council for this study that has been fabulous. And the approach and the process of getting all the stakeholders involved has been great. So thank you for that. I think this group knows affordable housing benefits everyone. It benefits the people who live in the housing. It benefits our local employers because they have a local workforce that they can hire from. It benefits our businesses because it means that our people are spending less on rent and therefore have more money to spend locally. It's this great flywheel that helps entire communities. And I think one of the things I'd like to do tonight is to offer you the practitioner's perspective. As someone who does develop affordable housing, I think a lot of the recommendations are really great and including the focus on density, on things that we can do to expedite the process. I'm particularly heartened by the revenue tools that are recommended in the in the program and would encourage. That for this study to. Have the greatest impact and for these recommendations to have the greatest impact that we really do look at ways of funding that affordable housing trust fund. We're in a very fortunate time right now and that there's a lot. Of political will to build affordable housing. Because we recognize the great need. We also happen to have a county that is funding those initiatives and a state that's also looking at those resources. But at the end of the day, all of those funding sources rely on local funding. They want to see that the local jurisdictions are participating. And so that's where really making sure that those revenue tools that are being proposed, which include a housing bond, they include looking at recording. Fees, include looking at in lieu fees that those are. Really considered and carried forward. I think that's important in order for units to be. Produced, affordable units to. Be produced, and for this to really have impact. We as a city pride ourselves on being a diverse city. And it's really important for us to remember that economic diversity is an important part of that. Every community needs to have its child care workers and its. Clerks. And its baristas. And so that's an important part of making sure that everybody can be housed. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Peter, please. Hi. My name's Matt Houston. So and I just the thing that stood out to me and also some of the things that the other speakers have touched on already. But but the main thing that stuck that stuck out to me initially was there was a Section two point something I can remember that was it was something about parking and incentives or or to me, it felt like it was kind of pushing the parking off, whether there's, you know, some sort of a discount or whatever it might be in some way for this parking. But there's already in downtown Long Beach there, I don't know if y'all have noticed, but there's already kind of a little bit of a some parking difficulty there. And so I was thinking it might be good to kind of build in like some requirements instead of having, you know, an option to offset the parking some other way because it's still going to add, you know, parking needs to the to the to the pool and the and I was thinking, you know, then there's a funding issue and all this kind of thing. And just to throw it out there, it might be something that could be done, like have a, you know, to facilitate something like a credit unions and this sort of thing so that, you know, we can get tax breaks and people can reinvest and they can do things like the home ownership and also have a pool, too, you know, and and Inglewood, I was thinking having like a L.A. Rams and a Chargers credit union and working it out, the cards, everybody would like to have the cards and that could help to kind of offset gentrification and that sort of thing possibly . And then have like some diversity type things built in as well, which I think is really good. But you know, building, building parking structures might be good. I think the main reason that I think that's an issue is, you know, as Ben Carson says with urban development, that it's kind of you have to look at the whole the whole person. And if a person and me as as someone who was, you know, lost a little bit of my freedom and had to kind of start over as a software developer and with a lot of skills that I've developed over the years without without a car. A lot of the people who have those jobs that that I'm seeking that I'd really like to have, are kind of nested away in places where they're kind of tucked away from public transit. It's almost as though some of those businesses are actually trying to hide from people who rely on public transit, transit. And so that's that's something that's that can be become like a class separation. Mechanism. If people don't have access to vehicles and employers are kind of tucking their businesses in places where it's very difficult to get to through public transit, then it makes it an unfair situation. And so the breach that remains a barrister, if the breeze there wants to be a breeze, so that's great. But you know, the opportunities for other things should also be there as well. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Thank you for having us. My name is Trevor Griffith. I am a lecturer in labor studies at UCLA. I also work part time as an organizer with the California Faculty Association at CSU Long Beach. And I'm a member of Democratic Socialists of America. I'm here with two brief requests. The first is that going forward with your rent study that you'll be sure to pay attention to the years between 2015 and 2017, which is absent from the current draft report entirely, and b, that you pay attention to neighborhood level level data by using Zillow and publicly available data that Zillow makes available. I was able to identify that over the past two years we've seen the price of a studio apartment go up 38%, the price of a one bedroom apartment go up 31%, and the price of a two bedroom apartment go up 25%. It's true what landlords are saying about rent staying flat during the 2010 to 2015 period. But the last two years have been different, and especially if you pay attention to Southwest Long Beach, you'll see that that's where really these rent increases are taking place the most. So that's point one. The second point is I'd like to request that you take proposal 3.6 to modify the moderate income definition from 80% to one 20% all the way up to one 50% of area median income. And you separate it out from the proposals and vote on it separately. And the reason is because and you may or may not already be aware of this area, median income, median income, excuse me, is determined based on a metropolitan region that includes Los Angeles and Glendale. Long Beach is a city that is poorer than those two other cities. And as a result, the area median income determined by that proposition is much higher than actual median income in the city of Long Beach. So in 2015, the median income for households in Long Beach was $52,783. But according to HUD's median family income for the L.A. Long Beach area, it's 63,000 per year. So that's a 20% difference. And what difference that makes is Long Beach. The city of Long Beach uses that HUD data, that metropolitan region data to determine its affordability settings. And so when you're talking about raising what is currently 120% of median income at roughly $75,000 a year to 150, you're talking about subsidizing households that make between 75, 75,000 and 100,000 a year. But we already know that at least in 2015, 150% of median income in the city of Long Beach was already $75,000. So you don't need to benefit the top, you know, 33%. We need to focus our resources on those who need it most. Thank you. Thank you. Good grade data, by the way. We're going to and I know that there's some questions about the the AMA, which I think staff is going to address during the during the council comment. So next week. Staff members and so second district resident and also coming as a member of Democratic Socialists of America Long Beach Branch, I would just like to say that the proposals that are being put forth are all very interesting and very show that broad range of experiences that are going to be going into developing this new plan. However, I would say that they're a little bit more stilted towards the issue of the adequate housing supply, which of course is a very serious issue. Instead, I would also I would request that you look further into legal avenues in order to strengthen the basically the the demand issue or the costs that are going to be associated directly with the individual individuals seeking housing in the city of Long Beach without adequate statutory protection for rent control, adequate statutory protection for folks being displaced for any particular reasons, including those that might even be that violate the 14th Amendment. It's really imperative that that Long Beach get ahead of this. Landlords have, especially in this particular city, lacking rent control, have a host of particular areas to be able to or avenues to displace residents and very limited resources on the on the actual for the individual residents to be able to combat this in any particular legal manner . The city of Long Beach right now in Legal Aid, I believe, only has one full time housing attorney. You can go go down and go to the across the street, to the county courthouse any day of the week. And you'll see that an increasing number of evictions are happening every single day. And those people lack any legal representation for the most part to be able to combat them. So it really again, it really falls on the city, therefore, to increase its own its own statutory protections for, again, their own residents. At the end of the day, the city must be serving its residents. Over the individual landlords you're going to be looking at. You know, when I worked in the 14th floor, a lot of the landlords calling for complaints. We're we're calling with 714 area code phone numbers compared to the residents who are again, find themselves displaced at a record rate because of the rising prices between 2015, 2017. Thank you and have a good day. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. City Council members and Mayor Garcia. We are Cal State language masters in social work students working on our capstone. Project for graduation. My name is Rebecca Gomez. I am one of the four students. That will be speaking to you today. To finalize our Capstone project, we decided to present our findings with city council members to bring attention on some important issues that many Long Beach residents are faced with, and to support the policy recommendation to allocate resources to prep. As part of our project, we were tasked with going out in the community to assess the needs of our chosen ZIP Code 90813, which is District one represented by Lena Gonzalez. During our needs assessment, we interviewed community members, community service providers and business owners. We attended a city council meeting, the mayor's roundtable with Housing Advocates, the Homeless Study and Community Forum and Resource Fair. We encountered that the main concern for many residents is housing, such as affordable housing, unjust evictions and substandard living conditions. Since our group's academic concentration in integrated health, we decided to focus on substandard living conditions after hearing residents testimonies and how this has affected both their physical and mental health. This became the main focus of our capstone project and we created a survey to capture the extent of these concerns. We went back to the community, door to door and in public facilities such as laundromats and parks. To speak with. The residents about their experiences. After this, we decided to gather another perspective on how substandard living conditions are addressed. In the community by the Department of Code Enforcement. We interviewed a code enforcement officer bureau and. The effort to come in as a neutral party. Another component of our project was to speak to political representatives. We were successful in meeting with the chief of staff from Roberto Franco's office. My fellow group member, they were present. Our summary of our findings. Thank you. Thank you. Great work, students. All of that. Yes. Copy. Good evening. City Council members and Mayor Garcia. A name is Lacey Salinas and I'm a member of the group project and I will be presenting on the findings of three of our interviews with residents in the Code Enforcement Bureau. First, it is my duty to. Provide a depiction of the stories of the residents of the ZIP Code. 90813, which is in District one. We have learned that overcrowding is apparent in multifamily apartments. For example, one resident mentioned having eight people. In a one bedroom apartment. Imagine that. I know it would be impossible to to understand them and to understand what this family. May be experiencing. Most rapid concerns are related to not. Having healthy and affordable housing, which is pertinent to today's agenda item. Nearly 30% of residents are unaware of code enforcement and what they can do for them, and only about three mentioned having a positive experience with them. Those who were unaware of code enforcement share that. They were fearful. Of reporting their concerns because. Of retaliation and unaware of their tenants rights. When asked the miracle question of what they want from their landlords and their city, the majority said that they want renter. Protection against rent increases and. Evictions. Which we have. Noticed is not part of the policy recommendation. To our understanding and speaking to the housing organizations. Renters protection is part of preserving affordable housing. We also explore how these substandard conditions might be affecting their mental health. One fourth of the residents stated that they had persistent worry become easily annoyed or irritable, feeling depressed or hopeless and trouble sleeping or staying asleep, which we have learned are symptoms linked to anxiety and depression, mental health disorders. Second, our interview with Code Enforcement Bureau Kurt J. Kinane played a key role in identifying some of the barriers that. Code enforcement officers may face. And the experiences of our residents. We learned a lot about how the code enforcement division is structured and how the procedures are carried out. Kerr further explains the process of the violations and the time. Span of handling these concerns. What we learned from our interview is that code enforcement programs such as Prep is not able to protect tenants against retaliatory harassment or allow code inspectors to enter their dwelling. So why would your resident speak up if the odds were against were already against their against them? Therefore, if additional resources are allocated to prep, then we hope that some of these. Resources can be used to protect these actions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, city council members and Mayor Garcia. My name is Daniella Ruiz and I am also a master's of social work student from Cal State Long Beach. I am also a new Long Beach resident and district too. I moved to Long Beach a few months ago because I had heard and experienced many of the great things that Long Beach has to offer. As many of us know, Long Beach is known for being diverse, welcoming, friendly, protective and inclusive. And in many ways, living here has allowed me to feel welcomed and included. However, during this project, I had the opportunity to meet people who have not been protected by the city in terms of housing and adequate living conditions. These people have shared stories about the rodents and other critters that invaded their homes and families. They have spoken about how their voices have not been heard when they have attempted to take action. And some have even shared stories about being evicted when they have attempted to take action. They also shared how they feel anxious, worried and fearful of being evicted. So instead, many of them choose to live in the apartments that they can afford, even though they pose a threat to their health. It's disheartening to learn that a city which appears to be so welcoming and friendly is allowing such an injustice to occur by not protecting its own residents, by not ensuring that their homes are habitable, by not creating affordable housing for the most in need. Additionally, as part of our project, we were tasked with connecting with political representatives. This was the most difficult part of the project since we were experienced many barriers when attempting to connect with elected officials. Despite our various efforts and avenues, we were only able to set up two interviews. This speaks volumes about the barriers that residents must experience when attempting to make their voices heard. If, as master level social work students, I found it difficult to engage my own city government. I can only imagine how isolated and disconnected other folks must feel. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, city council members. My name is going to go in and I'm a resident of Long Beach, currently residing in District seven. Information Project has enlighten us as to the tremendous need of the community. It is our hope that you, the City Council, will continue to find. Solutions for some of the following concerns. First is education. If additional resources are allocated. For prep, we need to continue. To educate our. Residents on how the program functions and education around complaint based code enforcement. From our interview, it was alluded that outreach. Was already taking place, but. The residents we talked to had not been reached and let alone know how to report it. Second is protection. If the residents are not protected, it is very likely that they will not report at all for. Fear of retaliation and most importantly. The fear of eviction. Even through the prep program, there's no guarantee renters will not be. Retaliated. Against if they allow. An inspector to enter their unit. Third is more safe, healthy and affordable housing. As you will note, the 90813. Area is the most impoverished area in Long Beach and therefore the most in need. And we notice from this policy recommendation the need of these minimum wage earning, working class people of color will not be addressed. As a resident of Long Beach for 25 years, a single working mom and a student from Cal State, Long Beach, I am looking to you, my city council, to ensure that those most in need live in safe, healthy and affordable housing. Thank you so much for your time. The women I come from in birth. My name is Angelina Ramirez. I live in District six. I'm a community organizer for obvious reasons. And power in general or recommendations needs to have stronger commitments and timelines. We support more funding for affordable housing, such as increasing coastal zone and new phase, a bond measure for funding more affordable housing . We need to preserve whatever affordable units we have, and we support expanding one for one replacement for affordable units, a way we support dedicating more resources for HIV. We need to make sure our city is able to keep our homes safety safe and healthy. We strongly oppose changing the moderate income definition to 150%. And am I? We cannot support the city subsidizing how simple people making more than 100,000 a year. The city is already focused on moderate income housing and we need housing for the working class families of Long Beach. Inclusionary housing for home ownership units only. We need to have inclusionary housing for rental units and for working class families. A prime environmental impact report. We oppose this type of EIA are in the downtown plan because of the impact the has this has in the surrounding community and the community to be able to have input on what is being developed in our communities and by having a program are our voices will be silenced. In addition, when we are talking about preserving affordable housing, we need to include renters protection in the discussion. They are not two separate items. When the protection helped keep people like me in their homes and help keeps the rent affordable for families. You cannot say the rental protections are not part of the affordable housing discussion. There are related. We hope to see that these recommendations are not equitable. The city wants to move toward more equity and these recommendations will not do anything for those in it and focus development on the higher income level, not for families like me. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi. Good evening. My name is Lilia Ocampo and I am a Liberal member. And today I come to speak for the people that does not make the low income, for the low income people, the very low income people, and also the extremely low income people which I belong to. Suddenly I look, I realize that the affordable housing plan is for the work force. What I don't belong. Where I don't belong to yet. I belong to the work class. And we are not included and are planned. And I want to ask Mario Garcia to first include us, the people who serve. The people who work. The people who. Sorry. But the people who make the economy, who spend the money and the city who work for the city, for the service, for the service and also for for low income families. We have a children's that if we're not included in the plan, we're going to end homeless because we're not going to be able to afford to pay for the rent of an apartment. We're not going to have a house to live in because we're we're not going to. We're not making enough money to be a condo plant. So thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. When I stayed with Senor Alcala, they miembros they'll consiglio me nombre de recalcitrants eb en el distrito or no estoy aqui representan como miembro they leave it para todos or you part they they. Barriers or so partly various organizations are guilty that they long. Good afternoon, mayor and councilman. My name is Ricardo Cervantes. I live in District one. I am here as a member of labor. I am also part of various other organizations in this city. Killed in a year and in battle. Aqui Bible in the city that they long be central mi familia e miss e hos i order minutos e i i erin travel aqui in thumb them your free una they last mother scare is is tavern a stand luciano opera la luna una bartender beneficios para la comunidad durante el plan the fandango may even look good in is toluca pork then they entonces sat service members then can be OC event account that is they plan. I have always rented in the city of Long Beach. I raise my family, my daughters and now my grandchildren in the area of downtown. I was one of the mothers who was fighting for the benefit package for the community during the downtown plan. I was involved in the fight in this fight since then because I knew that it would cost a this plan would cause a change. I order estamos pray S.A. aqui for all seen estamos ah Rolando they be vendors. I said see Willie says bueno de la seu that is they considerando mas puntos para this model year of bbn thus SLC release apple yandel i the intent c is the intention. And now we're here present because we are now talking about affordable housing. It is good that the city is now considering more funds to develop affordable housing and we support this recommendation. Better look in those people. But ask estamos recommend recommendations. No, but reflect on the necessity that is been struck on monetary trouble. Mi familia no esta representan though esto recommendation this is aim for the estate is too little Barack here removes applejack construction is the baby and thus para la familia scape gunmen must they sing went out me do you need those L.A. esto no representa mi familia. What concerns us is that this recommendations do not reflect the needs of our community, community of workers. My family is not being represented in this recommendations. The focus of this study seems to support the construction of affordable housing for those who make over $55,000 a year. And that does not represent my family. Ah, they must get in most cambios la the fee, the FEC, the law lower and lower us more. They are not Barack Incluyen familiar square gardening classic sing sing me Lola is esto no incluyen amy familia in Oakland como neither others no opinion eso recommendation. And now we're here trying to change the definition of moderate income for families who make over $100,000 a year. That does not include for my family, does not include my community, and I do not support this recommendation. Necessity must aim for calmness in Los Trabajadores. Okay, gaman in minimal loss they there say to add that incluyendo losing capacity. Does he get any meaning rational feel if I mean. I mean we need to focus on workers who make minimum wage family, the elderly, the disabled, those who have a fixed income and families like my. Las Comunidades Estamos preoccupy those poor. Keller's recommendation is no. Some considerable. I see no one. Moussa Kiwanuka yeah those sick say it Amos or Luciano opera mask Bebe Anderson says civil espera but familia como como la mia? Gracias. We, the community are so narrow. Spencer indicated that instead of the OC. Thank you with the community our concern about the recommendations that do not consider do not consider us and we will not stay quiet. We will continue to fight for affordable housing. That includes families like mine. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. I just want to clarify something and I wanted to ask Patrick, I think it's important to the recommendations are for all levels of low income and very low income housing. However, I think the piece that's being pointed out, which I think is an important point of conversation, is the the change to the AMA on the moderate side on the higher end. And so I think there's going to be some questions about that and why the staff recommended it. But I've had a couple of people say that the low income housing or very low income is not included. That's that's that that's not correct. So that is all a part of this project. This is for all levels of low income housing, affordable housing. And we will talk about the ambit piece at the council discussion in just a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Karen Rhys side. I'm a resident of. The First District. In one of the low income affordable housing units on seventh and Pacific. And I want to thank everybody that participated in the process because this is kind of really the most open dialog. And thank you, Mayor, for leading this effort and this very, very serious issue. Tonight, I'm going to speak on behalf of the Gray Panthers. And we have sent everybody our position paper dealing with affordable housing. And we're also not in support of raising. The AMI until we hear additional information. There's a couple of things missing from the proposal, and one, we would really like to have cohousing consideration considered as a part of the proposal. Actually, Maggie KUHN, who was one of the founder who was. The founder of the lot of the Gray. Panthers, was one of the first advocates for co-housing in the US, and co-housing consists of placing elders with college students. It's a very successful program economically, very supportive and creates great understandings and support for both of those age generations. There's no mention of multi-generational housing. We would like to see that included as part of the process. The other thing that we feel is missing and maybe it's not appropriate to put it in this particular report, but our tenant protections and we all know our city is experiencing incredible rent increases. In my day job, I am at the senior center on Fourth Street. I listen to the stories and they are increasing every day the heartbreaking stories of our seniors who have received rent increases that they cannot afford. They come in crying because they don't know what they're going to do. It is just heartbreaking. So we really want you to consider renter protections. I live in an affordable building. I looked for section two or two HUD, because they're more protected. My building, if they sell the building, there's no protections for me. In this plan. It's going to be too little, too late. So please consider those things. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Margaret Hennessy and I'm a retired master's level social worker. When you are on your way to being old, an elder, a senior, you are very busy living, working, solving problems and raising children. When you realize you are eligible for senior housing, senior transit passes and free lunch, it's almost surreal. But it happens to all of us. The dictionary definition of a displaced person. It's a person who is forced to leave their home because of war, persecution or natural disaster. A refugee when someone is evicted from their home due to rapid inflation of rental cost, that is also a displacement. We older adults have been told by the city that there is commitment to Long Beach senior citizens. But as I look at the gentrification process, we senior citizens who have reached this stage of life where we are no longer able to compete and generate new increased income, we older adults are becoming increase. Distinctly vulnerable to displacement. Starting over does not come easy to many older adults. And choosing to move away from a place that they considered their home, their roots because they are no longer able to afford inflated rent is heartbreaking and humiliating. Surely there is a way to work this out without driving seniors into homelessness or storing them in shipping containers just to get them out of the way of progress. We older adults know you need money for social programs. Developers have money. Let them know if they want to develop in Long Beach. They will need to do so with the moral compass in this beautiful, developing, diverse city on our beautiful coastline. We want to remind the city that we seniors are part of this rainbow. In fact, most of us work very hard to get us this far. We challenge this council, both individually and collectively, to legislate senior rent protections like just cause and rent control, especially since our income isn't going any higher. Thank you. Thank you, madam. Next speaker, please. My name is Liana Noble. I live downtown and part of the North Pine neighborhood. District one. And I also want to thank the mayor for your initiative in convening the study. Group and that. We've got this kind of a comprehensive document in front of us, because I think we all the one thing we can agree on is we have a hell of a housing problem here in our great city. I have got four concerns, and my concerns are from a neighborhood perspective. I'm lucky. I am in the process of buying a loft. Whether I'll pay it off before I die or not is another question. But I am officially a homeowner. But most of my life I was a renter. And the majority of the residents in my neighborhood are. We have more than 60% renters in the North Pine neighborhood, which is our citywide average. We are up around 75 and 80%. So what happens to renters happened to me in my neighborhood, and that is my motivation. My concerns are that these are not recommendations that are specific to the very general. I understand the challenge of coming up with specific recommendations. But I think we are at a crisis and we need something that we can measure and evaluate. Secondly, as other people have raised, there is nothing. Even though there was a lot of discussion in the public comment from the 200 plus people that took this seriously and participated. There's nothing in here about renter protections. And I know from my neighbors that unless there are renter protections, we are not going to solve our housing crisis. There's a lot of talk in the report about homeownership. Obviously, I think homeownership is great, but we are not going to become majority homeowners in Long Beach. That is not the economy that we live in. It isn't the reality of this country nor of our city and our city's history. We've got to address the needs of affordable rental housing. And as people have already said, with an emphasis on the low, the extremely low, everything that's below moderate, that the renters that live in my neighborhood up above seventh and up to Anaheim. That's what we need to address. My final concern is that when we talk about workforce, I sure they hope that we are going to define that, to include my neighbors who keep the restaurants open, who work in the hotels, who work in retail and have minimum wage jobs. That is our workforce. Thank you very much, speaker, please. Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is Neal Richmond. I live in the third. District and I'm the I was the director of Community Corporation of Santa monica, community based nonprofit. Housing developer in that city. And for nearly 20 years, I taught affordable housing finance. At the UCLA. Department of Urban Planning. First, there were some very good policies that have. Been proposed, like a bond measure, to create a local source of funding for affordable housing production. However, there's a lack of emphasis on the. Preservation of affordable housing. The central problem in Long Beach is an overreliance on the model of housing filtering. That leads to what critics. Call trickle down housing policy. This is the assumption that the production of higher income housing. Helps those at the bottom of the market. I recommend that elected leaders and staff read. The May 2016 report of the Institute of Governmental Studies, California's oldest public. Policy research Institute. The filtering process takes generations measuring that, meaning that units may not filter the rate that meets the needs of the market's peak, and the properties may deteriorate too much to be habitable. Further, in many strong market cities, changes in housing preference has increased the desirability of older, architecturally. Significant property, essentially disrupting the filtering process. Typically, my neighbors in Belmont Shores are not moving to new and. Shiny developments in Santa Clarita. Or for that matter, often near Ocean Avenue and relinquishing their old and used homes to. Deterioration and occupancy by lower. Income households. Homes are not cars where most. Buyers do prefer new. Over old. The institute did argue in favor of the production of more subsidized housing. We are losing out on getting private capital investment through the. Low income housing tax credit program because of a. Strong, dedicated source of housing funding that is required to package projects. Federal funding has declined, and, of course, redevelopment money has evaporated. What can the city do? Well, here are three ideas. First, commit to at least 20% of boomerang funds going directly into a. Housing trust fund. As you know, these were once tax increment funds that that were used by the city for those purposes. We'd like to see them dedicated again to producing affordable. Housing. Second, we'd like to see follow the lead of the city of Los Angeles and commit to both commercial and residential linkage programs. It's important to just respond to the housing market. From from new real estate production in Long Beach should begin immediately to make a strong commitment to a Nexus study. Thank you for this opportunity to speak and we hope the Council will strengthen the proposal before it. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. My name is Georgiana Charles. Linda. I live at 327 West Sixth Street. I just gave some pictures to you and the conditions I'm living in because I'm low income housing. I'm also here with liberal because we need low income housing and it all sounds good and the mental health thing is great, but it's like you guys keep waiting and dragging. What is a senior at my age going to do? Buying a home? I don't have a chance. You know, I live on sort of security. I just saw some pictures up there of that's the condition of my house I live in right now because I'm low income. They treat us less than I cut 14 mice and less than seven days. I'm afraid to go to sleep because they got in my bed and scratched my face. And that's how we get treated because we're low income and now our building has sold. I was here before because the building I was in before sold and they gave us a 60 day notice. Now, that same owner, Donald Me, is buying up all the properties. An apartment that I paid three, seven and 54 now is 1195, and all they did was put in a new floor. There's got to be something that you can do. Your city hall, you guys have the owners phone numbers. You guys have luncheons for everything else. Why not invite some owners and have them, you know, have a discussion about letting people in? They're still handing out vouchers at Section eight. There's no housing. No housing. We don't make two or three times the amount of rent, so they won't even look at us. I have perfect rental history, but because I'm low income, I don't have a chance. So I know there's something you guys can do. If not, you'll see me every week and I'll just come up here and complain. You see the pictures? I'm afraid to sleep in my apartment at night. And the owners will not do nothing. They will not even buy me traps. By the time I pay my rent and buy food, I can't afford traps. People are buying them for me because they know the condition. I called the Health Department. Nobody are doing nothing. So we got to get some some code enforcement or somebody involved in this. I should not have to live like that. Thank you. Thank you. And, ma'am, I'm not sure, obviously, where this apartment is, but you should just leave the address and we'll make sure that someone's up. Okay. We'll take we will take a look at that. Okay. Next speaker. My name is David Wagner. I'm a fairly recent resident of Long Beach here in downtown. I'm speaking in support of Libra, and I'm also a professor. Retired professor has written nine books on homelessness and poverty. First thing has to be said, obviously the focus is local, but you have to look, we're in the USA and this gentrification process has been going on now for about three decades. It's not news. Look at every city up and down the East Coast, every city on the West Coast. Fewer and fewer poor people and fewer and fewer working class people are remaining. This is not. Localized to Long Beach. So we ought to have some recognition of that. Anybody who talks about diversity and wants a city where everybody makes 100,000, well, it needs to be called out on that. What kind of diversity are you calling for? I've heard the mayor, I've heard the council. I've heard them say they want a diverse diversity where I mean, the barn door is already closed. I can't afford to live in downtown anymore. You need about $100,000 of income in your family to live downtown. You need probably close to 70 to live elsewhere. So this is really years and years and years after this problem emerged and it emerged in New York and it emerged in L.A. and emerged in Philadelphia. What we're doing is basically the European model, which is the rich, occupied the cities. The poor had to go out to the suburbs like you see outside of France, whether they're big projects in the suburbs. And that's what's happening in the United States. I think it's important to keep in mind for both people on both sides of this, this is not new. So I think any proposals that don't have rent or protection has several other people have said are doomed to failure. Check out all the other cities. And secondly, no protection for eviction. I understand there is no just cause language in this state. You could be evicted for any reason whatsoever, and that's got to be remedied. And finally, a couple of people have spoken about this, the 3.6 change in the median. Am I I'm not even sure you could do this, really. But it would essentially, as several people have said, raise the so-called affordable housing to 90,000 a year. And this is something that really once again takes us to the new diversity issue. What kind of city do you want? I mean, is this Malibu then? It's after what you want. Fine. And I'll leave with it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thanks so much, Max. Good evening. My name is Suzanne Brown. I'm a senior attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. We want to thank the city for its continued efforts to look for housing solutions that are right for Long Beach. And we're happy to have this dialog with you tonight. I'd like to address four of the cities housing recommendations in my comments this evening. First, we support the creation of an inclusionary housing ordinance. However, the ordinance and any. Underlying economic studies should include. Rental developments. Assembly Member Assembly Bill 1505 by Blum is expected to become law and it will clarify any legal uncertainties regarding inclusionary housing for rental projects. Second, while we agree with the recommendation to increase coastal zone in lieu fees, we are very concerned with the timeline. The city made a legally binding commitments in its most recent housing element to complete an economic study in 2015 and to increase coastal zone in lieu fees as part of the city's budget process in 2016 to 2017. The public has not seen any such economic study and these fees were not increased as part of last year's budget . We urge the city to share this study if it exists, and to set a clear timeline for increasing these fees right away to be in compliance with law. Third, we do not support changing the definition of moderate income to 150% of area median income. This is contrary to longstanding definitions set by the federal government at HUD and the California State. Department of Housing and Community Development. It's also contrary to Long Beach's affordable housing arena numbers. SAG has told Long Beach it needs to reduce. 4009 affordable units by 2021 to meet the existing affordable housing needs of residents earning 120% or less of Mary area median income. In light of this, the city should not change its definition of moderate income to 150% of am-I. Fourth, we encourage Long Beach to adopt an affordable housing linkage fee for new residential and commercial development to maximize local revenues for affordable housing. This very important recommendation was not included in the city's report, but it is a critical. Tool for housing development. The City of Los Angeles is currently in the process of adopting such a fee. Finally, I shared a legal memo with you earlier from land use experts at the Public Interest Law Project about inclusionary housing impact fees and access studies. One really important point from that memo is that nexus studies are not required for and low fees of any kind, albeit coastal zone in lieu fees or inclusionary housing and low fees. Nexus studies, which are more complicated and expensive, are only required for linkage fees and impact fees. Please utilize this memo from experts. In Sacramento. As you make policy. Decisions tonight. And in the coming months. As it sheds critical light on how to best craft much needed. Affordable housing policies without creating unnecessary burdens on the city. Thank you for your time and dedication this evening. Thank you. Speaker. Yes. My name is Holly Stewart and I live at Fourth and Pine. And I'm fairly active in my community. And I thank the mayor and all the council and especially my councilwoman, Nina Gonzalez, for your concern about these issues. And I'd better be talking about a bit different than many. My concern is, as I walk through the neighborhood now, I'm retired, by the way, so I spend a lot of time out walking around. I see children and families where they're in stressful situations of worrying about things like eviction or how are they? Are they going to have a decent house? How are they going to have that house taken care of? And I think the effect of this on the children is very, very bad, just as it is for seniors who are facing things like eviction. And I think part of our part of our goal has to be to, again, as everybody has been saying, protect affordable housing and try to make sure we even have more of that so that, in fact, we get stable neighborhoods where children grow up looking ahead to their school from one year to the next and for even for a whole semester. And I know our mayor here as an educator also, and I worked in education for almost 30 years, that kind of primacy among the children ends up also making a difference all the way through education of whether young people are successful and get on to college and learn the skills they need to have a different kind of life. And I think that is one of the crucial things about this, is that we don't end up also seeing a situation where if we don't maintain affordable housing over a broad area now I'm until about land area. What happens then? We end up with a different kind of segregation. It's not like the old things have Latin groups or black groups, or there's that being the victim of segregation that ends up being segregation by income, and that has just disastrous effects. I was poor and white. My family were. And I know that I went through some trials and errors. I saw my mother fall through the wood, the feet on the floor of a house because we couldn't afford to live in a better place. And I know that later when we got more permanency and in our family and we were still not high income or even moderate median income, but the fact that we had permanency from one school to the next and from one school year to the next, gave me the courage to keep on going in school and then go on to university and graduate school and things like that. But there was times when I wondered, Why am I in school? But I think this is what all of us, this job, all of us back here, all of you at the table is to try and get these neighborhoods. So we keep people of all incomes and all creeds and races and ethnic groups able to live together and build that future for our children. I really believe this is something that we can do and we need to do it. And so thank you very much. Thank you very much. And quiet before you go up, I want to make sure I have for that speaking. So I have the gentleman in the back because my last speaker. Right. And because I'm closing the speaker's list. And so and so looks like there's another speaker behind him. She's the last speaker. I'm closing my speaker's list. And the speaker's list is closed. Okay, no more. And we're going to take everyone that's in line right now. Yeah, go ahead. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. City council members who are here, Rivero with Libra and my compadres motors, they already went before me and spoke of where we stand in both support and opposition, of what revisions need to be made and what still needs to be addressed as part of this discussion around affordable housing. From the very beginning of this process, from the formation of the Study Group to the other community workshops, renter protections has always been part of the community's conversation. Yet here we are considering recommendations and not a single form of such policies is being considered. Mr. Mayor, I hear you and several others say that this is about affordable housing and not renter protections. You speak of them as though they are two separate and distinct things. Renter protected protections is directly tied to the preservation of what is affordable for families right now. Are you limiting your definition of preservation to just covenanted or project based units? Because that's not what we mean when we are speaking of affordability. We want to keep the homes that are affordable to us now. And that means having conversations about resident retention policies, which include renter protection excuse me, renter protections. We cannot have an intelligent conversation about preserving affordable housing without this, and we will continue to invite this into the discussion. Now I want to turn my discussion to the idea of equity. It hasn't been long since you all voted to establish the Office of Equity and even less time since it has been operational. This office was supposed to be the guiding light, steering us into a more equitable city and to understand its true meaning. We were even shown a cartoon graphic that. Showed everybody given the same opportunity. I invite you to seriously think. About the intention behind this office, which you all unanimously had put into place. It was to symbolize a new path for the city. So I invite you to honestly ask yourself, do these recommendations. Speak to that idea of equity? Do these recommendations provide for the most in need? Do the any of these recommendations. Give everyone. The same opportunity? Because if you believe that they do, then I have to sincerely. Question that. Which guides you. However, if you don't believe it is equitable, as if you don't believe as I do, then I implore you to seek the counsel of your conscience and vote to make it so. Equity is not changing the moderate income definition. Equity is not focusing development on moderate and above moderate income levels. Equity is a citywide inclusionary housing policy, including rental units. Equity is resident retention and renter protection policies. Equity is funding affordable housing developments for the lower income levels. That is what equity looks like and that is what you should all be striving for. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor. City Council City Staff Brian D'Andrea, senior vice president with Century Housing. As you know, Century is the nonprofit steward of the villages that Cabrini West Long Beach. We're home to 1300 formerly homeless residents on any given night. We work very closely with the city and all our partners to restore a sense of help, health and hope in the lives of our residents. I'm also here this evening as a member of the Mayors Study Group, chaired by Bonnie Lowenthal. And first, thank you to the mayor for convening this group and lifting up this issue of housing affordability. Tonight's a really proud evening for all of us on the group. I also want to acknowledge the efforts of city staff that work diligently to prepare a really incredible report, including Patrick Geary, Andrew Chang and Amy Burdick and their entire team. All of us know this is an issue that acutely affects and impacts households across the income spectrum here in Long Beach, and one that's putting real strains on our communities. This evening, we encourage City Council to not only receive and filed this report, but to keep it handy. City staff has done a great job outlining a set of really compelling and progressive recommendations that can form the backbone of all of your policymaking efforts here in the weeks and months and years to come. It's clear that the Council has many policy tools at its disposal, tools that will invariably require choices. But we think these choices can ultimately spur housing development, generate economic activity, promote homeownership, and alleviate the affordability burdens facing our city and our residents. In closing, just like to say thank you on behalf of century and that we look forward to continuing our work with the city. Thank you very much. We look forward to your new projects that you're building right now. So thank you. Please. Next Speaker. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor. My name is Cheryl Cole Rowley of 327 West six, apartment two. And I live in Ms. basic apartment and the condition is very bad there and I don't know what's going on. She sold the property, not telling anyone what I have to deal with. The rats and the roaches. This doesn't make no sense. I'm a senior citizen and I don't complain. I don't call the health department. I don't call a code inspector. It just don't make no sense. I can't even sleep at night. Dealing with the mouse is running all across my floor and I. I contact the manager and she told me that you do it yourself. It should be up to date about this. And when I can't tell a complaint, I call everyone out. I just sweep it up on the rug. Ms.. Beasley, I sold a property. But they didn't want our money on time. I'm a senior citizen. I shouldn't have to live like this. I'm stressing out every night because the roaches and all this stuff, I don't have the money. I don't I don't have the money to buy all this stuff. But she does. So the problem is basically it. And the manager tell me, write a letter. Write a letter, this part. So all of this. I wrote a letter and I went to the health department. I don't call it a code inspector. This should be studied about this, sir. I mean, this doesn't make any sense. I'm a nervous wreck. I got to wake up every night and think the rat gonna jump in my bed. This is terrible. Oh 327 Beasley I never miss Beasley. And it's just terrible there. I shouldn't have lived like this. And I just want to thank you guys. But if I had to keep coming out here, I will come. And it doesn't make any sense. But then management to rent on time. But they don't do the condition there. What do I do for this? I don't call the health department. I don't call the code inspector. Miss Beasley, I sold the property and I'm still doing the same stuff over and over. I don't have the money to keep bad dog stuff and a mouse and all that. I'm on a fixed income. I live upstairs. I live on. It's just terrible there. I'm not sure I should live like this. I'm a senior citizen. And if I could go somewhere else, my rent might be too high. I can't afford it. I'm on a fixed income. I just want to thank you guys and just hear me out. My name is Coleman, Sherlock Holmes. And if you can leave the address with the clerk and we're going to we're going to send someone out. Okay. Absolutely. You, too. Mr. Mayor and city council members, thank you for addressing these very important issues. My name is Steve Askin. I am both a homeowner and a rental property owner in the second district where my wife and I have raised four children. Now, this hearing has focused mostly on a report that deals with long term development. But I am here to ask that the Council also take action on some of the immediate rental crisis issues which are threatening our city's diversity, as we've heard from some of the witnesses tonight. I only need to look down my block in Rose Park to see how rapidly rising rents are moving. Some of my fellow landlords, I'm sorry to say, to chase out good tenants so that they can bring in wealthier tenants. We just heard an elderly woman tonight who experienced just that. The common problem of being pushed out on 60 days notice and a feeble excuse. Now, to preserve our diverse neighborhoods, the neighborhood where I'm so happy that my children have had a chance to grow up. We need to protect the tenants, the tenants who helped us landlords prosper specifically. And I was it's not part of this report, but it is part of the overall housing mandate. I urge this Council to address the immediate crisis by reasonably restricting the landlords right to throw out tenants without just cause and by considering putting some restraint on the excessive rent increases which we've seen in this city. I'm speaking as someone with 32 years as a rental property owner and based on that experience. I also have to ask all of you to ignore the claims that we've sometimes heard that protecting tenants is unfair to landlords. The truth is, our tenants need protection far more. Than us landlords. The truth is also. That anybody who's bought rental property in Long Beach over the last ten, 15, 20 years almost certainly has seen both their property value and their rent revenue soar to highly profitable levels. We landlords, quite honestly, though some will tell you differently, do not need unlimited rent increases just to maintain our properties. My fellow landlords know that they're earning more than they ever dreamed possible. While many of our tenants suffer for the good of our city's tenant majority and for our entire city, I urge all of you to support fair rental practices and ignore the shrill voices that we've sometimes heard from a few self-serving landlords. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is Amy. York, and I'm currently a renter in the seventh District. And I spoke at one of the forums before. On the need for renter. Protections. And I, too, like many people here, was really surprised when I looked through the report and the saw no discussion of renter protections. And anyway, I did want to address one section of the report. Which is letter D on eviction. And displacement, because it was unclear to me why this was the only thing that was addressed on eviction. And basically what what the report says is further investigation needed to be done into the number. Of unlawful detainers that had been filed. And apparently the goal of that is to get a better understanding of displacement. Yet there were first of all, the the term displacement. Isn't really defined here. Number one. And number two, there are other forms of quote unquote, displacement that aren't addressed at all, such as gentrification and rising rents, that type of thing. So I wasn't sure why those issues weren't discussed as well. And there was also a. A distinction between. Unlawful detainers and 60 day and 30 day notices. Almost as if 60 and 30 day notices are legitimate. And not a form. Of eviction. They are, in fact, evictions. And yet those aren't being investigated. Only the unlawful detainers. Anyway, I wanted to go back and talk a little bit about my experience. When I spoke at the forum, I explained that I'm a victim of a retaliatory eviction. This was when I was living in District two. And after months of dealing with an issue with. Management that they refused to remedy, I emailed the owner to discuss the issue, which I had a legal right to do, and four days later I received a 60 day notice. To vacate. No reason was given because under the law they don't have to give a reason. But what they didn't anticipate was that if I could show retaliation, I may be able to recoup some of my expenses which which I did in small claims court. And I was awarded my expenses, but nowhere near. What it cost me in terms of time and stress. And thank you, ma'am. Time's time. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker. Please. Oh, good evening. My name is Libra, a United States Navy vet and. Resident of Long Beach. I came here. To speak on behalf of some of my fellow vets that was put out on the street because the city of Long Beach gave them affordable housing vouchers, and the new developers that came in and bought the buildings that they lived in forced them right back out on the street. I had a friend that he was in the hospital getting the heart operation and he had to come out of the hospital and go right to a homeless shelter. You know, I understand we got these New York real. Estate developers or Michael Bloomberg who funded the housing. Developers or whatever. But I don't feel that New York is the city that we should be modeled after, you know, to take care of our people. I believe City of Long Beach has always taken care of the homeless. L.A. County has always taken care of the homeless. So I feel we need to represent as a city and where we always have been. Instead of, you know, letting some people from a model city like New York that doesn't. Never take care of the homeless. In my book. I visit the city several times. I was raised in the West from California. And, you know, I feel that we need to take care of our own. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Josh Butler with housing Long Beach. I want to thank the mayor for having me. Maybe a part of the study group and for the council for taking up these recommendations, as well as the many members of the public who gave countless comments to us to help guide where we're at today. And there. Is a situation which we have waitlists for. Affordable housing, which are anywhere from 3 to 8 years long. We have 19,000 people that signed up for the Section eight waiting list. We have 1000 vouchers that are currently out and cannot be used. We have vacancy rates that are dipping as low as 2%, and we have rents that have risen anywhere from 20 to 30% over the last three years. So does with that backdrop that we were asked to put together these recommendations and start to build for the future. And I think we've done a very good job of doing that. Unfortunately, I feel like we have left the city council a great deal of heavy lifting to do because we have not addressed the immediate need as some of the folks here have mentioned. They may pass away while they're waiting for an affordable housing development opening to come through for them. These are seniors who are living on fixed incomes who, when they move, are being asked to verify that they make three times the rent when they're one on a fixed income. That's not possible to do. So where are they to go? When landlords speak of 1400 dollar rents, I often wonder if they would let me borrow their landlord time machine so I could go back into the past and warn people about the impending disaster that will be facing us in the future. And that would be if we would have passed inclusionary housing ten years ago. How many units would we have on the table if we would have included affordable housing in the downtown plan? How many units of housing would we have had? And maybe the urgency with what you are faced in terms of dealing with this plan would not be as great. But it is. And so housing Long Beach, while we were part of this group and we certainly support these recommendations, we'll ask the council to go one step further, as we have for the last year, and that is to enact a just cause eviction protection ordinance for the city of Long Beach. If you're paying your rent on time, you're following the rules of the lease. You should not be kicked out of house and home. I think that's a basic standard that we should be able to meet. We are the largest city on the West Coast without any form of renter protections beyond what the state provides. That's simply not enough. And every day housing Long Beach, we see the victims of that policy coming through our office. This report does not focus on the displacement that has occurred in our city. The data is readily available and we've been working on trying to get that data and we look forward as this process moves forward and working with working with city staff to help better identify where we are seeing short fallings. I think looking at Edison Shutoffs as something that we could also take a look at, we've seen an increasing number of shutoffs there. So the health of the community is not fully reflected in this report. I think this report tries to make very poor situation look very good. I'm not sure why we did that. We have a lot of work to do and I don't know why we would need to reframe our current housing stock as having gone anywhere needing the need of which our residents are facing right now. So I would employ the Council to take a deeper look at some of the challenges that we're facing right now and take a look at coming up with a stronger solutions possible to build upon the work that we have done. And thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And just just also one thing that I had brought up a few times. So I know that multiple council members have asked and requested staff to provide rental information. As far as some of the numbers and some of the some of the data points that were brought up today and certainly some of the data points that both the some of the housing advocates, as well as some of the property owners have asked to be included. So staff is right now working on a lot of this data collection. I know that they're reaching out to some of the groups. It's kind of it's taking place currently. I think there was a draft of an initial data that has been collected. I think that is an ongoing process that's going to happen over the next few months. It's been asked, I know, by multiple council members for that information. And so just for for folks that are here, I know that staff is working on that and they'll be reaching out to everyone to ensure that the data that is being actually collected and shared is reflective of what's actually happening. And so that's I think it's important for everyone to have correct data on all of the rent, all of the rental issues that are happening across the city, and to hear from all all sides and hopefully bring folks together as well. So I know and I think that Josh was just up here. I'm not sure he went. He's up there. So those I that's something that you've asked for as well, Josh And that's that data is is being collected. Next speaker My name is John Kendrick. I'm a vice chair of the Long Beach Gray Panthers and a member of Labor Day. And I've been in Long Beach since the eighties. And I want to hit on four things. One, renters protection. The first time I got evicted, it was illegal because I reported my. Landlord. To the city. It was during El Nino year and we have a. Mold in our apartment. My landlord took documents for somebody else. Why did it out? Did a sloppy job. And then said, He served me, but I never got served. And then I got a three day notice to vacate. Now, when I went to court because I found out I can get documents and I found out and I saw on here where he used documents. For something else, which I've been told, you can't. Do that on any kind of legal documents. Use Wite-Out and you can see what he messed up and this and that. And I never got served. When I took it to the court, the judge left it off. There was no protection at all. Second time, I got legally evicted. I look on the website. And I brought up my landlord. I got evicted. Single parent of three kids going to college. One child in special needs. I ended up in Curbelo Village for two years because the people there, the director, the staff was taking money from the people. And doing things they shouldn't have been doing. It took us almost two years to get enough information to report them. Well, they did a surprise visit. The director and her husband and staff all got fired. So even the people to supposed to be helping us, we down at the lowest we can be. They're not helping us and there's no protection. It costs me years to go from obviously to college with a two year degree to not be able to go to Cal State Long Beach, because I couldn't afford the debt to go farther with that. And my children suffered during that time. Also, do you talk about the homeless camp? It's off because. Anybody being homeless, they know. We're out and moving around at 3:00 in the morning. When you start that survey, the signs up. Everybody's all over the place and this people just aren't even counted in a survey. When I looked at it and then I took part in your talks that was going on. And there was things that. Were brought up. Like one district one, two and three, they're in prime areas. For sea level rise. As it's growing. When those areas go underwater. Which they will, we don't find a way. That means other areas that's considered not prime real estate will become prime real estate and. Those people will get pushed out even. Faster. Thank you. Here we. Go. One of the things where we are, we got to we got to get you would never talk about artificial intelligence. We're losing jobs real fast. So they. Could think. How can I afford a house? Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. And also, I know I mentioned earlier, but I think Ms.. Where is the last speaker we did that? We close the speaker's list. So you're the last. She's the last speaker. Sorry, sir. Okay. I think you really spoke, I believe already, sir. So she's the last speaker? Yeah. No, it's okay. Not. Not not a problem. Next speaker. I'm Kevin Yeager. I'm a resident of District two and a member of the Long Beach Democratic Socialists of America. My mother, my sister and I were all living independently and searching for housing in Long Beach, and we ended up moving in together with a fourth roommate in a three bedroom in Alamitos Beach. My father, my mother is a Long Beach librarian, and she's choosing to live with her kids just so that she can afford her community. My sister is a CSU Long Beach student, as well as a full time worker, and we've already heard hopefully about the homelessness crisis that's facing our students. And so this is not a hip, new millennial trend of living with your parents. It's an economic coping mechanism. We don't need homeownership encouragement. We need you to recognize that our workers incomes have been stagnant and or declining for the past few decades and implement real renters protections. I hope we can all agree that we want our students and librarians to live here rather than commuting in from the Inland Empire where they can afford it. In particular, the protections and preservation recommendations by the Affordable Working Housing Study Group put forward. They were woefully inadequate. I don't understand how an affordable housing study could fail to recommend that it failed to recommend rent control and just cause eviction protections. We can certainly do more than analyze, contemplate and enact policies to address Airbnb or consider a policy to limit condo conversions. Also extremely problematic is raising the moderate income definition to 150% of AMI. And I don't understand why the study group would recommend this other than as an immediate concession to the developers to allow them to build closer to market rates. Housing, market rate, housing. Excuse me. But the truth is, there are real alternatives that we can consider, like rent control, like just cause evictions, like community land trusts. And we need a city government willing to stand up to the speculative real estate industry. We need a city government that stops talking about housing as a financial commodity, as a market demand to be fulfilled, and starts treating housing as a human right. Until we do this, our city is letting the real estate industry profit while we pay the price. And these protections we are asking for are not politically impossible because unlike the developers, we, the renters, make up the majority of your constituents. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Brock Howard from downtown Long Beach Alliance. Good to be with you again on behalf of the commercial and residential stakeholders of downtown. I want to thank the Mayor for convening the study group and for council for having this conference. A conversation tonight on a very important topic. We also want to thank the study group and the city staff for the amount of work, the hard work they put in on this and for all of the community meetings they also took part in and hosted. The recommendations. The deal has already started to look at these recommendations and prioritize them, and we look forward to having to be part of any conversation involving policy and implementation in the future and look forward to hearing back from you as to the direction on those those recommendations and the implementation of the recommendations. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor, and the members of the city council. My name is Johanna Cunningham, executive director for the Apartment Association, California Southern Cities. Tonight, I would like to thank the city staff, Patrick, Amy, as well as Andrew for including us in this study and asking our advice. HCC was present at many of the meetings and we wish to express our availability as the City of Long Beach continues to further define and address the issue of housing. I would like, however, to address one particular topic this evening, and that is of course the rent rental housing industry. While I appreciate the work of city staff conducted to try and better serve this issue, I want to. Address the disconnect between what. Is being reported online and the reality of real rents. I'm going to use one example, real life example that I have encountered just recently. It is in the zip code of 90802 and concerns a group of rent rolls that I was examining. The average rent there was $851. Once again. Far below. All the reported agencies that are online. American Community survey as you stated reports 994 apartments dot com reported an average of 1450 dollars. Craigslist was reporting $800. There are a few additional factors that I'd like to. Note. Here. The rents listed. Online represent really only about 20% of what's being advertised, and that many of these rentals are not listed online, so they are far above what is actually being represented. Most rentals are either self-managed or they have management companies and they don't use the online forums. Owners hang out signs outside the building and you'll see those all over the city. Those rents are usually anywhere between 20 to 30% below what is being advertised online. Long Beach has a great number of long term residents who have been in their units for five, ten, 15 and even more than 20 years. The rents cited are newer builds fully monetized. Recently renovated or newly. Purchased properties that still need to be renovated. All of these factors will change the data and. Collection and the outcome. A CSC is working on compiling data that is not online from our members. To help report a more accurate reflection of rents. In Long Beach. Other questions that we would like to be considered are the age of the building. How long have residents been in place? What improvements have been need to be or are planned to be made within the future? What amenities are available? At what. Point does the rent rate affect the amenities. Being offered? Thank you for your time. And we look forward once again to continuing. Our discussion with the city. Thank you very much. And let me just add also, Joanna and and obviously, we look forward to continuing working with you and obviously all the other groups as we try to make sure that we're getting accurate data. And I think no one should ever be afraid of data and of getting good data and being able to make decisions based on real data that we can that we can agree to what the right and correct factual data sets are. And so I think that's something that we're going to have to work ourselves out in the next, you know, in the in the weeks and months ahead. But that's something that's really important. So thank you. Next speaker. Excuse me. Good evening. Members of the council. Mary Garcia, I want to thank you for addressing this issue and for enduring an hour of our comments. Some of you looked like you're suffering and you're suffering. And when I was up there, I'd be suffering with you. I mean, this is way beyond my attention span. What I want to address briefly is something John Kindred said, who is the go spoke 3 to 3 guys before me and he didn't sit it tonight. He told it to me 17 years ago when I took over managing the El Capitan condominium complex on 33rd and Santa Fe . He said, Andy, if you can fix this place, you can do anything. And the complex was in disarray. We were averaging two calls for police service a day. It was on the brink of financial collapse. And if it had collapsed, that is 150 entry level homeownership opportunities, homeownership units that would have been lost to the city of Long Beach. And so I was able to bring it out because I have the time. I'm in the real housing business. I know how to fix things like this. But when you are addressing these policies and you mentioned this tonight of increasing homeownership opportunities, that really means. Minimums. And what I want you to do when you're formulating your policies is to think about how things might affect how those complexes are run, because most of them. Are lucky to have a real estate professional. Running for them. It's people. Ordinary. People generally, who are not really sophisticated with real estate, who are have the responsibility of running their community for things. For example, I traveled to one Atlantic Avenue in your district, Mr. Austin. We have a fine complex run by a great board, but they're lucky they have someone who is a real estate management professional running that organization . But she won't be there forever. So we need to craft policies that will not make it difficult for those complexes to get rid of the bad actors when they get in, because it can be very difficult to get rid of them. And I know that, for instance, there's some talk of just cause eviction. Why? To bring that, it makes it much more difficult to get rid of these people. When I was trying to get rid of the gang members and the drug dealers, I didn't send out fines to the owners because once a drug dealers, oh, he had the music to out things that really wouldn't be you know evict able under a just cause the eviction scenario. So I just want you to imagine it when you're crafting your policies. How is an unjust, sophisticated board going to deal with a situation where they have bad actors in the community who are more violent and more threatening , better funded that they are. So thank you very much for your time. Have a good evening. Thank you very much. And although our speaker, please. The council. Mayor, I want to thank you. I want to thank you, Amy, because you took some time. Patrick, you took time to meet with better housing for Long Beach, and we gave some. Input and some of that input was implemented. And I really appreciate it. I wanted to just address a couple of things that were said tonight, because I was getting a little concerned that you might get just one side of a story and there's always two sides to every story. So there was one gal that spoke about being a great tenant, and I don't want to call her name out, but I know that particular story because one of those tenants was given a relocation fee and has two evictions on the record. So sometimes we don't always hear the truth up here. We hear people coming up here telling stories that aren't always really accurate. I'm a property owner. I manage quite a few units. All my units are my own and I take good care of the units. And I welcome good, you know, good renters. But there are times where most of road and issues are caused, 90% are caused by the renter. So, yes, that's not accurate because I deal with it every day. So when you want to target and attack a property owner, you got to look at the whole picture because there are two pictures in this. There are two stories. So there's a couple other things I wanted to address. You know, when you tell a lie long enough, people start to believe it. And so I want to say that there's a lot of misinformation that comes up here. And, you know, one gentleman mentioned Legal Aid and Suzanne Brown and I, I just I just talked to someone about legal aid. I don't know if you guys know David Clement. You gave him an award, Jeanine. You gave him an award and he let the tenant live there for one year. And then legal aid took up a case and now is suing him for free. So but I don't know if Legal Aid knows that David gave that tenant a year to live there for free. So these are stories you guys don't hear because we landlords don't come up here and tell you all the good things we do for the renters. And yes, we do do a lot of good things for renters. And so I think it's important that, you know, when when, when to thinking about things like, you know, implementing Prep, you guys implemented Prep. There is a class action suit going on in L.A. right now where the renters, the property owners are getting together and suing the city because they don't like intrusion in their units. I have talked to almost every one of my tenants about these forced inspections, and they're not a fan of them, especially undocumented tenants. They don't want that kind of intrusion in their units. So the people that are pushing force inspections need to think about the unintended consequences that can come along with it. So there's a lot of issues that we need to really address. And I think that, you know, when when people talk about housing, taking information from people that are giving housing, not people that are talking about trying to put housing providers out of business, because if you lose the housing providers, you're not going to have housing and it's a difficult process. So thank you, guys, and thank you. Thank you for letting me share. Bye bye. Thank you. Okay. We're we're going to go ahead and take this back to the back to the city council. And thank you, everyone, that had a chance to comment here and at all the other various sessions. So I just want to ask one question and I think Customer Pearce was up first. Will, I'm sure have some questions too. But Miss Bodak. On there. Obviously, there's 30 recommendations on on here. The one that has had some of the most questions was 3.6, which is about Amy. And so I know that currently and please correct me if I'm wrong. The current moderate income definition that we have at the city is 80 to 120. Is that right? Yes, sir, that's correct. And so the the proposed recommendation here and just to be clear, the the the proposed items on here. 80%, 90% of these are recommendations that came from the study group. There are also recommendations in here that came from staff or the consultant. Staff consultant. So this is one of those. So I wanted to ask where the recommendation came from. I just want to be clear that something that staff brought to the table as a recommendation. So I just wanted you to explain, Ms.. Burdick, the reasoning. Because I also want to just also be honest. It's my understanding that even if the AMA was raised, there's no real funding for this. I mean, the truth is that the state and federal funding right now, is it funding this level of moderate income housing anyway? Is that correct, too? That's correct. Mayor and members of the City Council, RMI and the definitions of extremely low, very low, low income and moderate income bring forth a lot of confusion and discussion. Currently there are there is no funding opportunity for any type of housing production or housing preservation or affordable loans or first time homebuyer mortgage programs that address any moderate income category. And right now, moderate income as defined by HUD is 100% to 120% of AMI. And yes, we do use Los Angeles County AMI. That is a requirement of our HUD documents. We do have to comply with those as well. If we were to, I would just want to give you this perspective. As the implementers of first time homebuyer programs in particular, a two person family of moderate income makes up to $62,000. They would be able to afford a mortgage of $230,343. That is infeasible in this city where our average median is 550,000 and excuse me, our median is 550,000 and our average is 630,000. If we increase the the range for moderate income, we would actually capture folks who can two person family who would earn up to $77,750. But as you said, Mayor, we do not have any funding sources available. The idea is that if there were an unencumbered funding source that we were able to achieve through one of these recommendations, whether it's a bond issue or an A in lieu fee or a recording fee, that we could allocate some of that money, that it does not have restrictions on it to the moderate income category without cannibalizing any of our other funding sources for the other categories, which we already have. So that's the rationale for why staff was interested in increasing it to 150%. We used to have first time homebuyer mortgage programs. We had to discontinue those programs because we were not able to provide a big enough subsidy for the mortgage for a first time homebuyer because we were only able to qualify them under the low income, very low income or extremely low income categories. So because of that, we no longer have a first time homebuyer mortgage program and we no longer offer silent second mortgages like we used to as well. Having said all that, I understand there's an emotional reaction to this idea that we would only be focusing on moderate income. And if that is a concern to the city council, we can certainly discuss these issues further and, you know, look to define that definition more at a later date. Hopefully that answers your question, sir. Okay. Because currently it's 80 to 20 on the median on the idea. That's where we currently are today, correct? Correct. Okay. Thank you. So we'll we'll let the council ask questions and go from there. So thanks for some of that clarification, Councilman Pearce. Okay. I want to thank everybody that came out and spoke tonight and everybody that's sticking around for items later. I know that this is an important issue to a lot of folks, and I definitely want to thank the mayor for all the hard work that he's done over the last year, year and a half, to bring together the issues and bring together experts in this field to talk about how do we generate income, how do we generate dollars to build more affordable housing? And that's what the discussion is about today. And I know that there are some of us on the council that want to talk about the important issues of renter protections. As I've said many times, I myself am a renter. But today we're talking about at this moment, this critical issue about getting enough income to build are enough resources to build affordable housing. And I want to say one thing that I think is really important. There's a dear friend of mine, Bob Smith, from the painters, and he says, you've got to have three things in life to be successful and to contribute back to our community. And it's education. It's a good job and it's housing. And I think Long Beach in a long time has come a long way on education and jobs. And I'm really proud that today we're starting to have that deep conversation around housing. So I have a couple of questions. I'm going to try not to be as lengthy as my 25 pages of notes that my staff prepared for me to go to the Army. Question me 1/2. I wanted to ask you mentioned that HUD defines it as 100 to 120 as at the OECD as well. What is their definition for moderate income? It's the same. Okay. And how many other cities in California have changed their definition to moderate income? I don't have that info on my. Okay. And what's the maximum income level a person within the above moderate category can earn? Do we have. A single person? Yes, a single person. $68,050. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that. I want to just say on this issue, I think, you know, you guys were really clear that it was a concern. And I think we have to be really important that we're not creating trickle down housing. Right. We know that whenever we create one of these market rate housing, it takes several years, three decades to be exact, before somebody can afford one of those units. And so while we're creating a lot of opportunity to build other housing, I think that on this item, you know, I have a real challenge supporting this one item . I would support being able to come back and look at maybe how our funding options are working every single year. I want to hear the rest of what my council colleagues have to say. But on this one issue, it's the one that we have to ask ourselves who are we trying to develop housing for? And when we look at the last several years, we've been developing market rate housing. It's been happening. We've done a great job with the downtown plan to help generate that, and our market is meeting those needs. So on that issue, I think it's really important. Number two, I want to I want to thank you guys for including the rental issue when we're talking about inclusionary housing to ensure that the consultant study looks at both ownership and rental housing. Thank you for that clarification. I definitely appreciate it. And look forward to should the state change their policy as being able to implement that here in Long Beach. I would like to ask on one other item. I know that we have done a great job on the 30 something policies on here. I would like to ask staff to report back to council in 90 days on Long Beach's developer impact fees and comparison to other cities in which cities have impact fees and inclusionary housing. If there's cities that don't do both are cities that have both so that we can have that full picture moving forward. If I may. Two weeks ago you authorized a contract for a developer environment assessment contract, and that work will be actually included in that contract. Thank you. So I don't know if it will be concluded within 90 days, but that that specific task and line item is a requirement of this study. Thank you so much, Amy. I really appreciate it. I'll wait to hear the rest of my colleagues comments. But again, I want to thank the council and the mayor for bringing this stuff forward and everybody that's that's stepping up to discuss these issues. Appreciate it. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes, thank you. This was a very comprehensive report. I know we had a lot of our input already put in to this report. And so I have basically three items I'd like to discuss. So I would like to touch on the multigenerational housing. I was actually researching that a bit, so I have another component to that. So specifically with 3.11, that recommendation, it does look at micro units, but I would also like us if we can expand that to look at Co-Living. As mentioned before by I believe it was Karen who maybe herself. Okay, great. An example that I found was common space in Syracuse, New York. I believe it's multigenerational, but it focuses on students as well. But I'm looking and I'm liking that we're exploring more of that, especially joint use agreements between our the city and our educational institutions to provide more of that, those housing elements and then the inclusionary housing. I'm looking forward to seeing that come about and seeing what the court rulings decide for us. And then I have a question on the income restricted rental units. Can you define that specifically? I know it's state and federal mandated units. So what would that look like exactly? Do you can you refer to a specific policy? What are. You. Well, it's income restricted rental units in here. It's in the. In the hope. So. So income restricted rental units, that is our technical term for covenants. So all of the units that we develop for affordable housing based on various income levels, whether they're extremely low, very low or low income, we place covenants on those units for either 45 years or 55 years, and they are restricted at that income level. So if it was developed as an extremely low income, affordable housing project, all of the tenants must be, you know, income qualified when they sign their lease and when units turn over, the next tenant that comes in must also be that same income qualified level. Okay. Great. And in terms of density, the density bonus program, the projects that we have. So I'm looking at the data on both the income restricted and density bonus. And it seems I mean, we have a lot of those types of projects in specific areas of the city and it seems like they're more so in some areas than others. So I guess my question globally would be how are we influencing these types of projects to be citywide? And I know it addresses that sum somehow in this this report. But, you know, for instance, 1700 units of income, restricted housing is in the first district and we have about 250 of density bonus affordable units in the district, which is great, but how do we get those types of projects in different areas so that people can see and have opportunities elsewhere? The short answer to that is your upcoming general plan. The land use element is the guiding document that establishes where height and density and residential development will be occurring in the city. And so it is up to ultimately the city council to determine where that height and density will go. But we are pushing certainly and the state is pushing height and density along transit corridors and they define transit corridors, not just as light rail or fixed rail. They do define transit corridors as those that have bus stops with very frequent headways of bus service. So our land use element, which we'll be presenting to you in a study session next month, is going to show you where we think there's opportunity for height and density to be developed over the next 20 years within the city. That is your opportunity to spread density throughout the city. With density comes opportunity for additional housing development. Okay, great. Thank you. And then the final I appreciate that. And we'll we'll look into that certainly a bit more. And then the final item is the report on rental rates. So what is the timeline that we expect that to come back fully and comprehensively back to the council? I'm sorry, which one was that? The report on rental rates. Their report on rental rates. We're working with our economic and property development department to establish the the a consistent data source. And so I suspect that the goal would be to evolve that into a consistent reporting mechanism that we can present to you on a semiannual basis so that you have an understanding of of trends. Okay. And when do we expect that? Do we expect that in six months? Is it looking like we'll get that data in? I don't have a timeline for you right now given the other 29 recommendations as well. We'll be balancing that. Okay. Well, I. I can. I can. Like. Yeah, I would like a more firm answer. Yeah. I mean, listen, I want to just. Just jump on there, too. I know it's being right now. I think Mr. Chrysler is kind of driving that part of that process. So just in some casual conversations, I expect that over the course of the next couple of months, next month or two, I think a lot of that data is being collected and there's some discussions happening in the community. So I don't expect it to be six months expected to be over the course that. Mr.. Mr.. WEST over the course of the next 60 days. You think we'll have that data? Yes, 60 days we'll at least give you status reports along the way. Okay. And that's going to be between development services in the economic development department? That's correct. Okay. So I would just like for us, as it's being developed, to just include a few things for consideration because I think we should include them. And we've heard this and I certainly would be remiss if I didn't include this or didn't talk about this now and have it included in the report. So what I'd like to just kind of have us wrap our heads around is just displacement and what that definition is and what that looks like in that report. Also identifying demographics affected right now. I think we just have information as to cost burden, which I think we already know and have, but we also have median rent information. But that demographic information would be good. And then how do we I know we've been working with housing Long Beach and Apartment Association, but how do we and I mean, maybe this is a bigger question, but how do we come together to be able to maybe create a list of resident retention programs? And I don't know what that looks like, whether it's education, I'm not sure. But I think there needs to be some sort of clause in this rental report that includes kind of that what that looks like. So just something to keep in mind. Other than that, I think this is a great report. I'm looking forward to hearing more and we'll see where it goes from there. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And first, I want to thank all the speakers for for coming out. This has been educational beyond my expectation on this evening. I also want to thank staff for this very, very comprehensive look at the report on a very, very complex issue. I think there are some creative recommendations here. And the recommendations, I think, do take into account the input from most, if not all, of the stakeholders who participated in the process. Getting to this point, I think we need to obviously take a realistic approach. And so that's why I will be supporting the recommendations here tonight. I think I'll be supporting staff's recommendations, not because, you know, everybody necessarily agrees with everything, but it represents, I think, a step forward as moving the bar. And I think a lot of many of the recommendations actually address much of the challenges that we face here with housing in the city. It's been said that we have a housing crisis in the city of Long Beach. We have a housing crisis in the county. We have a housing crisis in the state. We also have a jobs crisis. I want to respectfully disagree with one of my colleagues who said that we've addressed that issue and we're doing great in terms of jobs. We're doing great in terms of our unemployment, but we're not doing great in terms of good jobs. We have an empty factory right next to the airport. They used to employ thousands and thousands of people on a daily basis and those good jobs were lost. We still need to get back to that now will continue to to be on that program, because I think there is a nexus between the jobs that we have in this city and the housing that we in the housing crisis that we have. The issue of affordability particularly I also heard from a number of residents here just this evening that I think validate the need for prep. Right. We we hear that we have a quality issue as well with some of our housing and prep does exactly address that. And no matter where you are on that issue, you know, if you look at the data here, our inspection rates have gone up significantly. And I think we're going to get good data and sounds like there's there's results happening as a result of prep. And so I'm glad that this council has moved forward to. To support that, and I hope we'll continue to do that as well. I did have a question regarding 3.5, and I would love for this border if you could read that policy and explain exactly what we are seeking to do with that. Certainly. So there is an ordinance. On the books called the Housing Trust Fund Ordinance, and it was to be the repository of matching funds at the time for a program that was run by the state OECD. So you would qualify for matching funds if you had a housing trust fund ordinance in place? We established a housing trust fund ordinance, but the ordinance was written so that it only the funds that would put were put into it would only be eligible to be used by extremely low income and above moderate income purposes. The Housing Trust Fund Ordinance, as it was defined, was not funded on a regular basis and it did get very limited capital in it. However, the. City has a restricted housing assets fund that all of the funds that are in the restricted housing asset fund total approximately $35 million. And that is really what we use for the production and preservation of affordable housing. So the idea of modifying the Housing Trust Fund ordinance is to expand it, to allow all of the sources of money that we have in our housing asset fund and to be able to spend those moneys on all of the income levels and not just the two that are currently defined in the ordinance as it currently stands. Okay. So in terms of diversifying and promoting economic diversity, it would expand. It would allow us to say that we have a housing trust fund ordinance that has $35 million in it, as opposed to a $175,000, $35 million in it, excuse me, as opposed to 150,000. It would allow us to spend that money in the way that we spend all of our housing asset funds as well for extremely low , very low, low and moderate income. And so they're moving forward to the next point, 3.6. Is there a nexus to modifying the moderate income definition from 80% to 120 in the area, median income to 80 to 150? Well, yes and. No. If you chose not to modify the moderate income definition up to 150%, it would still be at 120%. And we could still utilize any funding sources that are unrestricted for moderate income. Okay. Well, thank you for for that clarification. And I guess my next question, maybe you've answered it, but I had a question prepared is why are we changing the HUD standard? And I just would make clear on that. It's in there with the idea that if we. Receive locally available, unrestricted dollars, that we would be able to help more folks in a income strata that we cannot currently reach. And our focus really is on homeownership. And as you probably remember from the rental report, we are are our homeownership opportunities are decreasing even from five years ago. So we are becoming a a more intense renter city as opposed to a homeownership city. The idea, again, that staff was supporting was if we increased it to 150%, we might be able to work on some homeownership opportunities for that that income strata. Well, I'm looking at the data provided here, and I don't know what page it's on, but it shows homeownership versus renters here in Long Beach. Yes. Nationally that that number doesn't seem to have moved much over the last 50 years. In the seventies. I think we are at about 70% renter and 30% homeownership. That is very different from the from the nationwide average. We did decrease over time five years ago. We were at, I think, 57, 58%. We now think we're up 58, 59%. So we are creeping back up. I believe the the average for the United States is 30% renter. Is that correct? Patrick? Page 37 of the report. It's a. 55%. Right. Okay. Well, thank. You. And I don't know if that matters much to somebody who is at risk of, you know, losing their home or or or who who can't afford to rent today. I do get that. But I think these numbers tell a story that they need to be looked at more, more clearly. And bottom line, in my opinion, this is like I said, I'll be supporting staff recommendations. But the real issue, I believe, again, goes to the the shortage or the available of existing housing stock. I think we have to build and we have to build at all levels to to accommodate, you know, the demands of our constituents citywide . And and we need to address the quality of the housing stock. I think our proactive rental housing inspection program is helping in that regard. And obviously, I think we need to deal with the affordability of the existing housing stock at some point as well. And so I will be supporting this. I think staff has done a great job. I think and I think in reality, I just want to be realistic. I don't think we're going to be able to implement all of these recommendations in time enough to solve our crisis. But like I said, I think tonight if we we make this vote, we will be taking a huge leap forward and in addressing an issue that has it's a growing issue here in the city. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Councilman. Councilmember Arango. Thank you, Mayor. I do want to commend everybody who came out tonight. Your voice is very important and it's a compliment to the city of Long Beach and to you as residents who come out here and get involved in the decision making so that we make it here in the city. And your civic engagement is certainly welcome because we need to hear what you think about what decisions that come before us and the studies that we have to deal with in. Regards to the council. Comments that have come thus far. I want to commend Council members from the first and second Gonzalez and Pierce for the issues that they brought up. It's very insightful in terms of what they see as important issues. I'm not sure that I can recommend adoption of all these recommendations because there are some that I have a question on. But more specifically, I have one that I think should basically be removed, that I don't see any benefit or aspect to it. And that would be item 1.8, which is dealing with the sequel, supports equal reform to the city's legislative actions with that encourages the production of affordable and workforce housing. It's just a statement that's put out there with no explanation whatsoever as to why it was put there or any explanation as to what. Would be the benefit. Revisiting Sequel. My interpretation of it at this point is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Leave it alone. Why is it there in the first place without any explanation? From my conversations with individuals in the building trades. They're fine with Sequa as it is right now. And if we're looking at affordable housing and the development of affordable housing, Revisiting Square would basically change some rules that may be actually detrimental to what we want to accomplish here. So I would I would suggest that we either reevaluate that recommendation with an eye on removing it or if it needs to stay there. Tell us why. I mean, why do we need to reevaluate that item and come back with with with the more clear, more clear explanation as to why needs to be there and what do we want to accomplish with that other and that I think the other comments that have been made regarding the the income levels and the whole aspects of rental properties and inclusive housing has been is right along the lines where I'm at and I. So I'm looking forward to moving forward with this. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to first just thank the audience for for bearing with this discussion and excuse me not to step in the back for a little while, not feeling that great, working on a few hours of sleep, got a newborn. So excuse me for that. And I'm up on caffeine. So if I come a little jittery, it's. It's the caffeine. Thank you. So I want to acknowledge just the mayor, the city council, everyone. This has been a really well put together process. Everyone has had ample opportunity to come to the table. Speak, and we're still at the beginning of this. And so that that really says a lot about our sincerity as a city council, our mayor, sincere sincerity to really do something meaningful around affordable housing. I want to thank the task force and staff for their hard work. And I just want to say that it is not easy. It's very difficult to develop affordable housing. From identifying the site to entitlements to identifying financing, going through the tax credit process and then 18 months of construction. You're talking about five years from, you know, the idea to actually opening, opening up a building and then there's there's the lease up period as well. So you're talking about five years. So so, you know, we should all there's going to be plenty of opportunity over the course of this time to really evaluate, reevaluate, check ourselves and make adjustments as we go. But as we move along, I tend to agree that, you know, with the recommendations being up all night gives me an opportunity to really review the the city council agenda. There's a lot of good stuff in here. And we could go we could go stronger. There's things that we can improve. But I'm going to support this tonight. And I have some thoughts and some areas where I think we should some considerations moving forward as we continue this process, so on. So I want to say congratulations and thank you to both the the task force and to city staff on these recommendations. I can tell that these are things that you think we really can make, you know, that we can implement. So on inclusionary housing I support it is becoming standard in in major cities. I, I the angel is always in the details obviously. So as these ordinances are developed and you know, I want to keep a close eye on those. I do believe they should apply to ownership and when we figure out the legal circumstances and to rental housing as well. So I do support both of those and I'll continue to watch that to better understand the legal circumstances. In terms of revenue, we still don't have a replacement for the 20% set aside from redevelopment. We don't have that. That was our major our major source of revenue. So I do support a revenue, a bond, something that is dedicated to to housing because we need a local source. So we're at these other table, these other regional tables like SAG and other cities are dealing with the same thing. The state the feds do not provide a dedicated source for us to really develop this. We have to, you know, for a foreseeable future, we have to think and protect ourselves and think about a local source. So I do support that on the armory discussion. So I'll follow it that the 120 versus the the 150. And I have a quick question in and some thoughts on that. So and I know that this is this has come up, but one more time for a family of four and 120 versus 150. What are we talking about for a family of four in terms of the the income? So for a family of four, let's see, under the current definition, it would be a family of four with an income of 77,750. They would be able to afford a mortgage of 282,875. That's current. That's current 77 total. Yes. So you're talking 35, less than 40. Okay. So for 14 floor, that's you know, when I started working up here, there was the field field deputies or two city council members. They got married. They may be able to afford and possibly afford a house. And I got to tell you that I'm. Already married, Rex. So, so so, you know, I could see I can understand why we want to justify going to 150 a 150%, if that means, you know, to teachers or, you know, to field deputies on the 14th floor are able to buy a place. I don't think that's unreasonable for a family of four. And but again, the angels in the detail. So I followed the portion. We said we don't have rent resources, as many resources to help lower moderate income ownership. Now, when I was purchasing my my home, we didn't have down payment assistance in some cities, had it in some cities didn't. And that impacted my decision on where to go. And luckily I was able to get here in Long Beach. We didn't have we didn't have that tool. So tools like that do make sense. But my concern is, are there tools, are there resources that could be going to, you know, extremely low income that will be some somehow taken away and given to the moderate income owners? From my original understanding, there really weren't because there aren't resources available. But. I'd like to understand for the sake of tracking and evaluation, if we could like as we move forward track by, by category, what resources were actually utilized. So our density bonus is only being utilized by a certain subsection. Is it just the moderate or is it just extremely low using using density bonuses or whatever incentives come out? So so my question for staff here is how can we evaluate this on a regular basis, six months, a year to see are there certain categories that are absolutely not using incentives? And how can we throw some incentives at them? Because I believe this is a both and situation. Not a not a no. But it's a it's a both. And so so how could we or what is the cadence we anticipate on reporting back and can we report back by category? We absolutely can report back by category. We can tell you exactly how many units are covenanted for extremely low, very low and low income. And we can tell you how many are covenanted for moderate, which are pretty much almost. Well, you. Know, I mean, like moving forward, like are we building in these categories? We are building in all those categories because we're required to do so under post redevelopment dissolution law. So we have very, very defined categories that we can spend money on. And Patrick, I don't know if you know them off the top of your head, but they're very prescriptive. Yes, Amy. So we can't use any of our existing funds to serve moderate income households. A minimum of 30% of our funds have to serve extremely low income households. A maximum of 20% of our funds can serve low income households earning up to 80%, ami the remaining 50% have to serve households under 60%. AM I? Thank you. So I get that what I'm really interested in is a year from now when we look back or a year from when we implemented certain changes, could we look back and say over the course of last year, the last year, this category use this many density bonuses or this much of an incentive, this category did not. So we can understand if certain categories need additional help, we can. Absolutely, we can do that. Okay. Fantastic. That's what that's what I would like to see. And then finally, I think we have some opportunities. You know, we have a lot of motel motels that are being misused. And and frankly and I know that, you know, we've had conversations, but, you know, just once they are in the open, I think we should try to, you know, free two birds, one key and, you know, clean up nuisances with these motel motels and create housing opportunities for people who need it. And so that that's something I think we should make a priority and set a premium on because we can literally help the quality life of people who are already being I mean, you probably heard was a terrible incident at a motel, motel, and they happen all the time and that's housing opportunity. So we should figure out how to hold these folks accountable and update those uses to be something that we actually meet. But overall, I just want to say, I know I've spoken a lot, but I want to I just want to say thank you to everyone I think is a good first step and I look forward to tracking the progress. Great. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Yes, thank you. I appreciate the discussion. I wanted to ask one more time. I know the Army is the topic of fun today. And for a family of four. What is the the. Moderate income maximum and and minimum sorry. The maximum is 77,750. So I have I'm looking at a graph that tells me that's the minimum and that the maximum is 97. 97,000 would be if we increased it to 150%. Okay. So I'd like to go ahead and go and make a motion to approve the study. But leaving out the recommendation for Am I in hope that we could come back at another time and do what Vice Mayor has suggested, which is kind of look at where people are using our resources and also look at other first time buyer incentives where when we look at the bond measures and everything else that we're talking about doing so I'd like to make that motion. Is there is the second Councilman Gonzales or do you ever to have a second or is there a second? Yes, but although I would just I guess to kind of feed off of that, I would like to see what other cities are doing relative to AMI and making that. I think we we've we've kind of talked about this quite a bit. And I think it's it's very important that we address this. So if there's some sort of information we can receive before we move forward with that piece. So that would be great. And so I think I think that the motions to receive and file and adopt the recommendations but remove 3.6 because the current AMA is already what it is. So that just wouldn't the status quo wouldn't change as far as what it currently is. So it would just be to remove 3.6 and just do some further study and some further information about what other cities are doing around around. Am I? I believe that's the motion. Okay. Councilman Gonzalez, is that the second? Yes. Correct. Okay. Councilmember Andrews. Thank you. C'mere. For those of you who are not keeping up with the time, we have 21 more items to go, and I. We might as well wake up now, because I just want to, first of all, thank everyone who was a part. Of this, you know, bargaining for this document to come forward. And a lot of this is because I think the development and service and, you know, the numerous. Sarkodie's who came out and took time to be a part of this study group and people have a body the input, you know, this. Housing is a very sensitive issue. And when we mention affordable housing becomes, you know, an urgent. Matter. That faces us in California. But what I really like to say is I think that with individuals. Like our Mrs. Amy Bodak and her group and a lot of work that you all of you guys have come to gather and you're very study groups. I'm sure that we're going to be able to come to something here. Where we can all be, you. Know, satisfied with. So thank you again very much for sticking around tonight because we're going to be here for a while. And in the can you just keep getting longer? So we will. Councilman Austin So I'll be sort of following up on Councilmember Andrews's comment, recognizing that we do have a big agenda ahead of us. But I do want to didn't they want to just just point out something that one of the some of this data here that that I think is pretty compelling. The 2010 Census had our population at 400,060 462,000 residents. Today, the Department of Finance estimates our population to be 484,000, almost 885,000 residents. That means I've heard a lot about people leaving Long Beach, but the numbers show that people are actually coming to Long Beach and this is creating a serious housing crisis for us. And so I think the I mean, the numbers don't lie. I mean, that we have a population growth that we're dealing with as a result, we have a housing challenge as well. So just wanted to make that point. Thank you. Councilmember Orengo. Thank you. To my previous comments regarding seek work with the makers of Motion. Consider including the removal of item 1.1.8. I would. It. Thank you. Okay. And I'm fine with that. But this is also a reminder of, I think the reason why staff put that in was because it's part of your guys's legislative agenda on the city council that you pass through the state legislative agenda that Councilman Austin chairs. So I think that's why it was put in there. So I think that if you remove it, you guys have to revisit the legislative agenda that you have as a state budget committee as well. I don't know if Councilman Austin has a comment on that or not. I do have a comment on that, I think. I think as we discussed, there's a housing crisis throughout the state and cities are looking at ways to to be able to build and address their housing crisis in a in a manner that can be expedited. You all know, we've we've said it. This is a crisis. If this is a crisis, do we want to have roadblocks? This council approved a housing development in my district a little over two years ago. Right. And that process was delayed significantly because there was it was challenged. It was challenged. And there was no merit to the challenge. But it could be challenged through the existing school process. And so and not to disparage those who had a difference of different opinion on that. But if we are truly serious about addressing our housing crisis, we, I think, have to look at modifying that that that that legislation and to to to be able to effectively address our issues. Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I just want to speak to the speak to the motion and directly to Councilwoman Pierce for a moment. So I just want to direct just directly to Councilwoman Pierce for a moment. So the the 122 150, I think and correct me if I'm wrong, I want to have a back here quickly. Is there is the hope that resources are not pulled into a higher category, higher income level that somehow is taken away from where we need extremely low and low income? That is the expectation is that we don't take resources away from that level. Okay. And the fact that the market right now is already creating housing at that level and we're not creating housing further down. Okay. And so would it be would it make sense to then say, you know, we want to evaluate that. We want to study that additional one 2150, not stop whatever incentives we're going to try to prepare, but craft it in a way that it does not limit whatever we have dedicated or whatever resources we have dedicated to . But you know, up to 120 level the traditional because I think we have to just think not. No but but yes. And even if it's a we have hesitation on the one 2150, we should still continue to evaluate it, craft some programs and see how we can try to meet those needs. I can tell you, I grew up, lived a renter, understand completely. And at one point I did make the transition and it was hard to transition as a, you know, single guy wasn't making a lot of money. But transitional homeownership and having local resources to help achieve that is essential. It is essential to just building wealth, generational wealth, like getting into that. And I don't want to I don't want to limit it because we don't understand it. Right. And that's why I think it's good to to study it, bring it back. I think the flag for me was the comment that if there's money that that has no strings tied to it, that it would go directly to this this area. And I want to make sure if we have funds that will have strings tied to it, it goes to where it's the most need. Sure. So I think. Well, same page. I think what I would ask then, if you could just amend emotion then and just say, you know, about, you know, continue to evaluate and study the one 2150 but bring any programs that are going to, you know, any funding, any programs that would bring it back to council, all of it together so we can understand. So the 120, you know, that's going to have to come the council anyway. Right. But that marginal stuff, we want to see it all together. Yeah. And give clear direction account to staff that we want to building mechanisms to ensure we're tracking and ensuring that we're not you know, stealing from, you know , robbing Peter to pay Paul. Right. Right. And I would I would want to see, as we discussed, having that be a continual report. Absolutely. An annual report back. So you're going to put that in your mode, just some reporting tracking and continue to evaluate this. We're not necessarily saying no, but we're. Yeah. Yeah. All I'm in my motion to include that fantastic things. Okay, then the motion has been amended. Councilmember Supernova. Thank you. I'd like to thank staff and all the speakers here tonight for spending their time with us in particular. Andy Whalen, I'd like to thank you for your moment of comic relief. We desperately needed it. You know, we've discussed the sequel issue, but I would just like to give staff an opportunity to weigh in on it . Okay. You have 10 seconds. That's a joke. Go ahead. We support 1.8. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for that brief response. That's all I have. Councilman Price. Okay. Well, I think any of just a little bit more direction than that. How would your recommendation be impacted if the motion were approved now with the friendly in regards to the sequel issue? So in regards to the sequel issue sequel, it can be a extremely expensive undertaking for an affordable housing developer. And there are some discussions at the state level that would impact their ability to do projects. We would like to be able to be going through the state and federal pledge. Well, the State Lodge Committee to support sequel reforms specifically for affordable and workforce housing, making it simpler for them, therefore less expensive for the housing developer, the affordable housing developer to proceed. And if I can add for the implementation, the way we would do this is you'd be giving us direction tonight to start thinking of some of those ideas, too. On how to make that process a little bit easier for affordable housing developers. And then we would be bringing you through your legislative committee, some specific wording to give staff the direction to work on. So that would be the implementation. You would see that again. Okay. So I guess the question I have for Charlie is how does the friendly regarding secure change staff's proposal? If I understand, I need some clarification after the last discussion here between Vice Mayor and Council Member Pearce. But as to 1.8, the way I have the motion reading currently is the it is a motion to adopt staff recommendation without 3.6 changes and to remove section 1.8 entirely. Well, if I can just chime in, I would be supportive. First of all, thank you to the staff. You've done a really great job. I would be supportive of moving forward with a receiving file on the staff rapport with all of the friendlies that have already been made. Absent the the secure, friendly. So if there's a if there's a recommendation, a friendly and it's been accepted, which I'm not totally clear on, then I might want to make an amendment. So I'll just wait to hear some more and then I'll chime in. Okay. I want to actually show that Councilman Pearce is going to go back to the motion to make a comment and I'm going to ask Miranda. Yes. So understanding that if we left that in today, it would still need to go through different committees and still come back to council and go through that whole process. I would I'm okay with keeping it in today. So I'd like just so we can have a more public conversation around it, I don't think any of us have had a detailed enough conversation to leave it off the table. Yeah. So I think. Roberto, you. Councilman Miranda. Go ahead. Customary lingo. Okay. But my my purpose for bringing this up, obviously, is because there already is and state ledge. It's just misplaced. I don't think it belongs here in this and on this item here, because we are going to be addressing school reform through our state pledge committee. So, you know, I would just turn to this issue for this today. You know, if it's if it's going to help anything, then I would draw my friendly as long as we know that it's a state led issue in that on this 1%. Thank you, councilmember appreciate that. It's it's on the state ledge book. So. Okay. So we have a motion and a second and I'm going to repeat it. Mr. City Attorney So the city attorney is supposed to adopt all of the recommendations and to move on item. Gosh, which one was that one? And in relation to item 3.6, did you want to repeat repeat it. Vice Mayor tried it on I believe it was to move forward with with reviewing all items of all images and to actually review all of them. But to bring back to council a report on what actually changing 80 to 150 would actually mean. That margin. That margin. 20 to 150. And how that would impact. Other other available things. We can do that. Yeah. Okay. And the report. Right. Report periodic and the report report by category. Yeah. Okay. There's a motion. Any second members, Pisco and Castro votes. First. It is. Motion carries. Great. Congratulations, everybody. Very nice. I have an announcement. If there's someone actually left their keys on the podium. If anyone found a set of keys when they went up to the podium to speak and maybe just grabbed them thinking they were theirs there. Someone's actually missing a set of keys. If you can just return them to the clerk. If you have them, that would be great. So if you have a set of keys or found a set of keys, please bring them to the city clerk. Thank you. We're just going to take a just 30, 32nd, one minute recess and they're going to start the council agenda in a minute. We're going to go and call the meeting back to order. If it was called the Great Depression, you know, I would talk about that. All right. You know, it's not like you were saying, oh. Okay, I'm calling to order. If you're chattering to go outside, please. So maybe mean called to order. If you're chatting, including our staff, you guys can go outside. She. Thank you. Welcome. Councilman Gonzalez. Councilmember Pearce. Councilwoman Price. Councilmember Sabino. Councilwoman Stacey Mongo. Councilman Andrew's. Councilmember Younger. Councilman Alston. Vice Mayor Richardson. And Mira Garcia. I'm here. Thank you. I have a I'm going to do open public comment right now. And we'll get back to the items in just a minute. I have one, two, three people here, I think, for all the same item. Can I have Dale Dixon? Sergio Gutierrez. Victoria Osuna. They're all here for the Rainbow Harbor kiosk issue. Is that right? Okay. Please come forward. Is that is of Velcro also? And Fanny Martinez. The is that a different issue? It's all the same issue. Okay. So then let me let me do it over. So then Dale Dixon, Fannie Martinez, Gutierrez.

Recommendation to approve renaming the Multi-Use Sport Court in Marina Vista Park the Luke Tatsu Johnson Court.

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Thank you. Item 24. And I suppose we didn't want. To do that. Yeah. Communication from Vice Mayor Andrew's Chair, Housing and Neighborhoods Committee recommendation to approve renaming of the multi-use Sports Court and Marina Vista Park. The link to Sue Johnson Court. Vice Mayor Andrews Thank you. Me I'd like to turn this over to Councilman Pierce for this price. Excuse me. Katz Councilwoman Price Thank you. And I want to thank the vice mayor for shepherding this item through the committee and having it here for us. This is kind of the final step of a very, very important item for me, my family and our entire community. Luke was an amazing young man. He was diagnosed with leukemia his first week at Wilson High School as a freshman. And he was involved in our Youth Participatory Budgeting Committee that selected the multi-use sport court. And unfortunately, he lost his battle with cancer. And we want to honor him by naming the court after him. We'll be having a dedication ceremony this coming Sunday at the park. And I thank my colleagues and again, especially Vice Mayor Andrews, for seeing this item through and making sure that it got here when it did, because the family's been really anxious for this process and very excited to have the opportunity to honor Luke as in a permanent space in the district. So thank you, everyone, for your support. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this? Yes, please. State your name, Larry. Good. You? I fully support this. I think it's an outstanding idea. No ifs, no answer, no votes. I raise a point of order. I believe the council the agenda calls for even before this item, whether it is, as it is called, calls for public comment. And I'd like to use that. I have signed up for public comment and this is the time, according to the clerk. At the public comment. Is appropriate. This is public comment for this item. No public comment in general. Having confidence that this is public comment for the item, as you said it has before this item has been was read. The public comment for open public comment. It should have been held first. Okay. Okay. You can go read it. All right. Thank you. Please. And that's one of my points more often than not. More often than not, the mayor handles the agenda. Like Seinfeld's Kramer enters and leaves a room. Period. That has to stop. That has to stop. No ifs, no answer, no buts. And I would as particularly important and during this comment and I would point out that it'll be we'll have to put up with them there for about another 80 about 16 to 18 months before the attorney general. Indict arrest him for the criminal complicity of Marines stated the raising of Marine Stadium to s. That's going to happen. No ifs. No arms, no buts. But as long as the mayor is here, he's got to stop. He has to follow the process. And again, not handling, as they say, like Seinfeld's Kramer enters and leaves a room. And I expect that. And I think the public's entitled to that. You can't jerk it around. When you do that, you end up with catastrophes. And on that, I'll end my point. But again, we should be giving consideration to who will be the new mayor in about eight to 12 to 18 months, if not sooner, if not sooner. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now we go back to the one item 24 together. Yeah, I do. We vote on this one. I'll just call for a vote. Please. No. No. Sorry. It's. Side. My entrance wasn't great. There's I think there's a there's emotion second to approval. And it was. The price. That was. Okay. Let's suppose not then motion carries Mengers on her chair. Am I. Councilman Mongo? Councilwoman Mangos? Yes. She's a yes. Oh. That's hmm.

On the petition, referred on December 1, 2021, Docket #1221, for a special law re: An Act Regarding the Disability Pension for Scott O’Brien, submits a report recommending that the home rule petition ought to pass in a new draft.

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Thank you, Madam President. Docket 1219. Councilor Savi charge are for the following petition for a special law regarding an act regarding the disability pension of Matthew Morris. Docket 1 to 2 zero. Councilor Sabby Georgiou for the following petition for a special law regarding an act regarding the disability pension of Richard Santillo and docket number one 2 to 1 Councilor Sabby George for the following special petition for a special law regarding the act regarding the disability pension of Scott O'Brien. Thank you so much. The Chair recognized this Councilor Sabi George. Councilor Sabi George, you have the floor. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you for. My colleagues indulgence with these three orders that are before you. You may recall several years ago, we had a number of police officers before this body who were either retired or on the way to be retired because of the the injuries that they sustained during several different incidents. These two here, Rich and Matt, were injured in East Boston in 2016. Gravely injured. They have now been retired and I am seeking additional retirement benefits for them as well as Scottie O'Brien, who was shot and injured in 2004. These three police officers have been before us before. We will have, I hope, a quick hearing in the next week or so, ten days to hear from these three police officers who have served this city and have been injured in service during service to this city. They will hopefully be before you and back before this body in the next few weeks. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you so much. Anyone looking to speak on these dockets? Anyone else add their name? Show of hands, please. Madam Clerk, if you could please add. Councilor Arroyo. Councilor Baker. Councilor. Councilor Braden. Councilor Campbell. Councilor Flaherty. Councilor Flynn. Councilor me here. Councilor Murphy. Council Malley. On the chair. Barry was asked, what would you be on all three? Yes. Thank you so much. These three dockets will be referred to the Committee on Government Operations. Will now move on to the next docket. Docket. 1222 Madam Clerk.

AN ORDINANCE relating to fireworks regulations; amending Ordinance 3139, Section 601, as amended, and K.C.C. 12.86.500, Ordinance 4461, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 20.22.040, Ordinance 10870, Section 331, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.08.040, Ordinance 10870, Section 548, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.32.110, Ordinance 13332, Section 43, as amended, and K.C.C. 27.10.360 and Ordinance 17682, Section 48, as amended, and K.C.C. 27.10.580, adding a new chapter to K.C.C Title 17, repealing Ordinance 6836, Section 1, and K.C.C. 6.26.010, Ordinance 6836, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.020, Ordinance 6836, Section 3, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.030, Ordinance 6836, Section 4, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.040, Ordinance 6836, Section 5, and K.C.C. 6.26.050, Ordinance 6836, Section 6, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.060, Ordinance 6836, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.070, Ordinance 6836, Section 8, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.080, Ordinance 6836, Section 9, and K.C.C. 6.26.090, Ordinance 6836, Section 10, and K.C.C. 6.26.100, Ordinance 6836, Section 11, and K.C.C. 6.26.110 and Ordin

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been delayed from his old low tape 1:00 search. We also have on today's agenda legislation addressing fireworks in unincorporated King County. You've heard it our last meeting from residents of unincorporated King County who are dramatically affected by this legislation. I'm in fact, the testimony we heard was overwhelmingly in support. We had one person testify against one last time. Today, we heard from more people offering testimony on both sides of a allow me to note that a lot of the opposition to the ban today was from the industry. I'm from TNT, Fireworks and others. In no way if we had can we take action in and ban fireworks by the 4th of July this year? I'm giving the timing of implementing new legislation if we were to adopt it for council. There's a 30 day waiting period from the time it moves out of committee until it'd be taken up before council. I want to assure everyone this, that this legislation will not and cannot be in effect by this 4th of July. But it is imperative to me to make sure that we take up and address the life, health and safety issues that fireworks bring to unincorporated communities so we can make appropriate public policy decisions. This will be on our next agenda. And given the time and already delayed executive committee of the Fun District, we will not take up the legislation today without and having no other items on our agenda today. Mr. Clare throughout the month ago. Thank you. The Flood District Executive Committee will convene at 130.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, adopt resolution finding the project to be consistent with the Downtown Plan Programmatic Environmental Impact Report and subject to the Downtown Plan Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program and denying the appeal from Warren Blesofsky representing Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development; and Uphold the Planning Commission’s decision to approve a Site Plan Review for the construction of a seven-story, 142-unit mixed use residential development at 500 West Broadway in the Downtown Planned Development District (PD-30). (District 2)

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You don't want to be. Do you want to do what. We're going to hearing at number one? Okay. Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, adopt resolution finding the project to be consistent with the downtown plan, programmatic environmental impact report and subject to the Downtown Plan Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program and denying the appeal from warn blue soft ski representing the Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development and uphold the Planning Commission's decision to approve a site plan review for the construction of a seven story 142 unit mixed use residential development at 500 West Broadway and the Downtown Plan Development District District two. Okay, thank you for that. We're going to go ahead and get into this hearing. So just just to go over the order of the hearing, I'm going to first introduce our staff to go over the staff presentation. Then after that, we will have the applicant can make comments for up to 10 minutes. You don't have to use the full 10 minutes, but you'll be able to make comments. And then the appellant there is one appellant and the appellant will also have 10 minutes to make comments. You don't have to use the full 10 minutes, but you're welcome to as well. And then after the appellant goes through the 10 minutes, the applicant gets 3 minutes if they want to do a rebuttal. But again, you don't have to take those 3 minutes and then we'll of course, have the deliberation and public comments and will conclude the hearing. And so with that, let me go ahead and turn this over to staff for the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before we get started, if the clerk could administer the oath on this one. Is there anybody in the audience? Could you please stand? Please raise your right hand. 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. Okay. Excellent. I'm going to go ahead and turn this now over to Mr. Modica, who will do the report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The staff presentation on this will be provided by Christopher Koonce, our advance planning officer and the Department of Development Services. Good evening, city council members. We are here regarding 500 West Broadway. That's and Council District two. To orient you on the screen, you have a diagram and if you made it to this building, you actually know where this site is as well. It's across from the Deukmejian courthouse. It's the empty parking lot there. The importance of this diagram is to show that the location of this development is in proximity to bikeshare to multiple bike routes, including the segregated bike route on Broadway. It's walking distance to the Metro Blue Line and walking distance to a large amount of employment base here in downtown Long Beach. Here's a aerial photograph of the location we're talking about at Broadway and Magnolia. Again, within our downtown area covered by the downtown plan PD 30. This is just a look at the adjacent properties. And you see there in the center the prominent building, which is the courthouse across the street. So this project is a seven story project. It is an NFL project and currently vacant parking area. It will rise seven stories to add 142 residential units, 191 parking spaces more than is required. It's 84 feet tall from its highest point from the lowest point there on Magnolia. It includes amenities for residents, including pool, spa, fitness, center, deck areas, balconies and community room. But also important, it provides a number of public amenities, including the ground floor, cafe seating area enhancements to the street, as well as visual improvement to the site. This gives you a site plan. So to the north is the section facing Broadway, and that's where you have your active users to promote an active downtown street life. So you have your cafe and retail, your lobby and entrance and leasing area for the future residents, as well as what's called a bike cafe, which the idea there is that we're really promoting biking for residents and visitors and that's not just a place to park your bike, but that's a place where you can also do any appropriate repairs and servicing to your bike that you may need to do. Vehicle access is from Magnolia. As we talked about, there's 191 parking stalls, which is more than is required in a three level garage. Pedestrian access from Broadway there there's landscaping along the sidewalk, which will be installed as a part of this project that does not exist today. So I know we're here this evening due to an appeal, but from the staff table point of view here, this is the exactly the type of project we like to see in our city and that we encourage as your planning staff. It was supported enthusiastically by the Planning Commission. It provides new housing units in close proximity to transit, biking, walking and sources of employment. It's a major investment and expansion in downtown, consistent with the city's housing policy and consistent with exactly what we told the development community and the community at large that we expected with the downtown plan . It was heard by the Planning Commission on May 4th. They voted unanimously to approve it. They did include environmental documentation at that time. Upon receiving the appeal from Mr. Polaski, staff did conduct further environmental analysis which simply confirmed our previous conclusions that the project does not result in any environmental harm and is consistent with the program environmental document that was prepared when the downtown plan was adopted just over five years ago. So as we talked about when PD 30 was adopted back in 2012, there was a program, environmental document, which means we actually went to the expense and complication of analyzing what the environmental impacts of not just one project, but the entire buildout of downtown over time would be. That's what the secret guidelines and the state law advises you to do. You're then advised to not do redundant review so you don't start over again when that project that you previously anticipated comes forward, as happened in that case. In this case. And for that reason the environmental review tiered off of our utilize the PD 30 IIR. There is no significant impacts that were not previously identified. The project is actually smaller than what's allowed in this section of PD 30 where someone could do it two 140 foot building. But as I mentioned, this is an 80 foot range and is a important contributor to that site. So that is staff's brief presentation. We're available to answer any questions, and thank you for your consideration. Thank you. So for this hearing, we are going to allocate 10 minutes to the applicant for applicant comments and then we'll have another 10 minutes for appellant comments and then we'll allow another three or 5 minutes for a rebuttal from the applicant. So is the applicant present? All right, come on forward and you have 10 minutes. Take us away. Hi, I'm Tyson. Sales here from Ensemble Investments on behalf of the applicant, and I'd like to thank staff for their hard work. And prep and. Presentation and preparation for this hearing tonight and city. Council. For their consideration. And we're here. To answer any. Questions. And we have our team and experts here if there are any technical questions that council members would like to ask. But we believe that the written record can speak for itself and we agree with staff's presentation. So I'll hold my comments and interest everyone's time. Thank you. So you want to. So you're deferring your time or you're done. You're good. Okay. Thank you. How about the appellant? Please come forward and you have 2 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, City Council. I'd like to reserve 3 minutes of my time. It's only fair that if there's a rebuttal that I would get to respond to the rebuttal. Up to the city attorney. So. Mr. Vice Mayor, generally we don't allow someone in this. Particular position to reserve. Their time. The reason the applicant gets a rebuttal is the applicant actually has the burden of proof here to establish under city council that this project merits going forward. And that's why they get the last word. Understood. Mr. Vice Mayor, that's not how Mayor Garcia has previously run these. I'm going to always let there be a rebuttal time. Well, thank you. Considering that the applicant. You only spoke for about 2 minutes, I think this is fair. So I'm going to just defer to the city attorney's advice. So you have 2 minutes and we'll start your 10 minutes with you. Thank you. Warmed Lisowski. Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development. The reason that we are bringing this appeal is under California Environmental Quality Act. And I understand that staff has instructed that there is a downtown plan, also known as a programmatic air. But there are many exceptions to a programmatic air. And staff was referring to the tearing of square tearing can be used and is being used in the situation. But when there are certain substantial, even mitigated effects that does not allow further environmental review to be completely avoided. So this project sits directly across the street from the George to Deukmejian courthouse, which is 63 feet tall, and this proposed project is 84 feet tall. So it's a full two stories higher than the courthouse, and it also sits to the south of the courthouse. And I don't know if you've been in the courthouse in the main lobby, but there's a great amount of light that comes in. It's a vast improvement over the original courthouse, and this building is going to tower over it. When you look at all of the renderings that staff has created and that the developer have created, none of those renderings show the courthouse and the development in relation to each other. So really what you're going to have is this seven story building really kind of dwarfing that beautiful new courthouse that we have. Another issue is they're proposing to only use the existing curb cut. There's only one curb cut on Magnolia Street and Broadway, Ocean. And seventh and seventh are the six are the only major entryways from the 710 Freeway into downtown Long Beach. And so, you know, this downtown plan, this council envisions this beautiful pedestrian interaction between the courthouse, the Civic Center and these other downtown Long Beach areas. This is going to this should be a major vital pedestrian intersection. Putting a seven story building there is going to significantly reduce the visibility for both pedestrians and vehicular traffic and the parking these these right turn only parking strategies. We all know when we leave parking lots in downtown, there might be a sign that says Don't turn right, but most people turn the way that's more convenient for them due to the one way nature of the. Of the. Of most of the streets in downtown. I apologize for boring the city council, so I'll try to try to make it interesting and short here. So the downtown plan was the programmatic air was adopted and in the draft air it stated that further environmental review might be necessary to examine whether there are project specific significant effects which are peculiar to the project or its site. Our position is that this is a peculiar project site being on this intersection right near the new civic center, right across the street from Deukmejian courthouse, as well as the major entryway that Broadway is from the freeway. This creates a situation in which this is a unique or peculiar project site. Also the program E.R. promised that further environmental review would be done and that this planning, the planning commission, as well as this body, continue to approve projects inappropriately using negative declarations or exemptions from seek that are not appropriate. So. Here's some of the. Some of the unique things about this site are the esthetics. I've already spoken about the courthouse being an award winning, glass walled building. That's part of the pride of our Superior Court district here in Long Beach. I've also talked about the traffic, about the ingress egress on Magnolia, and that the Broadway corridor is a vital part of vehicular entry to Long Beach from the 710 Freeway. The population and housing? Yes. The downtown plan calls for high density housing, but every week we read about pedestrian deaths in our city. And you can only imagine that these pedestrian deaths are caused by gridlock and driver frustration. We've all driven down Seventh Street before. We've all driven down Broadway. These are narrow streets. If there's a bus in front of you and there's pedestrian stops, many cars lurch out and these lead to pedestrian deaths. We've all driven down Pine Avenue before, and I've been told by parking staff that they are specifically instructed not to ticket commercial vehicles. So tell me about the intersection of Broadway and Pine. Where you've got an unsafe, an uncontrolled pedestrian crossing and you've got multiple commercial trucks parked in the middle of the street. And it's just one of these days before a child or a pedestrian gets into an accident and gets hit by a car that they can't see around. So these overly dense parking, these these are the reasons that this project deserves an environmental review. The environmental documentation that the city and the developer have chosen to use is an exemption. It's not even an initial study. There's no negative declaration. There's no mitigation. It's just simply an exemption. And the Class 32 exemption that's being used in this case. States that if there's a reasonable possibility that there's a significant effect on the environment due to unusual circumstances, then the categorical exemption cannot apply. So once again, we find that staff and developers work together to back in to these environmental reviews. And when I say back in, I mean I get the result that you want, which is we don't need an air. And then let's figure out how to make every single line of our report match so that there's no environmental review needed. So we've got the unusual circumstances. I'm going to use my last 3 minutes since Mr. Vice Mayor said I can't use it later. Let's talk about guest parking. The downtown specific plan changed the parking ratio for from one per unit plus to a quarter of a space. For guest parking. I don't know if anyone on the council and Mr. Vice Mayor have used any of those combined guests and commercial parking. But they fill up quickly. They fill up fast. And there's nothing there's nothing that keeps long term guests from occupying those spaces that are supposed to be commercial. I don't know if you've ever been to Pet and Pooch, I believe it's called or the Stav bar on the promenade and you try to pull into the alley there. There's only one egress, ingress, egress on a small alley. The name escapes me. Liberty Court, possibly. And. And very often all those guest spaces, those commercial spaces are taken by long term guests or residents of those buildings. So we do not feel that these dual use guest and commercial use spaces are appropriate. If you're going to have commercial on the first floor, then you should have the appropriate number of spaces for commercial as well as for the guest spaces. Those should be unique parking spaces for each of those two groups, not overlapping as they now are being approved very often both commercial as well as. So. So once again, what we're asking for and we will continue to ask for is that when there's a programmatic E.R. that's been passed, that this body and the planning commission insist that the developers follow the California Environmental Act, the reason that environmental reviews there or is to create a period in which citizen citizen input can be made. The problem with using these negative declarations or exemptions is that there's we're only limited to 3 minutes of public input when there's an E.R. The law gives many opportunities for the public to interject. And so by using this inappropriate exemption, you're depriving the residents, the citizens of Long Beach protection under the Environmental Quality Act. Thank you for your time with the applicant. Like the rebuttal. Good evening, Damon. Mama like us from Armbrister, Goldsmith and Dell back on behalf of the applicant. Just like to so. Just a moment. Let's set the clock to 3 minutes and if you need an additional two, well, we can go up to five, so 3 minutes. I'll make it short. I'll try to keep it within the three. Thank you. I'm just a couple of points to address that the appellant has raised and I'm sure staff will address them as well. First off, upon further review of the appellant's appeal, staff determined that we no longer needed to pursue a categorical exemption under sequel, but rather as allowed for under the school guidelines. We were able to do environmental analysis under the programmatic air for the downtown plan. And despite appellants claims, additional environmental analysis was done specific to Sequoia. That went. Through all of the issues. That are raised, all 18 impact issues that are raised under Sequoia to determine whether or not there was something. Unique or peculiar to. This project. And the record contained ample evidence of that, not only including environmental analysis by our Sequoia expert, but also technical experts as well. There's a shade and shadow study, for example, that looked at the courthouse and the near sensitive receptors and determined that there would in fact be no shade shadow impacts. As to traffic. And ingress egress. That was also subject to a very thorough traffic study. And again, no impacts were determined. Nothing unusual, even if we were to be under a categorical exemption, was there. And there's nothing peculiar about this quickly under population and housing, as was already represented by staff, this project is smaller than what is contemplated under the downtown plan and is fully sufficient with it. And finally, even if one were to look at the categorical exemption and determine whether or not there were unusual circumstances, it's not enough to show that it's appellant's opinion. There's something unusual here. Rather, the test is unusual circumstances leading to a reasonable possibility of a significant impact. And as I mentioned, the record contains a full environmental analysis that shows, in fact, there is no reasonable possibility of significant impact. Thank you. Thank you for your time. So that concludes the hearing. So at this point, we're going to open it up to public comment. Is there any public comment on this hearing? Number one. Thank you. Please come forward. State Stage Name. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Vice Mayor. Members of the City Council coaching with the. Downtown Long Beach Alliance. On behalf of our board. I just want to let you know that we do support this item supporting said city staff's. Recommendation. We have submitted a letter into the public record and this is consistent with PD 30, as mentioned by staff and certainly in alignment. With our strategic plan. So we look forward to your support and your consideration for this project. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Laurie Angell 458 He's quite straight. I think what's missing here probably is a fair evaluation of a plan as it's maybe morphed or changed over time, and to give the individuals that may have changed over time because the planning process can take decades. And so you have individuals that find themselves all of a sudden in a development that they had no input on. And they're astounded by the magnitude of the of the development that's going to occur. And they're not given any opportunity to weigh in. So in terms of fairness for the individuals that actually live there, it really isn't a very considerate process. And I think it's important that people that have moved into neighborhoods have an opportunity to weigh in on projects that are going to impact them, possibly for the rest of their lives. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Very good. On the very face of it. Trying to avoid an environmental impact report, lengthy as they may be. Strange the olfactory senses giving. If you have if you have nothing to hide, let that forward. Let that go forward. Period. The only reason you'd want to curtail it is because you have something you want to hide. And that does not speak well for anybody that would support that. Their brain is not on fire here. Another evening of notifying the public that this is going to happen. If you want this in your neighborhood, let us hear what you have to say. And I know a lot of people that understand this, the sequels far better than I do. It would probably be shocked at what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. You got it, Mayor. Okay. Any further comment saying on the public comment is close. We'll take it back behind the rail. Councilmember Pearce. Yes. I want to thank staff again for their time on this. I want to thank the developer for not just putting in a proposal for development that met the standards, but you went above and beyond with parking, with environmental concerns. You guys have been a partner that have really tried to step it up and say, this is what a top notch housing development can look like in our city. And so I appreciate that as somebody who was involved in the downtown plan, as an outside community member, I had my own concerns and my own opinions at the time and understanding what the downtown plan goal is. This development meets that goal, and we've had a process at the Planning Commission for people to come and be engaged, and we have a process tonight. And so the fact that we have a few people tonight, you know, it tells me that this is something that community members except I only have one question for our city attorney's staff. I. What is your take on this appeal today? Are we in line with the law? Councilwoman Pierce. Yes. Fantastic. I urge my colleagues to support my supporting of this development. Thank you. Thank you. With what counsel in place like to speak to this. One question for our development services staff, you've had a chance to hear the Opposition to your recommendation. Is there anything that you heard in the course of that presentation that changes your opinion regarding the recommendation on this particular item? No Councilmember Price based on the factual record and the entirety of the analysis that was completed, including the environmental analysis, we're very comfortable with the recommendation and nothing we heard tonight would change that. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I'll just add, you know, there's a number of developments across this city. But, you know, Tyson, your teams have been very forth coming and educating the city council, being very public about it. So I'm really excited about this project. And it was interesting to hear the discussion tonight. Allow me to better understand the process and what the intent of the downtown plan was and to see it realized. So thank you so much, Mayor Garcia. Okay. Just to close, I just want to, of course, congratulate the team that put this project together. This is a will be a huge part of filling in the downtown with quality projects, residential projects. I think the architecture and the look of the project is a quality development is going to be, I think, a great complement to the other projects that are happening in and around the courthouse, including the Civic Center, of course, which is just going to be catty corner and just right down the street from from this project. So I just I want to just thank you guys for investing in this project, but also the other projects that you guys are partnering with across across the community. So I'm very I'm very excited about this this parcel being being developed, and thank you for your interest in it and look forward to a successful project ahead. Thank you, Cam Tyson, the whole team. Members, please go and cast your vote. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. And we're going to go on to the next hearing.

Grants a $1.7 million loan to St. Charles Town Company for costs related to the relocation of residents of the Shady Nook and Belmont Mobile Home Parks in Council District 3.

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Perfect. Councilwoman Ortega, could you please order 376 published? Absolutely. I move that council bill 376 be ordered publish. Date has been moved and second it comments. Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. This particular ordinance is not one that I object to in substance. I really do believe that money needs to be made available for relocation of individuals. I think it's a good project. I am having a problem with a developer. I've had it before. The developer has come to us for other things. I always give a person a chance, but by the time a Second Amendment comes along, that's to the benefit of the developer. And then a Third Amendment comes along and it's to the benefit of the developer. I just tend to not lend money to that developer anymore, so I am not going to vote for it for that purpose. Thank you, Councilwoman Fox. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. Just to follow up on those comments, you know, this is a very, very critical loan. As you know, we've been working to make sure that the folks who are on a proper and couple of properties that have fallen way before, way below the standard of living, have been on, you know, kind of teetering on on condemnation and not and we have the opportunity now, this is the only opportunity we have to make sure that the folks who are on these properties are well situated into more affordable housing, quality housing. They're relocated. There was a purposeful intent, full trigger of the of the HUD Relocation Act. We wanted to make sure that folks have access to that. We don't want folks to simply have to leave for the sake of improving the housing and then have nothing for it. You know, we have out of all the folks we have brought to this property issues for us, the issue of this property, even when it when it had its former owners, nobody came to the table except Saint Charles Town Company, our Saint Charles holding company for this particular purpose. They're at the table. They've been at the table. They've been working with community, have working with attendants to make sure that there's not only quality, decent, sanitary, affordable housing on this site that's modern, but also that the folks have benefits and relocation benefits. Every thing is taking care of in order to do that. And I can go on and on on. What an amazing project this is. It would not happen without the developer that you mentioned here and the community and the city. So, you know, we are one step closer. This bill gets us there. And I I'm going to end with that. I hope my colleagues support me on this one. I'm voting yes on it. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Any comments? 376 Councilman David. Thank you, mister. Madam President. Mostly I'm just stalling since we seem to be missing a bunch of our colleagues. But I think we're good. I think we're good. Okay. Let's go. That concludes my comments. Good. Thank you, Councilman Nevett and the comments. 376 CNN Madam Secretary, roll call. Fats. No carnage. Layman Lopez, Monteiro, Nevitt. Hi, Ortega. Hi, Rob Brooks. Hi, Brown. Hi. Mr. President. All right. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. Announce the results. Ten eyes. One. Ten eyes. One day. 376 have been ordered published. All right. A little bit faster. Next one up 377. Councilman Lopez, what would you like for us to do with this? I wanted to. Well, Mr. President, I want to make some amendment necessary amendments to this bill. Got it. All right, well, let's first put on. Let's publish it. Councilman Ortega, will you please put 377 to be ordered published?

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.110 relating to COVID-19 paid supplemental sick leave; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-20-0017). (Citywide)

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Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending. The Long Beach Minimum Code relating to COVID 19 paid supplements or sick leave, declaring the urgency thereof to make the ordinance effective immediately. Write the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading City Wide. Hey, I have a motion by Councilmember Richardson. Can I get a second? Second? Goodbye. Councilman's in Dallas. I'm sorry, Richardson. Thank you. I want to start just with a brief, brief walkthrough from the apartment. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council. Aaron Wizner, McKinley from the city attorney's office will present the ordinance before you tonight. The the issue here is, again, as the other two were, is presented to you both as an urgency ordinance and as a regular ordinance for the council's consideration. Aaron. Good evening, mayor and council members before you, is the COVID 19 paid supplemental sick leave ordinance? The ordinance at the direction of council is prepared to serve as a gap filler to the Federal Act that was enacted on April 1st, the Corona Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The ordinance works as a gap filler by extending the 80 hours of sick leave provided in the Federal Act to full time employees that have businesses or workers here in Long Beach and have 500 employees or more nationally. The act also, per the request of Council, has a proportional sick leave provision for part time employees. The Act also includes an exemption for collective bargaining agreements and a 90 day report back and otherwise. The language of the ordinance. Tracks that of the Federal Act for which we are grappling. I'm happy to take any questions the Council may have. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you. I think the presentation really aligns with city council. Was it an hour long deliberation here? We wanted to fill the gap and cover companies that were 500 employees and both nationally and this ordinance does that. We want to clarify in this that a number of our companies, 500 above already offer a certain program that was lifted up in the conversation. And I think it needs to be clarified here that if a company already provides a minimum of 160 hours of paid sick leave, and that employer is exempt from this process, and I want to make sure that's reflected in my motion. So I'm going to make a motion here, a move to adopt the recommended emergency ordinance. In addition and in addition, clarifying that if an employee has a paid leave or paid leave off the policy that provides a minimum of 160 hours of paid leave annually, the employer is exempt from any obligation provide supplemental leave pursuant to the order of that employee that received a more generous paid leave. And that's my motion. Mayor and mayor, members of the council it's Charlie Parker and again that that we can certainly add that and that is I believe in LA's ordinance currently but it will require this to come back for a new first reading. Thank you. Councilmember Zendaya's. Thank you very much to staff and to all the councilmembers for being open to such an ordinance like this. This is a very crucial time for, you know, for for us. And so, you know, thank you for thinking of all those who who might be sick or might be affected by so much. So thank you again for considering this ordinance and for all of the work that's been put into it. Thank you. And Councilwoman Pryce. Councilwoman Price. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Oh, hey. Can someone explain again the covered employers? I know we talked about franchisee. Okay, Charlie or Gary, can you please reiterate what the city's under your understanding as a franchisee and whether this one applies them to the city of Long Beach? Councilmember prices. Aaron Wiener McKinley and I'll try to respond to Aaron. No, no, not a problem. I'll respond to the inquiry. So the intention, I think from the last meeting where we were giving direction on this item was to to gap fill the. The Federal Act doesn't talk about the application of the act in terms of franchisees or non franchisees. There's an evaluation that must be made based on the intertwined nature of operations. On whether they will identify themselves within the as having more or less than 500 employees. And I think part of the desire of this ordinance is to get fill. So if there is a selection based on how you understand your operations, that you do not fall within the five, you're not 500 or less employees and would not be subject to the Federal Act. Then you would be captured by the City of Long Beach's ordinance because you've already made that election that you do not fall within the Federal Act. Okay. Got it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I think I have a. Oh, yeah. On page eight. Line 16. I'd like to make a friendly to change the language instead of the words can work from home. My recommendation would be to change it to you have the option to work from home. I think it makes it a little bit cleaner and it provides the employee an option. Councilmember. As long as the city attorney says it doesn't matter, it seems minor shouldn't trigger another first reading. Is that right, Mr. City? Time the option would be at the discretion of employer. And the point of this portion of the of the ordinance is to make clear that the sick leave obligations only apply when an employee is unable to work from home, whether that's the contours of their job duties or their wellness. Requirements and the. Like, they were saying, I see what you're saying. Okay. So they they literally it's not that they're given the option to work from home. They're literally they can work from home. That's not healthy enough to do so. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Never mind that. Never mind, then. Thank you. Okay. So we have a motion in a second on the floor. Uh, let me go with that. It's been amended by Councilman Richardson. Councilmember Pierce. I'm good. I fully support the motion of this. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilwoman Mongo. Hi. Hey, can you hear me? Hello? Yes. Oh, okay. I just wanted to verify that there's a clause that allows for employers who are already. Offsetting that provision that that that's included in the ordinance. Councilmember Mongo, page nine on line 11, it's section 8.110.080 includes an employer offset section and that allows for employers who have provided sick leave hours to have an hour, four hour offset for every hour of sick leave provided for a COVID related reason. Beginning on the beginning of the pandemic, which was March 4th, 2020. And going forward. Perfect. I appreciate that. That was really important. Have a great day. Thank you. And now we'll do a roll call vote. District one. District two. I. District three. All. By District four, by district five. Hi. District six. All right. District seven. I District eight. The vote in your district nine. I. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you for that. Now we're going to go back to the other items on the agenda next to item 11.

Recommendation to declare ordinance granting to Southern California Gas Company, a corporation, the right, privilege and franchise upon terms and conditions herein set forth to lay and use pipes and appurtenances for transmitting and distributing gas for the purposes as specified hereinafter under, along, across or upon certain public streets, ways, alleys and places, as the same now or may hereafter exist, within the City of Long Beach, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Okay. Thank you very much. We do have a hearing tonight, so I'm going to turn this over first to staff so we can begin the hearing process. Madam Clerk. You want to read the hearing. Report from Energy Resources recommendation or receive supporting documentation into the record and conclude the public hearing regarding the natural gas franchise with SoCal Gas. Declare an ordinance granting a limited natural gas franchise to SoCal Gas to transmit and distribute natural gas within the city red for the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. There's no oath required. Mr. MODICA. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council, we will have a staff report by Bob Dow, our director of Energy Resources. Not even one of my own council members. In June of 1993. The City of Long Beach entered into a 25 year franchise agreement with a Southern California gas company or SoCal Gas, to allow natural gas pipelines owned and operated by SoCal Gas, which run through the city of Long Beach to provide natural gas delivery services to certain residential and commercial customers within the city of Long Beach. That agreement expired on June 7th, 2018. For the past several months, Long Beach Energy Resources staff have been in negotiations with SoCal Gas to enter into a new franchise agreement, and a tentative agreement has been reached. Under this new agreement, the City of Long Beach will continue to receive fees based on the gross annual receipts and imputed . Value of Nonproprietary Gas. Delivered to SoCal Gas customers residing and operating within the city of Long Beach. The anticipated revenue generated from the franchise agreement is approximately 2.6 million annually. Staff hereby recommends council to adopt the first reading of the ordinance granting the renewed natural gas franchise. Staff will return before Council on October 9th, 2018 to request adoption of the second ordinance. Reading. During the time. Period between the first and second readings, SoCal Gas has agreed to seek approval from the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPC, for the collection of an additional 1% surcharge to the current CPC approved municipal surcharge. This additional surcharge has. Routinely. Been granted by the CPC and other municipal jurisdictions where SoCal Gas and other utilities maintain franchise operations and provides for future revenues to remain in line with those of the expiring franchise agreement. This concludes my report and I'm happy to answer any questions. So, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, that recommendation is slightly different than what you have in front of you. So we are recommending that instead of laying it over to the next regular meeting, you lay it over until October 9th to give us that ability to go and speak to the PUC. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion and a second public comments on the hearing, seeing no public comments on the hearing. Well, move over to Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilman Austin. Okay. Now, then, we're going to close this hearing and please cast your votes. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Motion is carried. Next up is we are doing we've had a couple. We've had a couple of requests to move some items up. So let me start with item 25.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for Geneva Court and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Rezones property at Geneva Court and Martin Luther King Boulevard from R-MU-20 (Former Code: residential, mixed use) with waivers to M-MX-5 (master planned, commercial mixed use, 5 stories) in Council District 8. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 8-3-16.

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Okay, I'm on the second slide now. I think you've got numbers now, don't you. On your slides. No, no. Okay. I'm sorry. Just like this. Like less. Okay, great. So this is in Council District eight in the Stapleton neighborhood. I'm moving on to the next slide in the Stapleton statistical neighborhood, as I just said. The location slide shows you that it is in Southeast Stapleton at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard and Havana Street across from Bluff Lake. You can't see Black Lake in this, but southwest of the Denver City jail. So moving on to the request, it is about 0.83 acres or 36,000 square feet. The property itself is vacant. The applicant is requesting the rezoning to redevelop the property into a financial services dental office and hairdresser land use. So the again request is to rezone from r emu 20 with waivers to master planned context, mixed use five stories. So moving on to the current waivers, they relinquish the right to some civic land uses, including gallery, museum, boarding school, university or college. Some commercial land uses including animal sales, banking and financial services, medical or dental office and clinic, and the right to construct offices over 2500 square feet or aggregated over 5000 square feet of office space. So moving on to the context, again, the existing zoning is arm you toe with waivers. There is a Stapleton general development plan in this for the South Area adopted in 2001. The land use is vacant. This property itself is surrounded by residential, small scale residential and some commercial under development now. So looking at the context map zoning, you see that there's marks five to the north, there's mmx5, which is the mixed use zone district where they're applying for to the east and to the south and then to the west. The RMU, Tony, with waivers. Moving on to land use. The surrounding land uses are a mix of low density multi-unit and single family. And the blue on the map that you see on this slide is a daycare center. I would point out that the to the south, the triangular parcel, there are two restaurants underdeveloped there. And just south of our subject site is the site where the new King Soopers is being developed. They're being built just. So looking at building foreman scale, this gives you an idea of the existing buildings in the area. The day care center is the top photo. The the grassy field is the vacant property we're talking about. The lower right photo is some townhomes and single family homes directly across Geneva court from our site. And then all the steel girders in the bottom picture are the King Soopers under under construction. So moving on to process, an informational notice of a complete application went out to City Council and all of the affected renos on March 24th. Our planning board held a hearing June 1st on this and was duly noted, duly noticed electronically with a sign posted on the property and planning board voted 9 to 1 to recommend approval. And then we were on to the Land Use Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on August 3rd. They passed this item on to the Council for this public hearing. These are the RINO's that were notified and to date we have no public comment. So review criteria, you're very familiar with consistency with adopted plans, uniformity of district regulations, furthering the excuse me, public health, safety and welfare, justifying circumstances and consistency with neighborhood context and zone district purpose and intent. So the plans that apply to this property plan 2000 Blueprint Denver, the Stapleton Development Plan and the Stapleton redevelopment of the General Development Plan for the South Area adopted in 2001. So what I wanted to get into first was the sort of evolution of the location of this town center site. On the bottom left is the of the town center. Location side is the original location in the Stapleton Development Plan in 1995, which was going to be at 26th Avenue and Havana Street. Then by the time we did the GDP in 2001, the town center had moved slightly north and Martin Luther King, coming in sort of from the west in that middle picture, was going to divide and the town center was going to be in the center of that divided Martin Luther King. That was a little north of 26th Avenue. Then by the time we did, too, in 2002, when Blueprint Denver mapped the area, the town center had moved north to Martin Luther King and Havana Street, and Martin Luther King had not dipped south to connect to 26th Avenue like that center picture had envisioned. So there has been kind of an evolution of the location of the town center. I should note, though, that when we approved the zoning in 1995 for most of South Stapleton, the GDP very deliberately said the zoning should rule, and that's what we have adhered to since then. The GDP has not been amended. So I can't plan 2000. We have several strategies that we think this application conforms with telling us to promote the development of sustainable communities and centers of activities where shopping jobs, recreation schools are accessible to encourage quality infill development that offers opportunities for different densities and amenities to encourage development of focal points in communities where none exist, and to support development of neighborhood serving business centers. So I'm on to Blueprint Denver. Blueprint Denver land use concept is single family residential, and it's an area of change. The single family residential is described as primarily residential, with some complementary land uses such as parks and schools and some employment base that is definitely smaller than the housing base. Future ST Classification and Blueprint Denver. Martin Luther King is a mixed use arterial where we want to provide a high degree of mobility and. These streets are located in our higher intensity mixed use areas. 31st Avenue and Geneva are both under designated local streets. So I'm on to Stapleton Development Plan. This site is in District three in the Stapleton Development Plan. It is a to be an urban neighborhood, moderate density, significant natural amenities, as all of the Stapleton neighborhoods have, and strong ties to original Aurora as this is directly adjacent to Aurora on the east. So those key elements from that district, from the Stapleton Development Plan, that it's predominantly residential, that it has that district center, town center, that all Stapleton town centers have transportation elements and have either an elementary school or a neighborhood center of some kind . That's the one of the unique elements of this town center is that they they wanted us to develop urban design guidelines for the correctional facility on Smith Road as it's directly adjacent to the north of this area. So moving on to the GDP, the GDP and the mixed use zoning in the chapter, former Chapter 59 required general development plans. I'm sorry, the mixed use zoning required general development plans. So the GDP was based in the Stapleton Development Plan. There were 2155 acres in that general development plan, and it was generally shaped as most of Stapleton is, by the open space, walkable neighborhoods, mixed use town centers and neighborhood centers, regional retail and all different variety of land uses from residential all the way to industrial. And as I said before, specifically, the land use concept laid out in the general development plan, talked about the land uses may change and evolve over time, but would remain consistent with the mixed use zoning. So again, the mixed use zoning, the RSU 20 was put in place. It was primarily residential, but it was along some heavily traveled streets. And the mixed use concept of combining residential and neighborhood serving retail was present in the GDP. So I'm moving on to the land use slide from the general development plan and you see the red circle on the map there. It's a difficult map to read, but it was called residential on the general development plan. And then on the zoning map from the general development plan, we see that the site itself is the arm you tow with waivers zoning. And then the Street Network. I just wanted to point out again that the Street Network for as far as Martin Luther King Boulevard is did not develop the way the general development plan envisioned it. It did not split into two one ways, and it did not go just to the south and join 26th Avenue. It ended up actually pretty much being aligned east and west. So the master plan context under review criteria consistency with neighborhood context and zone district purpose and intent master plan context is intended for large redeveloping areas that are redeveloping in phases over time. And as I said before, the range of land use is ranged from single unit multi-unit, mixed use, large town centers, small town centers, transit oriented development, commercial, all the way to industrial land uses as we are developing a whole new community and the master plan mixed use zoning is intended to provide that flexibility for these master plan communities and to respond to market opportunities over time. And the zoning regulations were written to support these phased developments, allowing a variety of developments so it does the master plan mixed use five story does promote new town centers with mixed use neighborhoods that are five stories in height. So with that, staff believes that all of the criteria are met, that this proposal is consistent with the adopted plans, that it furthers the uniformity of district regulations by moving into a standard zone district from a custom zone district that, in adopting in implementing our plans, were furthering the public health, safety and welfare, that the justifying circumstance of changed conditions has been met, and that this project is consistent with the neighborhood context and zone district purpose and intent. With that, staff recommends approval. Thank you. Miss Lucero, we have one speaker tonight. I'm going to ask that person to make their way forward. Tyler Carlson. You will have 3 minutes. Please introduce yourself. Telecast. I'm a principal at Evergreen Development, so I'm the applicants and don't have a formal presentation. Just want to thank Theresa and staff for her help working through the zoning process. She's been great. And I want to thank the neighbors who are here. We've been working collaboratively with them over the last several months to make sure that the project we're doing here, which is basically a second phase of this bridge town center, is beneficial to them and the rest of the surrounding neighborhood. The impetus behind this request is really to remove the Byzantine waivers that are on it, which preclude financial services and a dental office. And we have leases with both of those use categories and we are leasing to them specifically to keep less intense uses in this buildings or service oriented uses versus the heavy restaurant mix we have in the town center immediately south. So we think this is a win win. It also cleans up the zoning for the overall parcel. And I want to thank everyone for their time and here to answer any questions. Great. Thank you. I also live in Stapleton and I work in the city in county of Denver, too. Sorry. Great. Thank you. All right. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions for members of council? Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. Three To start with you, the planning board. Nine The one who's the one and why? That was Don Elliott, and he had an issue with the location of the town center over time. He didn't. Believe that. Because Blueprint Denver didn't have a town center on the north side of Martin Luther King Boulevard. He didn't believe that this proposal conformed with Blueprint Denver. Okay. Fair enough. And could you go back to the slide where you showed the different zone codes? Yes, let me get to that. And my question is that parcel north of Martin Luther King, it has to zone codes, it has to the east, the x five, which is what the applicant is trying to go to, into the west. It has the RMU. And my question is why that is the case. You would think that that should be either or. And I'm curious why it's split. That's it. That's it? Yeah. Why? There's Army 20 with waivers. Parcel to the north. That's two different zone codes. So they are amused on the west. And then the next five was the applicants trying to go to is to the east. And I don't know if you know why that that is the case. Why in 2010 maybe we didn't write down the Army 20 because it had waivers. Okay. And the one to the north, it doesn't have waivers because it had a site plan that already governed it. So we didn't want to. We also did not reason. Site plan or PBGC, as we call them, plan building groups, because we didn't want to have to take back our approval of a site plan that was already approved and use. And you said this, but I want to make sure that this is understood. The current zoning right now, the RMU does allow commercial uses. As it's mixed. Use and which commercial uses could and actually actually, Theresa Tyler, I can call you up because I'm sure you've studied this a lot more, Tyler, if you want to come up. Thank you, Theresa. What can the. You don't even have to come here right now. You could have currently bought the property and done what to it. Currently. Yeah. The both categories allow for commercial retail, both allow for drive thru uses, both allow for actually high density residential. The only difference between the two categories is the waivers which limit you preclude you from doing financial services, medical, dental, that list that Theresa provided . I don't know why in the world it is so weird, but anyways, it is what it is and we're trying to remove it. But yeah, you could. The exact same building we're trying to build, you could do the only difference, as I mentioned the neighbors earlier this evening is if this was to not pass the waiver stuck , that I have to backfill my leases with the dentist office in the bank with more restaurants because that's the only the other viable use category and we both don't want to do that. But that's more intense uses by their homes. Correct. And that's why I, I think sometimes when people see are they think residential and I appreciate you bring up that point entirely. One more for you. And since none of them have signed up to speak against, I am assuming and I we've met with them that they are comfortable moving forward. But if you wanted to Tyler one, I appreciate the conversations you've had talking with the neighbors and their concerns and I'll speak a little bit to that during the comment, if you just wanted to talk about how those conversations have gone forward, they've gone great. I mean, it's it's a great group of neighbors who have normal concerns that anyone would have I would have if this was happening across the street from my house. They haven't been relating to the rezoning. It's really related to access. And we've tried to work through that with traffic staff to varying degrees of success, you know, which is a challenge for all of us, because I think we'd all like maybe a different access program than engineering's allowing to occur. But again, that doesn't concern the rezoning. But we continue to you know, we're doing some additional buffers. We're asking to be planting some trees on their side of the street to help mitigate some of the impact. We did something similar when we did the Sprouts on Colfax, where we had similar commercial adjacencies right next to neighborhoods. So we're trying to be good neighbors. And I live not too far away so they know where to find me. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Herndon, Councilman Espinosa, this might be a question for either Teresa or the city attorney. And this question really wouldn't have mattered at the time that it came to plan, Candy. But now that we've approved the linkage fee, if this plan set were to go for permitting after January 1st, is this still covered by the Stapleton housing plan or does this now fall under under the linkage fee? And the reason why I'm asking is one of those waivers allows a substantial, considerable more amount of redevelopment on this means of development on this site than the 2500 or 5000 square foot limitation. You know, this is a nearly 40,000 square foot site, TMX five. That's this can be a far more substantial project in what was originally codified. I'll defer to the city attorney. Mr. President? David Broadwell, Assistant City Attorney. The rezoning doesn't affect the fact that the language in the new linkage fee ordinance exempts out the entire Stapleton geographic area by virtue of the fact that it remains under the original development agreement adopted in the in the early 2000. So this rezoning doesn't affect the fact that the applicability of the linkage fee at all, that the the property remains exempt until the development agreement goes away. So why wouldn't we require somewhere in the process that that when we're granting so right now that the entire property parcel that's being redeveloped I mean re zoned has a 5000 square foot commercial limitation. Now obviously under residential, it could be substantially higher than that. But if it were to get developed commercially, every square foot of development in excess of 5000 square feet is in fact now not part of that redevelopment or. If it's an office, is it 5000 square feet? So any commercial use. Commercial uses don't have that. But now we're exempting that for the other waived uses that were so interesting. Yeah. Is that all your questions? Yeah. Okay. All right. Any other questions for members of council? A public hearing for council bill 430 is closed. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate the questions and I appreciate the community from coming out. And this show that I have so few people coming out demonstrates Tyler's ability to work with the neighbors. I am so familiar with this area. If the U.S. went down a little further south, you would have seen my house, my first house at 26 in Fermanagh and 28 when I put down an offer on that. And I remember those signs that talked about the East Ridge Town Center coming and it's finally here and it's really exciting. Those pictures need to be really updated, particularly at the town center because it's coming. And I appreciate I'm excited to see the full parcel north of Martin Luther King as well. And I appreciate Tyler and Evergreen recognizing the community in the sense because as he said, he could have done more active uses where you could have had restaurants, where you could have things going on and like 9:00 at 10:00 at night, right across the street from the neighbors. But I think he recognized there's a way to do commercial as well as take the neighbors into consideration. I think that's a testament to you, Tyler, as well as you being a resident and being very familiar with the community. I appreciate neighbors coming through because we have spoken in length about their concerns, not particularly the zoning, but particularly on egress and access. And we've we're continuing to have those conversations. And I, I appreciate you being here. We're going to continue those conversations to make sure we can ensure that you can have your your concerns warranted, as well as making sure that the parcel that's going to be developed can be successful as well, too. So this is something that I, I certainly support. I hope my colleagues will. I, I just find those earlier photos very interesting. I couldn't imagine Martin Luther King dipping down to 26th Avenue now the way that is in those original when you think about how it is now. But this is something I certainly do support and I would encourage my colleagues to do so as well. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah, thank you, Councilman Herndon. I will say one thing about this, not particularly this development, but I expect Tyler to do well with the neighbors because and in 2012, with the former sunflower site and you mentioned it, but now the sprouts that's on Colfax in a food desert, that was one of the most complex issues in working with neighbors. And still to this day, the folks over there are really excited about that grocery store. So I hope this works out for the Stapleton neighborhood as well. We this has been moved in second. Madam Secretary, roll call. Herndon. I Cashman. Kinney. Lopez knew Ortega. My black eye. Claire. Espinosa. Flynn I. Gilmore, I. Herndon, I guess again, I sorry, Mr. President. I please close the voting and thus the results. One moment. Ten eyes. One day. Ten eyes. One constable for 30 has passed. Congratulations. Lopez did wear you and I vote yes. Okay. Well, clean it to a 12. No, no, no, no. 11 eyes. One. There should be 12 eyes when they. 11 eyes were missing one specimen. It passed, though we do know that. So Council Bill 430 has passed. Congratulations. There is no pre adjournment announcements except that we forgot a hat again for Councilman Clark. Come on. Actually, let's go. He should be wearing a cowboy hat because they lost the border war to the lamb. Can't see it. No other business before this body. We stand adjourned a.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 2000 Blake Street in Five Points. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from PUD 329 and B-8 with waivers, UO-1, UO-2 to C-MX-8 (planned development to mixed-use, 8-stories), located at 2000 Blake Street in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-7-21.

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All speakers should begin their remarks by telling the council their names and cities of residence and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. If you have signed up to answer questions, only state your name and note that you are available for questions of council. Speakers will have 3 minutes. There is no yield enough time. If translation is needed, you will be given an additional 3 minutes for your comments to be interpreted. We will alternate between in-person and virtual for efficiency by calling in-person participants and then alternating to virtual participants. Speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole, and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilmember Clark, will you please put Council Bill 21, Dash 1455 on the floor for final passage? As Council President, I move that Council Bill 21 dash 1455 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded the required public hearing for Council Bill 21 Dash 1455 is open. May we please have the staff report? Good evening. My name is Anthony Barnes. I'm with CPD before you. Today, we're looking at a map amendment for 2000 Lake Street. It's currently zoned debate and the request for CMCs eight. So the subject properties are located in Council District nine in any suitable district and it's located in the Five Points neighborhood. Subject property is located on the eastern corner of 20th Street and Blake Street and it consists of two parcels. There are approximately a third of an acre. The request is for a urban center mixed use up to eight stories that would allow for a variety of residential, civic and commercial uses on different building farms from townhome, general shop front drive thru services and drive thru restaurants. Now the existing zoning is a holdover from former Chapter 59. The northern part northernmost parcel is under a par 329, which was adopted in 1993 and allows for mixed use commercial and residential development with active uses at street level as well as an electrical substation. The rezoning would only affect one of many parcels under this beauty. The southernmost part of the parcel is on B eight with waivers with the use overlay one and two. The B8 is intended for activity centers that allow for high intensity commercial and residential uses. The use overlay one district allows for adult uses. However, the waiver precludes them, so it is not allowed. The use overlay to district allows for billboard uses and the applicant does not propose to retain either. Overlay the surrounding zone districts to the north is i-8, which is a light industrial to billboard. There are several TMX eight with and without the billboard use overlay. And then to the south you can see the downtown core and lower downtown districts with the adult use overlay. Now in the immediate vicinity. The area's land use is a mix of commercial office, multi-unit, residential and vacant land in course field shown in the top photo is is the north of this is it the north of the site? In this considered entertainment cultural use the surface parking lot on the subject property is shown in the middle and the existing commercial development south of the site is shown on the bottom of the photo there. Here at the top photo shows the adjacent surface parking lot, which is currently undergoing a rezoning process to allow for Iraqis Plaza, which would host game day events as well as non-game day events. And the photo at the bottom shows a street view along Blake looking southwest. Um, so this has gone before the planning board back in November 17th and it was approved, approved unanimously. Uh, concurrent with this rezoning, the applicant has worked with the Department of Housing Stability as they intend to provide 12.5% of residential units at 80% ami with a voluntary housing agreement, affordable housing agreement, and as described in the applicant's revised narrative that they submitted, they conclude they conducted extensive outreach to City Council members Arnaud's and multiple neighbors. And to date, staff has received three letters of support from the local district, the Lower Downtown Neighborhood Association and the Ballpark Collective, stating that the proposed mixed use development replacing an existing parking lot would improve the streetscape. Right before the proposed City Council meeting back in January of 18, there was two letters of concerns that came from the Laurel district as well as Rockies, and those concerns were along design standards and engagement. And so since then, the applicant has done extensive outreach to the District and Rocky, and they have come into a memorandum of understanding agreement. And in that agreement, a lot of district and the Rockies provide their support. Now moving forward to the, um, the Denver zoning review criteria. Um, it must be found that the request map amendment is consistent with the five review criteria. And as a reminder, staff only evaluates the proposed zone districts and not a specific development. So when we're looking at the first criterion to see with adaptive plans, we're looking at four plans, which is Comprehensive Plan 2040, Blueprint, Denver 2019, the Northeast Downtown Neighborhood Plan of 2011 and Downtown Area Plan of 2007. So as stated in the staff report, the rezoning is consistent with several goals found in the comprehensive plan, particularly as they relate to increasing housing units close to transit and creating mixed use neighborhoods such as Equitable, Affordable and Inclusive Growth Strategy to increase development of housing units close to transit. It makes these developments connected, safe and accessible places. Strategy B Promote transit oriented development and encourage high density development, including affordable housing, near transit and support ridership and environmental resilient. Go strategy b encourage mixed use communities where residents can live, work and play in their own neighborhoods. Now jumping into blueprint timber under the future neighborhood context. The proposed rezoning is consistent with the downtown neighborhood context defined in Blueprint Denver. This context includes the most intense mix it uses in the city with large scale buildings that frame the street in the greatest and the greatest access to transit. The zone districts in the zoning codes downtown neighborhood context have generally been applied to location specific areas such as the theater district in Arapahoe Square, with urban center zone districts, including the eight, are prevalent in other areas of downtown context, including those north of 20th Street and west of Lawrence Street. And the urban center districts are appropriate in the neighborhood context. Additionally, Blueprint Denver allows the boundaries of context to be interpreted with limited flexibility. If the if the request furthers the goals of Blueprint Denver and is consistent with the overall intent of the neighborhood context map. So since the proposed district allows for a mix of uses and building terms that contribute to street activation and the proposed rezoning to CMC is appropriate and consistent with this plan. Now looking at the future place type, it's classified as high residential, which typically has the highest intensity of residential uses and taller mixed use buildings are common . Both like in 20th Street are downtown arterials, which are surrounded by intense pedestrian oriented land uses. The IMX is consistent with the future place and street types as it allows for a mix of uses in an eight storey building with with siting and design requirements that will help create an engaging streetscape. Now within the growth of your strategy, do you think the city city generate directs to key centers, corridors in high density residential areas that align with transportation options? In this case, the future growth of the area is categorized as high and medium high, medium residential areas in the downtown and urban core context, which anticipates 5% of jobs in 15% of new houses within 2048, will help achieve this goal. Furthermore, the proposed rezoning helps implement blueprint members policy relating to converting former former Chapter 59 zoning to a Denver zoning code. Now when we're looking at the northeast downtown neighborhood plan, the subject properties are classified as a mixed zoning with a maximum height of eight stories , which is consistent with this plan's recommendation. Um, uh. And then the plan further redefines height at this location by identifying it as part of the coarse field context area, where it is recommended that the building heights not be allowed to exceed the height of sports fields and to prevent use into the ballpark. So as shown in this graphic provided by the applicant, a six foot tall person standing at the top of a 110 foot tall building across Lake Street would not be able to see Intercourse Field. So just wanted to show that illustration. Now when we're looking at the downtown area plan the plan for the redefines height guidance at this location by of. The downtown planner recommend that the ballpark sub a provide distinct ground floor retail and other active uses along the street edge and pedestrian improvements near 21st. So the proposed TMX eight zone district enables street level active uses in a vibrant pedestrian realm and is consistent with these plans recommendations. The rezoning is consistent with review criteria two, three and five as specified in the staff report. In regards to Theater four, there are two applicable justifying circumstances, including the fact that the city has adopted several plans since the subject property has was zoned under former Chapter 59 and it retained former Chapter 59 zoning after the city adopted the current Demery Zoning Code of 2010. Therefore, CPD recommends approval based on all the findings that the review criteria have been met. Staff is available for any questions. You may have the opportunity here. Any questions as well as. Andrew Johnson. The House is here for any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you, edson. We have nine speakers lined up to speak this evening. I'm going to call the first few speakers in chambers and then we'll go to those online virtually. Our first speaker is Gerry M in person in chambers. Jerry M. Okay. We're going to go ahead and move on then. Paul, the Journal in Chambers. And I might have mispronounced your name, so please correct me. Good evening. I'm Paul DiGiorgio in the Summer Capital Partners with the developer for this exciting project. And I want to introduce a couple of our folks here this evening from Miller Capital, Mr. Ron Silver, who's our CEO, and Mr. Mike Harrington, who has spearheaded the project for the last year or so. And it has been a thoughtful process and with which we appreciate and we're respectfully here this evening seeking approval. And with that, I'll turn it over to. You're next in line. Okay. Thank you. Our next speaker in chambers is Tobias Stroh. Good evening. My name is Maestro. I reside in Lakewood, Colorado, an office in Denver, Colorado. I'm with Janus Architecture and Design. We were the architects on this project and working with our client to come up with a solution that is appropriate for this location in our in our hometown, our city here. And we appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and look forward to continuing to work on this project. May make it come to fruition. Very, very good. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and go virtually. Our next speaker is Jesse Perez. As members of council. May I be her? Yes. Yes. My name is just. There's no margin for Black Star action movies for self-defense, positive action come Mafia the Chains, as well as the Unity Party of Colorado, the East Denver Residents Council and Frontline Black Knows and I'll be there next November 2023. I'm against rezoning tonight. From what I've heard from the presentation, 80% Armani that is not affordable. So they said that this affordability clause or or neighborhood agreement, A-minus is not affordable. I don't care how you slice it. It's just not affordable to buy out of this area and. It's just going to feel more than just nice. So if you guys approve, this looks more likely will approve it because it meets all the criteria to see what it plans. Uniformity of district regulations for this public health, safety and welfare. Testifying circumstances and consistency with neighborhood context zone district. Purpose. In that sense, there's nothing I can say is going to change your mind on this. I just want to be cognizant of the unintended consequences that will result from having an eight storey building, right? HORSFIELD That is not affordable. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker joining us virtually via zoom is Richard Farley. Thank you, Madam President. Members of City Council. Good evening. My name is Richard Farley. I'm live at 2500 Walnut Street, Denver, Colorado. I'm speaking on behalf of the Loto District Inc registered neighborhood. Organization as a LoDo District Board member and co-chair of its Urban Design Committee. Regarding this 2000 Blake rezoning. The local district fully. Supports the rezoning of. 2000 Blake Street. Based on extensive negotiations with the developer. Fillmore kept for Fillmore. Capital and Partners, which has resulted in a. Memorandum of understanding between the developer and the local district R.A.. The ammo used satisfies the LoDo district's concerns. We commend the Fillmore Capital for spending the extra time and energy in working with us. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Matt Ben, 16. Good evening, counsel. Thank you, Madam President. I Mat Van Sustain. I'm the executive director of a ballpark collective. The R.A. that is this property is the key corner of this, the area that we represent. I live a few blocks away at 2127 Larimer Street. We have been communicating with Fillmore for a few years now on this project. They communicated early and often. They've been very responsive to feedback. They recently stepped back to to work some things out with the Rockies and LoDo and kept us in the loop. We believe that they're going to be a great neighbor and this is going to be a positive activation that fits in well with the project that's coming that the Rockies have proposed, and it's going to activate a very dead corner. In a very key spot. So we we support the rezoning of that property. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, we're going to transition back in chambers, Ron Silver. Good evening, Madam President. And Chamber. I'm Ron Silva. I'm from San Francisco, California. And I came here to support our project today. And to introduce my team, which has already been introduced. But Mike Harrington here. On my left is really the person for the last four years that has spearheaded this project along with. Janus, our our distinguished architectural firm. And I think although we can't show our pretty pictures. We have really. Designed a very beautiful building for a key location. In downtown Denver that we would like to see go forward. And if you do approve it, we will move it forward as expeditiously as possible. Thank you much for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Joe Veena Amar. Good evening. I'm Jovenel Moise and I reside on 660 Layton Street, Denver, and I work for Johnson Nathan Steel Architects. And I'm here to answer any questions that you have of the architects. We've been working with the clients over the last couple of years and the community. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mike Harrington. Good evening, Madam President. Chamber Thank you for your time this evening. I just want to rehash, I think Edson did a fantastic job, so there's not a lot to cover here, but just wanted to make a few points on our commitment to the community and neighborhood that we are excited to be part of. We currently own and operate three restaurant brewery entertainment concepts just across the street on Market Street, which we renovated and opened late last year. So we really view 2000 Blake as the next step in our further engagement and investment in the community. As mentioned, we did work with host Andrew to draft and execute a voluntary affordable housing agreement to provide five and a half percent of the units at an 80% AMI for all residential units. And and just lastly on our outreach. It's been a long process for us. We, I think, all told, met held 17 R.A. and community neighborhood meetings. We were granted meetings with eight city council offices. We did receive letters of support from the District Ballpark Collective and from the Lower Downtown Neighborhood Association and a vote of support from CDP. And as it's been mentioned, we did take a little extra time to work with the Rockies and the lower district to address some of their concerns. And we're very pleased that we were able to come to an agreement and sign animal you. So thank you for your time. Thank you. That concludes our speakers this evening. Questions for members of Council on Council Bill 21, Dash 1455. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Edson, could you help me out a little bit on the current zoning pdf? 329 I think it was. What? It's very unclear to me in the staff report what entitlements exist under that PD other than an Excel substation. What are the other entitlements and how do they differ from the new zone district request? So under the PD, commercial and residential uses are allowed and they do allow active uses but doesn't have great design standards like the CMC would. And in this instance they are at, I believe, the hours of to, but the maximum they can go up to here is five storeys. That's why the applicant is trying to go up to eight. That would be consistent with the neighborhood plan as well. And so, um, those were some of the uses that would be allowed. Okay. Make sure I understood correctly the FDR under the PD. Wow. That's the floor area ratio of. Floor area. Ratio. Unit development for those playing acronym bingo out there is 2 to 1. Did you say? I am making sure right now 2.5 with the maximum of five stories. Correct. Okay. So that would imply. Okay. I see. And then this would allow up to eight stories. Correct. Thank you. This pod was in 1993. Correct. It's the same year the course field got under construction, if I recall. Correctly. I am not sure. That or slightly before that. Well, that's the year the Rockies came to town in 93. All right. Thank you. That helps put in a little context. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President. Um, despite people the I was probably for the applicant. I am a strong proponent of the 50 to 80 trail. It's a 5.280 pedestrian and cyclist loop around the city center. I think it's a transformative project, and I think that it will significantly improve the public health, safety and welfare of our our city center. Um, I, I'm curious because this is along the route of the 50 to 80 trail. What your thoughts are for this development and its integration with the trail. Yes. We're extremely excited to potentially become another amenity along the trail. We agree it's going to be an exciting asset to the city. This being a prominent corner will obviously require very thoughtful, pedestrian accessible design. We feel there's a real opportunity here with the Lake Street closure of Lake Street on 80 plus days a year to really create a vibrant pedestrian experience and create a landmark corner along the trail. I'm not sure if that answers your question or if there's something more specific for me to get into in terms of design work. We're still in the conceptual, conceptual stage, but this is absolutely top of mind for us due to the real asset. Sure. Well, thank you. I also think it's a huge asset. Um, so. And. Certainly understand why you might you might want a more specific question. The my thought with a 50 to 80 trail is, is just as you said, a place. It is it is an opportunity to connect places like Coors Field or like the art museum or something, Gardens Park, where the kind of movement was centered in the, you know, a few decades ago. And and I see an amnesty capital and so many other locations that are that are along the trail. I want to make sure that as as you say or as I said, public health, safety and welfare is preserved. And in the 81 game days. Outside of playoff games, I can understand that we want to make sure that that cyclists don't plow down pedestrians. But in the other days I could see that. But it would definitely be beneficial to to make sure that the pedestrian and cyclist loop is preserved on the non-game days. And so I guess perhaps you mentioned it's in the conceptual phase. I like what you're saying about having it be another destination along the trail. And I recognize that on game days, that MacGregor Square conversation that we had a few months ago brought that up as well. And on game days, I recognize that we don't want cyclists going, you know, in an unsafe fashion around pedestrians. But in the non-game days, perhaps, have you considered the concept of of allowing cyclists to remain cyclists? And I'll mention one other thing, that the concept of the 50 to 80 trail and I believe this and want this to occur is for tourists speeds along the trail for for cyclists so the spandex riders that that bomb down Cherry Creek path great for them stick to the the jerky bike trail this is meant more as a as a community type type event. So with that context, perhaps you could tell a little bit about the your concepts. Absolutely. I also agree that nobody was setting tires on on Blake Street during this timeframe. But, you know, our initial concept for the for the building is going to consist of two floors of commercial space at ground level, light and airy and open. So I mean, I think the idea of slowing traffic down, allowing cyclists, encouraging pedestrian traffic, I mean, that is that is what we're aiming for. I mean, we want this to be a destination where people don't just say, oh, that's a nice building and continue on, but this is a destination along the trail that we're going to make a stop at. And I think so. I think by design and use on those two ground floors, that's really going to be the draw. And I think that will lend itself to, you know, slowing cyclists and creating a real safe and friendly pedestrian and cyclist environment on the street. So it's absolutely a priority for us. Okay, fair enough. I hope that you continue to to to follow the 50 to 80 trail as it goes through its discussion and implementation. And and if if I can be a resource, please let me know. And I like what your what you're suggesting. Thank you. Council President. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. Mr. Harrington, would you mind introducing yourself for the public record? Mike Harrington Fillmore Capital Partners. Great. Thank you so much. Council pro tem to. Thank you. I think my questions are probably for you and I'm just trying to understand I know that it was language in the neighborhood plan about not being able to see the field from surrounding buildings. Is that a legal requirement or is it a kind of a neighborhood preference based on that relationship with course field? Is there something else behind that? That's a great question. I don't think it's a legal requirement, but it is a recommendation from the plan specifically. In the northeast downtown neighborhood plan. It gives height recommendations, but then it has an awful context area limiting height no higher than the stands. And so it's a recommendation that's that's tied to height. And this is different from the view plane that's down there, right? Correct. And this site does not have a view plane. It is not okay. Mm hmm. But there's a view playing near there. It doesn't. Yes, it doesn't. Okay. All right. I have a stadium in my district, so I'm just trying to make sure I understand what's going on. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Counsel pro tem tours and seeing no other questions from members of council. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 21, Dash 1455. Council Members State Abarca. All right. I don't see anyone else in the queue. And so I will go ahead and finish up the comments. I do believe that this meets all of the rezoning criteria and we'll be supporting it tonight and asked my colleagues to do the same. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 21, Dash 1455. Please sit. Abarca. Clerk. I. Flynn. I. Herndon, i. Hi. Cashman. Kenny Ortega. Excuse me, i. Sandoval, i. Sawyer, i. Torres, I. Black I. Madam President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting and announce the results.

A bill for an ordinance submitting to a vote of the qualified and registered electors of the City and County of Denver at a special municipal election to be held on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, the question of whether the City shall be authorized to issue or incur general obligation debt for the purpose of financing and/or refinancing the cost of repairs and improvements to the National Western Campus Facilities System; providing the form of the ballot question; providing for other details in connection therewith; and ratifying action previously taken. Refers a question to the November 2021 ballot to allow the City to issue general obligation bonds for the purpose of financing and/or refinancing the cost of repairs and improvements to the National Western campus facilities system. Councilmember Black approved filing this item on 8-12-21.

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I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announce the results one day. 11 Eyes. 11 Eyes Council Bill 867 has been ordered published. Councilmember Cashman, we need you to put Council Bill 9 to 4 on the floor for publication, please. As Council President, I move the council bill 21, dash 924, be ordered published. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 924. Black eye. See Bucket. Hell, no, Clark. I. Flynn. I. Herndon, I. Cashman can each. Name. ORTEGA All right. Sandoval No. Sawyer, I. Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce results. Four nays. Eight eyes. Eight I's Council. Bill. 924 has been ordered published. Councilman Cashman, will you please put Council Bill 868 on the floor for publication?

Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP HR17-104 and award a contract to Alliant Insurance Services, Inc., of Newport Beach, CA, for healthcare, employee benefits consulting, and actuarial services, in an annual amount not to exceed $350,000, for a period of five years with the option to renew for three additional one-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to issue a Blanket Purchase Order to Alliant Insurance Services, Inc., of Newport Beach, CA, for healthcare, employee benefits consulting, and actuarial services provided during the procurement process and additional months of transition, in the amount of $140,000. (Citywide)

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You. And work. A report from Human Resources and Financial Management Recommendation door to contract to Alliant Insurance Services for health care, employee benefits, consulting and actuarial services in an amount not to exceed 350,000 citywide. Councilman Price. Thank you. I understand there's been a very favorable update on this item, and I want to thank staff for coming to the table with the interested labor groups and coming up with a resolution that's agreeable to everyone. I think this is a great move forward. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce, a public comment saying now please cast your votes. This motion carries. Item 21, which is the cancelation of the July 3rd meeting. Any public comment on this item saying nine, please cast your votes.

A bill for an ordinance vacating a portion of right-of-way at 2329 Eliot Street, without reservations. (INFRASTRUCTURE & CULTURE) Vacates portions of the alley north, east, and south of the carriage lot with the address 2329 North Eliot Street in Council District 1. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 6-22-15. The Committee approved filing this bill by consent on 5-21-15.

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I'd like to make some comments. Okay, let's see. We have Councilman Ortega and Councilwoman Rob. So as you recall, this bill came up for first reading last week and I had raised some questions about the fact that so this vacation is actually for a carriage lot owned by the city of Denver, and the adjacent property owner would benefit from the vacation. And in the conversations I've had with city staff, that property owner would not have to buy the land. It would just be, I guess, given to that property owner. This abuts federal boulevard where there is no parking. This is in a neighborhood that we're seeing major transformation or transition, if you will. And the issue of parking is a big concern overall for particularly for those residents that live on Federal Boulevard who cannot park on federal. And a number of those residents have historically utilized this carriage lot for parking. But in addition, there is an application for historic designation on the home adjacent to this particular site. The hearing on that will be July the seventh. On that application. This will give us the opportunity to hear what that recommendation is. And then City Council can do whatever they choose to do with this vacation at that time. So that's why I am requesting that we have a postponement on this bill until July the 13th. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Councilwoman Monteiro. I do concur with Councilwoman Ortega and would ask that my colleagues seriously consider that. But I had just a couple more questions for public works. Who commented last time? You know, ordinarily in it, customarily, we vacate alleys and it's it's a no brainer. They provide access to a property. Some remain providing access only under private ownership. Some have a bridge built over them. There are all sorts of reasons, some some indeed are developed on. But a carriage lot is much more than access. It's developable land. So I wanted to ask first if you know the size of this carriage lot. I think I might run. For people who don't know what a carriage flight is it? It is a center section behind houses on four different streets. And it's it's like a common backyard or open space or parking area. Go ahead. Hi, Angela. Cassi is with Denver Public Works. And it looks, if I'm reading this correctly, it looks like it's 3300 square feet. Okay. And then I wanted to know the procedure for notifying neighbors when that was done. Yep. So the process in any Ali vacation is that we initially once we receive the application, we notify about 30 internal and external agencies and we allow them three weeks to comment if there's no opposition to that alley vacation from these internal and external agencies, meaning, you know, anywhere from Comcast to excel to any internal city agencies . We then go forward with the public notification so that public notification goes that all letters go out to owner homeowners within 200 feet of the alley vacation. We they have two weeks to respond. And there are two signs posted near the vacation as notification as well. If we receive any sort of opposition to that to that from the public, it then goes into consideration with the manager, Rob Duncanson. The director, Rob Duncanson, who then determines whether there's technical merit to any of the opposition once it's then after that. If he determines that there is no technical merit to the opposition, then we move forward with city council. And so another question I had for you was this notification conducted before the demolition permit, an application for historic preservation? I did. I do not have that information. I was not able to determine that. Okay. It's my understanding that it was. So the reason I would like to see this postponed, as Councilwoman Ortega has proposed, is that this will be integral to talking about the development of actually three lots and a carriage lot. This is not a property rights issue because it's our property. We are actually giving it to someone because at some point in the history of Denver, a property owner gave it to the city. Therefore we often don't sell alleys or or right of way we we give them. But I think in this case, when there is real development potential and also a landmark issue that we should definitely take the time to make sure both are discussed together. Thank you. Let's see. Councilman Brooks? Yeah, I just have a couple of questions. So I was contacted by the person representing this property and tell me if I'm right here. We have 20 neighboring residents that signed a petition of support for this. Yes, that's correct. Okay. And we have. We had one person who was in opposition. But now has that excuse me, has that person turned over, is now supporting this. Position and supporting the project, as far as we know. Okay. And and this one on consent. Was this on consent? I believe so, yes. This was not heard in committee. No. Okay. Yes. You know, I just I just encourage, you know, all of us as council folks to think about this as we were before. You know, there's a there's a ton of support here in the neighborhood. And I think we you know, Councilman Rob raises some interesting points. What we need to think about as a city and considering alley vacations. But for this to not have the the committee discussion for this to go on consent and now to postpone an agreement that public works the community has now agree with it. You know, have a little bit of issue with that. But thank you, councilman. Councilman Ortega, did you have another comment? I just wanted to clarify something, but I can wait until after. All right, great. Thank you. And then I'll circle back to Councilman Shepard. Thank you, Madam President. Pro tem. I do think that my council colleagues, Ortega and Rob, have brought up some very prudent points here, very salient points. This is not your typical Ali vacation. I happen to live about six blocks from this site, and I'm well aware of the incredibly rapid pace of development in this particular neighborhood and how that continues to create additional parking problems for present and future residents. And I'm a little bit I guess I don't quite understand the alley of know why it was okayed for such a large parcel of land. So I do support. What? Councilman Ortega is making a motion for and I and I do think we need to hear what the decision is from landmark regarding the parcel in question. Councilman Ortega. So I wanted to clarify that last Friday I sent out information that I had received from the Landmark Commission on. That they've the research they've done on this property and the history on it is very significant. And so I just want to make sure, if you haven't had a chance to look at that, to see that because it's very compelling. But, you know, I just think it's important for that process to take its course before we take action, because as Councilwoman Robb indicated, these two actions are, although they're independent of one another, they're very integral to what happens with both properties. We're talking about a single family home that would be basically removed. And if this land is added to it, it would create a much larger footprint for development that would take place there. And I think it warrants, you know, the community as a whole having an opportunity to have a discussion about that given the parking challenges that already exist in that neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Rob, did you have a comment? Also your. Backup? Yeah, I just was going to chime in on the process piece. I reviewed the landmark application today. I had the landmark staff send it over to me. And it's certainly not 20 people, but people should know that there are six applicants on the application so that there is community input that this property should be preserved. And then that brings me back to the connection between the vacation and the preservation. Thank you, Councilwoman Robb, Councilwoman Kennish. Thank you. Madam President, I, too, wanted to chime in on process because I think it might have been Councilman Brooke's description might have left out a few pieces that I'm aware of. So I want to just confirm it's my understanding and I was see on emails from residents asking for a delay in the department's decision on the vacation. And it's my understanding that it was once delayed, that the department agreed the first time and that there was another community member who asked for a second delay and that the department declined that request. So there actually was early intervention from somebody asking for this to be slowed down before it came to us. So is my recollection correct that there were requests from residents for delays prior to this coming. In and those determinations are made on whether or not there's technical merit to to their opposition to the to the vacation. So if the if we denied it the second time, there was probably no technical merit to that opposition. Got it. But just to clarify, there was a resident coming forward long before we were on the floor. They made that attempt. And can you clarify, was it a resident? I believe that it was, but I don't have a name. But the one that I have record of is a the property owner on 23, 24 federal. And we resolved that conflict so that that property owner no longer had an opposition to the. So the person the person who requested the delay was the same person that's changed their position. Right. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. And one other question, just to clarify, Councilwoman Ortega's comments about parking, is it legal to park on a carriage lot? No. Has it ever been legal? No. Okay. So I just I mean, if I support this today, I don't want to mislead the public that I'm supporting it with the expectation that it that it may lead to a parking lot in terms of, you know, our code not permitting that. So I think that there is good merit. And and I do think there was some attempts to try to clarify this. And that's what postponements are for there to spend more time to make sure that we understand all the issues. So I will be supporting it, but I don't want to have that point confusing for the public that that that's a potential outcome here because it's not a potential outcome as long as this is a piece of alley right away, a carriage lot, whatever it's designated as. That, correct? Yes. Okay. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. CORNISH Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Madam President. A lot of my questions are answered with a couple of the questions I had here. I just I just wanted to remind postponement just so we can actually figure some stuff out in the wash. Doesn't mean necessarily there's a vote tonight on the actual property. And I, too, would just want that extra time just so we can clarify that without making some kind of a rash decision or some kind of mistake in terms of what. I do support the postponement, so I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Robb. In just one other point, I do know carriage slots have been vacated for parking, and that may be something that is discussed in this. I'm not saying that's the highest and best use of this desire, but in the past I know that sometimes that's the use of a carriage lot once it's vacated and no longer right away . Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay, Madam Secretary, roll call, please. ORTEGA Hi, Rob. This is the motion to postpone. Yes, I. Shepherd. I. Susman. Brooks. No. Brown. I fox. I. Can eat i lemon lopez i. All I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary closed the voting and announced the results. 11 eyes. One Nay. Okay. 11 Eyes. Final consideration of Council Bill 356 will be postponed until Monday, July 13th. Thank you. Madam Secretary, are you ready to put up the next items related to pending here? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yes. To 98%. Okay.

Message and order authorizing the City of Boston to accept and expend the amount of Three Hundred Forty Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars ($349,500,000.00) in the form of a grant, awarded by the United States Department of Treasury, to be administered by the City of Boston’s Chief Financial Officer/Collector Treasurer. This grant payment is made from the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) in the Treasury of the United States established by Section 9901 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) Pursuant to the requirements of the ARPA, the grant payment would fund COVID-19 response and recovery efforts and accelerate a Green New Deal for Boston through once-in-a-generation, transformative investments that address the systemic health and economic challenges in the areas of affordable housing, economic opportunity and inclusion, behavioral health, climate and mobility, arts and culture and early childhood. Councilor Baker offered a motion to Amend Docket #0503 by reducing the Mayor's Office of Housing by $5,000,000.00 and adding $5,000,000.00 for the

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Thank you. Back in session. Mr. Clerk, please read your 05030504 together, please. Document the 0503 method for. Authorizing the city of Boston. To accept. 49. State Treasury to be administered by the city of Boston as chief financial officer. Collect Treasurer. This grant payment is made from the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery from fund in the Treasury of the United States, established by Section 9901 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, also known as a RPA. Pursuant to the requirements of the AARP, the grant payment would fund COVID 19 response and recovery efforts and accelerate a Green New Deal for Boston through a once in a generation transformative investments that address the systemic health and economic challenges in the areas of affordable housing, economic opportunity and inclusion, behavioral health, climate and mobility. Arts and culture and early childhood stalking numbers 0504 Message In honor authorizing the city of Boston to accept and expand the amount of $40 million in the form of a grant awarded by the United States Department of the Treasury to be administered by the city of Boston's Chief Financial Officer.

A bill for an ordinance amending the local open meetings laws to authorize electronic participation and electronic meeting methods during emergencies and making other conforming amendments. Modernizes open meeting laws to allow for use of emerging technology. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 5-18-21.

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Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer, and your leadership in this regard as well. And I'm glad we got through this first process. And so. All right, thank you. The next item we have up is Council Bill 572. Councilmember Flynn, would you please put Council Bill 20 1-0572 on the floor for publication? Yes, Madam President, I move that council bill 20 1-057 to be ordered published. Thank you. It has been moved. And we've got the second by Councilmember Herndon Councilmember Sayed Abarca. Your motion to amend. Thank you. I move that council bill 21, dash 570 to be amended in the following particulars on page five, straight lines five through eight and remember sections two through five accordingly. And on this one. Yep. We're going to go ahead and if we could get a second on this amendment. Okay. Okay. I think I got Councilmember Torres on the second questions or comments by members of Council Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you. This amendment is specifically designed to remove the exception for collective bargaining conferences. I think it's important we heard throughout our collective bargaining sessions throughout this last year that people wanted some more transparency, and this amendment is designed to achieve that. All right. Thank you. Council members say. Next up, we have council member Sawyer. Thanks, Madam President. It's my understanding that Councilwoman CdeBaca is offering two amendments to the ordinance this evening, and I won't be supporting either of them. The mayor's office, the city attorney's office, a number of agencies and I collaborated extensively in order to draft the changes to this ordinance. There was also a significant external stakeholder process so that residents of the community can share their feedback as well. That process included two meetings with every council member to gather feedback on the changes that were made. Neither of these two amendments were discussed until the final draft of the ordinance was brought to committee. The proposed amendments haven't been subjected to the same level of scrutiny by Denver residents or the members of boards and commissions that they would affect. This is an ordinance. It can be changed by a vote of council at any time. So if these changes are something Councilwoman CdeBaca would like to pursue, I'd be happy to help her with the stakeholder in process at that time. But as of today, I don't feel that that work has been done. So I ask my colleagues to vote no on both amendments and vote yes to publish the ordinance as written. Thanks, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer. Next up, we have Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I don't believe that it is good public policy to allow our conferences on collective bargaining strategy to be open to the people with whom or negotiating. I don't want to sit in the PAs weidner room with the mayor and the council and have the police union sitting there hearing us discuss how we're going to approach their negotiations. I think that's bad public policy and I urge a no vote. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn. Looks like I double checked the hands raised. Council member Pro-Tem Torrence. Thank you so much. I'm hoping to get a legal response on a question that I have. Okay. We can go ahead and make sure that we have John Griffin or Kirsten Crawford here in the queue. Okay. We've got John Griffin. Go ahead, Councilmember, with your question. Thank you. Jonathan or Kirsten. Does removing this clause from the exempted areas mandate that it be open or just give the option for it to be open? And what would then be that process for opening it? Who would it be up to? Alex Pearson. Take this. And she. Okay. We'll have Kirsten Crawford. Go ahead and respond. That evening. Council members. I am actually going to pull. The draft so it it carves out the five through eight carves out from open means requirements collective bargaining. My guess although I'm playing up the change is we we would maybe need to make some other. Changes if we wanted to mandate that it occur in open session. But I am looking at that. I wonder if you might want to table that question for a minute and let me come back to it just to make sure. And just to be clear, Kirsten, I'm not advocating that they be open, just wanting to make sure I'm understanding that what removing that exemption, what it does and it sounds like in that you can come back in a little bit with an answer, but I don't see any other questions in the queue. If I if it's removed without any other language, it doesn't automatically mandate that they're open without additional work put into the ordinance. Okay. So I'm looking at the language now. Any collective bargaining conference is not considered a meeting subject to these requirements, but I guess in order to get very granular about who's in the room and when it constitutes a meeting, I suppose we probably do need more clarity. Your your question is a very good one. And, and one I'm not totally comfortable just answering on the fly right now. I just need a little bit more time to think about that. But I think that you're right. My hunch after playing up the language is that it wouldn't mandate because we don't know exactly who would be the body, the public bodies, so to speak, that would need to be convened with respect to. And I'm backing my way into that, into the answer, because when we look at this code provision, we list the public bodies . So for one, we don't list. What the definition of the body is for collective bargaining. So I suspect we might need a little bit more of definition if we wanted to mandate that. So just eliminating the that section. About collective bargaining doesn't mandate that it's open, but put it leaving it in mandates that it be exempted. It makes it very clear that it's not subject to our opinions without action. Yes. Okay. Got it. Thank you for that. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Pro-Tem Torres, council member Abarca. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify that that Councilwoman Torres is the goal of the amendment. It's to not necessarily create the mandate at this point, but to remove that exception will allow us to decide later if we choose to mandate it or choose to outline a process of how that should work. But this is to make sure that we don't close the door on that option for later. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Council members say to Barca and now we have others back into the queue here. And so Council Member Torres, did you have a follow up or is that okay since you've been up to to move on? Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. New in the queue, then we have Councilmember Herndon. Madam President, I just want to echo what Councilwoman Sawyer said. I mean, she did a deliberate, thoughtful engagement process with stakeholders, and this amendment is anything but. So I will be voting no, and it is an ordinance so we can bring it back later if. We actually have a transparent process to. See how these changes would actually impact it. But to do this at the 11th and a half hour, I think is bad policy. So I'll be running. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilmember Herndon. Next up, we have Councilmembers Sawyer and Flynn in the Q and I haven't heard from Councilmember Hines yet. And so I'd like to allow him to go. Go ahead, Councilmember. Thank you. Council President. I, I, I kept putting my hand up and down and it was probably because people kept asking the same question that I was intending to ask. So, you know, pro tempore, is this question about whether this is a mandate, I think is an important distinction. I know that I am not a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers, but I attended a bargaining session where you have S.W. did bargain with some with their employer. I also did attend bargaining for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. And and so there are there are labor unions that do have a public process. And and and it seemed like that was more transparent. I do absolutely hear what Councilmember Sawyer said about how this we could have added this to the stakeholder process and and councilmember heard into but we did not and and so I just wanted to just throw out my my thought process. Thank you. Council President. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. Next up, we have council member Sawyer. Things about a president. I just wanted to quickly pop into weigh in again on this, that frankly, whether this is a good idea or or not a. Good idea. Isn't. What's up for discussion here? You know, what is up for discussion here is that we don't know what the consequences are. We haven't been out to the community to have a discussion about this. We haven't been in conversations with the the organizations that we bargained with to get their feedback on it. And so that's why we think it's irresponsible for us to make this change right now. Like I said, it's an ordinance that can easily be changed moving forward, and I'm happy to help engage the stakeholders to do that. If that's something Councilwoman CdeBaca wants to do. But I don't think it's appropriate to do that at this stage. Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer. Next up, we've got Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, madam. I just want to clarify and partially in response to Councilman Hines, that this amendment has literally nothing to do with opening up the actual bargaining sessions, with the with the unit, with the police, with the firefighters or with the sheriffs. It apply it simply removes the exemption for our meetings with the administration to discuss what our bargaining position will be when we go to the table. And for that reason alone, I think it's very bad public policy and it's not a necessary step to making a change to opening up bargaining sessions. At some later point, it's simply a bad move right now to signal and have Nick Rodgers sit in the room while we're negotiating, while we're discussing with the mayor how we want to bargain with the police. I don't think that's I think that's quite obviously on its face a bad policy. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Flynn. Up next, council members say to Barker we have you back up. Thank you. Just wanted Kirsten to clarify, because I discussed this with her. That the collective. Bargaining conferences encompasses all of the collective bargaining according to what carers and confirmed for me when we had this discussion. So it's not just when we're deciding our positions, it doesn't it's not just about that. It's about collective bargaining in general as public meetings. Kirsten, can you confirm or clarify? Kirsten had to step away. So I'm able to speak on that. I need to be back with her to further discuss this. But that is not the way that I read this. It's exactly what counts. But one step. This is about internal conferences. But we would need to circle back. She obviously has a wealth of knowledge on the subject, but that is not the way that I read it. So. Okay, I'll go ahead. Never mind. Go for it. I was just going to I was going to ask Councilmember CdeBaca if she was had anything more to add. Okay. All right. Thank you. Next up, Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. And, too, I'm going to take on what John Griffin just said. The collective bargaining sessions themselves, the ones that John and Rob Ness for go into the room with unions are not subject to in the open meetings. There goes my clock again. Not subject to the open meetings. Requirements are in our code in the first place. So this removing this exemption does has absolutely nothing to do with that. It's simply this paragraph that it would be deleted by this amendment simply refers to our conferences with the administration on our strategy going into those bargaining sessions. So that's that's why I think it's bad public policy. I don't want them in the room when we're trying to hash out what we're going to offer them and what our alternatives might be. All right. Well, thank you. Councilmember Flynn and I haven't weighed in yet on this. And then we'll go ahead and do the roll call, vote on it. Councilmember CdeBaca, you still had your hand up. Did you have. Okay. All right. Great. I'll go ahead and weigh in. Geez. Have been working on this since last July when I was elected as city council president, really trying to shore up this process. And we created initial guidelines that we sent over to all of you that you've reviewed. And then, in addition to that, have worked since January to develop a memorandum of understanding with the administration as well, outlining what the steps would be if we got to an impasse at any point during this process. And honestly, having worked very closely with Jonathan Griffin as our council representative. I'm not sure how we would strategically be successful in our bargaining if we had it open at this point in time, because I don't believe that we have heard from all of the many different stakeholders that we would need to talk to about how this would actually get set forth. And so I am of the mindset, if it is something that is the will of a majority of this body, we can definitely do that stakeholder process and open this ordinance up and address it at the appropriate time. And so I will not be supporting either one of the amendments this evening as well. Madam Secretary, roll call on the First Amendment we have. And to clarify, this amendment eliminates the exception for collective bargaining conferences. Roll call, please. CdeBaca, I. Claire? No. Flynn No. HERNDON No. HINES No. Cashmere? No. Can each. No. Ortega? No. Sandoval No. So here now. Torres? Nope. Black. No. Madam President. No, Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results, please. When I 12 name. 12 nays. The amendment to 20 1-0572 has failed. Council members say to back your second motion to amend, please. Thank you. I move that council bill 20 1-5 72 be amended in the following particulars on page five line one strike means and replace with means and recordings of meetings shall be posted on the city's website. Okay. Thank you. We have it moved and we have a second by Councilmember Hines. Questions or comments by members of council. Council members say to Barker. Thank you. This amendment requires all virtual meetings subject to this ordinance to be archived on the city's website. I think that's important because not all open meetings are archived, and with the many meetings that are occurring, sometimes the residents have to choose which ones they attend and they should be able to go back and watch the ones that they couldn't attend in person and archiving would enable that ability. Thank you. Next up, we have council member Sawyer. Mr. President, just wanted to weigh in here to just say again, with the stakeholder in process, we haven't had a conversation with tech services about what archiving that kind of information might look like, what storage space we would need to pay for, how much it would cost, whether we would need to have FTE is added to mail in something like this, etc.. So again, while I think it might not be a bad idea at some point in the future, it's not something we discussed in this process and it is something that we need to reach out to our stakeholders and find out more information about before we can responsibly vote on something like this. Thanks. Thank you. Council member Sawyer. Up next, we have Council Member Hines. Thank. Thank you. Council President. I think that I certainly agree with the spirit of this amendment that we should have recordings for for everything that's that is a part of our city process. With I also am somewhat concerned about the stakeholder process. I know when I served on the Denver Commission for People with Disabilities, the it was difficult to find a venue. The Webb building changed some of the requirements for having holding meetings in the Webb building. We ended up finding a space in the Denver Museum of Natural Science next to a yoga session, a regular, you know, monthly yoga or at least monthly, that every time we were meeting there was yoga immediately outside. And, you know, I don't know how we would have necessarily met the requirement for open meetings in that venue. Maybe it's possible. I don't know. And I don't want the Commission for People with Disabilities to be unable to meet because they have to meet this regulatory hurdle. Maybe they could. Maybe they couldn't. But again, I think that's what the stakeholder process would do. Thank you. Council president. Thank you. Councilmember Hines. Councilmember Flynn. Madam President, I like this amendment very much. But like Councilman Sawyer, I think it needs a little bit more data behind it so that we can understand the costs. I would like to see it. I'd like to see this come forward at some point as an amendment to this part of the code. But I'd like to know, for instance, everybody that I've tried to see, recordings of meetings I've been able to find. So I know that we already archive a lot of them. I don't know what is not being archived. So maybe, Councilwoman CdeBaca, we could work together to figure out who isn't reporting and and why not, and can we get them to do that? I think it's an excellent resource that we do need to provide. I don't know that it's soup yet to put it in this up, to amend it into this ordinance. But I'd like to come back and have that done, for instance, if I can ask Councilwoman CdeBaca. Madam President, do we know? Would this applied to in-person meetings that are not broadcast on Zoom once we go back to in-person, if there is simply meeting in a in a room in the web building and it's not broadcast on Channel eight, where are you talking about? Like audio recordings of meetings and things like that as well. So to do. That, that would actually make sense. I think through COVID, what we've recognized is the potential of always having this alternative for for a virtual participation. And we know that it's easier to listen to a meeting than it is to read the meeting minutes. And so in 2021, I think that we should always default to recording meetings, whether it's a zoom recording or a voice recording that gets uploaded somewhere. It just makes more sense to have that as the standard rather than just your written minutes. Thank you. Madam President, I agree. And I think perhaps we could ask our staff to gather the data on what boards and commissions that are listed in this ordinance, and there's a ton of them. What is their current practice? Do they record now? If they do, do they archive it? Do they make it available on the website? I think that's that's something we should pursue immediately after this. But I don't think that we should put it in the code right now because we don't have the answers to these questions. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. And, you know, would be open to learning more about that, but likewise, would like to see that stakeholder process so that we're making sure we understand the intended and unintended consequences of our actions and we not seeing anybody else up in the queue. Madam Secretary, roll call on the Second Amendment, which would require all virtual meetings subject to this ordinance to be archived on the city's website. CdeBaca, I. Claire? No. Flynn No. Herndon? No. HINES No. Cashin? No. Kimmich? No. Ortega. No. Sandoval. No. Sawyer. No. Torres now. Black? No. Madam President. No. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announce the results. When I tweeted this. When I 12 nays the second amendment to 20 1-057 excuse me 0572 has failed council bill 20 1-057 to is currently on the floor for publication. Questions by members of Council on Council Bill 20 1-057 to. CNN. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 21, dash 057 to please. Black. I. See tobacco. I. Clark. All I. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Hi. Hi. Cashman and I. Can each write. Ortega like Sandoval, I. Sawyer. I mean Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced results. 30 nights. 13 Eyes Council Bill 20 1-0572 has been ordered published. All right. Next up, we have Council Bill 516. Councilmember Flynn, would you please make a motion to take Council Bill 516 out of order, please?

A bill for an ordinance establishing the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency. A bill for an ordinance establishing the Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-13-19.

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13 eyes. Countable. 1110 has been. Ordered. Published. Published, ordered. Published. Success. Thank you. All right. Madam Secretary, if you please put the next items on our screen and Councilman Flynn, will you please put Bill 805 on the floor? As president, I move that council bill 19 805 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. We're gonna go to comments. This is the bill that was originally filed a couple of months ago creating our Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. We have since gone back to the drawing board, started with a new bill which was supposed to be in committee last week, hence why this was delayed to today. But we had a snowstorm that canceled our committee, so it will be in committee this week. But this was set to come up today to make sure that we kept the fuel on the fire, to make sure that we got this office created. So it will be in committee this week. So I'm asking that we kill this bill now in favor of the new bill, which will be in committee on Wednesday, I believe. Great Councilman Cashman I believe Wednesday. So again, the ask is to for a no vote to kill this bill. See no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Black? No, said Ibaka. I wouldn't. Know. Gilmore. No. Herndon. No. Haynes. No. Cashman. No. Kenny Ortega. No. Sandoval. No. Sawyer. No. Torres. No. Mr. President. No. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. Announce the results. 12 nays one. I, 12. Nays one. I believe five has failed. That concludes the item must be called out this evening. 1037 Can we ask questions? Ten. We have a late breaking one called out. Ten. Madam Secretary, can king put 1037 1037 on our screens? Councilwoman CdeBaca has a question. Is there anybody here from Denver Health who can speak to the changes that we had requested in the contract? Councilwoman, were you able to review and see if the the changes were satisfactory? I didn't get an updated contract.

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Long Beach Police Department to present a report to City Council on statistics and impacts of ghost guns; and, the feasibility of developing additional ordinances to criminalize the possession, sale, and/or manufacture of ghost guns and ghost gun parts.

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All right, we. Announce the vote. Okay. All right. Item 29, please. Communication from Councilman Price. Councilman Austin Recommendation to request city manager to work with the Long Beach Police Department to present a report to City Council on Statistics and Impacts of Ghost Guns and the feasibility of developing additional ordinances to criminalize the possession, sale and or manufacture of ghost guns and ghost gun parts. Councilman Price. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. And I believe our police department is here tonight to help do a presentation on this topic. So just a little bit of background on this topic. I am a member of the Public Safety Committee and I did request that this item addressing ghost guns specifically be presented to the Public Safety Committee. So and I started that process in January. And in late February, the committee heard a report on ghost guns. And the results of that presentation by the police department was eye opening. And frankly, in my opinion, one of the biggest public safety concerns facing our state right now. It may be facing other states, but I don't know the stats on other states. I just know that in the state of California, the number one public safety threat right now is ghost guns. So our police department brought back the presentation and staff presented to us some. Facts about ghost guns. And we talked a little bit about legislation that's going to be coming forth to the state for consideration. The item tonight that's before you has nothing to do with the state legislation. It really is just a report back for us about the feasibility of developing additional ordinances locally to criminalize possession, sale or manufacture of ghost guns. And I imagine that with this directive, city staff would go back then and work our police department, work with our city prosecutor to come up with potential legislation that we could take up in this area. Specific to go scans, those scans. A lot of people don't know what they are. And I know there's going to be a presentation by the police chief. Is that correct? Is there going to be a presentation tonight or. No? We weren't planning on a presentation tonight, but we can answer a couple of questions if there are some from the council. Okay. Sounds good. No problem at all. I know there was a presentation done at the Public Safety Committee on it, so it goes on. A lot of people don't know what they are, but they have. Obviously, there's no background checks required for ghost guns. There's no serial number required or on ghost guns. There's no mechanism, legal mechanism to obtain ghost guns. They're purchased online primarily. And we have seen just in the city of Long Beach alone a huge increase from 2020 to 2021 on the number of ghost guns that were seized in the city of Long Beach in 2021. We seized 185 ghost guns in the city of Long Beach as opposed to 83 seized in 2020. We had in terms of citywide shootings, 453 in 2021 and 396 in 2020. So we can see that there's an increase in shootings, but certainly a huge increase, double of ghost guns that are being used in some of the offenses that we're seeing. Unfortunately, the reality of ghost guns is that anyone can buy a ghost gun with no background check, making it easier for prohibited possessors or anyone intending to commit a crime to possess or access a gun. We've seen a number of California cities take important steps to increase enforcement on ghost guns, and I'm hoping that the council will join me tonight in requesting this report come back so that we can make a determination as a council whether or not to adopt some sections into our local city ordinance that address ghost guns specifically. I think the urgency of this item is clear in light of the events of the last few days, in light of the increase in gun violence and in light of the seriousness of gun violence and the impact that it has on victims and their families. And so I ask my council colleagues to support this item. Again, this item doesn't deal at all with state legislation. It's just talking about ghost guns and our efforts to legislate them and add more sanctions to the ordinances that can be adopted by municipalities to address ghost guns specifically. All right. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I second this this motion proudly. You know, gun violence is a it's a problem in our city. We're reading and hearing about gun violence every day. And they are real victims. They're impacted by by gun violence. And to the extent that we can minimize, eliminate access to these illegal guns or the manufacturing of these illegal guns, I think we'd be doing something tremendous. I I'm looking forward to this this report coming back, because I know we're going to be taxing our our police department to to be very innovative and and to solve something that no one has been able to solve up to this point with with an ordinance. But if we sit by and do nothing and we're not doing our justice to to the victims and we're not doing anything to improve public safety in our city. And so I give this this motion, my full support, and I say my colleagues do as well. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Is public comment on this? Yes, there are three people, Kathy. Family. Thank you. Brian Martinez and son, I can say thank you. Thank you, everybody. For being here. Let me start off with I am part of an organization. Parents of Murdered. Children. It's been around for 43 years. And I'm the leader of the Los Angeles chapter. Which covers all of L.A. County. I am not speaking. On behalf of the organization today. I am speaking on behalf of myself. Who've lost. My nephew. And a cousin to gun violence, and two other cousins were murdered in the harbor area. I say the organization that I am part of to validate that I. Am an advocate for survivors of. Homicide. And we need to take this very seriously. I'm going to throw a number out there. And I don't know if many of you know there are currently 5600 unsolved murders in the county of L.A.. Throw the factor of unaccountable, untraceable ghost guns and that number is going to increase. So I'm here to beg you to please do all that. You can do. So that I don't have to sit. Across the table. From another mother or a father or a brother or a child and listen to them year after year after year cry because. Somebody made a decision to take their life. My organization does not speak on gun control, but we're talking about illegal guns. So, yes, my organization. Is behind. This. This ordinance, we would say, yes, we got. To get these illegal guns. Off the street so that when a murder does occur. We can trace it back to whoever did. It and hold them accountable. For the murder. So I beg you to please keep that number in mind. I believe I'm. Preaching to the choir. I think you probably. All feel. The way you feel. I sat here and I listened about the. Martin Luther. King Park. Those kids. Need parks. So they're not on the computers. Later, trying to learn how to make ghost guns. Okay. That's the reality. Of where we're at. These kids have too. Much time on their. Hands. They don't have anybody watching over them. And they need. Good places to go so they don't. End up on this end of the spectrum. So I beg of you, please. I represent thousands of I sit on the National Board of Trustees for the organization. We represent thousands of homicide survivors across the country. But right here in L.A., there's quite a few. And I. Beg you to please do anything. And everything you possibly. Can. To get these guns off the street. Thank you very. Much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you, Chairman and Council. My name is Brian. I'm the language deputy for assembly member Mike Gibson of the 64th District. Mr. Gibson was pretty elated when he saw this would be in the agenda today and he wrote a letter and I will not worry it to the Council on this subject. Letter of Support for Council Item 22 383 Report on Ghost Guns and Feasibility of Ordinance Strengthening Enforcement. Good evening, Council. I applaud and fully support the City of Long Beach in its process to create a local law that would criminalize the production and possession of ghost gun parts. Despite reforms to regulate them, Ghost continue to be a pervasive issue for local governments across the U.S. So much so that President Biden and the Department of Justice have proposed the rule change to federally redefine the term firearm to encompass its parts and kits such that they are regulated and require a background background check and serialization. Two days ago, we had a mass shooting just blocks away from the California state capitol. President Biden has once again called on for more reforms, this time for all of California to formalize a statewide band on ghost guns. Let me be clear this isn't a new issue. After numerous attempts, I was able to propel AB 879 into law. This California law required a state background check for individuals seeking to purchase firearms and receivers. It requires the Department of Justice to electronically approve the purchase or transfer of firearm parts through a licensed vendor. It also requires the sale of firearm frames and receivers to be conducted by a licensed firearm precursor parts vendor. Unfortunately, as the problem has worsened, it's clear that a more aggressive framework is necessary to prevent the continued proliferation of these weapons into our communities. Therefore, I stepped up to the plate and introduced just this year, AB 1621, which will completely ban ghost guns in every community statewide. Support from our city of Long Beach is critical in making this band a reality for every community in our state and joining alongside of other communities like San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland, which have levied citywide bands that make it illegal for any resident to possess or buy these weapons. We need all hands on deck to eradicate gun violence with our communities, wildfire in the 64th District and those alike. And as the assembly member always says, it takes a village. Thank you very much and I appreciate the opportunity to speak. All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Listen, I can play in the audience. He's the last speaker that concludes public comment on this item. All right. Back behind the real Councilman Price. Thank you, vice mayor. And I know I apologize. I thought the presentation that we had at public safety would be shown tonight. And that was my fault for my lack of clarity. But I'm not sure if the camera can pick up on this. But a ghost gun is just it's it can be made through a 3-D printer. It can be made using plastic. And now there are 3-D printers that can actually make make it using metal. But it's just different gun pieces that are molded and printed. And the most common model that we see right now is our Glocks that are made. And the interesting stat that I found in Long Beach last year was that of the ghost guns that were found to have been used in crimes. Two were in homicides, 21 in assaults, ten in batteries are threats criminal threats PC for 22, as we call them for and robbery carjackings, two in sexual assault, four in domestic violence, four in non-injury shootings. And this was the most interesting stat that I found, 116 were sold, possessed or illegally carried. That just means there's people, more and more people walking around armed with ghost guns, which to me was the scariest stat found property. There were five suicides. There were four. That's a particularly hard reality for me to understand because you can purchase these online with no background checks. And I don't know how many of you know of children who were youth who committed suicide just in the last few years as a result of COVID and used a gun to effectuate that intent. And I do know a youth that that happened to a very good friend of ours. And so the fact that they're easy, so easy to access is really concerning to me. I try really hard not to exaggerate things, but I will tell you, this is the number one ghost guns are the number one public safety threat facing our state because they're so easy to acquire. And all of the measures that we've put into place to make sure that the wrong people don't have access to guns are completely eliminated through ghost guns because anyone can purchase a ghost gun. And so I think we need to do everything we can as a city to try to regulate and sanction the possession of ghost guns and ghost gun parts. And I look forward to our police department coming back with a report that hopefully covers the same topics we covered at public safety and beyond. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you as well. We already had council comment. Okay. Let's go ahead. Talk to our vote, please. Councilmember under. Motion is carried.

Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP PR17-042 and authorize City Manager, or designee, to issue a permit, and any amendments, with ABA Enterprises, LLC, of Beverly Hills, CA, and Gateway Enterprises, LLC, of Los Angeles, CA, collectively doing business as Shoreline Village, in Long Beach, CA, for placement and operation of retail merchandizing units along the esplanade in Rainbow Harbor and a portion of the adjacent Shoreline Aquatic Park, for a term of ten years, with the option to renew for one additional five-year period, at the discretion of the City Manager. (District 2)

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Okay. Thank you. Okay. Moving on. I think we have 13 items left. So let's start with item 32. Item 32 is report from Parks, Recreation and Marine and Financial Management. Recommendation to issue a permit to Shoreline Village for placement and operation of retail merchandizing units along in Rainbow Harbor and portion of the adjacent Shoreline Aquatic Park for a term of ten years. District two. Councilman Pierce I'd like to hear a staff report and then public comment, if we could, and then I'll make some awesome comments about how much I appreciate people waiting. Mr. West, Steve Scott, Mayor, members of the City Council, the item before you tonight is to issue a permit to Shoreline. Village for. The operation of retail merchandizing units. Or. Amuse along the Esplanade in Rainbow Harbor. Since 2007, Parks, Recreation and Marine has permitted retail merchandizing units on the Esplanade from the western edge of Shoreline Village to Shoreline Aquatic Park, as is a best practice for commercial enterprises on city property. We went out and did an RFP to kind of beat the bushes to see what was out there and available. We received a couple of proposals our selection committee ultimately recommended. Let's also, if we can, just a little bit less loud for. Thank you very much. Selection committee recommended Shoreline Village for their well-developed vision of the RMU program, a commitment to high operating standards and a commitment to actively pursue Long Beach businesses. I want to mention that in keeping with the city's business friendly environment, current RSU. Operators. Will have the opportunity to apply for and become tenants of Shoreline Village's offerings. In short, this proposed permit is for ten years with an option to extend for an additional five and would include up to 18 reviews use. That concludes my staff report. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Public comments at first. It's fine. I can talk and then we'll have Deborah. I just want to say how much I am excited about you all taking over this process. Hopefully the vision that you have implemented of Shoreline Village and that you're working with the full team on, one day this council will get to see and this is a key part of it. And so having a responsible operator that's there and making sure that we're engaging with Long Beach businesses is again, as we saw with the American Life Project, something that is a top priority for me, making sure that we have Long Beach businesses have a chance at being in our tourism zone so that we can highlight all the great things that Long Beach has to offer. And so I do want to hear public comment, but I want my colleagues to know that this is the area if you're driving down Shoreline Village and you see those kiosk there, this is that area. And I think that we've had the same operator for a long time. And so it's really exciting to have some new energy there and to have as many kiosk as we've slotted for this. So I want to say how much I appreciate your guys effort and appreciate you all staying. So I'd love to hear from you guys. If there's any public company, please come forward. Good evening. Hi, I'm Debra Fix in general manager of Shirley Village. And also joining me tonight is Sergio Gonzalez, assistant manager. Tonight, I'm asking you to vote to accept parks, Marine Parks, Recreation, Marine's recommendation to issue the permit to Shoreline Village to manage a Rito carp program at Rainbow Harbor. You should know that you'll be getting much more than an up to 18 unit, up to 18 carts. The permits allows you'll be granting access to a long, standing Long Beach partner that has been successful at managing a shopping center, attracting locals and tourists while creating a positive economic impact in the downtown waterfront. Yes, we will be placing the beautiful carts that you've been shown in the package forwarded to you. But more importantly, we will be activating an underutilized area of our downtown community. The Shoreline Village Management will carefully select cart tenants and schedule activities to make Rainbow Harbor an enjoyable, enjoyable destination for locals and tourists. I met many of you at community events and I believe a few of me, a few of, you know, have firsthand knowledge of my personal commitment to Long Beach and the investment the owners of Shoreline Village make in the community. With our free events and support of many Long Beach nonprofits, we regularly host. We regularly host events that provide both free entertainment for the public and buying opportunities for all price ranges from a hot dog to filet mignon. Creating a great economic development for dozens of small businesses showing their age has already expanded its footprint to the Rainbow Harbor by having permitted events such as zombie walk Mardi Gras hours and coming this summer, the biggest pirate fest on the West Coast. In partnership with local event planners, with the support of showing village ownership. I am active and I'm an active member of the Club DLP, a rotary of Long Beach and serve on local nonprofit boards. Currently, there are about half a dozen card operators at Rainbow Harbor that have in. Most of them have contacted me regarding keeping their business going with the new management. All current operators have first priority in leasing the new carts. They must be in good standing with the past operator and agree to the new management practices. Once it is determined how many carts will be available for new tenants, the next priority will be to pursue local Long Beach businesses. I have spoken with a few and there is tremendous interest. The plan is to showcase the best that Long Beach has to offer while providing goods and services sought out by the tourists and locals . Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I wasn't sure if the other person was speaking. Perfect. That. Deborah, thank you so much. Councilman Gonzalez. Deborah and Sergio just want to say thank you so much. We were just there over the weekend and it was such a great environment and I can't even imagine what it's going to look like once this is all said and done. But thank you for all your work. Thank you. And I want to, first of all, just congratulate you guys that you're doing great work out there. My one request is going to be, as you're bringing in some of the locals, if there's an opportunity to work with some of our local Long Beach branded retailers, whether it's Long Beach clothing or five, six, two, or any of the folks that are creating Long Beach brand clothing in the city. I love seeing people walk around with Long Beach hats and Lombard shirts and Long Beach sweaters, and I think we need to encourage more of that in particularly areas that are tourist havens and places where visitors go. So I just the be great to have as a as option for folks as well. So with that, please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. And their last request tonight was to move up item 31 and then back to the regular agenda.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 3275 Denargo Street and 3315 Denargo Street in Five Points. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 3275 & 3315 Denargo Street from I-B, UO-2 to C-MX-12, DO-7 (industrial to mixed-use) in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-4-20.

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Councilmember Herndon has called out council bills. 105106107 161 162 and 201 for votes. Did I miss anything? All right, Madam Secretary, please put the first items on our screen. And, Councilmember Herndon, your motion to take out of order. Yes, Mr. President. I move the council bill series of 2020 01050106 and 0107 to be taken out of order and a block. Thank you, Councilmember. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Council member Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. In light of our emergency state of emergency, we need a vote to take these items out of order on the agenda so that we may take action to postpone them to new dates. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. Seeing no other comments on this, Madam Secretary, roll call. Black CdeBaca. I. Flynn. Hi. Gilmore. Herndon. All right. Cashman. I can. Torres. I. Council president, i. I'm secretary. Please. Because voting in those results. 999 counts bills 125126 and 127 may be taken out of order. Councilmember CdeBaca, will you please put council bills 105126 and one seven on the floor. I move, I move. Council Bill 10510601 No, it's only show me 105 and 106 What was the other one? 107107 on the floor adopted in a. Final consideration in a block. All right, Councilmember Herndon, now your motion to postpone. Yes, Mr. President. I move the count the bill series of 2020 010501060107, with their public hearings be postponed to Monday, May 11, 2020, in a block. Thank you, Councilmember. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of council. All right. I don't see any. Oh. Councilman Herndon Yes, Mr. President. The applicant of these items and counsel have all agreed to move the hearings to the to the May 11 date. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. Seeing nothing else on this one, Madam Secretary. Roll call on the postponements. Black Eye Seat. Abarca, i. Flynn. I Gilmore. Herndon High. Cashman High. Can each. Whereas I council president. Hi, Madam Secretary, please. Because voting in those results.

Approve the adoption of the Globeville Neighborhood Plan as a supplement to the City’s Comprehensive Plan. (NEIGHBORHOODS AND PLANNING) Approves the adoption of the Globeville Neighborhood Plan as a supplement to the City’s Comprehensive Plan. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 11-12-14.

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Thank you, Mr. President. I call this out because this is a proposed ordinance approving the Globeville neighborhood plan. And what I would like to do is ask for a courtesy public. Hearing for. For the night of December 1st. December 1st. Got it. So if there are no objections from members of council, we will have a cursory public hearing on 971 The Globeville Neighborhood Plan. Monday, December 1st. Thank you, Councilman Monti. Madam Secretary, can you tee up the next one, which I believe should be 924, called out by Councilman Fox? Councilman Fox, would you like for us to do with this? Please put on the floor for a vote? Certainly. Councilmember S, could you make the motion for us this evening? Yes, Mr. President. Could you please put 924 on the floor for final consideration and do pass? Certainly I move the constable 924 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Comments from members of Council Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. This is an ordinance to purchase a building for 911 purposes will house the call receivers and dispatch information. I do not oppose the actual purchase of this building, but it is a package deal. It also will be coming with a bill that for payment requires certificates of participation to be floated and in fact

A bill for an ordinance vacating a portion of the alley bounded by Cedar Avenue, South Birch Street and Leetsdale Drive, with reservations. Vacates the alley bounded by Cedar Avenue, South Birch Street, and Leetsdale Drive with a partial special reservation in Council District 5. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 5-15-18.

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Street and Leeds, still dry and under pending. No items have been called out. Uh, looks like we're good. So, Madam Secretary, will you please put the first item up on our screens? And, Councilwoman, can you please put Council Bill 394 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 18 dash 0394 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Councilwoman Sussman, your motion to postpone. I move that final consideration of Council Bill 394 be postponed to Monday, September 17th, 2018. It has been moved, if I can get a say and seconded questions or comments by members of Council Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. Some of the interested parties in this matter where we requested a postponement to Monday, September 17th, because tonight is a Rosh Hashanah holiday and they would not be able to attend this meeting. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. See no other questions or comments, Madam Secretary. Roll call. Sussman. Black Brooks. Flynn. Ah. Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman. Canete, I. Lopez. New. Ortega. Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting in this result. 11 Eyes. 11 Eyes. Final consideration of Council Bill 394 has been postponed to Monday, September 17th. That concludes the items to be called out. All other bills for introduction are ordered published. We are now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. All right, Councilman, can you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, I move that resolutions be adopted and bills and final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. All series of 2018 828 913 nine 3934 938 925 920 89049059099 ten 926 931 930 2879 891 893 604 816 832. And that's it. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. Hi, Brooks. Uh, Flynn. Hi. Gilmore. I heard in Cashman can eat. I knew Ortega. SUSSMAN Hi, Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please call the voting. Announce the results. 11 eyes. 11 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 880 approving the service plans for the creation of the 4201 Arkansas Metropolitan District number one and 4201 Arkansas Metropolitan District number two a required public hearing on Constable 881

A bill for an ordinance amending portions of Chapter 28, Article III, Article V and Article VII to extend sunset dates; and Approve Annual Aspirational Goals. Amends Chapter 28 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code to extend the Division of Small Business Opportunity (DSBO) program for an additional eight months to allow for more time to discuss community recommendations to the program and to identify needed changes to the Ordinance, Rules and Regulations and internal policies and procedures. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-27-19.

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No items have been called out today. Miss anything? All right. Now, Secretary, please put the first item on our screens and counsel menu. Go ahead with your question and comment. All right. Thank you very much. Adrina, you want to come up? This is a very important bill is coming through tonight. I just wanted to give some highlights of what's happening with the dispo in this bill, please. Thank you. Good evening, President. Council members. My name is Adrina Gibson and I'd like to first introduce myself. I am the new director of the Division of Small Business Opportunity. I am esteemed to have this privilege to work with the team at with the city, as well as with Dito and with you all as council members, I come to you all from our team working 12 years there with compliance, certification and implementing quite a bit of robust small business programs to maximize opportunities here in the city of Denver. I look forward to and have already begun in these long four weeks marrying a lot of the initiatives that I brought over from RTD, as well as bringing the men to the city and county of Denver under the Division of Small Business Opportunity. We appreciate your support of this bill on the second reading, just to give you a recap on what's going on within Dispo whom and I've been a part of over the last four weeks, we have regularly evaluated our success and measured our marketplace disparity typically at the five year mark. And so with this being the 2019, this is our year 2012. The 2016 disparity study was delivered in late 2018. As most of you know, there were some successes to note, but overall, there is still a disparity in the marketplace on public contracts for women and minority owned firms. And that reiterates the purpose of small business programs is specifically the one within the city and county of Denver. Under their division, DISPO has had some rigorous process of evaluations, both internally and externally, with our McKinsey reviews peak performance. And we've also adjusted quite a few processes, including but not limited to our certification period, our renewal period, going from every year to every three years, as well as eliminating our goal setting committee within the community. We have had an unprecedented level of public input on our ordinance and potential revisions from the Council as well as the Construction Empowerment Initiative Committee. This subcommittee worked very hard to prepare a roster of recommendations of which Dispo has reviewed thoroughly and has begun implementing to date. More recently, our business equity leadership team has also developed for dispo and all of the city agencies to engage on an enterprise wide with all of the programs that touch small businesses to maximize small business utilization and discuss important matters that relate to small businesses. Lastly, we determined our annual Mwb aspirational goals with substantial data analysis, methodology and performance history to bring together our 2018 aspirational goals. Again, thank you. Fourth quarter for the ordinance is set. Set the stage within the next five years and our ordinance revisions will be coming soon. Right. Thank you so much, Adrina. I can't speak more highly of the leadership of EDI or Caraga and having Adrina come on board and leadership that she's providing for dispo and and Jason Moore to the attorney that's really helping with the bill and helping guide that through. So it's a real pleasure. We you know, this is so important, this bill is because that prompt and accurate payment for all the minority women owned and small business subcontractor sorry the city construction contract so we're we were so pleased to have you you know, when we were going through this council with Cashman and we're telling you that we said, well, we always have a question. We always call Adrina over at RTD. What's the best practice on making this happen? And so we're so glad to have your leadership here. And and Susan's involvement as well is with the leadership of dispo. So thank you so much for all you're doing. And and please thank your staff to thank you. It's my honor. We're working hard for you. Thank you. Thank you. County Menu. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published. We're now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration counsels council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call an item for a separate vote. Councilman Brooks, would you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? All right. Mr. President, I certainly would love to do that for you tonight. I move that the resolutions be adopted and the bills on final consideration be placed and placed upon final consideration do pass in a block on the following orders. All series of 2019 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 one 8182 one 8196 one 9766 126 one 9188 189 159. Thank you very much, Councilman Brooks. Anytime, anytime. As far as the stand moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call black. Hi. Brooks. Hi. Flynn. I Gilmore. I Herndon. I Cashman. Hi Commit. Hi, Lopez. Hi. New Ortega assessment. Mr. President. I am secretary. Please, because the voting announced results. From. 12 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 19.0055 changing the zoning classification for 4519 Pearl Street in Globeville and a required public hearing on Council Bill 19 0079 Changing the zoning classification for 901 Irving Street in Ville

Petition for a Special Law re: An Act Granting the City of Boston the Authority to Provide Legal Voting Rights in Municipal Elections for City of Boston Residents Aged 16 and 17 Years Old.

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Thank you. Docket 0185 Council on the Here and Balk offer the following petition for a special law regarding an act granting the City of Boston the authority to provide legal voting rights in municipal elections for city of Boston residents aged 16 and 17 years old. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. At this time, the chair recognizes. Counsel me here. Counsel me here. You have the floor. Thank you. And thank you to my co-sponsor, Counselor Bach. I know we have a lot of dockets that we're going to be speaking on today, so I will be brief. And we introduced this home rule petition last year, but unfortunately, we were not able to pass it or act on it. We are hoping that this year we will get to the point where we can send it over to the mayor's desk and then on to the state house. Young people have major impact in our community, but often do not have a say in the decisions that shape their lives. They pay taxes but don't have a say on how they are spent. They have tried to they are tried as adults, but are treated as minors in other courts of law. They are expected to advocate on behalf of their schools, but a lot giving an equal voice to do so. We are hoping to address that through this whole law petition. We look forward to the conversation and to moving forward on this issue. Thank you. Thank you, councilman. Here. At this time. The chair recognizes counsel Bork. Counsel Bork, you have the floor. Mr. President, I just want to thank counselor here for collaboration on this and say that it is indeed something that we're excited to really get to this term. I know that opinions are conflicted on this, but I will just say that at a long time ago I used to teach Civics Weekly in the Boston Public Schools. And what I saw was that when our young people dig into civic engagement of all levels, they are just as engaged and passionate and capable of being just as informed as adults. And I think often the counsel sees that firsthand with advocacy from young Bostonians. And the reality is that our our current system of having people become voters at age 18 almost picks the moment in people's life where they are most dislocated. And it's the worst moment for habit formation. So people are often, you know, starting new jobs, starting new schools, moving across the country. And as a result, we see young people's registration rates often quite low. But the reality is, if you sort of zoom out, you say, well, it's almost like we're designing it for that to be the case. Whereas for if young people were able to start exercising the franchise on local issues where they live while they're in community , we'd be hearing these debates in school hallways, and I think we would be cultivating the habit of voting that would really last over time. In addition to the fact that I think that as we see time and time again are our young people, they are prepared to make their voices heard and they do deserve a say in what happens in our community. So looking forward to the conversation ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Counsel. Buck. Is anyone else looking to speak on this matter? Would anyone else like to add their name? Please. Please raise your hand. Councilor Braden. Cancellara. Council of Royal. Council region. Zip Docket 0185. We'll be referred to the Committee on Government Operations. Excuse me. The. That she recognizes. Council. Council. Britain. Mr. President, just a point of information with passage of counsel rules and docket zero two or five. When will committee misalignments be communicated to the members of the council and will communication be filed with the clerk as part of Off the Record? We are already assigning dockets to committees, but we don't have any idea who's actually on those committees and who will be chairing those committees. It's not it's not in our hands at this moment. Dockets are being assigned to committees right now. And without an understanding of the committee composition, members will not know if they would like to move for a reconsideration or of recommendations for another committee. So I really feel at this moment it's important that we we we address the committee assignment issue. Thank you, Counsel. Bright And just as a point of reference, the committees will be released right after this meeting. After the meetings or. The the members of the committee, the chairs and the vice chairs will be announced at that time. Thank you. Um. Madam Clerk, please read docket 0186.

A bill for an ordinance approving proposed Amendments to approximately ten Leases, Licenses and Concession Agreements in response to the COVID-19 health crisis, to be negotiated by the Director of Real Estate to provide relief for the tenants. Authorizes the Division of Real Estate to negotiate and amend commercial leases in City-owned buildings to provide three months of rent relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 5-18-20. Councilmember Black approved filing this item on 4-23-20.

DenverCityCouncil_05042020_20-0388

11 hours, two days. Council Resolution 416 has been adopted. Madam Secretary, if you put the next item on our screens and howsoever can each. This is three eight. Go ahead with your comments. Thank you, Mr. President. This is the ordinance authorizing location. Of what you need to. See the process here. I mentioned this last week, and I want to take my prior comments about the values that this administration has shared about. This is a perfect example. I want to. Thank the administration for working with me to think about ways that we can make sure that we give residence to these tenants in our city owned building the commercial scale that we're thinking about here. They had an envoy as well. So the leases include a of subway store. A restaurant. A coffee shop. The EPA. Has. A gallery of theater and includes everything. The Statue of Liberty is a great example. And then the people, Republicans and as well wide array and many of the workers who work for these companies probably at any level important stuff for them. And based on that conversation with the administration, there been a commitment to the protection so that when companies hopefully get back money, they are going to bring back the workers that they have before they hire others. This will probably be a very different stock market, but it is no small thing to know that you go back to the founding cap, that there will be any potential motivation to think about workers. Whether that be. People or whether they do not begin with, be getting pregnant with or without food or without health conditions, for example. So this eliminated any of those risks by giving those workers that local reward the businesses that it wouldn't have health insurance. That is so critical right now. We don't have all the tools we need at. With government to address the. Very large structural issues that our government needs to take on. But in a small way, we can report the right thing and say for private insurance, really a great. Precedent. And to show the way it can be honored, both the businesses that have to pay your rent as well as the workers that they have. So I just want to say thank you to this network. This is not something you're going to see in the audience. We're not supposed. To. Describe how this is going to be put into effect. So folks understand the mechanism. Yep. Go ahead. Great. Thanks so much. Sure, Sky Stewart from the mayor's office said Alchemical Mechanics explained that this is an ordinance to allow the property finances division of real estate to renegotiate some lease terms with these tenants. As part of that, there will be an addendum to their lease that outlines the specific provisions that we're talking about here, where if they take advantage of that rent deferral, will their rent be deferred, a term added to the end of their term, but they will be required to meet these obligations in terms of the rehire provision. So they'll be required to try to stop their employees when they leave. Though she said that she will have the ability to check when they begin rehiring them. They have made the offers to those same employees. And also on the health insurance side, the one who was being provided health insurance, if they are being paid for that health insurance throughout the terms of the rent deferral, we will actually offset the cost in an equal amount to what they are paying in terms of that insurance. But that said something in doing that, as the council, I mentioned that a lot of these are part time jobs and a lot of Pacific operations here. So not everybody was receiving health insurance, but there are some more employees and management employees that we know are receiving health insurance that have to be paid over that time. So I want to make sure that they are rewarded for continuing to support their employees during this crisis. Thank you, Mr. President. Nothing other. I want to.