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Speaker 0: Adam 19. Speaker 1: Report from. Speaker 0: Perth. There's been a request on item 19 for a short presentation. Speaker 1: Please report from Parks, Recreation and Marine recommendation to execute agreements with Central Asia to occupy Room 112 at the General Officer Community Center at Cesar Chavez Park and Suite one, or for A, B, C, D and E at the Long Beach Senior Center Districts one and two. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're very excited to be here today with these two agreements that support a wonderful partner in our nonprofit community center. And I'll give it to Brant to talk a little bit about what these two items are. Thank you, city manager. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and council members. I think on the coattails of last Tuesday's significant community support for the Latino Cultural Center and also naming Central Cha as the lead not for profit to move that project forward. I think our department and citywide are continuing that partnership in a very supportive way. We have two operational agreements before you this evening. One is within Cesar Chavez Park at the center. Basically giving center some office space and underutilized corner of that facility. It is for a period of five years with the possibility to add two additional five year periods. And I think long term the purpose of that was once the Latino Cultural Center is identified, that a more permanent home would be located within that facility. The other realization is Central CHA continues to provide significant community services and they do utilize the Jennifer Payson Center as a home base for a lot of the programs they deliver. The accompanying agreement, operational agreement, is again realizing that Central Cha, a new headquarters building on Atlantic Avenue, probably to be completed within the next 12 to 18 months. They'll be utilizing some office space at the Fourth Street Senior Center that's recently been vacated with the relocation of Partners of Parks over to the Recreation and Parks Administrative Building in Eldorado Park. So and that again, is of a more temporary nature, realizing that probably within the next year to two years that they would be relocating back over to the Atlantic facility. So with that, I'm available for any questions that you might have. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilman's in the house. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mayor. I'm so excited for Central to having a space in our Jenny Oropeza Community Center at our beloved Cesar Chavez Park Central Chantelle's amazing work in the community. And that is a big, big thing for our community and for our residents. They really thrive off of being able to have central trust so close to them. So I really think central time for all the amazing work that you do and that you provide for for our communities, especially for our communities that are hard to reach, especially for those communities that are the most in need. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I'm just so glad that we were able to work together as a city. I really want to thank city staff for all their amazing work and their willingness to collaborate and make this make this agreement possible for Central Time. I also want to give a huge thanks to our Parks and Rec and Marine staff, especially to Director Denis, who was able to see the need that central chair had for for space and was able to to provide this space and work with them. And your willingness to always provide for the community is just amazing. So thank you very much for your collaboration with this and for realizing that this is a community that really, really, truly needs these services. And that tenure piece is the journey out of business center is the right place for them. So thank you again to everybody who made this possible. Speaker 4: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Just completely support this item. It's just great to have a partner with Central try and with just this great community organization. And I also look forward to having your offices in the second District, at least for a little while. Congrats. Speaker 4: I thank you. I look at my comments here. I think every time we're able to figure out partnerships with community based organizations to provide services, it's a great outcome. We see that in North Long Beach with what's happening with Camp Fire. We lost our after school program services. Camp Fire was able to come in and help out. Conservation Corps has moved in and has reactivated that space, and I have no doubt that central charge is going to have a tremendous impact on the park and the broader community. So congratulations to everyone. Councilwoman Zoro. Speaker 1: Yes, thank you. I wanted to express my support on this item and that I know that when center to finish building their facility in the sixth district, they'll be circling, spreading their resources in this variety of areas and then coming back home to the sixth district. So thank you very much. Speaker 4: Thank you. We have one public comment, Jessica Quintana. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of Center Child, this is just truly an exciting time, a moment for us to demonstrate this, this partnership with the city of Long Beach. Once again, I know we were here last week and I lost all my colleagues and crew because tonight's the Dodger game. And so they're all here in spirit and they should just get you go. We'll be here in spirit. But you know, this this truly really solidifies and advances, you know what we're all saying in our community and to promote and expand public benefits for our community members. You know, prior to the pandemic and currently now with the economic recovery, we've seen more of a higher need within our community to have access to benefits and services. And so we just want to thank our partner, Brant Dennis and the city manager and the city council member team and everybody at Parks and Recreation for being so supportive and welcoming us to the space. We truly appreciate that. You know, it's a lot of people don't know the story, but I moved to Long Beach in 1964. We moved on fourth and main. And so I grew up here in the city. And, you know, I have three folks who who inspired me throughout my life. One was also Travis. I had the opportunity to march with him when I was only 15 years old. He came to Long Beach and we marched to Wilmington. And we all know he's a labor leader and a civil rights activist. And so through working at the center of Back in the Day with Professor Armando Vasquez, who was here last week, we were boycotting grapes up and down Anaheim market, you know, and we had the opportunity to march with Cesar. Then the next inspiration of my life, who inspired me to do the work that I do, is the three folks who are memorialized. Associate Chavez Park is Jenny Oropeza. So Jenny, as you know, was the first Latina on city council and then went on to be our state senator who fought and championed for the quality of life for women, children in our communities. And then maybe a lot of folks may not know him, but there is a bench that's memorialized for John Northmoor. And John Northmoor was an advocate on behalf of youth. He's the one that brought things post to our city, into our community. And so I was a youth growing up in Long Beach with the first team post that was in West Long Beach. So I have the honor and privilege to go back to the area and really, you know, inspire my community and provide community benefits with three of the most influential leaders who made a difference in my life in the work that I do to provide services. And our community center, Chuck, for years have been in the city for over 25 years. We have an infrastructure that has brought many, many, much needed services to the community and bringing millions of dollars to the city of Long Beach and we're going to provide legal services were a part of Immigrations Appeals Agency and we'll be providing immigration, legal services, business development and workforce development services. And then we come with so many partnerships. We focus on job training and workforce development and have contracts with the Long Beach City College and other institutions for certified training. So we're just so ecstatic for the the excitement for this partnership and to provide services to Cesar Chavez Park and at the senior center. So it benefits so much. I know I'm over my time, but thank you, everybody. It's truly privilege. An exciting day for for center time for myself. Speaker 4: Fantastic. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement with Centro CHA, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, to occupy Room 112 at the Jenny Oropeza Community Center at Cesar E. Chavez Park, at 104 Golden Avenue, from October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2026, with the option to renew for two five-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement with Centro CHA, Inc., to occupy Suite 104A, B, C, D, and E, at the Long Beach Senior Center, at 1150 East 4th Street, from October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2023, with the option to renew for an additional one-year period, at the discretion of the City Manager. (Districts 1,2)

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Speaker 2: Emotions carried. Speaker 4: Thank you. 22, please. Speaker 2: Recommendation to request city attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code to comply with the state mandated legislation. Senate Bill 1383. Speaker 4: Or their second on this motion is moved and seconded. There's one public comment. Shukla. Speaker 2: Good evening. Mayor and City Council. I'm here this evening to speak in favor of this item and urge your support for it. I'm aware of the study session that already occurred on August 3rd and the the memo that came out a couple of months before that was an item that dovetails with current explorations to replace the search plant, our local trash incinerator, which at present does not have the physical infrastructure, the sewer hookups for anaerobic digestion, so that a pathway for meeting the demands of the SB 1383 is going to be off the table before its enforcement time. The main thing that I'd like to ask this evening, since it didn't cover the question, is when the city, like the city of L.A., is going to have a zero waste policy and adopt a zero waste set of goals, the easier to talk about if we knew when the Climate Action Adaptation Plan was happening. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you, members. Please cast your vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending Chapters 8.60, 18.67 and 21.42 of the Long Beach Municipal Code to comply with the State-mandated legislation Senate Bill (SB) 1383, the Short-Lived Climate Pollutants: Organic Waste Methane Emissions Reduction. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that, we're going to go and move on to the first presentation and then we'll do the consent calendar. So I know I think we have majority of people here for item 18. So let's go ahead and do item 18, please on record. Speaker 3: Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a report on a Latino Cultural Center. Speaker 2: Community Engagement and Business Plan Citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council. I will. We do have a presentation. This is a pretty exciting item that we're in front of. This is an investment of the council made and it's been really important to the community. I'd like to turn it over to Tracy Conger, who will start off our presentation. Speaker 2: Honorable Mayor and City Council. We are so excited and pleased to provide you with an update on the Latino Cultural Center. Next slide, please. Back in September of 2019. Council you all authorized $50,000 to support outreach efforts for Latino Cultural Center. And then back last November, we invited 50 prominent Latino leaders to serve on the steering committee. And many of those leaders are here in the audience today. And we want to thank them for their countless hours of advising and guiding us into this process. Also, we want to thank the Departments of Economic Development, Parks, Recreation, Marine and Public Works. Brant, Dennis, Eric Lopez, John Keisler and Sergio Ramirez have been huge partners in lifting this effort over the last year. Central CHA led a very robust community engagement process, which you'll see in just a moment. And Laud Cultural Resources has developed a draft business plan for your review this evening. Oh. Next slide, please. Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you. Speaker 2: The steering committee has been working diligently over the last ten months to produce the report this evening. We had a big kick off last December. We were excited and the mayor welcomed everyone to the steering committee. We looked at the history and data about Latinos in Long Beach. We saw a market overview of models and trends and a case study review of other Latino cultural centers across the country. In addition, as I mentioned, Central Cha led a five month, very robust community engagement process. We reviewed the community engagement report and provided feedback. And then from all a culmination of all this information, Lord Cultural Resources developed the draft business plan for your review this evening. Next slide, please. Now I would like to call up Joseph Quintana, executive director of Central Cha and Megan and Nya. They're going to provide an overview of the community engagement process. Speaker 3: Me. Can everybody hear me? Yeah. Perfect. Thank you so much. Tracy and Jessica will join us in just a few moments. But I will begin today's presentation. Speaker 2: By giving you. Speaker 3: An introduction into how our community engagement went. So next slide, please. Now this is going to be the quickest version of the history snapshot that we gave at the beginning of every community engagement session we had. And this is for the purpose of giving some community education, but also some cultural context into the issue and why it's needed. So just to begin after the 1848 US-Mexico war. Mexico lost about 55% of its territory to the US. This left over 100,000 Mexicanos north of the border. But following that. Speaker 1: Event. Speaker 3: Mexicans were largely decimated for decades to come. So between the 1850s to the 1940, the Latino population largely decreased. Now, following the establishment of the Willmar City, which eventually became Long Beach, this area was in an area that was largely derived from the last MI Atoll Brother Territory acquisition. And this comprised of Los Alamitos, Fritos and this. So this area was largely connected to the Latino roots. However, by the 1960 census, we saw that the Latino population had decreased to nearly 7500. But at that time, the Latino population started to revive and grow again because their labor force was largely looked for. For the current workforce development as well as for for the economics in the city. And so by 2019, we see that the Latino population grew from merely 7500 to over 1009, 190,000. That's an increase of over 191,000 or a factor of 2,652%. Now, that might not seem that big of a change, but if you take a look at the entire city's population, it increased by only 118,460 during the same time period. That's a factor of 74%. But the Latino population has grown to be the largest ethnic population in the city. Now I'm going to give you an introduction into what the city's current demographics look like. And this was just to give you context as to how the city has grown and how the demographics have changed over time. Speaker 2: Next slide. Thank you. Speaker 3: So we see that presently, according to the 2020 census, Lumbee Latinos represent 43% of the entire city's population of that. We take a look at family households in the city and we see that 31.9% of all family households identify as Latinos. Now, to take a further dove into what our our Latinos look like here in Long Beach, we see that 81.2% of all Latinos are of Mexican heritage. But we also have residents from Central America, South America, Peru, Peru. We also have them from Puerto Rico, Cuba and even the Dominican Republic. So we have a broad range of Latinos presented are represented here in Long Beach. And so if we take a look now not only at the composition of their origin, but we take a look at their age composition. We see that 30.4% of the Latinos living in Long Beach are under the age of 18. Those are youth populations. And then when we take a look at the Latinos who are of working age, that represents 65% of all Latinos here in Long Beach. Which is not surprising when we take a look at the workforce and we see that 42% of Long Beach's residential workforce are Latino. And this is important when we start to understand what kind of means, what can I give services and what is our population going to request from a cultural center? Now, I also must direct your attention to some of the opportunity gaps and the economic challenges that our community faces. Before we look at what the community requested, because in much of what the community requested, it's reflected in many of these opportunity gaps, including educational attainment. Speaker 1: Income gaps, health access. Speaker 3: As well as our digital divide, immigration issues, language barriers, and even some of our household challenges. Speaker 1: Next slide, please. Speaker 3: So of course, our community engagement was rich and robust. And as much as I would enjoy providing you with all of the details we don't have all night, so I'm going to give you just a glimpse of the outreach and findings that we had from our our our from our community engagement. So there was an overwhelming vocalized need for a cultural center that goes beyond the traditional museum or cultural center. And they were speaking our communities really seeking not only cultural recognition or arts, but they're looking for support through wellness, equity, social justice, economic opportunities, historical connections. They're looking for education, healing services and really opportunities for recovery. And so when we take a look at the tree presented, this is just a word tree that captures some of the dialog that our community brought up time and time again. And we see empowerment, we see recognition, we see acceptance. And so what we gain from this is that Latinos struggle not only with a sense of belonging or a sense of acceptance, but they're also struggling with trauma, financial burdens. They're struggling with job insecurity. Disparate health impacts, educational attainment gaps, family struggles, language barriers, immigration issues, and even a digital divide, as I mentioned before. Next slide, please. So Center Cha really did do our best to implement a outreach plan that was broad and robust to make sure that we didn't cherry pick our participants. But instead, we cast a broad net to make sure that our true Latino voice here in the city was captured. And through this effort, we hosted 19 focus groups, which encompassed 263 individuals. And it also gained participation from 25 local organizations. We held these sessions in both English and Spanish to make sure that it was language inclusive for all of our participants. Additionally, we collected 77 survey responses which were collected from students, youth as well as residents over the age of 18. We also connected with many of our city leaders and experts and hosted 15 key informant interviews to see what they had to say, what their input was on the center. And finally, we hosted a see if you will be MBA Student Research Study, which included 12 MBA program students, three professors, as well as one well-known urban planner . Next slide, please. So from all of these outreach, from all of this outreach, what we found can be summarized into four main categories. We see. Speaker 1: That. Speaker 3: Space and facilities. Speaker 1: Was a big. Speaker 3: Theme to our community. Programs, services and. Speaker 1: Exhibits spoke. Speaker 3: Directly to our community, community arts, health and wellness as well as education. Overall was a big theme, and economic and community development was very big to our community. But these are sort of umbrella categories. So to take a look at the more specific concepts that were identified by our community, you can see at the broad array of descriptions below with pictures and what our community really wants to see. And of course there's more, but these are just the most popular ideas and we have to phase in some of the ideas that our community is seeking. And historic exhibits was one of the first ones. Our community is really seeking acceptance and connections to the roots here. So they want to hear stories, pictures and really have that connection solidified between us and why and our history here in the region. Now, a trusted safe space was the next thing that came up. Very often. Our community wants to make sure that this cultural center is not only a space where they can get resources, but they want to make sure it's a safe space where they feel comfortable to access these resources and that it's safe for people of all ages, all backgrounds, and that everyone feels comfortable in the city to go. Additionally, making sure that we create a community resource hub as sort. Speaker 1: Of a pipeline to. Speaker 3: Give information as well as to provide information or other resources on some of the issues that our community may be facing, some of the challenges they are seeking help for now. Additionally, there was a very high outcry for services and programs regarding workforce development, entrepreneurial development, as well as business development. Now our community, of course, don't want to see cultural arts, education, language programs, language services, even assistance in tech services and so forth. And that all falls under cultural, education and arts. And then another interesting thing was that the community wanted to see architecture, decor, esthetics and displays that really reflected the diverse Latino community. Because one thing they mentioned was that when they look at downtown, it doesn't reflect the Latino people. There's not one thing that really reflects their culture. And so that's really missing to the connectedness in the community. Of course, Student Support Services was another large thing. But one thing that was interesting that I may mention is that the community really fell in love with the concept of including an elementary school, a traditional Latino marketplace that can serve in the historical cornerstone of the city. But it can be a comprehensive economic development and a mixed use project that's not only going to highlight and showcase the city's Latino population and their vitality, but it's also going to support as a support the center overall, as an economic generator, because this can pull in new businesses, this can support local businesses. And this could also be a place for tourist, for visitors and for even the city overall. So, of course, this is the overall view of the community engagement and a snapshot. If anyone is introduced, interested in the detailed information, I will be proud to provide that to you. But I'm going to keep the show going and I'm going to pass it on to Jeff cooking dinner. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 3: Thank you, Megan, so very much. For those who may not know, Megan just graduated with her. Speaker 1: Masters in Economics. So she is one of the youngest economists here in the city of Long Beach and has already doing great work, as you can see. So we're so very proud to have her. Speaker 3: So on behalf of Sensor Tower and our advisory committee and our Latino community and just want to give a big thank you to the city council members. Speaker 1: To our mayor. Speaker 3: To city manager Tom Modica, to John Keiser Brant, Dennis, to Eric Lopez, Tracy Colonia for all their support in this. Speaker 1: Initiative, because without your investment, we would have never been able to do this feasibility study that's so much needed in our community. I'm not going to go over the demographics that's already been presented, but what I would just like to say thank you on behalf of the organization. And we look forward to the next steps, the next steps of conducting a feasibility study for the El Mercado de Long Beach and a Latino cultural district. So we're excited for that. I know. That's next. Speaker 3: And we look forward to. Speaker 1: Working with Mr. Kiser and our city manager to making that. Speaker 3: Happen and our hardworking committee members and some of them are here today. So if some of our committee members could just stand up, I know we have a lot more who couldn't be here, and some of them are elders, but our committee advisors who are part of the cultural center just to stand up and. Speaker 1: To be recognized or give a giveaways. Speaker 0: One. Speaker 3: Thank you for your time and service. As you can imagine, we have 40 members. Speaker 1: But some folks. Speaker 3: Cannot be here in person and they're watching. So thank you so much. Speaker 1: For your time and service. Speaker 3: And so I also just want to thank our community members who came out today. So this is why you won't hear a long speech from me today, because our community has so much to say. So thank you, our community, for coming out. Give yourselves a round of applause. And we're there in support. Speaker 1: And we have a lot of. Speaker 3: Watchers watching. Speaker 1: At home, and. Speaker 3: We are in full support of this project. So thank you. On behalf of Senator to. Speaker 0: Thank you, Jessica, so much. And Mr. Motorcade, did staff have additional comments or. Yes, we would like to present the business plan by Lord Consulting. Great. Speaker 2: Great. And we will go quickly through this, mayor. I would like to present Veronica Gonzalez and hub here, Jimenez from Lord Cultural Resources. Veronica's here in person and her colleague, whoever is in remote via WebEx. Honorable man, city council members, it's a pleasure to join you this evening. I'm from lower cultural resources and we have just celebrated our 40 year anniversary. Laura Cultural Resources was founded in 1981 in response to an emerging need for specialized planning services in the cultural and heritage sector. We are now the world's largest cultural professional practice, with completion of over 2500 projects in 57 countries across the world. Lord has earned an international reputation for sector leadership, innovation and excellence. It has been a true honor to have worked with your very esteemed steering committee, the city's amazing staff Tracy Brandt, Sergio and now Eric. And to have a very important partnership with Centro Cha on the planning of the Latino Cultural Center. Jessica, David and Megan, thank you all for the opportunity to work together. We join you in your enthusiasm, engagement and leadership in moving this very important project forward in a way that continues to be transparent, equitable, inclusive, with a focus on access of resources on behalf of your very substantial and growing Hispanic constituencies. We look forward to the Council deliberations and consideration of our plan. I now want to introduce my colleague, Javier Hermanas. Javier is our director of organization and strategy. He has a high level of expertize and many years of experience in leading a wide range of projects with museums, cultural organizations and municipalities. Of course, we will be here following our presentation to answer any questions you may have. Thank you so much. Speaker 4: Thank you, Veronica. This is Vince Carter speaking. I hope you can hear me all right. Speaker 2: We can hear you. Speaker 4: Great. Great. So. So I'm going to be presenting just, just five slide slides, a snapshot of the of the business. And I just wanted to add in my my gratitude again for the process has been very enriching. You can see that the process followed as we faced the approach we we tried to build on your work with other other partners along the process. Very important the contributions from some of the community engagement and process sense which are led and part of our reform was to be, you know, quantifying the implications of this initiative, trying to come up with operations on the use of capital cost estimates for for this project moving forward. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. So what? What? The business plan includes the full document. Is this a process overview of the origins? Then the context. We look outside the controlled market realities and risk practices where we we we developed a long list of cultural centers of similar scope and also did a shortlist of a more detailed analysis of more and more relevant institutions. Alongside, we also conferred with local institutions in Long Beach to try and investigate attendance levels and other variables. We we then developed operating assumptions across a number of categories. And I have to say here that the business plan is built on these assumptions and the assumptions may change, and that is hope to be right. Because at this point in time, there are there there are things that need to be determined determinants like, for example, the scale of the building and some of these assumptions will have an impact on the final numbers. So for now, we are working with the assumptions that we that we have been able to build through to the process of consultation starts with the advice also from from the steering committee of the different stakeholders. And we believe that the assumptions that we have in place are solid enough. But as I say, we are we are realistic in the sense that this may all as the planning moves forward and the ultimate result is to produce the attendance and financial projections, projections for operations, meaning after opening day, so we can estimate how much it will cost to run during the first five years of operations and also a capital cost estimate that I would show you coming. And move on to the next one, please. Thank you. So. So typing right into the the summary of the operational revenues are expensive. We are we are focusing on EUR five operations after opening just because we experienced. The first the first couple of years are two years are years when when two issues may occur due to a novelty factor or due to inexperience cropped up of different programs. And by year four and or year five, we can start to to assess an institution in a more space. So these numbers are going to be present in our four, four year five after opening. And the budget that we have calculated is around $1.6 million per year. This would be non inflated and that would be the operating operational expense of the institution. The we have been analyzed revenue being different categories and we started with bad revenue, meaning that the revenue that the new student inside the control center can generate by itself by selling activities, for example, through admissions, through rentals, through programs, performing arts and other things that other services that may be on offer. And this amounts to 23% of operating cost being covered by it. It is a good performance in the cultural sector and we've seen anything between ten and 20, 25% in the comparables, very rarely anything above 30%. So so we we we believe this is, you know, it's a good target to achieve. But it does it does it does point to the fact that other other revenues are still required on our revenue. And we have to be very transparent if we want this institution to be sustainable in the long term in being aware that it's a very mission driven institution and the model reflects that it's not a market oriented performance, meaning that, for example, ticketing program, some of the services programs that center which have already shared some of those programs, will not be trying to make a profit in the price points. Right. So so what that means is that at some some kind of subsidy or some kind of alternative funding is required. So that's what we estimate, that around nine in-house full time positions would be created in the center, supplemented by approximately another 9.5 points. So we're looking in total 18 positions. This will be new jobs in that open economy. And in terms of attendance, we projected around 18,400 per year. It could be more than this. We would be conservative here. But also, you know, because we believe that the programs are going to be of high quality and attention to detail, attention to that, because we don't want to look as much in maximizing quantity, but making sure that the quality is there and programs that are. So the range of 18000 to 20000 seems reasonable. With that in mind, and I'm not finished with the point about other other sources of revenue and and that would be the need would be for around 1.3 million to come from other sources beyond programing on what other sources. That those would be good. That would be the Mercado and which which is going to be a study is going to be developed soon on the visibility of that specific initiative. Also, public public private partnerships and government contributions to different levels, including federal, state and local or post all types of of government funding. Also corporate contributions and donations. Sponsorships. And we are recommending unemployment for operations to be put in place as well as as the capital campaign is is called for giving you advice to create another another company, a company for the adult and entrepreneurs so we can move on to the next one time. One important assumption we had to make and which, as I said, may change, is the size of the building. A person we are working with with an assumption of 15,000 square feet of enough space. And you can see how we we you know, we recommended a breakdown of those spaces between exhibition spaces, public events and amenities, also education and meditation spaces or more specific workshops and classrooms, things like that. And then Michael and offices are 50% of the total excuse me, there was a big a big request from the community to also provide outdoor spaces. So we are also forecasting that in the end, the total in the total construction. So the total program space is actually 21,300, including indoor and outdoor. This, as I said, is is based on on our knowledge at this time. It might be a renovation of an existing building, potentially an optional or existing stretch of a park. But we don't know if it might also be a new buildings. So those are things that we express as the project moves forward. Move on to the next one. Thank you. Yeah. This is just a quick run up of operating expenses. These are revenue. And basically what this shows is pick up right between the 1.6 operating budget of the institution and the 383 180,000 end revenue that we forecast the tax to produce. And the next slide that we are moving to now. Thank you. I'll show you the other source of revenue that will cover the cost and what are the amounts that we have planned. And I just focus on the top three, starting with the largest, which is the last one that would be forming a private partnership and all or level of public funding. What we have learned from our research of control centers of this type is that they don't rely on some sort of public funding. And this also goes back to the reasoning that many of these institutions or all of our missions within institutions, they are put in place to to serve a community need and a subsidy to develop the involvement of the public sector. Is is is critical from the beginning at the moment that the public sector has been very important in all levels. And we hope that will continue. The second largest item that we have that we have forecasted here is some dominance. And this would, of course, depend on whether the campaign can afford or whether it's realistic to to put on a party something for a moment. But we believe that if 10 million to possibly 10 million fund was raised or dominant for operations, then that would yield approximately 270,000 per year, which would be, you know, if it were to be a great cash cushion for for sustainability long term. So we we already have to pay for this. And then the third item is the recall that medical there are 181,000. This is our very preliminary estimate of what the recoverable generate as a net revenue. But as I said, an analysis and there's another study doing this in more data that we offer whether these numbers at this level or be notable. And we can move on to the next slide. Thank you. And this is my last my last night. This is now talking about. We were talking about OpEx, operational revenue and cost. And we're just focusing on this line on capital estimation. We have we have run different ranges depending on and different scenarios, depending on whether the the control center is released on or it's a new project and whether, you know, that there's always a range between different costs and there are always some some unexpected costs that could originate. So far, renovations, for example, are in high level. We believe that the project would be achieved with between 26 or 26.9 million and 30 million. And this is this includes the three bullet points at the bottom. This includes construction costs. So hard costs at 20 to 40 million. It also would include costs. So all the architecture of these project licenses and around 5 to 6 million total, and then we are doing 8 to 10 million for the development fund for operations that I mentioned at the beginning. So for example, the development fund was was decided to not be pursued. Then we will decrease these capital campaign needs by 10 million. So actually the building just requires around €20 million, up to 31 winning to Fund Corporation. And this is this is it for me for now. I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone may have. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going back to staff now, Mr. Marco. Speaker 2: Yes. Thank you, Javier and Veronica, for your hard work on the business plan. In terms of next steps and to wrap up this report, central China has been identified as the nonprofit who will lead the Latino Cultural Center. They'll need to finalize the draft business plan and develop a work plan and fundraising efforts, as well as initiate the formal planning entitlement phase. And lastly, identify a permanent location for the Latino Cultural Center. Last slide, please. City staff are here to answer any questions you may have, and that concludes our report. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. There is a there is a motion. And the second I'm going to ask the maker of the motion if we can do public comment first unless there's and then we'll come back. So I do have a significant amount of public comment. So I'm going to when I read your name, please line up in that order and then we'll get to the public comment and then come back to the council. So I'll just read up what I have. If the first five speakers could please line up in this order. Armando Vazquez Ramos, David Salazar, Phyllis Arias, Ron Arias HURTADO. Are safe and eligible to vote for six could please come forward in that order that Amanda Vasquez Ramos. David Salazar. Nicholas Arias Ron Arias parasail and Olivia Ortega. What the fuck is wrong? Thank you. I would like to start with a prayer. Lord made the Dodgers make it tonight. I know. I said everybody's mine. Okay? And I wanted to share a little levity, but to celebrate with you and thank all the cooperation from city fathers and in the administration that has been so supportive and it's so wonderful that we're at this at this point in time because it's a night and day difference from 50 years ago. So when you know that I go back to the late sixties and certainly that what we have in this city today is capacity, the capacity to be able to go through this process, to create a vision and to implement the project. And certainly that the future of Long Beach is strong. This project will certainly create the viable opportunity to develop a long term project in perpetuity. And now with the cooperation with the cities development of the downtown of Long Beach, connecting Drake Park with Cesar Chavez, the ailing river expansion, and certainly I have already introduced or provided a letter of support that outlines what I wanted to express. I just want to say a huge thank you. And of course. Speaker 4: We look. Speaker 0: Forward to this journey together. Thank you so much, city manager. Thank you so much. City Council and of course, the mayor of L.A. And then I have to thank you, Dr. Ramos. Speaker, please. Mayor Garcia and members of the City Council. My name is David Salazar and I'm a secretary, a board member, as well as a resident of the fifth District. We're pleased to be before you tonight to present our report for the Community Engagement and Business Plan for the Latino Cultural Center and Mercado. The creation of the center and the Mercado has been discussed for many years in the city, and we feel now that time has come. Currently, Long Beach Latinos do not have a cultural home where the community can celebrate their history, identity and culture in a place they can call their home their hub. They also do not have a cultural and relevant retail and commercial space that serves the needs, serves their needs, and promotes entrepreneurial ship, small business development and economic self-determination. We believe that the cultural center and the Mercado addresses multiple objectives and speak to the long standing social and economic inequalities in the city. The combination of the two projects are in perfect alignment with the city's racial and equity equitable equity I'm sorry, Equity Reconciliation Initiative, as well as the up and coming 2.0 economic development plan. In summary, the creation of space and the development of the Latino Cultural Center, McCollam will not only showcase the vitality and the spirit of the city's Mexican-American and Latino community, but also establishes a much needed cultural home that will provide a place of belonging, pride and economic opportunities for generations to come. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Next propose. Speaker 2: Good ending. My name is Phyllis Aria, and I've been a resident of Long Beach for exactly 50 years. In my 50 years in Long Beach. I've seen the city's community of. Speaker 1: Latinos grow from. Speaker 2: About 7% in 1971 when I arrived to about 45%. Speaker 1: Today, which is remarkable. But in my years. Speaker 2: As an instructor, as a teacher, as an educator, I was always struck by how much our Latino community doesn't know about its own history. And I think that the Latino Cultural Center is the perfect opportunity for us to make sure that we all know that the entire community knows the history of Latinos in Long Beach, the history of Latinos in California, the history. Speaker 1: Of Latinos in the. Speaker 2: Entire country. And so I fully support the Latino Cultural Center, and I thank the city and its staff for its support. Speaker 0: Good evening, Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Ron Audios, and I'm here to completely and totally support the concept of a Latino community cultural center. As Armando mentioned, I am also one of the old guys that have been around for 50 years. For those of you that remember the original Centro on Anaheim and Holy Pedro, that's where I got my first job. And so the idea for a permanent home for the Latino, Hispanic, Latino community has been around for many, many years as communities across the nation struggle with diversity, inclusion and equity and access issues as a result of our social change and all that is going on in the country, in the world. This is a great project. It brings us together. It allows us to celebrate who we are. And ultimately, we are much more alike than we are different. This is an investment and I thank the Council for supporting this concept. The staff members John Kyser, Tracy Brant, Eric Sergio they have been absolutely wonderful and we wouldn't be here without them. So I just want to completely and totally support this project. Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, City Council members. My name is Harold La Salle. I am the community affairs director at Interval House. We are very proud to support the proposed Latino Cultural Center at Mercado there, Long Beach. We have no doubt that it will become an important and successful cultural, educational and economic hub for the city, especially because of the involvement of Central Cha and Jessica Quintana. Without question, there is no other organization that could better lead the development of this district center, which has been our community's premiere cutting edge program that has advocated for the protection and advancement of not only Latinos, but our culturally underserved and disenfranchized communities in our city. We know that they will continue to be forward thinking and inclusive in their efforts. So on behalf of everyone at Interval House, of which only a few of us are here tonight, we enthusiastically support this incredibly important development. Thank you. Speaker 1: Good evening, honorable mayors and members of the City Council. Speaker 2: My name is Sylvia, although. Speaker 1: I am the legal and Latino program director at Interval House. We have provided housing and support services for victims of domestic violence in our community since 1979. Speaker 2: I am also the. Speaker 1: President of the ROMANA, the largest support group for Latina domestic violence survivors. For residents of Long Beach or over 45 years, I am so hopeful to see. The creation of a Latino cultural center in Kabul the longest. It could be such a great development for our city, and we would create a sense of pride for Latinos living in Long Beach to have a dedicated. Speaker 2: Area that highlights our. Speaker 1: Culture. Speaker 3: Um. Also, it would. Speaker 1: Be great for tourism to create a. Fun and a great place for people to come and enjoy and appreciate the diverse and. And College for Latino culture and music and modern art. This would be a great this would be a dream for our community. Speaker 0: So thank you so much. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. Gracias. Good to see you. Speaker 5: Nice to see. Speaker 1: You. Speaker 0: And next our next speakers are going to be Adrianna Guerrero, Joshua Sneed, Priscilla Suarez, Diego Zamora. Hear me get here. Mina Cruz. I think it says Marta Cota and Yvonne Garcia. So repeat those, please line up in that order. Adriana Guerrero. Joshua Sneed. Griselda Suarez. Diego Zamora. Filomena Cruz, Marta Cota and Yvonne Garcia. Speaker 3: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and members of the City Council. Speaker 1: My name is Guerrero and I'm the Administrative and client services director at Interval House. As a lifelong Long Beach resident and director at Interval House, which has been serving Long Beach and the Latino community for over 40 years, we couldn't be more enthusiastic. Speaker 3: About this. Speaker 1: Important development for our community. Speaker 3: It will not. Speaker 1: Only be exhilarating and exciting in terms of culture, tourism and entertainment, but it will also be of serious importance in terms of helping our. Speaker 3: Community access. Speaker 1: Critical resources for support. Speaker 3: From health. Speaker 1: And education to economic and housing support, and much more. It's poised to be a central hub for our community, and we thank you for making this a reality for our city. Thank you. Speaker 0: Good evening. Members of the Long Beach City Council, fellow residents of Long Beach. Anyone else I have the honor of addressing tonight? My name is Joshua Sneed. I'm a Long Beach resident in the seventh District. And I'm a local nonprofit executive and L.A. County commissioner. I'm currently enrolled in classes at California State University, Long Beach. I'm addressing that tonight because I recently attended a presentation about the proposed Latino Cultural Center here in Long Beach. And I want to share my impressions about this project. One thing the presenters did especially well was to help me see why our fine city deserves to have a place like the proposed Latino Cultural Center, a place that feels like home, where important celebrations can be held and remembered for decades. Where events and exhibits add life and meaning to the history taught in our schools. This idea will eventually become reality. It's inevitable. It's overdue. We should throw our full support behind making this happen. Now I ask our city council if you have an opportunity to provide material support to this idea, please consider how a space like the proposed Latino Cultural Center can make our city a more complete. This great idea is worth our investment of time, attention, and the funds needed to make it a reality. Thank you. Speaker 1: All right. When I have no chance, I'm going to tell that Suarez, the executive director of the Arts Council for Long Beach. I just want to take a moment to also be told I can take a psychic stand or check on a sore throat. You think it is the studio you have to go through though? Umberto Liberal Bavaria's Bertone, endemic to the love camp, is a long beach the in central the middle. Yesterday wasn't really bad. Thank you very much, mayor and council for voting to have this study and to have a steering committee. This, along with the work of the African-American Cultural Center and the Cambodian Cultural Center, is an important part of Lumbee Fabric as Arts Council. It's been a pleasure to be on the steering committee and as a beacon. Actually, Ghana to be on the steering committee has made a world of difference, to know that you are invested in the Latino community here in Long Beach. This is just one intersection of how the cultural center can uplift voices in economy, in arts and culture, in education. It is an intersection, and this Latino cultural center is just one example of many actions. There is deep, rich history not only in Long Beach but in the greater Long Beach area. And I think this will be a destination for many families and many residents around the area. So thank you again. And what I actually. Speaker 0: Good evening. My name is Diego Zamora. I am born and raised from Long Beach. I reside in the district. I support Santa Clara, Latino and vision of America here in Long Beach because I consider myself to be two sides of one coin. One side being born in Long Beach and the other one is having a mexican background. With that being said, growing up, it's always been needed in media, which means to say not from here, but from over there into this cultural center, which would be from the bottle, is just kind of bringing both of those two together and creating an area where I can relate to something where a lot of people that are just like me can go and be who they are. Thank you. Speaker 1: One of my kids at. They ran through the serial number if you get through. Speaker 0: Good evening, Mr. Mayor. And council members. My name is De La Cruz. Speaker 1: So Miembro de la Paz inaction people in the street to say. Speaker 0: I am member of Latinas in Action and I'm a member of the Protect. Speaker 1: Your Boy Centro Cultural Latino concept then gathered in Long Beach Parliament and in La Boulet Latina. Speaker 0: I support the Latino Cultural Center and the concept of Mercado in order to support the Latino culture. Speaker 1: But love Comunidad Latina in Centro Cultural Latino. But I represent them. Well Melanie that ended in a strike only that. Speaker 0: So for the Latino community. This center is going to represent our unity and in our community. Speaker 1: Them being back there on the ground in nosotros Podemos convivial communities familiar with Yami studies and the world championship up. Their love will do that as they did that Latina a company that is. Speaker 0: And this place is going to allow families and friends to share a good time together and also to show the Latino identity to other cultures. Speaker 1: It's important that. But I'm mi mi familia Martinez. I don't do that. And if I see that kind of joke and I said, But I left Proximus candidacy on this. Speaker 0: It is important for me and my family to keep our identity for the next and future generations to see that we are growth in this city. Speaker 1: It was for you in the city. Speaker 0: So thanks for your support in this initiative. It with. Well. Speaker 1: When I notice that I see you. Well. Speaker 0: Good evening. May I rather see? It's a pleasure to see you. Speaker 1: Now, you have told me a lot. I can see. Speaker 0: Another council member. It is a pleasure to see you. Speaker 1: If you look by the four yellow butterfly. Yes, they are Latino. Speaker 0: I am here to support the Latino Cultural Center. Speaker 1: You see a little bit gurgle, but the native language. Speaker 0: And also the vision of the America that you have here in the city of long. Speaker 1: Sorry. I'm also bothered by Latino I've got the name of and I thought that. Speaker 0: We know that we have a big percentage of Latino neighbors living in this city. Speaker 1: But all of us are more European. So Korea and the U.S. is intercultural. Speaker 0: But the most beautiful thing that I believe there, by creating this cultural center and this mercado. Speaker 1: The entire parastatal, then, of course, basis. Speaker 0: Is to be able to bring a little piece of our own country. Speaker 1: People that connect are nothing of a penal spoiler. They look well made the form of way of life. Speaker 0: And to be able to connect that don't feel like outsiders outside our country. Speaker 1: Has a wonderful circuit and we'll see on that. If I were killed, that's cool. Buda Nordstrom made a terrible noise, I thought is the only noise. Speaker 0: Celebration and other thing that makes me really very emotional. I it's really exciting to know that other cultures are going to be able to experience and to see our identity, our culture, our tradition. Speaker 1: The have in my if I project forward in their own opportunity that if the sense would be so if I look at people before I lose you got to sit up economy are going to suck on Maria Latina. Speaker 0: And also because this project is going to offer education opportunities is going to also offer health opportunity and economic growth for the entire community. Speaker 1: That is going to do away with my problem of voces intercultural though they're almost like a totally stone age economic and it's like a little legacy, but I can say about the same moment. Speaker 0: So I envision that moment when they're in the cultural center. Another, more color. There we go. And cut the ribbon. And the mayor and the council members are there celebrating that moment. That is to come. Speaker 1: We support the Latin American. Granted. Speaker 0: That's a. Greetings, Mayor and council members. My name is Ivan Garcia. I live in District one and I'm with Latinos in Action. And today I am speaking in support of the Cultural Latino Cultural Center and the Mercado the marketplace in Long Beach. The reason I speak in favor is because the Latinos make a very significant chunk of the population here in Long Beach, and it only it's only fair that their significance is celebrated in the city. And this marketplace, this cultural hub, is a very good be a very good way to do so. In addition to that, it can also bring about many economic benefits. Small business, Latino owned small businesses could benefit highly from this hub, this marketplace. And it's also a way to ensure that, as others have mentioned, that immigrants and Latino communities of all types are able to be celebrated and in this in the city. And it only makes sense because tourists, people from outside come to visit this highly diverse place. And when they see a Latino hub, they're able to have greater exposure to the diversity, to the very, very diverse nature of the city. And that only benefits us as a city. As you know, we have an image of being very diverse, of being a highly place with a lot of high number of Latinos and a high Latino influence. And so to me, it only makes sense that we have a cultural hub that celebrates and encourages Latino entrepreneurship and economic development . And that's those are those are the main reasons. Those are the reasons I am in support of the Cultural Center for Latinos and a Mercado in the city of Miami. Thank you for your time and thank you for your support. Thank you very much. An excellent speakers we have Arianna, Segun, Rana. I think it says. Seven relievers Zambrano, Perez, Jennifer Aguiar, Aguiar, Kenny Green and Maricela Rivera, Ariana Shogun, Rodrigo Zambrano, Edith Perez. Jennifer Aguiar. Avila, Kenny Green and Maricela de Rivera. Speaker 1: Hello. Good evening. Speaker 3: My name is Ariana Fagen. Speaker 1: I am from District four. Speaker 2: I was born and raised. Speaker 1: In the city of Long Beach and I'm for support of the Central Coast to a Latino and the vision of America in Long Beach. Speaker 3: Growing up as a first. Speaker 1: Generation Mexican-American, I hold significant value to my Latina identity. Speaker 3: I understand the importance. Speaker 2: Of creating and cleaning space. Speaker 1: To feel a sense of belonging. That sense of belonging will be created with a sense of cultural, Latino and the vision of a mercado in the city of Miami. To me, this piece represents the Latino community to flourish and prosper through the creation of economic, educational, social. Speaker 3: And health opportunities. This space for the. Speaker 2: Latino community in Long Beach to. Speaker 1: Claim their identity and express their diverse culture, tradition and values through music, art and performance. I am excited for the opportunity to embrace and preserve the Latino culture in the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 0: But whatever your color, the name of the closet you wouldn't in, Mr. Mayor and members of the city council. We know from what I know, they want to get rid of Roger. My name is Rodrigo Zamorano and I live in Detroit. If I remember it, I believe in action. And I am a member of Latinas in Action. Bangura player in central control of the Union. I'm here to support the Latino Cultural Center, LA Vision, the image of Carol, the numbers for the second year and also the vision of El Mercato in Long Beach in order to support our diverse community. Look on the map, the ever present federal policy in Long Beach. So the Latino community represents a big part of the population here in Long Beach. In Congress, after what happened in the Dallas policy, all of this. But it's elements that are contrary tradition. So this is going to bring the opportunity to express in this space our culture and traditions and policies that are really happening there. It is part of that tradition. Yes. And this space is going to offer an opportunity to express those cultures and traditions that we have, again, brought in there . And it's possible that instead of an associate of Patria, for example, to have a space to celebrate our patriotic celebration of culture with our music occurring, present a human Latino view to hear our music with a live presentation of the shows of Latino show, by our continued tradition of preserving, trying to be able to dance our dances and also express our culture through the visual arts. That's certainly more than the parliament for their own party to preserve the present language. So it is very important for us to have a little piece of our Latino countries here in the city of beach. Where are. I have an issue there. That's why I supported this initiative. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor, and members of the city council. First and foremost, I want to thank you for your dedication to serve our city and the implementation of this new policy. My name is Edith, for I am first generation Mexican-American, born and raised in the city of Long Beach. I reside on the seventh District in a Senate district with my family. I fully support the Latino Cultural Center Business District and the vision of Ella mercado, the Lumbee, because of their opportunities to our community and the economic growth of our city. Most importantly, I support the implementation of the ultimate goal, the Long Beach, because it will value our traditions of Latinos and my language will represent our history, our identity, our bond to the past, to our present and the future. Thank you. Speaker 0: Good afternoon. Speaker 1: Mayor. Speaker 0: Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Jennifer Geary and I'm a promoter of community health and education worker. Speaker 1: For Central Chair. I am also a first generation. Speaker 0: Mexican-American, born and raised in the city of Long Beach. I am a resident and registered voter in the seventh District. My father also owns a small furniture and upholstery business in the fourth District. I am also. Speaker 1: Here to support the Latino. Speaker 0: Cultural Center and Business District and our vision of the Long Beach that it will help to grow Latino and Hispanic entrepreneurship and support local Hispanic business owners who. Speaker 1: Have been impacted by the pandemic. Speaker 0: Thank you for your time. We look for your support on this initiative. Good evening, honorable mayor and the rest of the elected officials, leaders of Long Beach. My name is Kenny Green and I am part of the Workforce Development or Social Charter. We talked about history throughout this presentation and you know that we are writing history where people are going to look back 100 years and study what was done to say you guys have you guys could make history right now with the Latino Cultural Center and why this is important, because people 50 years, 100 years could look back because of the center and the history. The Latino journey could be memorialized so it won't be lost every time one of our seniors passed away. It also will give opportunity for our youth to create the history that's that's going to be here for generations. We talk about the American dream. This would give, you know, opportunities for folks to live the American dream by having their own businesses and also ensure that youth and young adults can create a career pathways. Very important because right now you guys could make history where people could look back 100 years from now and look at the Latino Center and study what we've done and where we're going. Okay. Speaker 3: Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Speaker 2: Council and community. My name is Maricela Rivera. I am the proud mother of these two. The three of us are proud members of the ninth district in North Language. Speaker 1: This is. Speaker 2: The first time we have attended in. Speaker 3: Person since. Speaker 1: COVID. Speaker 2: And I hope that that stresses to you how important this is to us. Speaker 3: We are here to stress our. Speaker 2: Support. Speaker 1: For the Latino Cultural Center Center, also senators but. Speaker 2: Center and. Speaker 1: Irma mercado. And I am going to relinquish the rest of my time to the staff because that I should still get a card for her. We must remind ourselves. Speaker 2: That with no. Speaker 1: Culture, there are no jobs. With no jobs, there's no economy, no economy. There is no Long Beach. With no Long Beach. Speaker 2: There is no diversity. There is. Speaker 1: No. Speaker 2: Democracy. Speaker 3: But I said otherwise. Speaker 0: Thank you. That was that was so great. And I have our final three speakers, which are Shane Weaver, Britta Cortina and Abigail me here. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Shane Weaver, field representative for Assembly Member Patrick O'Donnell. Happy to be here tonight in support of Agenda Item 18 and just to read aloud a letter from the Assembly member. I am pleased to support the Long Beach Latino Cultural Center Feasibility Report in collaboration with Central Shore and the City of Long Beach. The feasibility report includes a community engagement study and a proposed business plan exploring support and financing options to create a Latino cultural center district and a mixed use small business economic development hub. As Assembly member representing the city of Long Beach. I commend such try and the City of Long Beach for championing the Latino Cultural Center Feasibility Plan and business plan. Currently there is no established commercial area representing Long Beach Latinos, which roughly is 43% of the city's population. The Latino Cultural Center will not only serve as a source of inclusion and innovation, but will also help revitalize neighborhoods by becoming a regional economic generator offering visitors and tourists an authentic cultural experience. The Latino Cultural Center feasibility report captured the huge impact through direct engagement and explored financing options to develop the Latino Cultural Center District and a mixed use small business economic development. I urge a favorable consideration of the Latino Cultural Center, Community Engagement and Business Plan. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Speaker 1: Good evening. Mayor and. Speaker 3: Council Members. My name is Marissa Cortina. Speaker 1: I reside in the seventh district. Um. I am supporting the. Speaker 3: Latino Culture. Speaker 1: Center and Mercado. As a resident business owner, Latina woman, business owner. I have two locations in the sixth District and also in the seventh District. I plan on contributing to the resources and financial literacy. Because I am a tax preparer and because we see that this has been a project that has been much needed in our community . I growing up, I was in the Central Chop program and which introduced me to entrepreneurship using my skills. I'm creating jobs now that I am. Um, so I support and I think this is a great idea and this is something that's much needed in our community, and I hope that we can make this possible together. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name's Abigail, and I'm district director for. Speaker 3: State Senator Lena Gonzalez, and. Speaker 2: I have a letter. Speaker 1: On behalf of the senator to share. State Senator representing California's 33rd District and a member of the Latino Cultural Steering Committee. I write to support the Latino Cultural Center Community. Speaker 3: Engagement Business Plan. The City of Miami should prioritize equity, inclusion and celebrating. Speaker 1: Of its diversity. Speaker 3: And its commitment to ensuring that all. Speaker 1: Residents have an equal opportunity to thrive. The Latino Cultural Center will serve as a focal point to blend the city's unique cultural identity and embrace its historical significance. These efforts can help revitalize the neighborhoods and increase the quality of life of residents, creating community pride, belonging, identity, and reconnecting Latinos. 43 I support the Latino Culture Center's visibility and business plan. Thank you, everyone. Speaker 0: Well, thank you. And I want to just thank everyone for speaking to. We do have a motion to set and I'm going to turn it over to customers. And in just a minute, I'm going to say just a few things. Let me let me start. But it is mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Cleo, instead of those who stress our story, ask on this experience. Yes. It's okay to say that it's a memento. A memento, comma, something important. None of us such a little bit better in la la. A study of Latinos in this economy that one grande applause so in which are more a simple chart Latinas index your total operating history on a scale you about how the mucho para you got the momentum. Como también como como latino rhythm with your concern document them their own will mercado oligarchy giving you know none of us in Mexico battle for Latin America men amateur who eat at the man may see talk tomorrow the bassoon devil but the madness of commedia e but there is an article. Speaker 1: Is being. Speaker 0: Presented. It's also the practice and mundo. A eukaryote is being important in this one, too. Just briefly to say also that in the cap, but it is giving a lot of pride to see all of you. You've worked so hard for this moment. Everyone in this audience, all of our Latino elders, the leaders, Central China, Latinos in action. And I'm especially excited about the Mercado. I know, Jessica, you've been talking about the Mercado forever to me. And I just think it's going to be a great place to share our culture. I think you all know also that I'm you know, my other half is Mexican. And so I have the great fortune of eating a lot of Mexican food, which is almost as good as Peruvian food. Just almost are my two favorite foods. And so I look forward to all the all the tamales. And that was first class and, you know, all the great food we're going to have at the ultimate travel together. I will also say the one thing that makes me proud of this moment and I've shared this with a lot of you at a lot of meetings is. As Latinos have grown. Our share of our responsibility in leadership is also growing. And that means that with additional power or influence or ability to reach people, that not that also brings additional responsibility as a community. So I think it's important for us to recognize and for everyone here to recognize that the growth and population should equal a stronger desire. Any stronger sense of responsibility to the city and to the community. And so I know that that's something that's really important and that I hope that's part of the center, part of its education core is about that responsibility to serve community and the country that has welcomed us and given us and our families so much. I know that's going to be a big part of what the center is all about and that experience that we've all had in being a part of this country. So I just want to thank you all all for that great power comes great responsibility. My favorite my favorite Spider-Man quote. And I want to also just think I'm going to turn it over to the council. So I'm very happy about this. And I'm, you know, I'm super supportive. So I do plan on being there the day that we cut the ribbon in whatever capacity, you know, maybe a teacher at Chelsea Long Beach again to with Dr. Vazquez Ramos. And and I look forward to to sharing that moment. I want to thank our staff have done a fantastic job. I know the tricycle longa you worked so hard on this project. I just want to thank you so much for your commitment to the project. All of the staff have worked a lot, but tracy is like really gone to bat, I think, at the city. So I want to thank you, Christopher, for that. And and I do want to also especially thank the two council champions that have really been also pushing me not just on this issue, but on a lot of issues. The council is and they have some customary ranga who I know have been talking about Latino issues in general for a very long time. I just want to thank them. I want to particularly also I know Councilman Mongo also discussed this issue at the Economic Development Committee. I know that Councilman Allen also was a strong advocate at the committee as well with a lot of advocates here at the council. I think everyone here is supportive of this of this project. And so congratulations. Very, very, very proud day for the community. Historic day for the community. And with that, I'm going to turn over to the mic of the motion, compliments of the house. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I am such a proud Latina today. Today, being a famous historian again, I feel that the long reads of what is so good that most of us will not blossom when we played the profound. I want to thank everybody who came up to speak today and shared their story and their support for this amazing Latino cultural center slash, Edmund Cardon, especially Rosita, of course, and her her companion, Bijan. So thank you. Thank you very much. Another big thanks to our amazing staff like mayor, said Tracy. I'm always going to want you on my side to bat for me. Thank you. Thank you so much. I also want to acknowledge on the work that has already been done towards this vision. For many decades, this just didn't happen. So I really want to say thank you to all of those who kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing to bring us here to this day. Today, I am honored to have been part of the Latino Cultural Center Steering Committee. Thank you for that opportunity. I am super excited and supportive of the cities of Long Beach's vision for creation of the Latino Cultural Center. I would like to begin by acknowledging and thanking the work of the Latino Cultural Center Committee, who was composed of some very, very impressive members. I also would like to thank the leadership and collaboration efforts with Centro CHA and our consultant team, the Lord Cultural Resources, the points, components of the community engagement, visioning workshops, best practice research , marketing analysis and the development of concepts and business plan. All this all of this that was considered for the Latino Cultural Center have been a main theme at this point in this process. No formal specific sites have been identified, although, as we heard tonight, we have a very, very strong community interest in the location in the areas of the Drake Chavez masterplan. I also want to acknowledge that there's much more work to do in this effort and a lot more details to the vision for the center and as well as the concepts and plans and detailed marketing analysis and fundraising strategies that must be fully developed by the nonprofit central to that's leading this effort as it moves forward. I'd like to make a motion that the city continue to be engaged in the steering committee's efforts that at the appropriate time, as potential locations are explored, that both public and private are explored, and that the public sites that are that meet the need for our Latino cultural centers objective be including and not limited but included in the Drake Chavez Park. May may it be may be considered as well. If you need me to be a little more clear, staff, please let me know. Speaker 0: They've got that loud and clear. So that makes a lot of sense. We'll add that into motion. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. The reasoning for my motion is that it the possible inclusion of the Latino Cultural Center in the Mercado Project and the fact that Chavis Master Plan, which is something we're all advocating for it it would be have a historic cornerstone area in the city's Mexican-American and Latino community. Complementing are open space and parks that we have in in the surrounding community. This location also would enhance the use and programing of its existing general base at Community Center and Art Park. Furthermore, the development of the Latino Cultural Center and Mercado around the around or on the site, Chavez Park, is consistent with the goals of the city's Racial Equality, Equity and Reconciliation Initiative Report The Blueprint for Economic Development and the economic profile for the Latino Community Report. Given that it is addressing long standing social, economic, social and environmental and equities affecting the city's business community and promotes community empowerment, cultural recognition, interpersonal ship and self-determination in the city of Long Beach. As we know presently, there is no established cultural and retail project representing the city's growing Latino community, which stands at 43.3 of the adult population in the city, along with the Latino Cultural Center and Met Project, will provide identity and recognition for this population and can be integrated into the city's downtown core and and waterfront. This creation of place at Cesar Chavez Park hopefully will not only showcase the vitality and spirit of the long before female community, but also will become a regional economic generator and offering visitors and tourist and authentic cultural experience. And that makes me super happy. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And I want to turn it over the customary ringer, if you and I very happily second that motion cast members and then as to what a promotion. Today we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month. Out in the foyer, out here in front of City Hall. It's the seventh annual celebration that we had here when I first was elected in 2014. We didn't have that celebration. We sort of like went dormant after many years of having celebrations in the theater lobby Chelsea, Long Beach, Bixby Park. I'm with Ron and Phyllis in Nevada, a little bit here, 50 years. And, you know, we've been through a lot and we've had a couple of false starts in trying to get a central established here. We're starting with Central La Raza, the Accademia, and then and here we are tonight making history. This is this is one of those efforts that I think is going to be successful. And I think it's because of the people that are involved. Phyllis, Ron, Armando And of course, can't do it without Central Chad and the leadership of Jessica Quintana, who has basically been at the forefront of making this happen and making it a reality. And, of course, the support of staff. Tracy, you've been wonderful. And of course, our city manager has been very supportive of this cultural center right from the start. And it's a very proud moment that we had here tonight because of the efforts of the community and, of course, all of you who came here to speak in support of this project, because without without the support of community, there is no project. It works because you make it work. You make it happen. And it's not that's not us here at the city council that make it happen. It's you. We basically advocate for you. That's our that's our role. We're advocates. And you let us know what you want. And we try to make it happen. And we try to make it happen in a way that is going to be conducive to being moving forward the agenda for our people. The the night tonight is that I am a Chicano. I always call myself a Chicano and I've always been and will be. And a Latino or Hispanic Heritage Cultural Center is is something that will be very proud for. One thing I would like to see that I did not see presented here is also the fact that, you know, we as Latino leaders who are up here, we get old. No, we're not as young as we used to be. So we need new leadership. We need those individuals who are in the third, fourth or fifth grade now, or those who are just graduated from high school to take leadership role in leadership positions in the near future, because we're not going to be here that long. We need we're going to move on. We have to make room for the new leadership is coming. So I hope that this culture center also presents leadership opportunities to advance the the leadership that we need here in this city as it diversifies and becomes even more so than the period of three years now. So we know what the statistics are showing. We know what the data is saying. You know, we're becoming more diverse. And with that diversity comes responsibility. And with that responsibility comes leadership. And I hope that the Culture Center will also include some classes or some opportunities for our youth to advance their leadership skills and the opportunity to eventually take positions of leadership locally, state and nationally. I want to thank you all for being here. I want to thank. Of course, that which Mary said there has the mayor who who had been always supportive was. By the way, one thing he didn't mention. I hope he won't get a lot of Mexican food. Today we get Peruvian food and back at the city council. That delicious. Very good. So, again, thank you very much. And I very happily and proudly support this motion. This motion. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. And we thank those those behind the diocese getting getting very old. I think he's excluding Mary. And I hope that Councilman Austin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'd like to just weigh in and express my full support for this item. I stand with my colleagues, as well as the community in the call for cultural center for Latinos in Long Beach, in support of this whole community engagement and business plan. You know, I just want to commend the report, the work that went into, you know. Presenting this. You know, I'm always impressed with the young lady, Megan and I. And her data, I think, illustrates our Latino community so, so clearly and and the importance of what we're doing here today. Obviously, our staff report and forward community law, cultural services are they they are amazing to work with. And I think they're going to be an amazing partner not only for this cultural center, but we've also been working with them on the African-American Cultural Center. And I expect they'll be involved in other cultural activities as we as a city strive to be more inclusive. And this work is really all about inclusion and recognizing and bringing people together, helping us understand who we are as neighbors, as a community. And I'm really proud to support this this evening. I want to hear you say that many of the concepts expressed in the visiting plan here are very similar to to the concepts that were expressed in the African-American cultural center process and to the community involved here today. Those of you who came out and spoke this is an amazing, historic moment for you to get involved, to be a part of something, be a part of something that's going to really require a great deal of collaboration as a community, as a city . And there's a space and a place. There's an opportunity, I would hope, for each and every one of you who want to be involved, to be involved in this. And I would just say that this is a vision. The vision is shared by many people, but the work is just beginning and it's going to be a heavy lift. And so it's going to take a lot of work to get there. I'm here to support and hope we get across that finish line very soon. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you to everyone who came out and spoke in favor of the item tonight. And for all of you who have been working really hard behind the scenes to make this. Speaker 1: Project a reality. Speaker 2: I'm really impressed with the presentation that we heard tonight, and I. Speaker 1: Appreciate the education. Speaker 2: Regarding some of the history and the importance of a city asset like this. I could not be more supportive. I love the city of Long Beach because of its diversity. And I. Speaker 1: Mean, it's just it's just. Speaker 2: One example of how we celebrate one another's culture. But the mayor highlighted food. And I will say I think he secretly thinks Persian food is the best, but he probably won't admit that tonight. But he does often talk to me about how much he appreciates that. But, I mean, you just look at the people behind the diets and what amazing diversity we have in our city. So I think anything we can do to to. Speaker 1: Further support our. Speaker 2: Cultural differences and educate one another. Speaker 1: On the beauty and the history of our cultures is a positive for the city. And I will always support efforts to do that. Speaker 2: All day long. Speaker 1: I will say the staff first of all. Speaker 2: Tracy, you're amazing. You're just amazing. I love. Speaker 1: Having you on the city. Speaker 2: Team. And I. Speaker 1: Just it's just it's really it's really. Speaker 2: Hard not to get behind something that that woman works hard. Speaker 1: On because she's very thorough. And so I appreciate that. Speaker 2: But I will say to the city team, I think the. Speaker 1: Challenge is pretty clear for the city team idea that everyone loves. How do we get that shovel ready so that all of these wonderful elected officials who. Speaker 2: Sent their representatives to speak to us tonight can be ready when there is funding available for either a matching funds grant or some sort of grant to allow the city to expand on our. Speaker 1: Cultural diversity. Speaker 2: And our cultural. Speaker 1: Assets. So I think that the idea for us, the challenge is going to be projects like this are really. Speaker 2: Great, but a lot of times. Speaker 1: They don't become a reality because we're not perfectly situated at the right time to make it happen. So hopefully we can get to a place where this is shovel. Speaker 2: Ready when those funds become available and we don't miss that opportunity. But with that, I want to thank my colleagues. Speaker 1: Councilman and de Haas and Councilmember Ranga for championing this project and allowing us all to be a part of it. I fully support it. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Speaker 2: So thank you, Mayor. First, I want to just congratulate you all for coming to this kind of milestone and finishing at least this portion of the plan and the business plan. You know, I think that what what I want to lift up is the process it takes to bring everyone together, young generation and our elders, but also just the diverse Latino community. I think just that some people don't realize the vast number of their various culture and mentioned and food as well. Right. And how important it is to educate everybody in Long Beach and just the broader community diversity of the Latino community and just want to share that. It's an inspiration in what you're all doing. I think the African-American Cultural Center kind of said that they started with theirs and have come to milestone themselves as well as you. And I think the Cambodian American Cultural Center will be on its way so that we're all able to come together at some point and share with each other across culture. Meanwhile, as as education is done within the culture of these centers. And so I just want to reiterate my thanks to staff as well as the leadership of Councilmember Sunday House and Urunga for bringing the item forward with a central cause leadership, Latinos in action and many of you all. So and I just want to share that and I think as we had one speaker earlier with her, Maricela with her children, and that it is really for our next generation to making sure that we lift up the culture and the pride of our diverse community. And I'm just really proud that we as a city highlight that and celebrate it. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm cute. Next. So I'll take a plate, a personal privilege, and say it's my turn. And thank you all for coming. This has been a long time going. I remember the first time I met with David Salazar. In addition to hearing this amazing idea and talking through his vision and what the board had come up with and all the work all of you had done, I also encouraged him to run for city council. His wife said, No, I strongly encourage you to continue to encourage him all through January of 2022. He still can get in on it. You guys have brought forward some amazing ideas and it takes strong leaders like David and Jessica and Ron to really continue to be resilient to the ups and downs of the city and the ups and downs of the economy and the ups and downs of the priorities of different council leaders who rotate in and out of this dais. But through those years, this group of people and most of you in this room have been constant in your your continued pursuit of what you know to be an amazing vision. And I see that vision, and I'm so blessed to be able to be here to be a part of it. I look forward to finding a way to get this over the finish line. I would love to again meet with some of the community members. We have an amazing nonprofit organization and economic development partner. And many of, you know, I do a lot of grants and over the last 24 months. Hundreds of millions of dollars in this country have been set aside over the next five years for diversity and inclusion. And I think that this project is primed to receive one of those grants. I was on a call with one of the members of that community, a nonprofit group that connected with our city. I'm talking specifically with banks that have specific funds available for projects like this that will lift people out of poverty and give them the opportunity to have their own business in a cultural district that they're passionate about, to have a job where when you show up every day, it's not a job because you're actually just doing something you love. And the funds are there. We just need to work together to find a way to put them into an organization that can accept them in a meaningful way and implement them. And I'm here to do whatever it takes to get us there. But thank you each and every one of you, because as we move through that process, your voices will continue to be needed for continual input and continual support to get over the finish line. And I will be there when the ribbon is cut. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you for the presentation and congratulations to Central Char and the future of Long Beach is definitely stronger. So I also want to thank Jessica and Tracy for your leadership. And I stand with my colleagues when we say that we wholeheartedly support this. I'm just so excited and I just think it's really important that we highlight the heritage and the ongoing contributions of our Latino communities. As many of the speakers mentioned today. I know that our community looks forward to a place where they can go and embrace the cultural significance of Latinos and their history and our community. So thank you so much to all the people that made this happen, to all the people that came out today and spoke. You really touched me. I love everything about this project. And like my colleagues, I can't wait to be there at this ribbon cutting. Congratulations. Speaker 0: Thank you. And Customer Supernova. Thank you. I, too, would like to thank all the speakers here tonight. I really appreciate you being here. It's it's just an absolute honor to sit on the dais tonight to support this item. But I want to bring the conversation back to food and rather specifically. And I'm looking at Ron and Phyllis here. I mean, listen, listen. It's Pancho's in the fourth District, is it not? There you go. Thumbs up. Okay. But I just like to give a special congratulations to Jessica Quintana, and you should be very proud tonight. And what I'm most impressed about is tonight is a big picture item. It's a global issue for the community. And Jessica has the talent to lead that effort. And yet no detail is too small for her to keep an eye on. The most minor detail on a vaccination clinic. It always have a park. She's on it. And that's that's a real tight end. And our our district has been the beneficiary of that. So I say thank you for that. Well, thank thank you. And that concludes everyone here on the on the council. Dove, congratulations again to everybody. We have a motion and a second by council member and they have some contemporary ranga on the floor. So members, please go out and cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion is carried. Speaker 0: Grip graduations, everyone. Thank you. We're going to we're going to move on to that consent calendar item two through 14. Yes. Thank you, guys. Thank you. I get emotional. A second person sent calendar. I have and I can find Dave and there's a I believe here.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a report on the Latino Cultural Center Community Engagement and Business Plan. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thinking that we're doing the two commission items. We'll start with the charter commission item and then the general commission item, which is 17 and 15. Speaker 3: Communication from Council Member Super Nature of Government Personnel and Elections Oversight Committee Recommendation to receive Charter Commission appointment and reappointment approved by the Government Personnel and Elections Oversight Committee. Speaker 1: There's also a. Speaker 3: Communication from city attorney recommendation to adopt a resolution making findings. Speaker 0: Now. Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Just item. Speaker 3: 17 recommendation to receive the charter commission. Speaker 1: Appointments. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman. Okay. Thank you. We would like approval of this motion from the committee. Thank you. Thank you. And as we as we approve this, I want to go ahead and just read a little bit like we have traditionally have about each county commissioner. I know that pre-COVID, most of our commissioners would come to the council meetings. There might be a few of them that are here for their appointment. If they are, feel free to to stand or wave over or give us a wave. We know most are at home watching, but I wanted to still recognize them and read their their short bio as we appoint them to the Citizens Police Complaint Commission. We are appointing Michael Soto. Michael Soto as a Council District three resident and has called on him for over a decade. He is a police special investigator with the Office of Inspector General, which provides oversight to the Los Angeles Police Department on behalf of the L.A. Police Commission. Michael is also an attorney in California and is practice law in the area of criminal defense for over ten years, primarily as a deputy public defender in both L.A. and Orange County. Michael is a graduate of CAO of University of California, Hastings College of Law. I'm sorry. You refer to California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Also, we were also pointing to the Citizens Complaint Commission, a Dr. Mary to Harry. Dr. Mary to Harry is a resident of Council District four and is currently working as a clinical director nurse practitioner for the L.A. County Department of Health Services. Mary's also served as a sexual assault forensic nurse, completing exams and collecting forensic evidence for both victims and suspects in collaboration with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. Dr. Harry holds a doctorate in nurse practice from the University of California, San Francisco. And also being appointed is Michael Bates. Michael Bates is a Council District six resident. He currently works as a design and environmental consulting engineer and the technical services. Mr. Bates previously served on the city's Board of Examiners Appeals and Condemnation as a member and later as chair. Michael holds a B.A. of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in Indiana and also Michelle Anderson. Michelle Anderson of the Council District eight resident. She is a prosecutor with the city of Los Angeles, working at the deputy city attorney and the L.A. City Attorney's Office. Michelle is a member of the Sierra Club, Black Women Lawyers, Negro Lumbee chapter and is active in many other organizations. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science from UC Irvine and a Juris Doctor degree from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles. Being appointed to the Planning Commission is Alvaro Castillo. Alvaro is a fifth District Council resident. He previously served on the Airport Advisory Commission. Mr. Castillo, the small business owner and a parent of two L.B. Unified School District students, he is employed by the extended Stay America by In America as a divisional director for Human Resources in the Western US, yielding a bachelor's and master's degree from Cal State Long Beach in Business Admin , where he continues to be involved in alumni activities. Being appointed to the water commission is Courtney Pugh. Courtney is a second district resident and Courtney has lived in Long Beach for over a decade. She's a partner at the nationwide public affairs firm and leads her California operation. Prior to that, Courtney spent over a decade working for organized labor and was the first woman and Asian-American to serve in many roles, including as the executive director of SEIU California and the political director for the L.A. County Federation of Labor. She graduated with a B.A. from Bell State University in Indiana. Our re appointments are to the Harbor Commission. Bobby Olvera and Frank Colonna both being reappointed and to the Citizen Police Complaint Commission, Veronica Garcia and Danny Buchanan. And also being reappointed is to our Ethics Commission, Margot Morales, James Shotwell and Susan Wyatt. So those are all of our charter appointments. I'm not sure if any of them are here as I read their names. I know we're not generally generally for during COVID. We don't have folks coming or anyone here in case we want to stand. Yeah, please stand. If I called your name. Oh, yeah, I see some of you aren't here, actually. Let's give them a round of applause, and I'm going to have you guys just come forward in just a minute. But thank you all for being here. And I mean, honestly, you're just an incredibly impressive group of individuals. Just really, really proud to appoint all of you. We're going to do the additional commissioners in just a minute. But we've got to do that. These these charter commissioners first. Captain Boston. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I just want to take this opportunity to say how proud I am to second the motion, also to serve on the committee that made the approval for these charter commission appointments and welcome all these new commissioners and reappointed commissioners to their roles and respective roles. I know that on the CBC we are putting forth from some very strong and competent individuals who are going to have a big job in front of them because this commission is going to go under some dramatic change over the next year or so. And so I thought it was very important to make some recommendations, at least on my end, for somebody who was going to be very strong. And I want to just take this opportunity to congratulate the eighth District representative. There's Michelle Anderson. I know you're doing very, very well, but congratulate everyone in the hall. This is this is a great responsibility. Charter commissions are part of our Constitution, I guess, is the city. And the role that you have are extremely important. So. Thank you. Thank you, councilman. Councilman. Sorry. Speaker 2: Thank you. I just want to congratulate to all the commissioners who have been appointed and reappointed. And one is just thank Michael Bates for serving to represent the sixth District for the Citizen Police Complaint Commission. Appreciate your service and stepping up for the for for this and to all of you for your time and your service to the city. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I, too, want to congratulate everyone. I know that the representative from the third Council District for the PCC is someone with whom I've had the. Speaker 1: Pleasure to work with on the opposite side. Speaker 2: Of the courtroom. And he will bring to the PCC, I. Speaker 1: Think, a very balanced approach, having been a public, having served as a public defender for so many. Speaker 2: Years, and now being involved in police reform. Speaker 1: And police investigative issues. I think he's going to be a fantastic addition. So congratulations. Speaker 2: Michael. I think you're going. Speaker 1: To do a great job. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Please cast your vote on these commissioners. Speaker 1: Motion is carried. Speaker 0: Great. Congratulations to all of you. And just we're going to take a photo, so just hold on 1/2 if you can just stay here. Thank you all very much. And now I want to we have the next item, which is our general commissioner's.

Appointment

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

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Speaker 0: Right. Next item is item number 16. I'm sorry, item number 19. Speaker 3: Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a report on the cannabis delivery and dispensary feasibility analysis and direct city attorney to prepare an ordinance to allow cannabis delivery and equity dispensary facilities in. Speaker 1: Long Beach Citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. Like the first go to staff or staff report each year. We do have a fairly lengthy staff report. That's a pretty complex issue and we'd like to go through some of the analysis that we've come up with. We also did a significant amount of community outreach that we'd like to share with you as well. So this is in response to a council request to look at can we increase the number of dispensaries from four equity applicants as well as delivery licenses? So I will turn it over to Kevin Jackson, our deputy city manager and the team. Thank you, Tom. And we're going to go ahead and jump right into the presentation. We're going to have Emily Armstrong, our cannabis program manager, who will be doing the presentation tonight. And as Tom indicated, if you can be patient with this is pretty lengthy presentation. We're reporting back on both initiatives and we want to make sure that we provide clarity to you as well as the listening public. Also, before I turn it over to Italy, I want to acknowledge that we have Art Sanchez, our deputy city attorney , who provides support to cannabis operations and policy. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Emily, and if you can take us through the slides. Speaker 3: All right. Thank you. Good evening. I know the mayor is not here, but members of the city council. Good evening. This item is a report back on the feasibility of allowing cannabis delivery businesses and additional equity dispensaries in the city. This report is a culmination of the work we've been doing in the city to improve the cannabis social equity program. For some background, the city council adopted the cannabis social equity program in 2018 alongside the Adult Use Cannabis Ordinance, with the goal of promoting opportunity in the cannabis industry for individuals and communities negatively impacted by the war on drugs. Through business ownership and employment. In a memo released on August 5th of 2020, staff detailed some of the challenges reported by equity applicants in opening a cannabis business. These challenges included a lack of available retail license types and others with low startup costs, the highest cost and need for capital with the license types that are currently available. Challenges with identifying and securing property in the city's eligible zone, known as the Green Zone. A lack of technical assistance to support equity applicants with their real estate, financial or legal needs, as well as the lack of community input in the design of the program. In response to these challenges, staff identified options in the memo for the City Council's consideration to reduce these barriers to entry, including allowing the shared youth manufacturing license type and increasing the availability of retail license types such as delivery and storefront retail for equity applicants. In January and March of this year, the City Council directed staff to prepare an ordinance allowing shared use manufacturing in Long Beach to prepare a feasibility study on allowing delivery businesses in Long Beach with an emphasis on prioritizing equity applicants and exploring the feasibility of a cap on the number of delivery businesses. And to prepare a feasibility study on allowing up to eight additional dispensaries in Long Beach to be made available exclusively to equity applicants. This presentation outlines the recommendations in both the delivery feasibility study and Equity Dispensary Feasibility Study for the City Council's consideration. The first study being presented tonight is the delivery feasibility study. Cannabis delivery businesses, also known as non storefront retailers or businesses that sell cannabis goods to customers exclusively through delivery. For example, a customer goes online, places an order, and an employee of the delivery business drives to the customer's home and delivers the cannabis goods. Delivery businesses must have a commercial license premises, and that location must remain closed to the public at all times. Currently, delivery operations are allowed in Long Beach, but only by licensed dispensaries. Therefore, delivery of a standalone license type is not available for any other applicants, including equity applicants. When preparing to conduct the feasibility analysis, staff identified three policy areas that would need to be explored to have a significant impact on increasing equity business ownership. First was the issue of a licensing cap and how that would affect some of the predatory practices involving equity applicants. It was the issue of allowing equity applicants to have priority of this license type or to make these licenses exclusively available to equity applicants. And third was where delivery businesses could locate in the city to gain as much information around these policy areas as possible. Staff performed outreach to the community, contacted other jurisdictions to learn best practices, researched laws and regulations, and held internal discussions with city departments responsible for licensing and regulating cannabis facilities. As part of the Feasibility Study Council requested that staff explore the feasibility of a licensing cap on delivery businesses. A licensing cap would limit the number of businesses that could operate in the city at any given time. Similar to the licensing cap on dispensaries. One of the primary reasons the cap was placed on the number of dispensaries in the city was to limit any potential negative impacts from overconcentration of retailers in the city, while still providing consumers with sufficient access to cannabis. However, unlike dispensaries, delivery businesses must remain closed to the public. Similar to other non-retail cannabis business types, thus reducing the potential impact on the surrounding community associated with having customers frequent the establishment. When staff requested feedback from the community on a licensing cap for delivery businesses. 59% of respondents in a community survey did not agree that there should be a limit on the number of delivery businesses citywide. In addition, when we reviewed other jurisdictions policies, no other jurisdictions that a cap on the number of delivery licenses allowed in their city. Jurisdictions who have that caps for other license types exclusive to equity have experienced a high rate of predatory agreements and other unfair business practices utilized by individuals seeking to partner with equity applicants who would otherwise not qualify for a business license without that partnership. A way to avoid these challenges is to adopt a delivery program that does not place a cap on the number of available licenses, thus reducing the risk of individuals engaging in predatory practices. Under a licensing model that does not have a cap. The total number of businesses would be determined by property availability and local consumer demand for cannabis products purchased via a delivery business. Staff then explored the concept of prioritizing the delivery license plate for equity applicants or making the license type available exclusively to equity applicants by offering this license type exclusively to equity applicants. Equity applicants would be afforded an opportunity to gain access to the retail market with little to no competition from non equity businesses in Long Beach. However, restricting non-equity individuals from this license type does come at some risks of those individuals engaging in predatory practices against equity applicants. This is why staff has also researched ways to prevent and protect equity applicants from these practices, which will be explored further in this presentation. Although it does not come at no risk making delivery licenses, exclusive to equity applicants would provide the greatest opportunity to level the playing field and allow equity businesses to have a long term foothold in the cannabis market in Long Beach. The community also largely supports the concept of making delivery licenses available exclusively to equity. Lastly, staff explored the various requirements surrounding where delivery businesses would be able to locate in Long Beach. As we have heard over the years from equity applicants going through the city's licensing process. Identifying and securing property has been one of the most difficult barriers to overcome. Equity applicants have reported that there are overly restrictive zoning and buffer requirements, limited inventory of available and compliant properties, a lack of credit or lease history for equity applicants . A lack of education by the property owners of the equity program and predatory lease agreements or premiums charged to cannabis businesses, police space or staff is exploring ways to reduce some of these barriers to entry across all license types. When exploring the delivery license type staff first needs policy direction on the number of businesses that will be allowed before providing a recommendation regarding the zoning for this license type. The number of businesses allowed in the city will impact the zoning determination due to the level of impacts that could be experienced throughout the city. The common concerns around delivery that staff would need to address in a zoning determination are related to parking and traffic. For these reasons, staff proposes to explore the impact and make a determination regarding zoning during the ordinance drafting process. Although it was not included as a policy area under consideration, it is important to note the enforcement approach that can be taken regarding illicit delivery businesses. Currently, cannabis enforcement activities are conducted on a complaint basis. Therefore, if staff receives a complaint regarding a potential illegal cannabis facility, staff will investigate the complaint and take the appropriate enforcement action . However, the current enforcement model and the existing staffing capacity cannot effectively proactively detect or prevent illegal delivery businesses in Long Beach. What I mean by that is that if a delivery business advertises its services on an online platform, which they typically do, they do not indicate where their facility is located in the advertisement and pursuant to state law. Businesses can legally deliver across jurisdictional boundaries, meaning a delivery business operating in Los Angeles could technically legally sell to a Long Beach customer. Due to these challenges. We don't know the nature and extent of the illicit delivery market in Long Beach, which would be those businesses storing cannabis products and delivering from facilities located in Long Beach . If City Council were to desire a new approach to enforcement, $25,000 would be needed to hire a consultant to perform outreach and research on potential models of enforcement and best practices. The study would then outline an appropriate enforcement approach, along with any additional resource requirements, which would likely include a significant additional cost above what is currently budgeted . In conclusion, staff recommends that there be no licensing cap on delivery businesses and that delivery licenses be made available exclusively to equity applicants. These recommendations provide the greatest impact on equity ownership are consistent with community expectations, and although there is a moderate risk of predatory practices, staff are confident that we can put the necessary protections in place to reduce these practices from occurring. So the next study I would like to talk about is the equity dispensary feasibility study. To provide some background. There are currently 32 licensed cannabis dispensaries operating in the city today. None of the 32 dispensaries are owned by equity individuals, due in large part because the equity program did not exist at the time licenses were awarded. Therefore, equity applicants have been completely shut out of the retail market. Given the time, given the impact that new dispensary licenses would provide for the equity community, we really emphasize the importance of community feedback in this process. To solicit community feedback. Staff staff held a virtual community meeting open to the public, held virtual roundtables with well-known cannabis organizations and equity organizations in Long Beach, and provided a survey which was pushed out through email campaigns, various websites and social media. Staff identified four key policy areas for the equity dispensary study. First was the issue of what an appropriate number of equity dispensaries would be for the city. And although the motion requested up to eight counsel did request, we look into the appropriate number for the city during the study. Second was the issue of expanding the Green Zone, as this has been a primary barrier for most applicants. Third was the type of competitive application process that would be used to select the equity applicants to move forward in the dispensary licensing process. And last was how we could prevent or protect equity applicants from predatory practices in the future. Each of these policy areas was necessary to explore to ensure the success of the Equity Dispensary Licensing program. Each recommendation surrounding these policy areas was crafted very thoughtfully, with the goal of developing a program that would not only provide a pathway to licensure for these applicants, but to also ensure that they would be successful in obtaining a license and ultimately operating their business for years to come. Our first recommendation regarding licensing caps is to allow up to eight licenses or 20% of all dispensary licenses to be made available exclusively to equity applicants through the survey. Virtual meetings and roundtable discussions. We asked the community what they felt would be an appropriate number. The average response from the survey was that there should be 34 dispensaries for equity, in addition to the 32 dispensaries that exist today. What respondents reiterated in the meeting were that there should be a 5050 ratio for equity and on equity. In that instance, it would bring the total number of dispensaries in the city to 64. Although this was seen as an equitable number of businesses, there are some practical concerns. It is unclear if the market would sustain that many dispensaries, and there were concerns from the industry that that many additional dispensaries might impede. On the success of all the dispensaries in Long Beach. Participants believed that the number of businesses should be sustainable for not only the existing dispensaries, but also the new equity dispensaries opening their doors . When staff researched other jurisdictions, many jurisdictions are allocating between 20 to 50% of their dispensary licenses to equity. It's important to note the many jurisdictions with a higher allocation built that into their original dispensary licensing process. There were also practical implications when it came to the amount of assistance the city could provide through the form of direct grants and technical assistance. On average, it will cost the dispensary over $500,000 to become licensed and fully operational. Equity applicants are heavily reliant on the city to provide some of this capital to avoid them getting involved with an investor who might be predatory. Given the current level of grant funding. Eight businesses would be awarded around $126,000 in grant funds. This would also just be if grant funds were awarded to the dispensaries and no other equity businesses. While we are confident more grant funds will be received, grant funds are not guaranteed in order to provide the greatest level of support to these businesses. Staff recommends allowing up to eight equity dispensaries in the city, which would bring the total number of dispensaries to 40. Staff also recommends expanding the Green Zone in Long Beach to allow more opportunities to equity applicants so they can find viable locations to operate their dispensary. Properties that comply with all the current regulations are very limited in the city of most commercial corridors or within the buffers of schools, parks, daycare centers and or beaches. Staff identified that expanding the Green Zone would help alleviate some of the challenges with securing viable properties. Without an expanded Green Zone, it is possible some equity applicants will find no viable properties to conduct their cannabis business, or they will experience significant delays due to the extended search for a viable property to determine which changes would produce the greatest impact in expanding the Green Zone while also maintaining public health and safety. Staff conducted a spatial analysis, reviewed community feedback study buffers in other jurisdictions and discussed buffer amendments with internal city departments. Staff developed the following recommendations. Recommendations Should the City Council wish to allow additional dispensaries? First is to remove the park buffer and implement a 600 foot buffer from playgrounds and a 600 foot buffer from community centers. Currently, parks include all open space areas, including some areas that are not frequently used or are not traditionally viewed as parks, including medians, dog parks, marinas and waterways. Staff recommend focusing the buffers on those areas of the city that have large number of children present and or are predominantly patronized by minors, which typically include areas with playgrounds and community centers. The second is to reduce the school buffer to 600 feet to align with the state's requirement. Long Beach has over 145. Charter public and private schools, which is severely limited the amount of available property in Long Beach. Although there are some concerns over child access and exposure, there are reasonable protections in place to prevent this, including age requirements for individuals to enter the cannabis facility. Opaque exit packaging. When a customer leaves the facility with cannabis and the sale of prepackaged cannabis goods to reduce odor. Staff recommends aligning with the state's requirement to open additional space in Long Beach. And third is to remove the beach buffer. As we know, Long Beach is mainly bordered by a beach which does limit some commercial corridors of the city. Eliminating the beach buffer would have a significant impact on the Green Zone. In addition, protections would still be in place when children are present as any beaches that contain a playground or community center would continue to have a 600 foot buffer. In total, these changes would add an additional 3.1 miles to the Green Zone in Long Beach, which would provide significantly more opportunities for equity applicants to find viable properties. In terms of application processes to select these equity applicants for dispensary licenses, staff identified four options as found in other jurisdictions who have had similar dispensary licensing programs. Based on community feedback, a review of best practices and applying an equity lens to this analysis, staff recommends a hybrid application process that would include both a merit based review process and a lottery process. The merit based review process would include a full discretionary review of applications based on an applicant's fitness to become a cannabis business owner , as well as their experience during the War on Drugs and their history in the equity program. Unlike the city's last dispensary application process, which was also a hybrid model, this process would include a merit based process that includes the city's RFP process instead of just a simple point scoring criteria. And then the qualified pool would attend the lottery. There is proposed to be four phases of this hybrid model. Phase one involves review of pass fail eligibility criteria to determine if an applicant submitted all the appropriate paperwork, meets the requirements of the equity program or any other criteria to be eligible for this process. This phase is typically conducted by internal city staff. Then Phase two involves a review of evaluation criteria. This is part of the discretionary piece of the process similar to an RFP. Applications or proposals will be evaluated and scored by a panel of individuals looking at best practices in other cities. The panel will be scoring applications that are redacted for any identifying information to reduce bias. The panel is proposed to be a voluntary panel consisting of individuals with expertize in economic or business development, actively involved in social equity matters or cannabis regulators from another jurisdiction. To reduce bias, we recommend the panel should not be affiliated with the cannabis industry in the city of Long Beach. After the panels provide their scores, staff will tally up their scores and rank the application. Those that meet a certain threshold will move on to phase three or the interview phase of the application process similar to an RFP. This allows the individual to provide clarity or context to their proposal and give the panel an opportunity to determine the legitimacy of an applicant. Any individuals who are deemed to be part of the qualified pool by the panel will then be placed in a lottery to select the eight applicants awarded to move forward in the licensing process. It is important to note that the evaluation criteria has not yet been developed. Given the feedback from the community on wanting to really help shape the program. Staff is recommending hiring a consultant for $50,000 to conduct a co-designing process with the community to develop the criteria. This would give the community an opportunity to provide feedback on criteria they believe is important and necessary to ensure that equity applicants will be successful. Business Owners. Staff would then work with the consultant and the community's input to ultimately develop recommendations for the City Council's approval. Starting from today. This process would likely take a full year to draft the ordinance, develop and implement the application process, and ultimately select those businesses able to move forward in the licensing process. Should the city council move forward with directing staff to prepare an ordinance? It is anticipated that with current staffing levels it would take approximately three months to develop the ordinance. At the same time, staff would be conducting the RFP for the CO-DESIGNING consultant, as well as performing recruitments for additional staff. The ordinance would likely take effect in February, at which point shortly thereafter we would be continuing to work with awarding the contract to the consultant, as well as starting to license delivery and shared use manufacturing businesses in Long Beach. Once the consultant is selected, the Co-Designing process will take a couple of months, which would likely occur around April of next year. The dispensary application process would then open in May of 2022 and would likely be conducted over a period of five months, with applicant selected in November of 2022. Lastly, staff explored how to prevent or protect equity applicants from predatory practices. Which are those predatory agreements or other unfair business practices utilized by individuals seeking to partner with equity applicants who would otherwise not qualify for a license without that partnership, providing protections against these practices are absolutely necessary to ensure the success of the equity program. Without these protections, the integrity of the program is at risk. And ultimately these licenses could perhaps fall into the hands of a non equity individual, harming that equity individual's chance to build generational wealth. Staff identified two recommendations to assist with this effort. One is to strengthen equity provisions in the municipal code, and the other is to provide more education, training and direct technical assistance. There are many different options for municipal code protections that would need to be explored in further detail during the ordinance drafting process to consider which ones are the best fit for Long Beach and the equity program. Some examples include barring non-equity, individuals or entities from having an ownership interest in more than two equity cannabis permits setting a minimum time limit that a business must be equity owned. Setting a time limit before an equity business can transfer ownership. Or allowing multiple equity applicants to have a majority ownership in a license. When we asked equity applicants what they thought would assist them the most with this issue of predatory practices, we overwhelmingly heard about the need for more direct technical assistance and education. Although we are starting to provide some technical assistance to equity applicants, applicants have specifically voiced the need for training regarding owning and operating a dispensary business, as well as having attorneys on hand to assist in reviewing legal documents. Many times, equity applicants will enter into predatory agreements without knowing the harm done. We are hoping to prevent that by providing those resources to the applicants upfront before they sign on the dotted line. The recommendations as outlined in this presentation will require additional resources to implement. This slide represents all the resources that would be required for both the delivery license type and the equity dispensary license type. Staff is requesting $75,000 for a technology solution for the equity program. $50,000 in one time for the community engagement consultant, as well as an additional $200,000 to guarantee funding for the direct technical assistance needs of the program. Currently, the administration of the equity program is conducted using manual processes and outdated technology in order to streamline the review of applications, administer grant funding and provide reports on equity program statistics. $75,000 is needed to develop a software program that can accommodate these functions on an ongoing basis. In addition to the one time costs, staff is also requesting two full time employees to support the administration and expansion of the program. One of t would be to support the business license division in the Department of Financial Management, and the other would be to support the Office of Cannabis Oversight in the City Manager Department. The cost for the two structural activities is anticipated to be $230,000 annually. Staff is requesting to structural active as opposed to temporary staffing due to the increased workload of the cannabis program over the last few years. These two employees will not only support the implementation of these license types, but will also assist businesses through the licensing process , which could take years and provide ongoing regulatory support and work on future policy changes that would affect the cannabis program and equity program. Over the years, staffing has been reduced for the cannabis program across the city, and these staffing resources are necessary for any expansion of the cannabis program in Long Beach. To offset these one time and structural cost staff is recommending a tax increase on all cannabis businesses that pay a tax on gross receipts. This would include all delivery, dispensary, lab testing, manufacturing and distribution facilities inclusive of any equity businesses. Staff is recommending a point to 5% increase on the gross receipts tax, which would result in increased revenues of approximately $609,000 annually. This increase would be able to cover the costs of the one time needs and a portion of the cost of the empties in FY 22 and would be structurally incorporated into the NY 23 based budget . Through these policy recommendations in the work that we have been doing on an ongoing basis, we have addressed most of the challenges identified by equity applicants with becoming a cannabis business owner. We are increasing the availability of cannabis retail licenses. We have approved an ordinance allowing shared youth manufacturing in Long Beach. We continue to offer direct grants and loans to equity applicants throughout the licensing process. We are developing policies to help assist applicants with securing Green Zone property. We are expanding access to technical assistance and training programs and we have been involving the community in every step of the way. Although there is more work to be done, we are confident that the work we are doing and continue to do are further supporting the goals of the equity program. In conclusion, we are recommending to allow delivery with no licensing cap and make licenses available exclusively to equity applicants. Expand the Green Zone for dispensaries in Long Beach. Allocate eight new adult use dispensary licenses or 20% to verified equity applicants. Use a hybrid application process, including a merit based review and lottery to select which equity applicants can move forward in the dispensary licensing process. Strengthen the Long Beach Municipal Code and provide additional education, training and direct technical assistance to equity applicants. Add to of to Eve at an annual estimated cost of 230,001 time funds of 325,000. Increase the cannabis business license tax by 0.25% for all cannabis businesses, charged a percentage of gross receipts and report back on the status of these new equity license types in 24 months. Should the City Council wish to allow delivery in equity dispensaries in Long Beach? We request that Council direct the city attorney to prepare an ordinance as well as provide the appropriations for the one time funds and the approval for the ongoing structural costs of the two. These. Thank you. And I'll stand by for any questions. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That concludes that presentation. Thank you. Let me. Just go back. I go to public comment first. You know what? Okay. Let me first go to public comment and I'm going to read I have nine members of the public. Let me just read all nine members. If you want to just line up, please. And I can say Luis Carlos Zee, Matthew Souza may very well. Julian Xavier, Violeta Aguilar, Andrew Cruz and Derrick Smith of Common Names are in this order tonight. Ken Elliott Lewis Carroll Courtesy Matthew Souza May Burial. Julian Xavier. Violeta Aguilar, Andrew Cruz and Derrick Smith. The goal of social equity laws is to ensure that people from communities disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and discriminatory law enforcement are included in the now legal marijuana industry. This is according to the National Cannabis Industry Industry Association. As it stands. The Bureau of Justice states blacks who compromise, who comprise 13% of the national population or 49% of people arrested for drug selling, and 36% of persons arrested for drug possession. And in the city of Long Beach, we make up 0% of the 32 holders of cannabis licenses. And without a local hire requirement of our presence, even as mere employees seems to be another element not to be tolerated. So who does the social equity share rates truly serve? Reserving eight new licenses for equity applicants through a program that has as of yet served zero of its clients toward obtaining a retail location is a doomed project from the very beginning. And looking at the feasibility report. Miss Armstrong, I read all 26 pages. I am ashamed to see an attempt to use a Trumpian economic empowerment zone, i.e. using capital to deprive neighborhoods, to create a shell, to funnel federal money into investment in what is still considered a Schedule one substance. That won't fly in court. Mr. City Attorney Now Solutions. I think Stash recommended the idea of time limits for transfer of equity ownership is a great equity protection. Let's put some teeth on it. Let's make it in perpetuity. In the state of New York, 50% of all cannabis licenses will go to social equity applicants. We're obviously better than the state and the city of New York. So the city of Long Beach should be 100% marginalized. Communities should not be combating of Big Pharma and private equity for capital investment, business licenses and real estate. There's a reason that the Green Zone is trying to be expanded today into East Long Beach, and not one measure in first came about in 2016. I got plenty of time on this. First time I wrote anything down. I think that I should do that more often. There probably is. There's a it's the irony of this is that the equal protection clause prevents us from making exclusively racial laws in relation to things like that. Okay. But property like this, expansion of the Green Zone. There's a racial element in it. If you couldn't afford the land in 2016, you got what you got in a lot of the central and western areas that you cannot afford to get today. It's becoming a feudal system with the delivery versus retail storefront. I think that the city needs to step in because we can't let the wolf who's in the henhouse regulate themselves. Thank you. My name's Elliott Lewis. I'm with the Catalyst Cannabis Co. First, I want to say, if you guys know me, I've been known to be critical of government from time to time here. I would take a very positive stance. I'm just really impressed with Emily and Ty have put together. They really put time and effort into hearing all the stakeholders, all the different opinions from the equity applicants to every stakeholder industry, different city. So I want to applaud them as well as city council members who have reached out and asked questions and been curious. And I'm just so proud that we're approaching this issue how we have and this is a broader discussion. You know, seeing the Latino Cultural Center and seeing the diversity of the people that were appointed to the commissions is just great. It makes me proud to be a Long Beach resident. So, you know, I want to come out and focus on the positive. You know, I'll be the first one when government does something that, you know, I disagree with to be outspoken. But I think it's important on this matter when it deserves praise, it gets it's it's praise. So I think it's a super nuanced issue. It's very difficult. And I'm very proud how the city's approached it. I will say I'm really vehemently opposed to the tax increase, so I'm not going to get into the rabbit hole of different industries that you could tax that are around town oil. But I will say that there's plenty of places and, you know, we're being utilized as a piggy bank. At the end of the day, three quarters of the market is illicit. If you want to create jobs, we have to reduce our tax rate. So it's not only a quarter point, but at some point, you know, you have to put down the line. The other thing that I would say is I'd like to go with full merit based. I think that's better. It's very important to take in the biography of somebody, you know, and then there's other things that go into that, like, is this person going to have high labor standards? I know some people in cities have signed up for union contracts. These costs 20, $25,000 more in order to run. And then really just see if this person has the hustle gene. Because at the end of the day, if you ain't got the hustle gene, you're just you're not going to make it. So we're trying to do a hand up, not a handout. And, you know, everybody wants to talk about barriers of entry being, you know, money and finance and the red tape and those are there. But the thing that I want to talk about that I think is important is the industry itself. And sometimes the political class holds down social equity through social equity from from from happening. And, you know, look, it's hard. I'm looking at the new map myself and I'm thinking, damn, another eight licenses. Well, I got shareholders, too. And we're all trying to make a profit. If I'm being honest with myself and I'm checking out the areas I understand, you know, sometimes where the industries coming from. Unfortunately, Councilman Richardson isn't here to respond to my remarks. But, you know, we brought this issue up with him many times and would influence what the industry does in the political class is they don't really address the issues. And his quote to me on several occasions, he must be hiding in the basement what his black and brown brothers and sisters aren't ready for social equity. And to me, that shows and that's a quote verbatim. And to me that shows the problem sometimes that the industry itself and the political class, they're engaged in pandering and gesturing but don't really want to get stuff done. But I would add on a positive note, great job staff. Great job, everybody. And city council that reached out. Thanks. Did any man, mayor and city council want to start off by saying that? I'm very disappointed with the recommendations being proposed by this report. First, this report is only recommending additional dispensary licenses to be made available to social equity applicants. Only if the Mayor and City Council move forward with this recommendation. Eight out of 40 dispensary licenses will be owned by social equity applicants. That is only 20%. 20% is really just the tip at a restaurant. It is an end, it is an afterthought and shows the lack of effort put in to create an equity in the cannabis space. Second, if the selection process includes any form of lottery, it is lazy and cheap. What a way to devalue and dehumanize the human experience by essentially putting this in a hat and drawing names at random. Moreover, don't use eight dispensaries, share manufacturing and delivery licenses as a distraction from truly resolving the issue. There is a lack of diversity in the cannabis sector, especially when it comes to dispensary ownership. For context and lobby, two 0% of dispensaries are owned by the black and brown community. Unfortunately, this is not unique to lobby. It is an endemic statewide black and brown dispensary. Ownership is pretty much nonexistent. Besides elected government, a government officials who determine who gets cannabis licenses. Licensed dispensary owners have the second most powerful position in the cannabis chain. Re Max y. Food for thought dispensary owners work as the gatekeepers into the cannabis space, meaning they determine what products hit the shelves, and most importantly, they can open up doors of opportunity. Obviously, the more diversity among dispensary owners, the more diversity in the cannabis space overall. The only time trickle down anything will work. I want to end with this. On July six, 2021, the last time I was here, we came together as a community to condemn the desecration of Martin Luther King statue. As a reminder, Martin Luther King Martin Luther King's versus was not just about racial justice. His message was also about the redistribution of wealth and power. Honoring and preserving his legacy is not simply about protecting the statue, but also about creating and implementing policies that will redistribute wealth and power in the indigenous, black and brown communities. As I stand in front of you, I can't help but notice that the city council's makeup is diverse. You all have directly benefited from our Luther King's work. Now you have a choice. Do you sit down and enjoy the benefits of Martin Luther King's work and an unfortunate death? Or do you pick up the baton and truly honor his legacy by creating and implementing policies that will redistribute wealth and power in communities of color that have been negatively impacted by the war on terror. Thank you. Speaker 3: Great evening, everyone. Speaker 1: With giving all glory and honor to God. My name is Muriel Burrell, also known as May, and I was born and raised in Long Beach, and now I am a verified social equity applicant. Speaker 0: Mr.. I'm so sorry. We have to keep the mask on. Speaker 1: Okay? It's hard to talk with this. Speaker 0: I know. I'm so sorry. Speaker 1: Currently there are 32 non equity owned dispensaries in operation within the city and they have been operating for years. Yet these next eight potential eight social equity owned stores that we discussed tonight patiently, impatiently wait for their chance to operate. I do ask tonight that you do your best to expedite this process. Also, as Emily mentioned, locating property is the biggest problem. But that problem could be solved if the city gave us access to its own properties, which would help us to avoid those predatory practices. Also, regarding the lottery choice, I do ask that you all do not allow the lottery choice of dispensaries where greedy snake investors seek to benefit. Instead, begin with the waiting list that the program already has in place, starting with applicant number one. Also, I do ask for an unlimited amount of delivery licenses, yet only awarded to 100% equity owned businesses. And regarding the stars that I saw tonight in wanting to employ new employees within the city. I was saddened to see that because we have less than a handful of social equity applicants that have successfully, successfully gone through the program. And yet you all are looking to employ more people when that money could go toward us in helping more applicants actually successfully go through the program instead of us sitting around talking about it. Thank you. Mr. Mayor and the Council. My name is Jillian Xavier. I am originally from the island of Trinidad Tobago. I have been this country for over 45 years. And I want to tell you, I can read from this, but I'm just annoyed. The lottery is not the way to go. I've been a social equity entrepreneur since the inception of the program. We've been sitting here looking for properties that don't exist at all. Right. Because you have this map with a bunch of dot. A couple of stars that says if they're approved, all the dots are just applications. Applications that went in. It's been sitting there for a year or two. But you have. For 20 properties and all these properties then yeah, we have some history to look at. You get over there and there's another applicant that's already, you know, sent in an application. They can't find the presenter. We send the application. We need help having a lottery. That's a lot. And then you're still asking for money to hire more people. Shared kitchens have been. Shared manufacturing had better access. July, what's going on with that? Have you reached out to anybody who's already in the manufacturing? I said, we want to work with social equity. There's no where that study we're sitting here frustrated. You're telling me to wait another 20, 22 to get in on a lottery that's just been sitting here since 2016? Like, what are you guys going to do to help us get into business? Help me help you get your taxes so I can help the community and I can bring people, these young people. And look, I'm a mother whose son was shot and killed at 18 years old. I will not be a grandmother. I'm in this business because I have a passion for it. Cannabis has helped me stay off pharmaceutical drugs when they would say, Oh, just take this Prozac. Well, but wait a minute, you might hallucinate. Cannabis has helped me. That's why I'm passionate. Talk to the passionate ones, not the ones just sitting here trying to cash a check. Now, was this trying to change the community, bring these young people off the street, show them how to be owners of their own business? That's what's important to me. And we need to do better. And I'm asking you guys to really not do this lottery thing because we have been here standing for a long time. My name is Joni and Lisa Xavier. I'm not going anywhere and I'm asking you guys to do better. Speaker 3: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. My name is Taylor with Catalyst Cannabis Co. And as you know, Catalyst is very proud to be here in Long Beach and who have four stores here in the city of Long Beach. We just opened our last location in downtown Long Beach, and it has been a great community effort to really revitalize the whole block. Speaker 1: So this is what we believe cannabis can do for our communities. Speaker 3: We have been advocating and. Speaker 1: Working on port policy in. Speaker 3: The city of Long Beach that provides actual opportunity for social equity applicants. Through this process, we have had the opportunity to closely work and collaborate and learn from folks that have gone through the social equity program here in the city of Long Beach. Speaker 1: We have come to learn firsthand through our partnership with. Speaker 3: Carlos from push and delivery. Speaker 1: Of the barriers and. Speaker 3: Challenges social equity businesses face. Speaker 1: Even when they have all of that support. Speaker 3: Including access to capital, including access to vendors. There's still many, many barriers that social equity applicants face. So that is. Speaker 1: Why right here, we want to make sure. Speaker 3: That those barriers are removed and that they. Speaker 1: Are able to open business. So we are glad to see that the city has moved to add additional brick and mortar licenses as we see this as the real entry to the industry. Speaker 3: We support this and we urge. Speaker 1: Council. Speaker 3: To support merit based. Speaker 1: Process when selecting new applicants. We also support and really encourage the. Speaker 3: City to really look at what are the. Speaker 1: Like, what are the barriers and what are the processes that. Speaker 3: We can implement to ensure that the technical. Speaker 1: Assistance, training and education is a bit readily. Speaker 3: Available for social equity applicants. Speaker 1: And we reduce predatory. Speaker 3: Practices. So as we continue this process, we are proud to be here. Speaker 1: If we want to continue to be partners with the community, we want to continue to. Speaker 3: Be part of this conversation with social equity applicants to ensure that the industry. Speaker 1: Provides those opportunities. Speaker 3: That we know are available in the industry for our communities. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 0: Good evening, everybody. I like to think that first I'd like to take the opportunity to thank city staff and council for their hard work and dedication for social equity within this past couple of months or so, like a year now. It's been very frustrating for a lot of people, as you can see. So, you know, I really do appreciate your commitment to it. Emily Armstrong And kind of an oversight. I really do. Thank you guys for stepping up and moving forward with all these recommendations moving forward. I do have some. Give me 1/2 as I see recommendations being announced with the Agenda 19. I would also like to add some suggestions to city staff and council within our recommendations, given as we hope to move forward with adding to with annual estimated and one time calls and also increasing kind of effect licenses. I would suggest a community oversight committee that should be created and appointed to oversee the implementation of Long Beach Cannabis Regulation and Revenue Ordinance. The purpose of this committee is to convene representatives of the cannabis business operators, workers, patients and other key stakeholders in the cannabis industry to oversee the Cannabis Office of Cannabis Oversight Implementation by evaluating data on the industry's growth and also provide guidance and recommendations to the Board and counsel on amendments to local laws and regulations, including those governing the equity program to facilitate socially responsible growth of this new industry by creating living wage jobs and economic opportunities consistent with the city's intent to commit to the social equity and our minority community communities. Most importantly. As I said, we all know this is a frustrating task. Our goal is to all come together to try to reach these these endeavor, these milestones that both of us can, you know, get over when it comes to the RFP in a lot of respect. The lottery kind of impedes on an RFP. So like it would kind of be pointless to just do a RFP, do interviews, and then go with the lottery process out there. So thank you guys for your time and opportunity and I look forward to keep working with you guys. Good evening. I have a letter from my president, Andrew Zehnder, which I'm happy to give to you. But perhaps in the interest of brevity, I'll read you the highlights. My union. Yes. CW Local 324 represents 300 cannabis workers in the city. We appreciate the work of staff to craft a proposal that addresses the need for more social equity. Social justice is a core value of the CW, and we're pleased that Long Beach has taken the lead on this issue. In general, we approve the inclusion of labor peace and it remains an important tool for preserving job standards in the industry. We support the usage of merit based review during the application process. Collectively, we have sufficient experience assessing which operators are committed to upholding the letter and the spirit of the regulations that the city established. And we should draw from that experience and continue to promote businesses that play by the rules. We suggest the city delay the implementation of the tax increase of a quarter percent, although we recognize the value of a cost neutral program. We have to be mindful of the fact that the current legal industry only maintains about a 30% foothold in the city and that it's incumbent upon all of us to make every effort to increase that percentage if we have any hope of preserving a healthy industry. Increasing taxes will not accomplish that. And yes, UW continues its advocacy in this industry to ensure the promotion of the welfare of workers and the community in which they live. And we appreciate your consideration of our perspective. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Matthew Souza, and I'm actually going to allow Adam, the president of the LBC, to speak for me. Good evening. Sorry I didn't. Last time I was here, we were able to just walk up during the agenda item and talk. So I didn't lose a card, but. Good evening, Honorable Mayor City Council. My name's Ahmed Jazzy. I'm on the board of directors of the Long Beach Collective Association. You know, the BCA and other groups have been working for months to be able to craft and provide city staff and city council with recommendations to consider. I wanted to thank city staff's effort and the time that they spent to go through all the information that was provided not only from the local groups, but also from very from various cities in the state and nationwide. I wanted to highlight some important feedback that we received to date from many not only equity operators in other cities, but a diverse group of people that we've been talking to. Number one thing is there isn't really a social equity program in the state of California that actually in its entirety works. Right now, there's many holes in the various programs, and I think that we've been able to learn at least some of the things that have gone wrong, and we can successfully fix it here in the city of Long Beach. Time will tell the actual best direction for cannabis equity and all social justice efforts that are happening here in the city, state and nationwide. But there is some wrong steps to start going down this policy. First, raising taxes is not the right step to moving policy forward. Currently, the market today is a very intense market at overtaxed. We're paying taxes on taxes on taxes literally when it comes to the state and city. Some good things that are going to be key to a successful program is opening up the zoning for job applicants. That is definitely the right step. Also ensuring sustainability of the new and existing facilities to avoid overconcentration within the city. Everybody will have to actually operate and work within this industry once everybody is able to get included. Lastly, having a roadmap to education, training and the protections is going to be as important as any other policy item that we're deliberating over tonight. The ability for an applicant to get the proper training, education and having access at least to that is going to be paramount. Lastly, I want to say that timing is important. I think, you know, the process does take a long time and being able to streamline that process. What's happened in the city of Los Angeles is we have about three and a half, three years later, still waiting, only, barely, not even I don't even know how many have actually opened, but we have over 350 applicants are still waiting three years later. So I wanted to thank city council and I'm going to. Thank you. Thank you to all of our our speakers. We do have a motion on the second. I want to just read a quote from an owl in just a minute. I just want to quote Mr. Merkin. I might have some additional questions and comments. Just one clarification that I want to make sure that I that I heard I think I heard almost from from a few people, including you, CW. And I want to, of course. Reiterate what we said about labor peace provisions. I think most folks I've talked to in the industry, I've shared I'm sure that one of us I think I know it's difficult for some dispensaries, but one of the things that I really supported early on was the unionization of the workforce to me was incredibly important to for many of us that are familiar with the way unions operate. There was a sense of structure that was put in place and a sense of empowering the worker and the employer and the employee. That I think is really for many folks helped also add to the legitimacy of dispensaries and of the industry. And so I just want to thank you, UW, for all of their work. And I do want to also ask this question about the lottery versus the merit based system, because I've heard this a few times. What I want to understand, Mr. MARQUEZ So I have over the last few years, I have had a chance to, you know, run into or meet different folks that have been involved or been active in kind of a social equity process that obviously looking to open a dispensary and are trying to do it the right way. And and so my only concern about about the lottery system is that the folks that have been on the ground level then get left out of that process. And I'm not sure who's been there from the beginning or not exactly. But I just want to make sure that from what I understand, that what you're proposing is not a straight lottery, but some type of merit based lottery. Is that correct? It's you have a you have a merit based program and then the merit based program gets you into a lottery. Can you explain that? Yes, it's definitely a merit based program. First and foremost, you have to be merit based to get into it. I'll let Emily explain how the lottery would work after the merit based system and why we think that's a a reasonable approach. Speaker 3: Yeah. So. So the intent is to go through a traditional kind of RFP process. And so that will involve evaluating proposals, determining fitness, determining their history with the equity program, their history with the war on drugs. And it's ultimately to get to a point where, let's say you have 100 applicants that apply for this. Maybe the panel ends up saying that 20 people could legitimately be cannabis business owners as equity applicants. They meet all the criteria. They have really great proposals. They have really great interviews. And then it really just comes down to how do you select eight? How do you select the top eight when they're all really great? And that would be the reason for the lottery. Speaker 0: I see. I understand that. You know, my only thought, you know, my only thought as I think about that and and. Thinking about merit based program, particularly, you know, I you know, my experiences in like the college admissions world. And I think that that merit merit based programs work and they're the right approach. But we also look at not just who might appear on paper to be the exact perfect candidate, but also, you know, try to find those that have the potential and frankly, those that have been involved in the advocacy work and been part of our process now for many years. So what I just what I just hope you are taking into account and I'm not sure if it's part of the point system is if we have social equity folks that have been engaged with the city for years. And they qualify. Obviously, they have to qualify and meet all of your criteria. I think that's the most important thing. Right. And they qualify, meet the criteria. So that person have the same or or a better chance of being able to open a dispensary than an applicant that is just coming in. And so it is very it's part of the merit based program. Are there points awarded to two folks that have been kind of working with all of you now for for a few years in this process? Speaker 3: Again, the criteria has not been developed and that is really the purpose of hiring the consultant. To do this kind of Co-Designing work around the criteria is to make sure that we are hearing that, and that's a part of the criteria and we have heard that. So the intent would be to hopefully prioritize those people that have been involved in this program for for a few years now. Speaker 0: Okay. And then as far as it relates to the tax question. So I understand that the council recently obviously decreased the tax. That was something the council took action on recently. So not that I'm opposed to, you know, appropriately ensuring that things are taxed at an appropriate level. I think that's important. But it does seem a little bit counter to what we what we just did. And so I understand that it's to hire additional city staff, I think is two positions. Am I correct? But we there's no there's there is no other way to see. I mean, the when you open the turn of the century, we are going to see more tax revenue. Yeah. I'll jump in on that using that projection for the additional staffing. So we looked at that first. Can we use any of that money? We believe that that's not going to be available, at least structurally for at least several years, because we have to go through a process right now to bring on the staff, to do this work, to then work with everybody, to provide all the assistance. And then they're going to start opening probably two or three years down the road, maybe faster. Well, we did want to make this cost neutral. We did reduce the tax, but we reduced it in a in a specific area of cannabis. It wasn't on every single one, if I remember right, it was to specifically entice the manufacturing side of of the shop. And last year, when we were making our $18 million reductions out of a $30 million deficit, we looked first and foremost. And how do we not affect services? How do we not affect police and fire and parks and rec and libraries? And what we did first was to look at our cannabis group, which we had staffed up as we started this program. And then we felt we were kind of at the equilibrium where we could reduce that. We reduced in my office, we cut assistant to the city manager position, we reduced the are in business licensing with the idea and we discovered that to the Council that we couldn't take on new assignments if we got rid of that staff and then we kind of got this direction to go the other way. So that's what we're looking to do is to restore the staff that came up as part of the reductions last year. If we need to take on this additional work, there could certainly be other ways that you fund it. But then we'd be adding to the structural deficit and we'd have to come up with some other reductions in other departments. And what's it and what's the total amount? Uh, have you come to the 300 range? One option, which we have described is we do believe there are some grants out there that we can get some of this, uh, cost from like some of the technical assistance. What we don't think the grants will fund are the two administrative bodies. So we definitely need the two administrative bodies to move forward. It's potential you can get other state resources and then drop the tax a little bit so that it's not at the point five could be a little bit less if we get that direction too to look into that. Now, another thing, I think the council is been much more engaged, I think, and probably some members in the details of the proposal than I have. So I'm just kind of, you know, just chiming in on what I what I'm hearing. So I'll let the council, I think, ask they probably know more about about the the structure for the purpose for this funding or for the tax. I would just I would just say and then I'm interested in hearing what what others have to say is I'm wondering if and maybe this is not possible, but if before the actual tax was implemented, we could first go see if we can get grants and see how how the revenue actually starts coming in. Because that's my understanding that revenue has been performing fairly well on the cannabis side. Is that right? Yes, it has been going up and that's been part of our projections as well to help offset it hasn't has. And also the revenue has been in some cases higher than expected it has been. And those projections are part of our multiyear deficit. So, yes, they've been going up, but so have costs and other things. So those are included in there. I would just I would just, you know, in just in the discussions that the council has, I would just add that we interested to see if before we do the tax that we could look at first thing through our grants available that and I think that the the revenue we're seeing on the other end is is they're passing on expectations. So I think that's a very positive thing. Thanks to everyone that spoke today and the industry and and where things are headed. So I'll first of all, Councilman Allen and then kind of see where where I would comment on Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. I just want to start by recognizing Emily and Ty for their hard work on this item. This is just a complex issue. And I know that you've been working on this for months, meeting with stakeholders, weighing options, and I appreciate how through these reports have been. So thank you very much. With respect to both delivery and dispensary retail license, I think that we have a real opportunity to expand the cannabis program and do it in a way that helps meet our social equity goals. This is a new industry and prior to we knew it was illegal. Many people suffered as a consequence of unfair drug policies. And I think it's really important that we do everything that we can to ensure that our social equity initiatives are robust and lead to a successful business. Regarding our delivery licenses, I fully support the staff's recommendation to pursue exclusive licensing for equity applicants with no caps on the number of licenses. This option, I think, has the most community support and the potential for the most impact as it provides an opportunity for equity applicant to obtain a delivery license. Regarding the retail dispensary license. I want to thank the staff for such a thorough report too. I do fully support the expansion of the Green Zone. Right now we're in a situation where there is not enough space for new businesses to set up shop. And without expanding the Green Zone, it's possible some equity applicants will not find a viable property to conduct their cannabis business. So I do support removing certain buffers and aligning with the state regulations to open up some space. I also appreciate the four option staff within it and how we might go about awarding retail licenses. While the staff did recommend the hybrid approach. I believe that the full merit based system is more appropriate. And I'll tell you why. I think the city and consultant, they can do a good job at categorizing and and awarding these contracts. I think that's important. And we do it that way because there are just equity applicants that have different stories. There's equity applicants that their lives and and lives of their children and grandchildren have been affected. And I think that we we can't we can't just pick from one on a lotto. I think that we have to. I think we need to do that on an RFP process. And I feel confident that that staff could do that. And then lastly, with regards to the proposed tax increase, I'm not fond of that either. I think right now the cannabis industry is taxed north of 30% and one of the most taxed industries. And and I think if we're ever going to expect these businesses to compete in the illicit market, the taxes should be lower. And so I'm not I'm not an advocate for for raising the taxes. And then lastly, I want to I think we need to expedite this process and whatever that looks like. I think we need to get this. Speaker 0: Middle. Speaker 1: On and long. And I agree with many of the speakers that we've been waiting a long time for for this to happen. Thank you. Speaker 0: Well, thank you, Councilwoman Councilmember Renko. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank Councilmember Allen for her comments. There are a lot of them were right on with what I was thinking about. Well, the things that I that I like about the town, however, is the fact that the distance between businesses is smaller. I mean, it's gone from a thousand feet to 600 feet. Does that include a visit between within each other or is it just between like what the what the you mentioned about schools, parks and other only businesses. Speaker 3: The 1000 feet between the dispensaries would still be maintained. Speaker 0: Right. It's just one clarification on that. And then also when it comes to there was a commentary made earlier from one of the public speakers about lack of business, space, lack of building or other other opportunities to open a dispensary, perhaps even in the Green Zone. What about and we also just passed the law in its resolution a couple of weeks ago regarding the compensation for developers. For building affordable housing. I'm thinking about empty properties, empty lots. Those types of opportunities with that, would that come into play at all or were those properties stay available only for affordable housing and not and not to be able to not be eligible for a dispensary to be in that place. And obviously it would have to be away from from other houses and commercial areas. Speaker 3: Yeah. So we haven't looked into that. But I will say we have looked into other ways to try to incentivize property owners to allow cannabis or use their spaces or use some of these vacant areas. I think there is still some legal challenges due to the fact that at the federal level cannabis is illegal and perhaps the money that we're using to incentivize it's federal funding that really can't be used for that purpose. And so we kind of have to be creative with the ideas, but that's definitely something that we can look into a little bit more. Speaker 0: That's, I think. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 1: Mr. Mayor. So I have a couple of questions about this. I want to thank staff for your work. You guys have done an excellent job on this and. Speaker 2: I know that. At least I. Speaker 1: Have. I have at least one current. Cannabis business owner. Speaker 2: Here tonight. Speaker 1: Who spoke and that's Elliott Lewis. And and I've said many times in the past, the council office has had a tremendous working relationship with that operator. And to the extent that he's going to be involved in the social equity program, I trust that he will honor his word in regards to what he's shared with me regarding the goals of the program. And so I support the work that staff has done. I support very much the process that the staff has undertaken. But still, I do have a concern about the green zones and also. The number of cannabis dispensaries we have in each council district understanding that our redistricting commission is going through a redistricting process right now. One of the things that we made abundantly clear in the discussions that we had about cannabis leading up to the voter initiative. Speaker 2: And even beyond, was we did not want. Speaker 1: Cannabis dispensaries to be concentrated in any one particular area. We wanted them spread out throughout the city. Speaker 2: Because certainly it would not. Speaker 1: Be fair for them to be concentrated in any one or more areas. And one of the reasons that you guys have modified the buffers is, I. Speaker 2: Think, to allow for more opportunities. Speaker 1: For the establishment of the brick and mortar shops, which I think is great in looking at the distribution of dispensaries throughout the city. There are some that have one. There are some that have two, and then there are some that have six. So what I'd like to do is make sure that we have some fairness in terms of where future dispensaries go. So I'd be interested in talking to my council colleagues about some sort of a density cap per district, whether that's a conversation we have. Speaker 2: Tonight. Speaker 1: Or whether that's a conversation we have in the future as the new district boundary lines are created. That probably makes a little bit more sense because I think that's a conversation we need to have. Obviously, access. Speaker 2: To cannabis was something that. Speaker 1: Was discussed as being very important before it went to the voter initiative. A lot of people came to council and talked about the medical needs and how important access was for that medical purpose. And we've talked a lot about health and wellness. And so we certainly want to make sure that everyone throughout the city has access to this medical or recreational option. And so we with the buffers are hopefully. Speaker 2: Allowing for. Speaker 1: That. So the increase of the buffer zones is that allowing. Speaker 2: More. Speaker 1: Sites to be developed, more businesses to be established throughout the city. Is there now more opportunity in every district? Speaker 3: Where there is more opportunity in every district. You know, some districts will have more available space just due to the number of parks or the number of, you know, buffers, the schools, the things like that. So there is expansion in every district. It just it differs between districts. Speaker 1: Okay. But but sitting here right now, there is capacity in every district right now to take on more than there was before the vote on whatever the maps are tonight. Speaker 3: Bear there could be. Speaker 1: Okay. And then having said that, I do have an issue with one of the areas that it now appears to be an eligible buffer, and that is in the peninsula in southeast Long Beach. It seems like we are trying to build the buffers around places where children would gather. And yet every summer we invite over 600 children. We specifically, in fact, you have to be a child to participate in this program. We invite them to the peninsula to run along the beaches and go back and forth between the bay and the ocean. 600 of them from all over. We're really proud of the equity program that we've built for the Junior Guards program. We've got to with it there. We've got a sailing center there. We actually go out of our way to attract children to this area. And yet that's not a buffer or that's not a prohibited area. It's a residential area that has a liquor store and a cafe. I just don't think we should be allowing. If the goal is to protect children from peripheral proliferation of marijuana dispensaries, then we should not. Speaker 2: Be inviting 600. Speaker 1: Of them. And let me not even touch upon the numerous beach camps that the City Parks Department sponsors at Bay Shore. So I really would like to ask staff to reconsider that. I don't know if that's a conversation we can have right now, but I don't understand why putting a dispensary in the middle of the Junior Lifeguard program is allowed. It seems I can't defend that position. So if we're not able to remove that or somehow move the Junior Lifeguard program, I can't support the current boundaries. And I hate to say that because I think the program and the policy, everything we've done is great. But I cannot knowingly say 600 children throughout the city who were trying to give access an opportunity to welcome. There's no other businesses here, but there is a dispensary. It just makes no sense to me, so I can't support that. But other than that. Speaker 2: I think the program's great. Speaker 1: And I want to do whatever I can to support you. And I want to support the program. I just I don't understand why we need to have one on 67th Street. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman, Mongo. Speaker 1: I will try to get through so many of these comments. Great presentation staff. You guys have done excellent work. I'm really proud of being a part of this City Economic Development Committee and the work that has been brought forward. Special thanks to Councilmember Austin Councilwoman Allen. I think this has been just a great eye opening opportunity. I also am supportive of a full merit based system, but I would say that banding similar to how we band exams for being hired in the city is appropriate because when you have big money at stake, a half a point to make a mistake at that level and the liabilities that can be brought into that. I just think that we should be put together a building system that makes sense, but that is merit based. And I agree with. Elliot about the hustle. Gene, I don't know how you judge for that, but. Being one of a few members of this diet who's actually been an independent business owner, the hustle gene matters. And we want to give people with the highest likelihood of success the opportunity to be there. I've talked to a dispensary specifically in my district, and one of them had said to me, Man, I think the taxes are too high. However, if I couldn't have gotten through the process and the time that I did because of the excellent staff you have. It would have taken me a lot longer to get my business off the ground. So I think that it's a push pull, right? If you don't have the staff to support the program, then the equity program will take three years. But if we staff up quickly and we make the investment. You could get an equity program off the ground more quickly and have that focused staff attention. And so everyone knows me. I'm not a big supporter of raising taxes, but I am a supporter of paying for the things that we need. And at least in my discussions with dispensary owners who have needed handholding throughout the process, they have appreciated the staff that the city has provided immensely. And so I think that that's something to kind of talk about. I'm not sure who the interviewees were and how many there were in the surveys that you kind of discussed throughout the presentation. And I think that that's kind of an important component, right? Like you just survey, did you ask for respondents from 500 people in ten responded or was it 25? Were they from the same groups? I just don't know. So it's hard for me to validate the data and feel comfortable with it. So if staff to give us a little bit of input on that, that'd be helpful. Speaker 3: Yeah. So is this specific to the dispensary survey or both? Speaker 1: Actually, I'm going to go through all my questions because I realize my clock is ticking. But if you could answer my questions at the end because I know I have a limited time, but yeah, on both, I'm kind of interested just to know what that looks like. Issues about the zones and fairness. So I'm one of the councilmembers with six in my district. So as Councilmember Richardson, who's not here tonight, I've been at a budget meeting in his district where the community asked, why do we have six dispensaries and no one else does? And I was able to say, No, no, Mimi, I to do. And the reason that Councilmember Richardson and I both have the great blessing of more dispensaries is because we are adjacent to a number of cities that do not authorize cannabis sales. And so the borders of our city really have quite a number of dispensaries. Almost three of my borders to other cities have those have dispensaries and have quite great volumes because they're not really competing for the Long Beach market. They're really competing for the Orange County market or the Lakewood Market or the Signal Hill Market or not saying, oh, I'm sorry, Paramount Market, etc., etc.. So just something to think about. But in that discussion, a community member had specifically stated, What about all these other marijuana related businesses? What are the added risks? They had some specific data or concerns that they presented about the number of attempted break ins and so on and so forth that have happened. I've had several in my district. The dispensaries do an excellent job of preventing theft. I would even say in some of the cases better than the pharmacies are doing right now. But it is something that they think about. I would be interested because there are districts that only have one. Same idea with when you talk about districts versus development zones in the city. We have three major development areas. Maybe we do it by development areas since we know that those boundaries are going to be moving soon. And the specifics of being on the side of a council district or that side maybe isn't as important of making sure that the north piece of Long Beach, the downtown people love it. On the east piece of Long Beach, Equitable equitably have access in the area. But when push comes to shove, people are going to want to put in dispensaries where the demand is. Big companies like McDonald's don't go where there aren't people who want to buy McDonald's. Similarly, in the sophisticated industry of cannabis, the dispensaries need to be where the people want the marijuana. So. Eight more. I don't know how we equitably look at what that looks like and where we want them, as I mentioned, to be successful in placement. I'm out of time. But if you could answer that question and then based on my colleagues, I might queue up one more time with my last three questions next. Speaker 3: Yeah. So in regards to the the survey question that you had posed, so for the delivery survey, there was a total of 79 respondents to that survey and we did send that out via email or website. I don't believe that one was on social media at the time, but we did get 79 total responses. 47% of the respondents were equity applicants or identified as equity applicants, 21% identified as Long Beach residents, 20% identified as cannabis business owners. 5% were potential equity applicants. 3% were just members of an LP, business or community organization, and then 4% were other. And then in terms of the Equity Dispensary survey, we did push that out on social media, which gave us a little bit more of a response rate. And so we we received 135 total responses, 43% were equity applicants, 23% cannabis business owners. And then or I'm sorry, 30, 43 were equity applicants, 23 cannabis business owners, 67 of those respondents were Long Beach residents. And then to identify those other. Speaker 1: Thank you for that information. I think that one of the big challenges that I had, at least with the dispensary locations, was people don't realize how small a thousand feet is. And when you reduce that to 600 feet, I mean, we got a lot of complaints with that dispensary doesn't meet the rules. But when you look at the the measurement, it far exceeded the rules. People's perception of that that before is a lot different than the reality. And I think that's important. So I'm not real comfortable with the maps yet, but I'm comfortable and supporting, I don't think councilmember. Speaker 0: So I'm okay. I'll take that. Well, first, I'd like to thank staff and our city's Office of Cannabis Oversight Team for really putting in the work for this feasibility report and the recommendations on top of all their other duties. I understand that they're split in time, and this is a real issue with staff capacity that we have to deliver cannabis oversight, but also add on new facets to add to this program. And I know it took a lot of effort and the report was very thorough. I want to appreciate my my colleague's comments as well. I'll just say that I generally support the recommendations, including the revised green zones, with the comments of my colleagues regarding the beaches and the children on the beaches. I think those are important points that need to be taken into consideration for any ordinance that we we may look at drafting. I think a dispensary licenses exclusively for cannabis equity applicants is a reasonable and manageable starting point. Right, for the market absorbing new businesses in the market. That was the number we threw out in March. It seemed to be a number that was. Settled upon by many of the respondents who have been engaged in the process. And so they got that part right for right now. But that doesn't mean that it's capped enough that it'll be over with. We can we can always look at doing more. I'd love to see us move faster and expedite the process. If if there's any way for us to do that. And I'm going to continue to push in that regard. But the idea of a 25 or point 25% tax is a little troubling for me as well. I've heard from a couple of my colleagues that that might be a dealbreaker. We want to we want to move this equity program forward. And I'd like to explore other ways, too, to getting there immediately. The financial needs to add staff and deal with the one time, as well as structural costs associated with building this program out . So later on tonight, we'll talk a little bit about what, a 21 budget performance report. And in that report, staff indicates that business license tax revenues are anticipated to outperform what was projected in the budget by $1.3 million. Right. Due to a surge in cannabis sales, as well as an extension of business hours that the council approved. So if we've been a partner, we've been proactive, we've done all we could to make this industry work and be profitable. And it looks like we exceeded our expectations. I guess I need to ask what that exceeded expectations were those revenues going in and world and can those revenues be used back into the program? So they are eligible youth. But if you look at the whole performance report, those are general fund dollars or measure em, but they essentially are general fund. And as you look at the whole of the general fund, we're only half a million dollars. Balance. We're essentially exactly balance. We don't have a structural surplus and we're going into a structural deficit. So while that specific revenue has gone up, others have gone down, other costs have gone up. So we are currently for this year's budget balanced and then for next year's budget, we're right now looking at a 36 to $38 million deficit. I'm hoping that'll come down as the economy continues to improve, but we'd be looking at reductions next year. I couldn't possibly be performing better than 1.3 million. And. It's possible. So I think we're hearing that from the council. What I'd like to suggest is that you don't take the tax completely off the table yet, but you consider other options if we can get additional state dollars. Give us a little bit of time to see what measure M revenues might do, what the state dollars would might be, and then what that delta is. And we'll bring you back some options, one of which could be a lower tax, one could be general fund and cutting something else, because we've got a little bit of time to develop the ordinance and come back to you with the staffing model. Well, I love that recommendation. I just want to figure out how to get out of tonight in terms of a vote to support moving forward with our campus equity program and then maybe leaving it open for staff to to figure out the financing without a text right away. I think that's the direction tonight instead is to give us more direction to come back with other options. And we'll bring that back. When we bring the ordinance back. When we bring back the appropriation increase, we'll bring back, you know, what our new funding strategy is going to be from June. So yeah, I'd like to move that into the record. And I really think that that's important because I don't I don't hear a consensus around moving forward with a quarter cent tax and and probably. Potentially crippling even those businesses that we are trying to lift up right at the same time. The fact that that my my really my my my real concern here on with that. If we can, we can do that. I think we are we're in a great place. I like the idea of looking at other grant funding opportunities. I know that there are opportunities from the state. I think that, you know, again, time the more time we we put into developing our social or cannabis equity program, it's potentially opportunity life. Um, and I will just say that, that the the ideal of, of. A merit based process is very, very important. Listening to the presentation. The ideal of a hybrid where we are doing an RFP, we're assessing qualifications. There's an interview process. I think that for me, the most important component is that it's a fair process that will get you better. But that tends to put a little bit more in terms of. Not for a little bit. Oh, man. I'm talking about Cuba. Cuba. Thank you. Councilman, sir. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. So I also want to express my appreciation for staff's hard work in making sure to get community input, equity applicant input, as well as those who are working in the cannabis business as well. And also appreciate all the questions and comments made by my colleagues. You know, one of the things that I want you to just comment on, well, it's taken time to get us to this point. It's something that's not been done. And we've worked kind of looking at other models of city have done what they've done right and what they didn't do right that we can learn from. So I also see that equity is going to be a process in development, right? So I see this as a pilot programing. Eight isn't I don't think it's right to say any number right now is the right number unless we do a little bit more piloting of how this program will work to making sure we even get eight. A total of eight. Ensuring they're successful. Right. That would be a success if it's 100% they're able to get their business running. So I feel like there's a lot of lessons that can be learned through this, what I would consider as a piling piloting phase of this equity program in Long Beach. One of the other things that I wanted to ask about, certainly I'm also concerned about this tax rate, which, in addition to the options that were the share that would be looked at, is where we find this funding is also looking at, well, what are the tax rates, what are the tax rate in the other cities and how have they explored ways to fund their program? I appreciate this exhibit. You know, at the very last page, exhibit H, a D attachment D here where you have lists a variety of cities that included, you know, looking at how they implement their program and their even their caps, as well as interested in seeing what their tax rates are and to ensure that we're kind of learning from them as well. The other thing that I. Wanted to talk about was also just this process of this these eligible applicants. It's really important to me that we also ensure there's a majority that are Long Beach residents, Long Beach resident, those who have been impacted by the war on drugs in Long Beach. I think we need to make sure that if there's a point system in the guideline, that we give them additional points. Because I think it's important that we lift up those who've experienced the various barriers here in the city. And then the other thing, too, is when you do get whatever your review process looks like, when you get your consultants together, or that's a consideration of how you find your consultant, I think it's really important that we also have variety of reviewers of these applicants, that it'll be people who are in the cannabis business, as well as those who understand equity that comes from that, have a background in understanding how do we approach using that lens in how you determine, you know, weighing in their experience, their life experience and also other other criteria as well that can be taken into consideration. So I'll say this again in that while it's it feels like it's taking a long time, I also think that we should also move forward a little quicker so that we can pilot this to see what we can do right and what we can do, you know, taking lessons learned from other city and what we can do . Well, right. So so I know that I value that. We we want to make sure there's fairness and all of that should be taken consideration. But we also want to make sure we get started sooner than later. I'm going to make sure I see all my questions here. So yeah. So I think that's all my question for now. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. And they have. Speaker 2: A thank you, mayor. And I also agree with my colleagues on all their previous comments and concerns as well. I'm glad that we're thinking about taking out the tax portion of this item or actually exploring other options, I should say. That would be great. I think that to me that's important because this is an equity program and I would hate for us to have and then turn the consequences here and be able to hurt the equity community, our cannabis community that we're literally trying to help and uplift. So so that's good. Another thing that I was wondering, just I was thinking about, you know, how things are across the city. And right now, the cannabis dispensaries have to be a thousand feet away from each other. And I was wondering what the feasibility of maybe increasing that to 1500 could be because of the fact that we that way it would be better city wide to be able to have that. And also it would help these equity applicants in being successful and not be overly concentrated in certain areas. And that way they can not only become successful but sustainable, which is what we want. We want them to be both a successful and sustainable. So with that said, I'm I'm so proud of us as a city that we're moving in the right direction. And I think that, you know, this has been long overdue. So I do also would like to see us move a little bit quicker on this. I know it's hard, especially if we don't have the staff. So I'm really hoping that we can together work something out and find funds so that we can bring on staff to really dedicate to this program. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Councilwoman Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: Mr. Mayor, I just want to follow up on some of the comments that I made. So I'm seeing here that we have added the community center buffer. Speaker 1: So the area that I was referencing before on the peninsula, I believe there is at least one community center in that area. Speaker 2: So I would like to make a friendly. Speaker 1: That that buffer be reevaluated in regards to 32nd Street and the Leeway Center. The other. Speaker 2: Point I wanted. Speaker 1: To touch base on with the council and I haven't heard really anyone comment on it. So I'm thinking maybe there's not a whole lot of support for it, but I would love. Speaker 2: To hear my council colleagues. Speaker 1: Comments on the overconcentration of dispensaries in throughout the city and specific parts. So I'd like us to address that issue. Speaker 2: Maybe it's not tonight. Speaker 1: In the form of a motion. Speaker 2: But I'd love to know what. Speaker 1: My colleagues think about that, since this is an issue that is before us on an ongoing basis, I believe, at present. Really some Brown Act areas that I'm uncomfortable reaching out to colleagues to talk about when we have items like this on the agenda. I think it's a public conversation that we have to have that I would like to have publicly about whether there should. Speaker 2: Be a limit on. Speaker 1: The number. So we how many total will we have with this? Eight. Speaker 0: I'm sorry, could you ask the question again? Speaker 1: How many total will we have? Speaker 2: I can do the math, you guys. I'm just trying to have a public. Speaker 1: Equity hybrid with my colleagues. We would have 40, 40, but that number I can get. Okay, so if we have 40. Speaker 2: And we have assuming we have nine council. Speaker 1: Districts, which that's probably not going to change even with the redistricting. What what would what would that look like if we were to have an equitable distribution? Speaker 0: So I will say that redistricting is the X factor. As you mentioned, we don't know what the boundaries are going to look like. We'll know what those will look like by December. And we're not planning to bring back with this ordinance before that time. So there will be time to, if you wanted to give a certain direction tonight to be able to look at the new boundaries when we bring something back. Speaker 1: I think that would be great. I'd like to add as a friendly that after the redistricting information. Speaker 2: Comes out, that council will have an opportunity. Speaker 1: To have a discussion about the concentration or the distribution, I should say, of dispensaries throughout the city. And whether we want to consider a density cap or for lack of a better word. Because, you know, I think we should be all roughly around the same. And we should provide opportunities in the districts that are underrepresented in cannabis businesses. We should do whatever we can to help those businesses get those types of services for their residents as well, so that their residents because I recall that was a really big issue when we would debate this topic, is that people having to drive to other parts of the city to get access. So we want to make sure everyone has access. I think that would be a great conversation to have and I bring that as a friend like. Speaker 0: A sentimental. Speaker 1: Yes. And so on. Yeah, that definitely is accepted. One of the things that I wonder is I, you know, represent downtown. And so where we have a small area or dense or high, so there's not going to be as much availability and downtown as there might be and councilwoman among those district just because of the fact that she has a big footprint. So I accept that friendly and I want to make sure I want to clarify the motion. So my motion is that we do not raise the taxes, that we look at all other alternatives, that the application process is based on merit. And then Councilwoman Price's friendly. That's my emotion. Speaker 0: Okay. So I didn't have speaker style, but that's the to clarify, the motion on the floor is the staff recommendation and with the addition of the Friendly's by Councilman Price removing the tax and looking for other alternatives and to go off of a merit, a stronger merit based system than the one proposed. I think what the motion is that is correct. Again, there's a second customer and get your supporters. Oh, really? Go ahead, Mr. Mayor, if I can make a suggestion, I heard from the council that you'd like to keep this moving forward. We haven't figured out how to pay for it because we kind of removed that option today. We need at least $50,000 to start the consultant to move that forward. So I'd like to just we'll find the resources for that or come out of, you know, something in the reserves or end of year fund balance. But that will allow us to at least take that next interim step if that's amenable. Okay, great. We'll wait for the customers on the way back. But let me just continue on the on the speaker's list, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 1: Thank you. Just a question about the tax. Was the tax only going to be applied to recreational or medical as well? If it would have been in motion just cause I just didn't know, it would be to both. Okay. So one of the things that I would definitely recommend is for it not to be a part of the medical side, like we don't want to tax people's medicine if we can avoid it. In talking with. Dispensary owners, an average sale is $65. So we're talking about a dollar, a dollar, $52 per purchase. And while that is a lot of money on the recreational side, I'm not as concerned as I would be about the medical side, those who have cancer and need the medical treatment and all of those things. I think that's the number one concern for us. When looking at your revenue options for the future, obviously this council would prefer not to increase taxes. But when you do talk about. For me, I would like to not increase taxes and to get equity licenses available within six months. However, if I had to choose between a small tax of a dollar 50 a transaction and getting equity businesses off the ground in six months versus three years from now, I think I would choose getting them off the ground sooner because I think we've waited just far too long, and I think that our process to date has been very frustrating. And so I think that that's part of the. The weight of the options. Obviously not increasing taxes best, but if it means it's going to be a three and a half year delay because the two of you are going to have to singlehandedly lift eight dispensaries off the ground. I just don't know how it could be physically possible for you to do. There's just that amount of workload that's feasible and there's an amount of work that does not. I do recognize there's a national discussion going on with legalization and perhaps the grant funding will be available. And I think that would be an amazing opportunity. And if that is, I also think that there's potentially a lot of equity funding coming from major foundations. I just don't how we get that into the city because most of their grant requirements are that it goes through a nonprofit. I don't know how we're set up to make that happen, but when it comes to moving this program forward, I'm very passionate about making sure that that happens. And I support councilman. Price's comment regarding. It's trying to find a way to distribute these evenly across the city. And I do completely agree with Councilman Allen about the density issues. And even with as many parks as I have and of many non zones that I have, we still have a lot of zones and I think that in discussing with the community certain dispensaries as they were put in. If if we could be a part of those discussions. I think we know our communities pretty well. And there are some locations that literally across the street would have been acceptable. But where they are is just the foot traffic of the kindergarten or the. It's just it's not always just about a circle around the location that really makes sense. It's a path of travel. It's a lot of things. And when you talk to a dispensary owner, some of those other things are very valuable. So I haven't actually mentioned this to Eliot, but he's right off a freeway. Nobody's ever made a negative comment about his because it's kind of like tucked into a corner and people have easy access on and off of the freeway versus another dispensary that might have significantly less traffic that is 1000 feet from a high school. And that one is highly controversial and highly frustrating for the community. They have no parking. They're constantly impacting the neighborhood. I mean, everything about that dispensary is a struggle. And so when you kind of work through what that is, I think that there's a lot of contacts that we could help provide you with that mapping. But I also recognize that there's some legal components of just like. How you articulate that in working with development services to make sure that we're equitably applying rules across the city and there's not just one versus another, so. Very supportive of both of those. But I do want to just say that while I don't want to increase taxes, I don't want this program to take three years. So what is your timeline on coming up with a solution and or bringing back? A temporary solution and or a proposal. Speaker 0: I'm not sure we know yet. So we brought a proposal tonight with change a little bit. So we'll go back and do a little bit of work. It'll be after December and then we'll come back with some ideas. Speaker 1: And for me again, I don't want to raise taxes if I don't have to, but I would rather raise taxes 0.3% on recreation and 0% on medical. If that meant the same amount. Just trying to protect those that are using marijuana as a medical youth. So that's what I'd like to just continue to voice as a priority. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Austin. And comma forgot what I was cued to say. But I do think that to Councilmember Price's point in terms of. Addressing density and equitable distribution of licenses throughout the city. I think expanding green zones will expand opportunity for that and I do think we as a council have to also be realistic to the market demand as well, and that plays a role into where these businesses are located. I'll probably have less than anybody on the council. I have one in my my district. You guys remind me of that often. That's right. On the liquid border. So I don't know why that dynamic is. Perhaps, you know, it's hard to place cannabis businesses in the district because of the current restrictions that we have. We have a lot of parks. We have daycare centers, we have schools. So I'm very supportive of bus. Inconsistent with the state policy. I think that's a smart approach that opened up opportunities for for these cannabis exclusive cannabis equity licenses to be successful in our city. And then again, yes, we'll have that of conversation about. Oversaturation. But I think this is a great starting point, and I'd love to get to a vote so we can get that to work and move this item. Thank you. And then finally, transformers in death. Speaker 2: You just wanted to make a quick clarification. I was hoping that my request for and the feasibility of increasing the footage from one 1000 to 1500. The feasibility of it could be a friendly. The woman, Alan. Speaker 1: Yes. iPod. My understanding is that that number was 1600 now to match up with state regulations. And that's just the distance that it's from schools and things like that. So I'm not sure I understand. Speaker 3: No, I think I think Councilman Van de Haas is proposing to expand the buffer between dispensaries from 1000, which we were not proposing to amend to 1500. Yeah. Speaker 1: I accept. Speaker 0: Just so we understand, that wouldn't be from ones that are currently in place. It's only for the that the eight new ones. Is that correct? Because we wouldn't be able to change anybody who already has a brick and mortar dispensary. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 0: Then it would be when new ones come in, we would look at the feasibility of doing 1500 from each other for the New Haven. Speaker 2: And my purpose for that is to make sure that we give these new dispensaries a chance to be able to be successful and be able to be sustainable. Speaker 0: That we can certainly bring back a second map that shows one with an one without. So the council can look at that as we move forward. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember Allen. Speaker 0: Okay. Okay. So my comments come from Brockton. I just I feel like that the last friendly amendment respectfully makes it more restrictive where we're trying to reduce to the buffer zones and expand. Opportunities for for equity licenses to be located in our city. And that that particular addition seems to. Who might be a little bit more restrictive. Right. It pushes us in the other direction. Speaker 1: Now, can you answer that question for me? Speaker 0: Yeah. So I need to correct the mindset is when we do buffers from fixed assets, we can certainly plot that on a map if we are doing hypothetical parcels that have not been selected yet because we won't know where they're going to go until they get through their process and bring us a leaf. Those are going to be essentially impossible for us to map so we can give you some ideas of what that means. But we would definitely be shrinking the Green Zone a little bit if we go to 1500 as opposed to keeping it at 2000. Speaker 2: And it would just be a feasibility, nothing to actually decide on today, but just to see what what it would look like. Speaker 0: So why don't we try this when we add in to. Right, we'll read you up an analysis of what the pros and the cons would be, and we'll have that answer returned when we come back. Speaker 1: Awesome. Speaker 0: That's perfect. Thank you. And counsel on Mongo. Speaker 1: To address the comments of both because of all of them that they have and the previous comments of Councilman Price and to factor in the need for it not to be as restrictive as Councilman Austin has just brought up my. Thoughts on how we can solve this problem right now without having to worry about all of that coming back. Is any any equity dispensary that's proposed within an area that was previously a restricted area would go through a small coop process. Therefore, you'd have that opportunity at the last minute to work with what's already in that area and know that area well, like the peninsula, like a couple of other things to be able to say, would this work? Is that a good idea? I'm trying to come up with a solution so that you don't have a bunch of analysis. I think you're weighing in. That doesn't sound like it'll work. Councilwoman Mongo, just in the interest of talking about the reduction of cost associated with that right now, increased conditional use permit process is pretty costly. And I think with the most recent fee update that the council approved those fees increase again. And I'm going to. Don't don't quote me on it. But I think those fees are upwards of around 10,000 or 10 to 15000. So that's a pretty sizable cost to add to the the equity dispensaries. I see. Speaker 0: And it councilmember in addition to the 10,000 I think we can work here at the staff table to accomplish. I hear the council's concern without creating okay not just the cost to the applicant but, you know, processing a conditional use permit. There is not there's reasons we don't see a piece for dispensaries because there's not a lot of conditions that we would add. And we're putting someone through this for nothing. Speaker 1: We're just trying to think of a way that we wouldn't have all this. Speaker 0: Yeah, I think the one. Speaker 1: Thing that that my brother has taught me being an industrial and commercial real estate, is that the loss of time is money. And he would much rather pay an extra $0.25 a square foot to get his location opened now than to wait another 18 months or a year because time is money. And so I was just trying to think of what could we do to get this resolved tonight? Thank you for that additional call. Speaker 0: We can do a consultation process here where the applicant is required to have a formal meeting with development services, is required to have a formal meeting with their relevant council representative. And if, based on the location, there is one, a neighborhood association that would not be in approval, it's just requiring them to have that consultation. And I think that would avoid the very costly fees. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great idea. Let me go to Councilman Press and we're going to go to a vote and we keep going back and forth. So we just need to include Councilman Price. Speaker 2: And to say support Councilman Sun House's friendly. Speaker 1: But I'm not sure if that's still relevant. Okay. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. So I think we have the motion on the floor, which I'm going to repeat, which is staff recommendation. We're going to add the two friendlies that Councilwoman Pryce made. And then Councilman Sun has this motion as well, which is an analysis of the 1500. But also we're going to bring back the initial staff recommendation on the buffer zone. And then we are also eliminating the tax and looking for a grant as a first option or other state funding, but also authorizing staff to put in the initial 50 grand or whatever the cost is to get the process started. And we are trying to focus on a more merit based process than the one presented by by staff. I think I got that motion correct. Speaker 1: That is correct. Speaker 0: Okay. With that, there is a motion and a second. Members, please go ahead and cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion is carried. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let's go ahead and go to item number one.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a report on the cannabis non-storefront retail (delivery) and storefront retail (dispensary) feasibility analyses; Direct City Attorney to prepare an ordinance to allow cannabis delivery and equity dispensary facilities in Long Beach; and Increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $325,000, offset by an increase in cannabis business license taxes, for software development to support the Cannabis Social Equity Program, and stakeholder engagement services and direct technical assistance funding for the equity dispensary licensing program. (Citywide)

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Speaker 3: Motion is carried. Speaker 0: Thank you. Item last item 21. Speaker 3: Reporter from. Speaker 1: Financial. Speaker 3: Management Recommendation to receive and file a fiscal year 2021 Budget Performance. Speaker 1: Report City Wide. Speaker 0: There's no public comment, correct? Okay. We're going to just do a brief. And Mr. Monica, do you want to just give us a brief? Performance Report update. I think most accounts have probably read the agenda, but I want to just do that publicly. Yes. Great. Speaker 2: All right. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the city council. This report is a preview of the potential FY 21. Speaker 1: Year end projections. Speaker 2: Just as a comment, your end transactions are still in progress and final disbursements of revenues are still pending. Speaker 1: So this report. Speaker 2: Is still based on estimates. And we'll bring we'll be bringing. Speaker 3: Back a final report on the Fy21 performance based on actual. Speaker 1: Per our normal schedule in February. This budget, as a reminder, was established at the start. Speaker 2: Of the pandemic in the middle of the incredibly steep and swift recession. And so what we're finding out on a positive. Speaker 1: Side is that current projections. Speaker 2: Show optimistic signs that revenue. Speaker 3: Shortfalls in key areas are not. Speaker 1: As severe as originally thought. Speaker 2: That we might be, they might be. So, as Tom mentioned earlier. Speaker 3: For the general fund. Speaker 1: Projections. Speaker 2: Are essentially showing that we are generally balanced for FY 21. Speaker 3: With a small operating surplus. Speaker 1: Of 500,000. Speaker 2: I do want to say it's important to note that there are many outstanding variables. Speaker 1: And when we're. Speaker 2: Talking 500,000. Speaker 1: We're talking a very small margin. And so it's. Speaker 2: Possible that this number could be. Speaker 3: More positive or it could even swing to be a negative. Speaker 1: We do have measure A, we still have one quarter left to go, but Measure is currently. Speaker 2: Showing a potential net program. Speaker 1: Surplus of about 10 million. Speaker 3: And so for this final surplus. Speaker 1: The city manager will be looking at all the priority items that. Speaker 2: Council mentioned on adoption night as well as other major needs. Speaker 1: Eligible under Measure eight. And we'll be bringing back a comprehensive list of recommended projects in February in the year and performance report for City Council. Speaker 0: Consider very much I think that's a good pick it up just as a note just wanted to add that all the projects that Councilmember Austin and the Council worked on so really worked under a great list of projects. If things continue as planned, those are all going to get funded or are looking like a lot of those going get funded. So that's really great news. So there's a motion and a second on this item. Members, please cast your vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a Fiscal Year 2021 (FY 21) Budget Performance Report providing an update on the City’s FY 21 financial status and projections for year-end. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to go ahead and do the all the fun transfers. It's items 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36 and 37. If I can get a motion any second for all those items in Madam Quirke, you can read them, please. Speaker 1: Item 26 A Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to increased appropriations by $100,488 to provide a donation to Lois Rita's wetland stewards to support a community planting event. Item 27 Communication from Councilman Super Anna Recommendation to increase appropriations by $250 to provide a contribution to the Friends of the Long Beach Public Library for their Celebrate Our Library event . Item 28 Communication from Councilwoman Allen. Recommendation to increase appropriations by 1500 to provide a contribution to L.A. Wine Fest to support L.A. Wine Fest 2021. Item 29 Communication from Councilman Austin. Recommendation to increase appropriations by $5,000 to provide a donation to the Bixby North Business Improvement Association to support ongoing programing at the Expo Art Center. Item 30 Communication from Councilwoman. And they have recommendation to increase appropriations by $450 to provide a donation to the Long Beach Camerata Singer's 2021 gala, which will take place on October six, 2021. Item 31 A Communication from Councilwoman into House recommendation to increase appropriations by 2500 to provide a donation to the Economic and Policy Impact Center Fellowship graduation held on September 18th, 2021. Item 32 A Communication from Councilwoman. Did they have a recommendation to increase appropriations by 250 to provide a donation to the Long Beach Public Library Foundation of Friend? Celebrate our Library event. Item 33 A communication from Councilwoman and I have recommendation to increase appropriations by $500 to provide a contribution to the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles in support of their collaboration with the Washington Neighborhood for planning of the Dallas Masters event. Item 36 Communication from Council member Urunga. Recommendation to increase appropriations by $500 to provide a donation to Long Beach Camerata Singers to support their 2021 gala. An Item 37, a communication from Council member Urunga recommendation to increase appropriations by $500 to provide a donation to Historical Society of Long Beach to support their 2021 cemetery tour. Those are all of those transfers. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. We have the motion and a second in place. We have one member of the public, Mr. Confer, on these items. Thought about that. I got the calendar misconstrued and had the opportunity of eating at the gala, the public library gala at the table to Miss Jane Hower. So she seems like a very kind and lovely woman. And she explained to me the cultural contributions of the Long Beach Camerata singers. So very much in support of that endeavor. With regards to the Expo Center, that is a bastion of community with respect to the city overall, but especially in the eighth District. So I'm heavily supporter of Council Councilman Alston's recommendation, especially with regards to the expo now being the home of the African-American Cultural Center. So thank you. Thank you. There is a motion in a second. Please cast your vote in this custom analysis. Anything you want to add. Speaker 1: No. Just support all the. Speaker 0: Items cost from your income for the item. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Ocean is scared. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is. The hearings. We have three hearings. They will have public comment and then we'll have the agenda, the rest of the actual agenda items. So beginning with hearing the first hearing.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $1,488, offset by the Third Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to provide a donation to Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewards to support a community planting event, and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $1,488 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is. The hearings. We have three hearings. They will have public comment and then we'll have the agenda, the rest of the actual agenda items. So beginning with hearing the first hearing. Speaker 1: Ring Item number 23 Report from Economic Development Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and adopt a resolution continuing the Belmont Shore Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessment Levee District three. We will have a staff presentation of this item by Eric Romero. Economic Development. Speaker 0: Good afternoon, Mayor, and members of the City Council. The Belmont Shore Parking and Business Improvement Area, also known as the Business Improvement District, was established by the City Council in 1983, allowing for the levy an annual of an annual assessment to be paid by businesses located in the district. The city contracts with the Belmont Shore Business Association to manage the Business Improvement District and the Belmont Shore Business Association's Board of Directors serves as an advisory board to the City Council on matters related to the district. State law governing business improvement districts requires an annual report be approved by the City Council. The annual report describes the boundaries of the proposed activities and the budgetary information, as well as the method and basis for the continuation of the assessment. The annual report proposes no changes to the district boundaries or the method of loving the assessment. The proposed activities will focus on marketing, special events and community outreach and security. This concludes my staff report. I'm happy to answer any questions. And I got a motion in a second place. I see no public comment for this hearing. Is that correct? Members, please go and cast your vote. Speaker 1: Components and. Motion is carried.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution continuing the Belmont Shore Parking and Business Improvement Area assessment levy for the period of October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022; and, authorize City Manager, or designee, to extend the agreement with the Belmont Shore Business Association for a one-year term. (District 3)

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Speaker 2: Public comment. Thank you so much for your testimony and testimony and certainly a lot going on in the town. Right now, we're going to move forward with item 34. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Zendaya's. Councilwoman Allen. Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Department of Development Services to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a single emergency rental assistance application for landlords with multiple tenants and communities at elevated risk of eviction and direct the Department of Development Services to publicize data regarding the rental assistance program on a public dashboard. Speaker 2: Fantastic. Thank you. I can't keep up. So I'm going to make the motion on table for me and pull up the presentation. Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 2: So thanks to community partners, thank the city staff, thanks to everyone who provided data and helped shape this proposal tonight and thank you to council members and they have an Allen for your support on this proposal. So a little bit of context. Long Beach has been a leader in the region, in the nation on the Recovery Recovery Act. $250 million in Recovery Act. The most significant effort with 64 million in rental assistance so far. The ERAP program, emergency rental assistance program that allows for the full payment of back rent for vulnerable tenants and is our most significant tool to keep people in their homes and keep people housed. The city has distinguished itself itself as a leader for efficient management of the pandemic and the recovery. We led the way on vaccination. We're now preparing to be among the first on booster shots. Our rescue our Recovery Act was the first meaningful recovery package, making good use of recovery money to strengthen our city. And our rental assistance program has been recognized by the US Treasury as one of the more efficient programs in the nation. We have just under 30% of our of our funding disbursed, beating the state and national averages. We've already helped over to about 2500 households with rent and utility payments. Those are 2500 households that are now no longer on the brink of eviction. Our Development Services Department and our community organizations have done a great job really rallying and making this successful. At a time when some agencies simply gave the money back because it's a challenge. Compare this to L.A.. L.A. was underperforming, and a month ago they chose to give the money back. And all of those people had to go back through the same process and go back to the back of the line. There was no context on it. Okay. So so here's what we're finding. So in Long Beach, ah, or here in L.A. County, our eviction moratorium ended September 30th, and we still have 15,800 households who are still behind on rent and vulnerable to eviction. That's estimated that over 43,000 people in our city, that's 99% of our population is in this very precarious position, that 16,000 children are at risk of eviction. And we can help make a difference if we expedite getting this funding out at the current pace. We'll take until August 20, 22 to distribute all of our money. And where is the money? What are we hearing? What is the most significant burden to getting the money out faster? Well, first, stringent requirements, so continue to have to prove that their 80% area median income or below. Right. They're below 80%. They actually have to prove their economic situation was was impacted by the pandemic. And, you know, they have to prove that they're at a point of housing insecurity. Those are things that we have to provide documentation of proof. You also have unique challenges. We understand that Long Beach is a very diverse community. We have digital divide issue. We have some areas where it's harder to connect to the to the Internet. We also know that immigration status makes it more difficult. And so the burden. In order to provide the worthiness of this program, although it's a really good program, you know, there are things that we can do to improve. Currently in a currently a ten it alone can apply or as a tenant and a landlord. The tenants who need the most help are often the one who are more likely to not have the required documents in order to actually receive the have a completed application or received the assistance. So the folks who are out of work are having a difficult time getting into work. Those are also a thing. People are having a difficult time completing the application and sometimes the documents just simply don't exist. The proof, they just simply doesn't exist at 4500 unfilled applications because they are processed by one side and not the other. We have 8500 incomplete applications because a tenant or a landlord is having difficulty finding the documents or none of the current proxies like Medicaid or unemployment insurance. Enrollment can be applied in lawsuit scenario. We have a tool called a self attestation form that we just began using. In some cases, it can be hard to complete with language barriers if you're signing up to a test, right? Sometimes it takes a little bit of effort to talk someone through what it attestation form. And there's also again, issues with digital access. And and so these are some of the barriers. The Urban Institute study show that 36% of tenants who haven't finished the application, they couldn't because of eligibility criteria. Another 24% expressed difficulty communicating with landlord. 21% said that the process of preparing and filing documents is why they didn't finish. And landlords expressed a very similar problem. 30% have said they haven't completed applications due to the complicated criteria. 30% said they expressed issues communicating directly with their tenants. 22% have said that they've had trouble preparing or filing documents. So here's the opportunity. You know, we've been recognized as a leader. We have responsibility, continue to lead. We've learned a lot. We've kicked around some different ideas. Today is to look at some new opportunities put forward by the Treasury. Look at the some of the things we've been kicking around and create some streamlined approaches to get more people in vulnerable areas approved. So the new Treasury guidance allows for advance payments to landlord with lower requirements for proof of eligibility. 2000 applications where landlord have done their site but the tenant haven't found their documents or you know, that could double the allocation overnight if we were to all those 2000 applications. Creating a single, streamlined application. Speaker 0: Process. Speaker 2: Targeted to property owners of buildings with large clusters of incomplete applications would help us to get the money out faster, allow you to protect more tenants and reach those who those hard to get tenants who we know. Maybe they haven't signed up, maybe they haven't initiated their own application. But if there's already a streamlined application happening within that building, it's easier for them to piggyback on and protect both those units so the neighbors know who their neighbors are, the landlords know who their neighbors are. Want to make it easy to protect more people if we speed this up or be eligible for additional funds. What the Treasury is doing and what the state is doing, they're rewarding the jurisdictions who get the money out faster by reallocate, reallocating funding from other jurisdictions. And so some some programs are mismanaging. Some aren't getting the funding out fast enough. We can reward ourselves by protecting more people with a win win. Of you promising example Kentucky. If your zip code is low income, you automatically qualify. So they're just looking at if you live in a zip code or area, you don't have to prove all of this. You can simply by living in that area, you qualify. Another example, the Carmelita projects. They're different because they're public housing there, but they're one of the only single application processes that have happened. And because they were able to do it that happened right here in Long Beach, they were able to cover, I think, a 20 some odd application, 80, 80 tenants and one application protected. All right. Imagine if we were to do this that most law departments in our city, Harris County, Texas, they use the amount of rent owed per month as a proxy for housing insecurity and lower rent, higher risk. And so here's the recommendation today. The recommendation is create a streamline single application process for landlords, for vulnerable tenants to cover the whole building. Allows tenants to organize with one voice and allows landlords to target their home their whole building, so allow people to organize around one one application. This proposal has had support from folks at every stage of the rental assistance process from tenant and tenant advocate to rental asset. The report provides rental assistance providers to city staff and landlord. You know, it's not often we can hold up a letter from the apartment association in a letter from Long Beach forward both saying the same thing. I'll be leader will continue to look at these ways to continue to innovate. So given the city's mandate to push the state to lower the burdensome application process, we've already had some success in getting the state to do that. I think we're we will be one of the first we will be the first city in the state to make this happen if we can make this happen. So the ask is move forward, begin engaging with the state on a single, streamlined application. If there are other ideas that come out of Federal Treasury or other ideas the City Council has, we want to throw that in the kitchen sink as well. The idea here is to streamline this process and then secondly, create a rental assistance dashboard that can be public, that helps show progress, equity concerns, where where we're making progress , where we're not adding transparency. That's something that's been good during the pandemic, is our most significant tool to address housing insecurity. And so we should have that same that same concern. And again, we're open to additional ideas as well. So that is the presentation, and I'm happy to make this motion. Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes, sir. Thank you, Vice Mayor. That was a really great presentation, very comprehensive. And I just want to say thank you for asking me to sign on to this item. Housing is a priority to me, and this item provides a real opportunity to improve our Erap program. The item also streamlined the Erap application process, which is really important and helps get those assistance dollars out faster with more tenant that can be covered under the program. So people really need this. I know I've heard from a lot of my residents and looking at your numbers, we all know that this is really necessary. And and I also encourage DAP, if there's anything that happens along the way that you think we can improve this process, we're always looking for that and being a leader. So just happy to support this item today and just a great work by mayor. Thank you. Speaker 0: I think I need a second on this notion, actually, Cliff. I'm going to second. In a second to Councilman Allen. Councilman in the house. Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor, again for. Ask me to sign on to this very, very important item. Why do we have inequalities? Why do inequities exist today? Because for centuries, certain communities, and particularly our black and brown, low income communities have been left behind. They have been neglected. Policies and programs have not been designed for them because they have not encompassed nor even acknowledge the additional barriers that exist for the working class families. So I really, really want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson for putting forward this item, as well as Councilwoman Allen for your support. Because in this item we are doing, what we are doing is acknowledging the inequities that exist within our rental assistance program, and it is proposing a solution for it. And I think that's what we really have to focus on. There are about 8500 applications that have been incomplete. That means that there are thousands of potentially low income households who need this support, yet, because of technical technicalities, wouldn't otherwise be receiving that kind of support. I am proud that Long Beach has been a leader in the management of this program, but we need to do more with more than 43,000 people at risk of being evicted. We need to do a better job of ensuring that no family is evicted, especially as we have our holiday season coming up. And since most of the funds that that are for this particular thing are available, so we need to make sure that there are not only available, but that they are accessible to all of those who are really in need of them. In regards to the new application options for landlords, I propose that as we identify specific neighborhoods and buildings with the highest needs, that we ensure that every individual in those buildings receives funds if they are in need of it. I would like for the application to process to be as easy as possible. I think that that's also where we get hung up and where these technical technicalities occur. So I think that it's very important that we make it as easy as possible for for the landlords to apply for the residence to apply, and for them to actually receive this these funds in a very timely manner. Not only are we helping out our residents that are in need of this, but we're also helping out our landlords who have been and who have also been very patient and have been allowing, you know, all of the tenants to just stay there without paying rent. And they are also suffering as well. So we really need to make sure that as much as we we can that we help our tenants. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. I don't see anyone else cued up. Is there. Should we do public comment? Well, cancer. Thank you. And I want to appreciate this item I figured out. It's one that I'm happy to support. I was proud to introduce the original item for rental assistance only about a year ago, and that was $5 million commitment from the City Council, from our CGP CDBG Fund. And since then our, our emergency rental assistance program and the funding coming from the federal state government has expanded significantly. I think that that we've been able to help a lot of families and and I really appreciate the commitment of this council and our staff to, uh, to help not only tenants but also to housing providers during a very, very difficult time. We've come a long way and over the past year I think we've learned how to deliver and continuously improve on our processes and systems to provide rental assistance to families and keep families house. So I fully support anything that eliminates barriers and red tape that improves transparency in the process. And allows us to deliver on these critical services to families in need. So with that, I'm happy to support this motion. I think you and I will do public comment, but I'm quick. Speaker 1: Can the following people please line up for public comment? Elaine Hutchinson. Garcia. Lopez Reyes. Married. You gone, Mike Murchison. John Edmund and I can face an uncertain. Good evening. Honorable Mayor Garcia. Honorable Vice Mayor Richardson. And members of the Long Beach City Council. Speaker 0: It might not working. 1/2. Speaker 1: The mic is on and I. Speaker 0: Know it's on. It's just not projecting it. Speaker 1: I'm not speaking into it. Speaker 0: We're going to we're going to check in with this. Speaker 1: HUTCHISON Can you please put your mask on while you're doing public comments? Thank you. Thank you. May I go ahead or. Speaker 0: Why don't you wait 1/2? Thank you. I think it was working before, and now it's not. What do you do? Why don't you restart and we'll just restart the time, all right? Speaker 1: Okay. Now? Speaker 0: Yes. Speaker 1: And your mask must. Speaker 0: Remain on the mask on. Speaker 1: Put my mask back on. Yes, please. Thank you. Okay. Like this. Okay. Okay. The Honorable Mayor Garcia and Honorable Vice Mayor Richardson and members of the Long Beach City Council. My name is Elaine Hutchison, and I'm here this evening on behalf of the Apartment Association of California's Southern Cities, located at 33 three West Broadway here in Long Beach. Just to mention, we're very proud that this year we are celebrating our 97th year serving the rental housing industry here in Long Beach. We want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson and council members the data's and Allen for bringing item 34 forward to streamline the application process for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. We know from calls coming into our office that both tenants and owners have difficulty in communicating to meet the requirements, either because of language barriers or difficulties with understanding the process or simply to understand the purpose of the program and how they felt. And then the steps to be taken. We here in Long Beach are very fortunate to have seen several awards of rent relief funds, and we still have 46 million of unspent funds. So while there may be federal or state guidelines to work with, we must remember that our end goal is to help pay unpaid rent and thereby prevent homelessness and to help stabilize the tenants in our community who need assistance. We are very pleased to support item 34 and urge the City Council to approve this item. Thank you very much. Good evening. Mayor and council members. My name is Grisha Lopez Reyes. I'm the director of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community. COVID 19 has revealed the vast inequalities in our communities, but we applaud the city's efforts to develop a strong recovery plan for the COVID 19 pandemic to ensure that we get the necessary resources to residents that have been impacted by this public health crisis. The rental assistance program is key to making this happen. However, while this program has tried to help many households with rental and utility payments, the difficulty of the application process discourages tenants, especially low income renters and or undocumented communities from accessing these funds. It is confusing, inaccessible and requires the necessary amount of documentation. For this reason, we strongly support the recommendation put forth in tonight's item by Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Sun has and Councilwoman Allen to lower administrative burdens for eligible residents to ensure that those needed the most are receiving the assistance. Our Coalition has engaged thousands of renters through our organizing efforts this month, but I wanted to lift one story from Shelly Ward. She's a Long Beach resident who tried to apply for rental assistance but experienced difficulty due to the long and complicated process. Due to the drawback she faced when starting the application process. She was then served an eviction notice. Shelly and her family are now facing the threat of displacement, which could have been avoided if the process was easier and more accessible. This new process will open up the opportunity for tenants and landlords to work together and make it easier for the funds to be distributed effectively. By voting yes and improving this recommendation, Long Beach will continue to be a strong leader on COVID 19 recovery and an example for other cities. Thank you. Speaker 2: Next speaker, please. Speaker 1: Good evening, Honorable Mayor Garcia and the city council members. My name is Mary. You. I am a pastor and. Speaker 3: A faith rooted organizer with Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, also known as crew. I represent hundreds of. Speaker 1: Faith leaders connected through crew to speak in support of this item today. First, I want to say thank you to the city for developing such a strong recovery plan to provide resources for our community. And specifically, I want to say thank you to Vice Mayor Richardson, council. Speaker 3: Members and Council Member Allen, for bringing this item up. Speaker 1: We all know that availability and access are two different issues. We have our city has the rental assistance funding available to tenants, but the tenants who need it the most don't have access to this resource because of the burden of paperwork. The majority of our vulnerable tenants, of people of color. So streamlining this application process is the key to address the issue of access rooted in the racial injustice. Speaker 3: In our society. Speaker 1: And as a pastor of an immigrant congregation, I have witnessed firsthand how family and children have been impacted by this pandemic. And our youth have been feeling stressed out because they see their parents struggle to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table. So this burden impacts their capacity to engage in school with their studies. So if we want to make sure that our children can have a healthy development and can succeed in school, then we need to make sure vulnerable families have access to the resources that they need the most right now. So this new, streamlined process will change the futures of many families and youth, which will change the generations to come in our city. Our Christian sacred text teaches that we are all connected in one family as children of God. And some of us, if some of us are in pain, all of us are impacted. For this reason, we believe that developing the development of the streamlined process to provide rental assistance to our tenants as quickly as possible will support the well-being and healing of our city. So we ask that you vote yes to approve this recommendation. Thank you. Speaker 0: Mayor. Vice mayor, council members. Good evening. My name is Mike Murchison. I represent Spier. I represent 100 hundreds and hundreds of other rental property owners that want to commend the vice mayor for bringing this item forward. We also support your fellow colleagues who signed off on this. Councilwoman and Councilwoman Allen, thank you very much. I also want to mention the hard work the development services does on this issue because it's been a difficult one. I want to thank Christopher and Oscar for their dedication to this. I support the vice mayor's recommendation on this. I support, believe it or not, and be on the same page with a good jobs and healthy community. That's going to be a first for me. But I think the two main issues that I want to bring forward is, number one, streamlining the permit process. And I think other speakers have brought that up. That's critical. But the other bigger issue, and I brought this up months ago, is that the federal government has income requirements. And you all saw that in Rex's presentation, the 80% of area median income. Those are going to change because you're not going to get to all the tenants in Long Beach. You have, I don't know, 250,000 tenants that live in Long Beach. And I don't know how many of them a high percentage, the oh deferred rent, if you want to get to every one of them. Then you go to your California congressional and federal delegation and you talk to them about waiving or reducing significantly that 80% of area median income until that changes. I support obviously expediting and making a one page permit or excuse me, application process, but that income level is what makes it extremely difficult for everybody in Long Beach. That has to change. Otherwise, we're going to be in the same boat four or five, six months from now. So I just want to encourage you to reach out to Congressman Lowenthal and others and see what can be done to reducing or getting rid of that income requirement. Vice Mayor Richardson, thank you very much. Council people. Thank you. I really appreciate it. One of the rare moments in life where you know me and Mr. Murchison agree. I think that. Am I wise? It makes no sense. We have we have a zip code. I love the example that the firemen are use with respect to the state of Kentucky and using zip code measurements. You know, we we know which zip codes are poorer than others and area median income is based on that. There are zip codes that have a spectrum of incomes. 90804. If you live on the western, part of that zip code is much different than the eastern part of that zip code. Narrative five is another example. Nine over six I mean, there's a there's multiple zip codes where you have, you know, quote unquote, low income people with middle income and higher people living in the same zip code. So if the process is to streamline this effort to pay off the first rent, then I would have to agree we have a rate of above 80% because it's just not realistic. There's a reason why over 12,000 applications are not processed yet. I'm unfulfilled, and it has to do with the, you know, the education of those who even know the paperwork, the understanding of it, how difficult it is. And with respect to the streamlined effort, for one, I agree in green in agreement of this. I have to say honestly that a lot of the third party organizations that have partnered with the city don't have the reach that they claim that they have. You know, our piece was, I don't know, these no bid contracts that are going through organizations who aren't present in the communities that allegedly they represent in regards to housing . They have not been able to fulfill their part of the bargain, if not solely on the backs of the city, for why people get these applications in. And with respect to the city, we're going to need massive, you know, boots on the ground. You know, maybe a couple of dozen fellowships need to go out and really streamline this on the city side as well as on the applicant side. And also, you know, these rare times that we get federal money to do anything with housing, it shouldn't just be about paying off rent. You know, we should be pushing and creating opportunities for tenants to become homeowners because this is just going to become cyclical. Who's to say what's next for Corona 37 or whatever that's going to come down the road and completely shut down our economy again? And then we're just going to have to keep doing these things. We need to create opportunities for tenants to become actual homeowners. So just for future mine, because we shouldn't be sending back any money. And although 30% is a, you know, better than everyone else, that's still, you know, a failing grade. So thank you. Speaker 1: Good evening, honorable mayor and Council Members. My name is Elsa Tung, District seven, resident and program manager at Long Beach Forward. I'm proud to join this eclectic group of public commenters in support of this item. Language four does support item 34 to explore creating a streamlined single application process for the ERAP program. And we thank Vice Mayor Richardson and Council women's and they have and Allen for their leadership. Now as the presentation showed. Despite Long Beach ranking above our pier cities in rental assistance allocation, the dual eviction and homelessness crises require us to do much, much better at our current rate of rental assistance. Disbursement. Long Beach will not be able to pay out its full allocation until August of next year. A streamlined single application process would allow property owners and tenants to organize around submitting one application for groups of vulnerable tenants in eviction clusters to get erap money faster and for more tenants, especially the more vulnerable tenants are covered under the program. Here I want to emphasize the data driven policy opportunity. This is an opportunity for the city to develop a proactive process that matches tenants based on vulnerability and geography. So let's first identify clusters of incomplete applications, potentially from a single building or a single particular neighborhood. And then let's use well known, publicly available data and metrics. Median household income, racial concentrations of poverty. COVID 19 impacts even concentrations of rental arrears that fall below 80% area median rent. To then target the city services and screen requests for advance payments. On the note that the previous commenter made about various income levels being within the zip codes. Yes, that is true, but there is lots and lots of data at the census tract level that can pinpoint and target services and rental assistance even more precisely. Emergency rental assistance is not the answer to the eviction crisis, but it is an answer. So let's please vote to make it a more efficient and effective answer. Vote yes on item 34. And finally, justice for Moana Rodriguez. Thank you. Speaker 0: Good evening. Honorable Mayor. Vice Mayor, City Council, honorable city attorney, city manager, city clerk and staff. Thank you for your time and dedication to the city of Long Beach. My name is John Edmond and I'm the executive director of the Apartment Association of California Southern Cities. I'm a long time watcher and a first time speaker. I'm speaking today in support of item 34, sponsored by Vice Mayor Richardson and co-sponsored by council members that has an Allen Long Beach has been a leader in distributing of the erap funds. And I just want to say leader in the state for sure. I'd my hat is off to city staff and being able to put together a program and executing it and doing what they've done so far. And it's pretty tremendous at the time that they've had to be able to do that. And I think what's happened is we've learned best practices about what can be done, what needs to be done, and what can be implemented with a one application process. Property owners, many of whom are small property owners, stand at the ready to be able to assist. They have a lot of information that the tenants need and that the city needs in order to be able to make that happen. And so we want to work with city staff and the city to ensure a streamlined process and being able to make that happen so that we're able to get those funds to those in need . Thank you for your time and consideration. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 1: My question is really for staff. I know I've been talking about this for a long time with you guys. And I know there were some efforts, like kind of a summary. What are we doing? What have we done about the income level? That's something that I think our office has been very focused on and trying to expand and broaden that income level because we had a lot of landlords and residents in my district who were not eligible. So what have we done? What can we do? What are our limitations? And then the other question I would have is, I think a streamlined process is great, but our streamlined process is really just more of the application process. The requirements are still going to be what's required statewide, regardless of the type of form they have to fill out. We're not we're not able to eliminate any of those. Documents that are required. Is that correct? Speaker 0: Well, thank you, Councilmember. I believe this motion will allow us to reach out to the state and Treasury Department to see if there's other mechanisms beyond what the current regulations allow in order to streamline the process. We've been having conversations with both entities to further push the the risk profile to be able to streamline the process. So we will continue that based upon your motion today. In terms of the area, median income, we they prescribed very detailed requirements, 30, 80% and 50% priorities. The charge was to start with 50% priority 50 and my priority then the 80, 80% and my priority. We've also modified that a bit to focus in on those that have potential risk exposure to eviction. So we've been moving that forward in terms of any adjustments. That's something that we would need to discuss with the the state and the federal government. Speaker 1: Is the risk factors. Are those still tied to the income requirements? So there's no risk factors that would outweigh the threshold income requirement. Speaker 0: That is correct. The risk profile is really based upon the the information and the type of information that we collect. We've been using the attestation process to help those that are requesting funding assistance. We've provided forms in multiple languages to be able to do that, and we keep pushing the envelope, I think. The vice mayor indicated the zip code. We've been pushing for the zip code here in Long Beach to be able to have an easier attestation process that goes along with the zip code in areas of need to be able to do that. So as far as the the income level, those haven't changed. And so we continue to review that and better understand what we can do to help those income allocations. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's good and that's great and I appreciate everything you're doing. Obviously, we want to be trying to help as many people that are in need as possible. But the. The the fact that the risk factors there's no mechanism for the risk factors to alter that threshold level for aid is ridiculous. Because the whole point of this is to try to keep people housed and not. It's ridiculous. Not by your doing. I make that clear. You're limited to what the regulations require you to. But the whole point is to keep people housed and not on the street at a time like this. And if someone is at risk of losing their home and they happen to live in an area based on their income and the rent, that they're still going to be kicked out of their home, there's no alternative for them. There's no there's zero alternative for them. And I tell you, we get emails all the time from people who are at risk of losing their home and because of their income level, they're not eligible for any sort of aid. You know, I've got staff members calling around the property owners, begging them to open up properties at a lower cost so that people don't get evicted. And that's just it's ridiculous that the risk factors don't have some sort of mechanism to lower the threshold for people that are at higher risk regardless of their income. And I just don't know if there's any way around it. Speaker 0: So it's really loud. Council Member There There isn't a way around the income level, but just in case anyone is listening, I would encourage people to apply. So what we are able to do with applicants in that situation. So if your prior income was over 80% and you know you would not qualify based on your tax return, we can still qualify that person, but we have to qualify that person. So if my income was at 200% of am I on my last tax return but it's fallen to zero and I can document that it's fallen to zero for a sustained period of time, that the more complicated application. But we may be able to qualify that person if a person's income used to be at a very high level and has fallen so much that they qualify for a different form of assistance, whether it's food assistance or any other form of government assistance because they've been qualified as low income under that other program, we can use that as a proxy to qualify them. So we are working on those cases that are more complex or difficult, but it's also because they are more complex and difficult. You know, they require hours of staff, time for one application and obviously we have thousands of pending applications. So we're doing everything, everything we can. But I think with this item, we're going to have some backing to talk to the state about, hopefully providing us some further flexibility. Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Thank you. But I did not know that that option was available. So unfortunately, I may be routing some people over to you. So thank you. Speaker 0: And Councilmember, one last thing. If nothing else, there may be a level of legal protection if they do apply, and we haven't been able to process them because of various levels. So we would encourage everybody that may or may not qualify, that may have a need to nevertheless submit their application to the city. We think that concludes public comment. And in the motion there is a motion and a second on the floor just just added. I obviously am very supportive of this. I think the streamlining is really critical. And I do want to thank Mr. Murdoch and our team. And you guys are working really, really hard on this topic for many, many months. And I appreciate the regular updates and I know how creative you're all you have all tried to to be and to get as many people support as possible. And I know that it's very we have a very complex regulatory and state system that we're working under. So thank you very much. And thank you to all all the folks involved in this proposal, particularly Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilwoman Allen and Councilwoman Linda has. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion is carried.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Department of Development Services to evaluate the feasibility of establishing, in accordance with state and federal auditing requirements, a single Emergency Rental Assistance application for landlords with multiple tenants in communities at elevated risk of eviction. This funding would cover past rental arrears and up to three months of future rental obligation for eligible tenants. Participation in this program should allow tenants whose rental debt was covered an additional 90 days of protection from eviction past the final date of payment of back rent, and Direct the Department of Development Services to publicize data regarding the rental assistance program on a public dashboard.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_10052021_21-1023

Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is 1035. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Allen. Vice Mayor Richardson recommendation to request city attorney to prepare a resolution in support of California Clean Air Day on October six, 2021 and request city manager disseminate information to residents about clean air pledge. Speaker 0: I'm 35 and 35. There is a clean resolution mission, a second public comment on this. Speaker 1: There's no public comment on the. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: I'm. Thank you, Mayor. And first of all, I'd like to thank Vice Mayor Richardson for joining me on this item. Poor air quality causes, asthma, cancer and just overall shortens our lives in Long Beach and across the region. I spoke about this many times, but I grew up on the West Side and every bit of data we have points to major impacts from the detailed that zone between our horrible freeways. I am a breast cancer survivor with no family history of cancer. And it's important that we understand the causes of air pollution and how we change our behaviors and how we start advocating for structural changes in society and the economy. As Chair of our Climate Action and Environmental Committee, I am focused on taking small and large steps to improve our air quality and reduce our impacts on the environment . This has been brought into sharper focus with a recent oil spill on federal waters off of our coast. Our committee is working with city staff to advocate for cleaner transportation, to support the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, and to investigate innovative approaches elsewhere to reduce air quality impacts, especially those from transportation. Additionally, as a member of the Energy and Environmental Committee, I see regularly the data on the impacts of energy generation on local air quality. I brought this resolution to remind residents of our commitment to cleaning up our air. For the benefit of residents today and for the children of tomorrow. We must get better. It will literally saved many lives. Please go to Clean Air Dork Pledge to learn more about how you can clean up our air. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thanks, Matt Richardson. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Allen, for for partnering up on this resolution. There was an article today in the press telegram, the vicious cycle, fuel, so-called pollution, worst air quality in decades. Well, it's true. We have some of the worst smog that we've seen in L.A. County region and in the south coast basin in decades at a time when we have more stringent rules than we've ever had. How does that happen? Well, the vicious, vicious cycle that they're talking about is we're seeing urban heat, island effect. We're seeing hotter temperatures while we also see the diesel particulate matter accelerating the air quality issue. So we have higher standards because of climate change, the urgency has significantly increased. What does that mean? The actions that we take on climate action and on air quality together are necessary in order to improve air quality, reduce asthma rates and extend life in our area. Earlier this year, I was elected or joined the county board for the first time in a decade that we've had a representative here in Long Beach. We're really engaged in Clean Air Day, which is today, and I represent 51 cities, HMD partners with other agencies. Councilwoman Allen mentioned Sky and others, and we allocate over $100 million in funding for low emitting vehicles and equipment. We have some critical deadlines to meet on air quality here in Southern California. Particularly the 2023 federal payment deadline. What that means is if we don't make some significant changes. You're going to see some changes in the way all of us move. You're going to see days. EPA will impact implement days where you can't drive in L.A. County, where only essential workers can drive. You may see days where the ports. And right now, there's all the ports are backed up. You know, all across America, you may see cargo be diverted to other ports if we don't address this. And that can have significant impacts to our local economy if we don't do the right things on clean air today. Earlier this year, we passed a warehouse indirect source rule, a first of its kind, which regulates the types of trucks that can go into Southern California warehouses. That makes a huge difference in areas adjacent to the ports and out in the Inland Empire. We're also in discussion on a memorandum of understanding with both ports. It's incredibly important you talk about labor standards, air quality issues and all of that in an agreement with AT&T to address some of the air quality issues that impact our very neighborhoods here in Long Beach. So they have a lot of work to do. It's important on clean air to acknowledge that it's more than a resolution. It's time to make sure that we're all getting plugged in on this important goal to achieve a cleaner future that improves our environment, protects jobs, and creates thousands of jobs in a process. That's incredibly important. There are a lot of things that we all can do to fight every day for clean air carpooling, mandatory walking, making online purchases in one order instead of cleaning. By now on every one of your purchases you should think about. Those are things you should be able to do locally sourcing your meats and your food. All of those things have an impact on our air quality. And so thank you again and adopt this resolution for clean air. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Sunday House. Speaker 3: Thank you to Councilmember Allen and Vice Mayor for advocating for California Clean Air Day educational campaign. I'm happy to support this item. We all are too familiar with the negative health effects of air that air pollution causes to everyone, but particularly to our children and to our elders. Though these issues certainly require larger scale national and global actions, there are a lot of individual community actions that can be made and that can make a difference. So I'm happy to support this item and I encourage everyone to inform themselves and and to take the clean air pledge that is being made available to all community organizations and members. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Sir. Speaker 1: Yes, thanks, Mayor. I just wanted to express my support of this item. I mean, you know, we have a city that is adjacent to the 710 freeway corridor, and my district is adjacent to it. And while we have a higher, you know, it's read in the enviro screen chart reading one area of Long Beach where where the air quality is, that impacts all of us throughout. So I think that it's an ongoing daily. I think it's a daily clean air day in all the ways we can do to be conscious of our actions that contributes to our collective action in improving air quality. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion in a second. No public comment. Please cast your votes. Just one person. Bush cares. We will do item 38 next, please. Item 30 Report from Economic Development Recommendation to adopt resolution declaring city owned property located at 854 East Seventh Street as exempt surplus land District one.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare a resolution in support of California Clean Air Day, October 6, 2021. Additionally, request City Manager disseminate information to residents about the Clean Air Pledge and how their actions and self-education can promote a cleaner-air future.

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Speaker 1: Motion is carried. Speaker 0: Next to item 40, please. Speaker 1: Report from Economic Development Recommendation to consent to a request by the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach to leave concrete blocks from the 22021 Long Beach Grand Prix and place along Seaside Way Shoreline Drive and within the elephant lot for a period of seven months and authorize city manager to amend and or apply for California Coastal Commission approval of the same and authorize city manager to execute a First Amendment. To amend and restated operating agreement with Grand Prix Association of Long Beach District to. Speaker 0: Davenport police. And Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm happy to present this amendment to our agreement. This is a one time amendment. We have an agreement with the Grand Prix Association to run the race between 2017 and 2023. That's the current agreement. During this time, we experienced, of course, COVID 19, which meant that we had to work with the Grand Prix Association and Jim Macmillan, who's here tonight to actually change the dates of the race. And as you all know, Jim, and the association was able to run a very successful race this past month. The association has requested a one time request to leave some of the infrastructure in place because the next race will be run in approximately seven months. And this April, at its normal time, this one time request would allow for about 1000 concrete blocks to remain in place along seaside way shoreline east of Pine and the elephant lot . And you can see an image of of where those placements would be and that would stay in place through a May 1st, which would get us through the next race. There are some estimated savings for the the work that's associated with setting those blocks up and removing those blocks again. And the association has committed to using some of that that savings for applying in oil treatment that will help to make the streets look new again and ultimately beautify the area. This will also result in three days less set up time for the April race and will reduce the amount of noise and other impacts to traffic and quality of life that occur during the setup process. One last thing is, is that this action by the City Council for a one time change to a two hour agreement would actually require consent by the Coastal Commission because this is in the coastal area. So we would have to take this request to the Coastal Commission after the City Council decision tonight. So the association will also to to ensure that this is a positive change for the community, will inspect the infrastructure bi monthly, remove all graffiti and ultimately add the city to its insurance so that while they remain in place, they're not a liability to the city or the public. And ultimately, the recommendations here to accomplish this request would be that the Council approve the city manager to amend our agreement consenting to a request by the Grand Prix Association to leave concrete blocks from the 21 Long Beach Grand Prix race in place in the areas that were identified for a period of seven months, authorize the city manager to execute all the documents necessary to amend or apply for the Coastal Commission, approval the permit, and allow the city manager or designee to execute the documents necessary for the First Amendment to the Operating Agreement with the Grand Prix to amend provisions of the agreement if necessary. So that's the end of my report. I'm happy to answer any questions. And um, Jim McCallum, you very much here tonight. To answer any questions, I would like to point out we've had a couple of questions about is this going to impact the aquarium, is going to impact Pyke or the Hyatt on that side? And the answer is no, it's only on the east side of Pine Avenue. So it was specifically set up where there is no business activity to prevent the problems with the ingress and egress. Thank you very much. We have a motion and a second public comment, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I just want to say that the Grand Prix was a great success. It was awesome to see all the activity going on in downtown Long Beach and just a huge thank you to Jim for all the work that you did. I know this wouldn't happen without you. So just a big congratulations on a very successful event. Over 180,000 people attended the Grand Prix. It definitely exceeded my expectations and was just a successful and also an extremely safe event for the association and for the city. So just thank you, Jim, for all the work that you put into that. As we know, the Grand Prix will be returning next April. So I think it makes sense, given how beneficial this event is for the city to allow the association to leave up some of the concrete blocks in place, especially in the in areas where nearby residents. I think it will cut down on the noise both right now and then significantly during start up. I think set up would start again in February or March. And so that's a big impact. And I think since it's so close around the corner that that does make sense to keep some of those concrete blocks in place and and then exchange the association will pay for the oil, emotion, treatment of the asphalt portions of the track to make sure that the streets are looking good. Also, I appreciate City Manager Modica for making sure that answering that question about the businesses and the impact of the businesses. So definitely want to reiterate that this will not impact and impact any of the businesses that live on the east side of pine. So I just want you to know that I support this item. And thank you very much, Jim. Thank you. And ditto to everything Councilwoman Allen just said to the entire Grand Prix team. And the events in this area really affect mostly Councilman Allen's district. So I'm happy to support her recommendation. And second, this motion. Speaker 0: Councilman in the house. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor. A huge thank you to Jim and the Grand Prix team on behalf of all the residents who loved the Grand Prix. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it back this year. We know that COVID has has forced many, many events to either be canceled and postponed. And I think we were so very lucky to have the Grand Prix, even though it was later in the year, but we were able to have it and that made a lot of people happy. And so however, I'm super excited that is going to be coming back in its traditional month in April. And so I think that this totally makes sense. I totally agree and I'm very supportive of this item and I'm glad to hear that it won't be affecting our businesses, which was one of the main concerns of our residents in the area. So again, thank you very much, Jim, for the exciting times that you bring to Long Beach. Speaker 0: With emotion. In a second, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Ocean is carried. Speaker 0: Thank you. The next few items here seem. I already go to item 42 through 47. None of them have staff presentations. So let's go ahead and start with item 40, 41, actually 42. And sorry, we're going to do 41 most 42.

Contract

Recommendation to consent to a request by the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, LLC, to leave concrete blocks from the 2021 Long Beach Grand Prix in place along Seaside Way, Shoreline Drive (east of Pine Avenue), and within the Elephant Lot, for a period of seven months, through the conclusion of the 2022 race and corresponding takedown period, or May 1, 2022; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to amend and/or apply for California Coastal Commission approval of the same; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary for a First Amendment to Amended and Restated Operating Agreement No. 34876 with Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, LLC, to amend provisions of the agreement as necessary to facilitate the Association's request. (District 2)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. The next few items here seem. I already go to item 42 through 47. None of them have staff presentations. So let's go ahead and start with item 40, 41, actually 42. And sorry, we're going to do 41 most 42. Speaker 1: Item 42 Report from Human Resources Recommendation to adopt a resolution of intention amending the city's contract with CalPERS to include a mandatory employee contribution of 3% applicable to the Long Beach Management Association, classic Public Safety CalPERS members, and declared an ordinance to amend the city's contract with CalPERS to provide the mandatory employee contribution of 3%. Read the first time and later to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. Speaker 0: There's a motion. Can I get a motion in a second place? I one member of the public. Mr. Cantero, please come forward. Is this under Mr. Kaiser's department? Is it? I was just curious to ask, um, why or why with respect to public safety, is it, um, just being introduced for like the other divisions that pay into CalPERS? Because my mother pays into as well. So it's a current union topic. So just curious to know. There's a motion in the second. Members discussed votes. Speaker 1: Council member on. Speaker 0: Did you come from a did you want to ask the question before we went to the vote? Yeah, I just wanted to give a staff an opportunity just to clarify, uh, the question from public comment. Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't catch his question. I sounded like he was. Speaker 0: Inquiring. Speaker 1: About why this was public safety. Speaker 0: Oh, I'm sorry. This is a pick up. This was a result. Speaker 1: Of the negotiation. Speaker 0: With the Long Beach Management Association. Speaker 1: Public safety. So this is a contract amendment for. Speaker 0: There for them to. Speaker 1: Pick up 3% of the employer. Speaker 0: Cost. So the reason why this is a contract amendment. Speaker 1: Now we did one with away. We had to finalize that and now we're doing the next group. But it's basically. Speaker 0: For the group. They agree to. Speaker 1: Pick up. Speaker 0: Part of the employer court for the picture. An excited please 43 To clarify, it's the Human Resources Department. Public employee matter things. Speaker 1: The motion is carried 703 triggers. So to clarify, this is actually management publication. Public safety, police and fire. So Poway has already done it. Our lifeguards are upcoming and then it's pending with firefighter. So it's public safety management for fire and police.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt Resolution of Intention amending the City’s contract with the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) to include a mandatory employee contribution of 3 percent of compensation earnable toward the City's required employer contribution to CalPERS (in addition to the 9 percent statutory employee contribution) pursuant to Government Code Section 20516(a), applicable to the Long Beach Management Association (LBMA) Classic Public Safety CalPERS members; and

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Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next up, we're doing the pier item item 26. Speaker 2: Item 26 is a report from economic development. Recommendation to engage in negotiations with the harbor department for the transfer of the operation and Control. Appear from the City Council to the Harbor Department, District two. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Modica. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. So the Council's had a number of discussions about Pier H and the potential transfer to the port, as was the case back in the nineties. We came and did some very lengthy study sessions with the council and at the time we said we'd have some next steps to come back to you in September on. So we're back here for that next step. I will give you a ah, give it to John Keisler who'll give you a short summary of what this item is. Simply put, you're just directing the city manager to negotiate and you would come back with any kind of final vote on this when negotiations are complete. So turning it over to John. Honorable Mayor and members of the city council. I want to give you a quick background on each in the original item that was requested by the City Council. So if you'll remember, on March 10th, the city attorney, Charlie Parkin, published a memo outlining the legal issues and questions associated with the transfer of Pier. And then on April six, the City Council actually approved a recommendation to discuss the possible transfer of period from the City Council's oversight to the harbor department. Over the past few months, staff from both departments and consultants and engineers have reviewed historical, financial, engineering and operational issues associated with that request. And on July 20th, we had a big study session with the public to talk about the city council and public priorities with regard to a potential transfer. I just want you to know that this has been an extensive review process. In fact, dozens of city staff and engineers have conducted onsite tours and additional survey work. We've even been under the ship, under the water, testing the hull and doing a lot of design work on critical repairs, as well as meetings about historic preservation and all the different options with regard to activating the site. So now what we're what we're really asking is for authorization for the city manager to enter into negotiations with the executive director of the harbor department, Mario Cordero, and the Harbor Commission on belt on about ten different items. And I've outlined these items there in the staff report, but it has to do with the organizational structure, the management plan for transitioning of the leases, maintenance of the public areas, activation of the site for recreation, special events, public access, but also construction management and what we call the Conservation Management Plan of the Arts and architecture. And then finally, a timeline for completion of feasibility studies and a funding plan for those long term 100 year kind of options to dry dock or preserve the ship. That finally operating agreements are required for reopening the different hotel and event spaces. We also need a management plan for for any additional obligations that might arise in the discussions. Speaker 1: And a. Speaker 0: Delineation of any future role that the City Council or the Harbor Commissioner Commission may have, including the financial responsibilities and funding of repairs. So next steps, if approved by the City Council tonight, would be that staff from city management and the harbor department would begin the process for developing collaborative agreements. We would do some additional fiscal impact work and recommend actions and transition plans back to the city council. The city manager would actually return to the City Council for review and approval of those final agreements. And then the final transition agreements would be prepared by the city staff, once approved by both the City Council and Harbor Commission . So as Tom mentioned, the recommendation is really about authorizing the city manager designee to engage in negotiations with the harbor department for the transfer of the operation and control from the city council to the harbor department. And that's the end of my report. We're happy to answer any questions. Thank you. I do have a I do have a motion in a second by Councilman Allen. Let me take the two members of the public that are here to speak and I'll go to Councilman Allen. Before we do that, I don't I know that Mr. Cordero is here and was going to say a few words. So I think Mr. Kraft can please come forward and then we'll take the two members of the public who is Steven Albanese and Jessica Alvarenga? I believe I've said so. It's critical. Can you hear me? This is good. Every mayor and city council, as Mr. Kaiser has outlined, there has been preliminary discussions with the respective staff. With regard to the overall issue of periods in the Queen Mary. So as has been outlined, there are a number of plans that have to be put together, feasibility studies that had to be move forward. So we look forward to engaging and collaborating with the city of Long Beach as a city to address the issue. That, again, has been much discussed for many decades. And hopefully, again, together, we can confirm answers and come with some answers in terms of what the options are. But at this point, again, we look forward to working with the city council, the city manager and Mr. Castle with regard to all the issues that have been identified in order to further address the issues that are before us. So, again, it's an iconic emblem for the city. It is the Queen Mary and periods. Again, a lot of opportunity there. So we look forward to see how we work together to collaborate and permission to move and discuss and consider these options. Thank you so much, Mayor City Council. Thank you, Mr. Cordero. If I can have the two members of the public, please come forward. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Mary Garcia, members of the city council, thank you for your time this evening. My name is Steven Blonsky. I'm here representing QM. I restore the queen of which I serve on the board of directors. Here. My Restore the Queen is a501c free nonprofit corporation dedicated to the preservation of the Queen Mary with an emphasis on project based fundraising. Our mission is to act as community steward of the Queen Mary's Preservation in partnership with the City of Long Beach. Over the past weekend. Some matters of concern regarding tonight's agenda item number 26 were brought to our attention. On Monday, September 13th, an email was sent to the mayor and council members from our executive chairman, Mary Grau, expressing this matter. It would be I would like to reiterate the content of this email in case you were unaware of the correspondence. John Keisler, Director of Economic Development, Tom Eagle City Manager, have proposed a set of recommendations focusing on the transfer of operation control of period from the City Council to the harbor department. Part of the issues to be negotiated in their recommendation is the development of a business plan for the implementation of the Queen Mary Management Plan in collaboration with the nonprofit Queen Mary Heritage Foundation. It is this collaboration with the Queen Mary Heritage Foundation that raises our concern for several reasons. First, the Queen Mary Heritage Foundation, which is a California nonprofit corporation which was formed in 2014, is currently suspended by the Secretary of State for various violations of California nonprofit law incorporation code. A suspended corporation in California should not conduct business until it is reinstated by the Secretary of State with this current status. City Council should not even consider such collaboration at this time. Second Marriage Foundation has lost its iris. Five. I want to see three status. For Federal tax exempt as of May 15, 2017, for failure to file is required tax returns. Additionally, the California attorney general by letter dated July 1st, 2021, recommended the relocation of the Queen Mary Heritage Foundation's California tax exempt status for failure to register with the Registry of Charitable Trusts. We strongly recommend that the portion of collaboration in item 26 be tabled for a longer time until proper vetting of this organization can take place. Thank you for your prompt attention and thank you for your thank you, bird. A concerned citizen. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next, make a personal. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor Garcia, members of the council. Just go over and go with the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, and I'd like to share our opposition of the transfer of the Queen Mary. The Port of Longreach is the Premier US gateway for Trans-Pacific Trade and a leader in innovative goods movement safety, environmental stewardship and sustainability. It is the second busiest container seaport in the United States and supports 2.6 million jobs across the nation. More than 575,000 in seven in Southern California and more than 50,000 jobs, or one in five in Long Beach. Its ability to compete in a global marketplace meets zero emission environmental goals and continue to positively impact Southern California and national economies should not be jeopardized by taking responsibility of the Queen Mary. Does the venture that have consistently failed for over 40 years? We urge you to oppose the transfer of the Queen or the Queen Mary to the Port of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. Let me go now to Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: I thank you, Mayor. I first want to say thank you to Mr. Cordero for being here. And I want to say thank you to all the staff, both on the city side and on the harbor side for all the hard work in the last couple of months. This is a very complex issue and I look forward to starting this negotiation. Thank you. Speaker 0: That's why Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to also thank the Harbor Department for engaging in preliminary discussions with the city. I know you you've got a lot on your plate. And it's important that that we heard from you that you're willing to step up and take this step. I also want to acknowledge city staff for the presentation, most recently in showing that the the Queen Mary this pier has traded between the city and the port a number of times in its history at different points. And I think that's important to recognize. The port is a department of the city. We are one city family and it's important that we work together on whatever the future is. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 2: The motions carry. Speaker 0: Thank you. I've had a couple requests of items to move up, so I'm going to do those. There is no open public comment today, so no one has signed up for that. So we're moving on from that. We're going to do the open streets, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to engage in negotiations with the Harbor Department for the transfer of the operation and control of “Pier H” from the City Council to the Harbor Department. (District 2)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. I've had a couple requests of items to move up, so I'm going to do those. There is no open public comment today, so no one has signed up for that. So we're moving on from that. We're going to do the open streets, please. Extension item 30. Speaker 2: Item 32 reports on Public Works recommendation to extend the previously approved Open Streets Initiative plan allowing restaurants and other related service industry temporary parklet and outdoor dining spaces to remain open through June 30th, 2022, citywide. Speaker 0: Okay. Mr. Murdoch, is there a presentation on this? Yes, just a very short one. So we've been in front of the council a couple of times about the Open Streets program, which includes three different things, just to remind everyone. It includes your parklets, which are actually on the street. It also includes some of the streets that we have shut down in the past. We have fewer of those now and that are kind of open for just public consumption. And then it also includes the occasional activity permits where people can use their parking lots for other nontraditional things for parking, like having restaurant use, that type of thing. So we're here recommending that we extend that. I think we still certainly have some impacts from COVID, and we would recommend going that through June 30th, 2022. But I do have an amended motion I'd like public works to read. We do have one area that does have some unique conditions. It has higher traffic counts, higher speeds and some resident complaints as well in a very in a compact area. And that's Second Street. So we are looking at putting them on a slightly different approach where we have the next three months to do some additional outreach to really go and inventory every single parklet and talk to some of the business owners and the residents and then come up back to council with some additional ideas about how to handle that. So I will have Nico read that motion and then we'd be ready to answer questions. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council. The motion is to be amended as such. Request the city manager or designate to extend the previously approved Open Streets Initiative plan, allowing restaurants and other related service industry. Temporary Parklets, outdoor dining spaces and outdoor activity permits to remain in effect through June 30th, 2022. The extension shall include a process for residents to protest specific parklets that are violating the conditions of their permit. These protests shall be reviewed by staff. Attend a community meeting regarding temporary parklets along Second Street between Bayshore Avenue and Livingston. Drive to address ongoing neighborhood concerns regarding the number of temporary parklets, their impact on parking and their proximity to private residences. Inspect each parklet installation along this corridor to ensure that one the business owners want to keep the Parklet installation to the Parklet installation is being used as intended. Three The Parklet installation is being properly maintained for business owners abiding by all permit requirements. Five Parklets installations encroaching in front of neighboring businesses receive renewed approval from that business, property owner and the city traffic engineer. Six Any changes in traffic conditions do not justify removal and seven parking impacts are reevaluated as needed. Thank you very much. Oh, sorry. Excuse me. The motion also includes the return to the City Council with a recommendation regarding the ongoing use of temporary park installations along the Second Street corridor before December 31st, 2021, and to apply the inspection process to Parklets and other installations outside of the aforementioned area in response to a protest, or if deemed necessary, by the traffic engineer or his designee. Okay. Thank you very much, staff. I think we have the amended motion on the floor. There is a motion any second on the amended. Motion on a motion. Let me do public comment on most customers. And they just wants to go first through the public comment first. Okay. I'm going to ask the first five speakers and then the next five speakers. So please just line up the call. Your name Ryan Hoffman. Jenny Holbrook. Brian Pickett says Cochrane, Estella, Tiki Dore and Ron Newman. Please come forward. Ryan Hoffman, Jenny Holbrook, Brian Cochrane, Estella Theodore. And Run, woman. Please go ahead. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for your time. My name is Ryan Hoffman and I'm one of the owners of Season Second on Second Street. Obviously, the pandemic has been absolutely devastating to the restaurant industry. You know, we've had to do quite a quite a lot to survive it. We're really not out of the woods yet. We're seeing that indoor vaccine mandates are coming in different areas and we're very concerned about that and got quite a bit of investment into our parklet on both St Joseph and on Second Street. We're very concerned about moving back outdoors. Our staffing levels are based on having some of those parklets outside, which means if we lose those parklets, we're going to be losing employees right before the holidays and things like that. So our opinion, it's really too soon to get rid of them. And that's really all that we have to say right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's pick a piece. Speaker 3: Hi, Mayor Garcia and council members. My name is Jenny Holbrook and from Don Mature and Without Health and development. Sure. Residents Association. I, I and the Residents Association are not anti restaurant. We're not anti anything. We are pro traffic safety, pedestrian safety, sidewalk access for those using assistive devices and baby strollers and pro parking availability for residents and their guests. For months, the Belmont Shore Parklets have displaced dozens of parking spaces from the neighborhood and negatively impacted safe vehicle and pedestrian passage. SHAW Residents dealt with these issues to help the businesses while they could not utilize their indoor seating. Now Public Works and the city manager proposed another extension of the temporary parklets and this time four nine met. However, they just amended it. Thank you, Mr. Modica, please do not approve any extension of temporary parklets in Belmont. Sure. Until Councilwoman Price has had an opportunity to hold a widely publicized meeting of several mature residents and the residents deserve a fair chance to hear city staff experts on traffic accessibility, etc. give their input on areas of concern. And then the residents have an opportunity to provide their own input. Thank you. Please do not pass this. Thank you so much less. That is part of it. Thank you so. Speaker 0: Much. Next up, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and city council members. Thank you for having us. I'm a resident of the Belmont Shore, the pier area, right next to both our brewing company and the adjacent businesses there. As a result of the PARKLETS and the programs, our residents, our living rooms, our bedrooms have been inundated with noise congestion, resulting fallout from the businesses incursion in that space. Belmont Brewing Company alone was denied a permit by the Coastal Commission in 1995 to extend its space to that space. That area that's now encroached upon this parklet maneuver allowed them to do that for a temporary lifeline. But during the space of time for that last 18 months or so, it's become abusive with noise, traffic, dog noises, motorcycles, parking the restaurant, attempts to talk to the managers of the restaurant and other businesses have met with no no response whatsoever. They've been absolute contemptuous when we've reached out to them regarding issues with how much encroachment we've had patrons on the patio bringing their own music, the restaurant permits that. There are groups of motorcyclists between 33 and 30 that pull up on weekends and park adjacent to the restaurant, contravening local parking laws and ordinances. In short, I would ask you to look at your time if you're home on a Sunday watching TV, trying to prep for a meeting in the next day, talking to a loved one on the phone and having to hear the carnival of noise and intrusions that's encroaching on your space and well-being during that time. So please vote no against extending this. Thank you very much. Thank you. The speaker, please. Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Estella Heider. I live directly south of Second Street in Belmont. Sure, the Parklets were designed to help the restaurants weather COVID. And while this was happening, I was happy to do my part and take the it. Take the inconvenience. That time is over. Business is brisk. The restaurants have a robust takeout business as well now. And it is time to give the neighborhood back to the residents. I cannot park in front of my house. I'm 65 years old. I have to park a block away, bringing in groceries, dry cleaning errand. It's a problem. My. I bought my house in 1990 and this was my retirement house. I have put up with bad jobs and awful bosses, but I have kept my beautiful little beach house. Now I'm ready to retire. My right hip is about to go. I can't park in front of my house and my neighborhood has turned trashy, completely trashy. It looks awful. It sounds awful. And it's no longer the neighborhood that I bought into. So please do not allow the parklets on Second Street. They are ruining the neighborhood. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Ron Newman. And as Mr. Newman comes up, I'm going to have the next five speakers up. It'll be John Ehlers, Linda Dwyer, Darrell Burns, Tony Hosler and Katie Fahey. We'll be after this order. Ron Newman. John Ayers. Linda Dwyer. Daryl Burns. Tony Hauser and Casey. My name is John Eilers and I currently live at 6211 Riviera Circle in Long Beach. I lived in Belmont Shore for 30 years. I currently own a couple of apartments in the shore. What's president of the Belmont Shore Residents Association? For a couple of years and served on the board for maybe five years. I am opposed to the extension of the Parklet parking in the shore. Back then and now, parking has been an issue. Not enough spaces. Belmont Shore is identified as a parking impacted area, and as a result, owners who sell must have their garages inspected. I approved the limited use of Parklets during the pandemic to help restaurants stay open, but the need has passed. Also, restaurants were, and I feel, still required to provide parking spaces based on their occupancy. I do not have the exact details of the codes and requirements. Parklets seem to advocate the restaurant occupancy code and restaurants are now able to increase occupancy requirements or needs without regard to existing code. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you so much, sir. Mr. Newman here is a running mate. Yes. Looking for. Mayor Council member Ron Newman from Panama. Joel. I encourage you to extend the park kids in Belmont Shore. 30% of our customers want to eat outside fresh air, sunshine, as well as feeling safe. Outside dining gives us that European feeling. That's kind of what happened in Europe after the Spanish flu. They put up all these parklets and that changed the whole image of of that whole area. It increases traffic for business. Walking, biking, shopping and dining. People watching. I heard some of the comments from the other people as far as lack of parking and etc.. There's always been a lack of a certain amount of parking. But with uber, bicycling, cities are finding that it doesn't take the same amount of parking anymore. As far as any complaints. I've never had any complaints from any residents that if we did, we would take care of it right away. Belmont sure needs an uplift. A lot empty businesses down there. And if you look at our neighboring cities, they're all approving these parklets. Thank you so much, sir. You're welcome. Next speaker. Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Linda DeGolyer. I'm a resident of third district in Long Beach, but not near Second Street. I hope you can hear me because I can't hear anything you've been saying. My opposition to the extension of Bark Park, which is based mainly on my experiences on Second Street, but also other places I've seen in the city. First, they are usurping public property for a private business. No to the safety of turning into or off of Second Street. When you're down there, you can't see around the parklets. Three further restriction of parking in areas with minimal parking, especially handicapped spots for safety in walking on Second Street, especially through these parklets. I felt very unsafe walking through them. And five often a lack of appropriate ventilation with sides and the areas above all covered and thus decreasing air ventilation when it is most needed during this COVID time. I think these points make my opposition to the extension of Parklets obvious. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Speaker 1: The Parklets may have been appropriate during the worst of the pandemic. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. But their time has passed. Thank you. Thank you so much. I. Durban's okay. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yep. Um, Mayor Garcia, City Council. Thank you for having us here today. I appreciate the amendment, and I definitely want to go on record as supporting that. My name is Dale Burns. I live in Belmont. Sure. I'm just going to reiterate a lot of the comments that are made in terms of just concerns of safety, compliance with with codes, in terms of people with disabilities being able to access the sidewalks and also proximity to resident communities. I think the impact obviously been stated here. I don't need to reiterate that noise, drunkenness, disorderly behavior and the impact it's had on the shore. For me, I'll just say very simply know I think parklets are a privilege and how do we make sure that we're assessing Parklets appropriately so that people are to maintain that privilege? My personal opinion as a resident is I don't think all parklets are created equal. I think some parklets are doing very well. I think some of the businesses in the show are doing very well with those parklets and I support that. I support their efforts because they're making sure that our residents and our community stays the quality it should be. On the other hand, there are businesses and operations that are not in compliance and those need to be assessed. So thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and Council. My name is Tony Hauser. I live on Glendora off the second street, and I am not in favor of extending certain parklets. I am not against all of them. Some of them are managed very well. I do believe Panama Joes, that user that you have security in the parking lot behind you. That's what I've been told, that he has security in the public parking lot behind his restaurant. Others don't. Our main concern is that people urinating in the parking lot, smoking pot, drinking alcohol from the bar that they were in. When they go out to smoke, they bring their drinks with them. Nobody manages that. Nobody polices it. The sidewalk is very cramped with tables and chairs. It is definitely not ADA compliant and I am very frustrated about who actually comes down and sees this. We have photos, pictures, a cornhole tournament. People basically laid out on the sidewalk, on mattresses, and it is really impacted quality of life for everybody, not only on the south side of second, but on the north side of talked to homeowners on that side and the noise, the drinking, the speeding out of parking lots all hours of the night from patrons that are attending these this bar. It's got to change somehow. It has to change. And we need enforcement. And I'm not sure who to go to to find out who enforces that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Speaker, please. And as Katie comes up, the last three speakers Cumulus, Lazaridis, Nick Clare and Rebecca Hendra. Please come forward. Speaker 2: Hi. Thank you for letting me speak on this issue. Speaker 1: I'm Katie Fahey. I also live on Glendora. I support that amendment to look at things case by case, location by location. Um, I just want to give you my experience from a location, a parklet that's on a side street. I feel like it has brought the bar into my living room. Speaker 2: They've it's not only parklets. Speaker 1: There are TVs, there's sporting events, there's crowds. There's a lot of drinking going on. But somehow that has they feel like it's okay now instead of smoking next to the restaurant, in the restaurant to clean it up. They come down in front of my house. Speaker 2: And smoke and I wake up in the morning and it's vape pens. Speaker 1: And butts and it's just. Speaker 2: Dirty. Speaker 1: And then constantly going outside asking people to please stop smoking pot. It's coming into my house, so I have to police that. There's nobody who's controlling their crowd for some reason. The third parklet they feel the the parking lot is their bathroom. My kids are looking over the wall, watering plants. There's somebody staring at me. Is there pain on the wall? Like, how do I there they tell me. The restaurant tells me, not my property. So who manages the people that come out of their restaurant so that we can have a safe place for our kids? I've been there over 20 years, many iterations, and it's the restaurant owners need to take responsibility for the privilege they have of having a parklet. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And a lot of speakers, Jimmy. Mr. Mayor, City Council. My name is Tubular Diseases. I'm the owner of George's Greek Cafe in Belmont Shore. Let's see again. I've been a friend of his in a while. I'm supportive of the amendment to it. I was going to say something else when I stepped up here, but after listening to other residents, you know, it seems like there's a couple of bad players on the street and it's affecting the rest of us that are operating our businesses in our restaurants, in our parks correctly. So that's why I really support the amendment. I've been a long time Long Beach resident. I went to Wilson High School. You know, the parking issue has been recently not as bad it has been in the past. I remember coming up from Wilson High School in 1980 as a sophomore in high school and going to us, we didn't have the park six blocks away to get to three. So the parking issue has always been there. It's kind of something you accept to anticipate for sure. Mr. Mayor, you and I are friends. We haven't always seen eye to eye on everything, but still friends. When you jumped into action and help with the parklets, it saved us having to compete so closely to Orange County. You have you coming up with the parklets and putting the barriers up for us. It saved our business. That's not even an exaggeration. We are not out of this yet. The people aren't on. The money we got from the federal government was helpful and we're grateful for it. But we're still in this thing. So I'm, I'm in support of Parklets for sure. And I'm also am in support of policing it and making sure that the residents don't feel about us as they do. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Speaker 1: Mayor Council. My name is Nikki Claire. I'm from George's Great Cafe and my sister. We've been in the community a long time. I live in the Hietala very close by. I agree with everything that everybody said. I do think that this isn't a parklet issue. I do think that it needs to be manned. But they have saved our business. We are at a premium for outside. Business right now. If we don't have the parklets, we have two tables. A lot of people still don't want to sit inside. This is still a COVID issue. We would do anything that you asked us to to keep these parklets to make it safe for the residents, for our customers. But this is what's keeping our business open right now. Yes, we have deliveries in to go. People still want to get out and they want to sit outside. I still have tables inside that people will not sit down and eat out because they're not comfortable. And so I agree with the amendment to a point. If we can manage it differently, manage it differently, we need to be able to compete with other restaurants in the nearby areas, especially across the way, which is half a mile or so a mile from Orange County. And so I'm that's all I have to say. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. In the last speaker, Rebecca. Speaker 1: Hello. Honorable mayors and members of the City Council. My name is Rebecca and I am a co-owner of Let's Joke About It. It's a breakfast spot on Second Street. I also want to second where Jimmy said, I am appalled to hear that the residents have been suffering and I would in no way ever support that. I encourage my staff to ride their bikes. I've bought bikes for some of my staff members and I walk to work even though I live in the neighborhood and I'll drive sometimes. But the parklet has saved my business. The pandemic is not over. If it is over or if we're heading towards over in, our masks come off and everybody feels comfortable. Absolutely. I don't want the Parklet indefinitely to inconvenience our residents. I completely support our residents. And and that's pretty much all I have to say. If I didn't have the parklet, I wouldn't have the business that I have today. My business was very empty inside this morning and I had about a 15 minute wait for the parklet. That's truth. And I'm also keeping my tables six feet apart when a lot of the parklets have jampacked them in other parts of the city. I'm I'm trying to be compliant. So thank you for your time. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. That concludes public comment. I do have a motion and a second customers in the House. Speaker 1: You, Mayor, and I do really appreciate the amendment of the motion. And this temporary parklets were done in a time of distress for us here. And I really want to thank city staff our council for really stepping up and trying to be creative and thinking outside of the box to be able to save some of our businesses . We weren't able to save all of our businesses, and that's still hurt and it'll continue to hurt our city. But I think that one of the things that we did that we did do right was, you know, spring into action by creating these opportunities for our businesses to be able to offer a safe environment where they could also save their business. And, you know, I'm very supportive of this item, and I think that we definitely need to remain, you know, extend the parklets. With with also taking into consideration that we need to look at certain parklets and evaluate if it's working and if it's not and trying to help our businesses move forward. And yes, we're still not out of this pandemic yet. So we really need to make sure that we continue to look for creative opportunities to continue to save our businesses while at the same time providing goods for our residents as well. Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think what's happening here is we're in a transition. And, you know, we all wear face masks and, you know, address the public. The reality is we don't know how long COVID 19 is going to be here in our communities. And we have to transition to create more resilient communities, more resilient businesses. We have to do what we know works. We know eating outside works. We know masks work. We know the vaccination works. We know that a year ago. Also know that the restaurants have taken a significant, significant hit. We don't get you know, our services are based on a certain mix of revenues in the city. Police officers, firefighters, the services people depend on are directly connected to whether restaurants can operate and generate sales tax. Whether we can generate transit occupancy tax in our hotels, it's connected. And so we have to figure out how to be more resilient cities. At the same time, you know, I think what the city manager is proposing, whether it's Second Street or any corridor, we have to make sure that we prioritize those local residents. You know, zone in on what the issues are and work out a management plan to resolve some of those issues. And I think that's what the city manager is proposing with his men in motion to take a look at this particular corridor. And I would say any quarter that has significant concerns that race to that level, there should be a process in place and whatever moves forward for local residents to be able to appeal and have a formal due process to explore. But in general, I think we have to pivot. We have to start thinking differently about current management, about the sidewalk, the public realm, about restaurants, all of that if we're going to be a more resilient city. So I think what's in front of me, I'm happy to support today. Thank you. Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I want to start by thanking staff on this item. They've been working, starting from the top with our city manager to our public works team. They've been working with me almost daily on this issue for about two weeks now to come up with the amendment that was shared a moment ago. And I and I so appreciate you doing that. As I indicated in May and I will do so again. Now, there are certain business corridors in the city that are similarly situated, given their proximity to homes, businesses and homes, though I'm not sure is one of those areas. It's the only business corridor that has numerous homes consistently within just a few feet of residents of businesses. And so the impacts are felt at a much deeper level. And so I appreciate the amendments that were proposed today. Those amendments include the feedback that I have received from the community, as well as the experience that my team has had in monitoring the the PARKLETS since they initiated. I want to also think that we have 21 comments on this issue. I know my council colleagues get that comment live. That's a really significant number of comments to be submitted on one particular agenda item. So I want to thank residents who were not able to be here who who sent in their E comments. And I want to thank the residents who came out to the meeting tonight and our businesses. I have had the opportunity to speak with almost all of you during the past year, year and a half on this issue. And I hope that you feel that some of the amendments that were put into place tonight by my staff through the recommendation address, the very things you've asked me to work on, and those are things we're going to work on. We were one of the first cities to offer this opportunity to local businesses when the COVID pandemic hit. And I was a strong supporter of the Open Streets Initiative from day one. I am sure that countless businesses and individuals that this program has helped keep from seeing significantly worse financial situations and possible bankruptcy are extremely grateful for this opportunity. I am a business owner on Second Street, so I have a vantage point that's very different than all of my council colleagues in that the COVID pandemic hit me and my family in a very personal way. And so we understand the need to have helped our local economy in the best way that we could, and I hope to continue to do so. We're in a very different situation today than we were when we first implemented this program. One of the biggest things that we're seeing now is that we have many more people that are back to work, meaning the streets that were vacant for so long during the beginning of the pandemic are now being filled again with cars and commuters who are commuting daily and impacting the traffic volumes on the street. We're also seeing, obviously, that there are major parking impacts as a result of some of the parklets going into place. And that has resulted in a lot of retail businesses reaching out to us, letting us know that people are not wanting to go shop on Second Street because of the need to look for parking. And that's something that we're constantly aware of. We do, I think, need to reevaluate some of the parklets on Second Street. Some of them are no longer used or not used as frequently. And so we need to go through a process of talking to those business owners and finding out whether they want to continue their parklet or not. We've had some business owners reach out to us and say they don't want to continue their parklets and we respect that will accommodate that. We also need to talk with adjacent business owners to find out if there is any encroachment, if they're still okay with that encroachment or not. That's a conversation that some businesses have asked us to initiate as well, and so we will do that as part of this extension amendment that was being passed today. I do believe it's very, very important for our residents to have an appeal process because there isn't a one particular location that that really needs to be addressed. It's been a huge quality of life impact for residents, and the residents need to have a mechanism to address that, and we need to think about whether we can move some of the parklets off of the side streets when they're in very close proximity to homes and figure out a way to get them onto Second Street if , in fact, we are going to allow that extension. So this amendment by the staff allows us to take a look at all of those different options and be able to come up with a plan in December that is a little bit more streamlined for the businesses that are here that have been operating without any problem and no complaints. I want to thank you for being responsive and for for allowing I'm so glad you're here, because you get to hear directly from the residents what my team and I hear from the residents all the time. So I know that my time is up and I need to to let other council colleagues speak. So I just want to end with just a huge thank you to Lisa West from my team. She's our business liaison and she has talked with every single person in this room. Numerous times our team was out there helping lay out the trails on the days that they were delivered. We've been very hands on on this process. And I just want to say that we couldn't have done any of it without her. And I just really want to appreciate everyone who's here, especially staff, for helping us come up with this. We will host a community meeting. We will widely broadcast that meeting and encourage residents to attend, and that will be the start of a conversation for permanent parklets and other conversations that we need to have. Speaker 0: Thank you again, Catwoman entrepreneur. Thank you. And thanks to all the speakers tonight and thank you to staff for a great presentation. My comments run aligned with the vice mayors and that is well, Second Street might be unique. It might be the only all encompassing location for this. But unless the traffic engineers tell me otherwise, it's not the only spot in Long Beach that has an issue with the PARKLET. And so I get a little nervous when we do a carve out for a district and there seems to be no path for any other districts . And I heard Director Marconi correctly that if there's a a process for someone with an issue on a parklet, I think he said that has to be based on the original parameters of how that that parklet was set up. It can't be a new amendment to the Parklet. And I'm sorry, I don't remember the lighting exactly, but do you know what I'm talking about? I'm not sure, but I'll try and address that. And you let me know if I got you or not. The. There is people can already file complaints about Parklets. We're going to formalize that process so that perhaps it would look like a dedicated telephone number and email address where people can file their complaint. Staff will go investigate that complaint and identify whether or not the business is complying with the requirements of the permit for the temporary parklet. If they are not, then we can take action. Okay. And so what I would like to see is some latitude in there because it might have been set up with all great intentions, but that doesn't leave any margin for what if something changed or would have. COVID has changed a little bit. And I'm just wondering if we can get something in there to where a protest could be lessened or could be submitted based on a new circumstance, not on the original set up of the parklet, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that that's reasonable. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And Councilman Mongo. Speaker 1: Thank you. I just wanna thank everyone who came out today, and I especially want to thank the councilwoman as a regular on Second Street and a person who has a lot of friends that live walking distance. And we love to meet at their house and walk down. And I've seen both sides of it and I've heard both sides of it. And even residents who live nearby still enjoy walking down to Second Street and enjoying it. So I applaud the councilwoman for her efforts on this. And she always works really hard to make sure that everyone's heard and we can come to a resolution that I think if we get there, this could be a solution that could work for the whole city because Parklets have changed and there are some value and there's a lot of interesting opportunities district citywide, but each of us have different unique things that our district. So I'm going to stay tuned. Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight. Speaker 0: Thank everyone. Please cast your votes for the men in motion. Speaker 2: The question is, hey. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're not going to do. A series of items, none of which have any public comment lined up, and there's no staff presentations on any of these. So we're going to kind of go through these quickly. Madam Cook, I am 27.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager, or designee, to extend the previously approved Open Streets Initiative plan allowing restaurants and other related service industry temporary parklets and outdoor dining spaces to remain open through June 30, 2022. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_09142021_21-0982

Speaker 2: The motion is. Speaker 1: Carried. Speaker 0: Out in 37. Speaker 2: Adam, 37, is a communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Allen. Councilmember Oranga recommendation to adopt a policy setting the maximum number of City Council sponsor and agenda item can have to three sponsors. Speaker 0: Oh, I shouldn't have heard this one, but that's okay. I was a staff item. But let me look over here. Bethany Richardson. Thanks to the attorney who spoke to it pretty well last week. Brown Act is important. There are additional steps that we can take here locally to make sure that we we sort of protect our and protect our city from inadvertently making mistakes. And so the importance of the Brown Act, obviously, we know it's about public, you know, ensuring that discussions are held in public. And so I wanted to carry forward the recommendation from the city attorney to add that additional provision so we don't step over the three into 4 to 5 by by establishing a council policy that sets the max number of offers on an item to three here in the city. And so, that said, I'm happy to make this motion. Councilman Allen. They can't. Speaker 1: I don't have any comments. I support this. Speaker 0: Item, Mr. Bernanke. Thank you. No. Is that good? All right. Thank you. If we're really trying to avoid browner interactions here, I'm going to make a substitute motion, and that is that we set a new policy that we have no one signing on to items other than the original maker of the motion, and that would avoid any gamesmanship or whatever, and it would absolutely eliminate any browner considerations. And this would be just a regular applied to just regular agenda items and not to supplemental supplementals. We would still use the old rules. Is there a second on that? Or is there a second on that? Of that in that second bit Councilmember Austin that that is the current substitute motion come to anyone go. Speaker 1: Thank you. That's given me something to think about because I wasn't aware that there would be a substitute. I think that the first step is knowing and understanding the rules. And I know that we've been committees and different things. Different things have changed. And I think that staff having good intention is important. I'm open to either option. I guess I just want all of us to. Bring forward items. That support the community in a timely manner that supports making good work get done. Lots of different bodies have lots of different ways of doing it. I think that staff could bring back those for us because I'm open to. Whatever's best to get the people's work done. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. Cancel or bust me, Richardson. Thanks. And I can appreciate the councilmembers Hooper knows of subs through motion. I think the distinction is there is a certain level of collaboration and that's okay. What we're doing is adding a protection ensure that we don't spill over to four and five. So encouraging council offices up to three to collaborate across district lines is a good thing. And I think removing one signer won't stifle that collaboration. So in the spirit of both adding, you know, this recommendation in alignment with the city attorney and preserving some level of collaboration. I support the main motion form. I'm going to vote no on the substitute motion to support the main motion. Councilman Austin. So I. Speaker 4: Certainly the. Speaker 0: Amendment just in the spirit of hearing hearing it out and I believe it, there's a merit here. This is the Brown Act is very, very delicate. And I think, again, we all in good faith try to do our very best to collaborate, also follow the law. And, you know, a week ago there were there were some procedural errors or that was brought to light. It may have not been the first time. It was the first time it had probably been brought to the light. And I do appreciate the city attorney for the correction and also my colleagues for that and thinking that that. That issue. Listen, the it's one thing, if things are a collaboration, you're damned if you do, but you're damned if you don't. And this is one area that I'd like to see a little bit more emphasis on this. The. Because we can go to other processes, we can go to other types of votes or both in the process and how we can pay for that. You have to get a majority of vote. You telling me that you don't talk to. Majority of people to get to that number of votes on that process. I think, you know, BROWN That is a slippery slope. And we as the council members have to talk to one another to get things done. And so I'm going to withdraw my second on that because I do think collaboration is very, very important. But I will tell you that moving forward, I will bring forth items on my own if necessary, in the spirit of trying to get things done. But at the same time, again, we try to work together and talk to our colleagues and engage folks and bring people on board. There's that that that uneasiness each and every one of us I think most of us have full time employment. Right. And if we're not here, we're not engaged. We're communicating through electronic devices and sometimes over the phone and through intermediaries. That is part of what it takes to move an agenda item and to move policy on the body. And so I want to be very clear that I like the idea of bringing an item of items forward on your own. But there's a risk that you do so that, you know, you might be out there on your own. And so the the city manager's recommendation of three refiners maximum is a safe safeguard. I'm going to vote for the policy, but I don't think we need a policy because war is allowable. That correct. Mr. Turnbull. Sorry. Yes. Council member. That is correct. For Islam. So quick question to the item before us. If someone were to violate the policy and speak to four people, what would be the consequence? The consequence is it is to exactly what you said. It's the policy of the council. And there have been other situations where the council has not followed their policy. The consequence could be a a decision by the council not to either hear the item or. But there is no legal consequence to that as long as it falls within the Brown Act. And I would like to make a suggestion if you pass this policy that you give it a clear direction not to accept items that have four people on it by accident so that its the rules are clear how you want us to handle that. If you submit an item that accidentally has four people on or rather than three. I appreciate that clarification. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Captain America. Mayor. Sorry. May I just. Point of order. The second has been considered, so the second has been pulled. Is there another second? If there isn't another second, we go back to the main motion. Is that right? Should attorney. Think so? Okay. Country Ranga. Thank you. Simply stated, a city councilmember can always something. And I don't know that we're going back to the main motion. Okay, that's very Ranga. Yeah, like I said, a city councilmember can always have an item on his own at any time, regardless of whether we have Brown Act or not. The the. The motion on the floor is basically just. Is a cautionary, a cautionary item, too, to give us an indication that if we are looking at more than three people, that that will the city quick will be alerted to it and will let us know what you got for people. You may want to put it back to three. That's it. And it's a precautionary item to just give us notice that. We're on the edge of a brown at issue that we submitted before. That's all that is. It's not to say that we can't still violate the Brown Act by contacting Border Point councilmembers in our effort to get support for an item that is still going to be that still exists, that will always be there in regards to any item that a council member wants to put forward and making sure that no more than than. Or other members are aware of the outrage you're presenting. So on the end of it, at the end of the day, it's basically to separate us. Comment customers without comment is that we're always available to everyone. But one thing that that's important, I think, is the fact that our meeting here on the day is is about relationships . And our relationships are sometimes based on items that we present forward to ensure that we at least vet whatever item we're putting forward so that we know that the discussion is going to be taking place in a in a manner that is going to be either supportive or that brings up questions about why they are with you in the first place. And I think that's very important to our relationships. Other the days and I would say counsel that we share our thoughts. We share our ideas. We comment on them. And we think we will go forward either with three or four individuals. But the Senate would have no more than three. And I support the original motion for a couple among them. Speaker 1: Thank you. Last week's discussion brought forward a lot of learning, and I guess one of my colleagues mentioned collaboration and how agenda items bring forward to collaboration. I appreciate the rule that we have put upon ourselves in the past, led by Council Member Super, not in the past. And I appreciate the restructuring of our committees that the mayor took part in earlier this year really facilitated for us. I mean, I would love to see more of that collaboration happen at the committee level. I really think that that's an opportunity where three people are supposed to. I'm really dove into the context of all the other policies that have similar subject to really grow and have the access to the staff members to help flesh out those ideas in a more casual discussion. I also got a call that I thought was a very interesting one where a member stated many years ago the State Assembly and State Senate were not made up of people who had moved from city council level up to. Or moved on to. I shouldn't say because it depends on what region you're in, but moves on to Assembly or Senate positions for the first time in several generations. There are more previously. Council members serving at the State Assembly than never before during our time on this Council, and that the laws related to Brown Act were written, from my understanding now by the State Assembly and Senate, who chose not to have those laws apply to themselves because they felt that. And I want to say how they felt, but there's a lot of discussion that was you can watch on television about the reasoning behind that. And so it's a very interesting topic. I think that we want to protect the public's ability to interact with and take part in those discussions. I think that we as a council have really worked hard to bring those items to the community in a community meeting forum. And I think that hearing those items in advance on committees really brings that back to the community. So I'm happy to support the item on the floor. I'm happy to support a substitute. I'm also happy to kind of align with what Councilmember Odinga said, which is sometimes there's a lot of value in getting that additional input from an additional colleague. And when they don't sign on to the item, it doesn't even give us the opportunity where if one of them signs off later that you know and understand who is a part of that. So I'm open to trying something new and I hope that the state will consider really the changes in technology and all the different factors that have changed since these laws were written and do some significant updating that really gives the public the best access to all the information so that they can really be involved. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. I just want to add some context. And in the spirit of what I brought forward, I'm not disagreeing with our city attorney. In fact, I commend him for bringing the idea forward as a as a method to improve honor system. I would just suggesting if we can do that, we can we can make it even better by eliminating a couple of more folks. The most recent part of this discussion is, you know, I made the I meant that in the best way transforming the. But what I'm hearing just in the last couple of comments is the value of people collaborating. But the city attorney's idea diminishes that. So we're taking away one person from that. So we're kind of working both sides of that argument there. But I'm not sure if I have a second now, but that was the spirit of it. I like the city attorney's idea. I was just looking to improve upon it a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Council members. And they have. Speaker 1: Q I just had a question, clarifying question. If we do have if this do we have another motion on the floor? Speaker 0: No. This the main. Speaker 1: Motion. Okay. And if we do pass the original motion and we do have only three people sign on, we I'm assuming I know this answer, but I'm not sure. And we still can consult with the fourth person. We just wouldn't be signing them onto the item. Correct. Without violating the. Speaker 0: Without violating the ban. I guess the the intention of the Brown Act is that you're not trying to reach a consensus with the majority, so that would not be in a majority. So you could do that. Speaker 1: Thank you for clarifying that. Speaker 0: Thank you. As any public comment on item. Well, there's one more Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Okay, so I just this is this is academic, but I just need to make sure this is on the record. So if there are four people on an item and one of the people on the item reaches out to you before the meeting. During the meeting to talk, that's a brown ass violation if you're not one of the four people. Speaker 0: Yes. I mean, the issue is you're having a conversation about a subject matter coming before the body with a majority of the council. Yes, that's a serial meeting and it would be a Brownback violation. Speaker 1: I agree. And that has been my interpretation. But in the past, I think I've had folks have maybe interpreted it differently and said unless it's at that behind the diocese, it's not really ripe for discussion. Blah, blah, blah. But anyway, if there's four people on an item, you can't talk to them. You can't. Try to come up with compromise positions, etc. If you weren't asked to sign on, you're not part of that conversation until it's at the door. Speaker 0: That is correct. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 0: Fantastic. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 2: Council member, Vice Mayor Richardson. The motion is carried. Speaker 0: All right. We're going to go to item 25, you.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to adopt a policy setting the maximum number of City Council sponsors an agenda item can have to three - one original sponsor and two cosponsors.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_09142021_21-0952

Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 0: Thank you. What's up? Item 19 for you. Speaker 2: Item 19 This report from Development Services Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing. Declare ordinances amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by creating enhanced density bonus to facilitate the development of mixed income. Multi-family Housing An ordinance related to impact fee waivers for affordable moderate income units. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and Adobe resolution to submit the ordinance amendments to the California Coastal Commission Citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to go to Steph. Speaker 1: I'd like to introduce our planning manager, Patricia Defender for who will be making the presentation for this public hearing. Good evening, mayor. Vice mayor, council members. This is Patricia Defender, her bureau manager. The item before you is the proposed enhanced anti-business ordinance, which aims to facilitate facilitate production of both market rate and affordable housing throughout the city . It involves a zoning code amendment to add a new section of the code section 1268 and amends other sections of the code, as we'll discuss later in the presentation. So density bonus. This law is not a new law. The State first adopted the density bonus law in 1979. The law essentially requires cities to offer density bonuses and other incentives or waivers from zoning regulations to facilitate housing production and to help offset the cost of including a percentage of affordable housing units in privately developed market rate housing projects. The density bonus law has been in place for more than 40 years to help address the affordable housing shortage. The amendment in early this year the state law was amended and it went into effect to increase density bonuses from 35% to 50%. Among other changes to the law. And this is in recognition of the fact that the bonuses and incentives were really not sufficient to support housing production. So in the next couple of slides, which is going to describe very quickly what the enhanced anti bonus ordinance does and why we need it. So the bonus that the ordinance offers bonuses and incentives that are above and beyond the state law. They are, however, tailored to the local conditions, and we'll discuss that a little bit more further in the presentation. The proposed ordinance complements the inclusionary housing ordinance that was adopted by council earlier this year in a couple of ways. First, it helps offset the costs for providing affordable housing where the inclusionary requirement is mandatory. And then it also offers a voluntary inclusionary program for those areas where the mandatory requirement was not found to be feasible. Some things that the ordinance does not do is it does not rezone properties or change the property's land use designation. It does not up zoned any low density or one or two zoned areas, and it does not allow residential uses in areas that are planned or zoned solely for commercial use. The proposed ordinance is needed to encourage housing and particularly market rate and affordable housing, and to make it feasible in more parts of the city to ensure an equitable distribution of housing in the city. As we've noted, the state density bonus has not been sufficient to encourage housing production in the city. It has been used only in very limited instances in the past couple of decades, and usually by projects that are already proposing 100% affordable housing, providing the greater density, bonuses and incentives are needed to encourage the production of the housing. And this is intended to be. Importantly, this is intended to be a temporary measure to help achieve the city's upcoming housing element cycle. Rina goal of 26,000 housing units. It is intended to expire by 2030 or whenever the city reaches the affordable housing target of the Rina, whichever might come first. So in trying to sort of convey why this strategy is an important strategy, I just wanted to share that the staff has conducted a number of different studies that have shown that the development is infeasible in many areas of the city, even those areas that were planned for housing and mixed use development in the UAE. So analysis and study conducted, for example, through the planned North Long Beach planning process revealed that because of high land costs and high costs of construction and physical site constraints like small or shallow lots, many sites cannot be developed to the anticipated densities. These market analysis also showed that projects are infeasible and can't pencil out unless costs can be reduced by almost 40%. And that reducing costs by 20% brings densely bounded scenarios within the realm of feasibility. The study also shows that reducing parking by nearly 20% would make density bonus scenarios feasible. So these studies do reinforce the need for these tailored regulations. Okay. So the proposed enhanced anti bonus ordinance is consistent with the adopted city policies to increase housing production and affordable housing, specifically the revenue to have an incentive for production and affordable housing study that was adopted by the Council in May of 2017 and the Everyone Home Plan. It also implements the land use element of affordable housing policies. So just in trying to explain the applicability of this proposed ordinance, not all properties in the city are eligible for the enhanced density bonus bonus incentives. Only those properties where the zoning or the place type allows five or more units without bonuses are eligible for the enhanced density bonus. And again, just to reiterate, it does not rezone properties to allow five or more units, but rather five or more units as an eligibility criteria. This map shows illustrates the areas where projects are more likely to be eligible for the enhanced density bonus based on the place type. So it's a little bit hard to see on the map that you can see that the hatched areas on the map are the areas where projects or sites are likely can be eligible. And those areas tend to be in midtown, downtown and some of the major corridor corridors that were already planned for multifamily and mixed use. Multi-family and mixed use. Those areas are anticipated that their use is anticipated in those areas by the land use element. And the land use element does serve as a blueprint for the enhanced sensiblement. So just to reiterate that the areas shown, for example, in yellow that are the lower density single family areas are would not are not hatched and would not likely be affected by the ordnance. So this not just ties that the geographic the city was divided into three sort of tiers for purposes of flying bonuses. The bonuses the greatest bonuses are limited to the areas that are most accessible to transit. So most of the city falls, a lot of the city falls within the base area, which has a maximum bonus density bonus of 70%. There's areas that are along major bus corridors where there are frequent bus service are eligible for 90% bonuses. And then the airline transit stops, major transit stops and areas where two major bus lines intersect. Are eligible for 100% bonuses. And that's kind of how the that ordinance would apply. And this helps address other goals, such as reducing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. This map shows the transit priorities areas which are defined by state law, and it sort of ties back to those three geographic areas. So you can see the areas in the white on this map are generally the base areas, the areas in the green, but outside of the circles are the high quality transit areas, that mid level tier. And then the areas within the green circles are the black circles are the highest density bonus areas. And again, it's important to remember that despite the proximity transit, it says if a site is low density and does not allow for five or more units, it would not be eligible. This is a table that shows very quickly compares kind of the state density bonus and the affordability, the percentage of affordable units that would be required to compare state with the proposed ordinance and the three different geographic tiers. And you can see the different maximum bonuses and the amount of affordable housing that would be required as a result. In this slide, I would just want to sort of demonstrate how the bonuses and the affordability requirement work. So this example is a site that would be located in that mid-tier that here with a bonus maximum is 90% and it's a high quality transit corridor area. So if you look at this example on this site where the zoning would allow 36 units, 36 is the base units. If you take 15, if the project wants to have an 80% density bonus, it will have to do a 15% affordable, very low income housing requirement. So that would mean the projects ultimately would have six units, which is the 15% of the 36, and then it would be allowed to have a maximum of 65 units, 29 additional units from the bonus, 23 of which would be market rate, and six of which would be very low. That project would also be eligible for some concessions and seven concessions, which I'll explain here. So projects that provide affordable units as a component of a market rate project are eligible for a maximum of nine concessions. The concessions ordinance proposes concessions in sort of two different kinds of concessions on menu concessions, which are by. Right. Relief from zoning regulations that are zoning regulations that are customarily projects need some relief from such as floor area increases or reductions in open space or setbacks, individual setbacks. There's also off menu concessions, which are things that a project might not might need relief from that are not on the menu. And those concessions, if requested, they count as two concessions for each request and it does require approval by the Planning Commission and specifically wanted to tie the mentioned height. Height is a by right concession as is required by state law and the enhance that the proposed enhanced density bonus ordinance would allow a maximum height incentive of two stories in the base area and three stories in the transit priority area. Additional height beyond seas. By right height concessions would be considered off menu concessions and inclusionary projects are also entitled to concessions that they are limited to a maximum of six concessions. And finally, there are some extra concessions and bonuses for projects that provide onsite childcare and large family units as a way to encourage those kinds of developments . So the this slide just shows the parking reductions that projects are eligible for. As mentioned before, a state already requires or requires cities to grant parking reductions for projects that include affordable housing. The table on the left shows the ratios as required by state law, and the table on the right shows the ratios that would be required under the enhanced density bonus. It's basically it depending on the location of the project. A project may obtain more reductions from one or the other of the options that state law does allow for a reduction of up to a allows one half of a space per unit for projects that are within transit a priority areas. So areas closest or projects closest to transit would probably obtain greater reductions from the street the state than the reductions and projects can choose, depending on which side of reductions are most advantageous for the project. So this slide just tries to explain the differences between the two parking scenarios, the two the state versus the proposed enhanced density bonus. In this example that we use from previously, if this were in the base area, essentially 36 units are allowed by the zoning. If the density bonus is 60% and 12% of the units are very low income, then this is what the parking requirements would be. So you can see based on the state parking requirements, it would be 82 and with the enhanced the proposed enhanced density bonus, the parking would be 69 parking spaces. But conversely, if there is a project that's proposed in a major transit stop area with these kind of parameters, 44 based units using an 80% density bonus because it is within the half mile of the transit is the state law would give you a point five spaces per unit. So in this example, the state law offers greater reductions 40 spaces compared to the enhanced NC bonus 89 parking spaces. So another important aspect of the ordinance is the no net loss requirement. The no net loss requirements of the enhanced density bonus ordinance ensures that both that there is no loss in total units and that there is a net increase in affordable units. So it requires the projects have to provide to both replace any existing affordable units that might be on the ground. In addition to providing a percentage of affordable units that's required in exchange for the density bonus. Affordability levels of any existing residential unit is determined by rent, by the rent level and the household income. So if either rent or income level meets affordable levels, then the units have to be replaced on a one for one basis. And this helps stabilize the number of naturally occurring affordable units in the city. So it's kind of just to wrap up and talk about some of the administrative provisions of this plan. This proposed ordinance, as mentioned before, this ordinance with sunset has a sunset clause. It would sunset unless re adopted by the city council by October of 2030 or when housing, the affordable housing is not at the arena. The review process for these projects would be site plan. Review projects would be reviewed for design and compliance with objective design and development standards, including the urban design standards and transitional height requirements and projects with request for off menu. As I mentioned, off menu incentives would be reviewed by the Planning Commission. This ordinance, as proposed, also includes a amendment to the impact fee sections of the code to include a impact fee waiver for affordable units for moderate income units. It already allows for fee waivers for lower income units, and this would extend that to moderate income units. Public outreach on this ordinance, on this proposed ordinance was conducted in conjunction with the housing element, and there were a number of outreach meetings, focus groups, Virtual Open House has been available on the website. The staff did receive a number of different comments on the housing issues in general and the enhanced density bonus ordinance. And specifically, they were definitely interested in strategies to increase housing production and to increase affordable production of affordable units. But there was also concern expressed about parking, about the quality of the housing, about impacts to infrastructure and those kinds of things. A negative declaration was prepared as the environmental clearance for this ordinance was fully posted and noticed in accordance with figure that the California State Environmental Quality Laws, the EDB, does aim to help the city achieve the six cycle RINA allocation and that the ordinance is expected to just help achieve that and not to exceed the the number of units that was anticipated and planned for in the in the land use element. And individual projects ultimately do have to have their own environmental review. So with that, that concludes South presentation. And these are the recommendations essentially to adopt a number of ordinances that would amend the code to establish the enhanced density group bonus program to update site plan review findings accordingly and to update the. See sections of the code to extend the fee waiver to moderate income minutes and a resolution to submit the ordinance to the Coastal Commission in conformance with the Certified Local Coastal Program. That concludes that recommendation. We're happy to answer any questions. Speaker 0: All right. Thank you. So I had an opportunity to talk with you about this presentation a bit. And I understand how this this density bonus program will complement the inclusionary housing ordinance. And when we adopted it, I remember we created two zone one in an area that already had a downtown midtown plan that has enhanced density bonus , is already a part of that process. And then a second area that would allow inclusionary housing, which we supported on this council. If there were incentives, if there was a set of incentives equal to or connected to the ability to provide additional unit. And you also told us, hey, we're going to create some of those incentives since the city doesn't have a dedicated source of local revenue to produce affordable housing. All of that makes sense to me bringing this forward. A couple a couple questions for me. I think one. The obvious question is if you build more units in an area with less parking standards, what do we do about parking? And I understand that there's sort of three piers. There's your rail area, there's your high quality transit area. It's not real close enough. There's there's busses and other things and then there's your base area. So that's tier that makes sense to me. I also know and understand that as a part of our Climate Action Adaptation Plan, we're talking about parking strategies to address that. Now, here's what I'm curious about. We're going to need to create some sort of parking management program or policy or ordinance to complement any new buildings that take advantage of the density bonus. And even if people don't do that, I think we need to do that anyway because there's many other state laws and other things that ultimately reduce parking. We need to be thinking about parking management or transport transit, transportation management. What do we have in the works? And is there a way to tie those two together, tie these three things together? The Density Bonus Program with the greenery, housing, your climate action adaptation plan and a parking transit management ordinance. My first question. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. So we the city is the department is working, as you know, on updating the zoning code as a part of the implementing the land use element and creating new zones that help to implement the newly adopted plan. Part of the code amendments that are anticipated is updates to an existing transportation demand ordinance. So the city has in the zoning code a transportation demand management ordinance currently. That ordinance, the CAP Plan, the Climate Action Adaptation Plan, actually calls out as one of its actions action 87 to update that ordinance. That ordinance applies right now generally to just commercial projects, and that has traditionally been how transportation demand ordinances have been applied. And there's an opportunity to look at extending some of those strategies that are used to housing projects. So things like, you know, transit passes, having spaces on site for car share projects that are designed in such a way that they improve the pedestrian environment, they contribute to greater walkability, greater visibility through their design. Those are all different strategies that can be used to make sure that projects manage their transportation demands. Speaker 0: Okay. And and the idea, in my opinion, would be if we're building new development and they're taking advantage of these standard, if we want folks to be able to take advantage of transit or incentivize through passes and things like that, we also need to have an expectation that the people who live there in this new building will want to ride a bike or walk. So we need to make sure that the things that they need, that daily need, should be in a walk or bike distance from their home. So we need to evaluate if we are placing higher density in these communities where their relationship to their grocery store or their market. What's the connection of bike share? And we make sure that our bikeshare programs, if we're adding them to these areas, that the infrastructure that we put in those areas intersects with where we're preparing for growth. I think another thing that we have to think about is and I've raised this before and I want to more formally ask you to look into this. We have three agencies setting policy on transportation. The city of Long Beach on your micromobility and your last mile. So Long Beach transit on the busses and metro on the train. Three policy bodies all setting policy. Three different policy decisions to affect one outcome. And I personally believe that there needs to be an alignment one body, one decision making body in Long Beach that talks about transportation, access and equity, particularly as we're making this major shift as it relates to parking standards. And so can we, as a part of moving forward, look into those two things that updating the transportation management program that was a part of the CAP implementation. We need to make it a part of this implementation and to exploring what a model would look like to create one agency or an agency but one alliance to discuss these issues across those three agencies. That's something we can do. We have the capacity, the bandwidth to do those things. Speaker 1: I just wanted to point out that certainly that helps align with CAP implementation as well. So the CAP calls for much stronger collaboration between the city, along with transit and Metro, recognizing the criticality of improving not only access to but information about and sort of door to door service related to public transit. So whether it's our bus stop improvements, the timing and frequency of service as well as the end user experience, we hear a lot about that as we do planning outreach. For example, with that plan, we heard a lot about that as well as during the cap development process. And so I think this is a great opportunity to align those things because we know to help encourage the system change, we will need all of the players working together more. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next, we have Councilwoman Toro and Vice Mayor. I also might add that we have a plan review process already built into the process that will allow us to look at each unique development and project and its location to be able to develop additional conditions to suit that project and the needs of the of those residents . I think that's I think the great I think what I'm looking for, though, is like these ordinances are something like they're citywide. Right. And I think those relationships between these different policies need to be thought of from a system standpoint as well. So from a system standpoint, how we engage with our transit agencies and we are now with Transportation Agency, since we're doing bike, we have to get down differently. And I think now is the time to make make sure we do that. So that's something I would like to see happen tomorrow. Speaker 1: With Vice Mayor. I think the staff for the presentation on enhanced density bonus ordinance, you know, I have a district that that definitely has a lot has really I think met its fair share of development in how in building affordable housing and appreciate exploring ways in where we could offer this in other areas so that, you know , we're ensuring that we're meeting our housing needs. And so I agree with Vice Mayor Richardson around transportation concern. I do not have a metro line, also known as the blue line that runs through my district. That's an opportunity as well for further growth, which I look forward to exploring, to see how we can ensure that we take advantage of at least that transportation corridor. So what I support, I think, you know, offering that this enhanced density bonus ordinance and so that's why I wanted to share. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Forgive me, Councilman. Your anger. No disrespect to Councilmember Price, you know. Please excuse my frustration with this. Very nice, very colorful. Oh, probably. Okay. So when you have this chart here with all these nice colored bars inside. Meaningless to me in regards to being able to interpret. What this is saying and how it impacts my area specifically. And well, I mean, it's not a requirement to be able to counsel. I think that there should be cognizant of the fact that you have a council member. Who is sensitive to that, to this. So I would appreciate it in the future if you can provide that kind of information in in a more. In a better way for me to be able to be able to understand it. So I would appreciate that that that is the that is me. What I think is important for you to know. Speaker 1: I come from a very strong partnership, even different. We do have a version of the map that just shows in sort of one color the areas that are eligible based on place type. And I can make sure to get that map to you. Speaker 0: I appreciate that very much. Not to be able to by discussion is that, you know, I certainly appreciate the effort both there from from the city to create this enhanced density bonus. But there's a conflict there because you're also saying that the state density bottleneck is not working. So how does this address that? Speaker 1: Council Member Your other sources even differ so that that is precisely the reason for this proposed ordinance because the state density bonus has been in place for quite some time and we haven't seen the results. We haven't seen it produce the amount of housing and that that one would expect with a density bonus ordinance. And that's because of what we talked about in that one slide about its terms. This is a proposal that's tailored to local conditions. It takes into account the local sort of market forces, the land costs locally and the need, you know, the amount of bonuses in terms of extra density and other concessions that projects actually need to be financially feasible. And so this is why we believe that this particular set of regulations is going to be able to finally help generate the housing that density this was intended to generate. Speaker 0: The other count. Vice Mayor Richardson touched upon it in terms of like development that has. Close proximity to. Important businesses like grocery stores and retail stores or shopping areas. I know in my area I have a major corridor, Santa Fe, that goes from 10th Street all the way to downtown Los Angeles. And in that short period, that short stretch between TAB and Warrego, I have commercial residential areas and that's a corridor that nobody's going through and all that. So I think it would, I can't tell from this if it's included in there because I can't see it anyway. One of the things that I did a couple of months ago was that there was a development that was being proposed. I will. That would have helped. I would have met this, but at the same time did not provide any neighborhood serving services. And that's my concern is that. If we're doing these offering these bonuses to these developers. And there is no neighborhood serving serving element to it. I think it just basically. Doesn't provide any any benefit to the city because all it is. It may help us. We are reliant on it, but it certainly doesn't help the the individuals who end up living in those houses because they're still going to have to get in a car or get in a bus or get in a bicycle and ride two or three miles somewhere to go to a bank or to get their groceries. So I don't see the benefit of that in that respect and not that I'm opposing. With taking place here. I just want to put that in your radar that a lot of these developments. Art while they may not be addressing parking. They're also not addressing neighborhoods or serving elements to the neighborhood as well. So I bring that out as a concern because I certainly have one in my in my area that brought up two months ago. And I think that also needs to be addressed that you. Speaker 1: Be around a capital city center for just want to point out that this ordinance we're aware of your concerns for your corridors Willow and Santa Fe in particular. And of course, the council adopted a moratorium to give the Planning Bureau and the Development Services Department time to develop new zones in any future. When we are developing, apply those new zones. If there's a requirement for a mandatory minimum amount of commercial space, this density bonus would not change that. This bonus density bonus ordinance could work in concert with that to actually encourage redevelopment that would then be in the form of mixed use and would bring the desired neighborhood services to the Bay Area. Right now there's just a lack of investment generally. There hasn't been new development in terms of either commercial or very much in the way of residential. And this may just provide the incentive that would entice a developer to build pardon me, develop a mixed use project and bring the commercial and the have the added benefit of bringing more residential units as well. Speaker 0: I can use a keyword there. Mixed use. That's very important. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. So a couple of questions. I do have some concerns about this item, and I appreciate the presentation staff have provided and the briefing that you gave us in advance. But as proposed, I can't support this item, so I am going to share some of my concerns and ask for some amendment and hopefully those amendments are accepted. But if they're not, I'll propose them as a substitute. I think we can all agree that as a state we're in a housing crisis and we as a city need to do more to see more housing. I know that I'll speak for myself personally, that we were able to, in our plan, provide a capacity for over 2000 units just in the third District. And so I'm very proud of the collaborative process that we undertook with our residents to get there. But I want to mention that the land use element, I feel like we just passed that a couple of years ago and we have a lot of height limits on development included in the land use element. And now we're talking about a discussion of adding additional height and density. It feels to me a little bit surprising since the land use element was supposed to get us that additional housing we needed through the next couple of decades. And when we invited residents to community meetings and we had those very heated discussions with residents, we shared with them that if they worked with us and they walked along side this process with us, we were going to develop the capacity that we needed to comply with our state mandate. And so I can understand how residents would feel unhappy or confused about this process and specifically this proposal. I can speak for the third district in particular. We had numerous community meetings and years, six years specifically of discussion on CCF before it was finally approved after years of plans. And then we had the value added involved, a lot of community involvement and we passed it after all of those efforts. And now to have heights just allowed to be increased without community involvement feels a little bit like a bait and switch for the residents. So I guess as a clarifying question, I just for the public, because I know the answer to this with this policy allow for buildings to be higher than what was approved by this council and both the elderly and the. Councilmember Patricia Defender heard this. This audience would potentially allow projects to exceed the height limits that were identified in the U.S. and insist within the limits that were described. And that would happen without public input. We wouldn't have to go through an approval process. So, again, you know, state law does already allow a number of these incentives. The the process that I identified through the density bonus ordinance would involve site plan, review and projects. Right now, projects that are 50 units or more do have a site plan review by the Planning Commission. So those projects would involve a public hearing and sort of airing in a public setting, as would projects that, as we mentioned in the presentation, projects that would be taking advantage of any off menu bonuses. So those projects would go to planning commission, would have a public hearing. Projects under 50 units or projects that are 100% affordable. Currently, they are reviewed and approved by the Site Plan Review Committee. Okay. And I understand the state density bonus. My concern is that we're going beyond that into specific areas that are of concern to me and I've heightened parking. Parking is also a major issue for residents all across the city. And it doesn't matter if they're close to a transit corridor or not, because at this stage, parking is important to the community and individual residents. And we continue to see, despite our mobility efforts, park parking always being a topic of conflict and frustration between residents and nearby businesses. So it's really concerning to me that we could see a density increase with no accommodation for parking needs in the community. So I have a number of amendments. I don't know if I can do them in 44 seconds. So, Mr. Vice Mayor, can I put the amendments on the record now, or would you like me to to back up? Speaker 0: I think you should put them on now, and I think you should as foreman and substitute motion. Mine is just going to be a staff recommendation. Speaker 1: Okay. So I'm going to make a substitute motion. Then the substitute motion would be to take the staff recommendation. And make some modifications to concessions for height increases and parking as currently proposed. The proposed density bonus would allow up to two additional stories of height in the base area and up to three additional stories in the high quality transit corridor areas as on menu concessions. I'd like to propose that this be modified for the base and high quality transit corridor areas. Since I understand that allowances for the major transit stop areas can't be modified under state law, no. For the base tier area I am proposing we reduce height concessions so that only one story of additional height could still be allowed as an on menu concession. But under my proposed modification here, a second story would become an off menu concession that would then be required to go through a public review process, go before the Planning Commission and the project would be required to prove the additional height is a physical necessity for the project. This additional layer of public review would give the public greater opportunity to have a say, and the need to prove the additional height is a physical necessity. Sets a higher bar of only allowing the height if it's the only way a project could work. I understand that off menu concessions also count double. So extra height would then be counted as to concession. Similarly, for the high quality transit corridor area I am proposing we reduce height concessions so that only one story of additional height be allowed as an on menu concession. But a second and or third story would become an off menu concession subject to the same additional requirements. I just described that it must undergo a public review process before the Planning Commission and prove it's a physical necessity. As to parking amendments, my substitute will include the staff recommendation with the following accommodation or change to bump up the parking ratios for 0 to 1 bedroom to be one space per unit instead of the 0.75 spaces per unit, and which is the same as the state density bonus law. I'm also proposing to bump up the parking ratio for two bedroom units to require them to provide 1.25 spaces per unit. I know the city has a dire shortage of larger units for families who may need four or more bedrooms. So I'm comfortable providing a small amount of relief for larger units, which are in the greatest need in Long Beach, particularly for families. So I'm proposing the parking ratio be two spaces per unit for four plus bedroom, since this compromise would increase some of our parking ratios and make them the same as the state density bonus law . The other modifications I'm proposing is to clarify that these revised parking ratios would be inclusive of guest parking, whereas the staff's recommendation listed parking separately. So again, this amendment would no longer call out guest parking as a separate requirement. Otherwise, as I understand it, we wouldn't be able to bump up the 0 to 1 bedroom ratios because legally we can't be more restrictive than state law. Do those amendments make sense to staff? Speaker 0: Yes, they do. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. So I will make a substitute motion. Speaker 0: Thank you, gentlemen. Doctor. I would love to see that substituted in writing, and my comments would be very short. I think my my colleagues have really made some great comments. I do appreciate all of the work that our development services team has put into the document and have a density bonus ordinance. And I think it underscores. The importance of planning on the local government level. Right. I don't know how much time and effort that went into creating these documents and plan. I do want to know about the community engagement. Can you can you speak to what the type of community engagement went into this? Speaker 1: Yes. Councilmember Austin, thank you. It's a different approach. So as I described in the slide, in one of the slides in the presentation, we did do the outreach staff did outreach for this project kind of concurrent with the Housing Element Update, which is being, as you know, updated right now. We had a number of workshops starting in August of last year, kind of during the height of the pandemic. We did virtual workshops. We had a Spanish speaking exclusively Spanish speaking workshop. We had focus groups with affordable housing advocates, the developers, both market rate and nonprofit business community to understand what are the the needs around housing and what are from a development standpoint, what is needed to make housing production more feasible? We had meetings earlier this summer. We had a workshop about the housing element. Update In each of these meetings, we talked about the different implementation strategies and ordinances. As you know, Council has been acting on a number of different housing ordinances that are all part of a multipronged strategy to try to increase housing in the city and different types of housing. So that is in summary. And there's also been virtual the virtual open house that has been available to people. We've invited people to share their housing stories by video or voice message, and we're collecting all of those things. But that's been the way in which we've engaged the public on this ordinance. Speaker 0: Thank you. And my my colleague, I'm also the councilmember Price mentioned the land use element and the process that went into that and that this enhanced density bonus ordinance would layer on top of the land settlement. Speaker 1: Councilmember It does follow that. Mandy Solomon 27, is the blueprint. And also I think it's important to mention I may not have covered it in the presentation, but the reason why this is also a temporary measure is that there's the city, it's going to take the city some time to develop the new zones and resound consistent with that. And so this also offers a stopgap measure in this interim time while we're still developing and rezoning properties consistent with how you need to be able to take advantage of some of these density and height bonuses. But it does it can also layer on top of the value. Yes. Speaker 0: And this particular ordinance, time sensitive. Speaker 1: It is. Speaker 0: Also. Speaker 1: You mean the adoption of it is a time sensitive? Well, it is one of the ordinances that we have to demonstrate to the state that we have instituted policies and programs to achieve our RINA in this upcoming cycle, which is four times greater than the arena was in the past cycle. And there are going to be in the future penalties to cities for not being able to achieve, you know, meet its targets. And so this is viewed as one of the many different strategies as part of the housing element in implementing the housing element. Speaker 0: And I think we mentioned this before, even during a housing element discussion. We have the plan. We have the plans on paper and an ordinance for a landing zone in possibly to add to it and have this important ordinance than necessarily mean that we are going to actually achieve those goals. Speaker 1: It's certainly going to help us get closer to achieving those housing goals because it's informed by, as I mentioned, the market studies that show all the ways in which projects really need to achieve reduction cost cost savings in order to be feasible. So it is tailored to your point about, you know, some of the state legislation. This is tailored to the local context and is informed by what is needed in the city. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'll make you up later. Council member. Suvarna Thank you and thank you for tonight's presentation to staff and thank you for the briefing. Two weeks ago. That was very helpful. Just have a couple of points that others have brought up to me or I forgot to ask during our briefing. But I just wanted to follow up on the statements about public outreach. Not all the staff was at the Whaley Park viewing meeting. I know Oscar Worthy was there. And Linda Tatum, it was like the Rose Bowl. It was the granddaddy of them all. I didn't attend all of them, but I've never seen anything like it before or since. So to say there's public interest in this topic is an understatement. And so I really take seriously the ah comment to my colleagues about the need for public outreach. Also on the transit question and this, residents have asked me and asked to speak to my district because we have a unique situation. We have Cal State, Long Beach on the east side of the district and the west side of the district is 90804 the most densely populated zip code in the city. Long Beach Transit is in the fourth District, their headquarters on Anaheim and Gardena. But on the east side of the district, we have it's just the volatile nature of what is provided. So we have a Cal State, Long Beach shuttle bus service, which is on again, off again at times. It's gone all the way to Anaheim and Termina to pick up students. That system's gone now. Then there's a hybrid system where students are offered free bus passes on La Brea Transit that's taken place in the past, no longer around. So my question is, if Long Beach Transit is a separate entity, Cal State Law, which is a separate entity, how in the world do we possibly lock in this public transportation element if we're going to build housing that is dependent on that? Maybe that's rhetorical. Or if you have an answer, great. I love to hear it. Speaker 1: Well as it pertains to this ordinance. Council member, super or not, the State has defined what constitutes a high transit priority area or a major transit. Stop that map with the. If the if we can bring the presentation up, I could back up. I can show it again. But the map that shows the green and and the circle. So that's largely defined by state law already in those areas already meet the threshold. Speaker 0: I think maybe I maybe I'm not posing the question correctly. So that enables you to get the let's say, the bonus and then say that goes away. We may have gotten the bonus and whatnot, but now we we have a problem now to get people from point A to point B because the service has gone away. So that that's my point. Maybe I'll just leave it at that. And I think that well, I guess I'll just say I'm prepared to support the substitute motion on the floor and and just also want to say that the the need for public outreach on this is is very strong. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. And they are. Speaker 1: Thank you. They smear. As you all know, I'm all for affordable housing or any housing. And we are in a crisis. And so producing housing is definitely very important to me. I know that, you know, I can appreciate the intent of this item and all the hard work that has been put into it. I think that being able to produce more housing is essential in our in our city. But I also in hearing a lot of my residents right now with the existing construction that's been going on with, you know, this last year and beyond. And parking seems to consistently be an issue. It is consistently something that my residents struggle with. So I you know, that's that's something that that's very important. And when it comes to density, I know that what we're trying to do is make sure that we can attract those those developers that can that do have the ability and can produce housing with affordable housing inside of them. And I do appreciate that. But I think that we definitely need to look at the parking situation as we go forward. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Couple. Couple. Mungo. Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate the meetings and support and data that has been provided by our team. Excellent work. I also understand that certain parts of the cities have really produced a lot of the housing numbers. And I guess. If they keep changing the goal line, it's not really fair to cities. I mean, if the real number is now four times what it was before, it's going to be really difficult for us to meet that. But there are dozens of cities throughout the state and Southern California region specifically, which have made almost no effort to support any of it. So we're doing our part and we're going above and beyond even further. So I'll support the substitute motion on the floor. And I guess I would just say that. When I said on calls, I said on a call last week with a bunch of developers and real estate people, and the discussion was really about the amount of housing that's going into construction in 2022. And there are several other barriers besides policies. There's workforce barriers, there's resource barriers in terms of even lumber finally come back down a bit. But the cost of steel and lots of other things, it can't only be burdened on the backs of the communities to make up the difference. Inflation is not helping. And we'd love to help, but we need to see a collaborative, regional approach. And I think the moderate changes that Councilman Price has proposed are fair, equitable. And I will reiterate the same of Councilmember Sabrina. Community input on each and every one of these is critical because the transit lines constantly change and they're not coordinated. And until there's a method and a pathway forward that gives every resident the ability to go to and from their resident to a home or educational facility and transition into a job. And quite frankly. Remember Richardson and I've talked about this, the restructuring of the tax structure in the state of California to incentivize cities for us to really bring the jobs to the people. I mean, there's just so many factors that really need to be coming together. So great work. And lots of work needs to be done by others outside of our city borders, and we need to work together on how to apply that pressure. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I, I like a lot of what I heard from the entire tonight in terms of I mean, just to put it in perspective. We have zoned for 26,000 units and our arena requirement is 26,000 units. But the arena requirement, you get 20 years. I mean, you get nine years to implement in our land use element, you get 20. So it's the arena standard is, you know, it cuts it in half. And the reality is we're going to have to have some enhancement, but we're also doing a lot more than a lot of cities are doing. And we all hear those concerns about parking management. And so and so what I'm going to do is combine, you know, I added some some things at the beginning around report back on the transportation parking management aligning it with this as a part of the implementation of this. Exploring the alignment between our three transportation agencies in a city more frankly, without the feasibility of that grab. Councilwoman prices amendments, which I think are in alignment with the parking concerns, make a lot of sense into one motion that we can all support. So that's going to be my substitute substitute motion, combine it all and send it back to staff. So I'm happy to make that motion. Could that have been a friendly. It all could have been the family on the main motion. But I actually like this process, right? I like this part. It was clean. You were able to get out what you wanted to say. We had to hold. All right. I think we arrived at a good place. Thank you. A very public comment on the photo. Speaker 2: There's no public comment. Speaker 0: Members, please. Mr. Vice Mayor, we need to make sure that we have separate votes on each of the two ordinances before you and a third vote on the adoption of the resolution. Okay, let's hear all three vote. Speaker 1: Which is scary. Speaker 0: Thank you. The next. Whenever they're happy when we're voting, we've done we've done the right thing. Speaker 2: Councilman Mongo. The motion is carried.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 21.68, and Subsection 21.25.506.A.7, all relating to Enhanced Density Bonus regulations, read and adopt as read. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: I think we're on 22 now. No. 34. Looks like 34. Sorry. Speaker 2: Item 34 is communication from Councilman Austin. Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Mango. Recommendation two requires City Manager to communicate the City of Long Beach opposition to Senate Bill nine and Senate Bill ten to the Governor and urge his veto. Speaker 1: Of this bills. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Austin, thank you so much. So we're going to try this again. So in July, city council unanimously approved the motion for the city staff to review potential impacts of nine and ten in Long Beach and report back to the state led committee. The state led committee met on August 25th and received the staff report. However, the item was agenda item that received the file on the report so the committee could not even consider taking a motion on the bill or position on the bill, despite all three committee members voicing opposition to the bills during the committee meeting. We now have time to wait for a formal committee recommendation on these bills. The board's 49 items have now passed the legislature and are on the governor's desk and he can act on these two bills within the next few weeks. Any day now. I believe that we should urge the governor to veto both of these bills because they are bad loans. We've worked hard to create more affordable and workforce housing in our community. We've had an extensive community engagement as we work to adopt new land use element and housing policy policies like student. Earlier this evening, we discussed the enhanced density bonus. Provide an additional tool in our city to incentivize. To build more affordable housing along transit corridors in many areas that are already given for multifamily housing. The policy was buried in the Planning Commission and through the community outreach process for the housing element update. However, roughly nine in ten. Applies a one size fits all approach to the entire state without the benefit of community input and extensive work that we put in at the local level to address our housing crisis. The legislation requires that by right approval, this new housing for completing the important local government review process that includes extensive public engagement without any requirement that the new housing development. The affordable housing. As we all know, it takes time for new housing to be built. We're seeing new housing opportunities, including affordable housing, in many parts of our city today. We're seeing more reuse built throughout the city. But at the same time, we've work to preserve the integrity and distinct character of our many great neighborhoods in our city. This legislation is opposed by a broad coalition of hundreds of local government. League of California Cities. Social justice advocate. Affordable housing group. Neighborhood Council. And many others. So tonight I'm asking my colleagues to join me in urging Governor Gavin Newsom to veto these bills and instead let our city continue to work to meet our housing needs with our local community input and policies and zoning that take into account our own local needs. The Long Beach Way. Thank you. I asked my colleagues, do you think you can form Mongo? Speaker 1: Thank you. I. Brought the initial item forward. I think that there has been a lot that we've learned through the years on how much a bill can change during the process. And I think that it's important for committees to be active and hear what the bill says and where it stands and then to advocate for those. And I've appreciated each committee's opportunity to do that. In hearing that, a majority of the members on the committee were supportive of opposing Senate Bill nine and ten. I had hoped that the committee would bring it to the full council in a similar way that we were just discussing another item that came to the full council because it had an unanimous committee support. So with that, I'm very supportive of this item. I appreciate council member Austin taking the leadership to bring it out of committee, even if it was a solely slated item. I think we've all learned a lot on Brownout because of the way that it came to the table. I appreciate that. And the advice and guidance of our city attorney and the changes we've made as the council. And I hope my colleagues will support this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman, your anger to comes from our mongo. That is precisely the point that did not come out to the committee. It came out through to the city council directly. We did have a robust discussion at the state level committee about these two items. It was a receive a final item that we voted on. And despite the feelings of the other members that were there still was a receipt, a final item that should have gone to the state committee for a vote. If we're going to come to the council and which had been brought separately, it was not. It came directly here. And that that's my issue with the with this item at this point, which I will not be supporting because of the procedural effort on that, just that we've had before in other committees. And we just had a discussion right now about the committee structure and what it does that we're supposed to do and we're supposed to work together. We are. But when we had and, you know, many of us have been here for a number of years now. So we know the process and we know what we our expectations are. And we need to work together on trying to bring things forward. Now, in these two areas right now, I think that this letter to the governor is. More symbolic than anything else. The governor is going to sign it all the it's passed both legislature, the legislature and the House. I mean, the assembly and the legislature. It's a it's a done deal. Now, there's other ways I understand from my participation other in other organizations, committees, that there is a. Growing effort in the community to bring a vote to the people of California. There's there's petitions being circulated that will address both SB nine and every ten. That'll be, of course, later on down the line. I'll wait for that to see what the result of that is. But right now, I think my vote for this would be a symbolic vote. And I don't do symbolic vote. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Arthur. So the symbolic vote was the receiver filed in committee? That was the symbolic vote. And you, Mr. Raja, respectfully had the ability to determine whether that was a receiving vote or if that was a straight up and down vote for a recommendation to come before this committee. Thank you. Excuse me. I'm not done. No, I actually didn't realize. I let everybody speak once. I didn't realize we had public comment. So I'm an invite to public comment if you want to queue up and speak right after that, I want to finish my point. You go you get this final point that we're going to public. Okay. So the point is that, yes, you spoke in committee and you said that you were opposed to both SB nine and ten. There was it was unanimous all three members and so. During the committee, I said, Well, why aren't we bringing this to the floor and let's bring it to the floor. So I brought it to the floor and I gave you, Mr. Chair, as well as our vice mayor, who was also on the committee, the opportunity to serve on the bill. And both of you declined to sign on the bill. One on item two, to oppose this legislation here on the floor as a body, as a city council, and to send that message to the legislature and the governor. And so I just have to call it what it is. You said the process, I think is disingenuous. And I think to members of the public here. Dietrich Geiger and Janet Foster, if you can come forward, the Dietrich here. Okay. Dietrich first and then Janet. I'm a resident of district shares in the island district and I am coming today to urge you guys to support those SB ten and to not oppose it. I come today with the perspective of a real estate agent who works primarily with first time homebuyers. Those are renters. A lot of them are Long Beach residents. And it really sucks because a lot of the times I have to tell them, most of the time they cannot buy a house and they are not poor. They are not low income. They are not $100,000 income earners either. To tell them that if they want to buy, they either have to get a small little condo over here in downtown or they have to be back to the desert. They don't want to do either. They do not want to be super commuters. They want to own a home. They want to build equity. They want to have something they can pass on to their kids or that they can have something as a back up for themselves. Please support SB nine and SB ten and increase the housing that we have here in our city. And an all star for you. Thank you. Thank you. Next identified the. Speaker 1: Good evening. Thank you for this chance to speak to you. I am I am a resident of District two and also I am a co-leader of the Long Beach chapter of Yimby. And I'm asking this Council to support SB nine and SB ten. I enjoyed a lot of the spirited conversation tonight, particularly with Councilmember Mongeau stating that Long Beach is doing as much as we can in terms of dense housing related to transit. There's still another thing that Long Beach can participate with and also the cities that are mentioned where they're not doing as much as Long Beach. A lot of times one of the key components of SB nine and SB ten deals with the single family lot, and that, unfortunately, in California as a whole has been weaponized a lot. Whether it's based on equal access, opportunity to purchase, or whether it's from working and middle class earners as well as it has a history. And we all know that history of how single family lots were leveraged in the 1950s and this is the last vestige of this. And I asked this council to not ask the governor to veto SB nine and SB ten. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. All right. So I'm going to offer my my comments on this on this item. I don't see any other council comments here. So I want to thank Councilman Austin for bringing this forward, I think. What I want to say is that I think we've we've been very clear time and time again and throughout the years about the issue of local control. Long Beach protect local control in our state legislative agenda. It's been there. It's not new. We advocate in support of protecting local control already as a part of the legislative agenda. We've submitted amendments on nine and ten, many of which have been accepted. I and and I personally opposed a number of these bills. And my role as president is guard and other roles. And it wasn't because I don't doubt. I don't deny the housing crisis that we have. In fact, and I've been a champion on a number of things and had very difficult conversations around the green and other things . And so I think the issue is that I personally believe that we should try to maintain land use decisions as local. Also been clear. Even recently I expressed my opposition to these bills at the state level committee. I met with the governor's office who? Just two weeks ago. Talking about this bill and the prospects of the future of the bill. I met with them just to just two weeks ago in my capacity as the immediate past president of Sky. So the city's position, my own position on the city council have been very public about their position on local control. So that's that's not an issue here. I think I think there's also a reality that we should acknowledge that that Janet brought up and nice to meet again that Janet brought up is that single family housing in general in a number of cities. And I notice of our regional high single family housing has been used as a means to block any growth from taking place. And the ultimate result of the, you know, the abuse of single family housing is that housing and the burden. The burden of density gets pushed on things like Long Beach because other cities have not done their part. And so and in that from that standpoint, the state has attempted to take action to fix the issue of the squeeze down in one area and push everybody out of one community popped up in the other, and it exacerbates the homelessness crisis. And so from the state standpoint, I actually understand why five or six members of our local delegation voted to address this, and the state has taken action. You've got you know, in the last week or so, the legislature approved a bill with 28 to 6 vote in the Senate. 45 to 19 in the Assembly. Now, I wish this hadn't been the case. But the reality is that's the case. This is an issue statewide. We advocated for protections for us here in Long Beach. Many of those have been included. And that's the hard reality, is that although we wish that hadn't happened, the state has taken that action. And so I think. Personally with overwhelming support in the legislature. I think the things that are you know, in the conversation with the governor's office, I think the reality is that this thing is going to be fine. This is the law. The state is taking action. This is about to happen. And thinking about that, I think, what's this? This vote is going to have very little impact on the actual trajectory of the bill. So what are we doing tonight? I think we have to really think about, you know, we're already on the record. We're already in one place. What action are we taking tonight? Are we taking an action to shift the course of this process? I don't believe that that's possible at this point. From a process standpoint, I think it's time to be honest with residents, that it's time to be honest with the residents and and it's time to move on from this issue. And so tonight, for that reason and for many reasons, I don't think that this is the action the city lobby should take tonight. And moving to ask the governor to veto this, it is not likely to happen. And we need to move on from this issue and be honest about the reality of this legislative session and what we need to prioritize in the future. So that's it. I think we have one more Councilwoman Margo. Speaker 1: I honestly just don't know. You'd stated that we are already on the record with our position on these items. Dr. Hurley Had we sent our position on these items to the delegation or. What was our position formally? Speaker 0: The city is neutral on the bill currently. Speaker 1: And why are we neutral when the state legislative agenda states that we are against removing local control? Speaker 0: Well, in terms of SB nine, one of the main things that have changed since last year, this is the bill that was closest to SB 50, which the city opposed last year and this year. The bill basically is the definition of local control in the sense that city would have to make an effort to take an action in order to avail ourselves of the streamlining that allowed in the bill. So in terms of SB ten, that's one of the core changes over the last year and a half or so. And on the SB nine, I think as the Vice Mayor was referring to, one of the items we added to the state legend of this year was in response to some of the conversations that council has had recently actually for the development of single family homes into multi-unit properties. We included a new item to allow for more advocacy around reasonable requirements on those developments. So one of the things that we did try to incorporate in 39, how much is around affordability requirements as well as owner occupancy options for local agencies to impose? And that is one of the things that did get amended into SB nine this year. Now there is a requirement for property owners to subdivide using SB nine to sign an affidavit that says that they will live in one of their residences for at least three years. Speaker 1: I'm very supportive of those things. I guess my just misunderstanding is. We currently have more control than we would have if this bill passes. That could. That's what I thought. Our former presentation stated. Speaker 0: That is correct. Speaker 1: Okay. So this takes away some of our local control and we as a council have advocated for more local control. And I appreciate, Dr. Crowley, that you got a lot of the things in there for us. And I know that as a councilmember who was very engaged in consistently working with Chris and Oscar and all the crew over there, we were consistently working to improve the bill. Before figuring out now that it's out of state where it probably will be. My agenda item was to refer it to committee at that time, but I think it's important, even if we are okay with some things. My understanding is that local control is still what we believe is. The strikes. And so for those reasons, it is. What would you say we have as an official position? You said no position. So I guess I'm confused by the vice mayor's comments when he says that we are already on the record on this item. Could you help me understand how we're on there? I just don't know. We have not sent any formal on the record of our opinion of these bills or have we. Speaker 0: Not on behalf of the city. Okay. Speaker 1: So. I appreciate Councilmember Austin for inviting me to be a part of this, because I do think it's important that we take an official position on requesting the governor veto these two bills. We'll see what happens. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kirby, for all the hard work you've done through this session. And to everyone who's engaged, we know this is important to everyone. And thank you and also for continue to focus on this issue. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Emotion fail. Speaker 0: Right. So I think we're that satisfies the agenda. We're now at closing public comment. I don't have a list. Speaker 2: Vice-Chair We have item 39 and also item 29 being withdrawn. Speaker 0: So we have two more. Okay. Left here 39 and 29. 39.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to communicate the City of Long Beach’s opposition to Senate Bill 9 and Senate Bill 10 to the Governor and urge his veto of these bills.

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Speaker 0: Motion. Scary. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next, we'll have item number 12, please. Speaker 0: Item number 12, a report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record, conclude the public hearing and adopt the master's fees and charges schedule and the water and sewer rates citywide. Speaker 1: Thank you. There's a motion for a second. Okay. So we moved in, seconded. There's no public comment on this item. Speaker 0: There is one public comment on this item, Mr. Mike Murchison. Speaker 1: Okay. Good evening, vice mayor and council member is my name is Mike Murchison. I am a lifetime resident in Long Beach. I live in the eighth. And on behalf of rental property owners who have been hammered during this pandemic, I just want to kind of give you an observation about the water and sewer increases. Chris Gardner explained everything to me and he did a masterful job. So I don't have an argument with the background of Prop 218 and how the water and sewer rates are increased. But the problem that I have is the deferred rent that you all have been dealing with. Those moneys haven't been allocated to the extent possible because of the federal income requirements. So a lot rental property owners have been hammered financially on top of this. Rental property owners make up, in my opinion, the majority of the accounts the Long Beach Water has. Now, the state recognizes one building, meaning if you own 20 units in a building, they only recognize as one building and yet as a rental property owner, you've got to pay for all your tenants in there for your water and sewer rates. So a couple of weeks ago, the Long Beach Water Department had their meeting making a recommendation to you folks. Over 700 emails opposing the water and sewer rate were submitted to the Long Beach Water Department. My only point to you is that increases like this should be deferred at least for another year until we get through the Delta variant and COVID and all that, to continue to hit an industry that keeps getting blasted left and right, it's just not right. I just want you guys to take that into account. I know that this is going to probably move forward in all likelihood, but there's a lot of frustrated rental property owners out there right now . When you get over 700 that submit emails, that own, you know, multiple buildings, multiple units, it gives you an idea of the frustration that's out there right now. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no further public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 0: And Vice Mayor Richardson, there are multiple votes on this item. Speaker 1: Right? Speaker 0: Trump went after. Ocean is carried. Three had a vote on the second again. Speaker 1: This is concluding this is completing the budget actions from our previous council meeting. All right, members, please cast your vote. Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Okay. Speaker 1: One more time. Speaker 0: Motion is very. Speaker 1: Interesting. Thank you. So next, we'll take up the fund transfer items. This item 13, 16, 17, 29 and 30 and 31.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and take the continued actions necessary to adopt the Master Fees and Charges Schedule and the Water and Sewer Rates as they relate to the Fiscal Year 2022 budget as listed in Attachment A. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 1: Thank you. Let's have 24. Speaker 0: Please report from Human Resources Recommendation to execute contract amendments for health, vision, prescription dental, life and disability insurance to maintain current benefit levels and remain in compliance with state and federal laws and all plans city wide. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Miller. Could you give us a brief update on what this is? Sure. Every year we go through our health insurance and we work collaboratively with our employer organizations, they sit on an advisory committee. Our health or human resources department did an amazing job in keeping costs low. This is about a three and a half percent increase. It's important to compare that to annual averages in the industry, which is 7.7%. So there's a number of changes here, if you'd like specifically the detail, we can get into those with any questions, but we're recommending approval and any public comment on this item. Speaker 0: There's no public comment. Speaker 1: Thank you. Members, please cast your vote.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute contract amendments with Anthem Blue Cross, the City’s third-party administrator for the Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) group health plans, and Medicare Supplement Plan; UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage PPO Plan; Scan Health Plan for the Medicare Advantage Plan; and Vision Service Plan (VSP) for the vision plan; CVS Caremark as the Prescription Benefit Manager (PBM) for the Prescription Drug Plan for the PPO and HMO plans; Delta Dental for the fee-for-service dental plan (DPPO) and Delta Dental USA (HMO plan); The Standard Insurance Company for employer-paid life insurance, voluntary life insurance, and short- and long-term disability insurance; Union Mutual Life Insurance Company (UNUM), through Larry Lambert & Associates Insurance Services, for long-term care insurance; and implement a contractual agreement with Carrum Health as a third-party administrator for eligible surgeries to be performed through a Centers of Excellence facility; and, any subsequent amendm

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Speaker 0: Councilwoman Mongo. Motion is carried. Speaker 1: Thank you. Item 21, please. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilwoman Allen councilwoman than to has Councilwoman Price councilman serve recommendation to direct city manager to report back in 90 days with a plan to create a commission on women and girls in the city of Long Beach, as recommended by the Long Beach Human Relations Commission. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 0: I. Yes, I thank you very much. Let me just start by saying I I'm just, I'm just so honored that, uh, that we're actually here. Item 21 Commission on Women and Girls and 1975, a Long Beach City Councilwoman Renee Simon introduced the idea of a woman's council. A woman's commission? And 46 years ago she could not get a second, one male council member remarked. If this passes, I move to establish a men's commission. We have come a long way since then, but our journey is nowhere done. The era had yet. Ta ta ta path. And. And so what I like to do is like, if I can go ahead and I'll complete my comments, if I can go and go to public comments and then then I'm going to come back and complete my comment. Speaker 1: Okay. Sounds good to me. As you remember members of the public for public comment voting Mickelson Barbour sitting up and Janet Foster. Speaker 0: I have to say I'm ready. And I, too, have been given an extra minute because I'm speaking on behalf of the Human Relations Commission, and I brought a letter of recommendation that they have presented to you and are being distributed now. My name is Zoe Nicholson. Speaker 1: I live in Rose. Speaker 0: Park and I'm a proud commissioner on the Human Relations Commission. And this is my way. First of all, I thank the women and girls of Long Beach. I thank the men of Long Beach. I thank the vice mayor. I thank the five majority women who sit on this council. Speaker 1: I'm so happy to see you. Speaker 0: And I thank the gentleman here. I know some of you, and it's been a pleasure. I'm going to skip two for the sake of time. The part of this letter that I wrote. I think it's we have the other letter and, you know, you can read it at your leisure. At Long Beach Commission for women and girls working, intersectional and inclusive, they would provide equality and justice for women and girls, cis, trans and those who identify as female. Focusing on economic equity, educational equity, access to health care, including reproductive choice, violence against women, and other key issues identified by the commission as significantly affecting women and girls . The California State Commission has recognized the. Speaker 1: Overwhelming. Speaker 0: Circumstances that women face and the extraordinary compounding demands brought about by COVID 19. They have asked California to go city by city. And join Berkeley, Carson, Compton, Glendale, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa monica and West Hollywood in establishing a commission for women and girls. The city of Long Beach is one. Speaker 1: Of the primary leaders. Speaker 0: In California and setting a standard for inclusion, diversity, equity, respect and full inclusivity. There is an abundance of expertize of women and girls in Long Beach. Speaker 1: And as such. Speaker 0: Appointing women. Speaker 1: From each of your districts. Speaker 0: Will assure a city of brilliant commissioners working for. Speaker 1: Women. Speaker 0: And girls, uplifting the lives of women and girls actually uplifts the lives of everyone. The Long Beach Human Relations Commission is. Speaker 1: Presenting this letter. Speaker 0: Of recommendation to the city council, to the mayor, with the theory they will follow with a series of listening sessions with women and girls in this city to gain additional feedback on what their needs are that the Commission could address. And as I have to say, my councilwoman, Cindy Allen, who's been a real champion of this and I'm so grateful, had sort of stolen my thunder. But it's rather interesting, if you can only imagine. Renee Simon coming up to the city, up to the dais here. In 1975, she had just come back from the International Women's Convention and she was on fire about the advancement of women and girls. And she brought it to the floor. She could not get a second. But tonight, I know we're going to get a second and we're going to get a unanimous vote and we're going to begin the process of establishing a commission to advance a life for women and girls. And it's a really proud, emotional moment. And thank you very much. And by the way, thank you for my vaccine. I'm so very grateful that the. Speaker 1: City took. Speaker 0: Care of all of. Speaker 1: Us. Thank you so much. Next, we have barber shop. Speaker 0: Good evening, Vice Mayor Richardson and members of the council. I'm Barbara Shippen, and I'm the president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Greater Long Beach in West Orange County. It's kind of interesting to have this item follows the last item in which we are celebrating diversity and moving things forward in the city. And it was really shocking for me to hear that this item had been. Dragon in some ways in the city for so many years. So I'm very excited to be here this evening. I've had the opportunity to participate in the establishment of a commission in another jurisdiction, and I can testify that it really adds value to the work of government staff as they have more voices and more opportunity to hear and see what is going on in the community. And it also provides a safe environment for women to come forward to talk about some things. Councilman Richardson, we talked about the sex trafficking issues in the city that National Council also involved with. So there needs to be a commission that can focus on the needs and the wants and desires and the opportunities for women and children within the city. National Council was founded over 100 years ago specifically to work to better the lives of women, children and families. And along the section has just celebrated our 75th anniversary. So we have been working on these issues for many years. And I'm very proud and very excited to be before you this evening to support this. I would only say that I'm hoping that perhaps the report could come back before 90 days so we can establish the commission in this year and not have another year go forward to start before we have a commission. So thank you very much and I look forward to a success as we join together through this effort. Thank you. Speaker 1: And fantastic. Thank you. Next is Janet Foster. Speaker 0: Hello, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts. Also to Cindy Allen. Thank you so much. I'm a resident of District two and I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this. I like to add to what the previous speaker shared with you. I'd also like to have a consideration of intersectionality and within any discussion of women and girls here in Long Beach as it relates to background, economics also have a focus on, of course, racial and ethnic intersectionality because I think that's important as well. And and I agree that 90 days may be a little long. If it can be done sooner, that would be appropriate. And certainly I really appreciate this opportunity to voice support. And thank you very much. Speaker 1: Fantastic. Thank you. That concludes public comment. We'll take it back behind the rail. Councilwoman Allen. All right. Speaker 0: Thank you so much to the speakers. And my goodness, this item is long overdue. What is it? 46 years is a long time to wait. And I just want to thank my colleagues, Councilwoman Farrow, Councilwoman Van de Haas and Councilman Price for their support and also to Councilman Mongo. One drawback of having a majority of women in council is and not everyone can sign onto items together, but representation matters. And it's our duty to uplift women and our community. And I'm just so honored to serve on this diocese with all of these. Women. I also want to thank a Human Relations Commission here, Members Chair Terris and Vice Chair Erickson and of course you, Zoe, for being the front of this and for your years of service and and work. And I don't know if you know this, but you when I got elected, you were one of my first calls. And so it was just it was just really it was really moving for me. So I just want to thank you personally for all that you have done for coming out tonight. It's to wonderful to see you and I just to hear your comments and think that, you know, we absolutely need to improve the lives of women and children in this city. I heard this said in one of the meetings and someone said this and I don't know who, but they said, you know, women represent 50% of the population in the city, which means that they also represent 50% of our of our potential. So when women thrive, all of us thrive and prosper. And it's just time for a commission on women and girls. Women still face persistent barriers to accessing economic security, salary, lack of funding, forgiveness waived a wage gap, not to mention the issues with physical and mental health care. The COVID 19 health and economic crisis has only worsened the inequalities, endangering the progress of many women who. I've been able to achieve who haven't been able to achieve workplace homes and communities. And childcare access is also needed now more than ever. And I know that my colleagues have heard me talk about that quite a bit, especially during COVID. Women's well-being should be viewed as distinct yet interrelated. The topics of health. Personal safety. Domestic violence. Employment and earnings. Economic security. And political empowerment. I would like to see opportunities for this Commission to collaborate with other advisory commissions to uplift recommendations for City Council, where issues facing women and girls also intersect with other with other area. According to reports produced by the city's Office of Equity. Among full time workers in Long Beach, white men earn nearly two times as much as Latina women. 63% of black woman heads of household are considered rent burdened, compared to 52% of white women heads of household. Based on these factors, this commission must also intersect with a framework for reconciliation and racial equity to ensure a strong gender and racial equity lens. Also, I'd also like to kindly request that staff look at how these commissions have been established in other jurisdictions, including in legislation that defines the role of the Commission, staffing to implement projects, activities, initiatives of the Commission and how commissions are resourced and funded. I also like to look into the partnership with the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. I recently saw that the state budget includes a one time funding of $7.9 million, 5 million of which will be utilized to facilitate a statewide woman's recovery response in the wake of COVID 19. So can we also look and see about this funding and see if that could be used for any efforts that we're doing with this commission or any future efforts? So I look forward to seeing this plan come back. I agree I agree with with any of the speakers that there is an opportunity to get this quicker than 90 days. That would be very welcomed if that's possible. But again, I just want to thank all the advocates. Thank you, though. I think everyone that came up to speak for the creation of a commission on women and girls. It's about time. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 0: Thank you. And thank you to the speakers and to Councilwoman Allen for bringing this item forward. I'm so pleased to see this item coming before the full city council. It's been a long time coming, and as we work to ensure gender parity here in Long Beach and provide for the future of women and girls, it's very important that we continue to highlight these issues through our volunteer commissions, nonprofit organizations and as a council body. Over five years ago, in March of 2016, I, along with my fellow female council members at the time there were four of us brought an item asking the city manager to identify a commission to partner with with California State University Long Beach to complete a gender analysis study of Long Beach after the gender analysis study is completed. The selected City Commission was to examine policy reforms as outlined by the study and consistent with the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women known as CEDAW. At the time, it was deemed to not be feasible for the city council or for the city to participate in such a partnership. But today we have seen the influence of women grow here in Long Beach to become a majority on the city council and even broke the 50% mark on our city commissions a few years ago for the first time. So it is my hope not only that this commission is formed, but that once the commission is formed, we take the next step to become a sea city. I think, Councilwoman Allen, for bringing this forward, and I look forward to becoming a see the city through the partnership with this council. This commission. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilwoman than they have. Speaker 2: In his so months. Councilwoman Allen Price Sorrell and mango for first of all your leadership and for for just being as excited and as I am for this possibility of this commission. Thank you to the Human Relations Commission. I'm so excited for this recommendation to Zoe, who has been our champion and and just everybody who has participated and made this known that we need Women's and Girls Commission. I think that this commission will do amazing things, and I think it will be tremendous support and inspiration to all women and young girls throughout our city. It is particularly particularly symbolic to support such an item that did not get received a lot of support almost 50 years ago. How great is that to be up here and be able to vote on on this item and make sure that like some like that audience member said, you know, make sure that we get a second , but not only a second. Also get a unanimous vote. That will be amazing. I fully am in support of this of this item, and I look forward to what it will bring to our city. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think the pandemic has also brought a lot of light on to the impact that policies have on women specifically. And I think that there's a lot of data to support that. And the pandemic. Really showed how some roles in our families have have really reverted back in times of crisis and need. And so having a group of women here to advocate for our health and our economics and all of the things that are necessary to still be an equal partner at the table in moving our city forward is a critical role. Very fortunate. I work for the County of Los Angeles, so very early on I've been enrolled in the updates from their Commission on Women and Girls. And while I recognize that commissions are very lean in the county, in the city, and then we don't have the staff support that are necessary, if you do get to a point where you do a report out whether it's short or long, I know that every single one of us females here at the Dyas and many of our male colleagues have newsletters and we'd love to include those updates as a tool for you to reach the many, many women that subscribe to our newsletters. And I'd love to hear from you. As a comment on coming back within 90 days, you should know that you will. The fiscal year for the city of Long Beach is about to close in 23 days. So if it does come back in 90 days, you will be a part of this upcoming year, which I think will be a huge success. And so I think the difference between 80 days and 90 days or 100 days, it's all it's all going to get you into the process of next year's commissions. And so I look forward to that. Thank you for being here. Of course, we would have loved to have done it earlier, but with all things come, good timing. And with that timing comes great momentum. And I think the momentum is here for you to be the most impactful that you could have ever been, at least during my time in the city. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilwoman Farrow. Speaker 0: Thank you. I want to thank Councilwoman Allen on her for her leadership on this item, as well as my councilwoman colleagues who have spoken out. Really just want to add on to other comments about how important it is to have this commission. Because, you know, we saw a public speaker earlier saying, you know, my body, my choice and pro-choice. For a minute I thought it was a pro abortion group. But you know, that that brings to mind just the fight that needs to continue around reproductive justice. I think that, you know, I started my work with my girls in action where it was a lot about doing such sex education on top of what was a hot pot or not taught at school to then fighting for their right as minors to be able to determine what they do with their body. And I think that that continues to be a fight that we need to stand in solidarity with what's happening in Texas, but also just how we need to continue to continue this fight here in Long Beach, as well as overall California. As much as we might think that we are progressive or safe, we can't kind of stand by and think that we are because we have the next generation to empower and educate and support. And I think that the state is this commission will help us do that is not just for women who are in the career field , too, but also the next generation learning the juggle between whether or not they decide to become a mother, but also having a career and having the support through the childcare and any other issues that your face when you grow older, right? So with that, I support this item and for my colleague and stand in solidarity with them. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Council member Urunga. Thank you. And I want to thank my majority caucus on the days. As a member of the minority caucus of Days, I want to add my voice in support of this item. I think it's more important that we work together. Nothing that is ever done on the city council is not without the support of. The women and men that comprise the city council in moving our city forward. And that's important as well as in the community. I think it was stated that there were 5050 in the city of Long Beach and what a great way to celebrate that. And by creating a women and girls commission to address all the necessary issues that need to be addressed. You know where that with the 21st century. And we're still dealing with. Disparity among men and women. We shouldn't be. We shouldn't be doing that right now. So I look forward to the development of this commission. And I have you have my 100%, 110%. Support on this committee that. Thank you. Councilman Cooper now. Thank you. I'm very proud to support this item tonight. And thank you to the makers of the motion for bringing it forward. I want to hit this 90 day issue again and I'll approach it from a different perspective. I think Zoe Nicholson demonstrated extreme patience with her August 26th celebration. It was postponed for a year. I think this body needs to do everything in our power to fast track this and whatever we can do. City Manager, please let us know. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. I join in the chorus of support of this item. Again, thank you, Councilmember Allen, for bringing it forward. And I appreciate all of the the hard work, the advocacy that's gone into getting us to this point. As I mentioned in the last item, this is a this is a gut check. This is a values vote that we'll take here this evening. We are city council that prides itself on diversity. We're city council that provides ourself pride ourselves on equity. And this is a step closer to being a more equitable city. And I can just I know there's a laundry list of issues for this commission to really work on that will will vex the city council to to. To make changes in pay equity is one of them. You know, we want to make sure that pay equity and and and so many other areas that that have been traditionally . That aside, get up with it to front. And so I'm happy to support this. Thank you. I'll offer my comments here first to thank you to my council colleagues for for bringing this forward. I think it is absolutely critical for the future of our city. I personally feel that it is long overdue. You know, the role of cities is changing and has been changing. And when you see that, you know, like my colleague mentioned, the disparities exposed by COVID 19, the recent Supreme Court decision on reproductive rights in Texas, it's very it's a it's a very real issue. And we need to make sure that we change our organization and commit to systems thinking the steps you've seen in recent years, establishing enough equity, establishing an equity commission, establishing a women's commission. Those are system changes. You change the organization and build capacity for the organization, make better decisions, more reflective of the population. That's what this is today. So our city will become better. Our decision making will become better because we change our organization to be reflective of the interests and the needs of today and for the future. And so I certainly want to thank you all of the leadership, though. I saw you just recently. We talked we talked about this. Yes. You will get a second. Yes, you will get a unanimous vote. We're excited to certainly support this. And again, thank you to my colleagues for for moving this forward. Thank you to the the new equity commission for their recommendation and the chair for this for this letter of support. And I think this is a great step in the right direction. I look forward to unanimous vote. Thank you. Our members, please cast your vote. Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 1: Congratulations. Thank you. All right. Now we're going to go to item number 15.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to direct City Manager to report back in 90 days with a plan to create a Commission on Women and Girls in the City of Long Beach, as recommended by the Long Beach Human Relations Commission.

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Speaker 1: Congratulations. Thank you. All right. Now we're going to go to item number 15. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilwoman Allen, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Sara Recommendation to request City Manager to work with Public Works Department to report back in 30 days with an update on the current status of the E-SCOOTER program and other mobility share programs. Speaker 1: Councilman Allen. Speaker 0: All right. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I've heard from residents and a variety that have a variety of concerns about the e-scooters, and I'm sure a lot of my colleagues have signed on to this item, have as well. You know, we've people contact our office about safety and. Coming down the sidewalk. If you know any scooters, oleic acid is a concern. I'm also like how many scooters are coming into the city who operate them? Where are the drop zone? How are these drop zone drop zones decided? And and then how to report issues. So I would like for our residents to clearly see what the path forward for micro mobility looks like here in Long Beach. I'm also excited to see the go. Long Beach might be able to incorporate some of these issues into that app, so I'm happy to see that it looks like that's going to be happening. I want to thank the city staff, the mobility staff for working closely with my team on the side up and I'm excited to see what is coming up for our Micromobility and Mobility Share program. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Price. Speaker 0: Thank you and thank you to Councilman Allen for bringing this item forward. It was just a couple of weeks ago, I don't know, time flying by, maybe a month ago that we voted on the item that I brought regarding a third party vendor being part of our future scooter contracts, e-scooter contracts, so that we can see an improvement in scooter pickup. I'm still hopeful that that study will come back and give us some feasible options. But I'm hoping that when this particular study comes back, it addresses a few things that we hear a lot about. The first is when this program was originally established, there was funding set aside for enforcement of safety violations and helmet laws. I'd like to see some information on the number of citations that have been given or safety related scooter violations that we've documented. I'd like to know if there's any information on injuries associated with scooters, including those left on the sidewalk that present a hazard for residents. I'd love to know if we have any information on the number of individual Long Beach residents that have accounts with various scooter vendors as opposed to tourist accounts. I'd like to know whether or not we've seen scooter companies fulfilling their contractual obligations to maintain scooters in the public right of way. Because it seems to me that they have been some have been negligent in that responsibility. Another question that we get a lot and I'm still very conflicted about what what's happening, because I don't quite understand it. And one of my staff members recently observed this. Who decides where scooter pickup locations are and where they're placed? Is that the traffic engineers or the company? One of my staff members was out doing field work last week and one of the scooter companies dropped off a whole bunch of scooters, right, in a residential neighborhood in front of someone's house and said that that was within their city contract, which was shocking to me. So I don't know if that's true or not. How often do residents contact the city, either directly or through the council office, requesting us to address scooter related issues as opposed to contacting the scooter companies directly? And so these are just some of the questions that I'd love to see included in whatever report comes back. Do we have any sort of metric for the success of this program? Initially, the intent of the program was to take cars off the street and allow for different mobility options. Are we tracking that data? Do we have any way to measure it? And and so I think for me, I'd like to get a sense of where we are with the E-SCOOTER program. Does it make sense for us to move forward with it? What enforcement options are available for contractual? Failure to follow the contractual terms and how can we basically improve the quality of life issues for our residents who who want the scooters but don't want the the scooters and the the results of the scooter companies that aren't following their contractual terms. And I know that this item also says other mobility share programs. So the other question that I had is what is the status of the item that we passed at council? Probably about a year ago, allocating funds to a ride a bus minibus program that would travel from downtown Long Beach to Second and PCH area and transport people. I haven't heard anything about that program and I'm wondering what the status of that is. Speaker 1: Sure I can answer a couple of those questions, so I'll take the last 1/1. The mobility program, that was an item to do some research and looking to see what it would take to be able to fund some micro transport like we did a free pilot program that's going to be wrapped into the American Recovery Act money . So now we actually have money to do that. We can go back and check on the status of the report, but we're planning to be able to use some of the Funding and Recovery Act to move that item forward. And what we were planning to also report on is we we have another mobility program. It's our bike share program. It's been actually around longer than the others. So we were going to that's our other major mobility program that we would report on. When we first heard this item, we thought this was a pretty simple report on just the data that we currently collect. And so we have that available. We can get that within 30 days pretty easily. Some of the additional questions we can you know, those are good questions. We can certainly work on those. It's going to take us a little bit more time. So we took a lot of notes that those are part of the motion. We can put that together and work on a report. Speaker 0: Thank you. And just to be clear, the item regarding the working with the bus company, my understanding is and I could be wrong, but I thought we set aside a specific amount of money and directed staff to engage with a vendor. And I believe it was eight months to a year ago, we specifically allocated specific amount of money from the 12 million extra that we had identified. So that I believe that the money that we had already received and identified and we voted on it. You know, motion was made specifically about that program. Speaker 1: Correct? That was March 16th. There was about $2 million at the time that was allocated. And then just until you adopted your budget, that's when that budget got finalized. So that actually got reduced down to about I'm trying to remember, probably $1.6 million because every allocation had to get a reduction. Before we can start doing the RFP, we had to figure out what that actual amount is and then that will move forward. So there is funding associated with that project that we can work on. Speaker 0: Okay, great. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. I've had similar experiences. I really want to thank Public Works for their work on helping us when all of a sudden 15 scooters are dropped off next to a bus station in a place where they're blocking the walking path and or a wheelchair path of our residents, they shouldn't have to walk into the street to get to public transportation. So I appreciate public works responding, but I think that the questions that Councilman Price really bring forward really discuss the cost of this program on our taxpayers and the residents and the convenience and the inconvenience. I was in Councilman Allen's district the other day over at the park, and multiple scooters were blocking the parking opportunities. And luckily my husband got my daughter on to the grass and one at a time took every single scooter out of the paid parking spaces that were not paying for parking and would not then get a ticket taking up parking spaces that are critical and valuable in District two, especially on a weekend. And so I'm very interested. I opened my app at the time to go Long Beach app, and there's an opportunity to put a band in a shopping cart, but there's nowhere to say. Abandoned scooter, inappropriate area. We should probably allow community members to track that for us and help us with this kind of challenge. Because I would have gone out and done all 15 of those scooters that were blocking the bus stop. So I recognize we're already spending considerable resources. On the flip side, I do hear a lot of benefits. I hear community members that used to ride scooters to Long Beach City College and the such. I think during the pandemic that probably went down considerably and the utilization was very different. And I look forward to seeing this data and I support all the questions coming back to us. I think that they're really critical in our ability to evaluate if this is a good fit for us, and I would even be interested to see how it compares with our bicycle data. I really think that we need to be in a position to have one of our nonprofit partners, maybe partners of Park, look for us to get a sponsorship. When you go to Chicago, all the bicycles are all sponsored by, I want to say like Kaiser Permanente or Blue Cross or whatever it is. And that's I'd be interested in knowing how much money the city receives to contribute to health and wellness based on those sponsorship agreements. So lots of opportunities to improve the program. And that was a big risk when we took this on. And I look forward to hearing the report back. Thank you. Speaker 1: So, Councilmember, I do want to add you had mentioned it and so did Councilmember Allen about the ability to report some of these. We have been working for the past probably two months, did add it to the Long Beach app so that we can actually have people be able to respond and get that directly to the vendors . So that should launch, I believe, this week if it hasn't launched already. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman. And they her. Speaker 2: Thank you very much again, Councilwoman Allen, for bringing this item forward and for those who have signed on. As you know, I'm a big supporter of alternative forms of transportation that are both fun and convenient and also more environmentally friendly. But we do need to be careful with the unintended consequences that they may have. And I do agree with a lot of the statements and requests that Councilmember Price has made tonight in regards to finding an exact data, making sure that we are that we have these mobility, you know, company in our city, but that it's actually doing what it's supposed to do and in making it more more friendly to be able to be on e-scooters. And I think that having that data will show if we're actually making an impact in the city as we as we begin to approach more and more citywide events like the Grand Prix and also the other Los Muertos celebration, I think it's very important that we are there, that our residents know where, that we as a council are addressing the transportation needs and concerns, both, you know, for parking and also for companies like for mobility scooters and e-bikes. I think that we we need to really, really keep an eye out on making sure that the these these companies that we're contracting, that they have some kind of responsibility to make sure that they're running an efficient and safe business in our city. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman Cubana. Thank you. This goes back quite a while, but there was a request made at one of the early meetings on E-Scooters. And I'd forgotten about this until Councilmember Mongo mentioned the the carts. There was kind of a fundamental flaw in reporting abandoned carts and abandoned scooters. And that is still, if you call the phone number for an abandoned car, you'll be asked, what is the name on the cart or whose cart is it? And sometimes there is no identifier in it. So the cart remains abandoned. If they can't be processed and we've got them with the same gear and scooters that the average resident looking at their window or something may not be able to read the name of the scooter on there. So I don't know what's feasible. I just know it's been asked before. So if we could look into actually the possibilities on both issues, that'd be great. Thank you. Interesting. I'll just add a couple comments of support. Thank you so much to my council colleagues bringing this forward. I think, you know, we have to continue to refine this system and keep a close eye on it. And I also want to want to say just, you know, broadly, this is one system managed by the city. Long Beach Transit has its own governing authority. Metro has its own governing authority for our transportation system in the city isn't really. I think we can do a lot in terms of coordinating the way that we think about transportation and transit in our city. And we have to think I think we need to think a little bit bigger as it relates to how we manage and coordinate with other agencies to have one seamless experience for micro changing and public transit in our city metros looking at fairly systems. You know, there's there are things we can do to think about the overall system. That's not what this item is tonight. But I just want to keep in mind that as we focus on refining this program, we can't lose sight of there's no other agency responsible for convening all of these groups around the big picture of transit in our city, aside from the city of Long Beach. And so thanks a lot very public comment on this item. Okay. Seeing numbers members, please cast your vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Public Works Department to report back in 30 days with an update on the current status of the e-scooter program and other mobility share programs.

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Speaker 1: Okay. So, nonmembers, please cast your vote. Just one part. Most cars. Thank you. I remember 20. Recommendation to request city manager communicate the city of Long Beach in opposition to Senate Bill nine and Senate Bill ten to our state legislative delegation and governor's office. Thank you. And before we go, I don't see emotion yet, but before we go to the motion, I want to raise it with the city attorney concerned about Brown next and raised on this item. Could you speak to that, please, vice mayor, members of the council. Thank you. Yes. On Friday afternoon, I received a call from the vice mayor and Councilmember Urunga alleging a possible Brown Act violation regarding this item before you this evening. The both the vice mayor and the councilmember provided copies of emails they received from Council District eight asking if the Councilmember wish to sign on to the item. In addition, they indicated that Council District eight, since upper request to Council District three and five, also requesting their signature on the item. I have confirmed that these four emails were sent and the alleged violation is that Council District eight communicated with a majority of the council members outside of the public meeting concerning this upcoming item on the agenda. It is my opinion that there is sufficient evidence to show a direct communication with the majority of the Council members concerning an item within the jurisdiction of the Council outside of a public meeting, and then at in fact the item that was attached to the emails requesting they sign is the item placed on the agenda this evening. I understand the position of Council District eight that the Communication was only seeking the members to sign on to the item. However, as I mentioned, the communication requested. The letter was shared with the majority of the council and the item is taken a position on a state legislation. It would be reasonable to assume that those members of the Council agreeing to sign on to this letter, reviewed the council letter and would be or are in support of the position, and therefore it appears a collective occurrence of a majority of the Council was being sought in advance of the public meeting. So based upon my limited information here, it is my opinion that a Brown Act violation would occur if this item is considered, debated or voted on this evening. Further, my recommendation would be to withdraw or receive and file this item for a future meeting in order to cure this alleged violation. I would also recommend the Council consider adopting a Council policy that you would have no more than three members of a council sign on to any agenda item to help eliminate this possible violation. It's just very easy to occur unintentionally, of course, that the if one of the council members is not available or they discussed it and they are unable to sign on and they go to another council member and all of a sudden you might have five members inadvertently now discussing it or having it in front of you. So it something that the council hopefully will consider in the future. But for this particular item, I believe you could cure it by receiving and filing it this evening. And the council member from the eighth District or any other council member could bring this back as early as next week, and we would be able to move forward and discuss and consider it. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we should. You know, be mindful of the advice of the city attorney. Councilman Alston, would you like to respond? Sure. And possibly in the zeal of of trying to in urgency try of trying to get this item before the city council. Procedural errors were were made which I will assume responsibility because they were staff to staff communications and worked work member to member communications. I want to be clear on that. But in July, the City Council approved a motion for staff to review the potential impacts of SB nine and SB ten very, very important items of legislation here in Long Beach and throughout the state. And to report back to the state led committee. And typically that state led committee would take that information and then will consider making the recommendation to a full city council about whether to take a position on such a legislation. However, the state large committee met when we met to discuss this item on Wednesday, August 25th. It was agenda that they received and file item of a report so the committee could not even consider a motion to take on the particular bill. Of great importance to the city. This is despite the fact that all three city council members at the state led committee stated during the meetings that they did not support the bills. So given the timing of these bills, both now SB nine and SB ten have now passed the legislature and are on the governor's desk. We cannot wait for another committee meeting to be schedule. I felt it was important to bring these items forward to full consideration of the City Council to discuss and to consider taking a position on. I believe that we should urge a veto of both of these bills because they are bad for Long Beach. We have a history of cracker work legislation here and we know what the impacts are on our communities and neighborhoods. We work hard to create more affordable housing, workforce housing in our community. And we've had extensive community engagement as we've worked through and adopted a new land use element in housing policy. These bills apply to a one size fits all approach to the entire state without the benefit of community input and extensive work that we put in at our local level to address the housing crisis. And we all know it takes time for new housing to be built. And we are seeing new housing opportunities, including affordable housing in many parts of our city. We're also seeing great success with our 80 new policy built throughout the city. I think Mr. Turner wants to get to know I'm not done. I know he just came from county council and I would add when the council from the eighth District concludes, I would caution the rest of the council members to respond or debate this issue. It's clear the council member from the eighth District isn't finished. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I don't want to anyone to respond or to reply to that because then we would be debating the issue. So with that. Okay. But at the same time, we have work to preserve the integrity of the distinct character of many of our neighborhoods in our city. So tonight, understanding the advice of the city council and ask for my colleagues to join me at some point in urging the governor to veto these bills and instead let our city continue to work to meet our housing need. And then, as I love mayor likes to say, the Long Beach Way with local community input and policies and zoning that take into account all of our local needs. And again, Council, I do hear that that there is a receiving flow option to to to to. To to vote on that that that is completely okay with me. And again, I will just reiterate that I do not and it was not intentional to to violate any any procedural rules, any Brown act. Because if you walk down the line here, I have not had contact or conversation with more than two of my colleagues on this particular item in any way. Thank you. And just to be clear, that motion received five. There's also a government office that received promotion. Okay. So there's a motion receiver file that is that we your second in fall in price. Speaker 0: Um, I was going to I actually had a couple procedural questions not about the merits. Speaker 1: But just quickly, I just want to be clear on what we're debating. Speaker 0: Yeah, well, I didn't know what Councilman Austin was going to say when I said he's given me a lot to think about here. So I think what I would like to do is make a friendly that this item come back. Does it have to be refiled or can it can we make a motion to bring it back on another time? Can we just put it on for next week? Speaker 1: Just got to put it back on. Absolutely. We can bring it back. Anyone could put it on the supplemental for next week. Speaker 0: That's right. Okay. So so the procedural question I had is so I was one of the recipients of the email asking if I would sign on to the item, but I don't know who else was asked. And so is it is it the case? And this is just a clarifying question. I answer don't know the answer to this question. If you ask three colleagues to sign on to an item and let's say one of them signs on and two and says, you know what, I'm not interested in signing on. I don't support that. Are you then precluded from asking someone else to sign on? Speaker 1: That's correct. Speaker 0: Okay. So then do you have to rewrite your I mean, then what do you do? The item can't come forward. Speaker 1: You could still bring the council member could bring an item forward by themselves. You may not be able to put it on the supplemental, but you could bring it forward as an individual council member. And that's why I would strongly encourage you to consider a policy where you limit it to three total council members, because that's where the BRANNICK violation occurs is by the now we've shared this and reached and maybe had a debate and as Council member often points out, this was maybe chiefs of staff, two chiefs of staff, but that's attributable to the council office. And so that information has been shared and the courts have been really clear. Aye, aye. Like button shared on an email account could be a brannick violation if five council members just hit that. So you don't have to have substantial debate. It just has to be outside of the public forum with more than a majority. Speaker 0: So yeah, I understand that. Nine Appreciate that clarification. I mean, there's been times where there's been four people on an item and then someone on that item has sent me a text or reached out and said, Hey, I want to talk about this. And I've said, I can't talk to you because there's already four people on the item and I've known that that was an okay, but I didn't know that if somebody refuses to sign on the item, which I think is what happened here, then you're precluded from bringing it forth. If four people had been asked. Speaker 1: That's correct. Because now you've you've discussed it with a majority of the members outside the presence of the council out of the public meeting. Speaker 0: I understood and I appreciate that clarification. So so I guess the only thing we can do tonight is receive and file on this. Speaker 1: That that's. Speaker 0: Correct. Okay. Thank you. Not on the mango. Thank you. I guess I have a couple of questions. One is that I choose not to sign on to items or to sign onto items without providing any feedback to my colleagues. Ever. I mean, often. I don't mean ever. Often, because I'm not here to block them from getting another signer. I can think of a time where Councilman Price and I may have agreed on coyotes in the city, but at the time she had asked me to sign on to an item and I did not tell her whether I supported or did not support the item, just that I was not prepared to sign onto the item. What she did not know is that I was working with the university on my own item and I just chose not to participate. So that was, in my opinion, not a discussion. And I think that gaining consensus is really the intent of the Brown Act. And in no way do I feel that a council member, especially in this case, choosing not to sign on to the item, is getting us towards consensus, especially when a lot of our chiefs of staff knowing us individually, know our positions generally and sign on or don't sign on or recommend because sometimes it's just not the time. And so I guess I would say that I've actually consulted two attorneys because I was very shocked that this was a potential Brown Act violation. And this particular individual who has served as a city attorney to other cities has stated that their position is that it's on building a consensus around an item or about a discussion, which I don't think either of which happened at this case. And while I respect your opinion, Mr. City Attorney, is it not a justification and opportunity as a board to still move forward with the item and deal with the potential remedies that are required? And if so, what do you believe those remedies would be? Speaker 1: Well, first, I totally disagree with your comment. I think that this is a Brownback violation if you act on it and if you debate it this evening, because the letter in which is in your agenda package was shared with a majority of the council members outside of the meeting before the meeting. And so taking an action, your action would be considered null and void. And your direction to the city manager in this case would be come back. You would have to rescind the action and then reconsider it to try and cure it. So you're you're not. Plus, it could be referred to the PPC and potential fines and penalties. But I think if I'm giving you what I believe is practical advice here too, is how do we fix this and cure it and move forward? We can certainly have a longer debate on what you believe is reaching a consensus or reaching an agreement, and that would be facts specific on each one of the times when you're looking at the Brownback violation. So you can't have a general statement that says, well, if I just didn't talk to him, I didn't violate Brownback. That's not how it works. Speaker 0: Well, I respect that. I also read every single agenda item every single week. And so every single agenda item is shared with the majority of the council in advance of the discussion of the item. Speaker 1: That's that's true. When the agenda package goes out to the public. At the same time you're talking about before the item is submitted to the city clerk is what I'm talking about for consideration are placed on the agenda. Speaker 0: So if the media shared the agenda item publicly in the local news with that potentially and we read it, would that be a violation? Speaker 1: If you communicated with your members of the council about it or their staffs of your offices, communicate with each other. Yes. Look, I. Speaker 0: Didn't communicate that. That's I think right now you're assessing that there's a potential branch violation, but there hasn't been discussion with me or I don't know any of the other colleagues I know, not me, about if it was potential that I had a discussion with Councilmember Asad about this item. Speaker 1: So we received the package and you signed on to the items. It's assumed that you read the item and agreed to sign on to that. Speaker 0: I was asked if I wanted to sign on to an SB ten SB nine item by my chief of staff, and I said Yes. That agenda item, if you checked my email, has not been opened and has still not been open to this day just because I didn't have time to open it. And I guess going into these details is important, and I feel that there's a little bit of procedural gaming going on because we already had a position stated by I. Just another point the committee is Councilmember Austin Councilmember Muranga and Councilmember Richardson all stated their opposition. If Council member Austin would have come to other members of the body. And not the members of his committee would be have also had the violation. I just don't know. Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'm following your logic here, but I think that the if the question is, could the council member, Austin, have approached someone other than on the pub on the state led agenda to bring this item forward? The answer is yes. Speaker 0: Even though they also publicly already stated their position on the item in committee. Speaker 1: The question was whether the person on the state led committee could approach a different council member not on that committee, to ask them to sign on the answer. Speaker 0: On an item already heard by the committee. Speaker 1: That's correct. Speaker 0: Okay. Well, I think we're always learning. Speaker 1: Thank you. I just want to say I think we need to be cautious with the president with that and there's elected official and let me just say, I don't believe Councilman Alston was intentional or anything. I think it was a procedural mistake among chief of staff of a previous chief of staff. I understand. But this is not where we should split hairs or cut corners or debate whether or not if you want to have a council discussion and a study session on the Brown Act, we certainly should do that. But trust in public officials has waned. That's the truth. And we shouldn't cut corners. The city attorney had a recommendation. I think we should respect that recommendation. His recommendation is also to go from 4 to 3, because this isn't the only time this has happened. And so we should, you know, rather than accuse gaming of the system, we should just follow the rules and do what's supposed to be done. And I don't think this was intentional. But the accusation of gaming the system is just knowing the rules and knowing the process. And we should follow that process and move forward together, protect our city, bring the item back, and we'll have the debate that you want to have. But that's what I think we should do. How come the Super Bowl? Thank you. Two things. This this question is procedural, number one. And number two. I was not asked to sign on to the item, so I think I'm in a safe zone here. So my question would be, moving forward, if this were to be heard one week from tonight, that would require a supplemental to be submitted by noon on Friday, which requires three signatures. Am I correct on that? That's correct. Okay. So is it the opinion of the city attorney that that could be accomplished? Based on the conversation we've had here tonight? That's a very good question. But I believe the answer is yes. I mean, what the allegation is this evening and what I'm dealing with this evening is the item before you on the agenda tonight was delivered to and discussed by at least by the staff members, five members of the council. So I am encouraging not to consider that tonight to re agenda is it to cure it. So if if for example, the council violated the Brown Act, generally speaking, the one of the remedies could be to place the item on the agenda and rescind the action taken by the council to cure it and then reconsider that item . The that so in essence, that's what you would be doing. You would be saying we could put this forward. And for example, the council member from the eighth District wouldn't couldn't maybe doesn't put it on the supplemental, but a different council member puts it on and gets two other people to sign it. There is no Brown Act violation there. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. And I'm going to guess your recommendation. We'd have only three people sign that supplemental. That would be my recommendation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 0: To follow up on the procedural questions of council member super or not, does the item need to be any different than the item that is before us tonight? Speaker 1: This particular item? I think the answer is no. I mean, you're asking and going to have a discussion or a debate, I assume, on the merits of whether you're going to ask the governor at this point in the legislation to veto the legislation that's carrying on is apparently on the desk of the governor. So I think the answer is no. It does not have to be any different. You just need to bring it back. And it. Speaker 0: Will have an. Speaker 1: Elevation outside of. Speaker 0: Every member of the dais before it was filed. I think that's my concern. Am I wrong? It has now been shared with every member of the staff before it was filed. So why is it not the same violation? Speaker 1: Councilwoman Margo Let's be respectful of everyone's time, but we can. Speaker 0: Councilmember Richardson, I think you have already accused us of trying to cut corners, in your opinion, as welcome and appreciated. But thank you. For your opinion of my time. This is an important item to my district and my council. Speaker 1: Like my completion on the agenda so we can debate it. We did. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 1: And you broke the Brown Act, so. Speaker 0: I did not make the accusation. Speaker 1: Thank you. Councilman Austin. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney, for winning and explaining your position. Again, I take full responsibility for the the procedural error, and I look forward to debating this matter next week and taking the position one way or another at the full city council. I think this this this item deserves our attention. And we are clear on how to how to move forward. I move to vote. Fantastic. Very public comment on this item. It's like there's one. Janet Foster. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I'll be back next week. But I just wanted to ask your support of SB nine and SB ten. And primarily it's because these two bills will contribute to building housing that we so need, and Long Beach needs to be a part of it. I know their views about what neighborhoods, but their neighborhoods that are bearing the brunt of a lot of the development. It's not shared equally. I think that we can talk about this a lot more reasonably than I think what fears that are out about what type of housing being built? Who gets controlled? What does a neighborhood look like if this is allowed? I think it can be reasonably done. But I just wanted to be here in support and to ask the city council to not not lobby the governor about this, but let it stand. We've had great representation locally who stood who stood and supported this. And I'm here for Long Beach, Yimby, the Long Beach Yimby chapter. So I'll be back next week. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. No further public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 1: Thank you. Our final item of the item of the evening. Item number 32.22, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to communicate the City of Long Beach’s opposition to Senate Bill 9 and Senate Bill 10 to the Governor and urge his veto of these bills.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Our final item of the item of the evening. Item number 32.22, please. Speaker 0: Item 22 Communication from Councilman Super Knoll, Chair of Government Personnel and Election Oversight Committee. Recommendation to approve that section of Marine Stadium Park. Be named the the conductor. Larry Curtis. Concert Park District three. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Price. Speaker 0: Thank you. Okay. I am so excited about this item. So we're ending the meeting on some positivity here. I'm so glad to see this item come before the city council. At each step in this process, there has been great support to remember Larry Curtis for the beautiful marks he has left on this city over 700 nights in our city. Filling our parks with music and fun and community is something we should recognize and highlight for future generations of Long Beach residents. The muni band is an amazing part of our city's past, present and future, and I cannot wait to attend the concert as the new conductor. Larry Curtis Concert Park. Thank you to all the residents who made this a reality and to Councilman Supernova, who chaired the committee. That was the final approval that we needed for this item and everyone who voted on our survey. We appreciate your amazing support for Larry and the MI band. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Councilman. Super now. Thank you. Glad to carry the message forward from the committee. And thanks to Councilman Price for doing a great job in supporting this item. Thank you. Great item. Great job to the committee. Look forward to supporting it. Public one we have one person for public comment, this Dennis Houlihan who we have. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm Dennis Houlihan. I live in District three, and I am proudly represented by Councilwoman Susie Price. Speaker 0: And probably were. Speaker 1: It's true. That's true. But yeah, I wanted to thank all of you collectively and individually, on behalf of the friends of the Long Beach Municipal Band, my colleagues Kay Cofield and Laura Espino, we've all worked behind the scenes, learned from Susie and have helped to bring this to where it is right now today. And it's an exciting time. I had the privilege of addressing you on July 6th when the public sessions for the Council re-opened and enthusiastically supported this idea. And you all voted unanimously. Heartwarming and much appreciated. I want you to do the same thing tonight, please. You're on a roll with unanimous vote, and this is certainly worth that. Since July 6th, so much has happened. It's been extraordinarily active and exciting. The Department of Parks, Recreation, Marine interviewed candidates and selected an outstanding new conductor. And against all odds, we put together a two week season for the band. This was an amazing miracle to get the people, get it together and make it happen. And for those of you who attended one of those concerts, you could see all the people sitting there with their families on the blankets, having a great time, enjoying the music. But summer came back thanks to your confidence and your investment in this, and it was really gratifying to see that. So I want to publicly thank Councilman Super and I thank you for what you did behind the scenes. Councilwoman, the price for your leadership, your guide to your patience with all of this and your vision that we could all share the naming of the park in Larry's honor. Extraordinary. Along with that, we had some wonderful partners at the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine with Brett Dennis and with Gladys Kizer. We all worked together. It was really cool to see all the gear smashing. You helped make that happen. So I stand here today asking for your vote. And on behalf of Larry's widow, Linda Curtis, his son Kurt Curtis, the whole Curtis family, they are honored beyond imagination. It's extraordinary. And. On behalf of the family and all of us who love that matter and love what it represents and the joy for the families of Long Beach. Thank you. And please vote unanimously. Let's not break the roll and appreciate your patience and enthusiastic support. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Vice mayor. This has been a wonderful education tonight to watch back in time to watch the process working. I'm humbled. I'm so happy to live in Long Beach and I respect everybody's patience with a wide variety of topics. More people should come and observe. You guys doing your thing? It's heartwarming. It's been a wonderful education. And thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Thank you. I believe that satisfied engender we have closing public comment. You have two speakers, Dave Shukla and Katie Cart Clark. They is Katie here? Okay. So, Dave, I think you're the only one. You're up. Good evening.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve that a section of Marine Stadium Park be named the “Conductor Larry Curtis Concert Park”. (District 3)

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Speaker 3: Thank you. We will also go ahead and take one vote on all the funds transfers. Item 24, 25, 26, 27, 31. I can have the clerk read those. Thank you. Speaker 0: Item 24 Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $416 to provide a donation to the Long Beach Camerata Singers. Item 25 Communication from Councilwoman Zendaya's recommendation to increase appropriation in the City Manager Department by 2500 to provide a donation to Shi Tech on behalf of Demo Chicks. Item 26 Communication from Councilwoman Zendejas recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager apartment by $1,000 to provide a donation to Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles. Item 27 Communication from Councilwoman Sara Recommendation to increase appropriations in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department in the amount of $5,890 to do a restoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior statue. And Item 31 a communication from Councilman Super Non Councilwoman Zendejas recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department for $550 to provide a contribution to Central Asia for support for their back to school resource fair and vaccination clinic. Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilman Pryce. Speaker 4: I urge support for these items. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 4: Just happy to support all these items, Councilman Sorrell. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mayor. I just want to speak to the item to restore that. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Statue. I just want to share how much of a great importance a significant the statue is to our community in Long Beach and that it is a representation of the deep African-American history that we have here. You know, it's installed in 1986 and has stood for a symbol of equity, equality and justice. And that's why I want to make sure we pay respect and honor elders who had done a lot of work to ensuring that there is equity and justice in Long Beach and that by honoring their work, those who had helped put the statue together. This is how I want to pay respect, is to make sure we restore this and do a permanent upgrade to MLK Park as well as the other parks in our district. So thank you very much. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this? Cast your votes on the funds transfers. Speaker 0: Emotions carried. Speaker 3: Thank you. Let's go ahead and do the. We have five members of the public for public comment. I was going to do those, madam quick.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $416, offset by the Third Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to provide a donation to the Long Beach Camerata Singers for their September 11th Remembered Concert; and Decrease appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $416 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 3: item. And then after the budget, we will do all the other items on the agenda after the budget hearing. So let's go ahead and do item 23, please. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Allen, Councilwoman Sara recommendation to request city attorney to draft a resolution in support of the establishment of the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System. And request City Manager to have the Long Beach Police Department partner with the Lewes Registry. Speaker 3: Gentlemen. Speaker 8: Thank you so much. First, I'd like to thank my colleagues, our council members and their hearts, Alan and Sorrel, for joining me on this item. And obviously, following the murder of George Floyd last year, one of the proposed reforms called for in policing at the federal and state levels was to create a nationwide registry of law enforcement officers who had been fired from this conduct, which would help curtail the ability of those officers to be hired elsewhere. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed the House of Representatives in March of 2021, and among its provisions, the Act would create a nationwide police misconduct registry at the Justice Department. However, as we all know, the prospects of passing the Senate and becoming law still remain uncertain. This is also one of the reforms identified here that are all city of Long Beach. One of the action items in the city's initial report on Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative. One of the goals of redesigning the police approach to community safety is to participate in policy reforms, efforts at the state and federal levels to establish a federal or statewide database of complaints against police officers to inform hiring decisions. And that's a quote from our our own policy. And this if that was passed, tonight's recommendations specifically address this goal. The USC Price Safe Communities Institute is working on establishing the first comprehensive, publicly available national catalog to collect data regarding officers fired or who resigned because of misconduct. Law enforcement agencies will also be able to access this critical analytical data regarding trends as well as patterns of potential miscount conduct casualties. The database is named for late civil rights pioneer Representative John Lewis. It's called the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System or Lewis Registry. The objective is to restore the public trust of law enforcement's. Officers serving the community while also helping departments hire the best police candidates. And we all know that our city, Long Beach, has been proactive in recent years to implement policies addressing the use of force. This Council has been supportive of that and we've established the Office of Constitutional Policing and the Police Department this past year to re-imagine traditional policing, to foster equitable and constitutional public safety for our entire community. Long Beach is also the thorough background. I'm sorry. Long Beach already does thorough background checks for hiring of police officers, one that exceeds state standards, according to Long Beach PD. And I will have a few questions for our police department just a little later. But I think it's very important that we introduce who the Lewes Registry is and allow them to talk a little bit about their program. And so I'd like to allow Dr. Earl Suthers and I welcome Dr. Earl Suthers and Dr. Loren Brown, the USC, S.I. postdoctoral scholar. I'd also invite them to give a brief presentation about the overview of the Lewis registry, and they can step forward. Welcome, Dr. Scissors. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember Austin Councilmember Mongo now. Good to see you, Dr. Garcia. John, it's an honor privilege to be here in the interest of full disclosure. I became a police officer 40 years ago. I wanted to be the solution to some of the problems that we were trying to fix. I served in three law enforcement agencies, the Santa monica Police Department. I ended my uniform career at the L.A. Airport Police as assistant chief of Homeland Security Intelligence. And in between, I served in the FBI. I'm honored now to be the director of the Safe Release Institute. And if I could just show you a couple of items here to demonstrate how we have reached out over the past year to work on this initiative. As the councilmember mentioned, named after John Lewis. And we're honored and privileged to be able to name it after him. In this case, the acronym worked quite well for us because there's a law enforcement work inquiry system. And they're saying here that John Lewis used to always say, this really fits our mission with regards to the Lewis registry. There's a couple of things that we hope to achieve with this. Number one, all neighborhoods, communities want transparency with their agencies. We think we can have this now because we'll have a database. It's publicly available. I used to be a background investigator and now Background Office officers can go to the Lewis registry and in a matter of seconds, save thousands of dollars and many hours to find out that the applicant sitting across from them might be someone who's been fired someplace else. And you all know that California is one of five states in the country that when you get fired, you keep your certification. And so we want to eliminate that and keep armed officers from wandering. We are a research university, so obviously we're all about data. So we intend to collect information so we can come up with predictive indicators that can reduce the risk of officers having these problems and getting terminated. Increased retention in his department. And last but not least, we hope to influence policy. When I was at Santa monica, we had term limits on special details like narcotics and gangs because of the challenges that those officers may face after long periods of assignment in those roles. A couple of data points I'd like to share with you in this very brief presentation. Last year we went across all three political parties. We got 80% support for the Lewes Registry, 74% from Republicans, 90% Democrat, and 76% from Independent. This past couple of months, we reached out to 360 law enforcement executives, mostly municipal chiefs across the United States. We asked them, do you support creating a national registry of law enforcement officers who've been fired for misconduct? 76% said yes, whether they supported it or not. We then asked them in the second question if the national registry existed. Would you use the registry as part of your applicant screening process? Almost 95% said yes. I'll just end this by saying we have a diverse collection of supporters. Those are some of our most noteworthy people there, as you can see across the country. We have briefed the L.A. County Chiefs. We have the support of Art Acevedo to major cities chiefs. We have activists, we have academics, we have citizens, we have communities, and we hopefully have you. And I'll just end this by saying thank you for your time. We have 22 departments that are already on board the PAC 12 Chiefs, as well as the UC system chiefs. If you approve this recommendation, you'll be the first municipal agency in the United States to partner. Speaker 1: With the Louis Registry formally. Thank you for your time. Speaker 3: Thank you very much, sir. Councilman. Sir. Speaker 5: Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Southers, for etc.. I'm sorry, Sutter. Thank you, Mr. Sutter. So I want to thank Councilmember Austin for bringing this item forward with my colleagues. Councilmember Sunday has an Allen. You know, I think it's just so important to have transparent hiring practices in our police department and to have people who aren't, you know , coming that we're aware of what their background is when they're coming into the department and that it's really also crucial to building as I you know, I think, you know, share it is building stronger relationships with the public as well as the police department. And, you know, the public should know who's protecting and serving them. And, you know, and we've seen the possible outcome of police misconduct, and we should do what we can to avoid it. And I and this the chair of the Public Safety Committee and previous member of the Citizen Police Complaint Commission, building accountability within LPD is very important to me as well as transparency. So thank you so much. I support this item and I hope my colleagues will as well. Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank you for coming today. It has been a while, but I always appreciate your presentations and the great work that you're doing and I'm in full support of this item. And if I can be of any help in onboarding additional agencies, please don't hesitate to ask or we're definitely grateful for what you're doing. And and any opportunity to spread this work across the country only helps every agency. That's a part of it. Thank you. Speaker 3: Madam Clerk. Any public comment? Speaker 0: There's one public comment, Mr. Sand. I can very. Speaker 1: So I can feel sixth district. I'm coming out today in support. Speaker 7: Of the Lewis law. Speaker 1: Enforcement work increase system that I'm trying to get the the acronym in order. I'm a big fan of Dr. Sanders and the work that he's been doing. I almost had a TSA head here just a couple of years ago. So it's an honor to have you here in the city, sir. This is a conversation about transparency. I think as members of the public, we can see various examples of why, you know, 18,000 plus law enforcement agencies across America should have the opportunity to have open ended dialog with one another about misconduct and past and former members of the police departments in various parts of the country. Should we, you know, municipalities should know who they're hiring and who they might not know who they're hiring. You know, we had a members of a Los Angeles Sheriff's Department gang clique, colloquially known as the Lynwood Vikings that had a Justice Department investigation in the late eighties. And a couple of members were fired and then proceeded to be hired later on into the Dallas Police Department and then create more misconduct. You know, when there's a pattern and behavior here is it needs to be public discourse, both from the community and on the municipal side with who is wearing these uniforms. This is a great opportunity to to disconnect the good from the bad. And I think that the city of Long Beach would be a leader. Speaker 7: Within the justice, um, restorative justice conversation. Speaker 1: As well as opening and repairing and mending some of the, the poor rapport between the public and our law enforcement with these kind of opportunities. So here in support and thank you for your time. Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Richardson. Speaker 1: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So I wanted to chime in and just say, I think this is a great resolution. Resolutions can have an important make an important impact, particularly when other jurisdictions will follow you. And Long Beach has a history of when we move, other jurisdictions move, being a large, you know, second largest city in L.A. County and the second largest city in the entire 191 city sky region. This is important. So thank you, Councilman Ellison, for bringing it forward. I think this is one of many tools out of last year's reconciliation process, a number of tools. And they don't have to all be local tools. They can be statewide or regional and national tools to help us turn the corner and and be a city that really leans into racial equity. And this is a tool that I think just makes a lot of sense. And so I'm happy to support this resolution today. Thank you. Speaker 3: Something awesome. Speaker 8: I just wanted to thank my colleagues and the public for speaking out. Thanks for the presentation, Dr. Suthers. I wanted to ask a couple of questions of our own police department. I see Chief Luna kind of cued up. What is our current? Recruitment and training practices for four lateral officers hired into the department. Former officers were hired into the department. Speaker 1: Mr. Mayor. Members of the city council. Thank you, Councilman Austin, for bringing this item forward. And the question for any lateral officer, just like any officer that we hire. I'd like to think that we have the highest of standards actually, for anybody who applies, less than 2% of the people who apply become Long Beach police officers because our standards are so high. We background everybody. We spend about 40 or 50 hours just to make sure that you fit our qualifications. So from a perspective of hiring anybody who has been terminated for a cause for it from another police department, we just don't hire those kind of people. Now, if somebody has been dismissed for maybe report writing or something else, that's something we may look at. But it's rare. But if you have anybody that's been dismissed from another police agency for moral turpitude, moral turpitude, ethical reasons, policy violations, which would include use of force and officer involved shootings. We just do not hire. Speaker 8: I think that might speak to my second question. To your knowledge, has or does Romney's police department employ any formerly terminated officers, officers who have been terminated for misconduct? Currently. Speaker 1: During the six and a half years that I've been chief of police. No, I have not. Speaker 8: Well, that's refreshing. And and, you know, I think this action tonight actually speaks to to transparency, accountability, all of the. Things that our community cares about, but also this council cares about. I think this item is one that obviously I support and encourage my my colleagues to support. I think of us participating in this registry will make us a. Because stand out as a city but also plants our flag and that we care about the the the integrity of the work and understand that it's a privilege to be a police officer in the city of Long Beach or any city for that matter. Those are my comments. Again, thank you so much for indulging me and appreciate your chief for pronouncing those questions. Speaker 3: Make a contribution to. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you all for bringing this forward. Councilmember Austin. Sorry. Dr. Summers out of here. Remember me? But when you were here, you worked in Long Beach for a couple of years as our youth coordinator, I think, if I'm not mistaken. At that time, I was a recruitment officer for the city of Long Beach. And as I constantly say, what am I? Duties at that time was to recruit for police officers. Ah. We had a lateral officer opportunity. That was a continuous examination opportunity. During that time, I'm not sure that we still have lateral officers that posted as a job opportunity. Speaker 1: Yes, sir, we do. Okay. Speaker 7: So we still get some applications or guessing of other officers from other jurisdictions and other departments as well. Speaker 1: We do. It's a few, not as many as we do on our own when we recruit, hire and train them ourselves, sir. Speaker 7: So I think that this motion here, I think, is long overdue. There was always a concern that could I be out in the field recruiting? And I had officers recruit with me to go find the best and the brightest to work for the city of Long Beach. There was always that concern being raised about laterals. They're not they're not the most. That that they're not the most qualified. But there's there's issues. There's a reason, as they would say, why they want a lateral from one department to another. But I never heard that they didn't want to come into law because it was about because it was the best that that was always at the top of their intent is to come to the best department that they could possibly find. So. But at the end of the day, it's about backgrounds and how qualified are they? And is there any kind of a blemishes on their on the record that we need to know about, and especially those that the chief mentioned that are of grave concern, especially when you talk about violations of policy or others, other things in the background. So thank you for bringing this forward and thank you for all the work you've done throughout the years. Dr.. So there's somewhat followed your career. You also worked in D.C., so I mean, you're just very, very proud that I got to know you and still know you. And congratulations, I'm bringing this forward. Thank you. Speaker 3: Now someone's in the house. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you very much, Mr. Sutter, for this presentation. And I think that this is very much something that we as a city and as a department, I think need and will well, kind of be a little bit better into helping us build the trust that there is that we're lacking here in the community between the community and our police department. So I'm very hopeful and very thankful to Councilmember Austin for bringing this forward and for allowing me to sign on to such an important item, especially being one of the city's first cities. To actually participate in this register, I think is something that we should all be very proud of. So thank you. Speaker 3: And Councilman Allen. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. And thank you council member Austin and Councilman Sun, Hoss and Ciro for signing on to this item. It's something that I feel strongly about. And as a former police officer, I, too, don't condone any misconduct in any form. And please percussion. And I agree with you. Speaker 0: Dr. Sudders, on your comments. Speaker 6: And your experience and your. Speaker 4: Insight is. Speaker 0: Incredible. So I appreciate you taking the time. Speaker 4: To speak with us today. Speaker 0: As a person who also. Speaker 4: Did background investigations for the for the police department. Speaker 0: I'm proud of what we did here in Long Beach. We did very extensive investigations, and I'm proud of that work. Speaker 6: I'm I think. Speaker 0: That this system is just another tool that can help all. Speaker 4: The agencies across the country. And I hope that they can use it and they will use it. We have to take steps to make sure that officers who are fired for misconduct. It's easy for other agencies to know about that, and the. Speaker 0: Information is also readily. Speaker 4: Available for those backgrounds. I think this is. Speaker 0: Just a concrete step forward. Speaker 4: To include to increase public trust and help departments hire the best police candidates. Speaker 0: So I'm just. Speaker 4: Happy to sign on to this and thank you so much for bringing this forward. Speaker 3: Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 3: Thank you. Then we will do the vaccination report. And then we'll go on to the budget.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution in support of the establishment of the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System (LEWIS) Registry, and request City Manager to have the Long Beach Police Department partner with the LEWIS Registry at the University of Southern California Price Safe Communities Institute, to help in the development, pilot and Beta-testing of a unified national database that documents all officers who were terminated or resigned due to misconduct.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_08242021_21-0851

Speaker 1: David Sonata. And I'm speaking on behalf of the great eighth District, as well as partners of Parkes and the commission that I've been appointed to for Parks, Recreation and Marine. I wanted to come tonight to both thank you for the. Speaker 7: Responsible decisions you've. Speaker 1: Been making for our parks and with hopes that we continue to fund our parks, recreation, marine and Animal Care Department. We have learned quite a lot during this pandemic. Your department has stepped up to be a major part in the COVID situations that we've been addressing for the past year and a half. We hope that you consider. Part. Parks Recreation Marine. As part of your health, safety and quality of life here in the city. As we have stepped up, as did your police department and your fire department have during these troubled times. We hope that you will continue in budgeting in the years to come, especially in 2023. As we move forward, making these responsible decisions are is not easy. And we understand that it is a major task that you've you do each year in putting the budget together. Speaker 0: Your time is concluded, sir. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 0: Speaker. Speaker 2: Good evening. It was my understanding I would have 3 minutes in my mistaken. Speaker 0: With the number of speakers. The time has gone down to one and a half minutes. Speaker 2: Okay. Well, Mayor, council members, I want to thank you for having me tonight. It's an honor to speak in front of you. I'm going to have to summarize this with the lack of time. But essentially it's a post I wrote on next door and I will email it to all of you. But there are four items I think we need to focus on with this budget. Number one is an increased police presence if the city of Long Beach is not willing to the city. Speaker 3: Actually, everyone, please. Everyone gets a chance to give their comments. Speaker 2: Thank you. If the city of Long Beach is not willing or not able to do anything about the homeless, we need an increased police presence so we feel safe in our community. I don't know about their districts, but in District five we would like more police. Number two, we need cleaner streets. I've spoken with the Public Works Department and we currently have 13 street sweeping employees. There's three that are going to be hired. They've been in the process for over almost a year. I don't know why it's taken so long, but we need not only those three, but we need an additional two to do the medians, the curbs of the medians, the left turn lanes. Right now it's in and by request only, which I think is ridiculous. They should be on a bi weekly or monthly schedule to have our medians swept. The city is turning. It's getting decrepit. It looks like a it doesn't look like what it used to be. Number three. Speaker 0: I'm sorry. Your time has expired. Speaker 2: All right. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say one last thing. Please do your job as you were hired to do, or we will replace you with somebody who will. Speaker 3: Time is up. Speaker 5: Hello. My name is Kimberly. Speaker 0: Chavira and I am the communications manager for the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. I am speaking today on behalf of the Library Foundation's Board of Directors and Supporters. Our nonprofit sole mission is to raise funds for programs, technology and enhancements in our city's 12 public libraries. This is possible thanks to the hundreds of donors across Long Beach who send donations every year of all sizes to invest in these resources. We would like to thank our city leaders for proposing additional funds for libraries this year. The proposed $174,000 from Measure US will strengthen the library's STEM programs for youth and mental health services for teens as they get back on track following a year of distance learning. The $300,000 from the Long Beach Recovery Act to eliminate overdue fines for one year removes a major barrier. Speaker 4: To resources. Speaker 0: Without any cuts to the library's budget. More than 22,000 community members will benefit from this as Long Beach continues to recover from all we have faced in the last year. More investments in the library structural budget are needed. The Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative Report Youth and Emerging Adult Strategic Plan, Digital Inclusion Roadmap and Theater's Report on Library Services. Speaker 4: All call. Speaker 0: For more open hours. Speaker 4: At the 12. Speaker 0: Public libraries. We urge you to provide the library with the funding necessary to be open more hours as provide more funding for the library's materials budget. Thank you. Next speaker is Victor Sanchez, Reverend Sandy Richards, Reverend Dr. Michael Eagle and Burdette and Clayton Hurd. And Karen resigned. Please light up. Speaker 2: Honorable mayor, vice mayor and City Council. My name is Victor Sanchez with the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community as part of the People's Budget Coalition on behalf of the working families that we advocate for. Speaker 3: We're asking that you adopt the people's budget. Speaker 2: And we also ask that you reform the budget process to allow deeper participation from working class, marginalized communities who are most. Speaker 3: Impacted by budget. Speaker 2: Decisions. Apart from the demands our coalition has shared with you in legislative meetings or an email, I ask that you in particular invest in care, not cops. By shifting funding from the $262 million earmarked for police in the General Fund to some housing priorities. In particular, the establishment of a rental housing division fully funding the Long Beach Right to Council program and a deeper commitment to community land trust. I also ask that you support Vice Mayor Richardson's request for $125,000 to find an additional housing navigator position and increasing the Measure US fund to $1 million with the expectation that 80% of that increase go to participatory budgeting and the rest to administrative costs. Speaker 3: Tonight's vote is about. Speaker 2: Undoing the historic disinvestment that has persisted here in Long Beach. Let's support. Speaker 3: anti-Blackness by. Speaker 2: Voting for the people's budget, which has the power to create a safe and healthy Long Beach for all. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 0: Reverend Sandy Richards. Next is Reverend Dr. Michael Eagle. After that. Speaker 2: Hello. Reverend Richards had to leave, but she gave me her letters out. All right if I read it. Okay. Greetings to you, Mayor Garcia and council members. I am the Reverend Sandi Richards, and I am the lead pastor at Los Altos United Methodist Church. I'm also here as part of Clergy and Lady United for Economic Justice. We seek to have you address the funding inequities in our community. The Long Beach Police Department uses align shares of the city's resources, and we are asking that some of that share be repurposed for healing suffering communities. In order to lower crime in our city, we need to raise the bar on support for marginalized communities. We need to be an anti-racist city which requires sufficient financial resources to support the programs which will lead us in that direction. We need resources allocated to health opportunity, community building and justice. There's an old saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, rather than filling our civic toolkit with mostly hammers. We ask that to diversify the toolkit so that law enforcement is not the only justice available in Long Beach. Help the city to follow through with the structural changes that are needed in order to change things for the better for generations to come. Sincerely, Reverend Sandy Richards. Speaker 8: Could it be mayor and council persons? And Reverend Dr. Michael W Eagle Path to Grant A.M.E. Church here. Speaker 1: In the city of Long Beach, California. I didn't come to attack your budget process. Speaker 8: Nor to berate your decision making. But I did want. Speaker 2: To request that you show a little bit more sensitivity and caring and. Speaker 8: Sharing to the people that you vowed to serve. Speaker 2: People need to know. Speaker 8: That somebody care at least is thinking about it and that's all that say. Speaker 4: My name is Ann Burdette. I'm a member of Long Beach Clergy and Lady United for Economic Justice, advocating for workers, families and the people's budget with respect and compassion for all of us, including myself, who have lost loved ones to COVID, please permit me to offer a painful metaphor. The city of Long Beach, along with the rest of the country, is in the air. The diagnosis is the pandemic of homelessness, housing insecurity, health inequity and systemic racism. Imagine that one of the primary responses being offered to us in the city budget is policing. But there are preventive measures, measures that can be taken today. We can provide the social distancing of adequate housing. We can provide with masks a clean air and open spaces for all. We can vaccinate with education, job training and economic investment in communities that have endured generations of de-funding. Imagine that we can prevent our city from going to the air by putting community safety first. Real safety that is attainable by real that reallocating our tax dollars to policing. From policing to protection. Adopt the people's budget to save lives. Speaker 0: Next speaker, Clayton Hurd. Then Kern resigned. Joanna Diaz. Rose Mae. Caitlin. Carla Alvarado. Speaker 2: All right. Hello again. My name is Clayton Hurd, and I'm speaking out as a member of First Congregational Church of Long Beach and with Clue urging you to support the Long Beach people's budget. I want Long Beach to be known as a city that cares about its renters, and we can do that by fully funding and staffing our rental housing division and attendant right to council program. I want other cities to follow our lead by fully implementing a Language Access Policy and Injustice Fund available to residents regardless of their immigration status. Long Beach can be the most youth and senior friendly city in the country in the state of California, if we want it to be. The decisions you made tonight require courage and imagination. And to quote the Center for Story based Strategy to win, we must exercise political imagination and stretch the terms of what is deemed politically realistic in the present moment. Imagination builds power because it opens the space for crafting stories that make just futures possible. You all have an incredible opportunity to demonstrate what a truly compassionate city can do to invest in black communities, communities of color, and other marginalized communities in a meaningful way. Please support the Long Beach People's Budget and continue to invest in people, care and community. Thank you. Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Rose McLachlan and I'm a resident of District seven and I'm here in support of the people's budget. Language access is extremely important to me, my family. I slowly emigrated to Long Beach, the West Side, as early as the eighties and as recently as this year I've always had to be a communicator and translator for my family. I've had I've had to help with catfish applications, SSI benefits, DMV improvements and even finding places where they can get vaccinated. My grandpa lived through World War Two and martial law in the Philippines and he unfortunately had to stop his education at third grade. It's important to consider that that experience represent the background of all of a lot of Filipinos that have chosen to immigrate here as a child. I felt good about being able to help my family, but it definitely was a lot of responsibility and pressure put onto me. I'm not completely fluent and Tagalog and my family isn't completely fluent in English, and because of that, there's a disconnect between what is communicated and things often get lost in translation. The information that I pass on to my family members, those details as they pass the information over to their friends and families. I wish that they were able to get that support directly with language access. My family wouldn't have to be as dependent on me. I'm not as available to them as I was before. This resource would open up their world and I'm sure it wouldn't reach just my family. But the whole community. The whole city. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Carla and I'm here to demand the adoption of the people's budget language. Residents deserve a safe and healthy community. We can no longer just wait for this to happen, so we are all here to demand it. I want to remind you, council people that you all work for us. You guys are all tasked with representing the interests of Long Beach residents, not the interests of multi-million corporations, not the interests of Long Beach police departments, but the interests of Long Beach constituents. Who gave you that can't be seen up there. So tell me. Speaker 6: Why. Speaker 5: Year after year, our demands for safer, healthy communities keep getting ignored. These past couple of months, my coworkers and I have walked the streets of Long Beach talking and listening to community members, and not once as a community member ever ask for more cops. Do you know what they do? Ask for resources, rental assistance, food assistance, mental health assistance. You guys are also out of touch with community members that you all truly think that community members want more policing when in reality they are demanding the opposite. Each and every one of you up there has a choice. Do you continue on with the racist system that leaves so many communities broken and hurting? Or do you finally use that privilege to advocate for care, not cops? You really want to eliminate cops? Then stop ignoring the root of the problem and defund the police. Invest in black and brown in indigenous communities. Just to be clear, budgets reflect, reflect priorities and you and your choice to adopt or ignore the polices the people's budget will make your priorities crystal clear. Speaker 6: Mm hmm. Amazing. Speaker 5: Good evening, everyone. My name is John Ideas, and I'm here on behalf of the People's Budget Coalition as well as the Language Access Coalition. Speaker 6: We have a need to uplift the necessity. Speaker 5: For improvement in the city budget adoption process as it currently stands. This process has been open and accessible to your constituents who need to be heard the most. We need to create a genuine culture and structure of language justice by hiring in-house interpreters. The current system of only having meetings in person without virtual meetings or telephonic comments is not accessible to your constituents for a. Speaker 4: Variety of. Speaker 5: Reasons. On behalf of the Peoples Budget Coalition, we strongly support Vice Mayor Richardson's request for 120 500,000 to fund the additional housing navigator position and not. Speaker 6: The feasible. Speaker 5: Feasibility study. In addition, the People's Budget Coalition also strongly supports the Invest in Youth Campaign's push to increase measure US youth funds to $1 million of the two $1 million of those $1 million. 80% of the funds should go directly to community for citywide participatory budgeting process. The remaining 20% should go to support the Office of Youth and Development. Administrative Costs and Youth Internship positions. We are steadfast and determined to continue advocating for the Long Beach that we love. Show us who you love and where your heart lies. We must continue to work together. Speaker 6: And genuinely. Speaker 5: Have a dialog to move past. Speaker 6: The current process. Speaker 0: Thank you. And the following speakers please lineup Karen Reside Rosella Reyes Father William Connor City. Ben and Vickie Aguilera. Speaker 6: Karen Reside, a resident of District one and a member of a proud member of the Gray Panthers. And we are supporters of the people's budget. I'm going to address senior issues, talk about safety, and I thank everybody for we have a fabulous health department. My building didn't have any COVID deaths, other senior buildings dead. For that, I'm eternally grateful. But we talk about safety. We have 113,000 seniors right now. We have one public health nurse for all, 113,000 seniors and one social worker. And we're about to lose a half time position if this budget stands as is from the Healthy Aging Office, which is Cynthia. How so? And that means that plans won't go forward and asking for a rental coordinator. I don't know if any of you've ever been to this multi-service center. There's no sidewalk. Seniors. Most seniors to get there have to take the bus, whether they're homeless or not. And there's no sidewalk. And you have to walk along the road. It's a dirt road. And the trucks that are going into the port to line up to receive their loads. Go past usually in about 25, 30 miles an hour. I'm almost hit gotten hit almost every time I go over there. Speaker 0: Mr. Assad, your time has expired. Speaker 6: So please do the right thing for the people's budget. Speaker 5: Hi. My name is Hazardous Waste. I'm the direct services coordinator for the Filipino Migrant Center, which is part of the People's Budget Coalition and the Language Activist Coalition. I'm also a District one resident and someone is on the ground every day helping provide services to Filipinos. I've seen how much the pandemic has impacted the people of Long Beach. People are still facing burning issues around food insecurity, housing and employment. It's been left up to us as Tagalog speaking community organizers to help identify these issues. And we need to see more accountability from the city of Long Beach to meet the needs of the people. I'm only able to relate to CNA members because they can understand and speak the language. If the city wants to provide for its residents, including the 13,000 foreign born Filipinos who came, who are mostly in working class families in the west side of Long Beach, and it needs to have paid staff within the city who know how to speak Tagalog in a way that everyday Filipino speak. The people need permanent, in-house interpretation and translation services in Tagalog and Spanish and Kami for residents doing city council and charter commission meetings without having to make an advance request. We also need funding for community based organizations like ours and many others here tonight doing the on the ground work everyday. The residents of Long Beach are one community and we did hear and understand each other in order to empower each other. And language access is a tool to do that. If the city truly believes in equity and won't just use it as a token gesture buzz word, then it's time to back it up with action and ensure that language access is accessible for All Long Beach. Speaker 7: I am Father William Connor. I live in District three. I am pastor emeritus of St Joseph Catholic Church in East Long Beach. I also represent hundreds of faith leaders connected through the South Coast Interfaith Council and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. I am a past president of. I see. I see. I am here to ask Mayor Garcia and the City Council to invest more funding in community resources by adopting the people's budget for the next fiscal year. One major need, namely is housing. Housing is a basic right, human right. Please invest more deeply in community land trusts to create permanently affordable housing while allowing low income residents to build generational wealth as home owners. This is an opportunity, the people's budget, for our city to lead with our values of equity and care for the community instead of fear and score and scarcity. Speaker 10: Good evening, Mayor Garcia, and good evening, council members. My name is City Ben and I am with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition and I'm here to express to the Long Beach City Council and everyone why we need to adopt the people's budget care, not cops. Why do we say colonoscopies? Because that's what the people need. That's what the community needs. That's what we need. Care, not cops. We say you're not cops to save families, to save life, to keep the community healthy, we need to invest in it. The Long Beach Police Department right now is on track to receive about 42% of the total general fund, which comes to $262 million. We need to to pretty much divert 25% of it and give it to programs that will keep the community healthy by investing. 25% won't come up to $65 million. That's barely dipping into the bucket. It will hurt the police department to lose 25% of the budget, but it would definitely help the community. There are so many programs to invest in. So let us defund the police department. Use it for the police department. I mean, use it for the people budget. Use it to reinvest in the communities, the marginalized community, the communities of color. Thank you for listening and I hope you will take steps to support the community. The Long Beach City needs you and needs your assistance. Thank you. Speaker 5: Next speaker is Vicky O'Hara and then Karina Rodriguez. Speaker 0: Jennifer Benitez, Camilla, Betto, Lopez and Gabriella. Please come forward. Speaker 5: Hello. My name is Vicky Aguilera and I am the rapid response coordinator with the Long. Speaker 0: Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition. Speaker 5: Here as part of the People's Budget Long Beach Coalition. I've introduced myself before, but I'm doing so again because on the meeting on August 10th, I was not so sure if any of you were actually listening. I hope this time is different and that even if you don't listen to me, you at least listen to our community who has had to navigate transportation, language barriers, work schedules and childcare in order to give their public comments today. Speaker 0: We demand. Speaker 5: That you invest in care, not cops, by shifting. Speaker 0: Funds from the $262. Speaker 5: Million proposed for police and the general. Speaker 0: Fund. To me, care, not cops, means safety. Speaker 5: And we know that the police do not keep us safe. There's no training in the world that can prove that can reform violent policing, because policing in itself is violence. It is tied to the violences of white supremacy, the technologies that Long. Speaker 0: Beach Police Department use against our communities, our violence. Speaker 5: LAPD spends millions of dollars each year on invasive surveillance technologies, such as automated license plate recognition, cell phone surveillance and facial recognition technology. We now vpd our shared community members license plate data with ice. As recently as April of this year. We know facial recognition technologies are inherently racist. So I ask you, are these technologies really used to keep us safe or used to continue to criminalize black and brown communities? Policing cannot be reformed. Please stop calling for diversity, diversity and community inclusion until the system of violence does invest in the people's budget. Speaker 0: Thank you. Karina Rodriguez, Jennifer Benitez, Camilla Battle Lopez and Gabriella. Please line up. Speaker 5: I'm members of the council. My name is Karina, and I work with the I.R.S. and I'd like to express my. Speaker 6: Disappointment in your. Speaker 5: Behavior. Speaker 6: During. Speaker 5: The meeting on August 10th. There was very little eye contact or acknowledgment of people's experience. In fact. Speaker 6: Some of you outright worshiped the police department. Speaker 5: Some of you invalidated the experiences that people were telling you, people that you claim to represent. Let's blatantly call things out for what they are by you. Continuing to support and fund police with millions of dollars, you're supporting white supremacy and contributing to surveillance. Speaker 6: Policing, brutal abuse and murder of people of color. You need to stop with the excuses. Speaker 5: That crime is up. It's one of the oldest districts in the book to get people panicked and afraid of people of color. I ask you, where are the reports of violence and crimes perpetrated by police? Speaker 6: It's no secret that there are white supremacist. Speaker 5: Groups embedded within police departments everywhere, and your members of the council. Speaker 6: Are supporting that. FBI policymakers in the legal system have historically criminalized, wrongfully accused, oppressed and killed. Speaker 5: People of color. I know some of. Speaker 6: You know. Speaker 5: What I'm telling. Speaker 6: You and still choose to do only what benefits you. Whether that's because you. Speaker 5: Have higher political aspirations are white. Speaker 6: Get money from police unions where a cop yourself gave it girl privilege or you were poor and made it out and forgot about truly dismantling the root causes that hurt people. And if any. Speaker 5: Of this information is new to you, I. Speaker 6: Suggest you take some time and educate yourself. Speaker 5: Maybe start by adopting. Speaker 6: The people's budget. Speaker 0: Next speaker, please come forward. Jennifer Benitez. Camera. Speaker 6: Bethel Lopez. Gabriela. Speaker 5: The song. Oh, hello. My name is Jan and I'm with the Filipino Migrant Center and we're part of the language Axis Coalition. I want to ask the obvious question why? After a year of community advocating for the defunding of police and the reallocation of funds back into our communities where they belong. Is the City Council yet again proposing a disgustingly drastic increase? The police budget. Do our constant rallies and protests through our personal testimonies of police brutality and terrorism fall on deaf ears? We demand City Council fully implement the language access policy by providing quality interpretation and translation in Spanish, Tagalog and Carmen, and also provide an ongoing budget to organizations that serve these communities with the funds they need to be able to provide their services more easily and as a first gen child of immigrant working class parents. I know firsthand the labor we do for our non-English speaking families. Speaker 6: We are. Speaker 5: Legal aids, social workers, tech support, even city directories. Translating and interpreting on behalf of the city a service you should be providing. As taxpayers who fund your paychecks. By the way, we are demanding you pass the people's budget and defund the police. Speaker 6: Good evening. My name is Camilla. I'm a resident of the sixth district. For the past few weeks, I've been coming to the city council meetings. I've listened to many reports. I've listened to the Health Department report on all the wonderful things they've been doing to help the community stay healthy and sheltered. Despite the shamefully underfunded budget they've been giving, been given, being forced to depend on uncertain grants. I listened to the report by Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion and how they provided needed resources to feed our community and attempt to support a robust economy here in Long Beach. I listened to the fire department report talk about their accomplishments and programs. I listened to the reports and the tangible things that were accomplished on behalf of the community here in Long Beach. I could clearly understand the value that was added to our community by these departments and programs. I saw that they provide care and needed resources to the community. Not so with the police department report. The LAPD has not shown their value, and especially not at the expense of their budget that consumes nearly half of the general fund. So this budget go round. I urge you to listen to the community. We have told you what we needed. We've told you every year with the people's budget. We told you last summer, during and after the uprisings, after George Floyd's murder. We told you through our many complaints against the complaints against and challenges to all EPD processes. So this year I asked the City Council to do something different. Listen and act accordingly. Support the programs that care for our community and make it better. Stop over funding APD at the expense of the community needs. Just because that's what you've always. Speaker 0: Done and your time expired. Speaker 6: We don't know how many more police on the street. We don't need to provide police more money for their violent tools. They do more harm than. Speaker 0: Thank you. Your time has expired. Better luck as Gabriella, Kevin Yoga, James Soso and Susan Wise. Speaker 2: Hello, everybody. Speaker 1: Hello, council members. Mayor My name's not the current project director of library and also a. Speaker 2: Resident of District eight. Thank you all for coming out and doing the cleanup. It was nice to see you there. The People's Budget Coalition strongly supports the Vice Mayor Richardson's request for 125,000 to fund one additional housing navigator position, which would be in addition to the three housing navigators funded. Speaker 1: By the Long Beach Recovery Act. Speaker 2: These additional funds enough should fund a new position and reversibility study. We also would like for the City Council to support more funding for the Right to Council program to ensure Long Beach families receive legal representation during the eviction process. We cannot continue to give so much money to the police department and other communities elective. We must not continue to ignore the call of the people, invest in cities and bring actual affordable housing rather than cutting through loopholes that cost the city housing and dollars that could be used to house people. And we want real change. We must not we must not invest in those that criminalize us, but those who really care about us. Community has called upon you to make the decisions and fund resources that make our communities better. We cannot continue to have a city that has a 17 year gap of life expectancy depending on where you live. Thank you. Hi. Councilmembers. I'm Kevin, a district one resident with another reason to defund our PD. I couldn't believe that the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan is unfunded in this budget. The budget documents say these plans are beyond the abilities of current city resources, but that's just an excuse hiding a political decision. We don't have a million for renewable energy, but we have 260 million for LAPD. I mean, it's ridiculous. And it's selling out our future. When are we going to fund the car? When are we going to stop drilling for oil? What are you waiting for? Do you think EPA is going to ask for less money next year? It's never going to be a convenient time. This budget is climate denialism. You say climate change is real, but then you deny that we can actually do anything about it. So we should start with funding the cap and ending fossil fuel extraction and making sure Long Beach residents have a habitable future and then recognize that LAPD's demands are beyond the ability of current city resources. The city needs to take climate change seriously, and that means defunding LAPD, stop selling out our future and invest in the people's budget. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. My name is James Fossum, a resident of the third district and speaking tonight on behalf of Long Beach Forward and asking you to support and adopt the people's budget. Specifically, we want to commend the vice mayor, Vice Mayor Rex Richardson for supporting a number of investments, including 1 million specifically out of measure US dollars for the Children and Youth Fund. And we're particularly excited to see a participatory budgeting project where we can really, truly go start to get at transforming the city budget. Well, we talk about not just numbers and dollars and cents, but actual engagement within this process, which all of us who have been coming here to all of these meetings, engaging in all of these processes, have been speaking to for a number a number of times. And one of the things that really stands out to me is that despite all of us coming from different backgrounds, from different experiences, there's a hard truth and we're all facing and that we cannot police our way out of this pandemic. It's a painful truth. And tonight we're asking you to face that truth with us by doing right by our communities. And speaking of hard truths, this pandemic and its impacts aren't going away anytime soon. And neither of the people who have been here organizing, educating all of us about the real direct needs going on in the community and the need to defund the police, provide care, not cops, and actually transform our city budget for good. If not this budget. The next. And the next. And the next. Please about the people's budget. Thank you. Speaker 0: Next speaker is Susan Rice and then may Lynne Kenny, Alan Seagram's and Pamela Fields. Speaker 6: Good evening. Vice Mayor Eisner said. I think the mayor has left the diocese for a moment. And good evening, city council members. My name is Susan Wise and I am here in my capacity as chair of the Ethics Commission, which was put into place by Charter Amendment almost three years ago. I urge you I'm here also and accompanied by Vice. Speaker 4: Chair Margot Morales. Speaker 6: We are here to urge your adoption of additional. Speaker 4: Funding for the Ethics Commission in order to allow us to have. Speaker 6: An ethics officer. I believe this recommendation was approved in the Budget Oversight Committee earlier this afternoon. Speaker 4: Where I think it was looked at. Speaker 6: Perhaps a little more, more closely. It is essential to the work of the commission. Speaker 4: Which has now identified. Speaker 6: Numerous. Speaker 4: Issues that need to be worked. Speaker 6: On in order to bring a culture of ethics to our. Speaker 4: City. It's something that has been endorsed. Speaker 6: By the voters, and I urge you to provide the leadership and the funding to make this a reality. The Commission will support it, and I. Speaker 4: Think that. Speaker 6: And appreciate it. And I believe. Speaker 4: That all the voters will appreciate it as well in in the fact that this measure had overwhelming support from the voters when it was adopted. I'm happy to answer any questions that you. Speaker 6: Have about the Ethics Commission or. Speaker 4: Our need for additional funding in order to make this work. Speaker 6: Important work possible. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 0: Hi, everyone. When I was Gaby Hernandez, and I'm the executive director for the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, a member organization of the People's Budget. Speaker 6: And said, There's last time, but I don't think. Speaker 5: You heard me. The police, you all are spending $780,000 and in a day. Can you please just reflect on that a little bit? It's 782,000 a day. That's almost a million a day. Speaker 6: Please think about that rather. Speaker 0: Than focusing. Speaker 5: On the root causes of the issues. We're thinking about giving more money to policing. Speaker 6: We are giving more money to policing. We increased the budget this. Speaker 0: Year for them. Speaker 5: You know what community needs. You heard it here. Resources. Speaker 6: Access to housing. Access to health care. Speaker 0: We're not getting. Speaker 5: That. You're hearing this time and time again, people. What do we want? When do we want it? What do we want? Why do we want to know? Speaker 0: Thank you. Cubs did not keep us safe. Speaker 6: We've thought we said that multiple times. Please listen. Look at us. Speaker 5: When we're speaking to you all, we ask for respect. Speaker 6: And we need to defund the police now. And we need to adopt the people's budget. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Marlon. I'm a resident of District Four, a card carrying member of DSA Long Beach. And also I'm an educator. I just had my first classes this week in my new position as an assistant professor of Asian-American studies at Cal State Long Beach College. So I strongly urge you to adopt the people's budget. We have been funding education, health, housing and youth development for far too long. Instead of putting more money in the police budget, surely we should be investing in the supports that enable all of us to thrive, especially the black, brown and immigrant communities who are most impacted by the deep histories and realities of disinvestment. Like many other educators, if I have a student in my class who has checked out or something's going on or maybe even causing conflicts, my impulse, like many others, is to reach. Speaker 5: Out and to ask. Speaker 6: What's going on in their lives and in their communities. One of the supports that they need to. Speaker 5: Thrive and to succeed. Speaker 6: In my class and beyond, because we need because we know that the answer, as the great professor in the department said clear, is the antidote to violence. And that is what we need more of in our communities. We need more support so that all of us can grow in our full abundance and what we're capable of as humans. And we know as a researcher also that there's abundance of studies that shows that that works. So I urge you, adopt the people's budget. Speaker 2: Good evening, City Council. My name is Kenny Allen and I am a resident of the Second District. I'm here tonight to ask that you adopt the people's budget. Take a moment to soak in the diversity of the groups coming to ask for your support tonight. Walking into the new City Hall, I was reminded by the multiple languages posted in shiny metal letters on the wall that every time a coalition this broad has come to you, eventually we win. In fact, after we win, you enjoy presenting our demands to the community as your leadership. Thinking back on our fights for language access, Claudia's law, funding for the arts and so many more. You may delay us, but you cannot defeat us. I know that you will ignore us tonight, but Long Beach is listening to us. The vision of a world without policing, surveillance and prisons is spreading like never before. Our movement is growing. How could it not? While we talk about health, wellness and housing. You take our taxpayer money and invest further in violence workers. You may attempt to delay the forces of change with your vote tonight. But to borrow from Victor Hugo, no force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come, a time beyond police has come. The question in front of you tonight is simple. Whose side are you on? Speaker 6: Resident of District six mayor. Earlier in this meeting, you brought up the greater public good and put a lot of emphasis on that. I think the greater public good requires you to divest in policing and punishment to abolish it. Think about it, Councilman. Councilwoman Ciro, I'm coming to you to demand that you take a stand to not dilute your voice among the loud corporate interests of your colleagues. Because I know you see us, the people of your district, the people of the city are demanding the disinvest the divestment of funds for the Long Beach Police Department , a corrupt and literally deadly department of the city's government that has murdered 27 people since 2013 and received 941 civilian complaints of police misconduct since 2016. And this body wants to give the BPD more money instead of investing in our schools, community programs and affordable housing. Councilman, Councilwoman Sara, I understand that some of your colleagues would not choose to vote to divest in Long Beach PD because they are ex-police themselves. They are brainwashed to believe that policing and punishment keep our community safe. But I'm here to beg you to open your eyes and see that policing and punishment only keep us in chains . There is not one study that shows that policing reduces crime. Speaker 0: Not one time has expired. Speaker 6: Adopt the people's budget. I'm speaking on behalf of Pamela fils, the mother of Donte Jordan, murdered by Long Beach Police Department November 2013. My name is Audrina Redmond co-founded a Black Lives Matter Long Beach chapter. I am certainly here to ask will not ask. And I'm not begging. I'm demanding that you defund the police. I'm absolutely demanding that you defund the police. I'm absolutely asking that you do what we know you know how to do, which is to make a plan and execute that plan. When I moved to this town 27 years ago, downtown Long Beach did not look like it did. The city made a concerted effort to invest in downtown, to build housing where we now have what did I hear last week from the fire department is equivalent to the city of Hawaii Gardens now in downtown Long Beach. You did that. You did that just like you did that. You can make a plan to reallocate funds from the murderous Long Beach Police Department and put it back into community services, put it back into health care, put it back into afterschool programs where kids are not being gaslit by police. There's something wrong with them and the police are there to save them. You can do that. You can do that. What you have to do is put your creative hats on, put your commitment hats on, and and stand with all of these people in this room who are here and ready to stand with you when you're ready to be the leaders that we require you to be. Speaker 0: Next speaker is Rosario Ellis. Roll out Juana Francisco and Jonathan Gray. Please come forward. Rosario a Alice roll out. Juana Francisco. Jonathan Gray. Speaker 6: When I started this I number. So you think, okay, when I start, as we know, Rosario. Speaker 1: Good afternoon. My name is Rosario. Speaker 6: This important element of mi familia, your personal situation. If you see. Speaker 1: Unfortunately, me and my family, we went through a very difficult situation. Speaker 6: No, no, not available in the policy. And in another. Speaker 1: Where I didn't have the support from the police or anyone. Speaker 6: I mean, that was the only one that was signing off until. Speaker 1: My daughter went through some sexual harassment, child abuse. Speaker 6: And I saw them what they had to do. Speaker 3: We had a death threat and we were. Speaker 1: By ourselves. Speaker 6: Put forward your list, Peter Bergen, Muslim, that all of a sudden we meant that. Speaker 1: So please, I beg you, I ask you to put more money into mental health. Speaker 6: What have we done with that? And if and then we'll see if we can solve our muchos ninos workaholic style. Now, when your S.O.S. estamos solos estamos pasando put on us, it doesn't modifica muchos ninos. So you can associate Angela. Speaker 1: In the zip code. Speaker 3: 90 807 where we are on our own. Speaker 1: Our children need your help. Our children need to be looked after. We look at different way to look for them. But we need your help to look for our children. Speaker 6: For the child? No, sister, you can look better. Your son could perform. Those were far more well, says I'm fond of your soccer concerns, but in Valencia lost one those my heart. Speaker 1: For the child. He's helping us, but they need more funding. I know that you can help us better by funding a little more. Speaker 6: Or you can work on the policy, on the laws that are too zealous a little. Speaker 1: Today I am here with the Coalition for Immigrant Rights of Lumbee. Speaker 6: What about what else happened in Brazil yesterday? They were. Speaker 3: Wrong. And please accept. Speaker 1: The people's budget. Speaker 6: But it doesn't so important. They also forget, as you say, yours among the information that I still see Sacramento. What can we then also truth. Speaker 2: And so. Speaker 1: Thank you to the council members on the street 14 and Sergio Romero because he's the one that gave us information and resources to us. Speaker 6: To filter out our thoughts here. Speaker 1: And I know that you worked for Mr. Roberto. Speaker 6: Garcia, and so when you read let me see. Speaker 1: He saved my life and my children's life. Speaker 6: Forever balances of West Los Ninos are somewhat also six on the frontier of coupon mutual mostly metal. Speaker 1: Please revise your budget and pay attention to the fact that children that go through sexual abuse need more help and they need your help. Speaker 6: Los Predators could pass almost what is known as a system of them in settlement that. Speaker 1: Parents that go through these. We also need help mental health. Speaker 6: Sisters provision in this total work on information. Let me see get up almost any sensible policy. Speaker 3: If you prevent this kind of. Speaker 1: Situation through commercials and information, we may not even need the police. Speaker 6: For our balances of reservoirs though. Speaker 1: So please balance your. Speaker 6: Budget in mutual crisis. Speaker 3: And thank you very much. Speaker 1: For listening to. Speaker 5: Hi. My name is Alice Frio and I'm a resident of District One. I'm here with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition to demand that the City of Long Beach adopt the people's budget. Specifically, I ask that you correct the Long Beach Police Department's budget by at least 25% and reinvest those funds into communities of color. In case you all forgot. Thousands of Long Beach residents rose up in protest last year to demand that the city take action to dismantle structural racism. As many Bipoc organizers have repeatedly argued, a key component to protecting black and brown lives is by defunding the police who disproportionately kill and invoke harm on them. Yet the discourse coming out of the mayor's office recently has been concentrated on beefing up the LAPD to respond to spikes in crime. It is giving me a real sense of deja vu to the failed tough on crime policies of the 1980s and 1990. It's now vintage jeans you can buy on retro row are cool. Vintage policies that exacerbate the racist prison industrial complex are not. Rather than adding an additional $16 million to the LAPD's budget, I urge that the city invest in community led crisis response, violence reduction and crime prevention strategies that are not related to police. I also demand that you use budget cuts to the VPD in order to fund initiatives such as affordable housing, youth programs and investment in mental health. Implementation of the language access policy along with the other points outlined in the people's budget. Thank you. Speaker 6: When I knock. Speaker 1: Good evening. Speaker 6: Well, I mean, normally it's quite a Francisca. Speaker 1: Hello. My name is one of. Speaker 6: The third party, the Coliseum, the immigrants, the Lumbee. Speaker 3: I am a part of the. Speaker 1: Coalition of immigrants of language. Speaker 6: If I keep a reminder to consider the language, I think very persuasive person. Speaker 1: I am asking here to the City Council to accept the people's budget. Speaker 6: It is impossible I la policia. Speaker 1: To defund the police. Speaker 6: Yes, I party the many that they are key in Long Beach. Speaker 1: I am part of this community here in Long Beach UK. Speaker 6: La Policia. No chemist. You got me in trouble. Speaker 1: The police never investigates it. They never do their job properly. Speaker 6: It is criminally sanctioned with so many that. Speaker 3: They criminalize our community. Speaker 6: Is imperative based on ask innocent criminals. Speaker 1: And they always catch the wrong criminals. Speaker 6: In bad weather. Mosby narrows in La Policia. Speaker 1: Instead of giving more money to the police. Speaker 6: There, they're there in that. If it is if one law as to pay for their their power. Speaker 1: You must give all that funding to the people and budget. Speaker 6: They're interested in their own admission that even though the little kid in. Speaker 1: The money should be given to a division that deals with it, penance, right. Speaker 6: Grasp of the culture of good channels if better kept warming, roaming dormant, passive paranoia and with recommended. Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and I hope you make the step, the right step to help our community. Speaker 6: We take it as you very much. Speaker 0: And the last speaker is Jonathan Gray. Speaker 1: Thank you Council for taking the time to listen to my thoughts about especially specifically measure us. My name is Jonathan Gray. I'm the Associate Executive Director of the Commune Development YMCA on 19th and Long Beach Boulevard at the Spark in Midtown. And thank you for those you that came to our groundbreaking back in July. And I'm here to talk specifically around the measure of U.S. funding, because I really was I really feel that more money needs to be allocated to CBOs nonprofits working with youth and not going to the city specifically. When I was at the Youth Development Forum held at Houghton Park last Monday with Mary's and Dana's and Councilmember Richardson and Vice Mayor Richardson excuse me, the youth made their voices heard, and to me, their voice is clear. They want investment in themselves. They want investment in. Programs that will benefit them and investment in their communities. And by moving money into the city budget in the city coffers to help the city and not help the communities, I can really cast a wider net of youth within our city I really feel is a disservice to the youth number one that spoke on Zoom or the dozens of youth that spoke at that forum. But it's really a disservice to all the 107,000 voters that voted in favor of measure. You are. So please take the time. Invest more money into CBOs, invest more money into our youth. Because if we want the youth of Long Beach to stay in Long Beach, they need that investment. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and go into there's a series of items all related to the budget. So I want to go ahead and go through those if you're really briefly. And so I think as a the council knows there are a series of of votes that they're all different and relate to different parts of the budget and they're all starting in items. Item 22 And so it's 22, 22, one, 22, a two, 22, a three and so forth. And so I will each I will go through each item as we, as we go through. And different ones relate to different parts of the budget. So let me be let me begin through that process and each one needs a separate vote. And I know that the city attorney, if at any time that I need to take a different vote or skip one, just please let me know in the sequence. And then I know that towards the end, Mr. McKay, I know there's going to be a period of time where the staff will need to go and do some calculations, and then we'll have to reconvene or continue on the agenda and then reconvene the hearing. Is that correct me if you. Speaker 2: Yes, potentially. So depending on how much changes are made, we'll need a little bit of time. It'll be if it's what's coming out of the Budget Oversight Committee, it'll be a little more truncated than that. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you. So let me let me go ahead and and start with the first item. The first item, which is a one. There is a motion in a second. It's just to receive and file and adopt the proposed recommendations as it relates to the mayor's message. Just as a reminder, this year's mayor's message did not have additional recommendations beyond the proposed budget. And so there are no changes there. There's a motion any second to that. To members, please cast your vote. Speaker 0: Motion is here.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and take the actions necessary to adopt the Fiscal Year 2022 budget as listed in Attachment A; Approve the revised Long Beach Recovery Act program allocations and approve the Fiscal Year 2021 departmental and fund budget appropriation adjustments for the Long Beach Recovery Act in accordance with existing City Council Policy; and Set September 7, 2021 as the hearing date for a continued budget hearing to take the necessary actions to adopt the Fiscal Year 2022 Master Fees and Charges Schedule and establish the rates and charges for water and sewer service. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

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Speaker 0: Motion is here. Speaker 3: The second item is the budget oversight committees proposed recommendations. So this is a. Variety recommendations. And here I'm going to turn this over to Councilmember Austin, who chairs the Budget Oversight Committee, who will go through all the proposed funding recommendations as amended to the proposed 422 budget. And this will also need a motion any second to move forward. And with that, I'll turn this over to Councilman Austin. Speaker 8: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'm going to actually have to the staff to read the budget oversight recommendations. But I do want to start off with a few comments. That's okay. I want to, first of all, thank everyone in the global community who participated in that Part 22 budget process in any way. And that includes community forums, city council meetings, surveys, emails, contacting your council representatives or staff in any way to express your opinions on just how this budget should be carried through. And we really appreciate your attention to the financial priorities and well-being of the city. This employee 22 budget process has been very different from the previous year, which was very dire and entailed cuts, many cuts to city employees and every department, including millions from our police department. The outlook was pretty terrifying a year ago. So I'll salute everyone who endured our entire city team and the community for enduring a very turbulent year. This year's budget is a little better thanks to our federal, state and county government partners. The give it up salute to President Biden and and Governor Newsome for recognizing Long Beach as a big city and allocating resources to help us recover and meet the needs of our city. On many levels especially, I want to thank our mayor for his work, to advocate for our city with those those at those levels, because it made a real difference. Therefore, 22 budget before us today is almost 180 degrees from a year ago. But we also know that we face huge budget challenges in the coming years. Therefore, 22 budget will promote. Ethics equity that will establish a new fund and will largely reflect the values of most residents in Long Beach. Balance in our budget is not just a financial goal, but this Council also has a responsibility to balance ideas and the needs of our vastly diverse city. The budget in front of us today accomplishes that. This budget will deliver services that improve health services, public safety and the overall livability of our city. So with that said, it is the Budget Oversight Committee recommendation to approve the city manager's budget, promote proposed budget with or will see recommendations that also address city needs and council priorities. I want to thank my colleagues, number one, for indulging and working with me on this this particular process. And I hope we all can support a responsible and measured approach to budgeting over the next fiscal year. And so with that, I would like to enter into the record the motions from the Budget Oversight Committee and on ask Budget Manager Griffith to read those motions, please. Speaker 5: Certainly these were the motions approved by the Bloc earlier today. A motion to revise the proposed allocation of the measure. U.S. funding as follows Add $457,337 to the community based grants for youth development, bringing the total from the $216,134 allocated in the proposed budget to $673,471. The funding will come from defunding the Youth Ambassador Program funding of $337,337, which includes funding for eight FTE ees in the field work program, funding for youth workers and trainees of $120,000. Would this change? The total category of youth fund funding will be $1,037,636. Originally, $917,636 in the category of climate change will be $123,029. Originally $243,029. It is anticipated that the city will be receiving direct allocations from the state for youth, employment and workforce development that will be able to potentially restore the defunded programs. B motion to use. $1,340,116 of one time funds from potential improved projections for the general fund in FY 21, which will be confirmed by February 2022, or a draw down of reserves if the FY 21 improved projections do not materialize. For the following structural and one time investments in the general fund be one motion to appropriate $165,000 in the General Fund group in the city manager's department to structurally add one ethics officer position to support Ethics Commission work, this structural add will be offset with one time funding in FY 22, with ongoing structural funding that will need to be identified as part of the FY 23 budget process. B2. Motion to add one time funds of 35,000 in the General Fund group in the city manager's department to further support Ethics Commission needs in FY 22, such as outside professional services or materials offset by the carryover of projected FY 21 salary savings. B3. Motion to appropriate $100,116 in the general fund group and the police department to structurally support the incremental cost of the conversion of two civilian positions in the Air Support Unit to two police officers. This motion results in an air support unit comprised of a total of four sworn police officers, two certified pilots and two tactical flight officers. This structural add will be offset with one time funding and F1 22 with ongoing structural funding that will need to be identified as part of the FAA 23 budget process. Before a motion to add one time funds of $100,000 in the general fund group in the city manager's department to further support the fireworks enforcement team, piloted it and fly 21 to mitigate the illegal use of fireworks and explosives in Long Beach. Be five motion to add one time funds of 200,000 in the General Fund Group and the Economic Development Department to determine the future of Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association. Funds are required to be spent on securing the financial future of Bixby Knolls and pay for studies, outreach and implementation of a new permanent revenue source that can replace or enhance past RDA funding from the city. These funds are intended to provide a bridge in FY 22 to new funding sources and cover administrative costs. Funding for events and business support will come from other internal sources or Long Beach Recovery Act. Dollars. B6 Motion to add one time funds of 540,000 in the general fund group and the Citywide Activities Department to be divided equally between the City Council districts for district priorities and in conformance with the existing guidelines for the use of district priority funding B7 Motion to add one time funds of 100,000 in the General Fund Group and the Public Works Department for speed mitigation efforts on residential streets to be divided approximately equally between city council districts. The proposed mitigation efforts must comply with normal rules and regulations and accordingly must be approved by the city's traffic engineer and follow normal city processes. B eight motion to add one time funds of 100,000 in the general fund group and the Public Works Department to develop a vision and a plan for a Long Beach COVID 19 memorial. See. Motion to appropriate $127,633 in the Special Advertising and Promotion Fund Group and the City Manager Department to structurally restore run programs. Specialist position in the communications program funded by a draw down on funds available in fy22 and with ongoing structural funding that will need to be identified as part of the FY 23 budget process. The motion to direct the city manager to include the following items as high priority projects to be considered for funding using any year end surplus resources from the General Fund. Measure a special advertising and promotions fund and or other sources as relevant. And if available, the city manager should include the status of funding these projects as part of the Fy21 Year and Performance Report and in the context of available surplus funds and other priority needs and projects. The following list is not in any priority order. One. The MLK Jr Statue Restoration and Park Area Improvements to North Long Beach Pool Feasibility Study. Three. All abilities playground design enhancement for Admiral Kid Playground and other potential playground projects for Duck Pond Gap funding as necessary. Five. Tree Trimming Enhancements six. Bluff Park. Historic Lamps seven. Bixby Bandshell and Park Improvements eight. Gateway Sign for four of five and 22. Implementation. Nine. Public Fireworks Show on July 4th. And ten. Beach Streets. That concludes the BRC recommendations. Speaker 3: Councilmember Gringa, any comments? Speaker 7: Just want to thank the work that. Councilmember Alston put into this. He came out with a budget that I think is balanced, which I think we should celebrate the loss of revenue there. What we need to do is to look into the future. This budget is is good for us today, but it might not be the budget that we're going to have to look at tomorrow. Tomorrow, we're going to have a very difficult, difficult time in building our budget. We're going to have a deficit that is going to be huge, and we really need to look at that. So I'm very glad to second this motion for this budget here this year, knowing that the challenges are yet to come. Thank you. Speaker 3: First me, Richardson. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, let me take a moment. Just congratulate and thank the Budget Oversight Committee. I know this budget. There isn't a lot of it's not a surplus. And what they did, I see a lot of our needs reflected here. I want to I want to I have a couple questions. And there's one one thing I do want to raise for staff. What's the real difference between the B category and the D category? Because I see a lot of really important investments in B and A really, you know, a lot of investments in D, but I think this would be, you know, confusing for the public. So let's explain why the categories and B funded and in the category things in category B kind of funded or what's the difference between categories being D? Speaker 5: Sure. Councilmember. So Category B is using a potential estimate of improve projections for the general fund in FY 21. We are not certain of that, but this is an amount that we feel it'd be a reasonable amount to actually appropriate right now. And so items under Category B are actually being appropriated in the actual dollar amounts. The items in Category D are identified as high priority projects and to allow us to close the year and actually see how the year turns out with actual dollars, and then we would be coming back. The city manager will coming back with his year end performance report for 21 and concluding and summarizing how all of these things would be potentially funded at the end of the year. Speaker 1: Okay. So and how are we looking toward the end of the year that look like these things are on the path where you can fund some of these items or not? Speaker 5: So that's a great question. I think there are some optimistic signs that we're seeing in terms of some revenue sources that are performing better, like sales tax and measure a. But given this year, with all of the uncertainties, the pandemic related expenses and some other factors, there are a lot of variables that could really swing the projection one way or the other. And so I would say, while we are seeing some optimistic news, it is too early to say one way or the other. Okay. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 3: Can I add one thing, Mr. Reisman? Just to add to that, before you move on to the next piece, I do think it's important and I know Mr. Murdoch and I discussed this piece as well. And I just want to add that I. We have, obviously for the last few years have had the city manager come back with that with those surplus dollars and presented a variety of different projects. And so I'm very optimistic. I think looking at what's what's happening right now, that the projects that are listed are going to see those those investments. I mean, I think it's always good to be a little cautious and not be sure, but I think we can all. Recall, if you look at, you know, every almost every single year, I think maybe not every year has a measure. It has overperformed. I think every year that it's passed and it continues to do so even even this year in the pandemic. And so I think there's I'm hopeful that not only are we able to fund all these projects, but maybe even more projects that are there. Speaker 1: And I don't know. Speaker 2: And I'm also optimistic. So I think this is a reasonable list. I think these are in dollar amounts we've kind of talked about. These are achievable. We just need to figure out how much money we actually have and how to allocate them to these. And there may be other priorities that are urgent between now and February. So that's what I'll be bringing back to you, is for an investment and a plan with these as priorities. Speaker 1: Okay. Well, it's good that's good to know, you know, that these are these are possible. I see a lot of important projects from, you know, Americo Playground, MLK Statue, North Long Beach Pool, Feasibility study. These are important things. And I wouldn't want to say each one is more important than, say, the Category B priorities. I think they're all important. The second thing I would say is, hey, you took from my time when the mayor put a question. The second thing I would say is you're going to come back with things with respect to the youth fund. First of all, I just want to say before I make this comment that I am and we made a request to take a request to take the 917,000 and make it a clean million. And the Budget Oversight Committee recommendation does that. So thank you to the Budget Oversight Committee for establishing a $1 million youth fund. That's important. We we you know, we talked about this. We advocated for this. The community was very clear. We had our own major U.S. youth townhall to talk about this. So we're really happy to see that. The second part of that request was the community won 80% of those funds to go out to community, and my request was 75%. It was just, you know, give a little more flexibility. What we have today is it's a significant improvement from only 216,000. It's up to 673,000, a significant improvement. I do want to see us do better. That's 67% and do want to see us do better. So my first question is I remember the initial list of items were all categories that are consistent with what we talked about in our U.S. resolution, but what is still remaining in those categories for the youth fund? Speaker 2: So you mean what is still like what else could be allocated in there? Speaker 1: No, I see that like the youth ambassador program. You found another way to fund that. What's remaining in the other 33% has gone to city staff. Speaker 2: So generally and Grayson, get specifics here, we need dollar amount specific. So we have some staffing to be able to support the youth fund and the youth commission. I think that's really important if we want this to be successful. We then in the health fund, we have funding for Office of Equity, about 50,000, I believe. We also then have the older adult senior program to make that structural. And then what's really left is the ones that I think you would have kind of the most discretion over that. At least I would recommend you look at if you're looking at anything else, and that would be some additional program for our library. So there's about 120 roughly thousand dollars for first team programing, which is science, technology, those types of programs in our libraries and teen mental health programs in libraries. Speaker 1: Okay. So, so, so in our support, all of those programs, the one thing I would say is what's with it was listed within the youth fund, that library fund, does that have to be conducted by city staff? I think it creates a a double standard. If everyone else has to apply to the youth fund or the libraries get directly funded, like the management of the fund, the youth summit, all that's after you develop that consistent, why wouldn't we just put library funding as a grant to the Library Foundation or some library supporting groups was consistent and we don't continue to whittle away at the 75% because we could be at a hard standard and a commitment to the public by doing that. Is that something that you have? Could that work? Speaker 2: And so anything's possible. The way we created this was that city staff would be providing that rather than foundation. Sometimes money flows to the foundation when they raise it and then it gets sent back to city staff. We've not explored a model where the foundation have their own staff that provide this. We were going to provide it with city staff kind of funded through through the library. Speaker 1: Okay, I see my time is up. I hear from my colleagues that. But I want to see if there's a way, either the end of the year fund savings are not fund savings projections or measure us like even if it performs better, that funding should still be going the way it was structured. So either that way or by just taking it because I agree with the library funding was structured as a grant because I don't think say the library is any more important than, you know, success and challenges Freedom School or I think they're equally important. I think we should be fair in how we begin to allocate this funding our paths there. I would love to just hear some feedback from colleagues. Speaker 3: Give us your councilman, sir. Speaker 5: Thank you. You know, I just want to follow with Vice Mayor Richardson's questioning around the youth fund and in the sense that I also want to thank the PBOC for supporting the increase in funding to make it $1,000,000 for the youth fund. I do want to explore, you know, I do agree that 75% is a good number as far as ensuring that it goes to the youth. I, I agree that, you know, we trusted young people to lead in developing in developing the strategic plan. And I think we need to be able to trust and be able to determine where the funding should go for their development and investing in them as far as just, you know, the process and to determine terminating exactly those points and, you know, like to explore further how we can ensure that it is about a 75% that that that that is allocated to young people to determine where that program goes. So that's kind of where where I'm at with this and that I think that we need to indicate to young people that we support their leadership and that they know what is best for them. The other question I have and I want to raise this because I want to make sure that we do at least address how the question about how do we also support our undocumented community members. You know, during the pandemic, there was a lot of funding that went into individuals that undocumented community members weren't eligible for. And I think we had some general discussion around basic income as a possible avenue. So I'm wondering now, you know, Tom or Mr. Modica or the state or maybe you can clarify what the process would be for our undocumented community member to be able to access the guaranteed income pilot program that will be coming in this fall . And so that we know we're also ensuring that we're supporting our and document committee members. Speaker 4: Thank you for that question. Speaker 6: Councilwoman Sorrell. Speaker 4: That program is is in the early stages of development, and it is being developed by. Speaker 6: The Economic Development Department. And as with all of the other. Speaker 4: Elvira programs or Recovery Act funds, it will be very extensively promoted. Speaker 6: And advertised, particularly among the community. Speaker 4: Groups that are subject to or that may be eligible for it. So we. Speaker 6: Will be developing those programs, and. Speaker 4: Before any of them are rolled out, you will be. Speaker 6: Getting some kind of notice in advance of the programs being rolled out so that if you have thoughts on it, you can certainly weigh in with the staff regarding that. Speaker 4: But that is the ideas that are very heavily promoted, particularly. Speaker 6: In the areas where that program, the areas of eligibility for that program. Speaker 4: And if you recall, there was a memo from the from the staff to the city council. Speaker 6: That very broadly outline what that program looks like. And it was based. Speaker 4: Upon a. Speaker 6: Lot of feedback and a very specific group that had come together to look at what some of the options for that program were. Speaker 5: Great. Thank you. We'll look forward to having more discussion about it. Further comment or question. Speaker 3: Thank you. Can I just add something? I think. Rosemary Richardson mentioned. One thing I think that is interesting, which I think is could be part of this custom in Austin, which is that if measure because obviously I think the ABC obviously has gone a lot further than the statue recommendation and you know, pretty close to where with some of the community input has been and certainly hit the over million dollars actually in request. But perhaps if we can take any overages that happen with measure us. I mean, there's certainly certain funds do perform better sometimes over time. And so if the funds are performing better this year or the next year, that those could go directly into the youth fund for that. For that piece that way, I think I think that's a an opportunity for that to grow even beyond the million that might satisfy, I think, some of the smears concerns. Speaker 8: You know, I think. I'd be certainly amenable to doing that. I just I think it's very important that we we we show good faith to our library services as well, because those are that's a proven entity. We know we're going to see thousands and thousands of kids on it on a yearly basis. And when we were talking about providing steam education and opportunities as well as mental health services, I think I think that's it will be it'll be troublesome for me to see that it's being proposed. But then this council or BMC or council committee cut it. Speaker 3: Right. And that's why I think that that's why I think the request is not to cut the library services piece. Speaker 8: Absolutely. I so if we can keep that intact and meet the the voice matters or concerns, I think we'll be fine. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that keeps the library piece intact and just any overages would go would go there. So I think that's I think that's a slight a slight change to that. Next up is Council on Mango. Speaker 6: Thank you. I want to thank the chair of the Budget Oversight Committee along with the committee members. I know it's a considerable amount of work to balance all the different requests. I'm excited to hear that the All Abilities Playground is getting some additional funding and there's been a lot of work on that and I'm excited to hear that. Councilmember. Councilmember Brenda's replacement field I'm sorry. Replacement Playground will also be considered an all abilities playground as I go to different playgrounds across the city and see the different apparatus that are available for kids of different needs. It makes me very proud of our city that we're making those kind of investments, and I'm proud to see us move in that direction. Also, I'm very strongly in support of maintaining the funding with the library and all of you know, I'm a big supporter of foundations, specifically foundations that support departments directly on the Library Foundation is going through a transition right now, and the library, as a department, has proven leadership through this pandemic to really be a rock along with our Parks and Rec program for our community and our youth. And I appreciate Councilmember Austin's comments surrounding that, though I do continue to support the Library Foundation and work with one of their board members very closely and see lots of opportunity for them in the years to come. Every time there's a transition, there's also a lot of opportunity. Everyone brings different resources to the table and I look forward to seeing where they go from here. So with all of that said, I just want to appreciate that a lot of these different add ons are a great need for our city. I know that I shared with Councilmember Austin that tree trimming is the number one request for service that we receive in our city, and it has gone from one that was for just convenience and support of the environment to one that's actually really safety related. As some of our older trees have passed away and dead branches have become a hazard in our communities at our park. So I really appreciate and wanted to highlight and lift that up in addition to some of the other really important projects that are listed here. So thank you very much for all of your hard work and I look forward to seeing where we go with this amazing investment. Speaker 3: Bless me. Speaker 1: RICHARDSON Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to just take a moment. Thank you for that recommendation. I think I think it certainly makes sense. It's it's you know, my concern would be if if we're not, you know, putting as much as we can toward that community grant portion. So I think, you know, if we have end of year projections are higher, putting those toward more community grants, I think that's a good thing. And I would say I don't think it's a library versus others. I think we just have to think of it all as youth and we all have value, whether you're in a park because your neighborhood doesn't have a library and my neighborhood didn't for a long time. I know what that's like. But we also do have the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library. We love programs within that library. So for me, I'm just thinking holistically. This is about youth, not about carving out our little piece for what we what we like. It's about our youth and empowering those youth to be a part of this process. And that's what's most important to me. So I certainly want to thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you, Councilman Austin, for being amenable to that. Speaker 3: Conference in the House. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mia. And thank you very much to the Oversight Committee for all the hard work that you have done on this budget. I know how how much you have worked on it. And I think that one of the things I'm very pleased to see is the motion that was made earlier by the Oversight Committee to recommend $1 million to to the youth fund. I think I after going to the form that we were at, where there was dozens and dozens of youth speaking out on what their needs were, it was really, really clear to me that they wanted us to really give the organizations that are youth serving the majority of the money. So I'm very, very supportive of the 75, 75% going directly to those organizations that are youth serving and the continued to help our youth and creating opportunities and paths to better, better life quality. So I'm really excited about that. I want to thank all of the youth who participated in our form and really made the their needs shown. So thank you again for that. And I'm again, I'm very, very, very supportive of the 75% at least that going to directly to our youth serving programs all across the city. Another thing that I, I know is that, you know, we continue to see language access in in every budget that we see. And I know that we're giving a lot to add to our language access, a lot of attention to our language access program. One of the things I'd like to see moving forward and and see as a priority is to be able to have language access interpreters in the House. And I think that that is going to be such a valuable such a valuable asset to our city. And I know we're working towards that. So I'm very, very much in support of that. And I really look forward to seeing how how every year we work together and work hard to provide as much as we can. And I know it's a difficult year and it's going to be even more difficult, but I think that when one of the things that this pandemic has shown us is that one language access is needed and and we really need to have that program in house. So thank you very much again for all the hard work on this budget. Speaker 3: Thank you. There's a motion to second to approve the B or C recommendations with as written with the amendment that on the youth fund that any additional resources that would possibly could come in from measure us would go to supporting the youth fund as it relates to community community organization programing. Speaker 2: Yes, I understand that would be then part of the motion. Yep. Speaker 1: Great. Speaker 3: Thank you. Please, Gordon, cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you. Item A3, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to adopt Budget Oversight Committee’s proposed funding recommendations, as amended, to the Proposed FY 22 Budget. (A-2)

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Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 3: Given an item 812 is the resolution establishing the Gann appropriations limit for 22. Speaker 6: I'm sorry, Miranda. Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 3: Thank you. Before we move on, do this. Budget staff need to make any adjustments to the budget recommendation before we move on to the next few items. Speaker 5: We just need a couple of minutes. They're bringing down the motion language that we will attach, and that can be part of 13 and 14. Speaker 3: So what then? If there's no objection, we will hold the budget hearing and then we'll go into some other items on the agenda and come back to the budget. Speaker 5: Okay, great. Thank you. Speaker 3: So then with that, if we can just go back to the regular agenda. We're going to go ahead and do item 28, please.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution establishing the Gann Appropriations Limit for FY 22 pursuant to Article XIII (B) of the California Constitution. (A-12)

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Speaker 3: Thank you. Item 32 is the last item, please. Before the budget. Speaker 0: Report from City Attorney a recommendation to adopt a resolution in opposition to the September 14, 2021 recall election of a governor of California city. Speaker 6: Wide. Speaker 3: Caters to public comments. Gary Levy and Jordan McKnight, please come forward. Go ahead. Speaker 1: Good evening, City Council. I'm Gary Levy. I live in the fifth district. I think when you have a vote, an issue that's left to the voters for the people to decide, I think it's wrong for a government agency to put its thumb on the scale officially. You all are elected officials. But when you come together here to conduct the city's business, your cities employ your city employees conducting city business. Just as these uniformed police officers here, it's improper for them to put their thumb on the scale and tell people how to vote. It's wrong for city officials conducting city business to do that. I think it stinks stinks of corruption. I hope the city attorney speaks out about that. It stinks of interference in elections. It's wrong to use that city seal, this letterhead, city resources and city time to tell people out how to vote. I think it also means if you're for this, that you're a bunch of cheapskates, that you're using city resources when you should be using your own private resources to speak out on this and your own private time to speak out on this. We saw this with Marjorie. We saw this with other charter amendments where you get city correspondence in your water bill. Again, city resources. It's unfair to opponents of this. It's just wrong. I've gotten phone calls on measure from city lines. It's wrong. It's a violation of the law. And I hope the city attorney can tell you that and recommend that you don't do it. That is all. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Hello again. I just want to say, from my understanding, the city cannot support a candidate. But you're that a loophole getting around that is by saying this is a ballot measure. But by opposing the recall, it is very much supporting the candidate. And I think it's a very dangerous precedent you all are setting sitting up there by by opposing this recall. The the polls show it's about 5050 split down the middle for the recall versus not wanting to recall. So I believe you should allow the voters to make their vote known, their opinion known, and you guys should probably stay out of this one. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 0: Council members who were not. Motion carries. Speaker 3: It. Motion carries with that, we are going to go ahead and take a recess. The Budget Office is still putting information in that will be presented to us as we conclude the budget. So we'll take a recess for about 10 minutes and then we'll be back for the final items on the budget. Speaker 11: But I don't know about what I'm about. Out. Speaker 2: Boop. Speaker 11: Boop, boop, boop. Speaker 3: I can have the council back to the staff is ready to present the rest of the budget so we can adopt the finish the budget for adoption. We're going to go ahead and call the meeting back to order. And if I can go ahead and do a roll call, please, so we can go back into session. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Zendejas. Speaker 9: Is it. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Allen as in Councilwoman Price? Councilman Superstar. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilwoman Zero. Councilmember your UNGA. Councilman Austin. Vice Mayor Richardson. Mayor Garcia. Speaker 3: Thank you. We're going to go ahead and take the next part of the budget, which is item 13, which is the emergency declaration. And it's a 13. I can have a motion in a second on item 13. Members, please go ahead and cast your votes.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution in opposition to the September 14, 2021, recall election of the Governor of California. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Motion is carried. Speaker 3: Thank you. If I can get a motion on item 14, please. And this is the final item that adopts the budget. And so can I get a motion any second please, on that? I think I'm going to I have some comments I want to make generally about the budget and then we will take the final vote. If anyone has any final comments, this would be the time to do so. I want to I want to just start by really thanking the Budget Oversight Committee. I want to thank you, Councilmember Austin, the chair, and the other members of the of the committee. Councilman Gringa and Councilwoman Price, for your really, really hard work and commitment to the city and the budget process. I also want to take a moment to thank the budget staff headed by Ms.. Yoon and Mr. GROSS, of course, and the entire team who work on the budget, not just during budget season, but all year long. And so thank you very much for your incredible work as well. And, of course, to the really hundreds of people that were invested through community surveys, community meetings, attending the council meetings in a variety of ways. I just want to thank everyone that was a part of the budget. I want to also just note that this budget that we have in front of us, the 22 budget, is balanced. It's responsible. And it reflects the city's strong recovery from this historic economic and public health crisis. This budget includes no cuts, no deficit. Replenishes our reserves and positions. Long Beach to continue building back stronger than ever before. We are making historic investments. In public health. And in securing our city's future. And in violence prevention work across the community. I want to thank this Council for their leadership and work throughout this year. It has been a difficult year, but we are grateful to all that. We've been involved in this process and in passing a budget that is responsible and reflects what our needs are is really important and really glad to see that happening tonight. And as we move forward on with that, again, I want to thank the makers of the Motion Councilmember Austin Councilman Ranga Guzman. Ask and give any final comments. Speaker 8: I think I gave my comments. I just want to say thank you to everybody who participated in the process. Thank you, Mayor, for working with us and all of my colleagues for the confidence and collaboration to make this happen. Thank you. Speaker 3: And Councilman Garrincha. Speaker 7: Great work on everybody's part for everything that has been done today. I want to especially thank the staff. I mean, they were really wonderful in doing the most difficult part of the heavy lifting, if you will, for this budget. Thank you. Speaker 3: Councilman. Councilwoman in the house. Speaker 9: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much again to our oversight committee for all the hard work. But I also want to uplift all of the community organizations that worked really hard on the budget and really came to to a lot of meetings with me and my office. And I really got a chance to get to know them and get to see where they're coming from and the needs in the community. So I just really wanted to uplift them and and also say that years ago, years ago, the people's budget was only a dream. And I think that throughout the years we've been taking as much as we can and implementing it into our budget. And I'm glad to see that there's a lot of focus on on our youth because I really think that there is a key in us. Investing in them is definitely the key to, you know, to ending hopefully are violent crimes in our city. So again, I think this is very hard work but very balanced and responsible budget, as you said. Mayor. So thank you, Chair Ashton, for all your hard work in the committee and I look forward to another great year, especially seeing this this amount of dedication to a budget and being able to not come out in a deficit is something that we as a city should be very proud of. Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilwoman Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just want to take a moment and just acknowledge the significance of this budget. I want to thank all the community members who participated for a very long time. It seems like we've talked about this budget and it's, you know, the recovery plan and conversations and through the budget process. And then we here we are tonight, and it's significant because we don't typically have these types of resources, but also we have a new revenue source with Measure US that we look forward to doing a lot of good, touching a lot of people in the areas of public health, climate and youth. And so tonight we made a significant commitment to youth in our city. We established our first million dollar youth fund. Our entire city council should be proud of that and should get out and make sure that community based organizations are engaged and support is going their way to make sure that we're supporting and have a world class youth development program here in the city of Long Beach. I want to thank Councilman Austin are chair of the Budget Oversight Committee for being a good steward of this process. Thanks to our mayor for his leadership, the federal legislative committee, for working hard on the that resources and city staff. Thank you so much. Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilman. Speaker 5: Yes. I just want to add my thanks as well to staff and to chair Austin of the Budget Oversight Committee, as well as the committee members and staff as well. It's been an interesting first budget process for sure. It's historic in the sense of this kind of resource and the challenge we face. I can't think of a better way, I guess, to learn about budgeting. So I appreciate everyone's patience around the process. And, you know, it's, you know, just thank you for everyone's hard work. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes comment on the budget members please Gordon, cast your votes.

Emergency Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance approving and adopting the official budget of the City of Long Beach for the Fiscal Year 2021-2022, creating and establishing the funds of the municipal government of the City of Long Beach and appropriating money to and authorizing expenditures from said funds for said Fiscal Year; declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect at 12:01 A.M. on October 1, 2021, read and adopted as read. (Citywide) (Emergency Ordinance No. ORD-21-0030)

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Speaker 2: Thank you. We're going to go and do all the transfer items that item 14, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 22. Madam Court. Speaker 1: An important communication from Councilwoman Allen recommendation to increase appropriations by $500, to provide a contribution to California families in focus to support their I Matter to Youth Fashion Show and music concert. Item 17 is a communication from Councilwoman Zendejas recommendation to increase appropriations by $689 to provide a donation to Partners of Parks to support the AOC seven Neighborhood Group. Item 18 is a communication from Councilwoman Zendaya's recommendation to increase appropriations by $1,000 to provide a donation to the California families in focus to support the I Matter to Youth Fashion Show and Music Concert. Item 19 Communication from Councilwoman Zendejas Councilmember Your UNGA recommendation to increase appropriations by $800 to provide a contribution to Wild West women to support the Long Beach Suffrage Women's Equality Day event. Item 20 A Communication from Councilwoman Zinder House recommendation to increase appropriations by $5,000 to provide a donation to the Wilmore City Heritage Association. And Item 22 communication from Councilman Austin. Recommendation to increase appropriations by 25,000. To provide a contribution to the Partners of Parks to support the Summers and community jazz celebration. Speaker 2: Thank you. There's one public comment, please. Item for 20. Leslie, Miss Leslie Holmes. Public comment. Please come forward. Speaker 0: I just I'm speaking from the behalf of what. Speaker 4: I and I just want to say thank you. Speaker 0: And it will be well used. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. There's a motion and the second members. Please go ahead and cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. I've had. One, two, three, four, five. David seven items have been requested to be moved up before the time certain at six I think to the two members that requested these. I may have a obligations as soon as possible. So let's please try to get to these next items. It's seven items we're to try to do them as many we can before six the time certain and it's for two members that will have to leave after these items have been requested. So we'll go through these seven items, hopefully expeditiously. Item 27, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotion Group in the City Manager Department by $25,000, offset by Eighth Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to provide a contribution to the Partners of Parks to support the Summer’s End Community Jazz Celebration; and Decrease appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotion Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $25,000 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 2: So we'll go through these seven items, hopefully expeditiously. Item 27, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Allen. Councilwoman Sara. Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution in opposition to the recall election of the governor of California. Speaker 2: Of Vice Mayor Richardson. And on the motion, please. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr.. A second. Proceed. Please. Thank you. Between now and September 14th, Californians are voting in an election that will determine the direction that we take in California and impact our community here in Long Beach and even in our country at large. In this election, voters ask the question on your ballot, shall Gavin Newsom be recalled removed from office of governor? Yes or no? That is a ballot measure question that has tremendous impacts on our city. Like any other ballot question, we have the legal authority and I believe the responsibility to demonstrate leadership and take a position that best aligns with Long Beach's goals and values. Many residents might ask, what is what does this vote actually mean for the future of Long Beach? I want everyone to know that the stakes are indeed high for quality of life, for the initiatives that we've pursued to create a more just, a more equitable city, a more inclusive Long Beach , where every resident is accepted and has an opportunity to thrive. And let's talk about what's at stake. All we need to do is look at the recall supporters statement of reasons. Those advocating for a yes vote say that the governor's support for immigrant rights, conservation and investing in housing and services have to stave off a homelessness emergency . Are the wrong things to do. Here in Long Beach. We've done the opposite. We welcome immigrants. We've shown this throughout our history as a city. Most recently, by passing our laws that protect our immigrants and helping reunite migrant families. We believe that climate change is real. As a city, we need to prepare for its effects. It's why Long Beach has led the way by creating a climate action adaptation plan and passing measure us to help fund these efforts. And we know that the K-Shaped recovery from COVID 19 is also real. While the wealthiest among us continue to do well, we've helped our residents, our residents on the lower leg of that case. We're struggling to recover. We've helped them by providing rental assistance and have so have helped support struggling small businesses who need more support, particularly through this COVID 19 pandemic. The progress that we've made as a city as a result, it's a result of us working together with our state and federal government to bring resources back to our communities. That's the progress that is on the line. The recall process is intended for youth. When a governor cannot fulfill their duty, fulfill their duty due to personal corruption or unfaithfulness for office. And these are not the reasons that are that the recall supporters have put forward in their petition. That's not the reasons. In fact, it's important to recognize that this recall petition started circulating months before COVID 19 even reached our shores. And make no mistake, supporters of this recall seek to unravel the progress that we've made as a city in our fight against COVID 19. The Long Beach can't afford to sit this one out. The progress we've made in the city is is too important, and it's on the line. So now is the time for us to take a position, our city's future, and make sure that we understand that this recall election is happening. This isn't whether or not we want this recall election, how this is happening. And so we need to respond to this with urgency and take a position of no on question one for the seventh, the September 14th recall election. And so I'm happy to move our position of no for the city of Long Beach, a position in opposition of the recall election for the governor of California. Thank you. Speaker 2: Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. This election, this recall election is a power grab by special interest who hope to delegitimize the votes that were cast in 2018. It delegitimizes my vote for the governor. This recall election will cost over a quarter of $1,000,000,000. And that's a, quote, equivalent to more than half of our general fund. Just for reference. This is a waste of time, energy and money by bet, by special interest. And this is dangerous for our democracy. Speaker 2: Councilwoman. Councilmember Superman. Speaker 5: Thank you. Independent of the comments made by my colleagues. I have to make this statement. The recall process is clearly outlined in the California Constitution, Article three, Sections 13 through 19, and in the California elections code. It provides a mechanism for the public to attempt to remove elected public officials from office before the end of their terms . I have taken the oath of office on three occasions to serve on the Long Beach City Council. Each time I raise my right hand and I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the State of California, I believe that supporting this agenda item would be a clear violation of my oath of office. Therefore, I will be voting in opposition. Thank you. Speaker 2: They can count. Remember, there's a motion in a second. There is no public comment. Members of his court and Castro notes. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution in opposition to the Recall Election of the Governor of California.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is item 21. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Allen, Councilmember Your Honor. Councilman Austin recommendation to support SB 679, which would create a new independent countywide agency to raise public and private funds for renter protections and support programs, and request the city manager to communicate the city's support to the bill's author and our state legislative delegation. Speaker 2: There's a motion on a second baseman, Richardson. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, it's not it's not often that the state legislature gives us legislation around housing that we actually get excited about. There's, you know, since the last redevelopment, there's been very few opportunities to actually put some points on the board. And I personally believe SB six, seven nine is one of those bills that will create some opportunities for here in Long Beach. Here's the context. We all know that we have to do more. We have to continue to do more around affordable housing here in Long Beach and across L.A. County, as our housing element makes it clear . Now is the time for action. We have 17,000 people who are precariously housed in our city living in overcrowded or unsafe housing conditions. 43% of all Long Beach households are housed, housing cost burdened. And within that, 80% of very low income renters, the house burden, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Eight out of ten low income people are getting crushed by housing costs. And across L.A. County as a whole, we know that we need at least 500,000 units that are affordable for working families and low income families. We've done our work here in Long Beach. We've done the research, we've done our planning. And we know that we need resources. We know that we don't have the funding locally to do what we need to do. And we've debated this quite a bit over the last few years. We've never returned to the level of funding for affordable housing that we had pre redevelopment era. And so we also know there are strict smart strategies out there deploying a number of them to bring together public private funding to reduce cost and increase speeds with which we support low income renters and create new housing. And we've been we haven't. And these are things that we we've we've supported. The New York Housing Development Corporation was created in the early 1970s and lasted 20 years. It's financed 186,000 affordable units across New York City and public and private sources. Now, we we we've come nowhere close to that here. The Bay Area created the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which is similar to the New York model, and also seeks to balance both regional and local approach. SB 679 The bill that we are we are considering support today would create the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority. So it's a regional approach to help support and support our efforts here in the city. It's our opportunity to reject the status quo, the status quo and chart a new course on affordable housing, housing affordability here in Long Beach, across L.A. County. Now, here's what's good about this. I pay attention to the regional table. You know, at the SCAD, we don't have a dedicated, dedicated seat on AQAP or a metro. And I wanted my colleagues to know that that lobbies has been at the table helping to craft as be six, seven, nine. We made sure Long Beach has a dedicated seat on the governing board, which we do not have on Metro, which we do not have on AQAP. We made sure that Long Beach has a guaranteed baseline of funding. The bill sponsor estimates that Long Beach will be entitled to nearly $15 million annually from this agency without having to apply for it every year. That's what's possible with this agency in the context of a moderate, moderate revenue proposal. This is nearly five times what we're receiving from Measure H. This is this certainly deserves consideration. Represents a good balance of a regional and local approach. We don't infringe on our local land use powers. We still have the ability to have local control. And the last point is SB 679 creates a regional agency for L.A. County. It doesn't guarantee funding for the agency that that would be a future step. This helps establish the agency to be able to be able to do this work and think regionally. So let's not miss our chance to push this right. There's a lot of things in Sacramento that we we've either opposed or we've been silent on. This is something that is an opportunity to get to put something out that we can support and so we can make sure Long Beach gets its fair share. We can partner with the community. We can make sure our communities have a chance to ratify this ambitious solution and chart a new path forward for Long Beach and beyond . So I want to make sure we make this motion to support this important bill. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. There's three public comments. It's good to hear the public comment. Speaker 1: The first speakers. Andy Kerr and then. Nadia Tushnet and then Tommy Newman. Speaker 6: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and honorable members of the Council. My name is Andy Kerr. It's good to be in your physical presence this evening for the first time in a long time. In addition to being a resident of District eight, I also serve on the L.A. County Measure H Citizen Advisory Oversight Board and have worked on issues of homelessness and affordable housing for going on 20 plus years. In addition to that, I was proud to serve on the everyone at home Long Beach Task Force. And I think it's really great timing to be here talking about this item today after last week's great report from the Health Department and from city staff on the update to what's been done the last couple of years on the Everyone Home Long Beach efforts and our efforts to fight homelessness and restore housing security. When I was first asked to serve on the Homeless Services Advisory Commission by Councilman Austin several years ago, our budget for the city's Health Department Homeless Services Bureau was under $10 million. And then to see it grow to over $90 million here in recent years is was is really incredible that we is I think it's a testament to our city's commitment to this issue and growing those resources. But it's also a little disheartening to see how the challenges are even more acute than they were all those years ago today. And. I'm really convinced the data and the reports that I read on a daily basis, it's really clear that this affordable housing crisis is the driver of the homelessness crisis. And that's why I am here before you today to talk about SB 679. I think Vice Mayor Richardson did a did a great job laying out all the the positives to this solution. SB 6679 would advance the critical work that we identified on the everyone at home task that everyone at home Long Beach Task Force. We lost the critical dollars in redevelopment that. Speaker 5: Vice Mayor Richardson spoke about in 2012. Speaker 6: And Lacasse would help restore that work to our community. Since 2012, housing cost burdens have only gone up. Overcrowding has increased, and we've dealt with that in this pandemic. That was the worst situation we could go into. Going into a global health crisis that we've been going through the last couple of years is to have the overcrowding this that we have in L.A. County. And housing affordability is driving that. Speaker 5: Problem. Speaker 6: Just as critical as the direct support to Long Beach that Vice Mayor Richardson spoke about. La Castle would be a regional solution. And I think that's really important because this really is a regional crisis. Every city, all 88 cities in the county need to do more on this issue. And we have very limited resources. We don't have anybody to turn to like La Crosse are right now. So that's why I support SB 679 and hope you will, too. Thank you very much. Hi. Speaker 4: It is good to be here again in person. I'm a Long Beach resident and I support SB 679. Speaker 1: For a whole lot of. Speaker 0: Reasons. We need much needed resources to build housing for people who. Speaker 4: Are low income and very low income. Speaker 0: I think it's also important to note that SB. Speaker 1: 679 preserves existing. Speaker 0: Affordable housing, and it builds housing that working families and individuals can actually afford. And it protects hundreds and thousands of renters from unjust evictions, rent increases and landlord harassment. I agree with Council member Richardson that the crisis is a regional crisis. Speaker 4: It's actually a national crisis, but we can only deal with our region. And so I urge you to vote yes to support. Speaker 1: SB. Speaker 4: 679. Thank you. Speaker 2: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Tommy Newman and I work at the United Way. We're proud to be the bill's sponsor on this bill, but I'm really proud to stand with one heck of a coalition helping to drive this bill forward across L.A. County, labor, community based organizations, business organizations, philanthropic organizations, 60 plus organizations supporting this bill. Only one city in Los Angeles County is opposing this bill would be Santa Clarita. I can draw your own conclusions there. And so we hope that Long Beach is able to take this big step forward tonight, help us drive this bill forward. It's absolutely still alive in the legislature. It's caught up in some conversations between some of our labor partners around exactly what the right balance is on labor requirements. We're confident. Had a good meeting with the speaker two weeks ago. We're confident that they can find a solution. And we think that Long Beach coming in support this evening will help us find that solution. As Councilmember Vice Mayor Richardson said, this is a good deal. We think this strikes the right balance for Long Beach and other cities across this county. That's why United Way is working so hard with so many. And deeply appreciate your support this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm happy to sign on. And second, this motion for many of the reasons already stated, and I think the vice mayor made a great points as well as public comment, I think we do have a responsibility as the second largest city in L.A. County, to be a leader in this regional approach. And I think this bill actually accomplishes that. I do have a couple of questions for staff, or at least a question. I'd like to get a staff report on this bill. I think we've heard a lot about it, but I'd like to know where the bill is currently. And you know what what what are the dynamics in Sacramento related to this bill? Absolutely. So as Mr. Newman from United Way mentioned, the bill did pass the Senate 29 to 7, but it is has been held up in the Assembly. It hasn't been referred to a policy committee at this point, given some broader negotiations around labor and other housing and other legislation as well. So not necessarily directly tied to this bill. It does require at this point a rule waiver in order to move forward. However, the legislature is still in session until September ten, so they still have about 3 to 4 weeks in order for this bill to move forward in the assembly. And in terms of just an overview of the bill, of course, the vice mayor and the public comment mentioned some of the high level points. But I would just emphasize, you know, the the bill is really about creating a new countywide agency separate from L.A. County and other city related agencies. So this really is a region wide approach. And part of the approach is really to make sure that there is buy in from cities and communities across the county, including having a seat for Long Beach on the governing board. And then there is in the legislation an overview of what the funding priorities would be depending on the revenue sources. So there would be investments in affordable housing creation and development, as well as renter support and assistance, very similar to what we've seen with our rental assistance program during the pandemic. And then there are also just outlines of what the priorities are for funding jurisdictions, including the city of Long Beach, being a direct funding jurisdiction within the bill. Great. And, you know, every year we go through a process to create a state ledger, gender, state legislative agenda through the state levels committee as well as the city council. Where does this this bill fall within our state lands agenda, or have we already kind of taken a position in terms of the. In a broader scope. Well, we have not taken a position on this bill specifically. We had assumed that at some point we would have a council conversation on the bill specifically, especially, you know, there has been some negotiations over the past several months with a working group to fine tune some of the details about how the agency would be structured. And there was negotiations with some of the smaller cities, as well as City of L.A. and County of L.A. just different dynamics and negotiations about how the agency should be structured. And for us, I do think at this point, the bill has been fine tuned in a way that is beneficial, of course, to Long Beach in terms of having a seat on the board as well as having direct funding opportunities. However, there is a question at this point from my perspective around it's a policy question really, which is, you know, around the funding revenue source for affordable housing across our state, LEGENDA supports additional resources for affordable housing. It would be beneficial. As I mentioned in the Council item, to have an additional local stream funding stream for affordable housing to leverage additional grant opportunities. But this would be created potentially through a ballot measure next year from this agency having the authority to put a measure on the ballot. Well, I'm certainly encouraged to know that the Long Beach has been involved in discussions from the beginning and that should a ballot initiative pass and the agency is created, that we will have a solid seat at the table because that is not the case, as I mentioned, in many other regional boards. Those are my comments. Thank you. I look forward to supporting this item. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman Longo. Speaker 0: Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about the feedback I've received from the community. I appreciate some of the speakers today have already had one on ones with and I appreciate your input and the great dialogs that we've had and the negotiation around the structure isn't the only thing. I think the negotiation around the revenue is a big part of that and I'm very supportive of a ballot measure because people should have the right to determine their own taxation. I think the other part of this that's pretty supportive of what I hear from residents of the fifth District is that there are always cities across the region doing their part to support the production of housing. And while this bill does not build any housing, it definitely provides the incentive option and not just the stick. The stick is currently what we hear all the time that we need to increase our arena numbers. We need to do this and we need to do that. But there are lots of cities who are choosing not to participate and that the penalties that they face aren't aren't dramatic enough for them to want to transition their plan and put in the effort. There are also a lot of cities who don't have the resources or expertize that a city the size of Long Beach has, and this agency could provide those templates for cities of those size. So I really like the buy in and regional approach and the incentives. And I think that this would release a lot of the pressure on the cities like ourselves who are doing our part in the whole system. So that is the reason I'm supporting tonight. Thank you. Speaker 2: Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm proud to sign on to this item. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson are leading on this. And also I want to say thank you to Nadia and Tommy Newman and all your coalition for your comments. And I also have to give a special thank you to Andy Kur for your comments and your service on this county commission. I know how dedicated you are to these issues. You are one of my go to people when I was running for office to get up to speed and I know how dedicated you are, so thank you for being here tonight to speak on this. We need more housing production and we need more streamlined funding to get it done. And this bill will provide representation on the new agency board for Long Beach, and it would also provide direct funding for the housing in Long Beach. And this is important because we need more renter protections and support. It makes Long Beach a more affordable place to live for our long time residents and provides homes for our children. And hopefully one day it gives them an opportunity to own a home of their own. So thank you very much and I'll be supporting this. Speaker 2: Thank you. Conference in the house. Speaker 4: I want to echo my colleagues and Councilmember Allen's comments and thank Vice Mayor Richardson for bringing this item forward and also city staff for elaborating more where this bill is right now. I think that this is really, really, really an exciting plan to bring to our city, because it is so, so very true that when everyone is in, everyone wins. And I think that this is ideal timing. Our city is in dire need of multilingual and workforce development programs that can support and empower our most in need communities to help ensure that every person has the tools available to thrive. And that is exactly what this bill is going to provide. So I'm very, very happy to support this. Thank you all for all the wonderful work that you've done on this. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilman Sarno. Speaker 4: Thanks, Mayor. I want to add to the thanking my colleagues, vice mayor of Richardson leading as well as Councilman Urunga, Austin and Allen for bringing this forward. You know, I know that we have been spending we've been spending a lot of money to address our homelessness issue. And I think that it's time that we do have a dedicated funding source to be able to address really what people need in the end of the days to be housed. And obviously, we cannot build housing if we don't have the funds. So I want to also thank all the advocates and organizer who have worked hard in ensuring that this bill moves forward and I wholly support this item. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Thank you. There's a motion on the second, I believe there is public comment on this. We did have a comment on this item. So, members, please cast your vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Council to support SB679 (Kamlager), which would create a new independent countywide agency to raise public and private funds for renter protections and support programs, affordable housing preservation, and affordable housing production-with a guaranteed seat for the City of Long Beach on the governing board and guaranteed annual funding for the City of Long Beach; and request City Manager to communicate the City’s support to the bill’s author and our state legislative delegation.

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Maximum 16. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Allen, Councilman Austin. Recommendation to request City Manager to provide a report on the current nuisance violation, fines, structures, and the feasibility of increasing penalties to allow for more effective enforcement tools and resources to address nuisance activities. Speaker 2: Councilwoman Price. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Speaker 2: I also got a second on this, please. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I just want to. The item as written is pretty self-explanatory, but I just want to highlight that we're looking in this item for a report on how to make code enforcement more effective, not necessarily to penalize people. There are alternatives outlined in this particular agenda item, such as community service in lieu of fines or fees, but really encouraging. People who are living in some of these new developments that we're starting to see pop up in residential neighborhoods to appreciate the right of every resident in the community to use and enjoy their property with peace . And so I think it's a really important time, given some of the state legislation that's coming out, this limiting our ability to put into place mitigating impacts, mitigating requirements that might help with some of the impacts in neighborhoods. We're not able to do that as a result of the state. Speaker 0: Legislation. Speaker 4: That's come forth. So I think it's important for us to take a look at what tools we have to make sure that quality of life impacts are at a minimum. I want to thank my colleagues who signed on to this item and asking for a report. This specific item comes as a result of some recent changes to state policy, which have allowed for, in some cases, a three bedroom single family home to become an edu 11 bedroom, 11 bath home on the same lot in the residential neighborhood. I am 100% in favor of more housing and absolutely believe that ensuring we are continually adding housing to Long Beach because it's important to our city as we grow and we want to make sure that we keep seeing residents thrive and love our city. This particular development, however, is a market rate 11 bedroom, 11 bathroom development near Long Beach State. It is not an affordable housing site, and it is not a site that's designed at all to help people who are under, housed, receive housing. It is undoubtedly an opportunity for developers to take full advantage of state law, allowing them to build at full capacity market rate housing. This change and changes like this. Are important for us to look at in terms of what options are available to us to help keep our neighborhoods at their best with little negative impacts in the form of parking issues, increased noise, excessive trash, or other types of impacts to residents in the nearby communities and nearby homes. This item asks for city staff to look at ways of making our code enforcement as efficient and effective and up to date as possible. Whether that's looking at fines or fees or looking at ways of adjusting fines based on income for those who may struggle to pay a violation, as well as options for community service in place of fines. The goal of this item is to encourage good neighbors and make. Speaker 0: Sure we have effective. Speaker 4: Tools at our disposal to keep the neighborhoods and as the place best places they can be within our municipal code. While looking at what tools may be most effective for different neighbors. And I ask my colleagues to please support this item, which is asking the city attorney's office to really take a look at what enforcement mechanisms we have in place and how we can make those more effective to address the changing dynamics of our housing situation in the community of Long Beach. And I know that we do have some members of the public here to speak who are from that exact community. Of the development I just mentioned. But they are not alone. This is just the first of such developments and I do expect more to come in the near future. So. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Speaker 2: That's when Austin. Speaker 3: Obviously I second this motion. You know, sometimes the legislation is passed in Sacramento that is well-intended. But oftentimes if the details are not really identified or discussed, the unintended consequences can result. And this is clearly an outlier, not the norm. And we as a city, I think, have a responsibility. To our residents to know keep the quality of life in intact and obviously support local control as much as possible. And so I support this item and look forward to the city attorney coming back with some good solutions, hopefully. Speaker 2: Thank you for a public comment, please, Madam Quirk. Speaker 1: Speaker number one is Jim the tall. Number two is Katie Larson. And speaker number three, jennifer and feld. Can you please come to the podium? Speaker 5: Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Speaker 2: My name is Jim Painter. I'm in the. Speaker 5: La Marina neighborhood next door to Cal State, Long Beach. A longtime resident of Long Beach. 30 years. First time speaking before the council. So please forgive a little nervousness. And thank you so much, Susie, for your introduction to this situation. I came here with notes and comments, but I can't say it any better than what Mr. Austin and Mr. Mrs. Price has already explained the situation to you in the introduction to you. The city prepared to mentions an 11 bedroom, one bathroom adu development on a single family lot. That's us. That's our neighborhood. And we're we're scared of that. But we're here today to support this item 16. And we thank you, not because we oppose any kind of housing. We all recognize the challenges in our state. But because we want to make sure that we continue to live in a great neighborhood. And we're here tonight not only to share those concerns, but we're briefly going to talk about a success story that we may be able to share with you. I can define our concerns, but I think it might be more meaningful to hear. I have in front of me a report from Gary Sheets, the city attorney for the City of Orange, that he prepared for his city council. He talks about their concerns. City of Orange is ahead of us on this. They have several of these mini dorms. And I'd like to share with you a little bit of the concerns that they have. The many dorms already constructed have caused numerous negative effects on families residing in nearby instances, including but not limited to parking on front lawns. I like to make a point. This one bedroom development is to house 15 to 22 students. That's the stated by the developer. The impact on the residences nearby including but not limited to parking on front lawns, illegal street parking, unsafe vehicle speed demonstrations, trampled landscaping, landscaping, loud music, unruly parties, congregation a crowds from outside the neighborhoods in the front yards. Confrontational interactions with neighbors. Public drinking, numerous late night disturbances, litter and trash, including bottles and caps strewn about the neighborhood and what has been described by the residents as a fraternity atmosphere. All of which effects constitute a public nuisance to our community. The city attorney summed it up this way. The effects are swiftly and significantly contributing to the deterioration of the peace, health, safety and welfare of the neighborhoods where such remodeling projects have been constructed. And I will point out that the developer of the many dorms at Orange is the developer of the many dorms here in Long Beach . So yes, we're worried. Speaker 1: But the time has expired. Speaker 5: Okay. I will sum up then that I was going to show you that the city of Berkeley has also addressed this problem and using city ordinances and using nuisances ordinances. They have successfully worked with the many dorm residents and the city. I wanted to say thank you for all the work that you've done and you and Jack and I'll pass it on to my next speakers. Thank you. Speaker 0: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council people. A special thanks as well to Councilman Price for the work that she and her office have already done on this. My name is Katie Larson. I'm a resident of La Marina Estates, as well as a local realtor. I am very much aware of the housing shortage that is going on and how it has driven up prices not only on home sales but on rents. An average rent of a family single family home in our neighborhood is $4,000 a month. This bill that is going in on honorably, well, when full will be a rent of $16,000 a month, four times the rate of an average home. Of course, it's divided. Speaker 7: Up into 11 rooms. Speaker 0: This is not affordable. Speaker 7: Housing being. Speaker 0: Put into our single family. Speaker 6: Neighborhood, nor does it adhere. Speaker 0: To the way that our neighborhood. Speaker 7: Has been zoned. Speaker 0: This is not unique to East Long Beach. We are like neighborhoods in any one of the nine districts you represent. Any lot that is more than 5000 square feet. We are all vulnerable to the abuse of the housing laws. We're just first up due to our proximity to the university. We also pay for parking permits. Each home is allowed three parking permits and some temporary permits. Speaker 7: Far more are far fewer than will be needed for this. So we. Speaker 0: Are expecting there will. Speaker 7: Be impact. Speaker 0: To the parking in the neighborhood. Whether it's parking. Speaker 6: On lawns. Speaker 0: It's illegal parking, blocking driveways or blocking access to. Speaker 7: Other homes. Speaker 0: Also. What about the additional trash? I went to college. I know what goes out of dorm windows and. Speaker 7: Out of on fraternity row. I know I've seen those things. Speaker 0: So there's also a mini dorm, again, by the same developer going in across from tincture prep. Is that the type of atmosphere we want across the street from an elementary school? We have co-existed with student renters for many years. Most of them are very conscientious neighbors. Speaker 7: We welcome the students. Speaker 0: We also have had terrible student renters where the police. Speaker 7: Have had to intervene, where we have. Speaker 0: Been awakened in the middle of the night with music and noise. That's us with 4 to 6 renters. Imagine having 20 renters next door. We would have no recourse should there be a problem. Because right now we can go to a single owner or to a tenant and ask for help. Now, with 20 renters in there. One tenant's going to blame another, blame another. So what we really need are ordinances to put structure on how these mini dorms are released and how we can help these tenants be good neighbors. Again, we welcome the students. We want prohibitive fines on both the tenants and more. Most of all on the owners. So to prevent this and I like the idea of there being community service for. Speaker 7: The tenants who may not be able to afford the fines. Speaker 0: So please help us move forward with enforceable ordinances so that we can maintain what we have worked. Speaker 7: So hard to achieve to become homeowners in our. Speaker 6: Beloved Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Our final speaker. Speaker 0: Good evening, County Council members. My name is Jennifer Landefeld, and I've lived in Long Beach for over 35 years. 21 years of those years in my current home, we raised our children here and we think Long Beach is a gem of a city. We love Long Beach. I consider my current home, my forever home. I'm here today to urge councilmembers to approve moving forward with this item to ensure we continue to live in a wonderful neighborhood. With 11 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. 80 new structure currently being built next to my home. This is very personal. Let's find ways to ensure such structures do not have negative impacts to our communities by expanding our enforcement codes. I am open to change and co-living environments. I care about our community and want to see it thrive and continue to be a great place to live. I feel that our city also wants us to. I have strong concerns, however, of the noise, parking, litter and other issues that may result from a student dormitory with between 15 and 22 students and their friends being built next door. We have successfully co-existed with the university and its students for years and welcomed them in our community. The latest tenants were respectful. We became friends there, admired by other neighbors. However, the tenants before them were another story. I mean, they had their parties started at midnight and were ended, you know, in the early morning. This caused numerous sleepless nights. I want them to be good neighbors and with some added attention to code enforcement ordinances. I think that can be. Let's give them a path to do so. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I have some folks queued up to speak, Mr. Modica. Just just a question, because I. I did read about this and I've heard as well. To me, I'm just trying to understand how you can put 1180 use on one lot. And what what I don't understand is I think the city has a proud record of building a lot of housing. We should always be building more. I think we know that. And certainly transit quarters, the downtown, we continue to build and build, but certainly adjacent to single family homes to build 11 units seems particularly for the potential of that to replicate itself. I think it's very problematic. What how how is this can you for those of us that aren't as clued in as possible price. Is this is this actually a state law? Speaker 7: Is there some history to this project? So I'll ask Oscar Orsi, our director of development services, to talk it through. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the city council. Speaker 2: The current state. Speaker 7: Regulations have a bit of an outlier. So for those properties that have a larger lot. Speaker 2: Than your neighborhood, they're allowed to build additional units. Speaker 7: There is no limit on the number of units that you can do. So as a consequence, in this. Speaker 2: Particular example, you have a larger than the normal sized lot in the neighborhood where they were able to come in and do the 80 you and the Jedi, you. Speaker 7: Add to total the total of. Speaker 2: Approximately 11. So it does meet the state edu act requirement. Okay. I mean, I think I think all of us here truly encourage homeowners to want to build ideas, use. I think we certainly support heavy use across the city. But it obviously seems that the intention, I doubt anyone's intention at the state level was to get 1180 use on one lot. Speaker 7: Do you think this will be a pretty rare occurrence? Speaker 3: This was a pretty unique. Speaker 7: Situation with the size of this lot. You know, that said, you know, there are concerns that there could be some others. And so this is something we're. Speaker 3: Required to. Speaker 7: Process that we have to do because of the state law. But we understand there is there is concern when you get that many units. Speaker 2: On a site. And I would like to know just if there are other sites that we are concerned about. I think I would rather proactively know about where these sites are so that we can understand and be prepared for that. In addition, I'm just wondering, and I think this is what Councilman Price is probably getting to also in this item is. We are we are certainly going to try to put in certain levels of protections or or rules around these areas. There's a reason why we don't, for example, just permit. Dorms in the middle of residential neighborhoods. So I just want to make sure that there is that that going to be reported back on as part of this item. Mayor. Yes, we can. We're going to do not. Speaker 7: Only to visit the legislation, but also take a look at our existing legislation. We do have specific regulations that covered sorority houses for turnkey houses, and we'll make that. Speaker 5: Analysis as well. Speaker 2: And I support it. And I think it's great that the university, by the way, is building a lot of on campus housing. And I think I think a lot of folks support that. I'm also wondering if this is an actual because it seems to me to be it's not really about any issues which which I think people support, we all support. But there obviously is some sort of issue, I think, within the law that was passed in Council Member Let me just clarify. Speaker 7: They meet the current regulatory. Speaker 2: Requirements. Speaker 7: Of one ADU and one Jay Junior Adu. What the issue is, is the number of units, number of bedrooms within those 80, as well as the home's number of bedrooms. So there's a total of about 11 bedrooms within within. Speaker 2: The home and the the adu. Speaker 7: So that's one of the things we also wanted to visit. Speaker 2: Is are we working with our state partners at all to to. Because to me, this seems like a very rare occurrence that could be addressed at the state level. That's something that we've been we've been discussing with staff, including Dr. Curley. Speaker 7: To determine what we can do. I think the City of Orange has has an option there that we would like to visit. But I. Speaker 2: Believe we are. Speaker 7: Very limited in terms of what we can do based upon current state. Speaker 2: Legislation. Thank you. I look forward to report back. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. So several weeks ago I brought an agenda item where I specifically asked development services to identify the blocks of the city that would be most impacted by similar types of legislation. Many of you know, similar to Councilman Price, I have a university in my district and that university is adjacent to some of the biggest lots in the whole city. And one of the things that I hear from development services and even sometimes interns on my own staff is, well, you know, it really couldn't happen to us because you can't knock down a current structure. And I say you misunderstand. The current structures are on the very front of this parcel, and that parcel is 27,000 square feet. And it's like that because it's always been like that. You might call them double lots or triple lots, but in the forties those were the size of the lots on that particular street, and they've never changed. And there are houses that have nothing back there. You can look at the gears and see where that is. And so while we have a large number of people who are supportive of an ADU, like Mr. Orsi said, if that Adu has three bedrooms in it and another three bedrooms on the front house, already had five bedrooms, all of a sudden what you're talking about is serious business. And I think that our staff tried to do the analysis by downloading the assessor's data on parcels and the percentage of land already built. And it's a difficult analysis for my summer intern to do. We don't have a robust staff like the department services office with decades of experience. So I would like to know when my agenda item is coming back, because I think that that would help us work with those communities to then mobilize and talk to our state senators and Assembly members on what specific things we would need to ensure that single family communities don't turn into dormitories. Do we know what that timeline is? I know that. Speaker 2: Some of them are. We're coming back to you at the next legislative committee agenda or meeting, which is, I believe, the next Wednesday. Speaker 0: Okay. And so I'm not on the state budget committee, but I do appreciate that that is the appropriate place for it to go. I encourage you to attend. This will help identify the specific places throughout the city where that happens. And then hopefully we can create a coalition of residents and the third residents and the fifth residents of different places in the city that we could pull together and really strategize and work towards the next housing item folding in something to correct this issue. And I think that that would be very helpful. Furthermore, my my side of the city is also a little bit different. So a lot of the individuals who've owned these parcels have owned them in their families for generations. They've passed them down and that's great. So the developers aren't really able to buy the whole lot and start from scratch. What we've started to receive in the fifth District are postcards. Postcards that say. We would like to rent your backyard. We will build the ideas. We will rent them out. We will manage them for you. And all you have to do is take a cut of the income. And these postcards are going to our senior citizens saying, hey, would you like an extra two grand a month? We know you live on Social Security of 850 a month. Think how this could change your life? And we want to be sure that there's another component of this, because in my side of town, the other component of this is that some of these seniors are aging and they don't have family close by. And one of the things that we recently said is we sometimes get calls about neighbors and it goes directly to being a code enforcement issue. And what I've reached out to, Kelli Colby, our health director, and said is this might not be a health department issue, this might be a wellness check. And if, in fact, one of these seniors puts these dormitories on the back unit, I think we do need to be aware of what dynamic could come forward and the potential seniors abuse that could occur. And so I think that when looking at. Nooses, violations, all all of that. I'd love to make sure that when a violation comes in when they are owner on on premise that we also have a wellness check component for our senior community. Because as many of you know, I worked with adult protective services for years and senior abuse is a serious thing that can happen very quickly. And young people who are afraid of getting in trouble with the law might be perceived differently than they intended, and the senior might be in a tough spot. So I'd love to see a component of this because I don't see my ADA use being developers buying the full property. I see my ideal issue being more of a owner, maintaining their property with the units on the back and then a new dynamic occurring within our community. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas. Speaker 4: Vice Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Price, for bringing this item forward. As we all know, it is for a very exciting opportunity to address our housing situation. However, we must do our best to ensure that as we move forward in implementing solutions, we did not set ourselves up for future issues and concerns that could have been prevented in the first place. Supportive of this item. Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm cued up next. I just wanted to say that I think this is like a worst case scenario of the of what folks envisioned with the AIDS situation. I think that we certainly need to engage at state ledge around some some legislation here. I think if you look at enough cities that have examples like this, there should be a way for us to put some protections or some limits on due process. So thank you, Councilmember Price, for bringing this forward. Next is Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you, Councilwoman Price, for bringing this item forward. I agree with the first speaker I think you did a great job at. Or do you think that item? I definitely support 80 use, but my goodness, 1180 use on one property seems excessive. So I do understand why neighbors are concerned. I also support a good neighbor policies and I'm happy to see that they're processes that make it easier for resident for residents to under stand. The rules that everyone needs to abide by is going to be important. So happy to support this item. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you. Councilman Price. Speaker 4: I just want to end with a couple of things. So this legislation is HB 68, and we did write I did write a letter to our Long Beach State delegation sharing with them the unintended consequences of this type of development. We did have a meeting with one of the the members of the state delegation, and we did have development services. And I'm not sure if Dr. Crowley was present. I can't remember. But we did a Zoom call. We talked about the unintended consequences. And there were a couple of things that were made clear. One was the access to parking or the parking impacts was really a. Kind of a dead on arrival issue because of the proximity to transit corridor. And the legislature has stated very clearly that the proximity to a transit corridor mitigates the parking impact issue. And so that's just not an area where it was ripe for discussion. We were also advised that if we were able to go out and talk with. So my recommendation was, why don't we tie units like this to affordable housing? Because what we're trying to accomplish is more housing that's affordable. This particular development, these rooms are going to go from anywhere from 1000 to 1400 dollars for a single room. That's ridiculous. That is not affordable. College students cannot afford that. And so if they tied it to affordable housing and had a component, it might be a disincentive for developers like these developers who I have met with and no knock on them whatsoever. But they were very clear and transparent with me that there is a loophole in state law and they are targeting college towns and trying to develop these types of housing developments. That's that's what their whole investment partnership and I appreciate it. I appreciate that they're operating within the law and they're trying to make some money, but they are targeting. That's why they're targeted. Orange Because of. Chapman This is not an outlier situation at all. We already have another application in the third district and more are going to come. So the application in the third district is already being processed by development services. There is very I mean, we can we can sit up here all day long and advise city staff about let's make sure we have these protections and that protections. There is very little we can do. It is not a fraternity or sorority house, so we can't impose the same regulations on them as we would a sorority or fraternity house. So making a recommendation like that to city staff. Sounds like we might be able to do something, but I don't want to give the residents false hope because I've been working on this issue for a long time now and our hands are tied. And that's why looking at the muni code like Berkeley did and solidifying what muni code protections we have there to protect people from noise intrusion, light intrusion, trash and other types of impacts and making sure the residents have those tools at their fingertips so that code enforcement can go out and actually educate the residents and the owners on what the expectations are, I think is very important, and that's what this item is about. This item was brought forth with full understanding of what our limitations are, which are huge. This is state legislation and the advice that was given when we met with our delegate was that if we could talk to the housing advocates and get the housing advocates on board for some tweaks to SB 68, then we might be able to move forward. But I don't know that it's the role of a single council member on behalf of the City Council to engage with housing advocates about state legislation. And so this is an item that I discussed the last time our state led agenda came forth in terms of asking for our state legislature committee to advocate for more local controls and changing existing state legislation to modify a bit in light of the realities that have presented themselves that I don't think anybody wanted. I really don't think our state legislature ever intended this to happen. Providing more market rate housing. In the third district is something I'm sure they were not envisioning when they passed this legislation. But yet that's what we have here. We have more market rate, super expensive, unaffordable housing in a residential neighborhood where a lot of people are going to be crammed into a very tight spot. Mr. Orsi Do you know the size on this particular development? Speaker 7: Councilmember I'm going to have to get back to you. Speaker 4: I do not know problem. But it is it's a single lot. We're not talking about a double lot property. It's a single lot in a residential neighborhood. So I appreciate the support of my colleagues. Speaker 5: Thank you. Final comment, Councilman Sabrina. Thank you. One of the speakers mentioned preferential parking and that's going to be a major impact here. And there's a few things we can do through local control on this. For instance, the speaker mentioned you can have three permits plus a guest permit per household. So if the ADU is giving given a separate address, guess what, that number doubles. So we want to keep an eye on that. And also just the the preferential parking process in itself. So this location is near the border of the third and fourth District. So a block and a half north, we've had an expansion request for the preference of parking there. It's been pending for a year. When these things happen, those expansion requests are going to come very quickly and the impacts are going to be realized overnight virtually. And so I'd like us to look at that process, too, with the permission of the maker of the motion. I just like to add that I know there weren't specifics on what we're asking for, but perfect. Your parking is a big one and that transfers the problem to other neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Speaker 0: Mongo, to build on what Councilmember Super said. And in our area, we also have the preferential parking district. And it's not going to make a difference how big you make it. The college students scooter and skateboard from the outskirts. So if you move it out 400 feet, they're just going to park outside that you move it out a half a mile. They're just gonna to park outside of that. So you're just continuing to transfer that issue. And I totally agree with all that's been said today. And I just want to emphasize again, I didn't even know Councilman Price was working on this. My district's been working on it in our own way. But I think that the thing that's really important is. The developers have the money to run the data and get a step ahead of us every step of the way. That is why they know exactly what houses to send postcards to when they went in and tried to buy the properties. And that wasn't effective. They have a second tier strategy and a third tier strategy, and so I appreciate that they were transparent and I'd love to learn any additional things that you learned from that meeting, because I haven't been as successful. When we call the people who send the postcards, they don't want to meet with us. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. I'm a yes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. I wanted to do that. I think there's three members of the general public comment. So let's do those, please. And they're going to do it in 15.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the City Attorney’s Office, the City Prosecutor’s Office, and the Code Enforcement Bureau, to provide a report on the current nuisance violation fine structures and the feasibility of increasing penalties and/or fines or fees on property owners/managers or tenants depending on staff’s recommendations, to allow for more effective enforcement tools and resources to address nuisance activities. This should also include evaluating options for fines or fees to be based on income qualifications, and if community service was feasible in place of fines where appropriate. This report will also include evaluating opportunities and the feasibility of bolstering the Code Enforcement ordinances and relevant provisions of the Municipal Code and aligning with best practices.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_08172021_21-0805

Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think a time in times of. Thank you, sir. Next up is that of 15 policemen. Speaker 1: Clear indication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Cindy, House Councilwoman Sara, Councilmember Arango, recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion on their progress and activities in their first year of operation. Speaker 2: With me, Richardson. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to take a moment and invite the leadership of the city's newest community development corporation, born out of action here at City Council on the Center for Economic Vision to provide an update on their progress in the first year. And so I want to pass it over to the leadership. Jeff Williams and Byron Reed. We have our presentation. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and Vice Mayor Richardson and council members and staff. Thank you so much for this opportunity. To give you a brief update on the new Miami Center for Economic Inclusion and and introduce our new leader. I it's good to see everybody. I haven't seen so many people since the before time. So in a quick aside, I just wanted to say that so many of you have been so supportive of me and the work I've done over the past ten years. And and I always felt like I had a lot of access and opportunity here. One of the roles we did and you entrusted us with your leaders and and your staff and your and we were able to bring 700 people over the last ten years to the city hall and the chambers to learn about our city. And I think the the big takeaway from that for me was it was about public service. And it was great to introduce our leaders to true public servants, elected and staff. So I just want to say that aside, and I thank you for for all your support tonight, I want to give a brief update on on the organization. And then I'm gonna introduce our our new leader, and you have the presentation in front of you. I'm I'm just going to walk through it kind of quickly, and I'll be happy to answer any questions at the end. Go ahead to the next slide. So the one B Center for Economic Inclusion was actually born out of a partnership here with the city. So the blueprint for economic development in 2017 called for one of the seven focus areas to be economic inclusion. And following that, thanks to the vision and leadership of the Vice Mayor, the EVERYONE Implementation Plan was brought forth. Working groups. Many people who are probably here in this chamber were part of the everyone in working groups centered on bringing how we can bring more inclusive economic opportunities to our city. And out of that was was the one the plan and that was unanimously adopted by the city council in 2017. One of the main outcomes of that plan was to create a new community development corporation, which became the Lobby Center for Economic Inclusion. So next slide, please. So there you can see the mission is to is to create a community development corporation that will expand inclusive economic opportunities for underserved communities in our city. Had it called out five focus areas, as you can see here. And the purpose of this is to serve the historically underserved economic communities, primarily in north, central and west Long Beach. Next slide. The vice mayor put out the call and said there was a gap and we need help. And as you know, probably recognize many of the people up there. This is our founding board of directors that came together to help take this plan from a vision to action. And between them, they have decades and decades of community experience. So even though we were starting from scratch, we had all this experience and and passion and commitment to community as part of it. And I was also asked to help be part of that and was honored to join this group as the interim director. Next line. So as I mentioned, the city of Long Beach matched a sea grant that was provided by Wells Fargo to actually launch the Community Vilma Corporation. And we started and we had our very first meeting on March 12th of last year, 2020. And that date might ring a bell because we had all these grand plans. We had our whiteboard out and we're planning how to launch this organization. And the next day was the stay at home and COVID hit. So we threw all that out the window. And a few weeks later we reconvened and said, Well, we have a crisis and we're serving our community. And there are those that are disproportionately affected by it and what can we do to help? And so we put together the in this together plan, which came with some seed funding from the Bridge Development Corporation and some of the other funders listed up there. And we put it into action. And because. Next slide, please. So in the start of COVID, thanks to these supports, we were able to build partnerships with local community organizations and directed over $250,000 in funding to help those affected by the pandemic. And these areas of food security, small business support, digital inclusion and housing support. And I think the big lesson here is, is these are all partnerships with existing Long Beach organizations. And I think that's the model that we saw was our job is not to go out and recreate the wheel. Let's find people who are doing good work in our community, provide them more resources, health, and expand their work and better serve our community. And I'll just quickly go to these next ones. Next slide. One of the one of the first things we did, actually, vice mayor, former staff member Ilana Grant, who's now the city manager's office , put together a group of nine churches and nonprofits who were already doing food service in our community and brought them together in a network. And over the over those first few months, we were able to serve a thousand households in a partnership with food finders. And as many of you have involved in, food security is a real issue in our city, and we're able to address that. These those food pantries were in north, central and west and the districts one, two, six, seven, eight and nine. So thank you to those council members and those staff who supported these efforts and allowed us to do that work there. Next one. And if you remember, early in the pandemic, seniors were disproportionately affected as well, and many of them couldn't leave their home for food. And we set up a partnership with a couple organizations to provide senior home food delivery. So in those first few minutes, we delivered over 1200 boxes of food, primarily, again to those zip codes of five or six. They won three, but actually that program served all the city. And we had a good partnership with the city's senior women, which provided referrals for seniors who who needed this kind of work. Next slide. Digital inclusion was another effort. And especially when people were home, students were home, and we were able to answer the call with some partnerships. And we've provided laptops to both students of the YMCA as well as Long Beach City College and some small business owners and nonprofit owners explained. And small business navigation. And, you know, there are a lot of the business structures in our cities that support businesses. But the small businesses and many of small business in North, Central, in West do not have those structures and support. And so we were able to partner again with the city. Economic development. I really want to thank John Chrysler and Eric Romero for allowing us to partnering with us to work with navigators to keep them abreast. If you remember all the loans and grants and everything was flying out at that time, keep our small business owners informed. Help them secure those funds and get through those very difficult months in the beginning. And and we also partnered with some of the other organizations, especially in central Long Beach, United Cambodian community, who also has a business navigation services. Excellent. We started with a group called Project Business Lift and again they became the trusted partner for small business. And we were getting so much information. They're trying to keep their doors open and they needed a trusted someone who could work with them and help them get through those time and help them get resources . They fled. And Housing Service as well. Of course, that was a big a big challenge at the time and continues to be an excellent. So as we came out of last summer, certainly the crisis was not over. But the recovery and the economic repair is what we needed to address and work on. And so we were able to take that initial seed money from the city, which was $125,000 that this body supported. And over those over the last ten months, we've been able to raise seven times that much through other other grantors, partners and private, private sponsors to continue to do this work. And I think what the work that we were doing in those areas that I just mentioned, we had proven models and we've been able to build upon. We've been able to direct resources directly to more than 31 Long Beach nonprofit community organizations in north central west long used to do this work. And we're also able to leverage many of the CARES Act and the areas that the small business support food security, digital inclusion and ongoing with COVID and vaccine outreach Exide. Well, that's an excellent. So one of the big areas where we really continue to need to do help and continuing to provide resources is in small business support . I know the but again, there are other structures in the city that support business owners. But many of our small business owners, especially in north, central and west, don't have those kind of support structures in that trusted resource. And so ongoing business navigation support is something that we will continue to advocate for and support. And we were able to do some small business programs to help small business owners, including a partnership with Long Beach Economic Partnership. Omni Works, SBC and CSC will be called Go Digital. I think Michigan Long Beach Economic Partnership is a sister organization of ours that will start at the same time, you know, their focus is on building up industry and serving and and ours is to serve our community and uplift those in the communities that we're serving. But I think it's gonna be very important for the two organizations to align. And everyone. Speaker 2: Time's up on that one. Speaker 5: Oh, I didn't realize. I'm sorry. Well, can I. Can I at least introduce Byron very quickly? Speaker 2: Yeah. What I'm actually going to do is I'm going to turn it back over to Bozeman Richardson. And maybe he can help in the introduction. Speaker 5: Sure. I mean, more slides that you have, I think. Just give him a couple more minutes to just finish. I don't have anything else to add. What everyone do, probably a summary of I'm following along. I think you have that many more slides as continue and introduce. Okay. I'll go ahead and get to the get to the end there. And you'll have this information, and I'll be happy to answer questions. So right there. I just just wanted some of the lessons that we've learned. And we're going to continue to work and operate as a nonprofit. But the next flight. We're here for a for our new leader. So we have a wonderful new leader who's come to our city to serve this this need and serve this organization. Byron has 30 years of banking industry experience, and he is he's not only gonna be a great leader for our organization, he's also going to be a great leader for our city. So I'd like to at least briefly introduce Byron Reed. Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council. Folks, it's a pleasure to be here. Speaker 2: I'll speak very quickly. I'm very excited about this opportunity coming from the financial industry, primarily the CRA side of the house, which is. Speaker 6: Community Reinvestment Act. Speaker 3: Which aligns very well economic inclusion. Speaker 7: I'm excited about bringing in all the skill sets that I've had a call list of all these years to the city of Long Beach. I see. Speaker 2: Opportunities here. Speaker 7: I see their. Speaker 3: Natural tenants that. Speaker 7: Mary Well. Speaker 2: With the work that I've done from a community. Speaker 5: Development perspective. Speaker 7: Corporate relations perspective. Speaker 2: And so what I want to do on behalf. Speaker 7: Of the city of Long Beach is bring some of that to bear and. Speaker 2: The areas of concentration that have already been spoken about. Of course, is housing and home ownership. I more than just the words. It's creating homeownership programs. Speaker 3: If you really identify community. Speaker 7: Based organizations. Speaker 2: To help those. Speaker 5: Individuals that are seeking first time homebuyer or a home, an opportunity. Speaker 2: The resource to get into those homes, small business diverse. Speaker 7: Entrepreneurship is another important tenet of what we'll be doing going forward with the center. Speaker 2: Supplier Diversity Procurement had several conversations with some some very key leaders here in the city about creating some real supply diversity procurement programs directed toward minority vendors to give them an opportunity. But we're going to. Speaker 3: Prepare those. Speaker 5: Vendors to stand. Speaker 3: Up for the RFPs that come forward. Speaker 7: Training them in the right way. Speaker 3: Not sending them out, and then them being disappointed by not getting the opportunity. Speaker 7: Workforce development and. Speaker 3: Youth development programs are very, very important. Speaker 5: What's more important. Speaker 2: About putting people to. Speaker 3: Work are workforce development programs that will help. Speaker 2: Folks understand. Speaker 3: How to get a job, the soft skills, the resume, writing the whole nine yards with regards to the workforce. Speaker 7: Development space. And so we'll be spending some time with organizations like Pacific Gateway. Speaker 3: Creating collaborations because. Speaker 7: That's what they do. Speaker 2: And will. Speaker 7: Make sure that the work that we do seamlessly together is something. Speaker 5: That produces the results that I know that. Speaker 7: You are seeking. And then lastly, last point of. Speaker 3: Reference to that like to mention is the connectedness. Speaker 7: The economic resiliency. Speaker 3: That is very important as well. And as part of the. Speaker 7: Work that we're going to be creating. Speaker 3: As the programs. Speaker 5: That we'll be doing. It'll be around economic development. And everything that I've spoken to. Speaker 3: Has a financial education, financial wellness overlay over all of it. I think that's paramount to their success. Speaker 5: For them to. Speaker 2: Understand how to financially succeed. Speaker 7: Is key to their success. Speaker 2: But how do you succeed financially? We don't have any money. Speaker 7: We've got to create those winds for them, whether it's investment. Speaker 2: Clubs, given the dollars, to help them. Speaker 5: Understand how. Speaker 2: To create the value proposition of those. Speaker 3: Dollars. Speaker 5: To be be impactful and to grow those dollars for their families. Speaker 2: Again, training them where they are. And so with those those those five things, those are the items that I'd like to share. Speaker 3: It's a pleasure. Vice Mayor, thank. Speaker 7: You for the opportunity and look forward to working with. Speaker 2: All of you. Thank you. And I'm just trying to I know the vice mayor has a certain amount of time allotted for his presentations and is trying to keep it as much into into his time as possible. So sorry about that, but thank you for your and welcome, Mr. Reid. And we look forward to working with you here in the in the months and years ahead. Councilman Sorrell. One zero. Speaker 4: Okay. Sorry, I. That the vice mayor is going to go next. Thank you, Mayor. And yes, sir, I want to make sure thank you, Mr. William, for your presentation and the update. I know that, you know, the excitement was there when you were about to launch and you had to pivot really quick in order to shift to the needs at that time, which is really uncertain and, you know, really scary at that at that time. So I appreciate I asi many of the volunteers and staff board members around ensuring that support was provided during the pandemic. And also so I appreciate all the work that's been done during the pandemic for relief and now as we're moving into recovery. I want to also just welcome and congratulate Mr. Reid on becoming the new president and CEO. I had the pleasure of meeting you virtually and am so glad to meet you in person and really excited and really glad to hear some of the things you share to give us a preliminary sense on what you're going to be working on. And I'm just thrilled to be able to work with you very soon so that we can ensure that we are doing the things you mentioned, which is getting the financial, education and wellness really integrated into the fabric of what we need to do to really lift up the parts alarmists that needs the support at this moment, especially during this recovery period. So thank you so much and looking forward to working with you. Speaker 2: Thank you, Katherine Mungo. Speaker 0: Thank you. I want to welcome Mr. Reid. I haven't had the opportunity. A great fortune to meet with you yet. That's a little bit disappointing, but I know that we'll get that opportunity in the next few weeks. If you didn't know, I'm currently chair of the Economic Development Committee and the chair for the first four years that I was on the council in creating the economic blueprint that really a lot of those strategies deemed everyone in with the cool, catchy name were really developed through a lot of community impact. And I really love the word inclusion and I think it was well written in the blueprint. And I think it's important that when we talk about inclusion, we talk about the whole city, not just any particular region, because Section eight vouchers, they're not limited by zip code. Poor students, they're not limited by that code. They live near schools and they live near transportation. And they they have great needs. And our side of town has many churches that did really, really active food donation boxes for our schools and for our seniors. And I think that there's a lot of value in lifting up because our side of town, we had an abundance of fruits and vegetables that were donated, but really a lack of grains and other things that are on the less expensive side. But we have fruit trees and so there are things that if all the connectivity is made across the city, there's some serious value. And we're also working really hard right now, and I'm pretty involved in the blueprint to point out, and I hope you'll be a part of that, because one of the things that I see in the city is there and you'll hear this from Derek Simpson when you meet with him. There are a lot of amazing organizations and many of them are doing the same thing. And in between those organizations, there's big gaps. And so I think it's really important to see where those gaps are and focus our energy on those, because any area that already has a nonprofit doing something amazing, we really want to lift them up and help them strive and succeed in those areas. So I look forward to working with you closely. I attend all the Economic Development Commission meetings I hope you'll consider attending because the Economic Blueprint 2.0 is really our future. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilwoman. And they have. Speaker 4: Thank you, Vice Mayor, specially for all the amazing work that you've done on this amazing project. And I also want to wholeheartedly thank Jeff. Jeff, you just did a great, great presentation and you continue to pour your heart into the betterment of our city as a whole. And I really, really thank you for that. Welcome, Mr. Reed. I'm really, really excited about you, you know, leading us through this. I think it's very, very important to have someone with so much passion, but not only passion, but also the expertize to move such a project forward. So I really thank you and look very much forward to meeting with you and working together with you during this time. I absolutely agree with you that on so many levels we really need to provide opportunities to provide a path to home ownership and hopefully eventually and ultimately wealth to a lot of our residents here in the city of Long Beach. I think that that's very, very important and especially for residents in my district, in the first district, so that we can end the cycle of low income families having to go through that and not finding a way out. I really, really look forward to working with you closer. Thank you again. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. I thank you, Vice Mayor. And I also would like to thank Mr. Williams for his presentation. And thanks to my colleagues Vice Mayor Richardson and council member, your reynaga. Councilwoman Ciro and Councilwoman Van de haas for bringing this item forward. I also would like to say hello and welcome to Mr. Byron Reed. We definitely look forward to your contribution and your important work in Long Beach, especially with housing and home ownership and diversity and business opportunities and diversity and procurement. And I definitely want to see more diversity in procurement. So thank you for the presentation and I look forward to supporting this. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilman Pryce. Speaker 4: Thank you and welcome, Mr. Reid. It was a pleasure to meet you. Just briefly before the meeting started, and I appreciate the presentation tonight, I certainly learned a lot about your efforts. I am not sure if the two of you know this, but I wear many hats and one of them is I'm also a small business owner . And so I think it's really, really important, especially since city funds went into the formation of the organization that we look at helping business owners all over the city. And, you know, Jeff, you made a comment and I'm just not familiar with this this information. It may be. Speaker 0: Absolutely true. Speaker 4: But that business owners and I think you said west, north and central Long Beach have less resources than other parts of the city. There's only one district left and that would be east. And I'm not really familiar with that, because one of the things that I found during the pandemic especially, is that actually, if you were not if your business wasn't located in certain communities, you didn't qualify for many of the grants. And so as a business owner who employs an entire female staff, many of them single mothers who needed a 2 to $3000 grant just to make payroll so that we didn't have to lay those people off. It was incredibly difficult for us, for us, because many of the grants were just not even available if you were located on the east side. So I know Jon Keisler is here. I'm curious, is that an accurate statement that there are more resources for the East Side business owners than other business owners? Because I feel like we should be supporting all business owners. And I'm not aware that any business owners get more or less support, although those are that are located in certain zip codes do actually get qualification for additional grants that others don't. Speaker 7: Yeah. Councilmember. So the short answer is that we serve businesses citywide. In fact, there are grants that are specific to certain zip codes or eligible for certain areas based on income levels and other things like that. That was part of our CARES Act and of course our CDBG programs. I think probably some of the questions that have been raised over the past couple of months is how do we get more geographically based business and technical assistance providers? And so we've been working with our partners at the Small Business Development Centers, some of our community based organizations to actually add business assistance to those community based organizations . And a good partner for us over the particularly the COVID 19 pandemic has been the Center for Economic Conclusion. We were able to geographically deploy these programs and services from in in North Long Beach, from both pop ups that we had established outside the libraries, as well as through their networks. But having a geographically based program is really, really helpful for business owners that may not come downtown as much or see City Hall. They can see those those service centers right down the street. So this has been a real positive learning experience for us, and we want to do more of it. Speaker 4: So that's really great. But I guess my question is, are there resources for small business owners and let's say what would be considered affluent areas that are more robust than other business owners. Speaker 7: But know that the resources themselves are available to everybody? It's more of the outreach activities and making connections and making people aware of those resources. That's been one of our great partnerships with Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion. Speaker 4: Well, let me just dispel the notion that business owners that don't live in certain, that don't operate a business in certain districts have abundant time to come to City Hall and are more plugged in with City Hall. I think any business support we offer we should be offering citywide, because running a small business is very, very challenging for every business owner, regardless of the zip code that they operate in. I mean, that's just a reality. So as someone who cleans or mops the floors and wipes down the entire business that we own once a week to save the cost of cleaning so that we can pay employees. I can tell you businesses all over the city deserve support. And so I know that you're committed to that. But I just wanted to kind of dispel that that that there are some people that have some areas that have more resources than others. I don't think that's true. And I for good measure and I just really appreciate everything the center is doing to support business owners. This past year has been incredibly difficult for small business owners. And if you own a business, I guarantee you've lost a lot of sleep about the people who depend on their salaries being able to to make their rent and pay for their family. It's it's very challenging. So thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to take a moment and kind of close this out. So, first of all, Jeff and your entire board, thank you for stepping up and answering the city's call. When we I understand what you mean when you say we're focusing on north, central and west. Long Beach Economic Development Corporation focuses on a broader economic development. But a community development corporation has this point at a community. And so this is the community we were designed to serve. And there were tremendous, tremendous conversations at the everyone in table, at the roundtables about the simple fact that for generations the story has been the same in north central west Long Beach. When we put forward and we learned a lot of this, we saw it play out during COVID. When we initially released Small Business Resources. Our communities didn't get the applications in. It was harder to reach our communities. They didn't apply and there's not as accessible. We've seen it over the years with the $2,000 CDBG grants. They're not effective. You need a wet signature. You have multiple owners. This is not accessible. So we saw that and we saw a need. And the data in the Long Beach, we did a a profile, inclusive Long Beach economic equity profile that showed that this isn't just a feeling, but the data supports it. The funding doesn't get to these communities for a number of reasons language barriers, a whole host of things. So to have an organization to stand up and say, we will help the city close those gaps, meet those needs, that is a good thing. I encourage you double down on this. Continue to go where the need is. It doesn't mean that we don't support businesses across the city. That's a false proposition. We want every small business to thrive. But we know there are barriers connected to redlining, yellow lining, the evidence of freeways in our communities, you know, overconcentration of nuisance liquor stores in motels in some communities. All of these things have an impact and make it more difficult for a business to survive or a family to be resilient, to survive. I encourage you continue to do that work. I also want to say to you, Mr. Reid, I know that there was a search. I know you went through the entire process. I want to thank you and I want to welcome you to the city of Long Beach, because, you know, I don't want you getting caught up with the politics behind the dyes. You're here to serve the community. So be self-righteous. Stand up. We're going to continue to support you and make sure that our communities have the resources that they need to thrive. So I have whenever I see there's another person cued up, but I want to make sure that we get you this. We want it to you know, we support a lot of organizations, but it's not often they come back and tell you how we've done. Some do. Steve Goodling does. And when he when he shows up, we say, hey, Steve, keep up the good work. We don't say, you know, I want this. I want the downtown community center on my list. We don't say that. We say keep up the good work. What's good for the downtown is good for the whole city. And I say for you, what's good for north, central west Long Beach is good for the whole city. Keep up the good work. And I want to present this to you when the time comes. Maybe after the next spokesperson. Thank you. Speaker 2: Councilman. Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. Something that Councilmember Richardson and I worked on together probably five years ago, I think could really bring together the two sides of the dais tonight, which is we talk a lot about businesses and the employees. Councilman Price brought up specifically the employees that maybe you work at a business on the east side might not live on the east side. And so, Mr. Modica, I know you weren't city manager at the time, or maybe Mr. Chrysler, you have some information. But back in the day, we asked for reports based on the number of employees and how many of those employees lived within our city. And at the time, Mr. Richardson and I were told that that wasn't a report that could be pulled. You know, we were on a 1970 system. It's too difficult, all these things. But now we've implemented several systems. Are we moving in a direction where we could actually find out which of these businesses are really employing Long Beach residents? Because then we'd be able to do a better picture of helping our city and our more impacted communities by helping the businesses that impact the most wages that come back to residents in our own city. Are we moving in that direction? I mean, this is five years ago when we were asking for this. Speaker 7: Yeah. Councilmember So that's a that's a good question. So the data where we would be able to, to try to, to connect an employee their place of employment to an address and then perhaps their home address would likely be through the Employment Development Department of the State of California. So it would be about the quality of their system. It wouldn't be data that the city tracks. Speaker 0: When we're asking for it on their business license. So on a business license, you currently say the number of employees and I'll give you an example. AmazonFresh opened in my district and they said, Well, we're going to have 300 employees and more than 50% of them are going to be hired from Long Beach. And I said, Where are you going to do those job fairs? Are you going to do them in north Long Beach and central Long Beach on the east side, we've got a lot of young kids that need jobs. And then on the first day, they only had a 100 employees. And I said, how many of them are Long Beach residents? And they said, 50%. And I said, Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live? None of them lived in Long Beach. None of them. I mean, the five or six people, I thought, this isn't a good start, so how can we hold people accountable if we don't have the data? Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah. That's not data that we collect through business licensing. We don't require them. The number of employees, of course, they report as part of their business licensing, but not their their addresses are location. So census data is going to be really interesting. We're going to get that soon and that will help us to understand some of those commuting patterns. But it's really the Employment Development Department data that's considered confidential data. We do have a look at some of it, of course, through our workforce development agency Pacific Gateway, and we use Cal State, Long Beach Office of Economic Research to really disaggregate some of that confidential data will likely not be able to produce, you know, lists tied to specific businesses. But we should be able to get some of the roll up data that shows where where employees live and commute and maybe not tied to a specific address. Speaker 0: Well, I think Mr. Orsi still in the back. I'd love to see that field added to the business license, even if it's just a self-reporting. But if we're doing grants in the future and you're able to say that 50% of your employees are from the city of Long Beach, and of those 30% are from disadvantaged communities or things like that. I think that's an interesting way to look at future grant opportunities instead of based on where the businesses, I think where the employees come from is is a big impact. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up, we have a comment, please. Speaker 1: Mr. Sun. I can pay. Speaker 5: So I came from sixth district. I just want to say, any of these people that are handing out these postcards in the fifth District. I got two mortgages I'm paying on right now and I need help. If you want to build a Adu at my mom's or my grandmother's house. I would love the support. My my address is a public fund. That being said. Once Council, Women's Council people. I don't know how to say women council women. Cindy Allen and Miss Mongo join forces and actually make a real local higher requirement. All of this tension will immediately go away. So just piecing it together. That being said, big supporter of Mr. Byron Reed. I've been an avid fan of all the work that he was doing at West Angeles. I'm a firm believer of the CDC. Speaker 3: Format. Speaker 5: With respect to housing. I think I'm not putting any pressure or energy. Just as a private citizen, I can say that we've seen the success of the model in Harlem with Abyssinian Development Corporation, with Reverend Calvin Butts and also with West Angeles, with Bishop Blake, and how they've been able to sustain and combat displacement, as well as bringing a lot of jobs into it. You know, what's that? So that being said, it's an honor and a privilege to have you here in the city of Long Beach working to combat a lot of the economic woes that marginalized communities of interest. That's something I've learned, a term I've learned recently at the redistricting meetings. Marginalized communities of interest that we are dealing with here in the city. And we welcome you and thank you. Mr. Williams, with respect of your interim. I think, you know, I live in a district that I believe we have to two bank branches, Bank of America on Willow and Bank of America and Cherry. And I think there's like eight. There's four. Or as yours. Oh, so we have one. Okay. I think there's I think there's seven or eight bank bank branches on Second Street. So I think that's what resources mean, speaking about resources in respect to those kind of things. Nothing against Miss Price. I know what you mean as a small business person, but I think that's what you meant about resources. So we're all on the same team. It's all of, you know. But thank you. Welcome to the city. And let's keep it moving. Speaker 2: Sir. There's a motion in the second. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is the budget hearing. Item 12. We still have very long agenda ahead of us.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion on their progress and activities in their first year of operation; and Direct City Manager and Economic Development to prepare a memo on the implementation status of the city’s Everyone in Economic Inclusion Plan and present to council within 90 days.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is the budget hearing. Item 12. We still have very long agenda ahead of us. Speaker 1: Item 12 Report for Financial Management Recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2022 Budget for the Departments of Economic Development, Fire. Speaker 0: And Civil Service. City Wide. Speaker 2: America. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So we have three presentations today as part of our budget hearing. The first will be our economic development department. Then we'll do our fire department. Then we will do civil service. So I will turn it over. Speaker 2: To John Keisler to. Speaker 7: Begin the Economic Development Department overview. All right. Good. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. I am extremely excited to be able to present to you a summary of the Economic Development Department budget for fiscal year 22. And so you know a lot about us, but I want to share with you a little bit about our mission and how we create equitable economic opportunities for workers, investors and entrepreneurs. So, as you know, we have a couple of key service areas that are really designed around our customers, around how to help people make more money . First, business owners, we offer technical assistance and grants. A lot of the stuff that we were just talking about tonight. But we also offer programs around connecting business owners to the Internet. Digital inclusion and how we can build more connectivity between customers and business owners online. We also offer business owners as well as investors, developers and the private sector real estate development services that helps to grow the property tax base, the assessed value of property in the city. And it also helps to address needs like housing and retail, commercial manufacturing and of course, hospitality services. But one of the really unique things about the city of Long Beach economic development is that we have Pacific Gateway, a federally funded workforce development agency that would typically be a regional nonprofit. It's actually a part of our city and a part of our department, and that helps us to really develop and cultivate sector cluster strategies for things like aerospace or entertainment and hospitality. And it also helps us to implement really unique programs for our youth workforce job centers and of course, the implementation of things like our project labor agreement. So this last year has been historic. You've heard this over and over again, but specifically for the economy. The pandemic created an unprecedented spike in unemployment within about a three week period back in March of 2020. Some people are shocked when I say this, but there were 250,000, a quarter million unemployment insurance claims that were filed by 150,000 different Long Beach residents over the past year, a quarter million. The city itself, with leadership of the city council, took action to provide rent deferments to our city tenants and deployed over $7 million in new biz care programs. In fact, we launched the first ever busy care program as part of the COVID 19 response. And you can just see the thousands of individual business owners and residents as well as the business supporting organizations that we helped to support. We also launch for the first time ever, a digital inclusion initiative in the city of Long Beach, who is really remarkable. One of the things that COVID 19 accelerated was the need for businesses and residents and workers to get online, both to tap into and access services, as well as to transition their business models. And so you can see the thousands of people that we brought hotspots to their their residential and commercial locations for the first time, as well as devices and resources through our community based partners like humanity I'm sorry, who helped us as a nonprofit to actually deliver those devices and training and get those households online. We also supported thousands of adults and youth workers. We launched new programs to actually get displaced youth workers to help with COVID response. It was a remarkable opportunity for us also to connect with the community. And we did during this pandemic five different economic equity studies to understand what was happening with various sectors and members of our community, as well as over 40 hours of roundtables , which many of you participated in, so that we could move in transition in real time the way that we supported our local economy and workers. So many other accomplishments over this past year that help shape the way that we deliver services. A new 55 page digital inclusion roadmap was completed. Believe it or not, most of this started in-person and ended virtually. But this has become a national model for many other cities that have asked for for us to help them with their own digital inclusion roadmaps. We negotiated the acquisition of new hotels and other properties to help with transitional and homeless services. We actually executed a decades long, new and innovative project labor agreement during the COVID 19 pandemic, and we launched new programs for cannabis equity. Technical assistance for four new cannabis business owners, helped to reopen Long Beach Community Hospital to the emergency room and secured control of our historic Queen Mary and the surrounding properties for the first time in 40 years. So I want you to know that even though we talked a lot about COVID response, we actually made some historic generational progress on other areas. So the Long Beach Recovery Act looking forward is really an incredible opportunity for us to make historic, systemic investments in economic inclusion in some of these other areas. And we're going to do this in a collective impact model. You can see that $64 million has been dedicated thus far by the Council toward Economic Recovery as part of Elvira, the Recovery Act. And you can see that it cuts across things like transportation, economic and digital inclusion and in our key infrastructure, like our airports and other support services. This is what it looks like for us in economic development in the coming year. The Long Beach Recovery Act will be 33 new programs that will go. They'll range from direct grants, over $20 million going to businesses, nonprofits, arts organizations, and a lot of those business supporting organizations, as well as an unprecedented investment in economic inclusion, digital inclusion, diverse business councils, more inclusive procurement. We heard about that tonight, and we're going to be making those down payments in FY 22 to Seed Fund, many of these historic efforts. But there's also other programs that we're going to partner on through a collective impact model with our nonprofit organizations and other departments that have to do with cleaning up corridors and testing and tracing support so that business can keep workers safe and that workers can can serve customers in a safe way. So the 22 focus for economic development really has it starts with the Recovery Act. I mentioned the 33 new economic support programs to support a more inclusive and equitable economic recovery that will be based on our community roundtables. We will also be updating the ten year blueprint for economic development for a more inclusive economy, which will really make this a relevant and current plan for this decade between 21 and 30, and prepare our economy and our workers, investors and entrepreneurs for this new economy post-COVID. We will be implementing the Digital Inclusion Roadmap to eliminate the digital divide. Our goal is to make progress, to eliminate the divide for all residents, workers and business owners in need by 25. And we will incorporate all of the goals of racial equity and reconciliation reconciliation initiative to eliminate economic disparities in communities most impacted by racism. So we have goal four within the reconciliation plan that really focuses on economic inclusion, economic equity, and that will be a part of every program that we implement in the coming year. We also will be developing and implementing multiyear action plans for major real estate assets this year, in particular Queen Mary and the Convention Center. Those are two that have historic needs for infrastructure investment, as well as business models that can help to offset the costs of those investments. So some of our challenges EDI economic development remains one of the smallest city manager departments. We staff most of our programs through grants and one time funding. We also need a lot of administrative oversight for both effective program delivery. But to do things like audits, whether it's auditing our contracts and service agreements or it's these big grants. We need structural funding if we want to sustain these efforts, including our economic and digital inclusion programs. Because one of the disadvantages of having this grant funding is not being able to sustain it once the grant funding is gone . So structural funding is going to be needed for the long term maintenance and development of our city owned assets, particularly some of those large real estate assets that I mentioned before. So the opportunity here, which is which is fantastic, is that economic development is all about return on investment. For both the community as well as the city. So when you invest a dollar, you should get two or $3 back on those investments. So our opportunity here is by investing in long term economic development, we can strengthen the revenue sources that pay for all of the other city services police, fire, parks and Rec, public works. And we need to use data to do that. So we've been working with our community based organizations on many of these initiatives that I discussed and they're ready to implement. So we have huge opportunities right now to move toward action in fiscal year 22. The other really amazing opportunity that we have coming out of COVID 19 is the incredible collaboration that we've developed with our nonprofit and community based organizations. Those relationships are strong, and they have become an incredible opportunity for us to deliver economic development resources. The city is also has all the critical elements of a modern economy. So many cities look to Long Beach and say, I wish I had an airport, an international seaport, a hospital system. I wish I had space and technology companies. And I wish I had a university with 40,000 students graduating 10,000 students a year, a community college with 26,000 students. We have all of those critical elements and we can build on that foundation. And then finally, lbr lbr funding is like seed capital. It's like venture capital. We get to invest it in once in a generation, one time opportunities to build long term and inclusive economic development. So we've got everything we need. But together we can deliver. And in FY 22, your economic development department is ready to go. So thank you so much for your time. I'm going to hand this over to public record. I'm sorry for. Thank you very much, John. So we will go to our next apartment. Speaker 2: Which will be our fire. Speaker 7: Department, and then we'll do a civil service and then we'll get public comment and answer questions. Next up is fire. How the you know. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 8: Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. This evening, I will be providing a brief overview of the fire department, highlighting the key services that we provide to the community. Some of our recent key accomplishments are focus for the upcoming fiscal year and some of the major challenges and opportunities that we foresee for the upcoming fiscal year. The Long Beach Fire Department delivers fire rescue, emergency medical service services, marine safety response, hazardous materials response, and non-emergency response services. We provide a 24 hour operation 365 days a year. Our personnel are well equipped and highly trained to mitigate all emergencies. The fire department strives to make Long Beach a better place to live, visit and own a business. Additionally, we work to ensure the safety of the community through proactive fire prevention activities, including code enforcement, fire investigation and proactive community outreach. We also provide training and education that is essential to the delivery of our core fire and rescue services. I would now like to present some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for the current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, we've responded to over 76,000 fire, emergency medical services, marine safety and other emergency incidents. Since many incidents require multiple units to respond. These 76,000 incidents equate to more than 157,000 unit responses. Included in this number are over 51,000 medical calls and over 6800 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous materials responses, airport responses and other non fire responses. I continue to be very proud of the work that the men and women of the fire department do for the community. Since the first days of the pandemic. They have come to work every day, answering every call, despite the danger and potential harm to themselves. Additionally, fire staff and management continue to provide leadership to the city's incident management team. With their knowledge of and experience with the incident command system. Our chief officers have provided structure to a rapidly developing and changing incident. Our shirt volunteers were a huge help as well, using their training to join many of our staff to support testing and vaccination sites throughout the city. Our Operations Bureau hired and trained a diverse class of eight ambulance operators to staff our basic life support program. And our training division turned out a diverse class of 19 new firefighters. These were both great investments in the fire department's future. In its second year of operations, the diversity recruitment program built upon the successes of the first year in fiscal year 21. The program hosted the inaugural Female Firefighter Work Career Workshop. This was a one day event at the David Rosa Regional Training Center, where 82 women were provided information on the application and testing process for fire recruit . Additionally, during the pandemic, the diversity recruitment program stayed in touch with potential recruit candidates by hosting 24 Zoom webinars on the hiring process and 27 Prospective Recruit Exercise Program or prep sessions which prepared candidates for success in the testing process. We also partnered with the Los Angeles Regional Training Group and the Long Beach Garden Center to develop a first response mental health training video series for all firefighters in the region. This training helps our first responders to readily identify the signs of mental illness in the field and to safely and effectively de-escalate these encounters. The department conducted 320 arson investigations, resulting in 57 arrests. This is a 60% increase over the number of investigations last year and a 50% increase in arrest. The majority of these fires are occurring of vegetation located in riverbeds, railway yards and vacant structures. To round out our accomplishments, I want to highlight two successful partnerships with other city departments. First, we conducted the triennial emergency drill in conjunction with the Long Beach Airport. This emergency preparedness exercise is required by the FAA and tests the speed and effectiveness of emergency personnel and airport staff in the event of an aircraft incident. We also partnered with the police department to develop and implement an alternative response model to work cohesively and collaboratively while responding to incidents of individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. With this training, we're able to coordinate our efforts more effectively on incidents in which both police and fire personnel are responding. This collaboration provides for a safer interaction and improved outcome to these incidents. The fire department has several major areas of focus for fiscal year 22. The first is to improve response times to fires, emergency medical and other emergency responses. We are working with our medical director to analyze and provide recommendations for adapting how we respond to incidents and perhaps what incidents we respond to in an effort to minimize response times. Firefighter safety and behavioral health continue to be significant issues in the fire service. Firefighters are under a tremendous amount of stress working on the front lines during the pandemic, witnessing tragic events firsthand and working long hours. They and their families are impacted by all of this. The health and Safety of Fire Department staff is one of my highest priorities as fire chief. To that end, we have trained peer counselors and made the services of mental health clinicians available to all staff. We need to make sure that everyone in the department is aware of these services. Remove any stigma associated with obtaining help and increase these services as funding allows. Another priority is to increase diversity in all ranks of the fire department through recruitment and training opportunities. Programs like the Female Firefighter Career Workshop prep sessions and the Fire Services curriculum at Jordan High School are all part of our short term and long term solution to improving the diversity of the department. It is also important for us to foster an environment of inclusion and equity in our workforce. The department is rolling out implicit bias training to all fire department employees. While this training is available through our online training platform at a minimal cost, it is very effective training in fiscal year 22 and beyond. The Department will continue this and other similar training and activities that focus on the priorities of diversity, inclusion and equity. In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number and size of vegetation, fires and other fires in public areas throughout the city. Areas such as parks, riverbeds and areas surrounding freeways. This is a great concern to us as it poses a significant risk to life and property. Preventing and minimizing the damage caused by these types of fires will be another focus area in the coming year. The anticipated retirement of our leadership in the management and supervisory ranks creates a great opportunity to develop the next generation of leadership. This has always been a focus of mine and it will remain so in the next year. The Fleet Services Bureau will be updating fires, frontline vehicles that respond to fires, emergency medical services and other incidents within our current budget. We're able to replace a number of vehicles in the coming year. Ten engines, two trucks and seven paramedic rescues will be replaced in the next 12 months. I want to thank the fleet services for their support and partnership in this area. Another focus area is to improve compliance with mandated fire prevention inspections. This includes hotels, apartments and residential care facilities. To help us meet these requirements. We're proposing the addition of three civilian inspectors in the fiscal year 22 budget. The cost of these positions will be fully offset by fee revenue that the inspectors will generate by conducting the inspections. Finally, we continue to streamline the fired plant check review process to meet service demands while ensuring the public safety. Despite the pandemic, we've been able to keep up with the workload and are committed to this continued level of service. As part of the fiscal year 21 budget, the fire department is participating in a comprehensive fire services study. The consultants are taking a very close look at our operations and finances, and we'll be identifying efficiencies and structural budget savings in the amount of $1.8 million. Since February of this year, the city manager's office and the fire department have been working with AP Triton, an outside consultant with extensive fire service, knowledge and experience, to conduct an in-depth review of all fire department operations. This review includes an analysis of staffing levels, deployment methodologies, the operations and activities of the Fire Department's four bureaus and the department's financial data. The primary objective of this, of the study is to identify budget solutions and operational efficiencies that will result in structural savings in the general fund beginning in fiscal year 23. Additionally, A.P. Triton is gathering information and conducting interviews and surveys throughout the department as part of the Workforce Initiatives component of the study, which focuses on diversity, inclusion and equity as well as succession planning. We expect the study findings and recommendations to be to be provided in October of this year. The department will face several significant challenges in fiscal year 22. First, as I mentioned earlier, service demands, staffing levels, the pandemic and the types of calls that we see have led to firefighters safety and behavioral health concerns. Increased development, specifically vertical density in the downtown area and throughout the city will increase service demands, leading to an increase in emergency responses and response times. We have we have front line safety equipment that is nearing the end of their useful lives and are in need of replacement. Items, such as the breathing apparatus that the firefighters use are due for replacement in the next couple of years at a significant cost. The fiscal year 22 budget proposes additional staff to manage our grants so that we can explore grant funding for these items. Similarly, our first responders work 24 hour shifts, living in and responding from fire stations and marine safety facilities, some of which are old and have significant health and maintenance issues. A plan for repair and replacement of these facilities, including identifying a funding source, will be necessary to respond to this challenge. Finally, wildfires throughout the region and the state continue to pose a challenge as they grow in size and frequency. The Dixie Fire in Northern California surpassed 500,000 acres last week, making it the largest wildfire in California state recorded history. For the past several months, we have assisted on wildfires in Northern California, Washington and Oregon, averaging 20 personnel per day that are out on the lines. And most recently this evening, as we're sitting in the back, we had another engine and battalion chief heading up to Sacramento. That is, as we hear, losing homes as we speak. We also have several opportunities coming up. First, while anticipated retirement of our leadership in the management and supervisory ranks creates somewhat of a challenge. It also is a great opportunity to develop the next generation of leadership. The fiscal year 22 proposes the continued support of the FIA diversity recruitment program. This provides a great opportunity for us to continue our short term and long term relationships and recruitment strategies with the goal of increasing the diversity of our staff throughout the organization. I want to thank the city manager and City Council for your continued support of this program. Another opportunity is the potential for grant funding to support training for our specialized programs such as hazardous materials, urban search and rescue and airport rescue and firefighting, as well as to support the acquisition of needed equipment, including breathing apparatus and personal protective equipment. Finally, we have an opportunity for improved efficiencies by co-locating the Fire and Health and Human Services warehouses. This will be funded with grant funds from the Health Department. I want to thank the Health Department for their partnership and we are grateful for this opportunity to work alongside them. In closing, I would like to thank Mary Garcia, our city council, city management and all the members of our city team for your consistent support of your fire department's mission to provide public safety to the city of Long Beach. For many, if not most of us, last year was the most difficult time we've ever experienced. In response to the pandemic and all associated issues, our city team unified and provided leadership and direction. I have never been more appreciative of the city I work for and the great people I'm honored to serve with. Finally, I need to express my tremendous pride and appreciation for the men and women of the Long Beach Fire Department throughout the pandemic. Sworn in civilian staff have never faltered in their efforts to provide for a safer Long Beach. I consider their actions to be heroic, and we'll never forget their response when called to service. This concludes my presentation and I'm prepared to respond. Any questions you may have. Thank you. Speaker 7: Thank you. Jeff Espino, we will have one more presentation and then. Speaker 2: We'll get to public comment and council questions. So the next presentation will be. Speaker 7: Christina Winton and her team from Civil Service. Speaker 0: Good evening, honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. It's my pleasure to present the budget overview for the Civil Service Department. This over for you will demonstrate how the Civil Service Department has utilized its budget and had to pivot like all city departments, to address the business operations of the department in the COVID 19 pandemic environment . Given the circumstances that we have had to face, we were fortunate to have the mission of the department to be our guiding compass. Civil Service Commission is a charter commission, and our mission was magnified this past year and a half as we had to think differently, as have as to how we were going to collaborate and provide technical, operational and strategic guidance and support to city departments in our effort to ensure a quality classified workforce. Our key services are outlined in our mission statement, and I'm proud to say we continue to provide these key services in spite of the barriers created by the pandemic. Like many of my colleagues, our team had to think differently about how we would carry out our mission. You will see in this presentation how we modified our selection system. We continue to listen to our customers needs and we were able to take advantage of best practices in merit based employment testing that involved the expanded use of technology. The first to pivot was the Civil Service Commission. On this slide, you can see that the commission immediately shifted to conduct their business meetings more frequently to meet the staffing needs of departments that occurred in an emergency setting. In addition, they provided me as the executive director with the emergency authority to approve certain routine transactions that would assist departments in moving quickly with staffing issues due to the pandemic. They also provided the temporary use of classified positions in the unclassified service in the Department of Health and Human Services, allowing the department to hire key staff immediately in the ever changing pandemic situation. And finally, the Commission created a policy to conduct disciplinary hearings in a virtual setting. With the support and assistance from the Civil Service Commission staff was able to to adjust to the staffing needs of city departments during the pandemic. When the emergency ordered to work remotely began, civil service staff shifted to a virtual environment. Staff was able to leverage technical services that we had already been experimenting with to address the ongoing staffing needs that continued throughout the organization. While staff had been experimenting with virtual testing platforms and we always intended to shift to this direction, we needed time to experiment with the various virtual platforms. Without the luxury of time to experiment, but with the tools to execute. During the pandemic, staff jumped in and developed new virtual process to meet the staffing needs of the department's. Now, candidates could not only apply online, but test online as well, whether it was a written examination or an appraisal interview. Without the challenge of commuting through Southern California traffic to come to Long Beach to test for a position show rates for exams increased, confirming that access to city jobs was now available to more people. Individuals were provided technical support if they were not sure how to access online testing before all exams. This technical support increase the comfort level and access for candidates to classified positions within the city. Our outreach to the community also shifted to a virtual environment. With the restoration of our record recruitment and outreach services division staff focused on outreach in as many virtual ways as possible. They participated in virtual webinars and job fairs, engaged in social media platforms, and increased followers in these platforms. Staff continue to reach out to the community as well through email notifications and sharing of information through City Council newsletters, which has helped increase applicants for specific positions. Some of our examinations required that we continue to conduct them in person. Specifically, public safety promotional positions. As you can see in this slide, protocols were in place to safely conduct these exams. Staff met with the city safety officer to establish safe protocols to ensure safety for all involved. I am proud to say that there were no reports of any exposure to COVID 19 through the in-person promotional exams that were conducted for both the police and fire departments. So as the landscape has changed, our business practices too have changed. And that will represent our challenges and opportunities. We look forward to the opportunity of expanding on the virtual platform that we have utilized during the pandemic. We will utilize the platforms to provide access to more candidates as well as assist us to streamline our portion of the hiring process. Speaker 1: To do this, our staff. Speaker 0: Will continue to receive training on implicit bias to assist us in being open to ideas that will allow us to continue to provide equity and access to classified positions through our merit based system. This training will help guide our department as we develop and implement our Racial Equity and Reconciliation Action Plan. There is a natural fit with the principles of the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Plan and the mission of the Civil Service Commission, which in part is to attract high quality, diverse individuals in our community. This outreach effort will be coordinated through our recruitment and Outreach Services Division. We are excited to expand our partnership with economic development, to further connect our community and educational institutions with the jobs that our full service city has to offer. We will continue to identify best practices as we work through the challenges of how to best connect the community with the city of Long Beach as an employer of choice . Thank you for this opportunity to share with you a snapshot into how the Civil Service Department has pivoted during the pandemic and how we intend to use this experience to utilize our budget to best serve the city moving forward into the future. Speaker 7: Thank you very much. That concludes that presentation and I will turn it back over to the chair to do public comment. Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Mr. City Manager and all of the departments. Before we go to the Council, I'd like to go to public comment. And so we have five speakers on the particular this particular item I like to call forward Karen boundary. Marian Drummond. Stephanie Park. Kenny Allen. Sheila Bates. These line up. Karen boundaries. Number one. Speaker 6: Good evening. Yeah, that's really a misspelling of my name, but never mind. Speaker 3: It's pronounced in. No boundary. Speaker 7: Boundary with correct spelling was wrong. Speaker 2: Oh. Speaker 7: Yes. Speaker 0: My concern is with regard. Speaker 6: To the budget and some of the things that I have seen as of late. Speaker 0: It appears that. There were a lot of listening tours that were given earlier. Speaker 6: And during the year. Speaker 7: Most of the. Speaker 6: Time when surveyed individuals did talk about the importance of in communities, talked about the importance of defunding the police. So I'm not understanding why these moneys are basically being re appropriated for the police. That is my concern. Also recently, there is an article that is about to come out in the Long Beach Post. Speaker 7: For tomorrow that talks about. Speaker 6: How Police Association is saying how communities don't want to defund the police when that is exactly what they did state that they wanted to do. The survey that. Speaker 7: They reference is flawed. The survey is not referenced in. Speaker 6: The news article. We don't know how many people were surveyed in in that survey. We don't know where it was or where it was advertised. The like it scale that is used within this particular. Talking about you know the various options is skewed. There is no option for and no opinion option. And then even the questions that were framed are double barrel questions. So you have questions that are should be broken into X, Y or Z that are all combined together. So these are. Speaker 0: Just my concerns. Speaker 7: And with that, I will. Speaker 6: Defer the rest of my time. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 0: Good evening. My name is Mary Ann Drummond, and I just. The city's budget is a moral document, right, that reflects our our values and our priorities. And really, we spent the last four years knocking over in the last 40 years allowing the police department to slowly sap moneys from the community supports and civic programs. Pressing a lot of them to extinction or to be ineffective because they have been improperly funded. And that has happened because this body has allowed it over all that time. Right. And your budget spends more than double on police than it does fire. And I just find that to be interesting because. Um. A revealing because fire response tends to be one of care and safety and alternatives. The People's Budget is more than just a shift in the way that the city has done business. It's a pathway toward ending anti-blackness and structural racism in the city. Undoing historical disinvestment that has continued for generations and moving us closer toward a long beach that is safe and healthy for all our communities. Can't wait any longer for a budget that finally addresses their needs. And concerns and the people's budget needs to be adopted now. I do hear a lot of words, but I want to see some action. Action that looks like divesting from police and reducing the force size and banning surveillance technologies like license plate readers and facial recognition devices that are laden with racial bias and are often used against black people. We must redirect these resources toward basic needs in essential services that look that so that our black, indigenous and people of color community members can live successful and happy lives and healthy lives. And the police don't keep us safe. We keep each other safe in order to increase that safety. We need to invest in these community responses of care and violence reduction and prevention of strategies and prevention strategies that are unrelated to police and specifically alternative emergency response teams called for in the city's racial equity and reconciliation report. I yield the rest of the time. Speaker 4: Harry Shearer bass. We've made it clear time and time again. The streets were flooded with people following the murder of George Floyd while we uplifted our local folks such as Tyler Woods, Lionel Gibson and Dante Jordan and many others with a clear demand and call of the city and the leaders. Defund the police. Provide care, not cops. And let me be clear about what that means. It means invest in our communities. It means invest in. Speaker 0: Alternative responses to. Speaker 4: The police. Real alternatives. Real alternative responses to the police. It means invest in our schools, invest in public health care, invest and invest in reparations. That was a promise that was made. There were things that city leaders said they were going to do on the immediate heals when the city was flooded with people on the streets demanding justice. And none of that has been moved on. We have not forgotten and we are not letting it go. Our demand is clear. Defund the police. Currently in the budget that was proposed. Y'all are wanting to give 42% of the general fund to police. That's on top of the fact that they continuously come to you time after time again asking for more money, asking for money for things like their uniforms. That should be a part of their budget. We're asking you for things like, Oh, we need a training program. Speaker 0: To make sure that officers and intercede. Speaker 4: When an officer is doing something not supposed to be doing. That should already be a part of their program, of their training program. And if it's not. If it's. Speaker 0: Not. That's a floor. Speaker 4: Another floor of the Long Beach Police Department. And so for you to not hold them accountable for that, they don't need extra money for that. You don't need to consider it an agenda item to do anything about that. It's ridiculous that this is even coming to this body and that nobody is calling them on that. I notice that item 23 was pulled from the agenda. Even the fact that that was up for consideration is nonsense. And I want to know who pulled it from the agenda. Because the reality is, is that if this was something that the city council and the mayor cared about, then y'all would have supported SB two, which is the. Speaker 0: BRAC, which is a bill written and authored. Speaker 4: By Bradford, named after Kenneth Roth. Speaker 0: Jr. Speaker 4: Who was murdered by the Gardena Police Department after Michael Robbins, who was an officer in Gardena, was previously an officer in Orange County and shot three people and wasn't held accountable by the department. Much like happens here was not held accountable by the oversight body of the police. Much like what happens here wasn't held accountable by the district attorney. And then we do not have a decertification mechanism. Speaker 0: We were one. Speaker 4: Of four states that doesn't have a decertification mechanism. If you cared about that, you would support SB two. But the Long Beach Police Department is cited as being against the bill. Speaker 1: Ms.. Bates, your time. Speaker 4: So how is it that you are hearing you say that you care anything about the community? Because it's clear that you don't. The budget makes it clear that you don't. And we. Speaker 6: Demand better. Speaker 4: Defund the police. Speaker 0: My name is Stephanie Park, and like my colleagues who came before me, I want to take this opportunity to state that the budget, as it stands is grossly imbalanced and not actually designed to meet the true needs of Long Beach residents. 65 million for the Long Beach Police Department. It's obscene to take these funds, those millions and millions of dollars, and invest them in our communities, our schools and public health care and affordable housing. And you need to invest in alternative responses to the police. We heard about some of that tonight from the fire department. We need more of that. We need more and more and more. This is a direct way to work toward racial equity. At this point in history, there is no way you are not aware of the harms of our carceral system, of the dangers of the racism and violence inherent to policing as we know it. We cannot keep investing in the same dangerous system. We have to invest in new and healthier and safer ways to respond to the needs of our community, not with guns in handcuffs and prison time, but with appropriate and actually helpful alternatives. We need care, not cops. Defund the police. I yield my time. Speaker 6: Good evening. Speaker 7: Gunther. My name is Kenny Allen. I'm a resident of the second district of Long Beach. Speaker 2: And I'm here to talk. Speaker 6: To you. Speaker 7: And ask you to adopt the demands of the people's budget. Speaker 5: Tonight. We talked about economic development. Speaker 2: That's why I. Speaker 5: Again. Speaker 7: Echoed the people's budget in demanding that you immediately divest 65 million from our expensive, violent and ineffective police force and. Speaker 6: Instead invest that money in development and the well-being of our community. On Page 28, I think it is, of the city manager's note at the. Speaker 2: Top of the giant budget document. It's got a big. Speaker 6: List of unfunded items. Speaker 7: When community members and activists come to this podium and ask for help getting the things that they want to get done. Speaker 5: In the community. Mm hmm. Signed into law. Speaker 7: The most common answer that we get is. Speaker 2: How are you going to pay for it? How do you. Speaker 7: Expect us to pay for it? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 7: We're coming to you with a really clear answer. And really, I'd rather be at home. Speaker 2: Having dinner right now than talking to you about this. So tonight, we're talking about economic development in 2021. Speaker 7: An economic development budget must include a reparations program. Speaker 6: Full stop. It's embarrassing that it doesn't. We need a citywide. Speaker 7: Rental housing division to ensure economic development doesn't come at the cost of a displacement of our current residents. And we need universal legal representation. Speaker 2: For immigrants to ensure. Speaker 7: Economic development efforts don't leave those most vulnerable to. Speaker 6: The violent effects of gentrification. Behind we all. Speaker 7: Deserve to live in communities where we feel safe, where neighbors can connect with each other and help each other. The people's budget gets us closer to that reality. You need to divest to invest. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. That does it for public comment here. I'm going to take it back to the rail. I want to. First of all. Take this opportunity to thank all of our departments for for their presentation and also the public speakers today. I want to turn it over to Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you for the presentations. Thank you for the community input. It's always valuable to hear where we stand from each and every department. I want to start with some questions for the fire department. I am looking at page 245 of the budget book and reflecting back on a few years ago where we added fees for calls for service. And I see one of the things that's frustrating about this book is that I have to go from book to book to book year over year. There's not like a five year prior year actual, so I can have my staff do that. But in looking at page 245 and looking at the revenue that's coming in, it says that the key services on this page include calls for service. Does this include those calls for service fees? Have those come in as were originally projected? And have we implemented a program for our low income Medicare, Medicaid families that aren't able to afford that call for service fee? Speaker 2: Councilwoman. Are you referring to the first responder fee? Speaker 0: Yes, sir. Speaker 2: Yes. That was implemented, I think, in 2015 at a rate of $250 per month for a response. And that is coming in around $1.7 million, which is. Speaker 5: I think, about what. Speaker 2: We had initially estimated. Speaker 0: And are we thinking that that I know that one of the reasons for the implementation of that system was for our over users, the sober living homes, the businesses that were really relying on emergency services when. They may have been able to support appropriate staffing at their facilities or we've seen a decline in the calls from those businesses that we had felt were potentially over users or not over users, inappropriate users or less appropriate users of the system. Those calls that were necessarily emergencies but were coming in for emergencies. Speaker 8: You're asking do we think there's a decline. Speaker 0: From those particular areas? Yes. Had it been an incentive for them to reflect on the calls and more appropriately use emergency services? Speaker 8: I don't have those numbers for you at this time. But anecdotally, just looking at the runs that we go on, I would say that they have not declined. Speaker 0: And we've talked about in the past a tiered dispatch system. Are we still considering that? Is that waiting until the new data systems are deployed? Speaker 8: We are still evaluating that. We recently brought on a new medical director, Dr. Abramson. She's going through all of the information that we have and will come up with a recommendation for us. Speaker 0: I've heard nothing but amazing things about our new doctor, and I look forward to hearing that. You mentioned that we're looking for additional staffing for grants. What grants will pay for the staffing and what grants are you hoping to go after that we don't currently receive? Speaker 8: So the grants that we currently receive or that. Speaker 0: We don't currently. Speaker 8: Receive, that we don't currently receive, that's why we're getting grant personnel in so that we currently receive the Homeland Security Grants. What we don't have is the bandwidth to be researching additional grants. We just don't have the the the personnel right now to get after that. So we're hoping to get an accounting in this coming budget year accountant. Speaker 0: So I guess I would highly recommend that. Being a division chief over grants and cooperative agreements for a large agency that brings in millions of dollars. I'm not sure an accountant might be the right classification. There's a lot of writing involved in these grants to get the grants to go ahead. Okay. Speaker 2: I can clarify that a bit. We currently have an administrative analyst who is who is managing all financial aspects of the grant. Hiring an accountant this year for fiscal year 22 and beyond will allow the accountant to handle the fiscal requirements of the grant reporting. While the administrative analyst under the direction of the Deputy Chief and Assistant Chief and Support Services can. Speaker 5: Explore grant opportunities and apply for those. Speaker 0: I would be very interested in which grants you think you're going to receive. A lot of the grants at the federal level are changing. I mean, day by day, I got a new one today for a no that came out last week. And their administrative budgets for these grants are also very slim. And so I'd love to see a plan because I'd love for you to have a dozen grant staff. The city of Los Angeles, I want to say, has 26 grant staff for their fire department, for their fire department. And they're able to bring in a substantial amount of funding, but they also have different administrative revenue streams available. Thank you. Next, you talked about improving response times for our community to your dispatch as a potential option. What I know that there's kind of a report that just came out about NFPA standards on turnout time. Where do we stand on our turnout time? Locally. Speaker 8: Currently we are meeting that standard predominantly throughout the city, six and a half minutes. Speaker 0: Turn out time is not the same as. Speaker 8: Oh, I'm sorry. With our turn out times. Speaker 0: I'd be interested in knowing what those numbers are. I imagine our personnel are doing an excellent job. I do have two additional questions. One, is a comp a compliment? I just want to tell you a great work on the mental health video. Excellent. I saw it on the television show and I'll here for a few additional questions. Thank you. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilmember Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 4: Thank you very much. First of all, to economic development. John and your team did a fantastic job last year with administering the COVID related small business grants. Your SWIFT work was able to keep a lot of people employed. And so I just want to thank you because I know that it really was life changing. Some of the work that you guys do did last year. And so big thanks to you. I do have a couple questions about with for Fire regarding the heart team and the transition to reach. So it may just be me, but I am thoroughly confused about what is happening and what's happening to the heart team and when REACH is going to take over. And I just want to have a better understanding of I know the Heart team was working with L.A. County or had to meet some threshold protocols and requirements to operate in the way it was with L.A. County. Is that going to happen with REACH? And I asked the same question last week, and again, I'm sure it's just me, but I'm a little bit confused about what that transition is going to look like for our homeless population and how we're servicing them. Speaker 8: Okay. So with the heart team, we've over the last couple of months have received one time funding month by month, to my understanding that funding ends at the end of August, at which time the heart team would no longer be in operation. The REACH team, I believe, has started their operation as of this month. I don't think they're receiving any type of dispatch. I think what's occurring right now is more of a proactive approach to what they're doing. But the missions are different and the Mission for the Heart team was to alleviate some of the responses that were being taken on by our engines, trucks and rescues that allow them to go to more serious incidents or other incidents. So with that in mind, yes, the heart team did have to go through a pilot program over overseen by L.A. County. We have received correspondence from Cathy Chidester from from L.A. County, saying that she has questions regarding and that was, as of today, regarding the REACH team and the heart. And it's not really a transition. It was a transition of funding. So that funding went back into the pot and now the REACH team has the funding. But as far as how they're going to deploy, I'm not fully aware of how they intend to do that throughout use in the dispatch center. They do intend to have a separate call or call taker. I believe that will help them to dispatch. But there are some questions that still need to be answered and we still need to have some meetings on that, to my understanding. Speaker 4: And I appreciate that and maybe for the city manager. So right now, the when people call 911, it may not necessitate the response of a fire engine and an ambulance to deal with someone who might need some mental health services and some interaction from what I think is going to be great resources on the REACH team. So what will happen now will if someone calls nine on one will fire now have to go out there with an engine and an ambulance even though the situation might warrant like something the team can do. Speaker 2: Depending on what the. Speaker 7: Call is. So Kelly Colby is on the line. I believe she's there. Kelly, are you there? Speaker 6: I have near me. Great. Yes. Speaker 2: So I'll start. Speaker 7: So essentially it is a different service model. So we're not asking health department employees to be firefighters. We're not asking them to take medical calls that they're not trained to do. But they are a resource to be able to be sent or dispatched or have other types of. Speaker 2: Of proactive ability to go out and look and work with individuals. Speaker 7: Who are experiencing homelessness. The fire department will still do the fire department job. Speaker 2: If they get a call about a medical incident and they'll be able to respond with an engine as they would any other call. Speaker 5: But we also then have the REACH team. Speaker 2: That can be able to go to certain types of incidences that they're trained for. Kelly If you can talk a little bit more about the transition and how we expect major calls to be handled. Speaker 6: Yeah. So at the current time in the just as we're working on that through the pilot process of this is that this is we're in the midst of a proactive space. The team is out there engaging with people on the street. We have a mental health clinician and a public health nurse working with the outreach workers. Beginning of September, we'll start to be more responsive. So we are hiring someone specific to ensure that our phone line is of it's being answered during during our open hours to be able to refer and send folks, send the teams out in a response to people, call 911. There is there's a specific call code that the dispatch center has identified that they would then forward those to the NSC and we would respond to those that nonemergency. This is not an emergency response. All other things that are medical or in need of response, we would have those calls. And then once they arrived, if this determined that they don't need to be transported or anything, they can call the health department, the multi service team and we can do a warm handoff. And then that allows for us to do ongoing service management, um, and a greater way to engage people in the ongoing operations that are working from their housing. So it is a very, it is a very different model, but it is a very close partnership between the fire department, the police department and the health department in our work around people with medical and mental health conditions experiencing. Speaker 0: Councilman Price, your time is expired. Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilman. Super Soprano. Speaker 5: Thank you. My questions tonight are going to be restricted to fire. And first to Chief Espino on page 17. Great list of accomplishments. I'd love to go over all those, but my time is limited. But great work on diversity. The female firefighter career workshops great and the mental health training with the guidance synergies outstanding programs. So thank you. Congratulations on those. So to the Council, I would just like to say that my first request is that. We go to structural funding of engine companies. And I say that because a year from now, I don't think it's proper to be balancing our budget using these vital public safety resources. So that would be my very first request is that we do that. I think fire engine companies, it's a it's a little different look nowadays, I think, of the wildfires that that the department is addressing. The chief mentioned that tonight, the local vegetation fires. I don't know if the chief put a number on that. I happen to know we were at 200 at some point that we didn't have in the past. So these engine companies are just vitally needed. My other records read that we discontinue using the specification of Engine 17 when we talk about restoration of an engine company. It was on a list of priorities that was developed over ten years ago. It was developed by a previous fire chief. And I think our current fire chief certainly should have the latitude to develop his own list of priorities when it comes to restoration of engine companies. That list was also created before I ever brought to this council the concept of the equity lens. When talking about Engine 17 and its relationship to Engine ten. And they both happen to call on the 90804 zip code in Long Beach, and that is the most densely populated zip code in the city. So. I wonder if the chief would like to comment on that priorities list and and what his thoughts are, if he could share that with us tonight. Speaker 8: Yes, sir. Thank you, Councilman. So we are still currently evaluating that priorities list, but I can tell you that Engine 17 still sits at the top of the list as far as getting structurally funded. There are a couple of different reasons for that. When you take seven teams out of the loop, there is a huge hole on the east side where we don't have the ability to flow water, as it were. As you're well aware, the condominium or the duplex directly across the street from Station 17 burning is a direct result of not having an engine there close by to get water on it, on that fire within a minute or two. And so 17 still sits at the top of that list. Right behind that would be engine one, two, one, which is downtown right here next door. The increase in vertical density down here. When I when I speak to our troops about it, it's as if the entire population of Hawaiian Gardens is going to be put in the downtown Long Beach. And that comes at a cost. Those are going to be responses that we have to respond to. And so that's, you know, apparatus and resources that and that's how we get there. So we will have a a new list coming out. And the the resources that we are looking at. It may not it may not change, but but I think it will change a bit. Speaker 5: Thank you for that. I think that's all I have for now. I didn't want to be dismissive of John Keiser and his great presentation. He's one of my favorites for all his work on Community Hospital. So a great presentation tonight. Thank you. Speaker 3: Right. Councilmember Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. I see on page 244 that we have a video production unit, but I don't see any video production related. Personal items. What items? What staff members are in our video production unit. Speaker 2: Ketzel Councilwoman. They'll be the communications specialist, I believe is the communication specialist. Speaker 0: Three. Speaker 5: Correct. Speaker 0: Are you aware that currently between 300,000 and $1,000,000 annually of you U.S. funds go to video production? Speaker 8: Are you speaking about the video production with the RTG? Speaker 0: I mean, it's currently for any video production that would be homeland security in nature. So if you were to do videos related to trainings on Stop the Bleed or Active Shooter or you've done these videos and our staff participate, typically complimentary. I'd be interested in seeing if a Cordray could be completed where a partial funding of potentially your video production staff, other local cities that have video production staff could come together and really bring those positions in-house. As a group of elected officials, I think we work really hard to use government funding and specifically federal tax dollars to fund our positions that have good employee benefits. And when we outsource those things to contractors, while I do see a great amount of flexibility and this Council on this day, as has consistently over the last year, taken out outsourced services and looked to bring those in-house. And so if there were funds available, I know other agencies have received them in the past, but at least the past three years that has not been the case. Those have been outsourced funds, and I'd love to see us put together a plan where those funds would come back to government employees that are doing the work already Speaker 8: . Know, we can certainly take a look at that and I'll get back to you with all that information. I do know that the the current staff that we have doing video production is extremely busy between everything that we're doing as far as being able to document all the different things that we do with training and whatnot. Speaker 0: Excellent. Thank you. And then lastly, you talk about recruitment and depending on the agency that you look to. One of the things that we find is that Explorer programs are a strong tool for diversity and inclusion recruitment. What is the status of our Explorer program and or are we looking to funnel youth in our community into a neighboring program that we can recruit from? Speaker 8: Yeah. We we currently do not have an Explorer program. We do have a search and rescue group that is a feeder system for both PD and fire. And we also have our program at Jordan High School, which is which is taking off. We are looking at an Explorer program and seeing how that would fit in with us. But at the moment, we don't have one. Speaker 0: And then finally, I'll just mention that I don't want to disclose the donor, but an elected official at the regional level has recently come forward with some funding, and if it materializes, there will be a program for individuals from disadvantaged communities to go through a 16 week program and become an EMT. And then from EMT opportunities with local companies, they would have mentorship in working towards becoming members of fire service. And I approached a gentleman who was here just two weeks ago from the midnight basketball program and have gotten him to apply for the program. And I hope other members of our community who would like to become firefighters but need that additional help. I mean, you can become an EMT to pay $700 and go to a course. But these are for individuals who need that mentorship, that one on one, a pre academy program, the 16 week program that starts in the fall . And I'd really love to see us utilize part of that to really grow individuals who are in our community that may not know what career they want to really take that opportunity and become a part of the fire service. So thank you very much. And I hope that we can work together on some of those programs. Speaker 8: Terrific. Thank you. Speaker 3: We saw Councilmember Sorrow District six. Speaker 4: Thank you. Yes. I also want to add to thinking. Fire Department, as well as Mr. Kaiser, as well as Ms. went in for the presentation, as well as our. Our community for the feedback. I wanted to just, you know. Councilmember Price that asks the question that I also wanted to ask, which is clarity around the Hart team and the transition to the Hart team, to the team. And, you know, I think with every new motto, it takes some time to figure out how do we make that work? And I'm just wondering if if there's a transition plan that, you know, develop. I mean, I know you're in conversation at the moment, but I'm just thinking it would be helpful because I think if we're not clear, I'm not sure how the public will know there's an alternative model that's happening and that where, you know, is it a pilot or is it something that's going to be permanent? And if that's the case, it sounds like then I just wanted to confirm. So we have the heart team on board until the end of this month and then September 1st the team go into effect. Like, because I'm trying to figure out like exactly how does it transition? Speaker 7: So we're actually already in that transition. Speaker 2: We had originally planned for Heart to Sunset in March. It was going to be a six month program. Speaker 7: We had some delays and we also wanted to make sure that there was overlap and that these issues were worked out. So Health Department team has been working with dispatch and kind of the groups on the ground. Speaker 2: To work on who gets what call and how they're going to handle those. We have launched them. So we wanted to make sure. Speaker 7: That heart was still in place and that we didn't just end one service without the other one. Speaker 2: We launched Reach, I believe, on August. Speaker 7: 1st, and then we wanted to keep. Speaker 2: Funding, even extra funding with. Speaker 5: Heart all the way through the 31st. Speaker 7: We did do some memos where we explained kind of what the differences between heart and region, the staffing models. Speaker 2: But given. Speaker 7: The discussion today, I'd like to provide a little bit more in writing so that we have that we'll get that before the next budget meeting about the protocols that have kind of been worked out and and the transition. Speaker 5: Plan. Speaker 4: Yeah. Thank you for that. And I also just want to share that I do look forward to seeing the study, the fire, your service study findings and recommendation. I know that we we've had some challenging year and we are in wildfire season at the moment. And climate change is not going to be you know, it's going to get worse. And I'm interested to see how much more resources is it going to how that's going to affect our service in general. Right. So I do look forward to seeing that. And I also want to make the comment to Mr. Kaiser in that. How much I think it's important that you appreciate the services and the hard work that the department has done to hit the ground running to ensure that services is provided to our businesses in the relief process and how we're going to be moving, looking forward to how we're going to be able to work together to really create transformation in services, as well as just changing the services and how we work with businesses and supporting people through workforce development, our guaranteed guaranteed income pilot program. Right? So many of these things that's going to be coming down the pipeline and how that we can transform our community for the better. And lastly, to civil services, to Ms.. Winter and the team. I do really appreciate the change in the way that you pivot continue to make sure we do recruitment. More than anything, I want to go back to how crucial it is to retain our workforce, given our hard work in doing the Long Beach promise and ensuring that we, you know, support our students and scholars through school process to college, how do we make sure we retain them, bring that into our city. Right. And that we are keeping our local talent. So I appreciate the outreach that you came out to our fair that we did in our community, because the city process is sometimes really confusing. People really want to be of service and want to work for the city. And it really helps that you're out there tabling and speaking in the community and kind of helping to demystify and breaking down and making it a little bit easier. Obviously we could do better and that's what I'm hoping we can do. But I appreciate the effort that's being taken at the moment. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilmember Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you so much. I just want to start with John Kiser. Thank you so much for for all that you have done. It would take me a half an hour to go over my list of all of the amazing things that your department has done. So I just just a sincere thank you to you. And then also, Chief, I just want to thank you for your presentation. I know over the past year and a half, your department has just performed incredibly. And I am extremely proud of all the firefighters, all the men and women out there that have performed during these difficult times and our city. And I want to thank you for your leadership. Speaker 8: Thank you. I appreciate that support. Speaker 1: I know that the response times are extremely fast, and that's important because that saves lives. So you all are heroes in my book, and I really appreciate and respect your work. I saw the long hours, too. I was out there at many of the clinics over the last year, and I saw the work that your team did in making sure that we. Vaccinations and arms and that save lives. And I appreciate that as well. I loved hearing about your diversity in your recruitment initiatives. That's really important to me, that we hire people from the community that look like the community and women. I know that we have civil service here. So this is this is for you. You need to make sure that when we are hiring police and firefighters, that we have people there that represent our community because you can only hire from the the list that they send over. So you also have to do a great job in making sure that you're being innovative and how you do outreach in the community so that we're bringing those folks to the table. You also and then promoting women. And I love what you're doing. I mean, loved hearing about your female engineers and not just all, you know, really good work. So I have a couple questions for you. I think we all have questions on the REACH team, but I'm going to come back to that if I have time. And my first question is, you know, I've been excited. I represent the downtown area and District two. So I've been excited about all of the downtown development and the high rises. But can you please share some of the challenges that the these developments might pose to the fire department? Speaker 8: Yes, Councilwoman Ellen. Thank you for the question. So, first and foremost, the the challenges that are brought on by the increase in population, more people mean more responses for us. So you bring in these high rises. And as I said, it's like putting the population of Hawaiian Gardens downtown. And so we're going to need to manage the expectations of downtown and how are we responding to those incidents? We're also right now actively tracking time and time from the sidewalk when we arrive on scene to time when we're actually at the patient. Because oftentimes, if it's a structure fire, we're not going up in an elevator. We're going up by a staircase with all of our gear and equipment. So that takes many minutes, maybe ten, 15 minutes to get a loft in. When we're going to patients, actually, we're using an elevator, but that also equates in an additional time. So those would probably be the biggest challenges to us, is being able to respond to that. Speaker 1: All right. Thank you. And then I do have some follow up questions. I'm sorry you're getting so much about the team, but is there anything that when we talked earlier about response times for fire call service, is there anything when we revert to the REACH team that would impact those that the response time or call for service time? Speaker 8: Potentially. So we're tracking that as well. So as I stated before, the primary mission of the Hart team was to alleviate some of the responses for engines, trucks, rescues. So if you put those responses back into the mix, that means those units are going to be taken out of service to respond to those patients. And so I would expect a slight uptick in our response times overall systemwide. Speaker 1: Okay. All right. And then is there anything any of the services that were provided by the Hart team that will not be provided by the REACH team that you're aware of outside of fire services? Speaker 8: Yes. So the Hart team, along with the primary mission of taking on responses, which they did by basically monitoring the radio. So that would be one going on, those types of responses. Secondary to that, they they do proactive work with within the community in which the research team would be doing some something somewhat similar. But the biggest thing that they're doing for us over the last couple of months and Councilman Supernova is aware of this, is that they are proactively going out and conducting heat mapping of the homeless encampments throughout the city, vegetation areas that are going to cause us issues if and when they end up igniting. The problem is oftentimes these encampments are in areas that are very hard to access because the people that are are living there don't want to be accessible. And it makes it very, very difficult for us for egress and ingress makes it very difficult for us to help manage that. So they're going out there videotaping, they're taking photos, they're coming back with maps. They go to the area stations, they relay that information to those captains and let them know to be aware that there is an encampment there. So that's one of the other big things they've done for us just in the recent past. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilmember Zendejas. Speaker 4: Thank you, Councilmember Alston. First of all, John and your team. Oh, my God, you have done an incredible job this past year. You just jumped right into it. And it's just, you know, you make us so very, so very proud to have an economic development team as the one that we have right now. I'm so thrilled for the 20 plus million that it's going to support our local businesses. You know, I think that that's that's really going to be very helpful, especially because of all the challenges that are small businesses and all businesses have gone through during this pandemic. I'm also very excited about the $2.2 million being allocated to bridge the digital divide. And I was wondering if maybe that part of that money is going to be used to in multilingual workshops or courses to teach those small business owners how to use and how to navigate such devices. Speaker 7: Council member. Thank you so much. So the answer is yes. We're really fortunate to have learned a lot through our Cares Act outreach and we have multiple community based organizations that are Spanish speaking. So language access has been built into the service delivery model and the programs that we've presented to the city manager. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you, I and that makes me very happy. And I know that I have a lot of those business and, you know, business owners in my district. So I'm glad to hear that. Thank you very much. I also I'm so excited about, you know, how part of this money is also going to go into businesses and help them restart their own businesses or start a business here in our city. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about those efforts being made. Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely. So there's there's a couple of different categories in some of the comments earlier about providing access is first having direct grants. So the $20 million that you were talking about is broken down by sector for businesses, for instance, in food services, then personal services, and then our art serving nonprofit. And so we've really tried to target the resources based on the impacts from COVID 19. But then when it comes to helping those businesses with access to these programs, the busy care program, which is is something that we've been building and growing now, has outreach efforts where in some of the harder to reach parts of the city , they are now going out door to door to talk to businesses in multiple languages. We have speakers, Spanish speakers and English speakers in actually knocking on the doors of businesses that may not have received communications for through online or digital. And then finally, we're going to be through the LBR, a program that you see before you contracting with community based organizations to then provide outreach at the neighborhood level. And through that, they'll provide both the funding and helping with the applications. But then some of the business and technical assistance for some of those restart activities that you're talking about. And I think that we've been having some conversations recently about a fresh start, and I think your office has been really a leader in that. And so we're going to be talking with the city manager about how we might be able to also use some of the business license, taxes and fees funding to help businesses get a fresh start who may have some liabilities or some obligations that they could not pay for during COVID 19. So we're trying to cover all these bases in different ways. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you so much, John, again, for all the work that you do and continue to do. I really appreciate that. Going on to the fire department. Actually, I have one more question for you, John, and then I might have to queue back up, but I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about our ten year blueprint. I know that we we talked about our blueprint earlier, our economic blueprint, and that was such a success. But I'm really anxious to know how close we are to maybe you guys giving us a presentation on the ten year blueprint for the city. Speaker 7: Certainly, COUNCILMEMBER. So this is something that the Economic Development Commission, the 11 members that were tasked with creating back in 2016 and since COVID 19, we've seen huge economic transitions occurring. And that has to do with information technology, the transition of business practices, even even workforce transitions, working from home or maybe starting their own businesses. And so the commission is looking at those economic transitions as well as a lot of the social transitions. We've also seen a lot of new information and opportunities to close racial disparities with regard to income generation and small business support. And those issues are now at the forefront of the Economic Development Commission's planning and ultimately the recommendations that they hope to bring forward to the Economic Development and Finance Committee of the Council, and then for final approval by the City Council at the end of this year. So they've been conducting monthly study sessions on different topics, different focus areas, and we're going to be wrapping that work up this fall with some presentations to both the committee and the council later this year. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. We have missed Councilmember Supernova. Speaker 5: Thank you. I realize that I had not mentioned the REACH program and I think that's obligatory tonight, so I want to do that. Seriously, Chief, you had mentioned that the head of County EMS contacted you today, and I think I heard you to say that the issue is over funding and not the public safety function of a group. So I just want to get that clear. Speaker 8: No. The the issue with county DHS is not anything to do with funding. It's it's more of the the actual program itself. And so even with the Hart team through the fire department that took a pilot study before it eventually was adopted, and we were able to put that into play with the research team. I believe their their view of it is it's it's bordering on parrot medicine as far as what the actual outcome is going to be. And so they just need to be very clear, to my understanding, about what that team actually is going to do, how it's going to be. I don't want to say dispatch because we don't dispatch a non sworn personnel from from fire dispatch, but they need clarification on the actual mission of that team. Speaker 5: Okay. And did they provide any. Well, I guess they wouldn't know what the timeframe is. And they have to get the information before they can analyze it, correct? Correct. Okay. And thank you for mentioning the tracking that the Hart team is doing on these encampments. My thought was just firefighter's safety. The fact that these rigs are not off road vehicles and in and it just be very nice to know where you're going ahead of time rather than trying to find a location on the way to a fire. So thank you for that. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 3: Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 0: Thank you. Now that I've asked the majority of my questions, I just wanted to follow up with a big thank you for the department heads who have really taken the time to make an excellent presentation on. Speaker 3: Please. Go ahead and continue, please. Speaker 0: Thank you. I know this year has been very trying for all of the departments and especially the ones presenting tonight. And I just want to give just an amazing thank you to all of the teams that work with you. I also know that we've lost some of those members in our community to other agencies and our promotions in other organizations. And I think it's just a testament to the excellent leadership that we have in the city. It does make me proud to be a leader on so many of these issues, and it wouldn't be possible without leadership in our departments like you guys. So thank you for that. And. Let us know how we can provide additional help. Thanks. Speaker 3: Right. Council members. And they has. Speaker 4: Thank you, Councilmember Austin. And I just want to take a moment to highlight all the great work that our fire department continues to do in, you know, your response time is very impressive. I'm very, very happy with all the work that you've been doing and look forward to the work that you're going to be doing in this next fiscal year. One of the things that I've been very, very, very proud of is, you know, the education and awareness that you bring. And I was wondering if there was a way that we can partner up with the fire department for more education and fire prevention workshops to inform and train community members on what they can do in case of a fire in their apartment buildings or houses. I really like welcome that opportunity and maybe we could talk off line, chief and and, you know, create some kind of curriculum so that we could work with our residents. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 8: Yeah. So thank you for for that. We do have a currently have a very robust cert program and that has been doing very well for us. Unfortunately, with COVID kind of slow down, difficult to get together in person, but we do have more classes that are coming up. Also the least those which is onboard as well. So I'd be more than happy to just sit down with you and discuss that. How we can be more proactive. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. Another thing that I'm very, very proud of is your fire pathway program at Jordan Hung. Jordan High has a very special place in my heart, meaning that I've done work with Jordan High School and hope to one day go back there and continue doing my work with them. So I'm very thankful that we have that kind of program there. And I was wondering if there was any any sort of I know the funding is always, you know, the main reason or something that holds us back. But I was wondering if there was any plan to maybe expand that kind of program to either Cabrillo or Poly High School, which is where most of my residents attend high school. Speaker 8: Yeah, eventually we would love to do something like that. Unfortunately, right now it's just a matter of bandwidth. So not only is it a matter of funding, we need to come up with a requisite amount of instructors to be able to to give all of the instruction to these young men and women that are coming up. But I could tell you the the young men and women that we were looking at in this program are fantastic. Unfortunately, it just going to take a bit of time, but they're still young. But that's when we need to approach our youth, right? When they're young, let them see the opportunities that are out there for them. And then hopefully somewhere down the road, we're going to see them within our ranks. Speaker 4: Thank you. And I'm always, always a big fan of female empowerment. So the female fighter per year workshops that you provide, I'm so happy to see that within our fire department. So congratulations on that and I look forward to supporting many more of those. And also wanted to I wanted to also see what the impact is on our fire department by some of the fires that have been created by some of the unhoused neighbors that we have. I, for one, had a big incident in my in my district, maybe like three, three or so weeks ago, June, June 24, to be exact. And. There was squatters living in that household. There was a lot of a lot of things going on there. And, you know, my residents were very, very fearful of the things that could happen. And they did see like that they were pulling, you know, electricity and this and that and doing a lot of illegal stuff. And even though we were on them and we were trying to work with code enforcement and everything, it was a very difficult situation until a horrific fire happened. And as you remember, the house burned down and now there's nothing there anymore. But I'm wondering what that impact has been on our fire department and fires like that. Speaker 8: Yeah. So obviously fires like that take up a lot of resources both in our apparatus and our personnel in time. But more so is the the life hazard that occurs every time we have a big fire like that. There has to be the assumption that there's a life safety hazard. The fire just didn't start on its own. And so with that in mind, we have personnel going into structures that are dangerous, inherently dangerous looking, searching for people that could potentially be in there. The one good thing that I'm looking at is where we've had a number of fires within certain occupancy. We've been able to work with the other members of the city team and as you said, burn to the ground. But they get cleared out and taken down to the ground. And basically it's now it's a lot and which makes that area safer. But it's just a difficult proposition for everybody. Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you very much. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you, Linda. So I guess I'll take the last opportunity to first of all, thank you, Mr. Keisler, and economic development for a great presentation and all the great work that your department continues to do. A lot of folks don't know. We're going on our 12 hour. We were here this morning meeting with the economic development and developers this morning on a key strategic economic development project in North Long Beach. And John and his team have been tremendously supportive and continue to do so for all of our activities and eight district and in North Long Beach as a whole. So thank you for that. I can remember not too long ago that this city council during the budget process made the decision to create an economic development department. Right. And I want to say, during my time on a city council, I think that's probably the best decision that we've made, that that decision has produced results far beyond what we could have ever imagined. And so credit to the city management. It's credit to the city, to the economic development team for for their great work and continued work in our city. Oh, so no questions. Fire department. Obviously, we do. We do appreciate your ongoing commitment to diversity in our academies and hiring practices. And that is obviously a nexus to our civil service department. And we appreciate all of the work that you both are doing to to make that happen. We do appreciate your great support during COVID. Uh, the 60% increase in arsons is very, very concerning. And I know we've had these conversations before, but there is anything that we can do proactively, particularly along the Rivers Railroad tracks, in terms of brush fires, prevention, to, to, to get in front of that. Speaker 8: Yeah. So currently there is a city team that's put together that's working collaboratively with L.A. Public Works, Caltrans, some of the other agencies trying to come to agreements on what this is going to look like as far as the responsibility, who's going to have the ultimate responsibility as far as a cleanup. But it's it's kind of a slow process in going. And so in order to bolster that, we also have, as I said, we have the Hart team that are going out doing proactive education in those encampments, in those areas, trying to get people just to be as careful as they can, and also giving that information to all of the area stations so that they're able to react in any event. And we actually do have a fire. Speaker 3: Right. Thank you. That that continues to concern me. And anything we can do to support proactivity in that space is important. I've seen and experienced that that increase in brush fires in my district and we experience it on often it seems like once a week right now. In Fire station night. Yes. Obviously, a very important topic of citywide conversation. And thanks to the structure overall. How or how are response times for a power station nine currently? And. And where do you see and where are we toward getting. I guess that's not your area but um. Response time supports this in nine. That's an important topic in my area of the city. Speaker 8: Yes, fire response times improved just the way that we thought they would. Moving the personnel from Engine and Rescue Nine to an area that was that was closer to Old Station nine, brought those response times more into line where they used to be before. Now, the the opposite effect of that is obviously when so the rescue was down just slightly south. So those were response times when they were in that location had improved down there. But system wide, we're doing very well with our response times. Speaker 3: Right. And then my my last question was related to wildfires. Yes. Obviously, they're not close by. But what are the impacts? How are these wildfires impacting operations and service delivery in any way for for our city? Speaker 8: Yeah. Right now, it's it's a critical time for our region. We just got notified by OAS this evening that they are in a critical state. They're asking everybody in our region to send apparatus up north because they're unable to handle it on their own, obviously, with those resources. But our primary I just want to be clear, our primary mission is to protect the city of Long Beach. First and foremost, follow up to that is is the region in the area. So I'm talking Malibu, Ventura, Orange County, San Diego County, somewhere we can get to fairly quickly. And then the follow up to that, obviously, are the fires that we're seeing up in Northern California. We're also up in Oregon and Washington. We operate very well because of master mutual aid and not only with wildfires, but looking down the road. And I would hate to see anything like it, but we have another big earthquake. I guarantee you we would be using master mutual aid, asking for assistance from outlying fire departments to come in and help us. Speaker 3: This might be a silly question, but are we reimbursed for that kind of mutual aid? Speaker 5: We are. Speaker 8: Yes. We receive full cost plus a slight administrative fee for the wear and tear on the apparatus and the like. Speaker 3: Great. I have no further questions. I don't see any further questions from the council. So with that said, let's go to a vote. To receive and follow. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. We are moving on before we go on to the next item on the agenda, which will be item 24, we are going to without any objection of the council, we are going to be postponing the infrastructure study session. I know that the Council is very interested in that and it deserves a lot of attention from the council. And and so we want to make sure that everyone's ready to go so we can postpone that hopefully to the next week or two. That would be great. We'll work on the timing on that. Thank you. And with that, we will take on item number 24.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2022 Budget for the departments of Economic Development, Fire, and Civil Service. (Citywide)

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Speaker 2: Thank you. I will be moving on now to the next item, which will be item number 25. Speaker 1: Please report from Public Works recommendation or request city attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to speed limits on city streets citywide. Speaker 2: Mr. Modica. Speaker 7: The item before you is related to speed limits. As mentioned, we are available for a staff report if you want it. Speaker 5: Otherwise we're ready with the recommendation. Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry. Councilman Price. Speaker 4: To do this because I know it's a late night, but. Mr. Lopez, can you just talk real briefly about how it is specifically in Belmont? Sure. That we came up with these recommendations or perhaps you can expand on what I miss here. It's my understanding that this has been a multiyear process where data has been collected and the speed, the recommended speeds have been warranted through national standards for speed design and roadway design standards. And that this is something that has been in the process for a number of years to get to this recommendation. The reason and if there's anything you want to add to that, please. But the reason I'm asking that is because we do have business owners in Naples that have been asking for a reduction of speeds on Second Street through Naples. And that's something staff is looking at. But they have to collect the data and they have to make sure the warrants are there to recommend it. And it could not have been just added on to this item. Does that sound about right to you? Speaker 2: Yes. Actually, we have Carl Hickman. That's our city traffic engineer. That's our local expert. So if I can have Carl Hickman help me answer that question, Carl. Speaker 5: Sure. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. And council members. And to answer your question, Susie, basically, you know, many of most of those streets and the Belmont Shore residents district, they have similar characteristics. They were all originally posted at 25 miles an hour. They are very narrow there. The GM metrics are very similar. The usage that is there is very similar. So all of these things make it appropriate, appropriate to designate the entire neighborhood as a common district. All of the speed surveys that we collected there show an 85th percentile speed between 19 and 23 miles an hour. Actually, 14 of the 18 were actually 22 miles an hour or less. So because so many common conditions exist per the vehicle code, we're able to create their residence district and change the speed limits, have a reduction down to 15 miles an hour for the entire group of streets. And we're talking CVC Section 22, three, five, 8.3. That allows us to do that per state law, and that's how we're able to accomplish that in the Belmont Shore area. Speaker 4: Okay. And so having said all of that, that your team is still looking at speed reductions on Second Street through the area of Naples, and that is a process where you're collecting data, doing speed surveys and establishing the necessary warrants to make that recommendation, correct? Speaker 5: Yes, Councilwoman, we're actually in the process of reviewing all of the speed surveys in the entire city. These speed surveys are required so that PD has a formal and legal process to enforce our speed limits. We have over 300 engineering and traffic surveys that we have to maintain, and these require a renewal on the five year basis . And sometimes we can also extend them seven or ten years. But yes, to answer your question, we will be reviewing those roadways as well at second and other areas as well throughout the entire city. And this is the first step in the process. And I can remind you all that we did pass a Safe Streets initiative back in July of last year. And this is part of our process to see where there are areas in the city where we can formally and legally reduce our speed limits to make our city's streets safer. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you. Speaker 2: That's when Austin. Is there a public comment on this item? No these cats votes.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending Long Beach Municipal Code Sections 10.12.010 to 10.12.030, relating to Speed Limits on City Streets, on the street segments listed in Attachment A. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. So just as a reminder, we have one item and then after this one item, it's a presentation, an important presentation. Then we move on to the budget hearing. So we're going to hear an update on the Everyone at Home Long Beach plan and then we'll move on to the budget. Speaker 1: Item 17 is a report from Health and Human Services Development Services recommendation to receive and file an update on the Everyone Long Beach Initiative of the city by. Speaker 0: Thank you. And before we before we have Mr. Modica start, I do know that everyone in front of them has the original everyone home Long Beach Task Force recommendations, I think should have a book in front of them. And also I know the presentation we wanted them in talking to Mr. Modica. For those who don't know our everyone home Long Beach plan is our our action plan and our work product that the Health Department put together with a really great group of folks from across the community chaired by our President, Jane Connolly of Cal State Long Beach, and included almost all of our organizations that were doing direct work around around homelessness and helping people experiencing homelessness and the housing work that's been in place for so many years. This plan will this update will give us the latest as to where this plan is from when it was released to the city council. And also talk about how we have met some of the metrics or maybe not met some of the metrics that we still have to work on as part of the plan. And so again, want to thank before Mr. Modica starts. Just the incredible group of folks that worked on this plan a few years ago. I think they are probably listed in this book and just grateful to that work and the work of the Long Beach Health Department. So, Mr. Modica. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think he summarized that very, very well. So I will just turn it directly to Kelly and Oscar, who will give the report's Kelly copy and Oscar worthy. Speaker 7: Good evening, honorable mayor and Council Members. I thank you for this opportunity to share the mid-term progress on everyone's home line breach plan. Oscar worthy Director of Development Services has joined me for this presentation. You. Everyone from Long Beach Initiative was established to address the homelessness crisis in the city of Long Beach. We gathered a task force chaired by Cal State Long Beach President Jane Close Connelly. The task force comprised of nearly 50 community leaders, stakeholders and people with lived experience during the summer of 2018 to present information on homelessness, existing resources and gaps, the task force developed engaged the Homeless Services Advisory Committee, Continuum of Care Board and other community members to inform the recommendations. The Task Force established a set of goals and strategies which were adopted on December 11th, 2018. This document has been our guiding focus since that time. There are seven key goals within the report. Strengthening governance. And increasing funding. Increasing housing access. Reducing homelessness. Speaker 2: Employing people. Speaker 7: Supporting families. Connected to help. And developing population based service models. I'd like to start tonight's presentation with some context. In our last homeless count in January 2020, just before the pandemic, we had 2034 people experiencing homelessness in Long Beach. This was up slightly from the previous year. People self-reported that they became homeless due to insufficient income and loss of jobs, family problems, loss of housing and behavioral health concerns, including mental health and substance use. Nearly half reported that it was their first time homeless. 28% had experienced homelessness for more than two years and are considered chronically homeless. In the past year, we have seen substantial increases in funding and recognition of homelessness as a public health crisis. However, this is not fully led to more people in transitional housing, as COVID 19 protocols reduce by nearly half the number of beds available in congregate shelters. Given the distancing restrictions and some shelters stopped taking new participants to ensure a person with COVID wasn't entering the facility, we began to hear more about encampments and as CDC guidance was to reduce encampment cleanups, to reduce possible community transmission due to encampment disruption proven also led to reduced access to vital public facilities and services as people were needing them even more than before. Another factor in the past year was the focus on reducing people in congregate settings, including the jails and prisons to reduce transmission. People in jails and prisons were released, but there were little, if any, additional housing and resources to meet their needs, leaving many of them homeless as well . The COVID pandemic has in many ways set us back in our efforts a little to address homelessness in Long Beach. However, you will see that we've made great strides on many areas of the Everyone Home Long Beach plan and we have significant opportunities in our future. Our first goal was to strengthen governance and increase funding. It was to build governance, data capabilities, communications and financing to support a coordinated and robust homeless services system and housing system. The task force set a goal of 25 million and ongoing sustainable funding for operations, programs and services and another 220 million in capital funding. Rapidly expanding state and county funding has helped us move very close to this goal. To date, we're very near the goals for ongoing funding and one quarter of the way there for capital funding. We expect to reach about 50% of the capital funding goal by 2023. Is there significant capital funding in the state budget over the next two years? The chart on the left here shows the funding. In 2018, we had eight funding sources for a total of $39 million, including housing voucher subsidies and capital funding. We now have 11 funding sources totaling nearly $95 million. 64 million is for new services and assistance funding, and 23 million is available to us through grant terms over the next two years. The primary focus areas for the funding include interim housing, housing authority, vouchers and capital improvements, remaining funds, support, homeless prevention, outreach, coordinated entry system and case management, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. Remaining resources also fund MSD Operations Program and Administrative Staffing Data Systems and overall administration. Our additional accomplishments in it, in addition to the funding, is that we have elevated the homeless services from a division to a bureau, hiring many new staff, including a focus on hiring around mental health and health care in our jurisdictional work and other special projects. We improve the continuum of care governance, adopting a new charter in 2020 to increase policy and decision making responsibility within the CRC Board. We also implemented a new number and implemented a number of collaborative work groups to focus on specific areas of need in the city. Finally, we enhance collaboration by transitioning to the Clarity Homeless Management Information system, which is right surrounding jurisdictions are using. This allows us to better coordinate services and outcomes with our regional partners. Our initiatives in progress include developing an affirmative marketing plan to ensure communications are focused and effective in achieving equity for communities who are disproportionately impacted by and experiencing homelessness. We are implementing a lived experience advisory board to ensure a lived experience is informing our policy program and resource decision making. We expanded access and referrals to the coordinated entry system to improve access so that regardless of which homeless services provider you are working with, you are being all or being prioritized for the resources within the system. And we're also developing contractor performance management dashboards, advocating for additional funding and piloting the Unite US referral platform to increase service access. The second goal is to expand housing opportunities and incentivize major landlords to provide housing to low income and homeless individuals and families. Everyone home goals for increasing housing. Access for 200 shelter beds by 2020, 200 new permanent supportive housing units by 2023 and 2000 very low and low income units either entitled or online in the pipeline by 2023. We have made strong progress on this goal in the past two and a half years, surpassed our goal by double in 2024. The shelter crisis beds are bringing 402 shelter crisis beds online in 2020. 402 beds in one year. During the pandemic, we have quadrupled the permanent supportive housing goal with 844 units of permanent supportive housing underway or completed. And we have an additional 425 units of low and very low income housing being developed or in the pipeline. In 2020, the city opened. The Atlantic Bridge community in North Long Beach, purchased the best western motel on Long Beach Boulevard. The project Homekey funding and supported the Los Angeles County Purchase and opening a project Homekey Sites funded Motel six and Holiday Inn, which brought an additional 175 beds to our city. We continue to operate Project Roomkey through August of 2021, which brings an additional 43 beds. In addition, we've issued 1582 vouchers for a total of 9375 bed nights. Through our new nightly capacity at this time is 484 individuals and households each night. Speaker 0: Efforts to increase our housing access has resulted in the development or processing of approximately or not approximately 1269 total supportive housing units, as well as low and very low income housing units. This figure includes 15 projects that have been completed throughout the city. Speaker 8: With a yield. Speaker 0: Of approximately 589 total housing units. Next slide, please. Also included in this figure are the preservation and rehabilitation efforts that have maintained 288 units in the city. Three residential projects with 53 units currently under construction and five development projects with 483 units that are approved or in the permitting process. Speaker 8: We estimate that an additional 400. Speaker 0: Units will be processed in the near future under current funding sources. Next slide, please. Additional accomplishments aimed at increasing housing access include inclusionary housing and the no net loss ordinance aimed at providing new affordable housing through new market rate development. The motel conversion ordinance creates avenues to increase supportive and rapid entry, as well as transitional housing. The Interim Housing Zoning Code Update expanded the locations of interim housing, as well as supportive of various supportive housing types throughout the city. The A.C. ordinance provides a clear path to encourage the rehabilitation and preservation of unpermitted units and the Miller Ordinance updated policies for the replacement of affordable housing within the coastal zone. The new plan and rezoning, which is a collaborative effort between the city and the North Long Beach community, establish zoning to provide, in part, additional housing support . Excellent. Speaker 7: Continue to develop new housing opportunities through the Long Beach Recovery Act. In the next year, we anticipate opening a transition age shelter for youth aged 17 to 24 at our Navigation Center location on Hayes Avenue, as well as bringing 50 modular shelter units online. The Project Homekey sites are slated to be turned into permanent supportive housing in 2022, utilizing state funding, bringing an additional 217 permanent supportive housing units online. Speaker 0: Thank you. Notable policy efforts. Policy efforts included the housing element, which will identify development opportunities to accommodate over 26,000 additional dwelling units throughout the city of various income levels. The housing element was released earlier this year. Community engagement continues and the draft element will be brought to the council in the fourth quarter of this year. The Anaheim Corridor Zoning Implementation Plan will provide visioning and planning efforts for new zones that will implement the land use element and encourage housing production. Lastly, the Enhanced Density Bonus Program is designed to incentivize and facilitate the development of mixed income. Speaker 4: Multifamily housing. Speaker 8: By. Speaker 0: Establishing development concessions in exchange for onsite affordable units. Excellent. Speaker 7: The third goal is to reduce homelessness. We reduce homelessness for prevention, early intervention and reducing our chronic homeless population. The Homeless Services division as partners continue to make progress on this goal. The goal focuses on reducing people falling into homelessness to fewer than 1500 annually, ensuring that if people fall into homelessness, they can be rehoused within six months, and that we have fewer than 350 chronically homeless people in Long Beach. The pandemic has slowed our progress in preventing homelessness. We currently are serving 1200 new homeless households engaged with us as well as we know that during the homeless count there were nearly a thousand people who were identified. So we know that there are more than 1500 households currently that are falling into homelessness. You prevention resources are available and we'll continue to work closely with partners to reduce the number of falling into homelessness. We've made strong progress in moving people from temporary to permanent housing. At this time, 66% of households access housing in less than six months, and 74% of households with a child are accessing housing within six months. Producing and reducing our chronically homeless population remains a challenge. The 2020 count found that we had 665 people who are chronically homeless. We continue to prioritize those who've been homeless for more than two years and seek to achieve this goal by 2023. These charts sort of provide a picture to what we were just discussing. What you'll see here is that in the chart on the left is that the chronic, chronically homeless population remains fairly stable, and that what we're seeing is that the new homeless is where we're seeing our increases. We continue to prioritize this population and work to build relationship and connection to services that on the right shows the percent of households exiting to permanent housing over a over a year time frame and longer. And once again, 66% of adults and 74% of families with children exit into permanent housing within six months. People who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness have significant, longer experiences of homelessness. This chart here basically shows it shows you that we've been fairly consistent in our ability to house people each year when we're talking about households. But because we've had the increase in resources in 2020, we have seen an increase, almost doubling of the number of households that we've been able to house in one year. We continue to expand outreach and sheltering opportunities. We've moved forward with outreach on the weekends and high impact neighborhoods and implemented the Safe Parking Program with the ability to serve 13 each night. We are working now to identify an additional site and expand operations. Speaker 0: The L.B. Cares Rental Assistance Program provided up to $3,000 per household impacted by the pandemic. This program served 1440 households in the city. The city also entered into an MOU with L.A. County to provide legal assistance for those experiencing tenant landlord disputes. Policies to reduce homelessness included tenant assistance, including just cost termination, as well as the State Tenant Protection Act, which established provisions to protect tenants from evictions caused by the pandemic. The Senior and Disabled Security Deposit Assistance Program provided provides security deposit assistance of up to $3,000 to lower income seniors and or disabled households. Excellent. Speaker 7: The Housing Authority received 582 emergency housing vouchers this year for people experiencing homelessness. This is a great opportunity to provide permanent housing opportunities in existing housing across the city. Vouchers will be prioritized for those with the greatest need. We have identified funding to provide case management to households receiving these vouchers to support their housing success. Speaker 0: The City Council elected to combine federal and state funds for a total of $64.4 million to provide rental assistance for those tenants impacted by the pandemic. So far, there are over 13,000 registered applicants and we continue to process their requests. The city will be amending the MRU with the County of Los Angeles to expand the right to counsel program services to assist tenants facing evictions due to direct and indirect impacts from the pandemic and related economic impact. Excellent. Speaker 7: The fourth goal is focused on increasing employment opportunities for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness. Our goal was to create 600 new job opportunities for adults and 240 job opportunities for transition age youth by 2021. At this time, the city has created 60 slots of supported employment and we are in the planning for a transition age youth program. During the pandemic, many jobs across the city were lost and creating new opportunities was very difficult. Jobs programs with our partners continued, but at lower capacities during the pandemic, we continued to seek employment resources. The primary funding in the county is administered through the Los Angeles County Department of Workforce Development, Aging and Community Services, otherwise known as the Relax Relax hubs for initiatives focused on employment, supports for people experiencing homelessness across the county and is seeing large increases in funding. We are working to tap into those programs and resources to grow employment supports in the City of London. Homeless pilot. The other things that we have been doing this year is the Homeless Corp pilot, which is current misdemeanors and working and works towards dismissal. If persons are working with service provider which expunging their past convictions and works to address current warrants, that may be barriers to housing or employment. Pacific Gateway has co-located career counseling staff across the city at places like the Center for Health Equity and Reform, as well as link housing sites such as the Spark and the Palace. Pacific Gateway has engaged in a cross-agency case conferencing. The Long Beach Youth Services Network addressing the housing, health, employment and other needs of transition age youth. In progress. As part of the Recovery Act, the Health Department is exploring partnerships with economic development and public works to create a social enterprise healthy foods market at the Rented Bridge Farm Shelter in North Bombay, which would create a workforce development opportunity for transition age youth experiencing homelessness, as well as providing access to healthy food for the surrounding neighborhood. Pacific Gateway has reached out to the City of Long Beach Council of Business Associations, encouraging businesses to create employment opportunities for jobseekers experiencing homelessness. We also continue to focus on our employment program through our state hub funding and our focus. And there are tax incentives, state tax incentives for hiring persons who are experiencing homelessness. It goes supporting families and children so that we know that we have strong families because we know they are essential to positive futures. We set out to establish 400 new childcare slots for very low income and homeless parents by 2021. 200 were created prior to the pandemic, but we don't have a good sense of where things are now, given the pandemic's impact on early childhood providers. In 2018, the Health Department launched the Early Childhood Education Plan that outlined many goals and strategies to ensure our young children and families have opportunities for success. It continued to implement this plan that included creating opportunities for people experiencing homelessness. Also, nearly 1 million in CARES Act funding supported families and providers in the past year, and we will continue this work through the Recovery Act. In addition, we are creating housing opportunities as part of the previously discussed emergency vouchers. We are currently holding 100 vouchers for families with young children, as well as 64 people being served by a victim service provider. Future opportunities include 1 billion in funding and then state budget to address family homelessness and 1.5 million set aside for early childhood supports in the Recovery Act. The six goals focused on behavioral health and physical health services. This girl continues to be our most difficult to achieve, given county focus and funding limitations. At this time, there are only three medical detox sites in L.A. County, and we have not identified substance use funds for sobering center. We have continued to engage in conversations with the county around detox programs. However, Medi-Cal funding does not fund these at the same level as other services, and few providers are interested in opening these sites. The county has opened 14 new recuperative care beds in the city, but they serve not just the city of Long Beach, but all of L.A. County. Mechanisms for tracking hospital E.R. discharge data are not currently available. Prior to the pandemic, there was a discharge planning collaborative that kept track of this, but they have not been meeting since the pandemic due to resourcing, and we anticipate that that will start back up in upcoming months. However, in the past year we have implemented a number of programs to support the health and mental health of people experiencing homelessness. This includes partnering with UCLA to implement a mobile opiate and HIV testing and treatment pilot, conducting vaccination clinics at the mercy shelters and in encampments, visiting registered nurses at various shelter sites, and placing a mental health clinician at the mercy to engage with people at the mercy. Moving into this year. We are also we are implementing a number of new programs, including our new REACH program with the mental health and public health nurses in the field and additional alternative mental health crisis planning. We continue to partner and advocate with the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health and Safety and Substance Use Center to advise mental states right to increase mental health and substance use opportunities in Long Beach. Yet this was not a key focus area of the county in the past year. Finally, the Recovery Act funds are providing an opportunity for mobile, mental or mobile multi-service clinics to create greater access to services in the community. And our final goal is focused on developing population specific housing opportunities and supports. There are many initiatives taking place to generate housing and supportive services for specific populations in Long Beach. To date, we funded rapid rehousing and homeless prevention services for youth utilizing hip funds. He funds one strategic plan for youth in emerging adults and the Office of Youth Development. These efforts focus on upstream prevention of homelessness in our youth. The Department is currently hiring a youth development manager as well as a reentry coordinator, funding a healthy aging coordinator, and establishing an older adult housing work group through the Healthy Aging Center. Collaborating with Pacific Gateway and other providers to connect transition ages, age youth to housing and supportive services. Focusing on equity and homeless services and partnering with the L.A. County offers a diversion and reentry co-location at the Multi-Service Center. There are ongoing challenges and needs that that have come from the pandemic. The economic impacts of COVID 19 pandemic rapidly exacerbated existing affordable housing and homeless needs and service gaps. We've seen a real increase in the cost of real estate, which impacts housing affordability and production, as well as the city's ability to purchase and construct facilities without sacrificing direct services. We had city staff focus, the city staff focus and prioritization has shifted due to the pandemic response. Hiring challenges have limited our capacity of the Homeless Services Bureau to quickly respond to emerging needs. The administration and location of mental health and substance use. Reentry services largely fall under L.A. County's jurisdiction, and they're planning is not currently meet the needs for Long Beach. You've also had new a lot of new and more flexible state funding, but they're almost all one time funds limiting the ability to fund ongoing supports and operations to support homeless services. The new Long Beach Recovery Act funds, which are approximately $11 million, will support the creation of multiple new programs, including two mobile mental to mobile and AC clinics that will be deployed throughout the community to improve services. The modular shelter program, the opening of a navigation center which will have storage as well as 12 shelter beds for youth outreach workers stationed at libraries throughout Long Beach. Supported employment programs for youth. Expansion of the Safe Parking Program. And implementation of the REACH program. The Rich program launched at the beginning of August. It is a mobile response team focused on urgent community requests and low level, non nonviolent calls for service related to people experiencing homelessness. There are two teams. Each one has a public health nurse, a mental health condition and two outreach workers. We are also hiring one person to focus specifically on phones and field coordination. This really is an alternative response model focused on getting people to services such as interim and interim and permanent housing, mental and physical health services. Case management. Crisis intervention and trauma informed care. The REACH team is currently available 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the weekdays and will be expanding that as additional resources are secured. At this time it is early. Watch it or piloting the proactive outreach in impacted areas and urgent requests and in early September will be we'll have live response to the MFC hotline, the version of low level and nonviolent nine on one calls for service with police and fire department handle. There's a large set of opportunities when it comes to funding. The enacted 2021 state budget provides about $10 billion towards housing and homelessness, reflecting the level of focus and support the state is providing to this important issue. The allocations listed here represent a variety of funding sources administered by different agencies, some of which are direct funding, while others are competitive grants or collaborations with the county. All of these represent opportunities to address the various root causes of homelessness. I don't plan to go through all of these, but you have them available to you to understand the large number and focus areas of funding available. We do know that you cannot run you cannot address homelessness in our city with just city employees. This list represents a portion of our important partners in this work. It takes all of us working together toward the same goals. Your city and community based teams. Thank you for your support in our efforts. I also want to give a big shout out to our homeless services team who kept the NSC open and have worked every day during the pandemic to ensure people experiencing homelessness feel supported, are housed and can continue their progress toward housing. It has been a big year for our Homeless Services Now bureau. So with that and our presentation or open for questions. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. Members of the City Council. Mr. Vice Mayor. That was a comprehensive presentation. I know this is such a big topic for the council. We wanted to really show you kind of all the pieces. We're prepared to answer a lot of questions. I do want to underscore, while there's a lot of successes and you can see there's funding opportunities, the funding need is still incredibly great. Affordable housing is incredibly expensive to build along, which has been a leader in that. But we need more and more resources every time we open up one of our shelters to those take operation dollars to be able to run, not only purchase them and run them. So the team is very aggressive. They're looking for a lot of funding opportunities that are out there. But I do want to point out there is still a ways to go. We know that there's a crisis across the country. Long Beach is a model in reacting and responding and being very proactive, as well as compassionate about dealing with people who are experiencing homelessness. But we know there is still a lot of work left to do. And with that, we're available for questions. Thank you, Tom. So we'll take the conversation back behind the rail. I'll go ahead and start. First of all, thanks for acknowledging there's still a long way to go. But what you have here, I think you demonstrate incredible progress. Congratulations to you. Our continuum of care, all of our partners on the incredible work that you presented today and your hard work over the past few years since adopting the Everyone Home Plan. When we adopted this, we emphasized data and goals, and what you were able to present today was responses with data and metrics and goals, and that's a measurability and that's important to highlight. We love to see that in plans because we can show to the public the benefit of having our own health department and our own continuum of care. We can we can control local outcomes on these issues. That's incredibly important. I think I'll highlight a few things and then I have a question or two. I'm very happy to see a lot of the things here, particularly the expansion of temporary shelter beds. We had no idea we would be able to expand so much over the course of the past year. And I think the pandemic actually changed a lot of attitudes around that. A lot of my backyard sentiments and you saw people even with the temporary shelters during the pandemic that popped up temporarily all across town prior to Project Homekey. You saw a complete change in that narrative. That's important to note. I'm very happy with the Atlantic Bridge community in North Long Beach. I'm very happy was completed. The residents are happy with it. It's a great community. We can't get to the larger master plan fast enough, so we want to get to that so we can actually start talking about what the what the permanent site looks like. I'm happy to see the direct connection to racial equity. I think it's important. You know, we've learned a lot and it's important that we make a connection. We know that homelessness disproportionately, it impacts everyone, but this personally impacts black homeless. We know that black families are impacted to a significant degree. And if you go in with that awareness, then you know how to approach the issue with the right level of attention and cultural sensitivity to be able to address the issues. That's important. I love that you had a policy like a lot of the homelessness issues and the poverty issues we have in our city are directly linked to policy, land policy, and the solution will have to be rooted in policy. And so you highlighted things like inclusion, inclusionary housing, dwelling, amnesty or local land use plans like the Uptown Plan, motel conversions and our housing element. The fact that in our land use element we create the space for 26,000 units that's actually above what our arena requirement is, is important. And that's important for people to understand because within that arena number, it's previous need, current need and future need over the next decade for housing. All of that is built into that number. We've already put forward a number and created the space in the city to surpass it. All other communities are really fighting and struggling to figure out how to deal with it. We were ahead of the ball, ahead of the curve. That's really important to note. I love the highlight under go for around jobs and employment. I love the partnership at the the new Ron Arias Health Equity Center soon to open. We love to see that the social enterprise market with the Atlantic Bridge community that will employ individuals experiencing homelessness. I think that's important. And and I also know that there are still there's still much more to do. There are some some threats. And one significant threat is growth of the social. Economic conditions globally are still creating conditions where people are still vulnerable. The vulnerability is still there are people still slipping into homelessness. And so that moves our targets. It's hard to say this is our goal when the goal continues to grow. We're seeing this resident see this manifest in the scenes of life. You see them in the you know, you see encampments that crop up on freeway, on an off ramps and in the areas that are not even the responsibility, the city, but other agencies. But that's what our community see. And those people definitely, certainly need help. So I think we're headed in the right direction with the partnerships that were born with Caltrans and others. I think that's important. I think it's important to know it's going to be expensive to buy, to build affordable housing. We had, you know, redevelopment years ago, $25 million a year. We're going to have affordable housing production. We're nowhere close to that in terms of the subsidy. Have to think outside the box. We have to continue to advocate for a dedicated source of revenue. I think one are opportunities as be. 649. A lot a lot comes out of Sacramento that may or may not be helpful as it relates to local giving local cities the tools to make a difference. And I think this is one that will on city council and have a discussion next week about supporting SB 649. And, you know, a few other things I think, you know, we need to think about creating our own mental health department within the city. No other jurisdictions have done that and have contracted in from the county. And I would love to explore what looks like the contract in mental health services. I think we need our own housing department to think about something to talk about. And I think the rights program, I think it's a great the fact that is great that we're rolling it out. I think there's some questions and, you know, I'll stop there, but I'll go ahead and ask a question on the REACH model. Walk me through a little bit of how how it works. I know it's a separate phone line to 911, but walked me through what happens if someone calls our regular emergency line 911? How would that be processed with the Reese model? If you could walk me through that, I think that would be helpful. Speaker 7: They said they could call two different lines. So, one, they could call the NSC directly and request support, and then we would respond or they could call 911. And there are certain certain criteria for which 911 would transfer that line to the to the NSC to respond. Or they would send out, depending the police and fire department, depending on what the call was about. And then once their situation may be stabilized, to the point that the REACH team would then arrive and there would be a handoff opportunity at that point to continue to work with someone to engage them in additional services. Speaker 4: Okay, great. So it sounds like there's more than one way that people can call and access this reach service or alternative crisis response. Okay. Those are my comments. I'm going to go now to Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm pushing the wrong button. Thank you. When you were talking about goal four of employing people, you discussed DAX or we DAX, the workforce development agent and Community Services Department and the program that they have. We have our own workforce department and typically when federal funds are allocated, we have our own allocation. Have we advocated for a similar apportionment for direct allocation to our own workforce development department of the Homeless funding for employing people out of homelessness? I know that. Speaker 7: There are specific funds that we taxes receiving that is not federal funding. Correct. So it's coming from the county funding and. Correct. Speaker 2: And I'm asking if we're advocating to use the same federal formula, if L.A. County on the way that Exide gets 40 million and we get 4 million, then if the county is receiving homeless funds and the amount of 4 million, then we would get equivalent. Speaker 7: I understand now. Thank you. And I would have to, you know, engage with have the workforce discuss that upward. Speaker 2: So I'm really interested in having that discussion. Otto Solorzano, the director, they're great individual, used to be my boss, and he was often really open to partnerships, especially regional ones that decentralized funding and gave other agencies the opportunity as long as we reported back on the systems that they're using to provide transparency through their dashboard. And I just see that as a huge opportunity for us to localize that workforce side that I just think is critical in getting individuals employed. I also want to thank our Economic Development Commission. I sat in on their meeting on Monday and their discussions around different issues that help people stay off the brink of homelessness and fall into homelessness and what economic factors that they can contribute to. And I really think it's very thoughtful and I appreciate that. I see an intersection between the Everyone Home and the Workforce blueprint to point out that I see as being a really huge step. I also appreciate this is a very comprehensive report and I know we're doing so much. And when we talked about the chronically homeless. I don't know if I can find the page quickly enough. It doesn't seem like we're making as much of an impact. And I think you'd stated how long a person is homeless to become chronically homeless. Could you remind me what that was? Over two years. Over two years. So. Is it that how many chronically homeless individuals are we getting into housing annually? Speaker 7: I'm going to ask Paul Duncan, who's in the audience, if he has that number. We don't have a specific number. Speaker 2: Like a dozen, two dozen. I mean, we have 600 people who are chronically homeless and that number is fluctuating a little bit. But I'm not clear what the inflow is and what the outflow is. And do we have a dashboard that demonstrates that? Speaker 7: Can we can bring that information forward. But I'm going to ask Paul to join us now. Speaker 4: Good evening, council members. The large majority of the permanent supportive housing units that you see within that presentation are all prioritized to people that are experiencing chronically homeless or experiencing chronic homelessness, as well as a number of resources that we get through HUD and through our Continuum of Care program. So we receive $10 million annually, about 6 million of that goes towards permanent supportive housing. So anytime there's a turnover in one of those units, they're also prioritized towards people that are experiencing chronic homelessness. So the majority of the people that we're housing that are single adults tend to be chronically homeless. Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that. There's a lot of discussion in our community about. How much do we spend on homelessness? It's not enough. I don't think people know how much it is. If you look at a $90 million number or a $40 million number, and then you take the homeless count of. 1820, 400, I mean, different numbers of year by year. And you spread that out and then you add to it the additional resources that are provided by city departments that are really just embedded in the work that we do every day. I think it really speaks to the value of certain programs. And this was another discussion that was had at the Economic Development Commission, which is the universal basic income. And if the universal basic income could keep someone from falling into homelessness and how much it really saves the taxpayer in the long run. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Next, we have Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. So thanks for that presentation. I really appreciate it. Has a lot of detail. I think it's safe to say that some of the increase that we've seen, increase of transient activity and homelessness that we've seen over the last year has a lot to do with the early release of certain populations without treatment rehabilitation once they're released from custody. Is that fair to say? Speaker 7: We are saying that on the street. Yes. Speaker 2: You know, are there any sort of what organizations do we have available in the city of Long Beach that can meet people literally as they're leaving jail to provide them access to services or offer some sort of, you know, treatment program or reentry services. Speaker 7: We currently have the jail commission, so that is in jail now and who assesses and connects people to services as they're coming out. And we have a treatment center which also focuses with that population, but there's insufficient supports, certainly within the city of Palm Beach and frankly, all across L.A. County in the ability to address the number of people who need mental health and substance use support. Speaker 2: That's unfortunate. What about in the area of nonprofits? I know in Orange County, we have an amazing organization called Project Kinship. They work really closely with our health care agency. They're literally at the jail. As people are released, they'll interface with everyone and at least give them the opportunity to connect. Is there any nonprofits like that that are active in that space? Not necessarily in Long Beach, but even in the county jail. Speaker 4: We have a number of nonprofits that are focused to measure. H also pays for some jail and it's more focused on the county jails where necessarily the city jails. But there are a number of nonprofits that are doing enrich to the jails. And then we have a number of nonprofits that are focused on our reentry population within Long Beach. The two organizations that are most active within that space are there's three are The Advocate, a Tarzana treatment center and a center. So there are three nonprofits that we do work with and also partner with the city prosecutor's office and supporting and contracting to to some of those agencies. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you for that information. That might be something that maybe we can do a study session on in the future, because I think the work that those organizations do is incredible and would be worth highlighting and replicating many times over. And, you know, while we're talking about incredible work, Paul, I just want to take a moment and thank you. You've just been a really noticeable force over at the multicultural center. And I will say that my team and I very much enjoy working with you and appreciate your responsiveness and understanding. You know, kind of where we're coming from. It's always from a place of patience, not judgment and help. And I really appreciate that. So thank you. In regards to the jail conditions, so we do still have a jail commission in the jail in Long Beach. Is that correct? Speaker 7: Programs still exist. But I think during the during the pandemic, it's been not as much of a presence, but an opportunity, I think more an online presence. Speaker 2: Okay. All right. In terms of the employment opportunities you talked about, I know that a number of years ago that was one of the items I brought to council to start our homeless work pilot program. I'm curious, how is that program going and is that something that we can consider turning into a more of a permanent program moving forward? Speaker 4: Yeah. When we look at some of the work force development programs that exist, there's a large focus on metrics, especially with the funding that comes from the federal level and really making sure that people are getting to sustainable, sustainable employment. And what we often see is a real hesitance to work with people that have been experiencing homelessness and maybe have been out of the workforce for a while because the outcomes are often not quite as high. So really looking at things around supportive employment, where we're offering some financial assistance to take a chance on somebody and provide them an employment opportunity. And I think that's the one area that we've seen the largest impact looking at employment focused services for people experiencing homelessness. So we could definitely look at expanding more opportunities there. Speaker 2: That's great. I would very much support that and then I know I'm out of time here. But just the final question, the REACH program, which is a replacement for the HARP program. I know the HEART program had to have some approvals from L.A. County. DHS does the REACH program, or am I mistaken on that? I just don't know what kind of approvals we need from the county. Speaker 7: The REACH program does not need any approvals. Speaker 2: Got it. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Council member Supernormal. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 4: I will also follow up on the REACH program. Speaker 6: We we featured that in our July 30th newsletter and we included a link to your I think it's July 22nd press release on that. And for for folks reading our newsletter, it's a little bit of a complicated formula. And so I guess I wanted to drill down a little bit on that. So fire will still respond to calls for persons experiencing homelessness. We know after 4:30 p.m. they will do that. But let's say during the day, will will fire still respond to those calls. And then is there an if is there an interaction in the field with the REACH teams or how do you see that actually working out there? Speaker 7: So when the calls come in, if it is an emergency fire, we're always respond first. I mean that. So if if if it's a health emergency and is deemed a health emergency at the at the nine moment call center. Other than that, the the REACH team will be available wandering pro-active outreach in communities and encampments and others in addressing physical and mental health needs while they're there, as well as being responsive. So if someone calls the AMC and requests support or calls 911, it's not deemed an emergency. Then the Multi-Service Center, the REACH team would also go out. So it is a partnership. There are will be handoffs in different ways. So it might be that police or fire response first says, you know, this is not it's not an emergency, it's not critical. They'll hand them off to the REACH team to do further case management and other supports to try and eliminate the need to call nine on one in the future. Or it may be that we go out and we determine that the REACH team needs additional supports and may call on fire or police to support in those situations . So it's an ongoing partnership for sure through that process and the REACH team is available every day, at least during the weekdays until and we have additional resources will be on the weekends to be able to support the mental health and substance or side mental health and physical health needs of people. Speaker 6: And the the REACH team itself with a county clinician is that from the unit model, same type of personnel working? Speaker 7: It's not a county clinician, it's someone that we have hired with. So this person works directly for us and it's not through the county departments. So we've hired specifically to two nurses and two public health nurses and two mental health clinicians that are hired directly through the city. Speaker 6: Okay. So you would have the same possible issue in the field if the Met unit is responding and and there could be a handoff from the Met Unit two to reach. Speaker 7: Sure there could be. Yes. Speaker 6: Okay. And just I see the fire chief there. Do we have any moneys, any funding coming in to address all of the fires that are happening in the areas of these encampments? Thank you, Councilman, at this moment. No, there is no additional funding specifically for the fires that we are that we are combating in the vegetation and all the other areas. We are realizing a great increase in fees as far as our firefighting. Speaker 4: Foam. Speaker 6: And some of the other issues that we have to contend with. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 3: Thank you so much for that comprehensive presentation and just all that you and your team does and the community. I know you've been out there in my district and I just feel like thank you isn't enough. But we sure appreciate it. We know that the programs that you are doing touches every aspect of lives, and I know for sure that we are a better city because of all your work. So thank you. I also wanted to say that I know the housing and employment opportunities are critically important to the community and we need to make sure that we are redoubling our efforts on supporting employment and those experiencing homelessness. And we need to get roofs over their heads. So they can pursue employment. I've said this before and I'll keep saying this, but, you know, childcare is absolutely imperative and important. This pandemic has a lot of people back and we need to help kids and we need to get their parents back to work. You know, I have a lot of people, especially those businesses that can't find employees, but it's really hard when when folks don't have good childcare. I know that we've had several questions regarding regarding the the REACH team. And so I'm just trying to just one further question, like what is the difference between the REACH team and the Heart team? Speaker 7: And I can have as the fire chief to speak a little bit more about some of the specifics of the Hurt Team. The Hurt Team, they were available to respond. So if a call came in through 911, they may be dispatched to be able to respond to issues or medical related issues among the homeless population. And I think that their paramedics. Speaker 0: Yeah. Speaker 6: Yeah, there. Yeah. So the if I can jump in here for just a sec. So the heart team, specifically the mission of the Heart team was to enable the rest of our resources to be freed up. So the heart team would monitor dispatch and then go out on these calls, on typical calls that they thought might be dealing with the homeless or something that they could handle on their own, and they could upgrade or downgrade as they saw fit. And that would take calls off from our other apparatus, the engines and the rescues that would free them up for additional calls, heart attacks, difficulty breathing, stuff like that. So that was the the intent of the heart team primarily. Speaker 7: And then the reached him includes a mental health response as well. So it's it's not specific to the same level from dispatch as fire and the integration of the fire response. But the REACH team includes a public health nurse who has a lot of case management and other sorts of opportunities and engagement to be able to connect people to services. And then our mental health clinician that will be onsite as well to be able to sort of maybe de-escalate certain situations, really try to understand where the what the different issues are, and to be able to connect people also to mental health and supports. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 6: I might add, Councilwoman Ellen, some of some of the additional things that the Hart team is doing currently. So Councilman Supernanny brought up the all of the vegetation fires that we have. So we are currently using them to heat map the city, find where various encampments are ingress and egress for our fighting firefighting forces. They also, once we get rain, if we do get rain, they patrol the riverbanks, start to clear people out so that they're not in harm's way. So they're utility players for us, for the fire department. Speaker 3: All right. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Speaker 2: Sun ink you. Thank you for this great and very, very informative presentation. I think our city is doing a lot of good work and to provide a large amount of support to our homeless and homeless crisis that we're in and that we're living in today. One of my concerns often is that we as a city, I think, fall short of ensuring that our residents receive all of the information and direct connections to all of the resources and projects that we have. Can you can I have staff explain maybe a little bit more on the outreach efforts with this initiative and how to ensure what you're doing to ensure that this information is dispersed both in Spanish, English and any other language that may be needed out there. Speaker 4: So we do work to make sure that our information is translated within on the website so that you're able to access it in multiple languages. We do provide translation services on site for anybody that is in need of translation. We have a number of staff that speak Spanish that that speaks command. But if somebody was in need of translation for another language, we do have access to supports for that as well as people that may need sign language. So that is something that we continue to make sure is available and that we're utilizing when when needed. As far as communicating out and being able to reach people, I think really in the slide we talked about Unite US, that's an online platform that's really focused on it's basically like a yelp for for support of services. So we're partnering with them and making sure that people know how to connect in with the agencies that are providing services and can even coordinate referrals to the best service provider to meet that need through an online platform. So that will be launching shortly. And then we have a number of efforts to increase our outreach, the incorporation of the mobile MFC clinic. So making sure that we're reaching throughout the community, that we're in the community and finding people where they're at and engaging them through a number of different ways. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you for that. Also, one more question. I know that we've been referring a lot to the REACH team, which is, you know, great. And one of the questions that I had and you kind of touched upon it a little bit earlier, but who takes on those calls? Maybe you can clarify that a little bit for me. I know that in the past, from what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember that with there were there was a dispatcher that was hired and to take those those calls from the community instead of calling the 911 number to be able to free up that number for other emergency. So maybe you can touch a little bit upon that, please. Speaker 4: So we've had an outreach hotline for quite some time. It has not been staff just to do capacity. So this will be the first time where we have a staff that is answering that live and being able to coordinate with the caller who's asking for a response. So right now, if somebody were to call that hotline, there's a message system. We check that multiple times a day that the caller asks us for a call back to let them know the outcome, which is basically that we went out and we were able to engage. We will return the call. We do work to process those. Typically, we get every call within 24 hours and being able to go out. Sometimes it does take 48 hours just depending on the requests that are coming in. So this will be the first time that that's being answered. We also have an email where a number of people also submit requests through email. So we try to get as many requests as we can through the communities as we want to get out and engage as many people as we can. Speaker 7: But remember, I think the the the model that you're referring to is we did pilot where we had a person from the multi-service center sitting in 911 dispatch where the nine one dispatcher could transfer calls to that person to have a discussion. But it didn't it wasn't a space where we would had someone to send out. It was more someone to answer questions and engage with those people who are calling. In this case, if someone calls 911, they will transfer. If it's the appropriate call, they will transfer it to the NSC and we'll take those calls. Speaker 2: Thank you. I know my time's up, but thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 4: Thank you. And I want to thank you for the very thorough report. I think there was maybe, oh, 45 slides on that. A lot of good information. And I think it speaks to. Burn Long Beach in our city actually you know investing in and having a plan that everyone home task force was put together. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And all of those who served on that that task force gave us some guidelines and framework and goals to to achieve. I think in many respects we have we're definitely on the right track, especially when you think about just the shelter beds and transitional housing opportunities that have been created in the last just a couple of years. Uh, I want to say that I think. That when it comes to this issue of dealing with homelessness and the unhoused, we need to maintain and continue to be flexible and adaptable with our programing and governance over this issue, because the resources are not unlimited, they're not abundant, and we don't have many opportunities to get it right. Right. And so I want to caution us from, you know, creating a program and being married to that being the only solution to to fixing this issue. We need to be continue to be adaptable, because I can assure you that the challenge that we face, those who are on house are not, you know , in a square box. We're going to have to move to be able to move it around. And oftentimes, I think I've been on this council long enough to see us create initiatives before we even had the opportunity to assess to determine whether that initiative is working. We've created a new one and a new one, and we started layering on top of initiatives. And so I want to be mindful that, you know, that's something that I've been paying attention to watching. I think so. In some respects, we need to. Take a step back in and allow the good work that this council, this community has supported to actually manifest and then determine whether or not we need to do something extra. I just wanted to add add those comments. Again, I do appreciate this report and look forward to the implementation. Speaker 9: They did have one question. Speaker 4: Related to goal number four, employing people. There is a. Initiative in progress to hire a reentry coordinator. Can you explain a little bit about what that individual will be doing? The the target population, the goals set forth, particularly for that position, because I think that reentry is is an area of focus that we need to take to actually put as a priority and to just look at the data coming from L.A. County and CCR. We have a lot of folks that are reentering our community who will need these services. Speaker 7: So the entry, the reentry coordinator is actually being funded to the racial equity and reconciliation funding. It's part of that process within the violence prevention area at the health department. And so the goal and the long term goal is to establish a sort of a11 stop shop for people who are reentering from incarcerated settings to support employment , housing and many other things. Those resources have not yet been identified to go that far. So at this point, it's really it's an individual who will be working closely with nonprofit organizations and others to start to build a more coordinated capacity to be able to serve people as they're exiting incarcerated settings. Speaker 4: I think you'll all be watching that process very carefully, because I think it's very important that we like I said, we get it right. We don't have very many options and opportunities like we have right now. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Sorrell. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ms.. Collopy and Mr. R.S. for the presentation. And can you you know, I've heard this answered several times, but if you can answer it again, how many times is outreach? Does outreach get done to an individual before services is accepted? Speaker 4: So this was and this is something that gets thrown around. And I don't know that it's the most impactful answer truthfully. And, you know, it varies. 15 to 20 is what people say. However, that's kind of an averaging. So what we find is people either are willing to engage right away or it takes a whole lot of times more like 30, 40 times that somebody is very hesitant for a number of reasons. We are working with people with a significant amount of trauma, a lot of disappointment within our social services as a whole throughout their life. So there's a number of different reasons why somebody might be hesitant to engage with us. So I think as Councilmember Austin kind of said, we need to look at various different approaches, not being married to any one particular approach, but that people have a wide range of different experiences and backgrounds. So creating programs that engage people in different ways and really making sure that each program really takes a trauma informed friends to recognize people's histories, what they've gone through and really recognizing. And allowing that person to express from that viewpoint and not be reactive to it. Speaker 2: And that's why I really appreciate this Slide 34, where the goal is to develop population based service model. And I had hoped that maybe there would be a little bit more. But I do think that it does it really gets down to kind of what you're speaking about, ensuring that it's really addressing their individual experience and also situation that range is not, you know, from older adults to transition you to LGBT, LGBTQ reentry, single parents, veterans, etc.. Right. I really love to see more of it being kind of flushed out. The other two is just with what you just shared in. I know the team does so much work, you know, the city staff do so much work. So at the end of the day, how do we communicate to everyday people, residents, businesses that walk down our street or drive down our street, see people living on the street, or at least people who are unhappy? And how's that? You know that what we're doing is working. How do we communicate that to to to our residents? Right. That is probably not reading this report or reading the numbers or understanding the statistics. How do we how is that communicated that what we're doing is working as councilmember? Speaker 7: So that is one area that when you are in direct service models, we often don't have the time and the capacity to do the level of communication that you're talking about. And we fully understand the importance of that. And happy to say that the health department now has a peer. But Arpaio has been heavily involved in COVID response rate and has not been able to create as much of the other kinds of conversations. We've had multiple conversations about sort of campaigns, right, about sharing about all the work that we're doing and others, but that has been put on the back burner in the last year. That is something we will be focusing on moving forward. Speaker 2: Though I hope we do prioritize that because I think that it's really important that we share the different various work and because there's so much money also invested in this that it's so important we communicate all of the various approaches that has to be taken and needs to be taken. No further comment or question. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. So when we move from the Hart team to the Reach team, how will we have a consistency of data reporting? So currently, earlier this evening, the fire department replaced their data system, but that's a data system that the Health Department doesn't have access to. Or are we going to give them access? How do we track these? Calls and contacts longitudinally when we're changing our methodology. Perhaps you guys can work on that and give you. Speaker 4: A capsule on Mongo? Speaker 6: Yeah. We haven't been asked for that data as of yet, but we are looking forward to sharing that data. We would like to see also if it's working and if it's not working, how we can get it to work better. Speaker 2: That would be great. And then I really appreciate the discussion around funding from the measure H For all the different components of our city that have had increased costs, including, you noted, 200% increase in fires. I know L.A. City had a and a news show and I think they talked about a 600%. I don't know if that was on Channel seven. And I think that perhaps there's an appropriate opportunity for some discussions among the fire chiefs to really come together and discuss the environmental and regional impacts. And then I know that Supervisor Barger had an agenda item related to clear out on county property that would not take the standard 14 to 21 days when a brush fire risk is adjacent. And I don't know that we're really using that. I know I've talked with a few of my council colleagues about some of the issues we have related to the Nature Center. We've worked with P.D., but those fires are still happening on a regular basis underneath those trees, and we've already had multiple fires. So being able to reimburse some foam from the funding, I think is a reasonable request. And I think if we went in with a three or four agency approach, we might be successful. So I, I look forward to hearing what that might look like and then also having a better system in place for identifying those risks more quickly and making sure that we don't have as many of those fires because of the a dual impacts. There's also a lot of risk to the individuals that are homeless when a fire breaks out. So let's get that process memorialized. Thank you. Speaker 6: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And in fact, we have the public safety committee meeting coming up at the end of the month, and that is the topic that we're going to be addressing from the fire department, because regionally, the fires have been growing exponentially. And we've spoken to some of the council members about all of these vegetation fires and how they're impacting. Speaker 4: Us, our. Speaker 6: Run load, our resources and all the rest of that. So we do have our support services staff looking at ways to get reimbursement for that. And once we do, I'll get back to you that information. Speaker 2: And I appreciate that. And I know that when the funding first became available, there was an effort at that time and it just we didn't have the volume that we have today. And I think a new day is here and we can make a new effort. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Ringo. Speaker 4: Thank you. I also want to add my voice to the accomplishment of putting this report together very thoroughly. Very informative. A lot of information here that I'm going to have to dove a little deeper into with the author. But there's two things that stand out to me in terms of some of your goals here. Employ people and connect to health. I mean, those are important things that are always here when I'm out there in terms of why are these so many people homeless, what's going on, why they need a job? And some of those people also have some kind of mental health issues, whether it's substance abuse or or just some other kind of a diagnosis that they might have in terms of of their mental health. So one thing that came out to here that I that I saw here and it's like 27, was that there's a homeless court pilot. With the city prosecutor's office. What is that? Could you describe it for a little bit to what it is? Sure. We received a some funding through the D.A. Hahn's office, Supervisor Hines office through the L.A.. Community Development Agency. So that funding comes to the health department and we are partnering with the city prosecutor's office. So we have a judge who joins us by video conferencing and people can request to have their misdemeanor heard within that court. And basically, the focus is on really making sure that people are getting connected and to services and resolving issues that related to that legal issue that they're now facing. So that's the main focus. However, we partner with other aspects of the Los Angeles criminal justice system, including the. The county public defender has a program to focus on expungements. They come out to the homeless court as well. So we have met with over ten people that are focusing on expunging past convictions that way, when they're going to get employment, when they're working on housing, that that's not showing up on their background check and potentially affecting their ability to access either of those. We also are able to clear warrants for a no show and re-issue that for a future court date which might be at homeless court. We also have a number liccardo to show up to provide additional case management as well as we have are a partnership with the county to have a probation officer at the multi-service center 20 hours a week. So people that are also on probation that may have a probation issue, they're able to check in at the multi-service center as well. So all of those are offered at our homeless court, which occurs on the third Wednesday of each month. So we have done two so far. This month will be our third. How do they get that information? Is it. Because of some kind of contact that you probably had with one of the homeless person who says, I can't get a job because I have a record. Is that is that when you direct them towards the court? Yeah. So it comes up in our conversations. We have also there's been several press stories and presentations regarding this. So as we're out on outreach, engaging people around their legal needs, if people want to sign up for homeless court, there is a way to go on to the city prosecutor site and sign up to have your case heard the process and then assigned to that court. The other part about collecting to help you have here that there's an ongoing partnership and advocacy with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health to get some more on substance abuse facilities in Long Beach. Speaker 6: What requirements do. Speaker 4: You need to have to open up a mental health facility here in Long Beach? I know we have one. It's in my district. I support it because I think it's important. But is there another is there another effort to open up another one? And what is the requirements, if any, to open up a mental health facility here? Speaker 7: Councilmember There are two. The requirements are different for mental health and for substance use. So they're run by to the department. The L.A. County Department of Mental Health is a full department with a focus area, and then the substance abuse area actually lands within the public health department within within L.A. County. They are you know, they focus primarily on the Medicaid and unfunded population. And those are three with high level needs in terms of the substance use providers. They have to go through a licensing process at the state level, which is not easy. But we're hearing it's quite, quite complicated. The county does work with organizations who are interested to to work them through that process and provide them some guidelines. I don't know what the requirements are for the mental health side. We have the Behavioral Health Urgent Care Clinic, which is in it, which is in your district. And then but there are many other mental health providers. One Damage has a site that's near the health department that's a direct service provider, but they also fund many other nonprofits within the city of Long Beach around mental health services. So it's a real mix. And then so like the MHRA, you know, Mental Health America and others all have contracts with with the image to be able to provide those services. Speaker 0: Thinking the time is up and we'll move on to the next member. If you want to queue up again. Councilmember. If if you need to be. Richardson. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a big, big issue. And, you know, I had a lot to say and I was looking at that five minute clock. But I want to go back and lift up, you know, one or two points that I really want to talk about. First of all, I'm glad to hear the health department has a PIO. It's pretty important at this moment that we're able to communicate out to the public during a pandemic. It's great to have a public health department. A lot of folks, a lot of cities don't have it. Now they're looking at Long Beach to say, what do we need to do to do it? One thing I mentioned earlier is having our own like contracting in mental health services from the county. I want to go back to that. You know, I saw a presentation recently about the Trinity Mental Health Partnership. It's a three city JPA between Pomona, Laverne and Claremont. And for the purposes of this JPA, they're they're independent. They for the purposes of mental health funding from the state and for reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. And the way that the reason I think that's interesting is that we've seen the fact that we have our own health department and our own continuum of care. We've been able to amplify the amount of resources that we bring here to Long Beach for public health and for homelessness. And I think with the issues related to mental health in our communities, I think we have to explore what happens if we're fully in charge, not necessarily getting approvals from the county to be innovative or to invest more in mental health. And so I want to drive that home. I want to I would love to explore, you know, because you've done a great job here at everyone home with over at home report. We certainly need to look at. You know, moving past the partnerships we have in establishing our own independent mental health bureau or mental health department within our health department. What are your initial thoughts on this, on this idea? Speaker 7: I think it's certainly something that we're, you know, willing to to investigate. And along the way, we have had multiple conversations with the AMA and the funding makes sense to be to be carved out. So there's only one other one city jurisdiction on their own that receives mental health funding at Berkley. They did started a long time ago and they got their carve out of the all the state mental health funding. So I don't know what that approach looks like at the state level to be able to carve that out outside of the out of the L.A. County piece. But it's something that we could look at what those steps would be, and then we can report back. Speaker 4: Okay. Yeah, I would love to. I would love to see that, particularly because we have such a great track record and one of only three cities in the whole state with a health department. I think we have a good story to tell on. As in, we should be thinking about being more entrepreneurial about how we can handle it. If we give us the funding, it probably gets directly to the street faster. And we can we can locally control our own outreach around mental health. I think that's that's an idea that certainly demands some research. So so thank you so much. The last thing that I kind of glossed over before it's an idea that's come up time and time again is we do a lot of housing in the city and it's spread across two departments. Where are we with the conversation about unifying and having one housing department where there's one shared vision between the production of housing and the servicing servicing of and the education around housing units? Is there an update on the feasibility of that? Mr. Modica. It's an idea that we've talked about a little bit. I think that would come with some significant resources. So we kind of consider that if there was going to be a large investment maybe by property owners or by the state or by others, where we really can can create a department. Departments are are wonderful and they really provide a service, but they require a lot of backbone infrastructure to do that. So that is something that if we were to get a large revenue source, we could certainly consider. Thank you. Speaker 0: Is that our vice mayor? Yes, councilman, sir? Speaker 2: Yes. I just have one more question. I was wondering, is copy if you can give an example of a call that 901 receives that would go straight to the REACH team. An example of a call that would go straight to fire instead. So that would go to fire instead of the REACH team. Speaker 4: I can't remember what the exact designation happened and it's like six or seven or something like that. But it's, it's, it's termed in a way that probably is a little misleading. So I'm more just describe it. So somebody calls in and says, Somebody in my neighborhood is experiencing homelessness, and I'm concerned about that. They'll ask a number of questions to make sure that there's no concern of, you know, safety or any illegal, illegal activity occurring like that. Somebody says this person looks suspicious. They'll ask a number of questions that they kind of dig down of what does that mean and suggest that you're concerned that this person is in your neighborhood . So no major concerns are identified. Those would be calls that normally would have been transferred to PD, will now be referred over to the REACH team and then on fire. Speaker 6: And so there's a complete matrix that the dispatchers go through. And so if they determine in any way, shape or form that it's medical in nature, then it will come to the fire department and we'll go out and evaluate the patient first. It becomes problematic when some of the callers are unable or unwilling to approach the patients, because at that point we can't really determine are they having a medical emergency or not. And so more often than not, the fire department is going to be rolling out on that that type of response. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 4: And Americans, I would want to point out that heart and reach are very different. They're not a replacement. We're not replacing heart with reach. We're looking at a different service model. The heart model is really a medical response model was an innovation that we didn't have at the time. And it was really designed to help lighten the load with our firefighters who were responding to these calls because there wasn't anyone else to go to those. As we look towards reach one with a budget reduction, but also it was to look at more of a case management model, and that really is the REACH model. It's an alternative to police. It's an alternative to fire. It's also a model where you have actual homeless outreach workers who can then do more of that kind of mobile connection to services, as well as mental health as well as nursing. So they are very different. We're not looking at just taking, you know, firefighters and replacing them with with nursing staff or health staff. It is a different model that we're looking to take that next level of innovation. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman. Sir, anything. Speaker 4: Else? Speaker 2: No further questions. Thank you. That was the only one. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was wondering what the status of the bed fap item that I brought to council a couple of years ago. Speaker 7: Councilmember. We started that process through the search process, as you remember. And through that process, what we found out was that the providers were not interested in participating. So a real time build up requires that the providers enter the information and engage with the app and the business. There was not a lot of interest. The team did reach out to a number of different providers and to others. So that was a key piece around the mental health and substance use space. We do have more in insight around sheltering and the folks that the areas that we are funding through our other service provision model. So we have been looking more at stronger technology to connect people to services, unite us into other things. But the better conversation, there was not really any incentive because we don't fund the mental health and substance use providers and others to engage in that app with us. And so that piece of it has has not moved forward. Speaker 2: So is that the difference between Long Beach and other cities that are using the real app, that other cities are directly funding into the providers and we're not? Speaker 7: I think that there are they may just have other providers in that space that they've been able to connect with or engage with, or they may be funding them to engage in those services moving forward. We did the initial outreach and there just wasn't an interest in Long Beach. We continue to watch and to pay attention and to look at to look at other options, to be able to connect people to services. We have very tight relationships with with all of those providers in the city of Long Beach. And so through the case management and outreach and other connections, we do everything we can to connect them as quickly as possible. Speaker 2: Okay. And then in terms of the number of beds that we have available, do we have beds available on a daily basis if somebody wanted shelter? Speaker 4: It varies from day to day. We have a number of pets within Long Beach that have very specific criteria. So a lot of the times those beds are available, however, and months or a veteran, unless you're experiencing or fleeing from domestic violence, those beds may not be available if you do not meet those care characteristics. As far as our beds that are more general as an access, it does vary. There are some days where we have a number of beds due to somebody leaving the shelter, moving into housing. There are other days where we might have no women's beds, we may have no men's beds. It just varies from time to time as we're coming along, people that are vulnerable and are looking for a bed. If we don't have one available that night, we have been utilizing our motel vouchers to continue to engage that person and work towards with them until a bed does become available. So we do our best when people are looking for a bed to get them into a place immediately while we navigate towards an open bed. Speaker 2: And so how are we how are our first responders who are tasked with enforcement able to determine whether or not there is availability or shelter space before? Choosing an enforcement action pursuant to Boise and Judge Judge Carter directives and best practices that we have seen. Speaker 4: That's somewhat of a difficult conversation. I think it's much easier to do in the daytime. It becomes much more difficult in the evening time as our system just is not currently funded to operate 24 seven. So just depending on time of the day, it can be really difficult to determine when a bed bed is available. We have a number of beds within our winter shelter program that are set aside for PD as well as we do engage in as somebody reaches out from enforcement or other community services looking for a bed for somebody at an off hours, we will typically work and try to coordinate, but it can be difficult outside of our working hours. And I do want to point out for the record that our homeless shelters are not full and we track that every single day. We're we're getting closer now. But throughout the pandemic, we've been at 60%. We have availability for motel vouchers. So when we are taking enforcement actions, we absolutely do have shelter beds available in our community. You know, the data we do wish sometimes we'd like to know exactly how many, but we definitely have them available when we take enforcement action. Speaker 2: And that's thank you for clarifying that. I think that's really important because a lot of times the enforcement action is going to take place after hours because the law violation oftentimes is tied to it the hour of the day. So if they're at a particular public park or the public beach that's closed at a certain time, the enforcement action would be based on the municipal code, which would necessitate it being after hours. So as long as I think our officers have that information of what resources they have available to them so that we can make sure that we're compliant, I think that's fantastic. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me just have a couple a couple of questions. Also, I think the comments have been really, really great. And I want to just start by thanking our health team. I think it's been obviously a great job. I know it's not just the health department, but it's all departments in the city are involved in the work of ensuring that we get as many people into housing as possible and really focus on ensuring that unhoused folks have all the resources they need. It is obviously a even more difficult situation that we're in because of the pandemic. And I was just wanted to ask and also just uplift a few items in the report. One is, I think that having this update was great to kind of go through and see. I know I've had a chance to see the update and I want to make sure that for a project and task force of this significance that went that we have updates around this issue, you know, as often as possible, whether it's every year, whether it's every other year. We need a check in. At least the council needs to on this particular report. My other suggestion is the the task force was made up of so many folks from across the community that I think would also be great. At some point, I know we have some restrictions because of the pandemic. But to bring that group together, whether it's virtually or whether it's at some point in person, and to have just to give them a direct update, but also get additional feedback as to how they think we are doing and the progress that we're making in the within this within this report. I want to just uplift, I think. Corby, I think you and the team have done and other members of the department have done a great job, particularly on Project Homekey. I think it's been a huge success not just to see our our project, but the county partnership projects also have been phenomenal and I've said I support more project homekey projects in development. I hope that we're able with this money coming down the pipeline right now from the state and the federal government, we need to add and purchase more hotels or motels and convert them to housing for people that are unhoused. And I think that that is something that is, in my opinion, the the biggest bang for our buck is to get a hold of these motels and hotels and convert them into housing. And so I'm really hoping that we're really putting our best foot forward. I know we have a list of maybe three or four other acquisitions that we would like, and I'm just very supportive of this and hope that we continue to to push on these on these new housing opportunities. Let me also just say that. The one. Well, there's a lot of success in the report and a lot of success in the progress where I think we we just have to do better. I know it's not for lack of trying, but I can't express how important it is to have detox and sobering centers available in our community. And I understand that sometimes it's a difficult conversation for some neighborhoods or some for. I've talked to community members who don't like the idea, and I unfortunately just disagree with that. And I can't tell you that. Giving. Having a safe space for people that are suffering, that are sick and that need help within our community is incredibly important. We are also also just it's a plain resource issue when we have paramedics or. Or folks for it from our city, having to take folks to a sobering center or a detox center that is in downtown Los Angeles. The amount of time that that takes. It is costing us valuable resources versus being able to take someone to a sobering center or detox bed within our within our city. And so I just want to know that we are kind of all hands on deck on on this issue and that we are working with our partners in the health care space to add to identify these detox beds and sobering centers. And and that we are a part of that acquisition. Is there. Is there any progress we are making here or anything that we can assist with in this area? Speaker 7: I think that the easier of the two would be the sobering center. So it has far less restrictions, different funding mechanisms than others. And that is certainly something that we could be looking into more immediately in terms in terms of access, we have been looking at a number of different locations just for various service models, and that would be something to look at. Medical detox is a very is a much different conversation in terms of how it's funded, how it's funded through Medi-Cal, the systems that L.A. County has in place to find those systems, they're expensive. There are only three in all of L.A. County, and they're very, very difficult to access. So that is something that we've had multiple conversations but made no progress. They just basically have said about the funding doesn't work that way and that no one is interested in providing that. So I think the first place would be the sobering center. And then we continue to push on a detox conversation. Speaker 0: Well, think I think we should look at look to our our all of our our hospital partners as well across the city or medical center partners, I think. Ms.. If you're looking at, what is it, 12 beds on the for the for the sobering center, is that right? Speaker 7: It's the original conversations were told that, yes. Speaker 0: I mean, even to start, it would be, you know, and so I just am hoping that we that we continue to push on that. So thank you for for for that. And then finally, I do hope at some point we can address the issue of services or access for, you know, 24, seven for people that need assistance and support. I know that we there are some challenges there, but folks that are that are expressing homelessness should be able to access the multi-service center. Every day of the week and past what are considered regular business hours. I know that is hard to do, but I just hope that we continue to push and that we open the services up and meet folks when they need the support. Not necessarily when our traditional work hours are. And so those are just things that I want to uplift. But overall, quite frankly, you guys are doing an incredible job. The whole team at the health department. Thank you for for this report and this work. We look forward to meeting all those other obstacles and challenges. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. The mayor brings up some excellent points. I know that alternate destinations have not been a popular thing at the state level. If we wanted to transport to a detox bed, that's. Is it my understanding that that's currently not an available option for our fire department? Speaker 6: That's correct. That's not currently available to us. There have been pilot programs throughout the region. Speaker 4: I don't know that there are any pilot programs going on at this point in time. Speaker 2: So the County of Los Angeles currently has a pilot program. It started during COVID and on every EP, C.R., they have a tool where they can push a button and get a assessment from a medical doctor, whether it is either the medical director of the department, one of the two assistant doctors, or a physician's assistant that makes that assessment and then determines that that transport would be allowed. And so it may be something we want to explore. It wasn't an expensive system, and they pay by the minute. So you don't have to load up a bunch of cash to do it. Their foundation actually fronted the money to start the program, and during COVID, when they were trying to not transport to hospitals, it was tremendously a tremendous resource to be able to go to urgent care or any of those other things, because while it is outside the scope of a paramedic, having the availability to do a virtual consult with a doctor became an amazing resource. I don't know if the funding would be available for this to do that, but great tool and potentially mental health services or the County. Speaker 3: Quality or. Speaker 2: Productivity Commission would be interested in funding it, and I'd be happy to help. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 6: Definitely something we're going to look and do. I'll get together with our medical director and we'll get through that. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. There's a motion and a second. I don't believe there is public comment on this item. There's a motion any second to receive in favor of the report. And please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carry.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file an oral report as an update on the Everyone Home Long Beach Initiative. (Citywide)

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LongBeachCC_08102021_21-0769

Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that, we will go here. Item number 13, please. Speaker 1: Item 13. Communication from Councilman Allen. Recommendation two requires city manager to prepare a report exploring the cost and feasibility of expanding the Alamitos Beach parking lot and adding additional parking on Shoreline Drive and surrounding areas. Speaker 0: Councilman Allen. Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I'm sure that we all know that parking is a major issue, especially in my district. And boy, did I hear a lot about that when I was knocking on doors and campaigning. I do want to thank Director Eric Lopez and his team for their insights and for working with me and the team and staff. This is a really big deal. As you know, parking is difficult for residents, businesses, visitors throughout the second District and the pandemic has further contributed to the reduction in available parking. And as the city continues to grow and we emerge from the pandemic and as businesses, events and community organizations begin resuming their normal operations, adding additional parking is going to be imperative. The Alamitos Beach neighborhood is especially impacted with the completion of the Café concession stands and the upcoming proposed installation of the We Built Water feature, which I'm really excited about. And the 2028 Olympics is on the horizon. We are anticipating more tourist and people visiting Long Beach for events and recreational activities. This this item today would significantly expand both the parking lot and public access to the waterfront areas. I think it's also important to look at transportation issues holistically, and therefore I've asked public works to look into expanding alternative options, which include secured bike parking, destination scooter parking zones, storage lockers for pedestrians and bus riders, electric vehicle charging zones, and any and all other creative solutions that can be deployed that are have been deployed in other cities. I'd also like to see in the future some kind of outreach to our residents and see what their appetite is for creating a parking improvement district, possibly buying parking lots or creating shuttle systems. I just think it's important that we look at all of these these options. So this will be the first of many items that I will be introducing to tackle this issue. And I look forward to seeing what public works will bring back and find solutions that improve our parking and transit capabilities. Thank you. I do have a quick question. I have heard from residents at the Villa Riviera about late night noise and activity in the parking lot. What are our options for securing that that lot at night and. Is a gate or any other physical barrier possible. Speaker 4: Council member. The we are installing some security features. We're actually working right now to install some security cameras in that area. And there is infrastructure in place for a potential gate arm. We just need to do additional evaluation with any regulatory permit restrictions that we may have from either Coastal Commission or others. So that is an item we can look at and we're happy to see what we can do in order to help with what the issue. Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Speaker 4: Thank you. Seeing no further council comments. Any public comment on this of comment? Okay. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Public Works Department to prepare a report exploring the costs and feasibility of expanding the Alamitos Beach parking lot and adding additional parking on Shoreline Drive and surrounding areas.

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Speaker 1: Bush and Kerry, 21 police. I'm 21. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to Adobe resolution in support of the right of security officers that the common spirit dignity, health to a free and fair election and representation by service employees. International. United Healthcare Workers. West City Way. Speaker 4: Thank you, Councilwoman. Sorry, you speak on this. Speaker 2: Yes. I just want to thank my colleagues for their support to standing with the security officers to join SEIU. UAW. Thank you. Speaker 4: Okay, Councilman Price, anything. Okay. Any public comment on this? Speaker 1: No. Public comments and. Speaker 4: Nonmembers. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Bush and Kerry. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That satisfies the agenda if you want to. Speaker 0: Is there any publicly significant period? Speaker 1: We have five signed up. So, Christine, Jim. Anybody else. Cameron Coody, Kimberly Allen, Amanda Nordquist and Laura Roberts. Speaker 0: I think we just have one person from that group. Please come forward.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution in support of the right of security officers at Commonspirit/Dignity Health to a free and fair election and representation by the Service Employees International-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: And so I will do my best. We are going to come back to the budget. We are going to go ahead and do items 21, 22, 27 and 29. All the funds transfers as one item. Madam Clerk. Speaker 1: Communication from councilman's into his recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by 500 to support the Long Beach Blues Society. Blues for All Event. Item 22 Communication from Councilwoman Zendejas recommendation to increased appropriations in the City Manager Department by 10,000 to provide a contribution to social and environmental entrepreneurs to support their youth, sports and mentoring program. Books and buckets. Speaker 0: Not to mention Haas. Speaker 1: Mayor. Would you like me to add the other two items? Speaker 0: I thought you had read all of them. No, we. Speaker 2: Don't. Speaker 1: The other two items are. Item 29 and 27. Item 27 Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute all documents necessary to accept and expend grant funding from the Port of Long Beach and Item 29 Communication from Councilwoman Sorrell, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilmember Your Unger recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by 3586 to support the Rigley Village BLOCK Party. Speaker 0: Compromise in the House. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. It takes a strong community to build a strong community. Individuals stepping up, willing to put in the work and willing to work together to create solutions and address the issues they've met and they may see in their community as they live in this community. That is why I am proud and a strong supporter of our new books and Buckets program, a youth program that is very much needed in our Washington neighborhood. And I am excited to continue supporting this program. I would now like to give my remaining time to David so he can speak a little bit more about the program if David is here. Speaker 6: I don't see. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 0: I'm Truman Price. Speaker 4: It's support this item. Speaker 0: Councilman Ciro. Speaker 4: I just wanted to speak to item 29 around the village block party that, you know, that's the first in-person event I was able to host since I've been in office. And I thought that it was a great kick off to doing more in-person event, particularly bringing resources to community and bringing residents together to to connect, but also to activate the small businesses in the Wrigley Village area. And looking forward to continuing the work and the celebration in our Wrigley Village area and throughout the other parts of the districts. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion any second by consumers and they have some price. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: There is public comment on item 22. Speaker 0: I'm sorry about that. Please. Please come to the comment is your public comment. Speaker 1: And I can say, please come to the podium. Speaker 0: And then can can someone from the clerk's office send me the public comment? I don't have any up here. Speaker 2: Okay. Snake in Faith District six. RESIDENT I'm just coming today in support of books and buckets. I think it's an amazing opportunity. Youth led organization in the Washington district that's really speaking to the needs of the community. Speaker 3: And I want to say much respect. Speaker 2: To Councilwoman Zendaya for ushering locals in her neighborhood, in her district, and an opportunity to lead the. Speaker 3: Youth towards positivity. I, as a person that runs a bookstore, would love to support by donating books. Big fan of David. Speaker 2: And everything that him and his associates are doing and, you know, feeling very generous. Ms.. And they are so, you know, I don't know if there's. Speaker 3: Anybody here from the organization, but I would. Speaker 2: Love to give some money as well, because it is important that private individuals also step up to support the youth and not just the city. Speaker 3: So thank you. I also wanted to say thank you to Councilwoman Soros. Amazing blog. Speaker 2: Point. I didn't know if it was you know I liability issue that's why I don't want to say anything. Speaker 3: But it was a great. Speaker 2: Block party. I grew up in Wrigleyville. I was born in Pacific Hospital. So it was great to see so many people on Pacific. Speaker 3: Avenue and lots of children and pinatas. Speaker 2: And it was a great opportunity to see everyone out. And thank you again, Councilwoman. Speaker 4: Mayor. I think we may have a video to see that. Do you guys have the books and buckets video? Speaker 1: Well, cue that up right now. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 6: It isn't your typical youth sports program. I'm Christian Longo in Long Beach, where I'll introduce you to the founder who is from this neighborhood and is now back on the courts he grew up in hoping to bring others up with him along the way. Ever heard the saying the ball is life? It's definitely a way of life for 12 year old Stephen Sheppard. Speaker 4: I was playing since I was like three when my grandpa. We were playing in this court right here. Speaker 6: Since then, he's spent almost every day here dribbling, passing and shooting with his neighborhood friends or as part of a summer program called Books and Buckets. Speaker 4: Outside, all as a great program. Speaker 6: With lots of responsibility. Speaker 4: Because you also have to practice, but also keep your book and read about it. So then you can educate your mind about what's happening. Speaker 6: And motivate yourself in life. The program was started by another kid from the neighborhood, David McGill Soriano, who used to spend all his free time with friends on this very court. Speaker 9: I came when I was growing up right here in the Washington neighborhood. There was no youth program, there was no youth center. And I wanted to be a part of something. Speaker 6: David would take an hour long bus ride out of the Washington neighborhood every week, all to join a youth program he says helped his physical and mental development. Speaker 9: When I got older, I was thinking like, Man, what if what if our neighborhood had that? You know, what if I had take the bus ride when I had to do all that? Speaker 4: And so when he got older. Speaker 6: He did just that, bringing others who grew up in the area back with him. The camp brings an academic side with group discussions, readings and guest speakers and mixes it all together with. Well, I think you can guess what. Speaker 9: The part that really, really that meant is the basketball part, the basketball academy. Speaker 6: But more so than just developing for their future, it's a means to keep them safe in the present. This neighborhood wraps with its share of gang violence. Kids as young as Stephen have already experienced it. Speaker 4: So basically there's there's a lot of gang violence and they want to influence you to do bad things. And it's things like this that motivated David to keep. Speaker 6: His camp going. Speaker 9: Our youth know them as well. I know them, but they go to school with them. So if this program wasn't here, they might be a part of that. Speaker 6: By being here, they gain more than just basketball knowledge. They gain community. You know. Speaker 9: We'll passing the ball and they take the shot. And the day we give them the tools and they can help solve the problems in the neighborhood. Speaker 6: Locals coming back to their hometown and putting the ball back in. Kids like. Speaker 4: Stephen's for. Thank you for that. Speaker 0: Thank you. With the motion in a second, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. And just a note for the clerk. I don't have any public comments up here, so I just want to make sure that. Speaker 1: Currently there is. Speaker 0: Okay, great. Thank you. Next up is we're going to do item 19. Actually, I'm sorry. Let's do the the the four open public comments because. If you want to call those for the podium.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $500, offset by the First Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to support the Long Beach Blues Society, Blues for All Event; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $500 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 0: Okay, great. So then there's no more public comment. So members, please go ahead. We'll go to the next item. And we're going to go ahead and do let's actually do the item 17 and then 18 to the two other hearings and then we'll go to 16. So let's start with item 17. Speaker 1: Please report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record, conclude the public hearing and find the project exempt from sequel to the ordinance approving a zoning code amendment to implement suggested modifications by the California Coastal Commission. Read the first time and later or the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. Adopt a resolution adopting amendments to the local coastal program of the General Plan and adopt a resolution authorizing Director of Development Services to submit the local Coastal Program Amendment to the California Coastal Commission citywide. Speaker 4: This is a public hearing. And the planning manager, Patricia Defender. Speaker 6: Here will make the presentation for this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 4: Good evening, Mayor. Vice Mayor, City Council members. This item is similar to a number of items you have seen recently. This item is a local coastal program amendment for zoning code amendments that were previously approved by the City Council on October 2019. As you've seen with those other recent local coastal program amendments, the council has to act on, the Coastal Commission's suggested changes in order for the zoned zoning code amendments to be effective in the coastal zone. This action would allow these amendments to be in effect in the coastal zone. These which are these amendments are already a fact in effect in the rest of the city. Just by way of some very quick background. The Development Services Department has undertaken a program to periodically update the zoning zoning code, a program known as the Omnibus Zoning Code Amendments. The goal of the program is to modernize the zoning code and ensure that the regulations are up to date updated, to be responsive to changes in development trends and best zoning practices. These periodic amendments are necessary since the zoning code has not been comprehensively updated in more than 20 years, and there are conflicts and outdated provisions throughout the code. As previously mentioned, these particular amendments were adopted by the City Council in October 2019. At that time. At the time of the adoption, the City Council also adopted a resolution directing the Director of Development Services to submit submit these ordinances to the Coastal Commission for a finding of conformance with the Certified Local Council program. The city did submit the amendments to the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Commission is requiring some modifications to those amendments. And that's what's before the Council this evening. The customary procedure the city council must take an action on these coastal commission modifications suggested modifications within six months of the date of the Coastal Commission's approval, which for this item was in March of this year. If the Council approves these modifications this evening, the coastal the local coastal program amendments will be resubmitted to the Coastal Commission before the deadline for final certification by the Coastal Commission. Just very quickly, I won't go over the detail or substance of these code amendments, but they were code amendments that involved establishing land use regulations for several new uses, including escape rooms, tutoring centers, animal related uses if established and revised or clarified development standards related to the distance between structures on residential properties. Parking requirements in historic landmark districts, measuring fence height in flood zones, gross floor area definitions and floor floor area ratio calculations, rooftop solar height exemptions , and some other development standards. It also made some modifications to administrative procedures, exempting hearing items continued to a date certain from re noticing. The these are the description of the modifications that the Coastal Commission was requesting and generally that require clarifying the exemption from additional parking requirements for historic properties undergoing residential expansion. Is precluded from use in certain parts of the coastal zone. If this if such an improvement would increase the size or degree of non-conformity with coastal resource protection and shoreline policies. He clarifies that the new uses that are introduced in the code by these amendments are allowed by right and are consistent with the allowable uses in the adopted land use plan. It adds a requirement for properties within the certified local coastal program to prevent rooftop solar collectors from adversely impacting public views of the beach, bay or ocean that are preserved in the Certified Local Coastal Program. It makes a as a footnote to development standards related to accessory dwelling units in the coastal zone. Notice of public hearing for this hearing was published in the Long Beach Press Telegram on July 19, 2021. Written notices were sent to the Coastal Commission. Other notification was provided as required by the code, including posting at City Hall and select libraries. On this slide is a summary of the actions that shows that the City Council is being recommended to approve, which involves concluding the public hearing and finding the project is statutorily exempt from secure, declaring and approving the Zoning Code amendments to implement the suggested modifications of the Coastal Commission to adopt the resolution. Adopting the amendments to the local coastal program and incorporating the modifications suggested by the Coastal Commission. And certifying the compliance with the coastal, adopting a resolution certifying compliance with the Coastal Commission March 2021 Action that concludes the staff presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's any public comment on this hearing? I believe so. Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor, this requires three votes, one for the audience and one for each of the two resolutions. Speaker 0: Yes. Thank you. And there's no public comment. Correct. Okay. We have a motion on the second councilmember ringer. Speaker 2: No real comment other than that. Thank you to staff for updating our LCP for lovely. Speaker 0: First May Richardson. Okay. Can I have somebody else second that. It's it's I think it's I think we're fine. Go ahead and let's take the first vote. Members cast your vote. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Mongo. For smokers. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'll take a motion for the second vote. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Second vote. Speaker 0: Karis Thank you. And we'll take the third vote.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Subsection 21.27.130, Table 32-1, Table 32-2, and Table 32-2A of Chapter 21.32, Subsection 21.33.130.E, and Table 51.276-1 of Chapter 21.51, relating to the zoning regulations of the City of Long Beach, read and adopt as read. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that, we will go to the regular agenda and we'll come back to the CIA presentation. Now we're going to go to item number 19. Speaker 1: Item number 19. Communication from. Councilwoman Sara recommendation to receive and file a presentation from John Bishop Long Beach Medical Center to highlight new services provided at the Children's Village in the Millers Children's and Women's Hospital. Speaker 0: Actually, I'm going to accept. We're going to come to one song first. Oh, sorry. The problem documents are. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Bishop. I just want to make sure we warmly welcome you first. So I want to make sure we warmly welcome. Chief Executive Officer Mr. John Bishop here from Long Beach Medical Center to share with us the pediatric specialty care and medical and family support services provided at the Cherise marie Law here at Children's Village and how that has positively impacted their work as well as the city of Long Beach. So without further ado, Mr. Bishop, where we want to hear from you. Speaker 0: All right. Thank you very much. Sorry about the false start. And I want to personally thank the council for all the. Speaker 3: Support that. Speaker 0: They've given to the hospitals and to the community through the pandemic. It's been an amazing period, and I think we've been a model across the country. But what I wanted to share with you today is one, something new at Miller Children's and Women's. And then talk a little bit about the. Speaker 3: Services we provide. Speaker 0: Because children's hospitals and there are only eight in California really provide services that are different from community hospitals. And that's because we have the ability to have multidisciplinary care where we have all the experts in one location, because our children are really not just small adults, they have different health care needs and they need physicians that are specifically trained for them. Looks like my presentation may be struggling. So what they're working on in the back. Okay. No worries. No worries. I've got most of it in my head, but I want to talk about the Sharice. Speaker 3: Marie. Speaker 0: Le outpatient village. It opened in February and it's really making a huge difference because it took all of our pediatric outpatient clinics and there are many, many specialties. There's endocrinology, there's cardiology, there's surgical clinic, there's there's infectious disease. And they were in different places around Long Beach and around our hospital. And that's particularly a challenge for families, you know, that have really sick kids that need to see multiple specialists. They may have transportation challenges. And what we were. Speaker 3: Able to do. Speaker 0: Is co-locate them all in one building where you can make one call and make one appointment and have all your your specialist needs taken care of in one location. So for the families and the patients and the physicians who can now make handoffs, and if you think about the advantage of having, you know, a cardiologist handing over a kid to an infectious disease expert, it makes all the difference in the world to say, hey, this is what I'm seeing, have the lab tests available in one location. So it's just a tremendous advancement. And thank you for the city for helping us process that through all the approval stages. It really has been an amazing asset to the community. And lastly, and I would just save time for my I have a. Speaker 3: Brief video describing what we do. You know. Speaker 0: One thing that we've seen over the past 18 months is a lot of people have deferred their care, not just on the adult side, but parents understandably very protective of their children, have not brought them into the hospital until it was it was too late. We've seen outcomes that were very avoidable. And so to the extent that you are out in the community, I would ask you to please advocate for taking care of your children. Get them. The preventative care hospitals are professional cleaners for a living or a hospital is a. Speaker 3: Very, very safe place. If we have. Speaker 0: Any COVID patients, they are in effectively vacuum sealed areas with negative airflow. Nothing gets out. And so please take care of not just your health needs, but the health needs of your kids. Because it really it breaks my heart to know that sometimes people don't get to the hospital in time because they were scared of something that was that was very preventable. Speaker 3: So we could just see the video. Speaker 4: Children need health care tailored to their unique needs, like doctors and nurses trained exclusively in pediatrics and in a kid friendly place. That's where children's hospitals come in. About one in 20 hospitals in the U.S. is a children's hospital, making them as unique as their mission, treating infants, children and teens. And you have one right here in your community. Memorial Care Miller Children's and Women's Hospital. Long Beach is one of only eight freestanding children's hospitals in California. We are even more unique since we're one of the only hospitals in the region to have maternity and pediatric care under one roof. Our pediatric specialty physicians have gone through additional schooling and more rigorous training than a typical doctor. And since our care teams exclusively treat kids, they understand the complexities of a growing body and the need for more than medicine to get well. From broken bones to fighting against pediatric cancer, we have doctors who are experts in more than 40 types of pediatric specialties to help kids find wellness again. For some kids, specialized care starts before they're even born. Our maternal fetal medicine specialists, who are experts in high risk pregnancies, provide care for expecting moms. Ensure that both mom and baby have a healthy outcome after birth. If the need arises, our neonatal intensive care unit is just down the hall so mom and baby can stay close together. We are one of only a few hospitals in California that provides 24/7 specialized care for moms and babies under one roof. But our mission goes beyond the walls of the hospital from the South Bay to Orange County. We have satellite centers that bring our expert care to kids right in their own community. And no matter where they live, we help all kids grow up healthy by pioneering new vaccines, clinical trials and treatments through national research consortiums. Knowing the future of medicine is in our hands. We partner with academic institutions across the region to ensure that doctors, nurses and clinical leaders of tomorrow get the advanced training they need today. Because Miller Children's and Women's is a not for profit organization that provides care regardless of a family's ability to pay, it depends on public and private support. You can support your children's hospital by visiting Miller Children's Dawgs if. Speaker 0: Thank you. And in closing, I'll just say Long Beach is a big. Speaker 3: City. Speaker 0: But it acts like a little city. You have multiple generations. You have grandparents, parents, kids, grandkids. And that is such an asset because the pride of Long Beach really makes us a special place. And so our commitment to you is to try and keep you and your children out of the hospital and give you the preventative care to make sure that that happens. So we call it population health and we are on the journey. I thank you for your time and attention this evening. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. Comes from the price. Speaker 4: I support this item and thank you very much for the presentation. Speaker 0: Councilman Mongo. Speaker 6: Thank you. I just want to thank you for what you're doing. You talk about us being a big city and a small community. I think that that is very poignant. And I think that one of the things that we as a council during this economic recovery kind of discussed was that the districts across our city that are really job creators, a large share of the jobs of the city of Long Beach are in health care. And I'm sure you've heard from Mr. Heisler regarding the Innovation District and working together with the Economic Development Committee and Councilman Thoreau and the opportunities that we have to really bring people from the community into the medical field. L.A. County is doing a pilot project where we're taking individuals from disadvantaged communities and turning them into EMTs. And what does that look like after you become an EMT, to become a paramedic, to become a nurse? You become a all these different things where you talk about getting people to go into the hospital during these times. It's easier when they're going into the hospital and they see a familiar face from their community. So thank you for your support and your participation and the upcoming opportunities. I've heard that you've been engaged and we really appreciate it. Speaker 0: I see. Speaker 3: Richardson Thanks, Councilwoman, for bringing this forward. And John, thanks so much for the presentation updating us on this memorial. Just an incredible asset to our city. You know, both of my children were born there. One of my oldest spent a little time in that Nick. You know, it's one of those places, you know, where, you know, you don't really want to go back, but you had a great experience where you there those nurses are top notch and incredible. We owe a whole we owe so much to the incredible nurses at Memorial Care. So I wasn't going to let you come up here and make a presentation without acknowledging the incredible team you have. The children's hospital in the entire Long Beach Memorial family. So thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Sorrell. Speaker 4: Yeah. Just want to make sure to thank you, Mr. Bishop, for coming out today to giving us this presentation and sharing a little bit of an update and just proud to have you in my district and looking forward to ways in where we can continue exploring opportunities to improve. And but I do agree that just having, you know, the medical officers that you mentioned in one space really provides just saves so much time and relief for parents who are stressful and just making sure that it's accessible to the community. So thank you so much again. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I'm just going to add, Mr. Bishop, it's been obviously just really great to work with you for particularly the last year and a half, pretty closely on everything related to the pandemic that we're going through. But just thank you and the entire team. I had a chance to be there at the groundbreaking breaking of this incredible facility. I remember it well and just hear kind of what was in store and now having now being able to see the finished product. It's really spectacular building and great to see so many, you know, clinicians and nurses and doctors all in one space. And I think you said it best. And I just want to highlight again that being able to bring all of those different specialty clinics to 1 to 1 building, and it really fosters a an ability for folks to work together and to have, most importantly, a space where parents and families can go to one building and receive a care for for their children. I mean, one space. And so I think that's really, really important. And we're grateful for memorial for this for this project. With that, there's a motion and this second and there's no other public comment. So please cast your votes. Speaker 1: I'm Don Austin. Motion carries. Speaker 0: We thank you. Now we're going to do item. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. We're going go ahead and do item number 28.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from John Bishop, Chief Executive Officer, Long Beach Medical Center, to highlight new services provided at the Cherese Mari Laulhere Children’s Village (Children’s Village) in the Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital.

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Speaker 1: Item 28 Communication from Councilwoman Sara. Councilwoman Zendejas. Councilwoman Allen. Vice Mayor Richardson Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare a resolution to support a fair and free union election for security guards at common. Spirit. Dignity. Health Facilities. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Ciro. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. And first one to think, Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilmember Sunday has an Allen for signing on to this item. You know, during the pandemic, we saw how valuable our frontline workers are and they still are. And the security guards at Common Spirit, Dignity, health facilities are part of these workers. They were on the front line day after day, standing side by side to all hospital work. Staff and numerous security officers have reported contracting COVID 19 and have also, you know, it's impacted their family due to inadequate equipment. So this has caused many of the security guards to sign on to a petition to becoming part of SEIU. And so I fully support them in their decision in wanting a fair and free election to join SEIU, UAW. And, you know, the security guards were some of the many heroes during the pandemic. And they should have the ability to decide to join a unit that's meant to improve their well-being on the job site. I also just want to share to that kind of out of an abundance of caution of the Delta variant and the nature of their work, they couldn't be present today. But I know that they're listening and counting on us to stand with them in this fight, to enjoy basic protection or in their workplace. So, so. So I ask my colleagues to support this item, to prepare a resolution to support the security guards at common spirit, dignity, health, to have a fair and free election to join SEIU. One point of clarification that I wanted to just make is, you know, on the agenda item, it doesn't it doesn't state. It's different from the subject of what's in my agenda item I submitted and I wanted to clarify that it should be the subject is to a resolution to support security officers that common spirit dignity health to join SEIU UAW. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Before I turn it over to Vice Mayor Richardson, I just want to make a few brief remarks. So I'm very, very happy to not just support this resolution, but just to say a few brief remarks. Also, I want to thank Councilwoman Sato in particular for bringing this forward. But I do want to share a very short story because it means personally a lot to me. And I have a lot of love for the SEIU, UAW family. In fact, I consider myself part of of this family. In about a year before my mom passed away, she actually had been working at our same clinic for about almost 25 years. In the time that she worked at her clinic. She was considered a low wage worker, worked very hard, always went to work, rarely called in sick, rarely got a raise. But loved her job and had a lot of integrity as an immigrant woman working in her workplace. After about 20, 20 plus years, she continued and continued to wanting to work at her location. I think folks know that as a frontline worker. My mom also, unfortunately passed away to the pandemic, as do many women that are in spaces of health care spaces. My mom, just a few months before she passed, actually became a member of SEIU, UAW within the last year of her life. As she was approached, her and her her coworkers were approached and discussed the idea of actually forming and joining this union. And this group of six women at her workplace were very nervous to do it. They did not want to lose their jobs. They were a little bit nervous about taking a step forward and asking for an election for union membership. But they did it. And I remember my mom came to me and said, hey, you know, you, me, how what do you what do you think? I'm really scared to do this. But they are saying that they would represent us and fight for fair wages and represent us at the at the workplace. And my mom was the last person to ever ask for a raise. She never did because she would never do it. But she thought here a group or a union that would actually advocate for her on her behalf. And so a year before, about a year before she passed, she began her and these other women organizing and won an election at the site and became the first union at my mom's clinic. And they were represented by SEIU, UAW. And so I'm very grateful to to the workers of SEIU, UAW for welcoming my mom. She became a very proud member of the union very quickly. And when I talked to these security guards at this facility and at facilities across the state, folks should know that these security guards also are in a similar situation where they don't feel heard. They don't feel they have representation. And and in many cases are the only people on the campus that don't have union representation. And so I'm happy and proud to support this organizing of these workers. Just I was proud to support my mom's organizing and her job when she took that step forward as well and was welcomed into the SEIU, UAW family. And so as a proud member of that family, I want to thank Councilman Sauro for for this resolution. And I'm very proud to support it. Rosemarie Richardson. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Ciro, for bringing this this resolution forward. Certainly happy to support it. You know, I think just over the course of the past year and a half, we've seen significant changes in our economy. And we've talked about the k-shaped recovery, how low wage workers are feeling the most, the most they've had the most significant impacts. And they show up every day. They show up every day. They protect us, the security officers. And very difficult times, you know, when folks you know, many of us have the privilege of staying home and working remotely. They don't have that privileged security officers. They have to step forward and do their jobs. And in this time, you know, folks are leaning going back to what they know. Economy is shifting. Significant impacts. They're going back to what they know and what they know that works in difficult times is forming a union. They want to protect their jobs. They want to protect dignity in the workforce. So they're taking steps to do what they never done in forming union. And I support that effort. And I think that's something that history has shown us, has worked, and we certainly support those workers. In terms of SEIU, I certainly appreciate the comments by my colleagues have said, you know, I remember when I was, you know, a college student at Cal State Dominguez Hills, my mom went back to school to be a CNA, and she worked at Huntington Memorial Hospital and she was a SEIU UAW member. And I remember the pride that she had being a rank and file union member and a nurse's aide. And so these are very personal efforts. And so I certainly appreciate Councilwoman Ciro for speaking up and saying we're not just supporting security officers, we're support and security officers that form a union and join SEIU instead of you, because that comes with a certain level of dignity and a certain level of pride. So thank you so much and I'm happy to support this. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Ellen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And I also just want to say thank you to Councilman Ciro for bringing this forward and Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilman Zendaya's for signing on to this very important item, these workers. Just like your mom did, mayor absolutely deserve the right to organize and collective bargaining. We have to make sure that these officers feel safe, valued and taken care of. I just strongly support this item. Union jobs promote safe working conditions. They help workers secure their livelihoods and they make sure that they are treated fairly. So thank you again, Councilman Sorrell, for bringing this forward. And I will be supporting this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman Zahra, for putting this item forward. And thank you, Councilwoman Allen and Vice Mayor Richardson also as well for supporting this very important item. The pandemic has exacerbated any inequality ability and unsafe working conditions for many people, and it is so important to support and stand by our workers who are speaking up on these injustices. I think creating the opportunity for workers to unionize is a step in the right direction to ensure that our residents have adequate and equitable working conditions. It is also very important to make sure that this resolution include the naming as a union that these that these hardworking individuals have petitioned for, which is SEIU. Each of you. So I'm very, very happy to support this item. Speaker 0: I don't believe there's any public comment. So, members, please go ahead and cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare a resolution to support a fair and free union election for Security Guards at CommonSpirit/ Dignity Health facilities.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is item 20, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Zendejas. Councilwoman Price. Councilman Austin. Recommendation to direct City Manager and the Parks Recreation and Marine Department to explore the feasibility of a public pool to serve the North Long Beach community and return to council with a report within 120 days. Speaker 3: RICHARDSON Thank you. And I want to go ahead and get started on this. This proposal two days is really not the beginning of a conversation, but beginning an effort. We're a city that's certainly committed to a climate city that's demonstrated our commitment to equity to invest in our youth. And I think this is a bringing this conversation forward as far overdue. And I'm happy to do so tonight in partnership with Councilman Austin and our colleagues on the city council. Councilmembers Price and de Hartzell, thank you so much for supporting this effort. I think one of the first questions for me is. You know, where we passed the Climate Action Adaptation Plan and we see the impacts of climate change. We've we're talking about waste and a number of things on the agenda tonight. But what does climate resiliency really look like aside from the coastal areas? What does it look like inland? Well, we know if we look at what the data says, the data says that from the California interactive heat map shows that the further away from the coast, particularly North Long Beach, are some of the hottest areas within our entire city. North Long Beach contain contain some of the hottest areas. More specifically, we have more days above 85 degrees in a given year than any other area of the city. Every year it's going to get hotter. That's just a reality. And the reality is that people, particularly the children that live in the North Long Beach community, live the furthest away from the beach and the furthest away from pools. It's going to get hotter. Kids are hot this summer. We need to make sure that we have the resources and we're making the investments so that kids can get to the pool. There's a there's a video circulating on next door in North Long Beach circulating on social media. You know, it's a few kids and I'm not going to show the video because, you know, it's a little disturbing. But, you know, the neighbors have seen this video circulating around and it's you know, it's a few kids, five or six kids, some, you know. One of them says they live in this apartment building and some say they don't. But they jumped the fence and went into an apartment building to go swimming. These guys have trunks on. They're having a blast. And there's the apartment manager and he's saying, hey, you guys don't live here. You need to leave this pool. I'm going to I'm giving you a warning. I want to call the cops. We're going to leave this pool. Think back to myself at that age. I've jumped fences to get to a pool. When it's hot, kids are going to find a way to swim. But we have to do it in a way that it removes barriers. If you're five miles away from the nearest pool, four miles away from the nearest pool, it's difficult if you don't have access to the blue line, access to public transit. It's going to be difficult to get access to a pool, and you're going to have to go to go to other communities in the north Long Beach community. You have public municipal pools in Lakewood that are closer to us than our own public municipal pools. Now, we do have, you know, tremendously grateful for the nonprofits in North Long Beach that have provided this service for a long time. Fairfield Family YMCA. I served on the board there. Councilman often serve on the board there. At least four council members I can think of in the recent years have served on the board there. They stepped up and done great work. It's still not a public municipal pool, their various pools of hope. I've served as a volunteer on their board for many, many years. Warm water pool accessible to the community. It's really about therapy. It's not really recreation. It's a heated pool for therapy for most of the people that are referred by their health insurance to go to therapy. You have the Jordan High School pool and we've worked through joint youth for many, many years. To structure it in a way that it that it works. But we don't necessarily control that agreement. It's difficult to access. And so in the North Miami Beach community, there are significant gaps. It's transportation is a barrier, you know? You know, I look at a friend who took a took one of those little scooters up there. Right. The e-scooter up there. It takes some time to get from there to the water. So for me, this is a climate issue. It's a neighborhood quality issue. It's a quality of life issue. It's an invest in youth issues, an equity issue. It's time for us to, you know, put a flag in the ground as city staff. And what my ask is today is that we begin the process and the feasibility look at some potential locations that is feasible. Look at what cost may be strategies to get it as a priority in the city. Funding strategies state and federal, local and present some opportunities to put the Council in the position to close this this longstanding gap. And for me, that's that's really what this is. It's an opportunity. Invest in our youth, invest in recreation, give kids an opportunity to do something safe in their own communities. You know, I'm having a good time watching the Olympics, you know, watching these kids swimming and diving. You know, my kids take their two Barbies and we have this little pool and they're doing synchronized diving with their Barbies. It's really cool. People are interested in this, but we have to make simple aquatics, basic, you know, accessible to every neighborhood. That's what we should be doing. And that's really the gist, this item. So I'm happy to make this motion tonight. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I want to thank Rex for bringing this forward. I want to just say that I fully support this item. And I know many people in the North Long Beach community have been asking for many years, you know, why don't we have a pool? And it makes a lot a lot of sense. A couple of opportunities and options have come forward. And so I certainly support the idea of study in a location, the best location for for such a pool. I know this item was specific to the 90805, which is a pretty big geographic area. You know, it's going to require some some community input and as well as some strategic placement and obviously assessing our available space in the community to put a pool in. I think opportunities should be extended to areas of the city where they traditionally haven't been. And when given opportunities, young black kids and brown kids can certainly rise to the occasion and take full advantage of the aquatics experience that there's a void of today. On a personal note, I'm hosting as a young college student in my home. She's a water polo player at the Women's Water Polo Final at Cal State Long Beach. And she's our niece. She's been involved in aquatics since she was very, very young and probably one of the few kids that look like herself playing at the level that she's playing at. But it was because she was exposed to aquatics at a young age. She learned how to swim at a young age and fell in love with the water. And so I think there's there's opportunities beyond just recreation that can be extended. There's opportunities for college scholarships and long term career options for for young people. I know we talked about just the last year in our budget process, the junior lifeguard program that should be extended should not be a program that is only specific to a certain area of the city. Let's extend those opportunities throughout. I do think that there are some unique opportunities in front of us in North Long Beach and with our community partners. It was mentioned that the YMCA has a pool. I do serve on the board of the Fairfield YMCA. Full disclosure, but the YMCA is not a brick and mortar organization either. They can they can extend it and be a resource for us on beyond their borders. And so when it comes to even our school board, our school district. I think Jordan High School should be a a target for for ongoing recreation, particularly opening up that pool during these summer months. I know that was a practice for many years that we did have. We may have gotten away from it, but no matter where we are again, we're starting a conversation today about a pool in North Long Beach. We need to figure out how to bridge that gap today. Right. And over the next several, I want to say a few years before we actually are able to to get to a reality. And so, again, I fully support this this item. I throw out, you know, a couple of options in 90805 that I know of where we have a park in the. They set in the middle of the car milito for three and a half acre park. That is not programed. It's never been programed. It's just a big green space. We need to figure out something to do there. Davenport Park, I think, provides options. And I know Rex has been talking about Ramona Park as his options. We can't have this conversations without talking about where the opportunities actually are. And so, again, I'm happy to support this item and I would ask that our colleagues do as well. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Price. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wholeheartedly support this item. I'm super excited about this item. You know, we are a beach city with a pathetic. Access to public pools. I mean, we just don't have enough. It's not anyone's fault. No one's pointing the finger. But are the children in the city need to know how to swim? Every single one of them needs to know how to swim. And I don't know. I know that we can't mandate that, but we we definitely need to have more pools and provide more opportunities for it to be a norm, not an exception. Our special day just needs to be a norm. And so I support this item and I support us building more pools throughout the city anywhere. I think the opportunity for us to enhance some of our joint use agreements with the various schools that have pools is also a good opportunity for us to try to look into and take advantage of. There are a lot of assets that are part of the school district and even the community college that perhaps we can try to have more access to for our communities. And I would hope that in the short term we could look into that. I think to me where the location of it is. It really to me, I just think we should build more pools throughout the city. It doesn't really matter to me what district it is. It's more about the access that people have to those facilities. So the more we can have throughout the city, the more access people will have. And I think as a city, we're stronger together if we're trying to advocate for and obtain more city assets that all of the residents of the city can utilize regardless of district boundaries just as a city. So wherever this pool hopefully is built and goes, I think will be a welcome addition. Councilman Austin, you mentioned the Junior Lifeguard program. I do want to just give a shout out to Chief Gonzalo Medina. The reason the program can't really be extended is because it's an ocean swim program. So it has some limitations because they're teaching people how to rescue. People in the ocean. But Chief Medina has done more for aquatics and equity during his eight or so years as the chief than this city had experienced for decades. The Junior Lifeguard program now is the highest a membership that we've ever had. And we have students from all over the city of Long Beach joining the program. And for those who have had children who go through the program, the initial test to become a junior lifeguard is very difficult. My own kids failed, you know, multiple times before they finally were able to pass. It's really hard. So what Chief Medina did was he created a program to allow kids the opportunity to have a smoother introduction into the process. So that test wasn't this hard entrance or denial. It was more of a process. And he's just done so much for the area in the area of equity. And that program, I'm I'm so proud of it every time I go and speak to those kids. There's black, brown, Asian, white and even Persian faces out there. And it makes me so happy to see the diversity that he has brought to the program, because it didn't always look like that. He's done an amazing job. So I think, you know, we use what he did as the example of incorporating aquatics into the culture of everyone throughout the city. We look at the we talked about the Olympics. There's so many aquatics Olympians from Long Beach. It's shocking. Wilson High School specifically has had so many aquatics champions go on to the Olympics and it's something to be proud of. When we started our rowing equity program earlier this month. We had such a difficult time finding students to participate from certain parts of the city because they didn't have the basic swimming skills. And that to me was really important because they're preventing themselves from the opportunity to get college scholarships because that entry point requiring swimming is not there. So I fully support this, and I think the more our students in the city know how to swim, the better it is for them in terms of opportunities. And also we think about our aging population. Water sports is the best type of recreation for people that have joint muscle and back pain, and that's something that I think we really should be increasing for our senior programing as well. So I wholeheartedly support this and can't wait to help make it a reality. Speaker 0: Thank you. Freshman Richardson. Speaker 3: Thanks, Mr. Mayor, and thanks to my colleagues for the comments. Some really good things stood out. I want to ask Tom to respond before I do so. I think some really good things that came out, I think it's important to call out, you know, race. Black and brown kids need access to both. This is one particular area to give that access. So I think, Councilman Alston, for calling it out and I want to underscore that. But Tom, how would you react to this this direction received from council today? I think it's pretty straightforward. It is clear we don't have a. Speaker 5: Lot of swimming access in our city compared to some other cities. We do have some great assets, but there's not that many of them throughout the city. So happy to look at a feasibility study. We would. Speaker 3: Take a look. Speaker 5: At some of the areas that were mentioned here. We'd look at both capital costs and look at a couple of different parks that. Speaker 3: We could put it in. Speaker 5: We would also we have some experience on the capital cost. There have been a couple of pools in. Speaker 7: The region that have been built, so we've got some updated pricing. Speaker 5: We also need to look at some of the operating and I'll report back to you on on the operating costs of a pool. I would like to explore some of the joint partnerships, if there's any way, because this is a longer term project. So a project like this needs to start somewhere and we're starting tonight, but it does take some time to get it done and then we'll get you back information on the next steps, including kind of what a design process might look like. And and then I think the. Speaker 3: Point is to really have a project ready and able in case. Speaker 5: You know, the funding sources open up and we'll have this kind of already a little bit underway. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. I just wanted to also. If I had a direction I want to go. But since the city manager talked about partnerships, I think partnerships are an amazing opportunity for us. If you talk about lifeguard programs, the main trainer of lifeguards in our city that is not for ocean lifeguards is the YMCA. Because they have so many lifeguards, they need to run their pools. And then I don't know what we can do to find ways to provide scholarships and transportation mapping. There are very few places in the city that provide infant baby swim classes. And then the mom groups. There's a lot of talk about how to get to these three or four places in the city. There's one in Bixby in all the area. There's one in the third district, and then there's one in Los Alamitos. And I don't think people know how to get to them, even when they find where they are, because the connectivity between where the classes are available and the transportation, there's just a disconnect. And so there's a lot of parental talking of what needs to be done. And I think the same is true of senior programs. You look at our senior programs. They're great, but they don't have pools versus the YMCA is who are all connected up to Silversneakers, which are all paid for by Medicaid, Medi-Cal, all of those that allow those senior citizens to participate free of charge. And so how we can bring those programs to any school or any pool that we provide, I think is critical. And then I just also wanted to say and while I appreciate all the wonderful athletes that come out of Wilson High School, many of which were my friends back in the nineties when I was in high school . Will I'm sorry, Millikan High School put out a statistic that we've had an Olympian in every Olympics for decades. And then it just a shout out to Max Ervin on the men's water polo team who's a Long Beach resident. And he's been doing great and scoring lots of goals in the Olympics. So we're really proud of him. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Members, please go ahead and cast your vote with them for public comment. Speaker 1: Yes, we do have two speakers for public comments. And I can say and Anna Christianson. Speaker 2: Aren't you a Lakewood graduate? Speaker 6: I did go to Lake and BURNETT. Speaker 3: We got three. Speaker 6: Republicans in my district and it's also the most bussed to high school in the whole city. Speaker 0: Of a comment please. Speaker 2: Definitely took the one or two every day to go to Robert Millikan. I just think it's an amazing opportunity for pool equity. When I live in the common lidos, I learn how to swim at Fairfield as an infant and that program and then later got to level. Speaker 3: Up when we used to have a pool here on seventh and Long Beach Boulevard, now a McDonalds and Walgreens. Speaker 2: Go figure. But that being said. Speaker 3: I would love to see if this could be a plural thing. Speaker 2: I think the Councilman Austin made a great point with referencing the empty field in the common lidos. I think that there could clearly. Speaker 3: Be some federal partnership there with respect to. Speaker 2: The new census coming, you know, seven, seven, eight, nine are going to have the highest concentration of population increase. So it's clear that that's where children are being born. The emphasis in this point in my life at least, is children. So it's important that we have some type. Speaker 3: Of relationship with swimming in aquatics or relation to kids in these areas. Speaker 2: I think Davenport would be a great idea. Ramona maybe the forests or Coolidge. I'm just thinking about all the places that we can. Speaker 3: I think it's like two or 3 million on average. You know. Speaker 2: I figured that. Speaker 3: You know, so again. Speaker 2: It's a little bit more. Okay, well, I'll say 5 million. I know it's less than 107 million or whatever we're spending in Belmont. So that being said. Speaker 3: It would just be great if we could do a plural, you know, maybe like for new parks, new public pools in the park system. Speaker 2: It's great that we have private entities that help service to the load here, but would be great if, uh, you know, the city could take some of that financial responsibility off their backs. Speaker 3: So thank you. Speaker 6: Hi. My name is Ron at MAS. I'm in the Hamilton Neighborhood Association in. Speaker 4: District nine and I do want to thank Council with all the support of the youth. Speaker 6: Resources. Speaker 4: That you've added to. Speaker 6: Our youth development toolbox in North Long Beach, the library, the youth center. We appreciate those resources very much, and I know that it's going to help many children on the right path moving forward for years to come. And I think the pool is the next step in the. Resources for our youth toolbox. And I submitted that video. It was taken. Speaker 4: Out of 5500 acre field. Speaker 6: It was five or six children just playing in a pool. And I guess it had a profound effect on me because I saw children having to break the law. To enjoy resources and benefits that other people in our area may take. Not in our area, but in our city, in areas of our city that they take for granted. So just want to say that again, children had to break the law, jump a fence, get threatened by the police to play in a pool. And that area at. Speaker 4: 5500 acre fields is very close to Ramona Park. Speaker 6: This neighborhood or this apartment building has had these break ins consistently for years. And I don't know how police would feel having to go and arrest kids for playing in a pool. But it's it's embarrassing that we don't have these resources in our neighborhood so that these kids have. Speaker 4: A place to go play. Speaker 6: Have fun. And it's public accessible, easy accessible. I know, and I can speak for myself. Being a single mother years ago, I barely had enough money for a gallon of milk, let alone bus fare. Speaker 8: To a pool. Speaker 6: Miles away. Thank you for listening. Speaker 0: Thank you. And please, Castroneves. Speaker 1: We have one more speaker and I Christians and I. Speaker 0: Only have two stickers on here, so. Speaker 1: Now was my mistake. We missed. Miss. I'm sorry. Speaker 0: It's okay. Go ahead. I had to. Speaker 8: It's just. I think this always happens with us. There's always a little stress moment. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge that we're all here together on Unceded Tongva land. Good to be here. I have to pinch myself. I can't believe I'm hearing this. This is the great. So great. I really appreciate all the council members that spoke today, and especially Mr. Richardson for introducing this resolution. Long Beach Area Peace Network and our everybody in the pool program has been advocating for community pools. And I think it's really very important to acknowledge David's words from the Books and Buckets program. What what if I didn't have to take that bus? And you know, as well as the kids that came up here, our skateboard program, and that's what my son said, there are skate parks all over Long Beach. It should be the same with pools. And and whereas, basketball and skateboarding are phenomenal sports. Swimming is more than a sport. It's a life saving activity that everybody needs if you live near a large body of water. So this is basically clearly a public safety issue and not just for kids, but for adults. So I really appreciate it's just beyond beyond words. This is so important and it's so good to have the community coming together, our representatives coming together around this this matter. And I did send the sponsors some information. USA Swimming Facilities Management is partnering with Coke Total Aquatics programing and they present and they did back in the day and they offered to share this information with the city if we could only get to Denver. Well, they have been presenting virtual conferences and information not only on building community pools, but also on maintaining them and and having them be sustainable. So I really once again, highly recommend that we get out of our Long Beach bubble and reach out to the experts in both sending people to the Olympics, but also providing equitable public facilities and well designed. And that we we include I would love it if you'd amend the resolution to include funding, but I will at least consider funding a city council members and staff who could attend these conferences, at least access the webinar. I just want to say that even though I blame is not that is not that valuable valid. I mean, it might be valid, but it's not that valuable. But we do have a history of racism. We do have a history of classism. And we share it with a lot of people in the world. Right. A lot of communities. So how do we become a more equitable and a less racist community? We have it. We had a plan. We had a plan. That's our Healthy Communities plan that said we will put new recreational facilities in underserved communities. So not to end on a negative note, but I think this pool must be prioritized over funding the buyback safety before competition. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. We're going to hear the next few items here. I know 23 is a presentation, 20, but 24, 25 and 26, I don't think too not. So let's go. Here I am 24.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to direct City Manager and the Parks, Recreation, and Marine Department to explore the feasibility of, locations for, and funding options for the construction of a public pool to serve the North Long Beach community and return to council with a report within 120 days.

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Speaker 1: Councilman after motion carries at 30. Communication from city attorney, a recommendation to adopt them in order to grant an application from Mary L. Johnston for widow's pension. Speaker 0: Get a motion in a second place and there is no public comment. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes the agenda. Now we are going to go back to our budget presentation and our hearing. Budget presentation, please, Madam Clerk. Speaker 1: It's a report from Financial Management Recommendation to conduct a budget hearing of the proposed fiscal year 2022 budget for the capital improvement program citywide. Speaker 0: Mr. MODICA. Speaker 5: Thank you. This is our second budget. Speaker 3: Hearing and traditionally on this day we go through. Speaker 5: The capital improvement program. So the first. Speaker 3: Day we normally give the. Speaker 5: Overview of the entire budget and then now we're starting to dove a little bit deeper. We have a robust capital improvement plan. Speaker 3: We know how. Speaker 5: Important infrastructure is to all of you and your residents. Speaker 3: So we will have Eric Lopez go through that. We are planning to have a. Speaker 5: More focused study session just on infrastructure and kind. Speaker 3: Of our longer term infrastructure later in the month. And so we'll be talking about that a little more as well. If I can turn now to Eric. Speaker 5: Thank you, Tom. Andrew, honorable mayor, members of the city council. So I'm here tonight to present to you our proposed fiscal year 22 cap budget I to our residents present here today or those watching from home. Thank you for joining us tonight. I want to begin by first just highlighting some of the great work that the public works team has completed this current fiscal year. So we have some pictures to demonstrate that work. On the top left hand corner, we have our new Granada Beach concessions, a stand and play area. To the right of that, we have our new Atlantic Palms Bridge Community Center, our first year round shelter that opened this fiscal year. Speaker 0: We're actually going to pause 1/2. I think we did not do 23. So I wonder I wonder what the agenda aims for. So if I can have the clock, please. I'm 23, please. It'll be a quick vote.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to adopt minute order to grant an application from Mary L. Johnston for a widow's pension.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. We'll go ahead and I'll go back to the budget hearing. Speaker 7: Okay, Eric. Okay. Speaker 5: Let's try this again. So let's go through some of our accomplishments and think in the team that worked really hard to deliver our current Y 21 projects and investments. So I just wanted to highlight a few of those projects and, and just pay tribute to our very hardworking team members that make this a reality. So I talked about Grenada and the and our Atlantic Farms Bridge Community Housing Project. Next to that, we have a playground renovation that we did at Eldorado Park, our Golden Grove, and that was one of a couple of improvements below that to them. In the middle of the of the slide, we also have in an improved Golden Shore, Golden Grove outdoor event center that we were able to renovate great space for outdoor events. Then to the bottom left, we have one of our many street improvements and then to the the bottom right hand corner. We have one of many, many curb ramps that we were able to complete this year. Overall, we are proposing a total capital improvement program investment of 146 million. We this consists of a merger of a variety of different sources that are listed on this slide. The investment in our ccap this year is an enhancement from from last year. And we can talk a little bit more about that in future slides. Within our capital improvement program budget. We split it up into different categories and we call these investment categories. And as you can see from the chart, the largest investments this year are being made within our mobility program, our public facilities program and our utilities program. For the airport and for the airport in Fy22 we are proposing an investment in improvements for accessing the terminal and for rehabilitation of the airfield runways. The total proposed budget for this program is 1 million. But in our Beaches and Marinas program, we're proposing an investment of 1.75 million spread about various uses. We're actually going to highlight some of the projects in this program in the later slide. We put out the Tidelands projects together in a slide so we can share some of those proposed projects. The mobility program represents one of the larger investments. We are looking at investing a total of $60 million in our city's roads, alleys, sidewalks and curb ramp improvements. A lot of this funding comes from not just local sources, but also from state and county sources, including gas tax. SB one measure. R measure and property and property. In. But some of the example we just wanted to show an example of of a local street improvement project the before and after the these these projects truly do make an immediate impact within our residential neighborhoods and our just our city overall that we are very proud of. I also wanted to show a before and after of one of our curb ramp improvements. And in our effort to improve accessibility, we've actually been able to implement over 600 curb ramps this year alone. That's on top of thousands of others that we've been able to complete in the last few years. One of my favorites. We've been talking about dirt alleys for a while, and we're getting to the point where we're addressing just about all of our dirt alleys. Here we have a before and after representation of a of an alley that been repaved and just a significant change from from one to the other. Overall in our mobility program, we're looking at add $59.79 million in investments. We laid out the sources on the left chart and the uses on the right. Those are the different categories that represent one or a multitude of projects within those uses. As for our for our local street programs are actually our top three investments are. Let me talk about top four investments this year that are being proposed is for our interior corridor enhancements program, our arterial street rehabilitation, residential street improvements and our ADA curb ramp improvements. Those four major uses represents a majority of the investments as part of the EMOBILITY program within our CHP. Every year we make progress on the infrastructure investment plan that was unveiled an FY17 1718 this year when we started on our plan, or at least the streets and roadways, sections of the plan. This was our red. And every year as we complete segments, we start converting them into green. And as we work on improving those, they start converting. So we made a lot of progress, but there's still a lot of work to do. The remaining red lines are projects that we still need to find complete. And on the right hand chart, I demonstrate the progress we made on our major streets, residential streets and alleys programs . So a lot of good progress, but some work remains that a team is working extremely hard on. Or Residential Streets. Our Residential Streets program is actually one of our one of our more busy and and I'm going to say effective programs. We have a great residential street team that's every year of finishing segments that are consistent with our investment plan. So we continue our work. At this point, a lot of our f y 21 residential streets are already designed and program for construction, and our engineers are focusing on the next set of streets and planning and designing and getting them ready for construction in FY 22. Within our parks program, we're proposing an investment of 1.6 million. Spread out. Spread across three different categories. And for our public facilities program, we're proposing an investment of 21.6 million. And we have a variety of sources that comprise this amount. And two main uses are our facility improvements and our energy efficiency improvements. And I'm actually going to highlight some of these projects. So for public facilities, we have listed we have proposed specific projects for this year, our police department, academy building renovation, our Queen Mary improvements, critical infrastructure reserves, citywide EV charging city on solar energy efficiency retrofits . And the other is listed on this chart. For our utility program. The largest investments are made for water and gas and sewer infrastructure. But we also have measure W and measure W revenue this year for capital improvements. That's going to be $3 million for FY 22. And as you know, the measure W was passed by the voters in November of 2018 and has been identified to be used to construct new stormwater devices that clean water. When one of our primary examples of such projects are eligible for Measure W projects as the Lbps Mast treatment facility, and we show a couple of pictures of that project that were in the slide. I also wanted to note that our Long Beach Energy Resources Department is proposing an $11 million investment through the city's pipeline infrastructure. And the R. And our Long Beach Water Department is proposing a $46.8 million investment through our city's water and sewer infrastructure. One of the highlight of some projects within our Tidelands Cap and Program and just AB32 funding. I wanted to show a recent project on the left hand side of the slide that we recently completed solar installation, solar canopies, that we're doing more solar now than we ever have. And we're and we look to continue that investment to the right Tidelands project that we wanted to highlight is the junior lifeguard facility that we are proposing to rebuild and we are targeting to start construction this coming fiscal year. For our Tidelands funded projects. I listed those projects in the chart to your right. We have a great number of really exciting projects that are being planned, designed or constructed there as as you know, Tidelands Funds is a it's a source that can only be used within a certain geography state defined tidelands areas within our city. So when we have available tidelands funds, we, we investment within those defined tidelands zones. For AB 32. We've been we've been investing on our citywide EV charging infrastructure. That investment is set to continue in fiscal year 22, as is our investments in citywide solar and energy efficiency, improvements at our city facilities, where we're also looking at making some early de upgrades into the Queensway bridge lighting. And we're looking at investing in our partnership with SCC to really encourage more people to transition to green energy sources and to take advantage of a lot of the programs that exist out there that just some people don't know about. AB32 is it's a represents a city of projects that that public works has been focusing on, especially in the last year. And we have a great team that's doing just amazing job at delivering these projects. So thank you to that specific team as well. Now I want to take a moment and highlight a measure A and the investment has allowed in our city's infrastructure. Everyone should be familiar by now with our infrastructure investment plan. And we've been able to to complete just over 70% of all the committed projects. And we're working hard to complete the remaining ones. What the projects that we're looking at completing this, this, this next year include the North Health Facility, the Alamitos Branch Library, our Eldorado Park Artificial Turf Field, and our recreation park playground, just to name a few. And these are major projects are all underway and very exciting to have the opportunity to deliver them. I do want to add a note that we are currently working on the next five year infrastructure investment plan, and we're planning to come back to this body and present some of the details. A big part of that obviously is the anticipated federal funding. And we want to talk about funding strategies to address some of the needs. And I will get into some of our needs in a couple of slides. Major accomplishments. We continue to be able to do a lot with the funding that's approved each year under Measure A, from community centers to street improvements, to park improvements and even stairways and accessible pathways out in the park system. We've also continued to deliver playgrounds and more curb ramps and and facility improvements. The most recent playground that we completed would measure upon this is the cherry part of playground that we were happy to unveil just a couple of weeks ago. The FAA 22 measure a proposed budget or recommend they are recommending to allocate 6.3 million to the mobility program, 1.2 million to the parks program and 14.13 million to the Public Facilities Program, which represents a total measure investment of 21.63 million. Our our investments continue to add various the specific projects we mentioned the PD academy earlier but we're also making investments to fire station nine. Some of our facilities that would needs that have been identified in our facility conditions, assessment curbs and sidewalks, arterial streets, programs alleys and and many, many other more enhancements. Since the inception of Measure eight in 2017, we invested a total, including the FBI 22 proposed budget. We're looking at an overall investment of just under $160 million. And it's truly hard to imagine where we would be at without this funding source and without them. The many projects that Measure A has really allowed us to propose, plan, design and deliver. Total estimated investments. We do have some projects that are that will require additional funding so that we can complete our commitments within the spending plan for our measure. And we're working hard on those. I wanted to spend just a moment on our unfunded needs, and as Tom mentioned earlier, we will be having a study session and we'll get deeper into some of these needs, our funding opportunities and potential strategies for funding. So by bottom line, we have more needs in our city than we have available budget. And every year we try to balance our needs and available budget and and really push forward projects that that are ready. And also, I think we do work really hard to try to bring in additional state and federal funding, and we're excited about the opportunity to be able to continue to do that, to address some of our many, many, many unfunded needs. Challenges and opportunities that we've identified. We do have our our new payment management program. It's been revised. We're working to release the information and the maps with the what the latest and greatest information on our streets. Having that data is going to be key in helping us plan, program and execute the that are the many street improvements that that that are in the works. We do have the ADA settlement agreement that we continue to focus on and we're working really hard to make sure we meet our commitments. We also have the benefit of our facilities, conditions, assessment and and the and the data that allows us to evaluate our investments within our facility that we didn't have before. So we're looking at releasing those final reports later this year and to updating those reports every ten years so that we know exactly what the conditions of our facilities are, and we can use that information wisely. Measure W Investment Plan. Measure W has been a really beneficial funding source as we continue to program the investments to help with stormwater water quality enhancements. And we're working on, on, on our investment plan that we can use to guide us throughout the next few years. And as I mentioned earlier, the next infrastructure investment plan does lean heavily on state and federal funding, which we are expecting and hoping that those funds are significant. So it can truly help us make a impact in addressing some of our many needs. So that concludes our presentation and we're ready to answer any questions. Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 0: Is there any public comment on this? Speaker 1: There is one public comments and I can say. There's no more public comment on this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Before I turn this over to the council, I just want a couple of comments. First, I want to thank the public works team and Mr. Lopez for putting together a good CFP presentation. Always does. And I want to just add how I know I say this almost every year that, you know, for me this the CFP and the infrastructure work is some of the most important work that we do every year. And I think there are very few things I'm for. For most of the folks that I talk to that that rank higher oftentimes, then please fix my street or please replace my kids playground, or please take a look at the alley . These are the kind of bread and butter issues that we as a community, as a council should be focused on consistently is how we're producing for our residents as it relates to playgrounds, for the kids street, for the streets that are safe sidewalks, for to walk down in their neighborhood, trees that are trimmed. And I'm just really glad that we're making progress, even though we know the need is is so great. I just also want to just add that once again, I want to just uplift like I try to do every year, just the importance of of measuring. And you see it throughout your presentation. The investment that voters made now twice is transforming the city and has led to more investments in infrastructure than has been has happened in the last generation. So that's something we should be proud and celebrate and would not be possible without the people of this community who now twice have have now have invested back into into their city. One a note. One of the a lot of investments that I appreciate that happen. I'm focused on a few things. The first is that map. I think we've obviously meeting. We made a commitment to the voters to get that map done. And I know we're almost there. And so I look forward. I believe in a month or two or a month or two from now, we're going to have a study session specific to infrastructure and about kind of what's next. I understand. I know the Council Committee on Infrastructure is also, I think, digging in and doing some of this work. And so I look forward to that conversation and I look forward to finishing that map, which is an important commitment we made to the community. Also want to note that there are a few things that I enjoy more than replacing or installing new playgrounds. I believe that in the last few years we have probably replaced or installed close to maybe ten playgrounds using measure funds. They range from smaller playground sets to these just enormous, incredible new playground sets that we put in at places like Los Cerritos Park and Drake. We just opened one at Cherry Park with Country Ranga just a few weeks ago, all measure funded. And I want to encourage you, Mr. Lopez, and your team that as we plan for the future. Beyond the swipe at the next five years to prioritize playgrounds for kids in this community. And there's very few, very, very few things that we do where I get more positive feedback from parents and neighbors. Then we put out a new playground in their park. And so I just I'm hoping that that is a big focus for us moving forward. I also want to just note for the council that we have an enormous opportunity in front of us with this infrastructure bill that is getting bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate and in the House. I've been somewhat involved in it as a advocating on with throughout through the US Conference of Mayors and some of the conversations we're having with the White House and some of the the the infrastructure infrastructure groups I've had a chance to participate with with Secretary Goodridge on some talks, fought for the Port of Long Beach and getting resources there. We're coming up with some some asks as it relates to to road money and street money and playground money. And I think what's really critical is that we have an opportunity to get probably the largest federal investment in infrastructure than we've also had in a generation. And including in that will be also will be infrastructure investments that we've never had at levels around public transit, around broadband. Closing the digital divide around some some climate infrastructure and the very basics that we need in this community around roads, bridges, ports, airports. So. We're going to we're about to see a massive infrastructure investment in Long Beach and across the country. And I plan to be very involved and engaged in ensuring that we get that across the finish line, but then also making sure that we are investing it in where it needs to go in the city. And I would encourage us as a council, there's a lot of. A lot of items that come before us and a lot of interest, I think, on this body for issues. But I would challenge us that we should that this issue around infrastructure, we should spend a lot of time talking about and investing the time that I think our residents are asking of us. This is a huge issue. And so I'm really looking forward to these next few months where it's all going to be about infrastructure and how we spend those resources. So thank you, Mr. Lopez, for for the presentation. And I want to thank you, Mr. Modak, also for for making sure that we're getting these measures put in place. Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I think you guys have almost said all that I wanted to say, but not quite. I do want to thank Mr. Lopez for a great presentation. It's always encouraging to see that we have the opportunity to invest in our infrastructure. And the city this year was $146 million, and that's going to keep people work working. But also it's going to do a lot of good in our city. You know, I think the mayor here summed it up. I think we all are sitting on the edge of our seats and anxiously awaiting information coming from DC around the infrastructure bill that is matriculating through Congress right now. And obviously how we plan and what we. What we do in the future will be driven by that quite a bit. You know, I do love playgrounds, but I honestly, I think if you talk to too many of the residents in our in our city, you know, the pulse is around residential streets and alleys. That work is is transformational. That work is greatly appreciated. And and obviously, there's still a lot of need in the city. Measure A was a great shot in the arm. And it gave us the ability to to actually be working toward improvement. But it's not enough. And so I'd like to and when we get to that point, have that the conversation and, you know, I'm going to be a hard advocate and going down the gantlet to make sure that, you know, every street, every neighborhood in this the city is is a place where everybody is proud to live no matter where they live. In the city, our neighborhoods are all communities matter. And and I think whenever I can see residential streets, curves, sidewalks, alleys being repaired, I know that I'm doing tangible work that's going to make a difference for the long term interest of our city. So I would make those comments, but understand that that that's where I'm going to be coming from for for the foreseeable future. When it comes to infrastructure dollars. I'm looking forward to, you know, obviously digging into the rest of the budget presentations that we have, but to the the team, the staff, Mr. Lopez and entire public works team, I just want to say on behalf of the residents of the eighth District and I know many, many others, thank you for the aggressive work that you guys are doing. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 6: Thank you. Great presentation. Eric knows my favorite topic of all time is infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. I have to agree with Councilmember Austin that the pulse on the street is streets, streets and sidewalks. Streets and sidewalks and playgrounds are great. And I have a two and a half year old and playgrounds are fantastic. And I love meeting all the other moms and dads at the playgrounds. But when I'm at the playgrounds, the complaint I hear from parents is my kid can't bike on the sidewalks because they're so broken in our neighborhoods. And so I think that there's this intermediary and it's interesting to hear the parents because like when a sidewalk is cracked a little bit, it's difficult for a child to walk on and to learn to scooter on and so on. But when the sidewalk is cracked a lot, it's now become a skate ramp. And so while the neighbor kids all love it, the person whose house it's in front of does not. And the fact that I have multiple. Skate ramps in 90808 that are in excess of nine inches from where they initially started is just a testament to why we have $600 million in sidewalk need and sidewalks, our health sidewalks, our seniors sidewalks, our children sidewalks are everybody. During the pandemic, I know we saw people walking more than ever before. And to continue that, we really need to provide an inviting place to walk. I would even say the one thing I miss most about living in the seventh District was the width of the sidewalks. The sidewalks on the seventh district are two squares wide versus one rectangle, and that makes it a more enjoyable family walk at night. And so as we discuss and implement sidewalk repairs, I think that's something important to consider. This report is great. I think it would be interesting to dove into at the Infrastructure Committee the determination on priorities based on now that we have a full understanding of street repair need on residential streets, street repair need on Ontario, arterial sidewalk repair need, and our public facilities. Then we need to say, okay, what's the total cost? What's the percentages where we go from here? How do we make this happen and how do we deliver for the community now? Because people need those things now. And as we've seen during the pandemic, the cost of materials is increasing at a rate so quickly that we would be better off borrowing money and repairing them today, then experiencing continued increased costs over time. So I look forward to bringing an item back on that in a couple of weeks and hearing more from the community on what their priorities are, on how we would make sure that the percentages of funding allocated really meet the needs of what our community needs today and tomorrow. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Superman. Thanks. Thanks for the presentation. And I just. Speaker 3: Want to make a comment on the PowerPoint presentation. We didn't receive the PowerPoint until mid-afternoon. And I just I. Speaker 0: Want to refer to the streets and roadways map on page. Speaker 3: 12. So if anyone out there sees that we have a few inaccuracies, just rest assured will address those. In fact, the director and I have a briefing scheduled for tomorrow at 2 p.m.. Sounds like we planned it, but I was just looking. And so also on page 30. Speaker 0: Of the presentation. Speaker 3: References the pavement management system. So there are updates to this map that. Speaker 0: You're that you're seeing in the presentation and. Speaker 3: We'll get all those straightened out tomorrow. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman. Councilman Sorrell. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. I want to thank Mr. Lopez for the presentation. It's really helpful for me as somebody who's new to council to understand. And I do appreciate the visual images because it's the friendly illustrate. You know, how bad it was before and how much it's changed. I always appreciate being able to share that with residents when changes are, you know, improvements are made in District six. And I also want a distinctive public works team for all their work on all of this. You know, it's you know, it takes it's every day that, you know, we you know, the moment we leave our house , you know, we step on the sidewalk and, you know, so we, you know, have a lot of public works things that are in front of us. And I do want to just add to this conversation about yes, I think in addition to streets and sidewalk, playgrounds are important. I think it's important we really look at improving all of them because there are neighborhoods that are very dense where they have no yard. And the only source of area for young people to have physical activity and even to play is at the playground. So I would just add to that. Yes, playgrounds, too, in addition to the streets and sidewalks. You know, I also want to mention that when I think about streets and sidewalks, I think a lot about concrete. It's just it's a lot of pavement and concrete. And I want us to think about to how do we green these areas, right. And how do we ensure that while we want to create these smooth sidewalks for people to recreate, and that we're also conscious that it does create urban heat and it just gets hotter and hotter. Right, as we're trying to address climate change. So love for us to be able to consider that as we're going through these planning and now ways you can green alleyways and other other you know walkways. So and I'm just a question around the unfunded needs so you have all these streets and road improvement. And so I see $1.77 billion and it has a 2021. Is that just the last time it was calculated as far as the amount of money it would take? It's on page 29. So if you can help me understand these numbers, because it's a lot of money and I just don't know if it's the latest of these state indicate they're the latest estimates. Speaker 5: Councilwoman. So the 1.77 billion number is the cost to that. The amount that it would cost us if we were to fix all of our streets within a five year period. So it's just it's just meant to give us an overall sense of the scale. Obviously, the solution is going to be a multi-year effort beyond just five years. But, you know, the study focuses on just, you know, a just a snapshot, a five year snapshot. Speaker 4: Okay. As well as these others like the alley way paving, is it within kind of the period of like that's the estimates as well, just wanting to understand this. Speaker 5: Yeah. And I had to go back and check the detail. Some of these are five years. Some of them are within a ten year. So I can follow up with the team and give you kind of the the time frame associated with these. But usually it does hover between five and ten. Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. No further question on the item. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Price. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Excellent presentation. There are some wonderful projects on there. I was just commenting to the city manager, the playgrounds that we've put in all throughout the city. The pop of color. It just screams fresh, new. It makes people feel good about their city. And I think that's that's really important. And it to me, like I said, it doesn't matter where in the city we put them in because we're stronger or better together. If we can enhance facilities throughout the city, so any time we put a new playground in, I get really excited regardless of where in the city it is because I think it makes it's a it's a sense of pride that people have about the areas where their kids play. It's just it's just really important to people because every single one of us who have kids, our only goal in life is to give them the best life we can give them. Right? And so when we live in a city that has newer facilities, we feel like we're doing a good job as parents, at least provide those to them. So I think that helps a goes a long way, like the mayor said. The project that I'm most excited about on this list is probably one of the cheapest projects we have and it's the with it that's going to go and Councilwoman Allen's district. I'm so excited about that. I was telling the city manager that has got to be the best return on our investor that we have as a city . It's an inflatable. And anyone who says that the beach doesn't serve the entire city and the entire region has not been out to see the with it the long line of kids waiting to use it. I mean, it's to me that the engagement of the beaches has magnified since we put the first women in and now we're going to put the second one in. So I think it's going to be great. The only concern that I have is I'm excited about the possibility of a federal infrastructure plan. As chair of the Port Transportation and Infrastructure, the Port Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I hope to really dove deep into what that means for the city. But. The streets have got to be a major priority for us. They are a core service. We talk so much about programs that are great to haves, but things like infrastructure. Our need to have roads are need to have. If residents are driving on major arteries in the city and crossing over multiple potholes every day to get to work. They do not feel like their tax dollars are being spent in the right way, even if we have amazing programs that people throughout the city are benefiting from. There's something to be said for the hardscape the infrastructure projects that appear permanent that make people feel like their city is taking care of them. And it goes a long way. It's kind of like the visual of the fire truck at the block party on 4th of July. Residents go out, they see it, they touch it. They feel proud of their city. It's the same thing with infrastructure. People are driving down the road that is paved and they're not driving over potholes. They have a feel good feeling about their city. They feel like they're being taken care of. It's a minor thing, but when they're driving over that pothole, they're reminded of all the things they don't like about their city. It's not just about the pothole, it's about the response times, and it's about the climate issues. And it's about, you know, services not being open and facilities not being open. They're reminded of all the things they don't like about their city when they drive over these potholes. And so I know it's I'm probably preaching here and on a soapbox that that view as our public works director, Mr. Lopez, don't want to hear. But we have, you know, infrastructure and public safety, in my opinion, are must haves for a city. Everything else is a great to have, wonderful to have. But if people are driving over potholes every day and they're paying as much taxes as they are to live in the city, we're not doing our job. And so I think about projects on major arteries. I know Councilman Mongo and I, we're probably just one example. Every council district probably has one. So I'm just using mine because I don't know what I don't know. And I know about my district. Studebaker We've been talking about Studebaker for six years. Thousands of residents drive every day to go to work a new Studebaker, and every day they're reminded of things they don't like about the city. So I really want to try to focus on getting the biggest bang for our buck in terms of infrastructure and where we can make the most impact with the. Speaker 6: Limited resources we have. Speaker 4: I hope the federal infrastructure. Package comes through, and I hope we can benefit from that in some of these major arteries. But if not, we've got to figure out how to close those funding gaps. Because I know Council Mungo has been involved in other joint use committee meetings where they voted to fund Studebaker. We sued Caltrans. We have some money there. It just seems like we can never make up that that difference. And so I would love to see that happen. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilmember Urunga. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I'm really pleased with a lot of the discussion that's taking place today, because obviously it's highlighting a lot of the needs that we have. And I want to thank staff for being straightforward and transparent in bringing what we really are and what we need. Very pleased and very happy that the mayor has brought a focus to playgrounds. As I celebrated the ribbon cutting of a new playground at Cherry Park, I also had the this unfortunate incident that happened at Admiral Kidd Park, where we had a playground just completely destroyed. Devastating to their community doesn't mean it's over. It needs to be replaced. And I would like to see if we can somehow put out a fast track on their playground, because obviously all my clients are members here. Too, too. All nine of us are focusing in on Andy and explaining that we need playgrounds for our communities, where our kids go play. And and it makes for a great neighborhood where there's a there's a park and a playground. And obviously, the devastation that we suffered in National Park in the West Long Beach area is it's just I can't I can't express the the heartbreak and the devastation that I feel for for the loss of that park. So I really want to have an opportunity to fast track a playground for that area as soon as we can. It needs to be replaced. The the the void that that playground made to the West Palm Beach is just just a devastating. That's not to say that the only priority we have. Obviously, there's a lot more. But second to me, and that's very important is about the allies. We I had a lot of very allies in my district. Fortunately, we've gotten to fix quite a few of them. There's still a number that that need to be fixed. And obviously, it's important for this virus to be fixed for one major reason. There's no only reason at all. It's access. Access to our facilities, to our trucks, to pick up trash and to be able to have access to other parts of the streets as they go through the alleys. That's what they're for. And then finally, of course, I would just mention right now down in terms of our our potholes and streets, you know, when any community that you drive into and you see a nice. Nicely paved streets with freshly painted signs and and roadways. It makes you feel good about that city. And if there's anything that talks about what kind of city we have, it's the condition of its streets and sidewalks. And obviously, that's that's something that we were for the most. I mean, every every council member has its issues with streets and sidewalks that we all try to prioritize. But we can't unless we work with you with with the with our city management entirely and trying to prioritize that. And I know you had a difficult job of saying, you know, you got nine, nine bosses here, if you will, and each one of them has its own needs, his own his or her own needs, and wanting you to prioritize that particular project. So I know the difficulty that you're confronted with. However, it's it's about the city as a whole. And we want to make sure that our city is the cleanest, the most mobile that you can use in the region. And that's our goal. Our goal is to make Long Beach a better it could possibly be. And the only way to do that is by prioritizing what we want to do, and that's to keep our our streets paved straight and safe and. With good playgrounds. So that's my that's my emphasis going to be trying to get that, that playground back up and going. And let's let's try to work together and see if we could find something as soon as we can. I appreciate that. Speaker 5: Yes, sir. I did want to just get kind of an update to the whole council, and that was a devastating fire. I think a lot of you saw it. It was arson. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened there, but it was a total loss. Speaker 3: We are moving immediately to just. Speaker 5: Clean the site and we need to just find the resources to clean the site and put it back to a sand area. And then we're looking to do some temporary. Speaker 3: Fixtures just to give people. Speaker 7: Hope that. Speaker 5: That is going to be a site, again, you know, very quickly. And then we do need to prioritize finding money for that for that playground so. Speaker 3: That we can get it restored to what it was before or. Speaker 5: It doesn't need to be exactly restored to what it was before. We're looking at all kinds of different options. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Morgan, for that update. Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I also want to thank Mr. Eric Lopez for this presentation. I had the privilege of attending last Tuesday's meeting at Mark Twain Library with Councilwoman Sorrow, and I saw a bunch of my residents that were there and very active in the budget process. It was really great to see all the staff see our city manager, Tom Baraka, our budget chair, Councilman Austin, all out in the community just interacting with these residents in the roundtables and really listening to their priorities. So that was just great to see. I also agree with all of my colleagues about the importance of the roads and the alleys and all of the playgrounds. So I don't know if you can see this big smile that I have right now underneath this mask, but it's big. I do. I agree with you, Councilman Price. I love this water playground. I don't know. It looks like it's the size of a football field. And I know that children and kids all over the city are going to enjoy that. And then when I look at the end of the basketball courts and just all of the things that's happening here, it's just it's just really exciting. I do have one question for you with regards to the convention center. Can I get some type of analysis at some point in the future on what the outlook of the maintenance needs are for the convention center and then how that is going to be funded? Because I don't see that here, but it doesn't mean it's not here. So I'm going to ask that. And then one other question. Can you, Mr. Lopez, go into a little bit more detail about, on page 44, the bikeway and pedestrian improvements projects and what they are going to look like. Speaker 5: So let me answer the first part and. Speaker 7: Then turned to Eric. And yes, we can certainly dove more into the convention center. Speaker 5: One of the things that we spent. Speaker 3: Measure on is really getting data and. Speaker 5: Analysis on all of. Speaker 7: Our city facilities prior to measure. We kind. Speaker 5: Of had. Speaker 3: To estimate or we had to go look at each. Speaker 5: One. When it was time to do it. But we didn't have a comprehensive analysis and so we did. Speaker 7: That with our streets so we could make database. Speaker 5: Decisions on our streets. We did it with sidewalks, we did it with alleys, and now we are finishing up on our facilities. So we have gone through the convention center as one. Speaker 3: Of our major facilities. Speaker 5: It has in the $55 million range worth of need over the next. Speaker 3: Several years for upgrades. Speaker 5: Some of. Speaker 3: Those are things like HVAC. Speaker 5: Systems that haven't been touched since the nineties and need. Speaker 7: To be improved so we can get into more of that. That's kind of what our discussion on infrastructure is going to be, is looking at the longer. Speaker 5: Term things, not things that are funded this year. Speaker 3: But what are our challenges and what are some. Speaker 5: Of the opportunities? And Eric, if you can talk about pedestrian. Speaker 3: Mobility, please. Speaker 5: Absolutely. Thank you, Tom. And so for the bikeway and pedestrian improvements, we have 1.4 or 5 million proposed for FY 22. The this program is intended to help us repair and maintain bike corridors and for and to reduce future infrastructure expenses. So it is a maintenance type of program. We actually our funding for this consist of major measure of county measure R for Metro County Measure M, also from central and some air quality funding that we get. We have a series of locations of focus, including our Orange Avenue backbone bikeway, our Pine Avenue Bike Boulevard, our Pacific Avenue cycle track, our downtown walkable streets, the Atherton Street Bikeway areas, the livability initiatives. And we also use some of these funds for grant matching funds. So it's a multitude of uses. I And it does change year to year depending on some of our grants. So I'd be happy to give you more details on on that category, if you'd like. Speaker 1: All right. Thank you, Mr. Lopez. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 6: Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I really appreciate the comments of my colleagues and thought I would add to a couple of comments. A big thank you to Councilman Price. We talk about Studebaker. Studebaker has been a mishmash of funds and trials and meetings in places I'd never been to before. We've looked at technology that got us a grant to try something new on one piece of Studebaker, but not on other pieces. And so I think that Public Works has been really creative, and the residents are ready for it to be done. So we're very excited to continue to move forward with that. As for Councilman Ciro, she brought up an excellent point when you go to page 29, when you look at this. I noticed it during the presentation, but I'll bring it up. It doesn't have a total and I know why it doesn't have a total because that total is a scary, scary number. But I think it's important that we talk about it. This does not include parks and recreation needs unless it is a facility and the need list is $3.54 billion. And I think it's important for people to recognize that that is a very, very big number. I think the other thing that's interesting is when you compare it and I think this is a philosophical conversation that Councilman Price may want to lead infrastructure and it's up to her. She's the chairwoman. When you flashback to page 27 and you look at mobility, which is 6.3 million of the 21 million, so less than 25. Let's see, I have to use a calculator, but less than 20, 20, just over 20%, maybe 25%. But you look at page 29 of what the mobility need is. Streets and road improvements 50%. Alleys 30%. Sidewalk management, 17%. So 777 0% of our need is mobility. But. Only did that wrong. 66.3 divided by 21.63. Only 30% of our allocation is going towards mobility. And on top of that. Parks and Recreation is 1.2 million. That just seems like one playground. And I know that we've been working really hard to have one all accessible playground in the city, and I think it's current funding levels under 200,000 were a million short. To get to where we need to. And an all accessible playground is going to be more expensive than a typical big playground. And so I just think that from a philosophical standpoint, obviously our commitment to. The five year map was a priority, and maybe I should be making the division out of the final column on the right hand side to see where all that money went over time. And I know that there's a lot of different needs that really pushed Measure A, but if we want to fund things, I think the other thing we need to look at too is. Councilman Price talks about. Pride in your city. We started a signage program, and that program's now been unfunded for two years. It's great that the convention area or the Tidelands areas can get some signs of the airport, but the rest of our city has identity and entrance points. And Councilwoman. Councilman Richardson and I have a lot of entrance points to the city that the community was promised signage and pride, and it just hasn't materialized. And I think we need to make sure that's available. And then my last note is the county of Los Angeles just put out a notice that supplies necessary to make each HVAC repairs are not even available. I mean, the wait lists for what we need. If we plan to do something in March of next year. We should be ordering parts now because there's so many back orders. So I think we really need to get a comprehensive economic overhaul, look into our system. That and what I'm also hearing is overhead door repairs, the cogs and the wheels and the things that we need from certain countries are just not coming in because of backlogs and supply creation during COVID. And so if we can go into that and figure out what the truth is. Postpone some projects that won't have the materials necessary. And then lastly, I want to talk about private funding. We do not lean on our private funding partners enough. We have partners of parks. The moment that that playground burned down. Partners of Parks should have had a nonprofit go fund me up. And the Go Fund Me executive director from the organization. They usually put in 20 grand to get you started. There's a lot of opportunities out there that we're just not capitalizing on. When you bring in or really invest in your Fire Foundation or your Parks Foundation or your library foundation, the Library Foundation's an amazing things, but our Parks Program and Partners of Parks is sitting on a bench list of donors that want to give five grand each. For two, three, five years. And so if we don't give them the opportunities to put in the benches or name a field or name a playground after themselves. Hell, you won't give me $1,000,000. I will make it the Eric Lopez playground. I will make it whoever's playground so that we can give the children what they need and get to 3.54 billion because tax dollars alone are not going to get us there. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. So I'll just add my comments here before we go to public comment and wrap it up. So I agree with everything the council members have said. I think everyone has a good understanding of their districts and their needs. I think we all agree on streets and sidewalks. You know, one thing I will say is that, you know, I'm not a big fan of the two year plan. And I remember, you know, and I've got a lot of institutional knowledge. 11 years here. I remember when it was, you know, here's how much every district gets. You go to your community, you make a priority. You pave what it is and you get input on what's in design for next year. So people have some sense of what's going on. The two year plan, I'll tell you, I look at the streets in the city. I don't know any resident who looks at that and says, yeah, that's it. Secondly, I think you just used to go further. It seemed like, you know, the amount of street we will get. You know, I remember when as a half a mile man and went down to like a quarter of a mile, it just seems like it doesn't go as far as it used to be. Maybe as costs have increased, I'm not sure, but I'm not necessarily committed to the system that we have. I think what makes more sense is we've gone through in the last decade two different strategies. And I think we need to just, you know, be very, very clear about when we're starting a new process and when we're stopping . So people don't say the reset button doesn't get set over and over on residents. As I can tell you, we're just now getting to Artesia Boulevard. Steve Neal talked about Artesia Boulevard when he was sworn into office in 2010. And then there's 2021 and we're not breaking ground until Q1 of 2022. That's 12 years waiting on one corridor and South Street is the same story. Market Street is the same story. I mean, it's the same story in these corridors. So something's not not working. And we have to really figure out how we can be serious with the residents about what we can actually deliver. And so, you know, I like you a lot, Mr. Lopez. I'd love to see your thoughts on how we address that. And secondly, you know, you know, we're knocking out a list of things in in North Long Beach because everybody has a different understanding what need is. At one point, we need a library. We focused on that. We got that done. Prior to then, it was the fire station. We had a little one. Then we needed a one that was a decent sized, you know, the community center raining every year, the shelter, it's an emergency every year. The health center finally get in there. But, you know, a lot of those decisions are depend are determined by grown ups, adults who are saying this is the priority. And every time we prioritize what the grown ups need and all that time, it's hard to provide for the youth. I'm excited for all of the playgrounds across the city. They look great. I take my kids to these programs. We're trying to get to every signature program in the city. But again, my district and this is where I get to just got to speak up for my community. My district has more children than any district in the city and still has not built a new playground. And there is plenty of need. There's plenty of opportunity. I don't want to take away from what any other council member said about their needs, but at some point we need to deliver a playground in my community. Halton Park. Ramona Park. Prime candidates surrounded by schools and children. So we certainly need to deliver that. The second thing I would say is we certainly I'm almost done. I'm almost done. The second thing I'll say is the most important thing we can do right now together is advocate the Congress. Because all the hopes and dreams we just heard as of right now, a local street program is not included in the Congressional Congressional infrastructure plan. I'm not sure if you guys know that today it's not included in the program. And unless we get what our members of Congress and advocate, we need to advocate for those things in order to make it a reality. In recent months, you know, through through SAG and through FET ledge, we've had a number of conversations pushing this. Alex Padilla, MAXINE Waters and that. Barragan Lowenthal, Sanchez Schiff. We're pushing that. It's hard to advocate now because we can't go to D.C. It's almost you know, our advice from the lobbyists is don't even come. It's not even working. The the you know, the virtual lobbying is incredibly important. So we have to get creative in how we do that. Our fit led committee is going to continue doing that. We're going to advocate through our advocacy strategy and Dennis and everybody continue to focus on that. But that's the most significant thing we can do. It looks like Cindy is going to take it up very soon. Like in August, the Senate will take it up and then we should have the House take it up and finish it in September. That's the hope. So we have a little bit of a window to get to members of Congress and talk about a local road program, because right now it's not a part of the part of the package. So those are my generally my thoughts on this. And at this point, we're going to open up, see if there's any public comment. There's no public comment. All right. No public comment. So we're done with this. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 4: Motion carries.

Public Hearing

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2022 Budget for the Capital Improvement Program. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is hearing item. 12. The second hearing of the day. Speaker 6: Report from financial management. Recommendation to receive. Speaker 7: Important documentation. Speaker 6: For the record concluded a public hearing and modify the conditions to the existing entertainment permit without dancing or to honor severely limits. Cantina at 1174 East Furlough Road District seven. And this item does require No. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. Can we please go ahead and. Do the oath and then also the presentation. Believe a. Speaker 6: Please stand for those of you who are going to testify on the item. To you and each of you do solemnly swear that the testimony you may give in the course now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Speaker 8: Sandy Palmer will provide the staff presentation for this public hearing for financial management. Speaker 4: Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. Tonight you have before you an amendment of conditions to the existing entertainment without dancing permit for Lorna Marie Lee doing business as Lana City Limits Cantina located at 1174 East Wardlow Road operating as a restaurant with with alcohol in Council District seven. All entertainment permits are subject to a two year department review process. And during the most recent review of the permit for L.A. City Limits Cantina, some concerns were identified to remedy these concerns and to bring the entertainment conditions up to date with what is normally proposed for entertainment premises today. Staff is recommending the approval of the amended conditions as contained in the hearing packet, as well as the police department stand ready to answer any questions council may have. And that concludes staff's report. Speaker 6: Thank you. Councilmember Urunga. Speaker 3: Thank you and thank you for the report. I think that the review that the police department did on this establishment is very thorough, and I think the owner has agreed to all the conditions are put there, especially in addition to the special conditions that were included there as well. So I ask for my colleagues to please support the motion. Speaker 6: All right. Is there any public comment on number 12? There's two members of the public, John Mayer and Miss al-Qaeda. Good evening, members of the City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is John Myer and I'm here representing my sister in law, Eugenia Sanchez, who lives at 3320 Cerritos Avenue, which is adjacent to the back of the of the bar. We originally, in response to the public notice, we originally sent in a letter that outlined. Speaker 7: Some of the. Speaker 6: Disorderly activities that we associate with the establishment. And we had recommended or requested that we that you not move forward in granting this entertainment permit. Since then, we have read the staff report and the conditions of approval. We've also had an opportunity to speak with members of the District seven field office and members of the business license staff, and they were very helpful, very responsive. We certainly applaud the action of the police department and the city staff in listening to the community and responding with the additional conditions of approval. We support and recognize that they have added conditions that deal with some of the issues in regards to when the trash is being taken out , the hours of the entertainment, as well as what's going on outside of the establishment. Therefore, with the. Speaker 7: Additional conditions. Speaker 6: Of approval, we think we're better off than not having the entertainment permit at all. We are not confident that, based on past and current practices, that the ownership of this establishment will be able to comply with these even since the 30 day ABC. Action. Nothing really has changed. One of the key components of our concern is how the primary business is defined. You heard tonight it's defined as a restaurant, and somewhere in the last 20 years it has shifted from a restaurant to a bar. In looking at the city zoning ordinance, if the city were to define it as what it is a bar, we don't believe there would be any grandfathering allowed and they would have to go through a conditional use permit. The reason we have conditional use permit is so that you can see how a specific operation is being done at a specific location. If this establishment was in a commercial center or a community center, it may not have any problems. But it's currently located the crossroads of a small neighborhood. Speaker 7: Commercial center surrounded. Speaker 6: By a residential neighborhood. So I don't know what the appropriate action is to have that primary business definition looked at, but it certainly needs to be done. That concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you. Our next speaker, please. Speaker 4: Good evening. Speaker 9: I am a resident. I lived south of the previous person who just spoke hour a month. I live on Cerritos. Our families have endured urination in my garden. People being drunk, vomiting all over the place. Feces, sex in the vehicle in front of my house, up and down the street. People, women being plummeted. You can hear the woman, you hear the socks, the blows going into her body and she's screaming and everyone calling the police, even Roxanne's across the street. We get all of their people parking into the street, blocking the driveway, blocking acting silly. So now am I. It's not that I don't want her to have a business there. I hear the hamburgers are good. My problem is all the rest of it. Our families keep our block clean. We go out and we sweep. And we're not happy to have to pick up condoms. I don't want to have to pick up small alcoholic bottles in the front yard because people are drinking before they get to the bar. So they don't have so much money before by the time they get there. They all really want to be drunk and. I mean, we actually live in a nice neighborhood, but the riff raff comes in from the bars and we, the people on all the neighbors have to come out and sweep and clean and call the police immediately so someone's not killed. I'm in the neighborhood. And we don't want to go through this. We sometimes the ballerinas are coming out. We have tiny children walking up and down and they have their little shows. And then you have the mixture, the flip of the bars at night. It's too much. It really is. I'm tired of being worried about. I'm drunk. It's going up and down my street. I really am. And I've raised children and the neighbors are raising children. And. Singing and dancing and all of this other entertainment stuff prolongs their ability to cause this course. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you, Councilor MacGregor. Speaker 3: Thank you. I want to thank the two speakers who came up today to share their thoughts. STAFF Do we have. I hope conditions in place that addressed some of the concerns that were raised right now. Speaker 8: Council member. Speaker 4: The new conditions that are recommended, they do include conditions that would, we believe, go a long way towards addressing those concerns. And upon review by both the the Department of. Speaker 8: Police and Financial Management, we. Speaker 4: Believe this is a good step towards addressing the totality of the concerns that have been raised by the residents. The reasons that we believe that to be the case is this was previously an existing entertainment permit. We're not bringing anything new forward tonight except for additional conditions on activities already existing. And these conditions, because the permit was issued a number of years ago, were not present before. PD has met with the business and spoken with them about the new conditions, believes that they have been very receptive and responsive to those for going forward. And so and these are now in line with what standards that we have learned over a number of years of what we think is appropriate for entertainment permits. And given the two year review had these concerns, this is a good time for us to apply those and then be able to ascertain that the business is able to operate appropriately within them. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There is a motion and a second on on this hearing. So younger. I think we've had the motions been written to the record and if there's no other council comment, we will go ahead and cast our votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: I think you were doing. Before we do the next item, I just wanted to note that item 26 has been pulled from the agenda. That's item 26. Next up, we are going to take item 14.

Contract

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and modify the conditions to the existing Entertainment Permit without dancing issued to Lona Marie Lee, dba Lona’s City Limits Cantina, at 1174 East Wardlow Road. (District 7)

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Speaker 0: I think you were doing. Before we do the next item, I just wanted to note that item 26 has been pulled from the agenda. That's item 26. Next up, we are going to take item 14. Speaker 1: Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to approve a Third Amendment to employment agreement with Thomas Modica to increase the city manager's current annual compensation by 5% and adopt a resolution amending the salary resolution. Speaker 2: Citywide. Speaker 0: For city attorney. Speaker 6: Mayor, thank you. And as pursuant to government code, the California government code, this would amend the contract with the. Speaker 7: City manager and. Speaker 6: Provide a. Speaker 7: Increase in his salary on July 1st of 2021 pursuant to the terms of the employment agreement. The city manager received a 1.45. Speaker 6: Consumer. Speaker 7: Price index increase and the city is now proposing a 5% merit increase. Speaker 6: For an annual salary of. Speaker 7: $309,612. Speaker 6: And an hourly rate of. Speaker 7: $148.34. Speaker 6: Per hour. Speaker 7: That concludes my report. Any questions? I'm happy to answer. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second. There is no public comment on this item. Members, please go ahead and cast your votes.

Resolution

Recommendation to approve a Third Amendment to Employment Agreement with Thomas B. Modica, City Manager, Contract No. 35514, to increase the City Manager’s current annual compensation by five percent (5%) for an annual compensation amount of $309,612.93 at the hourly rate of $148.343 per hour effective July 31, 2021; and Adopt resolution amending Section 2 of Resolution No. RES-20-0108, known as the Salary Resolution of the City of Long Beach, to implement the Third Amendment to terms of the employment agreement with Thomas B. Modica, City Manager. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 6: Thank you. Let's have item number 15, please. Speaker 1: Report from City Manager Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance to revise the title of Human Relations Commission to the Long Beach Equity and Human Relations Commission. Speaker 6: Will make the motion on this one. Staff report. Speaker 8: That evening, Vice Mayor, members of the Council will have ah this presentation made by the Theresa Chandler, our Office of Equity, along with Katie as the equity officer. Thank you. Speaker 4: Okay. All right. We were locating locating the clicker. All right. Good evening. Honorable Mayor and members of the city council meeting are here this evening to present the proposed amendments to the Human Relations Commission and to seek approval for the ordinance to be revised. The reconciliation report we presented to you last August included four main goals. The first of which is to end systemic racism in Long Beach in all local government and partner agencies through internal transformation. From their strategy for is focused on building robust organizational capacity to support anti-racist reform. And one of the action items included reevaluating the role and function of the city's Human Relations Commission as an institutional asset. Since then, the Commission has been going through a robust evaluation process to develop the proposed recommendations we are presenting to you this evening. January of this year, Council directed the city manager to work with the commission to not only change the name, but to also update and expand its mission and scope to align with the recommendations from the Racial Equity and reconciliation initial report. Here is a timeline of the process we've been engaging in since you provided this direction in January. In February, the Commission met to discuss counsel's direction, a timeline process, and formed an ad hoc committee who could dedicate some additional time to this effort outside regular monthly meetings. This ad hoc committee met with the city attorney to best understand the parameters of the City Charter and role of advisory commissions. In March, the Office of Equity held a visioning session with community stakeholders to gather input around what the functions and role of a Re-envision commission could entail. In April, the Ad Hoc Committee reported back to the Commission on the visioning session themes and began discussing and forming recommendations which the Commission voted on in May and circulated for review with the city attorney and city manager in June. We are excited to share these recommendations for your consideration this evening. The proposed amendments in the Long Beach Municipal Code Chapter 2.4 cover four key areas related to the Human Relations Commission, including the name, purpose, functions and membership. It will now walk through each of these areas. Thank you, Theresa. So the Human Relations Commission proposed the revised name of the Equity and Human Relations Commission. There are multiple options being explored by the commission members and community stakeholders, but ultimately they narrowed it down to a few options. An Equity in Human Relations Commission emerged. The name was selected to lead with equity first, while also acknowledging and uplifting the human impacts that we were seeking to achieve through our equity efforts. Next, I will walk through the three revised purposes of the commission. The first is to make advisory policy recommendations to the City Council on Equity, Human Relations and social justice issues, including racial equity and reconciliation. Also to serve as a forum for community discussion on equity and social justice policy issues, and to encourage input and participation from the groups most impacted by these issues. Second, the Commission proposes that they consider and recommend programs that foster a more equitable and socially just Long Beach at the individual community and system level, and to evaluate and provide recommendations regarding such programs, information and services relating to advancing matters of equity, human relations and social justice in the City of Long Beach. Finally, the Commission seeks to cultivate and sustain equity, diversity and inclusion in the City of Long Beach through accountability, measurable outcomes, and civilian oversight to provide accountability and transparency in government in the city of Long Beach. The Commission also recommended the following updated functions to provide a public forum where matters of equity, human relations and social justice may be presented, discussed and evaluated for the purpose of submitting recommendations to the City Council. Recommend policies and programs to the City Council in matters affecting human relations, equity and social justice issues, and recommend legislation for the implementation of such policies. Collaborate on project development with community groups, city commissions and other related institutions, including but not limited to the Human Dignity Program, to foster a more equitable and socially just Long Beach. Review and make recommendations on the equity action plans implemented pursuant to the City's Framework for Racial Equity and Reconciliation. Submit a report to the City Council Biannually that details the status and progress on equity measures in the city and any other areas or topics related to equity, human relations and social justice as directed by the City Council. Related to the membership of the Commission. The first recommendation is to expand the number of members from 13 to 15. The second recommendation is to ensure that the Commission is broadly representative of those persons and groups impacted by inequity at the individual community and systems level. And the third is that commissioners should possess experience either personal, professional or academic experience related to equity, human relations and social justice. And finally, that members must attend an implicit bias or anti-racism training upon being appointed to the Commission. Tonight we ask that city council request the city attorney to prepare an ordinance amending Long Beach Municipal Code Chapter 2.44 to revise the title of the Commission, as well as amend the purpose and duties of the Commission if directed. Between August and October, the City Attorney will work to draft the ordinance update, which could return to city council. That concludes our presentation and we're happy to answer questions. Speaker 6: Thank you. I'll offer my comments here and here from the city council will go to public comment. So, first of all, thank you to the Human Relations Commission taking up this charge. The city council directed you to I, you know, find a way to modernize and update your commission. The last update was 1989. At the same time, the PCC was updated. As we're going through the process of updating the PCC and only made sense to update the Human Relations Commission to place a focus on equity. I think what you present it, I think shows much more clarity in the mission and the focus and thank you , the staff for for doing your job and facilitating this process. I even think the name of what you came up with, equity in human relations, I think that represents compromise and inclusion. I know there was a debate there, but that that represents inclusion. So I think you've done you've done your job, and I'm happy to support what you put in front of me. There's one area and, you know, I you know, I think it needs to be a little tighter on one area. So, you know, focus on the programing and all these other things. I would have loved to see systems or policy added in there, too, because the part of this is really systems and policy. So, you know, that's just my only feedback there. But in general, I think we've done a great job and those are my comments. Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, vice mayor. And also, I just want to say thank you to the members of the commission and the support staff. That was a wonderful presentation. Also a special thanks to the chair and Vice Chair Ellis and Amy. I am very grateful for your frequent communications and I'm so happy to have you both residents of the Second District. I wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly support the inclusion of equity, specifically in the title and mission of the Human Relations Commission, and support renaming the Commission the Long Beach Equity and Human Relations Commission. I also support the recommendations to increase membership on the Commission and also increase their scope of work. The Commission can and should be empowered to serve as an advisory body, recommending solutions from and for the community. I look forward to continue to work with you and all of the wonderful commissioners. Thank you for all your hard work and testing. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 2: Councilman Ciro Ings Vice Mayor. I also want to add my thanks to Ms.. Chandler and Ms.. Balderas for the presentation and their work with the Commission. I know it's. I also want to thank our commissioners for their hard work and just going through such a process to ensuring that there is dialog and conversation about what it means to be inclusive and to work toward equity. And so I think it's really important that we do consider how the commission is relevant to our times and the needs. So I just want to thank all the hard work that was put into coming to this point and with the renaming and the additional board members to the commission , which I fully support. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you public comment for any public comment on this item. Speaker 1: There is the first speaker is Amy Erickson. Chanel Smith, Melissa morgan and John Schultz. Can you please line up? Speaker 4: Good evening, Vice Mayor. Council member. So nice to see you all inside here again. And to city staff, especially to Kelly, Colby, Tom Modica and Charlie Parkin and your staffs for all the hard work that you've all done on this change to this ordinance. I am Amy Ericson. I'm a lifelong resident here in District two, and I am coming to you as the vice chair of the hopefully soon to be renamed Equity and Human Relations Commission. I'm here to support agenda item 15, which is this recommendation to revise the title of the Human Relations Commission to the Equity and Human Relations Commission and to amend the purpose, functions and membership of the HRC. I would also say to also fund $200,000 per year to support the work of the Commission and those staff members that work diligently on all of their work and then have to find time to do this work. We want to see some dedicated staff time so that they don't have to work five times harder than most other folks. As the City of Long Beach engages in efforts to institutionalize equity and infuse an equity lens throughout this process, it's we want to move that through its practices, policies and decision making. And it has and it is critical that an independent citizen commission has the ability to advise, advise city council on matters of equity and social justice and be on hand to provide accountably accountability and partnership throughout the process. Just as you said, vice mayor. I think policy is most important in the work that we're doing. This is something I know we've been able to do in past years as we present and comment in council. But with this change in ordinance, we will ensure that this work continues into the future. On that note, we are hoping that not only will you support this ordinance tonight, but that you will look at the items that were recommended through the process from community commissioners and staff. One important piece is that we also need to staff this important work. But as Chair Sardinia's stated in the Cape Cod presentation, all commissioners want the community to come out and share their needs so each commission can help. We meet on the first Wednesday of each month and would like to make sure that any of the community here come out to our meetings and be a part of it. Another recommendation we have is about commissions. What we found through our work is that this is not the only commission we need to look at. A women's commission is desperately needed in this town to look at the work of what we can do to uphold these people. It's critically important, especially when we're thinking about naming buildings and naming bridges. It's important to think about women in that as well. I wanted to also share that some of the work that we also need to be doing is around ensuring that this work goes on. So we are going to be coming back to you to talk to you about how we can make this a charter commission. We know that you all uphold the values that we that we hold dear, this commission. But we don't know that you're that the people that come after you will as well. So thank you so much for your time. Speaker 6: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 2: Hello. My name's Chanel Smith. I'm a resident of District three and the district appointed to the Human Relations Commission. And I want to thank Council for your recognition of all of the hard work that went into this new name and the new purposes. And to that, the staff, Teresa and Katy, for the amazing work that they did in helping us through this process. I won't take up too much time. I think that Commissioner Erikson said it perfectly. Vice Mayor, I appreciate your comments on how this is really a systemic issue and how this commission needs to start looking at systems , which is why we want to have the revised duties that the Equity and Human Relations Commission are asking for. And also we'll be coming back to you guys to discuss this becoming a chartered commission. I want to second Commissioner Eriksson Eriksson's comments regarding the $200,000 ask that is not a part of today's mission or today's motion, but we'll be coming back. It's really important that we have staff to support this and that we recognize that we're not asking to reinvent the wheel. As the Relief Human Relations Commission moves into the city manager's office, the staff that we currently have is not going to follow us until we want to make sure that we have that continued staff support. So thank you all for your time and for the acknowledgment of the need for this commission to change its work. Speaker 6: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 4: Okay. Well, good morning or no I'm I got an evening long day I. Speaker 6: Did that. Speaker 4: Pandemic life blurs their everyday is blurs day. I'm. Hello Mayors. City Council city manager and city staff. I'm Melissa morgan speaking tonight on behalf of Long Beach Forward where I am privileged to work and learn and grow. We support this important step to provide some citizen led oversight and advisement and accountability regarding the city's equity driven efforts . And we support amending the Commission's purpose, functions and membership in line with recommendations from the Racial Equity and reconciliation initial report. We also support $200,000 of funding for staff support. You may not know, but once upon a time I staffed the Human Relations Commission when I worked in the same offices, our city manager here and I was in the city manager's office. Back then, maybe you could imagine the Human Relations Commission was a little bit pooh poohed, for lack of a better word. It wasn't really lifted up or valued. There was not budget and staff support that I was able to give was very minimal. And so that commitment just wasn't there. So this is very encouraging to see this effort being made and this support from staff and hopefully from you, all this council and really making this change. I had the honor to independently outside of my 9 to 5 or nine train or depending how late this goes tonight, my full time job to participate in the March 24th Community Stakeholder Visioning session. There were about 25 no 35 passionate community members and ten staff, I believe. And it was an amazing experience. Folks shared, very frankly, how much they care about human relations. Some great tips on how commissions could function. So I definitely encourage you to read the report that is added here in the materials. And I wanted to tell all of you council members that some people in the community have a perception and concern that you all don't necessarily embrace equity to its fullest and that there may be staff who do not embrace equity to its fullest and that there's work to be done there. We're really looking for actions beyond words, as well as funding and budget and change in system and policy. So the community was very clear that they're looking for your leadership to really show how deeply you embrace equity, diversity and inclusion. Something I was reminded in the process is that the Human Relations Commission was started and then restarted again in response to police brutality. And back then there was an article about 30 years ago where a person who was involved said, We really hope this commission gets some teeth this time, so we're asking you for some teeth. Please support this item. Please support deeper equity regardless of race, sexual orientation, our age or immigration status. It's vital that we see diversity, equity and inclusion priorities in our government. We're waiting for your leadership. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, council people, city staff. I see the equity team over there. I see fellow commissioner here. My name is John Schulz and I'm a 20 year resident of the fifth District. Today I speak to you as a member of the Human Relations Commission. I'm the newest member, and really, I've only seen these people on on Zoom. And you guys all look better in person briefing. I ask you for your support of agenda item 15. Up on the screen, the logistics call for a name change. Some additional commissioners that's likely to pass at a moment. So today I'm going to advocate, advocate and encourage the city manager, the mayor and the council to help find the funds requested in this item. It's a relatively small amount, and we do have some federal one times to look at, especially any of those funds that require an eye on equity. We have a huge task of reconciliation ahead of us. Help us help you. In the policies, logistics and implementation of equity and everything that that word means to our city. That's what I got. Thank you for your time. Stay healthy. Fantastic. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you all for your participation here. And and good luck to the new HRC and members. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 6: Thank you. Let's take item number 27 now.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending Chapter 2.44 of the Long Beach Municipal Code to: (1) revise the title of the Human Relations Commission (HRC) to the Long Beach Equity and Human Relations Commission; and, (2) to amend the purpose, functions, and membership of the HRC, as outlined in Attachment A. (Citywide)

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Speaker 6: All right. So I lost my paper that showed me which item was doing that. Okay. We're going to take we're going to pick up item number 25. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Mongo Councilman super not councilmember your UNGA Councilman Austin Recommendation to request city manager to assess citywide impacts of SB nine and SB ten and report back to the State Legislation Committee. Speaker 6: All right, Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 4: Thank you. Many of you know that this item has been in committee, and I think it's important. I get a lot of calls with questions. And sometimes the questions are so specific that I don't always know the answer. I spent a lot of time calling development services back and forth, and I think that there would be some value in having development services provide some context and information very globally and by district to the state committee. State committee is an open forum so community members can participate and attend. And then we can use that information, put it out in our newsletter, provide additional information to the community so that people know more about SB nine and SB ten. There are parts of SB nine and SB ten that people agree with, and there are parts of SB nine and SB ten that people hope that will still change . But I think that it's really important that. They know the facts so they can both advocate for or against whatever they have. So with that, that is my agenda item and thank you for those who signed on. Speaker 6: Thank you. Council member Turanga. Speaker 3: Thank you. I think it's important for us to know exactly what's going on with these two legislative items here. I know there's going to be a lot of staff trying to take it up. And I think. Mr. Quincey, you're you're out there. Can you give us an estimate as to what you think would be a time frame for this to come back to the state led committee? Speaker 6: So I'll be working with Dr. Crowley here. We'll both be working on this item. Know, in a perfect world, to give you perfect information about, every single district would take six weeks. I understand it may be scheduled faster than that. So based on, you know, when you schedule the item, we will provide you the best information we can at that time. The same staff that will be working on this item are also working on the data related to the just cause item that was just heard by council. And we do have some issues with our software that we all talked about a few weeks ago. So it does take some time. I apologize for that. But we will do our best to provide counsel, the best information we can in the most timely basis as possible. Speaker 3: I want to thank Councilmember Mongo for bringing this forward and for taking it to the state led committee, which I think would be the appropriate committee for it to be heard first before we expect it in court for a full hearing. Thank you. Speaker 6: All right. Thank you, Councilmember Price. Speaker 2: I, too, want to commend Councilwoman Mango for bringing this item forward. We are. This is probably the topic we get the most emails about in my district. So I really appreciate this approach. I do have a request for city staff when this item comes back. You know, one of the things that I've shared with our delegation is this idea that Long Beach. We're working so hard to try to meet our housing goals. And there are so many cities that are not taking that approach, and there are many cities that are ignoring the mandates. And so I wonder if that's possible for Long Beach or cities like Long Beach who are working so hard to expand our housing stock to be exempt from some of these policies or somehow build build an exemption through our work such that if you're meeting the goals or if you're. Speaker 8: You know. Speaker 2: Making progress in meeting the goals, then maybe you get a credit so you're not subject to the same requirements or the same state intervention. I don't even know if that's possible, but I feel like we should be treated. Differently than cities that are completely rejecting the reality of housing. And I don't like the fact that we're being all lumped into one, because just in the third district alone, we're producing 10% of the required housing for the city of Long Beach in the next three decades. So I would love to see if there is a way that we can advocate, of course, through through discussion at the state ledge committee. But how can we best advocate for Long Beach to either either be exempt or have different standards? So I don't know. Is that even something that you guys have talked about? Speaker 6: We'd be glad to report back on that and then just share two items with the council. You know, there's a lot of interest in these two bills. We may remember several years back, a bill called SB 35. And there is a lot of concern about it. It turns out we haven't had a single SB 35 project in the city, but that bill had triggers. So if you are meeting your Rina, you are totally exempt. If you are meeting certain portions of your RINA, you went on to middle category. So that's a model that already exists in other legislation. We can report back about that and then we can also report back separate from these two bills. There is a provision making its way through the legislature called the Housing Accountability Unit, which would hold cities that don't follow housing mandates accountable. I know there's a lot of different opinions about that just sharing with you. I think it's a frustration to staff that we invest. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to understand every year all the rulemaking and legislation that comes down from Sacramento and following it to the letter. Some of our peer cities don't take the same approach, and this would provide staff at the state level to take enforcement against those cities that aren't aren't following the rules. Speaker 2: Oh, well, that's good. Thank you. So as to right now, does SB nine or ten have those triggers in it, or is that something we might be able to advocate for? Speaker 6: Those triggers aren't in in the legislation today. And I'll work with Dr. Carley to see what's possible. Speaker 2: Right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Speaker 6: All right. Thank you all at my comments here. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongeau. I think it's the right approach. Hey, let's sometimes the legislation, you'll see a lot of smaller cities will get together and advocate one position or the other. And as Mr. Coons just, just stated, we have our own a governor affairs apparatus here and here in Long Beach. I'm a part of an executive board of two organizations that they do that they they look at what's best in general for cities like Skaggs. Their position on on SB nine was oppose unless amended with some very specific things that they requested contract cities this year for one year I'm on the executive board there. Their position was, I believe, the same, I think here in Long Beach. I think this approach of asking staff to actually place the lens of Long Beach on the policy and see what's, you know, is there an impact along Beach? I don't see that that the bill actually benefits us very much. I don't see a benefit to it. I think there are things like SB six, seven, nine that will open up the playbook for funding. And years ago we were very, very clear that Long Beach we've done we've allocated, I think, 28,000 units, the Orlando minus element, the spaces there to build our biggest barriers, funding to make housing affordable and to incentivize development. The legislature took our biggest tool away redevelopment, where 20% of every dollar will go to accelerate affordable housing production. Specifically, the most important and impactful thing we can get from Sacramento is reestablish a finance mechanism and tool to build and produce housing. Now that's Long Beach. Now there are issues in other communities, but that's not a Long Beach issue. So I think whatever our position is in Long Beach, it should be proportional to the impact on Long Beach. If is not much of an impact on Long Beach, then we should put our focus on being proactive in Sacramento on the bills that we think will actually help us solve the problem. If this bill, I would love to see the report back on what the impact of this is. Not much of an impact on Long Beach. I think we should we should just be very clear what what our position is. Let that be known. I'll put a finger on the scale if we need to. But we should really be putting our resources behind the things that we know will actually help us solve the problem, in my opinion. But I think I support this item. It allows us to take the steps to have more clear understandings, a lot of misinformation out there. And my hope is that this process will help to clarify those things. I don't see any other council comments, any public comment on this item. Speaker 1: There is one public comment on item 25. Jacob O'Donnell. Speaker 6: Thank you. Speaker 5: Good evening, Vice Mayor and members of the Long Beach City Council. My name is Jake Jacob O'Donnell, field representative to Senator Lena Gonzalez, who is coauthor of Senate Bill nine. So California is in the midst of a housing crisis per the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Only 27% of households can afford to purchase the median priced single family home, which is 50% below the national average. And of those renters, it's over half of renters, and 80% of low income renters are rent burdened in the state. So in response, SB nine builds on the successful approach of current ADU law and expands options for homeowners who wish to be part of the solution in solving the housing crisis. So this bill has a number of safeguards to ensure that local governments maintain control of zoning and design standards, that community character is respected and that tenants are protected from displacement. There is an owner occupancy requirement in the bill. And that historic neighborhoods are preserved. And this bill also expands opportunities for homeowners to build equity while also generating affordable units excuse me for working families and seniors, creating new home homeownership opportunities for those currently locked out of the market. And it provides flexibility for multi-generational housing. So as the vice mayor kind of alluded to, that as benign as it's currently in will have little impact on most single family neighborhoods in Long Beach because of the local control components of the bill so as to be nine provides local control over zoning and design standards as long as they do not conflict with the bill. So this is specifically prohibiting duplexes or physically precluding the development of two 800 plus feet square units. And in addition, SB nine prohibits the demolition of more than 25% of the existing exterior structural walls unless the ordinance allows a local ordinance would allow that. And again, it has a tenant. Owner occupancy requirements. So far the structure had been occupied within the past three years. That would be exempt as well or excuse me, protected as well. And I'd like to conclude my comments with the some comments from the Senator directly. So the senator wants to thank the council for bringing this item forth. She's thankful for the hard work of the City Council and agrees that this bill is going to bring some perspective on both as a benign and as an SB ten on next steps. And she's looking forward to just engaging individually and collectively on, you know, solutions to go ahead and address this crisis for our mutual residents. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Send our regards to the senator members. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries eight zero.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager and all relevant City Departments to assess likely Citywide impacts of SB 9 and SB 10 and report back to the State Legislation Committee, prior to any established hearing date at the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

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Speaker 6: All right. I think we now are item number 16. Speaker 1: Okay. Report from Health and Human Services, Development Services and Economic Development Recommendation to adopt a resolution to accept and expand grant funding from the California Department of Housing and Community Development in an amount not to exceed 5,100,000 and to execute any subsequent amendments with CD relating to the Grant Application and award for conversion of the Interim Housing Homekey site at 1725 Long Beach Boulevard into permanent supportive housing District one. Speaker 6: I councilman's well, actually Stafford Port Police. Okay. Is there a brief staff report on this one? Speaker 8: Yes. Kelly Collopy will give a brief staff presentation. Speaker 10: Good evening, Vice Mayor and council members. So this funding, really, it's requesting authorization or a resolution to authorize an application from the city of Long Beach to apply for the CDBG Homekey funds. Really, the purpose of doing this is to identify a $5.1 million to be able to support the conversion of the course of the best Western , which is our Homekey site at 1725 Long Beach Boulevard. So it would move from a transitional housing as it currently operates to permanent supportive housing. So this is to allow for that application process. The applications do go on a rolling basis. So our goal is to get in there early and quickly to make sure we don't lose our opportunity. The funds would go towards the phase conversion of the site, including picture upgrades to each unit, installing kitchenettes, replacing flooring, plumbing, TV and internet connectivity, electrical painting and other sort of upgrades to create the permanent supportive housing opportunities. I'm open for. Speaker 6: Questions. Thank you. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 2: Thank you, Vice Mayor, and thank you, Director Khalid. Before that, homelessness is one of the highest reasons for why many residents reach out to my office. And it is a concern for many of us. Also in the city is heartbreaking to me when our neighbor neighborhoods and when I'm out in the neighborhood and see so many people struggling, many with mental health needs and other challenges. Getting unhoused people housed is an immediate need. We need to help people get on their feet again and receive the necessary resources to live healthy, clean, and not have to be sleeping on hard, cold, concrete floors on our street. So thank you very much for this. And I'm very supportive of this item. Speaker 6: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: No comments. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. I see there's one public comment on this. Laura Roberts. Laura here. Okay, members, please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Cantons in house. Motion carries weight zero.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution to accept and expend grant funding from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), in an amount not to exceed $5,100,000; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all necessary documents and any subsequent amendments, including amending the terms or changing the amount of the award, with HCD relating to the grant application and award, for conversion of the City’s existing 102-unit interim housing Homekey site at 1725 Long Beach Boulevard into permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. (District 1)

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Speaker 0: In fact, and I'm not sure if there are there are folks here for any of the funds transfer item items or not, but we have so many of those. Why don't we just do those ones right now and just get those out of the way? Because your staff in the back we have let's do item 22, 23, 25, 31, 33 and 34 all funds transfers. We can just read those all into the record and we'll take one vote. Speaker 1: So that starts with item 21. Did you say. Speaker 0: I believe there are items 22, 23, 25, 31, 33 and 34 I think are all the funds transfer items. Speaker 1: Item 22 Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $2,490 to provide a donation to the Friends of Belmont Shore for Summer Concert. Item 23 Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $460 to provide a donation to children today for the annual 3rd of July celebration. Big Bang on the Bay. Item 25 Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by 2300 to provide a donation to the Community Action Team for their annual community events. Item 31 Communication from Councilwoman Price Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by 6000 for a community concert on August 1st, 2021. Item 33 Recommendation and Communication from Councilman Austin Councilmember Your UNGA recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by 2000 to provide a donation to the Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association to support the summer concerts at Los Cerritos Park. And Item 34 recommend a communication from Councilman Austin. Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $1,000 to provide a contribution to the Partners of Parks to support the Juneteenth 2021 celebration. Item 35 Communication from Councilwoman Sara. Recommendation to approve the expenditure of $5,000 in the General Fund group as a reward for information identification. I'm sorry, that's not a fund transfer. Speaker 5: That's correct. 35 needs to be heard separately. Thank you. Speaker 0: Great. Speaker 1: That was it. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. We have a motion in a second. Is your public comment or any of these funds transfers? Speaker 1: No public comment on those items. Speaker 0: Councilman Price, anything? Councilman Sara. Anything? Okay, then. Let's go. We have a motion in a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 0: And it's just for the public. The councilman's system is not working. So she's sitting over in the eighth District. Speaker 6: I'm renting a seat in the eighth District tonight. Speaker 1: Motion carries a zero. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. We're going to go back to our our study session then, and which we have scheduled today, which is a big staff presentation. I want to I'm going to open it up and let me know, Mr. Modica, when you guys are set up and ready.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $2,490, offset by the Third Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to provide a donation to the Friends of Belmont Shore for summer concert; and Decrease appropriations in the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $2,490 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. We're going to go back to our our study session then, and which we have scheduled today, which is a big staff presentation. I want to I'm going to open it up and let me know, Mr. Modica, when you guys are set up and ready. Speaker 5: We're ready. Speaker 0: Okay, great. We have actually let me go in first. Do you want to read the city section into the record, please? Speaker 1: Recommendation to conduct a study session to receive and file a presentation on efforts related to the Clean Language Initiative. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I am thankful I've been talking to staff about bringing this study session forward. And it's something that I know is not just important to me, but it's important to everybody on this dais. And we've been talking about this for as long as we've all been, I think, together as part of this body, the cleanliness of the city and ensuring that neighborhoods, regardless of where they're located across across the city, are clean and well maintained is incredibly important. I also want to make sure that I think we're all aware that during the pandemic, the the impact of the pandemic had on cleanliness was was serious. And we have gone through a health recovery. We're going through an economic recovery and making sure that we also recover so that neighborhoods have the streets sweeping on time, that trash is being picked appropriately, that dumped items are being are being picked up when they need to be. The corridors are being cleaned up is also really important when you think about a year and a half now where you had much of your staff or many staff members, whether they were sick or they weren't able to go do certain certain functions of their job. It did impact cleanliness when you had more homes producing more waste. That also impacts cleanliness. And when you have different patterns of travel, that also impacts cleanliness. When folks from your from from certain departments are unable to do certain work because they're out working at getting folks healthy or vaccinated or tested, that also impacts the work that we can do as a city around cleanliness. So we have had a difficult year and a half, but I'm really proud of the staff, is doing a great job of bringing this back and I look forward to hearing the presentation. We want to make sure that Long Beach is is a clean community for everyone that is here. And I know there's going to be a lot of questions. I have some as well that I'll I'll ask of you guys as soon as the presentation is over. I want to thank you guys for the work that you that you did with this and the memo that you sent to council earlier today. And I view this as a very important initiative for the team and for the staff as we move forward across this next year. So, Mr. Modica. Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. That was a very good overview. We are going to have a presentation that kind of has three parts today. We're going to talk about a lot of the investment that this Mayor and council have made over the past four or five years. It's been impressive considering where we started. We didn't really have this kind of clean language program. We created it and just about every year we added to it. Every year, though, we kept getting more and more requests. So the better we did, the more requests we got for our service. And you'll see that today. Do you asked us to do probably 20 to 5 different initiatives as part of that over the years. We're going to report on those today. Almost all of those are complete or we're going to be getting to a lot of those or a couple of more of those as we do the Recovery Act. We're also going to go through some of the data of what it's looked like over the last year. That was one of the strangest years we've had from a from a refuge perspective. And the mayor mentioned a, well, just patterns changed and demand changed and the team really had to adapt to keep up with it. And then we're going to talk about what's next. We have for at least two years, we have some dedicated resources to really invest and do things we've never been able to do before. So I will turn it over to Eric Lopez, to Nico Mokonyane and to Chris Coons, who I'm sorry, Chris Hubert, who will go through the presentation. Thank you, Tom. I want to reiterate that maintaining a clean city is one of our department's highest priorities. We have heard loud and clear that this is a priority for the mayor and the city council, and it's a priority for us as well. So we've throughout the years, we have built a strong, clean team that continues to improve and evolve. And the present presentation today, I think, is going to demonstrate some of that evolution and some of the improvements that that we continue to make. So with that, wanted to turn it over to Decode McClennan, our deputy director. Go. Speaker 7: Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having us here tonight to give this presentation. We're eager to. Share with you some of the challenges we face and some of the some of the successes we have had and anticipate. So with that, I'll start it off. The Clean Team was developed in fiscal year 16 2016. We were directed to develop and implement a clean team operation with an emphasis on improving the quality of life and esthetics in our neighborhoods. That included collecting illegally dumped items, dealing with cleanups of people experiencing homelessness, encampments and bulky item collections, litter abatement, some public education as well . In fiscal year 17, the mayor announced the Clean Language Initiative, and I'll be reviewing some of the items that were part of that initiative in a few moments. In fiscal year 19, the clean team took over cleanups for people experiencing homelessness in the park sites. And in fiscal year 20, the operation observed graffiti abatement as well. Initially there was a request for an illegal dumping action plan, which I believe, Councilmember, your anger had brought to the table at the same time that the mayor was also asking for the similar questions. What we did was we we evaluated what we were doing and looked at the the requests from the plan, and we enhanced our staffing as a result of that. We started promoting our no dumping signs that are available to residents for posting. We worked with L.A. County and the L.A. County sanitation districts to increase opportunities for household hazardous waste drop offs going from once a month to twice a month at a facility on California. We increased our. We promoted our bulky item collection program a little more heavily. And we increased opportunities at that time from two free annual pick ups to four free annual pick ups. And subsequently, we have increased that to 12 annual pick ups. We developed a mapping system where we can track our hotspots of where dumped items were being found so that we can proactively address those areas. We evaluated enforcement options. Some of you may recall we did a project with the graduate students from the Kennedy School of Management at Harvard University who did a lot of data gathering for us and provided us with some information that we helped use to target enforcement and target services in certain areas. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention our mattress and box spring collections, which that data in and of itself has become an item. When I remember when we were at about 15,000 mattresses a year, I remember the first time staff came to me and said, we did some analysis and we found it's 300 mattresses a week. And I basically looked at and said, Go back and redo your work because that makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. And she came back and showed me it was 15,600 mattresses a year. So now we're over 25,000 mattresses and box springs a year. It's a remarkable number. We do track this separately because we do get some reimbursement from the Mattress Recycling Council, which when I learned that there was a mattress recycling council, I learned that every industry has its has its representatives out there championing your efforts. Speaker 0: And I want to just kind of highlight that. I just think it's such an important number that we haven't talked about with the public in a long time. But the fact that we are that we illegally dump or pick up 25,000 mattresses a year in the city of Long Beach is is startling. And that goes to show that the amount of work and that is just one type of dumped item 25,000 mattresses a year. And so thank you for for that. Speaker 7: Sure. And to be clear, it's both dumped item and and schedule collection combination, but 25,000 is a huge, huge number. Agreed. So in the Mayor's Clean Long Beach initiative, there are about 18 different action items that we will summarize over the next few slides and provide some updates or review. The city's current cleaning efforts was obviously the baseline that was was established. And based on that, we made some staffing increases by reviewing our resources and our current efforts. At that time, we looked at where our public litter containers were. I apologize if you got to advance the slide. Thank you, Eric. We looked at where our public container litter container locations were and have added about 200 locations since then and that's ongoing. It's evaluated regularly and we do add where we find appropriate when we do get requests for some of your offices to make additions as well . And thank you for being our eyes and ears on those. And we review the graffiti contract and resources and I'm really proud to say that 99% of graffiti is abated within 48 hours. And another statistic that I I'm really proud of is that almost 98% is removed in 24 hours and really proud of that work that's done . Thank you. We have community partners. We partner with Long Beach Transit and Long Beach Transit works with US Weekly to do deep cleanings, which I'll talk about a little later. We work with the bids citywide who have been very supportive and helpful. We were asked to consider a revolving volunteer corps based under the circumstances of the pandemic. That's been delayed a little bit, but we did use community service workers as support for a while. We have not continued to do that again due to the pandemic, and we'll talk about that a little later as well. We created a litter free Long Beach campaign and that included schools. And we'll talk about how that's coming back. We're going to be renewing that program. And we. We explore information marketing campaign and more neighborhood cleanups. So what we did with these marketing campaigns is we identified what are the big items in our litter stream. We found that that cigaret butts were somewhere close to 16% of what was in our litter stream. So we did a targeted campaign on on reducing cigaret butts out there. This council approved an expanded polystyrene ban, which is also a large item of litter out there. And we've been implementing that. Neighborhood cleanups were put on hold during the pandemic, but they're back and roaring. And we will talk a little bit about that to. Improving free on and off ramp cleanliness. We are in discussion with Caltrans to establish an MRU that will allow for City of Longreach to go in and do some cleanups on 22 targeted on and off ramps throughout the city. We hope that this will allow for us to have a quicker response to requests. We ask to look at a locked dumpster policy. We ran a pilot program on that in the East Village area. We are planning another pilot program. The results of that program were somewhat mixed. Some people really like them. Some people did not like them. Some people found that it did reduce litter in their area. Some people found that people were unwilling to unlocking and created more bags. So it's a it's a great idea, but it has its pluses and minuses. And then we were asked to explore an empty private lot ordinance which development services and code enforcement did that. And the City Council passed an ordinance a few years back regarding empty lots. We were asked to modernize to go Long Beach app and we have done so. If we use the Salesforce platform now, which is known worldwide and this system integrates with our existing systems and on the back end of it has really streamlined our ability to create field assignments and and issue them out to the field in a much more expeditious manner than the previous system allowed us to do and provide a customer relationship management implementation system. And the Salesforce application allows us to do that. And there are many tools currently available to utilize in that manner. Review shopping cart theft technology. We reviewed what we were doing. We had a contract with the shopping cart retrieval company. And frankly, what we determined was it was not being effective. So we eliminated the contract and the clean team crews are now responding to that. And I will tell you, we get a fraction of the requests for for shopping in shopping carts, though, than we used to do. Proactive code enforcement are code enforcement partners with the clean team. On our deep cleaning days, their staffing was impacted and during the pandemic, a lot of that staff was reallocated to do the enforcement for the health orders and at the parklets and whatnot. So while they are continuing now to get their staffing back up, we will hopefully see some more proactive code enforcement coming in the future. And Police Department issued over 120 letter citations in fiscal year 20. We continue to work with them to see how we can enhance those options. So now I'd like to talk about our current clean team activities. As you can see on this slide, we started in fiscal year 16 with about ten, ten and a half employees. That includes management oversight. Since then, fiscal year 20, we've increased the full time equivalent to 31 and a half. And based on our American recovery plan funding that we're going to get over the next two years, we are we've been approved to add 20 full time equivalent non-career positions to support that. We are already in the process of hiring those nine careers and we have brought about 11 of them on board so far already. This is not to reflect that what the actual current staffing is. We do not have 51 people out there working. I want to make sure that's clear. The goal is to get 51 people out there working. The responsibilities of the clean team remain largely the same as when they were originally planned. Illegally Dumped Item Collection. Mattress Collection. Bulky Item Collection. Homeless Encampment Cleanups. E-waste White goods, which are appliances and tire collections. And the reason some of these items are listed separately is to make clear that we have to use different equipment to collect these materials. We can't throw a TV in the back of a trash truck. We have to send a different vehicle to do that. Mattresses have to be kept separate altogether so that we can get reimbursement from the Mattress Recycling Council. So sometimes when you have a pile of stuff and only a portion of it, a portion of it disappears and then some of it remains. It's because we have to bring a separate truck in to collect those items. Deep cleanings, which we'll talk about in a moment. And graffiti abatement and litter abatement. We wanted to provide a little bit of some statistics and some graphs because my mom always told me she likes pretty pictures and colorful stuff. So that's what we did. And what we have here is we see the orange bars are special, bulky item collections, which are scheduled and requested by residents. Blue is illegally dumped items. So we can see that while there's an increase of both, we see a greater increase in special collections. And I believe that has a lot to do with us changing our methodologies. A few years ago, part of what we determined when we were working with the graduate students from from Harvard was that we got so caught up in responding to illegally dumped items, we were collecting them sooner than we were collecting items for people who were doing it properly and scheduling it. And we also learned that when we would tell people, We'll come pick up your couch in three or four weeks, they'd say, Never mind, and just take a picture of it and send it in as a dumped item in a go along recap. So we had some challenges as we changed our methodology, but I'm proud to say that now we get your special collections collected by the next week. Sometimes, at worst, we may have to schedule a Saturday clinical crew to do anything that we missed, but they're done by that next week. That does increase a slight delay on our dumped items, but our dumped items are still being responded to within five working days. Next map shows some of our efforts in areas where we do cleanups for people experiencing homelessness and also cleanups where we have our hotspots which aren't necessarily the same hotspots could be litter hotspots or dumped item hotspots as well. You can see there's been an increase in both. To be honest with you, as some of this, I don't believe this is the best metric in explaining how we deal with people experiencing homelessness and the and the litter and debris that remains as a result of that, because a cleanup could be two items . Cleanup could be massive. And so we're going to try and find a way to provide a better metric for you guys so you can get a better picture of what's going on out in the field. We talked about mattress collection. You can see the increase over the last few years here. Next slide, please. And now we'll talk about moving through the pandemic and the COVID 19 challenges we experienced over the last six months. First of all, staffing was obviously impacted by quarantine and isolation protocols when people experienced exposures. You'll see towards the bottom of the slide our sick leave usage in calendar year 2020 compared to 19 was a 90% increase and. You'll see the increase in calls for service that we're going to talk about in a moment while we have the experiencing this 90% increase in sick leave usage. We also utilize clean team members when our refuge operation is in shorthanded. Our primary core service is to make sure that the the trash you pay for to get collected on a weekly basis is done. So. So we do sometimes tap into our resources over the clean team to support our refugees collection. And during the pandemic that happens quite often. We are also utilize community service workers before the pandemic and to get this in perspective, in our fiscal year 19, when we had a full year of community service workers, we used we have 20600 hours of community service workers. That equates to about 400 Labor hours a week that we lost in March of 2020 because of the pandemic. And that all went to support the clean team. We are working with the city's safety officer now to develop protocols so we can reinstate that program. Also, we have daily sanitation sanitization protocols at each employee had to do that impacts the time. If it takes 15 minutes to get your additional safety gear, wipe down your truck, the interior, the exterior, 15 minutes over 50 trucks a day. That's that's a lot of hours. Again, that takes labor hours to get that work done. And we had about a 30% increase in calls for service between 15 as fiscal year 19 to fiscal year 20, which again were being addressed with a 90% increase in sick leave usage. I'd also like to add to that slide that during that time between March and May, we suspended street sweeping operations which. Street sweeping collects about 900 to 1000 tons of debris a month. So you can imagine for two months we didn't sweep sweep any streets at all. And then when we did return, street sweeping, we have been short staffed. Good news is that we have a civil service list now and we conducted interviews today to hire some people on board. So that's great news. But when we did return to sleeping, we were also had a parking citation forgiveness. And so we were issuing a lot more parking citations than we typically did and dismissing a lot more citations. I believe we just missed somewhere in the vicinity of 25,000 citations. So imagine for each one of those citations that was dismissed, there was a vehicle impeding our ability to provide a quality sweep. Additional challenges, 49% increase in calls for service in our hotline we had. We'll show you that statistic, that graph in a minute. It was somewhere around 150,000 calls for service this past year, 32% increase in go along beach requests, 22% increase in illegally dumped item reports, 21% increase in special bulky item collection requests, 9% increase in residential refuse collected. And I'd like to really talk about that for a second. When we discussed this briefly back in September last year, we were experiencing a 13% increase of level down over the year to be about a 9% increase. That's still about between 18 and 19,000 additional tons of trash that's collected at residential harms. That's the addition of the equivalent of five and a half routes added per day, which we didn't add we had to absorb with our existing team, which again was being impacted by the higher use of sick leave and furloughs for a portion of that time. So it was really a. Commendable that that refugee operation was able to do what they did do during that time. With the additional challenges, they experienced a slight increase in graffiti, square footage and a slight increase in. Speaker 6: Our. Speaker 7: Number of encampments that we had to work on. This is a monthly chart and it starts in January 2020 pre-pandemic. And you can see our base in March is lower than where our our start was before the pandemic. The good news is you can see what you can see where we spiked in July and the blue item is the blue line as illegally dumped items and the orange line is our special collections. And so while the special collections are fairly consistently even, we did see a huge spike in weekly dumped items from May to July . Some of that balanced out. And now, as you can see, we're lower than where we started in January in both illegally dumped items and go Long Beach requests and our requests for scheduled special collections continues to go up, which is a really good sign for us. Also, this is our hotline request. You can see where we had the spike in the summertime, but an additional spike in September, October. That spike in October reflects a time when we were really impacted with quarantines and isolation. At one point in October, our clean team was one person and everybody else was in quarantine or operation. And even as recently as two weeks ago, we had six people in quarantine or or isolation in our in our clean team. So that increasing calls, there is a reflection of complaints that were driven because of our inability to provide service. Next slide, please. Thank you. So deep cleaning events. We provide deep cleaning events weekly. They were they were impacted by the pandemic. Like I said, when we had people out in quarantine where our deep cleaning was impacted, too. Code enforcement had reallocated their resources to the to the work on the pandemic response so they weren't as available to support other outside agencies like Long Beach. Transit had their own impacts, and there were times where they were unable to support. So it was challenging. I'm glad to say things are back to normal, so we're glad to see the deep cleanings continuing. They include debris removal, bulky item collection, litter abatement, graffiti abatement, language transit comes in as bus shelter maintenance when possible. We have read abatement included and code enforcement comes along and notes any code violations to property owners. We've also partnered with some outside agencies I mentioned, along with transit, but also the Conservation Corps and the Cerritos wetland stewards, where we'll identify locations that they can provide support us, they can provide support for us to address. This is this is what we call a heat map. This was revised in December 2020. This reflects the calendar year, 2020. The yellow areas are the highest hit areas. You can see that. The highest addressed areas correspond a lot with multi-family living areas as well and concentrated a large part in the downtown area, although you do see areas west and north and a touch of other parts of the cities city. So next steps, the American Rescue Plan Act. $4 million. We had initially requested $5 million. Due to other issues, we didn't the city did not receive all of the funding we had anticipated it for. But we do anticipate making up that additional million dollars with other opportunities that are out there or providing some additional staffing for two years, including clerical support. And 20, as I mentioned earlier, non-career refugees, operators and maintenance assistance full time equivalent. So we'll probably have more than 20 bodies, which is good. We're getting some equipment that's going to allow us access to areas that we didn't have before. So we have six yard rear loader trucks that allow us access in smaller, narrower alleys that we weren't able to service and other equipment that we can use to provide different services that will either be provided as part of our deep cleaning efforts or as needed around by request. We are also getting pressure washers. I do want to caution that doesn't mean we'll be able to walk up and down all the different streets and just pressure wash the whole way. This is really for spot use. It'll be oftentimes associated with areas where we have people experiencing homelessness and we need an extra layer of cleaning and abatement in those areas. Commercial residential corridor improvements. We're going to be adding illegally dumped item crews. We have new equipment, as I mentioned, that will make areas marks accessible and we're going to expand the use of our community partners. We're adding additional support for neighborhood cleanups, for litter abatement. We've already began begun that we at one point we were only at one point we weren't providing any support. And then we would go and have neighborhood associations, have drop off locations for bags, and our teams would go and grab the bags to minimize contact. And now we're actively out there providing assistance during cleanups again. Deep cleaning. We're going to talk a little bit more about that. I know there's interest in that. We're increasing the frequency of deep cleaning events and we're expanding locations for deep cleaning events. And we're going to be promoting public awareness not just to the general public, but also working with our schools. Encampments for cleanup, for encampments of people experiencing homelessness. We will be adding staff to assist with that. We're again adding equipment and pressure watchers, as I mentioned, where there are many occasions where we cannot handle the debris and the material that make up these cleanups. In those cases, we contact Ocean Blue for hazmat collection, and we also have some trained assistance from Conservation Corps and illustrators wetlands stores. We've also tried a community dumpster program, which which is helpful, where we place select community areas, dumpsters to contain waste rather than let people spread it publicly in the area. I want to make sure we clear on that. You know, the clean team does not do enforcement on encampments. We post we ask people to leave. If they do not leave, we do not displace them. So I just want to be clear about that. We're there to clean the trash and debris. That's that's their street. And right away, improvements. We are looking at removing impediments for pedestrian and bicycle travel, uneven sidewalks, trip hazards, encroaching trees and bushes and replacing faded curbs and signs. Or repainting. Faded curbs and replacing signs. We want to do a comprehensive public education and outreach program, continue to promote our bulky item collection. We like to see that number go up, that graph go up on the free pickups. We're going to be working with Long Beach Unified School District to re incorporate our school cleanups. In fact, we we did have an event where we gave 50 cleanup. We have a program called Cleanup in a Box and we distributed 50 clean up here in a box are programs for schools to start doing their own cleanups on campus in the surrounding neighborhoods. We're going to do an education campaign on refugees recycling and composting, similar to what we've had in the past, but more up to date. And we're going to do programs to help address illegal dumping and help ensure people are properly managing their household hazardous waste. We also are going to continue our public education and outreach program. We do have an adopt a Street program where just similar to adopt a highway, it's actually managed by the same people. Public Works has adopted 12 stretches and we're going to work with our public information team to really promote this opportunity to businesses so that they can adopt streets in their areas and help with the litter abatement. We have a no litter zone program or we partner with businesses that commit to keeping their storefront clean. We have over 500 partners in our no litter zone program. And then we're going to basically do some education on how people can help, how can they participate in volunteering in a cleanup or coordinator, organize their own? We're working with outside agencies I mentioned earlier. We're working with Caltrans to develop a memorandum of understanding that will allow us to maintain 22 freeway off ramps. This maintenance will be specifically to provide outreach to homeless people, people experiencing homelessness that may need outreach and understand what services are available to them. And it will focus on illegal dump collection and litter abatement. We are also in discussion with L.A. County to address encampments for people experiencing homelessness along the L.A. River, San Gabriel River and Coyote Creek. We we do really need to get those agreements in place to access those locations appropriately. So here there are 22 different locations you can see spotted with red dots that identify the proposed locations we will be addressing with Caltrans. They are all around the city. Now I'd like to talk a little bit about deep cleanings back to the colors I mentioned. If you look at your your your map on the board and we'll identify the locations in the next slide. The red lines are where we're currently providing deep cleaning services. The yellow lines are where we are, which overlays. Some of the red lines are where we intend to increase deep cleaning frequency. Green lines are where we're taking an existing location, expanding that deep cleaning boundary. And the blue lines are new proposed additional deep cleaning locations. The expansion and the proposed locations are based on where we tend to receive a concentration of calls for service. So that's why we you'll see that we expanded some and not others and where we added some of the locations which we we proposed to add. So these are the locations. There's a lot I'm not going to read them all to you. But you can see the majority of locations have been current locations have been expanded to a larger boundary. Next slide, please. And these are the proposed new proposed deep cleaning locations that we are we propose adding to the existing ones. So the question is going to come up with what is the frequency of these of these cleanups? Currently, they're done quarterly. The goal is to get the current locations to at least monthly as we expand our staff. The proposed new locations which don't tend to be as. As heavily needed locations will begin quarterly and we will increase those and monitor those to see what frequency we find. It becomes more effective if it's increasing it. Are we spending too much time there and all locations will be assessed on a regular basis? So $4 million for citywide cleanup over two years. What are we going to do with this money to accomplish all these things we talked about? We're adding staff and equipment. We are going to address a public litter abatement campaign. We are going to be more proactive in and addressing issues for people experiencing homelessness, including working with the outreach team to provide services prior to a cleanup and ensure that we're not displacing people. Expanding the frequency and the locations of our deep cleaning. Doing a comprehensive public education campaign and improving our efficiencies. I'd like to thank you for this opportunity and the time you gave us to present, and we're here to answer any questions. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. A very thorough presentation and we appreciate that. I do have some some comments and then a couple of questions. And then I'm going to turn this over to the folks that have queued up to speak. Let me let me just first start and I think I want to make sure that we say this also for the council and for the public. The cleanliness of the city. And I think and I've said this before to the team, we have the potential to be the biggest clean city in California, and that should be the goal. And we should strive for nothing less than that as as as our target. And I think that one one thing that that a lot of folks don't don't know is that we have a lot of work to do, I think still to achieve what we find is acceptable for every neighborhood. But the amount of innovation and hard work that has happened behind the scenes on this initiative has been incredible. I will tell you, like and you know that I'm so proud of all the work that the staff has put in over years on this initiative, even long before we brought the Clean Language Initiative forward. And there were 18 points in that initiative you covered, I think all 18 of them. I mean, the city council passed that policy. We are working. We brought the we brought the Bloomberg Innovation Team to do mapping, to do data. We brought in Harvard to do a study on how we can best approach our collections. We, I mean, every or every suggestion that council members that the staff brought forward as it relates to how we track a trash launching the Golden Beach app, putting the CRM system in place, are changing the way the expanding the collection items , the pilot programs. We tested just the amount of innovation that went into producing what is a very basic city function, which is making sure the streets are clean and picking up trash has been to me very impressive. So I just first want to commend just the entire organization for what I feel has been an. Absolute success of where we are today. That doesn't mean we should be satisfied with what we have today because we have a lot of work to do. But you guys have done a phenomenal job. Number one. The second thing I want to say is if you can go to Slide nine, first of all, and I and I definitely want to make sure we get and maybe you have where you have. Mr. Modica but can we get Councilwoman Allen and Councilwoman Zoro the initial clean team kind of agenda item and the kind of 18 point plan that we put in place that you covered. But it'd be great for them to see the narrative as well. Sure. And and that was that was I mean, we think we did that in 2017 or when we passed that. Speaker 7: The Clean Initiative, I believe, was 2017. Speaker 0: So and I'm looking at it obviously here in front in front of me here. And one of the things I want to bring up, if you can, you go to Slide nine, please. Okay. So to me, this is also really impressive. And you know, right around, of course, when we were we made a commitment this council created the Clean Time Program through our budget process, where we literally shifted to a proactive clean prior to the clean team process, where we actually put up employees on clean team trucks, branded them. We sent them out to the community. We didn't have proactive cleaning on streets. It was all by request. And so the proactive this has got us to a much cleaner community than we were ten years ago. There's just no question. And and then I look at where we are from the amount of employees we had in FAA 16. To where we are today. Which is triple, I think where we were to where we're going to be next year, we're going to be five times. The strength of folks working to clean the city from from from from back in in 2016. And that to me is is very impressive and I think shows a commitment to us taking this. Did I get that right? Does take taking the sun? Yes. And and I think what what's really impressive to me is we are in the process right now of almost doubling the amount of clean time resources we have today to work we're going to be in the next year or two, is that correct? Speaker 7: That is correct. Speaker 0: So I just want the council to think about the impact that this that we are making and why it was so important for us to set aside those millions of dollars in the American rescue plan for cleaning our city. And I think to me and I think to other people in this body, this is a core function of the city. This is what we should be doing right and what we should be doing and putting our our resources into ensuring that we provide this level of kind of basic service for for the for the community. I also want if you could go to Slide 11. I also just want to commend you like just, you know, decode Eric the team. When I look at this orange book collection request number. That increase is nothing but a massive success because you guys were working for years to try to figure out how to dramatically increase that number. When we were first talking about this like 2015, 2016. We wanted more people to report. Of bulky items at their home. And you guys have done a nice job of increasing that number and of using I mean, we've you know, we've been doing direct mailing, we've worked with apartment owners, we've put messages online, we've increased the amount of request. We made it easier to request pickups. So all of that has led to the success. So I just want to just share that. I really appreciate I appreciate that work that you guys are doing. And then we can go to Slide 20, please. Again, the what I love about what you guys have done here in the plan you presented is you're not just bringing in staff, but you're bringing the type of equipment that we need to ensure that we that our team has the resource, the modern equipment that that we need. I appreciate that. And then I want to go to if you want to go to slide 30, as we as we conclude. But because I'm not sure that the entire council is aware what a deep, clean actually is. And so obviously, all streets in Long Beach get cleaned. And and there's street sweeping and crews go out and do pickups. What these deep cleanings are is they go by foot. The teams most of the most of the time, and they walk the street. And what they're doing is they're picking up all of the small hardware, all that trash and and and cigaret butts and stuff that gets stuck in between businesses and on sidewalks and in gutters. And you're doing weeding. You are ensuring that that the streets and I know why you the streets that are selected are obviously the ones that get the most impacted by trash at these corridors do. So that deep cleaning that is happening right now a few times a year and we're thinking about increasing those to a month is so important in the quality and cleanliness of those streets has dramatically improved over the years, but dramatically improved. And I just think about just neighborhoods that you've highlighted as being the most impacted by trash and illegal dumping have changed dramatically. Now, we had a setback this year. There's no question, because of the pandemic. And so, you know, I have, you know, been we have been less for I'm still frustrated, but, you know, understanding why we are where we've been. And so I'm just really excited about kind of doubling down on this and making sure that we continue to clean the city as much as possible. And the last thing the last thing I'll just say is I want to make sure that the council stays updated regularly on our efforts on this, because you guys are doing such a great job with the innovation. Don't stop with the innovation. Let's continue bringing in some of these teams and continue analyzing what we're doing and looking at the data, how we can how we can improve things. And then I had mentioned to to Tom also that I wanted to just conclude my remarks about just tap at the Golden Beach app. And we had a prior Golden Beach system that maybe in some ways was easier to use, but it wasn't connected to a back end. So it was very hard. It was people didn't realize it was manual like a go. A Long Beach request would come in and somebody was manually taking the request and getting it off to someone versus now there's like an integrated backend. So to go along with your quest, go to the right person. What how many unique users do we have today on the go lobby, John? Speaker 5: Someone asked, bring a body to come up and talk a little bit about that. That is a little bit of a complicated question because we couldn't track from before to today. But we have some of that stats while he's coming up. I do want to highlight the changes in the app. We've heard that too is that it's the other one was kind of point and click and again all it was was just enough to get to a person who then would enter it into all of our complex systems. And when we had 10,000 requests, we were keeping up. Now that we have 30,000, 40,000, it needs to be an automated system. It's provided a lot of functionality. We have it in four languages now, which we never had go Long Beach in. We have resource sections that you can actually look things up and really need. Function is the mapping function. You can actually see who else has actually reported that already and what the status is. And then if you want, you can follow it and you can get notified when that gets closed out. So it is a little bit of an adjustment. We had some technical issues in the beginning, as you do with any major new system. A lot of those have been fixed and worked out and we're still working on some improvements. So we'll turn over to Bahrain to talk about the number of users. Speaker 4: Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council. My name is Bowring, a body bureau manager with Technology and Innovation is city manager. Modica said. It is a nuanced question. Our old system did not have the notion of a user. A user was anyone who submitted their email address along with a request. Our new system can also align with that methodology. So a sort of apples to apples comparison would be the same time period from 2019 to 2020. So I'll give you the dates. October one, 2019 to July one, 2020. The old system had 3225 cases with associated emails, and those are unique to duplicated email addresses for the same time period. October one, 2020 to July one, 2021. The new app has 5899 unique email addresses. The new system, though it does have a well-defined mechanism for what constitutes a user. So a user would be someone like myself or many of you actually in your accounts that take the time to go in there. You create an account and then you validate your account. So it's not enough to say, I want to sign up. You actually have to go in there and log into your email and verify that you are who you said you were. So we have 1000. I'm sorry. No, no, I think that's 89 users. Speaker 0: Okay. So would you would you say that we have been more likely have more users on the new system than we had before? Speaker 4: We certainly have more unique email addresses. And so. Speaker 0: That's good. And I think so. I think that's that's a positive thing. What I would my one request is going to be on go lobby chat because I think given some of my suggestions to Tom, but personally as far as changes, but I would like you to work on putting together just a neighborhood user group of. Residents from across the city. That can just be a group within your department that can just test the app with you and use it. Because I actually think there are some basic functional changes to be made that the person just making a request can just tell you versus, you know, the tech team making that change. There is just some very practical changes that can be made to make it easier and more user friendly to to to any neighbor across the city. So if you'd be willing to put together a group of residents, I'm sure that colleagues appear to be happy to recommend a few a few folks to test the app with you . And they can go through an app and give some suggestions for upgrades. I would appreciate that. Can I get that commitment? We're going to do that. Speaker 5: Yeah, we can look at that. That could be never ending. I would like it to be a defined group, and we could be. Let's get. Speaker 0: Together. It could be one of it could be one from every district. But I would I would like there to be a defined group that it's a user group that will test the app. Speaker 5: We can do that. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. And so I appreciate I appreciate all the work you guys are put into this. And I'm going to turn this over to the the council maker of the motion of Vice me, Richardson. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, first of all, I just want to thank the all the entire public works team and the rank and file who are out there cleaning stuff up. We were out a few months ago on Artesia Boulevard and they told me a little bit about the struggles over the course of the past year. So I'm really proud to see that you maintain your momentum and you're picking up speed, picking up steam. And and I just want to thank you for your efforts and thank your entire rank and file team for all that they do to help over the course of a very difficult year. Few things on go Long Beach. What we've done in the past. We'll do ninth districts blink spring cleaning where we'll put out a contest to the neighbors and say, hey, you know, we'll report, you know, the individuals who reported the most items over a certain period of time and schedule cleanups and do all these different activities, and we'll give awards and recognition to try to get more people involved. I would love to see if there are some citywide opportunities with the new platform to gamify the system and encourage more engagement there. The second thing I would say is I, I know this is one clean team, but a lot of us have business improvement districts with clean teams. I would personally love to see us through this recovery effort and I know that there is some direct funding of bids and things like that. I would like to see some coordination in incentivize and coordination across like we use Conservation Corps at Uptown Business District. I would love to see some some strings or some some way to incentivize them to work and coordinate with our clean team. An example would be if I know that our clean team I saw two corridors in the Uptown Business District area on your map, Artesia and Atlantic. If we were to have their schedule and then overlay that with what the Uptown Business District schedule is, then we can work with the local neighborhood associations to help fill the gaps and have one published maintenance schedule for the business district. I think something like that in the council office can help coordinate that, but I think it would go a long way for people to see exactly where our gaps are so we can keep up with it. The next thing I would say is I know that there was a period where we actually couldn't do neighborhood cleanups during the pandemic. I'm glad to see that they're there back, that the neighbor neighbors are getting the dumpsters and clean it up. At some point. I'd love to see from prior to the pandemic to now, are people requesting less cleanups or more? And do we need to do work to encourage more people to get out? The neighborhood associations get out and do more. So that's something I'm curious about. Next. I know that graffiti has also been up during the pandemic, particularly on our murals in North because we went through effort and we painted murals on most of our high graffiti walls and it's significantly reduced graffiti in these areas. But now a lot of them have been tagged over time. And Mr. City Manager, I know we spoke about spoke about utilizing some of the recovered resources to actually get a team of artists to go touch the murals back up. I don't need this and I don't need a big response here. But is is that going to be included in this clean up effort or do you have some other way to address that? Speaker 5: That's currently not in this effort. That is something that we'd like to do, is to get more murals out there. So the original plan was that we we couldn't find a way to fund that as part of the Recovery Act. I think as we have found ways to use the Recovery Act in certain ways, we can look at that. But I don't have that funding yet. But that's still something that we want to do. Speaker 4: Okay. What I'm interested in isn't necessarily more murals, but the ones that we do have, we need to go out and we need to tighten them up. And I think that when we think about a clean neighborhood, I think the availability of murals, people, people see graffiti on a mural, they'll see weeds, they'll see trash and all . It's all connected. Speaker 5: And that is one of the priority uses of our percent for the arts as well that the Arts Council has suggested is being able to maintain the assets that we have and be able to clean them and fix them. Speaker 4: Okay. We have we have some that need some immediate, immediate help now. Next, the train tracks in Artesia, I think I didn't see it as a node or specifically called out it's not our property. And then we talk a lot about Caltrans property, but this is the railroad property. And Tom, I've shown it to you. We've gone out, we've cleaned it up, but it is a problem. Hot spot. Just the train tracks just north of Artesia. What is that? I think west of Paramount, I believe. And then finally, I want to make sure that we we address weed abatement, particularly at the pump station, Artesia, or any city property, any city facility. We need to put a lens on how often we're we're abating the weeds there. This particular site, I think it's one of those I'm talking about the the mural is tagged, the weeds are grown and this is city property. So if we we need to maintain our own property to be an example for others. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Vice Mayor, Councilwoman Sarno. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor. I just I also want to add my thanks to Eric Decker and all of the other environmental services team for this really long, hard and dirty road that we've been on towards cleanliness. So and it's just an image and just an incredible amount of trash that's been picked up over the years. I mean, so just thank you so much for all the hard work that and it's been a work in progress and I believe that that's going to continue to be the case. You know, I've been having since I've been on council, you know, maybe mid-December, we've been having district dialogs among neighborhood and hands down. It didn't matter what neighborhood in midtown or central limit, cleanliness was the number one issue that everybody wanted to address. Right. And so I just want to make sure that our residents and as well as other Lomita residents know that based on this presentation, help is on the way and investments are being made to ensure that we're doubling down or tripling down the efforts. You know, and I also want to just share, too, during the time when we couldn't do neighborhood cleanup, that was really a challenging period because, you know, many people are home because of the pandemic and, you know, the trash is just visible everywhere. And so it's definitely impacted people's kind of, I think, attitudes, I think sometimes towards the neighborhood. So that's one of the things that I want to to circle back on is just how do we ensure that we're inspiring people to clean up? And I really like that idea earlier that about clean up in a box that was done with the school. I'm actually interested in thinking about how do we incentivize people to just clean up within their front door and front steps, not just businesses, but individuals? And how can we give, you know, people like a care? So that encourages them to clean with a pick up tool to put, you know, other gloves and trash bags and, you know, any other educational materials. And I'm actually thinking about how we can put that together as we, you know, go into this public education and outreach phase where I'm thinking about fix the six kit, fix the six kit in a bag or a box or whatever it is that makes it easy so that they just have it then and there and it's everywhere. And I think making it as easy as possible for people to clean, I think helps a lot, just as I think the mayor talked about making the app as easy as possible to use. And the other thing I want to say, too, is I want to thank our neighborhood association that's just really resumed their cleaning. And I want to think about ways we can offer support to them as well as seeing them kind of our, you know , neighborhood cleanliness ambassadors and where they're really encouraging people to use these Golden Beach app, even educating them how to use it in other languages to bathe and just making sure that people know they don't need to. Just posted on Facebook or other social media, they could actually use an app to report that. Right. So I think constant communication and education. An educational ways that we can encourage people is really helpful. So otherwise, you know, I'm just so thrilled that, you know, we're going to have so much more, you know, efforts and investment and tools to be able to really clean up and really get into it. So thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Price. Speaker 3: Before we go. Thank you. So thank you for the presentation. And I know that my office is probably one of the offices that contacts you a lot on these issues, and I appreciate the work that you do. There's a couple of questions that I have that I think obviously I talk with Tom regularly about district specific issues that we have. So I'm not going to use that time to do that tonight. But citywide, do our cleanups ever involve pressure washing sidewalks? Speaker 7: Not often. Like I said, what we're we are going to be buying a couple of pressure washers through these funds so that we can make them available. Pressure washing on a large scale is is difficult, but we are going to do what we can to incorporate some of those efforts into our cleanings. Speaker 3: I think maybe focusing on the business corridors and augmenting what the business corridors are already trying to do with their assessment funds could be a really good area, good use of that. And some of our major corridors, I think would be a really good use of the pressure washers if we could incorporate that, maybe a quarterly pressure wash on on some specific corridors. The other thing I want to talk about is community cleanups. We used to do those a lot where we would partner with community neighborhoods and then kind of stop doing that during COVID. What is the status of that now? Speaker 7: Community cleanups have resumed. As I mentioned, initially, when we started supporting them, it was simply the neighborhood association would tell us they're doing a cleanup. We'd identify a couple of locations in their cleanup area to drop off their bags and we'd have a truck go by, pick up whatever's there. Now we're beginning to actively assist in those cleanups, and we're interacting with the actual volunteers. So I believe I believe in 2021, we've done already 98, 91 clean ups. So we're back on track there. People people are eager to get out there. Speaker 3: And I know you touched on it, but is there anything specific they need to do to coordinate? Should they go through the council offices or go through? Speaker 7: Either way, we have a staff person that helps coordinate those cleanups, and many of the council staff actually call her directly for assistance as well. So either way, we can do it. We do like to hear ahead of time. We do have occasions. We recently had one, for example, where some people take it upon themselves to do something and then kind of leave stuff behind for us and we don't know what's going on. We went today, in fact, and collected over 200 bags of debris that that someone had left behind. And again, while we appreciate the efforts to clean the city, we we it's very shotgun. If we don't have some sort of coordinated understanding of what's happening, where. Speaker 5: Know what that is. In some of these cleanups we could really use the council offices help. And some of you are already doing this. Cleanups are more complicated than just putting stuff in a dumpster. A lot of things can't be accepted in the dumpster. It has to be sorted there. It won't be accepted if we put an e-waste in. So we're looking going forward to really partner with the council offices to kind of help take that responsibility to organized neighborhoods and designate someone who's in charge of appropriate disposal. And that'll make us be able to go a lot further and do a lot more of these as we work in partnership. Speaker 0: Okay. Let me add something to that, too, Councilwoman, because I think I don't know, I hadn't mentioned it, but it was possibly going to be, I think, announced in the next few days. But I think it's pretty close to being set. We are going to launch a citywide cleanup, Long Beach Day. I think it's going to be August the 14th. And on that date, it's going to kind of kick off kind of like our post-pandemic, like cleaning the city. I think we're going to ask and host events in every district in the city and try to have an event hosted by every council office across the city to have cleanups happening everywhere. And Mr. Modica smiling because he knows it's going to be a lot of work. But he's very excited to, I know, to lead this effort. And and so and I think all of us are are looking forward to that, too. So I think that's going to be Saturday, August 14th, and that'll be our cleanup. Long Beach kind of community kick off and we'll have a lot of resources for all of our neighborhood groups to continue doing that work also. And by the way, a lot of council members, you've already been hosting a lot of clean ups, I think customers and daycares. I just saw one I think that you just did, I think this weekend. And so we'll well, I'm encouraged just all the efforts into the 14th and there'll be information on that in the in the days ahead. Speaker 5: And if we can work on confirming that data, we still that's a huge effort to do all nine all at once. We normally move them around so we think we can do it. We got to work on the actual date and make sure we can get all the resources there to support all your efforts. But we will get a date and I'm hoping it'll be the 14. Speaker 0: Okay. Right. Because that's the one that you mentioned to me today. Just. Councilwoman. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 6: Thank you. First, I want to thank the team. I'm I'm very fond of all of you. But, Diego, you've done just an amazing job. I can't tell you enough how great of a partner you've been over these last six, seven years, from street sweepers to alleys to you name it. Your Let's Find a way attitude is really a really important thing for people to learn from. I can't tell you enough that you're ready to take on anything in the city, and I totally believe in you because of all that you've done for us when it comes to the clean team and everyone on the team is great and thank you for all of the work that you do. Mattresses. So tires. When you get new tires, you have a tire disposal fee. Mattresses have been like the new rage. I don't know if I'm like targeted. I do streaming television, but I get a new mattress advertisement at least four times a day. Are there mattress recycle fees because people are now getting mattresses delivered directly to their door from all over the country? What does that equate to in terms of is there a fee structure for that? Speaker 7: Yes, there is. There's similar to what you do with TVs or tires. There's and that's that those dollars go to the mattress recycling council, which in turn we file a report to them annually and then they pay. Avitus reimbursement doesn't cover all the costs, but. But it covers a portion of the cost. That's why we collect them separately and track them separately as well. Speaker 6: Good. That's good to know. Graffiti. You guys are doing a great job. I can't tell you enough. I want to thank both your team and then also my council office staff. We have a lot of on ramps and off ramps, so we have to work with Caltrans on and my team is on it and I appreciate the community for helping us report that stuff because the sooner you report at the scene, you can get rid of it. You talked a little bit, about 16% of litter is cigaret butts. I'm imagining that that's a citywide number. I'm going to feel terrible. I can't remember her name right now, but I was out and about walking in one of our neighbors of 60 years just named Lloyd, and his daughter asked me about the current trash problem we have with advertisements and specifically some of the non subscription papers that have kind of really taken off in terms of their ability to throw these things into our driveway and. A lot of them just end up in the gutter. What percentage of the percentage of the city that receives these throwaway advertisements? What are we talking about in terms of cost? Speaker 7: And I wish I could tell you that I don't know. The 16% number on cigaret butts was from a statewide report. I do know that there are some freedom of speech issues. It doesn't mean you're allowed to litter, but there are some speech issues involved in printing and distributing. Speaker 6: Well, there are people who leave them on your curb, like at your door. And there are people who just throw them into your gutter. And we should have some kind of structure for organizations that hire lazy distributors, that just leave stuff at the sidewalk to the street and figuring out how to ensure that those that are making money by advertising to our residents but are not spending that money for a proper distribution system, should then. Be charging or paying for that cleanup. They also cause blockages of water movement until the next street sweeping day, which then causes buildup of water and mosquitoes and all sorts of problems go along the job. I just want to thank the entire team, both in the city manager's office, the rest of news division and in the IT department. A lot of you know, I was a big driver of fixing the Long Beach up. I would guess that of your initial 30,000 people on the app, a thousand of them were probably fifth District residents, were high users, individuals who were in the park all the time, fixing our water fountains, all of those things. So I would love to have a presentation in the next few months related to our next steps on the Long Beach app. I appreciate the idea of the team. I'd love a senior citizen on that team because I think that a lot of our retired senior citizens are the ones that are really helping us out by taking responsibility and ownership of certain areas. They walk regularly to use the app. I'd love to find out more. We're hiring all these non carriers but we also have a lot of retirements coming. I'd love to make sure that there's a pathway for our non-career hires to work towards a career position and how we work on that as a city. Slide 11. We were talking about illegal. Dumping something and we see what we were on. If you could turn back to Slide 11. And then when you renew your animal license annually, you have the opportunity to donate. I think there are a lot of people who, when they do their refuse cleanup, if some kind of solicitation could be provided in their next water bill, I think there is a lot of people who would be willing to pay and donate to the clean team. I don't know if we can set up a nonprofit account similar to what Animal Control has, but I. I appreciate the 12 free pick ups. I don't think that people always expect it to be free. And so I'd love to get to a point in our city where we talk about what the true cost of collection is . And then those people that make an income of less than $60,000 a year, it's free and then like a graduated pay structure for those that can afford it. Because I think that we continue to have this where we're sub venting costs for people who are asking to be supported. And I think that those dollars could go much further. And in the meantime, if we could just give them the opportunity to donate you back to a program, because if they wanted to have a pickup done, you're talking $250, people are happy to do it. Thank you. Speaker 0: That's a super. Speaker 2: Thank you. Great presentation. My favorite slide was 19, the heat map. And since we were talking about neighborhood cleanups, I have to give a shout out to West CA. That's a West Eastside Neighborhood Association. I think that might be the longest running monthly cleanup in the city currently organized by K.C. Carver, and that it cleans up illegally dumped items bordered by PCH, 10th Redondo and Cherry. So it's a huge area. And I noticed they're not on the heat map or they're just beside the heat map. And I'm wondering if they didn't pick up that 6 to 7 tons of dumped items a month, they might be in that heat map. So that's a very interesting graphic. But on that topic, this is a monthly cleanup. It's the the fourth Saturday of every month been going on for, I guess, decades now. 8 a.m. to noon. And they could really use volunteers and especially volunteers with pickup trucks. And I notice that these kind of third party contractors were mentioned in your presentation, Conservation Corps. It should be nice if we could recruit them. I've never been able to do that, but it's a very consistent day of the month and time, so we could really use some help there. Also on the on the corridor, kind of clean ups or quarterly corridor cleanups, it would be nice if we could give you some very specific areas. And I'll just mention the Anaheim corridor in the fourth District. We have a no man's land between business improvement district. So where Zephaniah ends, there's a couple of block stretch before the Midtown bid starts. And so that's an area we could really target. And if there's a vacant business and whatnot, we have really no way to addressing that. So I'd like to give you a more focused area and then more than a quarterly cleanup in that area. That's all I have. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilor MacGregor. Speaker 5: Thank you. You know what things I found interesting in that chart right there, 11 is that one of the reasons why I brought forward the illegal dumping ordinance was to. Lower illegal dumping. And instead, you know, we've had a steady increase over illegal dumping as the years go by. And that's an interesting phenomenon to look at right now. We are looking at the fact that you have more you have an increase in requests. Or pickup special pickups. Yet illegal dumping hasn't gone down at all. It's gone up. Which is interesting to note. Has there been an effort to. I know these people to to find them to cite them for illegal dumping. I mean, I know it's hard because, you know, they do you know, you do an illegal dumping at two or three or four in the morning and nobody's around. But I think that we need to start looking at how we can cite these people for all the illegal dumping. And you've talked about. There's hotspots that you know where it takes place, but maybe we could have some kind of a camera or some kind of a patrol or roaming team out there in those wee hours of the morning when illegal dumping is taking place to catch these people. And that's what keeps our our city our city dirty is illegal dumping. I mean, it doesn't matter where I drive. I could drive in my district, see an illegal dumping, a mattress or a bunch of waste. And I could go to the next district, whether it's eight or six or or drive down PCH to. District four. And and see some items out there that I just strewn in the middle of the street or in front of a yard? No. Are there any ideas that you have how we can lower that blue bar right there to down to near, like, 20% 2016? Uh. Speaker 7: We have tried a few different things in the past. We did have a camera program a while back. Yeah. What we found oftentimes was. Once people figure out there's a camera there, then then they move the hotspot a block over or something like that. So it kind of shifted people around. We did have one prosecution that occurred with that several servers. This is many years ago with that program. What we do is we're again, we're trying to encourage people to schedule the bulky items. And and it is an odd phenomenon. I wonder about this often. Councilmember It is. Why does dump illegal dumping continue to increase when people are obviously learning that they have legal options to to remove their waste? But, you know, sometimes I think maybe it's I still I think that we still have a certain percentage of people that take advantage of that misuse, that go along which app. And rather than call and schedule a cleanup, they just take a picture of it and send it in. We do go out and if we can identify the location from where the dumping occurred. Speaker 5: Then we will. Speaker 7: We don't have citation authority on this, but we can charge them for the service. And so I recall I'm not going to it wasn't this like this. I think it was last year we had gone from about $14,500 a year in added charges to over $65,000 a year and added charges. So our field investigators and supervisors really started becoming more active in trying to identify where the dumping occurred from. So so we do try and charge back. And I think some of your officers will know. And when you get a report, I will often respond saying we're going to try and find out who did this and charge them for the service. And everyone's been very supportive of that. Speaker 5: And, you know, against members who really need to look at behavior change. So that is part of what we looked at with our Harvard students is we can continue to pick up the trash, which we should do, and we're doing bit more every single year. But that's where education, that's we're starting with youth and getting people to really look at why is dumping occurring and how do we provide other options so that this doesn't happen. If we continue to double like this, that's going to be a tremendous, you know, impact on our operations of resources. So we are still looking long term about how to just get to be a society that doesn't dump as much. You know what? I think communication's very important. Obviously, the education program that we have in place for keeping our city clean is very important. And obviously, I think we need a stronger emphasis on illegal dumping, that the illegal dumping is illegal, plus the fact that it keeps our city dirty and unwelcoming. And I think that we need to push that. That's part of the behavioral change that you're talking about. One last thing. And the the freeway on ramps and on ramps, the cleanups that you're working with, Caltrans and I'm thinking also with the county of L.A., how is that negotiation going? Because, I mean, we still have it's still a bit of an issue. I see a lot of material dumped right there on the island ramps and off ramps. Sometimes it takes weeks to clean those up. So how are we doing with that negotiation and what's going on? How are we going to be able to get a faster response when we have items dumped right there, I know, on the freeways and the freeway on off ramps. Speaker 7: We are further along in negotiations with Caltrans than we are with L.A. County. I think one of the challenges we're going to we're trying to overcome is how is it going to get paid for? So the to make it more expeditious, city staff will be responding rather than waiting for Caltrans to respond. We're trying to develop a model that will allow for their support to do those cleanups. Speaker 5: So the dollars that were presented tonight will allow us to start doing that. So we were doing the final negotiations. We believe we're having the the only type of agreement like this in the state where we're doing both maintaining some areas, but also working on people experiencing homelessness. So we would obviously like some of the state dollars that are coming down. We're not waiting for the others, though. Once we get through them a few, we're going to go ahead and and start doing more of that work. But we do think if there's new state resources, that they should help compensate us for those costs. That's all I have here. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Come on, Mango. Speaker 6: Thank you. My theory on the illegal dumping is that the costs that you charge to come pick up an illegal dumping is worth it. And I think that part of that is because people don't recognize you talk about the terrain change and don't plan ahead for I'm going to clean out my garage this weekend, so I need to call in a request now for next week. And the individuals would rather pay the illegal dumping fee and fine and get it picked up right now because that costs is still two parts. One, less than it would cost them to hire someone off of Yelp or rabbit, whatever people use to task people to do things. It's still cheaper than those two options. I mean, a same day, pick up minimum. I can't think that it's going to be under $225 and that would be for a small amount of stuff. And I think our fines are less than that. I think I saw one in my district that we worked on together that was 115. And so if the fee structure is incentivizing them to be an illegal dumper, it is worth that cost to them for a same day pickup. So my call to action to you would be to find a way to come up with a fee for a same day pickup that was closer to market rate because we are the legitimate option and senior citizens are more comfortable calling us and knowing that we're going to reliably be there. There are a lot of these individuals who, when you call them and you schedule them, they come out, they start the pickup, and then they raise their fees on the individuals. And so those are the kinds of situations that I've encountered that I think are contributing to the number of illegal pickups. We talk about Long Beach Volunteer Day. I know I've done a lot of those. I would love to see us expand to Long Beach Volunteer Month. Just a friendly reminder. We have a citywide calendar and all of these things should be on there. I think that every cleanup should be on the citywide calendar, even when the clean team is coming. I think it's something for people to look forward to. Obviously, we do want to incentivize illegal dumping in the quarter that's getting clean. But I think that it's it's important transparency for us. I also just want to kind of give a shout out to our city manager. We talked a lot about the Go Long Beach app when you became the city manager and whether or not even every department had had to go Long Beach app and whether or not they were ambassadors for the city in the way that we felt that it was important. I don't know what that progress is. I'd be interested to know who the the city staff member is that does the most reporting. Same with the council offices. I imagine some of us do more than others, and I think that that's a fun incentive based activity. When you go into Yelp, you can become the mayor of a restaurant because you're the one that goes there the most. We need to find ways to make the go. Long Beach app fun. When kids are standing at Eldorado Park playing some Pokémon game on their phone. I'd rather than be playing some go Long Beach app, right? You did you play the Pokémon game? And then lastly, we talk about on slide 23 the sidewalk issues and things that you're addressing. But even some of the streets in the city that are in very good condition have poorly graded streets. So we're still having the collection of debris and water and trash that the street sweepers can't get to. So I don't know what our long term solution to that is, because those streets, instead of being fully reconstructed, were slurry sealed. So now theoretically, we're not going to touch them for ten years. We need to have a plan to address those grading issues that are causing debris collection, especially on our corners adjacent to our parks and things like that. So thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman in the house. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. I just want to give a huge thank you to both Echo and Eric and the whole team for all the incredible job that you've been doing this past year and a half. It's just been a very trying year. But you guys have managed. So thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for all your support for our cleanup in the First District this past Saturday. It was such a successful event. We collected so much, so much, so much trash, which makes me happy that we collected it, but sad that it was there to be collected. But the community really enjoyed being able to participate, so I look forward to many of those moving forward. I know that the Golden Beach app has been an incredible tool for my constituents and for my staff as well. And I know that you guys in this plan had a portion for education. Are we planning on doing maybe like. The workshops for gold, Long Beach aptitude for our residents to get more familiar with them. I know I had a presentation done for my check ins for my residents and they really enjoyed it. But maybe we can create and I know we have like a short video that that we have, if you guys could correct me and that I think we do have a short video, but are we planning on doing more outreach on and education around the Golden Beach app? Speaker 7: I'm getting a nod of yes from Leah Erickson, our director of technology and Innovation. Speaker 5: So I'll address that. So with any new system, we kind of did a software rollout. We you know, this was a massive system. It's not just an app, but it is a customer resource management system that interacts with all of our work order systems. And so there were some bugs to figure out. We had one of the premiere firms, Salesforce, to do this for us. But in the in the kind of months after the launch, we were still working things out. So we've never really done the big full promotion of It's ready, it's here. So that's still coming. We're going to be doing more and more of that and more of explaining to people how to how to use it. So we've gone to a number of community meetings, and just when we talk about it for 5 minutes, people just really get excited that there's these new tools that they have available to them. Yes. What you more. Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank you very much. I also was wondering, I know part of the strategy. Strategy is. Speaker 3: To, you know. Speaker 6: Clean our streets and be be able to have a cleaner environment. Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 6: One of the things that I wanted to ask is what is the feasibility of maybe adding like a tree watering program to this? I know that, as we all know here, that, ah, trees have really, really been dying. And I know that something like that would be really, really important. Is there any plans for something like that through this program? Or maybe if you can recommend something else, another program? Speaker 7: Not currently, but we can certainly investigate that and see what options are available. Speaker 6: Thank you. And I appreciate that a lot. Also. I know that it's been touched on before, but I really like the idea of coming together and having like a clean kit to clean, you know, the neighborhoods. And it also would be really need to be able to collaborate with our schools and our students. I think that that would be very essential. Is there anything in mind in this strategy to cooperate and collaborate, I should say, with our local schools? Speaker 7: Yes, absolutely. We're like I said, we've we distributed 50 clean up in a box opportunities to the schools. And as they as students return to in-person learning, we will continue to expand that. We've we've had other programs in the past that we're looking at potentially reinvigorating or seeing if there are new opportunities for litter awareness and education Speaker 6: . Wonderful, as you know, because my office and is always in constant contact with your office in regards to this. But one of the most frequent calls that we get is about street sweepers and how maybe we don't have enough. Maybe you can say a little bit about that and what's what the plan is. Speaker 7: Certainly I think we have enough street sweepers. If the challenge is that we currently are short staffed in street sweeping. Like I said earlier, civil service has established a certified list for us to hire from, and we started interviews internally today and tomorrow. So we hope to be getting some sweeper operators on board. Again, one of the challenges we face this year in particular is that in our in our zeal to assist people that were experiencing COVID hardships, we were dismissing a lot of street sweeping citations. And as I said, there were about 25,000 citations dismissed. And each one of those was an obstacle along the path of the street sweeper to provide a quality street sweep. Now, that's not to say that that's the only reason we are going out pretty much every day with at least one route, our time zone open and what we try and use is move those around so we don't miss any one particular route two weeks in a row. But recently, for example, we did experience that where a sweeper actually broke down on a route that had been skipped the week before. So once we get these people on board, we will have full staffing and we will be sweeping every route every week. Speaker 6: Amazing. Thank you for that. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And just great job. Really just good work. I love these clean ups. This has been really important, supporting our economic recovery, supporting our residents, supporting our businesses and tourism. I'm just I'm so proud of CD2. A big shout out to a lot of my houses that are constantly doing cleanups. I keep all the equipment in the back of my car because I know there's going to be one happening every week. So I'm really proud of all the work that's being done and the community. I had a question for you with regards to the trash bins. I know we've had some clean ups. Are those available through this this project? If we have neighborhood cleanups, then we're going to need that. Speaker 7: I believe Development Services and Neighborhood Services Bureau can provide you beans for if you just want to be there at the location for cleanup. Speaker 1: Perfect. Great. And then also, I love the LO the Golden Beach app. It's it's incredible. I do. I have met with all of the scooter companies online, at least all of them about one. And no scooters being left, and especially in the downtown area is problematic. Is there any way that we could incorporate a function in the Golden Beach app that would could work with the vendors of the scooter so that those are picked up? Because I know it's really problematic, especially like I said in downtown. Speaker 7: I'm getting a positive head nod from T.I.. So, yeah, that's something that is now on their radar. Speaker 1: That is awesome. That is going to make my constituents so happy. And then also, I did not realize that there was a training video. I know when I'm out talking to a lot of my neighborhood associations. There's a lot of folks that are interested in using the Go on Beach app. I'm always excited to tell people about it. So if there is a video, I'm not aware of that. So I would definitely want one to get that information and then I'd be able to share that. So thank you very much and great job, everyone. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Zoro. Speaker 3: Yeah. So I wanted to ask a question. I was wondering if you can pull up that map with the hot spot, because you mentioned earlier that it's generally where it has the most trash is where there's families living and I take that maybe or multi-unit and. Yet. I don't think that's the that's the map with the hotspot spot map. I forgot what Slide 19 was in 19. Is it stuck on this young? Speaker 7: Fortunately, our remote control is no longer functioning. Speaker 3: Okay. All right. Oh, that's good to know. I just wanted to. My question is really, what are. Because, you know, I live. Okay, great. So I live, you know, nearby a multi-unit. And I always know when somebody is moving out because all of their furniture is like on the sidewalk. So I'm just wondering, what are that some ideas and approaches has come up to address this. Is it does it range from, you know, charging these apartment owners the fee for removing them? Because I'm always using the app every week or two. Really, it seems like there's furniture's out. So I'm just curious, what are some approaches we can take because that's really kind of been the reoccurrence that's happening on a cycle with these large, bulky items. Speaker 7: That we can often tell the difference between a move out and just a dumped item based on the the composition of the material that's out there. And frankly, we you know, I'm a very firm believer in charging property owners back for that service because it is a business that they're running when they're when they're have rental units and clearing out your tenants spaces is a cost of doing business. And it shouldn't be a cost to the ratepayers. It should be a cost to the person who's running the business. So we do make every effort to if we can identify how and when and where that debris came from, that we charge them back. At this point, we don't have the ability to site. What we do is we charge for the cost of the service to collect those items. Speaker 3: So there's no way to do that on the go along beach. APT Right. As far as you know that you see something illegally dumped by a site kind of like what we have I think when we're we're doing those fireworks, right? We have this app that you can download where the pictures of it, people are literally moving things from the building into the sidewalk and then reporting that. Is there a function that does that? Speaker 7: You can you can add a picture in the Go Along Beach app. You know, and we've you know, there's so many options out there now. People have closed circuit cameras, they have the Ring app and they have all these different apps. And people send us videos of all sorts of stuff anymore. And more and more and more. And I have to remind our team is like, you got to you got to work as if you're on camera all the time because that does happen. So people do provide that. With regard to the Go Long Beach app, you can and you are encouraged to add photos in your report and you can add comments. So if someone is aware that and we do get this sometimes this came out of my neighbors place it's the address is this but oftentimes people are also a little. Reticent to kind of put their name out there and say they're reporting their neighborhood because they don't want to create a neighborhood problems either. Speaker 3: All right. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And councilman's in the house. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. Another quick question. As we see that illegal dumping continues to rise. I'm curious to know if you think it's because it's in locations where perhaps there's a lot of renters. And my question is, can renters call in for illegal I'm sorry, for specialized a pickup. Speaker 7: So yes, there is a correlation between multi-family units, population density and illegal dumping. So for the first question, yes, there's a there's a nexus there. Secondly, it really is a it's a it's a challenging situation in Long Beach because we have certain accounts that are master metered, which means there's one meter for a multi-unit building and there could be say, let's just say ten units at that building. But we know that there's one meter, so it's one account. Whereas other buildings maybe multi metered. So you have ten units. Each unit has its own meter, and so there's ten accounts. So it's challenging for us to say that every renter has the opportunity for 12. Every renter does have the opportunity. But it's hard. We don't have the ability at this point to kind of track when it's a master meter to account, to say, how many did this unit get versus that unit get versus that unit get? Speaker 6: Thank you. Thank you. That makes sense. Speaker 0: And that's something I think that teams in working on for for a couple of years because that's absolutely been an issue so. Councilman Mongo and then we're going to go and received another report. Speaker 6: Thank you. Since we have so much data, do we see that illegal dumping is most popular on certain days of the week or certain dates like the 15th and the 30th of the month when people might be moving out or getting a pay day and then going and buying a new couch? And or are we thinking that it's related to move outs and move ins? Speaker 7: In many cases it's related to move out and move ins. And anecdotally, we've we've noticed at the very beginning or end of the month, this seems to be a little bit of an uptick. Speaker 6: So do we schedule additional crews at that time or do we have the ability to know? Speaker 7: We might we might allocate our crews accordingly, but we don't have additional crews available to schedule. Speaker 6: I'd be interested in I mean, I'll touch back with Councilman Van de Hoss and Councilman Ciro, who have also talked a little bit about the the move and move out date. I mean, I'd really strongly recommend that we provide a 30th of the month available for purchase $200 pickup because again, that's below what it could be cost . The landlord could very well burden the price. The landlord is the one who wants those items out of there for the new tenant to move in. And then I really think and I talked about this last week, we need to do a better job informing the landlords of these opportunities. The landlords don't want Tenant A to move out and leave all their stuff on the curb and then tenant B and C be upset. We aren't really informing those landlords. A lot of them are senior citizens. We really need to do a better job. We need to pull the situs addresses of the properties from the assessor's office, and then we need to do a notification based on landlord of what programs are available, how we can support them better, supporting their tenants and the penalties if they don't. So I would I would love to see us work something out if either of you wanna work on the agenda item together. As you can tell by my number of cues, trash is really important to me and keeping the city clean. I really appreciate Mayor Garcia and all the work through the years. One of the biggest things we've done through the budget process is these clean teams, and I cannot tell you enough. When I used to drive from the east side of town all the way down to city hall meetings, it was brutal. And now it's just so rewarding to see how clean it is. And the streets are clean. I know we could get a little bit better coverage on the weeds in the winter right after that first rain. We just have a huge pop up of weeds and all of the sidewalks and gutters across our big corridors. But other than that excellent job, I drive all over L.A. County for my county job and you guys are just doing such an excellent job. I just want to thank you so much. I'm excited for the improvements that you're still striving for, and I want to keep you striving, but you're doing excellent work. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes council comments. I don't believe there's public comment in the study session. Correct. Okay. Thank you guys for the report. I know it's been a long 2 hours, but a very I think an important one. So I just want to thank guys for the study session on this item. So with that members, please go ahead and cast your votes to receive and file. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Just as a reminder, we have three hearings before the regular agenda starts still. So those are going to go next. I think I have one member of the public who had a public comment that's on a agenda item. Is that right? Okay. Why don't we go ahead and.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to conduct a study session to receive and file a presentation on efforts related to the Clean Long Beach Initiative.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_07132021_21-0633

Speaker 0: Thank you. And there is an item related to the statue, I think later in the agenda as well. Thank you for that. Let's go ahead and move on to the hearings. We're going to have an item hearing, item 17, first. Speaker 1: Report from Development Services recommendation received supporting documentation into the record to conclude the public hearing and adopt and impose the mitigation, monitoring and reporting program for the Southeast area. Specific plan to clear ordinance amending the Land Use District Map to reflect the establishment of the Southeast Area Specific Map plan. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for the final reading. Adopt five resolutions amending the local coastal program implementation plan land use map. Amend the post certification coastal zone map amending the local coastal program and element of the city's general plan. Amending and restating the Southeast Area Specific Plan and authorizing Director of Development Services to submit the ordinance amendments together with the resolutions to the California Coastal Commission District three. Speaker 0: Thank you. And then we can introduce the city manager to get the presentation first. Speaker 6: Good afternoon, Mayor. Members of the Council, I'd like to introduce Christopher Coons, the deputy director for Development Services. He will start this presentation. Speaker 2: Right. Good evening, council members and Mayor for this item which relates to the southeast area specific plan. And item 18, which relates to the pool, we do have presentations available to give you or if you don't want the presentations, pick up now and let us know. These are both routine matters. After when accidents take place in the coastal zone, they go to the Coastal Commission. They make changes to those items, and then they come back to this body for you to conform those changes. So that procedural matter that's in front of you this evening. And I have Patricia, a defender for our planning bureau manager, to answer any questions and provide the presentation. If you wish to see it. Speaker 3: Mr. Vice Mayor. Can I. Speaker 4: Help? Sure. Councilmember Price. Speaker 3: Unless there's any objection by my colleagues, I don't think we need a presentation on this particular item. I do want to make just a few comments on it, though. These are some procedural steps that we have to take in order for this plan to move forward. I will share. I know I have some new council colleagues who perhaps haven't been as plugged into the history of this item. But the southeast area specific Plan C CEP was in its first formation in 1977, created as a specific plan for the southeast portion of Long Beach and over the past eight years that I've been in office. This is a project that I've been intimately involved with. My commitment to the residents throughout this process has been to work closely with city staff, and I want to just acknowledge our assistant city manager, Linda Tatum, who's very involved in this project. Before she assumed her current position and was invaluable in getting this project moved to this place. And of course, our entire city team led by Christopher Koonce. This plan will allow the preservation of the wetlands for the decades to come, as the plan was prior to this plan being passed. There were portions of the wetlands that actually had development on them, like an In-N-Out Burger that probably should never have gone on top of the wetlands. And so the passage of this specific plan will ensure that we have the wetlands to be able to restore. Working with my colleague on the Councilman Urunga, on the Cerritos Wetlands Authority, we do have a plan for the restoration of the wetlands, and this plan will make that possible and a reality. It will also place a burden on developers who wish to develop in this area to meet certain standards regarding environmental standards involving public access standards , open corridor standards. And these conversations have been had and some of them have been a long time to develop to get to the place that we're at now. I do want to point out one aspect about this grant this this plan that I think we sometimes forget when we're talking about the city's requirements in terms of housing . You know, there's often a misconception that that the southeast side of Long Beach is not contributing to the housing requirement of of the city. And so I would just want to turn over to the staff. You know, this particular specific plan alone, how many units does this create for the city of Long Beach? Good evening, council members. This is Patricia Defender for Planning Bureau manager. This plan does create capacity for approximately an additional 2500 dwelling units. And I'm sure, as most can appreciate, that that is not welcome news to folks who want to try to limit density. But I think some of the the ways that we've gone about designing the specific plan and the requirements for developers is going to create over the next 40 years a development and a community that will be filled with open space and mobility options and wetlands restoration and wetlands tourism, environmental tourism in a way that we've never seen . So I urge my colleagues to please support this item. It's certainly something that the council district team has worked very hard on, not just this team, but the teams that came before me. And I'm really, really grateful to be at this place. So thank you. Speaker 4: All right, thank you. And I'll just offer my support. I would say these long range planning efforts are really, really good. Thank you, Councilwoman Price, for your hard work and for highlighting the housing discussion. You're absolutely right. It is difficult to have a discussion about housing, but I think our land use element is 26,000 units and that's almost 10% of it. So that is important to note, and thank you for your leadership on that. So is there any public comment? Speaker 1: Comment. We had three public comment and a Christianson and Cantrell and Marlene Alvarado. Speaker 6: It's a lot of trash talk tonight, folks. I'm here representing the Los Cerritos Wetlands, a land I'm sorry, task force from Sierra Club. And I also live in the third. And I got pretty much the same description that you just got of this. I'm going to take this off of this rezoning. It talks about it in one way, but I think of it in a very different way. I think of the zoning that was is here in place now, CDEP, which limits the height of housing to three stories of all buildings, really. And how from the very beginning and that was a community generated zoning. From the very beginning it was attacked by business after business developer after developer who didn't really respect the community members, who designed that for their desire to protect the low cerritos wetlands. And I don't want this to come off the wrong way. But, you know, when I went to the first CEP meeting, I sat next to a guy who was all in favor of it, and he said, I wonder, I wonder about low income housing. I said, Go ahead and ask. In someone from development services who answered that question says Long Beach doesn't do that. And I think it's very important when we talk about our need for more density and our state mandates in all the units we need supposedly to provide for future residents, that that we understand that we're we're really involving a lot of developers who really want to make a lot of money doing this. And just like wetlands restoration, this is business to leave something alone, to leave the land alone, to leave the wetlands alone, rather than to add more visitor centers, more bike trails, giant berms to protect industry that's already there. And we'll come to call the in and out as this seascape does, a recreational area to zone the in and out recreational is pretty stunning. And, you know, we need housing for the poor. We need housing for people who have very little income. We do not need seven storey high rises in a liquefaction zone, in a tsunami zone, you know, next to our wetlands. And so I'm afraid this will perhaps solve some problems. I realize today, you know, when when the as that sea rise goes, all of the people who are living in Belmont Shore and on the peninsula can just move into the high rises because they are, you know, above ground. That's a plus. That's a plus for those guys who are down on the peninsula, I guess. But as for the majority of residents in Long Beach and those of us who fought for a long time to protect what's already in the wetlands, this isn't this . No benefit. Sorry. Speaker 4: Thank you. Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Good evening. Ann Cantrell speaking for the Sierra Club Cerritos Wetlands Task Force and I attended all the meetings on C set back before. Councilwoman Price was on the council when Frank Kelner held similar meetings on this and C dip which proceeded which is now our zoning had some problems to it. It allowed housing development on the wetlands. And it allowed oil development on the wetlands. So see, CIP still allows oil development on the wetlands. And it is creating 2500 new dwelling units surrounding the wetlands. Sea dip only allowed three storey buildings. See? SIP. Will allow seven story buildings surrounding the wetlands. And the oil. Production. Is addressed briefly in c cep as saying. Modification nine will modify C Chapter C CIP C CIP Chapter five to incorporate the oil production standards recently certified by the Coastal Commission for C Dip, among other revisions. The Coastal Commission staff. It's said, and I quote, Oil released into the wetlands area will contaminate soils and vegetation and result in a range of effects for wildlife from habitat exclusion to death. Required cleanup measures would likely result in the complete loss of affected wetland areas. Wetland channels could also provide a direct pathway to marine waters. If an oil spill reaches the San Gabriel River, Alameda Bay or the Pacific Ocean, impacts to marine habitat and species, coastal recreation and other coastal resources could be devastating. Therefore, because the ability to effectively contain and clean up an oil spill does not exist at this time. Staff finds that the proposed project is inconsistent with the second requirement of the Coastal Act. This was when Bump Wanted was getting their permits to act for oil production in the wetlands. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 1: Time's up. Thank you. Speaker 6: Sea has not solved anything. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Next week, the police. Speaker 6: Hi, I'm Marlene Alvarado from the First District, and I have been actively involved in the wetlands here for many years, and I see this whole thing part of a capitalist system that exploits the land, and it's exploiting the environment, especially with the oil. My God. Oh, we're having catastrophic temperatures right now. And and we're still producing oil out of a wetlands, the last seawater wetlands here in Long Beach. It's tragic. And as with no added, you're going to build high rises of seven stories when the law had previously said they could only do three. There's another item here that I want to talk about and has a lot to do with renters. And the problem is you can't make money off of poor people. And so we're going to have expensive seven story buildings in a dangerous zone. Speaker 1: And. Speaker 6: You guys are going to go along with it. But you're holding up neoliberals who really believe that capitalism is going to be the answer when it's really going to be our destruction, because we can no longer exist in the system exploiting wetlands, exploiting poor people. It's you know, our city is a sellout to developers and real estates. And that's what I want to say. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 4: All right. I think that concludes public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 4: Thank you. I think we have a hearing number 19 next. 1818 is next.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Land Use District Map of the City of Long Beach as said Map has been established and amended by amending portions of Parts 6, 7,12 and 13 of said Map to reflect a change from PD-1 (SEADIP) (Southeast Area Development and Improvement Plan) to SP-2 (Southeast Area Specific Plan), I (Institutional), and R-1-S (Single-Family Residential, Small Lot); making conforming changes to the map, incorporating the California Coastal Commission recommended modifications, read and adopt as read. (District 3)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_07132021_21-0639

Speaker 4: Thank you. I think we have a hearing number 19 next. 1818 is next. Speaker 1: Great report from Development Services Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and find the project exempt from secure. Declare ordinance amending and restating the Belmont Pier Plan Development District. An ordinance amending the Use District map from the Belmont Pier Plan Development District. Read the first time and later of the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading. Adopt three resolutions approving a general plan amendment to the local coastal program element of the General Plan, amending the implementation plan land use map and authorizing director services to submit the LCP amendment to the California Coastal Commission District three. Speaker 4: Thank you. There a brief staff report on this. Speaker 6: Yes. I'd like to again introduce Deputy Development Services Director Christopher Coons to introduce to present this item. Speaker 2: I thank you, Vice Mayor and Councilmember Price, similar to the previous item. We have a, um, a trustee vendor for our planning barrel manager is available for any questions we can provide information. Much like the previous item. This is a matter that has been worked on for many years and concluded at the local process. It went to the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Commission made changes and council tonight was asked to conform those changes. What this matter does relate to the Belmont Pool. It's important to understand the item in front of you tonight has to do with the zoning for the pool and not the design of the pool itself, or financing of the pool or any of the other matters related to the pool. So with that, we're glad to answer any questions or provide a PowerPoint if necessary, to you. Speaker 4: As a member price. Speaker 3: Well, I think on this one, if you could go through the PowerPoint, it does. I know that's a lot of procedural changes. So it may not be the most exciting one, but there's a lot of public interest in it. Speaker 2: Absolutely. So if we could get that up in the back. Speaker 3: No offense, but your area of expertize is not of mass levels of interest. So by everyone of everyone. So the technical. Speaker 2: Well, well aware. Speaker 6: It's very technical. Speaker 3: Okay. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members Patricia Devendorf, her planning bureau manager, as was already described briefly, this item is essentially a local coastal program amendment to amend the land use and tax changes associated with the Belmont Pier Plan Development District, which is a PD two. And we'll complete the final legislative actions needed for the local Coastal Program Amendment. These amendments are the enabling legislation that are needed to facilitate the the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center project. No. Having some trouble with the. Speaker 1: Next slide, please. Speaker 3: Okay. Okay. Recent actions on the project have included the Planning Commission's approval of the changes to the PD two ordinance. The Council's original adoption of those changes, which occurred on January 21st of 2020. The adopted changes to the PD two required an amendment to the local coastal program, which is a part of which PD two is a part of the local coastal program and the local implementation program. The Coastal Commission took action on the LCP amendments February of this year, approving the LCP amendments with suggested modifications, as was recommended to them by the Coastal Commission staff. At that time, the Coastal Commission also approved the coastal development permits for the pool. Adoption of the LCP amendments with suggested modifications must be completed before August of this year. That is the deadline to return the informed changes to the Coastal Commission. Pardon me. The Coastal Commission provided nine suggested modifications to the local coastal program via amendments to the PD two. The staff has incorporated all of those. Coastal Commission suggested modifications to bring PD to the Pier two ordinance into conformance with the local coastal program amendments as modified by the Coastal Commission. They largely are modifications to clarify PD two and LCP policies and to establish PD two development standards and clean up the ordinance the zoning associated with a barrier within the PD two area. None of these amendments with adversely affect the Poole project or existing land uses businesses or residences. Specifically, the suggested modifications included changes to the zoning map, which is shown here as well as text changes. This page summarizes the zoning map changes, which is a change that will revert one area of PD two to its previous zoning of R for R. A previous zone change to PD two was not certified by the Coastal Commission. So this just restores the zoning that has been in existence there for some time. With the deletion of the previous sub area for the the remaining suburbia is renumbered. So suburbia five becomes a barrier four. And that is those are the changes to the map. The changes to the text bring the audience into consistency with the Coastal Commission policy and language that was previously certified by the Coastal Commission, that some clarifications to the public and recreation access purpose, for example, in the standard of review for projects where among those changes. So just to summarize, the five local actions listed here are needed by the City Council tonight to complete the local Coastal Program Amendment, which was previously approved by the City Council. They include PD two zoning ordinance and text map changes. General plan amendments to the local coastal program to implement. The Coastal Commission suggested modifications and a resolution to direct staff to resubmit these changes to the Coastal Commission for Final Certification. These actions are exempt from CEQA, as are all actions related to the preparation or adoption of local coastal programs. This project also had a project, Air and air addendum that it is here to offer, and those also are in effect and analyze the environmental impacts of the project activities, including these final legislative actions. These legislative actions do not create any new significant environmental impacts that were not already analyzed in that year. And so no further secret documentation is required. Noticing was done in accordance with requirements of the zoning code of the city and the Coastal Commission regulations and all previous commenters were notified or comments received on this matter tonight were forwarded to the City Council prior to this hearing. So just to sum up the this slide just shows the actions that are before the council again approving a zoning code amendment to the PD two ordinance and text approving zone change to the PD two Zoning map approving general plan amendments to implement text changes and map changes to the local coastal program, and adopting a resolution to authorize the director to resubmit these changes to the Coastal Commission. That concludes the presentation. And again, we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Speaker 0: Thank you. Have to go back to Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you so much for that presentation. I take it back, it was totally, very exciting and I really appreciate you putting forth it. This is a much more technical presentation on this project than we've had, but I really do appreciate you going through it. I want to thank all the Long Beach residents who have been involved in this project for years and the appellants. Even though the appeal was not successful at the Coastal Commission, it did provide an opportunity for us to have meaningful discussion regarding the issues raised in the appeal and to work on those issues to obtain a project that is a lot more more mitigated than I think what was initially presented. I want to give a special acknowledgment to my predecessor, Councilman DeLong, my former colleagues, Councilwoman Lowenthal, and Councilman O'Donnell, who's now on the assembly, who really fought very hard for this project before I ever took office and were supportive of this project and setting aside some of the initial funding. I want to especially thank Councilman Suranga for his work on this item with the Coastal Commission. I had the opportunity to attend that Coastal Commission hearing and I have. Speaker 6: A new. Speaker 3: Level of respect for him because of the amount of work that is required to wade through some of these very technical issues. This one not excluded. Among those topics, and I really appreciate his thoughtfulness in listening and meeting with everyone on all sides of this issue. I want to thank the Coastal Commission because they have worked with the city staff who are the heroes of this project. The city staff worked with the Coastal Commission all during 2022 and 2020 to really address all the concerns and come up with a project that is smaller in scope than initially contemplated, but certainly something that everyone can live with and feels very comfortable. Speaker 6: With moving. Speaker 3: Forward. And especially I want to thank them for some of their programmatic opportunities and outreach efforts to provide this as an access opportunity for everyone throughout the city and through the region. This facility is going to be an incredible asset for both competitive swimmers as well as residents throughout the city who are of all ages. It's a place for high school and collegiate athletes will be able to learn and master their craft a place where seniors can take classes to stay active. A place where children can come for simple recreation and the splash pools and kids of all ages can enjoy our beautiful city at a very low cost. This has been a long time coming, and I'm so glad to see that this project has has finally made it to this point where we've been successful at working with Coastal Commission on developing developing a project that's realistic and feasible given its location and the funding. So I want to thank everyone who was involved, especially our city staff, especially our city manager, who's been a champion for this project. And I want to and our mayor our mayor has been a wonderful, wonderful advocate. I can't I can't talk about this project without talking about his support for a prudent and mitigated project that would be acceptable to all those who are interested as stakeholders in this in this project. So I want to urge my colleagues to support this item and thank you for the time. Speaker 0: Councilwoman, we do have a motion in a second to a public comment. Ma'am. I'm calling for public comment. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Uh, we have ten speakers. Lucy Johnson. Joe Wainstein. Duffy McCormick. Speaker 0: Actually, I'm sorry. We just need to please refrain from all of that to some folks. Come up and speak at times a lot. And so we'll call the first five speakers up. Go ahead. Speaker 5: Lucy Johnson, Joe Weinstein, Debbie McCormick. Speaker 2: Jessica Payne and Christiansen. Please line up. Speaker 6: Good ending there. Garcia and council members. I'm Lucy Johnson, a resident of the fifth District. And I've been a proponent of this pool for since 1968. Here we are again. It's been eight. Speaker 8: Years and five months, almost to the. Speaker 6: Day since the city closed the original Belmont Pool. Belmont Plaza, Olympic pool. Eight years and five months. So just so very thankful that we finally got to this point that the project is approved by the Coastal Commission and that this is just a cleanup item technically. Speaker 8: To match up language in. Speaker 6: Various parts of the Coastal Commission approval and. Speaker 8: The city's. Speaker 6: Ordinances as they have been. So we appreciate that. Hopefully this is the next to the last time we'll. Speaker 8: Be back in front of you. Speaker 6: With the last time being. Hopefully when you approve the contract for the construction. So thank you very much for all your efforts. Speaker 8: Tom BODETT, the city. Speaker 6: Staff, Chris Coons, Eric Lopez, Josh Hickman, Susie Pryce, all the council members that have been supportive of this and. Speaker 8: In Councilmember Durango for the efforts on the Coastal Commission itself. Thank you. Well, I'm Joel Weinstein. Like my colleagues in Carp, we support the idea. More swimming and other aquatics. The problem with this project is not the goal, it's the specifics. In particular, the utterly irresponsible choice of the project site. The choice of the site for the former pool was okay in the sixties because no one saw threats from quakes, liquefaction, tsunamis, sea level rise. But now, knowing what we do, this is an idiotic site choice. The site choice makes Long Beach a leader in climate denial. Just see Melinda Amendments. Cotton Melinda Cotton's submission to you. The site as a result imposes huge extra costs of operation and construction so that instead of a typical cost for such a facility like 15 million, which they did in Torrance, this is supposed to cost 60 million more and give us a site that will be less functional, less life, less everything. And it's all due, apparently, to a concept that tidelands funds are to be used and need be used only for luxuries and extras and nostalgia and never mind the people who are now going to depend on those funds to be spent for defense against sea level rise, not for the fancy of a swimming pool, which will be in the midst of a flooded neighborhood. But for the defense of those neighborhoods themselves. Speaker 6: Can I go? Okay. Hi. It's nice to see some of you again. Some of you I have met. Some of you I have not. I also have been coming here for eight years and five months. I'm very passionate about this project, so I want to thank Mayor Garcia, Councilwoman Susie Price and all the rest of you. My name is Debbie McCormick Allen, the owner and head coach of the McCormick Diving Team in Long Beach. I'm also on the board of the Aquatic Capital of America Foundation and a member of the Long Beach Century Club. In 2019, you honored our team in these chambers for celebrating 51 years of excellence. Now it's 53. Okay. We are beyond anxious for you to start digging that hole. I realize there have been many delays due to frivolous lawsuits. Personally, I feel. That those losing lawsuits should pay all those costs, since every delay costs the city thousands of dollars more. Once this pool is built, it will bring a lot of excitement for the public and all water sport enthusiasts, especially with the citywide access and multiple pools for all the fun aquatic activities. While the majority of time this facility will serve the community, the few times that it is used for major events will attract millions of dollars in tourism. Every delay in starting this project is more time that Long Beach clubs like mine has to spend traveling to different cities to rent their facilities. With the Olympics coming up, there will be a lot of kids dreaming of becoming an Olympian one day. One of my former students started at the old Belmont Pool and just won the Olympic trials. So I want you to cheer for Brandon Lucero. I just know that there's a lot of kids that might want to be an Olympian one day. Okay. Okay. Well, cheers for Brandon. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Jessica Payne and a Christensen and Cantrell and Coral asleep. Please line up. Speaker 6: Hi. Thank you. Mayor Garcia Garcia. Thank you. Councilmember Price. Thank you for the whole council for actually getting through this project. My children were deeply involved with the Belmont Pool for the last 12 and a half years of its existence. They went to major colleges because of their experiences swimming and diving there, and it was invaluable. For five years we actually lived in Sydney, Australia and used that Olympic pool. But the community use of that pool was what I want to bring up to you. It was amazing with the swim, the diving, the water polo, but also all of the community features that we are adding to this pool that brought people there. And yes, it was closed maybe three times a year, mostly for TV and film use, not for competitive use. They could keep it open for the community and run major competitions. It was an amazing thing and every time I went there I thought about, why couldn't our Long Beach pool be more like this? Now it's going to be, and I thank you. I'm very sad, though, that the next year it'll be at least 12 and a half years since it closed before we have another pool. Thank you for keeping to work on this. Speaker 2: Thank you very. Speaker 6: Much. And cheer for Brandon. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker. Speaker 6: Yeah. Anna Christensen from the Long Beach Area Peace Network. We still maintain that this is a let's see, what did we call it? Well, white privilege. It's a castle to white privilege. It's in the whitest, wealthiest corner of town. Black Lives Matter apparently didn't really sink in. I guess the Coastal Commission is going to expect you to buy a bus and throw a few dollars for some free lessons. That's about it. But it's not. It's not going to do what? The other thing we ask you to do is Long Beach. I'm sorry. Peace Network is Bill pulls. Bill pulls in everybody's council district costs about 2 million bucks a pop. It's not a lot. Excuse that. Oh, we don't have any money. Okay, well, let me just say this. You just spent two and a half million dollars to maintain the Queen Mary for six months. 23 $2,000,300 for artificial turf in Eldorado Park, and $1,000,700 to rehabilitate a duck pond. You know, 200 million for the cops and 94 million for the fire department. We can find $2 million. It's getting hot. It's getting hot in the night. It's hot in the first. Don't believe that every elder is going to make it down to the Belmont pool. This is delusional. And my my final remark is be delusional on your own dime. We got to face reality. The difference. And Cantrell speaking for Karp and the Sierra Club lo Cerritos, Wetlands, Land Trust. You are being asked to approve the finding that the project is exempt from sequel. Even if the LCP exemption applies, it does not apply to the zoning. So code changes or the general plan amendment that are necessary for the project. As portions of this project are not exempt from sequel, the entire project is not exempt from sequel. In fact, a new EIA is needed to study the effects of removing the roof and that the effects of removing the roof will have on noise, light and energy use. Will blowing sand clog the filtering system and the moveable floor? Will the disabled and elderly be able to use an outside pool? There has been no traffic study since Ocean Boulevard was calmed. There is no plan for a special event. Parking. Alternative locations have changed because the Jehovah Witnesses and the Queen Mary Land are no longer being under lease. Lastly, by moving the pool north and taking a public park and public right of way, there is not only loss of parking, nesting trees and disabled sidewalks, there is a violation of the city ordinance 905 which states parks will not be alienated unless replaced with a 2 to 1 ratio. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Speaker 4: Politically. Marlene Alvarado and Wise. Speaker 2: Sam Simmons, please line up. Speaker 6: Carelessly here. The first point I'd like to make is a judge pointed out to us not long ago that imprudent spending is not illegal. The second point is that there is no objection from carp on building an exotic swimming facility that will allow the competitive swimmers and divers to train. The objection is to the location. Looking at what the the Coastal Commission put together, where they had nine items and 24 pages of what needs to be accomplished before they can approve the CDP. You see words that you would not see in building a normal pool on more stable ground. You see words like plinth, that's a sea wall. You see a ten foot walkway. Foundations to account for high ground groundwater levels to accommodate elevated liquefaction potential associated with high water levels, beach fill programs, plans for how each foundation element will be removed. So before we've even built it, we have to have a plan to remove it because it's in the path of sea level rise. The tidal and ferns will be gobbled up by this asset. There was a list of hundreds of competing priorities for those funds, and that list seems to have been discontinued. But reconstruction on the Belmont Pier is surely on that list. Every day replacement of lifeguard stations needs to be paid for. Imprudence. Speaker 2: Is all. Speaker 6: Right. Speaker 2: Next speaker, please. Speaker 6: Earlier. I'm actually with Hungarian Peace Network and Democratic Socialists of America. This pool is really not a very wise thing to do. It is going to be affected by sea level rise. And you know how we humans thinks we we cannot beat nature. But I mean, look at Florida, a ten story building. How many stories fell down because of the liquefaction? I think this is not wise at all. And another thing, too, is I don't think too many kids in Councilman Rich Rex Richardson's area or probably Austin's area would be able to go down to the pool and enjoy it because I hope they live too far away. Public transportation is in their grade and maybe they kind of need more police in their own area. Actually, I learned how to swim in Lake Michigan and I didn't need a pool. That's what I have to say. Speaker 0: Expedia points. Speaker 5: Good evening, counsel. My name is Hank Wise. It's nice to be in front of you again. I was here a little while ago when I accepted an award from you guys for my Catalina swim efforts, which have done seven of them. And thank you for that award. I'd like to just. I'm basically here to celebrate. Okay. When? When the pool passed the Coastal Commission with all your hard work, especially mystery ranks. I was just like I was over the moon and I still am over the moon. This pool will be used by the whole city. It'll be used by every age group. It'll be used in so many capacities. And, you know, I'm a head coach of a youth. A youth swim team. A lot of development and all that. And then the adults. I have an adult team as well. But beyond of that, the seniors, the aquatic aerobics, like the water aerobics people, the the the free swim, the late afternoon people that come on in from all over town, park in their cars and just coming on in and getting wet. It just feels good to everybody. So this pool is going to be used widely, widely by everybody in the city. It's going to be a hub. It was a hub before and it'll be a hub again. Thank you so much for passing this pool. I love it and I know so many people that love it, too. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next figure, please. Speaker 3: Hi, everybody. My name's. Speaker 6: Sam Simmons. I'm in District four, and I'm here to talk about the pier and about the restoration and rejuvenation of the pier in this area. I'm a swimmer. I'm also an avid ocean swimmer. More importantly, I'm an ESL teacher at a community college, and I'd like to talk about how the pier helps them. And so it's not only my life's work. Yes. So but also in helping students understand the importance of our oceans and the animals in it. My students come from all over the world, from all kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds and languages. Many have no knowledge of the ocean, and many have never seen the ocean, and they may fear it. We have an assignment where they read a book about a gray whale and an ocean swimmer. And in that assignment, they have to go to the pier and they have to look out at the pier, write what they see , identify the animals of the pier. Many of them, when they come back, say it's a remarkable experience to experience the ocean from a pier. Many are too afraid to swim. So the pier may be the only way that they're able to experience it at all. The comments that I have gotten back from them have been all amazing and that is how they are able to experience the ocean. It is my belief that the pier can help individuals do this. It gives people a stake in helping to improve our oceans. We can't heal what we fear or we don't know. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. I want to say a couple comments and questions over to Councilman Price, too, to wrap us up. Let me let me just also just add that I want to thank the just the staff. Again, I think you guys have we've been talking about this project for for a very long time. And it's one I've I've I've supported from the beginning. I think rebuilding a historical landmark, a place that's so, so much of our community has been involved with since they were many of them kids and the Olympians that have come out of this facility. And just the, I think, Joy, that so many Long Beach families have had as being a part of this community has been really important for us to to be committed to to this project. I also I appreciate obviously, I understand there's been a lot of appeals and there have been a lot of court cases. A lot of this has gone to trial. And on each of those occasions, the the city has been able to move the project forward. And I think that's important to note that what's happened not just in the courts, but also at the Coastal Commission have have reinforced why this project not only matters to our community, but meets the rigorous requirements that especially the Coast Commission puts on projects of this magnitude. And I will share, and I think most folks know this the Coastal Commission staff and the commission, having been a former Coastal Commissioner myself, put these projects through an incredibly rigorous process. And so I feel confident that the Coastal Commission has blessed this project and they have an incredible team of of climate scientists and environmental attorneys and staff that are committed to this work and to the the Coast Commission itself is a body that has also done great work. And so I appreciate all of the Coastal Commission's work in getting us to this point. I think we all would have loved for this to have gone by a lot faster, but grateful that we're here at this moment. And obviously to, you know, to Lucy and Debbie and Hank and everyone that's just been involved in the process. I just want to thank you for guiding the process as well, because it has been, I know, a labor of love for all of you. And it's and it matters to Long Beach. And I think we made a commitment. I certainly did. Councilman Price certainly did. And her predecessor before her to get this project completed. And that's what we're going to do. I also want to just note that I have met personally kids from across the city that are excited to see the pool reopen and kids that that are now no longer kids that use the pool and are off doing other great things, you know, in college or beyond. And their experience and connection to to the to that facility is really powerful. And and, you know, it means a lot to so many people. So I'm glad that we're finally here. I look forward to seeing shovels in the ground and getting this project started. And I'm grateful to the courts, the Coastal Commission and the city staff for every step of the way doing the right thing and moving this project forward. In addition to that. I also want to just add that one thing that I think is also important is that you're working also on inequity plan and that equity plan. And I understand that this is something that is work being worked on with the Coastal Commission and will, I believe go to the Coastal Commission at some point. And so I think that that's something that I think is is absolutely important. And I'm really I'm really grateful and glad that we're moving forward on that plan as well to ensure that the pool is a political assessable to everyone. Because I can tell you right now that the advocates and those that that have been meeting or with me or talking to me about the pool, they want the pool to be accessible to everybody. That is, I know our goal behind the dais and it's certainly the goal of Debbie's and Lucy's and everyone else in the community is for it to be something for for the entire city. So I strongly support this project and I just want to personally, again, thank Councilman Price for being such a great steward of and leader of getting us to this point as well. And we'll continue to get it across the finish line. Councilman Price. Speaker 3: And to add to that, Mr. Mayor, thank you. I'm so we do have some permanent pools in the city of Long Beach. They're not in the third district. Maybe city staff can tell us where are the permanent pools in the city of Long Beach. Speaker 5: So we have two other pools. We have three pools total. We have the Belmont pool. We have a martin Luther King pool, which is in the sixth District. And we have Silverado Pool, which is in the seventh District. We also have access to some of the community pools. I'm sorry, the school district pools. And we do some joint partnerships with them. And Cabrillo is another one. In fact, almost every pool I can think of that we have access to where we've done is in an area that is that is an equity area. That is an area that is related to communities that need access to facilities. And so the Belmont Pool is the largest. It's a regional pool and it serves the entire region, and it's been located there ever since the voters approved it back in the sixties. Speaker 3: So thank you, Mr. Modica and I, I'm super excited about the equity piece. We just started the equity rowing program in the third district. Last weekend was our first weekend. And you know, without going, I don't want to violate any of the privacy of the kids, but these are kids who would never have access to a program like rowing because it's so expensive and cost prohibitive. And they're participating in this and this program. And we had a difficult time recruiting because some of the kids don't know how to swim and they needed to have some basic swim lessons to sign up for this equity program. And so we want to make sure that that access is there for everyone. And I think the Coastal Commission wanted that as well and I'm super excited about that piece. I will say I was I was moved by the comments of the Coastal Commission, I think the title as president or maybe chair, I don't know his exact title and I don't have his words written down. But they hear from all communities all over the state of California. And at the end of the Belmont Pool comment, he made an observation that I thought was pretty profound and I got to give it to Anna Christiansen's been really the only one that's talked about this equity issue from day one. But in the beginning, the conversation was, let's not build this pool blocks the views. The building is too high. It should be in other parts of the city. And the Coastal Commission president made a comment about it's interesting when you have residents from the community that is the proposed project site saying we don't want those people here, that the whole idea of equity and integration is bringing people together in different communities. And that's a way of exclusion to say let's keep the let's keep everyone separated so that we're not integrating. He he said it a lot more articulately than I did, but I thought it was a very. Speaker 0: Hey, hey, guys, please, please, will. Let's actually we're not going to have the outburst right now. So thank you very much, Councilwoman Price, continue. Speaker 3: I thought that that was a very profound statement that he made because the idea of bringing people from throughout the region to different neighborhoods. Speaker 0: Actually, I know that's not that's not yet. Mr. Christiansen. Ms.. Christiansen there is time. There's time to talk. I miss Gretchen. There's time there's time for you to do comment. Now. Councilman Price, as a former councilman PRICE. Speaker 3: Thank you. Okay. Mr.. Speaker 0: Ms.. Christiansen, thank you very much. Yep. Thank you very much, ma'am. Ma'am, you cannot you cannot continue to do that. We've got to continue the meeting. Speaker 3: Councilman Price. So thank you. So one of the things that I appreciated was the comment of if you build facilities throughout the city, you get people from throughout the city going throughout the city. Right now we have people going to Cabrillo or MLK or Silverado to use our free rec classes, and that will be the case in Belmont Pool as well. And as Councilman Saranga said at the Coastal Commission, if you build it, they will come. And I thought that was a really great statement, that that's a way for us to get people to get on the ocean and to access the ocean. And I thought that was a profound statement that someone else made that it was important to highlight. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Ranga. Speaker 5: ex-Mayor. And since there's quite a considerable, considerable discussion about the Coastal Commission, a board that I sit on, I just want to give you a little bit of a historical perspective that when this item first came to the City Council to review it, to develop the plan and send it out, I didn't vote for it because I didn't see an equity component to it. And it was. Pass obviously in that wet to the coach commission. And I, I really try to emphasize to staff that we needed an equity element to it to ensure that kids from all over the city and the region, for that matter, had access to the pool. That after all, the coach commission is about access. And that's what we that's what we want to encourage, want to pursue. So when it got to the Coast Commission, they heard out loud what what it was supposed to address. And it did. And when it came to the coach commission and I had my fact, several coach commissioners make that very same point that we needed to make sure that that, of course, commission permit in order for a city to get it, that it would include an element of equity to ensure that kids and people from all over the region, regardless of their background, had access to the pool. And a statement that I made was, you know, because people were also talking about why are you building it here in the third district and one of the most highest rent districts in the city? Why don't you build it somewhere else? More people can more access like all that's segregation. Winnie, what's the matter with integrating the third district? That's where we would need to do is we need to integrate the third district by having people come to where no others can. Speaker 0: Guys, I. Please, can. Speaker 5: We. You might find that funny. You may find it hilarious. You might think it's a it's a it's a non sequitur. But, you know, think about it, think about it. Think about having people come to the beach. Where they haven't been able to come before because they're excluded, because they don't come to me, to our area, because we have a pool here. Build your own pools over there and you stay there. That's not what this is about. This is about equity, is about fairness, is about everybody having access to a pool in Long Beach. Now, if you're and you disagree with that, then you know what? You have an issue with equity. With equity. So anyway, just to just to put this out. Speaker 0: Thank you. Actually actually hold on 1/2. Councilman Ranga, you have the floor if you want to finish up. Speaker 5: Just to close this out. A passed the coast commission unanimously. Well, actually ten. What? And it was it was a good project. They thought it was everything that what that the commission has recommended to be included is here now and it's going forward and it's and it's going to be reviewed again by the Coastal Commission. So thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember and then Vice Mayor Richardson, and then we'll go to a vote. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to chime in. And so a couple of things. So, one, we have certain assets in the city that are citywide assets. Our convention center, our civic center, our airport, our port, the Belmont Pool is designed to be a citywide asset. Now, that does not mean that we cannot also invest in community pools. I tend to agree. I think there's value both ways. I think the conversations on integration said are great. My mother integrated schools 50 years ago when she was in second grade. Those are you know, those are powerful, powerful statements. I don't want to oversell it, but I think there is something to be said about. There's a pool at King. There's a pool at Belmont. There's a pool. Let me just. Let me just finish my statement. There's a pool there, King. There's a pool on the West Side. There needs to be a pool in North Long Beach. We have access, limited access to a pool of Jordan, limited access. But there is no city municipal pool in 925, which has more children than any other zip code in the city. So I would say yes on my pool. Yes. I'm investing in pools in North and central in West Long Beach. There are pools in central west. There needs to be a pool in north. And the facilities in central west need to be improved. So I would hope that in this this obviously keeps on coming up. So I hope the staff is listening that there you don't have to I mean, you've heard enough. We need to be making these investments. Next time there's a big surplus in the state, let's see some proposals about expanding pools into these other other areas of town. So those are those are some of the some of my thoughts here. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that members, please go to cast your votes. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Unanimously. Thank you. Next item is item number 19.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending and restating the Belmont Pier Planned Development District (PD-2), read and adopt as read. (District 3)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_07132021_21-0646

Speaker 0: Unanimously. Thank you. Next item is item number 19. Speaker 1: Report from development services. Speaker 0: This is the last hearing also. Speaker 1: Recommendation to determine that the project is categorically exempt from CEQA declare ordinance amending Title 21 of the Long Beach Municipal Code to amend maintenance of low income housing in the coastal zone. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of City Council for Final Reading and adopt a resolution authorizing Director of Development Services to submit amendments to the California Coastal Commission citywide. Speaker 6: Mr. Modica last hearing for development services tonight, Christopher Koontz will make this presentation. Speaker 2: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and members of the Council. In January of this year, we were in front of the City Council regarding what's called the Mello Act, which is how we deal with affordable housing that is proposed for demolition in the coastal zone. We presented an ordinance to the council at that time and council had a number of comments and requested changes that were all positive changes. We spent the month since that time working with staff, working with city attorney, and working with outside advocates to refine the ordinance. And we think we have it correct now, per your instructions back in January. So Patricia Defender is going to walk us through those changes and what's now in front of the council. Speaker 3: Good evening again, mayor, vice mayor, council members. Patricia, do you even defer as deputy director Christopher Coons said, this item was before you on January 19th of this year. At that time, based on comments from the public, council instructed staff to make revisions to the ordinance, and that is the ordinance that is before you this evening. It incorporates those revisions, and I will describe them a bit later in the presentation. Speaker 6: Mm hmm. Speaker 3: Just to provide some background again, state law adopted in 1981, known as the Mello Act, requires replacement of affordable housing that is demolished in the coastal zone. It allows payment of in lieu fees as an alternative to providing onsite replacement of units. In 1988, the city adopted its Mello Act ordinance to implement the state law and establish the new fee. The city's adopted 2014 2021 housing element. The current housing element identified updating the Mello Act as a program to pursue and to update the in lieu fees. While the city has not collected any mello in lieu fees in the area because no projects have triggered it, the fee is being updated at this time. As previously noted, the draft ordinance has been revised per council instruction to better align the proposed Mall Act amendments with adopted inclusionary housing and no net loss ordinances. Proposed fee schedule is based on the market study of current development. In addition to updating the fees, the Zoning Code Amendment removes exemptions for single family houses, duplexes and accessory dwelling units, which are commonly among the things that are demolished in the coastal zone. Planning Commission did approve the recommendations and recommended that council approve this these amendments October of last year. This slide shows the the revised in lieu fee schedule, which varies based on the number of bedrooms and the affordability level of the unit. These fees will be tied to the construction cost index to ensure that fees escalate when the index increases to keep up with the cost of the increases in cost of construction. The changes that were made since the January ordinance that was before you are described on this slide here, both rent and tenant income will be considered in establishing replacement unit for unit affordability level. This ordinance will pilot that approach. The revision eliminates alternative ways to comply with the affordable unit replacement requirement, such as rehabilitation or conversion of existing units to affordable or offsite units. Those will not be permitted to count toward replacement requirements. Units to count towards or place requirements will have to be constructed onsite or applicants will have to pay the in lieu fee replacement units have to be at the same or greater levels of affordability. The revisions further ensure that the new fee maintains pace with construction costs and the affordability covenants remain for the life of the project . Public outreach was conducted on this project and and noticing in accordance with code requirements, the proposed zoning code amendment is exempt from secure. The actions before council this evening are to determine that the project is categorically exempt from secure to adopt an ordinance amending the Chapter 2161 to limit exceptions to the requirements to replace affordable units and to modify the in lieu fees in the coastal zone of the city. And to adopt a resolution authorizing the Director of Development Services to submit the amendments to the California Coastal Commission for its review, approval and certification. That does conclude the presentation and staff is available to answer questions. Speaker 0: If you have a motion in a second. I think we have two members of the public. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Abraham Zavala and son, I can say, please come to the podium. Speaker 4: Good evening, City Council. Speaker 5: I just had to answer a call from. Speaker 4: A baby sitter, so I'm a little distraught. Let me gather myself. It's been a long night. I want to urge City Council to adopt this current ordinance, the mill ordinance, as one critical tool to address the city's desire or the dire affordable housing needs that we have. Specifically, we support the following provisions of the ordinance that was recognized from February 2021. First point the alignment with inclusionary housing and no known net loss ordinances. The requirement that affordable replacement units be provided the same or deeper affordability level. The requirement that affordable units be provided as net. Speaker 5: New units so that. Speaker 4: Rehabilitation or subsidy of existing units is not permitted. The prohibition of off site compliance for construction of affordable units so that all affordable units must be built on site. Or developers. Developers can pay the in lieu fee. We also agree with the extension of the affordability covenants for new affordable units to 55 years or for the life of the project, whichever is longer. And lastly, we also agree with the inclusion of a pilot program to monitor the implementation of affordability requirements that are defined by looking at both the rent and income levels of tenants. So once again, we strongly urge you and maybe I introduce myself because I was so frazzled. And with Bebe Circle, my name is Abraham Zavala and I'm with Long Beach. Residents Empowered a group that's part of. Speaker 5: The Housing. Speaker 4: Justice Coalition. And we as a coalition support these amendments and hope you adopt them. Thank you. Speaker 2: Listen, I can fit in sixth district. I just want to say, you know, I respect all the seniors. There again, you know, a little irritated there. But with respect to the King's Pool, there was a shadow coming from Belmont Shore during the COVID, bring in people to swim at Kings Pool that never swam there before. In my 30 plus years as full time at Silverado, Fairfield YMCA Kings Pool, the YMCA was used to be on Seventh Street. I never swam at Belmont Shore, so let's just get back to reality. The reality of today as Miss Patrician. Ma'am, I don't know how to say your last name. Try. I'm trying to be respectful. I did read the 80 pages of the 861 page report that you guys have available on your on your your your site. With respect to this, I think that, you know, we had a very spirited land use element debate for quite some time. And the the years have come up and we're going to have some state mandates come in with regards to affordable housing. And as you said, it's 2500 units expected to come with this development. I personally, you know, I don't really try to speak with regards to districts I don't live in, but with regards to overall the city and the housing mandates that are going to come from state down. You know, I do have to speak to the fact that it seems that a lot of the development for affordable housing is connected towards the blue line and the transit hub, the court corridors. And so it's important that when moments like this come about, that we support the establishment of affordable housing units and other districts besides six, eight and nine. So I'm all in favor of this ordinance. I just want to be mindful that we have a realistic relationship with the development of affordable housing units in the area. So if there's 2500, maybe there, you know, we can get like, I don't know, like 15%, you know, I don't know what mandates that locally you guys are allowed to do. But it would be nice because I don't want a tidal wave of pressure to be put on property, small property owners in the third district, which would then propel them to move further west, maybe into the fourth district, which would then propel another housing crisis of some sorts that would then get picked up by the other districts and company. So thank you. Speaker 0: Think you have, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, Mayor. The mayor was long overdue for an upgrade. And I agree with you, Abraham. This is a critical tool. I want to thank the staff for their work on this and for further revising the ordinance to incorporate additional changes. I strongly support this ordinance and was pleased to see that it mirrors our inclusionary housing and know not loss policies more closely. It ensures that we continue to have affordable housing options. And that our coastal zones remain accessible to everyone. So thank you very much. Speaker 0: And Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to say first, congratulations to the community advocates who spoke out very clearly over the course of the past year, but more specifically at the beginning of this year, and talked about the needs to improve our Mello act and make sure it aligns, like Councilwoman Allen said, with our inclusionary housing policy . Well acknowledged city staff, I think they got the scalpel now. Scalpel out. They said, we're going to listen to you. We're going to make this work. And what what's presented from us? I received a very strong letter of support from the community. And I think that's a testament to the good work that our development services team does. And so overall, this is a great ordinance, and I look forward to voting for it tonight. Speaker 0: Thank you. Customers in the house. Speaker 6: Mayor also would like to congratulate all the community advocates that have pushed this through. I think that is it's very well done. Thank you, staff, for all the hard work that you've been doing working with the community. Also would like to thank the previous council that did a lot of work on this even before I got on board. But I'm really excited to support this item tonight. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. We have to have any public comment on this. Then we just did it correctly. Okay, so we have a motion in a second. Please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries eight zero. Speaker 0: Thank you. We do have. So we're now completed with the three hearings. We're going to the regular agenda. I want to note that we do have a good group of folks here for the substantial remodel items. So I do want to hear that item. I know it's towards the end of the agenda. We should hear that early. However, if we don't mind, there are some folks here for the ADA item. So I'm going to just move item 24 right now. I know some of those folks won't be able to speak. And then after 24, we're going right into item 30.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Chapter 21.61 relating to Maintenance of Low Income Housing in the Coastal Zone, read and adopt as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_07132021_21-0651

Speaker 0: And then after 24, we're going right into item 30. Speaker 1: Item 24 Communication from Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Zendejas. Councilwoman Allen. Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department to report back in 30 days on the feasibility of a pilot Ada Beach Access Mat at Granada Beach Ramp. Speaker 0: Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you to the community members who have worked with my staff on this topic, in particular Kim Long Indica McClain. This item is one that I'm super excited about to for us to have here in Long Beach, despite significant efforts by the city to ensure that all Long Beach residents feel welcome and have access to our city facilities and resources. One area is not yet accessible to everyone. Our wonderful beaches are not accessible to residents with mobility limitations. Our sandy beaches present a difficult access hurdle for residents using wheelchairs, walkers or other mobility related support. Speaker 6: With the goal. Speaker 3: Of allowing all residents to have access to our coastline, the city should evaluate the feasibility of developing a pilot Ada Beach Access mat at Granada Beach launch ramp or other location that the city staff might recommend to better understand the opportunities, impacts, maintenance and products available. Speaker 6: With the goal. Speaker 3: Of developing an ADA Beach and Park access program throughout the city. The recommendation for Granada Beach comes from the make up of Granada Beach and that it's already a launch and has a lot of a paved area already which would allow for wheelchairs and walkers and other devices that can't traverse the sand to have a further distance to go on the concrete before the map would be rolled out to go to the water. So I want to ask my council colleagues for their support of this item is long overdue. Frankly, I'm ashamed that we didn't bring this item earlier. To me, it's a no brainer that we should have thought about earlier, and I'm so grateful that we are now in the place where we can bring it. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. But a big and special thank you to Councilmember Price for Agenda using this item. We live in such a diverse and beautiful city that continues to grow and continues to be a leader in so many areas, such as ensuring accessibility in city facilities and resources to on. Yet for years, we as a city shamefully have discarded the fact that people with mobility, limitations and other disabilities have not been able to enjoy the main feature of our city, which is the beach. So I am extremely supportive of this pilot program that will begin to change that and will ensure that everyone, not just some one or some of our residents, but everyone will be able to live, work and play in their own city. I had the personal experience of having access to the beach all the way in Malibu because of wheelchair accessible meant that was there. And I just want to thank the advocates, my fellow disability advocates, for reaching out and making this need known to us, the council on and really stressing how important it is for us to be able to include everyone and for everyone to be able to enjoy our beaches here in Long Beach. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Ciro. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor. I also want to thank Councilmember Price for bringing this item forward and Councilmember Sun has an Allen for signing on. I really want to thank our advocates, Kim, as well as DICKERSON, many other who have been advocating for accessibility in our city. And I agree that it's just long overdue and so glad that we're able to that this items brought forward for us to do feasibility studies to ensure that we increase the ability in our city. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Ellen. Speaker 1: Yes. I also want to thank Councilwoman Price for bringing this item forward. I think having access is so important and I've wanted to see expanded access. I'm ADA access to our beaches for a long time especially that goes all the way to the water, not just to like where the lifeguard towers are. I have spoken to city staff and with members of our Citizens Advisory Commission on Disabilities about the need for this. And I announced that I would be supporting such expanded access back in June, starting with the Pride Tower. So I just look forward to greater access at the Granada Beach and to our beaches and just thank you so much, Council on Price and Van de Hoss and also Sylvie for bringing this forward. Speaker 0: Thank you. And then just before we start public comment, I just want to also certainly thank everyone that's bringing this forward, but especially I want to thank all the advocates I know that I see just Kim and Decker and so many others that you've been advocating, whether it's been through the commission or just as advocates, not just for this project, but also for so many other projects as it relates to accessibility and making sure that we are accessible for everyone, whether it's playgrounds, whether it's beach access, whether it's fixing infrastructure. So I just want to personally thank you all again for all that work would not be happening without all of you. And then let's go out and call public comment. Speaker 5: Think McCain Newby, a florist. Speaker 2: Gretchen Swanson and Kim Bong. Please line up. Speaker 6: I want to make sure before I speak. I think you mispronounced my name. So you were trying to call Deacon McClain, right? Speaker 2: Yes. Sorry about. Speaker 6: That. Thank you. I feel like my name has been mentioned quite a bit, so I don't know if I need to come up here. Okay. Good evening. My name is Deacon McClain. I'm a former Citizens Advisory Commission of Disabilities chairperson. I've served for eight years on Cape Cod, and I'm very, very happy to see the council finally taking action on making beaches more accessible. This was an issue that had been discussed and recommendations were written about it. Years ago, but I want to make emphasis. This discussion started in 2017 and it was discussed in at least three or four meetings of key court. And one of those meetings, our Honorable Mayor Garcia was there. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and City Council for supporting beach accessibility and the installation of a moby Mac at the District three Big Beat. Last week you passed the cities for our Global Initiative. So not so let's not just talk the talk, but walk the walk. Let this be a beginning for a more accessible and inclusive Brown Beach that includes not only beaches at the waterfront, but also our parks in public spaces. All needs are. This is a necessity. I see the mobile map as the first of many steps, not the only step. It is no longer enough to just be do the minimum, to just be ADA compliant. We need to expand the conversation in action to make our city more inclusive and accessible. We need accessible items like these in. By saying this, James Baldwin said it best. Not everything that is placed can be changed, but nothing could be changed it till it is replaced. And today, council an honorable mayor. Today is the day we are facing you today with this issue. We invite you to face the issue with us and always remember, as it is said in our disability community. Nothing about us without us. Thank you. Speaker 2: You'll be a force. Speaker 0: I think Kim's going to go next. It's okay. Speaker 6: Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Kendra and I live in the second district. I also am a member of the Citizens Advisory Commission on Disabilities for the City. A couple of months ago, I saw a post on the new beach playground. I was the person who brought the need for more accessible equipment at the playground and an access mat on the beach to enable people with disabilities and to be able to get to the water safely and comfortably. My own experience illustrates this problem. I am an adult with cerebral palsy and I use a walker for mobility. I have lived on the beach in Long Beach for 11 years, and during that time I have never been able to get to the water on my own because I cannot use my walker in the sand. There are numerous beaches in Los Angeles County that provide access maps. This spring, the county unveiled its latest mat at Venice Beach. In Orange County, Huntington Beach, recently began providing an access map for beachgoers. The cost of the measure would depend on the distance, but judging from the company websites, it probably costs only a few thousand dollars . Mats can be rolled up and stored when the beach is not open and is remanufactured using durable materials that would provide many years of use. According to the U.S. Census, 7% of the population under age 65 has a disability and 11% of the population is age 65 or older. Since many of these residents have mobility issues, providing a beach access mat would be an investment that would benefit potentially thousands of residents and visitors to the city as well. In addition to benefiting people with disabilities, the parents with young children would benefit as well. Average, Matt can provide additional safety for a parent holding their young children. As the sand is difficult to walk in. It also would enable them to use strollers and other build equipment more easily. I feel that an access map can be a benefit to everyone that wants to enjoy the beach. I hope you will support and struggling to access beach mats in Long Beach for people with disabilities. Dan Tehan live in Belmont and they may not be able to get to that beach using public transportation, which many of them rely upon. I would like to also request an access beach map in the Alamitos Beach area. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Kim. Anyway. Speaker 6: Let me take off my security blanket. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Nubian Flores and I'm a proud District nine resident and I'm chairperson of the Citizens Advisory Commission on Disabilities. I'm here to ask I'm here to speak in support of agenda item number 24, as the item reads, now that in 30 days you will receive a report back on the feasibility of implementing accessible beach pathways to the water for our residents that require mobility support like wheelchairs and walkers. I would implore, I would implore you to please also lay out actionable and swift steps to have mobility maps at our beaches as soon as possible. These are long overdue and already in use in our neighboring cities. I would also ask that you install these beach mats in at least three of our beaches, at least one in each of the waterfronts that cover districts one, two and three. We cannot just take into consideration we cannot just take into consideration improved accessibility at the beach. We must also consider public transportation and our most accessible walkways to these waterfronts. Take into consideration the travel, time and accessibility for a resident of North Long Beach to Belmont Shores. Let's not just keep being about the minimum. Speaker 1: Let's offer options, give residents choices. Speaker 6: We know via our Cape Cod Commission that we have approximately 47,000 residents that identify. Speaker 3: As having as a. Speaker 6: Disability. From children to seniors. Last week you adopted the Cities for All Global Initiative, a pledge that and directive to make public spaces accessible and inclusive. The pandemic has showed us the importance of outdoor spaces like our parks and our beaches. As we continue to make our way back to community. Let's take action and make spaces like our beaches as accessible as possible and do it with urgency. Thank you for taking this first step and thank you, Councilmember Price, for leading this initiative. Thank you to the council members who have taken the time to meet with US Commissioners and listen to the recommendations from our commission. We're in this together. Let's get this done for our residents of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much. And thank you to the commission again for all the great work. There is a motion in a second on the items. Swanson. Oh, I'm sorry. Yep. How many more public comments do we have. Speaker 2: That can please public comment? Speaker 0: Well, that concludes public comment. Did you call another name? Speaker 6: Yeah. Sheila. Speaker 0: She's not here. Okay. All right, so let's go ahead and take a vote, please. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Mongo. Vice Mayor Richardson. Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department to report back in 30 days on the feasibility of a pilot ADA beach access mat at the Granada Beach ramp and opportunities to install in other beach and park locations.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_07132021_21-0670

Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to hear item 30, please, which is the substantial remodel. Speaker 6: Report. Speaker 1: From city attorney recommendation to declared ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to termination of tenancies due to substantial remodel and declaring the urgency thereof. Read the first time and lead over the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Speaker 0: I need a motion, please. I need a second. Thank you. We're going to do public comment first, please. Speaker 1: Kathryn DOMA. Abraham Zavala. Tamara Romero. Karen Oakey. Nathan. Can you please line up at the podium? Speaker 6: My name is. My name is Kate, the OMA. I appreciate all the hard work you've done on this ordinance, but it does not protect those of us most immediately at risk. I have communicated to you all my arguments countering the vested rights issue upon which any liability concerns are based. I am convinced by current law and precedent that the Council has the right to revoke permits already issued to remodel occupied units. But I'm not asking you to revoke the permits. I do request that you strikethrough the words quote on or after July six, 2021, and quote on page three ly 19 of the proposed ordinance, and allow all tenants at current risk of eviction for substantial remodel to be protected through December 31st. Removing the restriction and extending protections to all tenants is no more of a liability risk than the current temporary moratoriums in effect. This ordinance does not include the permanent prohibition proposed to replace it after a renovation administration program can be created. So the date restriction only affects the temporary moratorium. Removing it would give council staff and stakeholders five months to research and negotiate what terms may or may not be legally applied to existing permit holders under a new renovation administration. You have the ability to make that edit and proceed with passing the remaining ordinance today without creating an irrevocable situation that will put Long Beach families in the streets on December 1st, right in time for the holidays. Thank you. Speaker 2: Good evening, council members. Speaker 4: So for my time, I'm going to read Jesse Alcala, a tenant that is with Libra who who's in District six. I want to read his statement. He had to leave to feed his daughters. Speaker 2: Also had a issue with the baby sitter. Speaker 4: But I read it nonetheless. So says, good evening. My name is Jesse Alcala. I am a tenant in District six. I am a single parent raising daughters. I work in the food service industry. I've been on the front line during the pandemic to the present. Tonight, I want to urge councilmembers to adopt item 30 tenants like myself. Thank you for voting on this item last week. Speaker 5: However. Speaker 4: Council must think about their decision to exclude tenants with existing sub remodel notices. Many families will be evicted if you do not take action in some way. I implore you to make the choice tonight to protect all tenants, especially the ones with existing notices. Thank you. Speaker 6: Hi. Long Beach City Council and Long Beach City Attorney. My name is Tamara Romero and I am a District two resident and organizer with Long Beach Tenants Union. I'm here today to demand that a retroactive eviction moratorium for tenants who received evictions are unlawful. Detainers through the substantial remodel loophole be amended to be included in the emergency ordinance that will be voted on today with an amendment to create the establishment of a renovation administration program. Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 1: 10 million miles. Speaker 6: Paisley or Velasco? Speaker 1: Aurelia Ortega. Can you please line up? Speaker 6: Hi, I'm Karen. I am a 40 year resident of Long Beach. I've lived in nine different neighborhoods. I've been a renter for these 40 years. I'm so happy that Mr. Mayor and his team, council members, that you are considering passing this ordinance. But the only question that I have, the only concern that I have is line in my notes is, uh, page three. Line nine. Um, regarding the, the beginning of. Well, let me refer to Kate. She said that she's look, she's concerned about July 6th through the December 20, December 31st. I'm sorry. I'm very nervous. That would that would really put people who have already been given eviction notices in a very bad situation. You've done a lot to continue to maintain and and hold forth low income housing. I know five other residents, all of which are are targeted for eviction as well, and they're all disabled. I think that you really need to pull that line from the ordinance. But the audience is fabulous. It's really terrific. It's going to help a lot of people. But I think you need to give temporary protection to people who are presently under eviction for this kind of some this kind of remodel. Thank you for your time. Speaker 2: Hello. I'm here to read for Aurelio Ortega, who just left to care for her children. Hello. My name is Aurelia Ortega of District six with the Orange Resistance. I am a mother of four, and I'm here to ask you all to support a retroactive moratorium for substantial remodel evictions. We know that the city attorney's legal opinion has all the power to really protect us. And we hope that you all go against that legal opinion that you were told at the last. Speaker 5: Council meeting and go with the legal. Speaker 2: Opinions that many of your council officers have heard through other attorneys who really emphasize their work in protecting tenants. My son, my son's birthday was today and. Speaker 5: We are here fighting to give him. Speaker 2: Adequate housing and to show him to fight for his rights. Speaker 5: So that he lives a dignified. Speaker 2: Life. With respect. Thank you for. Speaker 4: Supporting this item. Speaker 6: When I started this atlas, you know, but I sold our last call. So de la résistance. Here they launch. Speaker 9: What do you mean? My name is Ora Velasco and I am from the. Speaker 2: Orange Resistance. Speaker 6: Institute. Keep up with Alias confusing Nonis. Hello, Connor. My. May or may not want a moratorium. Raised to the rated R era. There's a long haul by your grandmother like consistency in the reformer. Speaker 5: I am here to. Speaker 2: Ask you, please. Speaker 9: And to help us to stop these evictions due to these and remodel the remodeling situation. Speaker 4: That is happening right now. Speaker 9: And regarding the moratorium. Speaker 6: And either they let you that they they didn't bother it for their part. But they were able to harness their necesitamos game status. The unfair emails or Armageddon scare or near ongoing concerns of seniors. Speaker 9: The city attorney. It has a lot of power, all the whole power to protect us. Speaker 4: But we need you. We need your. Speaker 2: Faith in order to protect us from your officers. Speaker 6: Not nonsense opinions. Legally, there, you're not protecting the larger than our guy, though they must feel that. Speaker 9: And then you had to have faith in the attorneys that are united working for us because their opinions, their legal opinions are the ones that are protecting. Speaker 2: Us from the attorneys, from the city. Speaker 6: Instead of democracy and importantly, pornography. Speaker 2: We're doing this for our own rights and for our own children. Speaker 6: Francis. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: Miles Hensley. Speaker 6: Alias Sheik. Speaker 1: Jesse. Speaker 3: Alcala. Marlene Alvarado. Speaker 1: Please line up the podium. Speaker 2: Good evening. I'm speaking today in solidarity with tenants of Long Beach, California, who are facing violent eviction because of the substantial remodel loophole in the city's just cause eviction ordinance. As drafted, the emergency ordinance for substantial remodel reform does not include a retroactive eviction moratorium. The exclusion of a retroactive moratorium leaves many families who have received eviction notices and unlawful detainers vulnerable to the violence of eviction. The Council should motion to amend the ordinance to extend the moratorium back to the initial passage of the Just Cause Eviction ordinance. The city possesses vastly greater resources than the tenants in receipt of eviction notices and unlawful detainers and should expend these resources in defense of working families. The recommendation to not include a retroactive moratorium in this emergency ordinance comes from the office of Charles Parkin, who, in the one opposed ran for office in 2014, received thousands of dollars from developers and real estate management companies due to this. I perceive that we need to question the city attorney's capacity to provide an impartial recommendation regarding a retroactive moratorium. You need a marshall City resources to protect hundreds of families from eviction. So motion to amend the ordinance to include a retroactive moratorium. Thank you. Speaker 3: Good evening. My name is Aliya Sheikh, and I'm a community organizer with L.A. Voice. We are a multiracial, multi-faith organization spanning dozens of congregations throughout Los Angeles County, including several here in Long Beach. People of faith in our community are calling on you to close the substantial remodel loophole that landlords have exploited to begin eviction proceedings upon tenants exacerbating the housing crisis. We need a retroactive moratorium so that no families are pushed out of their homes. We hope that you all make the right decision and stand on the side of renters. Thank you. Speaker 1: Jose Alcala, Marlon Alvarado and Karen Harper. Speaker 6: My name is really Novato. I'm with Democratic Socialists of America. And let me show you a piece that worked. And I used to be an ESL teacher and I remember once I thought we were studying and if you teach, it's called survival English and we were coming upon a renters. So I told them, I told my spouse they had a certain amount of rights, legal rights. So I this one woman said, well, my house is infested with cockroaches and it is a lot of repairs. I said, Well, you have the legal right to do this. So she went and she told her landlord that she could that she had the right to do this. Well, he fixed it all up and increased her rent and she couldn't afford it. And granted, this is not exactly what is happened with the new law. They can't get people out, but it's still the same kind of human tragedy that's happening with this restriction. I really highly recommend that you extend the more the moratorium and look at the human beings that are suffering, who are hard working people because I taught them, thank you. My name is Karen Harper. Greetings to the mayor and the council people. I'm with the Long Beach Area Peace Network, a coalition of groups working on social, economic, environmental justice. And we also are advocating for figuring out a way to prevent evictions of those folks that had the remodel permits. But the work has not begun. Please figure out a way to protect them, too. Thank you so much for your work. We're really impressed with this ordinance and what it will do to protect people. Thank you. Speaker 1: That concludes public comment. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion in a second. Councilman Allen, any comments? Speaker 1: I yes. Just real quickly, I just want to say thank you to all the folks and for all your comments and your support with this item. I also want to thank the staff and the city attorney for their work on this and for everyone's engagement throughout this process. I know we have we're concerned throughout the process about the residents who have received eviction notices under previously issued permits. And last week, I know that we all ask in the motion for the city staff to report back on what the city can do to support these residents. So, Mr. Modica, I do have a question for you. Do you know when we can expect to have that report back? Speaker 5: I will answer that. Speaker 2: Good evening. Councilmember Allen, members of the council. So that initial report back will be within 30 days of your first hearing, which was a week ago. And then I just want you and the members of the public to know, you know, we were sending out several million dollars of rental assistance. So that is one program. But we also participate in the county's stay housed L.A. program, which provides eviction defense services to tenants. And that program is available to anyone who received an eviction notice. And there is a website stay housed, L-A, which is where you sign up for that program. So we'll be putting that and some other information in the report back. But that is a service that's available immediately to those that may have received a notice. Additionally, if it's other landlord tenant issues, repairs not being made, a harassment, other issues. And we have a contract with the Long Beach Fair Housing Foundation. And those services are available today and always to any tenants that may be in in those situations. And we'll be putting that and more in that report back, which will be in the next 20 days or so. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I do appreciate that. Appreciate all the efforts. I know that that's really important. I also really quickly want to recognize Councilwoman Sorrow for her partnership and for all the Cosigners and colleagues that supported this last week. The ordinance we see today is the first step in addressing the systematic issue. And I'm really proud of the unanimous support that was received on this item. And I look forward to the results of stakeholder meetings and to seeing the recommendations. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. Compliments are. Speaker 3: Yeah. I just want to add on to the thanks to the organizers, advocates and tenants for sharing your stories and I think working so hard to ensure that tenant rights are protected. And also the city attorney, as well as development services for all your help, and especially so Councilmember Allen's leadership, steadfast leadership and hard work on the item as well as the cosigners for supporting. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There is a motion or a second. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: This item requires two votes. Yes, this. Speaker 0: Is the first one. Speaker 5: The first vote will be on the urgency and the second vote will be on the ordinance. Thank you. Speaker 1: Come on, Mango. Motion carries eight zero. Speaker 0: Thank you. And the second. Your motion in a second, please. Also for the second vote. Kevin Rushing the second for that vote. And please cast your vote on that one. Speaker 1: Motion carries eight zero. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you very much. That concludes item 30. We are now going to go back to the regular agenda and we will do item 35 next.

Emergency Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.102 to temporarily prohibit the termination of lawful residential tenancies by demolition and/or “substantial remodel” no-fault notices through December 31, 2021; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopt as read. (Citywide) (Emergency Ordinance No. ORD-21-0022)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_07132021_21-0675

Speaker 0: Great. Thank you very much. That concludes item 30. We are now going to go back to the regular agenda and we will do item 35 next. Speaker 1: Item 35 Communication from Councilwoman Sara recommendation to approve the expenditure of 5000 and the General Fund Group as a reward for information leading to the identification and conviction of the individuals responsible for the desecration of Martin Luther King Jr statue on July 2nd, 2021. Speaker 0: Councilman term. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor. First I want to thank the Anti-Defamation League for offering 3000 in addition to our 5000 for finding out and catching the person or people who've committed this just awful, hateful act. And I just want to share this as one of the steps were taken to take demonstrate the seriousness of this act, in addition to ensuring that we're getting up to date cameras installed at the park, as well as making sure that we continue to honor the statue by looking into how we can better polish and better take care of the statue. The other thing I want to mention that is also thinking LPD for their assistance in continuing to communicate and work with our community on the ground as well. And I just want to share that, you know, this is it's not only urgent that we address this hateful act, but that we recognize there are many an equity issues that we need to address in the park, in the surrounding area, but most importantly, how we continue to build unity through ensuring that we create events that brings people together. Right. It's been a challenging year due to COVID that we've not been able to come together. But I look forward and working with our community members to bring our various, you know, black community to our Latinos, African-American, as well as our Caucasian community together, so that we're able to ensure that we're promoting unity, as well as just getting to know each other to ensure that we just decrease the division that has occurred through various, you know, through the pandemic and other. So I just want to make sure that we constantly speak about how great Lumbee diversity is. But I want to make sure that we also work towards celebrating and ensuring we do education and of each other's culture and heritage and and so forth. So I look forward in doing that. As a new councilmember of the area, to bridging any divide that we continue to have. Thank you. Also want to thank Council Member Rex Richardson, Vice Mayor Richardson, as well as Councilmember Austin for supporting the item as well. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 4: Thank you. Just. Just briefly. There are a whole lot of things that city council's a whole lot of tools that we have outside of offering a reward. Occasionally we step forward and we do that. We have done some had some success with that. So I want to thank Councilwoman Ciro for offering up this this reward. And in addition to the Anti-Defamation League, we've seen success in the past, and this is an appropriate step. If you want to help support an investigation. In addition to the efforts that our city manager is leading and that our police chief is leading. And so I think this is an appropriate step and I'm happy to support it. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Before I turn over to customers in the house, I just want to just add one. I obviously just again, just condemn this what was a absolutely both a racist, horrible, disgusting act on our Martin Luther King statue in King Park. And again, just note that this is especially offensive and hurtful to the black community and to all those that respect and love Dr. King's message that resonates not just in our community, but across the country, in the world. I also just want to thank I think want to thank the police department for I know that they are actively investigating. This is it obviously was a hate incident and a hate crime and is being investigated as such. And I want to thank that Councilman Zero and the and the members of the council for supporting moving forward with this reward and and the ADL for stepping up also to add to the reward as well. So it is going to be important that we continue to work to catch whoever or the persons or person that committed these crimes. Let me also just add, I think it's also important, Mr. Modica, as I'm talking to some folks, I know that we are we have already obviously made some adjustments to the cameras to put some fixes in place, and we're looking at some lighting. But I think what I'd like to see, and maybe that's something you can put together and I think are already working on, is some kind of definitive timeline so that we can actually share with the community. This is when the camera system will be complete and this is when the lighting will be complete so that there is a firm target date that we can actually share with the community. I know that Councilman Sorrell also wants a firm timeline, so I want to make sure we've publicly asked for that. And if you can let us know whether we have a date now or maybe you can get us a date just sometime in the next week or so that you think we can get these things finished. Speaker 5: I guess I can certainly share a timeline for the whole project. The rewiring of the camera that is focused on the statue was already complete, so that was done immediately and rewired and they created a system there. The rest of the closed circuit system needs to be replaced and that's being prioritized. And we can provide a general timeline. Speaker 0: Great. And then I guess you'll do that. You'll get to us in a memo format that we can get that information out. Sure. Great. Thank you. And then with that Councilman Sun House. Speaker 6: Thank you. This was an act of utter disrespect and hatred, none of which represents the city of Long Beach as a home. We are a city of unity, inclusion and love. We do not stand for anything incited by or affiliated by hatred. And I want to applaud Councilmember sorrow for her immediate response to this crime and everyone in the community who came together to reject this message of hatred and uplift the message of strength and unity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Was not only a champion for social justice and unity during his time, but continues to be a leader for many of us today in the sense that his actions, his words and his legacy live on in our hearts today. Thank you so much, Councilmember Sara, for this and for the reward. I encourage everyone to participate in this reward and to participate in this investigation, if you know anything. It is it is very important that we put a stop to these hatred hatred messages. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. I also want to say thank you to Councilwoman Ciro for bringing this item forward. This was just absolutely the right thing to do. And we need to show our community that this hateful act, this hateful crime, is completely unacceptable. And we have to do everything in our power to catch those responsible. Mr. Modica I do have a question. So the cameras were down when this when this crime happened, and there are new cameras are going up there. Are there systems in place that we know if this camera is tampered with or destroyed or not working in the future? Speaker 5: Um, I don't know for that specific system. I'm not the technical expert on that. We do monitor our cameras regularly. We had mentioned some information to you before a couple of years ago. Our cameras were only at about 60 to 70% operational. Council put a lot of investment into that, and as of last week, we had 94% operational. So this happened to be one that was down. There were other cameras in the park that were working, but they weren't actually focused on the statues, though. But I can ask the question about do we have automatic triggers that let us know if they go down when they do go down. It requires investigation and ordering parts, and sometimes it does take some time to replace them. Speaker 1: Or even have cameras or, you know, vandalized for any reason. And they're not operating properly. That would be a good thing to know. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Price. Speaker 3: Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Sara, for bringing this forward. I wonder and I, I think this is an incredible act to try to identify the perpetrator of this. We just did this in my day job with the freeway shooter, a shooting that resulted in the death of a six year old boy on the freeway. And I know that the reward kept growing because the county board of Supervisors put some money in and then a lot of other people did. So I'm just wondering, I think the higher the reward goes, the more likelihood that someone will turn in the perpetrator. And I'm wondering if there's any way we could talk to the board of Supervisors or other entities to see if they could add on to this reward to try to get the likelihood of someone being someone turning in. I don't know what kind of leads we have are probably not appropriate. Speaker 6: For the police. Speaker 3: Department to talk about that at this point. But I do know that as the reward number went up, the tips that came to our office went up as well. And so to the extent that the city can help facilitate that and see who other interested parties may be to help add on to this reward, I think the likelihood of identifying the perpetrator will increase. So I think it's a great item, and I really do hope that the perpetrator is caught and held to the held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, which really isn't enough. And under these circumstances, I think we would all want the full extent of the law to be implemented. So thank you. Speaker 0: Councilwoman. Is there any public comment on this item? Speaker 1: There was one public comments and I can say. Speaker 2: I just want to say thank you to the office of the of our councilwoman, Dr. Sally Sara, for leading the initiative with respect to offering a reward. As Councilwoman Price has stated, I think when a financial incentive is involved, uh, usually someone is turned and uh, as a member of MASH al-Sharif, which is just a block away from this park. I pray that an enormous police department finds you because we are looking for you. That being said. Thank you, everyone, for taking this as serious of nature as it is. And we appreciate the timeliness of this. And we'll be looking for that member. Uh, Mr. Modica. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes public comment. Okay, so we have a motion any second. Please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Gentleman Price. Motion carries eight zero.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve the expenditure of $5,000 in the General Fund Group as a reward for information leading to the identification and conviction of the individuals responsible for the desecration of Martin Luther King, Jr. statue on July 2, 2021.

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Speaker 0: Next item is going to be item 21, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilman Super Not Councilmember Stronger recommendation to request city manager to work with the City Clerk to report back on the feasibility of allowing for telephonic public comment to be available at City Council meetings. Speaker 4: Councilmember Price. Speaker 3: In CA, I want to just highlight that some of the residents who were here earlier advocating for the accessibility on the beach item were also here for this item. And I shared with them that I would let the public know that they were here, but they couldn't wait as long as it took for this item to come forth. And I did commit to them that in the future when we have ADA items, we'll try to move them to the top, if we could. And that I would say that publicly as they asked me to say that I'm very glad to be bringing this item before the City Council. As we look at ways of making participation in council meetings accessible for everyone throughout the COVID 19 emergency, there have been creative solutions to follow state restrictions around public gatherings and social distancing. We've seen the availability of remote public comment provided by telephone become an incredibly useful way of offering greater access and accommodations for everyone to have a voice and participate in the important discussions facing our city. As we move back to holding in-person city council meetings, it's important that we ensure our public comment process is available to everyone. This should include individuals with disabilities for whom attending council meetings and providing public comment in person can be difficult, as well as residents who are simply unable to attend the meetings in person due to work or school schedules, transportation needs, childcare, the time needed waiting for their item to be called, or other reason that may constrain someone from attending a meeting in person or present some other substantial hardship. It's important that we fully evaluate the feasibility of continuing the use of telephonic remote access to city council meetings. Our city council discussions and the policies of our city are improved when everyone has the ability to participate in our meetings and provide their public comment, whether they can be present physically in the city council chambers, or if they prefer to participate remotely by telephone due to physical or other limitations that make in-person presence difficult. So I ask my colleagues to support this item, and I'm hopeful that the city manager can come back to us with a recommendation that feasibly. Speaker 6: Works with. Speaker 3: The limited budget that we do have to allow for access, even though that access may not be as robust and as detailed as it was during the COVID 19 pandemic, when no other option to attend meetings was present, some type of telephonic access can hopefully be accomplished through through a method that is within our budget. So thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Councilwoman Zendejas. Speaker 6: Thank you. Very smear. And thank you, Councilwoman Price, for bringing this item forward. I think it's very important. I also want to give a huge thank you to our city clerk office, who moved very swiftly during the pandemic to make sure that we had public comment access for our for our community, for our residents during the pandemic while we were holding our meetings online. So I know that you did a lot of research and a lot of hard work. And I for that, I thank you very much. And we were able to give everyone, all of the residents, the opportunity to be able to participate in our city council meetings that were being held online . As we all know, public comment is the opportunity for for our residents to participate in the decision making of their city. Thus, it is crucial that we look for ways to make it easier and more accessible for everyone to provide their thoughts, concerns and ideas at our city council meetings. We know that there are many challenges to attending in-person meetings, especially for people with young children. People who work late or who perhaps do not have transportation means to be able to come to city home or who may just feel uncomfortable doing so for either health reasons or any other reason. I also know that there are a lot of challenges, including costs, but I am confident that we can find tools that will be able to provide access to our residents to be able to do public comments during our city council meetings via telephone while being cost effective. I know my residents will definitely benefit from it immensely. Therefore, I'm very supportive of this item and I look forward to receiving this report. Speaker 4: Thank you. Council member Urunga. Speaker 5: Thank you. Very, very happy to sign onto the site. And I think it adds to the transparency of the city and being accessible to us in making their comments. Got childcare. Childcare is an important issue as well for people to participate here or might have an issue with that. So I'm glad to assign to this item and I know that the resourcefulness of our city manager and our staff will find a way to make it happen in a cost effective way. Thank you. Speaker 4: All right. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? Speaker 1: There is Nubia Flores, Kim Bong and carelessly. Speaker 4: I know that they needed to leave a bit earlier. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: Right. Saying no for no further public comment. Sure. Come on down. Welcome to The Late Show with Vice Mayor Rex Richardson. The mayor had to leave or make at night whatever you want to call the show. Come on up. Speaker 6: I Karen reside proud resident of the first district and with the Long Beach Gray Panthers. Missed you all very much. It's great to see you all in person. And I'm one of those that was reduced to calling in for comments. And I gave up. I mean, I sat for 45 minutes, one meeting because the queue was long and when it was near the end I was just cut off. So there's a number of issues with the telephonic system. It is important for those that are disabled and are, but it is a valuable service as long as there are some kind of fairly, fairly equitable distributed system. I know I signed up many more times than I got an opportunity to speak because it was limited to the first ten people that happened to be available at the time when you can call in and get in the queue. So I wasn't able to get into the queue in many times, so I've just resorted to sending in emails. But now it's busy legislative season, so it's hard for me to sometimes get emails and comments in before the deadline of 4:00 during the day. I also want to mention that it's been a year since people have been in our chambers and I was having a terrible time. I did speak to two groups tonight because they were having side conversations and I'm hard of hearing and when people have side conversations doesn't allow me to hear the speakers, particularly like the development services person who has a very soft voice. So I think we need to go back to reminding people to use their inside manners and to let them know that there shouldn't be any side conversations. And also the applauding makes it very hard to hear. And I was ready to get up and smack down a christianson. I'm sorry. That's just not tolerable behavior in a public meeting. Sara, thank you for letting me voice my feelings and it's good to see everybody looking forward to seeing you every week again. Speaker 4: Good to see you, too. Thank you so much. That concludes public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries eight zero. Speaker 4: Thank you. I think we're at number 26 next. Is that right?

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the City Clerk to report back on the feasibility of allowing for telephonic public comment to be available at City Council meetings.

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Speaker 4: Thank you. Next, we have item number 28 and I'll make the motion on that one. Speaker 1: Report from Parks, Recreation and Marine recommendation to adopt a resolution authorizing city manager to submit a grant application to the Ocean Protection Council for the 51st Street Greenbelt Development Project in an amount not to exceed 3 million. District eight. Speaker 4: Thank you. We know Councilman Alston couldn't be here to make the motion I'm making. That on his behalf is a great project from North Long Beach. Any public comment? Speaker 1: There is one public comment. Speaker 6: Amy Valenzuela. How? Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 6: I have prepared comments because I'm kind of verbose. Speaker 3: And it's late. So my name is Amy Valenzuela, and I am the president of the River Park Coalition and also Tongva. And I want to express. Speaker 6: Our support. Speaker 3: For the Greenbelt Project River Park Coalition, as many of you know, because you've met with us or not met with us over the past months as we have formed as the first advocacy organization that's focused on the lower river as a community organization and the acquisition and development of land around the river in order to transform it , and. Speaker 6: The. Speaker 3: Watershed into an asset for habitat and climate resiliency and open space for our citizens, especially in areas where people have been impacted by park inequity. So we have about 2000 members now and we're working with our first project, which is four acres just south of the Dominguez Gap. So this will be a great contiguous kind of experience for people who who need the river and walk along the river or recreate along the river. The greenbelt will be a great addition to what people are already able to experience, but it also represents the type of project that not only provides a benefit to the community, but also creates climate resiliency and water reclamation practices. Speaker 6: Along the river. It's also a small step. Speaker 3: But an important one to creating more park availability to an area that has historically not had a lot of access to park space. So we are very happy to be working with the city now in this way to acquire additional potential park space along the L.A. River. But I do want to take this opportunity to just really push all of you. The river is the river, right? It doesn't exist in one district. It really impacts all of us, and it can be transformed into an amazing asset for us, for climate resiliency and the decisions we make now, because there will be flood events, there are going to be impacts to our city and there are going to be pressures upstream that will impact the way we experience our river. That may not be the best for us here in Long Beach. So now you have us at River Park and we just want to make sure that there is funding and attention and leadership from all of you, please, to really address what the potential is for the river now and what that can mean for people who don't have a lot of access to park space and. Speaker 6: For our air. Speaker 3: Quality and for our ability to manage the the climate crisis that we're facing now. So that's what we're about at River Park. We're very, very happy to partner with Councilmember Austin and all of you as it relates to your projects along the river and really everything that's happening south of South Gate to the ocean at this point . So thank you for your time and we're very happy to support this project. Speaker 4: Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Speaker 1: Motion carries eight zero.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to submit a grant application to the Ocean Protection Council for the 51st Street Greenbelt Development Project, in an amount not to exceed $3,000,000; and, if awarded, execute a grant agreement, and all documents necessary including subsequent amendments, to accept and expend the funds. (District 8)

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Speaker 1: Council, District two I Council, District three i District four i district by district six i. District seven i. District eight District nine I. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Next item, please. Item 18. Speaker 1: Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing and adopt a resolution amending the master fees and charges schedule. Adopting new fees and penalties for violations relating to fireworks citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. I have a motion in a second. Is there any public comment on this item? That's one reason Day has. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mayors. You know, this is a very important topic to my residents and I and. Just 1/2. Speaker 7: Yes. Speaker 5: The in the past week, we have begun to hear more and more fireworks being unveiled in our district. That's clearly sending a message that it is really necessary to to look at what what things we can do to prevent anybody from wanting to to light fireworks were they're already illegal here in the city of Long Beach. I think that this ordinance will and will that were voted on today will help us kind of disincentivize those people from wanting to light fireworks that are being very disruptive, not only in my district, of course, but throughout the city. One of the things that is very important is that we create a city that is not welcoming. Well, not that it is welcoming right now, but that is not welcoming to light fireworks. So, you know that that the consequences are greater than than the joy of lighting the fireworks. So I'm very, very happy to be supporting this item. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Ciro. Speaker 1: I just want to thank all of our residents who have been so active in advocating for, you know, active measures and stronger measures for us to be able to address the illegal firework, especially the Long Beach, against illegal firework groups. So I just want to express my thanks for for all of their time and energy that they've spent on this ongoing issue. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I, too, want to thank the staff and the community groups that have worked so hard to get us here today. And I think it's really important that we work together to ensure that this 4th of July is the safest yet. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that roll call vote. Speaker 1: District one. Speaker 5: I. Speaker 1: District two, i. District three. I. District for high district I. District six II. District seven. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: District eight or District nine high ocean carries.

Resolution

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution amending the Master Fees and Charges Schedule adopting new fees and penalties for violations of Chapter 8.81 of the Long Beach Municipal Code, relating to fireworks. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Communication from councilman's in the House, recommendation to increase appropriations in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department by $50 for the Harvey Milk flag raising event. And then the public works department by $150 for the costs associated with the Harvey Milk flag raising event. Item 21 Communication from Councilwoman Allen and Councilwoman Zendaya's recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $1,000 to provide a contribution to Partners of Parks to support the Juneteenth 2021 celebration. Communication from Councilwoman Zendaya's recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $1,095 to support the Long Beach Blues Society. Blues for All Event. And Item 23 Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Allen Council and Super Nine. Is this part of the transfer? Item 23. No, I'm sorry. Item 25 Communication from Councilman Super. Recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by $500 to provide a donation to the Long Beach Fire Museum. Speaker 0: Can I get a motion in a second, please? Mozambique councilman's Sunday house and a second councilman Alan Thompson day has anything. Speaker 5: Yes. Think in the year. Once again, I would like to thank Vice Mayor Richardson for partnering and supporting an Juneteenth celebration and also to all my colleagues, including Councilwoman Allen, for supporting this event. I'm happy to contribute the donation to support the city's upcoming Juneteenth celebration, which will be this Saturday on historic Pine Avenue starting at 11 a.m.. You can still get tickets by going to Albee Juneteenth dot com. I look forward to seeing everybody at this great event. In addition, I also wanted to. To tell you about. How about our next event? As we all know, it is widely known that music helps heal the mind, the body and the spirit. After a year of staying indoors, then going through so much stress, pain, we we are finally approaching the light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that it is important that we do our best to help our Long Beach community in this transition, not only through a speedy and comprehensive economic recovery, which we are working on, but also by providing events like these that are meant to celebrate life and community. And it is in it is an absolute pleasure to be supporting this summer concert series. I want to thank the Long Beach Society for all the hard work that they've been doing to organize such a beautiful event in our first District. For those that who don't know or haven't heard yet, this a first Blues for All event will be next Saturday, June 26th, at our very own Cesar Chavez Anthem Theater. If interested, please make sure to sign up. More information will be provided and you can contact my office or it will be definitely posted on social media. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, Mayor. We just got some great news out of Washington this afternoon. The United States Senate unanimously passed a resolution designating Juneteenth a federal holiday. So all it needs now is to pass the House and be signed by President Biden to become our 12th federal holiday. So this was really exciting. Thank you, Mary, in Dallas, for bringing this forward. I like it that folks are calling this our country's second Independence Day. So just here in Long Beach, I want to thank the organizers, especially Karl Kemp. And I would love to see the annual Juneteenth events in Long Beach just become a beacon for the whole region. So I look forward to seeing everyone out there on Saturday. Thank you. Speaker 0: The Councilwoman seen no other speakers. I don't believe there's any public comment. Members, please do a roll call vote. Speaker 1: District one i. District two, i. District three. I district for my district by district six. I District seven. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: District eight. District nine. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes the funds transfers we have now. Item 23, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department by $50, offset by the First Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department for the Harvey Milk Flag Raising Event; Increase appropriation in the General Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $150, offset by the First Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department for the costs associated with the First District Harvey Milk Flag Raising Event; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $200 to offset a transfer to the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department and the Public Works Department.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes the funds transfers we have now. Item 23, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman Allen, Councilman Super Na recommendation to request city manager to conduct a review of the city's hiring practices and to issue a directive which prioritizes fully staffing the permit center. Provide a report within 30 days regarding the status of the city's permitting software and to explore the creation of a development shot clock for the review of local development. Speaker 7: And Mr. Mayor, I might add, my thing is I'm working so I can not working. Speaker 0: So can someone else. So I need to have someone queuing. Okay. Vice Mayor? Yeah. Speaker 7: Thank you. So I think we have a presentation to queue up to help summarize the proposal. Speaker 0: I can hear the clerk take a look at his system, please. Speaker 7: Thanks. Okay, great. Thank you. So first first, it is great to be here in person to help make this proposal on this particular date. And great to see everyone. Today I want to talk about and propose a proposal called the MLB Build Initiative is building upgrades, incentivizing long term economic development. And this is focused on supporting our our team internally and creating a modern, efficient, permanent process within the city of Long Beach. I want to thank our city team. I want to thank our stakeholders. Building Industry Association, Base Fed, IAM, Southern California Association, Nonprofit Housing WHO submitted letters of support. And I also want to thank council members Mary's and de Haas, Sandy Allen, Darryl. Super so. So let's see. Okay there it is. Is working. So here's here's a bit of background. Last month on May 11th, our director of development services, Oscar Orsi, submitted a memo to the City Council detailing the challenges within the Building and Safety Bureau as it relates to issuing construction permits. The memo highlighted lengthy permit, turnaround times, lack of communication with applicants, a slow or delayed development review process, among other issues. During the pandemic, it's been hard on our permit center, and the permit center saw its fourth full time staff drop from 11 to 6, with replacement hours coming in the form of private contractors and overtime. This has resulted in substantial delays in the review process, which, although understandable, it can have and lead to substantial, significant impacts on our city. The situation has delayed our ability to approve permits and build housing in the middle of a housing crisis and make it more difficult for contractors to conduct improvements to homes, improve the habitat habitability issues within our city, threaten our ongoing economic recovery. So it's an important issue that needs to be elevated to the city council. So this chart shows a little bit about what we're talking about. So it shows the ratio of field full time equivalent positions, contractors and vacancies over the period of January 2020 to April 20, 21st. As we can see, the number of positions filled by city full time city employees is declined and the number of positions filled by contractors has grown. We want to turn that trend around. As a city council, we have a job to be responsive to our city's needs. This is important to elevate. We need to make sure we invest in our city employees. We make sure that they're adequately staffed and are able to do do the job that they're hired to do and that we trust them to do so. Here's a snapshot of April, April 2021, and it shows almost an even split between full time employees and contractors and vacancies and positions filled by other staff. And we need to we need to fix this pie chart. We'd like to see much more green. We're heading in that direction. But this sort of summarizes the issue at hand. Even prior to the pandemic. And this is this is a report, a study published last year prior to the pandemic. This this shows the 90 day goals set out by the state in SB 330. It's a goal, but it compares how long these fairs in comparison as it relates to how long it takes to actually approve discretionary projects within the city on smaller projects way beyond the state goal. But if you look across smaller projects from five or 25 units, 251 units and above, there is a big disparity between what the state set out and where we what we're achieving. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that I mean, to be hard to close that gap completely. But we do want to understand where we are from a benchmarking standpoint and continue to take steps take steps toward closing that gap. We have an opportunity ahead of us, and that's what this proposal is about. Despite these issues, affirmatively addressing this issue does present a real opportunity for us to create a modern, prevent permitting system that's efficient, transparent, accountable. If we get this right, this will help spur economic opportunity in our city, help support construction jobs, help support small business contractors. It will help eight local realtors and restaurants who are looking to make improvements to their businesses. It'll improve our housing spark stock. Help us address our aging housing supply and habitability issues. Although staffing is one contributor, expediting our house hiring process alone won't be enough to really spur the recovery or help solve the housing housing crisis fully. But let's use this as an opportunity to explore ways that we can not just fix the problem, but improve the system altogether. So this is what we're asking the city manager do with this proposal. So first we want to expedite hiring. I know a lot of steps have already been taken to start heading in this direction and we're supportive, but we want to support heading in the direction of expediting hiring, to conduct a review of our hiring practices and issue a directive that then helps prioritize fully staffing our permit center as fast as possible, as quickly as possible , and other offices that may be related to this this system. We also want to provide options to the City Council to procure a modern permit software platform that has the ability to optimize and expedite our building permit review process. And the third thing we want to do, we want to explore the creation of a shot clock of development shot clock. And this would prioritize customer service, accountability, transparency and how we deal with construction and development timelines within our city. So here are a few cities that are taking some very similar steps. These cities are right around the same size as Long Beach or around that, you know, around our very similar lobbies in many ways. And so what it shows is that the challenges we face this city are not unique. We want to look at some best practices and we want to, you know, ask our staff to really lean in here. Oakland implemented a quarterly permit tracking system to update assessment and update assessment. And as a result, they've seen a reduction in rent to income ratio from 51% to 44% between 2015 and 2018. And San Jose, they made an update to their software system and it's helped them remain resilient through the pandemic. It only received the city of San Jose after that, only saw a 9% drop in permits issued compared to their neighbors in neighboring San Francisco who didn't update their software. They saw a 34% drop in permits during the same period. San Diego updated its permit software and in in 2020, just last year, transitioning to a fully online system that prioritized customer full transparency in how it has the shot clock. It has estimated approve timelines while also making the permit process more sustainable by completely removing the need for paper. Submitting paper plans as completely online as more sustainable is what San Diego done laying some beaches planning, planning and building departments to transition to a new software in 2018. After 14 years without an update, their residents, contractors and interested people can can now visit their website up to date. Information on permit activity is live. They can arrange inspections, make payments, track the process of their project from home or their smartphone 24 hours a day. So as we can see, all of these cities took affirmative steps toward their, you know, to support their hardworking employees. And I want our city to our city council to make this step to to do the very same. So here's the shot clock idea. I mean, the shot clock and, you know, shot clocks, you know, some city some states have shot clocks. The state of California has a shot clock. What we're talking about is updating our software so we can help approve smaller scale permits like home repair improvements, bring some transparency to our our permitting system by providing top tier customer service and accessibility. We can align with state law on affordable housing shot clocks. We can also. So we can also, you know, regulate and improve habitability by better understanding and distinguishing between improvements to existing homes and businesses from the building of new homes. So you can treat it differently. The idea is to add accountability, transparency and better customer service by implementing a shot clock. So as the city recovers from the pandemic, I think it's important that we acknowledge, you know, we were we were dealing with a housing crisis prior to the pandemic, and that exists today. We're going to continue to tackle issues of economic equity. We should do all that we can to remove barriers that prevent us from building a healthy, safe and bright, vibrant city for all of our residents. We have an incredible staff, tremendous leadership, and we need to put them in a position to succeed. That means we need to make the investments necessary to bring, you know, bring them bring pride to their jobs, bring stability in the workplace, bring quality public service, quality services to our residents. So I want to thank you for this time. I'm happy to make this motion, and I want to ask staff to provide some updates on sort of progress since the memo on May 11th and then any reaction that they have on how they plan to respond to this request. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: There's a second by Councilmember Austin. Speaker 7: Thank you. And I'm going to defer comment and I'd like to hear from the public and my colleagues before. Actually a bonus. Thanks. Speaker 0: Okay. So, what are we. Is there. Before we go to public comment, Mr. Market, did you want to. I wasn't sure if that was a good question. Okay. So Mr. Motorcar. Speaker 3: Yes. And of course, he would respond for staff. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mayor and council members and Vice Mayor, for the opportunity to update you and just to let you know our thoughts on the proposal. We have been making some tremendous strides since the May TFF memo to you all. Just to highlight a few of some of our accomplishments, we've opened City Hall back in April, May and and started with express permitting by reservation only in the next week or so where we will be accepting reservations to expand that even further so that folks can actually come in and process over the counter applications on a reservation basis only. We have launched today a new permitting software for certain express permits. So now we have a web facing portal that will allow us to check off several of the most frequently requested permits, like reroutes and certain water heaters and that sort of thing. As the Vice Mayor alluded to, we are continuing to work with our civil service department and our human resources to continue to prioritize the interviewing and selection of staff. We've done some great strides and we will continue to to work on that. We have an open enrollment process currently that will allow us to continue to interview staff or applicants as they come in. Lastly, we've made, I think, a significant amount of of improvements to improve our our backlog. We've reached out to our partners in certain cities like Oakland, San Diego, Tennessee, Huntington Beach. And we are essentially consistent with their express permit timelines, their minor project timelines. And we're working to catch up where about a week or so behind them when it comes to the major project review. So I think we've done a pretty good job and in reducing that backlog. We're not perfect and we'll continue to improve that. And I want to thank the vice mayor for his recommendations. I think these are in the order that were were laid out. I think these are things that that we will be able to report back to you in terms of the additional staffing efforts, the technological improvements, as well as the shot clock. I think we are. Generally speaking, we're in support of of those recommendations and as a precursor, having staffing and technology in place to be able to effectuate the shot clock proposal. So that's our thoughts. Thank you. Speaker 3: And Mayor, if I can add just a couple more areas that that Oscar shared with me that I think would be important for the team to know in two specific areas. One was expedited, permitting, all those ideas that that actors talked about during the pandemic. Yes, we were certainly suffering. We had employees get sick, employees leave, contractors leave. We had furloughs. And so we were seeing response times in that area of about eight weeks or more. We were back down to 1 to 2 days in those areas. So there's been huge progress since May that we were even at a point where we were getting so many calls and emails, it was taking a couple of weeks to be able to respond to everything. We're back down to 1 to 2 days as well. So there's been certainly a lot of focus on this. We know that there's more that we can do and look forward to engage in some additional study. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Modica. Appreciate that update, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to start by thanking the development services staff. Over the last six months, I've worked so closely with them because so many permits had been pulled on my side of town and there have been so many things that impacted residents. And I just want to say that not only has the management been excellent, but the staff that are there remain excellent. Some of the discussions that I've had with management about the implementation of the system that we've discussed, I'm thankful to hear, at least from our I.T. Manager, that. We are actively updating the current system to have those online submissions and this is kind of part of a bigger picture as well because other systems will plug into our system. So then there's a secondary component of the assessor's office and other things that really have a long term benefit in reducing the workload over time . And for those things, I'm grateful because I know it is a big lift and our city has many, many large IT projects at hand. We talked about during an Economic Development and Finance Committee meeting in 2016, the priorities of the city in terms of transparency. And we specifically talked about development services. And as I've tracked the progress with the department, I look forward to a time where this permit system is hooked up to a dashboard and whether it's called a dashboard or a shot clock, the transparency on all things within our city, whether it's the number of days it's been since an animal was impounded and receives its vaccination to the number of days it's been for a permit to be processed of different types. Individuals in our community should see what's happening at City Hall. As the mayor said when this was brought up the first time, 24 seven City Hall, and that was long before a pandemic that people should have access to that information. 24 seven. And so I look forward to us getting all of our systems to that place. And I know that the Long Beach Coast project has been a heavy lift and is a big piece of the resources that have really been a burden on the city to get us to this point. Other critical projects, including the Long Beach, one card and others, are making progress. But but slowly because there's so much going on. And I appreciate that. But one thing that I think we just cannot not address is the staffing shortages. Mr. Modica has done an excellent job both as city manager and as assistant city manager in trying to streamline. We had a presentation approximately two and a half years ago related to the changes made. However. On and on and on. Cities around the region continue to come in, cherry pick our excellent stuff, and they do that because they're able to get their training wheels here, learn the ropes, become excellent staff members, and then all these other cities are cherry picking our staff. So what I'd like to see is a friendly. A friendly. A friendly amendment. I can't even remember the things we used to say at the diocese, like looking down. Someone help me out here to dress and provide some ability for our executive team to whether it be with one of the committees of our council or independently be able to provide critical shortage recruitment rates. Critical shortage recruitment rates have been a very effective tool in the county of Los Angeles. Quite frankly, the county of Los Angeles has used them to ravage our prosecutor's office and steal them for the DA's office. And it's about time that we use those tools for ourselves. So the Los Angeles County Municipal Code, Section 6.10.050 outlines the critical shortage recruitment rate. I think it important to note that the steps in the county system are different percentages than the city system, but that the CEO, under certain considerations in that case would be our city manager, can provide between a one and four step increase during the shortage for both recruitment and retention of critical positions. And I think that hadn't Mr. Modica had that tool during this time, we would have been in a better position. Mr. Orsi and I and Mr. Koontz and I have discussed the specific item before this agenda item was even presented. It's something that we talked about back when we had the week shortages. Sorry. Speaking with a mask on. I'm like, totally winded in myself. But this is a critical part of our city's ability to stay competitive when we have the best of the best. And so for those reasons, I hope, Mr. Richardson, your vice mayor Richardson, will consider a friendly amendment to add in that Mr. Monica look at critical shortage recruitment options for this Council to consider. Speaker 7: Right. These three ideas are a starting point. If there's other things that make it better, I think we're just sending the message that these are the types of things we want to explore to really turn this around. So absolutely happy to accept it. I thank you. Speaker 0: Councilwoman the house. Speaker 5: You think if I smear Richardson for this item? As we all know, many departments experience cutbacks in staff as well as a slower processes in some instances due to online transactions we had to make during during COVID 19. However, as as this item, stress and such changes created more barriers for our permitting center and others per many permit and building related offices, which translated to greater barriers to our affordable housing expansion efforts. And that is something that we cannot allow to continue. Anything that we can do to help ensure that our response to housing crisis and that are and that our pandemic recovery is as speedy, comprehensive and efficient as possible is something I want us to do. I am very supportive of everything that this item proposes and will continue to support this item and these efforts to make sure that we we are able to provide these permits in a timely manner. Thank you. Speaker 0: Kathryn Ringo. Speaker 2: Thank you. I am supportive of the item, but the complaints that I've received haven't been along the lines of the permit. It's the customer service that the individuals get their delays. Excuses are being made and using the using the understaffing as as a reason for not being able to provide the service. I think that while we get a solid chart, we have maybe just about equal amount of contractors and employees. I think that when you get contractors, you get what you pay for. The customer service is just not there. So I want to see that we can improve our our customer service in the area that we get up to, up to speed with our staffing. But I also want to encourage our department and maybe with h.R. To do maybe a compensation study in terms of where people leaving and where are we being cherry picked as a councilmember, Mungo stated, why are we going to other cities or the stimulus in general for our either better employment or better working conditions? I don't know. Might want to do a exit interview of these individuals to find out why they're leaving. We know some because they got sick and probably would didn't want to come back or couldn't go and couldn't come back. But for those that replaced them, I think we also have to include a training program on customer service, being able to deal with the public. Many of these contractors, we know, are not trained in that area. They're just trained to do the job and probably not sensitive to the needs of the community for to be responsive. So I'd like to also see some kind of customer service training that would bring these contractors up to speed. If we're going to be using them, let's get them. That's getting trained so that they can work in the municipal environment. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes, I thank you, Mayor. And I just want to say thank you to Vice Mayor Richardson for introducing this item. And I'm so happy that I have signed on. I have heard from so many folks in District two that are having or had issues with their projects. I recently, just last week, was talking to a personal friend who has done construction in this city for over 40 years, and he has never seen these long delays. And I know that were what happened with COVID. And I explained a lot of the issues that we've had. I was encouraged when I just heard city manager Tom Modica say that this would be a focus of his. I think that it's important as a city that we do everything possible to get things done in a timely manner and that we have good customer service. You know, we need to return people's calls. I know what we did as a city during COVID. I know the amount of calls that we were receiving then, and I know how responsive that we were to all those calls. So I'm confident that we can get this under control. With the commitment from staff. And I also think it's important that we hit you know, we hit the ground running. And that means, you know, all these contractors. So this is going to help us. This is these issues are going to help us really with our with a strong economic recovery. I also think it's going to be critical that we address address some of the staffing issues that we've talked about and then updating all of our technology as well. So anyway, this is good stuff. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 7: Thank you. I also want to just first of all, thank our Development Services Department for. I'm just doing an amazing job of responding to just the enormous amount of development that's going on in the city at this time. It is not it's not normal times. Right. And I would believe that particularly over the last year with people staying at home or paying a little bit more attention to those household projects that we need to take care of in terms of maintenance of homes. There was probably an unexpected demand on our our our services here in the city. And and during a period of time probably that we didn't think there would be that demand. And so there were some factors that I think we need to acknowledge over the last year that that. That certainly led to a changing dynamic. In my view, this is a personnel and priority management issue at I that the I appreciate Councilmember Richardson for bringing up the graph showing the the disparity and the the the trend of contractors versus full time employees. I'm one that believes that employees actually have more vested interest in their work, particularly in a critical function like this in terms of permitting of for development services. I mean, there's the specific codes, there's specific institutional knowledge. That is, I think, very, very useful. Employees are going to have that grasp and long term interests more so than a contractor in the future. So so I guess I have a quick question of how did we get to this point with it? And I heard from my colleague, Councilmember Mongo, and it seems to be some some thought about pay disparities and people being kind of plugged off to other agencies. But to the director and to city manager. What, what, what, what? Because it was a drastic shift. I mean, literally 50% of the workforce in this particular function went away. What contributed to that? Speaker 0: Councilmember First of all, you're correct. 2019, we had a banner year in terms of the number of permits pulled and issued. 2020 was not that far behind. I think it's our second highest permitting. So although we were in COVID, we did have a tremendous amount of requests for development. Uh, I think what, what we were managing some of the absences and whatnot throughout the better part of 2020. It's towards the end of the year 2020, the beginning of 2021, where we experienced delays or excuse me, vacancies, and they all seem to happen all at once. So it's kind of the perfect storm, if you will. We have the added development activity now. We have vacancies, and now we have to bring up staff contracts to have private consulting staff to train those. And we've we've done we've done well at being able to fill those positions. But again, those positions are transient in nature and they require training, which didn't help us in terms of our backlog. So that's essentially what what transpired and why we created these why these delays were created. Speaker 3: And just add to that a little bit. We agree, we want most of our staff there on a daily basis to be our own city employees. That is our model. We then use contract staff to help on the surges and the supplements. And so we got to a point where people were retiring, people were leaving, they were getting sick or they were moving for other jobs. We are not known as the best paid municipality around either, so pay is certainly a factor, but that is something that we see in multiple different areas. One thing we did do is we've authorized over hiring. So they have the ability to now hire more than budget in order to get back up so we can get city employees. But just like other employees were, other employers were affected as well by just the limit of a labor pool. So this permit tech is one of the main positions down there. We used to get about 70 to 90 applications a year when we opened it up and about half of those would be unqualified. And then you get maybe 30 or 40 people to choose from. In this recent time, working with civil service, they opened it up and they got about 36 people and 63% of which were not qualified for the job. So that leaves you with about 13 people to then, you know, go through and make sure that they're a good fit for us and have all the qualifications. So we are just like other industries having a hard time finding people to replace them. Speaker 7: So, um, it sounds like we, no matter where we get to, the bottom line is we're going to have to have adequate staffing to be able to improve efficiencies in our system no matter what we do moving forward. So with that, I certainly support improving our efficiencies and I think this discussion was worthwhile. I'm really looking forward to hearing from public comment, but also the stakeholders who who deal with our development services department on a on a daily basis. I think that is a. Speaker 0: An. Speaker 7: Important element. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 0: Next up becomes one person. There is no public comment, but Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Oh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think this is a fantastic item. I'm happy to support it. I do have in doing a little bit of research on the shot clock practices and legislation and in other. Speaker 4: Parts of the country. One of the things that that I saw is that. Speaker 1: Making sure that we have enough time and a. Speaker 4: Process, a meaningful process from public input, I think is going to be important because that's one of the criticisms. Speaker 1: Of other shot shot clock bills that. Speaker 4: I that I've seen and read about. I think that's really important. So I'm. Speaker 1: Hoping staff stays. Speaker 4: Mindful of that. Speaker 1: And also allowing staff to still. Speaker 4: Have the opportunity to make meaningful changes and provide adequate oversight, I think is critical. Again, these are some and this is an area. Speaker 1: Where we can really adopt some best practices. Speaker 4: From unfortunate lessons learned in other jurisdictions. Speaker 1: And I just want to make sure that moving forward, staff is mindful. Speaker 4: Of some of those best practices and that's incorporated into whatever comes back to us. Speaker 1: So that's kind of where I wanted to start my comments. Speaker 4: I wanted to acknowledge our development services and our planning staff. I mean, they have done a tremendous job and just. Speaker 1: Even in the short time that we really the city. Speaker 4: Manager, has really put a focus on this, I've seen a major improvement. Speaker 1: Too, to see that our response rates and our turnaround times have. Speaker 4: Improved such that where we're on par with a lot of the other cities that were cited this evening and cities with within the region I think is very helpful and it shows just tremendous progress by our development services and planning team. So I want to thank. Speaker 1: Oscar and Christopher really for their. Speaker 4: Efforts in that regard. Speaker 1: But but I'm wondering. Speaker 4: You know, we've gone through the process of streamlining hiring and expediting our hiring process. You know, to what extent have those. Speaker 1: Changes in our. Speaker 4: Operations in the city changed our process? And has it been more efficient? Speaker 1: Are we operating efficiently in terms of our. Speaker 4: Hiring process so that we can get these positions filled? And maybe that's a question for the city manager. Speaker 3: So yes, I do feel like some of the improvements that we've made have helped here. For example, this is one we elevated very quickly with civil service. They put it the test ahead of others, which they have been doing now for us when we see a critical vacancy. And they created what Oscar mentioned, open, continuous, so that they're not just opening it for two weeks and then it's whoever's on the list. It actually, if we find someone tomorrow who wants to sign up to be a permit tech, we they can get on the list do the qualifications and we can pull from that. So that certainly has been one. And on the other end, as we hire, we've been streamlining a lot of what it takes to go through occupational health and to bring them on board. That is going even faster. And we're looking at some additional improvements there to make that go quicker. There are certain things that you don't have control over, like, you know, a live scan and some of those where you have to rely on some of the other agencies for background checks. But the ones that we have control that we've made some progress on. Speaker 1: Okay. Great. Thank you. I don't have any additional questions. Mr. Mayor. Thank. Speaker 0: Councilwoman. Councilman. Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce reminded me of something that I had read about one other jurisdiction, and I thought it'd be appropriate to ask. The vice mayor if he had that intent, because that would be something I'd like to learn more about. When you talk about a shot clock, that would be a timeline. And typically when the shot clock is reached in basketball, you then lose the ball. And then in your mind, would that mean that it's an automatic approval? Speaker 7: No. I've had good conversations with staff about there's a lot of ways to get there. And I wanted to kind of close out some of those comments, though, so I'll explain a little bit further when I'm queued up next. Speaker 8: Okay. I think it's critical to know that because I could not be supportive of a process that would allow for projects that have not gone through proper approvals and requirements to make it to completion. So I think that the health and safety of the community and their neighbors is just critical. So as long as it's more in alignment with the dashboards and transparency that this council unanimously supported in 2016, with you on the committee at the time as vice chair, I think that we can continue and I know that Ms.. Eriksson, with technology and innovation, is supportive of continuing down that path, though we all know it's taken a little bit longer than we had hoped. I know we can get there together. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. I want to I want to just thank all the council members for their colleagues, for their comments. You know, as we started off with this presentation, we want to lift up our staff. We want to support our staff. You guys have done an incredible job. I see it. We deal with habitability issues in my district. We're doing development in my district. I hear it. I see how hard you work, how hard it's been to get development going in certain areas of town. So. You know, from things like a plan. We want to be in a place where implementing those things now. And that's why it's important to have this the system in place. A few things. There's there's a few things we're asking for here. I think the city council is really lifted up. Hiring is important. We want to see what you've done. We want to see what you can do next. The idea that council the friendly by councilmember mongo. I think it's a great idea if there is other tools be created the software. There wasn't a lot of discussion by the council but I know how significant the software and how expensive this could be. We want you to come back and provide those options. I think big think about having a best in class software system. That's what we want you to come back and put us in a position to support you and do. And in terms of the shot clock. I've been really clear with staff. What we want here is transparency, accountability. Now, at the end of the shot clock, again, something, something, something happens, right? There's already under certain laws and affordable housing is already a shot clock. Now, I'm not asking to add additional penalties. This isn't about being punitive. This is about understanding how we are meeting our commitment to the public. Are we? Are we meeting the shot clock? Are we beating the buzzer? Right. Are we constantly delayed in that shot clock? So there's so many ways to achieve it. The idea is the software can really open up the playbook for us in terms of having a shot clock and understanding what our commitment is to the public. So thank you to the city council. Thank you to the staff. Thank you to the again, to the machinists, the Building Industry Association, the Southern California Association, our private housing and L.A. County Business Federation for speaking up and supporting us. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I just wanted to just to close. I want to thank Mr. Orsi and just the whole team at Development Services and Planning. I think you guys have really done a great job under a very difficult year. So I just want to thank you and the team. And I personally want to just also think I know I have encountered a couple instances with neighbors or folks, a couple of folks that stopped me on the street and have been waiting on a permit or have had some concerns. And you've addressed those very quickly. And when I brought those to the department's attention. So I just appreciate you for for doing that as well. And I want to also just note and I think I know Mr. Modica, you and I talked about this or have been talking about this as well. As a as a snapshot as where we are today. We are are we close or fairly close to being cut up as far as the amount of time it takes for processing as we were pre-pandemic? I think we're pretty close. Is that right? Speaker 3: We're pretty close, especially on the stuff that really is kind of the smaller the minor ones. Those were taking weeks. They're now taking 1 to 2 days. One thing we didn't talk about here that I do want to add and I want to hear what Oscar has to say, though, is we changed the system completely when we send it went home. We went from a very efficient system where you touch every single city department all in one day on one visit to having to now interact virtually with dozens of different people in different areas that couldn't see each other. And it was all done on email instead of over, you know, in person. And that had a very significant impact on our efficiency. And so now getting that back open and as you heard, Oscar bringing more people in and being able to get even more services, indoor permit counter is really going to help. Oscar, can you talk a little bit about where we are just in terms of being caught up? Speaker 0: Yes, thank you. Mr. Motorcar Monaco. As you pointed out, we had to pivot as we shut down and shuttered our city hall. We went from a largely in-person service to a digital process. And it's not necessarily the most conducive way to conduct business, especially when you rely on on the development community to provide the information that we need to process it so that when you don't have that and now you're spending most of your time, whether it's through emails or through phone calls, it's not the most efficient way. So technology will help and be able to control that and regulate that and hold both parties accountable. Councilmember Mongo, you mentioned what what shot clock ideas would be, things like being able to to not accept incomplete applications. We've done that as a courtesy to expedite the services, but then we find ourselves on the back end, waiting for weeks for folks to to respond to those, to those efforts. So having staffing, having the tech will allow us to effectuate a shot clock type program. But, but, but as I mentioned in my presentation or in my in my discussion points, we are caught up in some of those cities that were referenced tonight. We are within their ranges and the only improvement we need on our on our LA, our large projects and we have we have seen development activity continue even during during this this pandemic and coming out of the pandemic. So and we're making, again, great strides in getting those. But our timelines have been cut down to what used to be eight weeks to one week, what used to be several days to return a phone call to a day or two. And we'll continue to do that. And and this effort, this program will just help us be kind of the leader among those communities that we that we identify today and throughout southern California. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think also I want to just note that throughout the the, you know, 15 months, 14 months of the pandemic development has continued to boom across the city. Projects happening at every scale, housing, affordable housing projects, large market rate development, retail development. And I just want to commend also all of you for just continuing to shepherd all those projects through. It has been a huge task. And in fact, in talking to a lot of mayors and other cities, we have not seen there have been some slowdowns in other places. And I feel I'm from a large project perspective that you guys have done a really great job of just maintaining those and moving those forward. I do I do agree that losing a big chunk of our workforce like we did and changing the whole system like you all had to do, it did cause absolute disruptions for particularly, you know, folks who were just trying to do additions to their home or smaller changes to within their own neighborhoods. And so I think that's that's absolutely correct. And I think that our planning and our development department, just like it was impacted, just like public works and or trash pickup was impacted, just like fire service was impacted, just like our hospitals were impacted. I think that all of our departments were impacted in a very in a very real way because of the pandemic. And so, again, just to you and your team, I think you've done a great job. And I want to just note, I don't I and correct me if my date's wrong, but I think we we we implemented the new plan check system just like two years ago. Wasn't that like two years ago? Yes, it's a recent implementation and I know that that and so we've it's it's that's been a huge benefit to to the planning process, an enormous change. And so that software and that system is just two years old, correct? Correct. And Mayor, just wanted to let you know that the developer community has not taking advantage of that EA plan software like we wanted them to. So we are trying to revisit the EA plans offered as well as our in for permitting system. They work they both work in concert to improve efficiencies and to upgrade our technology, including our E plan. We had a multiple phased a plan process. The most current one that implemented the online portal was a couple of years ago because I know we've had some folks use the plan process, but you're saying that we need to do a better job also of getting it out there and promoting it and making sure people know about it, correct? Correct. And we have been but it's just the community is typically likes to stick with the traditional process. Right. Right now, I think. Definitely understand. So thank you. Look, look, I think we all look forward to being fully staffed up and opening up the counters fully in city hall and letting folks come back up to do the planning. I want to make one more note. I think that the ability and you said it to Mr. Modica, and I think it's critical, the ability for staff to be in the same room. And to be able to share plans with each other or to walk across the hall and get get a plan checked or walk over to an engineer or walk over to the traffic department or to sustainability department and be able to collaboratively work on a project was dramatically hindered in during that year. And I think that we should and I think we have learned a lot of lessons. We have to be prepared for how we would how we would operate in the future if we were to have to have this type of closure in the future, which hopefully will never happen again anytime soon. But I think we we learned a lot of lessons on that because that back and forth is really critical. So thank you for getting things back to almost where they were pre-pandemic and will continue to make real improvements. So I appreciate all of your work. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I appreciate you giving me an opportunity. Once again, I take a lot of ownership of this. This is something I've always been very passionate about. I want to kind of just say two additional things. Some of the bigger projects that I know are coming or have come, and a lot of the bigger developers from housing on Norwalk to the Amazon 360 or fresh or whatever it's called now in spring to the senior facility that is going through a process to globe master plan. I'm working with people that work in a lot of cities, and despite what we've had as a challenge, I will tell you that they consistently say that we are. The cream of the crop staff to work with. I know that occasionally a staff member might have a bad day, but on the whole, working with you and your team, I get rave reviews all the time, so I just want you to hear that again. And then in talking about some of the things that Ms.. Ericsson and I and quite honestly, her predecessor and I discussed related to these systems, there are a lot of tools. A lot of you talked about the pausing of the permit process when you accept incomplete documents. And you and I have had a lot of talks about this in the last two years because I got a complaint that no one's gotten back to them. And there was one email that let them know that X, Y and Z is missing and no one's responded. And so I really love some of the systems that that technology and innovation and I have discussed, which really have like a couple of major components to them. One is that you can get multiple approvals from multiple division simultaneously when a plan is at a certain phase. And that really gives you that online one stop shop that I know that you guys are striving for. And so I want the community to hear that that's in the works like long before today in this meeting, but that you guys have really been thinking about the developers and what they need. And then secondarily, when a plan is paused because of a change need or an issue or a request that there is a drip notice of notifications to all members emailed, which means that it says today your plan check has been put on hold because you are missing A, B and C. It has been three days since your plan check has been put on hold because you're missing an agency. It has been five days since your and that is an automatic in the system that doesn't take staff resources and really continues to put it back on the staff of the companies that are coming to the city and asking for that help so that they are reminded because often these architects, engineers, developers, they have 70 different projects in 30 different cities and they don't always remember and they forgot about a set of emails that came from our office. And so I just want to thank you again for that. And I know one of our council members asked this question as a series of questions, and they did it so politely that there wasn't an actual direct response. But I've heard some of the rates of our competitor cities. Is there anything you want to comment about the the variance of those rates and what we're really talking about? Or the cost. I'm sorry for the the pay to staff in other cities versus ours. Cause I just don't think people know. Speaker 0: I think we're going to have to get back to you one time. Once we get that. Speaker 8: I've heard in some cities it's double digits. Speaker 0: Yeah. Some of them police staff have gone outside the organization for four or $5 and up for the same position. Speaker 8: Yeah, significantly more worth a move and into areas of Southern California that have a significantly lower cost of living. And I think that that's important to recognize. And I appreciate our staff that stick with us, train and retain. That's my motto. And I appreciate you and and the staff that have been with us for the long haul. Note that you will be rewarded. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a there's a motion in a second. Please cast your vote to call. Speaker 1: District one, District two, high district three. I. District four. District five. Yes. District six. District seven. District eight. District nine. All right, Ocean Cares.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to conduct a review of the city's hiring practices, and to issue a directive which prioritizes fully staffing the Permit Center as well other offices dealing with the review and approval of building permits; Request City Manager to provide a report within 30 days regarding the status of the city's permitting software and provide options for optimizing and expediting the building permit review processes; and Request City Manager to explore the creation of a "Development Shot Clock" for the review of local development in line with transparency, timelines, and standards consistent with state law.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06152021_21-0552

Speaker 1: District one, District two, high district three. I. District four. District five. Yes. District six. District seven. District eight. District nine. All right, Ocean Cares. Speaker 0: Thank you. 24, please. Speaker 1: Communication from Councilwoman Sara, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilwoman and Vice Mayor Richardson. Recommendation to request city manager to report back in 60 days on a security and safety program that can be implemented to improve safety conditions for street vendors. Speaker 0: Thank you. Can I get a motion, please? Can I get a second? Councilman Ciro. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. So I want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson and council members in Dallas and Councilmember Allen for their support on this item. The street vendors represent some of the community's smallest local business owners and make up some of the most vulnerable members of our community. Vendors are typically low income, elderly and undocumented migrant workers. These are people who have been particularly economically vulnerable in the pandemic, often operating on slim margins. But they are also a vital and integral part of this community. The violence street vendor have experience recently is the result of a system that has not invested in them, their business and their families. Their vital role in our community and economy provides many of our low income residents with quick and easy food access. These entrepreneurs are not only supporting themselves, but their families with their daily earnings from their pushcarts and mobile stalls. Vendors are put at greater risk due to the fact that they are often alone and may be handling a large amount of cash. So we must protect these members of our community from robbery and physical attacks that have risen against them in recent years and the past year. We should support these vulnerable workers who are trying to make an honest living and support their families. So Security and Safety program is requested to provide protect these street vendors through crime prevention and economic development strategies that include but not limited to some of the following. And have an overview of street vending laws in California and Long Beach strategies to decrease robbery by eliminating cash exchange through assistance and support to use online and alternative non-cash transaction signage program that indicate the vendor does not possess cash and support for vendors from the Long Beach Recovery Act, protect their business with their security cameras and other potential tools they can use. Information on how they can report crime safely. As always, information on the Long Beach value acts and the protection in place for undocumented residents when they're interacting with the Long Beach Police Department. And so that that concludes my comment on this item. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. I want to start by recognizing Councilwoman Sara for bringing this item in, Councilwoman. I think it's an important item, and it has the potential to impact so many vendors in our city. I personally just love the street vendors, especially all the fruit carts I see around town. They are just an important part of our community and unfortunately lately there has been a string of attacks and violence against our street vendors and we need to take all the steps necessary to protect them. The initial direction that Councilwoman Sara provided is excellent. And particularly with respect to exploring paperless transactions because they do carry so much cash and how they can safely report these incidents. I look forward to seeing the full report back in 60 days. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman's in Dallas. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much to Councilwoman Sara for this item. I'm very happy to see this item. Thank you, Councilwoman Allen and Vice Mayor Richardson for also supporting this item. Instances of robbery, assault and harassment towards our street vendors are not new. What has changed is, is more of these cases are being recorded and shared on social media. And and that, I speculate, has helped encourage more street vendors to make police reports when they are otherwise when otherwise they would not do so. And talking to our street vendors and listening to these stories of harassment and simply put disrespect hurts my heart because they are such hardworking individuals and have so much integrity and they're such a big part of our Long Beach community and they deserve respect. Two of my residents have been victims of of this, and that's Mr. Fernandez and most recently, Mr. Elliott. I'm hoping that this item will send a clear message to all of our street vendors that not only are they welcome in our own city and their own city, but they are valued by our own city as well. I also really love this item that it emphasizes on making information about Long Beach values more accessible so that people know. That they're there. That there are protections in place for undocumented residents when when interacting with our Long Beach Police Department. So that will hopefully also take away some of those fears that discourage people from reporting such cases to the police. Moving forward. I also wanted to share that our community based organization, Centro Cha, has responded to the assaults and robberies of these two Long Beach street vendors who had been assaulted in recent times with they've helped them with legal services, rapid recovery assistance. That includes the following assistance. Victim assist victims to obtain. I'll be the police reports. They assist vendors and their families to navigate and complete the victims of crime application for medical and trauma. On top of this central charm maintains their commitment to serve our undocumented community and street vendor community through the following resources of emergency rental assistance, brochure, gift cards, small Business Development Assistance, Free Immigration Legal Services, and ongoing case management services. I'm so, so very thankful again for this item. I think that we owe it to these these very vulnerable street vendors to let them know that they are protected. So, again, thank you, council woman. So for bringing this item forward. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues, Councilwoman Sorrell, for taking the lead on this. This item. I think what's most important about this item that acknowledges the humanity and dignity of all of these people who are valued members of our community. And the reality is, when violence happens and violence takes place against street vendors, it tears in tears at the very fabric of our communities. And it doesn't stop there. It plays on the social media. We hear about it at church. We hear it about it. We hear about it. Our neighborhood associations. It creates tension within our communities. And we need to acknowledge this at the highest levels of our city. And we need to deploy resources and strategies to make sure that that, number one, we value the members, every member of our community. And two, that we can't allow these things to just continue to happen without a response from our city. And so thank you so much for your leadership on this. And it's incredibly important that I'm proud to sign on. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 1: Yeah. I was just wondering where we can go to public comments and and I would like to provide a comment afterwards. Speaker 0: Yes. Let's go to public comment. I'm quick. Thank you. Speaker 3: Our first speaker is an Burdette. And Burdette. Speaker 4: Hi, Mr. Mayor. And Councilmembers. This is an Burdette resident of District seven, also a member of Long Beach Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. I want to thank the council members for excuse me who have co-sponsored item 24. Only a couple of you on this panel are from my generation, but when we were kids, we strained our ears listening for that ice cream man or Helms Bakery truck. And these were the street vendors of our day, and they sold their donuts and their cream circles directly to us. So they were such an important part of the life of the community. They made our lives better. They made them easier, often tastier. But now on my street, I look forward to the bell of the police, the man on his bicycle or the fruit vendor with his cart. They remind me that a community thrives with all kinds of economic activity, and we don't always have to get into a car and pollute the air and clog the streets to get quality produce or ice cream. So now we see our community members, local street vendors, under attack from racist hate crimes. Recently, two longtime residents were assaulted and received very little support from law enforcement. They are being attacked by people who are encouraged to fear and disrespect others. So as a city, we need to respond to these crimes with clear civic support. For these street vendors that make our city international. I'm a Long Beach native. I strongly support any protections that Item 24 can give our street vending entrepreneurs. Please vote yes on item 24 tonight and help Long Beach live up to the purpose of the California State Safe Sidewalk Vending Act and our own local statutes and really promote the health and safety of our community. I think we're only going to recover as a city economically and morally if we just protect each other. Thank you. Speaker 7: Thank you. Speaker 3: Our next speaker is Jessica Quintana. Speaker 1: Good evening. Speaker 4: Eric Garcia, members of the city council. I also want to thank council member Sally Sara and our vice mayor, Rick Richardson, Mary and their husband, Sandy Allen, for bringing this forward. This is definitely long overdue. Sensitized in full support of item 24, we have experienced firsthand hardship and the trauma of these benders in our community. It's just only recent that we've learned of the assault, but this has been ongoing for a very long time because vendors don't come forward. They fear. Speaker 1: For their status. Speaker 4: And their fear of police and the local government. They won't go through with testifying against perpetrators who have assaulted them. Unfortunately, these you know, these cowardly assaults and robberies on immigrant vendors have a long lasting trauma effects on them, their wives, their children and the neighborhood that they live in. Their well-being and healthy lives have been impacted for for a very long time. You know, they cringe when they hear loud noises at night. You know, the wife tells. Speaker 1: Of how. Speaker 4: Their their husbands are jumping in their sleep because their child, you know, because of our experience of working with immigrants, have a trusting relationship with their community and have the ability to be able to rapidly respond to the needs of these offenders. As you know, they are not eligible for a lot of government support and help. And through our donations and community foundations, we've been able to respond to these vendors who lost their earnings and pay for their rent and provide them with food security and get back on their feet and being able to help them navigate the system of victims of crime. If anybody has ever tried to navigate that, it is a hard, hard system to to apply for these services so vendors and their families can get counseling and get their medical needs and bills. Wait. It's a long process, and the process starts first with getting the police report. And so that sometimes is very hard for them to navigate as well, too. So, you know, it's important that as we look at this initiative and, you know, we started discussions that the vendors are included in the discussion. And when we're talking about their cards and. Speaker 1: Cash and money. Speaker 4: Making sure that, you know, we're listening to them is what's going to work for them. And then also that we're inviting immigrant service organizations to help with some of the solutions as well to, you know, it's important, just like the speaker said before, that. Speaker 1: We continue to help. Speaker 3: Thank you. Our next speaker is Robin Cortez. Speaker 4: Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. I'm Robin Cortez. I live with my husband and my two young boys over in the third district. And I'm here tonight to advocate for greater protection of our street vendors. And Councilman, woman follows agenda item number 24. And really just echo much of what's already been said this evening. I think that we would all agree that one of the best things about Long Beach is its people. The diverse, hardworking community of Long Beach essentially is human throughout all of its unique districts are part of what makes this incredible city stand apart from others. Our wonderful street vendors are such an important part of this beautiful community. The growing impact on our beloved street vendors has been alarming to me, to say the least. It is time, I believe, for us to really stand up for these valuable members of our community and ensure that they are protected and supported with dignity as they work to simply make a living. I would just simply ask the council this evening to support the security and safety program. I'd really like a clear message to be sent that we stand in solidarity with our street vendors and we don't condone any degree of violence toward them. And I'd really like to leave this evening knowing that our city's leaders are collectively committed to preventing crimes against these vulnerable people. I'm very grateful this evening for your vote in favor of this agenda item. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. Our next speaker is Tito Rodriguez. Speaker 4: Good evening, guys. Mayor Council members. My name is Tito Rodriguez. I am the executive director of Local Heart Foundation. I'm born and raised in District six. So all my life I grew up with street vendors stopping in front of my house and giving us the goodies, you know, like we've all had. Right? So I've dealt with about 400 street vendors through our nonprofit where we've protected, we've helped, you know, get them legal assistance from some similar to central PA. But as we've seen in the city of Long Beach, you know, it's increasing, right? We've seen it on social media and we've seen it on every news network there is. Right. So I want to give a huge, huge thank you to so far over the agenda item 24 for stepping up and in saying enough's enough, we need to protect our vendors. So I'm asking you guys to please, please do something for our vendors. Out of all the vendors I've spoken to, they all want to pay their fair share in taxes. They all want to get committed. They've all they all want to get license. They just want to go out there and make an honest living. And with your guys with support and protection, you know, it would make things a lot easier for them. So I just want to give. Speaker 0: You guys, you a, you know. Speaker 4: A big hug, virtual hug for taking the time to hear us out. And hopefully, you know, this thing gets passed and you guys continue to do great things for for the people city of Long Beach. And, you know, I like to say the city of Palm Beach, if it takes us to say bus and you know what , that would be greater for us. You know, me being from Palm Beach in Long Beach, being one of the first cities to step up and say, hey, we're we're willing to protect our street vendors and hopefully other cities follow. Okay, guys, so God bless you guys. Keep up the great work and thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me go back to Councilman Ciro. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. So I want to thank all of our committee members that made public comment and especially to Senator Char, as well as Local Hearts Foundation, who have done so much to support our street vendors prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic and the various philanthropic work and efforts to providing the services and support needed . And I hope to count on my colleagues on their support for this item. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to comment that I stand with our street vendors. I think they're an important part of our community, and I think it's critical that they have a security and safety program in place that could be supportive. I think it's also important to note that the police department has experienced a 10 to $14 million cut in the last year. That includes a reduction of 51 police positions. And I'm interested in knowing from the city manager what departments he feels are appropriate to include in this. And if there would be funding to support it, I would be very supportive of funding to support this specifically if there was a way to link it into violence prevention and our our federal funding that just came in. But I think that to really be effective, we need to put our money where our mouth is. Speaker 0: Is is there is that a question to the city? Speaker 8: It was Mr. City Manager. What departments do you feel would be a part of this? She said appropriate departments. I think that usually comes upon you to determine what those are. Speaker 3: Yes. So we think economic development is going to have a role in this. A number of these vendors can kind of qualify under some of our recovery programs. So we are looking for a funding source that could help police, not as much. They really don't get involved in street vendors. We went back and checked. They aren't, you know, out there issuing tickets or anything like that. But they will have a role in kind of explaining the Values Act. We also have business licensing and health because some of these do need a health permit, but they don't need a business license. We do need to be updating our ordinance at some point. It's a pretty big undertaking to do that. So our audience is a little bit inconsistent with state law and therefore there's parts of our ordinances that we are not enforcing because they're in conflict with state law. But that is also what the city attorney's office, something that's going to have to be done. Speaker 8: Thank you. I would just like to, again, give a little bit of additional praise to Councilman Zendejas for the program that she has implemented in partnership with the police department. That I feel has been completely effective. I've seen some statistics. I've heard from the community that it's been effective. And I don't know if expanding a component of that which which does include really a partnership with police in helping our community understand the resources available to them, the situational awareness, the design for safety and control that our police department has effectively utilized for our standing brick and mortar facilities, such as our liquor stores that have now had significant reductions in victimization. I think some of those things that have been proven to work should also be considered. So that would be my $0.02. Let's also use things that have worked. Thank you. Councilman, congratulations to both Councilman Zero and Councilman Zendejas and Allen. Speaker 0: Not to mention De has. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. One of the things that I was hoping that this would also fall under our Latino initiative and the recovery plan that we have and our anti-violence aspect of those two. I also wanted to give a big shout out to Tito Rodriguez, who is from the Hope Foundation, who has been just great and in supporting our street vendors. When one of my residents was assaulted, the most recent assault that happened, he sprung into action with with his organization and created an event where the whole community came out and supported the vendors that were assaulted and they had like a button buy them out kind of event and everybody was there and supporting this vendor. And it just was such a great energy to be there with the community. And I just want to thank them for the work that they do. And I really look forward to seeing this report come back and and working together with staff to make sure that we protect our street vendors. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think it's been very clear tonight that Long Beach support for street vendors. I certainly do. And I've also been concerned with some of the reports and some of what I have also been been reading and seeing as relates to their safety and to ensuring that they feel welcome in this community. I've shared my my concerns and my hopes for for them feeling welcome and supported to our city leadership team over the last few weeks. But I'm really thankful that Councilman Sauro has brought this forward and really brought in the conversation around safety and support, particularly around. I love what you said, Councilman, about access to technology and to the, you know, the types of services and needs that would help them not just in their business, but also for their safety. So I really appreciate how thoughtful your legislation is that we have in front of us. So I just want to thank you for that. And of course, and a huge thank you to the community that has rallied around our our street vendors, particularly Centra Cha and so many others. That was also really, really great to see. So just a really excellent conversation and an excellent item to bring forward. So thank you. Roll call vote, please. Speaker 1: District one i. District two, i. District three. I District four. All right. District five? Yes, District six. I. District seven. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: District eight. District nine. I. Ocean carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager, or designee, to work with all appropriate departments to report back to the City Council in 60 days on a security and safety program that can be implemented to improve safety conditions for street vendors operating in our city.

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LongBeachCC_06152021_21-0567

Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to do item 38, please. Speaker 1: Item 38 Communication from Council Member Younger Councilwoman Zendejas. Councilwoman Sara. Vice Mayor Richardson. Recommendation to establish a policy for the COVID 19 Emergency Rental Relief Program to determine eligibility for expedient processing and payment to residents. And request that city staff reach out to landlords who have issued eviction notices to advise them on the ability to apply for expedited processing. Speaker 0: Of a motion and a second count. Summary Oranga. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mary. I want to thank my colleagues up close. A woman said there has sorrow and Vice Mayor Rick Richardson for joining me on this on this topic. COVID 19 has had a major negative impact on working families and led to the most significant economic downturn that has ever been seen in decades erode. State and local agencies have put together an economic recovery package that includes rent relief. However, in many cases, these payments are not coming soon enough. Because current evictions, the foreclosure protections expire on June 30th. Many of those who were hit hardest by the pandemic may be facing eviction or even homelessness in the coming months. That is why it is paramount importance that we identify and prioritize residents who are in immediate danger of eviction so that they can receive the support they need to stay in their homes. And I want to also note that many of the families that are affected by this, they have until June 30th. That's been the state deadline. We need to act quickly. And unfortunately, we're not meeting in the next couple of weeks. It is imperative that this this item pass. So I would appreciate the support of my colleagues. Thank you. Speaker 7: Thank you, Councilman Urine. I'll offer my second here and simply say, I think we know that conditions are going to change if and when the eviction moratorium deadline is lifted. And I think this is smart. It allows staff the flexibility if there is an urgent situation and someone's going to they're in the pipeline and and something is about to happen. I think staff needs to be able to have the flexibility to do so. And I think the point here is simply just to keep people in their homes. And that's why we set up the program and that's what it is that we want we want accomplished. So I'm happy to support this here. I know that a portion of the funds we talked about and maybe, maybe this has already happened, but but this is city manager. Did we do the back rent? We set up a structure for people to apply for maximum back rent. Where are we with that? Is that already? Is that all that funding already gone out or is that still eligible under the funding that we have? Speaker 3: Um. I believe what background is eligible. We are just getting underway with issuing payments. So we've got, if I remember the stats right, about 36 million or so of people have applications and then they go through a vetting process and they go through all the different federal requirements and state requirements. So we have been issuing checks just as of last week. I think about two or so million dollars went out the door. And I believe that back rent is a part of that within the within the parameters. Speaker 7: Okay. I think this most closely aligns with the background portion of this, but I'm happy to support it. Speaker 3: Thank you. So what we're looking here to do, just so I can clarify, is we're not changing any of the criteria. Those are all set in state and federal law. And Christopher is here. He can help me out if I say something incorrect. But we are expediting those who are in urgent need of being potentially evicted, that we will be processing their payments first so that we can kind of move them to the front of the line and make sure that they're eligible for those that meet the criteria. So, Christopher, anything like Mr. Toms? Speaker 0: Absolutely correct. We don't have the ability of one or two to change any of the eligibility criteria, but we do have discretion and we want to help people. So if someone has an active eviction notice, they need to let us or the vendor know we'll take them out of order. We'll process that as expeditiously as we can. And the most important thing, though, is getting people to apply at all. We've done an amazing job to get people into this program, but there are still people that have not applied. We are in contact with your staffs all the time. We need your help to meet, to find those final people that have not yet applied and get them into this program. Thank you. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you very much to city staff. And thank you so much, Mr. Koontz. I know that you've been doing an incredible job on this, and I thank you and my residents. Thank you. This pandemic brought so much pain to so many families. It put many out of work and left people with no steady source of income to purchase food, pay bills, or even pay rent. As we come out of this pandemic, it is important to do our best to connect folks with the emergency resources available as the emergency COVID relief rental relief program that is meant to help families stay in their home. I want to thank Council member Wodonga Vice Mayor Van Richardson and Councilwoman Sorrell for supporting this item that calls for the rental relief application process to prioritize those who are on the verge of facing eviction. I also hope to continue seeking outreach and being contact seeking outreach that is being conducted citywide to ensure that folks receive access to information about this opportunity and are available to apply as soon as possible. As as you know, city staff, me and my staff are ready and and willing to reach out, do all the outreach we can, and also reach out to our and to our community based organizations who are out there every day with our trying to help our community and our residents with this particular aspect of rent relief. So thank you again very much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And I also want to say thank you to council and your ranga for bringing this item forward and to Vice Mayor Rex Richardson and Councilwoman Zendejas and Councilman Ciro for signing on to this very important item. This is this is this is very, very critical, especially with the state and the county protections that are set to expire on June 30th. It's vital that we take this action to protect both the tenants and landlords who have experienced financial loss due to COVID 19. And it's also important that we expedite this relief where it is needed. And I know I can tell you that my residents thank you for this item. So I'm happy to support this today. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Saru. Speaker 1: Yes. I want to thank Councilmember Yanga for bringing this item forward and my colleagues, Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilwoman Sun. As for signing on. And, you know, I think my colleagues have shared so urgent that we do something as a city to protect our renters. And I want to thank development services for their amazing hard work and ensuring that we're getting the word out and assistance through the emergency rental assistance program. I just have a few questions. And with this is what currently is the turnaround time for processing and payment to residents? And the second question is what happens to residents while they're waiting for processing and payment? You know, if they applied prior to that June 30th, when the eviction moratorium ends, I won't know what happened to them while they're waiting for their payments to be processed. Speaker 0: Sure. Thank you for the question, Councilmember. And similar to the discussion earlier tonight, you know, we accept applications in any level of completeness. So while it should only take about ten days to process an application, it has been taking much longer than that, a couple of months to process these applications because we'll be missing information from the tenant. They have to prove not just that they're in financial need, but that COVID was a triggering event. So they don't need to have covered themselves, but they worked in the service industry and lost their job as a result. Or there was some complicating factor tied back to the pandemic, and they have to establish their income and some different things for us. So we gather all of that information and then we need some information from the landlord and we reach out separately to make sure we accommodate that. So we need their W-9 tax information. We need to verify the amount of the lease. We contact the utilities to see if there's back utility payments. We put all of that together. We go through an audit process and then we issue a check. The tech goes to the landlord for the background. But the good news is, even though that can take some time to process, you know, step two after we receive an application is to contact the landlord. We're in the process of paying this outstanding amount, you know, and we want you to accept payment. So in the event that someone is behind you by facing an eviction, we'd be working with the landlord to let them know that that payment is forthcoming so that they would stop any proceedings. And 99.9% of the landlords are very accommodating. And we have a different procedure for if the landlord is not, you know, doesn't want to accept the payment or is not accommodating. And then as a last, last, last resort, we have a separate program that we cooperate with the county, which is a right to counsel program, which does provide legal counsel to the tenant to dispute the eviction if that should become necessary. And the vast, vast majority of cases, we're working cooperatively with the landlord, with the tenant, and that's not necessary. But that is available as a kind of backstop. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Brenda. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I thank you, Mr. Koontz, for that explanation. I was going to ask a question about our our ability to work with landlords in implementing this program. And you were right on. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Any public comment on this item? Speaker 1: There's no public comment on this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think I've come from an and there's. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mary. May I just have one quick question for our staff. Are we trying to one of the things that I think is deterring some of my residents from applying for this is may be the rigorous documentation that that needs to be filled. Is there a way that it can be simplified or can we look into possibly simplifying that process? Speaker 0: Sure. Council Member So I really would encourage people to apply and provide what they can and then talk to us about what they can't provide. So I wish it was even simpler. We have to please in this program, both federal regulators and state regulators, both of whom have different ideas about how to make it simple. So it's not perfectly simple, but when a tenant is not able to provide a document. So, for example, oftentimes people maybe they don't file taxes or they just don't have a copy of a prior year tax return. There is a way to do a sworn declaration as to their income level. So we work with them. We they could submit the application online. They could call the hotline. We've been doing outreach events in person in your district and around. And in that case, we actually have staff, you know, help the individual fill out the application right there live. So we really are able to work through people's situations, including, you know, missing a document or not having something that we're requesting. But we do need them to take that first step of, you know, engaging with us and starting the application process. Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Mr.. That makes me feel much better. Thank you. And thank you again for also working with our landlords who often get forgotten in this situation. And so thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. And that concludes the the agenda items. We will go ahead and do a roll call vote, please. Speaker 1: District one. I'm District two. I'm District three. I District four i. District five I. District six I. District seven i. District eight District nine high rise. Speaker 0: Thank you. We are going to move on to item 26, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager establish a policy for the COVID-19 Emergency Rental Relief Program to determine eligibility for expedient processing and payment to residents who have been served with a notice of termination of tenancy, or eviction, including Notice to Vacate, Notice to Pay or Quit, or any other eviction notice. Further, request that City staff reach out to landlords who have issued eviction notices to advise them on the ability to apply for expedited processing and payment of back rent through this program.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06152021_21-0554

Speaker 0: Thank you. We are going to move on to item 26, please. Speaker 1: Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the implementation and launch of the city's new public facing calendar system citywide. Speaker 3: Mr. Mayor. Members of the council, we do have a presentation on this. This is a really exciting development that we've been putting into place, and it's ready to go live about how to really show a lot of the great events and meetings and ways to engage with government. This has been a big priority for this Council, especially through the Strategic Communications Plan, and I'd like to turn it over to Kevin Lee to walk us through the presentation. Thank you, Mr. America, honorable mayor and city council members. I'm happy to be here today to share with you an update regarding the city's new public facing calendar system. That's a launch in just a couple of weeks. As you are aware, the city launched a five year strategic communications plan in March 2020, just days before standing up the Joint Information Center for the COVID 19 Response, which is still in operation today. During the pandemic response, we were able to accomplish many things in the communications plan, one of them being the city calendar system. Now, with things opening up, this is the perfect time to launch the calendar. In the communications plan. The calendar is under the strategic focus area of local public engagement, with a goal of making a more well informed community and an objective of increasing awareness of city priorities. Projects, programs, initiatives, services, events and meetings. The current calendar we are replacing has some challenges. It's a legacy based calendar that the city migrated into the CMS in 2017 with the update to the city's website. So while it served its purpose at the time, it has some limitations. For instance, it lacks advanced functionality and limited filtering options. It's not that dynamic, interactive or shareable, and you're not able to receive notifications. Jump forward to the new calendar and you'll see so many benefits and enhancements for the public. There is a simplified homepage access, which I will talk about in a moment. New options and features. It's user friendly, very intuitive and dynamic. There is a refined navigation, an integrated notification options and advanced filtering options as well. And let me touch on language language access as well. People will be able to use Google Translate throughout the calendar as a quick way to get information in any language. However, we will also add a standard in language message on event pages that lets the community know that if they need more information in their language, they can reach out to the staff contact. Also there is a feature that allows community members to note they will require onsite interpretation at a meeting. Further, we will now have the ability to add characters in other languages, such as command directly into the calendar, which was impossible before. And for a staff, this calendar really had a customized look. We were able to still keep the look in certain departments like library services and development services while integrating the back end. And it's easier for staff to maintain. For instance, you can now enter a multiday event really easily, which before you were not able to do so. As you may be aware, under the current Events tab on the city website, there are two calendars, a special events, one and a meetings and notices one. This isn't necessary and can be confusing. With the new system, there will just be one department. Calendars are automatically integrated into this master calendar on the. Speaker 2: Homepage. Speaker 3: And basic structure and event details are provided upfront for the convenience of our community. And you can now navigate the calendar from home page or access the full calendar by clicking more events. With the new calendar. There are there are several views, all depending on how each individual would like to view the calendar. The eye catching tile of you. What you see here is the default for desktop. However, there are three additional views people can choose. The month and list views are a bit more traditional. And then there's a map view as well that allows you to see events on where they fall within the city on a map. This view is default for mobile to ensure an optimized experience. With the new calendar. There are also several ways to search for events and meetings. You can search by calendar name, for example parks or libraries, event type, for example, career workshop, community meeting, or even age based types as well. You word search. This is self-explanatory. But I do want to note that these key words don't have to be put in the back end by staff. The calendar is actually searching the contents and then proximity by zip code. If someone wants to know what's going on nearby then. The event page will now be full of features. Obviously there will be an event description and image and contact information will be required in case the community has additional questions. You will also be able to share directly to your social media pages and place right into your personal calendar. There is also a shareable QR code for each event. There's also an RSVP option as well. And within that option, a calendar administrator can include an option for a community member to sign up to speak at the event if there is a Q&A session. Also notable is the notification features. You will now be able to subscribe to a calendar or an event and receive notifications via text or email when a new event is added or if an existing event has updates. If you're really into it, you can sign up to receive notifications regarding all events and meetings in the city that are on this calendar. You can also customize when you receive notifications. For instance, if you can get noticed, you can get notifications upon each new event, or you can receive notifications on all events added in a week . I want to call your attention to the fact that council members will be able to receive notifications when an event is added within your district. You'll likely already know that they are coming, but this can give you more details and also you'll be able to share these events as they pop up. Just some information on the administration. Oversight really falls in the Office of Public Affairs and Communications, which is my shop, and we'll make sure that the calendar is being used across the department and then also the Technology and Innovation Department. They'll be there to make sure that functioning properly, properly and for training. There are trained content authors in departments and legislative offices, and content is expected to be provided in full and follow the city calendar guidelines, which will be available on the city's intranet. What's next? We expect to launch the week of June 28. This gives departments time to populate their events on the new calendar. We will send out a press release. Social media across departments will integrate it into our Go Language newsletter, the city's on hold message, the city's homepage and all the this calendar is really intuitive. We are working on a how to video to help those along that might need a little extra information on how to use it. Before I close, I'd like to recognize Sal Rodriguez in the Technology and Innovation Department and Jonathan Garcia in our public affairs office for the excellent work they've done on this project. That concludes my presentation, and I'm here to respond to questions you may have. Speaker 0: Thank you. I believe there is no we have no public comment for this item, so must go to the council. We have a motion by council and I'm going to second advisory. Richardson Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you so much. I have waited so long for this item to come back to council. When I first brought forward this idea to the city, it was unanimously supported but not funded, and it went in years where we continued to hear from the community. Request after request to know when things are and how to not schedule nonprofit fundraisers on top of citywide events, how to better coordinate resources, and to really have a central place where all postings were the unification of notification to constituents to be able to score. Subscribe to the things you want to know about. While we are in the infancy of rolling this out, the potential is endless. I want to thank Kevin for his relentless pursuit of this. The poor guy has had to have dozens of meetings with me going in and out of every component of this and what the public and the future with the public can see, how they can engage with it, and how they can really see what they want from the city through this process. I see this having endless potential in terms of not wanting it to be overcrowded, but to really be able to click on and click off anything. If you want to know when the Grand Prix is, every single Grand Prix for the next five years that we have a contract for should be on that calendar. Every Christmas parade, every event on piping, every event in uptown, every single thing could be here so that citywide resources are not stretched too far, but also so that nonprofits can coordinate better with us, so they can know when they can have access to a street fair or an event. And then furthermore, just the standardization of an ability to see when things are happening. When is enrollment for soccer? When is enrollment for our summer programs at the Nature Center? All of those dates are possible to be here in the future. It's just a matter of ensuring everything's in one place. Then, as a person who enters our city, as a young member of the community who's interested in work source opportunities, you can subscribe to those. Then, as you transition to a mom, you can look and sign up for the list related to enrollments for 3 to 5 year olds in Parks and Rec library. You don't have to go to the library website, then the Parks and Rec website and then the Nature Center website. It's all in one place for your convenience. I think this will really help constituents be more involved when we have citywide initiatives or policies, whether it's the land use element or short term rentals or any of those things, and community meetings are posted. You now can search for which community meeting makes the most sense to you and not rely upon council members individual emails. I often get calls I can't find the email that you sent out last month that had the date of the upcoming such and such meeting. Now there can always be a link to the citywide calendar that has all of these things. When bringing this item forward. I had a vision that really came to me through discussions with leaders in our city and leaders that continually struggled through an informal network where they would among themselves, whether it was a group of moms or a group of nonprofit leaders, work together to really keep their own calendar. And this will eliminate that. And it will also give instantaneous updates to anyone that subscribes to any particular event of a move. So when things change, when dates change, when things move, we'll be able to know and notify people appropriately. So I cannot tell you how excited I am for this. The future is endless. I love to see us get to a point where nonprofits who've gone through appropriate training and within certain limitations could also use the tool to engage the community on some of their more popular events, maybe even the convention center. Any convention that's open to the public. How great would it be if you're a Long Beach resident and you said, Hey, I didn't know we had the fishing convention. I'm into fishing. Not only did I sign up for the Fishing Derby at Eldorado Park, but I'm notified. Did you know of these other fishing events in our city? And then really take those warm leads for residents to be able to be involved in every aspect of our city. I really think this is a component of of the full integration of a 24 hour city hall. And I just cannot tell you how proud I am of our staff. It has not been an easy path, and I want to just say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don't think you know how many people you're going to impact and their ability to be involved is just it's really, really life changing for for people, especially busy people and busy moms. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. I also want to say thank you to Mr. Lee for your presentation. This is an exciting idea, and I too have wanted a city calendar for so long. My staff attended one of your training sessions and they really appreciated the simplicity and the ease of the platform. Having one centralized calendar that is searchable and compatible with social media and other platforms is something that is really going to resonate with the public. So I really liked when you talked about all the notification features. I think that is really great. I know I'm definitely going to appreciate it. It's just a great tool for people to know what's going on in the city and all the great events that are happening. So I do have a question. How are you going about just getting the word out that we have this tool now? Speaker 3: Yes. County Council Member So when we launch in a couple of weeks here, the week of the 28th, we will be sending a press release out on social media as well across our city department. So we'll make sure that every department starts pushing this information out. We'll be integrating into our newsletter and things like our on hold message at the city. And then we will also be working with we have a email list of community groups will be pushing it out through there as well, which reaches a lot of people in the community. Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Just great work. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think I'd passed over a vice mayor Richardson, who had the second, actually. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, you know, I mean, this is this is incredible. I hope folks I hope folks use it because it can be tremendously impactful. You know, it's a big it's a big deal to do an integrated calendar publicly. I mean, it will make all of our jobs a lot easier. And one of those things, we're a big city, but we're really not all that big. We're kind of a small town and everyone wants to support everyone's events across the whole city. This is one tool to help make it happen. Councilman Mongo I remember it has been a long time. I remember when you brought this forward and we all talked about how useful it would be. And I think it shows sometimes how long it may take to get something done, but is just as exciting when it finally happens . So thank you for your leadership in bringing this forward and bringing this forward. And and I look forward to making sure that our our, you know, all of our districts begin to engage with this citywide calendar so we can support each other's events. Thanks a lot. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Sir. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. I also want to thank city staff Kevin and your team for working so hard on this and Councilmember Mongo for being such a strong advocate for a calendar that works for 24 hours and to be effective and efficient in the way that we coordinate our work. I am so excited about being able to subscribe to the calendar because I live like as Councilmember Mongo as a busy mom. I live off of my calendar. If I am, if it's not on my calendar, it's not in my you know, I'm not aware of what's happening or, you know, it's not on my radar to go to. So I appreciate so many of the features and function and are so excited that there will be an ability to access that in other languages as well, which is so crucial to ensuring that all members of our residents can access them and understand what's happening. And that I also have had a few of my staff already attend the training, which has been great so that, you know, I appreciate being on a council member coming in with this system set up so that we can best organize and also inform residents about this as well. So thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you, counselor. Moms and dads. Speaker 5: A huge thank you to to you, Kevin Lee. Mr. Kevin Lee, thank you so much. This is phenomenal. Thank you so much. Council member Mango for keeping added and pushing for something so amazing like this. Increasing the level of communication between our Long Beach community and our city is something that I am very, very passionate about. I think that tools like this and like this new calendar system offer us the amazing opportunity to do exactly that. And I know many of the residents have expressed interest in being more involved and receiving information about local events and volunteer opportunities. And I'm so happy that all of that information will will all be in this one place, in this calendar. So thank you. Thank you very much for your hard work, because I know it took a lot of hard work and a lot of years to actually develop something like this that we all can benefit from. But we are going to reap the benefits here on out and I'm just so excited. I can't wait for this to launch out and to launch and I am super excited to share this with all of my residents as well. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. The comments of my colleagues reminded me of a small thing that happened along the way. This item started so long ago that it was not common for you to receive a note from, let's say, your favorite sports team or your favorite Netflix series or whatever, where when they send you the email, you can click on it and it literally adds it to your own calendar. And whether it's something where we say, I want to see all the volunteer opportunities for park cleanups at the park near me, or I want to see all the low income resident workshops that help me fill out the forms I need to get up my feet, whatever those things are. I just want to give an additional thank you that though the path has been long and a long path along the way, the continued support of staff to make adjustments so that by the time that it was released, it wasn't already antiquated and out of date. And so thank you for that. And I just can't wait to see all these things pop up on my calendar that I can subscribe and unsubscribe to in the bottom. I'm just so excited for the things that this can do for our community. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. There's a motion and a second members. Oh, actually, I understand you have an announcement about Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Yes. All council members currently participating in the meeting are in the council chamber. I will stop the the roll call vote and proceed with voting via vote cast for the remaining items. Speaker 0: Thank you. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you. Next item, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the implementation and launch of the City’s new public-facing calendar system. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

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Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. N 36, please. Speaker 1: Report from technology and innovation. Recommendation to adopt a resolution to execute a contract with Frontier Communications, to occupy, place and maintain attachments on frontier poles for the purpose of extending telecommunication services to the Santa Fe Avenue Synchronization Enhancement Project and an annual amount not to exceed 20,000 citywide. Speaker 0: The motion in a second with no public comment, but Councilman Mongo does have a question. Speaker 8: Thank you. And I probably should have done it on 35 over 36, but I'm hoping that in the next several weeks we could also get an update on the citywide infrastructure upgrade that allows for fiber that kind of talks about bringing everyone within. The guidelines of connecting everyone. Everyone connected. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Members, please cast your votes.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to execute a contract, and any necessary documents and subsequent amendments, with Citizens Telecommunications Company of California, Inc., dba Frontier Communications (Frontier), to occupy, place, and maintain attachments on Frontier poles and use conduits for the purpose of extending telecommunication services to the Santa Fe Avenue Synchronization Enhancement Project, in an annual amount not to exceed $20,000, for a period of ten years. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

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Speaker 0: You we're going to go back up now to item 30, please. Speaker 1: A report from Health and Human Services and Public Works. Recommendation to execute a consent letter and a project specific maintenance agreement with Caltrans for access to Caltrans property to offer and provide social services, targeted maintenance and relocation assistance to people experiencing homelessness citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. I know we can have a short we can just get a short update. Mr. Morricone, this would be great. Speaker 3: Yes, this has been something we've heard from the entire council mayor community about working better with Caltrans to get some enhanced maintenance. So it was an agenda item. It came to the council. We've really been working well with Caltrans. I hope you've seen some big improvements out there and this is the next step. So we've been working to actually take over some of those sections now that we have some additional resources in the Recovery Act and we're excited to be here tonight. We're going to be coming back later in July to really talk about cleanliness in the city and all the different efforts. So we can get more into it then. But I do want to give a a quick overview of what this item is. So, Diego. Speaker 0: Good evening, everybody. Speaker 7: It's nice to be out. Speaker 0: And see everyone. I'm just going to take a couple of minutes to go over some of our our discussion about our agreements with Caltrans. So the project specific maintenance agreement that we are. Speaker 7: Developing with. Speaker 0: We've developed with Caltrans will allow us access to Caltrans property to offer and provide services, certain maintenance issues and connecting people experiencing homelessness to their. Speaker 7: Services and housing. Speaker 0: And this is set up for at least one year, and we're looking at extending it beyond that. Next slide, please. Public works in conjunction with the Health Department has been meeting with Caltrans BI monthly to discuss. Speaker 3: Strategies. Speaker 7: On how to improve the esthetics and appearance of freeway off ramps and on ramps in and out of city Long Beach locations. Speaker 0: We selected the locations 22 different locations based on need and ease of access for staff to get in and do some cleanups and offer services. Speaker 2: This will allow. Speaker 7: Caltrans more time and resources to maintain. Speaker 0: Other areas while we take care of these 22 areas. We'll be working with Caltrans for these cleanups for the next couple of years. Speaker 7: Next slide, please. Speaker 0: So as I said earlier, we've identified 22 locations throughout Long Beach in which the clean team will focus their efforts. And these locations, as I said earlier, were based on access, ease of. Speaker 7: Access and ability to provide assistance. Speaker 0: We are creating a flexible agreement. So if we identify other areas throughout our process or we find that. Speaker 2: Maintaining these 22 areas becomes routine. Speaker 7: And we have the capacity. Speaker 0: To expand under the current funding. Speaker 2: We would be able to do. Speaker 7: That and we'll work. Speaker 0: In conjunction and we expect to continue our regular. Speaker 7: Meetings with Caltrans to address these issues. Speaker 0: Next slide, please. So you can see here at these locations, a clean team will focus on a litter and debris removal, graffiti abatement and connecting people. Speaker 7: Experiencing homelessness to services and housing. Speaker 0: These particular pictures are from the Clean team's most recent clean up on Shoreline. Speaker 7: Drive at the terminus of the 710 Freeway. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. And we're here to answer any questions. Thank you very much. I'm going to turn this over to Councilman Mongo in just a minute. Is there any public comment on this item? I don't believe so. No public comment. Great. I just want to just just make two notes, I think. One just for the council. So they are aware we are going to be having a word with staff to schedule a fairly extensive study session on cleanliness and our Clean Language initiative as it relates to the entire city. I believe that's going to be July 13th. Is that right? Mr.. Mr.. MODICA Yes. And so at that meeting, we're going to get a pretty comprehensive report on not just the MEU as it relates to Caltrans, but all of the work that's happening around cleanliness, the additions of staff for clean teams, the deep cleaning that is happening across the city, the need for corridor cleaning and enhancements as well as of a large list of of initiatives that the council kind of voted to move forward on over the last few years, as they all relate to cleaning and ensuring that the city is really coming back from from the pandemic. We know that our our clean teams were one of the areas that really suffered as it relates to staffing during the pandemic. And at the same time, we also produced a lot more trash as a city. I believe we pulled, I think it was maybe 25% trash or something that I read that we're producing more, is that right? About 25% or am I giving the wrong number? It was about 27,000 tons is what it was. So we're producing a lot more trash and we normally had been as well. So that that did create a, you know, a very difficult challenge. And we're and I haven't begun to notice really a change in a difference. So so I just want to make sure everyone knows that that is on its way, that major report. And in addition not to be confused with the LA County, because I did want to make sure that to be clear, this MEU is with Caltrans . There are other areas that are county spaces that we're also working right now on getting an MRU with L.A. County to address those areas. So I'm often asked, for example, about the 710 entrance to the city that is not city property, that is L.A. County. I'm also often asked about some areas actually out in District five, over in the eastern part of the city by neighbors pretty often. And those are also L.A. County, some of those areas. So as just as a reminder for the council, we will be also bringing forward and I know Mr. Monica and Mr. Lopez and the team are working right now on an L.A. County agreement also that's separate of this. But this is a, in my opinion, a really important step forward. I want to also add that Governor Newsom has put in his in his budget at our request, as if we were the first city to make the request to try to put money into the budget for his clean California campaign. And we led a coalition of mayors to get that into his budget. That is also in his budget. And so Caltrans is providing additional funding for some of these locations statewide. It's my assumption that we're going to be working with the governor's office and Caltrans to getting that funding for our Caltrans locations and others across across the city that they can focus on. Considering our city was the one that led the effort on that, I would expect that we would see some of that benefit along with all the other big cities. So I want to thank Mr. Lopez, just the whole team, for leading this effort. And so very, very, very positive development. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to thank Diego and Mr. Lopez as well. If you could turn to slide three, please. I think they do it in the back when we I think they have. Speaker 7: To do it in the back. If you can get us the second. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 8: Everyone knows how concerned I am with trash and public health and public safety and encampments and what they've done to parts of our city. And I have been meeting with not only our city staff, but county staff and Caltrans staff for as long as I can remember. My staff consistently meet with them. We work through graffiti cleanup. We work through encampment cleanups. And I. When I proposed the idea that we clean up for them and that they pay for it or pay us, pretty much. City staff laughed, and I was discouraged from bringing this council agenda item forward. And if not for the support of my colleagues, I cannot say that this item would be here today, because in in our meetings with Caltrans, depending on what division of Caltrans, we are very lucky to have great relationships. But this has never been done before. And the idea that it was even possible and I appreciate the nods was. We really had to change our frame of reference. And I think that a lot of this is possible because of some new collaborations and some funding that we had never had before. But but I want to say that I want to thank my staff and their persistence and the partnership with public works. Without which, this would not have been possible. And I can't wait to do it with more agencies and and get to a point where we can take ownership of any area that's within our boundaries, even though it is not our property. And I think that this is also true of some areas of our city. And I've heard Councilmember Austin make excellent comments about this in the past, about our absent landlords in the city as well, because trash does accumulate on their properties and we need to have a mechanism by which we can clean up and appropriately fund the bill when negligence has been made to ensure that we have the ability to keep our city looking its best and healthy for everyone. Encampments aren't healthy for anyone, and everyone knows if you've come to any of my homeless committee meetings that we provide the services and resources through outreach along the way. It's not that we're taking these people and just moving them along. We really do provide them opportunities and so we do it right. We are a model that is followed across this country and it is because of amazing people like the three of you, a Teresa, Tico, Eric You guys are fantastic and thank you for your leadership on this. Tom I know there was a lot of reluctance. The but I'm glad we got here and I see it happening more and more throughout the region that people want to do like us and be like us. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'm sorry that the next screen is. Vice Mayor Richardson, I think. Where's the screen? Speaker 7: Durango. Speaker 0: Yep. It's just. There you go, Councilman Ringo. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. And, you know, Councilmember Mongo, you can be so correct about all this. The seventh district is crisscrossed by two freeways. The 405 and 710, and a river runs right through it. So you got Caltrans on the freeways and then we had a county with the river. And so there's a lot of challenges that that I hope east in my district with residents who constantly see the the build up of encampments and the trash and the desire to want to have a clean city and a welcoming city. When you come in through our corridors to make sure that it's clean, I'm glad to hear, Mayor, that we're going to be having a study session on this coming up in July, because I think it's very important that we try to support our staff in trying to keep our cities clean. But more importantly, I think it's one of the things that we that is that is about Long Beach. When you want to come here, you want to see a city that's vibrant, that's that's dynamic in that and that's clean. And you accomplish that by making sure that we have the staff to work with us to keep that. And I'm looking forward to further discussions with the county to also get into an agreement with them. And Mr. Modica, you've heard it from me many, many times that, you know, this is a county territory. Either they clean it up or we or we clean up and we charge it. And we've done the same with Caltrans when the on ramps and off ramps are just unbearable and just a blight as we see it. So I'm glad to see this motion going forward and I'm looking forward to more discussions on on the rest of the city and the other efforts we're going to be looking at. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. So I think this is incredibly important. It's been important for a long time. You know, the 91 freeway corridor's been a real area of focus. It only touches the North Long Beach ninth District community and intersects the 710. But it's it's been an issue in 91 for a number of cities along the corridor. Just, you know, I remember years ago taking, you know, it's different legislators, three different assembly members, long 91, taking those assembly members on and off every onramp in a in a Caltrans van to show them the conditions of the ramp. This was these were this was well before the pandemic, you know, just January. A coalition of cities along 91 submit a letter. Mayors and council members along 91 some in a letter to Caltrans about this very this very issue was a very significant, serious, serious issue for the 91 corridor cities, the 17 corridor cities and clearly across the city. I want to thank. I like that we're heading this direction. I want to thank staff for taking steps toward this in this direction. I want to ask a question to just raise up. I see the nodes here and many of we've talked about the different nodes that are referenced here. But one node that I want to make sure we have the flexibility to cover and include is the Atlantic in Artesia for the 91 and Atlantic corridor. That is the entryway to the that is the entryway to the Uptown Business District. Speaker 0: Where the vice mayor is talking to the staff. Also where you. Speaker 7: Put it, I'm sorry. Speaker 0: On the screen, just the text. Speaker 7: Of the map. Okay. Well, this corridor. The 91. Okay. All right. There it is. So when we look at the 91 close to that 9117 intersection, it's just a patchwork of infrastructure that is left a lot of dead down space. I'm particularly interested in Atlantic and Artesia, where the 91 in the Atlantic corridor meet, because that is the entrance to the Uptown Business District and entryway. Very close proximity to the Atlantic Bridge community. So it requires a lot of focus, particularly to stay in control of the business issue. So I just want to make sure I see if other nodes are there. I see the seven two. I mean, I see the Long Beach Boulevard 91. I think I see a node there. But I want to just ask what flexibility you have as you negotiate with Caltrans to make sure that that is that site is included . Thank you, Councilmember. Mr. Vice Mayor, I appreciate the question. Speaker 0: Certain criteria were given to the city of Long Beach by Caltrans to help select these. But we have ensured. Speaker 3: Flexibility to be. Speaker 7: Built into the agreement to allow us to address other areas as well. Okay. So let me just make sure that is raised up. That's an important corridor. Important intersections in the north Long Beach community. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman's in Dallas. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mayor. One of the things that I think is very important is partnerships. I'm so happy to see that we have a partnership with Caltrans. I think that's a huge deal. I know that, you know, having several main streets coming in and out of my district, you know, it's really, really important to have this kind of partnership. Not too long ago, one of my residences car was completely totaled by a car coming down one of our streets off the freeway. And he was inside minding his own business, and his car was completely totaled. But, you know, so partnerships like thing like this, I think will help us in the future in addressing some of those concerns. I do have a couple questions. Do we have a plan to address our worst streets when when extra funds become available? For instance, my business district, the streets haven't have gotten to a point that they're so expensive to fix that there is no time frame for when they're going to be addressed. So I guess when. Speaker 0: I'm getting to some requests of staff to go back to the image, just keep it keep the image there of the map. I'm just getting a couple of councilmembers that they want that. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And second question is, do do we have any idea of when the bond that was recommended will be coming back to a council? Speaker 3: So Councilmember, I think those are both questions about street repair and this is more kind of the cleanliness of the onramp and on off ramps. But we did do a two from four on the on the bond, and I can certainly send another copy on that. Mm hmm. Speaker 5: Thank you for that clarification. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Austin. Speaker 7: Thank you. First, let me just say, I do appreciate this item. I'm encouraged by this. This is a long time coming. We've been kind of pointing the fingers during the governmental salute for four years on this freeway, always, you know, when agencies pointed to the other. And I think this is a real, real testament of of interagency collaboration and what can be possible now when residents call and they complain about an encampment or trash debris, we're going to own it and we're going to be able to control our own destiny, destiny and the image of our city in a lot of ways. So I'm encouraged by this and certainly more courage if there's some funding behind this to help pay for this. So with that, I just wanted to say that I appreciate the the work of staff. This is the shows that we've been listening and we're looking at innovative approaches to to to solve the problem and not wait for the next agency or the next person's responsibility. We're taking it on ourselves. And so I think that that says a lot about where we're going. Thanks. Speaker 3: Mr. Bennett. Mr. Mayor, if I can add to that just for a quick explanation. This has been in the works for many years. So we've talked about this and we've always wanted to do this and it always came down to resources. So one thing that's really changed here is the Recovery Act and the ability for us to actually hire up and do this work. We were always worried. We're always willing to take it on, but Caltrans would never pay us. And if we sent them a bill, they wouldn't pay that either. So this has always been about getting the resources so that we weren't neglecting our neighborhood streets by doing Caltrans work. So the Recovery Act is what really made a lot of this possible and a lot has to offer. They may end up reimbursing some of us. Right now, that's not guaranteed. But if there is state money, we said we're willing to do the work. We still want Caltrans to be responsible in certain areas. This is their property. We're just assisting. And I do think that our job, our teams are going to make a noticeable difference. But we also need to make sure Caltrans is still doing their job. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to turn it to councilman in just a minute. But you you actually said a few things. I just wanted to add or clarify. So just just before we move on, I just wanted to clarify a few things that I heard. One is that this is being fully funded by the proposal that we that was in front of this council on adding clean team resources to the Recovery Act. Isn't that right? Speaker 3: That's correct. Okay. Speaker 0: So just just to also be clear, so from the council, I think remember those $5 million that we put in there for clean it cleaning initiatives? That's where this that's where this is going at, not just this. I think we're going to hear on the 16th the master plan from the city as to how our all those resources are going to be spent in addition to what we're already doing. So that's fantastic. I also just had a question for whether it's for Diego or Eric or or for you. Mr. Modica is the are we overlain because this is a city expense that we are picking up the money that the Governor has put aside for Caltrans on ramps and off ramps. It's a significant amount of money in the budget. In fact, we've seen probably images or media of him, you know, cleaning sides of freeways that's promoting this initiative that's going to be, I'm assuming, overlaid on top of what we're doing to get more kind of more cleanliness or what's our approach with that? Speaker 3: Yes. So I'm I meet with the Caltrans director now every month with Theresa. And we've been talking about how to do this. They do not have access to that state funding yet. And so the agreement we've been negotiating allows us to get reimbursed if they get money, but we're not waiting for that. So we're building a budget, an approach based on the Recovery Act money. If they are able to reimburse us, then we can use that money then to do this work and then we can free up those recovery dollars to do additional clean team work as more to do either. Speaker 0: A, you know, we use it in the Recovery Act and we get additional resources to do more areas or we're or we know is we don't get reimbursed basically either we get reimbursed or not. But either way, we're going to get more, more, more work done than what we see on the on this map from the Caltrans , in my view. I also want to clarify that just because this is a Caltrans, in my view, it doesn't mean that Caltrans is not responsible for all the other off ramps and off ramps. This is just the ones that the city will be responsible for or that will provide additional levels of service moving forward, correct? Speaker 3: That's correct. And we also, you know, some of these are prioritized. You know, some of these they're not getting to because it's one or two encampments. Those are really good ones for us where we can engage in work on those. These are some of our most difficult encampments as well, and they require lots and lots of resources. So we still want Caltrans to work on those. And then we really think we'll be effective with a lot of the litter cleanup. Just faster and more responsive. But homelessness is still going to be a very major challenge because we have a lot of service resistant individuals at this time. Speaker 0: And have we have we thought about it? Because I know that what we're looking at in front of us takes significant resources, which is why it's not, you know, more often or more off ramps and on ramps, I'm assuming. But as resources become more available, is there a possibility that the M.O. you think could be could be increased or additional spaces could be added? Is that correct? Speaker 3: Yes. Can some of these were chosen with safety in mind if it needs a foreclosure in order to get crews out there, that really is a safe spot for our city employees to be. That's really a Caltrans responsibility. But we can certainly do more if we have more resources. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you. And then that's I think I think that's really the one note I'll just make is I think that. Be the entrance, the 20 to seventh Street entrance, that that Caltrans entrance as you're going into the city from the six or five of the 405 is also, you know, one that Caltrans oversees. I know that's one that we're very interested in. And also upgrading and doing some signage long term and some other work. And so that's certainly an area that I think we should always keep, keep an eye on. And I know that it's a really it's a really important entrance point, as are others in the city as well . So. Well, thank you. I'm a conservative councilman, Mongo. Speaker 8: I think Councilwoman Allen is next. Speaker 0: I'm after him. I think I have. I have men going here. But let's go to Councilwoman Ellen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mary. Just really quickly, this is just a common sense agreement, and there's absolutely no reason why we all wouldn't support this. And we all recognize the homeless encampments along our freeways, the seven, ten and the four or five or the 91. I'm also excited to hear about the the county agreement. I think all of these collaborations are just huge. So I definitely know I feel that we need to get Long Beach cleaned up and I'm happy to know that we have the resources and to get this done. So just great leadership on this. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I appreciate everything that was said today, and I know that a lot of agenda items by this dais often come from great work that starts with staff over years of time, and then a councilmember hears about it and wants to add their stamp or seal of approval or opinion, and we bring it to the Council . But I do want to say that, Mr. Modica, while I'm a big fan of yours, what you said today was not the way that I remember it. I remember several meetings where Councilmember Suranga and I had funding available to clean up Caltrans areas and we wanted the city to do it. And we were continually told that we could not enter those properties without we had liability issues, we would never be able to get it done. Then Councilmember Super not and I wanted to clean up certain areas and the same was said we had some funding available in our council offices. The communities were really asking for responses and we as leaders on this dais were working really hard to find solutions. And I recognize that it was all not within your area. But while I appreciate that the city staff may have been working on a form of this, I don't know that we were really asking for specific designated off ramps. I don't know that any one councilmember couldn't add three additional off ramps to this. And I know Councilmember Richardson, he's probably the best out at every agenda item he brings forward. He wants two more off ramps or two more things. He's always fighting for his constituents, and each and every one of us could do that. But when when you hear what the mayor just said, I think it really is the root of what we were asking for, which is as any resources are available, we want to have the ability that if our city staff have the resources , we should be able to have the ability to enter into Caltrans area and clean that area up. And I appreciate that through dialogs, an exception was made for Councilmember Super not in my clean up and there was a way that Caltrans eventually cleaned up councilmember Franco's and I issue but this really was an apex of an agenda item that was rooted because there was continually issues where we could not find solutions. And without that and I appreciate Diego in his presentation earlier that talks about that it was really driven by a council agenda item because sometimes it does take a policy by this dais to to make that move. And if additional resources are available, I hope that the memo was written or I have the motion, I'd like the memo to include that it doesn't only include these off ramps if there are additional resources that Councilmember Richardson is able to bring to the table to do a specific cleanup in a specific area that may cost $40,000 because it's gotten to a certain point like the one that happened between councilmember supervisor and I. We want to be able to do that. We don't only want to be limited to the blue dots on the screen, any area of our city that needs help that we have funding for, we really want to see that. So thank you, everyone at the dais for all of your comments today. I think they're very poignant. And I just want to say one additional big thank you to our clean teams. And while I'm very fortunate to have a side of the city where our residents are out there cleaning up regularly, painting polls and doing all that they can when the clean team comes in, I mean, it makes such a big difference in our alleys and our corridors. They're just they're miracle workers. And I just want to say thank you again. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. Before we wrap up, just a couple of things. So one, I think what's different here is that the homeless issue on the on and off ramps is significantly worse than what it was before. And this won't meet. This won't be just cleaning up the on ramps. It will take significant work with getting access to the on ramps to go and address the actual encampments and make sure that I mean, because what I see on the a91 for you is different than when, you know, my predecessor, Councilman Neal, was having the very conversations, these very conversations about taking over the on ramps. And it was a public works conversation then. It was about, hey, if we spend our resources here, we're already behind on the on our own jurisdictions. And that conversation was before I or most of us even joined that join the council. I think what we need to hear, what I'm interested in hearing is that by getting access to these sites, we can go and do our homeless outreach work. Because the complaints that I see, our neighborhood associations have already gone and done adopt a high rate on some of the 91 off ramps. They're already doing some of these work at the homeless on ramp and the homeless situation with the encampments have been completely abandoned by Caltrans. And that's been the nature of the letters along the 91. And I'm just speaking to the experience in North Long Beach here. Homeless outreach is what I really want to see is getting access safely to reach out and engage from that standpoint. So for me, it's not about when this originated or whatever. I think this is about where you have a very different circumstance on off ramps. And I want staff to be very, very clear that the expectation isn't just picking up later here in access to deliver services and ensure that people are not creating these massive embankments on, on and off the freeways. I just wanted to be clear on that before we wrap up. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you, Vice Mayor, if I can respond to that quickly. And so, yes, we totally agree with that's part of the reason we want to be out there. And we've been offering our assistance to Caltrans with our outreach workers so that we don't have to rely on lahsa. And we and that's how some of those have been have been addressed. But that is going to be the bigger challenge is there are some very large encampments, very service resistant people. And part of the menu is we're not allowed to just go on their property and do whatever we want. We need to also follow their rules. So they do have some rules about and that are different than ours about how they treat encampments, the level of severity. I think it's just being out there is going to make us more nimble and especially with the ones and chooses, the ones that we can easily get to, the larger encampments that we still have to go through Caltrans process. So I do want to temper expectations that this will not be an overnight fix, but I think this is so much better than just relying on another agency. So but those are those are definitely are our priority that what we have now is not acceptable. Speaker 0: Thank you very much and great work again to the team. I we look forward to this MRU and I know we're going to focus on these property agreement, but we're always looking at expanding as we as we move forward. So thank you very much. Please cast your votes. Motion carries 33, please.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute a Consent Letter and a Project Specific Maintenance Agreement, and any other necessary documents required including subsequent amendments, with the State of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), for access to Caltrans property to offer and provide social services, targeted maintenance, and relocation assistance to people experiencing homelessness, consistent with the business operations of the entity, for a one-year period, June 15, 2021 through June 14, 2022, with the option to renew for three additional one-year terms, at the discretion of the City Manager. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06152021_21-0560

Speaker 0: So thank you very much. Please cast your votes. Motion carries 33, please. Speaker 1: Report from Public Works recommendation to adopt a resolution approving repaving resurfacing projects proposed to receive road maintenance and rehabilitation account funding and the fiscal year 2022 paving program citywide. Speaker 0: I have a motion in a second. There is no place for public comment on this. You have one here. Speaker 3: We have any greenfield. Speaker 0: Your public comment. Speaker 3: Yes, Annie Greenfield. Annie Greenfeld your phone may be still muted. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Marquez. I just wanted to give a couple customers. Just wanted a brief dust up. Didn't want. This actually is. Speaker 3: Eric Lopez. Mayor, members of the City Council. The item before you is essentially a requirement from SB one, our Road Repair and Accountability Act and its SB one requires that a list of all projects propose to receive funding that it be identified in a resolution that's approved by the City Council. And there are specific requirements that we are meeting through this agenda item that that's specific to this funding source. The bill also requires the use of a pavement management system and that guides the development of the project list. Something I wanted to clarify this list only represents about a quarter of all roadway projects that are going to be part of the capital improvement program. That's really important. It's just about a quarter is not a complete list and and wanted to make that clarification. The other. Speaker 0: Clarification. Speaker 3: I wanted to make is that all of these projects are part of the measure, a spending plan. So these are all commitments we've made in the last few years. And we're meeting those commitments. The supplemental, the measure, a funding and other funding sources as well. So that concludes the status report, and we're here to answer any questions. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I want to thank Eric for doing an exceptional job of working to improve the streets of the city of Long Beach tonight. I kind of want to just take a moment to ask a few questions that I help. I hope will bring some insights to the community. Many know that I've been a proponent of street repair since day one and that when elected, I remember one of my first my first meeting with the mayor. We went over the amount of street repair needed in every district in the city and the cost of that street repair . And the fifth District was by far the worst. And we've made a lot of progress, but we are nowhere near where we need to be. In a recent memo from the city manager's office, they discuss that we spend approximately $50 million a year maintaining streets at good, very good levels, and we're not really having the amount of money necessary to attack the poor and very poor streets that to really get a hold of it while this is a huge light towards climbing out of this tunnel. This is still only 25% of the total plan. But even when you see the total plan, we need an additional $211 million to pull our poor and very poor streets and alleys to a condition which I see as appropriate and deserving of our taxpayers and our neighbors. And so I just want that to be both a celebration and a reality check when when you have $211 million in need and that $211 million in need still grows, even when you're spending 50 million a year. We we have a long way to go and we need a plan. So what I would also ask is that in future reports, any street that has been paved or resurfaced or mitigated in the last ten years be itemized. Because when I read the memo the other day, unless I misunderstood, we're spending 50 million keeping the streets good. And I'd like to see how many streets are getting touched again before hundreds of streets and alleys in our city have ever been touched once since the status was in place. And I know the reasoning behind the strategy that we currently have, and I understand its cost effectiveness. And there are residents that have lived on poor streets for a very, very long time. And the current structure of our budget does not, for the foreseeable future, find a way unless an infrastructure bill falls from the feds, which would be if it could be dedicated to streets and sidewalks. I need 300 million for sidewalks and 300 million for streets, and I would be a celebratory person without something like that. I don't see a way where we can tell the residents on poor and very poor streets. Any date in my lifetime that they could perceive their street being fixed, and that is just not acceptable. So we have to come up with a solution. Grateful for the 9 million in front of us. It's 5% of what we need. Thank you. Speaker 0: Katherine. Sara. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. So. I too am grateful that we have this 9 million and to just to see that we're going to be having road maintenance. But I, I think that I need a little bit of a few questions answered about how some of these streets were decided as far as how they ended up being on this list and what's the process on getting on a list to getting it into the repayment program? Speaker 3: Yes. Council Member So we look at the measure spending plan. We made these commitments ask of specific streets that are going to be paved in each district. So throughout the last few years we've been going around and getting some of those segments done each year. Those are the the allocations of dollars as directed by the City Council is based on need on the amount of of need per district. And so we allocate dollars a by a percentage based on on that need. And so, you know, there are some districts that will have a different need then than other districts, though. So there is some differences. But that that approach was was requested by the City Council. C So when we look here, these are all measure a spending plan, identify streets, and the allocation is based on on the need percentage. Where does that percentage come from? The staff updates its pavement management plan every 2 to 3 years, and the need percentages are outlined in that plan. So we get it directly from our and our payment management system. Speaker 1: Do we have the ability to view this pavement management plan so that we can better understand the process that was kind of taken to it sounded like from Councilmember Mongo statement their grade levels in how they're listed and how they're decided as far as how they're chosen based on, I guess what it's categorized as need. Speaker 3: Yeah. So we, we actually have the last pavement management program posted on our website. I'll make sure I can send a link. A link so you have a direct access to it. We're looking as part of our update in our in our newspaper management plan, which will be done in the next couple of months. We're looking to make it more interactive. We're looking to layer it on a map where you can identify your street, see the rating, see the condition, and just make it a lot easier to understand what the recommendations are. Speaker 1: And what would be wonderful to do that. Thank you. Speaker 0: I want to make one clarification also and then I'm going to turn over actually, I think conference in Dallas was the second or did not go to the second of the motion. So if they go to your city councilwoman or no. Okay, I'll go to the councilman next. But just to clarify one one thing, and this might help clarify for Councilman Ciro and Andrew Councilman Allen as well the plan, I think Mr. Lopez that you're referring to is is not just the the measure, a five year plan that was adopted by the council, but also the CHP overlay that we did on top of that plan. Is that correct? Or you're just referring to the measuring streets? It's both correct. Speaker 3: So it started with the measure, a map. And then as we build out that map we laid on, as we got new gas tax money, as we got new funding. So, yes, that is the five year commitment that we're talking. Speaker 0: That this was just the measure, a plan we have, that we this council many years ago adopted the Missouri Street Plan, which was a five year plan of which we're nearing the end of or close to the end of. And then we also added through the budget process a variety of streets that met Mr. Lopez's criteria that he just explained from a variety of sources, including, you know, the SB one streets, the gas tax streets, all the streets in the chapbook. And it all got folded into one master, a five year plan map that is publicly available that anyone can see that the council adopted. And that's what we're going through right now. And so I think it would be great, obviously, for the Council at some point we should get a kind of refresher and I agree with Councilman Sato as to where we're at with that map because I know we've been discussing kind of the what's next, what's next post, this five year plan and how do the funding sources that we have in place impact that that map? So I wanted to make that clarification. But thank you for thank you for that. Next, we have customers in the house. Speaker 5: Thank you, ma'am. I just want to say thank you very much to Councilwoman Mango. I stand with you when it comes to the needing the the poor and very poor street repairs done. I know we've had several conversations about this in the past. I know that my residents are eager to figure out, you know, when is their street going to be repaired. I remember when I was elected that I came to visit my my district, my industrial district in the West Side. And one of the streets was horrible. I mean, it's a horrible, horrible that I don't think I could even drive my wheelchair through there because it was so bad. And so I said, this is easy, right? And this is one of the most horrible streets here. We're going to fix this, you know, a.S.A.P. That still has not happened. And and now I understand why I understand the process. I understand that it is extremely expensive to actually fix those really, really bad streets. And I also understand that it's less expensive to fix the the good, you know, streets or port, you know, the ones that are not as horrible. But my question is that do we have a plan for that? Because I don't think that we can just say, oh, well, the street is just horrible and it's just going to have to remain horrible for like council members. Mongo says, for as long as we have life, you know, way past us. And so I I'd really like us to move forward to creating a plan that would address those poor, very poor, because they continue to to be damaged then not only that, but they continue to damage other vehicles that pass through there and stuff. And and it's just it makes it look like us as a council don't care about those streets or don't care about the, you know, where they are. I usually have weekly check ins with my residents, and one of the things that keeps coming up is why are we not fixing Seventh Street? You know, Seventh Street is a main, main street here in. And it goes into the city and out of the city. Right. And so so I think that that's one of the things that we really need to look into. Seventh Street, I don't know is that is that street anywhere in the in the plans to be fix. Speaker 1: Seventh Street. Speaker 3: Councilmember. I would even go back and check the exact plans, but I can let you know if it's on the current plan or not. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Lopez. And I think that, you know, I grieve sorry that we have to come up with a plan to be able to address those very poor and poor streets. Because we cannot we can't. It's it's really is unacceptable to continue like this. Speaker 7: All right. I see the mayor stepped away. Councilman Austin. Thank you. And you know, I'll just say that we have several streets that are going to get paved and we should be celebrating that. And I did to have some some questions and try to understand the methodology and how we got here. But I'm going to take this as as a as a win for or at least a few streets in the district. And I can remember when SB one was being debated in Sacramento just a few years ago. I think four years ago it was actually passed. And we lauded this this funding sources as an opportunity. I did have a question for a city manager or public works director. Was there a shift in strategy at all in terms of how we were spending SB one money? Because the recall wasn't there was it wasn't it specified that SB one would go toward arterial streets. Not residential. Is that ever a strategy? Speaker 3: I don't I don't think we recall that, particularly because there's there's a number of different types of gas tax. There's gas tax. There's then are prop or prop C, so there's different funding sources. Some can only be used on arterials, some cannot. When we got the extra SB one, we went back and looked at kind of the next level of streets and added those in. And so again, you're only seeing one little portion of gas taxes, another whole section of gas tax that's been used for streets as well. Speaker 7: Okay. So what I'm hearing also from my colleagues and I share that is that, you know, we were contacted on a daily basis about streets throughout our districts, the need for repairs. And I think it would be a very. I think it would help us a lot if there was there's a little bit more transparency even for the public and how we were going about identifying which streets are next. I know that's not easy, but even explaining, doing some education about the pavement management plan and how streets are rated and and so when when when they see a street help getting paved to streets at least three stillbirths. It's not an affront to them. It's there's a there's a methodology and some science to it. I think that would help us as elected officials explain what's going on, because oftentimes you can you can have a neighborhood and you can do two streets and you look at that as a victory. But it really is not a victory when the rest of the neighbors are wondering why not us? So we need to be able to explain that so that our residents understand, you know, how and why we're reaching the decisions that we make other that I'm looking forward to seeing these streets done and leveraging our measure eight plans for for future opportunities as well. Speaker 3: Yeah. And we certainly agree we'd love to be able to to bring more information. I do want us to go back a little bit in history. Four or five years ago, councilmembers were getting one street per district, a new that we were able to do. And when we brought on Measure eight, that's what allowed us to really start doing several and create an actual plan. Before that, we didn't even have a pavement management plan. We didn't have any data. We just kind of looked and saw where where were you hearing the most complaints and what one street would you like to fix ? So I do think we've come a long way. I am excited about getting our new pavement management plan and then starting to plan for that next, you know, five year, ten year bring you the options of what funding do we have and what is a need. We did think that the in we're really betting on some money from the federal government. We know is $1,000,000,000,000 plan in the works right now and we think we've got a lot of projects that would qualify. Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me let me just add something else I think Councilmember Austin mentioned. I just think it's important because there's a lot of conversations about, you know, wanting to have a plan and needing to get certain streets done. These plans require funding. And I just want a little bit of a reality check as to where we're actually at as it relates to funding infrastructure. We are right now spending more on infrastructure than we probably have in the last 50 years. It's very clear about how much we're actually spending on infrastructure. We have more sources of street repair resources that are going into fixing streets than we certainly ever have had in the last few decades. And we were just pre measure a doing 1 to 2 streets for council district a year. So I'm very grateful that the voters, you know, for the first time in 40 years, stepped forward with and taxed themselves to invest in all the streets and again taxed themselves to invest in other statewide measures, including, you know, supporting bills like SB one. So I just want to make sure that we. Are realistic that right now, even with all of the spending that we're doing in infrastructure, it's not enough. It just is. We just got to be honest with with the public about just saying if we just keep saying, we're going to get through. I agree. And we worked really hard to make sure we're doing as many as we are today, which is still not enough to get streets to where they need to be without, you know, a bonding program that I know Councilman Mungo's talked about or without another revenue source or without a large influx of resources. There just isn't an opportunity for the city to do dramatically more than what the pace that we're currently doing. It's just not possible unless, of course, we shut down all of our libraries and firefighters and had no other departments in the city. So it is it is it is a big challenge. But because fixing a street is not is not inexpensive. And we're talking millions of dollars for First Street. So. I just want to make sure that we're taking a note that. When I look at this list, what I see is, oh, my God, we've never done so many streets before. So I'm grateful to the number of streets that we're now doing. So I just want to thank the team and how you've had to completely ramp up. Is it enough? Absolutely not. Are there plenty of streets that need repair, including the very poor ones? Absolutely. What I think would be helpful and I think Councilmember Austin is kind of alluding to this as well, is an opportunity in the near future to have a broader conversation about infrastructure. And we've kind of had that discussion a little bit on the dais about what does all of our infrastructure funds look like? Where I would like a public update as to where are we at with the five year plan that council adopted? How much of it it's done is it we 90% or 95%. And then what? And then showing the public and the council a kind of a what what is the what's the staff proposing for the next if it's not five years, three years or whatever. So we have an idea of what's coming down the pipeline with the resources we have in front of us, because we cannot set an unrealistic expectation that somehow things are going to be dramatically different in the next 3 to 5 years without a significant revenue. Not I'm not talking a little bit of revenue. Measure producing. $80 million a year approximately in sales tax. Correct me if I if that's incorrect. And so we have this body. Has increased through revenue measures. I want to say 100 to $125 million of revenue that we didn't have before. And so just want to make sure that we have that a little perspective. And so I think having a conversation at the dias about what the next few years around infrastructure looks like and what makes sense, I think is important for folks to know what's actually realistic also. But I'm very proud of this work and I think you and your team have done a phenomenal job with the amount of ST we're finally doing. So thank you for that. Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 7: Again, Mr. Mayor, I think context is incredibly important. Thank you for allowing some of that context. I think, first of all, congratulations to the public works you guys have done and so much, so much work, infrastructure work over the past few years. And I know that it's hard to keep up with the demand of the public. I mean, folks know their council members. They know their city manager. You're going to get a phone call. Members of Congress, assembly members, they don't get a phone call about those things, even though they have more resources than we do. They don't get the phone call. You do. But I think it's important to note that a lot has changed in recent years. I remember I remember when, you know, our plant in North Long Beach, which streets was was anchored to redevelopment. Redevelopment. We were paving streets and building fire stations with redevelopment that ended in 2013. And that's almost a decade later. And immediately after there's been you know, there's been a measure a there's been SB one, all of these different things. I think it's you know, we we also changed our system. The payment management plan process is still fairly new. Prior to that, there was a divide by need and divide by nine. You know, it had its challenges. But you also were able to respond to neighborhood immediate need and say, prioritize this street. There was some you know, some good things about that managed plan has its good things as well. So that's fairly that's fairly new. And then I remember when Measure M put out for the first time, we were able to put out a map, go out, do community outreach. Show the residents what to expect over a three year period. I thought that was incredible to be able to say, we commit to this and we will deliver this. I thought that was great. I think the challenge here moving forward is going to be that there are different colors of the money. Tonight we heard about rules and conditions on SB one. There was no significant outreach to the public about conditions on SB one. SB one. When that happened, that was immediate. Like cities rejoice that we have another tool in addition to our local revenue measures, to go out and produce streets and improve streets. And I think in knowing and understanding that there will be an update to the management plan. There needs to be a conversation about, one having a conversation on expectations with the public. And secondly, what is the policy on how we actually use the pavement management plan? The pavement management plan just gives us an assessment on the condition of streets, but doesn't say, do we go after worst first? Do we go after streets to catch them before it's before it's too late? That is the conversation, in my opinion, that is overdue. And we need to get back to that policy conversation about how we do that in relationship to the different colors of money. If we're going to treat SB one differently than, say, Measure eight. I think we need to have a plan to talk about that. So I think moving forward, I certainly see that we need to do some engagement around the update of the pavement management plan that's already planning. I think it's time for that. I think we need to as a part of that factor in things like vulnerability within communities. I think we we want to factor in need. There's certainly need in all parts of town, east Long Beach, west Long Beach. I think that's a factor. But we need to think about like things like access or lack of access to public transit. Some colors of money are directly linked to public transit. But what about the service roads next to it? What's a more? So we need to pull up a scalpel and have a real conversation about the policy around it in a way that makes sense for everybody across the city and is understandable and is fair. And so that's the conversation I'm looking forward to having in the future again. Thank you so much, Eric. I think you and your team are doing incredible work, but that doesn't. But that means people are going to hold you accountable to the talent that you have to step up and rise to the occasion, given the challenges of public finance and infrastructure. Thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Ringo. Speaker 2: I did great conversation. But, you know, the one thing that I'm concerned about is that, you know, first of all, I want to thank the residents of Long Beach for voting for Marjorie. I mean, that was just a life saver in regards to at least getting a plan to fix our streets and our infrastructure. And as the mayor said, yeah, it's never enough. But, you know, what we get is that you? I voted for Marjorie, and where I work my street, you know, it hasn't been fixed. So there's there's that mentality or mentality with that opinion that we get on a daily basis in my office. And you know, we look at can we want to we want to get the most bang for our buck with everything that we get. So we do go after the streets. That can be a quick fix. In the meantime, we defer the maintenance of the other streets that are that are really going down to a later point in time. And while there are other streets that are on the edge, they deteriorate and they get into deferred maintenance. So, I mean, what we have here basically is, is a never ending cycle of as we fix a street, another one goes down and it doesn't end. So we need to have a better plan, a better way of being able to fund the streets. And, you know, I would propose and I don't know, it's probably a budget issue, but, you know, setting aside a percentage of our of our infrastructure funds for those major deferred maintenance streets that really need the work because they're just falling too much. I mean, I think the councilmembers and then I brought up a clear a very clear point, point it. Her wheelchair can't cross the street. She should be able to cross the street in a wheelchair. And there are parts of town where she can't because of way deferred maintenance. You just don't have the money. So we need to set aside some funding so that she can be able to cross the street without a worry about a pothole or just a street that's just been alone, left alone for for so many years. Sorry if I'm getting a little excited about this, but I mean, it's something that I deal with on a daily basis for my constituents. My street hasn't been fixed. I asked for about ten years ago. I voted for Marjorie. I thought you were going to fix it. I don't have an answer. And although we defer to you, I think you try your best you can. But, you know, we only have a certain pot and we want to distribute it as best we can and try to get as many streams fixed. But in the meantime, like I say, you know, when we put the deferred maintenance on those other streets, others fall into it. So we need a better approach in how we distribute those funds. And I would like I say I recommend that, you know, this is like a bank. You know, you set aside for your savings for the rainy day so that when you can use it and you apply it to those streets that are. That are in a in a very bad shape. So, anyway, thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman. Sunday House. Speaker 5: Thank you, Mary. Mayor. I just want to echo councilmember dundas comments. I get the calls every every day and in my office as well. But I also want to acknowledge the huge difference that a military has made and really thank the voters for passing this this great, great measure. I think that, like Councilmember Donna said, we would be in a much, much, much horrible position right now with those streets if it wasn't for this. And I really want to also thank city staff. I know, Eric, you have been amazing. And I know that you also feel like your hands are tied because you're trying to do as much as you can to help us, you know, get our streets fixed and stuff. And if you had a magic wand, they would be done, you know, overnight and stuff. But I think that, you know, together we can really come up with a plan to really address it and figure out how we can address the streets that really are like the worst, worst streets in our city. So I really want to thank you for all the jobs that the great job that you and your department has continued to do. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 8: Thank you. I really appreciate all the dialog at the dais today. I know that there's an upcoming policy discussion coming to the Infrastructure Committee, and I'm excited for that opportunity. We talk a lot about where this comes from and what does that mean and how do we set aside the money. And it's an overwhelming amount of money, and I hope we can go back to where we started this conversation. When I, I made the motion and we talked about the context, which is we need 200 to $400 million. You add in sidewalks, we need $500 million. And that's a lot of money and there's ways to get there. I brought forward a bond item that the mayor mentioned. I think we need to revisit it. I've spoken with bond experts recently and gotten some additional context. Buying bonds right now and getting them into the city is one of the best rates we've seen in our lifetime. And so the other thing we have to talk about is the cost of not repairing a street that falls from poor or sorry, from fair to very poor increases almost 100% and in some cases, more than 100% . And so when you talk about whether you're borrowing money at a 7% or a 3% versus the cost increases that happen if you do not repair the street, you're really talking about significant, significant increases. You're also getting a lot of savings in terms of pothole repair. But even if we want to talk about context and policy and all of these things and vulnerability and all of that's important. Even if the money fell from the sky tomorrow, it would still take us years to get through the work. Because as measure has been upon us and we've been fortunate to have SB one prop, a prop C measure, a general fund all contributing to our infrastructure plan. There are also only so many contractors to help us, and I know that. I want to give a lot of props to public works for ramping up their project management and their ability to get this many streets done is also phenomenal. And then I want to give a big thank you to our residents. One of the residents wrote an email during this Dyas conversation about that. Our streets never been touched in 37 years, and the street adjacent to her has been slurry sealed twice. And the other issue that comes about when you have a slurry sealed street is sometimes those slurry sealed streets will never get to the point of a full restructure. And many of them have significant drainage issues that back up into our neighborhoods. And because we continue to slurry seal, instead of letting some of them go where we know that that work could get done, and then focusing on the poor and very poor, we just we need to get there. And I'll say we have had this policy discussion several times. I'm excited to have it again with two additional members of the dais because we were featured on what our ten worst streets were, and we were honest and open and transparent about that with the public. And we continue to be and I think that's an important part of the conversation. So again, as I said when I opened, really excited to celebrate the $9 million, but it does come with a reality check on and I know I was talking to another councilmember hey, there's so many little projects that individually don't make a difference , but every time we approve a $2 million project, I wish that the agenda item said, Would you like to approve? The paving of Street A? Or do you want this program? Because I think we really need that kind of context. When people call our office to hold us accountable, to say, yeah, it's a great program and if it'll help more people than that, but other times it's an investment in the infrastructure that our taxpayers expect. So and our residents and our and quite frankly, our visitors. So I'm really passionate about this. It's been a heck of a night, a lot of passion items for me today, and I'm really thankful to get so many of them out there. And if anyone wants to talk streets with me any day, any time, any place, I'll be there and I'll bring them to the PMP. Speaker 0: Thank you. Members, please cast your votes.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution approving repaving/resurfacing projects proposed to receive Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account funding totaling approximately $9,200,000 in the Fiscal Year 2022 Paving Program. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06152021_21-0562

Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. The last item is 35. Speaker 1: Report from Technology and Innovation Economic Development Recommendation to approve the Digital Inclusion Roadmap to ensure that everyone in Long Beach has equitable access and use of computer literacy training. The Internet technology devices and other digital inclusion resources. Citywide. Speaker 0: I have a motion in a second, but there is a staff for Mr. Mayor. So, Mr. Modica. Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor, I need to recuse myself on this one. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 7: Thank you. Given the fact that I work in the technology and telecommunications industry an abundance of caution, I am stepping outside and recuse myself on this item. Thank you. Speaker 3: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and members of the council. This was a big policy initiative by the council in 2018, is to create funding, find a way to do a digital road map. We went through a process and found some additional funding. It's been a big outreach effort with our community and there's been a lot that the council can be proud of for digital inclusion, especially with the CARES Act. So I want to give a report today on what we've been doing for the road map development, which really helped inform how we spend a lot of those digital divide dollars that came through the CARES Act and is going to be furthered under the Recovery Act. So Lee Eriksen. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. The Technology and Innovation and Economic Development Departments are pleased to provide an overview of the proposed Digital Inclusion Roadmap, peer review and discussion. The Digital Inclusion Initiative strives to ensure we achieve our vision that every individual on Long Beach, regardless of background, neighborhood or identity, has high quality, accessible technology, resources and services to be civically engaged and social and economic empowered. This vision was co-created by stakeholders and community members as part of the Digital Inclusion Roadmap Development. The city's digital inclusion initiative has three focus areas that collectively work to achieve the vision. We believe that digital inclusion is only met when all three areas are met. Capacity includes free, multilingual computer literacy, training and technical support. Connectivity includes low cost and free, high speed quality. In-Home Internet services and technology support. And technology includes low cost and free quality, internet enabled technology devices and technology support. We didn't wait for the digital inclusion roadmap to be finished before starting our digital inclusion work. And already the City of Long Beach has received ample recognition for advancing digital inclusion efforts in 2020. Economic and Digital Inclusion Program Manager Rebecca Comber received the Charles Burton Digital Equity Champion Award presented by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. This National Award recognizes outstanding leadership and dedication in advancing digital equity. You also see the city receive recognition as a 2020 digital inclusion trailblazer three times in a row, and also a California social and public information official Caprio Award for our social media engagement campaign, which was done in all four of the city's languages. I'm now going to turn it over to Rebecca to cover the roadmap development process and the proposed digital inclusion goals and Community Priorities Strategies. Thank you very much, Leah. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the city council. As Leah mentioned, my name is Rebecca Coloma and I'm the city's economic and digital inclusion program manager. I'm super excited to share with you all about our great work about developing our digital inclusion roadmap, which uplifts collective impact and an equity lens as part of our way to advance digital inclusion for all in Long Beach. On January 23rd, 2018, the City Council approved the city manager to work with several city departments on a digital inclusion master plan to support this effort. Back in March of 2019, the City Council saw further approved one time funding of 40 K to the Technology Innovation Department to support the development of the road map. And as I mentioned, the essence of this process does include collective impact and also an equity lens. So through collective impact, we were able to work closely with the community and cross-sector partners in a structured format to be able to solve a digital divide and ultimately advance equity and inclusion. And through that, we focused on performance management, developing a common agenda, making sure we had a joint plan of action, and fostering open communication with all of our stakeholders who were involved in addition and equity lens was also imperative. Through an equity lens, we were able to segregate data, address systemic and institutional barriers, and ensuring that we were uplifting the lived experience of community members that are most affected by the digital divide. As part of our digital inclusion road map development process, it was very imperative for us to ensure that we were engaging both stakeholders and also the community through stakeholder and community engagement. As part of our stakeholder engagement process, we hired a consultant called McCormack, and we were able to convene a 50 person multidisciplinary Digital Inclusion Stakeholder Committee, which officially kicked off back in August of 2019 through October 2020. And this committee provides strategic guidance, vision and oversight over the development of this process. And the committee also reflected the entire spectrum of digital inclusion. And also as part of that, it was also crucial that we also engage with community members as part of this process. We hired Pueblo Planning, who is a social justice and justice urban planning consultant to help us out with the community engagement activities. It was very imperative that we partnered with local trusted community partners, and these partners included Central Cha, Long Beach, Forward, the United Cambodian community and the YMCA of Greater Long Beach. I do want to talk a little bit more about our community engagement process, which was very unique. First and foremost, we intentionally uplifted the community members as experts as part of this process through power sharing and intentionally acknowledge that historically and currently marginalized communities are typically left out of government decision making processes. And Pueblo Planning had a great way for us to also engage with the community, and that was also through art and storytelling, where they were able to use that process to uplift their lived experiences, knowledge and vision for what digital inclusion should look like here in the city of Long Beach. We had a variety of different ways to engage with community. Over the past year, this included community pop ups, workshops, interviews, and also a survey. And through that, we were so excited. And during a pandemic, we engaged with more than 170 community members in a process that was both meaningful and inclusive. During our community engagement process, it was very important for us to understand what some of the key challenges and barriers were for being able to access and utilize the internet and computers. Some of these key challenges and barriers included high costs with Internet services, poor quality broadband literacy and English literacy barriers, lack of access to electricity to name a few. And as part of this process, I wanted to share a testimonial from Angela, who resides in central Long Beach, and she was able to share some of her challenges with accessing and utilizing the Internet and computers. And this is a direct quote from Angela For one of my classes, the computer wouldn't work because the Internet wasn't working. So I had to email my teachers through my phone because I have mobile data to tell them I was not able to complete the assignment. I told him that if I would give him more time, if I could do it, I would have more time. And I had to drive my car to my grandmother's house because my grandmother also had Internet access to complete the assignment. So here is a perfect example of a Long Beach community member from their own words that shared what challenges that they were experiencing with having poor internet and computer access. As part of our process, it was very important for us to also uplift strategies, goals and objectives that would advance digital inclusion here in Long Beach. For the purpose of this presentation, we will be highlighting some of the key top strategies that were referenced as part of this development process for capacity. The top community strategies included providing one on one tutoring, where community members can learn how to use the internet and computers. In addition, providing classes where community members can also learn how to speak, read and write in English. In addition, establishing a hotline where community members can call to resolve any issues that they're having with Internet service providers. And connectivity. The top community strategies included providing free and low cost quality, high speed Internet services for community members at home, and also being able to administer free quality wi fi provided at public parks and also at public libraries. And last but not least for technology, the top strategies included providing free and low cost quality desktops, computers and tablets for community members, and also providing technical support where they can receive information on how to address computer issues and also any other technology related issues. In regards to next steps, we heard a lot of great expertize wisdom and lived experiences on how to address the digital divide in Long Beach. Once this item has been approved by City Council, city staff will officially kick off an equity focus implementation process. And this process would both involve us convening with the community and cross-sector partners. And we will establish an implementation committee where we will have the opportunity to identify funding personnel, data collection and reporting structures to implement this process . As part of our conclusion, I would like to take the time to thank the mayor, city council, city manager, city staff, community partners, and most importantly, the community for all of their inspiration and collaboration, time and commitment with developing this digital inclusion road map process. That concludes our report. And Lee and I are more than happy to answer any questions that you may have. Speaker 0: Well, thank you. That was a really excellent report and a really great presentation. I also just want to just note. I want to thank a staff you all did a fantastic job in the presentation was really great. So, so, so, so good work. I also just want to note that State Senator Gonzalez was a real champion on this issue and really brought this issue forward to the council on multiple occasions and continues to do that work at the state level. But we want to make sure that we obviously think and recognize her for bringing this to the council as a as one of her kind of top type issues and priorities. There is a motion and a second, I think Councilman Mango, who made the motion, had to had to leave. So maybe someone else can make the motion. And I think she's got to be here for it to make the motion. So let me do this. Ottomans and in. Speaker 7: Europe. Speaker 5: Thank you. Thank you very much. We are. And thank you for recognizing all the hard work that now Senator Lena Gonzalez has put into into the digital divide items that we have before us here today. Great job on the staff. Thank you, Ms.. ERICKSEN. And thank you, Rebecca, for a great presentation. As you know, COVID COVID 19 highlighted and brought to light many of the already existing impact and inequities in our city. And among those was the digital divide that posed an additional barrier to many of our students, parents who had to condition from going, you know , in school to online schooling. We also saw that many of our neighborhood associations found it difficult to transition to virtual meetings, especially because many people lacked access to Internet electronic devices or or they just did not know how to navigate the Internet. In addition, I am particularly glad to know that much of our community outreach, many of our computer literacy programs, among other resources, will continue to be offered in multiple languages. I am very, very supportive of this item and our city's effort to close the digital divide so that we can all move forward together. Thank you. Thank you very much for all your hard work on this. Speaker 0: Thank you. Catherine. Ringo. Speaker 2: Thank you. This is a very encouraging item that's coming forward, but it's always how do we pay for it? That's that's the challenge. And I'm hoping that nationally I know that there was a discussion about making Internet accessible for everybody and a national basis. And I know that there were a few bills being considered in the state of California to do the same thing. But nothing has happened. In your report. In flipping through it, I see there's other testimonials as well, and one where it says Each month I pay $35 for Internet and my daughter understands that it is the cheapest . It does not meet the needs of my child's education, however, because it has been very slow and because it's very cheap. That's just. Part of a quote. And then the other one, he's the one who hits me hardest is the rent is not affordable anymore. We are living in a time where food and rent is very high. We pay for rent and food. So do we want a luxury? Laptops are not a luxury. They are a necessity for daily life. I would like to see help for kids to get laptops to get accessible quality internet at a good price. So I'm hoping that during this period of of bringing this forward that we are talking to our partners. Well, Verizon and and Spectrum and any other service provider here in Long Beach to provide affordable Internet. And I brought this before I went, senator, senator and then Leader Gonzalez, which was a councilmember here. I joined her in the whole discussion about the digital divide, especially when it comes to West Palm Beach and the first District as well, because we both are adjacent districts and we we suffered the same consequences of not having good Internet access or at least one at an affordable price. So I'm hoping that when we move forward with this and we are looking for the funding that we can work with our partners to to make it accessible, first of all, and to make it affordable, of course. So I support the title for today, but we need to get cracking on getting the funding so we can make this a reality for all citizens and all residents in Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 2: The town. Speaker 0: Councilman Taro. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. First, I want to thank Lee and Rebecca for the awesome presentation, and I want to thank the technology and innovation staff as well for their hard work. You know, during the pandemic, it really lifted the high need that really demonstrated how much of a divide there is digitally. And, you know, I just really appreciate the team because, you know, during the time when, you know, obviously went virtual, there was just a high need for access to Internet as well as computer. And really the team stepped up and really fill in that need. I saw them everywhere possible with food drives and all of these spaces. So I really want to acknowledge that and appreciate that. And I really like the the community engagement approach you took and how inclusive and accessible it was in the way that it was approach. And it really shows in the report and I really look forward in the next steps and how you're really bringing equity to the forefront in how we implement it and appreciate the way that you'll continue to work with in partnership with the community organizations as well as active residents. So thank you so much. Speaker 0: Councilmember Councilmember, your rank I think you spoke already to the to the second rate. Why did you pick up again? Okay, Councilman. Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And I also want to recognize Director Erickson and the T.I. I staff for their hard work on this road map. I also want to appreciate I want to say thank you to Senator Gonzalez for all of her hard work on this item. I know this was a major undertaking and I was just so impressed when by the presentation, especially hearing all the goals and community strategies. I also just really respect the community engagement and outreach that was achieved during this process. I feel like that you really took the time to understand the barriers in accessing the Internet and computers. So just great work on this. Speaker 0: Councilman Austin. Speaker 7: Thanks. I want to say most of my questions have been answered already. I wanted to just compliment the staff on a great report and presentation. I. I did have a question related to. It seems like. We've experienced a lot and learned a lot in the last year. We had to work through some some some unexpected challenges in terms of connectivity issues that were experienced. I would say prior to. 2020 or even as this process was going on, had there been any any significant improvements from Internet service providers in terms of expanding capacity and and and connectivity for for residents? Speaker 1: I thank you for that question, Councilman Austin. I did want to mention that the Internet service providers were at the table throughout this whole process. So Frontier Spectrum, Verizon and they have been offering low cost programs and most of them are participating also in the emergency broadband benefit. And I know that they've also been making investments in in the connectivity in the cities in this inner city. So a lot of investment, small cell deployments, etc.. I'm increasing fiber capacity. So there's been a lot of investment in the city over the last couple of years. And one of the items that you approved earlier, 34, is continuing the city's work with digital, with building a fiber network, the citywide fiber network, to provide access within any within two miles of any point of the city's fiber. And so that's also going to be able to be moving forward with the the approval of that item to to use the broadband group to help us design and engineer the city's fiber network. Speaker 7: Okay. So this is probably a deeper conversation, but I would really love to understand how that that infrastructure actually looks. Um, from ISP. Um, you know, because we know that there's not a lot of competition either. You live on this side of town. This is who you have. You live on this side of town, this is who you have. And sometimes there's also disparities in terms of quality. Right. And and I think we need to dig a little deeper there as well, because we understand that there's a digital divide. But then also there's a digital divide with, like I said, quality and individuals who are required to work from home or get to be productive in their daily lives. I've heard from a number of individuals who reached out to me and said, Hey, can you do something about this? Because my Internet goes out at a certain time every day, right? And I'm down for an hour or two. So, so, so I think this is a great, great jump starting point for us and I appreciate that work. But I do think that we still have a lot to do. This is a much broader issue. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Supernanny. Speaker 7: Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. And I make this same comment. Speaker 3: Every time this topic comes up. And by the presentation, I can tell you doing it. Speaker 7: That we continued to collaborate with the public school system and almost it sounds like there was a bit of a gap analysis where you saw what the school district was providing and then we could fill those gaps. So really great to hear that. But, you know, my. Speaker 3: My point has always been. Speaker 7: If the school district is is supplying every student with a Chromebook and a hotspot, then that's a starting point that we can work from. Speaker 0: So thank you again for the report. Thank you. And let me make got a public comment, then I have a closing comment. Speaker 7: We have Jacob O'Donnell. Jay Cutler. Speaker 4: Great. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. My name is Jacob O'Donnell calling on behalf of Senator Lena Gonzalez to express support for item 35. As the former first District Council member, Senator Gonzalez launched the Digital Inclusion Road Map Initiative to ensure every Long Beach resident, regardless of zip code or income level , has Internet access and that providers are serving and investing in our communities that deserve it the most. Now in the state legislature, Senator Gonzalez continues to advance policy in this space with the introduction of Senate Bill for the Broadband for All Act, which will ensure funding for high speed fiber infrastructure projects in underserved urban and rural communities throughout the state of California. We want to thank city staff for all of their hard work and dedication on this initiative and all of the community partners who have put so much hard work on and collaboration into this effort. And we're excited to see the next steps. On advancing digital equity and inclusion in the city of Long Beach. Thank you for your time. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. I just wanted to add also that I did want to thank the Technology and Innovation Commission just because I know that they worked on this issue pretty thoroughly. And it's a really great folks on that commission. And I just know that their work is reflected in this in this roadmap and this report. And then this is maybe a broader question for Mr. Modica, or we can you know, we can maybe bring Mr. Lee, Kevin Lien. But I think this report is so good and it's you guys did such a great job. I just don't want it to just live as a report. So I just hope that you're thinking about how it can live, as, you know, not just online, but how do we create infographics and a story and materials so that we're out telling the story online? This is the type of report and I could see this about other reports as well, that we should be digesting it down to smaller images and infographics and one pagers that we're able to post on social media so that those can share within the community about what we're doing. So I just want to make sure that we are thinking about that for this report and for others, of course. But I just always, whenever I see such a well done, broad report, I just don't want I don't want us to be the only people that that see it. So if we can just work on it, that would be that would be great. Speaker 1: Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to add, you know, the $40,000 that we reported earlier, that was from at the time Councilwoman Gonzalez's account and the Technology and Innovation Commission was an active participate through this whole process, including studying the digital inclusion divide at your request, actually back in 2018. So and we definitely are going to be moving in towards implementation. And as part of that, we are going to continue our equitable work and equitable approach to outreach and inclusion and have also a state of of digital inclusion every year as part of the approach. And I just really wanted to also just really give a lot of credit to Rebecca. The work that she's done is it's just been really amazing with this whole process. And she's being actually asked to speak at national, state and regional conferences and cities and groups, and we're even L.A. County's asking us, Hey, what are you doing down there? So this this work is really getting a lot of attention. And and she totally deserves the work she got from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. Speaker 0: And Rebecca, the presentation was phenomenal. So thank you. And let's continue this this amazing work. Thank you, Leah. Such impressive staff and commissioner work here. Just thank you all very much. Members, please cast your votes. Speaker 1: American. Do you have to vote? Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Now it's new business, so I want to make sure that we still have quorum here. Okay, good. So if you have new business or an announcement, now would be the time count from your income.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve the City of Long Beach Digital Inclusion Initiative’s Digital Inclusion Roadmap to ensure that everyone in Long Beach has equitable access and use of computer literacy training, the Internet, technology devices, and other digital inclusion resources. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Item ten is a communication from Councilman Austin. Council Member Muranga. Recommendation to increase appropriation in the seat of Managers Department by 7500 to provide a donation to care closet OBC to support their ongoing operation to assist and provide opportunities for people experiencing homelessness. Item 11 is a communication from Councilwoman Pryce. Recommendation to increase appropriation in the city manager's department by $250. To provide a contribution to Long Beach Unified School District. To support the Woodrow Wilson High School Senior Celebration 2021. Item 16 is a communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Sun has Council Member Oranga recommendation to increase appropriation in the city manager's department by $50,000 to support the Uptown Jazz Festival and item 17. Is a communication from Councilwoman Sara. Councilwoman Sun has a recommendation to increase the cooperation in the city manager's department by $5,000 to provide a contribution to city fabric for District six dialog. Item 18. Is communication from Councilwoman Sara Vice Mayor Richardson recommendation to increase appropriation in the city manager's department by $1,000 to provide a donation to Love Beyond Limit for the 2021 Juneteenth celebration at MLK Junior Park. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I think we got all of the items. So let me I have a motion by Councilmember Austin and the second by Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilmember Austin. Oh, yes. Well, I can speak on that item that I brought forward. Obviously, there is a a appropriation of $5,000 to a closet. They've been honored before the city council. Continue to do great works with the unhoused population doing cleanups throughout North Long Beach, my district, as well as other areas of the city. And I think it's a. Good good up by use of public funds. At this point I would ask for your support and. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm happy to be back in this and be in support of all of these transfers that I have here, in support of our annual Uptown Jazz Festival, which is a citywide, citywide, a great opportunity for people to come together, sort of a citywide event in uptown Long Beach. We're really proud of it. I want to thank Councilman Roberta Ranga for co-sponsoring it this year with me also as well as Councilmember Marys and Bay has. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman's in Dallas. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to make a friendly amendment to item 16, and that is that we will be contributing $5,000 to the Jazz Festival. Please, if you accept that friendly face, man. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Make of emotion. Should accept it as well. Certainly. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Councilman Ciro. Speaker 1: Yeah. I just want to build upon last week's item around making Juneteenth a city and federal and state holiday and where it's so great that there'll be a variety of Juneteenth celebration and just happy to share that. I'll be supporting the annual Juneteenth celebration at MLK Park that will be hosted by LA Beyond Limits, as well as other sixth District residents and organizations and churches as well. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. With that, we do have some public comment and then we'll go to a vote. We have public comment, I think, on item on 18 of those items, 41 number 18 of those. Our first our. Speaker 3: First speaker is Monique Chris. Speaker 2: Hello? Speaker 4: Can you hear me? Speaker 2: Yes. Please begin. Okay. Speaker 4: And then in support of Councilwoman Dr. Susie Soros Agenda Item 18, a recommendation to provide a donation to live beyond limits for the 2021 Juneteenth celebration at Martin Luther King Park in partnership with Cultural Alliance. Speaker 2: Of Long. Speaker 4: Beach. Love your limits as a parent. Speaker 2: Can empower. Speaker 4: Youth and help to transform lives. For many years now, and we believe it is important for our youth and community of Long Beach to celebrate such an important holiday. Speaker 2: In the African. Speaker 4: American culture. Long Beach has a rich history where African American community and this event will. Speaker 2: Allow us. Speaker 4: To come together to celebrate it after such a isolated year due to COVID 19, I actually support agenda item 18 so that we can continue to pass on the teaching of those before us and continue to push for a better future. Thank you, guys, and have a great rest. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 2: Roll call vote, please. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sun has. Speaker 1: All right. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilman Boehner. I swim, councilwoman mango. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sarah. I Council member Oranga. Hi, Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: Hi. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Richardson. I watching Kerry's. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next step. Let's do let's have a quick votes on the UN. Well, actually, that may not be quite right to have some public comment. We have we have three votes on audiences that are, I believe, second readings or first readings that were already adopted by the council.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $7,500, offset by $5,000 in Eighth Council District One-time District Priority Funds and $2,500 in Seventh Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to provide a donation to Care Closet LBC to support their ongoing operations to assist and provide opportunities for people experiencing homelessness; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $7,500 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. Next step. Let's do let's have a quick votes on the UN. Well, actually, that may not be quite right to have some public comment. We have we have three votes on audiences that are, I believe, second readings or first readings that were already adopted by the council. And in 13, 14, 15 will take a vote on each of those individually. Item 13. Speaker 0: Item 13. Communication from City Attorney. Recommendation to declare ordnance. Adding Long Beach Municipal Code Chapter 8.81 relating to fireworks and declaring the urgency thereof. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting citywide. Speaker 2: Thank you. I have a motion in a second to approve. What's your public comment? This. Philippe Herrera. Just. Speaker 3: Philippe Herrera, please unmute for item 13. Speaker 2: Hi. Hi. I live. Speaker 4: In District. Speaker 2: Four, and I'm just here to make a request of city officials to give a little bit more attention to our district due to the constant, um, fireworks that have been going off nearly every night. I realize there has been many city attempts to correct this in the past, but I feel it's important to. To dedicate an earnest effort to. To make this a little better for everybody. So this is just an honest plea. And I don't have any any suggestions as I'm. I don't have much knowledge of how to fix this issue. I'm just kind of hoping my my request is is heard. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 2: Okay. Members, please go ahead and do recovery. Speaker 0: Mr. Mayor, can we have the mover and seconder, please? Speaker 2: Well, I'm sorry. I got some of your ranga and councilmen. Speaker 1: Mongo and I queued, sir. Speaker 2: I'm sorry. Just in motion. So I just thought you were just making the motion. So countering negative. Any comments? No comment. I'll refer to the CD by Councilman Mongo. Speaker 1: And this item 13 was their staff presentation. Speaker 3: Dear Members of the council, the city's city attorney park. And this is an ordinance. This is not a second this is not one of the second readings. The other three ordinances were second reading. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 3: And yes, we do. Art Sanchez from my office can give a summary of the ordinance. Linda Tatum can certainly discuss the Fire Works Committee. And we have the city prosecutor, Doug Howard, available and the deputy police chief. Speaker 1: Art, could I have a few questions? But they might be answered by the presentation up to Mr. Mayor, how you'd like me to proceed? Speaker 2: No, I was under the impression we were that there were questions here so that there was just an ordinance going back. So we can go ahead. If city attorney, did you want to kind of give a summary of the ordinance? Speaker 3: Art Sanchez? Speaker 2: Yes, council. Mayor this item came to our well, this item was brought to our attention by the fireworks committee. Our office was directed to prepare an ordinance to increase enforcement measures for the use of illegal fireworks. The focus of this the language of this ordinance was to address those issues. One, been increasing the scope of individuals that could be held responsible for violations, as well as to increase the penalties. One aspect of the increase in the scope of responsibility or the scope of people that could be held accountable for illegal fireworks was to create a host liability ordinance, which would include property owners, tenants, landlords, property managers , as well as any individual that organizes, supervises, officiates or conducts any type of firework event at a particular private location. The second main point in the language of the ordinance is the response costs. So anyone that is found to be held in violation of the language of the ordinance would be responsible for the cost. The actual costs of fire PD and any kind of emergency personnel responding to a call relating to illegal firework activity. And so those are the two main points of this ordinance. I am available to answer any questions that Council may have. I also want to remind Council that this is an emergency ordinance so that it would require two separate votes. Once the Council's concluded discussion. And that's the that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Them among us. Speaker 1: Thank you. So I just want to thank the fireworks committee, the city attorney staff. And I know Linda Tatum's been a big part of this. Two questions. I want to make sure you both questions, because I know we have a limited amount of time. And when we talk about all the parties that could be held liable, I think it's important for there to be a process or a way where we ensure that the individual putting off the fireworks is actually the one that is held accountable. And so I know that there are situations where there are minors involved. I know there are situations where there are tenant landlord issues, property manager issues. So I guess I would want to know what. Our methods of ensuring that the process, if a landlord or a property manager appropriately notices the tenants of the legal requirements not to use fireworks inappropriately, then it sounds like as a component of that the ordinance the landlord could still be held liable. Or is it that in that case, if proper noticing went through, it would be the tenant? And then what kind of costs are we talking about? What is our estimate of what we're talking about? Where a current fine is $1,000? I don't know a Captain Bill that. How much an hour or how many hours are we talking about to input it, or are we talking about an increase? I would hope so, because we came to the city and said we need these to be more. Larger penalties, but in cost recovery, it doesn't always turn out that way. We want to make sure that we have an understanding of the magnitude of what we're passing tonight and how that could be held by a landlord who could be a 85 year old person in a senior community who uses their rent for their fees to take care of themselves in a single community. So I just want to make sure we know what we're passing here. A Councilwoman, this is Linda Tatum. I can speak to several of the issues you raised there. You you talked about who is responsible. And that is one of the things that the fireworks, the working group spent a lot of time on looking at this ordinance in terms of the actual implementation of it. And at the heart of this ordinance, the new concept that is introduced here is the notion of what we call host responsibility or social responsibility. And like many other property related ordinances, the ultimate responsibility is to the property owner. So the wave of the ordinance is written when a a property owner is assumed to know or be aware or be responsible for any activities that a tenant, a visitor, or even someone who is just as long as they're on their property, they're responsible for those costs, those costs that are associated with the violation. That's the fundamental premise of this ordinance. And we talked among our group about how it would be implemented. It's very much the same way you investigate any other crime is if there is evidence either from a complaint, the police department would go out, they would take a report. They provide that the evidence of that information to the city attorney, the city attorney would thereby issue the citation. And we talked about the costs. The citation state law limits the citation to $1,000, which is why it was necessary to increase that penalty to include the cost recovery. And at this time, we are not addressing the actual cost recovery fee. That is what will come back to you next week. And we hope to in the staff report when we present that item to have some approximate costs that we can share with the council. So tonight, you're just approving the ordinance language. Next week you will consider what those fees are or what those potential fees could be, because we're not. Speaker 2: The only reason. Speaker 1: You're only adopting the concept of the cost recovery. And that would include not only fire and police as as Art noted, but it would also include the cost of the city attorney to prosecute the fees. And I would like to just take a little bit of time to talk about some of the other activities of that working group. They have been very active in terms of designing an outreach program. The direction that we got from council last July when fireworks kind of went through the roof is just to to attack this from more than just one perspective. One of those was increase in the penalty, but the other one was to do a much broader outreach and education campaign, and that has started in earnest. The other thing that we've been really active in is collaborating with neighbors. We've been very active in trying to collaborate across the state with other approaches and strategies for how other cities are addressing this. So all of that went into our consideration of proposing this ordinance. Again, we're looking at best practices. Two other things that will be a factor, at least for this 4th of July is the fact that the city council last week approved the free block parties. We're still hoping that that will be a deterrent in addition to those block parties. The other thing that we will continue to do is to start data collection so that we know the number of calls for service and we can track those over time based upon different activities that we put in place there. So we're trying to look at this from a number of different perspectives to to really get a better handle on this and to prioritize the issue in the community based upon the council direction that we received. So thank you. Thank you. Is there a toolkit for landlords and property managers or information that they can provide as a notice to their tenants? And when we did the suspension of rent, I did hear from a number of senior citizens who said, you're literally taking away my rent and grocery money because I live on that income. And so I'm very cautious when we pass ordinances like this that we both want to hold the individual who's terrorizing the community with illegal fireworks accountable. And what we don't want to do is then rack up. A fee that we're we're passing an ordinance today with no fee attached to it. So, I mean, it could be anywhere from $1,000 to. I imagine it wouldn't be as high as $10,000, but I just don't know. And the reason that that council came together and said, you know, we really want the fees to be higher is because we wanted those fees to fall on the people who are willing to spend thousands of dollars on illegal fireworks. We didn't want those to land on our elderly residents who are providing housing for the community. And so I just want to make sure that through that social responsibility and host responsibility, you discussed that there's a process where if a landlord and or property management company could demonstrate that they did their due diligence and that there's still a way to hold the right person accountable for these fireworks and those fees. So that that would be my concern. Otherwise, I'm very supportive of the item as long as those are met. Speaker 3: Councilmember this is city attorney. The fee is in the ordinance. It's a $1,000 fee. The fees that were referenced by the assistant city manager, Linda Tatum, will be the cost recovery fees. So they will be in addition to the $1,000 fee that is established this evening in this ordinance. If that helps in my question. Speaker 1: Yes, I definitely understand that to be the case, but I don't see any cost estimates and they said they're going to bring those next week. But today we're being asked to approve the the structure by which we come up with those cost estimates. So that's all. And Mr. Parkin, are you of the mind that are our residents that are not setting off the fireworks, have done proper noticing and would be protected from burdening these fees and fines as the landlord who appropriately goes out and or hires resources to manage their property to ensure that those tenants aren't terrorizing the neighborhood . And what what what does that process look like? Speaker 3: So so the process of the ordinance would would be to hold the host or the property owner responsible for this conduct. However, there is an exception that it does not apply to a host who initiates contact with law enforcement or fire officials to assist in removing the person or terminating the activity in order to comply with the chapter. So. So there is for those landlords that are working with the city and trying to eliminate this, there is an exception. Speaker 2: And this is Art Sanchez. Just to follow up on Mr. Parkin's comment in regard to how these fees or the enforcement against a property owner would go, they would have an opportunity to respond and provide information similar to what Councilwoman Mongeau was referring to in terms of if they provided notice to a tenant or if they provided specific information to whoever was occupying the property that they were not to use illegal fireworks. That certainly can be taken into consideration when we're evaluating whether or not to proceed with the prosecution of the citation. Speaker 1: Oh, wonderful. Thank you. I hope that and his team can bring back some samples that we can circulate in our newsletters and on social media in multiple languages. Some landlords may have tenants that don't speak the same language as them, and it's really important that language is integrated into all components of our city. And so for those reasons, I would hope that a flier and or acknowledgment tool could be provided for property owners and property management companies. I think that will go a long way in getting those entities to help with our campaign to notify people that illegal fireworks are not going to be tolerated in Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. A councilman in the house. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. First of all, for all of those listening to our city council meeting, one of the things that I want to make very clear is that fireworks are illegal in the city of Long Beach, any kind of fireworks. And we have been having this problem for four years now as as was mentioned a lot last week, city council last week, city council meeting fireworks are not only disturbing, but because they set up current norms and don't let people sleep. But they are also very dangerous and triggering for events that that, you know, occur or when through violent and gun battles and stuff like that. So it brings back a lot of PTSD. Yet despite the $1,000 fine that we already have imposed for fireworks citations in the last couple of years, we have seen an increase in the number of illegal fireworks. One of the things that I would like to see and like Councilman Mongo said, is I would not want any unintended consequences to our property owners and landlords when when they are not aware of. Of the illegal fireworks that are being lit by maybe some of their tenants. I do worry about that. I was wondering, is there a way? I mean, I am sure that there could be a way where if a landlord does not know and does not obviously approve of their tenants doing or lighting up fireworks on their property , that they have the freedom to be able to pass that fee onto them. Is that something that is possible? Speaker 2: So this is city attorney Art Sanchez. So in answer to that question, one of the main issues relating to enforcement measures of illegal firework activity is finding the violators. So if a property owner is in a better position to identify who these individuals are that are setting off the fireworks, then yes, we would take that into consideration . Depending on what the information is and what and how much how we could identify the individual who set off the fireworks. So that would be something we could take into consideration. But as a whole, regarding the way host liability works in this situation, I think the focus is on being able to enforce against individuals and what hosts liability does in the language of this ordinance increases the scope of people we can hold accountable so that we can get to the actual individuals that are setting off these fireworks or have possession of these fireworks or selling these fireworks. And, you know, and so that's that's one of the reasons for having this type of language. And, you know, again, those are things that we can address as we seek to enforce this ordinance. Thank you. Speaker 1: Three. Thank you. Another thing for those that that are caught dead lighting of fireworks. I know that other cities such as Pasadena, which has been thrown a lot around when it comes to fireworks and I was wondering, they have an ordinance that impels the cars that that the person lighting the fireworks has. Is that something that we can consider in this ordinance? Speaker 2: So this is our attention that again, I have reviewed what the city of Pasadena has in its ordinance, and I didn't see anything in their actual fireworks ordinance relating to the empowerment of a vehicle. I don't know if that's related to someone that is discharging or selling or possessing the fireworks in their vehicle. But it may be that the vehicle is part of, I guess, the committing the violation or the crime. And that may be a basis why I just don't have enough information to know what Pasadena is doing in terms of the empowerment of vehicles. Speaker 1: And when doing some of my research, I did come across that. And I do believe that it was, you know, for having these illegal fireworks in in the car that they were being impounded. But I will look further into it and maybe we can talk through it. And I think some. My second question would be, is it possible to issue like or come up with an incentive program to help residents identify who is lighting up fireworks and possibly, maybe even when we have the if we we identify someone that's lighting up fireworks and that's doing this, and then we give them the fee, which is the thousand dollars plus. Right. Is there a way that we can use maybe some of that money from the peak fee to create an incentive program? Speaker 3: The city attorney that that could be considered during your budget application process as whatever money that's coming in for the program. The cost and the fees that you'll discuss next week are to recover the cost of the services to implement the program. So if we start giving the money or you return the money or it sounds like you're creating some sort of an incentive or reward program for reporting, that would have to be additional monies that the city would have to make that decision on how much how you would distribute that, how you would award that, and that could be considered during your budget cycle. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. It gives me a little bit of hope. Third question, and I may be afterwards and another time. Okay. Thank you. I'll call you back up. Thank you. Speaker 2: Council member, Austin. Thank you. I just need a little bit more clarity on that. The host you'll remember I brought forth the social host in order is related to alcohol consumption. I want to say maybe eight years ago and and I think our city prosecutor and I think a lot of this is based on on that the host is not necessarily the owner. I just want to be clear on that. Is that correct? City Attorney Yes. Councilman Austin That is correct. Okay. So it could be the tenant. It could be a landlord. It could be a property manager. But it's trying to assign responsibility to someone at a specific address. That's how I understand this. And so with that in mind, that may address some of the scenarios related to fireworks in our city, but it may not all. And so I'm just going to ask how we or how does this ordinance address potential situations where individuals may be setting off fireworks in an alley or in the middle of the street? So to answer your question, Councilman, the ordinance does have language that allows for a adjacent property or adjacent public right of way to a property where individuals are setting off fireworks and then return to a specific private property that can be identified. It allows for a violation to be attached that way. And so what that would require, unless the fire or the police officer is able to identify the individual setting or identify that the individual setting up the fireworks where he was located and where he went into or what location he went into would require residents or witnesses to identify one, the activity that's adjacent to the property. And then second, the property where that person that was setting up the fireworks ended up. And so that's it does have a provision for that. To answer your question, if the alleyway is adjacent to a specific property where the individual goes, then that could be assessed as a violation. Well, thank you. And I think this is a tool that we haven't had in prior years. And I'm you. Well, I don't necessarily like to see enforcement measures, but this is one that has the attention of so many residents throughout our city. And this is more than an annoyance or a nuisance, fireworks or impacting on sleep. I mean, people are deprived of sleep. They're animals that are having, you know, hard times dealing with these these fireworks. They're are veterans that are impacted. And so I think it's important for us to send a strong message. I think the takeaway from this is, you know, moving forward, if you choose to do legal fireworks in our city, you are putting your own housing at risk. And I think that is a strong message to take away from this. Thank you. I'll be supporting this. Thank you, Councilman and House. You are mute, Councilwoman. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. My third question would be, is there a way to penalize, certainly or legally discourage people from even participating in close proximity to illegal fireworks being lit as a way to discourage people from not only lighting up these fireworks, but also from being complicit in in a way, you know, like if they're involved in. You know, the the whole show thing. Like, is there a way that we can also cite them, even if it's like a $50 citation or something like that for those that are encouraging the your lighters. Speaker 2: And to answer your question, Councilwoman Sanders, the ordinance does have language that allows for what includes the definition of a host, as any person who organizes, supervises, officiates, conducts, controls or otherwise is in charge of an activity at a property. I mean, the best example I can give for that is someone that maybe has organized some kind of, you know, firework party at a particular location. And based on the information that either PD receives or information received from witnesses at the scene that they can identify this person who organized the event, that that person could be held accountable as a host. And so I think that answers part of your question. It doesn't necessarily apply to all the individuals that are participating at that location, but it does provide for that type of liability as a host for the person that can be determined to have a coordinated or supervised event. Speaker 1: A great and is if we wanted to do something like that. How would we go about it? Is there a way to to do something like that? Speaker 3: Councilmember invite and this is city attorney if I understand your question correctly, this ordinance does not and I don't think legally you could craft an ordinance that would cite someone who's watching a fireworks. It may be somebody who's just walking by it, maybe a resident or a neighbor. I think what Art was explaining that we're trying to capture in the ordinance is if someone is is participating, organizing it, or at the host location and in setting off fireworks, we can certainly go after them. But I'm not sure where you would we would have to do a lot more research on where you could draw that line. Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. Understandable. And yes, more research would be welcome to try to see, you know, because usually from what I hear from my residents, it's usually a little group that, you know, gets together, likes the fireworks and tries to disappear after they light it. So that that was my my reasoning for asking that question. Also, one more question. The city has in place a system to track down the sales of fireworks as as another approach to stopping the practice of of a fireworks being set off in the first place. Correct. I mean. Do we trip? Do we track it by the the cars? I just want to make sure that my my residents and actually other residents are informed on how we track the fireworks and the calls that are being placed. I can speak to that really generally. We have through the emergency services, the emergency line. Whenever a call for service comes in regarding fireworks, it is tracked by that by that office. And they track what they track, whether or not you see a fireworks activity in a specific address. They also track whether or not you hear what you think is a firework, and they will note that it sounds like a firework. So we track all of the data related to what we think are fireworks calls. Now, I wasn't clear that I hear you ask a question about confiscation of fireworks or fireworks sales, because that is something that PD also that was one of the other priorities that we were asked to look at to see if a police could step up the efforts to confiscate fireworks. And I know since the beginning of this year, there have been a couple of confiscations, and I think the chief is on the line and he could probably speak to that a little bit more specifically. I'm thinking. Yes, I thank you very much, Linda, for that explanation. I think that it would be great to share what what the conflict station successes have been. So, Chief, I might have to cue in again, but I'd like to give you time to answer that and to share that with our residents. And this is Linda Tatum again. Our staff is also finalizing a report, I think we mentioned during last week's meeting that we are preparing a report so that council can see since the the the that the working group came together last July, there have been a number of successes and a number of new, new initiatives that were done by this group. And we'd like to just lay those all out for for the the city council. And that report will be coming out to you within the next within the next ten days. And that will include the confiscations data as well. Okay. Wonderful. Did, Chief, that you want to share, Chief Luna? Did you want to share about your lust confiscations or. Or should we wait for that report? And I think. Not available. Speaker 2: Stafford I think Stafford mentioned that they wanted to they're still putting a major report together that they. Mr. Modica, I know you had mentioned that you guys were putting together a report that will include the PD involved. Yes, we we are planning. Speaker 3: A written report that will have a lot of information that you can share with the community. So we can do a quick oral report and our wait for the written report later. Speaker 2: Councilwoman. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Did you want do you want a quick oral report now? Speaker 1: Yes. If possible, please. Just a small one. That would be great. Speaker 2: Can you give a quick report? Yes, sir. Robert Luna here. Mayor and members of the City Council. So we were allotted funding that all of you made sure that we had. And part of our strategy was to give this money to some of our narcotic teams and directed enforcement teams. And and this is a warning to everyone who's listening out there. We're doing by bus. That means if you're out there selling fireworks. Our intent is to arrest you or cite you and confiscate the fireworks. And our teams have been doing that. We've confiscated close to £1,000 of fireworks thus far, and we plan on doing many more. So, again, just a warning to anybody who's out there. You're going to get a very heavy fine for trying to sell fireworks in the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Chief. And I know that you had a commander also in New Hampshire that with me, as well as city manager. And, you know, I that's one of the reasons I wanted our residents to hear that we have been confiscating fireworks. With that said, one last question, and I may have to queue up right back up, but hopefully I have enough time to ask this question. I know that using your time is up. I will come back. Thank you. Speaker 2: By Summer Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple comments. You know, this is a difficult issue every year. You know, it's a cultural issue within our city. Fireworks. And every year the city council demonstrates that they're working on it. And city staff also brings their best foot forward as it relates to policy and enforcement, culture, education. And so I want to just acknowledge the city attorney's office, the police department and city staff for really taking the feedback from the council over the course of the past few years on this issue and coming forward with a new tool in our quiver. I think it's important every year that we do let the residents know that it is a process, but we are continuing to work on this issue. It is frustrating. We know that, you know, veterans, folks with animals or people who just want, you know, calm and quiet in the neighborhood, it's that it's a difficult issue and we need to continue to figure it out. The one thing the one question, one request that I would make to staff is I know and I am supportive of the strategy around block parties this year that Councilman Mongo Councilmember Mongo talked about supportive of that. We do those things in the ninth District and the culture here, too. But I would like to know, as we approach particularly the 4th of July, if we need to do more outreach in key areas or, you know, if folks don't know about the program, about the the way fee waiver or if they're not particularly engaging at some of the high fireworks neighborhoods, if we can just, you know, give some periodic updates, a city manager memo or two from for just on how we're going by district, that would be helpful, particularly for me to understand what's happening in the community that I represent. But I just wanted to just chime in. I know it's an important issue. I want to thank staff and I want to just offer encouragement to the residents that will continue working on this. Thanks a lot. One mango. Speaker 1: Thank you. My comments actually fall in line with this. Mary Richardson So when I look at the high firework areas, we know what streets typically have calls and these are the streets that have calls all year round. So I guess my call to action and we only have 30 days is we know the addresses of the property owners of those properties on those streets and I would love to see a notice seen to those communities and to those groups. The Situs address is the address that the property owner requests that property tax paperwork is mailed to. A lot of mailing list by those from the assessor's office regularly to solicit them with advertisements about refinancing and such. But we as a city can work with the County of Los Angeles to get that download of the this addresses for the whole city. We could easily gioco those pretty quickly or have they have a GIS guy in the assessor's office. If you ask them to geo code the specific areas you want and download those addresses, you then have the exact addresses of the property owners, you know, the addresses of the renters because they live in the addresses that you were searching and you'd be able to mail out those notices and alternatives, including if your neighbor is someone who you believe to be someone who interacts with illegal fireworks, perhaps we offer a reward and or we say, here's a tool in the free block party to ensure that you and your neighbors are out in the community, all watching to be good witnesses and prevent, through peer pressure, the use of fireworks. And as Councilman Sun has said, all fireworks are illegal in Long Beach. So I say illegal fireworks. All fireworks are illegal in Long Beach and they do terrorize our community. So I just want to make sure that we work with the resources available for notice that I know that today or last night, I should say in my newsletter, it was sent out to thousands of people about these resources. But again, 50% of the block parties are already on the east side. And I think that it's been an effective tool for keeping illegal fireworks down as I've driven around the city on the 4th of July. And I hope to partner with any councilmember who wants to help their neighborhoods get those tools and resources to make sure that every single block in this city has a chance at a peaceful 4th of July. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Go back to customers in their house and then we'll go for a vote. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor and City Council Member Members for bearing with me. You all know how passionate I am about this item. My last question is let me get to it real quick. My last question is, are we expecting to have on the go Long Beach are activated? I know that I heard that we were working on being able to have that available for our our residents to be able to report the fireworks that are being lit. Do we know if this is a function that will be available to us before the 4th of July? Councilwoman. This is Linda Tatum's responding. The the go Long Beach app is still in development. But given that we still have some work to do to marry or to make sure that the Go Long Beach app is compatible with the prosecutors website, we are not going to attempt to do that prior to the fourth. Rather, we are driving all of the the complaints right now directly to the prosecutors website. That website is up, is familiar. Residents know about it already, so we'd like to not confuse them and have two separate websites that they could report to. But shortly after the fourth, we will we'll continue to work on that so that we can somehow make the two compatible and speak to each other so that they both essentially do the same function or we'll somehow combine them. But but we're looking at all of the options. But for this coming forth, we want to make sure we're driving all of the traffic to the prosecutor's website because they've had some successes with prosecution as a result of the uploaded video and other data that provides evidence for them to follow up with actual court filings. So we're hopeful that we'll see a lot more of that activity this this holiday. Thank you, Miss Tatum. Thank you very much for the that information. I know that I get a little bit anxious and I want things done right away raised. But I think the best thing to do is to do it accurately and efficiently. So if we have to wait a little bit longer to make sure that we have a successful go Long Beach up where we can really, you know, report through there, I'm I'm really looking forward to seeing that in the coming months, hopefully before New Year's. But thank you very much, Miss Tatum. Thank you, everybody, for answering my questions. This is something that has been very important to me, you know, since before I was on council. I want to give a huge, huge thanks to city staff for your willingness to address this issue continuously. I want to give another huge shout out to our city prosecutor, Doug Kopacz, who has been amazing in creating a portal where we can have these instances recorded right directly to him. And I think that that is been a lifesaver and I'm very happy that we have had success with that. I want to give another big thanks to our fireworks committee. And I just could not could not pass up this opportunity to also give thanks to our amazing Facebook group, Long Beach against the illegal fireworks. Thank you for all the input that you have given us throughout this past year and a half. And thank you for working with all of the above mentioned to make sure that we have a fire firework free city as we move forward. And thank you for caring for the whole community. Speaker 2: Ricky Ricardo, please. Speaker 3: This vote is the first vote of two votes that will be on the urgency. Speaker 0: A first vote, Councilwoman Zendaya's. I compliment Alan. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: I'm Samantha, but I. I can tell you in mango. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sarah. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilmember Oranga. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Richardson, I motion carry a second vote. Councilman Sun has. Speaker 1: Did we? I'm sorry, did we ask for public comment on this item? Speaker 3: Yes, we had public comment on this item. Speaker 1: We don't have any public. Speaker 3: We did. And as speaker, we had a speaker and they spoke prior to council. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sun has. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilman Allen. I councilman's subpoena. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilmember Muranga. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: Hi. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 0: Bush and Kerry. Speaker 2: Thank you. Let's go ahead. And we have two more audiences to approve. Let's get these approved. First, item 14, please.

Emergency Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.81 relating to fireworks; and by repealing Section 16.08.600 of the Long Beach Municipal Code; declaring the urgency thereof; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06082021_21-0487

Speaker 2: Thank you. Let's go ahead. And we have two more audiences to approve. Let's get these approved. First, item 14, please. Speaker 0: Item 14 is reported from Development Services. Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to construction in the vicinity of abandoned oil wells read and adopted as read citywide. Speaker 2: Okay, I think I can get a motion, please. Councilmember Tharanga, can I get a second? Nothing about council comes from ringgit. Do you have any comments? No, I did that. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Speaker 1: Thank you. I don't know if everyone recognizes the significance of this item. There are properties throughout our community that really could be used for some amazing economic development opportunities. This item started years ago, and through the great work of our economic development department, they have really followed this through to fruition. So years of great work behind this and these are the kinds of things that often go unnoticed. It really can change the future. So we're really appreciative of this. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman. It's really public comment on this. Speaker 3: Yes. Our first speaker is Eliot Zimmer. Speaker 2: Good evening, city council members. My battery's running low. I just wanted to say that I would like. Speaker 4: To see that the City. Speaker 2: Council ensures that the companies that have done this. Speaker 4: Drilling and have made money from the wells. Speaker 2: Are responsible. Speaker 4: For closing up this well. Speaker 2: And all. Speaker 4: Of our wells and making sure that. Speaker 2: They are free of. Speaker 4: Benzene and any other. Speaker 2: Toxins that may still be present on the site. Speaker 3: Think your next speaker is Anna Christiansen. Speaker 4: I don't 14 will. Okay. Construction on top of abandoned oil wells. Even if they are not shut down in conformance with state standards like building on a volcano. Sierra Club's lo Cerritos, Wetlands Task Force and Provisional Wetlands Protectors request a no vote or a postponement of this second reading. We propose the following changes. Adhere to Collegium Recommendation three Set back for construction year abandoned wells. No construction over abandoned wells, no impracticality or hardship exemptions allowed re approving abandoned wells as is no new construction allowed unless until all abandoned wells including orphaned wells on the project site meet current calcium standards. Regulations for construction on sites with detectable amounts of methane must be consistent. Meet Cal, Jim and L.A. County standards and not tailored to specific projects. The city and its various employees and agents will not be indemnified for issuing project permits or approvals on site with abandoned orphan wells that have not been shut down according to Chaldean standards . In effect, at the time of construction, no low cost or affordable housing projects may be constructed on top of abandoned wells, nor on properties with improperly abandoned orphan wells. This amendment promises equivalent regulations to those of Chaldean what is actually equivocating because it uses ambiguous language so as to conceal the truth. Equivalent means not differing the same words or significance, while claiming to provide, quote, better outcomes for public safety, resulting in a, quote, healthier, cleaner and more viable environment for a Long Beach. The proposed amendment actually eases state environmental protections to the benefit of developers. Constructing buildings over oiled oil wells. Capped or not is, quote, just not a smart thing, according to Chris McCullough, a former Carlton district deputy for Southern California. Quote, Because gases that were naturally venting into the air and dissipating are now potentially getting trapped. If that gas were to build up and ignite, you have a potential for catastrophic damage to structures and life. The Amendments product matic language Collegium recommends that this is your language. The proposed regulations allow construction over wells, including those that have not been safely abandoned or properly closed. Only construction projects involving caregiving facilities, hospitals or schools must continue to meet current standards. That should tell you something if you work. If you want to build a school on it, why build a home on it for wells and not abandon the current accounting standards to the current cultural standards? Claim of impracticality or hardship can be submitted and the development coordinator the authority to approve the well. And I don't know that I thought I'd be able to tell him, but I now I have more additional problematic language. Speaker 3: Thank you. Your next speaker is in control. And Cantrell. Our next speaker is carelessly. Carelessly. Speaker 4: Hi. This is carelessly broken through. Turns toward what I saw in the PowerPoint presentation. You're talking about reducing the requirement of the calcium program and replacing it with a Long Beach specific set of requirements. The presentation was a little loosey goosey. It basically sounds like we don't want to use Cal Gym requirements. We want something less comprehensive. But we haven't figured that all out yet. My concern is why are we abandoning existing controls before the new process is defined? Well, it doesn't happen often. Nothing. Explosions have occurred as reported in the news. The oil contaminated sites have long been considered unsuitable for development because of environmental and safety issues. However, as I understand it, new products are making it possible to build on these sites. The wording in the PowerPoint presentation made it sound like the new requirements and process that we will use in place of Belgium are not well defined as of yet. The presentation described existing controls where it talks about cement plugs and setbacks. So the idea was to keep humans further away from danger. The Long Beach proposed regulations, the equivalency standards talked about lift cement plugs and then it says or other approach subject to study. So that's a case where we haven't defined it yet. The presentation goes on to say that we should allow development of certain projects over abandoned wells, and that means no setbacks. And it says subject to certain safety provisions. And I didn't see those defined there. Certain process, create a process to locate and examine world conditions. That process should already be defined. Before you approve this, create a process to test and monitor. Well, that seems to be the most important control to have, but this process doesn't appear to have been designed yet. It seems that before you approve anything, those processes should be documented and they should have decision trees in them that go toward more stringent requirements in highly contaminated areas. The PowerPoint presentation said a learn and censor mitigation system can be required if the setbacks are reduced and humans are closer to the contaminated site. It would seem concerns for safety should result in the document saying they will be required. The decision process should be well documented, deciding when to test and monitor well who does it? How often? In a rush to build? Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 2: Thank you. Call. Vote, please. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sandy has. I asked one, Alan. Speaker 1: Why. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Pryce? Councilman Sabino. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Mongo. City Councilwoman Sara. I can't remember Tauranga. I can swim in Austin. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Vice Mayor Richardson? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 0: Bush and Kerry.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 18.78 relating to construction in the vicinity of abandoned oil wells, read and adopt as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06082021_21-0488

Speaker 0: Bush and Kerry. Speaker 2: Thank you. And the last ordinance is 15. Speaker 0: Item 15 Report from Development Services Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to Methane Gas Mitigation Read and adapted as read citywide. Speaker 2: You get a motion in a second place. Posted by Bashir Richardson, second by Casspi Ringa by Samir. Did you have any comments? Thank you. No. Got me wrong. Any comments? Look out. Thank you. Okay, then I'll do public comment and we'll go through about. Speaker 3: Our first speakers and a Christianson. Speaker 4: Listen, I'm Anna, not Ann Cantrell. You didn't let an Cantrell speak on the last resolution because you dial me by mistake. So try to make up for that even though you're ignoring our comments. Agenda item 15. Amendments, additional problematic language. It's not about public safety. It's, quote, providing a more efficient regulatory process for the applicants. It's all about the applicants. The city will not be held accountable. Future owners and occupants of the property will be notified that, you know, you're not meeting Cal Jim recommendations and that Cal Jim does not approve building over Wells, but they will still be expected to indemnify the city and its various employees and agents. So no matter what, the city's off the hook. Here are some additional recommendations to think about since you're voting this one along. Reinstate the Tidelands monies set aside in the annual budget for the cost of abandoning city wells. Though you waive those in 2021, at least take some responsibility for properly shutting down your own wells in the future. Notify those owning property with abandoned wells and residents living on or near abandoned well sites of the associated health and safety risks, including methane gas and other toxic fumes and possible oil spills and explosions. Assist property owners having abandoned oil sites on their land to ensure that these wells are shut down, according to Cowden standards. Study the impact of abandoned wells on public health and safety and on the city's water wells, as well as the specific impacts of an individual well being shut down. And just possibly, just possibly listen to the residents of Marina Pacifica and please get Beach Oil Mineral Partners to stop poisoning them and the entire wetlands with their storage tank. Achim Coombe Can't do it. Cal Jim can't seem to do it. Nobody can seem to stop this toxic pollution. And by the way, it's 700 gallons of polluted water a minute when our own city staff stated that no water in Long Beach can legally go anywhere from wells but down in the ground. And yet that oil company is transporting 700 gallons of polluted water a minute across the street and the fumes are poisoning the community. So if you want more, you want more building and more more passes. But let's try. We insist that we have a healthy community. This is out of control. The addiction to oil by the city council. Speaker 3: Thank your next speakers and control. Speaker 4: Good evening in Cantrell, speaking on items 14 and 15 for Sierra Club Carp and River Park Coalition. This is the second reading and opportunity for council to deny the proposed ordinance changes for building on abandoned oil well and methane site. The staff report states, quote, Long Beach currently requires that construction projects proposing to develop near wells adhere to calcium standards. The proposed action will create tailored regulations specific to Long Beach that provide better outcomes and quote, better outcomes for whom? The answer can be found in the negative declaration quote. The city has received numerous requests from potential developers and property owners regarding development of habitable and non habitable structures in the vicinity of oil gas wells. Methane leaks from abandoned wells, pipelines or processing equipment can occur and result in hazardous conditions for adjacent uses while substantially increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The current LGM well abandonment standards prohibit development on site with previously abandoned wells in the city, unquote. This proposed ordinance is an attempt to eliminate Cal Gem regulations and allow more development in places such as Wrigley, Bixby, Knowles, Alamy, despite the loss of wetlands and other oil and methane producing areas. Tel Jim requires as many as eight cement plugs and that all structures be set back certain distances from the abandoned well. This ordinance will allow the use of only three cement plugs. It also allows building directly over abandoned wells with only a membrane barrier to contain the methane. This will result in putting the lives and health of the residents at risk. The build up of flammable and toxic methane has been compared to living on top of a volcano. By requiring such projects as hospitals, caregiving facilities, schools and high rises to continue following the current Cal Gym standards. The city is recognizing the dangers to human health and safety for some, but not all residents. It's not too late for this council to deny this ordinance change and adhere to current Cal Gym standards. Please vote no. Thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for. Speaker 2: Thank you to the motion on the floor. And please go ahead and cast your vote. Real call. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sunday has. Speaker 1: High. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Allen. I can't comment on it, but now. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Can. Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sarah. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilmember Ranga. Speaker 2: I am. Speaker 0: Councilman Austin. Speaker 2: But. Speaker 0: I. Mayor Richardson. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Bush and Kerry. Speaker 2: Thank you. Let's go ahead and go back now and do public comment, please. So I know we have not agenda public comment, so we'll go through that and then go back to the regular agenda. Thank you.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 18.79 relating to methane gas mitigation, read and adopt as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06082021_21-0518

Speaker 2: Thank you. Item 21. Speaker 0: Item 21 is communication from City Attorney. Recommendation to adopt a resolution in support of Medicare for All. Supporting legislation, policies and grants citywide. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilman's in Dallas motion and he can't. Speaker 1: Yes. I have a comment. First of all, I wanted to thank our city attorney for dragging up this resolution in support of Medicare for All. It is no secret that our nation's health care system does not provide the most simple, accessible, nor affordable medical care that is needed not only in the process of enrolling in health care . So it's so complex that it gives many people headaches, but it is also extremely expensive to to the point where many folks have to choose between paying for food, housing or health care. And usually they choose the latter. It is completely in order. It is completely unacceptable that in the wealthiest nation in the world, the only option and hope for many people to to cover a loved one in during an emergency medical situation is to be open to a go fund me account. I think that that, you know, we need to do better than that. That's why I am 100% in support of this resolution and calling for the nation's health care program that will, once and for all provide every person in the U.S. with health care. I'm also hoping that this new system leads to better access to mental health services, which is something that is in high demand and is very much needed in particularly when addressing the homelessness crisis that we're living in today. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Can I get a second, please? Second rate, Councilman Allen. Any comments, Councilwoman? Speaker 1: Yes, I do. Thank you, Mayor. And supporting this item was an absolutely no brainer for me. And as I said many times as a candidate, health care is a human right. And being able to get quality health care should not be dependent on the job that you have, as many of you know. I am a breast cancer survivor and I know how important having access to affordable and quality health care is. I'm grateful to my medical team and I know going through that going through this experience without proper health care. You know, it could have been it could have been fatal. Our system needs change. But until that happens, I will continue to be outspoken about the need for reform on our health care system. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. I know there's no public comment. I'll just just. Let me just add, I also strongly support Medicare for All. I think I think the clearest one of the clearest kind of just things that people have seen through the pandemic is just the need for free, accessible health care and the need to think about how how we got vaccines or tests out of folks. It was free. It was easy. If you didn't think that, you know, that health care was it was a human right for everyone before, you certainly should today. And there's also no question that that you're that someone's care should be tied to if someone is working or not, and whether they have private insurance through an employer or public or type, another type of insurance, someone should have health care unconditionally. And so I really hope that this country is moving in a direction where where much of the world, a developed world, is as it relates to medical care. I'm also proud to be part of the Mayors for Medicare Coalition across the country, and it's definitely growing a growing group of mayors and cities. So thank you all for supporting this. And please go ahead and do a roll call vote on the resolution. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sunday has. Speaker 2: Tangible. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilman Sabina. Speaker 2: Hi. Speaker 0: Councilwoman. Mongo. Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sara. I Council Member Muranga. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Councilmen Austin. I Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Motion carry. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. We have word that we're down to our last item, item 22, which is staff item on Queen Mary. Madam.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution in support of Medicare for All supporting legislation, policies and grants that will establish a national health insurance program to provide every resident of the United States with health insurance through an expanded Medicare program, inclusive of improved and comprehensive benefits. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06012021_21-0417

Speaker 2: Okay. Well, we're going to hearing item number 11. Speaker 0: Report from Development Services recommendation to adopt a resolution allowing for the initiation of a consolidated coastal development permit process in connection with the realignment of Shoreline Drive as part of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project, and adopt a resolution granting city manager the authority to initiate permits districts two and three. Speaker 2: Thank you. I'll turn this over to Stan. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor, and members of the city council. This item for you tonight is essentially a housekeeping matter. Our planning bureau manager, Ms.. Patricia Defender here will provide you a brief presentation. Speaker 1: Good evening, Mayor. Vice Mayor, council members Patricia Devendorf, her bureau manager. The item before council involves actions associated with the Schumacher Bridge Replacement Project. The actions involve the adoption of two resolutions. The first a resolution to submit the portion of the project in the coastal zone to the California Coastal Commission for the processing of a consolidated coastal development permit. And the second resolution to change the process for initiation of consolidated coastal development permits by transferring that authority from from the city council to the city manager, which is a procedural change only. This site provides an overview of the project, the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project, and the air was prepared for this project. An alternative three design option A was selected was the selected alternative. As previously noted, the portion of the project, subject to the consolidated coastal development permit is the realignment of local streets, including Shoreline Drive, that are the first phase of the bridge replacement project. This slide shows the chronological history of the project. The A.P. or the notice of preparation for the project was issued in 2016. The environmental process was conducted and that environmental review process was completed in 2020. The following components of the project fall within the coastal zone, specifically these improvements for both within the city and the state jurisdictions of the coastal zone. They include shoreline drive improvements, which involve lane realignment, that shift both the north and southbound traffic medians and buffers to facilitate traffic calming sidewalks and bike lanes to improve circulation connectivity improvements to Golden Shore, which involve removal of the existing grade, separation over shoreline drive and construction of an accolade Signalized intersection as well as the addition of new class one shared use bike paths along golden shore. Improvements to Seaside Way involve lowering the grade to meet the modified golden shore roadway and new sidewalks and bike lanes and also conveyances from the existing stormwater pump to that will be must facility. This slide shows a map that demonstrates the location of the various improvements. The red area falls under the Coastal Commission jurisdiction and the coastal permits are solely issued by the state in this area. The yellow area is the appealable area. The city issues local coastal permits in this area, but they can be appealed to or by the Coastal Commission. And finally, the green area is the city's permit jurisdiction and the city issues local coastal permits in this area, but they are not appealable to the Coastal Commission. So these improvements across these various jurisdictions. The next steps for this application are to approve the requested resolutions and to submit the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project. The local improvements associated with that project to the California Coastal Commission to initiate the consolidated coastal development permit process. The actions also involve the resolution to for future consolidated development permits to be submitted to the Coastal Commission and reviewed by the City Manager. This concludes the staff's presentation. I'm also joined on the line by the Public Works Director and other public works staff who are available to answer questions on the project. Thank you. That concludes the staff presentation. Speaker 2: I don't believe we had. I don't believe we have any additional comments from on for the year. Beyond staff, is that right? Speaker 0: Correct. There's no public comment for this item. Speaker 2: Okay. Let me go to Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Perfect. I thank you, Mayor. I'm super excited about this project. I think that it will significantly improve our infrastructure and. Speaker 0: Connectivity. Speaker 1: And walkability in the downtown area. So just want to thank Oscar and everyone in. Speaker 0: Development services that worked on this project. Speaker 2: Thank you. Can I get a motion and can I get a second, please? On them. On the motion. And I think staff may have said this was a silly one. Or sort of city city two in a city three, but I think City one and City two, just for the record. Speaker 5: Yes. City one and City two. Speaker 2: Okay. So there's a motion by Councilman Allen and I have a second by Councilmember Ringo as we ring any comments? Speaker 3: No college degree for downtown Long Beach. Thank you. Speaker 2: Okay. Great. And I just want to also just add, this is a fantastic project and getting the Shoemaker Bridge done is critical to the future of mobility and the broader downtown area in the western part of the city. And so it's a really, really important project. I'm glad that we're making a lot of progress. There's a we have a most significant role, calvert-lewin's. Speaker 0: District one, district two. I District three. I district for. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. Speaker 1: By. Speaker 0: District seven. Speaker 3: I. Speaker 0: District eight. Speaker 3: By. Speaker 0: District nine. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution allowing for the initiation of a Consolidated Coastal Development Permit process pursuant to Section 30601.3 of the Public Resources Code (Coastal Act) in connection with the realignment of Shoreline Drive as part of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project; and

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Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is item 12. Speaker 0: Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record conclude the public hearing relating to ordinances regulating construction adjacent to abandoned oil or gas wells. Declare Ordinance Amending Title 18 of the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to construction in the vicinity of oil, gas wells and ordinance relating to methane gas mitigation. Read for the first time in laid over the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading citywide. Speaker 2: Ten year motion in the second place. Gavin. I have a motion on the floor. Let's go. Turn over to staff and begin the hearing. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. Members of the City Council Development Services is delighted to bring these two ordinances for your consideration tonight that will allow the construction in the vicinity of oil and gas wells, as well as the establishment of methane gas mitigation standards. Next slide, please. Thank you. Current state regulations create barriers to development near the vicinity of oil wells. The proposed action creates tailored regulations specific to Long Beach that provide a more efficient process for applicants with the public, with a plot with public safety as a primary goal. The development of these regulations was a result of a multi-year effort that involved a survey of development standards in poor cities. The use of professional technical experts. Consultation from our local and regional construction and development partners. And the public's input. Next slide, please. If an applicant is proposing to develop in the vicinity of oil gas wells, they may elect to utilize the California Geologic Energy Management Division, Cal Jam for short standards. Or they may utilize the Long Beach standards. The proposed standards provide alternative equivalent regulations and approaches that allow construction near over wells subject to certain safety regulations that include locating and examining the conditions of the wells, as well as testing and monitoring those wells. Next slide, please. The proposed methane gas regulations will establish a prescriptive standard for the detection and mitigation for those projects proposed to be constructed over areas with detectable amounts of methane barrier. Next slide, please. As part of this effort, the city, with the assistance of our technical experts, created a localized GIS map that will assist the development community in identifying those areas in Long Beach, where detectable levels of methane gas are present. Next slide, please. As such, staff is recommending that the City Council adopt the ordinances relating to the construction in the vicinity of oil gas wells as well as methane gas mitigation standards. That concludes our presentation. Staff is happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Next slide, please. Speaker 2: Thank you. I do have a motion and a second and a motion by Councilmember Ranga. I believe we have one member of the public that can speak. So why don't we do that? Member of the public? And then we'll come back to customary Ranga and record. Speaker 0: That member of the public is in on the call yet. Speaker 2: Okay, then let me go to Councilman Ranga. Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like every district in the city has some kind of oil well facility that has been abandoned. And this would be a great project for us to determine what we can do to or not do to create more development economic assistance for the city. So I very happy to support this this motion. Speaker 2: Right. Councilman Price. Speaker 1: Mr. Mayor, I agree. We certainly had a number of these issues arise during the development of Second PCH. And so I'm glad that the development services staff is bringing this item forward, and I'm happy to support it. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 1: That was a second. I don't have any other comment and thank you for the presentation. Speaker 2: And customers and ask do you have any comment or is that just a motion? Speaker 1: I would comment. One of the things that I was glad to see included in the initial study checklist was that it looked into the environmental factors potentially affected by the project and found no impact from their results. The healthy and life safety matters from constructions near these wells were something that I was very concerned about, but I'm glad to see that it was addressed in the study. So thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. I have a motion by Councilmember Ranga, seconded by Councilman Price. I think Councilman Price. There was a second, I think. Right. And then and as to the roll call vote. Speaker 0: District one. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District two I. District three. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District four. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District seven. By District eight. Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 0: District nine. Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next step is we will do public commentaries and we have a I think we might have two of those.

Ordinance

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 18.78 relating to construction in the vicinity of abandoned oil wells, read and adopt as read. (Citywide)

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Speaker 2: Okay. Then we'll go on to item. There is a request to move item 16. So we'll do item 16. Speaker 0: Communication Town Council Member Your Anger Councilwoman Price. Councilman Mongo Vice Mayor Richardson Recommendation to request City Manager to update and revise the policies and procedures related to the city's tree maintenance policy and urban wildlife policy, and to report back on the feasibility and costs associated with establishing a program it customary. Speaker 2: Right. I think this is your item. GONZALES. Yes, yes. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor, for putting this item up too quickly. First of all, I want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilmembers Rice and Mogo for joining me on this right here. We know we've had a lot of issues in without treaties over the past few years, and many of them have to do with the fact that some contractors have been negligent or have been very careless in how we treat our trees and their cut and being treated. We're not. So this item here is, I believe, that the city manager can review the current policies and procedures for our tree maintenance throughout the city and being able to come back with a recommendation as to how we can implement a program that will be much more general and broad to make sure that our our herons and our nesting birds are taking care of and that their homes not destroyed as we take care of our trees, as we need to go, and we have projects that we want to develop. One of the major projects that brought this to to the forefront is that I have a project in my district over the really greenbelt and there were some trees that were perhaps mistakenly brought down. A review indicated that there might have been some nesting birds in that area. And so it just raised a furor in regards to what are we doing to protect our trees and to protect our nesting birds. So I think that with this policy that the city manager is requested through to review it and come back with some recommendations, would help us address that and the least amount of fears that are out there in the community in regards to our nesting birds and our very precious trees. So I'm I'm glad that we're bringing this forward. And again, I want to thank my councilmember colleagues for enjoining me in this effort as well. And with that, I'll leave it to Abi. My second. Speaker 2: Thank you. And Councilman Mongo to the second. Speaker 1: Thank you. This is an item that has been in need for quite a long time. I'm very fortunate to work very closely with Councilmember Suranga, who cares so much about our community and our trees. We've worked together on many projects, including disease, trees and other things in his district and across the city. And I'm very proud of the work that we've done to make improvements, but we do need to make more. And so I'm really excited about this item. We cover the tree component of every major project, but it really needs to be pulled together in a more concise document that really gives the. Warrant that is necessary for something of such importance to our community on a go forward basis. Our trees are aging and we really have to have a plan on the way forward. So thank you for a great item. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Suranga for bringing this item forward. And, Mango, I know that this is very important, especially in those areas where trees actually get rooted and deep rooted and uplift the curves. It can become so dangerous. And so I think that a program like this would be really great to be able to evaluate and be able to get those those fixed before people have accidents. And I'm especially thinking of our seniors on their walks and people with disabilities that don't have any alternative route. So I'm really looking forward to this to supporting this item and the results when it comes back. Speaker 2: Last May, Richardson. Thank you, Councilman Aranda, for bringing this forward. We have a responsibility to take care of our tree canopy as it doesn't take care of itself. It requires investment. It requires care. Our city was built at different times, and therefore there were different trees that were utilized in different parts of the city. And each of our districts has different, unique needs. And so the fact that we're staying on top of this and asking staff to keep a sharp eye on this is important. And it's the types of things that the neighbors, the neighborhoods want and need from their city council. Thank you. Thank you. I don't believe there's any public comment on or actually there might be two couple comments on this item. Speaker 0: No, those callers are not on the line. Speaker 2: Okay. So we'll go to a roll call vote. And Councilman Price is having a little bit of tech issues, so she'll be probably back in about ten, 15 minutes after I do the work. So we'll call the. Speaker 0: District one district to. Speaker 1: My. Speaker 0: District for. Speaker 2: My. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District seven. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: District eight. Speaker 3: Hi. Speaker 0: District nine. Speaker 2: By. Speaker 0: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager update and revise the policies and procedures related to the City’s Tree Maintenance Policy and urban wildlife policy, including nesting birds. Direct City Manager to reevaluate the standard operating procedure, including, but not limited to inspections by a trained biologist, when trimming or removing City trees that have evidence indicating an active bird nest. Also, direct City Manager to report back on the feasibility and costs associated with establishing a program to pro-actively inspect trees for urban wildlife that are scheduled for trimming and removal.

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Speaker 2: Next up, we're going to do item 18. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilman Austin councilman's in Dallas Fires. Mayor Richardson recommendation declared Juneteenth as a day of celebration in Long Beach. Request city attorney to draft a resolution calling on President Biden and Congress to make Juneteenth a national holiday. And Governor Newsom and the California state legislature to make it a state holiday and refer to the federal legislation committee and state legislation committee. Speaker 2: Councilman Austin. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And of course, I want to thank my colleagues, Councilwoman Zendaya's and Grace Meyer, for signing on to this important item. Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. And on June 19th, 1965, union soldiers landed in Galveston, Texas, with word that the Civil War had ended and that those enslaved were now free. Even though praise of President Abraham Lincoln at the time had issued the immense citizen proclamation more than two years earlier. So the celebration of June 19 was coined Juneteenth as a combination of June 19th. Today, Juneteenth celebrates African American freedom, cultural contributions and achievement while encouraging self-development and respect for all. It also recognizes our history and educates about a significant moment in our nation's history. Juneteenth National Independence Day Act was introduced in both the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. And it hasn't been passed yet. And I would like our state and federal legislation committees to consider including this as part of their our legislative agenda to mark Juneteenth as a state and federal holiday. Juneteenth celebration is planned this year here in Long Beach on June 19 on the historic Pine Avenue, which will have so many significant, I think, meanings as well. We'll be celebrating. Juneteenth will also be celebrating the reopening of our of our our our state and our city. And I think it's a great time for us all to come together as a city to celebrate the event, which I believe will become a premier celebration in the city and in Southern California, will feature a variety of music, including blues, jazz, gospel, traditional drumming as well as a step show, poetry and speakers. That's the event. But we're also promoting that as well and encouraging support for that event. But I want to just mention that Long Beach is a leader in celebrating diversity. We know that we support social justice and equity in our city and we foster mutual respect and understanding for all. This is an event that that is consistent with that. And I said we should declare Juneteenth as a day of celebration here in the city of Long Beach and join the growing momentum behind this issue and add our voice to a call to make Juneteenth a national holiday. I want to just encourage your support, but also want to thank a few people in the community who've been really working hard to bring light to this this issue and fuel to the work. And that is, you know, Mr. Crockett, who has is a lead organizer on this Antioch Church and Pastor Jane Wayne and my sister Chaney are debate. And thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas this will be a your event and we'll be kicking off and building momentum on this. And of course, the African-American cultural center of Long Beach and many more organizations that are getting behind this this event, but also this cause and support, this item. So, again, I would thank you for entertaining this, think my co-sponsors and encourage your support. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is council member Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Perry. Thank you, Councilman Austin. You know, we've we've acknowledged Juneteenth in the past and Long Beach. For many people, it's fairly new. And I think, Councilman, also for introducing the idea, I think is really about acknowledge it and allow folks to acknowledge, you know, the full history here in America, particularly with our difficult history on race and on slavery and racial healing. And I have to say, you know, it was just a year ago that the council began the process of the framework reconciliation. So I think it makes a lot of sense that here on Juneteenth, it's almost exactly a year ago that, you know, we began that conversation here on Juneteenth. We acknowledge where we are definitely a inflection point in our in our nation. You know, I also want to want to say that to the organizers of the Juneteenth event, Caro and Antioch and everyone, I think, first of all, thank you for organizing the event. I know that you reached out to my office, the mayor's office, Councilman Alston's office, about moving forward with the acknowledgment, but also know that you requested some support for that event. And, you know, the idea was to bring bring an item to give some one time. I want to ask the city manager or city attorney, is that okay? Can I just tack in on this motion today to add some actual support from the City Council? I'd like to offer up for my one time's 20 $500 to help. And what opened up anybody else that wants to do that to help with that event? But I want to ask city city manager, is that appropriate? Do I need to put that on the item? I love to just be vice mayor. Yes. Speaker 5: You could amend the motion to add some one time dollars. Speaker 2: To your event. Okay. I love I love to do that announcement cost and I want to offer that as an amendment. Speaker 5: And vice mayor, we would then come back later with all the appropriation language. So we're just it'd be good to know today if there's interest in doing that. And then we can we can do the dollars later. Speaker 2: Right? Speaker 3: Absolutely. Except that Friendly and I had planned on doing so as a as an act for my office as well. So there will be some resources move in that direction and encourage as much support as possible, not only from the city council, but to those private entities who may be listening as well. Speaker 2: Absolutely. But I think this is a step in the right direction. We certainly should acknowledge this at this moment. And I'm really incredibly proud that our community organically stood up and said, this is the time, this is the year. Calvin also said it best. We're coming out of that. You know, we're coming out. So we're celebrating quite a few things. So I certainly will be there with my family and look forward to a happy Juneteenth. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is council member Ringo. Speaker 3: I want to thank my council colleague bringing this forward. Customer Austin customer from member Richardson Reisman Region. Every year before COVID, we would always have some kind of celebration, and it's something that I greatly miss. It's a great opportunity to share our culture that we've been doing the last several years in the city, and I think this would be a great opportunity and I'm looking forward to continuing this discussion as part of the as Chair of the State Legislative Committee. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Catherine. Sara. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank Councilmember Austin for leading on this agenda item, as all the other council colleagues supporting it. And as a federal judge committee member, I certainly support this and also support ensuring that we continue to do education about and acknowledge the impact of slavery. And I want to also share that, you know, District six has historically celebrated Freedom Day or Juneteenth. And, you know, my residents and a group have come together and are also doing an event. And the Martin Luther King Jr Park on Saturday, June 28th. So if you're not able to make it on the 19th, come on over to the sixth District and join us as well. And so I just want to thank you all for, I think, Councilmember Austin, for ensuring that we continue to acknowledge this while a very, very dark time in our history, that we continue to also acknowledge that we see the impact and that we continue to do the education. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is Councilwoman Dana. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you very much to Councilmember Austin for this item and Vice Mayor Richardson. I think this is very important in recognizing not only the good, but also the dark reality of our history as a nation and as people is not always easy and is often very uncomfortable, but it is very, very much necessary . It breaks my heart to know that for about two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, many people were still enslaved. And it wasn't until June 19, 1865, that they learned the news of their freedom. I believe that in recognizing this at a local, state and national level is a crucial step in moving forward a much brighter tomorrow, and a step that also serves as a much needed message in support of social justice and equity for Juneteenth. Offers offers us exactly that. An opportunity to heal. To celebrate the African American freedom and culture. And also serves as a reminder that us all that to us all that we still have much, much more work to do. Again, I want to thank council member Austin and Vice Mayor Richardson for introducing and I am in total support of this item. I am also super, super excited to be hosting our Juneteenth celebration right here in District one on June 19. So thank you very much. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is. Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. And I also want to thank council member Austin and Vice Mayor Rex Richardson and Cindy Haas for putting this item forward. I just want to say it is an absolutely fantastic item and I absolutely 100% support recognition and celebration as we honor Juneteenth as a national and a national holiday would be absolutely fitting. I also have submitted a letter to the Budget Department to support the event. So I know that there is a motion on the floor with the vice mayor, so I don't know if I need to change anything there so staff can let me know. But just fantastic item and I look forward to supporting this in every way. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 1: Q Mr. Mayor, and thank you to the comments of my colleagues and my colleagues who brought this item forward. Councilman Zandi, has your your comments were spot on in terms of of the importance of the recognition and the fact that we're hosting this in your district. I'm really looking forward to that. And so thank you for those comments. I know that Karl Kemp is one of the organizers. I think the mayor and I have known Carl for decades now since our end. And Councilman Sun has I remember we we knew him when we were in student government at Cal State Long Beach together . So we've known him for a very long time. He did reach out to me. I have committed some private dollars to him, albeit a lot smaller of a number than what's been proposed in the and the friendly, but at a at a level that I support a lot of causes that are important to me privately. So I'm very happy to do that. And I, I wholeheartedly support this item. Speaker 2: Thank you for that. Before we go to public comment, I just want to just echo what everyone said. I think this is a great step forward. And I also personally just want to thank Mr. Kemp, I think, for really kind of stepping forward and really organizing and doing a lot of the work to get this event off the ground with so many other partners. I think maybe with two or three weeks ago I was just riding bikes and I remember I was riding my bike right down Pyne and saw him and he stopped me. And this actually must've been more like a month, a month or two ago. And he was out there with another person that we know and just talking about the event and it was really excited about it. So I just love his energy and his passion for recognizing and parts of my history that are that are very painful but are really important to to to also recognize what came out of that pain and what continues to be a struggle and an uplifting of of an important, critical part of our American history. So I'm just very grateful to the Carl and to all of you for bringing this forward as well. So with that, is there any public comment? Speaker 4: Yes, we have one public comment. Tasha Hunter, please begin. Speaker 7: Hi. Good afternoon, Mayor Garcia, City Council member, staff and community members. My name is Tasha Hunter and I'm a proud District eight resident as well as the president of the African American Cultural Center of Long Beach and a very proud member of the black African American community. With that being said, I'm here to support this item enthusiastically, and I'm happy to know that we live in a city that is willing to support an item of recognition and realizing the importance of this day, Juneteenth. My my maternal great great grandparents were born into slavery in Virginia and Florida. And so many of us raised in black households know and have celebrated Juneteenth for as long as we can remember. But for so many, it's not been known, nor has it been celebrated. This is an educational opportunity for city, for our country. And with that being said, this item follows the trajectory of where we see our city or state, our country moving towards in an effort to not only reconcile, but also to recognize the contribution of black folks, our ancestors, elders and our people that have been monumental for over a century in the city of Long Beach and centuries in this country, to say the least. As a number one recognized celebration for freedom from the horrific institution of enslavement in the United States. We wholeheartedly support this item for state recognition, and we support this item for nationwide recognition. Thank you, Councilman Lawson, for consistently being a champion for the voice of the people. Thank you, Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, for your support and reconciliation efforts. And Councilwoman Mary's and Day House for also supporting this item. And a very special thank you to my brother Carl Kemp for his focused, compassionate and dedicated planning. And this year's this year's event, in partnership with the LBA and many other work for the past Council persons in the Sixth District that have continued to celebrate Juneteenth from our beloved Councilwoman Mother, Dorothy Top, the El Roy Moore, Richardson, Dee Andrews. And thank you to Councilwoman Su Sara for continuing to recognize this important day in District six. Lastly, I want to recognize all the smaller organizations that have been holding down their own Juneteenth celebration for many years and lobbied to take part to downtown Long Beach and to the African American Historic Society. And our local historian, John Malvo, was never stopped. His efforts of keeping this and many other important chapters in black history relevant and heard. This is the work that the ACP, the African American Cultural Center of Miami, also aims to do along with city council. We ask that you vote in favor of this item. We ask that you vote in favor of celebrating black freedom. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I know I believe we have some public comment. Are there additional public comment? I know that Mr. Kemp is actually on the line and he may have signed up for item night, a different item. So he's trying to be what he was supposed to be on both. So, Madam Court, can you get Mr. Kemp on the line, please? Speaker 0: Yes. Give us just one moment and we'll get Mr. Kemp on the line. Speaker 4: Carl. Ken, this is item 18. Please begin. Speaker 2: Yes. Simply thank you to Councilman Al Austin, Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, Councilman Mary's and de Haas, Mayor Garcia, and to all the city council. I support this motion to declare Juneteenth as a day of celebration in the city of Long Beach. While calling on President Biden to make it a national holiday and Governor Newsom to make it a state holiday, I applaud the bold motion by Councilman Austin, Vice Mayor Rex Richardson and Councilwoman Van de House. I respectfully encourage unanimous support from the council. Juneteenth may be new to many, but it's one of the most important of all American holidays there is. It offers us an opportunity to confront our ugliest sense the enslavement of human beings so brutal and inhumane that it's almost unimaginable. At the time, at the same time gives us the ability to celebrate freedom and the cultural contributions African-Americans have infused into every aspect of American culture. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, my city made me proud with his courageous march into complex conversations on race and developing policies that move us as a city and a society towards reconciling our difficult past. Those subtle. You brought added dignity to my people by changing your official policy to capitalize black when referring to people of African descent. And thank you for that executive leadership. Mayor Garcia, in both cases, you, as our elected officials led recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday, as a leadership moment. Mayor Beverly O'Neal once told me that Long Beach is a small enough town that you can make a difference in it and a large enough town that the difference you make will matter in the world. By recognizing Juneteenth as a day of celebration or even as an official city holiday, Long Beach, with its size and diversity, can lead the way towards national recognition by similar sized cities and ultimately the nation. Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia recognized Juneteenth as a paid holiday. Cook County, Chicago recognizes the paid holiday. Twitter square, adobe all day Lyft, NFL, Nike, Postmates, Target and Uber. And many more companies now recognize Juneteenth as a paid holiday. After 400 years of free labor extracted from the blood of black Americans, one day of recognition and celebration of freedom seems more than reasonable. I want to thank those who came before me Connie Oden, Ahmed Saffir, John Malvo, Laura Richardson, the The Andrews, for their investment in Juneteenth as a celebration for our community. I want to thank our sponsors, our title, sponsors of the debate and Antioch Church. I appreciate Craig Cogan and Pastor Wayne Chaney stepping out on faith to support an event they saw as worthy. The Port of Long Beach, Catalyst, water for developers really. And so many more for investing their their time, their prayers and their funding to make this event happen. We have a fantastic event lined up. We hope to see you all there. We hope to celebrate with you. And again, I'm probably over my time and I want to respect yours, but I just want to end by saying thank you for your leadership, your bold vision. And I do hope to see you on June the 19th celebrating with us the beauty of African American culture on the same streets that this time last year saw us protesting together. Again, thank you for the time and I appreciate it. Speaker 4: Thank you. That concludes public comment. Speaker 2: Thank you. So there's no there no other public comment on the line. Speaker 4: No, there's not. Speaker 2: Okay. With that, we're going to do a roll call vote, please. Speaker 0: District one. I district to. Hi. District three. I district for. Speaker 2: My. Speaker 0: District five. I District six. Speaker 1: And. Speaker 0: District seven. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: District eight. Speaker 3: Hi. Speaker 0: District nine. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Russian Kurds.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to declare Juneteenth as a Day of Celebration in Long Beach, request City Attorney to draft a resolution calling on President Biden and Congress to make Juneteenth a national holiday and Governor Newsom and the California State Legislature to make it a state holiday, and refer to the Federal Legislation Committee and State Legislation Committee for consideration of inclusion in the City’s Legislative Agendas.

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Speaker 0: Russian Kurds. Speaker 2: Item 19, please. Speaker 0: Communication in Councilman. Super Nature of Government Personnel and Election Oversight Committee Recommendation to approve renaming the Community Center at Horton Park the Doris Topsy Alvord Community Center. Speaker 2: Somewhere. I'd like to go ahead and move the motion. Yup. And you're can you please go ahead, councilman. Okay. So this is a. This comes from our committee and we unanimously supported this naming. So I'd like to make the motion. Thank you. And there is a second by. I believe this is Councilman Austin. This was for this item, not the not the last one. Correct. Speaker 3: Correct. Speaker 2: Okay, great. There's the motion in a second. Speaker 3: Obviously I want to lend my support to this item. I think there's a lot to be said about the process. This came before the city council received unanimous support, went to the Parks and Recreation Marine Commission and received unanimous support, and then then back to the Governance and Personnel Committee where it received unanimous support. Obviously. Mother Dawes, former vice mayor, former harbor commissioner, is a iconic figure in her own self, somebody who was a trailblazer in our city, someone who was a mentor to many, many, many city employees, but also elected officials in the city and around the region. It is only fitting that we we name of the Highland Park Center for her. And I want to just give a nod to Vice Mayor Richardson for his leadership in getting this issue to this point. And I would encourage our full support of the council. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. By Sam Waterston. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just want to take a moment, and I thank everyone who's been involved from the committee that helped put all this together, community committee to the Parks and Rec Commission, the Government Oversight Commission, to get this done. Prior to my daughter's 90th birthday, we set a goal to get it done this June. And today, pending this vote, we are we are going to make sure that Mother Doors has a well-deserved and happy birthday and thanks to city staff for all of their work to make sure that we have a good plan on how we're going to recognize this this moment. This is this is I mean, this is great. We're we're you know, this is recognition of, you know, the first black councilwoman, the trailblazer of the term vice mayor. And, you know, she one of her quotes that she you know, that she know for is you can get anything done if you don't care who gets the glory. And I think, you know, I certainly, you know, mother daughter could teach me and a whole lot of folks that lesson right there. So, you know, I certainly want to thank Mother Doors and look and thank everybody involved and look forward to opening up the tops, the other community center. How important. Thank you. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm a big supporter of the councilwoman. And and as a former councilwoman, I think it is appropriate that perhaps this is a time that we could have that discussion. I think that this is one of many names that have come before us through an amazing process. But there is a administrative declaration that we don't name things after people who are alive or have passed recently. And I think perhaps it might be appropriate to ask council member Soup or not to provide some recommendations to us if that is a necessary policy anymore. We have some pretty amazing people who have done some amazing things in the city, and that administrative mandate was not from a city council. And so I think when you have great people like the councilwoman and the legacy that she had among others, I see that it is an exception to the rule. But there have been a lot of exceptions lately, and I am wholeheartedly in support of this. But as a leader and a former councilman, I know that she would be a person who would want us to to look at what we're doing and make sure that we are being honest with ourselves about what our true policies are . So, again, thank you to her for everything she's done for the city. It has been an amazing legacy, and I'm honored to be a part of the council that makes this happen. And I just can't thank her and the committee enough. Thank you. Speaker 2: Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor. I also support the committee's recommendation. Speaker 0: Of vice mayor. Speaker 1: Doorstop Silver is a truck with a just a total trailblazer in our city, and I firmly believe that public facilities and spaces should be named after upstanding leaders who represent the best of us and vice mayor. Doris certainly fits the bill. So, so happy to support this. Thank you. Speaker 2: Councilman Sorrell. Speaker 1: Mayor. I want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson for his leadership on this item. And, you know, I think it's fitting that this renaming the community center follows Juneteenth because it's really important to celebrate the amazing work and legacy of a black women, particularly because I think that, you know, there are numerous obstacle I'm sure she has had to overcome in order to be able to do the work that she does. And I think it's important that those that come, we follow her, know that and hear about her history and celebrate her. So thank you, Vice Mayor, for honoring and celebrating the Honorable Doris Tulsa, Albert. So thank you so much. And I support this item. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilman Ringo. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you very much for bringing this forward. Now, before we were friends, we were opponents. Doris and I ran campaigns against each other. And for jealousy, she won over me. But she was also one of my mentors. When I was 20, she was a civil service commissioner. Not many people remember that, that before she was elected to the city council, she was a commissioner in a civil service commission work where I worked and we became friends there. And I just been proud to follow her legacy, to see how she's gone, just from an individual who was very important to the community, to one who is become an iconic. And the name of this building will certainly be that for her and for us in that community forever. So I'm glad to support this. Congratulations, Doris. Let me be. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilman Superman. Thank you. And thanks to Councilman Munga for bringing that point up on on our policies. So what I did was I had a conversation with Deputy Deputy City Attorney Gary Anderson prior to that meeting, and I asked him to go ahead and please be on that meeting with us. And we took the time to explain the policies and how it does not apply to council. So I think it is an important point of clarification. And and so we did it by the book. So thank you for asking that question. Thank you. And I want to just add again, I think this is a wonderful opportunity to name what a great building, really. I'm after a really great person and has such a strong legacy within the broader language community, but also specifically just the history made within our own black community. So just echoing what everyone else said, and I think it's the really great, great naming is your public comment? Speaker 4: Yes, Mayor, we have public comment. Karl Kemp, please begin. Speaker 2: Yeah. I just want to again thank the city council. You guys are on fire and doing great things. It's so great to give this woman who has dedicated her life to this city before she was on the city council while she was on the city council, served as vice mayor two times, went over to the Harbor Commission and made history there. And at each one of her stations, she has done something revolutionary to make lasting change in policy, to make lasting change in the lives of the people that our city and its institutions interact with. All of us probably have individual stories. I have a bunch. I will simply say that I would not be here today if it were not for doorstops. The board president, Bob Maxim, identified me as somebody that needed somebody like her, and she took me under her wing. My first job out of college was working for the city of Long Beach, and she is nurtured and looked after me every step of the way. My mom gave her permission to engage, I'll say simply for the public to engage in corporal punishment if necessary. She was truly she is truly another mother for me and has served of that while my mother was here and after my mother passed. And it's just beautiful that Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilman Austin and the entire city council have saw fit to give her this wonderful tribute and give her a chance to smell her flowers right now. And I just want to thank you on behalf of all the people like me who have had their lives changed by by this wonderful, wonderful blessing that we call mother daughters. Speaker 4: Michelle Dobson, please be in. Michelle Dobson, please begin. Speaker 7: Thank you. My name is Michelle Dobson, and I wanted to take a moment to thank each one of you for supporting this. I read the minutes as this has gone along the way, and the unanimous support all the way through is just heart warming for a woman who is an inspiration to many of us here in the city, raising her sons while getting her master's degree to the Long Beach Original from Saint Anthony High School. She remains a proud alumni and supporter of that school. And I know personally she was extremely supportive of us as a youth group. To me, ACP, when I was coming, who she helped as a city city council member, sent us to several national arts and academic competitions, and the timing here is just perfect. As was mentioned previously, there's a gospel song that's sung in our community called Give Me My Flowers While I Can Smell Them, which is just say this could not have been brought forward at a better time. And I want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson for leading the effort and for bringing this to the community and the council and anything that we can do as a community to support it. Of course, we are here and I think it was unanimously supporting this all the way through. Speaker 2: Thank you. Any more public comment? Speaker 4: No, that concludes public comment. Speaker 2: Okay. Then with that, we will go take a roll call vote. Speaker 0: District one. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District two. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District three. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District four. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. District seven. Speaker 3: I. Speaker 0: District eight. District nine. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Great. Thank you. I think we have to a one time certain item which is supposed to be after 630 and then another request to come up to move early. So let me let me do item 17. And then after that I am 13, which is which is a row for the transfer on rowing. We'll do right after that. I think that was supposed to be anytime after 630. So those will be the next two items. The next item 17. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilwoman Mongeau. Councilwoman Dan Diaz, Councilwoman Price, Councilmember Your UNGA recommendation to direct city manager and the Fireworks Committee to develop a fireworks free neighborhood incentive program and waive the fees of all submitted and approved block party applications for this upcoming July 4th, 2021 holiday.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve renaming the community center at Houghton Park the "Doris Topsy-Elvord Community Center".

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06012021_21-0489

Speaker 2: Right. Very much, Karis. Now we will go on to item 13, please. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Zendejas, Councilmember Urunga, Councilman Austin recommendation to increase appropriations in the City Manager Department by 10,000 to provide a contribution to the Long Beach Rowing Association for the creation of a free youth. Learn to Row Summer Camp. Speaker 2: Price. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm super excited about this item, and I actually have a few people that are going to be calling in to speak about it. This item came about after we had the Coastal Commission meeting about the pool and one of the Coastal Commissioners and I know Councilman Arango will remember this, made a comment about competitive swimming and she talked about how she was a competitive swimmer and making opportunities for people who wouldn't have access otherwise to learn how to be competitive athletes. And it really got me thinking about Marine Stadium and the history of Marine Stadium as an Olympic venue and the city of Long Beach and the sport of rowing. I'm not sure how much my council colleagues know about the sport of rowing, but I didn't know anything about the sport a few years ago. Before my boys got involved in it. We used to see the rowers on Marine Stadium all the time, but had no idea what it meant to do that sport. Since my boys have learned about the sport, I've learned a lot about the opportunities in that sport in terms of collegiate admissions aid and collegiate scholarships, especially for female rowers. We've seen a huge boost in the last few years, ever since rowing became an official NCAA sport. Teams are now allowed to give out 20 scholarships per year, and with rowing being an equivalency sport, those 20 scholarships can be divided in any way that a coach wishes to. Rowing rosters are typically large in size, and plenty of scholarship opportunities are available in 2015. On average, NCAA D1 teams have 39 rowers on scholarships, with some teams having up to 50 student athletes receiving some sort of athletic aid. An 80% 85% of collegiate rowers were members of either a high school or club rowing team in the city of Long Beach. We don't have rowing as a high school team. And so the only way students in the city of Long Beach throughout the city could participate is through participation as a club sport, which is incredibly expensive. So this item provides a free summer camp at the Long Beach Rowing Association is going to help us administer. They're going to provide the boats. They're going to talk about it in just a minute. And it's for the students that are interested. So we've already reached out to Cabrillo Poly and Jordan administrators. They've been super positive. We're targeting students from those three schools because those are the high schools that we see a lot of underrepresentation on in terms of rowing scholarships and aquatics scholarships. And the administrators have been very, very supportive. We got our first applicant and accepted yesterday, so we're really excited about it. We're probably going to have 15 to 16 students. And for those students who participate in this program, if they decide they like the sport, I'm going to personally fundraise one year scholarship for each of those students that comes at $8,000 a student for participation in the annual club sport. So I may need some of your guys's help in fundraising for those students, but I'd love to give them the opportunity to do a year of college rowing to see if they're good at it. And wouldn't it be great if we have athletes from all over the city on college scholarships for rowing, especially our female athletes? So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Christina Dugan, who should be on the call to talk a little bit about the program. Speaker 4: Kristina Dugan, please press star six. Speaker 1: Hi. Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor, for the time to talk about this program tonight. And of course, thank you, Councilwoman Price, for your overwhelming support and is bringing this program to council. My name is Christina Dugan. I'm a resident and business owner of the third district. I've been a member of Long Beach Rowing Association since 2007, and I'm the regatta director for Elvira. I've been on the board. I work with the club on many of our programs and trainings. It's located the feeder, our Rowing Center, located on Alamitos Bay Marine Stadium. The Rowing Center is home to Long Beach Junior Crew. California adaptive rowing program, also called Cart and Beach Crew. From Colby, Oprah, Endeavor, Chen, Vance, rowing and sportsmanship. Sportsmanship through its members inclusion of the community and programs we provide learn to run programs and are an Olympic and national training site. But let's get into this program. I am so excited to coordinate this program called Row the Stadium, with the help of Councilwoman Pryce and then the volunteers who are members of V-Ray. They will be hoping we have two boats set aside. There are two boats, eight students. Eight participants are in the boat with the coxswain, who steers a 62 foot boat. It's huge. It's so exciting to be on the water. And I have to tell you, the ultimate goal of this group is to row the stadium. Every you should have this opportunity. High school students, young men and women looking to attend college are being encouraged to attend college, can have opportunities open up for scholarships and admissions. I'm not going to go much into this. Councilwoman Pryce went through all of this. But as she said, our first participant accepted yesterday. She found out from the College and Career Center from Cabrillo High School that other participants are excited to participate and asking about this. What is the program? Well, the stadium is a six week program. It'll meet Saturday and Sunday for 2 hours each day at our two rowing center, teaching the fundamentals of rowing both on and off the water. I'll be running has volunteer coaches, lunch drivers and experienced adult rowers will be working with the participants for dry land and on the water. But another part of this program, several current rowers who rode with LBJ will be participating in the leadership portion of this program by being junior coaches and working with the participants weekly. These two young people have developed a dry land training program, have helped to develop the name and logo for this program, and will also be in the boat with the new rowers to help them on the water, peer to peer coaching and team building. From their perspective, with the supervision, of course, of head coaches is really important to the program's success. Rowing is so close to my heart. Youth. I have run programs for many, many years. I am. Speaker 4: Thank you. Our next speaker is Christina Durian. Speaker 1: I know that she just spoke. So I think your next speaker is going to be either Kian Pryce or Gabriella Schaub. Speaker 4: Thank you. Deborah Schwab, please begin. Speaker 7: Hello. I'm Eric Garcia. Council members and constituents of the Long Beach community. My name is Siobhan. I've been growing as a part of the Long Beach Junior Crew program for about four years now. And during that time, I have learned so much about the sport and the opportunities available for competitive colleges, and this is especially true for female rowers. As Councilor Price says, rowing is a sport that has traditionally been targeted to male athletes. But that trend has changed. And today, female athletes throughout the nation are recruiting more and more for the sport. Speaker 1: I thankfully had the. Speaker 7: Opportunity to attend the Long Beach Junior Crew summer camp back when I was just 12 years old. And these camps ultimately were the reason why I fell in love with the sport and led me to develop a strong athletic ability, maintaining a fun and enjoyable environment with others. We are fortunate to live in Long Beach, a city but as hosted rowing in the Olympics and may someday host the Olympics for the sport again. And therefore, rowing is a big part of Long Beach, its history and our future. This camp will open the door to the youth from throughout the city and hopefully many more athletes throughout the city to learn this sport free of charge. This will open up future opportunities for our local athletes to continue to shine as they transition into college. I am excited to be one of the youth counselors in this program and thank you in advance for supporting our efforts. Thank you for listening. Speaker 4: Thank you. John Price, we begin. Speaker 7: Hello, Mr. Mayor. And Council. My name is Kim Pryce. We often talk about opportunities and people taking advantage of. Speaker 2: Opportunities that are provided to them. But what I have learned. Speaker 7: Is that something is not. Speaker 2: Really an opportunity if you don't know about. Speaker 7: It or if you. Speaker 2: Don't have a real chance of participating in it. I feel that way about the sport of growing. Speaker 7: I I'm fortunate to live near Marine Stadium or. Speaker 2: Rowers enjoy. Speaker 7: This Olympic. Speaker 2: Site every day. Speaker 7: My brother and. Speaker 2: I have grown up seeing rowers practice their sport at this site. We started to learn the sport. Our family learned about how many college scholarships and opportunities there are for high school athletes who row. Speaker 7: But not many people. Speaker 2: Know about this sport. Speaker 7: Rowing is an expensive sport to learn and. Speaker 2: Practice, and that is why the opportunity to grow is not really an opportunity for everyone and only an. Speaker 7: Opportunity for a small group. Speaker 2: Of people. Speaker 7: That needs. Speaker 2: To change. I'm excited to currently. Speaker 7: Participate in Long Beach Junior. Speaker 2: Crew or learn the sport and encourage inclusion and help in a healthy lifestyle. We want to. Speaker 7: Expand that beyond just the youth who are currently. Speaker 2: Part of the team. A Rose Stadium camp will offer any student who would not otherwise have the opportunity. Speaker 7: To learn the sport. The opportunity. Speaker 2: To participate in a free introductory summer camp. Speaker 7: So students who participate and who want to continue to score would be eligible. Speaker 2: For a one year membership to join object. We are grateful for the administrators at Cabrillo Jordan and Poly High who have already taken time to learn about the camp and send their referrals. Thank you very much. Speaker 4: Thank you. That concludes public comment. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mr. Clarke. And I'll just conclude with the other thing that we're going to be providing through private dollars. So it's not part of this item is a transportation voucher. So any student who needs transportation, we will provide them vouchers with their preference so we can do Uber, Lyft or bus passes. We will provide transportation for anyone to participate in this program. And as you can tell, I'm super, super excited about it. I would love it if we had a few students from Long Beach get a full college scholarship for rowing. And wouldn't it be great if they someday came back and became Olympic athletes? And hopefully we host the sport of rowing in Long Beach in 2028? And I hope that this program helps shine the light on what we're doing in Long Beach to make the sport accessible for everyone. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Mayor, and thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilwoman Price, for introducing this item. And to all of my colleagues who supported it is super important to ensure that all of our youth have access to these types of programs that can grant them the amazing opportunity to develop new skills that they will be able to enjoy for the rest of their lives. Traditionally, these programs have not been accessible nor affordable to our students who live in the Westside or in the Washington neighborhood and in surrounding areas as well. This is why it truly, truly warms my heart to know that this role summer camp is targeted for the students, local students here at Cabrillo Poly and Jordan High School. And I'm I'm even more pleased to know that this is something that they can potentially take with them to college as well. And thank you so much, Councilmember Price, for sharing that transportation will also be provided for these students because that is a huge thing and a huge barrier for our Westside students to actually participate in opportunities like this. I'm super excited to support this item and for this program, and I'm committed to supporting programs like this that are aimed to empowering the youth. Thank you very much, Councilwoman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Next up, we have council member Ringo. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Councilmember Price, for bringing this forward. Anything that provides added access to our coast is very, very welcome. And I really appreciate you bringing this forward, especially with all the fundraising you're going to do in the end, the travel vouchers. I mean, that's awesome. Thank you so much for bringing this forward. I think our kids will love it for it. I will love you for. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilman Austin. Speaker 3: I thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, you know, I just want to take this opportunity to thank and salute Councilmember Price for bringing forth this very innovative program that, in my opinion, will really expand access exposure, but also open doors of opportunity for young student athletes who probably wouldn't have had it otherwise been exposed to this this amazing sport crew. I can tell you firsthand that college scholarship, athletic scholarships are life changing for student athletes or for parents, for families of student athletes. And to expand that, those opportunities are amazing. And I can just just I have two nieces who are involved in aquatic sports on sport scholarships. One went to university, too, Pacific. The other one is at Cal State. Long Beach is a water polo player today. Lastly, my son is also a scholar athlete on scholarship playing football. These these opportunities are very rare. But when when a kid has that opportunity, when a family has that opportunity, it it is one that is amazing . So this is a small investment that that could pay big dividends of a long term. So, again, congratulations. Thank you for bringing this forward. Councilmember, you can count on my office to help you with your outreach efforts and and assist in any way we can to make this a success. Thanks. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilman. Next up, I have Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just want to chime in and say thanks for intentionally calling out Jordan High School and Cabrillo. My experience is when these kids win, when the olive branch is extended and opportunity is extended, they take advantage of it. And I've seen some from, you know, Jordan High School. I work really closely with them. I see some great opportunities and some great success stories come out of there. So I just wanted to say thank you and you have my support. Please don't hesitate if you need any help with your ongoing commitment to this program. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes the council comments. I think we've done public comment. Just just to add to what everybody said, just a phenomenal way of reaching out to folks for an amazing sport. And I agree, we are going to get rowing for the Olympics. That's the goal. And a lot of folks are working to make sure that that happens. And we we are the world class Rowing City and have the history to prove it. And I think one of the best rowing facilities anywhere in the country, especially for for hosting these larger events. And and what we do currently, I mean, just take any on any given day, you can just go out and watch Marine Stadium or to the river and you just see folks, young people rowing. And it's just one of the I think the kind of the beauties of of that of the neighborhood as well, and of seeing all these young people enjoying a sport and taking care of themselves and really appreciating each other because it really is an every in every way team sport were there where, you know, people are learning and supporting each other. So I think it's phenomenal and a great way to reach out to young people. So thank you for that. That concludes public comment and council comment. So we'll go ahead and do a roll call vote, please. Speaker 0: District one. Speaker 1: Hi. Speaker 0: District two. Speaker 1: I District three district. Speaker 0: I district for. Speaker 2: My. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District seven. Speaker 3: I. Speaker 0: District eight. Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 0: District nine. Speaker 2: By. Speaker 0: Version carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is item 14, please.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the City Manager Department by $10,000, offset by the Third Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the Citywide Activities Department to provide a contribution to the Long Beach Rowing Association (LBRA) at 5750 Boathouse Lane for the creation of a free Youth Learn to Row Summer Camp targeted for students attending Cabrillo, Poly and Jordan High Schools; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $10,000 to offset a transfer to the City Manager Department.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_06012021_21-0490

Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is item 14, please. Speaker 0: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Council member Urunga. Recommendation to approve the renaming of South Street Parkway to the Pressburger Parkway. Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember. RICHARDSON. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Today, I'm proud to bring this recommendation forward. We started this process a few months ago with a unanimous vote of the city council to begin this process. And I'm grateful to see the vote of support from the Parks and Rec Commission. It did not make it out of the they didn't receive a vote in the government oversight committee. I thought with with chair, supernormal and staff about the appropriate process. The appropriate process to then bring the recommendation from Parks and Rec Committee to the City Council, which is what I'm doing today, so that we can make a decision to move forward with this. This request a little bit about this request for Dan Price. Berg is North Long Beach leader and he's been involved. And anybody who knows Dan and his family, they're committed and they love the North Long Beach community for more than 35 years. Dan's been incredibly involved in our community, particularly around projects like the One Day Christmas Store, an event that provides gifts for people in Long Beach who otherwise wouldn't be able to provide Christmas at all. And that's gone in 2007 to 2015. I've helped out with this program's an incredible program in its nine year run. The store service, 30,000 people from our community right here in Long Beach and a number of other projects at the Long Beach Veterans Day Parade since day one. Dan is family will open up their house to just a great family. And we're a tight knit community in that district. In fact, we have a culture of neighborhood associations. Dan is a part of that, that group of all of our neighborhood associations. And we've taken great pride in transforming places that weren't necessarily places of pride. Vacant lots. Walls that have integrity, graffiti and transforming them into places. And the way we do that a lot of times is by beautifying an area or adding a mural or naming a location that most some folks may not have thought of naming. There's a little piece of history right on South Street by the city's first park pocket park established in North Long Beach in the 1990s. And it's about a third of an acre. It's a small lot that used to be dumped, items in trash and, you know, other things you wouldn't want next to your home. Dan And a lot of the residents of the Forest Park started cleaning up this little this little patch of dirt. Ultimately, it turned into a nice green parkway, and it's turned transformed into a place. In that place has been host to weddings. It's been a host most recently to a memorial for Long Beach resident candidate Candice Yokoyama. And it's really been what we epitomize as sort of placemaking, transforming a space into a place. And so one of the request of the committee was to go out and receive more public input. And we've received a letter from each of some seven of the ninth District Neighborhood Association presidents of the grant or name Neighborhood Association, the Collins Neighborhood Association, the St Francis Place Neighborhood Association. The College Square Neighborhood Association. Starting Neighborhood Association. Hamilton Neighborhood Association. Longwood Neighborhood Association. These are all ninth District neighborhood groups that work really closely together. We also received a letter of support from the Forest Park Neighborhood Association. This park, this pocket park is within the boundaries of the Forest Park. And that's important to note. And finally, on this portion of North Lawn, which is represented by Assemblyman Mike Gibson, I want to thank Assemblyman Gibson for his letter of support today. And so, as the council member of the night, I'm proud to carry this motion. I think it's appropriate. I think it responds to the needs of our king, the request of our community, to make sure that we're naming many of our local places after, you know, local people with a local story. And in this, you know, in the press, Berg's family has been really committed to the uptown community. And I think this is appropriate fitting naming of this pocket park in my district. So I'm happy to make the motion today. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilman Ringa has the second. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank Councilmember Reyes, very rich itself, for bringing this forward. I've known Dan for about over 30 years and I've been to his house. He has a lot of celebrations. And you're right, he's got a great family, great heritage. He's one of those. And as I mentioned earlier, with with the vice mayor, one the doors, he's iconic. The city that is iconic to the ninth District. And this is a very appropriate and fitting tribute to him and his family for all the work that they've done. He's been a hard worker tonight district. He worked in the office when Councilmember Merrill Lynch was was in office. So there's anybody who knows the district is down prescot. And I'm very happy to be part of this historic event for him and for his family. So thank you to my marriage, to her, including me in this. Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilman Ciro. Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor, and thanks to vice mayor. Richardson for bringing this item forward. You know, I think it's really important that we honor the the wishes of our residents, particularly the neighborhood leaders that have really advocated and supported dad in this naming of this park. And for that, I think that it's important to support that item because it's being asked by our neighborhood leaders. So with that, I support. For that reason, I support this item. Speaker 2: Councilwoman, is your public comment, please, on the item? Speaker 4: Yes, Mayor. Darlene Broom, please begin. Darlene Broom, please press star six to begin. Holly Pressburger. Please begin. Speaker 7: And I'm. Hi, this is Darlene, and thank you for allowing me to speak this evening. I'm speaking in support of Ben. Preferred to rename the South Street Park. We park after him. The first person that I met some 30 years ago. Well, not 30 to 20 years ago, when my husband and I first moved to the Forest Park was a band CRISPR and he has been. Speaker 2: An active. Speaker 7: Figure for that whole time the. History that he brings and the help that he has put forth in this community is. It's not something that you can just pick up every day. This man has been here since when they built the the Forest Park Nature Trail, which is now the Forest Park wetlands. He is there for everything. He opens his doors to whoever needs help. You keep abreast of any and everything that's going on within the city. I can't think of anyone more deserving at this time to have. Speaker 2: Something named. Speaker 7: In their honor for all of the work that they've put. Speaker 2: Out. Speaker 7: And thank you again for allowing me to speak. Speaker 4: Thank you, Holly. Press berg. Please begin. Speaker 7: Hello. I would like to share a letter that my son, our son has written, and his name is Aaron, but he wasn't able to get on this call. I'm going to start with my father is Dan Pressburger. I know there is an issue of support of renaming the South Street Parkway in his honor, and there really shouldn't be. The Parkway has been tended to cared for by my father before the first seed was ever planted. My father lives, breathes, bleeds, North Lawn, which he has fought for Uptown community, that he has raised his children and grandchildren, and he has sacrificed his time and often his livelihood to create legacy not only for my sister and myself, but for our children. I remember being a kid growing up in a bar next to a poorly paved alleyway and a dirt lot with no fence. I remember being seven years old and making that line into a dirt track to ride bikes and drive RC cars and do cool tricks. But suddenly it was too full of trash to play. And that's not the case today. Over 30 plus years, my father has bagged that garbage, fought to get fencing, helped plant trees, flowers. And I'm pretty sure he's mowed the grass once or twice in that parkway. It's been instrumental in getting the city to create the grassy area and putting up fences, creating clean, relaxing area. It was a gorgeous contrast to the filth and dirt and danger that filled the place before. The most important thing about the Parkway is that he never asked for recognition for it. He never he never said this is mine. Even though he took pride looking out of his windows and seeing something he helped create. He never said someone should pay me because the parkway is its own reward. A swath of beauty near a historic landmark. My dad never wanted to own that area, but cared for it as though he did. And whether or not you put his name on that sign, he has left and continues to leave the indelible mark of the north side of Long Beach. His legacy continues through the committees and programs he has founded and shared over the years through the annual Veteran's Parade, the annual Christmas party that he has hosted, nearly everyone from average citizen to city council to state legislator. And his legacy is clearly every single time he a car drives by north by the Long Beach dairy and criminally slows down to get a really good look at that big house plucked out of time and the shaded grassy area next to it. They say, man, that's a really cool place. So no matter what the name is on that sign, it will always be spread. Parkway to the community he is cultivated to the neighborhood and to the folks lucky enough to call Dan Pressburger part of their family. Thank you. Speaker 4: Thank you. Sharon Segal, please begin. Shereen, if your phone is muted, please unmute your phone to begin. Sharon, please begin. Skye. Donato, please begin. Skye Donato, please press star six to begin. Speaker 7: City Council and Mayor Garcia. My name is Skye DiNardo, and although I have only known dance for a few years, I consider him a great friend and he is what I would refer to as a community healer. With all that is done for Long Beach and no family especially, I cannot think of one reason why any person would object to the park next to his home being named in his. Speaker 2: Honor like originally proposed. Speaker 7: I find it sad and tell you that it has come up for topics. Please consider that it be named after him because it certainly should be. He deserves it 100%. Not at all. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 4: That concludes public comment. Speaker 2: Thank you. We will go back. This also concludes Council comments. I will do a roll call vote, please. Speaker 0: District one. I District two. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District three. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District for. Speaker 2: High. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District seven. Speaker 3: I. Speaker 0: District eight. District nine. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 2: Thank you. Now moving on to item 15, please. Speaker 0: Communication from Councilman Super not a recommendation to increase appropriations in the city manager department by $500 to provide a donation to Tinker Clinic for Children for the sixth annual Carnival and Resource Fair.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve the renaming of South Street Parkway, "The Pressburg Parkway" in recognition of the contributions of Uptown community leader Dan Pressburg.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. Next up is item. Well, they're 21 and 22, please. Speaker 0: Report from Economic Development Recommendation to execute all necessary documents with City Ventures for the reduction and sale price of 4800 Long Beach Boulevard for a total purchase amount of 1,109,056. District eight. Speaker 2: Can I get a motion, please? You're going to get a second. A motion by Vikings. McGraw says they can make concessions and they has seen no public comment. Roll call. Speaker 0: District one. I'm district to. Speaker 1: My. Speaker 0: District three. I district four. District four. Speaker 2: All I. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 1: I. Speaker 0: District six. I. District seven. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 0: District eight. Speaker 3: Hi. Speaker 0: District nine. Speaker 2: All right. Speaker 0: Ocean cares.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all necessary documents with City Ventures, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, or affiliate (Buyer), for the reduction in sale price of 4800 Long Beach Boulevard, Assessor Parcel Numbers 7133-010-900, -901, -902, -903, -904, for a total purchase amount of $1,109,056. (District 8)

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Speaker 0: Thank you very much. We are going to go ahead and here I am. 34 police have been requested here at home, 34 person. Speaker 1: Item 34 Communication from Councilman Alston, Councilwoman Allen, Councilwoman Price and Council Member Rangle. Recommendation to request city attorney to draft a resolution calling on Congress and the EPA to take all measures necessary to prevent further harm from the DDT waste dumped in the waters between Long Beach and Santa Catalina Island and Support Assembly Joint Resolution two by Assembly Member Patrick O'Donnell. Speaker 0: Catherine and. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And first, I'd like to thank, obviously, my colleagues, council member Alan, because we have a prize in Your Honor for signing on to this. I think it's a very important item. For half a century, we've known about the harmful, harmful effects of dichloromethane or trichloroethylene, that is, DDT for short. It's a pesticide was banned in the United States in 1972. It caused significant environmental damage and harmed numerous wildlife and marine species, including our sea lions, brown pelicans, California condors, dolphins and other birds and fish. The nation's largest manufacturer of DDT was located in Los Angeles, and they disposed toxic waste throughout the sewage pipes that poured into the ocean, creating a Superfund site of contamination of the house Verde Peninsula coast. What wasn't known until recently was that the company, the dump, also dumped as many as half a million barrels of toxic waste from DDT into the waters between Long Beach and Catalina Island, creating a much greater environmental health hazard than previously was known. Our Assembly member, Patrick O'Donnell, has authored the Assembly Joint Resolution Number two, which is currently going through the legislature, calling on Congress and the EPA to take all measures necessary to protect our coastal resources. And since a Assemblymember O'Donnell has introduced that legislation. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors has also passed a motion by Supervisor Hahn calling on federal calling on the federal government to address this environmental hazard. As important as our coastal resources are, it is also important to lobby, adds its voice in support of Assemblymember O'Donnell's legislation, as well as the county's action, with our resolution calling on Congress and the EPA to take appropriate measures. Assembly Member O'Donnell, I understand, is signed up to speak on this item. So with the consent and okay from my colleagues and the mayor, I would like to see if we can go directly to public comment before we go behind the rail. Thank you. And I would obviously appreciate your support on this. I'm. Speaker 0: Thank you. I do. Let me just go ahead. There's a motion and there's a second by Councilwoman Price to be here the second, and then we'll go to the assembly member. Is there anything you want to compliment, Price? Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm happy to sign on to this item. And I think Councilman Councilmen Austin and Assemblyman O'Donnell for bringing this to our attention, I read only recently became aware of these dumplings. And I guess just real quickly, I just wanted to ask staff, were they is this something that the city staff was already aware of and are we already working with our state, county, federal partners on this? Speaker 6: Counselor, this is Tom. It's not something I'm immediately aware of. We also are getting educated. We'll be asking if anyone else in the organization's been a part of this and its potential that the port has been as well. They do a lot of work on this related to contaminated fish tissue and and soil samples. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And then with that, Madam Clerk, can we go to open a public comment? I believe that we have as a member. O'DONNELL We can make some remarks. Assembly member Patrick O'Donnell. Please begin. Speaker 3: Mr. Mayor, you can hear me correct? Speaker 0: Yeah. We can hear you. Speaker 3: Great. Great. Good evening, Mayor and council members. And thank you for the opportunity to participate in tonight's discussion regarding the dumping of DDT off our coast. And tonight is really a chance to further educate people I've even heard tonight not even know about this. Well, I didn't know about this either. I read about it in the paper. And so tonight, the good thing is that more people don't know that the bad thing is that it's out there. But as the representative for Long Beach, Signal Hill, San Pedro and Catalina Island, someone who cares greatly about our environment. I have authored Assembly Joint Resolution two, which calls upon the federal government, the Federal Department, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the US Congress to take all measures necessary to prevent further harm to our citizens, wildlife and natural resources by the DDT waste dumped in the waters near Catalina Island. DDT is bad stuff. And this situation needs rapid attention and has the potential to become what I call a huge, unnatural disaster, in that it is a disaster created by man and man must address it and fix it. In 2019, scientists from UC Santa Barbara discovered a long forgotten dumping ground for toxic waste produced as a byproduct of the DDT manufacturing process. A recent survey of the site discovered over 27,000 barrels of waste, with potentially thousands more buried beneath the sand on the ocean floor. The site has already gone. The site has already done untold damage to our oceans and threatens to do even more without swift action. And that's what we are calling for again this evening. Assembly joint resolution to calls upon our federal government to take all necessary steps to stop the harm the site continues to inflict on California's residents and wildlife. And I want to thank Council member Austin Councilmembers Alan Price and Turanga for supporting air to and requesting a resolution on behalf of the City of Long Beach in support of this measure, which is really intended to educate and activate educating more people every day we talk about this and ultimately taking action on this tragic situation. DDT is bad stuff. It's off our coast and we must act. And I thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Amber, for your work on this. And I do have other members lined up to speak. Let me start with Councilmember Ringo. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. Basically, I just want to add my voice to this issue, to Xyrem. Basically, we also, as you know, I am a member of the California Coastal Commission and we discussed Assembly Member O'Donnell's bill, and the commission is in support of the bill. I think it's a very important item that we need to look at protecting our coast. And obviously we're also concerned that there may be other sites along the coast of Canada, in Ireland as well, that are not discovered at this point. So we need to basically look at not only this site, but also others as well. So I want to thank the Assembly member for presenting that bill that is very important to the California coast. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman Allen. Speaker 2: Yes. I thank you, Mayor, and also want to thank Councilmember Austin for bringing this item forward and for the opportunity to co-sponsor. I support this. This is an important item. I also want to thank Assembly Member O'Donnell for the resolution at the state level. I also know that Congress Member Lowenthal is doing what you can in Congress to advocate on our behalf as well the the health of our local environment, our residents and our visitors who enjoy swimming, water, sports, fishing and other ocean activities are really important to me. We need to know how this happened, and we need the EPA and the Congress just to step up and help us clean it up. So thank you so much. This is important stuff. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman's in the house. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to also thank Councilmember Alston for bringing this to council and of course, thank Assemblymember O'Donnell for his rapid attention to this matter and the urgency that he brings with it. And I fully support cleaning up this mess that we, you know, that just came upon us. And hopefully by doing this, we can capture other ones from happening in the near future. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I just want to add also so my member, thank you for your leadership on this. This is actually a pretty big issue, I think, like you and so many others. When we start reading these reports of obviously something that's been some major reports on this in the news. It's pretty stunning what is actually just off our coast and certainly close to our neighbors in Catalina Island. The amount of damage it's happened to our coastal assets and marine life is significant. And this is obviously a very dangerous substance. And I think there's a lot of more work and research has got to be put in place to really understand how we really mitigate what's going on, but also protect ourselves from the future, from other types of incidents like this happening. And obviously, it's a different era today and there's many more protections. But I think having this conversation, this resolution and the conversation in the legislature is really important. So thank you, Assemblymember. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and go to a roll call vote, Madam Court. Speaker 1: Councilwoman had. Actually. Speaker 0: I think Councilmember Ashton I think I had him cued up one more time. Speaker 4: Actually, I wasn't cued up again, but I want to just thank everybody for their comments and thank again our assembly member O'Donnell, for his work in the legislature around this. And again, this is one of those major issues that we need to be very mindful of and look forward to our anni vote. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that, please, we'll cover. Speaker 1: Compliments that they have. I'm Councilwoman Ellen. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Price, I. Councilman Sabina. Speaker 3: My I. Speaker 1: A woman mango. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sara. I council member oranga i. Councilman austin. Speaker 3: Hi. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: In case.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Attorney to draft a resolution calling on the United States Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take all measures necessary to prevent further harm to natural resources, wildlife and citizens from the DDT waste dumped in the waters between Long Beach and Santa Catalina Island, and support Assembly Joint Resolution 2 by Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell.

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LongBeachCC_05182021_21-0452

Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to go ahead and do item 23, please. Speaker 1: Item 23 Communication from Mia Garcia, Councilwoman Allen. Councilwoman Mango Councilman Austin and Vice Mayor Richardson. Recommendation to request City Manager to develop a plan to allow restaurant and other related service industry parklets and outdoor dining spaces to remain open beyond June 30th, 2021. Speaker 0: Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and start. And I want to first just especially thank Councilman Allen, Councilman Mongo, Councilman Austin and Vice Mayor Richardson for co-sponsoring the legislation that we have in front of us. And more broadly speaking, of course, other members of the council that have been very supportive of our open streets as well as our broader parklet outdoor dining program. What I really wanted to bring forward was we all know that the city, a date for the end of our current program is weeks away. So towards the end of next month, what we have in front of us, I think we all are aware, is a wildly successful outdoor dining program has been implemented across the city early on when the pandemic hit and there was an opportunity to do the outdoor dining. This council stepped right in and did the right thing and really providing a lifeline for restaurants to be able to operate outdoors in a way that was safe. And they would also bring in folks so that they felt comfortable eating and spending their time. And the resources at these restaurants. And the economic impact to restaurants has been devastating. I think we all know that there has been a huge amount of loss for all of our restaurants. Our restaurants and our food and beverage economy is one of the strong, strongest in our city. And I think all of us know also so many servers and cooks and restaurant restauranteurs that make up our community. And many of them, of course, live in our neighborhoods as we kind of pull out of this pandemic. We still have a lot of folks that feel more comfortable eating outside, regardless of the ability of restaurants being open. I know folks that will not eat indoors right now. They still want to eat outdoors. And I know that a lot of folks feel that for them that's what works. And in addition to that, I have talked to countless residents. Endless residents that stop me and say, we love the outdoor patios, please keep them. I discovered restaurants that I never had discovered before. I'll just give one example. I think all of us probably love five, five, five is one of the great steak houses and restaurants in our city. We talked to the managers there or some of the waitstaff. They'll tell you that they've they've brought in a whole new clientele and group of folks that had never been to the restaurant inside. But because they have a strong outdoor options, they are now there and it's brought in a different group of people to enjoy that place. And that's happening in restaurants all across the city. New folks are discovering restaurants because of the strengthened outdoor pilot program that we've had with with diners. Now, as a reminder. Parklets aren't new. In Long Beach, we had them before the pandemic. We didn't have as many as we have now, but they have been active and there is a parklet, permanent parklet process that the city has established for for restaurants or coffee shops to to build permanent parklets. And what I really want to make sure that we do with this motion is that first we have staff with the authority to provide a extension so that we have an extension beyond the June 30th date. And I've talked to staff and I'll share a question of time in a minute. Mr. MODICA What that could look like and then as an extension is put in place, is really create a more permanent process for the parklets that once they permit and to be clear, not every parklet once one wants to stay permanent and not every parklet may work in the locations that they're in. There's some traffic concerns there. It needs to be conversations with the bid's, with the neighborhoods. So we understand that there has to be a process in place. But my personal opinion is that as many parklets that want to stay permanent should be allowed to stay in place. And of course, we I think they have been a huge benefit to the residents and those businesses. And so I would love to see staff work with these restaurant owners directly and ensure that we're able to keep as many of these as possible. Now, separate of that, we also have an Open Streets program, and we know that many of these open street programs are when the closure of the streets are, many of those will probably will likely end at some point in the future. And I've heard from some from a lot of restaurant owners that they're ready to reopen their street. And but but some want to keep a parklet or want to expand their sidewalk dining. And so as part of this motion, I think we obviously want to we want to treat each parklet as an individual a request. So we want staff to go to each to talk to each park, look at what may work in one place, may not work in another. We want to make sure that we're also looking at creative options. It's parklet. Maybe some folks want to do an extension of the sidewalk dining. I've seen some restaurants in Bixby Nose and in downtown where they just been able to add a few more chairs or tables outside on the street. That's giving them the ability to continue to continue on. We should be lenient and provide an additional space for those folks to do those those types of of additional services on the sidewalk. And of course, I want to make sure that we're doing outreach to residents, to the beds, to the stakeholders so that we can have creative solutions. We want to have a process that is easy and that business owners feel comfortable going through and navigating so that we can hopefully make some of these permanent where it were. It may work to make them permanent. So Mr. Modica, with that, I might have some questions in a minute, but I do want to turn this over to some of the folks that have been in May the motion or report part of this process. So I have a motion by Councilwoman Allen. And with that, let me turn it over to her. Speaker 2: Okay, great. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for bringing this item forward or two. And also just for your leadership over the past year in supporting our businesses. I was so proud to sign on. I've heard from so many business owners and patrons about how much they love the parklets, just like so many of you. They absolutely love and I. And I love. I love it, too. I also want you to know that I have had the opportunity just to visit so many of these businesses, knocking on their doors and talking to them personally. And I just want to give a message to staff from now. I mean, they they thank you all so much. I mean, you created a lifeline for these businesses and some really tough days early in this pandemic. And this was a lifeline that they needed so desperately. You acted quickly and it served just such a great purpose. And you really helped their businesses and they were so grateful. So I just want to deliver that message to our two staff. And I also know that, you know, extending the parklets, you know, it gives it gives continues to give these businesses, you know, opportunity to recoup their losses. And for those that want to keep this permanent, it gives them an opportunity to get their application in. I think it's also important that we hear from our constituents and each of the neighborhood and the business districts and that we take into account, you know, all the safety considerations of our city engineer as we move from the temporary to the permanent parklets. And with regards to the open streets. I also talked to every single business I know online. And regarding that that that that closed street and the majority of those do want that open up again there. They're they're very grateful for the opportunity. But it's it's it's they they say they would like to see that opened up. I know I'm grateful that my partner, the DBA, is currently doing a survey for Open Streets. And so I think it's important that we listen to the stakeholders and their their opinion is going to be important . And just working collaboratively and listening to our our constituents is as key. So thank you, Mayor, again, for for your leadership on this. I do have a question. So moving forward from the temporary parklets and as people make an application, there are going to be businesses that are not going to qualify for a permanent park. Parklet Is that correct? Speaker 6: Yes. So we love the Parklet program. We think that is one of the shining examples of how this city and this council and mayor all reacted very quickly to support our businesses that we had dozens of them spring up literally within a week. Our staff were out there just creating these. But we also just put them in the places because the need was really to get people outdoors. In some areas, they are not. You know, there are some safety concerns. They may be over a storm drain, for example. They may be over a gas line. They may be in an area where the traffic engineer long term has some safety concerns. So we've informally looked at it. We think probably around 70% or more are eligible to go through the permanent process and have some modifications. But there are some that would not qualify and we would be working through those are looking at other options, maybe some sidewalk dining or other things that would be available. Speaker 2: And one last question. So for those that do qualify, then they would have to follow the current design guidelines that are in place. And then I also want to ask you. So those guidelines that are in place as design guidelines, have those been updated or have any you know, we never expected to have these these parklets, but I'm glad we did and I love it. But are those going to be modified in any way or do they need to be? Speaker 6: So Long Beach was one of the very first in the state of California to create Parklets for commercial use. The idea started in up in North in San Francisco as a parklet as a way to create open space, but not for any type of public use or private use like restaurants and things. Long Beach was one of the first to introduce that, and we started getting a number of people interested in 2018 after we had had a couple under our belt, couple of years under our belt, we decided to really create some very strong standards, design guidelines, a very easy to follow direction, directions on how you can create parklets . So that is a pretty robust document that's available. We're willing to look at it if there's things that now don't make sense or have changed in COVID. But we think we have a really good foundation to work from right now. Speaker 2: All right. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you. And Mr. Monica, let's make sure as we start this program to review those that parklet can a process that we have the way to simplify it, we can we can do that the before I go to the seconder of the motion and then I want to go to public comment. And I have I would like to speak to Mr. Monica on the extension. I know I had asked you this, but what would your recommendation be for the extension as we work on this program? Speaker 6: Yes. So I think we would recommend a three month extension beyond June 30th that we would get a through summer, which would be at the end of September. We would then during that time do lots of outreach. We'd go to the bids. We talked to everyone who's got a permit, and we would also then ask them to indicate whether they are interested in becoming permanent. They can apply right now if they want, but we realize a lot don't have the funding available or they need to recoup some losses. I do want to make sure, though, that we're heading people towards a permanent parklet, both for safety reasons but also for esthetic reasons. A lot of the ones that are out there right now are not. They were done on an emergency basis. They don't have the final materials. So we would want to do till September 30th. And if then we have people in the pipeline that are really working on getting it permanent, we'd be comfortable, you know, doing a transition as we move towards the permanent one and then sunsetting the ones that are not you're not interested in moving forward. Speaker 0: Okay. So your recommendation would be the October one would be the end essentially of that of the of the extension. And then the goal would be, of course, to do a permanent process so that by then we've established this permanent process that folks have gone through, correct? Speaker 6: Yes. So the permanent process exists now, but we would ask them to have filed everything to be working, or at least by October one, make significant progress towards making it permanent. And then, of course, if they need more time, we would work with them. Speaker 0: And I want to make sure also, Mr. Modica, that it's not that we just don't treat this like any other part of the process, but we are. I mean, these folks have had dramatic impacts to their operations. And so I know we've had a lot of challenges in making sure that planning is is is up to speed and that we have our full development services team is at full speed. So I want to make sure that getting folks to permanency, which is certainly what I'd like to see and I think what you're hearing from probably here from council members should be prioritized so that these folks are, you know, come some time, you know, come September one, I'm going, oh my gosh, I've only got a few weeks to go and there's no one to help me or or I've been put, you know, to the bottom of some pile. And so I just want to make sure that we are kind of treating this as a very specialized program to get these folks to their permanent parklets, which I think have been a huge benefit to the city and to the restaurants. Let me go to the to the. So thank you for that. So I agree, Councilman Allen, I just part of the motion then will be that September, October I'm sorry, the October 1st and date. Are you okay with that? Councilman Allen? Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. Speaker 0: Okay. Then the second of the motion is Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I'm in. I'll be brief. I think that you know what we what to in them present. It was actually an opportunity to double down on things we already committed to. It aligns with our vision for active transportation. It helps us reimagine our communities to have more walkable, vibrant communities while at the same time making businesses more vibrant. I'll give you an example. You know, we a years ago, we didn't have any businesses in my district with patio dining. And it took a lot major investments to get just one barbecue, extended the sidewalk. But just through this pandemic, what we saw was it became a matter of, you know, whether your business survives or not. And people came outside and they closed off their street and and it ended up being being a success. So I think that this is something that obviously I always will say we should defer to those local neighborhoods on what's right for them. But if there's a process that we can put in place that allows businesses and neighborhoods to accelerate their their path toward active transportation and other things in a more walkable community, I support that . I see this as my my strong support to continue this. I think we also need to be thinking about people's tolerance for going indoors. Everyone has a different comfort level for how they reemerge into the reopening. And I think we just have to acknowledge that we've got to rethink open space in general curbs, sidewalks, bike lanes, all of those things. This isn't going to stop. We're going to have to start designing more patio dining, more use of the sidewalk, wider sidewalks, the things that we've been committed to. I think this is an opportunity to accelerate. So this this item, I was proud to sign on to it. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. And I know this is incredibly important to note that in many of our businesses, it's incredibly important. So I'm proud to add my name to this. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. Madam Court. We're going to go with that. I think we have a couple of public comment and then we'll go back to the council. And then we've got Councilman Austin when we come back. Alex Trebek. Speaker 3: Please begin. Thank you, Mayor. Members of City Council Alex Charron, representing the Long Beach Restaurant Association. We sent a letter earlier voicing our strong support for the site, and we want to thank the mayor for his leadership and the council members for their engagement. Also want to thank very much John Kyser and the economic development team for engaging with the borough and our various members. All hundred plus are extremely supportive of the continuance of the park with the program. I think it's been an unintended consequence and benefit of the pandemic and I think the response from citizens throughout the city of Long Beach has been that they want to keep them as long as possible. We would offer selves up and our members obviously as a resource to city staff as they work through designing and implementing a final structure for the PARKLET program on a permanent basis. And again, thank you, Mayor, council members, city staff for your leadership, very strongly supportive on behalf of the library. Thank you. That concludes further comment. Speaker 0: Thank you, Mr. Clarke. Come to more often. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I agree with all of the points that have been raised thus far. I want to give a special shout out. Thank you, obviously, to you, Mr. Mayor, for your leadership. But I want to thank the hardworking crews for our public works team who really have stepped up in action and made many of these open streets and parklet programs successful. I'm show that we are flexible, we are adaptable, and we can adjust for the moment. And it's really, I think, a credit to our city management or our public works department for really responding quickly. Now, I wish I know there are some businesses and folks in my community in Bixby, those who would have said the bit, but it should have gone a little bit quicker. But understanding the scope of the city, I think they did a really good job in responding to the moment. I'm going to speak in favor of this motion on this item. Certainly I will support extending and maintaining our parklets that are existing at least through the summer. We have great weather for outdoor dining and I think we need to smooth back into our reopening. And as somebody mentioned, be sensitive to the comfort levels of, you know, the consumers there. And then sidewalk dining, I think, is also very, very important to continue as well. And so I certainly hope this motion will contain that. I would like to if there's one thing that I've heard from my constituents in my businesses. Because that I think this open streets and parklets would even be more appealing if we were to to pay a lot more attention to the esthetics. Right. And so as we move forward, I think we're now beyond a temporary kind of solution we need. And those businesses that are looking toward permanence for parklets, there needs to be standards in place. But they have to look good, right? I think that's also important. It can't just be construction corrals and and, you know, orange and white. The corrals we want, we want we want we want the best. And we want our business districts. We want our our businesses to succeed. And the best way to do that is, is with the, I think, parklets and that look good signage that looks good. And so I would just ask that to think about the quality of these parklets what they look like and how they really, really complement the character of the business districts and communities in which they are in . And, you know, I believe that these parklets should also be extended as a piece of regular operating business. Right. They should. As long as a restaurant is open, their parklets should be able to be operational as well. And so I would hope that we're considering giving that to consideration as well. And then I would just obviously announce it's been in the news. We had to make some some significant adjustments to improve traffic and mitigate traffic for Bixby nose area. We're going to go back to business as usual with that. But our parklets and sidewalk dining, I've heard overwhelmingly from our residents as well as our businesses that they want to keep that in place. And so I'm happy to support this and glad we're having this opportunity to extend this for our businesses that really need us at this point. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, councilman. Councilman, Mango. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate this item. I think it's a great direction. I completely agree that the esthetics are a huge component as we move forward. I think it's also important for us to be more strategic at the end of this. So two parts. One is, yes, it's important to prioritize this program. I think we should come in with a program that kind of has an open date for a window where we accept in all the applications and process them. But I think it's also really poignant that there are a lot of individuals in construction right now, whether they're doing home construction or commercial improvements that have been waiting 8 to 10 weeks to get their plans approved. And I appreciate Mr. Orsi is a. Extreme. Commitment to getting that timeline back in order. And I know we just started accepting people at City Hall this week, but I want to both prioritize this while not allowing for any additional delays on behalf of those that are waiting because type of message both for them and those that would like to get back to work . There was a discussion about a roofing permit that was delayed for weeks. So I appreciate that the source is getting to that and I do want to prioritize this while also maintaining the progress that we've been making with the development services progress. Second, at the end of September 30th, when we have completed this project and we say everyone who's requested an outdoor space has received one. I think there's some value in going back to what Mr. Richardson said, which was there are areas across our city that could benefit from this that maybe didn't even realize it. And I'd love to see a strategy across the city, at least for an open parklet summer program in places that have not explored it before with landlords that have not seen this as an option. So I just want to put that in the ear of staff that as we move forward, we kind of think citywide about the opportunities available to us and as we make these big changes. So great item, great work and I look forward to seeing what comes of it. Speaker 0: Thank you. The Councilwoman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I appreciate that this item was brought forth, and I appreciate the opportunity to comment on it. I think that our temporary emergency PARKLET program has been very important in helping our local businesses during the intense difficulties of COVID 19. I think that the city demonstrated true leadership and in the urgency with which we implemented this program. And I think that's fantastic because I know there's numerous businesses that would have absolutely gone, gone bankrupt and not been able to function had we not been able to offer this alternative. I do think that as we're thinking about the city wide approach, we consider the various differences in our business corridors and the neighborhoods where parklets are present. And that's why the experiences of my colleagues who have parklets in residential neighborhoods has been particularly interesting to me. I've been talking with them about it because the impacts to some of the neighborhoods simply can't be mitigated where there are parklets available or currently in existence. And also in talking with our traffic engineer, there are significant issues with traffic safety. Not all of the streets in the city are the same with not all traffic speeds are the same, not all volume on the streets where parklets are the same, and all neighborhoods that have residents living close to Parklets will have some impacts to the community as a result. So I'd like to offer a friendly to Councilwoman Allen that this item and actually before I do that for clarification, would it be to extend whatever businesses are currently operating parklets until October. Speaker 6: Yes. So we would recommend that we would extend what we call our entirety of our Open Streets program until October. And there is really three components to October Open Streets, there's the actual open street like Pine or Atlantic, and those are really governed by the businesses. If they you know, they're going through surveys right now and they man by Atlantic is going to be going back but and pine is under evaluation. There's then parklets and then there's the ops and I can talk about that a little bit more later, but we would imagine that all of those would be able to be extended through September 30th, ending October 1st. Speaker 2: Okay. So my, my friendly would be to have that extension be customized kind of going on to the mayor's points based on the neighborhoods and the specific impacts to the neighborhoods. For example, some of the businesses that were given Parklets in Belmont sure aren't even restaurants. We have a realtor who was given a parklet, and that takes up 2 to 3 parking spots. So I want to make sure that we have an opportunity to reevaluate that before we automatically extend. And also, I want to have the opportunity to speak to our traffic engineer. So my understanding is that we've had five accidents, vehicle accidents into Parklets and two of those have been in Belmont Short. Thankfully, no one got hurt, but those collisions did take out two parklets completely. One of them was in front of the business I own on Second Street, so I want to make sure that the extension and any future PARKLET program be customized so that it's not a one size fits all for the entire city, and that we can look into things like traffic impacts and parking impacts. We've lost over 150 parking spots in Belmont Shaw, which is now presenting a major stress on the retail businesses there, as well as the residents. So like I said, some of those parklets aren't even restaurants and may not need to be a parklet and I don't want to have an automatic extension. So I'm I'm asking for some customization in that front. And so my motion was that everyone would automatically get an automatic extension. And then those they have the opportunity to apply for permanent and that would go to October. Okay. So my friendly would be that it wouldn't be an automatic extension that we'd have the opportunity to look at the impacts to different neighborhoods before an automatic extension is given. Yeah, I know. My motion is for an automatic extension. Okay. Then I'll make a substitute motion and request that we have some customization in regards to the extension program. Okay. Speaker 0: Because the councilwoman. So just saw what's the substitute official even. Speaker 2: The substitute motion is that in regards to the extension of the pilot or the extension of the emergency parklet program, that city staff be given the opportunity to work with individual council offices to determine which parklets are extended based on traffic concerns and parking impacts and other neighborhood impacts to that particular community. Speaker 0: Okay. That's a substitute. Is there a second on the substitute? Speaker 3: They're also second. Speaker 0: It is the second by customer Superman. Let me keep going through the list of books. Councilman's and Dan's. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank you very, very much for bringing this item forward. I think that this has been a life saver for many of our businesses here, especially in my district. I also wanted to thank all of the businesses who have been thinking outside of the box as well and have been able to provide this kind of environment for their customers. I think that that was maybe a very risky, you know, call for them. But they but they actually did it. And I think that it speaks very highly of our city staff and the devotion that they have towards our businesses, especially our restaurants, during these very difficult times. I hope that this motion will will not only continue to expand the PARKLETS, but also expand opportunities for our outdoor dining. And as we move forward, I think that's very important. We we cannot diminish the role that they have played in allowing us to keep restaurants and service and be able to save not all jobs, but at least some jobs across our city, which is very important as a member of our downtown community. I can speak to the impact that they have had on the quality of life, and I just love the feeling of still being part of a vibrant, active city, even in the midst of such a difficult, challenging time. I know that there have been many challenges along the way, and especially as someone who uses a wheelchair, it's important to me that we continue to maintain access to our sidewalks and public right of way where parklets are being used. And with that said, I think that the extending this program through October 1st is the right thing to do and will give our parties the ability to plan for longer term and address the issues in ways that move us in a sustainable way for these restaurants. I know that I have spoken to a lot of business owners in my district that have invested in the Parklets and they have really, really enjoyed being able to welcome their customers in their parklets. And like it was said before, you said, Mr. Mayor, that it has also brought in additional customers that would never probably frequent that restaurant because it was outside. It gave them the opportunity. So I just want to say thank you for this. And I'm really, really excited because I do think that these parklets will definitely, you know, bring so much more to our to our city. The quality and safety and convenience for everyone is important, especially right now, as our businesses recover from this COVID pandemic. So we really need to focus on on helping them recover and succeed. But most importantly, we really need to help our small businesses, our restaurants thrive from here on out. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Supernova. Speaker 3: Thank you. We have just a handful of parklets in the fourth Council District and actually two of them on the Anaheim corridor in this area, business district have closed down. They're ready to go back indoors and they volunteer literally to shut them down. My concern, my support for the second is that I'm not sure where stakeholders would have a voice if this is just automatically move forward where you get an extension of 90 days. I'm not sure if there's a process in place where some of the unintended consequences, there's a port or someplace that the public can take that maybe Mr. Modica has something in mind. If so, if he if he could explain that. So that that's the spirit of the the second and why I'm supporting it is that we need to have some some point other than specifically the council office because these parklets didn't go through the council office. They basically the application goes to special events and that's who administers all this. So. Mr. Modica, do you have any way that the stakeholders could either have a protest or at least voice the issues? And secondly, to Councilman Austin's point, I think esthetics are incredibly important on this. And but I would add that it has to be a balance, has to be esthetics, safety and ADA access or ADA compliance are the keys. Those three keys. Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. Zubrin. Yes. Those are some good questions. I'll try to answer those. I think we definitely can build in some community outreach process. I think with extra time, that becomes a little bit more robust. So if we're looking and trying to make decisions by June 30th about who should get them and who shouldn't. That's only about six weeks away. Additionally, we would need some criteria for the second on how we determine when we come to June 30th who who stays and who gets the automatic extension. I think there's some very valid points that are being brought up by Councilmember Pryce about and especially in some of her areas, are those that's one of our more difficult areas to determine permanent parklets. To be able to really look at what would need to be permanent and the and the permanent impacts of that on parking, on residents, on retail and others. So if we were going to do the substitute, I would need a little bit more direction on how do we make the determination? Is it certain businesses on Second Street, is it all of them or are certain businesses citywide? Or we do the extension and then work on that through the permanent process. Speaker 3: So just to complete my thought, so if we're not there, can't get there by June 30th, can we possibly agree to that? There will be some process in place where people can voice an opinion on these. Speaker 6: Yes, we can certainly set up a process to do that. Again, the more time there is to create it and have them voice it when then we can, you know, look at that as as we move towards decisions, trying to do all of that by June 30th is going to end and allow enough time and then make those decisions on whether or not to extend them. That's a little tight in thinking. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also want to thank your leadership on this item as well. I know our restaurant slash hospitality industry has been greatly impacted by COVID and has had to really pivot in order to survive. Many did not make it, including several restaurants and dining business did not survive in my district. But. But I wanted to ask the question, is this item also not us? Is this item to also vote for a plan for us in addition to extending it automatically until October? And then it's a plan to also determine how much it would cost to making a permit and what what the implication would be for it. Right. Speaker 0: Yeah. I think I'm, I think I'll, I'll answer that. Mr. maybe Mr. Modica. I know we've been discussing this. The idea would be for staff to create a plan, and the extension would allow staff to create the plan to work with stakeholders, see which ones would work. And obviously if there were parklets that were going to try to apply to be permanent, but for whatever reason, maybe the traffic engineer or the community. There were issues with then, of course, then those parties perhaps would not be allowed to be permanent, depending on what that process was like. But this would just give everyone the time to, to and for staff the will to come up with that process, because there isn't one in place right now. Mr. Marchand, you want to add anything to that? Speaker 6: Yes, I think that's exactly what we were looking to do, is to kind of create that and and then be able to gather all the input. So in terms of cost, though, this is typically a full cost recovery. We would expect that the city actually for a year now has been providing all of that for free. So we didn't charge fees. We provided all of the barricades on the public side when it was public access. So there's been a significant amount of public investment, but going forward, those would be cost recovery and the businesses would need to come up with the investment to make it permanent. Speaker 2: And so with this also be a time where we could get the stakeholder. I heard a little bit that we would be able to get other input on on the development of this plan. Right, such as that, in reference to Council Member Sabrina's question about engaging feedback on this. Speaker 6: Certainly, yes, we could set up a process to gather some more of that input, especially on the individual parklets. I know some of the bids are already doing that work up in Bixby Knolls on Atlantic. That work has already been completed. There's work right now going underway by the Dolby in downtown regarding Pine but also in general. And we would want time to assess that but also give people the ability to give input on a specific one that they might be having challenges with or that they really support. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. That helps answer my question. And the other is that, you know, I, I also look at these parklet as opportunities for economic recovery and also activating our corridors. And it's one of the challenges I have and I look forward for opportunity to seeing how that could potentially work. And we developed plan in my district as well. So thank you so much. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman's in Dallas. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for everyone who's speaking on this as well. One of the things that I wanted to point out is thank you so much, Councilmember Sara, for pointing out that there actually have been a lot of businesses that have not survive. And that continues to break my heart every single day when I see businesses not being able to survive. So one of the things that I think is important is to make sure that we we tailored to those businesses that are really trying their best to to move forward and come out of this. So I would like to make subs to actually, you know, extend the, like the first motion. But maybe what we could do is only extended to the the restaurants that are currently on that on the PARKLET program. So I think that would be good in that way if it's only extended for the PARKLET. And like Councilmember Susie Price said, there's other businesses that maybe can can be looked at separately and that's what my set up would be. Speaker 0: Okay. Is there a second on the sub? Speaker 2: Sub again, Mr. Mayor? Speaker 0: It's taken by Councilman Price. Councilmember. Speaker 2: Councilman Price. You. And thank you, Councilwoman Zin de Haas. I'm just really trying to mitigate the impacts here, so I appreciate that said, I do I have a question for city staff. My district much of it and where I think most of the majority of the parklets in the city are in the coastal zone. Would an extension like this be automatic in the coastal zone? Speaker 6: Development Services will help us with that. Speaker 7: Uh, thank you. Councilwoman Price So depending on tonight's action, we would have those discussions with the Coastal Commission staff. Our current waiver from the Coastal Commission is based on the Governor's order. My understanding is that that order is going to lapse on June 15th, but we're not in possession of any subsequent order or clarifying language from the governor or from the legislature. So we can't predict exactly how the Coastal Commission will respond. But the Coastal Commission would be within their rights if they wished to to revoke our approval on June 16th. Speaker 6: And just to add to that, if I will, there's still some lack of clarity there, because we do believe the governor is going to relax the health orders on June 15th, but we're believing that he'll keep the emergency in place through September because that's the federal funding to fund the disaster will go all the way through September . So there may be some nuance there. Speaker 2: Got it. Thank you. And Councilman Zander has the only friendly that I would make is when this comes back to us for a permanent parklet program that staff have the opportunity to consider safety issue, traffic safety issues, parking impacts, impacts on other businesses, not restaurants and residents input when considering whether to allow a parklet to go permanent . Thank you. Send it. Thank you. And I appreciate that. And I just I do want to just I know. I hope Carl Hickman's on this call, Carl. The traffic safety concerns that you've that you and I have talked about is is it fair to say that the traffic safety concerns vary by street by street, depending on the with traffic volumes and speeds on the street? Speaker 3: Yes, Councilwoman Price, you're exactly right. You know, not all the city's streets are the same. There are buried conditions everywhere. So Parklets in one district may not be the same as the perfect conditions in another. And the ones that are along Second Street and Belmont sure are rather unique. So you're right. We need to look at each individual roadway configuration where the parklets are and help to decide where we're going to allow them in the future to perhaps go to permanent or where they may be come out. Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I'm going to vote in favor of the extension tonight. I can definitely hear where the votes are. Just want council members to understand. The reason I was asking for customization is I have some serious concerns about traffic safety issues and I wanted our traffic safety team to be involved with, even with the extension in terms of a few of the areas of concern. But I understand where the Council's will is, and I certainly am not going to vote against an item that will allow us to have the opportunity to continue to help our businesses. I just hope that those corrals are solidified and that everyone's taking the best precautions until we get through the extension. So thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Councilman Mandel. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I also think it is appropriate time to bring up an opinion that I know will not be popular among a majority of restaurant owners. But this particular restaurant owner contacted me because they feel as though stating their opinion is so unpopular that it is difficult for them to communicate in restaurant groups. There are restaurants in certain areas that have significantly more square footage than their neighbors. And so while they both benefit from the extension into a parklet like their neighbors do, the more parking spaces that are eliminated from the street also reduces the number of potential customers they feel that they can get. And again, we had some dialog about that. Customers aren't just based on parking, and there's a lot of other things going on in the economy. But I think with a long term vision of alternative modes of transportation to get to these corridors, I think that's really important because there are a lot of facilities that as the economy does reopen, the more parking spaces we take away in parking impacted neighborhoods, the more difficult it will be for them to return and restore to full capacity. And so how we adopt and bring in alternative modes of transportation to support those that pay. Speaker 0: Top. Speaker 2: Dollar for their space that now is not full and is also something for us to think about long term. So just as it's an opportunity to share their opinion that I think we are here to represent every voice and for those to be heard, I thought just an added to it, but I of course signed on to this item and support it wholeheartedly and just want to make sure that we move forward strategically in recognizing that. I hope that just months from now we will be completely restored and we want to make sure not to move in the direction of alternative transportation that the community has not yet adopted and look at what ways we can help them get there. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also want to confirm one thing is that we're not going to be changing the operating hours at this time for the parklets. Again, I have homes that are located within 100 yards of bars and restaurants, and the operating hours that we've had in Belmont sure have seemed to work out okay. And so I just want to make sure we're not modifying that customization situation. Speaker 0: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean. Mr. Monica, would it be would customization happen as they become permanent, passed past the the pilot or should? Speaker 6: Yes, that is one area that we did have some customization. And most of the city we did just that with the normal operating hours due to the crowded conditions in Belmont Shore. We had worked on some other I think 10:00 was the it was kind of the consensus for for the Belmont Shore area. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 0: I think you have Councilman Allen. Speaker 2: Yes. So I just wanted to talk on this really a little bit more. I understand what Councilman Price is, and the safety is always a concern for me. And I think that gives us time over until October to evaluate that. I will not support and I will not support only being restaurants. I know the restaurants had a hard time during the pandemic, but there are other businesses that were hit really hard that have parklets. In my district we have gyms, we have nail shops and I don't think I feel I don't support telling them that they don't have 90 days to to to recoup their their losses or even to go through the permanent process of having a permanent parklet. So I don't think that we should be should be telling businesses only restaurants are the only ones that have this this privilege. I think that some of the hardest hit businesses during the pandemic where the gyms, they weren't allowed to open at all where the nail shops and and so that's my concern. And I, I will not see I will not be supporting a motion just to allow only restaurants to have parklets. Speaker 0: I'm wondering. Okay. SO Mr.. Mr.. Modica. I think the motion for the motion on the floor is an automatic extension for all restaurants and for non restaurants. Do we have an idea about how many parklets, how many non restaurant parklets there are or open space? I don't know. Speaker 6: Mayor. The City Attorney. The motion on the floor is the substitute substitute which limits the Parklet extension to restaurants only. Speaker 0: Right now. And my question to you, Mr. Modica, was how many of the current kind of parklets are non restaurants? Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you for the question. So we believe there's about ten that are not either restaurants or bars. The vast majority are restaurants are parklets. There's a couple of bars. So that's a question for us, too. When you say restaurants, we're assuming you mean excluding bars, but that would be a clarity. And then there's a couple of barbers, salons and gyms within those ten. I do want to make clear, as I understand, you're talking about the Parklet program, not including those things. There are probably over 200 other businesses that have applied for what we call an occasional event permit, and they are using their own private parking lot in order to do things like a tent outside in the park, which is not normally allowed in your parking lot. We also want to continue that until September 30th and then we'd you know, that does need to eventually go back to normal. But we understand that would not just be restaurants that would still be open to everybody. Speaker 0: Okay. And just to clarify, I'll make this clarifications also with customers. And that's it's it's my understanding that the extension is for restaurants and bars due to September 30th. And then if there are there are ten of these parklets that are kind of non restaurants, but also non extensions into the parking lots. Is there a way that we could get to these that we can work with these ten? I want to make sure that are one of the chance to support the broader program but get to what people are looking for. Is there a way maybe Mr. Murray got you to address those ten that are maybe out there that are in this unique spot? Speaker 6: So all ten would have the ability to use if they have private area, they could all apply now for an occasional use permit and and be able to use their parking lot. Some might not have that, some might only have a parklet. I just don't have that information in front of us on those ten specific cases. Speaker 0: Okay. Well, let's, let's keep the conversation going. I think councilman's in the house or right. As of right now, at this moment, the sub sub is to extend all restaurants and bars until September 30th or October one. And we're still having a conversation about these possible ten businesses. And this includes Tom. So all the businesses that have their their their extensions like like nail salons, I know there are some barbers that have there are going into their parking lots. Those all can still continue beyond the June 30th thing. Correct. Speaker 6: That's that's recommendation. Anybody that has the OP would be able to continue to use their parking lot until September 30th, but we don't really have a permanent process for them. Going beyond that really is against the zoning code. So that would need to end in September 30th unless we come up with a brand new program. Speaker 0: Okay. And maybe that's something we can look at between now and September 30th and ways of helping those businesses out there. You know, if there's a possibility to provide some resources there, let me just keep going. So we know where the sub sub is right now and we'll just keep going. Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple of things, though. Thanks for clarifying with the EPA. We have way more EPA in the parking lots in North Lobby, so I'm glad to hear that that will continue. But I agree with what you just said. We certainly need to figure out what a solution is between now and then, particularly, you know, is there alignment with the recovery funds to see if we can help them make some of these outdoor patios more permanent? Because I'll tell you, there will still be interest there in terms of I want to be sympathetic to Councilmember Al Allen hadn't thought about the non restaurant operators and I know that there are a few gyms that have gone outside. Those are significant investments. If those were included, if those are included. What is the difference between the main motion and the substitute substitute motion? If the only difference was narrowing it back to businesses. But Mr. Katainen Do you see a difference. Speaker 6: In the motion? Vice Mayor. Thank you. Yes. The difference I saw was that the substitute substitute eliminates any parklet, not the overpass, but any parklet that is not a restaurant. And I believe the mayor has added bars. If that was part of the substitute substitute. So bars and or restaurant as Parklets and these other ten that have been mentioned as the number of Parklets would not be able to continue under the substitute substitute under the main motion. All Parklets would continue until that date. Speaker 3: So if this narrows, think about ten, ten businesses. I think before we make that decision, we need to understand where they are, who they are, and how they how they feel about this. I don't know that that and I would love to hear it. Whether those ten or not are the are, you know, help advance some of the interests that Councilmember Price mentioned in terms of her subs to motion. We're talking about ten businesses and it's going to make a difference to them. I prefer to make a vote on the main motion. I don't see I'm not hearing an art a compelling argument on by exclude these ten businesses. What I'd love to do is get back, withdraw the substitute motions and get back to the main motion that I think effectively does what I've heard people talk about. And if there are very specific concerns, then we just adjust the main motion to address those very specific concerns. I'm not seeing a big difference between the May motion and the substance substitute, except for the fact that excludes ten businesses that we don't have a lot of information on those businesses. I'm not comfortable I'm not comfortable supporting at all. And those are my comments. I would leave the makers of the book up to figure out what to do, but it seems to me the cleanest thing to do is just get back to the last. Speaker 0: Let me just keep going to the queue, Councilman. Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. I know a little bit more about some of them. And what I've heard from staff is that it would be helpful if potentially we include those gems. Gyms have been closed the longest. They actually were full closures. And so if miss that day is open to a friendly amendment to allow. Gyms and personal services to continue into your friendly. That would be helpful. Speaker 6: Councilmember Omar Gonzalez, city attorney. I think the the cleanest way to do it would be to withdraw the substitute substitute and return to the main motion, which would address, I think, the issues identified by Councilmember Allen and the vice mayor and possibly the councilmember for the first District. That would assume, obviously, that you would either vote on or withdraw the substitute motion also, but the main motion would address those issues. Speaker 2: Mr. City Attorney, thank you for your input. Unfortunately, it does not address the parklets that are held by office uses and office uses are currently taking up some parklet parking spaces. And so I think that including the barbers and personal care services and other businesses that really can't function on Zoom or WebEx or any of those those office uses is where we were kind of making sure to hit that. And again, this is just sort of context that I'm assuming based on the 30, 90 minute roundtables I sat in with Mr. Keisler over a period of three weeks. I think what Mr. de Haas is looking to accomplish and what Ms.. Allen is looking to accomplish would be possible if what I saw was the sun has not been, but I'd like to hear a verbal option on accepting a friendly to expand her motion to include. Parklets that are not currently used for office uses, so that would be permanent adding personal care services and gyms. And I think that meets the needs of Miss Allen while still addressing the needs of the community and reducing the number of outdoor spaces for office uses. Where those parking spaces are still critical and or could potentially create an unsafe use in that area where other parklets could be expanded to those safe uses in areas that are maybe not as much need, but thank you for the recommendation. Ms.. And they are councilman's in the house. Are you open to my friendly? Yes. I also want to make clear that with my motion. And thank you, Councilmember Allen, for reminding me of all the businesses that are out there. I do not in no way want to eliminate any of our businesses the opportunity to be able to succeed, especially if a parklet is going to be what's going to help them succeed and move forward. So with my motion, I was trying to get the the first motion from Councilwoman Allen, and I'm trying to find a middle space, a middle place for Councilmember Price as well. I know that she had some concerns. And how do you feel about about that? Would that do you think, Councilmember Allen, do you think that would satisfy the businesses you're concerned about to. The gyms and the personal care services. And yes, as long as as long as you have anyone that currently has a parklet, as long as I definitely don't want to interfere with anyone's livelihood. And and it's they still need some more time. This is still really fresh for businesses. So as long as there's any business that's currently operating a parklet has the ability to still do so and seek a permanent a permanent PARKLET. So it may be I guess I would be looking for staff to tell me, are there any other parklets that are outside of personal services and jams? And if there are, I would want them included as well. Speaker 6: So we believe that there is one parklet that would not meet that definition or roughly around that, and it is one that is a retail or it is a real estate firm, but all the rest, we believe, would be covered. Speaker 0: Okay. So just to be clear, the motion that's on the table right now covers all parklets across the city, with the exception of possibly one parklet. That is that is a retailer. Is that correct? Mr. Marika. Speaker 6: We believe that's the case. Yes. Speaker 0: And as a reminder also that I know we're talking about the extension provides an extension. Any parklet currently operating can still apply for permanency tomorrow. You know, so that's still a process that that's that's that's moving forward. Let me keep going down the list. Councilman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you. And I just wanted to clarify, I don't have an issue with gyms and personal care who have to come outside in order to be able to open their business at some level. My issue is really with the realtor that is taking what's a major traffic safety concern where it's located, but also it's taking 2 to 3 parking spots from a really dense neighborhood where coastal access is as important priority. So I would just ask that they not I don't even know that they're wanting to extend their parklet because all their business is indoors now. But I just don't think an automatic extension is necessary for them now. If we go back to them and they say, You know what, we'd really like to have it. Then then maybe we can consider that for them. But I just I don't believe an automatic extension is justified for a business that has indoor space and often sees clients outside of the office anyway. Speaker 0: Okay. I have Councilmember Gringo. Speaker 4: Thank you. All right. They have forgotten about me. That appreciated a lot of a lot of the questions that I have had sort of been dealt with. But just to make a quick comment, and I do have a question. I think we're trying to get into the minutia of these items. Now, that were originally the original motion, I think was pretty straightforward that we can address, that staff can address and come back by September 30th. And then after that, the decisions can be made as far as what parties can and cannot stay. The one question I have is what about preexisting parklets? And we had a few. Are they going to be grandfathered in or are they going to be thrown into the into the basket in regards to be reevaluated for permanency or not? Speaker 6: Yes, sir, that's a good question. So anything that is permanent had already gone through a process. They've all been permitted. Those would stay. There wouldn't be any change to those. We're really just talking about the ones that are under the emergency authorization. Speaker 4: Okay. I appreciate that very much. That's all I have. And. Oh, and by the way, the the. I guess we would call it a parklets. But those that are in parking lots that those are continuing to go under and OVP processed, is that is that correct? So it's not part of this discussion that we have here. Speaker 6: They would also get an extension of their EAP through September 30th for all users, not restricted anything. Speaker 4: Okay. But then after September 30th, we're back to the OVP process. Speaker 6: So after September 30th, we would envision that those uses would start to become less frequent. We can certainly I'm hearing some interest from the council on how can we continue some of those if they're appropriate. We would be in during the study period, come back with some ideas. But again, we're really using allowing them to use something that is traditionally only designed for parking for very different and non-conventional uses. Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you very much. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. I have everyone who has spoken. So let me just clarify for the city of Tripoli and for the city manager, there is a motion on the floor that would provide an extension to October 1st for all parklets. I think with the exception of one use, which is a real estate use, I think that was the motion. And and of course this includes the all the parklets under a program developed by staff to support all the other extensions and to that are happening at parking lots that are happening in other places to work with the community and provide and create a program for permanency. Did I get that correct? Mr. Modica or Mr. City attorney. Speaker 6: Yes, that's the way we understand the motion is that the extension for the PARKLETS would include all businesses with the exception of. Speaker 3: The realtor or commercial use. Speaker 6: Yes. And then we would be looking as we go towards the permanent process for things like safety and working with residence and parking and all of those considerations that were listed. I do want to add one thing, Mayor, that we haven't discussed, that I just want to make sure the council's aware of. We when we first put these parklets out, we just did them. We didn't, you know, go and get any paperwork. We just did them. We then went back in around January and created formal documentation where we made the business owners sign off and say they understand that they have a parklet. They had certain esthetic requirements, they had certain ADA issues that they had to acknowledge as well as as well as safety issues and insurance. To date, most have signed that document, but we have about 30 who have never acknowledged it. And we've been very, very patient. We gave them until January and then until March and now until May. I really need to get those signed. So I would like just to let you know that I'm planning that any if any business hasn't signed off on just those basic acknowledgments that they would not be eligible for the extension on June 30th. Speaker 0: Yeah. I mean, citing the basic things that the basic paperwork seems seems pretty basic, so. Councilman Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. I just want to be clear that that is not the motion on the floor. The motion on the floor is to include all non office related uses because while Miss Price may have a realtor use, I had an office use on a street in my business corridor that did not need an outdoor use. And so I think that it's really important that the motion, as I presented it, the friendly that was accepted by Ms. Van de Vos, is what we actually are voting on. And while the. Parklet may or may not be there today. I know it was there a few weeks ago and it was an office use outdoor, taking up multiple parking spaces from a corridor which was one of our two busiest corridors in the district that is constantly in need of parking. And so this particular business use this office space to use. Can operate from Zoom or any of those other alternatives and is not necessary to work outdoors. So just to be clear, if there's a change to the motion on the floor, I'd really like to know before I vote on it. But what I had made a friendly was to add in all those other uses except for. Office related type users. So adding personal care services, gyms and restaurants and bars were all in there. And maybe the one operating in my district is operating rogue and is not authorized. I'm happy to work with city staff on that. Speaker 6: So this is Thomas Jefferson standing is it's not office use. So we understand that if it's realtor we need to treat all of those cases the same. So yes, it would I think go the way to say non office is a good description. Speaker 2: And I also don't want to target one industry of realtor versus another industry. It's all non office. If you don't have to be in person to serve someone food or provide them the equipment to work out with or to actually cut their hair or do their nails. Then there are options for you should you continue to not want to operate indoors. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I think, Mr. Monaco, what you're saying is that that's a good clarification, I think. And I think it's an important one. I think and I think what you're saying also, Mr. Modica, is that's a very limited it might be maybe just a small one or two that that would fall in that category. Right. Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I was just going to raise that. So to do a policy that excludes a particular business I'm uncomfortable with. I think, however, how Councilmember Mongo frames it is a little bit broader by just saying that maybe a category of non of office related businesses or wherever that category is may seem a little safe. But I just wanted to raise this with the city attorney. Just, you know, are we setting a policy by, you know, one particular business? But would you recommend that we go about we started the motion this way by looking at a category that's exempt. I just I needed to raise the question. Speaker 4: Vice mayor. Speaker 6: Vice mayor. Yes. And the Councilmember Mungo's point, I thought I did say office use. I did say that what I had heard is that one example was the realtor. But it is it would be by use. So if there's more other businesses within that category, I think council's making a policy decision that they do not get the extension for a parklet. Speaker 3: Okay. So much more much I'm comfortable with at least having that conversation. Look at council members. You've got to defer to them to know what's best in their districts. And it seems like we're in a place where everybody's gotten the things that they need. Very close to the emotion, but nuanced. So I'm happy to support the motion from. Speaker 0: Okay. Then just to clarify one more time. It's extension to the first minus office. Use attorney to make sure we're on the same page. Is that correct? Speaker 6: That is correct. Speaker 0: Okay. That's what it is. And they have to confirm. That's correct. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 0: Okay. Councilmember Austin. Speaker 4: I just need to clarify one thing, and that is in the motion, we will not be having any new parklets unless they are applied. They go through an application process. This is just to extend existing parklets, is that correct? Speaker 6: That's correct. The funding for the program to put out brand new temporary parklets has also expired. Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: And Councilman Allen. Speaker 2: Yeah. And that was my question that Councilman Alston. So if there anyone even prior to COVID that was an office space could have applied for a parklet and could be issued it and they still have that opportunity. So even though they're excluded from this extension, they have every right to go ahead and apply and possibly get or get denied. That's still available to them, correct? Speaker 6: Not necessarily. So the PARKLET program started as being solely restaurants, and then the council helped adopt that program and we actually expanded into fitness and some of the personal care outdoor services. We did not go to retail as we didn't want to have that become like, you know, clothing racks out on the street, for example, or office type uses. So in our current program for permanent parklets, those are not authorized uses. It's gyms and restaurants, I believe. Speaker 0: Okay. And I would imagine, however, can I interpret a little bit different? That's okay. So if there if there is a if there is a a business or a use that would like to become a parklet or that is within this, you know, June 30th date, they can always work with the city and try to contact the city and look for alternatives or see if they can get some kind of change. Because we've done that in the past. For example, when gyms weren't allowed parklets for gyms weren't allowed. We made the change actually in the code. I just want to make sure be very clear that the extension is, well, we're extending almost everyone. Even if you fall into that category, you can still work with the city on options and different opportunities for your business. And so I just want to make sure that that's also. But then also just your purpose closes tomorrow as well. Speaker 6: I'd like to have some direction on that because that is a little bit different. I'm hearing now that anybody who currently has a parklet those types of uses, then you would want us to expand the park, extend the parklet, but we just took policy action to get rid of a specific office use. So if that's going to change for the permanent program, I kind of need to hear that from the council. Speaker 0: I don't think you've heard that from the council yet. Councilman Price. Speaker 2: I didn't hear the mayor say that. I think he's talking about if if there's a non. One of the uses that doesn't fit into this current automatic extension. They can always go through the process of applying for a permanent parklet and I support that as well. I will say, I mean, I really did want to highlight this, but at Tom's comments, Mr. Motive, his comments about the types of parklets we have allowed kind of begs the question why? What is council and press talking about then? And the reality is that our bids, we're working very closely with public works on the parklets that were being put onto Second Street. And then one day a parklet appeared that the bid didn't know anything about and the council office did know anything about. And of course we don't want to shut down their parklet, but it is a real tea place and it's on it's on a very it's a major corner, a very prominent major corner inn in Belmont. SHAW And so it's taken 92 to 3 parking spots and up in a highly dense parking impacted area where coastal access is our number one priority. And it's just not a need that's necessary anymore. And that's why I was hoping for some customization, because we think we might be able to work with that business owner to allow for some outdoor seating, but we don't need 2 to 3 parking spots for it. And I don't know that they were ever supposed to get one to begin with, but so the residents have been really counting down the days until the the June 30th deadline, as we have told them, that that that was a mistake that we made and we apologize for that and that we will be more mindful of what parklets continue. So I appreciate everyone's conversation. And and I'm sure to some people, it seems like while they're sitting here talking about one business before we started to have this discussion, we had no idea. I had no idea how many of these businesses we had. So sometimes these discussions among all of us as council colleagues is an opportunity for us to learn what is happening in other districts, and we whittle it down to what the main issues are. And sometimes that takes time. But certainly if all of us have come into this knowing there's only one business to talk about, the conversation would have been streamlined. But we have Brown app, so we do a lot of these things in the public setting and sometimes that takes time. So thank you, everyone. Speaker 6: And Councilmember Price is being very accurate and also very nice. That was not intended to be a parklet in in our rush to just get these out and to help one was put out that was not meeting the guidelines and I think she's correctly at and identified that and that would be a good one to rectify. Speaker 0: Well, thank you. And I once I've been cued up and spoken, I want to just kind of close I think Councilman Price said it right. I just want to just remind us that what we're really doing tonight is extending almost every single parklet in the city to October 1st. And that's what are and even though we've been discussing certain different types of businesses, I just want to thank everyone at the end of the day. Well, this is what this is about. And what the conversation is about is supporting the the dozens and dozens of restaurants and bars of businesses that are using parking lots or using Parklets to get through this pandemic. And so I just want to thank all of you for for that work and staff. I know that this is also a lot of work for all of you. But this this additional time will allow you guys to figure out that permanent program and just continue to support these these small businesses that really need it. So just thank the entire council. I'm glad that we did have were able to have that discussion. Let me go and turn this over to the clerk. We'll do the roll call and we did public comment roll. Speaker 1: Complements and they have. Speaker 5: I'm. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Pryce. I can opener. Speaker 3: I. Speaker 1: Catwoman manga. I can't swim in sorrow. I can't remember. Councilmember Oranga. I mean, Austin. Speaker 4: All right. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. I'm pushing. Kay. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think we have we are open for the comment. We might have one. Can we do that, please? You can start now.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to develop a plan to allow restaurant and other related service industry parklets and outdoor dining spaces to remain open beyond June 30, 2021 program expiration date. Such plan should include community outreach to residents, Business Improvement Districts and other stakeholders and create options for both extensions and permanent parklet structures.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05182021_21-0446

Speaker 1: Item 21 Report from Development Services. Recommendation two Adobe Resolution Certifying the final program EIA on adopting a Global Master Specific Plan Accepting the decision action of the L.A. County Airport Land Use Commission relating to the Globemaster Quarter specific plan. Declare ordnance amending the Ombudsman's proposed sections relating to implementations of the Globemaster specific plan and ordinance. Amending the Use District Map to reflect the establishment of the Globemaster Cortez Pacific Plan. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading District five and seven. Speaker 0: Thank you very much. This is a hearings that will follow this, a hearing order. There is no oath required, correct, Madam Clerk? Speaker 1: Correct. Speaker 0: Okay, great. So let's go. So let's go ahead and turn it over to staff to begin the hearing. Speaker 8: I'd like to introduce Patricia Defender for the the planning. Speaker 2: Manager to make a presentation on this item. Speaker 1: Evening. Mayor. Vice mayor, city council members. My name is Patricia Devendorf. The item before you is a specific plan for the former Boeing C-17 manufacturing site and surrounding areas. This plan is centered on the reuse and redevelopment of the Boeing C-17 facilities located on the west side of the airport and the transformation of that site into a 21st century employment district. The plan also includes surrounding commercial and industrial areas. The actions that are before the City Council this evening represent the final steps to approve the specific plan, which has been in development since 2018. In December 2020, a planning commission held a public hearing on the specific plan and voted to forward the specific plan to the City Council with a recommendation of approval. Following planning permission, the project was heard at the Los Angeles County Airport Land Use Commission, a look which found the project consistent with the county's airport land use plan. The city was awarded a federal grant in 2015 to complete the three Phase C17 Transition Master Plan. Phase one, which was to study existing conditions and alternative land use scenarios for future use of the site was completed in 2016 and phase two kicked off after that time. Phase two has involved preparation of the land use plan, which is the specific plan that's before the council. When this phase is complete, the city will transition to phase three, which is to assist dislocated workers and affected firms and to facilitate business development and job creation. Those tasks will be implemented by the Economic Development Department. Estate planning and zoning law has authorizes cities to prepare a specific plan to implement their general plans, specific plans or customized zoning regulations for a defined geographic area. They enable the city to establish a guiding vision and land use regulations that help implement that vision. And they identify and plan for infrastructure improvements needed to support the contemplated development and mechanisms to fund those improvements. It also further allows a streamlined review process for developments that are consistent with the specific plan. Major economic investment is currently taking place in the city, in the vicinity of the airport and Douglas Park area, which is seeing a clustering of aerospace industries, particularly rocket manufacturing and small satellite launch companies. The adoption of this specific plan will help ensure continued business attraction and job growth in the area and support the successful re-use of the Boeing property. There are 24 aerospace, manufacturing, engineering and design companies based in Langley, Long Beach, and as of January 2020, the industry provided 6500 direct jobs. Recent companies to make Long Beach their home in these industries are. Virgin orbit rockets. Rocket Lab. Relativity. Space spin launch. Morph three of 3D and Space X. The specific plan can help support the continued clustering of these related industries in the area and take advantage of the area's proximity to freeways, the airport and the port. The specific plan consists of 437 acres and is centered around the former C-17 manufacturing site. And Terry Avenue is the North-South access in Spring Street is the East West access. The specific plan area is encompassed within the Long Beach boundaries, but abuts the cities of Signal Hill and Lakewood. Vision of the plan is to transform the area to a 21st century employment district that attracts leading edge firms and takes advantage of its local, regional and global transportation connections. This vision is supported and implemented by a number of goals that include stimulating economic development and job growth, cultivating human capital, encouraging land use and transportation improvements on Cherry Avenue that support surrounding businesses. And increasing mobility choices and reducing vehicular traffic. The plan has six land use districts which are tailored zoning districts for the sub areas of the plan and two overlay zones. The Business Park District, which is shown in the light blue, makes up the core of the plan and covers the former Boeing site, allowing a variety of industrial and commercial redevelopment of the site. This could include office, campus, commercial, industrial, business, park manufacturing, warehousing and research and development uses. The airport district is specifically for airport property, and aviation related use of the remaining districts are largely commercial industrial that allow uses similar to those allowed in Title 21 zoning but that are tailored for the area. The area is divided into four geographic areas based on existing and planned land uses and the role it plays in the broader vision for the area. The North Area is comprised of lots adjacent to Cherry Avenue, as planned for commercial uses and light industrial. The central includes the Boeing site and the uses that I describe before the business park and supportive uses industrial and other supportive uses. The southern area centered on Spring Street is zoned largely for industrial and commercial uses, with the aim of continuing a commercial continuous commercial corridor on Cherry Avenue to create a spine, a commercial spine for the area in the southeastern areas reserved for general industrial and airport related uses. As noted previously, the city is in the second phase of the C17 transition plan process. Outreach has been ongoing since the first phase. During the second phase, staff, which was for the development of this plan, staff held three workshops to hear the community and stakeholders needs and concerns for the project area and how they wanted to see the plan take shape. But South heard at these workshops played a large role in informing the development of the plan. The slide here shows the major points that were expressed by the community that have been incorporated into the vision and regulations of the plan to the extent feasible. They include providing pedestrian oriented retail amenities. Improving safety and appearance of streets. Allowing flexibility in permitted uses and standards. Protecting existing businesses and ensuring sufficient parking, among other comments. This project staff prepared a program IIR as well as an impact environmental impact statement or EIAS, which is required under federal law. Since this project received federal funding, this was necessary because of the federal funding that the city received. We are currently at the second to last point in this process shown on this chart, which is the City Council hearing. This slide lists the issues that were fully analyzed in the Environmental Impact Report, Environmental Impact Statement. And that means that these issues were identified as potentially having impacts, but were mitigated to less than significant levels. And those include esthetics, air quality, cultural resources. These were the items that were analyzed fully greenhouse gas emissions hazards and hazards. Materials, noise, transportation, utilities and service systems. These were the issues that were found to be less than significant, that they were able to be mitigated through the mitigations of the air. And those include esthetics, air quality, cultural resources, hazards and hazardous materials, noise, etc., as showed on the slide here. This slide shows the issues that were found to be significant and unavoidable, even with mitigation incorporated and those included. Air quality cultural resources, greenhouse gas emissions and transportation. The environmental review process requires both Sequoia and NEPA require consideration of project alternatives to identify an environmentally superior alternative to alternatives were considered the first one. The no project alternative was found to not meet the project objectives. The second alternative, the reduced project alternative, was found to be environmentally superior, but would only partially meet the project objectives and would fail to meet them as fully as the proposed project while still having significant and unavoidable impacts, although albeit reduced. And that's the reason that the the plan as proposed is, is what's recommended today. Eight Agency comments were received in on the drafty air in responses to each of these comments were provided in the final air. The city also received additional comments, including comment from the Cow Heights Neighborhood Association after the close of comment period. But all the comments were responded to directly by the city to those who submitted comments. Due to the significant and unavoidable impacts, the city must adopt a statement of overriding considerations when certifying this year. This slide lists the considerations in support of the statement of overriding considerations. The benefits of the project were found to outweigh the project impacts of because the plan meets the objectives of the project, aligns with the city's general plan and economic development goals, generates jobs and strengthens the city's tax base, and lays out a plan for improving infrastructure in the area in conjunction with new development. As previously noted, the Planning Commission held a public hearing on this item on December 17, 2020. A variety of comments and opinions were expressed, many of them in support of the plan. The areas of concern are listed on this slide include concerns about ensuring open space connections. Design of the streets, level of service and transportation impacts. Office parking reductions and parking requirements in general were among the comments that were provided. The city's response to the comments. One of the comments was also from the city of Signal Hill, specifically about concerns about transportation impacts. And I'm going to discuss that in a little more detail. Five letters have also been received leading up to tonight's hearing that have been forwarded to the council, including follow up letters from the Council Heights Neighborhood Association and the City of Signal Hill. The Planning Commission did recommend the City Council certify the EIA. EIA adopt the resolution establishing the specific plan, adopt a zoning code amendment for PD 13 and PD and the repeal of PD sorry, PD 19 and the repeal of PD 13 and adopt a zone change to implement the new specific plan. The LA, the Los Angeles County Airport Land Use Commission held a public hearing on the specific plan on March 3rd, 2021. The purpose of this hearing was to determine the specific plans consistency with the airport land use plan. This is an important step in demonstrating that the plan is not in conflict with the airport and that future land uses will not be negatively affected by the airport or by the airport operations. The ALA made positive findings to declare the plan to be consistent with the county's land use plan. This was procedurally required to take place between Planning Commission and the City Council. In particular, staff wanted to take a moment to address comments submitted by the City of Signal Hill. The City of Signal Hill expressed concerns about traffic impacts, impacts that proposed that the proposed plan may have on streets in the adjacent, in the air, in the city and adjacent to the city. Staff had followed up with City of Signal Hill after the December Planning Commission hearing. There were concerns specifically about mitigation measures being deemed infeasible. Those are mitigation measures that would involve roadway improvements. The air did determine those. Some of those improvements would be infeasible because the intersections are not wholly in the city and therefore the implementation of the improvement is uncertain and requires ongoing coordination with other jurisdictions to be implemented. Some of those improvements also were deemed to be infeasible because they conflict with the multi-modal goals of the specific plan and the city's adopted mobility plan. However, as is also stated in the ER analysis and the response to comments, the city has committed to signal that the city will coordinate and work with them on a project level based on a specific basis through the development review process for future developments to identify additional transportation improvements that will minimize traffic impacts. The city also has agreed to pay the fair share for established transportation mitigations that have been identified that would be identified in the city of Signal Hill as as appropriate in the future. So without ads tonight, Seth asks the city council to take the final steps to approve the specific plan. These actions involve certifying the IRS, adopting the resolution, establishing the specific plan, adopting a resolution, accepting the action of the Airport Land Use Commission, adopting a zoning code amendment, and adopting its own change to implement the specific plan. That concludes my presentation. Staff is available to answer questions and members of the consultant team that help the city prepare the specific plan are also on the line. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. Speaker 5: And, Mr. Mayor, this is Mike May's end before we move on. As the last slide indicated, there is three resolutions and two ordinances. And because of the nature of this action and the environmental impact, the environmental impact statement that will have to be adopted will need a separate roll call vote on the three resolutions and the two ordinances if we get to that point. Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. And we'll do public comment now. Speaker 3: Anthony Souza. He's been. Mr. Mayor. City Council members. Staff. Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Souza. I've been a person of Long Beach my whole life. I went to St Anthony's High School and my kids and grandkids currently live here. I've owned a number of businesses in the city and I've always supported the city in any way I could. Over the past 25 years, I've been purchasing and approving parts of south of Bordeaux, the cherry, which has been zoned Eigg a small part zone PD 19. This area would now be part of a Grand Master Corridor plan. I feel this is it. This is an ambitious plan and a good plan overall. It is not completely considered the many small parcels south of Bordeaux, such as myself and many others. There are many uses in this area and some have been operating over 60 years. And we'll probably operate there a few more decades. There was a car wash on the corner that has a writing commitment to be there another 30 years. The other side of my property there is a dry cleaner that is generational now. It's not going away soon. Then you have H and y rebar and buy and hold digging and have kids and grandchildren running them now. And it's them. I understand that the city would like to have the DC SP adopted. So I feel it's only fair that the plan not be detrimental to the long term businesses and property owners by itself. I believe this could be accomplished by eliminating the PD 19 zoning as as you want and grant grandfathering in the example with an overlay of that CSP for the next 15 years, or at least until the C 17 site is fully developed. Once the C 17 site is about it's redeveloped and you have a robust employment center and an economic driver, the small site may become feasible to develop. I want to thank you for your consideration. Ward Mays, please begin. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and fellow council members. My name is Ward Mace and with Good Men, a global property company that owns, manages and develops properties in gateway cities. For those of you that don't know, we are the company that acquired the former Boeing C-17 manufacturing plant approximately two years ago. And I've had the pleasure of working with staff through the specific plan in the air and are excited and grateful to see this project before the City Council tonight and would like to thank those of us or those that that helped us get there. Oscar Orsi, Christopher Koontz, Scott Kennedy and a whole host of others that we're working on this since 2015, long before we acquired the property. But what I wanted to share with you all is that we continue to receive significant inquiries about the property and are grateful to the city for having been able to license the property to a number of production companies, including Apple TV and Netflix is completing a feature film, The Gray Man that will be released next year. However, most important has been the learning that as we've gotten to know the property, the learning of the unique attributes of these buildings, the clear height , the bay spacing, the power, the significant power with the astro substation and the excess land that makes them incredibly value valuable in the market. And specifically, I want to leave you with letting you know that I look forward to sharing with you some very exciting news in the next upcoming weeks. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Speaker 0: Thank you. Will close public comment. Now go to Councilman Monk. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The staff presentation was excellent. Many have already seen it at the Planning Commission. I do want to highlight comments from both of our public speakers. Mr. Mace, I appreciate that you like the unique attributes of those buildings. It was my first trip with the mayor to Washington, DC, where his chief of staff and I were up at dawn in office after office arguing to not allow those buildings to be destroyed. They would have had a significant environmental impact to the communities around them. Mr. Odinga was very supportive of this position and keeping these buildings and reducing the impacts to those adjacent neighborhoods. And I think that many don't know how much work goes in beforehand. When we get to a project of this magnitude. We talk about the 24 aerospace companies that are in Long Beach and the development services team talks about the 6500 jobs. But I go to those locations and those are not just jobs. Those are careers that will set young, innovative individuals on trajectories for a lifetime. But innovating on behalf of our community, our region, and, quite frankly, our country as we take on the international competition of space and satellites. Slide seven. Outlines 437 acre property. And many have commented on the noncontiguous look of that map. If you could put up Slide seven, that would be appreciated and some of the questions related to the overlays. I think that it's important to note that not all of the area is in the city of Long Beach. And so when you see that map, there's a carve out on Slide seven, which is the city of Lakewood. And so that is why there is a bit of noncontiguous ness in the plan. As you move along to Slide nine and you look at the cherry overlay, there's often a question as to why the requirement for Community and Cherry Avenue overlay zone does not apply to both sides of the street. And perhaps it should. But today, we are eager and excited to approve a plan with minor modifications, because we do have many corporations looking to provide additional career opportunities to the residents of Long Beach. And we do feel that the work that has been done over the last you can argue for years, I would argue six years to get to this point has been significant. Specifically when we look at the existing businesses and the need to ensure that they're protected, as was outlined on Slide 12 by the community. As one of their concerns. So that's three slides ahead. We want back one. Thank you. They want to ensure protecting existing businesses and something has changed since some of the initial community input meetings. What has changed is COVID. And so initially we were moving forward with this plan with great steam and determination. But today I ask that we make some minor modifications. City Clerk I don't know how many minutes I have left, but I'd like to read into the record the suggested amendments to the Globemaster corridor specific plan. Is that something that I have time to do or should I come back after additional comment? Speaker 1: You have a minute and a half left. Speaker 2: Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll close my comments by saying I'll read in the exact or maybe the city clerk can read in the exact language. But I think that my goal today would be to make a minor change, which has been run by the city attorney, Mr. Koons Development Services and others, to ensure that it would still abide by what we're trying to accomplish and be in alignment with community input. And that would be that on page 69, the new subsection 5.3.9 adds in the section as follows Transition between existing zoning and specific plan districts that the land use regulation of the specific plan shall be effective immediately upon enactment, subject to the following four parcels under ten acres. The land use permitted by the existing Zoning and Plan Development District within the plan area prior to the effectiveness of the specific plan shall continue to be permitted in a manner allowed by the existing zoning or Plan Development District for a period of I hear the community asking for 15 years I'm open to. Putting in 15 years in that slot. I recognize that some leases can last up to, as he said, 30 years. But this would not just be for the gentleman who called in plan. It would be for all parcels along that corridor that are ten acres or less. Many of them already have long term tenants and would not be subject. But should those tenants become bankrupt or go under in the next few months or year because of this, then we would give them that opportunity to fill with a like tenant so that they could then recuperate and gather the necessary capital to make significant and transformational improvements to the corridor. Thank you. Speaker 0: And that's a compromise that part of a broader motion than that first motion. Speaker 2: It is the city clerk has the language. I don't know if I should read it all in or if they would like to read it in. I read in the component that I thought was most important. Speaker 0: Mr. City Attorney, is that a line? I mean, I'll ask for a second in a minute, but does that align with how we've got to have the motions yet? Speaker 5: Mayor We're going to have to hear the entire text that the Councilwoman was referring to, because it would be a change to the specific plan itself. So the Council needs to know precisely what do we have? Speaker 0: What are we ready for the record? Speaker 7: Councilwoman and councilwoman, if it's helpful, we have it here at the staff table and we can also assist you in providing that or reading that to the whole council. Speaker 2: I can read it from the top. I just knew I was out of time. So if the council will oblige me to read it, I'm happy to do that. Speaker 4: There. If I can challenge it up for a second. It's it's in my district, too. And if you need to, I will allow some of my time to the council and so she can read it all. Speaker 0: Yeah, let's, let's just go ahead and have Councilman Manga read the rations. It's important for the motion. I think there's also any objection. Go ahead, Councilwoman. Speaker 2: So the beginning of this starts. Per City Council Instruction staff proposes the two following amendments to the Globemaster corridor specific plan prior to adoption by the City Council on May 18th, 2021, as follows one on page 69, a sentence is added immediately following the second to last paragraph of subsection 5.2.2 as follows. Land use is permitted by the existing zoning and planning development districts within the plan area. Prior to the effectiveness of the specific plan shall continue to be permitted in a manner allowed by the existing zoning or planned development district for a period of 15 years. From the effective date of the specific plan as further detailed in subsection 5.3.9 of the specific plan on page 69. Number two on page 69, new subsection 5.3.9 is added as follows. 5.3.9 transition between existing zoning and specific plan districts. The land use regulations of this specific plan shall be effective immediately upon its enactment, subject to the following four parcels under ten acres. A The land use is permitted by the existing zoning and planning development districts within the plan area. Prior to the effectiveness of the specific plan shall continue to be permitted in a manner allowed by the existing zoning or planned development district for a period of 15 years. From the effective date of the specific plan of this specific plan B notwithstanding the above, no parcel shall be allowed to serve as container storage. See uses permitted by the specific plan but prohibited by the existing zoning or planned development district shall be permitted upon the effective date of the specific plan and shall supersede the prohibitions of the existing zoning or plan development district D. At the end of the 15 year period, any land uses not conforming to the specific plan shall be subject to Chapter 21.27 non-conformity of the Zoning Regulation three on page 124, add a sentence immediately following the last sentence of subsection 8.2.3 as follows When projects require additional seek or review, the city will coordinate potential transportation mitigation measures with the adjacent jurisdictions. And I think that I also want to just comment that considerable work by Councilmember Odinga's office came into play. Him and I were blindsided by a staff decision this year that allowed container storage on a parcel not outlined in my exemption today. But as we are both very cognizant of that impact on the residents, we are adding that additional restriction against container storage that we thought was clear but may need to be outlined very specifically. That is why I added Section C to ensure that Kim and I are never placed in that position to have to dismantle something that should have never happened in the first place and is not within the support of the community that we represent. Thank you. Thank you for your partnership, Councilmember. Speaker 3: And. Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor or Councilmember Mongo in discussions we had with Councilmember Mongo. There's also a technical amendment needed to be made, which is number four, which has to do with coordination with the city of Signal Hill as well as Lakewood into the future. So if it's acceptable, we'd like to also include that language. Speaker 2: Thank you. Page four, page two. Yes, thank you. Number four on page 124, new subsection 8.3.3.1 is added as follows 8.3.3.1 coordination with adjacent jurisdictions. During the development review process, the city shall coordinate with adjacent jurisdictions, primarily the cities of Signal, Hill and Lakewood, on a project specific basis for all projects requiring a traffic impact analysis and subject to site plan, review or other discretionary land use approval in accordance with Long Beach Municipal Code, Chapter 21.25. The purpose of this coordination shall be to identify transportation improvements that could take place in the adjacent jurisdiction or jurisdictions to mitigate traffic impacts within the framework of the established mitigation measures. The city may additionally commit to pay a fair share portion of these improvements within the adjacent jurisdiction or jurisdictions. Thank you, Mr. Cootes. I was excited and didn't get to page two. I guess I'm not qualified to be the city clerk yet. I. Speaker 0: Ah, we are Mr.. Mr. City Attorney. Anything else you needed from that? Speaker 4: It's perfect, Your Honor. Speaker 0: Okay. And Catherine? Ringo. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank Councilman Mungo for being so thorough on her research and discussions that we had and I also had with the development services staff in regards to this project and its impacts on the community. If staff would go back to slide number seven again, please. Sorry. It's late night. It's late. Okay. Now, you only see this slide that there's a Cherry Avenue overlay, and that's the property that we're talking about. And those are the ones that basically affected us the most. When Councilmember Mungo was talking about the surprise that we got late last year into this year with the container traffic that was there, that included a lot of noise. And it was that became a 24 hour operation beyond what we knew about. And it was because it was done over the counter without our or our understanding of what was taking place there. But the main purpose of had this map up is that you'll see to the upper left hand corner or that that section that's all residential. And the impact that this development's going to have on the residents there is going to be quite, quite impactful for them. And they're very much interested in concern as to what is going to be taking place here. So the changes that Councilmember Wingo has put in there is to address a lot of those concerns and of course dealing with the other cities that are also impacted by this with cities in Lakewood and Signal Hill. So it's very important that they also have interest in this. And and also the to what we are concerned about in the city alarm each one of the more important issues that was put in place up there and I know it's very impactful to the neighbors up in the in that area is called the heights and the criteria and that's the parking impacts that will be addressed on there. So one of the questions that I have is what what is going to be the parking impact of the development center? There are up and down that corridor. And what is the rationale behind the parking that that is going to go in place there? Because obviously there's impacts not either with the businesses that are there and with the upcoming development, there are going to be future impacts. So I'd like to hear more from staff in terms of what rationale are they looking at when it comes to parking. Speaker 7: But thanks, Councilmember Christopher Koonce from Development Services. So as you know, we've been working with constituents in your district because the property, the district five, but the residents surrounding are in District seven. So we've been working on this about five years, six years, and we had a lot of meetings and some things that were really important to the residents was they want the visual character of Cherry Avenue improved. They want goods and services. And then in terms of the businesses, they want higher value businesses, they want high quality buildings. They want next generation manufacturing space uses, R&D uses, and they don't want sort of dead warehousing. So very similar to what we've been able to accomplish on the other side of the airport in Douglas Park. That's always been sort of the vision for here, but also with some more kind of community scale retail over time. So in order to achieve that outcome, we have to look at what the regulations are doing in terms of the building. So because warehousing is at a relatively low parking rate and office can sometimes be at a higher parking rate, you can inadvertently discourage the office uses the higher end users that you're trying to attract if you set the parking requirement too high. So we know that parking is area of concern and a sensitive issue here in the city. So we actually had a consultant report that claimed that we should not have any additional parking required for office uses that were part of these larger buildings, that that should just be sort of a bonus . We took the community input, which was to not do that. We balance that and came up with a number that was appropriate for these very large buildings. In our experience, the number that we came up with is about what is actually used in other such facilities around the city, including over in Douglas Park, and we'll be more than adequate parking. So every new construction job that comes in there is a reevaluation of the parking. And we look at what the parking demand is, the square footage, and then we go through the process on that. So we were trying to balance a bunch of different factors, not just the numerical number of parking spaces, but the type of uses we're going to get and what we heard from the community in terms of what they want to look like and the type of users they want and the district. Speaker 4: Thankfully, our response is obviously it's very important to that community in that area. And I'm glad that you're paying attention and listening to what their needs are. I hope that day in the future you will be paying attention to that need. The other question I had is that there was during the presentation you also talked about the coordinated efforts that we will have with the Hill and partly Lakewood in regarding to bike lanes. What can we expect to have in terms of bike lanes along Cherry Avenue? Is it on both sides of the street? Just one side of the street? What is going to be, in your view, the impact for the community? And how can they stay involved in the development of the project as it goes where they are? Speaker 0: Sure. Speaker 7: So, Councilman, our long term vision is to be able to have bike transportation. And ideally, that's on both sides of the street. But that depends on final design. So it may not be on both sides of the street or there may be an interim condition where one side of the street is different than the other. So what's what's going to happen is this plan establishes a vision that establishes what we want cherry to look like in the future, but that's not tomorrow. So we have to do work development services with public works about actually engineering that street. And that is going to happen sort of based on when properties turn over and how we're able to fund that transformation. And that's all done in partnership with community. So Cal Heights did submit that letter with some concerns about, you know, sort of what's the interim condition on the bike and the exact bike routing and how it transitions as you reach for a five freeway. I don't have the answers on all of those because that is yet to be determined, but it will be determined with community in an open process and there'll be a lot of engagement and ability for folks to participate and then to make it. More complicated but also important. You know, Lakewood has a chunk of property on Terry that has Long Beach on either side and then to the south as well as to the west, we have signal hill. So we have to coordinate with both of those cities. We have a lot of shared goals, but also have some differences and may have some differences of opinion about, you know, the streets and they're welcome to treat their portion of the street differently. We just need to have a clear, understandable transition between the two different approaches. So all of that work is in front of us, but we'll be involving your office and your constituents as we do those refinements. Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And one last question was Councilmember Mungo mention the 15 year lease agreement, or at least the proposal in there? Is there anything magical? About 15 years going to be less than 15 years. I'm thinking maybe five. Is there is that out of the realm of reality? Or please, could you explain the the the process on 15 versus five or ten? Speaker 7: That's a policy discussion. So I don't want to speak for a council member. Mungo here at the staff table, we can make that number whatever you want to make that number eight. Every year. Flexibility provides additional flexibility to that property owner and I understand and respect that goal. At the same time, the community did want to see this transition occur over time and every year that's added is perhaps delaying that transition and delaying kind of the goals of what community members and others expected to see along the Terry corridor in this real property. So typically phase ends would be shorter and year a couple of years. But they can be long. There's no. There's no limit in either direction. It really is a policy call for this council to make and will implement whatever decision you make. Speaker 4: Councilmember Mongo Would you be amenable to a substitute motion but you're afraid that they'll put in the amendment to make it five years as opposed to 15? Speaker 2: So I guess I'd have two questions for staff. I agree that we want to implement what the community is looking for. I think that in reaching out to the land owners in that area, some really good points have been made. The car wash is not going to change for 30 years. The two adjacent businesses are not going to change for likely 30 years. And specifically, if you could pull up the slides again. If you look at. I think it's Slide ten. I guess I'm unclear if the community wanted this. Perfect. Nine. I'm sorry, said nine. If the community wanted Cherry to look a certain way, why wasn't that Cherry Avenue overlay zone applied to both sides of the street? I mean, why the rush to get one side of the street modified, but leaving the other side of the street without any overlay. Speaker 7: So the check the Terry Avenue overlay is different than the retreatment of Terry. So the Terry Avenue overlay actually allows additional uses that would not otherwise be allowed in the business park. But the difference between the two sides of the street is the difference between the two sides of the street. So on the east side you do have some industrial uses, but you also have the carwash is actually a commercial use. The Enterprise Rent-A-Car is a commercial use. So the character of the two sides of the street were different. And that was reflected in the plan, which is based on, you know, all of the different meetings, but as well the economic analysis and all the different factors that went into the plan. So yes, there's two different approaches on two different sides of the street, but it's meant to balance all the different input that we received and all the different factors. And then the community is also getting, you know, treatment of the street itself within the public right away. So that character will change sort of regardless of the businesses. Speaker 2: So there are multiple parcels which are currently in the business park district, community, commercial district, Cherry Avenue Overlay Zone that are currently industrial. And those were not given the opportunity to stay. General Industrial District. And yet the ones directly across the street from them are. So I don't understand. Well, if the community wants the they'll look to change. Wouldn't they want the look to change on both sides. Speaker 7: And the community input was one of many factors is what staff is trying to communicate to you. So the existing land uses were another factor. But I just want to be very clear. So everyone in council understands, you know, whether it's one year, two years, five years, 15 years, 35 years, that's the amount of time to establish a use. So once a user is established and they've been issued permits, they have non-conforming rights, they can exist into perpetuity. They can exist for a thousand years. So what we're talking about is how much time should be given as a transition period to establish a use not there. When the zoning changes, no existing permitted business has to go away. We don't do that. We don't set businesses down. They are able to operate so long as they operate in that location. Speaker 2: But I think what the constituents on that corridor that have financial interest in the area have communicated is if the complete opposite side of the street is maintaining its industrial status and the neighbors. To their south are maintaining their industrial status, their ability to sell their potentially new use to a and I don't want to name any specific business and get the community excited but is less because some businesses may not necessarily want to be next to a um, industrial site. So an example might be and Councilmember Austin's done a great job of having a Trader Joe's that's a commercial use, but a Trader Joe's is never going to go next to an industrial use . And so when you have limiting factors based on who your neighbors are, I agree that, yes, the amount of time does not matter, except for that you almost have to outlast some of your neighbors in to the point at which you either can buy them or they want to conform to the use. And if you have someone that will be there in perpetuity, it really limits the adjacent neighbors ability to be successful in bringing in the highest and best use for the residents. So yes, I am open to a reduction in the number of years this dialog has been very fruitful. We have a pretty amazing broker that has been looking in my district for a facility for quite some time and through this dialog I've connected them with some of the property owners on this corridor and I hope that that could result in something that the community is really excited about. But I also know that exploring that could take up to two years, which would then leave them in a place where if the amount of time available was too short, they might not be able to get a long term client. So if Mr. Otunga instead of I know that one of the parcels requested 15, I know in talking with some of the community members they had bigger ambitious numbers, which I thought were much too high in the twenties. Would you be amenable to, let's say. How about ten years? That would give them an opportunity for a five year lease with a potential two year option to explore that could potentially expire during that term. Are you comfortable with that? Speaker 4: Yes and no. Speaker 2: Okay. What are you most comfortable with? Speaker 4: Well, then you just find the. The the part that I have. Problems are issues with is what happens afterwards when it becomes a non-conforming use. Speaker 2: It made them have that right. Speaker 4: Yeah, we do. And, but if we, if, if we could address that to the point where like it doesn't become non-conforming anymore, we is like something's got to happen in that area in regards to that, those properties. One of the issues that I have, for example, that I have an issue, I have an item coming up later in in tonight's agenda regarding the zoning. And that's one of the biggest issues that I have, is that there are some properties along some of my business corridors that are non-conforming and they will stay like that forever. And it creates barriers to other types of development. And, you know, I don't know if there's a fix for that, but that would be then that becomes the barrier to all other types of development that we would want to see along these types of corridors. So I mean, and that's a conflict where I'm at the quandary that I'm in is that I'm not opposed going from 15 to 10. I would prefer less, obviously, because that way I don't I don't pass on that type of issue concern to my successor whenever that happens. But at the end of the day is that we all have that issue, we'll have that problem. But I think we need to fix that somehow so that we have greater flexibility in getting the types of businesses that our neighborhood serving as. An example, like I mentioned earlier, just north of the area that we're talking about, northwest of it is a big residential area that would benefit greatly from other types of development, like you mentioned earlier that we're not how to get people excited but but I mean it is a type of of development that is much needed in that area and that would be very successful, I think. But if we create barriers to it like, like establishing a, a non conforming use, then they're locked and they're locked it. And I can understand the, the concerns of those owners that are there now. Family owned pass pass on to their kids and grandkids and perhaps even great, great grandkids. But you know, how or how long can it be non-conforming and how long will it be non neighborhood service. So that's that's the quandary and I'll there was this and I don't know if Stapp has an answer to that or or we're just sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. Speaker 0: Um, Clark, are you. Are you following the time? I know there's other folks queued up, and I just feel like we're not following the time limits. Or can you please make sure that we are doing that? Speaker 1: Yes, we are timing the council member. Speaker 0: Okay. And I just I want to go back to folks that are cued up. Also, I have a couple questions as well. Speaker 5: Councilman, your on. Speaker 0: Over your anger. Can we get an answer to his question first? Speaker 5: Yes. Councilman, your anger. It's Mike Mays. The issue with non-conformity is is covered by a separate chapter in the zoning code. And that's something that's not before council tonight. That would take a whole other policy discussion. So there's really no way this evening that we can do anything to address the issue of our situation with existing nonconformity Speaker 4: . Thank you. Maybe that's a cop with a future. I could pass it on now. Speaker 0: Thank you. So just because I want to clarify just for myself. Do I? I love everything, I think. Councilman Bongo Guthrie, Ringo, you guys did a great job on this. This is a really, really critical, specific plan. I just want clarification. On. And I'm not sure if you were referring to this a moment ago, Mr. City Attorney, but Mr. Monica or some of the Roman services accounts as it relates to the one year initial recommendation, that's part of this proposal that's being currently contemplated to be changed, correct? The recommendation is one year. So on the non-conforming. Correct. Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor? A it's a policy call for the council. So I know I personally have had to go. Yeah, let me but let me let me answer your question, please. So we prepared a specific plan based on an economic analysis that shows that this transition can happen quickly and that no transition period was necessary. I then in the preceding days have had discussions with a couple of council members about this issue, and their desire was to provide some additional flexibility to small property owners because the effects of COVID were obviously not accounted for in the economic studies we did in 2018 and 2019. Totally valid. So our job as staff was to provide them some language and some options to do that. I had discussed the one, two, two year time frame with with different parties, but I'm not going to go into the private conversations. But the plan that was prepared and approved by the Planning Commission doesn't include any extra a transition period. But when asked how that would be accomplished, I provided language and the ability to accomplish that. Now, the period of time, that's a policy call for council and you have to weigh the longer the period of time, the more beneficial it is to property owners that need more time. The shorter period of time, the more beneficial it is to accomplishing the goals of the plan and to the community. Seeing, you know, sort of the land use vision that they had talked about in all the meetings that have occurred over the years. So how you strike that balance? We're glad to assist you, but that's really that's a call for the council. Speaker 0: And mayor and council member. Just to just clarify and reiterate, we're not talking about the non-conforming status. The properties will remain in a non-conforming status. What we're really talking about is allowing a few additional years to allow those property owners that are perhaps willing to or want to make a change to be able to comply under the existing zoning, not not the the new lands designation. And I'm and I'm trying to just get comfortable with the amount of additional years so I and I can be convinced. I'm hearing, I think, Councilwoman Young making some good some good points. But I just because I you know, I'm just trying to understand of the whole the community process as I understood it, and the desire for the neighborhood, the surrounding neighborhoods and the area to see change is is why the recommendations were made as you presented them. And so I, I just can I that they're going to do ten years which which to me seems. Significant, specific plan to go from a one, you know, 1 to 2 or ten seems significant. So I'm trying to understand maybe maybe this is just a very small group of businesses. Maybe maybe this wouldn't actually impact the area much. And I think Council Mango and customer Ranga kind of understand probably the decline probably more than I do because they've been work, they've been knee deep in it. So maybe Mr. Coons or Mr. Modi, if you want to explain to me just the number of businesses this would actually impact, this actually has changed. Speaker 7: So, Mr.. Speaker 3: Mayor. Speaker 7: This impacts numerically a large number of parcels. But I believe, based on the information we have, that it actually only affects the speaker that that spoke to. No. And possibly one or two others, because they have a situation where they have a vacant or soon to be vacant piece of property that they're trying to lease right now . And they're concerned about the rules changing from under them at a challenging economic time. So there are other properties that would be subject to this rule, but they're fully leased or they're pursuing uses that are enabled by this specific plan. Now, that said, you know, the property that that's most impacted is there at the corner of Cherry and Wardlow, and that's where you have an Enterprise Rent-A-Car and a car wash today, if you're familiar with the location. Speaker 0: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay. So so it sounded like staff is not overly concerned or there is not a concern with going to the ten year as it relates to developing the specific plan in the appropriate way. Just want to make sure that staff you keep saying it's a policy decision and I appreciate that. But policy decisions have impacts so that the staff is comfortable with that number. I only I only ask because that has not been the that the input that I receive when you when I this has been presented to me, this is very different than what's been presented. So can staff you're comfortable with that? Speaker 7: So, Mayor, we are comfortable with ten years or you know, we're trying to balance really hard things, right? So we're in an economy that is in a period of transition and change. And if this plan was in front of you two years ago, we would have not recommended any transition period at all. But we're trying to accommodate what is truly an unprecedented difficult situation for some of the small property owners, while still accommodating our goals and for the large parcels, we expect projects to be entitled this calendar year and for you to see new, exciting companies employing hundreds of thousands of people during calendar year 2022. So it's I don't want to lose sight of what this plan is and how important that is and being able to embrace those space related uses. So in order, you know, staff is comfortable with providing additional flexibility to those small property owners based specifically on the unprecedented place that the economy is in in this exact moment. Speaker 0: Okay. And. All right, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it just because we don't normally don't provide this amount of time in these instances. But I'm going to you know, I think that Councilmember Mongeau and Councilman Ranga have been working on this. It's this is the changes is news to me. So I'm just trying to understand it. I know, broadly speaking, with these specific plans, this is the type of we try to avoid these types of extensions. But I understand. So I'm going to go ahead and not I'm not going to have any objections to it. So I will support whatever it is that comes from manga and country. And I want to do. Speaker 3: This with this change. Speaker 2: But thank you, Mr. Mayor. And we're also trying to mitigate something that's worse for the community, which council member Austin has always been a great proponent of is vacant lots. And we know that as the economy is changing, we just want to avoid that at all costs and particularly in this area. The shapes and configurations of those lots have been unique and we've had some of the land owners combine them over time, which has been helpful, but in the way in which they really need to be united for a vision that will best serve the new industry being proposed and that many businesses are fighting for behind it. It's going to take some time to pull all those complicated, complicated proposals together during the time when the economy is striving, but inflation is going up. And we need to ensure that the businesses can get the capital to make the investments to do something amazing and not just what they can afford to do today. So I appreciate the leeway that you're giving. We've done a lot in the last 48 hours, and I could not have done it without Mr. Kunze, this partnership and Mr. or Councilmember ordering us partnership. So it's been a long road, but and some late hours the last night and a half. But I think we're there if everyone's comfortable. Speaker 0: Thank you. I appreciate that. It comes from Austin, Texas. Speaker 5: Answer woman mango juice for clarity. Did you accept the friendly made by councilman your anger for ten years for the transition period? Yes, sir. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Austin. Speaker 4: Wow. Thank you so much. And, you know, I do appreciate all of the work, particularly by my colleagues, Councilmember Mongo and Eurogroup for, you know, getting us here. But obviously the the the development service and planning staff were there many, many hours and hours of extensive community outreach to get to this. Very, very. Thick and thoughtful plan. I'll just say that it's it's quite a bit you know, I support the goals of this this plan. And there were five goals laid out early, you know, and three of the five of them are are jobs related. And, you know, the fire and the motor that got me to run for city council actually takes me back to the site, McDonnell Douglas Boeing site. As many of you know, I was employed there for 14 years, you know, right out of high school. And, you know, I want to challenge some of the numbers there because, you know, at our height, this is a place that in the 20th century had over 40,000 employees there. Right. And the C-17 site specifically had well over 10,000 at one point in probably the early to mid nineties. And so my my objective and I'm going to support what's on the floor here is to restore a vibrant job sector. And I think this this plan actually does that I want to just point out historically and it's always been an employment district, if you really want to look at the history there and not the thousands and thousands of good middle class quality jobs, union jobs, many of them that were were created and and that allowed for employment there, which had a direct benefit on every aspect of our city through our economic development, all of the small businesses, our housing market, Long Beach thrived as a result and the region thrived as a result of those those those great jobs that were were there. And so this is an opportunity, I think this planning document gives us an opportunity to, I would almost say, restore the employment district and the opportunities that we once had there, because we are if we were honestly honest with ourselves, we're operating from a jobs deficit right now. When we look at what we lost with our aerospace industry in the nineties and most recently Boeing as well as the shipyard jobs that were lost here during that period of time where the jobs deficit. And so we need it. We need a comeback and we need to be as aggressive as we can possibly be as a city council to do that. And so I think the. For those reasons. Obviously, I support this plan and I appreciate the thought that both my colleagues, Mongo and Urunga, have put into, you know, mitigating the concerns of other small property owners and residential impacts as well. I would just say also that, you know, some of the air studies and documents like traffic issues, there shouldn't be a concern again, because we had those issues. Right. We had several thousands of people, three shifts, 24, seven in and out of that that matter at that location. And it was impactful. But I think impactful in a positive way. And I certainly hope we can get back to that very soon. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to just chime in. I, I completely agree with Councilman Austin about the way we should be thinking about this. We think big picture this. You know, this plan sets the foundation for what the future could look like for our city. And there are a number of things taking place across our state, across our region that could potentially bode really well for Long Beach. Given how close we are to the port and our workforce, our college, our educational institutions, the electrification of our entire transportation network is about to happen very, very soon. We already have some history of aerospace manufacturing, and we have automotive manufacturing right here in the city. T ABC, Toyotas and Teslas are built in our city. We don't we don't know. You know, a lot of us may not know that this creates a big opportunity for us. And let's not lose sight of that. We also have a major expansion creation of renewable energy, just general, generally clean technologies. That's where we should be thinking as we should be heading. The fact that we have this plan in place, that this plan is getting into place, I think both well, for the for the entire city. So I want to say good word to both the council members who take the time to make sure that this vibes and aligns with the interests of the neighborhoods, but also are taking on this discussion point for all of us. Because, you know, if this goes well, all of us, all of our communities, whether we have, you know, jobs or educational attainment levels or whatever it is, we're all going to benefit from what happens here. So do you want to chime and say, I'm happy to support where, you know, where we land with this motion as long as we just keep in mind, you know, how important this space is to our broader regional economy. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you. We're going to go to a vote before we go to to our vote, we have emotional. We have to determine how many votes we have to take on this. Speaker 5: Despite separate five separate votes, Mayor. Speaker 0: Okay. So before we go into these into the five separate votes, I did want to add that I, I didn't earlier with some of my questions that I just think overall, this is a really, really just historic, I think, plan for the whole area. And I want to just uplift what a lot of what Councilman Mongeau said. And Councilmember Austin, because we were in this plan, I know the staff has been working on really, really hard and a lot of us have been working on pieces of this plan, including the advocacy around land use for for many, many years after. So to see it all come together. I just want to thank the entire staff and team. They worked really hard on this for many years. All the community members that have been involved, the property owners, the neighborhoods. And it is a great opportunity to really uplift the growing space economy, to uplift our aerospace economy that are such important parts of our city and really just improve just that whole portion of our city which which needs so a lot of love and investment. So a great work for everybody and just a really, really great plan. So with that, let's go and take each vote. Madam Clerk, do you want to read the the what we're voting on and then we'll go a roll call for each one. Take it away. Thank you. Speaker 1: First vote is adopting a resolution certifying the final program of the air. Councilwoman Sandy has. Councilman Allen. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilman Price. I councilman's a banana. Speaker 3: Right? Speaker 1: Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sarah. I council member. Council member. Speaker 4: Oranga I. Speaker 1: Councilmen Austin. Speaker 4: Hi. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson?

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution certifying the Final Program EIR/EIS-03-17 (SCH No. 2018091021), making findings of fact, adopting a Statement of Overriding Considerations, and approving a Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program (MMRP);

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Speaker 0: Go ahead. Speaker 1: That concludes the item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Item 22. Speaker 1: Item 22 is report from financial management. Recommendation to receive supporting documentation and to the Let the record conclude the public hearing and a DAB resolution amending the master fees and charges schedule city. Speaker 0: I'm not sure on the second. Do we have a mr.. Mr.. Mr.. MODICA, do you have any report on this or are we just moving forward? Speaker 5: Okay. Speaker 6: We don't have to. We can go straight to comments if there are any. We did a huge presentation on this as a study session about two weeks ago on the on the general philosophy. And we're available to answer questions now. If there's any specifics. Speaker 0: I don't think it's any I don't think is any public comment. Correct, Madam Court. Speaker 1: There's no public comments on this item. Speaker 0: Okay. Let me go to Councilman Pryce, who has the motion. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple of questions I wanted to ask staff. Can someone from the staff talk about the public outreach or noticing requirement that was effectuated for this item? Speaker 5: It looks. Speaker 4: Like. Mean to do now. Speaker 2: I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yes. Councilman. Councilmember. Speaker 1: Hi. Speaker 2: Yes. So, noticing requirements. I went out 14 days in advance of the hearing. This is within California state law and it went out via on our website posted as well as I'm posted on facilities and emailed through those interested parties. Speaker 8: To the city clerk's office. Speaker 2: Okay. And I just wanted to confirm that the master fee schedule that we're voting on today still has in place discounts for youth, seniors and nonprofits so that they're not going to be charged at the same rate as the general public or for profit organizations. There are no changes that were presented as part of the May or April six and the May 4th presentation. So those are still included. Okay. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Bryson. And that's a motion, councilwoman. Speaker 2: It is. Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. Vice Premier Richardson. Speaker 3: So just a couple comments. So so one thing that really stood out to me and I want to lift up, I was encouraged by the airport shuttle pick up and drop off these guys. All so so. Fleets with at least 25% of cleaner vehicles are per hour. Murphy has reduced 25%. Whereas if you have at least five vehicles and 75%, clean air vehicles is reduced by 75% using price in the clean the air thing. I think it's great. I think it's great that Long Beach is doing this and I think it needs to be lifted up. And also, I'm heartened by the consideration or comments last time you all weighed in and you know, I spoke to, you know, you and a number of people talked about youth and parks. I was glad to see that, you know, a lot that that was considered and what's what was brought forward to us. So I'm happy to support what's in front of us. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you. Council member Austin. Speaker 4: I support the item. I was queuing up to the motion, but I think our staff has put in a lot of our work. I mean, obviously the council has has reviewed these schedules and had the opportunity to review them for a few weeks. Now I'm prepared to vote. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 2: I want to thank that's where Richardson for his compliments. I've worked on the Clean Air Vehicle Incentive for three years. It has not been without its struggles and looking for a way to recognize the impact of those vans on the neighborhoods around it. Mr. Mayor, Garcia and I have worked hard to become the cleanest airport in America, and I think that clean vans is a step in the right direction. We did something meaningful with taxis many years ago, and I think the vans is the next step that we needed to get to, and I look forward to getting those fleets in line. I did have some questions. I met with every department head and that we had questions with and I had some questions related to some of the fees in here that staff had some information they were going to research and get back to us. On whether or not certain fees were set by the county, specifically with a mandate that we charge fees that are lower than our costs, which the county would then be creating a an unfunded mandate. And so I was just reaching out to health services to see if they got an answer to that. I know it's been about a week. Have you? I know there's a lot going on. Speaker 8: I can't remember. Yes. The the the fee for specific to vital records, which was the conversation we were having is set in the state health and safety code. We can't charge more than the base rate. The remainder of the costs that are in this fee study are related. That's the $28, the additional costs, the expedited emergency weekend and others are are not established specifically. We do have some flexibility in those rates. However, the increases that were proposed, the conversation make us significant would be make us move higher than others. Speaker 2: So just to be clear, they are state mandated. Therefore, that is an unfunded mandate and we have a process annually when we close the cap or to then pull out any unfunded mandates and forward those to the state for requests for reimbursement. And we're doing that with all of these final record. When we spoke, we didn't know even if the county was mandating it or the state. Now that we know that it's the state, can we ensure that it's a part of that annual closure process to potentially bring in that additional revenue? Speaker 5: I will work with will work with the financial management team and look at that option. Speaker 2: That's great. And for those department heads that aren't privy to this detailed conversation that Ms.. Colby and I had on any fee that is set by the state that exceeds our cost to provide it is an unfunded mandate. And there is an unfunded mandate, cost recovery strategy that is court regulated. And so we have that option. They often pay four or five years later, but it is still local funding that we should have available to our local kids. So thank you for doing the research. And even if it's only tens of thousands of dollars a year, tens of thousands of dollars a year over ten years, 20 years, it's a lot of money. And the more of those that we catch along the way, the better. We are representing our residents and able to provide those funds locally. So thank you for doing that research. Speaker 5: Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Ciro. Speaker 2: You, Mayor. I want to thank staff for their hard work in getting this report together. I know that it takes a lot of staff time to review these fees, and I do want to address that. You know, I think that there's always a concern that I think our residents will have, various stakeholders will have with an increase in fee and also just, you know, having them hear this in light of the pandemic. Right. I think that that's my concern is we're talking about recovery and wanting to make sure we help businesses and residents recover and then all of a sudden we come out with our fee increases. Right. So I'm just interested in hearing how, you know, if we're going to be moving forward with these recommended fee increases. What will be the communication process, especially in sections where they have more than doubled and sometimes quadruple? They're very few cases. But I think it's just really important that we do provide information ahead so that in light of just the current economic situation we're in. Right. So I do want to be sensitive to that, where we're going to be announcing this in this in light of this condition, economic condition. Speaker 0: Councilmember and Development Services. We don't automatically turn on the switch and start charging the new fees. We do provide public notice to our customers well in advance of the changes in fees to allow them the opportunity to come in and. Speaker 7: Submit their their applications to us. And in light. Speaker 0: Of COVID and our permitting, we will be very. Speaker 7: We will. Speaker 0: Allow enough time to for the community. Speaker 7: To submit their applications with under the. Speaker 0: Existing fees. Speaker 2: Thank you as well as the other departments as well. And. And Health and Parks and Rec. Speaker 3: That's Councilwoman Services. Brant Davis, director of Parks Recreation Marine, something similar to what director R.S. explained. We would also have a very proactive communication model in place through our website, our nature center, our community centers. And we'd also be reaching out directly to a lot of our stakeholders or community groups who have had a history and any type of event reservations. And so we will be very forthcoming during them. Plenty of notice of any anticipated increases above or beyond what they've been expecting historically. Thank you. Good question. Speaker 2: Thank you. Appreciate that. Speaker 0: Thank you. See no other council comment. We have a motion in a second. Please go ahead and do a roll call. Speaker 1: Compliments. And they asked me. Councilman Allen, I'm Catwoman Pryce, I councilman supporter. Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sara i. Councilwoman. Councilmember Oranga. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: Councilman Austin. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. All right. We're going to do all the funds transfer items together, which is item 24, 25, 26 and 32. So if I can have you please read all those, please.

Resolution

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

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Speaker 0: Thank you. All right. We're going to do all the funds transfer items together, which is item 24, 25, 26 and 32. So if I can have you please read all those, please. Speaker 1: Adam, 24, is communications from Councilwoman Ellen recommendation to increase appropriations in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department in the amount of 10,300 to purchase and deploy four new portable basketball hoops in the second District. Item 25 is a communication from Council Women's and they have Councilwoman Sara recommendation to increase appropriations in the city manager's department by 1000 to provide a contribution to Long Beach, home living and work sense to support flavors of Long Beach. Item 26 is a communication from council members and has Council Member Rangel recommendation to increase appropriations in the city manager's department by 1000. To provide donations to Elmore City Heritage Association to support the 2021 Will Moore slam season of Live Arts and Music, Virtual Addition and item 32. Is a communication from Councilwoman Price recommendation to increase appropriation in the City Manager Department by 700 to provide a contribution to the Wilson Instrumental Music Booster Organization. Speaker 0: Thank you. Can I get a motion in a second, please, on this? I have a most of my councilman allen is thinking about Councilmember Ringa. I don't believe we have met him for public comment for any of these. Is that right? We had no public comment. Okay. Great. Unless somebody wants to say any remarks from from from those. Councilman, our Councilman Allen do have any remarks. Speaker 2: A Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to real quickly and briefly, I just want to thank the man with 2/1 names, Director Brant Dennis, for his just for his partnership in this mobile basketball program. And, you know, these outdoor activities for kids are super important to me. And it brings me so much joy when I see the kids and the parents all at the one two year old beach, you know, shooting the hoops. And I go down there and I check that out over the weekends. And I love seeing just people waiting. Sitting on the ball are just waiting for a pickup game. And I love bringing my nephews down there. But one of the things that we were missing, there's just not enough of them. So I think that these hoops will be, you know, just real important for they you know, they can go on in and play with each other and just give them things to do. Plus, I want to say that the portable hips will be beneficial for years to come and it will add, you know, major flexibility to our recreation staff to deploy them around the the second district. So my staff did tour at different areas and the potential sites for these kids who will be possibly at Pierpoint Landing Promenade Square Park in Bixby Park. So just want to thank Brant enough and I can't wait to get this set up. And. And Brant, we're going to do a pickup game together. Thank you so much. Speaker 3: That's right. I've been practicing, so I got to keep up with you. Good victory. Speaker 0: Thank you. Customer Orangutan. Do you have any comments? Speaker 4: No. I will defer to custodians and that. Speaker 0: Consumers in the House. Speaker 2: Thank you and thank you, Councilman. Councilmember Dunga, I just wanted to say thank you to the lovely flavor of Long Beach programs. I'm so excited about giving and supporting this, this or this program and this organization. This Saturday, we will be having a taco festival at our very own and wonderful, wonderful Scottish. Right. And so I want to I want to invite everybody. It's going to be from ten. I'm sorry. It's going to be from 12 to 6 at the Scottish Rite Event Center here in the First District. And I couldn't be more happy to partner with with flavors of Long Beach and Long Beach, home and living. And of course, rock sounds big shout out to Robert. And so come join us this Sunday, May 23rd, from 12 2 to 1. I also want to congratulate, well, more for their continued hard work in in giving to and and providing space for the arts. I think that the arts has. Speaker 5: Been. Speaker 2: Extremely, extremely impacted by COVID. And so I'm just incredibly grateful to be able to support this kind of event for our Willmore Neighborhood Association. Keep doing the great work that you're doing. So very, very thankful for that. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that, we'll take a roll call. Vote for all items, please. 24, 25, 26, 32. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sandy has. I have a woman I own. I can't woman price. I have been all kinds of women. Mango. I can travel men. Sara. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilmember Oranga. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: Councilman Alston. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Bush and Kerry. Speaker 0: Thank you, madam. Cookies. I am 31. The item that we postponed from last week was at a different one. Well, let's hear 31.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department in the amount of $10,300, offset by the Second Council District One-time District Priority Funds transferred from the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department to purchase and deploy four new portable basketball hoops in the Second District; and Decrease appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Citywide Activities Department by $10,300 to offset a transfer to the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department.

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Speaker 1: 31 Adam 31 Report from Public Works. Recommendation to execute a second requirement for the California Department of Transportation for the design and construction phase of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project, District one and two. Speaker 0: Mr. Monica, do you have a report on this or is this different from the one that we postponed? Speaker 6: The one that we postponed had to do with the entitlement process. This is a word of funding from Caltrans to proceed with the project once it's entitled. Speaker 0: Right. Can I get a motion in a second place? Give a motion by councilors and they have the customary ranga. Do I have a public comment? I might add. So they do on this list? Speaker 3: Yes, we do. Alex. Please begin. Alex, turn. Please begin. Speaker 0: Alex. These are either. Okay. We're going to go we're going to go ahead and go to a vote of the council. Please. Speaker 5: Call. Speaker 1: Councilwoman said they have. Councilwoman Allen. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Councilman Price. Mr. Mayor, can we have the motion and the movement and seconder. Speaker 0: Sure is in Dallas and Durango. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. As women said they have. I just want to know when. I mean price. I recommend Sabina. Speaker 3: And. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Manga. I has a woman, Sarah. I'm Councilmember Oranga. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: Councilman Austin. Speaker 4: All right. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Yes. Well, she carries.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute a second Cooperative Agreement, and any necessary amendments, with the California Department of Transportation, for the design and construction phase of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project (Project), located from the I-710 to its terminus on the east side of the Los Angeles River; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to amend Contract No. 33938 with HDR Engineering, Inc., of Long Beach, CA, for engineering and architectural design services for the Project, to increase the contract amount by $22,550,235, for a revised contract amount not to exceed $29,526,622, and extend the term of the contract to August 30, 2024; and Increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $26,900,000, offset by $12,900,000 of Measure R funds from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MR306.19) and $14,000,000 of State Transportation Improvement Program funds from California Department of Transportation [STIPL-5108(199)]. (Distr

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Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Yes. Well, she carries. Speaker 0: Item 36. Speaker 1: Adam, 36, is a report from Financial Management. Recommendation to approve the restoration of departmental and fund budget appropriation. Adjustment related to the elimination of employee furloughs for the remainder of fiscal year 2021 through. Speaker 0: I can I get a motion in a second please? Mr. Monica, do you want to add anything? Speaker 6: Nothing to add on this one. Speaker 0: Okay. There's a motion to say. Councilman Allen seconded Councilmember Ringo. Members, please go ahead and do a roll call vote. Speaker 1: And one minute, Cindy has arrived. Councilwoman Allen. I can't remember. I can't subpoena Councilwoman Munger. Speaker 5: Yes. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Also member Virunga. Speaker 4: All right, Councilman Austin? Speaker 1: Yes, Vice Mayor Richardson.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to approve the restoration of departmental and fund budget appropriation adjustments related to the elimination of employee furloughs for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2021 (FY 21) in accordance with existing City Council policy. (Citywide)

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Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next item will be item 28. Speaker 1: Item 28. Communication from Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Mango. Recommendation to request City Manager to consider the feasibility of developing an open space public park area and walking path along the San Gabriel River. Speaker 0: Thank you. Turn this over to Councilwoman. Among our custom on price. Well. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll go first and I'll turn it over to Councilor Mungo. So I want to thank my the people who cosigned on to this item. Councilman Mungo, I know she's going to have some words to share about this item. And I want to thank Assemblymember O'Donnell, because he has really been working with the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and trying to identify ways that we can activate this public space through the use of possibly some city of some state dollars, not city dollars. And this is an area that borders three different districts. And right now there is a bike path for the major portion of the river. And the bike path is is the place that welcomes a lot of experienced riders. They often travel in large groups and they often travel fast, which is great, but it's not the ideal setting for a walking path. And so I'm hoping that with the support of the Council tonight, our city staff will be able to work collaboratively to enhance this public space and create some pedestrian access at the very least, and do so utilizing non city dollars through a partnership with the county and through support and some hopefully some resources from the state. So I would like to request our staff work on finding ways to identify what is feasible. What kind of community outreach might be required once funding is identified to make sure that the concerns of residents and also the interests of residents are captured in whatever project could come from outside funding to help with this particular vision. So with that, I'd ask for my council colleagues support. I do want to highlight a couple of things. This is public land that we're talking about, and it is not. There is no proposal whatsoever to use any city dollars to support this project down the road. It's just an ask for the city to work with the county and the state in identifying resources that I believe Assemblymember O'Donnell is already working on, not just for this particular area, but throughout his Assembly district. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Thank you, Mayor. The area in question has been of significant debate on the east side for many years. I've hosted meetings at the apex of the three districts, and through the years we've had significant challenges in that. The area in each of our districts is very different. But it is a contiguous strip that has three different government agencies as landowners. Each of those government agencies has been open to leasing back that land, potentially as low as a dollar a year. But there has to be a plan and there has to be a plan based on what's possible. And we need to work together to figure out what that is and then reach out for the community input. Councilman Price continues to highlight that this would not cost city resources. It actually would be a city resource saver. Considerable resources continue to be necessary to modify and clean up the areas adjacent to these lands. These properties because of inappropriate uses. And so activation of this space has been something that the residents in my district have been requesting, but only within the last 90 days has the property become vacant because a tenant defaulted in a major way, not financially, but through multiple violations. So we are excited for this opportunity. It's something we've wanted for a long time. We've worked with the Economic Development Department for years on what would even be possible. We've worked with the City of Los Angeles, who it surprises people often that the city of Los Angeles is a landowner in the fifth District, so as a water district and the county of Los Angeles. So it is complicated. But when we have leadership from our state representative, Assemblymember O'Donnell, to really bring all the pieces together, and I will say, I also appreciate Senator Gonzalez, who has been a part of some of our community meetings on our side of town to discuss these issues. It really makes all the difference. And so with the opportunity of some of the additional funding that Governor Newsom has available and the championing of Assemblymember O'Donnell, this could really become a reality. And we need to be prepared for what that is. And we need to quickly put together feasibility of what's possible and then from there really identify what the community is interested in and how that could better support the city budget so that resources don't continue to have to be spent in cleaning up an area. Once we activate it, we believe it will keep itself clean. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilmember Durango. Speaker 4: Thank you, Baron. I'm glad to hear that. So projects are taking place at the San Diego River, and we are, as you probably know, we have some projects that are being developed in the Lower Los Angeles River that also crosses three districts that are in development. And hopefully within a very short time, I can bring forward a presentation as to what's going on around the L.A. River. We also we think there's a lot of work to be done, and I'm hoping that I, too, can work with a similar our on council and Senator Gonzalez to bring much needed resources into that area as well. So thank you for bringing the focus on this onto the Tangi River as well. Thank. Speaker 0: Thank you. Cats are a super supernova. Speaker 3: Thank you. As was mentioned, this involves three districts. The fourth council district has a two mile border along the San Gabriel River. Unfortunately, I was not given a heads up on this item. I didn't learn about it until it appeared on the agenda eight days ago, so I didn't have the opportunity for public outreach. But that being said, we have a great deal of public input on this area at the southern end of the two mile stretch and five years of complaints of encampments and whatnot that are virtually impossible to address. So for that reason, unfortunately, I will not be supporting the item tonight. Thank you. Speaker 0: Council member, Austin. Speaker 4: Well, I think any time we have an opportunity to to develop longer are open spaces along our our rivers of law L.A. River, San Gabriel River. I think it's it's an opportunity we need to to explore. We need to look at in and if there is funding for, we definitely need to have a plan in place and champion. And so I commend Councilmember Price and Mongo for bringing this forward more. We cannot get enough of open space, green space that is actually programed in and for active use, even passive use in our city. And so I support this and I think this is also an opportunity for some of the the advocacy groups around river projects to to to jump on board with the projects on both sides of the city, east side and west side. Because I want to just say, I heard a lot a lot from people on the east side of the city regarding the projects going on. On my end of town, I think we're still one city and any opportunity we can get to expand open space is a good thing. So I support. Speaker 0: Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I also just in general support turning any open land that's public to low impact recreational space. And I think that it's also in alignment with the state's effort to conserving 30% of our as well as federal goals to conserving 30% of our U.S. land and ocean by 2030. So I think this is just contributing to it. So I so that's kind of. What I think is. Yes, I support the item. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate councilmember super nice comments. And I will say that I should have reached out and extended a hand. I will say, though, that when my encampment meeting started about five years ago, I was surprised. I had recently been elected and when I asked the community members that were not from my district who were on the other side of the street, if they spoke with their councilmember and this predates you, they said, no, we're represented by Councilman Price. Actually, when I was elected, didn't realize that our two districts touched, but they do in a certain area. And when I was touring the facility three weeks ago with L.A., DWP and community members, only community members from my district were there and DWP identified specifically the third district in mind. So I did not realize what part of that that is. And that was just an oversight or misinformation by L.A. DWP. No slight intended, but I appreciate your perspective. And of course, my community has also stated that they feel as though there's been no community outreach before this item was brought forward, but nothing could be further from the truth. Literally, the very first meeting since I was elected in 2014 included discussions of challenges with this area in our district. And so while the specific item in the way it is written today was not featured, it has been a topic of dozens of community meetings over the years, including our homeless meeting, our encampment meetings, our jerk cross jurisdictional meetings and the such. And I know that I recently reached out to a couple of or my chief has reached out to a couple of other chiefs of staff related to our upcoming homeless meeting where I know this will again pop up and of course anyone is invited as long as we don't have too many members to break Brown Act. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I don't think there's any public comment on this. Correct. So we'll go ahead and go to a roll call vote. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sun has. I'm Catwoman, Ellen. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Price. I can swim and super now. Speaker 3: They. Speaker 1: Can swim and mango. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sara I. Councilmember Aranda. I know. Speaker 4: All right. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 1: First, John Kerry.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the relevant departments, and all relevant outside agencies to consider the feasibility of developing an open space public park area and walking path along the San Gabriel River.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05182021_21-0470

Speaker 0: Thank you. I think our last item is item 35. Speaker 1: Item 35 Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Cindy has Councilman Allen Councilwoman Zahra recommendation to receive and file presentation and report from SCAD year in review highlighting the President's 2020 make through 2021 work plan. Speaker 0: Of Richardson. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As one of the just concluded my year as president of SCAD. I want to thank my colleagues for allowing me the time since 2014 be a part of this board, the great regional board. I've learned a lot and I've become a better leader as a result of the experiences being there. And, you know, traditionally when you serve on a board or you go to a study tour, you come back and report back to city council. So I'm happy to attach my year review report and I have a video just to show this. This year has been a you know, it's been a hard year. You know, I've been in the past, I've been able to go study alternative forms of transportation in Australia or, you know, the challenges around clean air in China. And, you know, we got you know, we got invited to Israel and Hawaii and all those things. This wasn't the year for that. This year was really local government folks hunkering down and getting work done. And so I want to thank Councilmember Allen. Also, Councilman Austin serves on the committee for being good members of of for being good members of SAG. And I want to take a moment to show the video of the year in review video. Thank you. When I think back of the events of the past year, I go back to the moment that we learned that COVID 19 was here in our communities and that we needed to respond. Speaker 8: It's a strange world, the space between things. Speaker 3: What we learned was that essential workers still need to go out and provide basic services. And we learned that schools may be closing and that if you weren't essential worker, you may not have had the means to provide for your family. So it was a very scary time. Speaker 8: Now I know that when we get out of this, I. Speaker 4: Want to help. Speaker 8: When we will. Speaker 3: But during that time, local government still needed to provide its basic needs and basic services. And so local leaders needed to step up and find a pathway forward without a lot of certainty about what the future looks like. I think about the Southern California region. We're already a region with tremendous opportunity, but also great meaning. We were in the midst of a housing crisis, a regional housing needs assessment. Next, local plan, setting our goals and vision for the next 25 years. And that work couldn't stop. So this regional council of local leaders from six counties continue to work through the challenges to make sure that we're setting the stage for a Southern California that's inclusive and strong. Speaker 5: And think, get this. Speaker 3: Ordinarily, our year is busy at SCAD because we have a lot of things that we get involved with as a regional MPO. But to have the combination of two primary assignments that SKOG has, one that's done every four years, and one that's done over eight years, to have those two come together in one year, obviously was a lot of work to get done. Where we had the most significant impact is not what we were able to do, but how we were able to do it. We had every excuse in the world to not meet our deadline on Connect somehow or not adopt the methodology on Rina or to not address the economic recovery. But we did it all, and we did it all in a fashion that built a real consensus across the region and helped place our region on a stronger, more firm footing for the future. A lot of decisions have been made in the last year and a half that have been very difficult, that have required a lot of regional thinking as opposed to parochial thinking. And I think that's where you have to celebrate our regional leaders, our board members that have come from these various cities and counties able to come together and actually fight for what is in the best interest of the region. Speaker 10: This last year was a little harder for Skaggs than other years because we had to work on the RTP or Connect SoCal as well as regional housing needs assessment. You know, this plan is almost a half trillion dollar plan, planning out the regional transportation needs for the next 20 years. This is really important that we do advanced planning so that local entities such as my city of Ontario and the County of San Bernardino can aim all of its projects to what would be beneficial for the entire region. Speaker 2: This year, we developed and adopted a final allocation plan for the six cycle regional housing needs assessment, which will help cities meet anticipated things in the six county region over much of the next decade. In the process, we gather input from throughout the region, examined a variety of methodology options and in the end challenge ourselves to come up with a formula that addresses our housing needs in an effective and equitable manner. And now PSAC is focused on providing communities with the technical support it needs to meet that challenge. Speaker 8: During this past difficult year, Scaggs staff, it's really stepped up to develop tools that we can all use in our cities and counties to deal with complex data that we need to make better plans and figure out how we're going to get to where we want to go, including the regional data platform. The housing element parcel especially directs us to solutions for our housing challenges. Additionally, we have COVID Vulnerability Indicators Dashboard again helping us figure out how COVID has affected our communities, which particular segments are really having challenges, and what we can do when. We learn where those challenges are. So with this technical assistance that our brilliant staff has come up with, we can work better for a better future for all of us with our different challenges. Last July, SAG declared racism as a public health crisis and in the months since has led region wide discussions on ways to eliminate barriers that reduce opportunity for millions of Southern Californians. The results of this effort include a draft framework for the agency's action plan on racial equity and the development of an inclusive regional economic recovery strategy for Southern California to make a true recovery from the devastation of this public health and economic pandemic. We need to close this historically large racial equity gap and factor in the importance of long range planning for transportation and land use in creating more inclusive communities. Speaker 10: Research is always a big part of what's kept us. But this year, COVID changed our lives in ways we could not imagine. As a result, many of our studies took on a new sense of urgency. Some of these studies included an early preview of the economic impacts of COVID on the region, a last mile freight study addressing the very real surge in both business and home deliveries, and analysis of changing transportation demands, and a sophisticated economic forecast that illuminates the need for an inclusive economic recovery strategy. Speaker 3: One of the biggest. Speaker 4: Successes this year has been in the support we've been able to give at the local, city and county level. Speaker 3: Millions of dollars in funding are being invested across many different areas of land use and transportation planning. Speaker 4: Some of these include a series of local technical assistance programs that will invest. Speaker 3: Nearly $65 million in local plans and programs. A subregional partnership program allocating $23 million to local governments to prepare and implement local housing elements. The Sustainable Communities Program, which is supporting projects in the areas of active transportation and safety. Speaker 4: Housing and sustainable development and smart cities and mobility innovations. We also. Speaker 3: Have the 28 mini grants awarded through the Go. Speaker 4: Human Campaign to Fuel Community. Speaker 3: Active Transportation Safety and Engagement Initiatives. We have multiple programs geared towards. Speaker 4: Accelerating urgently needed housing production throughout the region. All of this local level support is emblematic of the collaboration and partnership that is so central to who SAG is a win for our cities, a win for our counties. That's a win for Skegg. Speaker 3: It's a win for the Southern California region, and that's what we're here to do. The COVID year, as I call it, the year 2020 taught us a lot of things and we did a lot of things that we had not done before. And so it's been a very instructive year for us to on one level, to find that we have capacities that we didn't even know we had. But I just want to be very grateful for all of our stakeholders hanging with us, being with us through the changes in our processes and approaches to our work, all of them , I think we're able to adjust to the new beat that we sort of began to dance to. It's Greg. Skog has the opportunity to help shape the future for Southern California, and the future is uncertain. When I think about the future, I think about my daughters, my six year old and my three year old, and the future that they will have growing up here in Southern California. I want them to have clean air to breathe. I want them to have clean water to drink. I want them to have access to affordable housing and jobs, education, economic opportunity. And we want this for all of our children. These are things that we all agree on. And as long as we continue to focus where our interests intersect, the future of Southern California will be bright. You do? So thank you. That concludes my presentation. It's been a it's been a great year. I plan to conclude my year is immediate past president and hopefully recruit one of my colleagues who wants to, you know, have the experiences that I've had. And it's going. So thank you so much for this opportunity to share this report. And it is attached. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Sarah. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I want to congratulate Vice Mayor Richardson. Ah, former president of SAG Richardson, on a job well done and representing our great city at that level and said thank you so much for your service and your leadership. Speaker 0: Councilman's in the house. Speaker 2: Yes. I also want to. Speaker 1: Congratulate. Speaker 2: You, vice mayor, for a great job in representing the city of Long Beach. I know that you have been a great value just scad for for several years now. So I'm really excited for you and the experience that you've had and and also the leadership that you will continue to bring to us because of your experience there . So, again, congratulations. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 2: Yes. I think that was a great video and I just can't pass up on the opportunity to say thank you to our vice mayor for his service to Scott. That was an awesome video. Mr. Vice Mayor, you are absolutely the right leader at the right time. And you have led the charge on racial equality and inclusion as a gag as well as our city. And I know this to be a fact. Our our communities are going to benefit from your leadership for generations to come. I'm going to say this again. You are you are bold, you are fun, and you are hella passionate. And I applaud your work at SCAD. You are just an incredible chair. I learned so much from you. So just great work. Speaker 0: Thinking, Counselor. Anger. Speaker 4: In short, thank you for your service, Benjamin. Speaker 0: Thank you. So what's gag again? I'm just kidding. Oh, I'm just joking. Well, no, listen, I'm just giving the vice mayor a hard time, so if you like, I like to do that. So congratulations, Rex, on your year of service. And I think I think, Councilman Allen, I think you serve on Skaggs also or the alternate. And we've had a long tradition of this body being involved on on Skye and at the Gateway COG and so many of these regional boards, which are always very important for the city. So congratulations. And with that, I don't believe there's any public comment. So we'll do a roll call vote. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sundance. Speaker 5: Right. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Allen. I'm Councilwoman Pryce. I can swim in super. I'm Councilwoman Mango. Speaker 5: I. Speaker 1: Councilwoman Sara. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: Council member oranga. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: Councilman Austin. Speaker 4: All right. Speaker 1: Vice Mayor Richardson. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 1: Washington. Speaker 0: Thank you. And with that, we have a new business, as we called Mayor Carlos, the man before we close. All right, Mr. City, Attorney, you have a ruling. Speaker 6: Thank you, Mayor. This evening, in closed session, council authorized the settlement of the Anthony Garcia versus city of Long Beach litigation in the amount of $250,000 by a vote of 9 to 0. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that we're going to go ahead and ahead this. Sorry. Sorry, Charlie. Any business?

Agenda Item

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation and report on Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) “Year in Review,” highlighting the President’s 2020-2021 work plan, including Connect So Cal Plan adoption, the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, the Regional Equity Framework, the Regional Data platform, and other key milestones.

LongBeachCC

LongBeachCC_05112021_21-0411

Speaker 0: Okay. Now we'll do item 11, please, on the consent. Speaker 1: Recommendation or a report from Health and Human Services and City Prosecutor, a recommendation to execute an agreement with the Los Angeles County Development Authority to accept and expend CDBG funding to implement a homeless court pilot program citywide. Speaker 0: Thank you. I think we had a request from customers and they have to hear a staff report on this. Speaker 3: Yes, Mr. Mayor. Speaker 0: Right. Staff report, please. Speaker 3: Yes, Mr. Mayor, this is a wonderful program. We have both our city prosecutor and our director of Health and Human Services, Kelly Collopy, to give a report. Doug, if you can maybe go first. Okay. Kelly, I think we have Kelly now. Kelly, if you can give the staff report for item number 11, please. Speaker 0: Hello? Speaker 5: It's. Of the. The Homeless Services Court is the best practice model that is there. So the homeless services file and we see it around the country. Speaker 2: It operates in L.A.. Speaker 0: County as. Speaker 5: Well. It will be operating at the at the monthly service center one day per month. And we'll be starting with folks who are known to us in homeless services, really starting to work with them, to engage them in services, to be able to do expungements and those sorts of things. And then from that space, we'll also be bringing in a judge who will begin to work with others who may not be as known to us, but that will that are homeless and, and working to remove their different citations and others. So one of the best things about this is one of the multi-service centers that is easy to access, too, is that we'll be able to consistently engage with them, to be able to provide them services and support. And then the third is it's often like warrants and other sorts of things, misdemeanors that keep. Speaker 2: People from the opportunity of housing or. Speaker 5: Employment for others. And so this opportunity allows for those to be addressed and to be able to expunge those so that we're supporting people in their ability to get the services they need. With that, I'm open for any questions. Speaker 0: Was there going to be anything additional, Mr. Monica. Speaker 3: I think the city prosecutor was looking to contribute as well. But right now we don't have him on the line. So I think that's it for now. Thank you. Speaker 0: Okay. Councilman in the house. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And a huge thank you to our health health department director Kelly and our city prosecutor, Doug Ford, for this program, for this pilot program. I'm super excited about it. And I feel better that I needed to pull this off of the consent calendar because it is a very important program. And I wanted to make sure that we had a little bit more on it and about it. So I really appreciate you, Director Kelly, for for giving us a little bit more on this. And I'm really excited about this. I know that my residents continue to see our homeless crisis as one of their top concerns in our district. And I know that this doesn't only affect the first district, but also, you know, city wide. So that's I I thought that this was very important to to bring off of the consent calendar as well. I think that it is very important that we do everything possible to make sure that our unhoused neighbors have the services that they need in order to get out of that cycle and be able to, you know, become the people that they're trying hard to become, which is housed and healthy and they're going to follow. And those and sorry, I'm hearing feedback. If if everybody could please mute, that would be great. So yes. So I just want to make sure that we provide our unhoused neighbors with as much services as we can. Also, as we move forward, I strongly encourage that. We also continue to include our amazing homeless service providers and our continuum of care partners in this process, and so that they can also help in shaping this program, because they're they're the ones that are out there day in and day out with our unhoused neighbors and really do know the needs of them and what is working and what is not working. And I just can't thank you enough, both the health department and our city city prosecutor for trying to find innovative ways to be able to help our residents get on the right track again. So thank you. Thank you very much. And I look forward to seeing the results of this program. Speaker 0: Thank you. I have a report. We move on to the second and then I have a few councilmembers lined up to speak. I just want to add, I don't know that Mr. Marechal mentioned it, but the resources are coming, I believe, from the county. I think the county is helping host and sponsor this. So I also want to make sure that we thank Supervisor Hahn and just the county team. I know they've been working with the city prosecutor and staff on this. And so just wanted to note that I mean, I know it's in the report, but I just want to pull that out from the report as well. We have a second by Councilman Price. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas, for pulling this item from Cannes. Said, I'm so glad that you did. It was a great idea for you to do that. This is part of a collaborative court model that I'm a huge fan of. I staff collaborative courts myself every single week and every single day. Me and my team of over 20 attorneys refer people to homeless court in Orange County every single day. And it really is a wonderful opportunity for the continuum of care that you mentioned. Councilwoman Sun has to work to assist individual people, and it's really a person by person solution. There's no easy or swift way to address the needs of individuals because they are individual needs. And I want to applaud our health department and our city prosecutor. I've been very fortunate to get to work with Mr. Halbert in my professional capacity and learning ideas from him, and I hope to share with him some of the things that we do in our homeless court that could be implemented here in Long Beach. And he and I actually have a very successful story of an individual that we have both helped, one from the Orange County side, one from the Long Beach side with our health department. And we've gotten both health care agencies involved. And the person is doing great. They're working with the case manager stabilizing. And so it's taken a lot of effort from two different counties and caseworkers from two different counties to come together and prosecutors from two different counties to work together. But that's just an example of the kinds of things that can happen in a collaborative court. And even though she wasn't part of the collaborative court model, that individual is benefiting from the services, and the collaborative court structure will allow us to be able to do that more readily for a larger group of people. So thank you, Councilwoman Sun House, for pulling this item. Thank you to our health department director and Doug Halbert for moving forward with this program. I'm super excited about it and I think programs like this work work really well. And I know our city prosecutor is in the council chambers right now tonight, and I know he probably has a lot to say and I don't want to speak for him, but this is just one of those innovative models that he has already implemented, similar ones here in the city of Long Beach and is continuing to do . And I'm really, really pleased that he's at the forefront of our prosecution efforts in these unusual and innovative times. Thanks. Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilmember Obsidian. Thank you so much. And of course, well, I want to thank our council members and De Haas for holding this. I think it's important for us to discuss. Obviously, this is an innovative approach, as said by my colleague, Councilmember Price. Anytime that we can eliminate barriers for individuals to reentry or rehabilitate, particularly those who have been acculturated in not homeless or unhoused situation, this is this is value added. And so I fully support this item. I'm really, really thrilled to see us moving in this direction. And I think my question might have been asked by answered by staff. But, you know, I just the only question I had is where would this be housed and whether or not it will be moved around with the staffing if that wasn't available. Obviously, we have a number of shelters in our city and we want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of all of our unhoused residents. But those are my comments and I fully support this item. Thank you for pulling it. Thank you, Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Yes. I also want it being Councilwoman Zendejas for pulling this off. This is just an absolutely fantastic item that builds upon all the great work that's already happening now with our staff. I also want to applaud city prosecutor Doug Halburd and the Health Department. I know that Councilwoman Pryce and I were talking about the need of these services to address all these homeless needs throughout our community. And we were talking specifically about Bixby and the Promenade. So I'm just super excited to see this item going forward. Speaker 0: Thank you. And let me now, I think we have a prosecutor, however, on the line. I think it's connected now. Is that right? Speaker 3: Thank you, honorable mayor. Members of the council. Can you hear me? Okay? My my compliments to the City Hall Security. I was locked out of the chambers during the beginning part of the presentation, but I'm in now, so I know that the city council has already received some information about the homeless court project and to respond to one question already made as far as locations, it is my hope that we can move it throughout the year. Initially, the homeless court will be located most likely at the Multi-Service Center, where a number of our nonprofit organizations are already located. The goal of the homeless court, obviously, is it's multifaceted. We want to help participants get connected to critical services such as mental health, substance abuse counseling and housing assistance. We also want to help homeless court participants who are already active in services so they can have outstanding infractions and misdemeanor cases resolved, potentially dismissed. We also want people experiencing homelessness who have low level warrants to get those warrants removed. And the Long Beach Police Department's warrant removal program will assist us as part of homeless court as well going forward. Also, we want homeless court participants who qualify for the Priority Access Diversion Program, which has been piloted here in Long Beach for the last couple of years. Those who are eligible may have cases dismissed, may get their fines waived. Defendants may also attend programs in lieu of jail sentences, all in an effort to help them be successful with services and to reduce any barriers to housing and or barriers to employment that come along with the criminal justice system. So if there are any further questions, one more thing. The RISE program, which the City Council has funded for the last two years, allows old cases that are eligible for Expungements to be cleared as well. And we're also going to include that service as part of homeless court. So that will be the final of the RISE program, which was started about two years ago by Mayor Garcia and the City Council with funding directly from the city. Otherwise, we really have to thank Supervisor Janice Hahn if that has not already been mentioned. We really appreciate her because she contacted us, asked us to look at the Redondo Beach program and see if we could do something similar or even better in Long Beach. And it's my hope, of course, that we improve on the Redondo Beach model and really make something that makes a difference in the homeless problem we have here in Long Beach, which does appear to be growing. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. And I have Councilmember Cipriano. Thank you. I stand in support of this item, but I would like to make a friendly amendment, and that is that we have some very strict accounting for accountability first. And the fact that we're spending it might be counting money, but it's public money. And secondly, if we wanted to expand this program in the future, we would want to have a lot of data behind this. And so what I'm asking for, if they only meet monthly, maybe quarterly reporting both that has a great analysis to it, both quantitative and qualitative. So that that's my friendly. Thank you. And customers and they have. Speaker 2: Thank you. Council member sue for non and absolutely asset those friendlies. I think that would be very important. I think that it's going to be important to see what what this program is bringing and the results that it's bringing. And I loved hearing the example that Councilmember Price gave us a little bit ago about her success story along with our city prosecutor. I think that that is exactly what these programs are designed to do and is to see these individuals become successful and be able to live a good life moving forward and to be able to be provided those opportunities. So with that, I cannot thank you enough city prosecutor Doug and Kelly for this presentation. And of course, thank you. Thank you so much to our Supervisor Hahn, for thinking of Long Beach. She always does great work and she's always very thoughtful in keeping Long Beach and how to advance Long Beach in all aspects. And I know that in her district, our, you know, homeless crisis is very, very important to her as well. And so I'm very thankful that we have this opportunity to have this program in our city. So thank you again for everyone's collaboration and hard work on this. And I really, really can can foresee that this is going to be fantastic for for Long Beach. Speaker 0: Thank you. With that, we have we've got three we have public comment. I think we said we did on this item, correct? Speaker 3: Yes. We have public comment for this item. Our first speaker is Alison Crisp. Speaker 2: Hi, guys. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor, and our council members. And I want to say thank you so, so much to council members in the House for being such a rock star and pulling this from the consent calendar to speak about it. I really appreciate hearing the presentation from both prosecutor, from our city attorney and from Director Colby and the comments that are Councilmember Price and then they have made in regards to including our continuum of care providers throughout this conversation. I've participated in a few of these counts in Redondo Beach and been there in person. Watching and seeing tears of joy just as a volunteer is just the most incredible thing and watching. So this is going to be an awesome opportunity, especially had it having at a multi-service center. I did want to just leave a reminder for our council members that moving forward, there's going to be a larger conversation that's going to happen in regards to equity and the reason why these criminal charges have occurred for those experiencing homelessness. So I do encourage our city council council members to include our continuum of care board members and service providers. In this conversation, again, the service providers do have the boots on the ground by councilmembers. And then they had mentioned earlier with the leadership and help with future conversations in regards to homeless court. I also wanted to take this opportunity to remind our council members that the CFC has experience and work with these offices in regards to all the challenges for our friends that are experiencing homelessness. It is a larger conversation that will include support from not just society but from the service providers that are within our homeless services department to address not just again, the expungement of criminal records, but to follow up in collaboration with all the department to address what's happening before, after, before and after homeless court and all the 100 of human interactions it takes to help someone from street to home. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate you guys letting me speak and. Golden Beach. Thank. Speaker 3: Think your next speaker is Lee Charlie. Speaker 0: Life has many chapters. One bad chapter does not mean the end of the book by the letter. I arrived in Long Beach, California, Saturday, May 2nd, 2015. I lived and slept on the putting greens at recreational golf course on seventh in four months until the village at the Gabriel had a bed available, provided a safe place to live and legal services to get my be a benefit. I have two college degrees served in the United States Navy, and the hardest job I ever had was breaking the cycle of homelessness. Every homeless person is a human being and has a story to tell. If you will, listen. Drug addiction, mental illness, domestic violence and having a criminal record are far too common. This homeless caught pilot program is a huge step in the right direction towards progress. Maslow's hierarchy of needs starts with physiological needs. Then progress towards the safety gear. Gaining employment benefits. Permanent housing is all but impossible. Having a criminal record nonviolent crime, being expunged is a great start. Legal fees are astronomical and fortunately drastically decreasing hope and increasing homelessness. This pilot program will not solve our homeless crisis, but it will help loss of self-esteem. Sane judgment never stops, and many homeless individuals are punished over and over again because of a mistake made in their past that haunts them as they sleep on a concrete floor. I hope that the City Council will vote yes on this homeless pilot program. I hope citizens will be allowed to volunteer with legal professionals for the pilot program. Ten volunteers helped spread the message for unhoused people in the city. Well, the city of Long Beach have literature for us to pass out to the UN. How can the city post signs on highly populated areas of unhoused zombie citizens? Transportation is not easy. Walking from Bixby Park to the Multi-Service Center and maybe volunteers can help set up transportation. My favorite quote from our vice president, Kamala Harris. Anyone who claims to be a leader must speak like a leader. That means speaking with integrity and truth. Thank you, Councilwoman Mary De Hart, director, director of Health and Human Services, Kelly Co-op and Doug Talbot for being leaders in Long Beach trying to do something different. Tackling our Long Beach Homeless Crisis. Let's fight for our Long Beach homeless population. Breaking the cycle of homelessness. One human being at a time. Speaker 3: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Speaker 0: Thank you. Before we go to our our vote, I do want to again, just especially thank Supervisor Hahn when in discussing this process, she had the opportunity to actually provide funding to a variety of jurisdictions. And through conversations, particularly with Prosecutor Halbert and others, they settled on Long Beach as the city to do this work and through this funding from the county. And so I just want to make sure that we're just thankful for that partnership and the continued partnership that she's provided. And, of course, the prosecutor. Halbert, thank you for all your work in getting this off the ground and, of course, to our health department, but very, very important work. And I think we're all looking forward to getting a report and feedback on how it's going. So excellent work. Thank you all very much. And let's go to a roll call vote. Speaker 1: District one. I District two. I. District three. I. District four. Speaker 0: I. Speaker 1: District five. I. District six. I. District seven. Speaker 0: I. Speaker 1: District eight. Speaker 0: All right. Speaker 1: District nine. Right. Motion carries. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you very much. Item 16 is we're just reading the motion and then we're going to continue to do the first, please. So let's read the motion. Speaker 1: Item 16 Report from Development Services Recommendation to adopt resolution allowing for the initiation of a consolidated coastal development permit in connection with the realignment of Shoreline Drive as part of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project and adopt a resolution granting city manager the authority to initiate consolidated coastal development permits districts two and three.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and all necessary documents and any subsequent amendments, including amending the award amounts, with the Los Angeles County Development Authority, to accept and expend Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding in an approximate amount up to $254,000, to implement a Homeless Court Pilot Program in Long Beach, for the period of April 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022, with the option to renew for three one-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; and Increase appropriations in the Health Fund Group in the Health and Human Services Department by $254,000, offset by grant revenue. (Citywide)

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Speaker 1: Item 16 Report from Development Services Recommendation to adopt resolution allowing for the initiation of a consolidated coastal development permit in connection with the realignment of Shoreline Drive as part of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project and adopt a resolution granting city manager the authority to initiate consolidated coastal development permits districts two and three. Speaker 0: Thank you. I know that we are going to move as a gene firm. If I can get a motion in a second for you on this. There's a motion by account from your ranga. Can I get a second? Can I get a second, please? Second account on Sunday has moved to the June 1st meeting. Roll Call vote. Speaker 1: District one. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: District two. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: A district. Speaker 2: By. Speaker 1: District for. Hi. District five. District five. I. Again, I. Thank you. District six. Speaker 2: By. Speaker 1: District seven. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: District eight. Councilmember us. Okay. That's an I from council district eight and Council District nine. Speaker 0: All. Speaker 1: Thank you. Motion carries.

Resolution

Recommendation to adopt resolution allowing for the initiation of a Consolidated Coastal Development Permit process pursuant to Section 30601.3 of the Public Resources Code (Coastal Act) in connection with the realignment of Shoreline Drive as part of the Shoemaker Bridge Replacement Project; and

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Item 17, please. Speaker 1: Communication for Mayor Garcia. Recommendation to Request City Manager to develop a plan and vision for Long Beach, COVID 19. Speaker 0: COVID 19 memorial. But yes. I just wanted to object. First of all, just thank the staff and the WHO has also been working on this and have had some conversations. Um, we've talked about this already I think in public and there's been a lot of community conversations around how we honor really just a horrific event that's happened in our city and of course in the history of our city appropriately. As of today, we've lost 933 members of our community. And I've said this before many times, that the single largest loss of life we have ever experienced through an event in the history of the city since the beginning of the founding of language. And so how we honor will be more than these 933 lives, but also provide a space that is healing for their families and for the community. It's something that could be very important for us to do as a city in the years ahead. Just thinking about it as a community. The fact that we have responded in the way that we have, I think also gives us an opportunity to respond in a very powerful way through this memorial process. I've talked to our city manager, and this certainly is not going to be a fast process. It's one that has to be done very respectfully and thoughtfully engages the community and community leaders from across the city. I also want to make sure that in this process that whatever is developed is really something that comes from the community and especially so the those that have survived the pandemic and seen other folks that have passed . The families of those that have been victims of COVID 19 should absolutely be involved in what this would actually look like for us as a city. There is no set idea what whatever this memorial would look like or where the location would be or what it would represent. I think it's all up for for for our city wide conversation in the months ahead. The recommendation asked the city manager and and our team to develop a process and a vision for what the COVID 19 memorial would look like. I've also asked city manager to select individuals from the city to form a advisory group to the city to help give ideas and will need to be involved at some point, also in outreach and possible raising of funds for a project of this magnitude. I've also engaged Ron Arias, who all of us know as the former director of the Long Beach Health Department, to be involved and take a leadership role. Having been, you know, kind of the someone that guided and created the modern health department that we know today. But beyond that, it's important for the public to also know that this item is just to move forward with the process as far as location and what the cost would be. Those would be conversations for the future. We don't know. A project like this could have significant costs in the future. We just don't know what those what those would be. And certainly there will have to be some serious fundraising efforts to get support and even federal and state support to be looked at as well for a project of this magnitude. I want to thank again the team for this. And with that, I would like to get a motion, please. I see it as a motion by councilwoman that they have trying to get a second piece. And second by Councilmember Ringo. I got some of the deals. Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Amir. As as you well know, this has been an incredible time that has taken some of our loved ones way too early. COVID has has been, like you stated, one of the hardest hit things that has ever hit Long Beach, the city of Long Beach, and not the one that has also taken the most lives in such a short period of time. So I really thank you for for your efforts in in making this memorial as special as possible. And the only way to do that is, like you said, getting everybody involved, especially the victims of COVID 19. Every single person that was taken from us was a child, a father, a mother, an uncle, a grandparent to somebody. And with their loss, they leave behind devastation that it cannot be replaced. And so having a memorial and having it be community led, I think it's going to be extremely important. And it honors those that that unfortunately lost their lives to COVID 19. So for that, I just wanted to thank you and your staff and thank in advance our advisory committee and also thank Ron Arias for accepting this this opportunity to be a leader in providing this kind of special memorial here in our city of Long Beach Speaker 0: . Councilwoman Catherine Tauranga second. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank the comments and I agree with the comments that the council members and their has put forward every single one of us. Was touched by COVID 19 in one way or another. Personally, I had my my daughter and my son in law contract COVID. Thank goodness that they were able to get over it very quickly without any major symptoms or anything underlying with them either. So I appreciate the effort, Mayor, that you're putting forward on this. I strongly support the fact that we're going to make it community based. I think it's something that we need to memorialize how we went through a pandemic in 1918, that unless we read the newspapers and go into the archives, we we would have forgotten about it. And I think that this event in our history needs to be memorialized and never forgotten. Thank you for putting this forward. Speaker 0: Thank you. Council member Sara. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank your leadership in helping our city navigate. And the best, I think the motto in the way that in how to how to manage the pandemic. Right. And as best as we can, and also bringing forward this proposed. Speaker 1: Opportunity. Speaker 2: To do a memorial, given that, you know, it's it's going to be it's going to be more than a lifetime to process the impact of this pandemic. And I think it's still helpful to have a process to heal through this development of memorial. And I also would like, if we can consider to ensuring we have members of the heroes at the front line that's helped us, such as possibly health care workers and and others that could contribute to the memorial, given how much they. Speaker 1: Have helped us. Speaker 2: And save lives as well. So that that is a suggestion I'd like us to consider in addition to our residents. Our health care is in the front lines as well. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Allen. Speaker 1: Just thank you, a mayor, for your incredible leadership. During this time, losing over 900 people to COVID is just unbelievable number. Just a lot. You know, so many friends and neighbors and loved ones that we lost here in Long Beach. I know that we have absolutely never seen or would never possibly expect to even be in a position that we're in today. But I think that it's going to be important that we memorialize all of these lives. I think it's also going to be important that we develop a plan that helps everyone grieve and also is the kind of place where people can start that that healing process. And I think a memorial is a perfect point for us, for us to do that. I also agree, I think it's important that we find a way to honor all of those that were on the front line and help us get through this really tough time in our community. So I just look forward to seeing how the committee does that, and I just thank you very much. Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with everything my colleague said. I would I would just underscore, you know, the city's this this event changed our city, changed our region. And, you know, when we look back on this moment, you know, we want to we want to make sure that this sort of represents how we came together as a community to really overcome this challenge. And so I certainly am most interested in this as a device for healing and sort of allow people to cope with what we just went through because there will be trauma from for years to come. Based on what we just experienced. But I agree with what what everyone said. I look forward to helping be a part of this. Thank you. Thank you. And I just wanted to just add. I really love what was said about finding ways to honor our healthcare workers within the memorial space, because that's something that I personally also believe is would be great to see. And obviously all of those ideas will be part of the broader conversation. But I do think that is really a really great and really appropriate. I think the other charge I would just leave with Mr. America and the team is just to recognize that. A moral of this type is is significant from a healing perspective for our community. But it will also reach a lot of folks from outside our community. And the truth is, is that not every city is going to have a memorial. There will there will probably be few of them in the state. And so it's also an opportunity for us to provide this healing and special space for those of us in the city. But also we have to be prepared that many others will visit this visit this memorial from, you know, from across the state and in other places. And so that that's going to be an important space for those folks as well, who also had similar experiences and similar trauma. So I think it's a big it's a big charge, but I think all of us look forward to seeing the progress and what what's developed in the months ahead. And so with that, is there any public comment on this item? Speaker 1: No. There is no public comment on this item. Speaker 0: They will do a roll call vote, please. Speaker 1: District one. I district to my district three. My district for. Speaker 0: My. Speaker 1: District five. I District six. I District seven. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: District eight. Speaker 0: All right. Speaker 1: District nine. Speaker 0: All right. Speaker 1: Motion carries. Speaker 0: Thank you. Is there regular public comment, please? You want to do that now? Thank you.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to request City Manager to develop a plan and vision for a Long Beach COVID-19 Memorial that will be dedicated to those lost during the pandemic. A community advisory group should be formed for the selected project.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. And I would be happy to do that to thank you for for that invitation to do so. Happy to do that. With that, we are going to go ahead and go into our study session. We can read that, please. Speaker 1: Item 19 is the study session recommendation to conduct a study session to receive and file an update on the city's strategic vision efforts. Speaker 0: I will now turn this over to the staff. Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. So in 2019, the City Council embarked on a effort to create an updated strategic plan looking to the future or strategic vision. We've done a number of strategic plans in the city and some really great work, and this is kind of an overarching effort to pull all of those together and to really create a document that helps us kind of focus and look to the future. So we started that effort in 2019, and then along with many things, we had to take a pause during COVID and we've restarted that effort. So tonight you're going to get an update of some of the work that's been happening. We're not asking for any specific direction tonight, although we certainly welcome comments and then we'll be bringing this back to you in summer so that you have a chance to really dove into it a little bit deeper. And with that, I'll turn it over to both Theresa Chandler, our deputy city manager, and Kelly Collopy, our director of Health and Human Services. Speaker 5: Good evening, honored mayor and members of the city council. As Tom mentioned, in the early in October of 2019, the City Council directed city staff to develop a strategic vision for the city that would reflect the next ten years to 2030. We were in we were in the middle of all that and providing and then when COVID hit, it was set aside. Tonight, we are here this evening to provide an update to that strategic vision planning process and to and to really just sort of give you insight into what we are hearing. We began this journey in partnership with Arup Consulting Firm in February of 2020. However, due to COVID, we were delayed and we are just now sort of back and really engaged and working through it. Fortunately, we've been able to pick up where we left off and we've been able to have conversations with many of you, in fact , all of you throughout the process. In this evening's study session will provide a high level update of where we are in the process. We'll share the goals and themes that have emerged collectively from the work to date. Provide an update on our progress. Share what we've heard and our next steps. Speaker 6: Our goal of this work is to develop a tenure. Well, nine year now strategic vision for our city that reflects your voices, the voices of our teams and the voices of our community by way of using an equity and resiliency lens in this design process. This vision will help focus and prioritize our work as we emerge from this pandemic and move toward an even brighter future. Just about all of our city departments have their own strategic plans as departments or for specific focus areas to help guide their work. All of which elicited community feedback as part of their planning process. It wasn't necessary to start from scratch, given the rich information used to create each of these plans. Therefore, we started the visioning process by reviewing and pulling out the common threads or themes that emerged across all of them. We spoke with each of you to elicit your feedback and visions specific to your council districts and for the city overall. We also conducted sessions with city excuse me, city leadership and staff to gather their thoughts for internal and external transformation. Though we are using the information gathered from the community during the strategic planning processes, as mentioned above, starting this week, we are also meeting communities where they are at to gather more information about their vision for Long Beach in 2030. And we'll simultaneously gather information from city staff who are on the ground working hard every day to meet the needs of community members. All of this rich data will lead us to the development of the road map for the future of Long Beach. From the 25 strategic plans across the city departments, over 15,000 community residents were engaged through those efforts. As I mentioned in the last slide, ten interviews were conducted with each of you and the mayor. We have a steering committee made up of city staff who meet monthly to provide guidance to the Arab team and city leadership participated in two listening sessions, and another listening session is on the horizon for city staff who are on the ground providing services day in and day out. This is an this is an all hands in effort designed to ensure voices from across the city are heard and are contributing to a collective vision. Now, Kelly is going to share more about what we heard in these sessions. Speaker 5: We'd like to share more about what we heard from the interviews. The themes that were pulled from the various reports, as well as our visioning sessions with our employees. From the original, from the review of the plans, general themes emerged. They're focused on housing and homelessness, public safety, accessible public transportation, and safe places for active transportation, workforce development and economic inclusion, health, mental health and overall wellness education at all levels, beginning with the early child and throughout the lifespan. Digital inclusion. And climate change. And the environment. The conversations with you included these themes and highlighted included the themes of the strategic plans and also highlighted that we needed a focus on the basic needs of the city and ensuring that the basic needs are met across the city. You highlighted that equity must be a well integrated into our policies and program design as well as implementation and that resident interests are represented. Many of you discussed that in many ways. After this pandemic, we needed to return to the basics, ensure that all our communities have access to these basics, such as quality and reliable infrastructure, clean air and water, and ensuring safety in our homes and in our communities. This was framed in a conversation about ensuring that Long Beach is a desirable place to live. You highlighted the need for a resilient and diverse economy so that our residents can thrive while working, living, playing and raising their families in Long Beach. You also highlighted the importance of drawing businesses to the city and supporting innovative opportunities. And finally, you're focused on increasing civic engagement and working to create stronger community relationships and communication structures to ensure community voices are engaged in planning and decision making. Our Department Leadership and steering committee also focused on the importance of addressing the areas of greatest need in the city and working to prioritize resources and aligning them with the goals outlined in the strategic planning areas. They focused on addressing the digital divide to ensure that communities across the city have digital access and competency to learn, work and be civically engaged. They focused on environmental resiliency, ensuring that we have the infrastructures necessary to withstand the impacts of climate change, and also the ability to support those who are most vulnerable in our communities, such as older adults and those living in poverty who have limited access to healthy environments. And last but not least, they highlighted the need to support health and wellness by investing in children, youth and families to support the future of our city. This includes investing in early childhood education, workforce opportunities for parents, health and mental health services, as well as increasing access to healthy food and physical exercise opportunities in areas where they are most lacking. We know that to achieve what has been discussed through this presentation so far, it's absolutely essential to have a strong, vibrant and resilient city government. These next two slides really highlight the focus on our government. The Department Leadership and Steering Committee highlighted the importance of developing and strengthening mechanisms for equitable service investments, utilizing an equity lens and taking a long term planning view. They discussed the need for resiliency in the face of shocks that could be natural, manmade environmental or in the face of a pandemic such as we're experiencing now. And to ensure that we can continue to provide basic services and focus on a strong future. They talked about ensuring that we are strong, working together across departments to strengthen our ability to meet community needs by leveraging, not duplicating our efforts, including funding and talent. They also talked about the importance of community voices in the city's work and ensuring that they are engaged in our work together. There was also a focus on financial resilience and ensuring diversified funding streams clearly agreed upon priorities and investments in families, green infrastructure and safety, to name a few. They highlighted the need for accessible data that are shared across departments to support decision making investment determinations and to determine program effectiveness. They, however, needed to ensure our city employees are fortified and appreciated. This includes creating learning environments, growth opportunities, the ability to build skills while also maintaining a positive work life balance. And finally, they highlighted the need for technology investments to strengthen business practices and efficiencies, increase access to services for our community members, to support collaboration across departments and with the community, and to ensure flexibility in workspaces, including the ability to work remotely. Their vision of our city. Government truly highlights resilience, learning, engagement and financial strength through all that comes to our city. Speaker 6: After reviewing all of the existing plans, working with city leadership staff in our legislative offices, we have gathered quite a lot of information in a short amount of time. We certainly have some ways to go still. However, we have drafted the statement of possibility for our city to uplift the vision. We are all working to achieve that. People are healthy, well, and feel safe in an equitable and fair community. Housing is affordable, protected and available. Economic opportunity exists for everyone. Transportation and mobility needs are met for individuals and for the community. The environment is sustainable and resilient. We are looking forward to diving deeper into making connections with the community members who may have not been engaged in earlier city planning efforts. This week, we will begin meeting residents at vaccine distribution sites in parks located in some of the hardest to reach neighborhoods in west, north and central Long Beach to elicit feedback about their vision for Long Beach in 2030. Conversations will be had with people who are waiting in line before getting their vaccine and with those who are waiting to be cleared. Post-Vaccination. These conversations will be available in Spanish, Tagalog and Kami, and the following questions will be asked during the conversations. Well, we'll start out by gathering demographic information, and then we're going to go into what resources did they did you and your family rely on the most to navigate through the year? Looking forward, what do you want the city to focus on as we recover as a community in the future? What does a well-prepared Long Beach look like and what is the most convenient way for you to give feedback in the future? The team will also conduct some employee listening sessions to engage staff in the visioning of their future. Questions to prompt these conversations will be developed soon and shared in the final report. Many city employees are also residents of Long Beach, and we want to make sure their voices are fully represented in this vision document as well. The slide outlines our next steps in moving this work forward. It's been moving full speed ahead since we reconvened at the beginning of this year, and I'm proud to share how far along in the process we have gotten in a relatively short amount of time with all of the trials, tribulations and lessons learned throughout this pandemic response . We have been able to bring more clarity and purpose to this strategic vision process. We have seen the highs and lows. Our areas for opportunity have been exposed. Our strengths have been uplifted. And this document will allow us to align across the city so that we are united in our work and service provision going forward. We will be moving towards completion through this summer after we finished the listening sessions. The Preliminary Strategic Vision Action Agenda will be drafted to help move us along the pathway at the duration of the drafting phase. We will deliver a presentation to all of you in a council meeting and once approved, we will share the final version with our city team. This is where we are so far. We are certainly looking forward to hearing your feedback about what we may want to still consider as we proceed to the finish line. Thank you for your engagement so far in this process and for your time this evening. And we are available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Speaker 0: Thank you. I want to just obviously thank staff for all the work. After this epic brawl, I think we all can probably understand and appreciate this strategic plan directly. Pretty important documents. And they are obviously important as it relates to our departments, our community and how we move forward over the course of the next ten years especially . And so I just want to commend the staff for the work and for persevering, doing the work through the through the pandemic. I just want to also I know that tonight is not it's just an update and there'll be a lot more in the future. Mr. Modica about report is going to come down a month from now in the summer. Is that a draft or is that more of like what? What does that look like when when you come back to us? Speaker 5: We're the mayor. The timeline is over the next couple of months. And so we anticipate that we'll, um, that we'll be pulling all that information and you'll get a draft and have an opportunity to review and um, uh, provide feedback and then we'll continue on to, um, to finalize. Speaker 0: Okay. And the only other thing I'll add is I think that, um, our community input is really important in a process like this. And so, uh, I do appreciate the, uh, reaching out that you're all doing at the, at the vaccination clinics. And I'm just hopeful that, and I know that there's been obviously extensive community input over all the plans in the past and any other opportunities that there are to do. The additional input I think will be important, is what I'm sure you guys are all considering that as we as we move forward to. Thank you. I might have Vice Mayor Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I'll be brief. I think it's great that we're doing this. I think it's important now. Given everything we just went through. A lot has changed about our city and about the vision. Needs to be factor of this input into it are two things that I wanted to just take this opportunity to lift up. One, I know we're doing outreach at the vaccination sites. I just want to say in North Long Beach, that's a fifth of the city's population. One site, you know, doing outreach in there is not going to really capture what you need captured. I think you should be looking at multiple sites or opportunities across North County, some massive areas the size of Compton, Carson. So you should be looking at both districts, eight districts, nine west, northwest, northeast, just fine opportunity because some people don't go to Highland Park for the vaccination site. The second thing I would say is and this was my sentiment and I don't know what everybody said in their interview, I enjoyed my interview with Short 30 Minutes, but the message for me was simple. It's in my opinion, you know, that there's this transition toward equity and advance in our city. Really. It should be owned by owned by the city, owned by the city staff, the employees. And we really should be looking at the city as an organization. It's organization focused. Make sure no neighborhood is left behind, not to counsel people or not, you know, politics. We are a place where it really the city, our key performance indicators of the city should be on how well we all are doing. So basic common denominator. We all should meet a certain level of response times. We should all be meeting a certain level of economic activity in areas with more unemployment other than other areas. That's where we should be putting our focus of workforce. But I think what I really want to see, since the organization is doing this visioning that the organization as a whole really think about how it's going to meet meet the future as it relates to equity. It shouldn't you know, it shouldn't be city council members or you know, we certainly can say we want to say, but really it should be a part of the service. Those are two things. I would I would just add. Keep up the great work report to the next. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Speaker 2: You, Mr. Mayor, and I really appreciate the presentation that that you guys have given, and you've already done a lot of work. I know there's still a lot more community engagement to be had. But just out of curiosity, was there any information that came out from the visioning efforts so far that was surprising to the team? Or was the information that you learned kind of further corroborating the track that we're on progress we're making? Speaker 5: I think that there are many things that we heard that were aligning with what we've been hearing through other plans and things. I think the impact of the pandemic has shifted some view. For some, it's harder to think past what we've experienced. And so there has been a little bit of a step back and thinking about making sure that we really are settling and taking and taking care of the basic needs of our community, really focusing on, you know, access to food and access to safe spaces and and those sorts of things which in in previous conversations may not have been uplifted as much. So I think it did center a little bit more given the experiences of our city in the past year. Speaker 2: Okay. That's good. I have, you know, do you know yet? Are there significant variations in the input that we've received from the public based on geography or socioeconomics or gender? Or are residents mostly in support of the same priorities in terms of strategic planning? Speaker 5: At this point, Councilmember, that much of the information that has been brought forward has been pulled from the strategic plans that have been going on for the last few years. So if you think about the, you know, the CAP plan and you think about the blueprint for economic development and you think about the early childhood plan. And there are just so many different plans and the feedback from across the city is included in all of those plans. And we haven't gone through all the plans and broken out that I don't know that we actually have those data that indicate where all the those voices came from. But much of the themes that we have forwarded here have stemmed from a review and reading the comments and engaging with the more than 25 plans that the city has developed in recent years. Speaker 2: Okay. I appreciate that. I know it's it's kind of a a bigger, broader question to think about as we move through this process. And I think, you know, for me, I enjoyed my interview with the team as well, but I think it will be interesting to see what the strategic vision and priorities are for a city that's as diverse as we are. Because I know, for example, delivery of government services and response times and the delivery of customer service or public service services is probably a major priority for the residents that I represent. I know just kind of the response times when they report an issue in terms of strategic visioning, you know, how do we continue to have good customer service as a city to all of the residents that I'm just curious because we hear that a lot. It's a priority. Whether that was a theme that people thought about in terms of strategic planning, that that customer service be be looped into the discussion as we talk about a future strategic planning . So I'd be interested to know after you guys do your listening tours, assuming you're going to do them all over the city and capture the diversity that makes the city so beautiful and yet so different throughout the various borders of our city, so that we can develop a strategic plan that really encapsulates priorities to the extent we're able to of the diverse communities that we all represent. So I thank you very much for starting these efforts, and I look forward to hearing more about them as we continue these discussions. Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. The D.A.. Speaker 2: Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation. Very good presentation. I know that I really enjoyed my interview as well, but I think like Councilmember Rex had mentioned that, you know, it's really we really need to you know, what's more important is what the community sees. So our visions and I think that that's a great thing. And so I'm really thankful for you taking the time to actually try to reach those those folks that are hardest to reach. And in doing this pandemic, we have realized that how much how much residents we actually do have that are hard to reach. So I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you taking the effort and make our I should say, making the effort to really reach those and those folks that don't have a computer, that don't have a cell phone, that are victims of our digital divide and really trying to get their visions included as well. So thank you very much for that. Speaker 0: Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? Speaker 1: There's no public comment on this item here. Speaker 0: So I think the motion was by Vice Mayor Richardson and a second by Councilman Price, if that works. And with that, we'll go ahead and take a roll call vote. Speaker 1: District one, District two I. District three. Speaker 2: District I. Speaker 1: District four. Speaker 0: I. Speaker 1: District five. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: District six. Speaker 2: I. Speaker 1: District seven. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: District eight. Speaker 0: Hi. Speaker 1: District nine. Speaker 0: Hi. Speaker 1: Motion carries.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to conduct a study session to receive and file an update on the City’s Strategic Vision efforts.

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Speaker 0: Thank you. Next up is item 18. Speaker 1: Report from Public Works. Recommendation to adopt specification number r-7163 and award a contract to cease legacy construction for a total contract amount not to exceed 2,859,852. District six and seven. Speaker 0: Okay. Can I get a motion in a second, please? Emotion like tantrum or your anger. I get a second place. Second back are sorrow from Tauranga. Do you have anything? Speaker 4: Not project. Thank you. Speaker 0: Councilmember Controversial. Okay. Actually, there's no public comment. Is that correct? Speaker 1: That is correct. Speaker 0: That would be a roll call vote. Speaker 1: District one I support District two I. District three. Speaker 2: District I. Speaker 1: District four, high district five. I. District six. I. District seven. Speaker 4: I. Speaker 1: District eight. District nine. Speaker 0: Hi. Speaker 1: Ocean cares. Speaker 0: Great. Thank you very much. All right. I believe that's all the items on the agenda. Is that correct? Speaker 1: That is correct, Mayor. Speaker 0: Okay. Then, is there any new business from any any council members? I don't have any lined up here. So seeing no new business or announcements from the council, we will adjourn at 611. Living for it. All right, guys.

Agenda Item

Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. R-7163 and award a contract to C.S. Legacy Construction, Inc., of Ontario, CA, for the Long Beach Boulevard Pedestrian Improvements Project, in the amount of $2,486,828, with a 15 percent contingency in the amount of $373,024, for a total contract amount not to exceed $2,859,852; and, authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments; Increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $1,722,000, offset by Federal Highway Funds from Caltrans (STPL-5108(183)), approved by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro); Increase appropriations in the Capital Projects Fund Group in the Public Works Department by $1,722,000, offset by transfer of Federal Highway Funds from the Capital Projects Grant Fund; and Accept Categorical Exemption No. CE-21-040. (Districts 6,7)

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Speaker 3: Okay. Then let's read the item that was bought, please, which was 19. Speaker 0: Item 19 Recommendation to Terminate Management Agreement with Conservation Corps of Long Beach for the management and operation of 34090 Avenue and enter into a master lease for the operation and maintenance of Willow Springs Park Urban Wood Recovery and Utilization Program at 2750 Orange Avenue and Forest Park Environmental Stewardship Center at 6255 Forest Avenue Districts three, seven and nine. Speaker 3: Councilmember Aranda. Speaker 4: Thank you, Mayor, for allowing me to speak on this item here as. Speaker 3: It. Speaker 1: Is already done. Speaker 4: As many people know, the Conservation Corps has been with the city now since 1987 and has been doing a wonderful job in keeping our city clean and giving jobs to young people who are in need of some additional guidance. And the Conservation Corps provides. I think that this master lease is going to be a wonderful thing for the city. It keeps the Conservation Corps with us for many years to come. In addition to providing them with a new headquarters and other facilities that they will be able to use and maintain. So I want to just give a shout out to the Conservation Corps for the excellent work that they've been doing over the years with us. And I hope to strengthen and enforce and of course, reinforce the relationship that we have with them. So with that Mayor, I'd like to make the motion to accept the master lease. Speaker 3: I have a second by Vice Mayor Richardson with no public comment. Let's go and do a roll call. Speaker 0: District one. I district to. District two. She's District three. Speaker 1: I. District four. Speaker 3: Ney. Speaker 0: District five. Speaker 2: Hi. Speaker 0: District six. District seven. Speaker 4: Keep pushing. Speaker 2: I thank you. Speaker 0: District eight. Speaker 4: By. Speaker 0: District nine. Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 0: Motion carries. Speaker 3: Thank you. With that, we will go ahead. And do we have a request to move, I believe 21, 25, 25 as. Go ahead. 25 and then I'll pass it over to Councilmember Saro.

Contract

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to terminate Management Agreement No. 3557, effective June 1, 2021, with Conservation Corps of Long Beach, for the management and operation of 340 Nieto Avenue, and execute all documents necessary to enter into a Master Lease with the Conservation Corps of Long Beach, a nonprofit public benefit corporation, for the operation and maintenance of (1) Willow Springs Park Urban Wood Recovery and Utilization Program at 2750 Orange Avenue; (2) the building at 340 Nieto Avenue; and, (3) DeForest Park Environmental Stewardship Center at 6255 DeForest Avenue, from June 1, 2021 through May 31, 2041, with one five-year option to renew, at the discretion of the City Manager. (Districts 3,7,9)

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