Recommendation to receive and file a report from the Long Beach Fire Department on the status of illegal firework outreach, education, and enforcement plans, and a presentation from the Third Council District Committee on illegal fireworks.
Thank you. We're going to hear items 16 and 25, which are both fireworks related together, please. Communication from Councilman Price, Councilmember Pierce, Councilman Super Knob, Vice Mayor Andrews. Recommendation to receive and file a report from the Long Beach Fire Department and a presentation from the Third Council District Committee on illegal fireworks. And item 17 is a report from Health and Human Services, a recommendation to award a contract to Volunteers of America to provide operational I'm sorry, $0.25 item. Actually, I'm going to do one at a time. I just wanted to note that to hear one after the other. Okay. Sorry about that. So why don't we go ahead and do item 16? The recommendation receive and file a report on the Long Beach Fire Department from the Long Beach Fire Department and a presentation from Third Council District Committee on Illegal Fireworks. Mr. Mayor queued up. I think you're good to. Can you guys hear me? Yes we can use as he comes on our earth. Is the video queuing up or. Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you on this. And if you'd like to start your presentation. Okay. So I think there is a video for this presentation and I don't know if it's getting queued up or not, but I do have some comments on the item before we show it. It's one of our public service announcement videos that we work with Cal State, Long Beach every year to create. Oh. My name is Biscuit. When I was a puppy. I was really scared of these loud. Bright lights in the sky. I used to hide wherever and whenever I could. But then I knew. Coming. Comfort me. No matter what, everything is going to be okay. But then. My husband went away for a. And when he came back, it was the happiest day of my life. But he wasn't the same person. He used to be. My police dog friends tell me it's from these things called fireworks, which are these wild things that aren't allowed in Long Beach, but the humans use them anyway. So now it's my job to let my human know that no matter what, everything is going to be okay. I. So. So we wanted to kick off this item with that PSA. I think many of my council colleagues know that for the past several years we've been working really hard on education and outreach for fireworks leading up to the 4th of July. A few years ago, our office created a citizen committee to deal with fireworks. I know that, Ken Wise, I hope he's on the call right now. I think he wanted to give an update on the fireworks committee. And I think the importance of that is I don't know how many of my council members remember in 2018 when they did a presentation, they spent over 100 hours interviewing different public safety personnel throughout the city of Long Beach. They pulled data on hospitals in terms of 4th of July fireworks related injuries. They interviewed cities all throughout the region about how they deal with fireworks, education and outreach and also enforcement and prosecution of violations. And they presented a report to council. And as a result of that report, we brought several items over the past few years asking for the city attorney's office and the city manager to look at things such as administrative citations and other ways that we can better enforce and regulate fireworks activity in the city of Long Beach. This is to me, the situation is even worse this year. I know I've talked with Chief Luna about it and I've talked with Councilman Austin, who I know is also very concerned about this item and has brought an item as well tonight. This is an issue that for me, this year appears to be a lot worse. And in talking to the chief, I don't really know what the reason for that is, but the situation is out of control. It's almost nightly now, especially that on weekends. And so we're we're bringing awareness to the issue because I think it's important for us to have outreach and education through the pieces. I know that Ken Weiss, who's on this call, has been very successful in getting those pieces introduced into Long Beach Unified. He's worked, and I think he can speak to this himself, but he's got thousands, tens of thousands of views on these pieces just through the work that he's done with the committee that we created. And it's completely volunteer committee. So I'm really grateful for that. I also want to acknowledge our city prosecutor, Doug Halbert, who I spoke with earlier this week, who is going to be announcing, I think later this week a public facing website that will allow residents to be able to upload videos and to be able to lodge complaints. And we have that for price gouging. We're going to do a similar thing for fireworks, and that will allow the opportunity for home owners to also be held accountable for activity that's taking place on their property, even in the situation where the police officer doesn't witness the violation, which is necessary for a misdemeanor offense. So I'm going to turn it over. If it's okay, Madam Park, I don't know exactly how this would work, but I would love to hear from our fireworks advisory committee member Ken Weiss, if he's on the call and have him give a few updates and then and then we can move the item forward. And I know Councilmember Pearce reached out to me because this is an issue that's of great concern to her as well. So I know she's going to want to talk, but if we can ask Mr. Weiss to talk before she does, I think that would be great. Mr. Weiss's on the call. However. Mr. Weiss. Met. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor. City Council members, thank you very much for letting me make a few more hours and make a few comments tonight. Our committee has worked really hard this year on developing a fourth PSA relating to addressing the PTSD and how the fireworks effect affect individuals that have that problem. And we worked with Cal State, Long Beach and the Veterans Administration, and we just had a wonderful experience with a different administration. They were just anything we needed. They stepped forward and helped us. With the project and they did it. They were wonderful. I want to do it real quick because I know time is short. We all the pieces are now in the Long Beach Unified School District curriculum and are being shown to all the elementary school children. They are also in the Long Beach library system and are going to be available, I believe, through the youth learning part of the library. We we developed a static piece of art to go along with the with the pieces. And that's that piece of art is on the Long Beach Convention Center. Billboard As we speak, we have a language on the. On the Veterans Administration billboard on Seventh Street that has that was started at the beginning of June and has been run through 4th of July. We took the we had kind of a I think it's a wonderful thing. We had a citizen a protest and ask he he wanted to be involved with our committee, but he couldn't make the time commitment. And so he asked us, he said, of all the things that you have done this year, what haven't you been able to do? And I immediately said, Well, I'm going to do a bumper sticker or a Windows sticker. And he said, Send me the artwork and I'll make make it happen. And two weeks later, I had a box of 5000 bumper stickers on my on my front porch. And we've distributed them to different organizations around Long Beach here. 5000 isn't enough, but it's a start. The the pieces are on Long Beach TV. Parks and Rec is going to show them in front of the movies in the park when and if things get back to normal. The VA has. Has put out the and the the the yes A's through their social media. We worked very hard last year to develop a distribution network specifically in Long Beach, and we have 140 partners who are now distributing the pieces, all four of them to their organizations. And they are people like the Boys and Girls Club, Homeowners Association, just a whole myriad of organizations in Long Beach that are concerned and upset about the fireworks situation. We as of yesterday, the safety squad pieces. I have I have earned 24 million views. Which I think is just outstanding, just amazing and blows me away to think that 24 million people have seen what we created. If any of you have any questions for me, I'm. I'm more than happy to try and answer. And I don't have any additional questions for you, but I wanted to thank you on behalf of the city and on behalf of me and my team for the amazing work that you've done. I know that when we started this process, we talked a lot about trying to do outreach and education at the grade school level and the middle school level, just to teach the future leaders of Long Beach that this is this is not okay behavior. And and to maybe call upon the adults in the room who are breaking the rules to say, you know what, that's not okay. Kind of like our kids do sometimes. If we're picking up the phone while we're driving, they'll call out bad behavior and we want kids to understand that. But I think the work that you've done has been amazing. And the initial research that you did to get us to this point has been fantastic. And I just want to thank you. I know there's a lot of discussion to be had tonight. I also know that Chief Luna has shared with me that the attention of the police department toward this particular issue is going to be enhanced leading up to 4th of July from this point forward. So I want to thank you. Ken. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I have no additional comments. Thank you. Could I say one more thing before? Hello. I could say one more thing. Our committee is in the process right now of putting together recommendations for 2021, and we look forward to presenting them to the City Council in late August or early September. Council meeting. So I just wanted to make all of you aware of the work that we're doing on that. Thank you. Let me go to the coolest Councilman Pierce. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Price. And to your team that's been doing work. I, I did reach out to see if you were going to do this. And so I'm glad to be a part of this item. I have questions and I think I'm going to save for for the next item. That way we can have them all in context, but really appreciate what you guys are doing and really appreciate just doing the education component. I think that there's a lot more that we we can do, but also recognizing how difficult this situation is to manage. So I'll say my comments for the next one. Thank you so much. Councilman. Your anger. Thank you. And thank you, Susie. For bringing this forward. I know we're all districts are trying to do their part in trying to control fireworks. And, you know, actually, they're they're explosive devices now. And there are some fireworks out there that I. Yet the margin of being called a firework. The explosive devices, anyway. All that to say is that CD1. Mary said there has been four years of ice. Mary Andrews and myself were hosting a town hall meeting this coming Tuesday, June 30th at 7 p.m. to invite the community to talk about the fireworks and where the city is doing in terms of trying to address the issues. And you're absolutely correct. The fireworks, it appears, are getting worse and worse every year and much more violent. My my wife was on Facebook and she heard earlier today that one of our neighbors lost her dog to a heart attack because of the grief and the panic that that dog was experiencing. And I make sure that I always bring in my dogs early enough before it really gets going to like shield them from all the noise inside. So please. Those are two in the community that are listening to us. Please tell your neighbors that fireworks are illegal in Long Beach. Thank you. I mean, thank you. Any public comment on this item? Madam Clerk? Yes. We have one public comment from Cameron Berger. Your time starts now. Hi. I'm just appreciative of the fact that everyone is pushing for education and I think the push for firework education is really important. I am a little disturbed to keep hearing that the police are going to continue to be involved in the enforcement of firework laws. I lived in Long Beach for three years now and reminding the public that fireworks are illegal has clearly not worked. I think that the city should probably also push its efforts to educate high school students rather than just elementary school students, since they're the ones lighting the firework. Not elementary school students, but in the city should focus more on education and less on enforcing the firework ordinances to the police. Thank you. And I yield my time. Black Lives Matter. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Okay. Rule cover, please. District one. District one. I am. District two. I. District three. District three. District four. I. I. I. I. District six. I. District seven. I. District eight. Hi. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 25, which is also fireworks related.