Recommendation to direct City Manager to report back to the City Council in 30 days to fully develop the suggested four options that the Committee has recommended as incentives to encourage small business recruitment, retention and growth.  The incentive options to be developed include:  [1] Incentive to relocate or expand in Long Beach; [2] Manufacturing incentive; [3] Incentive for new employees; and [4] Incentive for renovation and construction.  The report should include estimated costs and details of implementation and subsequent program evaluation so that the program is ready to be implemented should that be the direction of the City Council.  The program should be designed to be simple, easy to administer, and with minimum costs.
Next item is the report from the from Councilwoman Stacey Mango, chair of the Economic Development Finance Committee, with a recommendation to direct the city manager to report back to the council within 30 days relative to a small business recruitment, retention and growth policy. Councilman Mongo. Thank you. Mayor EDI and committee has been very active this year. We have worked with local businesses to address many of the things that may be hindering them from both locating in and growing in Long Beach. Both Councilmember Price and myself advocated for local businesses along the campaign trail, along with many of my colleagues. And this is us following through with a pilot program to see what initiative programs are most beneficial to both growing our local Long Beach businesses and encouraging others to come here. I want to say that I have great respect for my colleagues, especially in making it a priority to take care of the businesses that are in Long Beach first. And so with that, I appreciate the Economic Development Finance Committee's work and the work of our finance office and the city manager's office. These are creative solutions during hard economic times that we hope will be productive, and we will review their progress and then come back to this board with additional recommendations. Councilwoman. Is it? Is there emotion? Councilman Price, you've made the motion and then Councilman Mongo. So, Councilman Price. Thank you. I, too, want to thank John Gross's office and Amy Botox office and all the staff that were involved in coming up. Actually, I don't know if Amy's office was involved in this. The other one. That was the other item. Well, I just want to thank her anyway, because. She. Does a lot of work. Hello. And the city manager for really helping make this concept a reality. When we started off with the idea of coming up with some small business incentives, we had talked about trying to waive business license fees for the first year. And when the figures came back in terms of what that would do to our general fund, it was it was shocking that the figure was very high and definitely not something that we could incorporate into our budget given our current fiscal climate and our future fiscal climate. So when I spoke with the city manager, I asked him to really help me come up with some creative solutions where we can start with some basic preliminary steps to incentivize and encourage small businesses, business growth and opportunities within our city. And he did just that with the help of Jon GROSS. So I want to thank you for coming together with coming up with this incentive package and for allowing us an opportunity to show our business community that we are, in fact, business friendly and we are doing our very best. Given the current fiscal climate, to give them as many breaks as we can when they choose us as a partner, and hopefully in the future, as the economy gets better, we'll be able to do more. But these are some baby steps that we hope will help the businesses that fall into these four categories continue to grow and thrive in our city. So thank you. Thank you. Vice Admiral Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank both Councilmember Mongeau and the committee members, Price and Urunga, for your focus on attracting and retaining small businesses in Long Beach. These are the lifeblood of our commercial and neighborhood serving corridors, and I'm very appreciative of your work here. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. I, too, wanted to thank you. I got really excited when I saw this item because it's especially it includes manufacturing, which is really wonderful. Just a real quick question. Do we foresee who do we foresee taking on this responsibility? I know that would probably be in your report, but at this time, who do we foresee? Mr. West Mayor, councilmembers. This would be in the finance department under business licenses. Jason McDonnell would be the key person at this time. Okay, great. Well, great work. Councilmember Mongo and the committee, you guys did a good job at this. Great. There's a believed with you. I don't think we need public comment yet. Let me do public comment on this item. Okay. No public comment. There's a motion to approve. Please cast your votes. Motion carries eight votes. Great. Next item. And that is we're going to make a clerk request, I think. And just talking to some of the council members as this is moving forward, it I think it's easier to not lock in the motion. You know, how the motion moves from the black screen. I wouldn't lock that in until I'm ready to call for the vote. That way it remains on the screen for the council. Right up front. Okay. Next item, please.