Recommendation to direct City Auditor to partner with City Manager to conduct a review on the following areas relating to hiring, training and onboarding of new employees: 1. Request City Auditor to conduct an audit of the on-boarding process and policies for all new employees, including appointed and elected. This includes, but not limited to, the orientation process, the medical evaluation process, and the City's evaluation of an individual's physical and behavioral health and/or prior medical conditions; 2. Request City Auditor to conduct an audit of the process for employees, interns, volunteers, commissioners, and elected officials to be informed of their rights and responsibilities related to discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation; 3. Request City Manager to report on the City's efforts to review and improve the turnaround time for hiring new employees; 4. Request City Manager to work with the Department of Human Resources and the Department of Health and Human Services to report on current practices and trainings of trauma-informed methods as 
Thank you. I've had I've had three requests for council items to be moved up on the regular agenda. So let me go ahead and do those first. First is item 24. Item 24 is a communication from Councilmember Peers. Councilwoman Price. Councilman Austin. Recommendation to direct City Auditor to partner with City Manager to conduct an audit of the knot of onboarding, process and policies for all new employees, including appointed and elected. Require City Manager to report on the city's efforts to able to review and improve the turnaround time for hiring new employees. And to work with human resources and Health and Human Services to report on current practices and trainings of trauma informed methods as it relates to employees. Gossamer appears. Thank you. I believe there's a presentation, but I recognize we have technical difficulties. All right, here we go. I am going to try to be brief. I want to thank everybody that has worked with me on this item city staff, city managers, department, city auditor in making sure that we put forward the best item. I need the clicker. Yeah. Are you going to click for me? Awesome. So Long Beach City employees are the heart of our city. We have nearly 6000 city employees. And it's critically important to me as a council member and I think to our city as a whole, that when we talk about the health of our city, we look inwards first. I also think it's critically important that we know it's been a lot of changes at the state level, at the federal level and at the local level for employment practices, for human, for air practices. And so we want to make sure that we take a moment to ensure our is aligned with those practices, those policies and the values that the city has said that we care so much about. Thank you. We're going to point it out to us anyway. What's the right and. There we go. I didn't get a training on this. You know, our training doesn't include PowerPoint. So we've got 6000 employees and 11 employee unions. And in the last 12 months, our department did a wonderful job of negotiating with all of those city employee unions. And now for me is a good time to kind of look at what we've done and look at what's in place. And so you see the city. We have everything from lifeguards to people that are fixing our roads to management to city attorney's office. So we have a very diverse group of employees here. Human Resources Department is the core of any organization we in our department. It includes recruitment, orientation, training, leadership development, harassment claims and really in any organization kind of sets the tone for how that organization is outside of your first interview when you get hired. You often come in and you go through a process with h.r. That process is your very first look and feel about how an organization's culture is. Did you get a thorough orientation? Did you get trainings on the things that you needed to get trained on? Did you have a map for what it was going to look like after day one? This is part of the culture that we really in the city, I think, can spend some time honing in on and ensuring that while we ask employers in our city of a certain standard, that we do the same in-house with our 6000 employees. So this item is everything in one item. So I wanted to just put it out here. I know that you already read them through. Really? There are two parts. One is the part where we work with our city auditor to conduct an audit of the onboarding process for all new employees, including appointed and elected. And so as an elected official, you know, the onboarding process was pretty short. Making sure that process is thorough, that there is an orientation process attached to that that also includes but is not limited to an orientation process in the medical evaluation process, the city's evaluation of an individual's physical and behavioral health and or prior medical conditions . So right now, the practice in the city is that we have to disclose any medication that a doctor assigns us, any mental health history, and that sometimes that might be a hindrance to getting the position that we want or it might change the type of job that we go into or it might say up to their their director on what type of employment or benefits they might get. And so we want to make sure that we're doing a full audit and that that's in alignment with our state practices and with the federal practices. We're also requesting the city auditor conduct an audit of the process for employees, interns, volunteers, commissioners and elected officials to be informed of their rights and responsibilities to discrimination, harassment and retaliation. And so this is really saying not just staff, but volunteers, our commissioners, our elected officials. So each of us are a different type of relationship with our h.r. Department and with our directors. The city of Los Angeles has a wonderful website that they've put together that is for everybody that there has any interaction with with the city of Los Angeles. They can go on and find out what their rights are. They can fill out a form. They can be anonymous. They can not be anonymous. But it walks them through a full process and gives them all the contact information that they need. And so I know that this is the second time we've had this conversation. And the council I know that Councilmember Al Austin had requested some information from H.R. and that now we have a process. I think it's further in my PowerPoint, but I want to make sure that this is clear, that it's for interns, volunteers, commissioners and elected officials as well. To that point. What's not listed in here in this request is from going through the process. We understand that nobody in the city has a number of how many volunteers we have, how many interns we have. And so making sure that as we go through this, we are also figuring out a tracking system. And that's in addition to. So we were able to find out how many commissioners we had. I know how many interns we had, but that number was not able to be provided to my office last week when we requested it. Of the city. The second part is not the auditor's office so much as it is working with the city manager and and his lead, making sure that we review the turnaround time for hiring new employees. We know that sometimes that time can be strenuously long. We also want to request that the city manager work with the Department of Human Resources and Health to request current practices and trainings of trauma informed methods as it relates to employees recommendations, enhanced use of trauma, informed practices with employees and constituents. So at the end all I'll go over changes, but it needs to also include constituents in the policy. So. So Long Beach Snapshot. Just to give you a little idea for administrators, 60% of our administrators are male for Non-Management got 39% are non male or male. So we understand that we definitely have a different dynamic in the city that while women represent roughly 50% of our population, that's not represented here. And we've talked about that. I know Councilmember Lena Gonzalez has led on trying to understand what demographics we have in the city, but recognizing that that dynamic might cause some tensions. Not saying that I've heard that it's caused tensions, but let's make sure that we're aware of it and that we're putting in practices in place so that we can address people being comfortable coming forward and talking about challenges that they might have. Okay. So 75% of all workplace harassment incidences go unreported altogether. I want to be clear that this slide is not about sexual harassment. This can be, you know, where you have a coworker that that speaks firmly to you, that you're uncomfortable with, that you've tried to address. It can be a look. It can be any type of harassment that makes you feel uncomfortable, but so uncomfortable that you likely don't feel like reporting that because you don't know what might happen . And these are general numbers just for us to be aware. I know that sometimes we we talk about these things in, again, relationship to other entities, but we don't necessarily talk about them within our own workplace. So violence in the workplace, this just talks about all the different ways that violence in the workplace can can come forward . And so we want to make sure that we're aware of these and that we're providing a process for people to feel safe in their workplace. And one statistic that I thought was really important is that absenteeism, 85% of victims reporting being absent from work or leaving early. So if you've been a victim of some type of workplace violence, your absenteeism rate is much higher than somebody else. And so I know sometimes we've had this conversation around harassment or filing harassment claims, and sometimes we say, well, they're absent a lot, so maybe they're using that as an excuse. That's not the case. We know that often whenever people are absent, it's because something's wrong at the workplace or something's wrong at home. So we want to make sure that the city of Long Beach, while we've passed a lot of great policies for employers within our city, that we are doing the best we can do so that people don't say this, you know, that people aren't afraid of losing their job because something happened to them and they're afraid to speak out. So this I want to give recognition. You know, the council had on that came before us. H.R. has done a good job on the fact that we've got a pilot program that's starting October four, 150 of our librarian staff to implement a harassment free workplace training. And it includes a detailed list of what that training will look like and an understanding that that training supposed to come back for all of the staff in January 2019. So I would ask as part of of this, that you're working with the health department and their trauma informed trainings as well as part of that so that we can make sure we're in alignment. So I wanted to give a snapshot of workplace situation training to Long Beach, but that we know these things happen. And so with that in mind, we want to make sure we do an audit that says, how is Long Beach going above and beyond? How are we meeting the standards? Because we haven't had an audit like this of the department, from my knowledge, for a while. The second part of this is that conversation around, okay, we have H.R. and now we have the lens in which we we have our conversations with our staff. And in the city of Long Beach, we have trauma informed trauma resiliency, we have safe Long Beach. And so I wanted to bring up Kelly Colby, our director, to give a presentation on what that means so that I'm not up here spewing things that doesn't that doesn't quite make sense in the world of H.R.. She's been an expert on this, and she's done a great job. So I just want to bring this to the next component. Yeah. You want it? And somebody. Good evening. Um, so just wanted to provide a little bit about what we're doing in terms of trauma informed work for the, for the city and then what is possible to be able to provide moving forward in terms of trainings and things. And so we have the Safe Line Beach Plan, which we passed in May of 2014. And really the focus of that is reducing all forms of violence in the city, including domestic abuse, child abuse, elder abuse, hate crimes, bullying, gang violence and violent crime. And what we realize is that is that understanding and addressing trauma is really essential to all of this work. And so through safe Long Beach, we brought forward a lot of different resources around trauma and resiliency informed work. So first I want to share a little bit with, you know, what does it mean when we talk about trauma informed? And so the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration says that trauma comes from experiences that cause intense physical and psychological stress reactions. And it could be like one single thing or it could be multiple ongoing things that start to have strong physical and mental. They can really affect you physically and mentally for quite a long time moving forward. So there's a lot of focus right now on children. And many of you may have heard the adverse childhood events, but they do really impact people's ability to deal in other levels of stressful situations. So it may not seem stressful at the moment, but if you've had a lot of stress in your life and you walk in the door and something sets that off again, it's very difficult. For the city. So far, what we've been able to do is we provide trauma informed training, which is a one hour training. Over 80 agencies across the city, agency wide trauma informed. We've had a four hour where Parks and Rec and the Health Department and a couple of other outside agencies had their entire staff trained around trauma informed work. And then we there was an eight hour training for mental health providers. It was really around assessment and other things and understanding of trauma. We were recently received a $300,000 grant. And so with that, we're leading trauma informed city efforts, really looking at what it means for organizational training, culture change and support as we're thinking about a trauma informed approach. And we're also working very closely with many of our nonprofit and other organizations who are involved. As in light for this space. What we realize is that that really if you're going to have a trauma informed organization, what you really need is sort of first, what is trauma and the ability to recognize that you want to have safety and stability, cultural humility and responsiveness, compassion and dependability, collaboration, empowerment, resiliency and recovery. And it really is a shift in culture. So training is the first part. But we would love, you know, as the health department and with this grant to help support the city in sort of looking at how do we overall do our work around work around trauma. And what it really means is that the organizations that communities are trained to identify trauma and respond in a trauma informed approach that our city really supports a trauma informed culture for employees working together and our employees working in the community. And they were building a support system for our employees. So if something does happen and it's true and it sets off trauma for them, whether it's something new or something that's in the past, that we have a system that that that supports and sort of supports our employees. So that the next steps really is to the possible next steps that we could be taking together across the city is to design and implement training, to build trauma informed understanding and response and skills, building best practices for trauma informed systems into our policies, and further exploring systems across the city for employees when incidents occur, that may cause trauma. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. So we bring up the trauma piece because not only is it about supporting our employees and making sure that we have a trauma lens with them, but most importantly, sometimes for me as our constituents, we have so many constituents that call our office every day that we meet in the field, that might require a little bit of extra time. And that's not only for us on the 14th floor, as with other departments. And so making sure that our staff has some training available to them that has that trauma lens, I think is going to provide the entire city with the support that we need. And we've seen some great cities like Philadelphia and the county of which county was at, Kelly, we talked about earlier today, Northern California county that also has a trauma informed lens. Alameda County. Alameda County, thank you. So the outcome of both the audit and working with the trauma lens is hopefully that we will have a report of the findings that identify our strengths and our weaknesses and that that's uncovered during our audit that a comparison of the findings and our benchmarks that we're looking at, that we have suggestions to connect any of the issues and noncompliance that are found and that we're implementing some type of trauma lens and departments where we see there is additional stress or whether it's H.R., our city attorney's office, where we are coming in, those those tense moments. And for those on the 14th floor, anybody that's in relation to constituent services, I do want to say that this item was something that was really important to me, that I've been thinking of how to roll out for a long time. I'm really happy to say that I have two co-sponsors, Al Austin and Susie Price, on this item, and I know that probably everybody on this council dais has a lot of thoughts about about this item. So I really look forward to hearing from everybody. I hope that you all will support it, and I look forward to hearing if there's any additions that you'd like to make to this. So I also want to thank all those that engage with us. We had mental health America, the villages of Cabrillo are some of our unions that participate with the city and several others that helped us kind of craft this vision for what it would mean to have a trauma informed city. But first, starting with an audit so we know where we're at. So thank you, everybody, for your help. Thank you. Councilman Austin Thank you and thank you for that presentation. Councilmember Pearce. I'm happy to sign on in the spirit of, you know, better government, improving our operations here in the city, improving communication and obviously better overall management of our of our of our employees and employee employee processes with or without our human resources. I heard a comparison to the city of L.A. and I will just tell you that I worked many years in the. Well employee relations process with the city of L.A. and they still got a lot of issues. So I don't necessarily think that's the benchmark for for where we want to be. And I'm I, I think this this this reads pretty straightforward. However, there's still some terminology that is new to me. Right. And I do appreciate our Kelly giving some an overview. I think that was very good for you to talk more about trauma informed practices, because it's something I mean, even working in labor relations, as long as I have, this is something that is new, right? This is not something that is I don't think is prevalent in every city and every city is looking at this. And so this is a this is a certainly a new approach that we are we are going for. I signed on again under the the with the with the emphasis on on embedded in government and had an opportunity to talk to the city auditor prior to to signing on in support of this. And this is something that she felt that she could do. Her office could could handle. And in an effort to improve our processes here in the city of Long Beach. And so with that, I'm happy to support. I will just say that I think the the peace with the trauma informed. Component. The trauma piece, in turn, means terms of getting information and understanding what that means to every employee in the city, I think could get very, very complicated and could even open us up for some some some exposure that we may not be. Some unintended consequences. And so I'm a little concerned about that, that that component of this as it was explained. So I'm looking forward to hearing other comments from from colleagues. But that component of it, I think it may take we may need to take another look at that. Yes. Go through all the comments. Just to clarify, one of the reasons why I asked Kelly to come in and present is because just like there's the ad not to go backwards, but the Office of Equity and there's equity trainings that they have done with the directors. This is a very similar model that cities like Philadelphia, like the counties, have used. It is something new that's coming up, but it's part of that mental health support. So when we talk about our homeless populations, we talk about those that are struggling with housing. Those at our heart team is working with our, you know, quality of life officers. They all have this training. It might be called something different instead of trauma informed. It might be called trauma resiliency. It might be called Mental Health 101. It's kind of these buzzwords, come on, because Grantor's, you know, they they get their little buzzwords. But the idea is not to expose any vulnerabilities of the city in our staffing. It's to just make sure that our staff has some language and a lens which makes the H.R. process. If I'm coming forward and I say, You know what, I have an employee and this is happening to me and H.R., I'm calling on you for help. Right. I'm calling on you to help me walk through a process that our staff have the knowledge of what a trigger might be and what might trigger employees, that if it is a sexual assault complaint, that there are things that that can go very wrong. Right. And that that often is where we end up with liabilities. Whereas if we have a different training that Kelly has talked about, creating specific for our city would give us a tool. It would help us, not hurt us, and it wouldn't be something that would open us up to more risk but would benefit the city as a whole. I'm not sure if if Kelly wants to talk about that before we go through the rest of it, I just recognize that question and and appreciate it. So thank. You. I do appreciate the clarification. And, you know, certainly we have a very qualified H.R. department. They deal with scenarios every single day and advise managers as well as employees on how to how to navigate through through through those challenges. I think what you're asking for is is possibly some some some clarification, but are we trying to insert trauma informed or trauma resiliency into the H.R. process? So that's why it's step one is is the audit. And step two is working with the health department on looking at that out of the outcomes and saying, well, here are some areas where you could insert an hour training here or you could insert something here to help us do a little bit better than what we're doing in the in that realm. And again, it's not only within our staff, but it's so that we can provide that trauma informed lens when we're dealing with constituents. And when you when you say that training, would you say the training would would model some of the other trainings that we have, like online trainings where you can go to a module. So that that is up to the experts that do trauma informed trainings. And that is why I've put these together with with the health department. All right. Thank you for that clarification. If I can jump in as well, I think we're just being asked to start and take a look at this. There's a lot we don't know yet. There's a lot that we need to sit down and talk. If the council does pass. This, that's when we'll start really diving into this. What would trainings mean? What would this look like? H.R. has got to get involved, so there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. Councilman Mango So those specific questions are what I had hoped to get answered before we pass this item. I appreciate that this has been on your plate for longer than the policy that we passed three weeks ago. But we did pass the policy on this Council that when we do our staff to weigh in or do an audit or any of those things, that we would include a component of what we thought staff time commitment would be, whether it's 20 hours or 40 hours or 140 hours or 600 hours of staff time. And I'm not saying that this is any more or less important. I just don't know when we start implementing the process that the Budget Oversight Committee and the Council as a whole adopted, specifically stating that we have to start asking ourselves where things land. The other part of this that I'm not ready for yet is we have a few fellow who supposedly are going to be reporting out on H.R. and the processes and the challenges and the opportunities. And I don't know if this has been a component of her studies over the last. I don't know if she's been here a year or 18 months or how long she's been here, but I've expected that there's a report coming out, and I'm very interested in knowing how these could kind of like fold into each other, because I have heard some challenges with the process that a lot of what you're talking about could address. But I also know that. It's not the only challenge that could be addressed. And so figuring out where those all fit together is is kind of important as well. And then maybe you can answer that for us. When are we expecting that report back? What does that report look like? I'll take that, actually. So over the last year, we. Have been doing a very intense study of our hiring. Practice. We know that it is a major challenge for departments. It's something that touches everybody. And we're looking at it from a really soup to nuts perspective. So from the day that somebody wants to hire someone to the time that they actually come into the end of the seat. So we've been using a Fuze fellow who is actually wrapping up some work right now. We got as much done as we could within a year. We had some successes along the way. We've actually already implemented a number of really positive implementations. And we've got some recommendations for four more. And so that is a little bit of what we would do, as if we were requested to do this under number. Three is to be able to report back on a lot of that. We've been mapping the process. We can do some initial reporting back in the next month or two, most likely with some additional coming on. Further, we didn't get it as far as we would like. We still have more to go, but we're very much focused on improving the. Hiring practice. Because in the discussions that I've had with city staff about similar ideas about making some fixes, the consistent answer that I have is we can't really tell you what kind of staff time that would take until the Fuze fellow's done and we have a report. And so perhaps what we could ask, and I don't know if this would be a friendly or how it would work is. That this come in tandem with a presentation to the Council on what we've already found. There's a significant investment in this individual who has, from what I understand views, fellows come from like really high grade educations and really intense knowledge bases that exceed the expertize of a city staff member who's a generalist. And we recognize that we've had to move towards generalists as the changing work environment has happened. But in the discussions I've had about the challenges that I've heard from city employees, about the places that they feel that we need changes , I really feel strongly that. Staff have been consistent in telling me that we're not ready to do that until we've had our report out. And so what I would like to see is two things. One is an analysis of the amount of staff time that would go into solving some of these things in terms of like how many hours of commitment are we asking the auditor to put behind it and or how many hours of commitment are we asking. For all these because. They're important and the number of hours could be appropriate? Or we could say staff do it within 100 hours or do it within 200 hours because I don't know what they're going to come back with. And I also don't know there's a pretty long list, and I think that we've consistently talked about this on the on the dais of reports back that are passed due from our city staff. And a lot of it isn't always their fault. Some of it is that we keep piling more on under shorter timelines. And so I don't know what the report back on this would look like. Maybe we approve step one and then have it come back with or after the Fuze Fellows presentation or if we're even getting a presentation on it. But I understand it was a huge investment. Thank you, Councilman Gonzales. Okay. Great. Thank you. I think this is a good discussion so far. I want to first say that this is a very positive item, I think, Councilmember Pearce, for bringing this forward. I have two lenses. So I'm a I was a city staffer for about five and a half years and now I'm in elected office. And seeing this from two lenses, I see the need for standardizing processes for anything that takes place. I think our employee groups for also being a part of this discussion as well. We did receive letters and communication, so that's wonderful from the Legislative Department. When I work there, everything from mental health training, I mean, I was a field representative in the first district. A lot of individuals experiencing homelessness. They would come into the office. I didn't even know how to handle that. I had to call security twice. I mean, there are things that I think our staff, we often overlook and we don't actually add additional support for these very, very important issues. And then everything from, like I said, legislative to mental health on the elected side. I would like to identify and clarify clear processes for appointed officials and the governing body city council. You know, we we have active shooter training for our staff, but we haven't even received active shooter training, which is probably directed at us, unfortunately. I hate to say that, but in this day and age, we have to think about those things. And you know, my staff, I'm glad they got that, but we did not receive that. And so I think that, you know, things like that, I think we need to be very cognizant of as well as our staff members and rank and file that are out in the field. You know, we've had incidents before and we don't we want to prevent that. And then lastly, I will say the on the elected side, I know that our city attorney deals with many of our issues. And I don't know the clear process because sometimes we go to h.r. Sometimes we go to the city attorney. So i'd like to include the city. The friendly amendment would be to include the city and attorney in this process and ensure that we have clear understanding as an elected body of who we go to, that the department . Is it the city attorney when issues arrive in the workplace, whatever happens, i'm not sure what that processes. And so if we can include that, that would be great, or the city attorney would like to say anything. I think both him and his office should be included in that. Yes, Councilmember, we'd be happy to be included in that. Just kind of a. Background on some of the issues. If it deals with a. Personnel issue that doesn't fall within the jurisdiction of the city manager departments, for example, a personnel issue in one of the. Elected offices that would generally be referred to the city attorney's office. It's a problem for H.R. to be investigating their. Bosses boss type situation. So and then there are. Other areas where we. Would get involved if. If it is beyond the scope of the department and we need an outside attorney. To do the investigation that would be hired through my office so we could certainly participate and help clear up any confusion on when an investigation is handled internally. Or we go outside. So yeah, and the process as well, how it's handled. So I would love for for you to be included in that in your office, to be included in that. And I think that would clarify, I think from from our end on what to do. I mean, there's a lot of issues I've gone to H.R. in some cases have gone to city attorney. And I just think on the elected side, we need to be a little bit more clear on that. So I think, Councilmember Pierce for bringing that up again, those are my thoughts and I think again, our employee groups for being a part of this. Thank you, Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And that, like Councilmember Gonzalez said to have. We are two separate lengthy. A little longer. You know I retired from the city after 28 years of working in the city. Long Beach has started with a civil service. And then I went there. That was I became the superintendent manager police compounds where he did a lot of hiring. And then I ended up my my career with the Department of Health as the administrative officer there. And each one of those points, I had a touch in the employment process there with employees. When I was in the civil service, I was obviously doing exam examinations for employment. A good portion of my career with the civil service was recruitment, and that's where I have a lot of concerns and issues regarding diversity and helping improve the diversity of our city and making sure that we get people at the front end that are reflective of our communities and not at the back end. So it's beginning. It's one of those issues that is very important and very dear to me that we make sure that we are expanding our umbrella as far as we can and looking at every nook and cranny to get that qualified individuals to apply for city positions and that we hire them if they meet the qualifications. Also, when I was at civil service and various other times during my career, I was the Department's Equal Employment Representative, which meant that I had to deal with not only issues of harassment or workplace harassment and or sexual harassment, but I had to deal with any of the other issues that are involved with employee to employee relations, as well as with employee and supervisor issues as well. So I had that experience when I was working with the towing operations. I was the manager there. I did the hiring and firing, the supervision and the training, and I had several incidents while I was there talking related to not only workplace harassment with employer and employee, but also harassment with a manager, with their employees and as well as inappropriate relationships. And I just leave it at that. But that that has come up through my experience. It is way too far. And then as the administrative officer with our department, I sat in a number of hearings, skelly hearings, as well as the Looby hearings, and understand what a skelly hearing is. A scary is when a classified employee is going to be terminated from his or her position. They go through a hearing and then they go to civil service of the appellate. And then the Civil Service Department Commission determines the fate of that employee, whether it upholds the discipline that the city that the city has imposed on it or rescinds it or sends it back to to do some other kind of discipline in a Looby hearing. It's basically a Looby hearing is conducted for employees who are unclassified, who aren't under the jurisdiction of the court or the charter for the civil service, for civil service rules or regulations which dictates how an employee moves or or is promoted and disciplined in the classified service. People who take an exam get all this and get hired. And in those hearings as well, it was interesting to hear some of the the issues that he had to deal with there in terms of employees who misbehave. And it's not only in terms of employees misbehaving, but also managers misbehaving as well. And that's an area that I think is not as well known or talked about as perhaps it can be or should be, because there are managers who who can be managers, who are managers and might not have received any kind of training about how to be managers. And I would say in all of this to to to the point of saying that, you know, any and all training that we are able to provide and give to individuals is good. It's good training. You learn something from it. If you didn't learn anything from it all, then so be it. And the discipline that comes forward is is deserved. But one of the most important things about all of this is that you have to make sure that if we are providing training, we have to make sure that it's documented. Because I'm parents of what I see here is an opportunity for the city to, I guess, not indemnify itself, but at least provide itself with with some safeguards that would say, I received training on sexual harassment. I receive training on how to handle a traumatized employee who see who got a who was intimidated by his or her manager. And we need to have those kinds of safeguards so that if and when it ever goes to a a jury or a trial or a court, we have the opportunity to prove that that we did provide that training along with my career. We also I also used to participate in what we call the employee orientation, new employee orientation. And the latter part of my career, I didn't see those anymore. I don't know if they were discontinued. Maybe staffing was an issue. Could have been. But I think that we need to bring something like that back to let new employees know what their rights are, where to go, if they encounter any kind of situation or their put in place of any type of situation that would put them in jeopardy of losing their jobs. Personally, I was I was one of those guys. I was put in a situation where, like, either if I if I said anything, I was going to be fired. If I punched the guy back, I was going to get fired or if I resigned, I was going to resign peacefully. I was going to be I was going to blow the whistle left and right everywhere. So those are the choices sometimes that employees are left with. You know, it is frustrating. So where do they go? And I also had an employee come to me who was sexually harassed. And while I was more trained, perhaps more experienced than other ales or administrative officers in that in that area, I still felt inadequate to be able to address this employee's issues with her manager. So I did what most managers would do, I hope would do, and that's to call H.R. and have H.R. be the the the conduit , if you will, between the the department and the employee to help him or her address their issues. So there's a lot of training that we need to do. And I and I'm very supportive of this item because I think it's important that we get it. Get not only start in the beginning to the where are we now, but where do we need to go and where do we want to end up? And we need we need to know that and some of those, you know, so some of these items that we're looking at, we don't need to reinvent the wheel, some of them, but some or maybe we need to bring them back like an employee orientation, especially dealing with an employee orientation that deals with these very specific items in in regards to employer employee relations or supervisor supervisor subordinate relations, what to do and where to go and and how to recognize. A lot of people might not recognize the fact that they're that they're being exposed to a workplace issue where maybe there's some just innocent joke telling being told and it's inappropriate. And she reported and and one of the most important parts of that is retaliation. We've got to make sure that that we tell our employees that retaliation. Retaliation is unacceptable. At all levels. So I know I was long winded on this, but, you know, also it could go on for 28 more years on dealing with this issue. But I supportive of it. It's it's a good item that we move forward with it. And I think that some bought some real positive results. I'm expecting that some real positive results will come as a result from ISM. Thank you very much. And Mr.. Thank you very much, Mr. American. I had one point of clarification. Why then? Kinsmen of Virunga? You're correct. For a while we did discontinue the orientation as we went through the Great Recession. One of the things that Alex Basque was did as the new director is institute those. So we have them about what, every two months now. 2 to 3 months. And we go and we present. To that everyone goes through a full day or a half day orientation and get all that stuff. I have hired two new employees within the last year and they haven't gone to an orientation. So let's get them signed up as we require everyone. In our end city managed department. We get a lot of others from other departments too. We'd love to have them. Thank you. Customer support now. Thank you. This this would apply to electeds. And just for my own case, in a normal election after the election, you would take office in like 90 to 100 days. If there's a runoff, it's half or maybe a little less than that. I took office after a special election in 2015, and after the election I took office eight days later. And so the terms on boarding and orientation are very foreign to me, but thank you for bringing up that topic. My challenge with this item would be two of the four items start off with requests the city honestly to conduct an audit. In fact, that's in the heading to and my feeling is all of these all four items should be conducted by our h.r. Department. That's the way it's set up. And I have great faith in our city auditor. It's not that i don't think she's up to this task. It's just that i think that expertize should lie within our h.r. Department. The long beach business journal one month ago on August 13th published their annual salary survey of the city. And we always hear about that after the fact. So the latest number for the two had $200,000 a year club. That number is up to 43 employees. And what we always tell our constituents is, well, an operation, a city this size, you need that level of executive management expertize and that level of executive management exists in our h.r. Department. So I'm thinking this item and saying our h.r department cannot handle this task. And if that is in fact, what the problem is, then we do have a bigger problem than just conducting an audit. So for that reason, I will not be supporting this item. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I'm going to go ahead and go back. Actually, we only have one more comment. Councilman Mongo, I'll make a comment and then we'll go to public comment. Councilman Mongo. In the spirit of trying to start. I know it's going to take time for all of us to adjust and move towards our new council policy. Would you be open to the departments that are involved getting us a TFF that is in alignment with the policy we just passed? If we pass this tonight, that would be appreciated. So I know Mr. GROSS isn't here because he didn't expect this question, but if Mr. GROSS could and my friendly would be that Mr. GROSS work with the departments that are requested to ensure that it tff come back to us with the information as required by the new policy of resource allocation. As passed by this council with the budget this year. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Let me go ahead and just to just say for what public comment I know this has not been said tonight yet, but I do want to thank our H.R. department for the work that they do. We have we have almost we have 5600 employees, almost 6000, if you include some of the other part time employees. And I know that there is a dedicated team of professionals that are in that office, many of which have been here in the city for a really long time. And H.R. is one of the most difficult things you can do in any organization. It doesn't mean that we can't improve. I think there's always improvements in all of our departments. But I don't want it to be there being an appearance or an interpretation that somehow our H.R. department is not doing a great job. And I want to thank Alex and you and your team for consistent excellent work. And and I want to thank you also for for an organization of this size. The level of work that you're I would say small team does is pretty, pretty amazing. And so I want to make sure I had a chance to say that. And since it's not been said tonight yet much, let me let me also just add that I don't I don't have issues with the agenda item is presented. I think that it's a good opportunity for the auditor to be involved with the city and to tell us how we can do better. I have to agree with when it comes to and I have mentioned that I think the staff and this will be a good opportunity to review this. For because elected particularly are elected independently, the process of of training and transitioning and employees. It is partial it's part you know it's it's divided up among some of the administrative work is done through the mayor's office on the on the legislative side which as you're aware I've in the past said that I not ever been crazy about that piece. I always thought that that should go fully to H.R.. But there also are concerns as related earlier that a lot of it a lot of the issues will go to the city attorney. So I think I'm very interested in how we improve the elected appointed piece and what are best practices in other cities so that we can get that piece better. So I do support very supportive of that. And I think that I've said this to our city auditor many times, but I think when we partner in these audits, we usually get really good recommendations and really good results. And so I just am thankful to her for agreeing to partner in this process. But I do I do understand. And I want to just thank everyone that made their comments. I do agree with everyone's comments today. And so I just thank them for all of that. So, Jeff, the things for city attorney. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. And you did allude to it, but I do point out the charter section 207b, that each individual member of the city council has the authority to appoint, suspend, remove and discipline the employee or employees. Of the Legislative Department who serve at his or her pleasure. Right. And so nothing this evening or nothing out of this. Study changes that authority. So it it's it. We can study it. We can look at it. But the charter says what it says for the elected officials. And and this ordinance will not change that. That's right. And I think that that's and we'll look at all of that as we as we move forward. We obviously, each member is responsible for their they're the appointing authority and they are responsible solely for for their employees and for their office. So, Councilman Mongo. So I know I made a comment and my first set of comments related to the views fellow. Mr. MODICA Will there be a presentation to this body on that or is that something that maybe I could throw into my friendly that her report and her findings or a meeting between her and the auditor take place as a part of this overall? So we were planning on doing that as part of item three, if you were to pass as we were going to do it anyway, to report out on where we are. It's the Fuze fellow was looking at one portion of it. There's a number of other things, so we'll likely consolidate. But we'd like to come back and talk to you about some of the some of the things that. We're working on to improve the hiring. Practice. I would only say that from what I hear again, her term is almost over. And so if there was an opportunity for her to sit down with the auditor before she leaves and and kind of talk through her experience, I haven't done that yet, but I hear that there's a lot of opportunity for us to learn from an extensive 12 month process. So so we'll definitely partner with the attorney, with the auditor. I do believe she ends in two days so that it's we are we are wrapping up. That is the end. Okay. Well, thank. You. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Oh, yes. I just wanted to thank all of my colleagues for their comments. And just, you know, we've worked a lot with the city auditor, but i did think I said thank you to our h.r. Department at the beginning. Maybe I got lost because i tried to run and talk really quickly. But i do appreciate the fact that we are a city of 6000 people is huge and it's a big endeavor. And one of the reasons why I wanted to partner with the city auditor's office is so you can continue to do your job and the city auditor can take a sidestep and take a bird's eye view and a different lens and really look at what other cities are doing. And so I think that that for me was an important distinction because I feel like the things that she's come forward with have been really great and it gives us an opportunity to do that. So I think my colleagues for the the thoughtful conversation today, I'm really proud of this item. I'm really proud of the steps that Long Beach is taking to align our city with the values that we continually govern on behind this dais. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Ringo. Thank you. Jeremiah. My soapbox. I left off one aspect of the of the proposals here you're talking about and constituents. So if you get Councilman Pearce complete giving a clarification in regards to how constituents. Can. Come into a play into play with with this. I think it goes back to what Councilmember Gonzalez mentioned, which is as as on the 14th floor and as the city attorney made real clear, we are the ones that hire and fire and train our staff. So I have to go out of my way to create a new training or find a new way to train my staff on trauma informed practices. Because I have a lot of constituents in my district that call that are struggling with their mental health. We've had to call police sometimes. We've had to call our quality of life officer. So if I can get my staff the right training to give them a couple more tools in the toolbox on how to handle folks with with a soft glove instead of, you know, immediate call that might trigger them or statement that might trigger them. That training is something that I'm providing for my staff and I provide for my constituents, but it helps us deliver better services to to our residents. So that that clarifies that. Absolutely. I was looking from the other from the other lens in terms of constituents who might have had a traumatic experience with a city employee. For example, when I had to contend with an issue regarding a city employee who sexually harassed a constituent, asking for her number, going to her home, I don't know how he got it, but he got her house number and phone number and then he began harassing her. She came to me as a manager, say, what are your employees? Is is harassing me. I brought him in. I interviewed him, determined that she was correct and subsequently let him go. So that's the other part that I was. So I think the training overall is going to assist all of us on the best practices. It's going to assist management directors and give some training for our constituents. So thank. You. Thank you. Thank you. Public comment. Please come forward. Hello. And if you're going to comment on this item. Oh, this is public comment for this item. Yes. Yes. And please come forward on this item and just just line up, please. I'm going to close the speakers list, I think, Mr. Suarez, for comment on this. And Mr. Suarez will be the last speaker. Yes. I. My name is Devin Deming. I am a resident of the eighth District. And I just wanted to say thank you so much for this. I spent my entire career in public service as a manager, in public service. I was of the city of Los. Angeles for 18 years and human resources. I have dealt with this all from an employee. As a supervisor. This is so, so important. Thank you so much. And you're an amazing manager at the public agency you work at today. So thank you. Hello. My name is Beverly. Life Firm and constituent resume district two. I do. The audit. The auditor's job for the federal government. Though I am not a trained auditor, I do it for my individual agency, not the GAO or an IG's office. And I just want to respectfully comment on council member supernormal comment about it's should be his job to conduct this audit of themselves. An audit is an independent analysis and research. It is not. Proper GAO, OIG. And I know you're not the federal government, but you have the same standards to audit yourselves. You can't expect the office to necessarily recognize not because they don't want to, but they're not. Their perspective is not independent and objective. It can't be. Plus, as others had mentioned, their job is to do our work. Let them do their job. Let the auditor and the audit office do their job so that they can assist h.r. And hence the whole city. I want my taxpayer money to be used appropriately. Thank you. Thank you. Next week, release. As high level shapiro. This is not why I'm here tonight, but Councilmember Pierce. Thank you very much. I'm not sure if you're aware that there were hidden cameras found in the restrooms at the Long Beach shelter. And it's really left employees and visitors really unsure and unaware of what has become of that. And the shelter in the city did not provide notification to employees or to guests. And I just I'm asking you to please look into this for the continued safety of employees and guests, for the well-being of everybody. I understand it's a LBB PD matter right now, but it just publicly we were not told. So I appreciate your attention to this entire matter. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nick Speaker, please. Thank you very much. My name is Bill Ward and I'm a member of the First District. I spent 25 years working in government affairs. I was a worked for five state lawmakers and also others I would agree with in the first district. The nature of public service is that sometimes you get people who are mad and they are sometimes dangerous. When I was the district director for Assemblywoman Sally Harvest, we had someone come to our door who I had a member of the they would send. They sent two officers, one, one on either side of me, each with a gun. And I spent half an hour listening to a clearly crazy man. And at the end of that conversation, he left. And then he went to a another elected officials office. And they did not have the good fortune of being able to listen enough that he walked off and was just mad because he's mad. Instead, they were deeply concerned. They called and the person was given a three day lockup. And I was the one who later got a call from the guy saying, You locked me up. Well, no, there's a very difficult business in politics, which is that sometimes, even though you know someone's crazy, you're the one who gets blamed when someone else goes a little thin. So it's a very hard business. I would like to commend the gentleman of the eighth District. There are hard times when you are on the count on the dias. And I worked for a senator who himself was ejected from the Senate because if you throw a book hard enough, pretty soon it hits you in the head and someone bleeds. Rod Right. Had to exit the Senate because not because of the members of the Senate, but because he got hit on the head with a with a book. And, yes, he got taken out. Members of the council here have taken a close look at something that was a hard issue. And by an 8 to 0 vote, they made a tough decision. Those are the things that you got to do. And it's a hard business. Thankfully, I will never be someone who is sitting at the dais because having spent the time I have, I'm lucky simply to be an obscure novelist and I'm not going to be running for office. So I am glad to see the meeting today, have so much discussion. Commend the member of the Second District for a great discussion and members of staff. You've got a good town and you've got good leadership. So good luck to you all. Thank you. Next speaker, our final speaker. Good evening, Mayor. City council members. I have some prepared statements, but before I read from them, I just want to quickly say that my comments today and I agree with those that support the current administration. I believe that Alex and her team inherited a broken product, and I think that bringing light to it is clearly in order. The city of Long Beach is a great, thriving community. Responsible for the successes of this community are almost 6000 loyal employees who toil here every day. I have the honor of representing the majority of City of Long Beach employees. I stand before you in an effort to inform and highlight this much needed review. We have members that toil in departments every single day that are under inconsistent policies and practices. H.R. historically has allowed department to put in place its own policies at times, at times without concern or regard for equal treatment. Some policies even go as far as being racially biased. We are having a problem right now with the police department, with a dress code policy. Additionally, some departments arbitrarily make decisions without proper guidelines, which allows them to make decisions that are the basis of a guilty until proven innocent model. We have had members may complain to the EEOC office and have been rejected the same day, explaining that they will not be looking into the complaint because it's just a personality conflict. How can they make that determination without a proper investigation? Time and time again, we have management covering for one another without the resolution of our members. H.R. continues its paralysis. A significant number of city of Long Beach workers are also live here as taxpayers. They pay the wages for all those who take home a city of Long Beach paycheck. I've been assigned to this location. I'm going on five years. I have never come across a work location in my 32 years in the labor movement. Where the Human Resources Department is as disconnected and uninvolved in policy and its implementation as they are here. The divide and lack of consistency is monumental. It's important that you understand this isn't just an issue. These are policies that affect everybody, and they're different throughout the entire landscape. I urge you this evening to, in the strongest terms, to support this item tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Suarez. We have control of Supernanny, and then we'll go to a vote. Thank you. Just because I was called out personally for my comments, I feel compelled to respond. And if I miscommunicated, I apologize. I never suggested that H.R. should conduct an audit. That was my whole point. What I was trying to express was that onboarding orientation and informing employees of their rights should be something part and parcel to the duties of H.R.. So that's why I thought it should be handled internally. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. We have a motion in a second. Please cast your votes. Motion carries six one. Thank you. And we have. So let me. We have. So just just I want to be clear on the agenda order. So I shall have two items that have been requested to be moved up. I also have a full speaker list of ten speakers. So if we can briefly go through these items and I need to get to the speaker's list and then I have a we have a full agenda after that. So 31. Staff.