Recommendation to adopt Plans and Specifications No. R-7022 for the Seaside Park Artificial Turf Field Project; award the contract to Los Angeles Engineering, Inc., of Covina, CA, in the amount of $773,123, authorize a 10 percent contingency in the amount of $77,312, for a total contract amount not to exceed $850,435; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments thereto; Adopt Plans and Specifications No. R-7024 for the Admiral Kidd Artificial Turf Field Project; award the contract to Los Angeles Engineering, Inc., of Covina, CA, in the amount of $1,418,136, authorize a 10 percent contingency in the amount of $141,813, for a total contract amount not to exceed $1,559,949; authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments thereto; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to approve expenditures through the City's approved As-Needed Services Contract to design and construct athletic field improvements at EI Dorado
Thank you, Mr. Goodyear. Thank you. Yeah. So, Madam Clerk, I think that concludes public comment. And we're going to take up item number 19 next. I am sitting down and I'm not barging in. Ahead of line and breaking the rules and taking more time. Thank you. Report from Public Works, Park Recreation and Marine. Recommendation to Award Contract to Los Angeles Engineering for the Seaside Park Artificial Turf Field Project for a total contract amount not to exceed 850,435. The Admiral Kidd Artificial Turf Field Project four Total contract amount not to exceed $1,559,949 and authorize the city manager to approve expenditures to design and construct athletic field improvements at Eldorado Park West in the amount of $800,000. District one, five and seven. Thank you. Let's have a staff report, please. Mr. Reisner, council members. These are some items that have been in the budget for some time dealing with the artificial turf issues. I going to turn this over to our public works director, Craig Beck and our Parks Rec and Marine Director Mary Knight. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor, and members of the city council tonight. You have. Before you an item that would bring forward renovated. Sports fields at Seaside Admiral Kidd in Eldorado Park. The combined project total is roughly. $4.1 million of investment into. These parks. Seaside Park is a park that is highly utilized, and it's difficult to. Maintain. The green grass field there in the sports field. And so we're proposing to put in. Artificial turf, sports field, pedestrian walkways, fencing guardrails and infrastructure for future lighting when. Funding becomes available. This project also includes. Admiral Kidd Park for similar reasons. Again, high utilized sports field there. And Admiral Kidd, that site is much larger. It's about a two acre site. Includes artificial turf, sports field, pedestrian. Walkways, fencing guardrails and again, lighting infrastructure. For future field lighting. Also includes El Dorado, where we want to. Look at enhancing the current fields that we have there and explore opportunities to adding new sports fields at El Dorado West. As you recall, there was an item that came before council some months ago to move. Forward with installing artificial. Turf field at Drake Chavez. I'm here. To share with you this evening that. That project. Is moving forward on schedule and is close to its conclusion. We do have the field lead and look forward to having that ribbon cutting ceremony in Council District one. So some of the. Beneficial. Benefits of artificial turf is that it reduces the amount of water utilized. To maintain the fields. It increases of. Playable hours because you don't have to take the field offline for maintenance like you do with a grass field. Certainly lowers maintenance costs and improves the usability. What we mean by that is it's a very even playing surface. So when you have. Incidents of turf fields, sometimes either through. Drought or other reasons, the fields can become unusable for periods of time. As you. Know, this item was. Discussed thoroughly. And ultimately went to. The Parks and Recreation Commission in June of 2015, where there was a move to transition some of our. Our. Grass fields, artificial turf fields. And in that meeting, the Parks. And Rec Commission took action to only. Use organic. Materials or organic infill materials and not crumb rubber. Staff spent some. Time analyzing. What options we had available to us, and coconut fiber matrix and caulking sand were the two organic alternatives that seemed to be most used in the industry. There was a decision made to move forward with caulk and sand, and that. Material is the one that was installed at the. Field at Drake Chavez and is the material that we're. Planning to install. On these fields as well. So just as a reminder, part of the maintenance agreement that we have with the contractors for installation is that they will maintain. These fields for eight years. So they will remain in a top quality condition over that term. Again, doing. Regular. Brushing, aerating, raking, sweeping. As needed to maintain the playing surfaces. That concludes. Staff report and we're available. For questions. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Yes. I want to thank Parks and Rec staff and Public Works staff for all the outreach into the community. I know this originally started as a motion from the City Council to allocate artificial grass soccer fields at three parks. And now the time it took grew and grew and grew. And it got to the point where we would not be able to afford artificial turf soccer fields at all three parks. And so now I'm proud to stand with Councilmember Durango and Councilmember Gonzalez and that they will have artificial turf in their fields. But that in Eldorado Park, we'll be spending our share of the funding to restore grass fields and then potentially look at an option of another sports space that would not cause us to remove any grass, which was the request of the community. So I appreciate the hard work and determination that's been taken on this. I know we have a lot more projects to do. We have a lot more restoration. The quality and condition of our parks had segregated through the years. I think that the committee that our fearless leader and of the Parks and Rec Department has put together of all of our organizations that are 501 seat threes and rent space coming together to come up with a plan to ensure that the quality of the fields is maintained and accessible to residents, not just to our our sports aficionados and players, but that there are days of rest and that the community can also engage and go out to a baseball field and throw a ball around with their kids is a really, really important part of living in a community with the best parks in the country. So I think this has been a immense lift, especially for a department had we've only had on board for 11 months. Congratulations. I appreciate my colleagues for their patience. I know that the decision of picking two would would be difficult, but I think that we came up with the solution where the needs were most and the community will be best served. So I appreciate everyone for all the hard work on this and especially on public works, who has to do all the project management and design and implementation while also managing all of Measure A and the other crumbling infrastructure and most recently leaking infrastructure. So thank you for what you're doing and keeping everything afloat. Thank you. Councilmember here again. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. I want to echo the comments made by Councilmember Mongo. This is a great opportunity for us to activate some fields, and not only that, but to make them available year round because of the the less maintenance that there is. And it's also a public safety issue as well. I mean, there's many times when you have overwatering or you have heavy rains, as we've had this last couple of weeks, where overuse of a park can really create divots and potholes in the fields and kids can break their ankles. And anybody who uses the for for for recreation as a whole. So I want to again, also commend staff for their efforts and the and the Parks Recreation Commission for doing their diligence in reviewing all of the available. Options that we have for turf and choosing what I think would be the best one that works for Long Beach. So I want to commend everybody involved in this project. Thank you. Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes, I, too, just want to say thank you to Marie and Craig for sticking with this. I know this was a bit of a process as we've described, but I know for Seaside and District one, we're really excited to finally have the opportunity to have some sort of greenery there. And so a lot of the kids and students at Washington Middle School are excited to start playing soccer again and, you know, just allow that park to come alive and really that neighborhood to come alive. So thanks so much. Okay. Any public comment on item 19? Please come forward. Good evening in Cantrell. And I want to thank Council Mongo for. Going with. Natural grass in El Dorado. I hope that this will be a. Prepared field with leveling and gopher prevention. Such as you're using for the artificial turf fields, and you'll notice that it can be done for $800,000, whereas the total cost for seaside is 1.5 million and the total cost for. Admiral Kidd is even more than that. Think of what 1.5 million could have done for the homeless tonight. I think. Children in Long Beach deserve soccer fields that are as well-maintained as golf courses, and I think it is possible to have it with natural grass. You were given the benefits of artificial turf, but none of the disadvantages were mentioned, such as it's hotter. It can get up to 160 degrees on a warm day. It's more abrasive. It needs greater maintenance. Your warranty includes brushing and aerating, which means watering and breaking. It doesn't include disinfecting, which you need to do with artificial turf because it can harbor staph infections. Another thing that I find out from my soccer playing grandchildren is when they play on artificial turf, they need special soccer shoes. The shoes that they use are natural grass aren't allowed on artificial turf. So I'm thinking of the children in your neighborhoods that are getting this artificial turf, whether they're going to be able to afford special shoes to be on here. These fields have to be fenced off. From the rest of the community because you can't have soft drinks on it, you can't have spiked heels, you can't have bicycles. It's not going to be open for the use of the public. So I urge you to take a look at what happens with Drake Park. It was supposed to be a pilot program and it's supposed to open in June. Look at it. See if all these problems that I'm saying are going to happen, happen. If they don't, then go ahead with this. But I would postpone making any contracts until you see the Drake. You so. Much. Success. Thank you so much. Next picture, please. I'm so sorry to be here again, but I need to support. I mean it. You tired of me? I'm tired of me anyway. I need to support my friend and Cantrell and. And. Absolutely. Beg you to listen to this elder who has spent her life fighting and trying to convince endless numbers of city councils to do the right thing for the environment and in a natural way to preserve nature. Now, artificial turf. I mean, I guess it's made out of stuff. It sounds kind of natural. But I do believe there's even a question of the contractors being sued. So I would just ask you also to slow down on this, but then again, to speed up on stopping spraying roundup in our parks. If we're concerned about safety, where all we are is concerned about safety, that from beginning to end the whole night, everybody wants to be saved. Who doesn't want to be safe? Sometimes convenience or something shiny and pretty like, you know, a plastic lawn. Maybe it saves water in the in the first, but then if it seals off the ability of the of our runoff to soak into our aquifer, where are we? I'm going to cut this off early. Just listen. Please listen to an Cantrell. She doesn't have any other interest than our our future generations. We love her. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. I wanted to actually commend the Council for going with the Natural Grass at Eldorado Park because I mean, I, I've had many pleasant experiences at that park and I really appreciate that it's one of the better maintained parks that kind of resembles a more natural setting. With that, I wanted to raise a couple issues with artificial turf as the production of oxygen is kind of inhibited because, you know, you don't have organic material that kind of AIDS in that process as well as the rainwater runoff, because artificial turf tends to kind of just keep it at surface where grass actually kind of absorbs it and puts it back in the soil. So it serves more of a purpose to maintain as much as possible grass or natural sort of settings, especially when you are dealing with children in inner city that normally don't have exposure to natural resources or, you know, outings, if you will, because most of the kids in the city are surrounded day by day with, you know, asphalt and sidewalks and all these things. So the ability to be still surrounded by something that's very natural, very I mean, I have memories of growing up and running on field. So I mean, I'm allergic to grass, but I still love it. So I think I think it's a thing that we should and especially in bigger cities and cities with more development preserve to keep. It might not seem as a sound investment, but I think there could be ways and to looking to better use natural resources to do efficient you know green preservation of parks that are in fact efficient in water use as well as giving back to the environment and not as abrasive like some of the previous points. Thanks so much. Next week, last speaker. Hello again. I just wanted to point out a few things and stress a few things when I initially hearing Astroturf. Be a strategist inside me jumped, my skin crawled and then I started getting itchy. But I do appreciate the exploration of the best possible ways we could implement using Astroturf, including a formula that is organic. However, as someone that admires good design and also strong urban design, one of the tenants of urban design is creating environments that enliven and enrich the community in ways that they didn't know they need. Things like art, murals, benches that art you wouldn't think are necessities, and also green spaces that are real and not abrasive and artificial . I just think about, for me, living in an urban environment, the most exotic places that I would visit as a kid would be Eldorado, Park and Disneyland. And I would really hate or not hate, but I think it would be unfortunate for young kids who don't get to come out and experience nature, to experience Astroturf and that be a hallmark of their childhood. I also think that while it's tantalizing to look at this as a way to mitigate climate change, I feel like in the long run, Astroturf only works in seriously contained environments like theme parks or private residences. The speakers before me have explained how it sort of cuts off water runoff. There's more maintenance involved, especially when it comes to sanitary issues. So I just ask everyone to consider those points as well. Thank you. Thank you. Please come forward. Good evening. My name is Abraham Bashagha, and I had I just felt a little compelled to speak on this this issue, just because I'm a former intern at the water department and I was working with the conservation unit and we were doing lawn garden conversions and synthetic turf conversions as well. And I was working with this program very closely and notice that there are two major differences. So it almost was almost like night and day. We had a lot more people signed up for the turf removal as opposed to synthetic turf. But working with the synthetic turf, there was a lot more detail behind it. I don't have an issue per se, if there will be synthetic turf parks and of course, grass parks. I think the balance is actually very good. The only thing with synthetic turf is that there must be an adequate amount of research done and just information as far as maintenance and safety is concerned. I just think it'd be smart to educate the public on the difference between the both. As lady mentioned earlier, that there are there are certain requirements based on the turf who's manufacturing it and who's implementing it as far as special spikes, special equipment that does exist. However, as long as the public's educated on it, I think there shouldn't be a problem. As well as the heat island effect on the synthetic turf in the summer, it does tend to get a bit hot, and sometimes it did. In one instance, I did see the turf melt on home. Well, I was doing an inspection for the water department, but that was just one instance. And that was because he went to a retailer that that was not on our approved list. So maybe I like I said, research would be great. If you guys need information from the water department, I'm pretty sure they would not hesitate to help. And that's all. Okay. Thank you. And our last speaker. And then we got to go to a vote, sir. Hi. My name is Ramon. I'm in the fifth district. I'd like to compliment Stacy Mango for at least giving us the grass soccer fields. I do have some objections to the artificial turf that's being put in the other parks. Before I go any further, I'd like you to know that I'm also been given permission to represent the air. So one one for which has 2250 people, plus the residents that I have that are about 3000. Okay. This is the same group of people that I got to sign a petition during the budgetary meeting. Okay. Um, the water savings for the. That we receive for the. For the artificial turf to remove and install the grass is actually less than the cost of install. I mean, the installation and all that stuff for artificial turf is cost more than the savings for maintenance and water. That's what I've gotten the. There's a lot of problems with the with the health aspects, the the biological issues that are involved, some of the cancer stuff that's still there. This is a new surface that nobody's ever tried before. And we're now rolling it out in full blast that we're that we're doing so. To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense. There's three times as many injuries and artificial turf as there is on on. Grass. The residents prefer grass. So do the all the soccer players and all the teams. I did survey in Roberto Urunga area for Admiral Keter, and I spoke with the people using the soccer fields, which incidentally already have light. And they they don't have any problems with the field. I'm sure you did. I don't know if you did or not. So I'm letting you know that the residents and the the soccer player teams, they prefer having grass themselves. I think it's important that you know that because we don't know why you're doing it. That's why it's only the guys behind the desk, I guess. So the Long Lobby School District also has done a study on the different uses on soccer. And what they've discovered is they've got a 2% loss in students that. Excuse me. Well, I guess you don't want to hear me. It doesn't matter that. You don't want to. I don't you know, it doesn't matter. These guys are so rude. They don't even want to hear me. So, you. Know. Sir Ramon. I actually called you today to talk about this specific matter. You know what? Well, let's let's not. That's not that's not going to here. Okay. All right, sir. Okay. So let's let's go ahead and. Okay. Thank you, sir. So anybody anybody else who would have comment on this item? Okay. See the public comment on the item. Mr. Boland. Hi, Larry. Roland, I had come forward. I had an opportunity to spend time at City College. The dean and the grass out in front of the between two large buildings was just a terrible mess. And the flower beds weren't taken up with all the gardeners who were being paid to do it. So I met with the head groundskeeper and I said, because I work for a company that did turf management. And I said, Look, why don't you do this? Grass will hold up. It doesn't have to look like that with all these holes in it. If you do one thing and that is you assign one person to that spot and you hold them accountable. That it looks like it's supposed to look. And guess what? Next year, the grass was just beautiful. But the grass next to it, where they had another guy, it was the same way. So it got down to people keeping it as it supposed to be. Now, we'll have to say this. I think you have to put a little more money into real grass. But there's also the human element of who's going to take care of it, who's going to fertilize it? Who's going to cut it? Who's going to make fix the patches? And I just say this and I'll make it short. I think everybody prefers real grass. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Bowlen. Councilman Mongo. Yes. I wanted to point out two clarifying questions to answer some of the questions that were brought by the community tonight to the first part. Who's going to take care of it? I appreciate your comments because that is a very important component of the entire process. And Parks, Rec, Parks, Rec and Marine has brought on a specific field and grass maintenance expert. So we now have someone who knows the difference between a piece of grass that has two goalposts and an actual field. And the things that Ms.. Cantrell mentioned, which is irrigation and all the different components that make grass durable for play. The second component to Ms.. Cantrell's question, 800,000 is not enough for the projects that we will be doing at Eldorado Park. However, we're bringing forth a community item, a follow up to a council agenda item I had several months ago where we have talked with Parks Rec and Marine about sponsorship and partnership opportunities so that the organizations that are going to be utilizing these fields will make up the variance or hopefully will make up the variance. They have said that they're interested in doing that. So while it is 800,000, there are three fields and the potential sports space that we're looking at and what that looks like, I mean, it would exceed the 800,000. But if these community groups would step up in the way that they think they can, we would be able to pull in another hundred thousand dollars from that community and make everything possible. Otherwise the project would have to be reduced slightly. But and we're giving that discretion to Parks Rec and Marine and public works to make that all happen for us without any more delay. So I'm excited for this to move forward. Thank you. And I hope my colleagues will support this item. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Motion carries eight zero. Okay, that concludes the items that were requested to be moved up. So now we're going back to the beginning of the agenda and we have two hearings, believe it or not, and important ones, actually. So I'm going to start with hearing number one, Madam Clerk.