Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the status of the implementation of the Long Beach Animal Care Services’ Compassion Saves approach; and Request City Attorney to prepare ordinances amending Chapter 21.51.210 of the Long Beach Municipal Code (LBMC), increasing the number of pets from four to six for each household, and amending Chapter 6.04 of the LBMC, regulating the adoption of dogs and cats originating from outside Long Beach. (Citywide)
Okay, fine. Okay, let's vote on that. Yeah. Okay, fine. No comments. Fine. Well, now we're going to move to item number 28, please, with item. Item 28 is a report from Parks, Recreation and Marine recommendation to receive a presentation on the status of the implementation of the Long Beach Animal Care Services. Compassion saves approach and requested authority to prepare ordinances amending the Long Beach Municipal Code, increasing the number of pets from 4 to 6 for each household citywide. Everyone's got a second in that. Madam Clerk, is it possible to have Councilwoman Mongo be the most winner? And I can be the second her because she doesn't have a computer that works. Why? One Mongo. I think we'd like to start with the staff report and then public comment and then comments on the day. Sounds good. Okay, please. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. So we had published some information. This has been an ongoing discussion about compassion save. So back in November, there was a two from four to the Council on the Public about some various follow up from Compassion Saves. We're here to present that report and some other concepts and ideas as well. So I will turn this over to her. Our two most, our director of Parks Rec and Marine. Thank you. An honorable vice mayor and city council. It is a pleasure to present to you. Compassion saves next steps. Next to me is our Animal Service Bureau manager, Ms.. Stacey Danes, that helped prepare this report and is here to help answer any questions you may have after the presentation. It's like, oh, I'm sorry. When I arrived here a year and a half ago, phase one of the city audit on L.A. backs had been completed. Phase two was then completed in August 2018. The mayor then appointed 20 members of the community to the Animal Care Visioning Task Force to help develop the all back strategic plan that is called for in phase one of the audit. Ms.. Daines and I then help facilitate your study session on April 16th, 2019 on the proposed Compassion Saves model. This was followed by the May 7th, 2019 City Council direction to staff to implement the compassion savings model and to make sure that it is reflected in the development of the strategic plan. Council's direction was also to come back with recommendations and how best to improve operation relationship with SB Clay. You will note that this presentation will also provide you with remarkable key progress on the statistics showing results this past year, especially as they compared to previous years. The presentation will also provide you with an update on camel management fundraising for all our plans to enhance our max adoption messaging and greater adoption opportunities, and the recommendation on to ordnance to help manage dog and cat population growth. As you can see in this slide, there is a remarkable decrease in cat and dog admissions of 46% when you compare 2010 to 2019. It is interesting to note that the pattern of admissions by month as shown in the chart on the right on on the right side, you can see that the peak season that challenges our capacity at L banks is from May to September. Thank. This slide shows the impressive library lease rate progress in 2019. Of the 2106, 169 dogs admitted into banks, 94% were library leases where cats in 2019. Of the 3210 cats admitted, 83% were library leases. Again we can see here the remarkable progress in ah euthanasia in died in Care's statistics in 2010 5559 dogs and cats were euthanized or died in care. In 2019, that number is the smallest we have ever had at 665. That is an 88% improvement rate. Our adoption numbers are particularly impressive. In 2010, we only adopted 146 animals, and in 2019 we adopted the highest we ever we have ever had at 995. That is an 85% improvement rate. These 985 animals that were adopted does not include any transfers to SPCA or any other rescue partner. Though, we still have a lot of challenges and opportunities. Ella Banks Achievements in 2019 are something to be very proud of. How we make these achievements are due to key. How we made these achievements are due to key factors. Stacey Daines was hired in February 2019. We increase community engagement through foster care, adoption and volunteerism. We expanded opportunities for veterinary care and treatment and behavioral support for animals, especially during peak summer season. With your approval of budget enhancements in fiscal year 19 and fiscal 20. In fiscal year 20, we are able to hire a full time veterinarian and an additional full time adoption and volunteer coordinator. We were able to foster nearly 200 animals in 2019 and also delivered with an all time high in our adoption rates. We could not have achieved these results without our volunteers. We increased our volunteer involvement by 73%. We now process volunteers faster and train them better. We also established a special group of trained volunteers to assist in our behavior program. We also launched a web portal that volunteers use for scheduling opportunities. This efficiency ensures that volunteers come in to help when they are needed. As I mentioned earlier, Elba is challenged with a rise of admissions of dogs and cats from May to September. It is the increase in cat admissions during this time period that is that it has become quite challenging. This 2019 season we came up with a creative solution. El Bax, as you know, is in the pitch. The Pitchford companion, Animal Village. The village is configured with dedicated areas for SPCA, play a dedicated area for backs and the common area to be used by both partners. We rented three mini pods that were climate controlled to house the large intake of cats that were that we experienced during this peak season. And we were very grateful to the city of Los Angeles, who loaned us their mighty mover, which is a unit that is climate controlled and can be easily moved to different locations. The mighty mover was also used to house the large intakes of cats. We placed these mobile units in the bank's dedicated footprint where we have an area for bags, parking needs, staff's hard work in collaboration with local rescue groups, volunteers and increased medical services. We were because of these efforts, we were able to overcome the challenges of this peak high cat admission season. Compassion saves us working. We saved more lives through a combination of foster care, adoption, help from rescue groups and our volunteers. These efforts increase the animals that need our care by 30%, which challenged our ability on our animal care duties. We were taking the opportunity. We are taking the opportunity to improve our ability to deal with this challenge with by pulling staff from different assignments for animal care. When the challenge is there better use of volunteers. And most importantly, we are restructuring the cleaning assignments to ensure feeding occurs before cleaning. These efforts are increasing tailbacks, efficiency and animal care. In addition, tomorrow, one new part time employee will start working at old backs to join the team to keep the kennels clean and ensure a healthy environment for dogs is provided. A second new part time employee will also be joining the ranks to help us with this challenge very soon. The Mayor's Animal Care Visioning Task Force began meeting in October 2018 and has provided very valuable feedback to the BAX team in order to improve its effectiveness. The task force members have been working hard in helping develop the strategic plan, which is a key deliverable and will be presented to the City Council in March, April. We're also excited to announce that Partners of Parks has agreed to work with our backs in raising private monies for our backs. The 100,000 of one time fiscal year 20 addition to the IBEX budget is meant to spearhead these fundraising fundraising efforts and to enhance the outback social media presence. A web portal in partnership with partners with Parks is currently being developed. We're also excited that we have begun planning a large annual fundraising event to help raise money for Outback's. With the generous approval of the City Council's $450,000 of Measure a moneys l banks will be improving its signs and ability to deal signs and ability to deal with high peak admissions season and also to taking to take our art and in to enhance adoption opportunities to areas that are further distant, that are that that are farther away from the Outback's campus facility. We plan to enhance our signs around the village that lead to the public, that lead the public to the campus and purchase up to three mighty movers. You can see on this slide an example of one of the old signs that we will be changing with a new design and messaging. The picture below is an example of a mighty mover that can be custom ordered with specific message ram so that we can be more effective in taking adoption opportunities to the people. Staff work with deputy city with deputy city attorney Art Sanchez to review the four existing agreements with SPC L.A.. The first agreement is for construction. The second one is the lease. The third is the lease back, and the fourth is a permit that allows SPC, L.A. to park vehicles at the city's Park Maintenance Operation Yard. A special L.A.X. team has met with Speaker Lee twice and made it clear that the city is requesting the establishment of an operating agreement. Other specific issues that we have been discussing that the city intends to make part of the operating agreement is to clarify is clarity of what is and what is not common areas and how best to respectfully use these areas in order to benefit both parties when their needs require it. This includes adding clarity and writing on how best the VACC will manage our footprint areas that corresponds to our leaseback areas, shared keys for the common areas and signs and common areas that are alabang specific. Last Friday we placed three banners and Stacy will briefly show you two of those banners that we placed them in and around our village. This is one of the banners that has also is introducing to the public our new album logo. And then we had. And then we have a larger banner that we're placing in front. Of the village that has been placed already in front of the village. And it shows some of our happy animals. We're also excited to continue working on the further development on best practices to operate the Joint One-Stop Adoption Desk and have been developing a mutual adoption questionnaire aimed on decreasing confusion from members of the public looking to adopt Long Beach animals from from the village. Staff recommends the city council request the city attorney to prepare Long Beach Dogs to prepare Long Beach Dog and cat ordinance to help manage population growth. We believe these two ordinance will be ready in March. Or April, the first ordinance will focus on on increasing the household limit from pets from 4 to 6 pets. The second ordinance will be to provide all banks the authority to regulate nonprofit organizations that bring 300 or more dogs and cats from outside Long Beach. L Banks will in February and early March, outreach to the rescue groups and to the public to receive their input on both the ordinances. You should know that the pet limit is currently, as described in Chapter 11 of the municipal code. Includes dogs, cats, caged birds and rabbits. Next steps bring back to the City Council the O back strategic plan in March, April, also at the same time bring back the ordinance on dog and cat population control to City Council. And also in March, April, we proposed to bring back a progress report on the ongoing meetings that we have started with SPCA, LA. That concludes the presentation. Be happy to take any questions. Thank you. I know I want to hear from our public, but I want to start by setting the tone. I want to thank a lot of people who did a lot of work, and most of them are sitting in the audience. We talk a little bit about the reduction in admissions, and I know a lot of us give that credit to the community and the Spaniard's program that has been out in the community and helped to get the number of animals from having unwanted litters down. I want to thank the rescuers for contributing and helping with the number of animals released alive from the shelter. That work is a lot, to your credit. Many of you are constantly posting. We appreciate it. While I know that once compassion saves one enacted, a number of our posters moved on to shelters that still have high kill rates. Our animals still need to be posted often. And I know that Stacy Danes is doing a great job by posting a lot of our animals in Lost and Found, but we still need all the help we can get. And I know there are shelters that are far worse than us, and I appreciate that there are a lot of love going to those animals, but we still need to get our numbers even more improved. I want to I want to thank Stacy for what she has been able to do in the months that she has been here. However, I think there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. You said that we have one new part time staff member starting tomorrow. Is this to replace the retiree from like six months ago that we lost? No councilmember. That particular recruitment is set to open soon. So this is a recruitment that has already been conducted. So let me be clear that this council has already been clear with the city staff that our recruitment is take too long and there's been an audit and a review of the onboarding process and. When we know a person is going to be retiring out of a staff or a department that is so small, the recruitment should probably start before they retire. And so my next question is to City Manager Modica, because I know Hiroto is leaving any day now. We said the second part timer will start soon. What could we do as a line in the sand date that we can check back in? So that my staff will know. I believe actually two people are starting tomorrow. Is that not correct? The report said one. Yeah, the one is starting tomorrow, Mr. City Manager, and the second one is going through the process. It has been selected but is going through the process. Stacy, is there anything more on on the second one? The second individual. Is still in the medical screening process but has been, which is the last hurdle. Already done backgrounds and all that. Okay. Correct. And is it my understanding, Mr. Modica, that once they pass that they can start immediately? So once we make a hire, we have to get them cleared by the FBI through the scam process, and we have to do the occupational health. So this person's the first one's already been done. So now it's just occupational health on this person. That's what I'm seeing. So if they're ready to go, then they're ready to go. And occupational health is actually something that we're taking a very close look at. We hope by February to have a list of positions that won't need to go through occupational health anymore. And some are still going to depending on physical duties. But that should be we are starting that very soon. Thank you for that. And when the retiree that needs to be replaced, can you remind me what position that was? That position as a maintenance assistant. Three. So they clean the kennels, correct? They're animal care. And do we not have an active list for maintenance? Assistant three. There is a recruitment that is going to open soon that will provide us with a list and that is a city wide. Mr. MODICA Is there a maintenance assistant one, two or three list available? What can we. It's been six months and the person's been gone. And I know we hadn't had a director of. So then. Those go to civil. Service. Thank you. Yes. So what can we do about that? I'll raise that with the civil service director. We clearly want to get either an unofficial or something into that position. If we have to take something to the Civil Service Commission to change things or ask for a provisional appointment, we can do that. That would be great. I would love to hear back on a provisional appointment. A couple of things about the proposal tonight. So first and foremost, this says animal care's next steps. I think that this is animal care's proposed next steps. This council tonight will make the decision on what those are. And I'd like to make a couple of modifications out of the gate. So I know we talk about a memorandum of understanding with SPCA, L.A.. I don't feel that that's strong enough. I think that in a lot of our other reports that we've talked about, the consistent terminology that Mr. Modica has used and has agreed is necessary in all of our agreements is an operating agreement. So Mr. Modica, can you give us a little bit of information about what the timeline might be for such an operating agreement? It's not. So yes, in our original item that we brought forward, we were calling it a memorandum of understanding. We are changing that a little bit more to a formal agreement of what we call an operating agreement. I think that better clarifies what we're looking to do, that we want to outline all of the different provisions and really write down the stuff that is currently happening out there and also clarify things that are not happening out there that we would like to happen out there. I will ask Rado and Stacy to give us a more concise, more precise estimate of when we'd come back. My sense is we want to make a lot of progress in the next two months and really align this with the strategic plan. So when we're hearing back from the from the task force and are hearing back from the strategic plan that we come back, this is, of course, a negotiation. They are not under any requirement to actually enter into an operating agreement with us. We have started those discussions with SPCA and we hope with the next 2 to 3 months, that will have a lot to report back on. Wonderful. I'd also like to modify the motion tonight to include a time certain to bring back a ordinance. We kind of talked about in the presentation a February or March date. I recognize that this council often is expected to have an ordinance that's so perfect that only ministerial changes could be proposed on the night the ordinance returns . I'm not looking for that. I'm okay with it being a draft that we can make significant changes to. But I'd like to ask if the city attorney could, at research, if possible, to have that ordinance back by February 24th. He said February or March. That's the last Tuesday meeting in February. If that's possible, that would be great. If it's not. Please let me know. And then the strategic plan. It was a broad date, if I know that's kind of based on a consultant. So if you could tell me a specific time certain that we could count on, that would be helpful. And then I'm just going to close with one last thing before we go to public comment, if possible. In 2015, I asked for our live releases to be a part of our open data portal. This is not something that needs to be created. L.A. County Animal Control already has an internal open data portal. I specifically drew that to the bar graph that's possible that links directly to Chameleon, and the data can be drawn on a daily basis and it shows the number of live animal in LBS and then it shows the animal outcomes in a bar graph. And that bar graph is a stacked graph that has this many animals where live animal outcomes by either being transferred to a rescue or being transferred to a or being adopted or they're in the foster program or they were whatever their live release category and you can click on those bars and they change on a daily basis because they pull directly from Chameleon. And this is not anything that needs to be created. It's all open to the public because it was created with government money. And here we are four years later and we don't have it. And I know at the time we went through two different IT directors, but I'd like as a part of the. If there's more to from Forbes, I'd like a date that our live release rates will be a part of the open data portal. And I don't know if it's here, but I want a date that that's possible if it's six months from now, tell me that. But I'd like to know when that's going to happen, and I want that to be a part of the motion with that councilmember. Mr. White, remember. I know you've asked for the February 24th date on the ordinance. The one of the ordinances that changes the number of animals has to go to a planning commission. So I don't think there's any way that we can bring this back to you on the 24th. It has to go to Planning Commission first. Would we be able to do the part of the ordinance? The other two components that they're they're proposing. We could certainly attempt to bring back part of the audiences that don't have to go to a planning commission by the 24th. Yes. That would be fantastic. And with that, Mr. Vice Mayor, I'd be open to either hearing from Councilman Price my co motion or hearing from the public eye. Is there anyone I would like to speak? I think I have. Uh. How many names you have? We have 19 that sign up for the public comments for this item. Can he go? Yes, go ahead. I just want to add one more piece to the conversation. And I thought maybe doing it before a public comment might be more productive so that if members of the public want this particular issue addressed, perhaps it's going to get addressed right now. But I don't know. So, first of all, I want to thank our Parks Rec and Marine Department and specifically Stacey Daines. You have been a great addition to the team. I'm so grateful you're here. I'm grateful for your transparency, your authenticity, your willingness to work hard and truly your love for animals, which can be faked to some extent. But you it's real with you. I mean, it's it's genuinely real for you. This is not a job. You're not doing it because it's a job. You're doing it because you care. And that's that comes across clearly, I think, to any of us who work with you. So thank you for that. And I want to thank my colleague, Stacey Mungo for her comments. She's been very engaged on this topic, and I agree with everything she just said wholeheartedly. I know that I have met with many of the advocates. Several of them live in my district and are my constituents, and I've had the pleasure and the opportunity to be able to sit with them on a number of occasions to talk about this specific issue. And I know that one of the biggest concerns for them and it makes a lot of sense to me and perhaps they brought it up to me because I'm an attorney, I don't know. But it's the terms of the lease. The terms of the lease are a major concern for me, and I agree. We need to look at an operating agreement. We need to look at an emotive issue. But I think we have a lease in place and my concern is that there are practices that have been developed over time that are outside the scope of the lease and outside the scope of the intent of the lease. So as part of this item, if it's okay with Councilmember Mungo, she's amenable to this, I would like to request the following. I'd like to request that the city attorney review the current lease between the City of Long Beach and SPCA, L.A., and meet with the SPCA, LA management team, the Lubbock's management team, and any other persons deemed by the staff or management team of either entity who have credible, relevant information to contribute to determine whether the current lease terms have been followed, whether they have been violations of the lease, and whether those violations warrant a modification or termination of the lease or. All conversations shall be protected as privileged communications and every effort shall be made to protect the identity of those who are expressing accounts or concerns regarding events and practices. And that provision, I'm not sure if it can legally be upheld, but I really want to protect. The individuals who might share concern from being. Retaliated against in some way. I just I want to make sure they're protected. So I appreciate your comments. And I would like to adopt some form of that. I know that. Sorry. Sorry. The report that also on the lease. Yes. The report shall be deemed a priority and which should return back to council within 30 days in order to cease all practices and operations that are deemed to be non-compliant and or detrimental to the operations and functions of Al Bax. So I do know that in meeting with Art Cox in advance of this meeting, that they've reviewed the lease and started through a process of noticing. Is that something we can comment on at this time, or is that something that's under negotiations? Could. Mr.. MODICA Well. That's something that Heard can give you an update on. He has been actively doing that work with with the SPCA. But I think that the component of Miss Price and my I'm sorry, Councilwoman Price and my comments both now and then when I met with you previously, was the legal components that Mr. Cox is involved in. Mr. Tan. Sorry, Cock Sanchez. Okay. Yes, we can talk about that. The one of the issues that has been addressed is potential violations of the lease. And you only have a violation of the lease if the city were requested or the in this case wrote to the director of Parks and Marine. What's the other side on notice and under the lease, they have 30 days to cure that default or potential violation of the lease. To my knowledge, we've never put them on a notice for those type of incidents. So and some of the incidents that have been raised, the statute of limitations probably has run on some of the if they were light violations at that time in 2005 or, you know, more than four years ago under the contract. So if there is an ongoing issue that staff believes they can't work out with our our tenant, in this case the SPCA, we could certainly work with them to write a notice. But before we get to that, obviously, we'd want to have negotiations with them to see if we could resolve it. Short of implementing the legal system, I don't not sure we could terminate the lease under anything I've seen so far. We don't have any grounds that I'd been put aware or made aware of that would result in some sort of termination. We have a I think a lease is in place till 2053. And so it is a long term partnership that we have with SPCA. And but that said, we could certainly clarify some of the issues that have been raised and we would meet with SPCA and do that. And I think what has recently happened and Mr. Modica was present was that there were concerns about violations of the lease that were brought forward by the community, that were both brought to the attention of the Parks and Rec director, the assistant city manager. And there was a discussion about making sure that if there were violations, they were put on notice. So I guess, Mr. Modica, where any of the claims brought forward deemed to be founded and were they cured or was there a noticing that will need to take place or has taken place? So the director of Parks and Rec has brought those up to the attention of SPCA last week. We also put those in writing to them and and were at this point dealing with it through negotiation, saying here are things that we want to hear where we're proposing this operating agreement, because we think that is really the best way to address these going forward. We can look further at actual lease violations at this point. The things that have been raised to our attention, such as, you know, not being provided keys, those are getting addressed. And we have we have assurance from SPCA that they will give us keys to the to the common areas that is clearly in the lease. That is not under dispute. They owe us keys and we've asked for those and we will receive those. And if we don't, we would take that to the next level. I'd like Corrado to jump in and talk a little bit about the discussion that we had with SPCA and what specifically we have noticed them on. And I think it's important to to kind of let the community know how many meetings there have been with SPCA. With regards to these issues of concern. There's been to sit down meetings, very lengthy meetings, and such as as the city manager just mentioned, mentioning on our request. And then also it was put in writing that we going that develop an operating agreement. And then we brought up the issue of the keys, the shared keys in the common areas. We also brought up the issue of needing to have a mutual understanding on the placement of signs in common areas and also in the areas that is our bank specific footprint. And then we also how we need to have a really good, clear understanding because there have been instances there where there wasn't and how best to use the common areas as well as what are the common areas. So that needs to be clarified. That was brought up as well. And and then the effective programing of a joint One-Stop Adoption Desk, the adoption questionnaire was brought up with specific it has to be a jointly developed and owned document and. And and then not just even more clarity on, for example, during the summer season when we used the Benee pods and the mighty mover in our area, there were concerns about whether we had the right to do so. We we did so. But we need to make sure that that gets established in writing so that there is no tensions with regards to using our footprint to the best of our ability when we have the needs to save our animals . And from Long Beach. Thank you. I appreciate your discussion related to the one stop. Many know that that's something that I'm very passionate about, that people would have the opportunity to know that they can adopt from Long Beach. I appreciate that you're addressing the adoption form. I think those are all things that have been brought to our attention by the community. I know Councilman Price said 30 days. I'd like to include the. Operation of the one stop launch and the adoption form. And with that, I'd like to open it up to potentially being 60 days. That's fine. And so those would be included as well. Great. And then if we can, Mr. Vice Mayor, hear from the public and then potentially bring back to add additional. Opportunities to improve the recommendation. All right. Thank you. The public place will call you names off and please come up. And you have 90 seconds. Thank you. Well, the next five public comments. Could you please do mine up in the podium? Beverly Leifer, Joanne Quartz. Excuse me. Excuse me 1/2. I'm sorry. Councilwoman Patricia. Okay. Okay, fine. Beverly Reliever Joanne Coates, Laura, Selma, Alex Armstrong and Wang. Can you please come up and stand by the podium, please? Do we only have one minute, 30 seconds. Yes. Okay. I'm Beverly Lifer. And first, I want to thank council members Pryce and Mungo for wanting the lease and potential violations to be investigated. This needs to be done prior to an operating agreement or ammonia or whatever you call it. I organize and peacefully demonstrate outside the State of the City event with a group of other animal advocates last Tuesday, like I did at last year's event, with no trouble. However, this year I was told by the head of security at this public event on public property that you, city council and the mayor stated that no signs were allowed within the security perimeter outside the building. Even the police agree that we were allowed and so were our signs. I checked before we even showed up. Unfortunately, the mayor's not here to the address, but the mayor and city council members have a history of restricting the public's comments and thoughts, as seen in the mayor's deletion of criticism of him on Facebook, limiting the time for public comments and now trying to remove people and their signs from a public event. Well, you can't and won't stop us from an acting our freedoms of assembly and speech. And you will never silence me or others from advocating for our city's pets. We demand that this city's animal shelter operate autonomously. All decision making should be made by the shelter manager or its city management. No private organization, including SPCA, L.A. should have unmitigated power to control. Thank you, Agency. Yes, thank you. I don't know. Hi, my name is Joanne Frost. Thank you for your increased attention to Long Beach Animal Care stories. This past year. I've been advocating for Outback's reform for over 12 years, and after all these years, I finally feel a glimmer of hope today. Thanks to many of you recently meeting with me and patient and listening to the unfortunate complex issue. So thank you very, very much. I am the family against entering into any additional agreements with SPCA until the violations and the current lease agreements are remedied. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. We do. You all have a letter at your desk from Best Friends Animal Society. They are a leading national welfare organization. They're dedicated to ending the killing of dogs and cats in America by 2025. They have written, commending us for our work this year. And they also noted that to have continued progress, our. Municipal shelter needs autonomy and self-determination. They made note that our backs must be freely, must be free to choose the type of collaborations that save the most limited animals. As Ella Max is in the current state of evolution. Now maybe the time to review current partnerships to ensure alignment of goals and purpose. Meet the Compassion Saves Initiative. They believe independence is a logical next step to its long term success and sustainability. And then the last thing I have is a visual that you may have in your doc, in your this is the main building of the common area. There's these pink areas that are highlighted. They we consider the valued space where animals can be housed and the veterinary areas. You'll see those pink arrows are all owned. Thank you. They are all taken over by SPCA. That's what we really need to get back as part of the lease. We don't need an operating agreement to get that taken care of. Thank you. My name is Laura Selmer, vice mayor and council. Thank you for the leadership. With the animal care services last year, having the lowest euthanasia rate in our history was a true accomplishment. I want to give a shout out to Stacy Danes and her team. You are saving lives. Another deserving Shoutout goes to Hiroto Mourad for his insightful decision to bring Stacy here. You knew what we needed. Thank you. Next is looking ahead. I urge the council to have the city evaluate and remedy the ongoing violations of the lease agreement between the city and SPCA. We have some information about your seats by addressing these violations. The dominoes will fall. The city might not even need or want an operational agreement. Please enforced release before attempting to negotiate an operating agreement on top of a lease agreement that is already being violated. Thank you for your service to Long Beach. And I also want to appreciate that the words of the voice of confidentiality, because there are some animal advocates in the community who are who are not free to speak because of fear of retaliation. So thank you for that. Thank you. Hey, guys. Thank you. Stacy. Stacy Mungo, Janine Peterson, Susie Price for what you've been helping Stacy Dance accomplished this year. It has improved in regards to the SPCA. We are asking our city council mayor not to not to approve the move or any operation agreement. We already, as you guys said, we already have a legal document that needs to be enforced. And that's really where we need to stand is on the lease. It's a violation of the lease, too, to change door locks. It's a violation of the lease to not allow our city animals in the shared part of the facility. These things are continually going on and the lease, it's a violation of the lease. So whatever needs to happen to save more lives is really on you guys to make that happen for us, and we keep asking you to do so. I think it's also disgusting that the Spca's Le's ethics are not being challenged here, that it's unethical for them to have the first pick of puppies or dogs that come into our city shelter over our Long Beach residence. How the hell does that work? I mean, no, that's just the these things that are going on there. It's ridiculous. It doesn't happen anywhere else. And Madeline Brunson needs to be accountable for what she's doing. She is responsible for the deaths of many animals. And it's got to change in our city. Thank you. I also want to echo my thanks to Councilmember Pearce, Price and Margo for your movement. Forward with Compassion Saves. I am more encouraged than I have ever been. Tonight, hearing Susie Price and Stacy Mongo backing very strongly what we all have wanted. So thank you. I want to make it real clear that Mr. Perkins Perkins, we do not have a partnership with SPCA. If you look on page 19 of the book that you were given, it very clearly states in the lease, this is not a partnership, so please make sure you guys review that. Secondly, I also want to concur that I do not support animal you or any kind of agreement until and if all violations committed against the L backs against the shelters by the SPCA, which I have personally seen myself. I was there the day. Those animals were tossed out of the small animal room. I saw it with my eyes. That can never, ever happen. Lastly, I'm asking you to hold off on any type of vote or consideration for Part six Chapter 6.04 with regards to the ordinance bringing in animals from other areas. This is punitive to rescuers who operate and pull many, many animals from the shelter and off of the streets and needs to be strongly reconsidered before it is even looked at by council. Thank you. Could you please stop the next slide, please? 1/2. Next, guys, please come up to the podium. Candice Lawrence, Carole Peterson, Kristi Mammoliti, Adam R and Fernando Collado. I thank you. Go ahead, Mr.. Could you. Yes, I think the record will show me that. I'm embarrassed to say this is the first time I've ever spoken on this issue. This is really nothing more than a 32nd conversation. There should be no killing. Of any dog or a cat. Figure out how to do it. It should end tonight. Nothing. Nothing should be killed. Figure it out. That's what you're there for. Thank you. Right now, I, too, would like to thank the two, Stacey's and Councilwoman Price, for the work that they've been doing. And it's wonderful to hear that there is some attempt at improving our relationship with SPCA, L.A., which we've all been crying for for years. I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as government money. It's taxpayers money. And I want to know why my taxpayer's money, instead of going to our shelter where we get pleas for kitten food, where we hear that there's no heat and the animals are cold, where there are no spay and vouchers, there are no spay neuter vouchers available, not even for, God forbid, language, but form where we have our spaying and neutering done. San Pedro. This is insane in a city of our size and our financial acumen. I don't appreciate that my pet taxpayer money is being spent on things like roundabouts landscaped roundabouts that everyone hates and nobody knows how to manipulate them. The signage is insane. I've killed practically killed about ten people so far. Not to mention how many people tried to kill me. And it's just not workable. They're in residential neighborhoods and they're not necessary. I'm not interested in my taxpayer money going for rainbow colored walkways. I'm not interested in my taxpayer money going for bike paths all over the city. I've seen exactly one biker on my street in the 20 years that I've lived on Pacific Avenue. So let's get the priorities here, people. Let's let's do something for the animals. The big thing that was in that order over and over again, obliquely. Thank you, young lady. Thank you. Was money. We need money. Hi. So the only menu I would accept is one that grants complete independence from SPCA. I have yet to find any evidence at all backs of the an innovative and life preserving care that was promised in that formation of this public private union years ago. In fact, SPCA has been a great obstacle in the operations and services provided to animals that backs the thousands upon thousands of animals killed can attest to that. So unless the AMA you give the autonomy to L backs, I would urge you to reject it. At the State of the City address last week, the mayor shared numbers from animal care services. Adoptions were up, euthanasia were down. But these two categories combined represent only a portion of the 5000 plus animals who come into our backs. So what happened to the rest? Well, a large number of them went to SPCA, L.A. And then what happened? Nobody knows, because there's no transparency coming from SPCA. The public is kept in the dark as to how many animals it kills and adopts without transparency. And with a CEO who has openly come out against no kill, it makes it kind of hard to trust this society. I would also think twice about regulating the animals coming in to Long Beach to adopt from other places. The last thing I want is more animals to go to SPCA because I don't know what happens to them. And if we free up cages that SPCA, LA is going to send more over. And of course, this will increase Long Beach's save rate and it will look good. But here's the thing. Not only will we not know what happens to these animals. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms.. But there will be no incentive for Long Beaches Own Adoption program. Good evening. I'm Christine family and it's nice to see you all again this first time I've been here at the new facility. Quite expensive facility. We spent a lot of money. We've spent a lot of time. But the bottom line is that our city's animal shelter is still killing healthy and treatable pets. Public record requests about those killed have shown this. You've been announcing a great save rate at our city shelter, but that save rate does not include in the numbers that SPCA transfers or kills. We do not know what they do with them. And SPCA is adamant about not being no kill on their website about not. Having no kill around our shelter, hands over up to 25% of the pets. To them, that SPCA is not transparent about what they do with them. How do we know what that number is? How can we even estimate what our save rate is? When. SPCA. L.A. is a care facility. You cannot even guess. Please stop telling the public how great you think the save rate has become until you get their facts. Let's be transparent. Our city shelter needs autonomy from especially in order to function as an adoption facility and SPCA. L.A. is toxic to that end. Let's keep this train moving forward like it is tonight. But no agreements with SPCA, L.A.. Thank you very much. Next. Hello. I usually want to start off with a little refresher, and I had needed one for autonomy. Apparently it's in developmental psychology and moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, unconscious decision. And basically what we're trying to get is we want Long Beach Animal Care Services to operate as a separate shelter from SPCA. Due to the reasons I addressed earlier, since they're not transparent and we don't not know what happens to our pets once they take them to their facility, they can't be counted as adopted. So therefore it's not what it is meant to be. They can't be. If UCLA kills any of them, the same way for Long Beach should represent what they do with our animals. Thank you. Thank you. Next, before we get started, can we call up the next slide, please? Wendy Aragon. Sherry Stamp which. Ronnie Nakano. Diane Cliche. Kate Karp. Would you please come up by the story? Line up by the podium, please. Einstein, sir. Thank you. The council members don't agree that we want Long Beach Animal Care Services to offer you a separate shelters from SPCA. Since they do not represent Transparent and we do not know what happens to our pets once they take them to the facility. They cannot be counted as adopted at SPCA. They killed any of them. They saved me for long pieces that represent. What they do with. Our animals. Thank you. This make Long Beach shelter in Tokyo. Thank you very much. Next. Wendy Aragon, president of Pain Assistance Foundation. We've helped to spay and neuter many Long Beach pets over. Over six decades. We have concerns about the proposed changes to the number to the proposed changes. Mentioned tonight to the ordinance. Regarding the number of pets strongly recommend that rabbits be included in the six animals allowed and that they be required to be spay and neuter like dogs. And cats. There's more prolific than cats. And subject to a lot of abuse. Neglect, abandonment. And we would really like to see this edition. We also in general regarding changes to the ordinance or change the proposed changes tonight, I just want to say that every animal advocate longs for the day when all healthy, adoptable animals find a quality, loving home. However, we cannot adopt our way out of the pet overpopulation problem. It exists. We cannot depend simply on the live release rate. Pet overpopulation is a complex social problem and it requires complex solutions. One Increased public education about responsible pet care. Humane education in our schools. Increase spay and neuter. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms.. Next. Hi. First off, thank you for allowing us to speak. So I've never done this before. So it's a little a little intimidating. So anyhow, I run Zaza Cat's Kitty Rescue. We are a street cat rescue based rescue. We save probably about a thousand kitty cats off the streets last year. Probably 80% of them are from the city of Long Beach. And out of that, 80%, probably 80% of them are adopted outside of the city of Long Beach. My fear or whatever is if you put limitations on the adoptable kitty cats we are able to adopt in Long Beach outside of Long Beach, it will actually cause us not to be able to save the amount of lives that we do. Say, if all cities were to put an ordinance out there that I'm sorry, but you can't adopt out your Long Beach kitty cats in Whittier, that is going to decrease the amount of cats that we can actually save because we do, like I said, about a thousand cats a year. We are on average 500 adoptions a year, just our rescue, not to mention what everybody else here does. So I fully support Stacy and I love what she's doing at the shelter. And I would love to be able to help the shelter out more by saving more animals and by doing so. If you tie our hands with where we can and cannot adopt our kitty cats out at. Thank you. Thank you very much. Animal. Hi. I was going to talk about partnerships tonight. Thank you very much, Gerardo, for clarifying. Step number two, because I was very concerned about that. Partnerships, it's become clearer and clearer by what I've heard and what I've seen. That SPCA play, no matter how many animals they take, is not a partner. The ones the ones who are partners are the independent rescuers, like the ones you just saw, Ronnie. They spend their own money and they scramble for more trying to save and adopt out as many pets as they possibly can. And we worry that step two is going to affect their ability to rescue, and it'll also isolate them from the rescue community at large outside the city. And as for business, they, with their own rescues, bring business in to the pet stores where they have the rescues on compassion saves and also knows no boundaries. And you and I all know that if any of these people find a box of kittens in a dumpster in Rancho Cucamonga or a dog by the freeway ramp, they take it in. And I'll bet. So would any of you. I think I'm Will. If you can get rid of that. I think it's ridiculous. I think that there's just a small number. Thank you. Thank you very. Much. You get it? Okay. Yeah. Hi, I'm Sherry. Say, go to the Sparky in the game. We do adoptions in Long Beach and SEAL Beach. I feel that that putting a pet limit on how many adoptable animals for small groups would really affect us. We do save animals from the Long Beach shelter, but unfortunately it's mostly the second injured. And just in the last eight months, we've racked up $28,000 in bills from animals that were not taken by the SPCA, which is very disappointing because when I moved to Long Beach, I was like, wow, we have SPCA here thinking that they have the funds to take the animals. So we do rescue animals for other shelters that offset the cost of our sick animals here. And we do a huge program of that. I feel like all of the rescue groups here do work together. The only group that doesn't work is the SPCA with all of us. I would also like to see that if a dog does get rescued off the street, that the general public gets first pick of the dog, which would which would be called a CTA, which means commitment to adopt so that they can do due diligence of rescuing the dog, getting into the shelter, and they get to adopt it from our shelter and collect license fees. And then from that point I would be interested party which would be like rescue groups or anybody else would like the dog and makes it simple, clean and clear where it's not like we're holding this dog for this group or that group. They get the dogs out as soon as they're available. They need to go. Also. Okay, I think that's. Fine. Thank you. Yes. Excuse me. Before the last go. We have three more. Mr. Vice Mayor? Yes? Linda montgomery. You please come up to the podium. Luis Montgomery and Jacqueline Case. Sorry. Good evening, honorable council members and vice mayor. I'm the executive director of Fixed Long Beach, so I know most of you and thank you for your past, present and continuing support. Since we have been in action, we've helped to fix over 8000 paths in and around Long Beach. So getting there, but not there yet. I would ask that with the 300 adoption pact limit that you include language to say those are pets adopted on city property. We as small rescuers and most people don't know about fix does rescue animals because we have them dumped at our events. We have them left behind. We have picked up animals off the freeway and off the street. And yes, sometimes we do get an easily adoptable animal that is surrendered to us and we can adopt out. But it takes 20 of those to offset one medical case. So when we take we have taken a dog from the shelter. We were told it would have a surgery. Money ran out. That dog ended up costing us $3,000. So limiting what. We're able to do and the pets that we can get and adopt out. It's it's going to be very detrimental to all of the small rescues and it's going to give the SPCA way too much authority, and they're just going to continue doing what they're doing then and. BOWLIN So please consider that. Thank you. Thank you for your time. My name is Louise Montgomery. I'd like to address the increase of pets from 4 to 6. I think it's a great idea. However, the wording, I believe, needs to be for pets to six licensed pets. While volunteering at the city of Long Beach. I personally experience the frustration of the staff and the thousands of hours spent addressing barking dogs, roaming cat complaints from irresponsible citizens who do not supervise their animals. With the mandatory licensing, spay neuter and breeding laws we have in the city. It's very difficult for animal control to even enforce this. Now, we have very low licensing rates now, and I'd like to council to consider increased funding to address that for the staff of the city. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Hi. My name is Linda montgomery. As my sister just said, we do have a lot of dogs in Long Beach that are still not neutered and they're not to go to Dog Beach. A lot of those dogs should be in Speedos. It's crazy. So the city is having a hard enough time enforcing a lot of the rules that we have now and spay and neuter. And also, one of the things that I was concerned about and I was interested in when you showed the chart, was that there are so many dogs that come in in the summertime. And one of the things that may seem irrelevant, but it really is a big deal and there's no transparency on it, is fireworks. The day before 4th of July, they empty out the shelter. A lot of dogs are put to sleep that day because they have to make room for the dogs that are coming in the next day because the police are not enforcing our fireworks. And people, if they knew that fireworks harmed as many dogs as that as they do. Maybe if we did a campaign with posters showing that's why we have them illegal, or at least letting people know how many dogs get out, get hit by cars, owners having to go back into the shelter to claim their dogs the next day. It's a program that might help with that. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. Hi. My name's Jacqueline Keith. I'm from District eight and I'm also a member of the Animal Task Force as as an alum. So as of March 2019, our box has shifted its model from animal control to compassion saves providing animal care and placing greater emphasis on saving healthy and treatable animals and providing life saving programs. So we had an audit back in 2018. And so during that, and I'm grateful that you guys are getting more staff, but we still are lacking. The funding programing has expanded to saving healthy and treatable animals remaining in. Open intake and shelter. And yet our budget for 2020 was less than the previous year. So although we've added a new staff member and we're going to add a second one back in 2018, we were told that we need eight additional staff. If you read the. Audit in 2018, it says in two sections that we need 12 part. Time, we need eight full time, and then we also need 12 additional. So the problem is, is we're still in I'm grateful for this for this report that you provided being a task force member. Some of the stuff is the first time I'm hearing it, which I'm grateful for. The people we have, they know I support Stacy and the staff in itself. I also am against the MRU. I think the list stands on itself. We should have more transparency. You should also investigate the fact that why does SPCA have keys to our shelter, our kennels? Why do they take our animals? And the joint documentation for presentation? Thank you. Thank you very. Much. Because at the bottom. Of the application, it states that my information is going to be. Advertised with SPCA. And I didn't ask for that. I voted. I wanted a dog or a cat from our shelter. I didn't want to be advertised from them. Thank you. Yeah. And. That is the end of public comment. Now we're going to back behind the diocese. Okay. So I have a bunch of things I'm going to try to remember to hit every single thing that came up during that time. It's. Because you already got to speak. I believe it's my turn. The vice mayor called on me. I don't think the chairs discussion. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Okay. So just to get through a couple of the things that were said in the audience, the budget of animal control has never gone down. What you're looking at in the budget book and I've gone through this with some of you, but obviously I haven't met with all of you. I try to make order as city attorney. Could you clarify the. Process for us. The maker of the motion you had commented before, and then it went to the second year of the motion. Then you went to public comment and then the councilmember appears was cued up next that if you're going in the order, it should be the councilmember from the second district at this time. And you're free to recue. I understand that's the process. I'm just following the chair's discretion. Does he have discretion? And the chair could call on someone else. But that's been your form and your order that's been followed. I don't think it's to me. Well, that's up to Councilwoman Pierce, but I think we're going to get through this no matter how we look at it. So I was cued up to second and I was asked to step off of the second. Okay, well, fine. Then you go. And I don't allow it. Okay, good. Thank you. Yes. I am excited that we are here today and that we have great leadership coming from both Stacie and Councilmember Price. And so it's it's wonderful to know that that we have many people on this council that today really care about our shelter. So I want to thank all the staff. Thank give them a round of applause. I want to thank our staff, as we already have, not only Stacey Daines, but the staff that's been in the shelter for a long time. I understand that it's about ten years is the average length of stay, length of stay for a staff member in our animal shelter. And I think that that says a lot about how much our staff really care about our animals in that shelter. I'm going to try to get through this quickly because I know we've got a long agenda when it comes to the lease in the MCU. I think absolutely. We've already really looked at the lease. We need to continue that. Our staff is asking for an IMO you. And from my understanding they're asking for an IMU because and I hate to kind of put it out there, but we have a hostile workplace and between our shelter and the SPCA and so they're asking for an IMO you to really put process into place to hold accountable the things that we believe we have laid out in our lease. STAFF Can you answer just a few questions in the lease? Does it lay out how to handle keys, how to handle meeting room request? I, I understand there's meeting spaces that we haven't been able to reserve just how we access pet food. That's a shared space. Does it lay out all of those pieces in the lease? Those items are not spoken about in the lease. Right. So it's my understanding that over the last several years that practices have been put into place just as a nobody called that person on it. And so we continue to get ourselves in a hostile work environment. I was there Friday for almost 2 hours and being able to see the space and really understand, understand what the shared space was and what our team had access to was really disheartening, not only as somebody who cares about animals, but as somebody that's responsible for our city budget. So my next question is. It's. When I'm standing in the adoption center, there are beautiful rooms that the little kitty corners, there's additional cages and there's a shared desk in the very back. It's my understanding that there have been times whenever there's been space available, but we haven't been allowed to put our animals in that space. Is that true? It's true. I'm saying I had not. That's true. And it's it's my understanding that on some of the the way that the bills are set up, do we pay the water bill for the entire property? At this time we are operating expenses are split 5050, including water. Including split 5050. So and I don't believe that the audit did this. Do we have an assessment of how much space we actually have access to and how much of the resources have been split? My question is getting out, do we have an issue where we're overpaying and maybe there's a government gift? That we're giving the SPCA that we're not accounting for because we don't have access to the space or we're paying for more water and things that that we don't use. Have we done that analysis? So I don't think that we have taken a look. At percentages. And square footage and allotment. That's not something that was evaluated in the audit. Okay. I ask that because I think when we say that the lease is enough, it's really important for us to really consider how much of our city resources are going to support a nonprofit whenever we are not supporting those organizations that really carry the heaviest load. As was mentioned here earlier. I support the council comments so far and really making sure that we're putting a lot of teeth to it. I want to make sure, though, that we don't wait to get to the process of of an IMO you because I worry that we might lose staff, we might lose support, we might lose funding if that is not a space that is really being shared fully. I love the signs. I love the new logo. I love that when I pulled up at 9:00 on Friday, I saw the staff out there putting up the new signs. Do we have in our budget for permanent signage? Because I know our logos change and we have the spaces. It's a part of the. Mix that that was. I'm sorry. That was part of the city council approves measure a $450,000. We're going to end up putting new signs. There was a slide there, as well as up to three mighty movers. And when we talked about the permanent signs, we talked about signage inside the building and we talked about the sign right by the front gate, right above where we walk in. Is that part of the signage as well? That that is something that we're going to be that is our goal and that's something that we have to bring forth in our meetings with, especially because we would have to remove the existing signs. So, so I'd like to talk to you about that a little bit. So we've heard very clearly from people in the audience, from our stakeholders and from the council that signage is very important and we completely agree. So we have we do think that's a very good use of measure. There are certain signs that the city has for control over anything that is not within the facility, anything that is in the park, anything that is on the sign or on the freeway, on the roads leading up to it. So we've identified a number of signs. All of those are going to be switched out. Those will have our brand new lettering. They'll be able to clearly delineate where this where the city shelter is and anything else. Then the lease is very specific. When it deals with signage inside the facility, it actually says both groups have to agree on signage and then it has provisions on what happens if you if a city can remove a sign that goes up, it is not an agreement. It is not a very good, well, well-written lease. So it's that's part of the reason we're bringing forward operating agreement because we want to make sure that we clarify all this. I think people when they wrote this lease back, you know, 15, 20 years ago, didn't really contemplate the situation that we have today. So that is really why we're proposing these types of things. But we clearly want to replace signage. We want to have good, very clear signage. And we're going to make that a priority. Great. On 1/2. In all fairness for the public, just like we have behind the diocese, your time is up so you can keep back up. Mrs. most will go to you can keep back up to 5 minutes. Okay. Now, just mongo. You have 5 minutes. Thank you. I completely agree this is a lease that this council would never approve. And then I'll also comment that often in our current lease agreements, we also approve a lease and an operating agreement at the same time under current. Is that accurate? I feel like I just read a two from four where we're approving a lease and an operating agreement simultaneously. Could you go into that? Yes, that does happen from time to time. Great. So. A couple of things. The shared areas in this operating agreement, I would like to see an effort to utilize. As primary custody. I don't know any other words except for, like, divorce words, but we need primary custody of at least 50% of shared space. And if that means 100% of shared space 50% of the time, or every other Tuesday and every other weekend, whatever you work out. But. Shared again. I have a daughter. I try to teach that it doesn't always end up 5050, but sharing doesn't mean that you keep all the toys all the time. And so I'd love for there to be some understanding moved towards and the operating agreement that we should see in the next 60 days. I'm willing to work with someone on an animal ordinance for rabbits, but I don't want to hold up where we are today to make modifications on the rabbit side. 50%. Oh, CTAs. I want to talk about CTS. For those of you who aren't in the animal world, I know we have a lot of people here on short term rentals and other things. A commitment to adopt is a very serious thing and we need to have a process by which during the animal hold period for owner redemption, that means an animal is lost. It is brought into our shelter. There's an owner redemption period where we don't let other people adopt it out. We need to be able to have a commitment to adopt. And if someone signs up for that commitment to adopt, they have 24 hours from the date of which the animal becomes available before we even put it on the docket for SPCA or any other group. Quite honestly, I love our rescues, but the public needs that first opportunity. And where I come from, we have a very strong CTA policy. We're in Chameleon in the Notes section. You can have up to three CTAs. They're all called at the same time when the animal meets that requirement and or they can be present at 10 a.m. on the day that the animal becomes available and whichever one's there first gets to adopt whatever you want to work out that doesn't result in fistfights at the shelter. We need that. And there have been fistfights at the shelters around the region over puppies. Budget. Going back to budget, what you're looking at in the budget book is not that their budget has ever been cut. It's that in previous years, as the year goes on, when we know that there's a certain need and Parks and Rec might be able to underspend in an area, they allow animal care to overspend on a one time basis. But the budget from year to year has not gone down. The budget are the things that you have, the ongoing costs of staffing and food and things like that. So I just wanted to be clear on that and then I'll recue for additional comments. I thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. It's. Yes, yes. Okay. Councilman Soprano. I see it. But he was. Gear. I saw supernovas was up earlier, but I wanted to to ask the question one more time on the signage. So we have it has to be shared and agreed upon inside, but not outside. We'll have to get you the details. I believe it's the premises that are under the lease. I don't have it in front of me what exact premises they're talking about. But the lease specifically says signage governed under the lease has to be jointly approved. So when I was there, I saw many doors that were in the shared space that had sparkly names plastered on the doors and said sparkly stuff only in our shared spaces. And it's my understanding we didn't have a process to agree for that. So when we're talking about the menu, I want to make sure that we come back with what is the process that we approve, not only shared space signage, what is the process where we approve meeting space rooms, what's the process for putting our pets into the adoption place but that there is a process and that not one person can say no, we might need to use that tomorrow or next day. To is is I wanted to ask what happens if they do not sign the MCU and we find that in the lease there's nothing too egregious because it's not clear enough in the lease. What happens if she says, no, we're not going to sign that? No, you. I might be a city attorney. Question. As everyone's mentioned, this would be a operating agreement. Operating agreement without an operating agreement or a memorandum of understanding is also an agreement. Right. So they could that is a distinct possibility that the SPC, LA would not execute that agreement and then we would revert back to the existing lease, which is the governing document for the property . And when when does the word cease and desist come into play? I just had somebody ask and I had to make sure I asked. Well, it it probably wouldn't come into play with this lease. We probably send them a notice of violation of the lease under the lease and the then they would have a cure period, I believe is 30 days to cure whatever the violation is. So if they are inappropriately locking out the city from shared space area, we would send them a notice and they would have 30 days to do that. Prior to doing that, I would hope that the director of Parks and Record and staff would have a conversation with the SPCA to try and resolve that short of involving the city attorney's office and and enforcing the terms of the lease through the legal process. But that's certainly an option that we have. Right. I just wanted that kind of mapped out for folks. My last part is around the 300 number. I don't think anybody in the city wants to deter people from rescuing animals. And it's my understanding that this is not saying that you cannot, you know, rescue animals and work with us at the 300 level, but that it's more regulating. Can you tease it out just a little bit more on the intent behind that 300 number? Yeah. So in the presentation, you'll note that we are suggesting that the bank's banks team is going to do outreach to the rescue groups as well as to the public about the 300. To be clear, the 300 number is regulating nonprofit organizations that bring 300 animals or more from the outside and Long Beach. It's not adopting Long Beach animals outside of Long Beach. That's not the intent. The intent is to regulate nonprofit organizations that have higher numbers than 300. And we're going to have a discussion with the rescue groups and the public on whether that's the right number before it comes back to you so that it doesn't negatively impact those rescue groups. And that's that's the intent. And Councilmember, I think we would also ask for some flexibility in this ordinance. We would also request and we've seen this in other places where the director of Parks Rec, a marine, can request a waiver of the ordinance under certain circumstances. So if there was a rescue group that somehow was at 301 or whatever it is, that if there's a partnership, if things are working well, we're able to say, Yep, absolutely. If things are not working well, we're able to say, I'm sorry, the ordinance does not allow that. So we are asking for some flexibility to recognize the effort of those groups that really do do very good work in the city. That's exactly what I was I was hoping to hear again. Guys, I think you've done a great job, Stacy. I look forward to many years of continuing to improve our shelter with you. So thank you, guys. Contribution? No. Thank you. Thanks to PRM for a great presentation. Thanks to all the speakers tonight and special thanks to those of you who reached out to our office prior to tonight's meeting. I was most struck by the comments about some of the behaviors out out at the Animal Care Services Center. And it was touched on here. Hostility in Stacy Mungo just mentioned, fistfights breaking up. I'm reminded of that famous line from the movie Dr. Strangelove. You can't fight in here. This is the war room. If you can't fight in the war room, I don't think you should be able to fight in a room where volunteers are trying to help cats and dogs. And I think you're trying to address that by the signage, internal signage within the facility explaining what the rules are. But I think based on one thing that Laura Selma said, that a lot of people are reluctant to come forward for fear of retaliation. So I think I have a friendly amendment that might address that. And that is I think we could set up, for lack of a better term, a separate portal where reports can be made anonymously as they see the behaviors or see violations that we can have some type of hotline. So if the if the maker of the motion would accept that, that's that's my amendment. I think that would be great. I think having some kind of email address that allows people to anonymously make a report that can be looked into and given the proper timeliness, that would be very much appreciated. So if I could we think that's a great suggestion. I'd suggest that we use what we have in place, which is the city auditor's fraud hotline. It is completely anonymous. It has the ability to go directly to the auditor, and then she has a process to forward those things to us for investigation without any attribution. So we will work with her on on getting that available if, if that meets the need. Thank you. Councilman Orson. Thank you very much. I'll be very short. I needed some clarification, first of all, to staff. I want to say a great report and to our our city team, great work just over the last ten years. The numbers speak for themselves. We are definitely headed in the right direction when it comes to euthanasia rates being reduced and adoption rates being increased. And I know that you guys don't share that credit alone. It is as a result of a lot of the great groups that are working in our city to work to make that happen. And so they are. Congratulations to everybody for the work so far. Thus far, we're not perfect, obviously, but I think we're definitely headed in the right direction. As a result, I wanted to add to the to the it's an emotion on the floor. There's been a lot said about operating agreement and memorandum of understanding. And I want to get some clarification from city staff on what's the difference. Legally they're probably no difference. The IMO you is is also a contract. The operating agreement would be a contract. You would have terms and conditions in both of the operating agreement and the IMO you that would hopefully clarify and add to the existing lease. I think that's the intention here. Either one of those documents is capable of doing that. And from city perspective, the reason for the change in terminology is just to communicate a little bit better. You know, there was some mistake, there is some confusion about memorandum of understanding. You know, sometimes that term is not well recognized outside of government speak. So operating agreement is really our way of saying it's supposed to be very clear who does what, how are we going to operate it? The facility was a way to better communicate to the public. So how long has SBC, L.A. been our partner? Well. Since 98 is when the lease was established in 1998. And what were the terms and how are we operating today? How did how do we get to this point? I mean, how has there never been a sit down to agree on how. Dog food is dispensed. And what? What areas are our city of a Long Beach versus SPCA, L.A.? I mean, has there been none of that whatsoever in the 30 years? I can't speak for the entire 30 years. But during my my being present there, we have been, you know, before Stacy with Ted Stevens, we have been bringing these issues up. And now they have pretty much come to a point where they're now much more serious with regards to changing behavior and ensuring that the the terms of the existing agreements are enforced. And also more added detail is added to an operating agreement. And how many years are left on the existing lease agreement. The lease expires in July 2053. So that tells me that there's going to have to be some some significant work from staff to to work together with all of the stakeholders to try to find a way to co-exist and operate together. Well, I. And so, I mean, I do like I'm going to support what's on the floor here today. But I'm I'm concerned that when, you know, you already have a lease agreement, there's not a whole lot of incentive to come to the table to an agreement if both parties are not willing to get there. Right. And so how we get them there is is is a concern of mine right now and to some of the tone around this issue. And to me, there's that there should be more and more collaboration moving forward that with that kind of a tone. So I want to support this. And then my last question is the I know the city auditor did a they did an audit of our animal care services. And what authority, if any, does a city auditor have to to look at this lease? But also the the the operations of SPCA. Because it is on city site. Councilmember. I believe that the other could look at the lease and the operations of our partner or speaker in this case under the lease, to see that both sides are operating as they would any other type of lease where we have an agreement. Queen Mary comes to mind right there. They're looking at the operations of our in that case, of our tenant. In this case, it would be looking at both the city and the SPCA. Or would you be open to a friendly amendment to asking the city auditor also take a look at. The lease as well as the operations of. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Fine. So one pair price. So I just want to go back to my friendly, which was very specific language directing the city attorney's office to review the lease. Note the violations. Seek out weather modification is necessary or termination is warranted. My concern with talking about operating agreements and may use whatever term we want to use is that we currently have an existing contract that I'm concerned is not being followed. So what I don't want to do is have us enter into another agreement with someone who might be in violation of the first agreement. So I know Councilmember Mungo accepted my friendly, but I just want to make sure that doesn't get lost here. I get that we're already doing that. But this is a formal request from the Council for the City Attorney's Office to take a look at the lease to provide provide us with information on what violations exist. I will tell you sometimes when we in the past, when we've heard about the relationship there, it has not seemed that violations are as prevalent as they might be. And so I don't know if that's because we've had this long term partnership and we're trying to support the partnership. But a partnership, a real partnership only exists when both of the partners are respectfully participating in the partnership with a spirit of trust, mutual respect, all of that. So I think that we have a legal partnership with this entity that should not be clouded by the term of the partnership, but rather by the terms of the lease. So I hope that my friendly was clear that I want to look at the terms of the lease. We can we can talk about operating agreements. But right now, I'm concerned that the first agreement we have in place isn't being followed. So I really hope that that message came through. I felt like I needed to reiterate it one more time because it's been a long conversation, and I'm happy to provide the city attorney with the specific language that I read into the record, or I'm sure the video is available to double check that. But that's that. That was my friendly. It was very specific. And Councilmember, thank you for that. If we can get a point of clarification that I understand that you want us to suspend any negotiations on a four operating agreement until that work is done or continue those discussions while we're doing that. And then the second part of that is just the role of the city auditor. So those you know, we welcome the auditor. If there's if there's a role for her and the council wants to do that, it's just to be clear. What is the attorney doing? What is staff doing and what is the city auditors? Sure. And I know Councilmember Mungo wants to speak on this, but what where my intent is that is that. The city manager hears very clearly that we're concerned that we have a lease that's not being followed in the manner that it was intended when it was entered upon, that that should be a priority for us to determine what provisions of the lease are being violated and to correct those those violations as soon as possible. We should not be entering into a new lease or new agreement. Sorry, not no lease, new agreement with someone who is already in violation of an agreement we have with them. So I would I think continuing the conversations is great. We can talk all day long, but we shouldn't put pen to paper on any agreement until we've determined. Whether the first. Agreement we have in place is already working or not. Thank you. That's clear. Okay. So just as a comment to reinforce, I'm responding to the friendly discussion. All right, please. Okay. So in what you had originally asked in my response, I just wanted to clarify what I had stated. So what I had stated is I received a manila envelope. From no name that had a bunch of potential violations on it. It's this does not have to it's from my vanilla folder did not have who it was from. I met with the city attorney, the city manager, and he wrote him what? And in those cases, we went line by line through it was not this thick. So there may be additional violations in here that were not in the manila envelope provided to my office with no name on it. And we went line by line through every. I don't know, exhortation from the person who provided an anonymous folder of every potential violation. Many of those are in this folder that I received today, and many of them the city attorney looked into. And the statute of limitations has either already passed or they were notified at the time of our meeting. To the to SBC Ala. And they have 30 days to cure. However. In addition to that packet that I provided to the city manager, I'm happy to add any of the materials submitted by the community today to add to that, and I am supportive of the city attorney and the city auditor working together in addition to the in the light of the friendly amendment also provided by Councilman Austin. If she's agreeable because she's not here to agree. And I think that that's an important part. If she doesn't have the resources, I don't want to hold it up. Antoine Monger That makes sense that time is up and now we're going to move to Councilwoman. Is that agreeable, Miss Price? Of course. Okay, great. So we're all on the same page. Councilwoman Pugh. Thank you. And I want to thank Councilmember Price for for clarifying that. I agree and support that. And I just didn't expect I don't expect that that will take too long because we've already been doing that process, which is why I went into the conversation about the operating agreement, because our staff really does need to be supported in that process. So my one question that I have two quick things. When the SPCA takes a pet, they come over, they take a pet. We don't know if that pet gets adopted or euthanized. Is that correct? Thank you, guys. Let's. So the assumption is that the pet is placed. The SPCA takes animals from us that are extremely highly adoptable and so would not. Have a reason to take an animal that wasn't. There have been times where. An animal. Maybe falls outside of their adoption program after they have taken it and they have returned it to the shelter. Okay. I wanted to ask if there was a process for that, just to make sure as we're going through the conversations with process and M.O., you if there was an opportunity to say if you guys take a pet that perhaps you can't adopt, that the first place would be our animal shelter, that it could come back to just because I know that that's been a question out there. And then I did want to just clarify, since we're having the conversation today so we don't have to have it again, it looks like in the lease that says any signs are not mutually agreed on, may be removed by the SPCA, by the city at the speaker's cost. And so any signs that we just don't agree on? There is a process in that lease. So I just echo that to make sure that we're not you know, we have our signage in the appropriate places so people can adopt from us and that there are signage in other places that might not be appropriate that we address that. And the last thing I'll say is that I, again, really proud. And the difference in between ten years ago and today and this is a difficult part, I think, for the SPCA, is that we used to be the facility that euthanized all the animals. We were animal control. We were not designed to be an adoption facility. And what we're doing right now is we're changing the model to compassion phase. And so it's going to take time to figure out the space in the process and that they really understand that, too. Is that yeah, it might have always operated a different way, but we as a council are setting the tone to say we want to make sure that the city is participating in saving lives instead of euthanizing them. So, again, thank you. That's one. Mango. Thank you. I was going through my notes. One of the things I have here is I was contacted by a reporter last week and again today that they've had a public records request in on our animal outcomes for months. So I guess I have a question related to. What is the challenge with running a critical report from Chameleon to get the media the information that they're asking for? Thank you, Stacy Mungo. There should be no challenge. If that is happening, I'm I'm going to guess that that is some sort of clerical error. Statistical data is readily available at a moment's notice and can be sent very, very quickly and easily. So it sounds like from talking to a reporter today that in December they requested the number of animals whose animal outcome was transferred to SPCA, and they're still waiting on that. Is there a reason why they cannot have that by Friday? No. There's no reason. Wonderful if you cannot find said public order requests. If you could just email the answer to the council, then we will make sure they get it. Okay. I think that will help. So just to kind of wrap up, thank you to the community for coming. Thank you. For those of you who responded to our Facebook and actually did the sit down dialogs with us in advance of the meeting, I think we got a lot of things handled in advance of the meeting related to potential violations. For those of you who are scared to come forward and. Put envelopes into my field office mailbox that we read and get everything. And we appreciate you. And I look forward to. If you have any other violations you're concerned about, please email the fraud hotline the city auditor immediately so that those can be handled as a part of this process. We'd like to move forward quickly, and we don't want to wait three weeks for more things and more things and more things to come up. And then please also be specific. Make sure that they have dates, make sure that they have the things that are necessary for them to either be notified or cured so that we can move forward. Thank you to my colleagues for all the time that all of us have spent in reading the many, many emails and better digging into and understanding. And thank you to my many colleagues who have visited the shelter over the last six months that may have not had another opportunity. And I'll end with. With relation to the 300 animals. I would really like us to look at a monthly limit versus an annual limit because animals are seasonal and kitten season and all these. If you're talking about 300 animals, maybe you just want to limit it by 25 a month because then during the peak seasons it's easier to monitor. And then a rescue that gets an exception is on an exception on a month to month basis. You'll notice that that's something I do in the budget as well. I like monthly limits and I hope that my colleagues are in agreement with that. I don't hear any objections. So let's look at that to make sure it's a better. Thank you, everyone, for all of your input. And I hope that everyone will support this motion. I. It's a good package. We had three motions all do it. We have a motion that's been extensively amended and that's on the floor to be voted on at this point. So with that, could we come up with a vote? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Next item.