Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and any necessary documents including any subsequent amendments, with the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), to receive and expend grant funding in the amount of $3,235,203, to support the Long Beach Cannabis Social Equity Program, from May 14, 2022 through May 13, 2023; and Increase appropriations in the General Grants Fund Group in the City Manager’s Department by $3,235,203, offset by grant revenue from GO-Biz. (Citywide)
Right. So the next item is item number 18. Could report from city manager recommendation to adopt a resolution authorizing city manager to execute an agreement with the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development to receive grant funding in the amount of $3,235,203 to support the Long Beach Cannabis Social Equity Program citywide. Hey, I have a motion from a council member Sorrel seconded by a council member Urunga. Is there a staff report on this? Emily Armstrong can provide a quick staff report. Can we see her on the zoom call? Anyway, if you could unmute. Can you hear me? Yes. Now we can hear you. Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that. Um, yes. So tonight you have before you a. Grant agreement with Go Business is our third. Round of funding with the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development for our Cannabis Equity Program. This will give us $3.2 million, of which 80% will go towards direct grants to equity applicants, and the other 20% will go towards administration and direct technical assistance. Thank you for that staff report. Is there any public comment on the site? If there are any members of the public that would like to speak on this item, please use the raise hand feature or dial star name. Tonight can be. Your time begins now. Hello. My name is Sam. I am very successful resident. I'm curious if staff could display to the public as well as the council, the amount of African-American graduates of the equity program who graduate through the program and became a dispensary owners or any retail space. I'm curious because tangibility wise, I don't understand what this funding does with respect to creating that business infrastructure towards the community most represented by the war on Drugs. This weekend I'm engaging with the Office of the City prosecutor on an expungement program to help with these old drug convictions that are no longer applicable to the modern era . And it's still fascinating to me that we have this social equity program, and we've still yet to see any black graduates have any actual dispensaries in the city of Long Beach. City of L.A. seems to be doing better than us. So if that I can maybe speak towards that, where exactly that 80% of the money goes into creating new business opportunities in the city of Long Beach that, you know, can help pay for some of these things in the future. Because on the outside, in percentage wise, I don't understand where the money where it's actually going. Thank you. That concludes the public comment. Thank you. I will continue with your sorrow that you have come in. And I just appreciate the work that staff has been doing to get us to the point where we were able to receive the grant and looking forward in ways that we can make sure we move this program toward. I see. Mayor has rejoined us. What had been on this island. So. Sure. Now I think. Is there any. Thank you, councilman, for doing the meeting. Also, just want to just want to go ahead. Any of the council members have any comments on this item? Good news. Great. Any public comment, madam? Sorry. We had no further comment from the public. Okay, let's go ahead and do a walk over, please. District one. I district to. My. District three, my district four. I. District five. I. District six. I'm. District seven. I'm district eight. I motion is carried eight zero. Great. Thank you. And I'm not sure if we had I'm assuming Councilman Austin mentioned that we're going to do the budget hearing at the end of the meeting. So we still have a few more meetings, a few more items before that item so that we move that to the end of the meeting. So let's continue on the item. Let's do item with the next few items should be fairly quick. Item number 19, please bring it in motion in a second. I also in order to queue up, if you want to motion in a second, just go ahead and verbalize the motion.