Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the status of Census 2020 planning; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute an agreement, and any necessary documents and amendments, with the County of Los Angeles, to accept, expend, and administer County allocated funding, in the amount of $322,141, to support Census 2020 outreach efforts to Hard-To-Count (HTC) communities. (Citywide)
Motion carries. Item 35. Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a presentation on the status of Census 2020 Planning and authorize City Manager to execute an agreement with the County of Los Angeles to accept, expend and administer county allocated funding in the amount of 322,141 Citywide OC. And we have a presentation on this. This is a very important topic, and so I want to turn this over to our staff. Sure. Mayor and members of the city council. We have the staff coming down for this, so I'll go ahead and get started. So Census 2020 is a really critical project. We do this only every ten years and we really need to make sure that we're paying a lot of attention to this, as so much is reliant on our on our census. So we'd like to give you kind of a quick presentation of where we are and then answer any questions. So why does it matter if somebody can advance the slides? Here we go. Thank you. First, it's a constitutional mandate. It's something that's required that every city and jurisdiction does every ten, every ten years. It really affects our congressional representation. So counting every people is the only way that we know how many people there are so that we can determine how many congressional members California gets. The data is critical for redistricting, so we'll be going into redistricting process in 2021, and we really need to use that data so we get a solid process. As I mentioned, federal funding and state funding is directly linked to the census. And of course, accurate data and demographics is really important for planning, policy and decision making. And so in the census, we tend to talk about hard to count areas. So we really focus our areas on on people who either don't want to be counted or aren't aware of the census and how do we make sure everybody counts . And so some of those hard to count areas, the characteristics are low income neighborhoods, households below the poverty level, people older than 25 with less than a high school diploma, people who are unemployed, non-family households, single parent households, people living in low visibility housing renters and temporary residents and overcrowding households. So very specifically, the hard to count populations are here on the screen. It includes everybody from senior citizens, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, individuals experienced homelessness, LGBTQ, Hispanics and Latinos, blacks and African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, children ages 0 to 4, veterans, people with limited English proficiency and college students. And so there are a number of steps along the way that we really need to focus on for our census challenges. So we start with a complete address list, trying to really get a very accurate list of every single address in Long Beach that that may have population in it. We look at kind of the broadband access. We're looking at privacy concerns as well. And, you know, there's the issue that we're in litigation on, on citizenship question. There's also, you know, less people this year to be able to go out and do an actual counting, depending on how they're doing the census. So that's that field capacity. And then, of course, there's language barriers. The good news is that, you know, we're not doing this alone. We have a lot of partners. And so there is a lot of regional and state collaboration. And Long Beach is really at the forefront of leading this effort. Not every city is taking such a proactive approach. There is the Los Angeles Complete Count Committee. There's the California Complete Count Committee, and the U.S. Census Bureau is putting a lot of resources into this. And then locally, we're looking at creating our own complete count committee. And we've been working on a strategic plan and really how to mobilize all of our resources. So what have we done to date? We have engaged in the LUCA process, which is called the local update to sensor addresses. And so believe it or not, but we identified 5800 new address locations. So we match all the databases that the county gives us with our databases. And we found 5800 new addresses that either deleted address or the new addresses. We've also engaged with some of our community based organizations. We did a pilot with five Central CHA, United Cambodian community, St Luke's Latino in Action and will be forward to do a community based CANVASING initiative. And then we contract our contract with Community Connect Labs. Oh, yes. And at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Jackson. Yeah. Hey, thanks, Tom, for stepping in. And this effort was truly an innovation and an example of the type of strategic collaboration that we envision for since his 2020 outreach moving forward. It was made possible through a contract with Community Connect Labs. Community Connect Labs is a nonprofit organization providing mobile technology solutions and training to help government, governments and service providers connect with hard to reach populations. The cost of this pilot initiative was partially offset by the city's participation at states like incentive program. So in early August of 2018, the offices of the mayor and city manager sponsored one of the state's 24 readiness assessment convenings in coordination with the State Census Office. The event took place at the Long Beach Convention Center, engaged in engage more than 150 community leaders representing community based organizations city, county and state officials. In these convenings, the state aimed to promote and facilitate collaboration, educate and identify partners who would play a key role in establishing local, complete council committees and help to build the capacity of CBOs that will serve as trusted, trusted messengers. During the 2020 Census campaign. We saw this as we saw this partnership as an opportunity to further engage and educate our community directly about what lies ahead for the 2020 census. As Tom indicated, we in early April of 2018, the California attorney general's office requested that the city join the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff against the Department of Commerce and Census Bureau to prevent the addition of the citizenship question. The secrecy. To the to the census questionnaire on April 24th, 2018, City Council authorized the city's participation in the lawsuit suit as co-plaintiffs. The city was joined by the by L.A. County, the cities of L.A., Oakland, Fremont and Stockton. And in preparation for phase two of the Census 2020 planning, the city manager's office worked with the mayor's office to hire a few fellow in September 2019 to work with the city and community stakeholders to develop a Census 2020 Outreach and Mobilization Plan. Over the past year, we have had deeper engagement and strengthened our relationships with the primary organizations actively engaged in census planning across the state, including the city and county of L.A., the L.A. Regional Census Table, led by the California Community Foundation and the Advancement Project of California. And with our sub regional Long Beach partner LV Forward. Also we've street that our relationship with the State Census Office and it's been particularly possible through our relationship with our regional program manager, Sarah Palin, who's a Long Beach resident. And we've also managed to strengthen our relationship through constant interaction with the California State Association of Counties, the LEO Educational Fund and the League of California Cities. In October, as part of the 2019 League of California Cities Annual Conference, we are partnering with the City of L.A. and the State Census Office to do a workshop on achieving an accurate count in 2020. Best Practices for Cities. So as we approach the close of FY 19, we are currently working on finalizing our strategic plan, city department outreach plans. All city all city manager led departments have been activated to create these outreach plans. A Census 2020 website, the launch of a city manager, a complete count committee and with the City and City Council's Authorization of Fun, an agreement with L.A. County to support the census planning efforts. And as I as I briefly mentioned on the previous slide, the city manager's office is in the process of initiating a complete account committee . This committee will assist with finalizing a holistic strategic outreach plan and implementation plan that we hope to integrate contributions of all major community stakeholders and their respective networks. We envision this committee, consisting of city and community leaders and practitioners representing the following interests community and faith based organizations, local government, education, public health, business, workforce development, housing and neighborhoods. Public engagement, particularly practitioners representing the media, special events, coordination and engagement of court volunteers and digital inclusion. We anticipate initiating the first meeting of the committee in mid to early, early to mid July. The city's complete count efforts will primarily be supported by state funding provided to the county in the amount of $322,141. Eligible uses for the funding generally include city department outreach, support for community based organizations and faith based organizations to do outreach, promotional materials, local media engagement, special events, and the establishment of what L.A. County is calling census action kiosks places where people can go to take the census and get help if needed. The Census 2020. Planning and execution will require a commitment of significant resources from the city manager's office and city operating departments. And a significant workload impact to existing priorities is expected. Additional one time resources will be needed to support these efforts and will be identified via the FBI 20 budget. Looking ahead, we expect to finalize the Census 2020 strategic plan in the summer of 2019 and the implementation plan by fall of 2019 upon initiation of the Complete Count Committee in July. We will begin conducting early stage education and outreach through December 2019. And finally, we will initiate full mobilization of the outreach campaign in January 2020 through August 2020. We will continue to provide City Council with updates periodically during the balance of the planning phase and during execution. During the execution phase. After full mobilization. And that concludes the status update on planning efforts for the Census 2020. Thank you. And I'd be happy to take any questions at this time. Thank you very much. Let me make a couple comments and then I'll turn this over to Councilmember Pearce. First, I want to just think the staff for the hard work on the complete count, our work, the complete count committee that I know we're going to be putting together as well as the presentation. I also want to thank there's a lot of community members and organizations that are working across the city to ensure that we have an accurate and complete count. And the census, the census process and ensuring that we have a complete count is incredibly important for cities and especially for us in Long Beach that has such a diverse population and it has so many languages that are spoken and different communities within the city. A lot of people don't realize that so much of our funding, whether it's federal funds for major projects, whether it's assistance for homelessness, whether it's assistance from the state on a lot of projects that might help low income seniors or families that are that are struggling are all set up through the numbers and the counts that are done through the census. And so getting an accurate count of every person that is living in the city of Long Beach is incredibly important. And the only way you get an accurate count, especially when you have all types of folks that live in your community, some that might only speak Kami, others that might be new immigrants, others that might be in dense communities. Where it's hard to count, folks, is to have the engagement of the community and of the whole city. And so I just want to thank all the community advocates that are out there that are working on doing this really important work. And please know that your city is 100% in on ensuring that every, every person be counted. I also just want to note that unfortunately, it's not going to be a great cycle for cities. And as they ask and seek help from the federal government on ensuring that everyone counts. And we've we've already had some indication that from a resource perspective, we won't be receiving the same type of support that we would like to receive when it comes to counting every single person that lives in our city. And so it's going to fall on states and counties and cities to step up and fill that gap to ensure that everyone is counted. And so in Long Beach, I, I hate to say it, but if we don't ensure a complete count, no one else is going to be out there to help us and to ensure that we do it. And so we're going to bring in the support from the state. The governor is completely committed to ensuring that we have a complete count in the state of California, and we will be rolling out many initiatives with our county partners to ensure that everyone in the community is counted because every single person benefits the city so that we have a complete picture of who is actually in our community. And so I just want to thank the staff again and think the community on that. And with that, let me turn this over to Councilmember Pearce. Thank you for that and thank you staff for your presentation. I definitely agree with everything that our mayor said. I have a I'm going to highlight what he said. I mean, having every single person count in our city, regardless of immigration status of language is so important for everybody. Regardless of where you live in the city, it ensures that we have resources and that we can actually ensure that we've got parks in every single part and that we're not leaning on some more than others. And so this is critical for everyone citywide. I appreciate through the presentation the comments about the CBOs and all the nonprofits that were listed, obviously someone that's done community work before stepping in to the government side. I understand that there those CBOs are much more skilled and in a position to build trust with people that might not want to share information with the census. So not only do we have that partnership, but I was hoping that you could explain what does that partnership look like? Are we providing materials to them? And if we are, who's translating that material? Does it come down from the federal government? Is that something that we do in-house or is that something that the CBOs are responsible for doing? Well, Councilmember Pearce, I would state that community based organizations are what the 2020 centers are going to be receiving support from a variety of areas, principally from the state. The state has allocated funding to administrative, large administrative, community based organizations. The one that's representing L.A. County is the California Community Foundation, who received approximately $8 million to support provide funding, support for outreach activities for community based organizations. But in the context of our complete count efforts, we want to create a strategic plan that is synergistic to the county's strategic plan. And we want to apply our resources that we're receiving to support that strategic plan. And part of that strategic plan includes support for CBOs. Then we will allocate funding for that. So I don't think that. So the short answer to your question is that the CBOs will be adequately supported from a variety of sources to to do on the ground outreach throughout the campaign. In terms of translating materials, the state is requiring that the county and any of the contracting entities with the county have a language access plan as part of their strategic plan. So we are actively working on that. So it's part of our complete count effort. We will be making sure that we have resources available to support the translation of materials and providing them to community based organizations and others who are doing outreach on the ground. Great. Thank you for that. And one other question. I know we can have as many strategic plans as possible, but if those organizations don't have the staff and the volunteers and the community groups to actually go out there and get in neighborhoods that we otherwise wouldn't, then it doesn't matter what strategic plan we have. So I wanted to ask on the $300,000 in county funding for Long Beach, how much of that stays with the city and how much of that goes to the CBOs? Well, at this point, since we're early in the process, I mean, we haven't even established agreement and we have a draft strategic plan at to this point. We want to make sure that we give the community an opportunity to weigh in on a strategic plan to establish the priorities in partnership with the community. So we don't have a specific amount that we set aside to support CBO outreach. I will I will add that our Lucca effort a year and a half ago is provides an early indication of kind of how we intend to work with community based organizations. So we receive $15,000 through the local incentive program from the state of California to support our contract with Community Connect Labs to provide the technology. But we as a city, we allocated approximately $30,000 to support the community based organizations that did the canvasing in the hundred and 23 block groups as part of that effort. And so, you know, we learned from that that was very successful. And so we think going forward, we realize that there is a need for resources for those groups and in order to do the work. Great. Thank you for that. I think my takeaway today is that I think that this is wonderful. In your conversations, in your strategic planning, I know we often whether in any kind of outreach that we as a bureaucracy try to do, it's never quite enough. And we can't do a job as well as the nonprofits and those organizations. And so I would hope that our funding would be centered on creating a structure to help them be successful in doing the work. I'm not sure if any of my other colleagues have comments on that, but thank you again for the presentation. And I know some of the CBOs are here. Thank you guys for rolling up your sleeves and doing the important work to serve our community. Any public comment on this item? Good evening. Mayor and City Council. My name is James Swanson, the associate director at Long Beach Forward, where a community based organization here in the city. I'm also a third district resident. My sleeves always stay rolled up. So I just wanted to thank you and thank city staff that are moving us not only from the city manager's office, but from the mayor's office as well, and some of the council officers that we've met with already to be partners in the census effort, because we all know what it's what's at stake for the 2020 census for Long Beach Forward. As an organization that supports movement building, we've taken on the role of being one of the one of six regional co conveners for the L.A. Regional Census Table. And this is a county wide effort that's never been done before and unprecedented because we know what's at stake in this county. So I really appreciate the partners that we've been able to meet with so far in this, because the L.A. Regional Census table is a space for community based organizations to organize ourselves in the city of Long Beach, where we serve community members in the city, outside the city, and to talk about how we can strategize and connect and work together to do census education and outreach, because we know once come once January comes, we're going to have to hit the ground more than running. We're going to have to be really going at it to make sure that we cover every inch of these hard to count areas in the city and these community based organizations that we've been working with over the past. It's the end of last year. I've been meeting in Long Beach, have amazing outreach plans that are really upping the game and what it means to actually do authentic community engagement into people who haven't been reached before. And when we think about these hard to count populations, of course, it's probably no surprise that the hardest to count areas in the city are areas like central west and north Long Beach, including also the Beverly's and the fourth District. As you can imagine, a lot of student housing of students who live there. But just to give you a snapshot, just yesterday, the state of California released some really amazing tools to read, to describe hard to count populations not only in cities, but other counties that encourage anyone else in the community who wants to know more to check out the California State Census website. But just to give you an idea about what these hard to count populations are like, the top populations in Long Beach and Crewe include overcrowded rental units, limited English speaking households, households without broadband subscriptions or Internet access, families that are 150% below the poverty line and families facing unemployment. So there is no easy task to reaching these communities and these populations. But we're really looking forward as these community based organizations are getting organized and partnering with you all and to learn and share from each other not only about how authentic engagement can be done, just like the Lucca canvasing that we were part of. But how we can use this process not only as a community building strategy, but a local hire strategy so we can get people in the community who know the community best, but also really build a wealth building strategy. So we're in good terms going into 2020 and 2021 and beyond. So thank you so much for your efforts and I hope you have a great night. Thank you. And our next big final speaker, please, on census. Good evening, Mayor. Council members. My name is Pat Kennedy. I'm with the Greater Long Beach Interfaith Community Organization. Just wanted to appreciate the complete count effort the city is looking at. To be honest, we've been working closely also with Long Beach Forward, trying to figure out how do we engage non-profits across the city to engage deeply in terms of getting people out and getting them counted. We think the difference between 450 and a half a million people is going to be those hard to reach people. And that's going to be a big difference, obviously, in our budget, in our resources in the future. So we hope that 300,000 that a significant portion of that is invested in getting people that are trusted messengers knocking on doors and talking with people. Thank you. Thank you so much. That concludes public comment. We've heard the presentation and had our questions. Please cast your votes on the receiving file on the census report. Motion carries.