Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute all documents, and any needed subsequent amendments, with The California Endowment, to accept funds totaling $75,000 to implement the Promising Adults, Tomorrow's Hope program that will assist young adults age 16-24 gain employment and educational skills, for a period of one year; and Increase appropriations in the Community Development Grants Fund (SR 150) in the Economic and Property Development Department (EP) by $75,000. (Citywide)
Thank you. Next item, please. Report from economic and property development. Recommendation to execute all necessary documents with the California Endowment to accept funds totaling $75,000 to implement the PATH program citywide. Councilman Richardson. Thanks, Mayor. Let's start with the staff report. We have Nick Shultz, who will present this staff report. Good evening. Honorable Mayor and council members will come before you tonight. Promising adults tomorrow's hope or path is a first of its kind diversion program, focusing on young adults aged 16 to 24. Cities large enough to have a high volume of misdemeanor crimes in all cases are handled by relatively few prosecutors. The number of youth with contact with the justice system is problematic as the status exacerbates young people's access to quality employment or distracts them from focus on educational and training pathways or access to other resources. The Long Beach City Prosecutor City Prosecutor's Office is already a leader in developing and implementing diversion programs. Our Regional Workforce Development Board is positioned with industry, employers and well-connected to both community organization and education and training institution with the capacity to serve these youth. This place is the program's leadership team in a new, in a unique position of being able to harness public resources and affect life impacting decisions for youth. And with PATH, we look we look forward to being able to demonstrate results related to program entry and completion for young adults skill games, work readiness, job attainment, retention, wage gain , and reduction in recidivism for path participants, as well as program adoption and replication in other California municipalities. Mayor, Mayor, Councilmembers. I also want to introduce our city prosecutor, Doug Halbert, who's been very, very key in this initiative as well. I just wanted to, on behalf of my department, thank the the mayor and the city council, as well as Pacific Gateway for helping to make this diversion program a reality. I think it was mentioned last time I spoke about this that this is the first workforce development focused court diversion program of which we know of in the United States. So Long Beach is doing something that is creative and innovative and hopefully becomes a pilot project that other communities can look at. But I wanted to thank all the council members, especially Rex Richardson, who has been very focused on helping make this successful. And with that, I thank you for your support. Thank you. Councilwoman Gonzales. Sorry, Captain Richard. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. So I want to thank Nick and Doug for their hard work in bringing this forward. It was. It's been about a year when we pitched this. We didn't know how we would pay for it, but we knew this was this that we wanted to figure out how to connect young people to a career or to an educational opportunity to place them on the right track when they make a mistake. And specifically, folks under 24 who we acknowledge in science acknowledges that their brains aren't fully developed. So so a full year has come, come and gone. And we've finally gotten to a place where we've found a financing solution for this. And thank you so much to our city prosecutor, Doug Halbert, for finding the resources. Thank you to Nick Schultz for corralling the write the Right Workforce programs with this. But we noticed that there was a gap in terms of how we divert people in education programs. So today is really about the California Endowment stepping up and helping to fill that gap and providing much needed resources to make sure that this is a comprehensive program that uses both workforce and education as a means for for diversion . So so I wanted to just chime in and thank all the partners we're really proud of of this program and where and how it's come together. And we look forward to doing more great work and innovative work like this in the future. Thank you, Councilman Andrew. I'm so sorry. All right. Yeah, I. Think that's the second time. I have. I've done it to a few of you guys. Tonight, so I just. I just really briefly wanted to say thank you for all of your hard work, both Doug and Nick. I know each of you work to the best of your ability to find ways and find opportunities for us, especially when many of us on the council have really advocated for for job growth, and especially with adults that certainly need it the most. And I want to thank Councilman Richardson as well for his leadership on that. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman? Yes. I also think you might also want to think and you can talk about this, because I'm very happy to see this item, you know, on the agenda. But I really want to thank the California Endowment for their donation to this commit to the commitment to the Long Beach community. You know, the Petrograd will give our youth in the Delta training, you know, experience that they need to succeed. And I would like to request the names of the organizations that are recruiting, as well as how to for people to this program. Because a lot of individuals will be coming through my office wanting to know some of this. So I want to thank you guys very much for bringing this to the diocese. And I thank you. Thank you. And Councilwoman Mango. Yes, Nick, you know that I'm constantly impressed by what you're able to do. You squeeze money out of a rock. And I think that that is one of the things that is so impressive about what you've been able to do with workforce development since you've been on board. I'd like to ask that information and documentation on what you're doing and how we can advocate for this at the federal level in our Fed committees in D.C. in April is possible because I think that $75,000 is a a start. But we are really going to need significantly more funding if we're going to take this seriously and take it to the next level where other cities will start modeling after us. So I'd like to see us up the ante and get some more private partnerships involved and how we can make that happen. So I appreciate the head nods over there. I think that we're on the same page that to really do something meaningful, we need to even push harder because this could be game changing for a Long Beach. Thank you. Thank you. Any public comment on this item? Seeing that, please cast your vote. Motion carries.