Recommendation to respectfully request City Council approval of the 2016 State Legislative Agenda as recommended by the State Legislation Committee.
Item 14 Communication from Councilman Austin, Chair of the State Legislation Committee. Recommendation to approve. Recommendation to for approval of the 2016 State Legislative Agenda as recommended by the State Legislation Committee. Council Member Austin. Thank you. I'd like to turn it over to Diana Tang for a staff report. Chair, Mayor, members. Of the City Council try and keep this brief. As similar to the Federal. Legislative Committee meeting we had earlier today. The state legislative committee met earlier this month to discuss staff's recommended changes for the 2016 state legislative agenda. All city departments did have a chance to review the agenda. And I'll just go. Very briefly through each of the. Five sections of the agenda and share a couple changes with you, as well as mention the committee's recommendations for this. Under economic development, we were able to remove some of the 2015 focus statements as they were achieved. We'd like to thank Senator Laura for for authoring and helping us secure enactment of SB 562 for the Civic Center and also for all of his work in the state. Delegations work with the city on redevelopment decision work with the State Department finance that will continue into FY 16 and through the next legislative year. And so that is reflected in the agenda for next year. Under public safety, we did make a couple of changes. I'd like to highlight one in particular with support or sponsoring legislation that provides funding for multisector, collaborative approaches to violence prevention and public safety, recognizing the continuum of services that are responsible for public safety under education. We made a couple of changes to reflect the city's safe Long Beach plan, as well as community schools. This is an idea that the city will be meeting with the school district on to discuss how community schools may or may not be able to help. Allow me to provide services to some of the the residents in our most impacted neighborhoods that could benefit from afterschool programs and sustainable, livable cities. We made a couple of changes that are related to to simply cleaning up the agenda. For example, the pilot needle exchange program, which the city had previously supported, is now a permanent program. And so we are cleaning that up. And last but not least, in the local control section, the only change that staff had to make was to amend the focus statements to mention safe one beach in lieu of violence prevention, as we are trying to promote a more positive dialog on this on this topic. And with that, I'll turn it back over to the chair to mentioned two changes that were adopted by the committee. Thank you. And let me just say that it has been a great honor to serve as chair of the State Lands Committee for the last year, year and a half. And I want to thank my colleagues who served on the committee, Councilmembers Dee Andrews and Lena Gonzalez, for their support and input in helping to craft this. I want to obviously thank staff for their great work, Diana and. Our new intern who's done a great job. Michael. Yes, Michael. He's done a great job. And I think this agenda is it's comprehensive and it really meets the values of our city and where we're going and the direction we're going in. I know, Councilman, you may have some comments, but I do want to add an amendment to to this. Under local control item 60. I'd like to and offer an amendment to item 60 so that it reads. There. I'm sorry. I was having trouble hearing. Item six under local control. Okay. I'd like to offer an amendment that reads Monitor or sponsor state legislation that proposes to change the structure of state and regional boards, which Long Beach's represent it and maximize the city's representation. And the reason that I am adding that is because obviously I think it's important for Long Beach to have a voice in regional governance on all boards and commissions, including the Air Quality Resources Management District, the the MTA and other regional boards. And as it stands right now, I don't think we we have the state legislation and the governance of those agencies that necessarily recognize the the the regional significance of Long Beach as a city. And so our members, I would love for you to support that that amendment. And if I can get a second on that, that would be great. I think I do. And also. Yeah, that's it. So I would ask that the, the council support this state legenda it is like I said, been. Well-thought out. It's comprehensive and I think it represents the values of the city. I would love to hear your comments as well. Councilwoman. Well, actually, Councilman Gonzales was the second in the motion to let me go to her first. I just wanted to say thank you for all of your hard work. Diana, I know it's a state and federal judge. I know it's a lot to take on. And so I want to thank you for that. As well as Michael, our management assistant. And so I have just been on the state ledger for just the two times that I've been there. And it's been very concise and very organized. And, you know, my my comments are just very broad in that sense. But I'll certainly support your your amendment. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Price. Thank you. I, too, want to thank staff for the presentation and who prepared that precis. That was a joint effort between Michael and I. That was fantastic. I'm trying to train our divas to start using Presley in the courtroom. So it's a it's a very exciting new development for us. I was very happy to see you guys. So thank you for that. Totally off topic. But I wanted to. One of the issues that is an issue in the city and specifically in my district right now, a very hot button issue is visual blight from wires that are left by cable companies. So with the assistance of Diana, I would like to make an amendment to tonight's agenda item. We do have some existing language specifically, quote, support legislative efforts to ensure that the city has local nuisance abatement controls over the visual blight that is created by excessive deployment of cable and telecommunication wires and related facilities. Similar to that language, I'd like to include an additional item that will enable our city staff to pursue changes to the California Public Utilities Commission, regulations that would allow the city to abate visual blight from cable television service wires that are in public view. When the wires and related equipment are not actually being used for the intended purpose, the item could read. And I'm open to suggestions from my colleagues. But this was created with Diana's help from the staff side to support legislation or request an amendment to California Public Utilities Commission rules and regulations to ensure that the city has the authority to abate visual. Blight that is created by. Cable television, service wires and related equipment that are in place and open to public view when these wires and related equipment are not actually being used for their intended purpose. So that would be my my recommendation in my amendment. We have found that a lot of these wires are just left behind by the companies just in case they need to use them at some future time. And that has really created a quality of life issue for some of the residents. So thank. You. Thank you. Councilman Alston, did you want to respond to the additions? Possibly. I'm just curious. And I would ask staffs with assistance where I mean, it's a it's a pretty detailed request trying to figure out where this falls into our. Our agenda. You know, there are subsections. Sure. So, Councilmember, that's the language to support legislation. I'm sorry. It's under local control. Item 40. 48 items to support legislative efforts to ensure that the city has local nuisance abatement control over the visual blight that is created by excessive deployment of cable and communication wires and related facilities is already in our agenda under local control of item 48, and it is something that we do work on annually, I would say, in the last couple of. Years at least. I believe. What Councilwoman. Price is asking for is that in. Addition to the state legislative route, that we also. Pursue this through the. California Public Utilities Commission. Okay. Does that need to necessarily be specified in the agenda here or can. Do we actually? Do we actually go and advocate or or have a venue to to work through the PUC? Is that done through the legislature or directly to the PUC? We can go directly to the APC. So. Councilmember Price. I mean, is it does it necessarily have to? I mean, I think we we we get it. And we I think well, we're committed to working in that direction with with staff. But I think most of what you already want is actually here. And I understand that. And I could see how you'd conclude that. But we've talked extensively with the city attorney about this, and we believe that this strategically, it's best for us to be able to approach this particular issue from multiple routes. And this allows us to have a more direct involvement in the actual specific regulations, because the other the existing clause doesn't specifically talk about what happens with the with the wires and equipment that are not being used for their intended purpose. You know, I think it's a rather benign request. I will accept friendly to to to do that to move the agenda. And we'll work with our state legislators to make sure that we convey your your concerns. Yeah. And the other thing might be, I don't know if the city attorney's office maybe wants to give a little bit more insight into what the request, because that was a recommendation that was made to our office because we've been working on this issue. So I don't know if they have a recommendation as to why they thought it would be inappropriate amendment for this evening. Mayor members of the council, we offered this as a possible solution in dealing with an attempt to deal with some of the visual blight. We've been referred to the CP you see in some of the regulations. If you call in a complaint under the CP, you see current regulations, they have up to five years the cable companies to respond to your complaint. And when we were asking them to seek rule changes, we were asking them maybe we could get some authority through the state pledge committee so that we can clarify that we could be asking for assistance in updating some of those rules. Okay. Well, the the amendment is accepted as a friendly and. Mr. Mayor? No. Perfect. I think we'll work on incorporating that into the state committee. Any public comment on the state large committee? Casey nine members, please go and cast your votes to adopt this. And I want to do I do want to thank the committee for their hard work in this. It's a lot of work. Council member, Supernova Mungo. Motion carries. Thank you. Next item.