Recommendation to direct City Manager to create an open streets initiative and explore ways to open more public space throughout Long Beach to allow for increased outdoor activities, safer access to public transit, and stronger economic recovery, all while maintaining appropriate social and physical distancing.
Okay, motion carries. We still have a few minutes for for our budget study session. The time served so a few minutes away. So why don't we go ahead and do the Open Streets Initiative item 11, and then we'll we'll we'll be in time for the for the budget session. 530 Madam Clerk. Communication from Mayor Garcia, Councilmember Pierce, Councilman Price, Councilmember Your Honor, Councilman Austin. Recommendation directs City Manager to create an Open Streets Initiative. Thank you. I want to just first of all, just think that all the council members that have been a part of this and who have been a lot of discussions in the community and we really appreciate where this is going. I want to just say some couple general comments. First, let me start saying that we know that the COVID crisis that we're in right now is a serious one and it certainly is a health crisis. First and foremost, but it's also an economic crisis. And it's an economic crisis that affects small businesses, especially it affects communities. And I think that the council should be commended for the creativity and innovation that is coming out with new ideas and how we help our businesses and community. We have been aggressive in working with our state, our county partners and how we reopen. I think that with some great ideas from our Restart Long Beach Advisory Group, from many of the council committees and from some of the small business owners themselves. And so we want to thank everyone. One idea that certainly is not a new one, but it's one that is beginning to grow across the country. And quite frankly, the world is reactivating our open landscape and our streets for the public, even more so than it is today. And so what we have in front of us is a new Open Street initiative that is going to want to explore ways to open up more public space throughout our city for increased outdoor activities, safer access to transit, a stronger economic recovery, and to allow us to physically distance and be safe within our own city. We know that as restaurants begin to open, they are going to be limited in how they reopen because of space if we want them to be successful. There are opportunities to allow them to reopen and expand sidewalk dining, expand tables and chairs onto the street and into public spaces, reopen some of our parking lots to some of these restaurants and retailers and really provide additional business support for these businesses as they begin get ready as they begin preparing to reopen. I'll also add that this initiative would look at not just how it would help businesses and restaurants especially, but also communities. And you are seeing now the different cities are reopening up small neighborhood corridors across the city and limiting traffic. And so they become kind of spaces, public spaces for people to enjoy, to walk, to recreates, to ride their bikes in a way that's safe. And what's great about Long Beach is we have a great tradition of being leaders and trailblazers when it comes to open space and activating pedestrian access. You think about the Parklets movement, which really began in many ways here in Long Beach. You think about our early innovations and the related bike infrastructure that happened here in our community. And so we've always led the way on these issues, and this would allow us to continue that work. And so the recommendation in front of us is to direct the city manager to create an open street initiative and explore ways to open up more public space. The plan should include options that would enable creative opportunities for outdoor dining and and as well as recreation opportunities across the city. And I'll just make a couple of comments and I'll turn it over to the two the coauthors of the motion. I'd like, as part of this motion to also explore. There's been some ideas about, for example, doing drive ins in some of our convention center lots in the downtown. I want to explore that as well. There's a lot of interest in doing kind of the drive in movie theater style expansion of public space because those lights are ours, our public lots, and I'd like us to move quickly. First, you know, we certainly don't want to create open street projects in an areas that that that may not work. This is certainly not a mandate to do them everywhere, but four, four neighborhoods, council offices, businesses that want to partner with the city to create these spaces . It should be a kind of project by project review. And I think if I can ask also staff to move quickly in a time is now and I'd love to see some of these neighborhood corridors opening up soon and I expect the council members to be very active in how they want to see these open. And I think they're getting requests from restaurants and businesses. And so I think I'd love to see the councilmembers engage within their own districts and create these opportunities as they see how those partnerships in the community. And so that is that is the motion that we have in front of us. I do have Councilmember Pearce who's made the motion. I have a I have a second by Councilmember Andrews. So let me begin with Councilwoman Pearce. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to all the businesses. Residents, the neighborhood associations that have chimed in. I think the support that I've received or heard has been overwhelming. And so I'd like to just share. I had many conversations with members of HRO and the association as a whole, the same for East Village individual members that live there, as well as the association and also Adobe. And what I can say is that everyone is excited about the opportunity. Everyone wants to see what city staff comes up with and everyone is saying that they would like to see something that could be flexible. As you mentioned, Mayor, what might be appropriate on pine might not be appropriate in a neighborhood area or might not be appropriate on Fourth Street. So with that, I'd like to share a little bit. I think there's some interesting ideas even around closing an entire street like pine that has ball bounce or curb cuts that allow for parklets to be put in. But then there's different streets like Fourth Street that would want to be able to make sure that people know that businesses are open in the middle. And I think that we've seen that work on promenades. And so I'm not as fearful as some might be, but I'd look to staff to come up with some ideas around signage, messaging, whether it's on the permanent or something that could be brought in temporarily for those weekends or weekdays. That it happens, I think would be really exciting. What I've heard from Retro is that they're very excited about doing something like Thursday through Sunday. Same thing with East Village. As we know, greenhouse gases are the number one cause of greenhouse gases is transportation. So as we look at closing down these streets, it's not saying that people aren't going to drive there. But as much as we can encourage people to ride their bikes where we have additional bike parking, where we have not just drive up movies, but bike up movies. And so really taking this, again as an opportunity to have that climate lens, because we know COVID has made our climate crisis has been made worse by the COVID situation. So really making sure that these are something that are flexible but that are exciting. I'd also like to see from staff moving very quickly and after this first phase of doing it with business corridors and maybe neighborhood corridors, having a conversation around, you know, when we get to face two or phase three, what do neighborhood block parties look like? Because we know that those have been something that have happened almost every month in a lot of neighborhoods throughout the summer, and that people are essentially doing their own selves right now. They're having musicians come out and play on the sidewalk and people are really staying in their house or on their yard to watch. But are there some guidelines that we could put in place or a toolkit that we could also put in place so that we can create a safe space where people know that they can invite musicians or work with their council offices or the city departments to open up those spaces. So I'm excited to see what staff brings back. And again, I do want to see things move as quick as possible. I think our promenade in the downtown is a is a prime location that we should be able to open up the second that we reach that benchmark. So I look to my council colleagues for their shared support as well. So thank you. Councilmember. Remember, Vice Mayor Andrews, I'm going to just come back to you that I have some other books cued up that are coauthors. Are they? They're also cued up. So I'll come right back to you, Vice Mayor. Next up then I have is council member Austin. Catch them here. Austin in. Remember. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you. And first of all, I want to thank you for bringing this item forward, Mr. Mayor. You know, I know that other cities, other cities in our state are looking at creative, innovative ways to engage community, but also support economic, commerce and communities and save our small businesses. And I think that this is an item that will will help us to do just that. I know for a fact in my district, we have a number of areas that could benefit from this area. This item here and this innovative approach, obviously, because we know that what we do that do it well, we have a successful bid. We also have Virginia Village, an area that is up and coming. And, you know, several small businesses need the support. And so I can I can see Market Street. There's other areas throughout my district and all throughout our city, our city that will benefit greatly from this with a little bit of creativity and organization of our local businesses with support. And so and I think this also gives our our businesses a big latitude to create safe spaces. In support of our community as well. And so I think this is a win win. I'm fully supportive and I believe support my colleagues to do this. Thank you. And then Councilmember Price. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Oh. Thank you. So I'm wondering if there is any staff report or visuals on this concept. Before I provide comment. Yes. Actually, you know what? Thank you, Councilwoman, because they actually did prepare slides and I was supposed to turn to them, I think, at the end of my comments. And I did not. And so let Mr. Monica and Mr. Beck we go through that those slides. I know you've prepared some slides for the council. Yes, certainly. So staff totally recognizes the urgency. We hear you loud and clear. So we did kind of accelerate the the review process. This was something that we had been working on and reviewing. So we actually are prepared tonight to give kind of a larger presentation, to show context and what these could look like. And then really, our our goal tonight is to hear from the council about what is it that you're interested in and where should we focus. And then we would work on implementation if, if we got the green light. So I will turn it to Craig and Carl Hickman to go through the the presentation that should be showing on your WebEx screen. Thank you, Tom. Mayor, members of the council, thank you for the opportunity tonight to talk about how we can utilize our public spaces to help address our COVID recovery response. What you have before you is some information that relates to how the team looks at providing open streets. And in this presentation this evening, we're going to review kind of what our goals were and really best practices that we're seeing in other communities and kind of taking items from those best practices that we work well in in our city. We like the idea of open streets, certainly something we've been promoting for some time with the implementation of many of our bike boulevards. I know this council's been very supportive of the concept behind Vision Zero. We look forward to sharing our Safe Streets Long Beach plan with this council in June, which I think ties in nicely to the Open Streets concept, like space for for businesses. We have some examples we're going to share with you this evening. And communication is going to be very important as we move forward, I think. I heard some of the council talk about flexibility. We fully support flexibility. Every location is a little unique and different and how we approach it needs to address that location. So I'm going to ask Carl Hickman, the city's traffic engineer, to go through some of the examples. Again, our program goals here is that we would be able to move quickly, we would be able to be efficient and have a low cost option. So when we talk about Parklets, we are not talking about the city's permanent PARKLET program, where we have specific development guidelines, but something that is call it Parklet Lite. Being able to utilize those spaces for public activation and you'll see some of the information that we present tonight as as an example of how that could occur. So it's important that we're thinking about maintaining social rather physical distancing to help support reopening of businesses. And that's included in here this evening as well. So with that, Karl, if you could please go through some of the information that we put together and share with council our concepts. Sir. Thank you, Craig. The next slide. You'll see when we were first talking about Open Streets concepts for the city of Long Beach. We wanted to investigate what other cities were doing. And here in this slide, you'll see examples from Denver and Oakland, where we have partial closures of residential streets. These are roads that now are open for traffic. That is only local traffic. And the regular cut through traffic would be eliminated. It greatly calms traffic and gives open space for residents to use the roadway and the right of way. Next. Next slide, you'll see in Oakland, they dedicated 10% of their entire street network to open streets concepts, and they found that 75% of the residents were in favor of those ideas. In New York City, there was an initial rollout of only a 1.5 mile stretch of road, but they've since tried to expand that to over 100 miles of streets in late April. So as you can see, many cities have concepts that they're implementing. For businesses. On the next slide. This is from the city of Vancouver where they're exercising and utilizing flex space options. You'll see in the slide where patrons are allowed to queue up in the roadway along the curb line while still practicing social distancing. They're able to access the retail establishment, purchase what they need to do, and at the same time, cars can still use the roadway, drive by and stop, park whatever they may need to do. So, again, this is from Vancouver. Also here we are, we see partial or full closures that are applicable applicable to non arterial streets where there are dense business corridors. This. These pictures here are from New York City and then in Florida. Next slide. Also, there are many examples in many cities throughout the country where they are establishing special delivery or pickup zones for retail establishments and restaurants so someone can stop by curbside pick up a meal, a business can have a delivery made near their business to accelerate their efficiency of their operations. So this is quite common where where they have special pickup and loading zones. Not from a residential point of view. We already have a program here in Long Beach where we close Bayshore Drive from ocean to second, and we do that every year from June 15th to September 15th. This is a roadway where we feel we can move that start date up sooner or we can even extend it to go longer. So this is something that we can implement, implement rather quickly. And also from a residential standpoint, we have many bike boulevards throughout the entire city and we could do partial closures designed to discourage cut through traffic and it would slow vehicle speeds. We have many throughout the city. To name a few, we have 15th Street, Daisy, Myrtle, Sixth Street and Vista Street bike boulevards. Again, we emphasize denser neighborhoods with limited park access. This would allow residents to get out and utilize the city right away. So for businesses, we can have partial or full street closures. Again, we want to focus on dense retail areas on non arterial streets. And we also have retail corridors on arterials that that will require partial closures and flex zones to retain vehicle throughput. Again, we don't want to totally shut down the cars driving by. They may want to stop in and access the business. We want to make sure we maintain that accessibility. And as far as the flex zones go, let's see here. Trying to move forward. Where's I.T. when you need them? Okay. As far as the partial closures and flex zones for businesses, we will need to work very closely with each individual business because, again, not every situation is the same. We have to streamline our existing sidewalk guidelines and work with each business to make sure that we can accommodate their needs. Some examples we have, we could do partial closures or flex zones on Santa Fe Avenue, PCH, to Wardlow, Second Street, Livingston, the Naples Plaza and roadways in Bixby Knolls that are yet to be determined. Again, we're going to support retail and restaurants and businesses. In many cases, city equipment will need to be supplemented by other devices to make these partial or foreclosures happen. Our public works team does not have all of the equipment, all the tools that we need to accommodate every one of these types of requests. We're going to need water barriers, delineation cones, signage, etc. and we may not have the ability to supply all of these devices and tools to each and every business that wants to do this kind of a program. And we're always going to consider ADA requirements. Public safety is a priority and emergency access. We're going to communicate closely with different stakeholders to make sure that we implement and consider everybody's concerns. Right now on Pine Avenue, we have a program. We have the ability to shut down Pine Avenue, either from first to third or from first to Broadway. And again, we have bollards there at all four intersections that we can install and we can shut down those roadways to a full closure to support business activity. This is something that we already do for for the taste of downtown and for other events. Looks like we're having issues with the battery. And you please move forward to slide. 13. Yeah. We're on 14 now. So again, for businesses, we talked about partial closures and flex zones. There was recently a a pilot program that was enacted last week. I understand that the event went well and this is something also that we could implement very quickly and stick with it as a good model for us as we move forward with the program. This was put on by the DLP and. And Studio 111. Next, we have a slide here that depicts a basic traffic control setup, which we would call a soft closure. It would be for a neighborhood street where we allow local traffic to still use the street and access it. But it would be shut down to to cut through. Traffic is going to greatly calm the neighborhood and allow the residents to utilize the city right away. Next, we have an example of a partial closure on a larger street, and you'll notice that the lane closest to the curb line has been closed. The red would be water filled barricades or delineate or something like that where we could establish parklets. We could establish dining areas, seating areas, again, to allow retail to utilize the right of way. The next slide is a full closure, where we would take a major street and do a full closure, not allow anyone into the area except for emergency vehicles. We again, we could allow for dining areas, seating areas, use of the right of way, maybe with plants, planters, things like that. But this would be an example of a foreclosure. Here. We took an example on Second Street, a street that we all know pretty well. And this is where we would repurpose the lane again along the curb line. We could install diagonal parking, we could repurpose the lane to accommodate parklets additional retail space. We could allow parklets of any kind, retail, dining, things like that. And we would also allow for a closure of a side street. We would call it a street lit where the nearby side street or Minor Street would be shut down to allow for similar activities or even parking these. This is an example of where we may even target private businesses that have private parking areas where we could utilize that space as well to accommodate some more activity. Now moving forward, we would need to have a communications plan. How are we going to communicate to residents? How are we going to communicate to the businesses and everyone who wants to use these zones? We'd be using signage, press releases, social media, graphics, websites, etc., etc. to get the word out about what we're trying to do in the Open Streets program. Guidelines and next steps. We want to make sure that we streamline sidewalk dining guidelines. Again, we want to be flexible and be able to move nimbly and quick. So we would need to streamline our processes and make these programs happen for the residents and for the businesses. We need to identify available city resources, see what we have on hand, what could be used, and anticipate what we may have to have businesses or residents perhaps rent or purchase. Again, we have to develop traffic control plans similar to the ones that I showed earlier, where we're going to call out exactly what is needed equipment wise and how the setups are going to take place. And we're going to continue conversations with all the stakeholders to make sure that all of folks considerations or needs are met. We want to make sure that safety is a priority. And then we're going to again roll out the communications plan, amend the program as we move along. Again, we have to be flexible. We're going to be collecting public and stakeholder feedback at all times and reevaluate our processes and how we do things as we move forward. Again, this is rather unique for the city, but I think that we can be flexible enough and accommodating and make things happen. Thank you. I welcome your comments. Thank you, Carl. So just a couple things that I wanted to add to the to provide a little context to how do we move this forward. We have the team looking at how we manage current guidelines for, say, a PARKLET program where we believe we can get that done in a different process, where maybe the city takes the initiative to put in place some of the elements that were shared with you this evening, working closely with the business districts to align what would work in a particular area, and then kind of having a public private partnership where the businesses, for example, could put tables and chairs into the space that the city creates. We're also working actively with our partner at Metro to see if we can identify some funding to help move this forward. So we're fairly far along. We're looking forward to hearing, as the city manager said, direction from council this evening and we stand ready to implement any guidelines that you recommend. That concludes our report, and we're open for questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Beck. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. And I want to thank Councilman Price for noting the presentation, because I went right by. It is a lot of work, so thank you guys for all that. Can I bring this back over to Councilwoman Price? Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Pryce. Okay, I'm going to come back to Councilwoman Pryce. Let me go to the other maker of the motion, which was Councilwoman Zendaya's. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you very much city staff and Councilmember Jeanine for bringing this up. This is so exciting for me. Not only am I excited to see what this is going to look like and especially that summer's coming up, I think that this is going to be very important. But I'm also very excited to see that we will be paying attention to the ADA accessibility issues that might come up, and especially because we have a lot of people in the first district, my district, with mobile devices as well as myself. So I thank you for taking that into consideration. And I can't wait to to see this happening and have it out in our street. So thank you for putting so much work into this. Thank you. Councilwoman, I think we have Councilwoman Pryce back. Enter your access code or. Anything meeting followed by. Mr. Mayor, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. You can hear me. Okay. Thank you. I want to thank staff for the presentation. I thought that was an excellent presentation and I want to thank the mayor for bringing this forth. This is a concept that we have thought about for many years in terms of whether or not a temporary closure of some streets would make sense so that we have, you know, a day or two where there's no cars traveling on the street and we just have pedestrian and bike access similar to how we do streets. But it's always seemed like such a huge undertaking that really in Belmont. Sure, we only do that for the car show. But but I love the idea of being able to expand this concept. I will say that we are doing everything we can to think about being nimble and being flexible in terms of our businesses, getting ready to reopen and helping them expand their capacity so that they can get back to a place of economic viability once we get underway. And Parklets are one of the things that we've talked a lot about. What I've communicated with the businesses in the shore is that, you know, for Parklets we do have to give up parking spaces which have been at a premium in Belmont. Sure. Since this court, the corridor is generally very active, especially in the evenings and on the weekends. And so maybe in the in the as we explore this option, maybe we try a pilot program where we have, you know, maybe three or four retailers or restaurants participate so that we're not giving up too many parking spaces and see how it works and see how the functionality is and fine tuned where we need to. And if the investment in the parklet is not too great, then it's something that we can have the a rotating concept where hopefully many of the as many businesses as want to can participate in it. And I really only envisioned it for Second Street right now, but I definitely see it working on Broadway as well, where we have a business corridor that borders the second district. I know Taste already has a parklet concept on Broadway, which is working out really well. And so I think this is a great concept. I love the idea that council woman peers raised in terms of music and having music on the street and being able to showcase other art on the streets and and really make it a user friendly, pedestrian, bicycle friendly experience for people without impacting. So the residential neighborhoods that are adjacent to these corridors too much. So thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, for bringing this forth. I look forward to having detailed conversations with the city team in regards to specific streets where this might work in the third. And I'm grateful to have been one of the folks who signed on to this. Thank you. I think it, councilwoman. We're going now to Vice Mayor Andrews. For thinking leadership when you say them. Because, you know, last summer we started, you know, seeing black boys in the sixties, back in the close, you're someone someone straight and made it possible for community to come out and partake in the Zumba and the free. And so I think they were looking at open space, you know, where we can come up and do something productive during these times when everyone is tired of being kind of cooped up. So, you know, I would like to chime in and suggest that we look at part in that, especially the ones that are not actively being used as part of the open space. You know, they could lead to create a huge iso, at least in my district. You know, we have former RDA labs that are sitting empty and we we'd like to be able to develop those and also look at them and and look at that and then be looked at to try to bring some sort of, you know, activity and some type of physical activity. So I'm looking forward to suggestions and to innovate this impact and think about giving. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, vice mayor. Next up is Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think this is a great item. I think it's really refreshing to see some item that's sort of tangentially related to COVID and really talks about something fun and exciting for the future is refreshing to see that we've made a commitment over the last few years to open streets. It's a well recognized commitment within our city and across the region. Just tonight in our consent calendar, we approved a grant from Sky Blue Mobile Sauce Production Committee to host another open street event, Artesia Boulevard. We got to figure that out, obviously, with social distancing and what we're dealing with. But the fact that we received yet another grant is is more recognition that we're leaders in this space. A few months ago, I was able to go to New Zealand in my role as Vice President Stag and it was a yeah. We were able to see firsthand some of the integrated space between our hotel we stayed in and the local restaurants and hotels across the street. The traffic was just limited to lay people pulling in the park, but it was incredible to see the way that the tables and the seats were, you know, spilled out from the restaurant into what would be the entire street. And there was no curb. It was all one level. You walk out the hotel across the street, there's no curb the step off. And there were barriers that are movable that really made the space safe and cars sort of meandered and everything was safe. It was really interesting to see. It was very well done. Locally, I know a number of great examples. There's a farmer's market that I love, I think is Redondo Beach or maybe Manhattan Beach, where they do a road diet on one side of the media and it's limited to the other side. The meeting they do, the farmer's market. I always look at that and think Atlantic Avenue. I think maybe even Artesia Boulevard if we if we do certain things. So it's totally possible. I think we need to have a toolkit. It was possible in all types of corridors from our commercial quarter to a residential corridor. I think it's fair to say that this level of creativity, it helps spur economic activity. So we actually need it in certain spaces. So we need to think about areas that are burgeoning, that need economic activity and how we could apply it. There are also areas like open space. I was glad to see that in the presentation. That said, I was disappointed to not see an example in North Long Beach. There are plenty of opportunity there. I would love to see more of that in the future. The Lab project, for example, is is considering certain strategies to expand walkability around the shops. It's essential now and the way we design shops. And it's when innovations like these are built as a means to overcome barriers to emerging communities that we really help shape the region. I love that, Mr. Mayor. I love that you brought up driving. I have little ones. We do the paramount drive in all the time. Pre stay home. Order all the time. There's plenty of opportunities for us to look at those things and all parts of our city. And the last thing I'll say is we need to look at this and it's been brought up, but we need to look at this as a model for how we implement and these social distancing standards for cities across the region. Because I know that both GAG and MRC are changing their grant programs to reward concepts like this, which may be helpful to public works as we find more funding where, you know, Skog and my sources both want to look for solutions like this in our future grant programs. So thanks to staff for the presentation. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. All the co-sponsors and I'm in full support of motion. Thank you, Councilmember. I have councilman proposal. Thank you. I think the opening comment by one appears was that one size doesn't doesn't fit all. And this may not work for the fourth district. Councilman Richardson, I didn't see any examples in the presentation. The Fourth District either. And the other comment I think Carl Hickman made was public safety is a priority, as he said that I noticed on the screen there, you know, kind of a makeshift parklet on the street without a rail. And I think part of the transportation system, we may not be able to outfit every site with all the equipment that we normally use. But I'd be interested in to see the kind where we don't have the rails protecting the public. I didn't get the overwhelming support from the folks in the fourth District. And the mayor and I both received an email today from one of the members of his task force, and I just want to respect his comments and share those little bit that where you have a very parking impacted area. Even giving up a parking lot for seating probably doesn't work. And I think overall. This restaurateur would like the focus to remain on the complete reopening. Like, let's not lose sight that that's where you need to be. Ultimately, I wouldn't want to see this this project delayed that process at all. And I think that we're talking about phase three. The other point I wanted to make was outdoor dining opportunities that are adjacent to residential areas. Normally that would involve a see up process. If we're fast tracking this, we'd want to know what what are the neighbors rights are? Are would there be something similar to see where neighbors could weigh in on this? And my final point would be about law enforcement and their services required. We had an incident today in a fourth District donut shop. You can read about it and there'll be post where the shop had to be shut down due to gridlock from cars queued up. And we just have to be very wary of these types of situations. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember and Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Public Works for a great presentation and for your leadership on this item, Mr. Mayor. I think the one size fits all will not work, so I really do appreciate the discussions related to various things. I also think that full reopening could even be bigger and better with opportunities like this. I think we're going to have to work hand in hand, not just with the restaurant owners, but also with the landlord. Each district very different. And in some cases in our district where we might have said the Spring Street Business Association and they might want to set aside some of the parking lot for one of the restaurants. We need to be cognizant of grocery stores that are significantly impacted right now as well that may have crossover parking. And so with those things in mind and the opportunity to really jazz some things up in terms of if we aren't able to do this, some of these restaurants are able to even bring music to their parking lots and let people sit outside, maybe a movie, a drive, a concert. Those kinds of things can really bring some lifeblood back. Many of the stories in the post related to the individuals who've been singing on their porch every night as people do their walks or the trolley that's been going through the neighborhood with singers on it from the same family. Many who we can do to get people back to work and engaged and still say stay safe. Because even if every single thing was open tomorrow, the volumes are going to take a lot longer to recover as incomes take a while to recover. And people who have been perhaps deferring their rent and other things now have debt that they need to maintain and they can't necessarily spend that disposable income that's now consumed by debt service on going out to eat and all of those things. So for those reasons, I think that it's important to really do both and support business owners and tenants and landlords all in one big package. So I think is a creative way. As long as we can ensure that the residents are protected and the landlords are protected and the city is protected. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman, to some final comments. Just want to thank everyone for for their support staffs and a great mayor. I had my hand up. I guess you didn't see it. Know, Councilmember, you're not in the queue, but I don't have it here. But go ahead, please. I'm sorry. I did try to use the system here. I basically thank you for including me in the time as well. I really appreciate that. And looking forward to working with staff on some areas in the seventh District that I would be very, very benefiting from such a program. And thank you for thinking of this. One of the things that I'm concerned about, obviously, is that some of these establishments are open till two in the morning. Is there going to be some curfew involved as well with this in terms of looking over what the timeframe would we would be opening street up like this or closing down, as has been the discussion with PD. Councilmember, if I could address your question, I wanted to share that there is a city team involved with this. Certainly a police department is represented on the team, public works, fire department, special events, Health Development Services. So there's a number of interests and ideas that that are brought to bear as we consider any location. I also should have maybe emphasized that what we're sharing with you on the screen this evening is proposed to be temporary in many situations that would allow us to move the quickest to install these temporary features, allow our our kind of recovery process to begin. And then as we we transition from recovery to kind of more permanent operations and then these temporary features would need to be replaced with permanent features if they were so desired. So all those questions about timing and length and noise and surroundings, those would all be considered as each location is ultimately designed. And I also wanted to make sure that I addressed the safety issue. Certainly one of the reasons I asked the traffic engineer to be part of this presentation is anything that goes into the street and the public right of way needs to have our city traffic engineers approval to ensure safety. So nothing would get installed that was not safe. Some of the examples were examples of other jurisdictions, not necessarily what we would put here in our city and safety would be paramount. Hope that addresses your question. Thank you. Yeah, it does, because obviously there is a public safety concern about that in regards to looking at different. Streets around the city and in all our districts. And as as it's been pointed out, each district is different and unique in its own way. Is there a budget number that we need to hear or you want to hit to to ensure that every district at least has some kind of of a business opening up with with this program? I would hate to see that. You know, there are many districts that well, there are some districts that have more business districts, if you will, then, than others, mine being one of them. And I would like to know if I can have at least two or three places in my in my district that would be that would benefit from this program and have money for it. So, I mean, is there is there a a target that we're looking at in terms of financing this? Or is there can we just go ahead and just draw the straws? How are we going to determine which streets we work with and which we don't? So Councilmember Yanga, specifically, first, I want to address the other comments that came up. There was no intention to slight any particular disarray. Not to look. Like we were only trying to show a couple examples. We certainly recognize that every district has unique features and we would work with those particular representatives and members of those communities to address those unique features. As far as funding, one of the things that we're working on right now, the city has received an allocation of funds for beach streets. Given that we're in the middle of a COVID pandemic, it's unlikely that you'll see a beach street event occur in fiscal year 20. So the idea is we could repurpose those beach street dollars to help implement many of the items that were presented here this evening. And if we're successful in repurposing those dollars, we think that we'll have sufficient funding to do implementation in all nine council districts. So I don't want to leave anyone with the feeling that just because they didn't see a particular representation in this in this presentation, that they're not included. We would work with everybody to try to implement what we can with that funding. If that funding is not made available, then we will try to address that as we continue our budget discussions. But but so far the signs are positive and we think we're going to have funding to do this. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you very much. Looking forward to working with you and staff on this. Thank you. Think you're all the councilmembers come up with closing thoughts. First is to the staff. I know that Metro is going to be adjusting its funding model for open street events to exactly this direction. And so all new metro money as it relates to Open Streets is going to be for projects like what we're going to be ahead of the game on, which is which is really good. I also agree, I think we've got to have a city wide perspective so that we're doing these across the city. Just want to uplift the idea of parking lots. Mr. BECK I'm hearing from a lot of restaurants that maybe aren't on a street, but are there parking lot adjacent. And so there's some creativity there. That's great. I want to also just mention a lot of these are going to be, you know, in many ways just done kind of, you know, with rail that just kind of comes up and then restaurants come in and and decorate and put their their tables and chairs up. And so I think we've got to be flexible that the different kind of parklet like spaces are open spaces could all look very different. And we should experiment, see which ones works, see which ones don't. We're not really creating, you know, traditional kind of parklet like structures, right? These are more flexible type structures as we explore. So I also want to make sure, Mr. Beck, that we're not imposing the same type of parklet fees or other kind of barriers for for small businesses. And so I know you guys will be flexible with that and we'll we'll be late in our approach. And just to conclude, I just want to thank really the dozens of restaurants that have reached out to our office, really from across the city and every from every business district that we've been talking to that are excited about this program. And I want to think also that the bids and the property improvement areas and and the Council of Business Associations for their leadership on these ideas, they've been doing a great job of promoting these and working with the businesses as well. So I thank you all. And with that, I'll have the court do a roll call. District one. District one. District two. I. District three. I. District four. I. District five. I. District six. By. District seven. District eight. Hi. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Right. Thank you. We're going to transition now in just a few seconds to our budget hearing, which. We'll be next. So. Mr. Modica, just get that prep and we'll start in just 30 seconds. And Mr. Murdoch, are you guys ready to go?