Recommendation to refer to Economic Development Commission to conduct a deeper assessment of economic inclusion in Long Beach by embarking on the "Everyone In Listening Tour" and providing further outreach to marginalized and disenfranchised segments of the business and working community; and Increase appropriations in the General Fund (GF) in the Economic Development Department (ED) by $40,000, offset by Ninth Council District one-time infrastructure funds transferred from the Capital Projects Fund (CP) in the Public Works Department (PW) to supplement the targeted outreach.
I'm sorry. I believe those are items 24. Okay. So 22, 23, 24 and 25. And we're doing 24/1, I understand. Right. Okay. And so go ahead. And we're going to begin and we're going to begin by doing item 24. Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson, recommendation to refer to Economic Development Commission to conduct a deeper assessment of economic inclusion in Long Beach by embarking on the Everyone in Listening Tour and providing further outreach to marginalized and disenfranchized segments of the business and working community. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to start off first. Let me just acknowledge, you know, we started a little bit late. We had some really important business in closed session. But I see the amount of people who stood. So thank you for for for remaining with us on this very important issue. It's four items here, but I'm only going to give a presentation on one of them and we'll have just a shorter discussion on the others for the sake of time. So today we have so I want to actually start we have a video. I loved doing business in Long Beach. But I don't have access. To the. Resources. That I need to expand my business and to truly thrive. Economies grow faster. Stronger and for longer periods. Of time when. Prosperity isn't limited. To just a few segments of our population. Everyone here means every. Long Beach resident has. Pathways of. Opportunity to fully participate. In the economic life of our. City as employers, entrepreneurs, consumers and citizens. The blueprint will be a catalyst for economic activity across the city. Long Beach is well-positioned to take a deeper dove into economic conclusions. Long Beach is strongest when everyone has a seat at the table and an opportunity to thrive. Join us for a conversation on what everyone means to you. All right. So today we have a package of proposals with the theme of everyone in. And the theme ties together our economic development focus of our city as a city with our new economic blueprint, as well as our focus on equity as a city with our new Office of Equity. So this marries the two together. It's a call to action to all segments in all sectors of our community to work together to ensure that our economy grows with everyone in mind. It means making sure that everyone has a place to plug into our economy. No matter what part of town you look you live in, no matter your race, your socioeconomic status, your gender, or your criminal background, it means small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in all parts of town have access to the resources that they need to grow their companies to create local family supporting jobs. But we're not there yet. There's still plenty of work to do. We're not there when five times as many of our Latino and Native American residents are living in high poverty neighborhoods compared to others. We're not there when twice as many black and Latino women are working full time and still living below 150% of the poverty line . We're not there when homeownership among our black and Latino residents is half that of white households, we know we're not there yet. When fewer than 15% of Asian and black residents have access to the resources they need to own a business. So there's a growing body of research that finds greater economic inclusion, fosters a stronger economic growth and a more equitable region. Yet over the past two decades, the critical connection between growth and inclusion has been largely severed. So as as the economy grows, the wealth gap continues to grow as well. So since the Great Recession, every one of the 100 largest metropolitan cities in the United States, including Long Beach, has added jobs and has increased their economic output. But only 11 cities have saw a rise in inclusive growth Denver, San Antonio and Austin, to name a few. While the rest of us, including all of Los Angeles County, saw increased economic inequality. Inequalities across every single economic indicator including employment, earnings, poverty, business ownership and homeownership. Without changing, without a change in course, racial disparities in income, employment and wealth will weigh more and more heavily on our communities across our nation. So this past April, the City Council adopted the blueprint for economic development, providing the city with a framework that seeks to advance a vision of Long Beach as the city of opportunity for workers, investors and entrepreneurs. Economic inclusion is called out as an area of focus, described as increasing access to economic and economic opportunities in low income communities to advance economic equity. The objectives as listed in the blueprint are as follows increase the number of minority owned and women owned businesses. Increase nontraditional capital resources for minority owned women owned businesses. Increase investment in low income business corridors. Increase the percentage of city spending on local businesses with emphasis on minority and women owned businesses. Increase financial literacy and wealth building opportunities for young people and disadvantaged families and decrease the digital divide for low income households. To me, that means creating an environment where everyone has a seat at the table and everyone has an opportunity to thrive. It means making sure every neighborhood is economically viable. It means acknowledging that everyone deserves a path to middle class, good jobs and economic opportunity. Where a young person, a young person who's working his or her first job through the city's youth hire program, learns the fundamentals of financial literacy. It also means making sure that everyone has an opportunity to build wealth and have access to capital, whether you're a small business, a home or an aspiring homeowner, or just a working, working individual. So we know that everyone benefits from a more inclusive economy because economies grow straight, grow faster, stronger, and for longer periods of time. When prosperity isn't limited to a few segments of the population, more inclusive cities can tap into deeper pools of talent and draw from more educated workforce with a broad range of skills. Strong, economically viable regions are able to provide high quality jobs for the residents, producing new ideas, new products, new businesses and economic activity. So the region remains sustainable and competitive. Economically inclusive regions are ready for the future with a skilled ready workforce and a healthy population. Economically equitable regions are places of connection, where residents can access essential ingredients to live healthy and productive lives in their own neighborhood. They can reach opportunities located throughout their city via transportation technology and can participate in the political process and interact with diverse sets of residents. Cities all across. The country are embracing similar economic inclusion initiatives and are taking a hard look and embracing more inclusive policies. For example, in Stockton, they're conducting the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration with a project called Basic Income as a strategy and strategy to address persistent poverty. Policy commissioned a study in Long Island called Empowering Black Long Island How Equity is Key to the Future of Nassau and all four counties as well as New Orleans called Equity. New Orleans the road to equitable government in Long Beach has an opportunity to lead the great L.A. The greater L.A. region has experienced demographic change and economic shock much more much, much before the rest of the nation, and making progress on new commitments to inclusion can inform policy making for the rest of the rest of the region and the rest of the nation's metropolitan cities. And that's why, as a part of the Economic Inclusion Initiative, I'm asking the Economic Development Commission to take a deeper dove into economic inclusion by conducting a listening tour, facilitating focus groups which address traditionally marginalized communities. The motion tonight will assist with the economic assist the Economic Development Department with resources needed to support them through this process. We're also asking the city to take steps to conduct an economic equity profile of our city and to adapt to measures related to access to capital for small businesses and financial literacy for our youth, which we'll hear about later. I want to just take a moment to just acknowledge those who issued letters of support. Senator Steve Bradford, Assembly Member Mike Gibson, our chair of our Economic Development Commission. Randall Hernandez. Central Shah, who I see is in the audience with this pulse for hope. The Maynard Foundation, the YMCA of Greater Long Beach and YMCA Community Development. The Long Beach Local Hire Coalition, the Uptown Business District and Humanity. In six months, I'd like the Economic Development Department to provide a report back to the Commission to the City Council on the Listening Tours findings. I want to acknowledge that the economic development staff, as well as Rebecca on the Innovation Team and our Office of Equity Staff and the Ninth District staff for helping to put together this presentation and helping to launch this everyone in campaign. So that said, I asked the City Council for your support. Okay. I think I'm chairing the meeting. I'll see the the mayor here. Okay. Councilwoman Gonzales? Yes, Vice Mayor Richardson, I just want to say thank you for bringing this forward. I think a lot of us have been talking about inclusion when it comes to many of these initiatives within economic inclusion as a whole. So I'm glad to see that we're bringing this forward. And I know I've often spoke spoken with Jessica at Central CHA as we brought up the issue of immigrant communities and how we can be more comprehensive in providing resources, not just for to tackle the issue of immigration at its face, but also to look at resources that we can provide individuals for housing and and entrepreneurship and ways to get out of the poverty level. And I've talked to Councilmember Dee Andrews about job opportunities as well, and I often reiterate these statistics. But in the 90813, we have high poverty rates. As much as 40% of our families are under the poverty line and as much as a 19%, I think it just went down to 16% of our families are unemployed. And so I think there is absolutely room for this in the city of Long Beach. I will also say to and I'm glad you brought up the issue of women entrepreneurship. There are some statistics. I was trying to pull them up and I'll find them for you. But I believe there's a banking institution that is looking at women entrepreneurship and access to capital. And I think it's important that we also find women, venture capitalists to provide that capital to women entrepreneurs. It's really difficult to do that. So that's why, unfortunately, sometimes we don't see as many women business owners as we'd like to because of that. So I think it's also finding that that other side, the individuals that are able and willing to fund and that speaks a lot to what we need to do more for women. And then I would like to think Randall as well, I know we've spoken quite a bit just on economic issues overall, and I appreciate your insight into this very issue. And I know that this is going to be a fantastic listening tour. So thank you so much, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Next, we have Councilwoman Pierce. Yes. I, too, want to applaud you for your efforts with everyone. And I know a lot of these are issues that we've talked about historically for five, ten years. And to be able to kind of put it in a way that we can get our hands around it and understand what that means. How do we really create opportunities, everyone from small businesses to everyone else in the community? And so I want to thank you and I want to thank your staff, too. I know that you guys have worked really hard on this. And I for me, everyone is about having those conversations. We've been able. Every agenda item I've tried to put forward, I've tried to include deep community meetings. And we know that's where we get the most creative ideas and get people, everyone to roll up their sleeves and do the work. And so I look forward to being a part of some of these discussions and having our constituents be that too. And when I think, again, all the community members who are here and I'm sure we'll hear some personal stories from you all. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Price. Thank you. Vice Mayor, are we speaking to all the items at once or one at a time? We're going to speak to this one. We'll have an opportunity to speak to the others. I'm just not life or presence. I think this one's great and I applaud you for bringing it. Great. Thank you. Councilman Mongo. Well, I'm going to speak freely about all economic development. That's fine. I want to give a big shout out. And thank you to our Economic Development Commission. I'm creating the Economic Development Commission, a group of neighbors and business owners in Long Beach who know economic development, who are connected to the industries that really move our city, who are connected to the communities that are a part of our business fabric that really is woven in with our neighbors. It's just such an important decision to make. But choosing the right people and the right leaders has been a huge part of that. And so I want to thank Randall Hernandez for his leadership. I know that in every conversation he is always driving us forward. We are looking at economic development and all different ways. And I really appreciate not only his hard work, but also his mentorship, because I think that this is one of many exciting things that are coming because of the blueprint that that committee took such a thoughtful care with. And so thank you for that. I also want to thank my colleagues on both the Economic Development Committee. I know that the starting point of where we we started together three years ago was very different than where we are today. We are a committee and a council of individuals who now look at the data and know and understand what that data means to our neighborhoods and what that data means to our community. And we're making those data driven decisions to lift everyone up. And I think that more often than not, you will find I live in the ninth, but I have a business in the fifth, I live in the fourth, but I have a business in the eighth, I have a business in the first. And just people love to live and work here. And so the ability for us to invest in ourselves is such a huge opportunity. And so I'll say what I said at the press conference. I have Akiva account and I look forward to many of you joining me and loaning money to our small businesses through becoming Akiva City . Because when we take personal ownership of our communities and our neighborhoods and our businesses, only then can we take that next step together. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman Austin, thank you. And I'm going to keep it short since we have several other items to speak to. I want to congratulate and thank Vice Mayor Richardson and his team for bringing forth this initiative. It's something that I support wholeheartedly. I think they put a lot of innovative thought into it, working with our economic development staff. I think we will lay down something that will be beneficial for many in our city, and hopefully we will we will address the equity gap. I can't stress enough every time an issue like this comes before us. I think, you know, partnerships with our great educational institutions is extremely important because that is the great equalizer. And we don't achieve equity. We don't improve our conditions without improving our educational status. So thank you very much. Thank you. And we're going to take public comment in just a sec. I just wanted to also just congratulate, obviously, vice mayor, particularly at Comp Development Commission. If everyone remembers this is the economic blueprint that this council adopted that the commission put together, spent a lot of time putting this blueprint together. It's really a ten year road map for the city when it comes to economic development. And it was a top priority of the commission. And for us to actually get this done, which is really the reason why we reformed the commission, why a restructure the department to have an economic development department. And this is really another step to that. And if you look inside this blueprint, one of the pages is dedicated to economic inclusion. And so, you know, this agenda item and what the vice mayor is talking about is a direct I'm really just he's taking from one of the key initiatives of the blueprint and really expanding it and bringing life to it and ensuring that has the attention that it deserves. And so I just want to commend him for taking a leadership role on that part of the blueprint. And so with that, we're going to take public comment on this item, which is item 24, but feel free if you want to talk. And we hope we're going to have a couple other items on the same topic if you want to just talk kind of once on the whole package. That's great, Mayor. Council members Randall Hernandez, chairman of the Economic Development Commission. And I'll make it brief because you do have my letter, but we really do view the everyone in campaign is a call to action. We want to bring stakeholders together, whether it be education, small business, labor, community organizations and really do a deep dove into some of these underserved communities. It's always been a challenge. For many years I've been doing economic development for a long time and it's always been a challenge, really reaching in particularly to multicultural communities and really getting them at the table to have a real, really frank discussion on what makes them tick. How can we be more effective and what services not only the city can provide, but the services that are available throughout the throughout the community. So one of the things we hope to accomplish through this is really to bring together a lot of the stakeholders and the resources that are available throughout Long Beach to the table and have a very frank discussion on all of this items. I want to thank particularly, obviously, Vice Mayor Richardson for really driving this initiative and really accelerating it forward. But to you, Mayor, for the launch of this a year and a half ago, when you asked the commission to take this on and who knows where we're heading with that. But I think it's we've we've developed a good product along the way. And I also want to thank and commend Councilwoman Mongo for her leadership on the Economic Development Committee, for working closely with the commission on a lot of these initiatives. So I want to say thank you very much, and we look forward to the next phase. We know our work is just beginning and this is going to be a great piece of that continued blueprint action. So thank you. Thank you. Speaker, please. Thank you. My name is Robert Leon Wood. I live at 3602. I really want to compliment you for this fantastic idea that we have here. But I also want to want to emphasize the fact that what we have at Long Beach is many families of young men from single parents and a lot of children being raised by single parents. And they want to get out to get the information. And we're going to have to make a special effort to reach those who have single mothers, who are midst of poverty, who are living in really negative conditions to make sure that they get a part of this economic growth. We also have a lot of young men who do not have skills at this time that are going to have to have a special effort to give them the kind of skills that's necessary to take advantage of the job opportunities that are coming. And we know that what Proposition 47, we have many of our young men coming back home from behind the wall, and that needs to be in this package, some kind of a special effort to ensure that these young men and young women are going to have an opportunity to have a chance to appreciate and to get a chance to get some of the benefits of this great effort that you're having. So it could be universal to the entire community of Long Beach, but I think right now you're really on the right track. But thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Excuse me. Hi. There's a few things that I have seen as being a parent in language unified that I think would bring everyone in for very low cost in. One thing I would like is for the Long Beach Police Department Junior Scouts program at Caboolture High School to get rid of their GPA requirement at Kabul High School so that ninth graders could go straight into a program like the police. And some of those kids they see, they fall in between the cracks. And we have to realize that Kabila doesn't have the same kind of grades and English learning skills that other schools have. So putting in that GPA, the police putting in the GPA requirement, I don't see as many young black boys able to get on the force. The other thing is the fire department may send in the training in Belmont Shore for the junior lifeguards. And that's how we get lifeguards and police and paramedics and firemen. As long as that program is centered in the NOSEWORTHY area and I'm not sure in the most wealthy pool, our kids don't have the ability to get there for that training to get the first lifeguard jobs in the city of Long Beach. So I've often asked for the for them to come over to the high school campuses for the lifeguard program and try to get the kids around the teams certified as lifeguards. Because we wanted black lifeguard Cabral High School, we had to have a meeting with our whole team and the principal, A.C. Brown Beach, to ask them why they couldn't produce any young black teen lifeguards. And they said that they just don't apply and they didn't have any black lifeguards to give us. So those are two things that if you wanted to listen, I think those things could just be changed and you would start to understand the kids a little bit more. And the other thing is we don't have Special Olympics, a Cabral high school pool. We just have them on the east side of town. So these kids also are at a they are a loss. And the Academy of Global Logistics, all high school has a program that's putting kids into global logistics. And I think what we have is truckers. And if you gave kids that are faster, kids with no homes, that they go out on the street after they're done with high school or in seniors, if you gave me a truck, it would be like a home and they could see the risk to the United States and maybe they could find somewhere to live that they can actually. Afford. In order to get out of Long Beach. We love to truckers. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, mayors. City council members, city staff. My name is Tasha Hunter and I'm the executive director of the Uptown Business Improvement District. And I want to say thank you. This is beautiful. This is something that we do. I deal with businesses on a day to day business, day to day basis in my business improvement district. And there's people that want to grow. They want to expand. They want access to the capital and the resources. And we search and we look and we find and this is something that we've been thriving for, wishing for all coming together. So I'm going to put a special thank you to economic development, Randall and everyone that's helped work on this. We're excited and we're here to support. We gave a letter of support. And any way that you want to utilize the business district, we're here. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Josue Gutierrez and I'm part of the YMCA Youth Institute, and I support this initiative because according to a partner in the scheme, we are the fifth most expensive brand statewide. A one room apartment would cost a minimum of 6000 dollars, but a minimum wage is 1100 dollars a month. My sister is forced to live with my mom and the rest of my family currently because she cannot afford one room, a one room apartment currently. In order for her to move out, she will need my other sister to help her pay rent so she'll be able to live in that apartment, which is a one bedroom apartment . So what I believe what we should do is raise minimum wage and she will most likely she and other people who have this situation will be able to have a life of their own and help support themselves. And people who are there with also helping out small businesses helps make the community give more jobs for kids and people in the city also. It also keeps the revenue within the city that can be used for taxes as well as growing the business itself. This is why the is to support this initiative. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Thanks, Speaker. Good evening. Mayor Garcia, members of the city council. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. My name is Jessica Quintana and I'm the executive director of Central Asia, and we're here today to support this initiative. Thank you so much. Vice Mayor Rex Richter said. You know, this aligns with the work that we do at Central CHA for over 16 years. Our main priority has been focused on economic development and workforce development in our communities. As you know, the Latino population is at 42% here in the city of Long Beach. And having said that, there's a lot of challenges within our community. We have language barriers, access to capital challenges, and developing small business entrepreneurship. Most recently, we just sparked a new initiative. With Cal. State, Long Beach and providing the first ever Latino Entrepreneurship Bootcamp at Central Asia. Because it's a challenge for a lot of folks to start a small business and really understanding how to begin those steps. A lot of people, what happens is they they save their life savings and really don't know how to navigate and start a small business. And for a lot of our youth, we have a lot of our workforce development youth in the audience. So I know Nick would be very proud to see some of his youth there. But, you know, these are things that we focus on. We focus on economic development as a strategy for violence prevention to build our communities. So. So they are, you know, equitable in in different parts, not only in the first District, in the ninth and the sixth, but also on the West Side area. It's important that we're providing these services citywide because we do have an issue of poverty and an economic lack of inclusion with a lot of folks, especially when they're having language barriers. So this is a great initiative. We look forward to having a seat at the table. I think that's important, having, you know, further discussions and conversations. We look forward to hosting a discussion and having that, you know, in translated into Spanish. And, you know, as many of our youth here and just the experiences that they have and and, you know, just their backgrounds are very diverse. So, you know, they're all as you know, you know, with a climate, they're in fear of of their current status. Some are. Some are. Their status is going to be expiring. So it's going to be important that they have opportunities to entrepreneurship, because that's the way they're going to be able to continue to to thrive in their communities. Because we all know that economics is really a matter of a person being able to live and thrive. It's a quality of life issue. So thank you so much again. And we look forward to the discussion, the conversation. Randall, you're in the audience. Thank you so much for your leadership. And we continue to look forward to working with you as well as the economic commission. Thank you so. Much. Thank you so much, Jessica. With that, I appreciate all the public comment. And to go back to the council. Councilmember Pierce. Well, yes, thank you. I want to again, thank you all for speaking today. And I just wanted to lift up a couple of things that I heard and wanted to ensure vice mayor, that it's included in this. You've done a great job of outlining which folks should be included. I think focusing on youth in a way that is a just a youth space, being a part of building healthy communities and their youth work groups. It's a unique space where we get to hear from them without a lot of adults putting in their ideas. I would hope that in some of their listening that we would really engage with some high school youth and what that transition looks like for them. Also on that, I just was thinking about the local hire pipeline and one of the challenges we've had with trying to make sure that that's the most robust pipeline because I don't have a history of that in Long Beach. And so using these listening tours is also an opportunity to think about how we strengthen some of the work that we've already started. So thank you. And again, really support everything. Sure. I'll just I'll just respond with I'm really excited about trying out this equity lens in the conversation. So we're talking with the health department and they're going to conduct training before these happen about how to best sort of use these strategies and tools to facilitate the conversation. So I'm sure a lot of what you talked about can be reflected. Thanks. Great. Thank you. There's a motion in a second. Please cast your votes. Motion carries gray in the next one. And we have three items that were related to this.