Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Financial Management Department’s Purchasing Division to ensure a study of the current Local Preference Ordinance is included in the Extreme Procurement Makeover Project (which is remaking procurement policies, processes, and practices in Long Beach), including an analysis, assessment of the feasibility and options for implementation of the items. In addition, prioritize this study by modifying the workplan for the Extreme Procurement Makeover Project, and report back to City Council in no more than 180 days.
Thank you. We're going to take item 11, please, which is the local preference medium. Communication from Councilwoman Allen, Councilwoman Mongo, Councilwoman Sara Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Financial Management Department's Purchasing Division to ensure a study of the current local preference ordinance is included in the Extreme Procurement Makeover Project and report back to City Council in no more than 180 days. Councilwoman Allen. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say, first of all, thank you to Councilwoman Ciro and Mongo for joining me on this item. And we all understand just the importance of keeping spending locally. And this policy has not been updated for over a decade. And this is something that I am very passionate about. Local businesses are the heart of our city and we need to make sure that we give them preference. These businesses have decided to invest in our city. They hire in our city. They also support other local businesses and restaurants. And local businesses who operate in the city. Need to know that if they decide to open up shop here or open up a business here in our city, that we're going to support them as a as a city and that we are also, as a city invested in their success . So I also want to thank Jeremy Harris of the Chamber of Commerce and the Delbert for their letter of support with this item. I appreciate I definitely appreciate the support, but also their interest in being an active partner in our procurement makeover. One of the things that I'd like to make sure that you reach out to the following groups as part of this makeover process. So that would include the Chamber, the Long Beach Economic Partnership, any business associations across the city, the deal, Bay, these groups and these members will be on the other end of the Nube procurement systems and they can help us. You know, have been included in this process. They'll help us be the best this can be. And I just know from from my past life in business, in business and doing a lot of pure procurement with the city and other municipalities across the state, how important it is for these cities to focus on on their local vendors. And I'm telling you, it does make a difference. It's better for us. It's better for our city. It's better for for our workers. The first step was taken in 2009 when our local preference was first established, but the cap of 100,000 was too low then, and inflation has almost made this comical now . So I think a preference of 10% was a good start. But it may not be enough to entice businesses elsewhere in our area to open offices or move their headquarters to Long Beach. So I want to thank the mayor and council who first took the step back when the mayor was first council member of the first District . I. A stronger local preference program will further empower local firms, many of which are designated small business enterprises, their minority owned business enterprises, their woman owned business enterprises. And they all need to compete successfully with established firms outside the city. And that may not share many of those characteristics. So it is my hope that all city employees who are involved in any purchasing decisions when possible, that we that we keep it local. So I do hope that my colleagues will support this logical next step in strengthening our local purchasing and our local economy, especially for small businesses . Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Sara. Thank you, Mayor. And I also want to thank Councilmember and Councilwoman Allen for leading on this item, as well as Councilman Mongo for supporting it. You know, I think that this is a great next step because as we're in this opportunity to be able to work on recovery, it's great to be able to review our local preference ordinance because we want to make sure that as businesses as well as nonprofit are getting back on their feet, that we consider how as a city that we help them do that. So I appreciate this item and that I hope that, as Councilwoman Allen said, it'll help to increasing jobs but also increasing, hopefully internship and fellowship opportunity for those that we are getting from college or even our colleges that we're proud of locally, so that we're able to grow and retain those talents and keeping them in their city. So thank you. I appreciate this item and I support it. Thank you so much. Councilman's in the house. Thank you, Mia. And a huge thank you to Councilwoman Ellen Taro and Mongo for bringing this item forward. I think it's very important, especially right now as we're trying to recover from COVID and a lot of our small businesses are being affected citywide, nationwide, worldwide. Great. But one of the things that I'm I think that this council has is that we're always very focused on our small businesses and making sure that we support them. So thank you very much for this. And I also wanted to make sure that our staff while looking into into this thank you, also includes the LGBT Q plus chamber of Commerce, which I think is very important. And also the look into making sure that we extend this also to our disabled business owners. I think that's also very important. So thank you again for this item. And I supported who hide it. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I just want to thank Councilman Allen. She's been an advocate for this long before she was a councilwoman. I remember working on this with her and now State Senator Lena Gonzalez. And it's just such an important program. And we really need to do whatever it takes to get these bids to local businesses. It really comes back to the city ten fold. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next up is customary, Ringo. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy, for bringing this forward, this long overdue. The limits were just too low, and we need to have more participation for our lives, as well as LGBTQ people who to participate in this process. But I think we also need to encourage them to participate in the procurement process by getting the education they need. A lot of them don't know the process of how to get a contract with the city or how to apply for a contract with us. So I think we also need to make sure that we include a educational component to improving our are our opportunities for how maybe we be applying for contracts with the city. So thank you for bringing this forward. A proposal we agree with. Thank you. Thank you. I have count. I have Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you. First of all, this is a great item. Thank you, Councilwoman Allen and the COSIGNERS for bringing this forward. Tell you it's been a big item of discussion. I think these goals are great. Going from 10 to 20, right out of date. That's great. And I would love to see that. And I'll see how we can get higher. We talked about this a lot when we did the the listening tour and that everyone had planned. And there were some, some really good things that we learned, particularly, you know, when people do procurement in Long Beach and it's hard to navigate. You have folks who have to go to different departments and have different processes to certify as maybe we be and we we've got school districts and we've got transit and we've got all these agencies. We also have to certify the woman or to certify the person of color. You have a different process for each one of these, and there is a lot of interest in seeing if we can partner as a part of this and streamline and have one process where if you want to sign up and certify that you're an African American business or your local locally on business, your certification in the city can have a me too with other agencies. These were great ideas. I heard about an incident with a local business owner when she needed to produce her her birth certificate to show that she was African-American. She was clearly African-American, but she she didn't have a birth certificate. She didn't have a race on a birth certificate. So she needed to go prove it. She had to go get her father's military records showing he was African-American and show that he was her father on her birth certificate. I think that whole process can be updated. So I love an extreme makeover. The other thing I would say is so we should learn from some of those things. But we also pushed and made sure and I'm not sure how much if the city manager could say we pushed in the recovery plan to put, I believe it was $200,000 and or some number around doing a comprehensive study. And what I don't want is for multiple efforts, because that was just funding this past year. So I would love for all that to dovetail. So we have one comprehensive study that comes back, and it's a true comprehensive makeover. It is. John Cox, one on the line. This is Tom. So. I think I heard the question. But yes, essentially, the council women's item is. Dovetailing very nicely into the. Existing effort. That is our extreme purchasing makeover. So we believe it's all coordinated. We'll be able to incorporate this in and come back with all of those changes to our purchasing system, many of which will meet our goals of the reconciliation plan. And recovery as well. And are we using the recovery dollars for the extreme makeover? We'll get back to you on that. I'm not sure. I think we had already funded some of that. A lot of it is internal staff and then we have the Recovery Act money. So I'll get you back a response on that. Awesome. Well, I think this is this is incredible work. I'm happy to support it. Thanks so much, Councilwoman Allen. Great item. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilman Allen, Soli and Mongo, thank you very much for this item. As a small business owner, I think it's a step in the right direction. And I applaud your efforts to help all the small business owners, because it's not always what people think. As Councilman Allen knows. And it's it's really hard to keep things going. So thank you. Thank you for public comment on this item. If there's any members of the public that wish to speak on this item, please use the raise hand feature or press star nine if dialing in by telephone. Seen none. That concludes public comment. Road covered. District one. High district to. By. District three. I. District four. I. District five. I. District six. District seven. I. District eight. I. District nine. Hi. Motion is carried. Thank you. I've had a request to do ordinance 18 and 19. So let's go to Ordnance 18, the first reading, I believe.