Recommendation to adopt Plans and Specifications No. R-7021 for the DeForest Wetlands Restoration; award a contract to Ford E.C., Incorporated, of Los Angeles, CA, in the amount of $4,872,567, and authorize a 20 percent contingency in the amount of $974,513, for a total contract amount not to exceed $5,847,080; and authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contract, including any necessary amendments thereto, and consider Categorical Exemption No. 15-115 (15301, Class 1).  (Districts 8,9)
Report from Public Works. Financial Management and Parks. Recreation and Marine recommendation to award a contract to Ford SC for the DE Forest Wetlands Restoration for a total contract amount not to exceed 5.8 million districts eight and nine. This was the second item. There was a request for Mr. West. We can do a short presentations and get to the motion. Yes. Presentation by our public works. Director Arthur Malloy, and our city engineer. Sean Crombie. Honorable mayor, honorable council members. The item before you is an approval for for a contract so the city can enter into a contract with Ford E C Inc. for construction of the forest wetlands restoration. The project is too big to be done. Consist primarily of ecological restoration of approximately 39 acres of detention and storage base and along the east side of Los Angeles River, between the Alamo Boulevard and Osgoode Street. The basin is owned and operated by the Los Angeles County Flood Control District. Specifically, construction will consist in the removal of excess material resulting from grading modification, improvement of storm drain hydraulics through sediment removal and regrading of the lawful channel wetlands creation. Grading of the floodplain where feasible with habitat enhancements, construction of instream structures for grade control and habitat, including step pools and water control. We are structures removal of non-native vegetation, creation of the vernal pools, including grading and installation of pond liner, procurement of stock plants and maintenance for planting with native species, planting of native species, hydro seeding and hand seeding design and installation of an irrigation system and soil testing. The total construction cost is approximately $4,872,000. We are requesting a 20% contingency for unforeseen conditions conditions of 974,000, totaling an in 5,000,848 $47,000. The construction will take place between January 2016 and probably will end end of September of 2017. This concludes my comments, and we're here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. There is a there's a motion and a second for this item. Councilman Austin is making the motion. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move in support of this motion. I'm excited about this project because it has been a long time coming. The forest wetlands will be a transformation of nearly two of a two mile stretch in North Long Beach from encompassing a number of neighborhoods the Sutter Nature neighborhood, the Virginia Village area up to the Forest Park. We're adding 39 acres of open space along the L.A. River to provide passive recreation, including walking, biking and equestrian trails. We'll also be creating habitats for numerous wildlife species, as well as recharging groundwater supplies like the Dominguez Gap wetlands that are south of the Alamo. The forest well as will become a destination for nearby residents, as well as nature lovers, tourists and anyone looking for a great place to take a stroll and enjoy a little bit of our our nature in our city. From dilemma up to Long Beach Boulevard, the overpass there. There will be a variety of habitat types, including vernal pools, native grasslands, coastal scrub, oak, sycamore and woodlands. There will also be a bicycle staging area beneath the L.A. I'm sorry, the Long Beach overpass to connect the wetlands with the L.A. River bikeway. I'm really looking forward to getting this project underway. But just one question. Mr. Malloy in it says that the project will be completed by September 2017. Is there any way we can get this done any sooner? This is a very large project. If we can entice the contractor to finish the project sooner, we will do that. But it takes time to do the lot of grading and a lot of structures have to be constructed. So I would think that it's a reasonable time period for a 39 acre project. Well, I for one, I can say that I think I've had monthly briefings with public works as well as Parks, Recreation and Marines on this particular item. Since I was elected three and a half years ago and watching the progress to finally get to this point is a real accomplishment. I want to commend both you and Mr. Scott. Scott, I'm sorry for their for your for your efforts and your department's hard work on this. I know that there was a lot of collaboration with other other agencies to get us to this point. And this is a real victory for North Long Beach and the city of Long Beach as a whole. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also want to join Councilman Austin in these remarks. This is truly a historic moment for North Long Beach, and it's difficult to really understand how much time and how many years have gone into this. So so to help sort of illustrate that, we do have we invited the last three generations of council people in District nine to come down to speak about this. And and I'm happy to say that we do have member Val Large here. I want to I want to just if if you allow Mr. Mayor, I'd like to allow councilmember former vice mayor to just give some remarks. From a historical context, I got a chance to serve as a chief of staff for a previous ninth district councilmember. And when we came in, the project was already ten years old when the last councilmember came in. So I'm hoping a councilmember version is give a little historical context for us. Perfect. Well, it's perfect. We're going to public comment now on it. So our former vice mayor will be the first one to speak. Thank you, Councilmember. Mr. Mayor. Members of the council honored to be here. It's two weeks in a row now. I feel like I belong back behind her. Dias. I just couldn't escape. 35 years ago. A community known as the Forest Park community had a dream of making a. Nature trail between the gap of the Forest Park and the Los Angeles River banks. My predecessor, Mr. Schulz, before he was on the city council and the community went out and got a nursery to donate over 300 trees. And as a community, we planted those trees along that gap. We call it. The the forest. Forest Trail. The forest bark trails. Now, remember, that was 35 years ago. I was much younger. Everybody in that community was much younger. Some of you on this list. Were just starting. School. We worked hard. Every couple of months we would go into that area and we would clean it out. We'd place the trees. But there was no city funding, no county funding at all for the maintenance of the trail. When I came on council in 2002, I worked with council member Frank Colonna, who was a member of the Mountain, a conservative river conservancy. And in 2003, we got $3 million from that organization to get the plans together. That was 2003, but 2004 we had plans and those plans for the wetlands have been. There ever since. So I'm grateful. And thankful that we're finally going to see after 13 years of actually having plans, we're finally going to have the wetlands of the forest wetlands again. If you guys can hurry it up, I'd like to see it. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. It's been a long 35 year process for the city, for the community of the Forest Park. And we're looking forward to be able to walk the trails and safety over the next couple of years. Thank you. Mr. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Austin, for finally bringing this forward in cabinet come to fruition. And I thank the council again. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Laurie Angel. I live in North Long Beach for 58 East Platt Street and I was involved in redevelopment for about 16 years. And this is a continuation of the Dominguez gap, which is something that we all were interested in, as well as the development along the L.A. River. The only thing I want to mention, I mean, I'm really looking forward to the project. I think everybody is. I think it's going to be a huge improvement for the area, make it much more appealing for people to go out there. But you have equestrian trails that was mentioned, but they stop at the Alamo. So the actual trail that's supposed to continue through and go all the way up to Sacramento or up to San Francisco, wherever the heck it goes, it stops at Del Amo because the trail doesn't go through. So if there is a way to put in some kind of a signal for the equestrian folks so they can actually use the trail, they're kind of a forgotten group and they need to have some representation, too. So if that could be considered, that would be great. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Mm. Good evening. And Cantrell and I first discovered the DeForest Park Trail with the El Dorado Audubon. We found a lot of rare and unusual birds there. And and hearing that you're going to be taking out non-native plants. I hope that doesn't include the old growth trees that are there, even though they're non-native, especially like the eucalyptus. They are well used by birds for foraging and roosting and nesting. Also, I heard that this is going to start in January and I know you're anxious to get this started, but I would like to remind you that the birding season is January through September. And so if there is any removal of trees, this would. Interfere with the. Birdy breeding time for the birds. So I hope that's been taken into consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, everyone. My name is Darlene Groom. I live in the Forest Park. I am Hispanic. They speak about the 13 years it's taken to get this program underway. Well, I've been here living in the Forest Park for 13 years. I understand a lot of the things and the problems that some people are having. But I live there. I see the wildlife that walks through the streets. I can look out my window any morning. I may see a a. Vulture. Rabbits, all of those there walking down the street, but they're walking on the concrete. What a great idea this is to reinvent our the forest wetlands, bring it back to life, make it what it should be, and give our children here in Long Beach something other to look at than the concrete. We need to. Give them the. Experiences that they won't otherwise have. If we don't do these things. I thank you for your time, and I appreciate all that you do for us. Thank you. And our last speaker, please. But we have another one coming. Good evening. My name is Dan Press Burg. I'm the president of the de Force, the Forest Neighborhood Association. Good evening, honorable mayors, mayor, council members and staff. This is a great opportunity for us. This is a great. Plan that's going to be happening here. We love the idea. I remember when we I had hundreds of meetings with Val and Frank Callaghan over this and just trying to get money for this. It's an amazing thing. Everybody that I know of in our area is ecstatic. We're looking forward to it. Can't wait to break break ground. Hopefully it'll be in December before nesting time. So anyway, we'd like to thank you and thank you for all you do. Thank you. Please. Good evening. My name is Renee Lawler. I live in the seventh district. I have spoken previously in out for the equestrian community and so I won't review all of the comments that I've made on October 20th and November 3rd, but I do encourage you to review those detailed comments in support of the equestrian community and the historic trail preservation and our needs. And for those of you who are here, who have not heard me speak in the past, I encourage you to review both that verbal and written comment. I'm here to supplement those comments and just encourage that with this project and every other project along the L.A. River that there be detailed review and concern or address and of the equestrian community's needs. There continue to be deficient connections for a continuous trail experience. So you have impacted a cumulative negative impact on the mobility of the equestrians in a safe, continuous ride experience. And as another speaker mentioned, there is not a connection in this plan to tie it with the prior Deming ESCAP Wetlands Project that was completed. So what you end up with are or corrupted interrupted segments of trails that are not being adequately addressed. I've touched in the past and I won't go into detail about it, but these are trails that date to the 1700s. You have new state legislation AB 530, which addresses the fact that the L.A. River Master Plan is 20 years antiquated and needs to be reviewed. And one of the biggest review deficiencies of the L.A. River Master Plan, this particular project, the DeForest Wetlands and all of the other related projects in the River Recreation Area, is the fact that the equestrian community and all the impacts these projects have are not really completely being addressed. There's safety signage that needs to be included. We've discussed that on one project, but it does need to be incorporated into this project. And I support wetlands and I support open space and I support development that's planned and and done thoughtfully. But this particular community has continued to be ignored and not heard. And even though we are a small number, our numbers continue to dwindle because of the fact that we have not been included in projects both on a large scale and individually on a small scale. So I request that you consider my comments from the past and do incorporate better planning for the equestrian users. Thank you very much. Mr. Good, you are good. You click as the address, which is not in the ninth district, but I fully support it. I pass and look at that area every time I go up and coming down on the blue line. And I think it's a fantastic project. And I would hope, I would hope that to take into consideration the views of the good and curtail content drought control relative to the bird season. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I'd like to think that we've got the competence and the the energy and the understanding sufficient to move forward with that without destroying that habitat. An interesting thing that I never knew about, one, it was just about, as a matter of fact, eight weeks ago when the going down on the blue line, somebody who's apparently lived here for a long time, told me way back when that they used to come up and do and catch lobsters. In those waters. And this was before. And the point was just before or just. About 2 minutes before the Wardlow station down there. So it'll be really interesting to see if we can bring it back to something approaching that state. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We're done with public comment. Councilman Richardson. So just one more thing I need to do. I want to make sure that we do acknowledge and publicly thank the funders. It was a funding funding that took all this time. So San Gabriel in Lower Los Angeles, Rivers, the Mountains Conservancy, Los Angeles County Regional Parks and Open Space District, California Natural Resources Agency and the State of California Coastal Conservancy. So important that we acknowledge them. Just to state we're breaking ground December 1st. So as before the nesting season and the reason we have two years construction is because that was taken in consideration as well as establishment periods. So all those things have been taken to consideration. I hope to see you all at the groundbreaking. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that members, please, Gordon, cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. Absolutely. A round of applause. Thank you all for that. And we're going to go we're going to go straight into our hearing, which is which is which is at the top of the agenda here. So just as a reminder of what the hearing looks like, because it's different than than a council item will have the