Recommendation to adopt resolution declaring results of the City of Long Beach Primary Nominating Election held April 12, 2016 for the purpose of nominating and/or electing candidates for three offices on the City Council from District Numbers 2, 6 and 8; and
I should have known that. Yeah. Thank you. Anyone else it? Fine. Okay, then we can move on. Okay. We have one item and we're going to take three separate votes. And first of all, I'd like to have the crow, please, with me those three items. Communication from City Clerk Recommendation to adopt resolutions declaring the official results of the Long Beach primary nominating election. The first resolution is declaring the results of the primary nominating election held in the city of Long Beach, California, on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. For the purposes of nominating and or electing candidates for three offices on the City Council from districts numbers two, six and eight, and directing the city clerk to issue a certificate of election to the candidates declared to have been elected at the primary, nominated like election resolution to certifying the results of the consolidated primary nominating election held in the city of Long Beach, California, on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. For the purpose of nominating and or electing candidates for two offices on the Board of Education of the Long Beach Unified School District, and for two offices on the Board of Trustees of the Long Beach Community College District. Resolution three Proclaiming, Calling and giving notice and giving notice of and providing for the holding of a general municipal election to be held in the city of Long Beach on Tuesday, June 7th, 2016. Designating the ballot, listing and adopting provisions relating to translations of and charges for the costs of candidates statements. Thank you. We can take it behind the wheel if you like, but we can have a vote on each one of these three motions at this time. And public comment and then answer. Fine. Is there any public comment? Okay. All right. Frances, Emily Dyson, Harris. I reside in District one and I'm absolutely elated. That District two, six and eight. You have. What a challenge. But I know that you were called and what a lot of work. But you have such a passion and commitment. I just admire you and what an absolute asset you are to the city of Long Beach. Thank you, Francis. Anyway, instead of Mr. Tyson. Sure. I'd like to just take this opportunity to say thank you to our city clerk. I know this was a new experience, first time election here in Long Beach, and I think it went off without a glitch. I know you, too. You and your your your team and the city clerk's office. I know. See many of them sitting up here. I know you had a great deal of community volunteers to help make this successful, this election process successful. I certainly wish we can get more people to participate in the process, and that's the challenge that we can work on together over the next few years. I'm certainly committed to doing that, and I I'll just be remiss if I didn't say that I was pleased with the outcome. So thank you very much. Like that. And excuse me a minute, Miss Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes. I just wanted to thank our city clerk and our city clerk team. I think they did an amazing job, especially under her leadership for the very first time. So congratulations to all of you for a great, you know, your great work. And, of course, congratulations to our new and new newly reelected colleagues. It's been a pleasure working with every single one of you, but especially you two. And it's been I'm glad that we get, you know, four more years with you. So thank you. Thank you. I don't a damn about your rank. Thank you, I guess. Acting mayor. Acting. Acting. Acting tonight? Yes, sir. I want to also learn my voice to congratulating the two members of my city council colleagues, Mr. Austin and Mr. Andrews, for their reelection. It's been a great two years for me, working with you and looking forward to another two years, at least for the present, when we're going to do this again in two more years in 2018. But I'm sure that the city clerk by that time will be a veteran of elections in Long Beach, which is going to do it again this coming June for a runoff election there, much smaller than what you had to deal with the primary, but challenging nonetheless, because that's the nature of elections. So I want to congratulate you on a job well done for this time around. You did it in the primary, which is great. And the two candidates were launched a very formidable campaign that resulted in this election in the primary. So congratulations, both of you, and congratulations to the other candidates. But I guess we'll be dealing with that in just a moment. Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Turner. Thank you. And I'd like to echoed those sentiments of my colleagues in congratulating Mr. Austin and Mr. Andrews. And again, special congratulations for doing it in the primary ended. Andrews for making history in winning a in in the primary. And I'd just like to say I did my part. I tried to lighten the load on the city clerk by not having an election in the fourth District. And I think that worked so well. We had to try it again in four years that same way. So thank you very much and congratulations. Thank you very much. And also, I'd like to give my comments on the first of all, I'd like to thank the city crew for being so helpful and doing that count because it came out in my favor. But those are the type of things that I think you will see here in the city of Long Beach. I know it's your first time, but if you have candidates like Austin and I, you're going to always have to sit around and watch some votes come in from anywhere and everywhere. But I still want to thank you, and I'm glad they came in from my district. I don't think anyone want to do another term or trying to do a write in, but if you do that, I'm just telling you it's no easy chore. But you can do it if you claim it. And I want to thank all those individuals out there who supported me and especially our city clerk who was there. I don't know whether you got any sleep or not, but I know they were really pushing you. But thank you again. And I'm like to have that. I'm so glad that the counts came out in my favor and that's about it. Thank you again. Okay. Well, anyone from the public like to come up and say a few words as any. Who? Who are they? Are they? Who are you. Mr. Acting Mayor? We have a number of candidates for our management assistance program. They're going through her tour of the city, and they're all wanting to join the city of Long Beach. And they've got their assessment tomorrow. So we thought we'd since they were here, and this is a monumental occasion, we'd invite them just to come in and witness for a couple of minutes before they move on to the next event. Would you like to come down and say a few words? No, they would not. Because we're trying to we're trying to extend this council meeting. They're never the short. So don't you ever get this idea. If you folks would like to attend the airport meeting with us at 6 p.m.. Feel free to drive up there. That's where three of us would be. Okay. Oh, well, fine then. Okay. We're going to stay. Can I add a friendly amendment? Yeah, you already have, Kerry. That's. That's one that will allow us to keep this going. You guys won't have anything to do. Mr. Orson would like to put that in, but as we have spoken and everyone, I want to thank everyone for coming out here today, especially the individuals who didn't. We had our council meeting last night, but this was a special meeting. Was Scott together? And you see our mayor, the vice mayor is not here and and I sit in when they are not here. But I want to thank you individuals who for coming down and getting a chance just to see just this is just the tip of the iceberg, what you're looking at today. We usually are here about one or 2:00 in the morning when we started for. So if you want to become a part of this, just kind of get ready for it because it's exciting. It really is. When you can have all your constituents and people just call you every day and tell you what a bad job you did. And so it's okay, but you just kind of let that that'll soon pass too. So thank you guys really seriously for coming down and getting this quick moment of Sam and Francis. You are the greatest. Come back up. Yeah, we have plenty of time. Branches we climb. We don't get out of Detroit. Yes, we have. We voted yet. Not yet. Oh, I just want to say and I couldn't sit there and not say this, commending the clerk as well as the city. There's quite a number of people in the districts that are seniors and persons with disabilities and absentee ballots coming in but was so awesome as the city has a need ballot, which persons with disabilities were able to use and that that machine is quite phenomenal. And the reason I know all about it, when I served on the city's Advisory Commission on Disability. So I believe by having that we've moved forward and they're going to hopefully get more about machines. But I want to commend you for the job well done. I just could not sit here because more and more people with disabilities and I would say half and I don't really like the word disability because I believe we all have a purpose on this earth. We all have a gift. We have a choice of either fulfilling or just sitting back and not doing much of anything. But I believe by having certain things like that, it kind of helps a person to be able to be involved. And I just want to thank you for that. Thank you again, writers. And when you. Thank you, Francis, for those comments. And you raise another point that I meant to say, but I did not get too excited with a congratulate congratulating my colleagues. You know, the voter turnout, again, very disappointing, what, just over a tad or 10%. You know, we still we have our elections committee. I hope that once we get together soon, we can address that. We still have a long way to go in terms of voter education and voter participation. 10% is I can't say it's unacceptable because at least those 10% participated in the process. But that's another 90% that have not and are not and not engaged in the political process. I know that one of the things at play that comes into play is the fact that there is a possibility of voter fatigue. You know, we had elections here in April, June and November, at least this year and next year. And in two years, we're going to do it again for our for our. Midterm elections as well as our are general elections where we get the districts, including the mayor and city attorney and city prosecutor and city charter so we can do something between to address our elections between now and then. It would be great, but I hope that we can work with the city clerk in devising some kind of new ideas or new ways to get voters engaged in our election process, because this has been very the last two elections have been very, very dismal. And it's just it's just very, very low, low turnout. And you know what that means? 10% of the people control 90% of what we're doing here in the city council. So I hope that we can speak further on this at our elections committee and try to address the turnout, because it's just it just it just means something needs to be done to improve our turnout. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes. And I was just going to address that as well, that at the I think we spoke briefly of the city clerk. And I had to address that to talk about a recap of this past election and then look forward to digging into some of the data as to what we can do going forward. I know she has some great ideas and I think collectively we can come up with some other ideas that we can bring forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Awesome. Well, I have to say, it's very encouraging to hear our election committee make some commitments to to dig in and try to help with their voter turnout. I think I had to take away from this election that not all of our residents are privileged to the same level of information, not only from public offices, but also from our newspapers. And I think as election committee, one of my recommendations would be to engage them a little bit more. We you look at a district like mine that has, you know, a very, very diverse. You want. People in one half of the district are more informed about what's happening in a community that they don't even live in. Right. Then the people who actually live in the community and think that when you have that that that level of disparity in terms of information, it opens the door for misinformation in campaigns. And so we ran into quite a bit of that this time around. And I'm certainly committed to working with you, my colleagues, and anybody interested to improve in how we communicate and engage residents. I mean, because that's the there's a I would say there's a big void in terms of information, and it creates a situation where folks are disenfranchized in the process. So I think we can improve that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eisen. Okay. You guys know we have no more opportunities to do that anymore. No one else you'd like to speak again? You can come up all day long. Okay. Since you don't. Okay. Well, now we will not. We will skip the announcements. Oh, no. Well, let's take this vote to make us legal. Okay. Three votes. Three votes, you guys. Okay. For the record, you're voting on the. First resolution at this time. There was a motion and a second. Okay. Please cast your vote. Motion carries.