Recommendation to request City Manager, or designee, to work with appropriate departments to report back to City Council within 30 days on funding a MI VIDA CUENTA COVID-19 Latino Health Initiative. The MI VIDA CUENTA initiative should include sufficient resources for providing continuous health education, equitable vaccine distribution, appropriate food distributions, and mental health care for the Latino Community including undocumented residents.
Thank you. We will move on to item number 12, please. Item 12. Communication from Councilwoman Sunday has Councilwoman Allen, Councilwoman Sara and Councilmember Oranga recommendation to request city manager to report back within 30 days on funding a mia Vita center, COVID 19 Latino Health Initiative. All right. Mayor Garcia, are you handling this? Are you willing to go over after. Just go ahead and start. I'll be. I'll be right back. And, um. Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't have the Q, so we're gonna do a voice motion. We're going to. We're going to send. We're sending the cues over right now. All right. To Matt as we go. Okay, let's do some voice motion so we start discussion. This is Council Member Sunday. So I'd like to make a motion. Okay. So you're recognized as our second. Thank you. And we're all around the council member. And they ask, how do you want to handle. You want to start report? Um, actually, before we get into it, I also wanted to make a quick motion, and I'm an amendment on the motion. I wanted to read that, you know, I would like to request our city manager or designee to work with the appropriate departments and relevant community partners, meaning community based organizations such as fraternal Latinos and Action and other neighborhood associations, so that we can have this item be more of a city and community led health initiative. Fantastic. All right. So we have that and it's been it's been seconded. Anybody else? What's the councilman you're on? I am with you now. Helping your. They gave me a poor support of this item that thank you customers and that has to bring this forward. As we heard earlier during the presentation on our budget items that we brought with the federal relief. There was a chart there that showed you those of communities. Are. Highly impacted. And we saw Latinos are impacted tremendously by the coronavirus and its impact in the community. And so I am fully supportive of this and where we would you need to identify what resources are out there that address these issues. Particularly in these. Hard to reach communities. And we know that there's systemic issues in the Latino community when it comes to vaccinations and how it is contracted. We know that that there are multigenerational families living together, that that doesn't do us any help in regards to controlling the virus, that when they're all together in one location, one place, it makes it tough. So I'm very supportive of the Sacramento Thank you conference and that is we're bringing this port very much needed. All right. Okay. So that concludes comic metals members. And they asked if you have anything else. Yes, actually, I wanted to see if there was any public comment before I continue my comment. Right. I was going to go public next. Is there any public comment on this? Yes, we have. Jessica Quintana, thank you. Jessica Quintana. Jessica Quintana, please. That means yourself. Vice Mayor. That concludes public comment for this item. Okay. I see we have we have Council District two, Councilmember Alan. I thank you, vice mayor and Council Womans and de Haas and Councilmember Turanga and Councilwoman Sara for bringing this item. I am proud to be a co-sponsor of this very important initiative that addresses the disparities in our community with regards to health resources. This pandemic has been anything but fair, and many folks in our most vulnerable communities were hit the hardest. And also many of our workers were undocumented and haven't received any assistance from the federal government. And are also hesitant to even access resources. So this item will lay the find foundation on how we build community resilience. So I'm very honored and happy to support this item. In first the council member during the council members in the House. Well, actually, you know, before you get final comments, we have one more for you from Councilmember Taro. Yes. Thanks, Vice Mayor. I want to thank council members in Doha and colleagues for Councilmember Urunga and Councilmember Allen for supporting this item. I think it's important that we continue to address the community's needs, and I think that it's so crucial that we involve community leaders and nonprofit leaders in this process, because it takes all of us to make sure that we continue to make our community healthy and safe. So thank you very much. All right. Council members and they are you can close us out. Thank you very much. Vice mayor also wanted to make it clear that the intent of this item is not exactly to wait until the 30 days are up to try to do something. As we know, every single day we have Latino residents dying from COVID and many, many families that are being affected by COVID on an on a hourly basis. So, you know, I know that it says on here within 30 days. So I will come up with a plan and I'm looking forward to working with city staff on this. With that said, I know that we're counting down the days that we as as a city, as a nation can go back to, quote , unquote, normal life. And I'm so incredibly grateful for all the work that has been done during this crazy pandemic by our city staff, by city council, by our community. I mean, our true colors have really shown, you know, our compassion has really shown. And I'm very proud of everyone. Something that we must absolutely not lose sight of is the way that COVID has highlighted the inequalities in our city and the work that still lies ahead of us. And we we really need to close that gap. And I know that we're working hard to do so. One of the things that I've been doing is I put together a Latinos contract COVID task force that focuses on on why is there so many disparities right now in the community, in the Latino community, and how we can stop the spread of COVID in the Latino community , which is being affected by COVID the most? And so I think out of this task force, we have had several equity based vaccine clinics throughout the city, and I am so very proud of that and that we've been able to reach those hard to reach individuals like the the grandmas, the grandpas, the uncles, the EMTs that are not computer savvy or cellphone savvy or don't understand the process. But the only way that we've been able to do that is through our community based organizations that I have been working with very closely, including Central China, our Washington neighborhood association, Latinos in Action. When they we all these amazing organizations that have helped be able to reach out to to those in particular those those communities as as vaccines become more available. It is absolutely unacceptable that we allowed the gap to continue. And we have an obligation to provide all the necessary support to ensure that we are prioritizing the health of our Latino residents. I'm grateful for the work that has already been started. And through those efforts, we like I said, we've been able to vaccinate so many, almost a thousand Latinos, hard to reach Latinos in our community. And that is to me, that is significant. And I want to continue to have those. I think that that's going to be very, very important. We know that the process has also demonstrated me the importance of engaging our community partners in this work and and that I think it's beneficial that we continue to have those conversations and that we continue to use our trusted messengers through these community based organizations that really are in the ground, you know, in the ground, working with all of these communities, especially the Latino community, and who who the Latino community already has a built in trust with. So I think that that's very important that we continue to work with them as we develop this health initiative for our Latino community. Also, I know that we had one public comment on this, and she wasn't able to. She was still waiting. I don't know if if you guys can check if she can speak right before this item is voted on. Mary Garcia. Or if we lost her, you know. We can do a public comment again on the we call for her. But I think Jessica's on the line now. So we tried public comment again. Yeah. Give us one moment and try to see if we can get her. Jessica Quintana. It's a cooking timer. Hi. Good evening, Mayor Richardson, members of the city council. City Manager Tom Modica. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight. For the first time, I'm just so inspired and and. Hopeful for. Better days. I've never heard such a council meeting that had so much inspiration and working together. This has been great. I just want to thank council member then the House for bringing forward the movie La Quinta Initiative and Councilmember Roberto Dongo and Councilmember Sorrell. This this initiative is so important. I'm not only the executive director of Center Child, but I've lived in the city of Long Beach for over 56 years. And so living here in the city know I've seen a few things, I've been through a few things and worked in non-profits for over 30 years and been with Center Child for over 20. So through my experience, I've seen us be hit with health and economic emergencies in our city. We heard earlier about. The violence in the eighties and the nineties and, you know, the deaths and injuries that occurred in our city and having to respond to those issues with the with the drugs and alcohol that plague our communities, um, with the mass incarceration, with discrimination against Latinos. And now we're seeing the uptick in, in Asian Pacific Islanders, which is, which is terrible, you know, and this is all due to, due to lack of, of information and access and inclusion. Language barriers. But we have never seen in the history of Long Beach, no health emergency like we have experienced the COVID 19 that has hit the Latino community harder, three times harder than any other community. We've had members in our community not only lose a member, one member of their family, but they have lost several members of their family. This has hit our community not only helped, but but grew economics. And so I just want to thank Councilmember for bringing this item forward. As she has mentioned, the culture, COVID, the task force, has been working very diligently together, putting on Latino clinics in our community, really trying to reduce the barriers of access to the system to be able to get vaccinations are reducing the language barriers and the fears and the myths that happen in our Latino community. So this initiative will not only help with information and accurate information to our community, but also develop it from a thought up model which is so much needed in our community from a thought, our models are evidence based. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. We're going to go customers and they have. Did you have other comments or should they go back to the council? You can go back to the council. Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Council member Ringo. I just wanted to add the council members in the House will also accept reaching out to unite here. They have also been a an organization that's been trying to do a lot of corporate outreach in the hotel workers and the people who are our service workers as well as well. You could include a unite here in that list of the organizations to reach out to. That would be great. Absolutely. Great. I just want to just add just a few remarks. I want to thank particularly Councilman's in the house for working on this. I know that she's been talking about bringing forward a Latino health equity plan or initiative for many weeks and months. And she's been talking about it with staff and with me and with I know other folks on the council and the community. And so I just want to thank her for that. I also want to just thank her and council murang'a for their leadership around the Latinos contract and group working group has been meeting regularly. It's really great to see that group and so many leaders in action and taking on the Cova challenge that the Latino community has been disproportionately impacted by COVID 19. That is something that is real. It is direct the relationship direct when it when it looks when you go back to health care access, when you look at the way a lot of people that are undocumented feel about getting services or about accessing health care and they're scared. And so to have an initiative that focuses not just on the undocumented, but on our immigrant community, our new Americans are full Latino community. Those that have been here that really need that additional support is really important and key. And I think that I just want to thank the councilwoman. I think this is really great. And of course, everyone that's that signed on to this item, but especially to two councilwoman and they have some concern. Murang'a You guys are our true champions for the community. Everyone, I want to thank both of you and, of course, the community groups that have been advocating, in particular Cynthia, Jessica and so many others. So with that, there is a motion and a second. So we'll go ahead and do the roll call the. Councilwoman Sunday. How's everything? I Councilwoman Allen. Hi. Councilwoman Price. I. Councilman Sabrina. Hi. Councilwoman Mango. I Councilwoman Sarah. I. Councilmember Ranga. Hi. Councilman Alston. Hi. Vice Mayor Richardson. Hi. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. We're going to go back to item 13 here. Let me go ahead and get a couple of three other items that are just quick off the calendar here. Really quick. Item 16, Madam Clerk.