Recommendation to request City Manager create a child care pilot program for meetings in the Civic Chambers, using $3,000 of Second Council District One Time District Priority Fund. Additionally, request the Mayor to put a time certain for all family-related policies to be heard before Council.
Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here. We're going to hear. She went 28 and 23. I'm 23 is communication from Cam Smith appears Councilmember Durango Councilmember Richardson recommendation to create a childcare pilot program for meetings in the civic chambers using 3000 of second Council District one time District Priority Fund. Thank you. Councilman Pearce. Yes. Yes. I want to say that this is an idea that's been around for a while. I think a bunch of us council members have kicked around what it would look like to have child care provided at city council meetings. We know that in the city we often have families come to city council meetings. We often have families that bring their their children up front. I know when we had our breastfeeds month that there was a packed house. And so we wanted to provide a divide by nine funds that would allow us for a pilot program. And the reason we wanted to do a pilot program is so we could make sure that we track how many people from outside the city are using these services and then how many city employees. We want to make sure that this is something that's available right to city employees as well. And so I want to thank the city manager's office for working with us. I want to thank my staff for working with us. I look forward to hearing from the community members. Thank you. Councilmember Durango. Now you got to remember, Austin, I want to show my strong support for this item. I know people probably do not recall, but back in the back, in the seventies and eighties, even through the nineties, there were two classifications city called child childcare providers. And it was a program that was run through the Parks and Recreation Department that offered child care throughout the city. It was a classification that we tested during the employment process. Of course, after budget crises along the years, that program went away. So I want to thank Councilmember Pearce for bringing this forward. It's a much needed service that the city should provide. And we'll start here with the city council meetings and hopefully over the years we can grow our child care program back again into the glory that it was back in the in the late 1780s. Thank you. Let's remember, Mongo. Thank you. I just had a couple of quick questions. Are we thinking that this would be licensed childcare or babysitting? And how would it be paid for? Would there be a stipend? When people pay to A to utilize it? Would there be a differentiation between employees that need it versus. Public members that need it. I just want to make sure that some some of our employees work council meetings and some of our employees work during the day. And so I just didn't want there to be a. Favoritism or any of that to the staff that support us. So the recommendation is using 3000 a second District Council one time funds. So my officers should be paying for this. The pilot program is for city council meetings and meetings held in this chamber. And so if somebody requests during those hours of child care because they're attending a meeting in this chamber, they would be able to request that per the item through the city clerk 48 hours prior to the child care services that we have lined up actually carry the insurance required by risk management. It is child care. And so you could bring your child regardless of age? No, not regardless of age from 2 to 13. So if your child is two years old, up to 13, you would be able to bring them here during business hours. I mean, not business hours during a meeting in this chamber to have child watch, we have a secure location that our city manager has worked to make sure we have a site that is appropriate. And I think that answers your questions. Well, I get $3,000, but child care is expensive. So would the person who's dropping off the child also pay like a a deposit or a. It would be completely free. It's completely free to the public and to our city employees that need it during those hours. And you use the word child care, but. Would it be? Because I think child care, at least again, it's been a long time since I worked in child care, but I did work in child care. There's like age separations by group, right? So when you have child care at a facility like something like this, that is it's done in public meetings in other places. Very often it is it's not that complicated. They bring a couple of different people. They are licensed. They have the insurance that they need and it's based on request. So if you have a request for two people, for two kids, then you have one staff person. If there's another request, there's another staff person. We're allocating $3,000. If that money runs out ahead of time, that is the time that will bring it back to this council to discuss. We've allocated this based on the number of of hours that we think there will be requests and added an additional amount to cover on top of that. Okay. And so the the caretakers would be licensed, but we're not trying to license a site on a child care facility onsite. Not at this time. But I would love to see that in the middle of this. But in between the library and here, when the middle part gets developed, I think that having a child care facility there that would be accessible to city employees would be absolutely something that we should strive towards. I ask a lot of these questions because I've recently researched a little bit around being a county employee and having child care available to employees in that model. It is a licensed site and it is available to employees, but it also is available to the public and there's some preferential variances. And then there's also a recommended donation that allows the program to sustain itself over time for a longer period of time. And so I was just kind of trying to better understand. Especially coming from a budget perspective. $3,000 is a great donation to get it started. I just recognize that depending on the criteria that we start the pilot that visioning might have been on on a go forward basis. So the pilot you're hoping for lasts through. How many months? It's a 12 month pilot. Oh, $3,000 for 12 months. Yes. I don't want to go back and forth. I can reread the item for you if you like. Respectfully, I have the opportunity to ask questions. I didn't appreciate that a lot. You ask all your questions and then I'll queue up again to answer them. Okay, so I'm here back. Let me let me just make sure we're where we're at. Did the motion get read in the. We haven't had any public comment yet, but the moment. Okay. Councilmember Turanga ah you did second. Okay. Let me do the public comment. Okay. And then we'll come back and this order, Larry Goodhue, Stefan Burson, Suelo, Maricela de Rivera, Lily Ocampo and Carmen de Marzo. Please come forward in that order. Very good to hear the suggestions before. You are certainly good. I'm going to suggest this also. It's sitting, examining. Hiring someone trained in mental care to help guide some of our more problematic council members. I think that would benefit. In fact, if we had that long ago, we wouldn't have the problems that we have now. So if you're going to do this, let's go all the way and get some mental help for. Particularly the councilperson from the second district. And. Also. I'll hold it at that for the time. Well, with the exception also, of course, of the mayor. You know, he's facing the prison sentence he's going to be facing. He's going to need some mental health. Thank you. Thank you. Also, Madam Clerk, I know we have over ten speakers who goes down to thank you. Our next speaker. Stephanie. Awesome. So Democratic Socialists of America, Long Beach branch coming here in support of the strong support of this item. This is an issue of an excess of accessibility and public access to that. You had two public meetings. I believe $3,000 is the least amount of money that you could possibly delegate to this, especially given the importance of making sure that families were represented at these meetings. We here at our organization, we prepared childcare at every single meeting because we believed that having our children there is accessible and required part of making sure the democratic process. Whatever is necessary to make sure that this goes through. I think that you should be pursuing this because this is a basic issue of small business, small D democracy. Thank you and have a good day. Thank you very much, Marcella Rivera. There's two of us and one hiding. Hello. Good evening. I'm Maricela de Rivera, ninth District resident, the co-founder and director of. Long Beach Breastfeeds and a city commissioner. And I am so very grateful. To. To Council Member Pearce. A council member Turanga and my council. Member Rex Richardson for bringing this forward. I have tried to model much as my grandparents did for us and then my parents civic engagement. For my wild. Non whispering children. I think it's really important that all people in our society are welcomed and included and whether that is very young children, very old people, people with different abilities, physical, cognitive and different languages. Just everything that I've seen today in this meeting is why I love Long Beach and I'm really excited about this program. I know that running a group that hovers around a thousand local Long Beach women breastfeeding and raising children in the city, I can say that civic engagement is something that everybody's really interested in and this is going to help. And I really, really appreciate you and your inclusion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Online. 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Thank you. Hello. My name is Carmen. The Muscle, a grandmother and caregiver to three beautiful children and a member of Best our central languages leadership team best, our central Long Beach. We provide childcare to over 60 individuals and their families so that they are able to develop their leadership and connect to important resources and information in the city. Oftentimes we connect our members to advocacy opportunities such as these. However, city meetings are often inaccessible, especially because children get restless after waiting for so long. I've personally brought my two grandchildren with me to these meetings and have experienced what it is like for them to get restless and tired. So we were happy to hear that the city has taken into account the many barriers parents and caregivers face when trying to advocate for their families and looking into providing child care. Thank you for this policy and I hope to have childcare provided the next time I come. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, my name is Lilia Campo, and I want to thank Councilwoman Jeanine Pirro, Jeanine Pirro and Robert Otunga in some form for bringing that item forth, because it is always better when we come and talk to you to know that our kids, we're going to have we're going to be in a place where they're not going to be like call or they're going to have a place where to play and to sit or to lay down if they feel, I hope, because right now my kids were with somebody that it was taking care of thing. But since you guys closed that outside and it's kind of cold, so I will really appreciate if you use your support for this item and. That will help to get more public anger and civic engagement. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next five speakers, Andrew Manzano, Maria Lopez, Jeremiah Roseboro and town and city to really please come forward in that order. Andrew Manzano, Maria Lopez, Jeremiah Roseboro. And Town and city really. Hello. My name is Andrew Montano with Long Beach Forward supporting the best central Long Beach Initiative. We would like to extend our thanks to the council members who sponsored this item. I remember last year in October, we brought parents out to support the LBC strategic plan, and many of the parents had to leave because their children were extremely tired. It's important we move all. It's important we remove all barriers to participation, whether it's language, access or child care. And when these barriers aren't removed, we are only allowing a certain demographic to be civically engaged. There is language in the agenda item that states all family related issues be put to the front of the agenda . I would like to highlight that issues around housing, immigration, environment and so much more are intersected with family issues. So lastly, thank you all for providing this item and I look forward to more parents turning out in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. I'm sorry. I'm looking at the wrong list. I'm really Lopez. Good evening. My name is Maria Lopez. I'm the director. Of Community Organizing for Housing, Long Beach and the Long Beach Tenants Union. I'm also a very proud daughter of a single mother who worked really hard to give us food on our plate. Our shelter, pretty much our means to live and sadly was unable to be active in my school, was unable to be active even in my soccer games. And so when we talk about the work that we do in organizing, everything is centered on families. Everything is centered on the ability to bring the most vulnerable families that are struggling, complex situations, to bring truth and power to their stories. But they are unable to do that because we lack affordable childcare and accessible childcare and meetings like these. Right. It is important that if we center families in our policies, we also center them in the actions that we take on a daily basis, like meetings like this. Right. And so I really applaud the fact that we're taking on consideration starting a pilot program. Thank you, Janine, for the money. It shows a lot of pretty much proactive ness from your district and from yourself. And so I would encourage that from everybody else. And also realizing that family issues are interconnected. Like Andrew said, we have complex families and we're trying to have complex dialogs to be able to best serve them. So thank you today for your time. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Jeremiah how you doing, mayor? City council. How y'all doing? Most y'all know me. I'm a single parent. And in order for me to be in the in the room, in order for me some decision to be made, I have to be here. And I can't be here if I have to watch my child and we have to sit here for 2 hours. She gets restless, tired, sleepy, wants can be run around, can't make noise, can't do nothing. So therefore, I have to leave. Most of you guys who have kids, you know this. So this is this is a lot of a lot of common sense. So let's just put it all together, you know? So I'm trying to raise my two daughters and also trying to be civically involved in some of the decisions is being made that affects us. So I can't be in here being here. Listen to the beautiful mayor and the city council with these rules and regulations that I have to listen to and be a part of and watch my daughter at the same time. So let's use our common sense. Ladies and gentlemen, peace and love. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremiah. And tell. Good evening. I'm in. Hello. My name is. I'm told that I'm falling asleep at the mamba out of my state of central language. And at a rate the body body over in a healing center and then at least rewarded and wanted for posterity. Avenue, Long Beach, California. Nice little Israel 4 a.m.. The murder of the four children I hope is in danger. The City Council so many time when advocated with no Jew see, or when it was Cambodian genocide. I remember day I had taking my son with me to meeting with a different group and always the childcare. I think Turkey is a city council is important for family that to come and help the dear boy had to the this meeting sometime sometime when we come to the meeting there is no one to take care of them at home and then how to bring down is we want to parent to be and getting engagement with the city. We need to have the family especially when children get boring. Please provide childcare at the city council and under city meeting. Thank you. Thank you. So truly. Well, good evening, Mayor. And good evening, all the city council members. My name's Atari. I live here and work here in central Long Beach. The reason I'm here tonight is trying to advocate for parents that lack of childcare. Say, example, like in the city council, we need a childcare service provider for the woman that family that attend city council meetings. Because I work in the community, I often seen moms and families that they are pressing about the issues and they want to attend the city council, city council to address the issues, but they cannot be here. So working in the community, I often hear a lot of story and also lack of childcare. Service provider to a woman who just having children and want to go back to work of woman who are on public service and want to go back to work. So this very important not just for the city council meeting and also for across the board, across the city in any meeting so that the city can provide childcare. Please. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Councilman Austin. Actually, Councilman, let me let me go back to Councilwoman Mongo because she had the floor when we went to public comment. So, Councilman Monroe. Thank you. A couple of things. I'm a huge supporter of childcare. I actually worked in childcare. I want to take a first. Moment to think. But fell out of language. Breastfeeds. I'm a member of Lemmy's Breastfeeds. I read the stories sometimes at 3:00 in the morning when I'm breastfeeding. I'm also a pumping mom, so I often leave from here and go in the back. I want to thank acting city manager Mr. Modica, who, when we moved into the new building, quickly recognized there wasn't a breastfeeding option on this floor and made one available to me in the back immediately. And so I really want to appreciate that childcare is important. The logistics of what we talk about and what we decide to go forward with is also very important. I heard a couple of comments related to. Low income families. We have lots of resources available. And if the the child care provided is child care, not child watch, there's funding available. And so the types of questions that I'm asking aren't to be critical of the program, but more from my background and experience in working in licensed child care, starting a licensed child care site from nothing, and working through the CHC and again and all the different programs that are available, I think it's important that we be sure to leverage as much funding as is possible. To keep a program like. This going on an ongoing basis because $3,000 couldn't run my sight for a month. And so I recognize that this is just at night and that's great, but I see a bigger long term. I know that when we were building the Civic Center, I was approached by a couple of different licensed childcare facilities and asked what the vision was, was their space set aside and all of those things, what rent would look like, and those aren't within our purview. We handed that off to economic development. But as a mom and as a daughter of a single mother, I've been to a many, many meetings like this. And I think that child care is important, but we just have to make sure that we're using the right words and creating the correct expectation, because what I also am concerned about is the expectation that $3,000 is going to go very far. I think that it's also important for us as a council to look at ways for you to engage and be a part of the meeting very actively without sitting here for 5 hours. And so we need to think about that, too, whether it's Facebook Live or we have public comment, you can submit in advance. But what does that look like and is it engaging? Because oftentimes it's not. And so I think it's a whole a whole picture. So I'm supportive of this item and I look forward to hearing more about it. But I also recognize that. $3,000 might not go very far. And we need to think long term about what our options are in partnering. And so I'd be really interested in partnering with a licensed childcare organization or your child watch program like they have in a lot of our fitness facilities. But but also recognizing that there are programs that will pay for part of it. And so if there is a quote unquote fee for service, there are agencies and entities that will pay for that for them. And so to make sure we know what that is. So thank you. Councilman Austin. Thank you. Thank you. And I appreciate the public comment. I think I also appreciate the the impetus of this item. And, you know, many of you may or may not know my my wife was a staffer here at City Hall for many years. And my kids literally grew up in the old city hall in the back or in the offices while while she was working and I was working. And so the for for city employees, but also for folks going to public to participate, child care is always a consideration. I do agree that the $3,000 is a is generous from the second council district with priority budget. But at the same time I think it's grossly underestimating the cost of what this world will will be. And this is a pilot. So we certainly hope that, you know, we will learn throughout the process. I'm supportive of the item and will support it because I think it merits at least a study to look at the possibilities. But. In my my day job. I also have the opportunity to to work with a licensing program, analysts who who license child care facilities, who inspect child care facilities on a daily basis. These individuals are in and out of homes of providers. And it's not just the provider that it needs to be licensed is the facility that needs to be licensed. And so certainly I expect city management to do their due diligence right and contact the appropriate state agencies and get the right licenses to do this, because it's not as easy as just, hey, you know, there's a room and, you know, and a babysitter to go watch your children. There are liabilities that come with that. And the facility has to be completely up to code four four to protect the safety, obviously, of the kids. And then the the other piece of it is also, do we have any ideal and I'm certainly I'm sure that we don't have of how many. Children or what will be the capacity of such a program? You know, this could it could be three kids. It could be 50 kids. And I think those numbers really make a difference with the licensing agency. So just my thoughts, I'll support this item. I think it's a it's innovative. It's something that, you know, as I see a few children out in the audience today, it will bring more relief to parents who are engaged in the city process. But it does have, I think, some challenges that we need to get some answers to. Thanks. Thank you. I'd like to call on Councilman Pearce. Yes, thank you. So perhaps me talking while there are about 50 people leaving the room made it a little distracting in the beginning. So let me clarify some of the questions for folks. The $3,000 was based on many conversations with the Los Angeles Education Partnership Group that works with Long Beach Forward and often provides child care services to many of those that are in the audience today. That was based on an estimate of 10 hours a month. Now we know that there might be months that we go over. We also know there are months that we never use child care. And so it was based on 10 hours a month. And it is done as a pilot with the idea that we are going to ask them to make sure they share with us all the signs and information. And we've identified the areas that we would like them to to track so that we can say this is what a real program would look like, and that if we get an assessment, you know, that that $3,000 has been used in six months or we're getting a a flag of that, then we can make some adjustments and we can bring something sooner to the council. While this item is just for providing child care during meetings in this chamber, obviously I think all of us would love to see some child care facilities closer in downtown. We've only really had one down here. Most of us have kids and know how expensive that is and that none of those are open at night. And so this is just a quick item to get the ball rolling so that we can start doing that work. There's a lot more work that we can do to make sure families are involved in council meetings. And absolutely, I know many of you guys watch at home, but there are some items like whether it's it's reflow or something like that. You want to be here and you want to be present, but know that this item we did work on, we do have a group that's going to provide that. It's not required to go to an RFP because it's only 3000. That way we could get a pilot program up and running quickly. And again, we did have many conversations with city staff as well as a Los Angeles Education Partnership Group. So I think that that answers those questions. I do want to also point out it is child care. I thought also it would be child watch based on the group and the certifications that they have. It is child care. They do bring everything that they need to the city to be able to entertain those kids and engage them. I'm so sorry that I didn't do a PowerPoint or make it more clear in the beginning, but I'm really excited about this program. I'm excited to put forward some of those funds for this. And Mr. Good, you I never respond to you, but my mental health is tiptop because I have great health insurance here. And I, I go see my therapist every two weeks on Saturday morning. So thank you for your care and consideration every single meeting. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to just comment in support of this item. You know, child care, child watch, whatever it is, it's expensive. I represent a district among the youngest districts in the city, and it's working families, people, they go to work. They want to be engaged in their city, in their in their government, in the decisions that impact their their lives. As we're here making decisions that then do impact their lives. And we have to think about the barriers that keeps people from being engaged in the decision making process. And it's unfortunate that we have to think about children as as as a barrier. But the reality is, you know, babysitters you know, babysitters are expensive and you don't trust, you know, everyone with your children. I don't. We don't. And, you know, not everyone has grandparents, things like that to count on. So if it's important to us as a city that folks have an opportunity to come down, if an issue truly is important to them that we have that service to offer, I think we have to go through the process of exploring it. You know, I agree 3000 is this is certainly going to cost more, but I don't want to sneeze at the fact that a councilperson said, look, you know, we're we're coming up with 3000 as a start. If we find out this costs more, we want to explore what that looks like. So I acknowledge that. Councilwoman, I appreciate you offering $3,000 of your one time district priority funds for this issue. I've seen we've done that on Kiva. We've done a number different programs is an important program. And I'd like to know if if the pilot requires more money so that we can we can talk about that in general . Again, child care is incredibly expensive in general. And I think it's just sort of a standard that we need to we need to begin to think about providing as we as we engage with the public. This is just the cost ultimately of cost of doing business. I don't know that it needs to happen at every council meeting we may need to look at. Sometimes we you can it might be a by request kind of situation. We've done that with language access and other things. We've piloted different things and we're in the new building. We talked council on Mungo mentioned this and I mentioned this to Tom, our city manager earlier. We talked about a child care facility and in conjunction with with the building. So we have been talking about this. And the response was we can explore potentially in the middle block a potential child care tenant there. You know, that may be a few years out. That might make it a bit easier if there's a facility on site that maybe we can contract on Tuesdays to stay open. But in the meantime, I think this is something that we can figure out. It's completely doable. I'm optimistic about this and staff and I want to see you be creative and figure out a way to make this happen. And I don't you know, it will be expensive, but probably not as expensive as as it won't be a number that will be incredibly scary to the city council. All right, thanks a lot. Catherine Tauranga. Thank you. During the interim of May 2nd in emotion and to now I checked with my chief of staff and our budget. Would you be accepting another 3000 for the CD? Seven? Absolutely. Thank you for your positive. Please amend the motion to include another 3000 word Kd7. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Mongo. So just to know next steps. So there's $6,000. Is there going to be a memo coming back to answer? Specifics for us or because there wasn't a contract attached, it was a pilot. Do we have a contract? So we were asking this to be a pilot program with direction to the city manager to be able to to put some of those in to get some of that input from the council on the details and put it together. So we need to understand the insurance. We need to understand whether this was child care versus child watch. We obviously want somebody a qualified and be licensed. The group that was identified is one that we are becoming familiar with that that they do some of this programing. And in fact, workforce development has been looking at using some of them through their federal grant. So we are taking all this information. We would come back with a report and do that research. How many events or how many? How long do we think this is going to last? What's it going to cost? And then we would come back with either a contract or. A purchase order. Thank you. And thank you for mentioning workforce development because they do have funding available for child care. And I'm glad we're going to use that. Thank you. We're going to vote, but we're back. So, Councilman Richardson. I'm not about to offer another three K. Just more comments. So you guys know, separate question about this, folks that I was probably queuing up for. I want to see the pilot kind of get there. But I was going to say, don't we have public agencies that do this within the city? Public entities? So the ones that I'm familiar with is mostly the workforce development. So there and they're starting that process. We do have, you know, if you come into a drop in center or something like that in. A parks, but those those tend to be at parks, you know, very specific. We don't really do it just for public meetings and stuff. So this is a space that we're getting more familiar with. And the council has been asking us about this. So we're going to do the research and let you know what we can do. Okay. Yeah, I just think it would be good if there's already something working that we can deploy here, figure out some economies of scale or cost savings to make it happen. I think it's probably the best, best way to go about it. Thanks a lot. And that partnership with Workforce. Thank you very much for that immersive discussion. Caster votes. Councilmember Pearce comes from member Price. Motion carries. Thank you, James, Nino, Larry Goodhue, Stella, Miguel, Ines and only winter them here. Please come forward. And that order. Is James. Nina here? Please come forward. Yes, go ahead, sir. Can I just set this down right here? Sure.