Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing; consider appeals from Jeff Miller and Melinda Cotton, Joe Weinstein, Ann Cantrell and Citizens Advocating for Responsible Planning (CARP), the Long Beach Area Peace Network and Anna Christensen, and Gordana Kajer; and Uphold the Planning Commission's decision to adopt resolution certifying Environmental Impact Report 01-16 (State Clearinghouse No. 2013041063), approve a Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program, and approve Site Plan Review, Conditional Use Permit, Standards Variance, and Local Coastal Development Permit entitlements for the construction and operation of the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center, an indoor/outdoor pool facility with an adjacent passive park, cafe, and restroom buildings (Application No. 1405-01) at 4000 East Olympic Plaza. (District 3)
Excellent. Thank you very much. We're we're going to go ahead move on to the hearings. But let's start the meetings here. We're going to do 2/1 and then hearing one. Hearing item two is the pool. Let me go and have the clock read the hearing item. And then I want to just kind of explain the process for everyone. It's an it since it's a hearing and it's a little bit different than a regular agenda item. So, Madam Clerk. Report from Development Services Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, consider appeals and uphold the Planning Commission's decision to adopt resolution certifying IIR zero one Dash 16 Approve the Mitigation, Monitoring and Reporting Program and approve site plan review c p standard variance and local coastal development permit entitlements for the construction and operation of the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center at 4000 East Olympic Plaza, District three. Okay. Thank you. Just so we all know, the order is we will begin, of course, with the staff report. And staff has a pretty extensive report to go through all of the obviously the presentations and the process and the timeline of where we are today surrounding the pool project and after the staff presentation, we will have the appellants or those that actually filed the appeal. Each appellant, the four appellant groups or four separate appellants. Each appellant group will receive 15 minutes to do their appeal. I will. And I did discuss this with with the city attorney. There's one of the appellant groups before tonight asked for an additional 3 minutes. For 8 minutes. That's an Cantrell. So I will allow and control 8 minutes on her presentation. We think that's a reasonable accommodation and and then after all all four of the presentations, three at 15 minutes, one of 18 minutes, we will then go into public comment on the pool and then we will have any additional comments from staff, and then we will from there go back to the City Council for deliberation and action. Okay. So that is a process. It's a lengthy process, but we're going to go ahead and go through through it and hopefully we can get everyone to just stick with with the process and trust off by going to. Mr.. West Thank you, Mayor. Councilmembers. We're here tonight to take another critical step on the Belmont Beach, an aquatic center which began in 2013 when the Belmont pool was closed for safety reasons. This is one of the more exciting and complex projects that we as a city have worked on creating a $100 million aquatics facility for the entire city to enjoy and to use. Long Beach has a strong history of aquatics producing Olympic athletes and a number of aquatic sports. But most of all, this project is for our residents to have a replacement for our legendary Belmont Pool and a place to learn to swim, to be healthy, to be active, and to enjoy the beach . This project would not be possible without the Tidelands dollars that can only be used in the beach areas. So we are thankful for having that as a financial resource. You will hear tonight a very complex analysis of everything that went into design of the Environmental Impact Report. And I want to thank our entire team for the work they have put in to get us to this point. Tonight is not the last that night that you will see the project. It is just another step on the journey to create one of the most unique and spectacular aquatic centers in the United States. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to our assistant city manager, Tom Modica, and also our development services director, Amy voting. So, Tom. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and members of the City Council. If the clerk can bring up our staff presentation, please. Thank you. So, as the mayor mentioned, we have a fairly lengthy staff report that we need to go through to give kind of a project overview and to talk a little bit about this project . Also, the council is sitting and deciding on whether or not to certify an environmental impact report. And so there are things that need to be read into the record. So this will be a fairly detailed report to go through the entire project, the design in the end, the environmental impact document. And so to start off the Belmont Beach, an aquatic center is designed to be a world class facility that serves all aquatic needs. It's designed to serve all neighborhoods, our entire city, as well as the region, state and the nation. As the mayor and the manager mentioned, tonight is another step in this project, an important step, but it is not the final decision. We will be going over the overview of the project. You'll hear from the appellants in public testimony. Then the council will decide on whether to certify the air if they decide to certify the air. The next step will be the Coastal Commission. And then after all of that, it will still return back to the City Council for decisions on whether or not to proceed with this project. So to talk a little bit about the project history, not many of us remember this, or maybe some of us do, but voters actually voted to put the Belmont Pool in its current location. That vote happened in 1962, and it was to set the location of the Belmont Pool, and there was even some eminent domain associated with placing the pool at that location as the as a site was assembled specifically for the Belmont Pool Project. It was constructed and finished by 1968 and served the state's and the region's needs for 45 years. Until in January 2013, the city was forced to close the facility due to seismic issues and to close it fairly quickly due to a loss of water space in the community. This council acted very, very quickly. The council, within a month, had directed staff to not only create a new temporary facility, which was done in record time, about 11 months, which is what you see there today, but also directed staff to design a replacement facility. And so, as I mentioned, the council has seen this project many times in the past. So in February 2013, there was that direction to begin the design. And that actually included some direction on certain elements to be included, including the indoor dining, well, some of the features and to begin that process. The council awarded a contract to Harley Ellis Devereaux and a number of other members of the team in March 2014 to start the design process returned in June 2014 for a study session to really review the project options. And at that point they did something above and beyond. Our normal process is because it was such an important facility with a lot of different needs and created a stakeholder committee representing aquatics groups but neighborhoods and businesses and citywide representation in order to help inform City Staff's recommendations on this project. October 2014 The City Council unanimously approved the programmatic design, which was influenced by that stakeholder committee, and city staff came forward with a recommendation that the Council ultimately were approved. And then in June 2016, the Council saw this again as we went through the conceptual design in the E.R. kickoff. So the Council has established a number of goals for this project. First and foremost, it's to create a facility unlike any municipal aquatics facility on the West Coast. It's a facility that is supposed to be in harmony with the neighborhood. It will employ an iconic and sustainable design. It needs to meet the needs of our local residents. We want it to be able to support competitive events as desired, and ultimately it needs to support the Coastal Act. So taking a look at a little bit of the project, it is a project for all user groups. Again, we want it to serve the entire city as well as the region's needs. There are six main bodies of water which is accommodating all the aquatics needs and will see the design and a little bit. First and foremost, it is designed to be a recreational facility. While it can support competition and competitive events, it is designed to be a recreational facility. It also enhances recreational access over what we had in the past by providing simultaneous use. And by that I mean our product, our pool in the past had served about 90 days a year, competitive events. And when we did that for whether it was high school swimming or high school diving, we ended up closing the facility to the public. This new design allows for simultaneous use so that the public and the competitive events can symbiotically exist in the same facility. It's designed to serve all age groups from infants to older adults. It has ample parking. 1050 parking spaces available is accessible by transit. It is accessible by bike. It has a restaurant independent of the facility. It has restrooms independent of the facility. And it was also designed to enhance the beach experience. And so we expect users from across the city will be coming to enjoy the facility. Public outreach is an important thing that we all know. And so I just want to make sure for our tech folks in the back, the presentation is not coming up on these screens. And it was. But I just want to make sure that what the public is seeing are is well, we love to see Mr. Modica. I just want to make sure the public is seeing the actual slides. So. For our tech folks. Thank you. Not and not your public. I mean, the ones that are watching on on the TV. So they weren't they weren't showing all up on the television for people watching at home. So thank you. So public outreach is an important component of anything we do on a project, but on a project this size, it's particularly important. So we'll reveal a little bit of the public input. In the past, we had some initial meetings with the aquatics groups. We talked about the study session and that general public input. In June of 2014, the Stakeholder Advisory Committee. We held public meetings in September of 2014, and that's when the council approved the baseline design. Throughout the entire process, we've had 16 public meetings to date, including the design team selection, programmatic requirements, conceptual design and online design survey with 506 responses. And of course the study sessions to the EIA are common period. So let's take a little look at the site plan. It is a 5.8 acre site, 125,500 square foot pool complex with indoor and outdoor aquatics facilities. It has five 55,745 square feet of passive parking landscape areas surrounding the facility, including improvements to the former Olympic Plaza right away. It has a detached cafe and restroom buildings, and it also removes the outdoor pools and temporary pools that are there right now and reconfigures the lot of the parking lots slightly programmatic requirements. This is the Florida design. It has an indoor 50 meter by 25 yard pool. That's the one on the bottom left. An important component is the movable floor. One of the things we heard from some of the stakeholders is the ability to host competitions indoors. But if we do that and create an indoor competition facility, it really precludes public access and public recreation because it's ten foot water. And a lot of people, a lot of kids, a lot of people learn to swim. Even those who are more adept at swimming also like the ability to stand. So we have created a movable floor which allows it to go all the way up out of the water as well as all the way down to the bottom or anywhere in between, including at a at an angle. This includes a separate diving well, with all of the diving platforms and springboards. It has an indoor dove spa. It has indoor therapy and teaching pools. The therapy teaching pool is a warm water pool for kids that want to learn how to swim. For therapeutics for disabled individuals. It has 1250 permanent indoor seats, which allows the facility to essentially serve the competitive needs of just about every competition. There's just a small handful that require maybe 1500, but the vast majority require 1250 or less outdoor 50 meter pool by 25 meter pool and an outdoor recreational pool, which we'll talk about in a little bit. The proposed facility capabilities. This really shows you that the pool is very flexible and can serve any and all aquatic needs. For example, the diving bay, while could be used for diving, can also be used for water polo, can be used for swimming, can be used for scuba diving as its deep water can be used for public safety training. So the facility is really designed to be configured in any which way because we have a lot of different uses that all use the facility differently and a lot of demand for that water space. You also see on the lower right the outdoor recreational pool. This is something that doesn't exist in Long Beach right now. This is designed to be kind of a kid's play area with equipment and fun jets and things that can be played with. And you'll see some images coming up. You haven't seen that in the design yet because we're really not at that point in the design. That comes later after we get to the level of schematic design. But that is going to be something that doesn't exist in Long Beach today, and it's going to be a new activity for our for our kids. So here are some examples of what some of those projects could look like. You know, again, we're not at that level of design, but we are looking at how do we make that outdoor recreation pool something that is spectacular and fun and draws kids from across the the city to come and enjoy this facility. We can serve all ages. You'll see, you know, a number of different user groups in this picture. And also to the top right, you'll see that moveable floor. And in that case, it's actually all the way out of the water and people are standing on. It can also go all the way down. So it's an example of the moveable floor. It can host nearly all competitive events. And a lot of times people think of competitive events as adults coming to swim, which certainly it can do that. But also we have a tremendous amount of youth events, including high school and younger groups that come to compete and then training in alternative uses. You can use these bodies of water for a number of things. We've seen other facilities use it for kayaking or for scuba diving, for synchronized swimming, for a number of different uses uses . So one of the important aspects of the design also was outside of the building and how this fits into the to the area and also the existing open space and the vegetated area, the green space. That's something very important to the neighborhood. There's not a lot of green space in that area. You have the beach, but you have open space and green space. And so the former project had about 119,000 square feet of existing open space. The architects were able to come up with an increase in open space under the new design of 127,000 square feet. That's primarily by reorganizing the site to be much more efficient. And also with the closure of the of the current street and creating Olympic way, allowing that to become open space, it had 45,000 square feet of existing vegetated area in the park. And again, by reformatting the site, we've increased that amount, even though it's a larger facility to 55,000 square feet, which is a benefit to the neighborhood. We know the design area. That noise is a concern for some of the residents because there are residents nearby and the facility has been designed. With that in mind, a lot of the activity will be indoors inside of the the natatorium. But we're also looking at 12 foot high transparent sound walls at the north and east sides of the pool. The outdoor pool is specifically designed with no external seats for competition. However, we have noted to be able to accommodate competitive events, up to 3000 people can come to an event here while bringing in temporary seating. So you would bring in the seating, have the event and then take it down again. So the Coastal Commission plays a very important role in this project as they were a regulator under the Coastal Act. While the City Council is going to take action on this project, the Coastal Commission also needs to take action. We've had seven meetings with coastal staff since inception of this project, before it even came to the Council four in October of 2014. We reviewed the programmatic design. We have since reviewed the conceptual design with the with the Coastal Commission staff, and they also sent in an environmental impact report comment letter to which the city responded about six pages of comments. We received a recent letter on May 11, 2017 regarding tonight's item, where the Coastal Commission raised a number of issues that they want the council to know about in our discussions with them. They really have sent that letter to inform the Council that they there will be things that the Coastal Commission will be paying attention to. They want the Council to be fully informed of those and for staff to really present and make sure the council is aware of the issues. Those include things like the alternative analysis, what sites we have looked at and we were prepared tonight to go through how we actually went above and beyond to look at alternative sites in addition to the site that is proposed, looking at height and view water issues, looking at local coastal plan conformance, and also about sea level rise and wave operation. You'll hear about all those items tonight. We take the Coastal Commission input very, very seriously and we will continue to work with the commission if this goes forward in the process. So before I turn it to Amy to go through the air, I do want to say that we posed a challenge to the architect. We essentially asked our architect and said, We need you to do a number of things for this project. It's a very complex project. You need to incorporate the project goals and we want you to incorporate all the community input that we've heard. And you need to meet the programmatic outline set by the council, and you need to use appropriate materials for the site and you have to adhere to the Coastal Commission requirements and you have to mitigate any environmental impacts. And then ultimately we want you to create a beautiful facility. We believe we have one of the best teams around doing this. They did a spectacular job. And you're going to hear about the design and the Environmental Impact Report next. And with that, I will introduce Amy Bodak, our Director of Development Services. Mr. MODICA Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. I'm going to go through some of the more exciting regulatory aspects of this project. I know you love hearing about ERs when we talk about them, so feel free to take notes on this. So first I want to talk to you about what you're hearing tonight. The city council is being asked to render a decision on an appeal of the site plan review a conditional use permit that would apply to the restaurant cafe only a standards variance related to the height of the facility and a local coastal development permit for that portion of the project, which is within the city's jurisdiction of the coastal zone. I also want to point out throughout this process, this is a replacement facility for one that previously existed on this site. But the project site does cover two zoning districts, both the Belmont Pier Plan Development District and the Park Zoning District. Those come into play when we talk about air consistency. As Tom said earlier, Prop seven, approved by the voters in 1962, allowed Tidelands funds to be used for a future pool project, which is essentially establishes established the public purpose and use for the site. The Belmont Plaza pool opened in 1968 after acquisition of several parcels that were necessary for the site. And then it was closed. The NATATORIUM was closed in January 2013 due to seismic safety issues. And then, as you know, it was demolished two years later in February 2015. It's important to note that the Sequoia process began while the old facility was still in existence, and it was very clear that the demolition of this project was for a replacement facility and that the square document was also for a replacement facility. Tom walked through the site plan. These are a couple of elevations. I'm just going to go through them very quickly. We do have the architects here who may touch upon these later, but it is essentially a half bubble facility where it covers an indoor portion and then there is an exterior portion of the facility as well. This indoor portion covers the one competitive pool into inside as well as the diving wall. And then the exterior has another pool, the teaching pool, the recreation pool as well. Again, these are some elevations you can see that it's a half dome portion of the facility is exterior. The other portion of the facility is on the interior. So this is the site we wanted to show you as part of the air, the esthetic analysis that we did to see what the environmental impact of this project would be from an esthetic standpoint, which is required under Sequoia. We took several photos, films from various locations, and you can see where those locations are on this diagram. And I'm going to show you the before picture of what the pool looked like from that position as well as the after picture. Again, the same. This is from Bennett Avenue and Ocean Boulevard. The before picture and then the after picture. Before a picture. This is further down on Ocean Boulevard, right near Prospect. After the after picture. And then the last one is actually from the pier. So this is the before picture and then this is the after picture. These are important images to understand because we are very cognizant of the potential esthetic impact and view quarter impact that the proposed facility would have on this. So we also looked at how the views were actually enhanced with the new facility, the yellow. The yellow rectangle that you can see under the half dome facility was the old pool. You can see that it was a very rectangular structure and it blocked views. The new pool actually expands views in the blue zone and increases the availability of views to the ocean. Past. The facility from various locations. This shows the height differential of the old pool structure and the new pool structure. The old pool is on the bottom and then you can see it superimposed on the top image in red. The old pool was at about 60 feet high. This new pool is at 78 feet high. And I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on that as we talk about Coastal Act consistency. So it is not much different from the overall height of the old facility, but you can see that the massive bulk is different and that this facility as proposed actually has a more narrow profile than the old pool did. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about coastal consistency week as part of the air had to look at both consistency with the local coastal plan which is within our jurisdiction. And then we also had to look at the Coastal Act for those portions of the facility that are within the coastal zone and the original jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission. Part of that consistency is looking at in particular chapter three, which relates to access. The Coastal Commission staff wrote a letter to the a comment letter to the air during the comment period and specifically asked us to focus on five sections of the Coastal Act to ensure that we were compliant with those five sections. We did that and more. We actually looked at 16 different sections of the Coastal Act within Section three and looked at that consistency. And our analysis demonstrates that not only are we consistent with the Coastal Act on the five areas that Coastal Commission asked us to look at, but that we are actually consistent with all 16 areas that we looked at in our land use analysis. This project site is clearly suitable for public recreation. It's been a public recreation site for the last 45 years and it is a replacement facility. It is a year round aquatics facility serving the same population in larger numbers as the old facility. This new project will, however, be fully ADA compliant, which will actually increase the accessibility over the old facility. We do have the ability to have competitive events which would allow us to draw folks from the region and from the state to our coastal zone who may not otherwise come to our coastal zone if it was only a local facility. And we also have local access that has been greatly enhanced through the addition of a bike lane augmentation on the beach path, and then also the bike lane on Ocean Boulevard. This facility is also very accessible from the greater community through all different modes of accessibility. And as we've been discussing over the last two years about increasing mobility and livability within the city, this project falls in line with those goals as well. From a local. Coastal zone perspective. We also have to look at consistency with our local coastal plan as part of our land use analysis under the air. And we have clearly demonstrated that the ocean views are actually enhanced through the facility design and that closure of Olympic Plaza to vehicular traffic will allow us to increase our open space, as Mr. Modica demonstrated on an earlier slide. We also heated coastal discussions about the cafe. Coastal is very clear that they did not want an internal café only serving the pool and the people who are visiting the pool. That is an intentional position of staff where we moved that cafe and public restroom facilities outside of the pool so that they are publicly accessible to anyone who wants to visit the coastal area and not just limited to people who are visiting this facility. So as I said, we're here to talk about the E.R.. We did have an initial notice of preparation in 2013. That initial notice of preparation sets the baseline under secure. At that point forward, everything that we're focusing on is related to the baseline. Under secure, the building that was there existed when we put the notice of prep out. We made it very clear in the notice of prep that this was a replacement facility. We did prepare a revised notice of Prep in 2014 because the facility had increased in size based on direction from the city council. And we did feel that it was important that that increased program be incorporated into a new notice of prep. Also, you will notice that that was done in 2014. The pool facility was demolished in 2015. So again, under the two notice of preps that we issued, the pool facility was still in place, although it was closed to the public. We drafted in air. It was circulated for 65 days in 2015 I'm sorry, 2016. And then we've been working on responding to comments throughout this process. We took this project to the Planning Commission. There was a noticing requirement in our municipal code to put a story poll up. We did put a story pull up that story. Poll decision was appealed to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission ruled that our plans for installing a storage pole were sufficient. We then proceeded with noticing the public hearing to the Planning Commission had that Planning Commission hearing in in the fall. And then we're here for the appeal hearing this evening. The drafty air has to look at all of these topics. It is a requirement under Sequoia. We have to do something called the secret checklist. We certainly have to look at all of these issues and if they are not applicable, we need to understand and explain to the public why this is not applicable. A draft ESR is a public disclosure document where we need to disclose all of the environmental impacts of the potential project on the environment. So the ones in red are those areas where there were less than significant impacts. That means that under land use, which includes consistency with the local coastal plan and with the Coastal Act, that our project had less than significant impacts and did not necessarily require mitigation. We looked at. Those in red here did require some mitigation. And with mitigation, the those impacts were also determined to be less than significant. I'm going to briefly go through these each and every one for the public record. But the but the the conclusion that I want to state, which I'll also get to, is that with mitigation, every single one of those significant impacts are reduced to less than significant impacts. This project does not have any outstanding significant impacts, which would require you to overrule those impacts with the statement of overriding considerations. That means that with mitigation, this project complies fully with CEQA and you are not being asked to make any overriding considerations that the project should overrule any of these environmental aspects on a statics. We do have to have a mitigation measure which requires the maintenance of construction barriers during the construction process. We do have to look at both of the one time impacts of a project during construction and then we also have to look at the cumulative impacts of a project over time. And the impact for this is maintenance of construction barriers. Biological resources. We did look at this as well. We went ahead and had biologists go out there several times. There is a and in a claim by the appellants that we are violating the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. We believe that that is not the case, that with mitigation we will be in compliance with that requirement as well as other biological requirements. Same with cultural resources. We are not we do not know of any cultural resources. If there are any discovered, there is a mitigation measure that would require us to retain an uncle paleontologist in case a cultural artifact or resource is discovered during construction activities. Again, geology and soils. We did require conformance with the recommendations of a geotechnical study and that study was very important in the actual design of the facility and the design of the foundation, which we'll get into later as it relates to a coastal zone, sea level rise and wave up rush. Hazardous materials. We are not aware of any hazardous materials that are on site. We do not believe that there will be any unusual use of hazardous materials during the construction. But if there is the case, we do have contingency plans and we also had pre demolition surveys that were done for the demolition of the pool related to asbestos and led. Hydrology and water quality. There is the potential for soil erosion during the construction process only. So there are mitigation measures required for that and also for impervious areas, drainage patterns and the eastern half of the site in flood zone. A So we do have some mitigation measures with the compliance of those mitigation measures. This project would reduce those impacts to less than significant noise. Noise was an issue that was raised repeatedly through this process, both from a construction perspective, but also from an operational perspective on how the pool functions and the potential impacts of noise on the operations to the surrounding neighborhood. So during construction, we do have standard conditions for the construction equipment as well as pre-construction meetings with the community so that there can be an understanding of what's going to happen when, etc.. We also have to comply with the noise ordinance which does not allow construction activities to occur before 7 a.m. or after 6 p.m. and also not on Sundays. Normal operations would not impact sensitive users, but there could be special events in the pool that may impact those sensitive receptors. As such, during special events, we do have mitigation measures that would that we would be requiring them to reduce noise levels from the outdoor speakers to a level below the city standard. Traffic. We did look at this. There is no impact during construction, but we do have a mitigation measure that certainly requires emergency access to the site at all times. And we also looked at the study intersections operating at an acceptable level of service for particularly Bennett and Ocean and then Termino and Ocean. There have been comments that have been raised about the road diet that happened after this project was proposed. That road diet would not have occurred if the level of service was going to be impacted at those intersection levels. So the thru intersection traffic continues to remain at acceptable levels of service, even with the road diet in place and putting the pool in place as well. However, during special events there is the potential for significant traffic impacts and one of the mitigation measures is that there has to be an event traffic management plan for any event that requires more than or expects more than 450 spectators. As you probably know, the Ocean Boulevard Road Diet did not actually reduce the width of Ocean Boulevard. It just added parking at a diagonal and then added a bike lane. That's just paint. So part of the special events mitigation for traffic impacts for a large event could be that two lanes of Ocean Boulevard on both sides must be maintained for entering and exiting the facility. That can be easily accommodated through a special event traffic management plan and does not reduce the level of service at those intersections . We also had to look at utilities and service systems. There are no new major facilities required. We did have to look at what our hydrology mitigation measures would be, and we clearly have to require a hydrology report, groundwater discharge permits and swamp regulations to comply with all of those regulations. We also need to have de-watering permits. But again, with mitigation measures, these impacts are less than significant. So again, this is a significant project. And with this air, it was concluded through the analysis that there are no significant impacts when we add all of the the mitigation measures. Again, that means that this city council is not being asked today to adopt a statement of overriding considerations. We did have a number of EMR objectives that the project applicant put forward, and the point of the project objectives was clearly to replace the former facility with a more modern state of the art aquatics facility to minimize time without a permanent pool, provide a signature design which you will see that that this project meets, that fits that bill. If you will generate revenue to cover cover some of the operational maintenance costs, implement the land use goals of plan development PD two, which is the Belmont Pier Plan Development District, which specifically calls out the pool in this location. So we are consistent with land use again, particularly under the zoning for PD two. This is much more sustainable, much more energy efficient. We clearly demonstrated that we are minimizing view disruptions and we're actually increasing view ability and access to the coast. We're serving existing users and bringing new users into the site and we're maintaining and actually increasing the amount of open space. Part of the ER process requires us to look at alternatives and we looked at a range of alternatives and went above and beyond to those that are required under sequa. Sequa does require you to look at alternatives, including the no project, no build alternative, but it also requires you to publicly disclose those alternatives that you looked at that may be rejected for various purposes. This project is a Tidelands project. It is a it was a Tidelands facility. It is a Tidelands facility. And because of that, the sites that we looked at and the alternatives that we looked at are in the Tidelands area. We do not have any general fund sites that were considered for this project because this is a Tidelands project. We also eliminated a number of sites that had insufficient acreage. Remember, we were given a specific programmatic requirement by the city council, and so we had to find sites that actually accommodated that acreage. We did look at three alternative sites, the Harry Bridges Memorial Park, which is near the Queen Mary, otherwise otherwise known as the Special Events Park. The Queen Mary site itself. And then the elephant lot is what we euphemistically refer to a large parking lot on Seaside, way adjacent to the convention center. So the Harry Bridges Memorial Park, we cannot build an enclosed recreational facility on this site. And this site was raised during the public comment period by members of the public who suggested that this was a legitimate alternative location for the project. The answer is it is mitigation for the Aquarium and Rainbow Harbor, and the requirements of the Federal Act that protected this do not allow for enclosed recreational facilities to be built on this location. Additionally, the site is too small to be accommodating the programmatic requirements that the City Council set forth. The Queen Mary site. We have a current lessee and we had a lessee at that time. The lessee was approached. The lessee said, no, they're not interested in this. They are interested in redeveloping that project site according to the lease that they had with the city. And so that site was rejected because we did not want to interfere with our contractual obligations with the private operator and their plans. Similarly, the elephant lot at the Convention Center is also encumbered with a lease for parking. Aside from that lease for parking, it is required parking for the convention center. Putting a facility in this location would be geo technically challenging, as challenging as putting it in the Queen Mary site and the Harry Bridges site because it's on landfill . It is also in the tidelands area as the other two sites were. But since this has required parking for the convention center, the facility, if it were to be built here, would be required to construct replacement parking for the convention center. That would be an additional cost for the facility that we do not have to bear at its current location because of the current lease and because it is a private lease between two entities. We did not include this site for further consideration. These are the alternatives we did consider Sequa does require us to have a reasonable amount of alternatives that can be viewed as a reasonable being. Number three. In fact, we did five alternatives and we looked at three alternatives locations. So we believe that we far exceeded the reasonable amount of alternatives that sequa requires. Alternative one is a requirement under sequa that you look at the no project and no development alternative. Alternative number two was looking at maintaining the existing temporary pool and just having auxiliary uses around it, making that pool permanent, adding permanent restrooms, permanent facilities to support that temporary pool. Alternative three took the proposed facility and eliminated the diving well inside and moved it to the exterior with the idea that that might hopefully reduce the height of the building. Alternative four actually got rid of all of the outdoor components, so we looked at that facility to see what it would do for environmental impacts. An alternative five was that we eliminated the diving realm and eliminated all of the outdoor components and essentially had an indoor pool, one single indoor pool facility. Alternative one clearly does not meet the objectives and the backfilled sand area would remain unchanged, but it does not result in a new development as at all. Alternative two is maintaining the temporary pool. That temporary pool has a life span that has maybe 1015 years to it. That lifespan would would need to be accommodated in a more permanent facility. And then we would also need to replace the parking that the temporary pool is currently taking up. Alternative three is removing the outer. Moving the diving wheel to the exterior. This would potentially reduce the building height by maybe five feet. All other components would remain the same. It did not have significant environmental benefits compared to the project. Alternative four is eliminating all of the outdoor components. This would significantly reduce the footprint of the pool structure. It would increase the open space and park area. Many of the facilities, the amenities would remain and the indoor pool would remain. There would still be required to have a height variance for this because the diving well would still be located within the pool structure itself. Alternative five is reducing the project to eliminate the diving role and reducing it to eliminate all of the odor components. This is similar to Alternative four, but it would actually reduce the pool building as well. It would essentially be a single pool facility in a single building, which would not meet the programmatic requirements that the City Council placed on the project. These are the project objectives and how they meet the project objectives versus the alternatives that were considered. And you can see that those five alternatives do not meet the majority of the project objectives, nor does it meet the programmatic requirements that the City Council required of this project. We did receive written comments. We had 57 comment letters from interested persons, and then we had three from state or local agencies, including Caltrans, the Coastal Commission and the County Sanitation District. All comment letters were responded to in the final year. As I said, as I said previously, the Coastal Commission did provide a comment letter. We addressed their comments in the final EMR. As Mr. Modica said, they also sent a letter last week related to sea level rise and wave of brush and the height of the building and view corridors. I've addressed the height overdressed the view corridors. I'd like to now address what they're calling a protective barrier, in their words, not ours. This proposed project is a replacement facility and has been a replacement facility, and we've been very clear in all of our public disclosures that this is a replacement facility. The Coastal Commission was required to issue a demolition permit when we tried to demolish the building. That demolition permit was again very clear and that the project was going to result in a replacement facility in that location. So we were very clear in our disclosures to both Coastal Commission staff and to the public that there would be a replacement facility in this location. There is a plinth or there was a plinth on the old facility. There is a plinth on the new facility. The old plinth was one foot higher than the van, the new plinth. The old plinth had a longer longitudinal footprint on the sand than the new facility does. The for those of the proposed plinth is narrower on the on the seaward side than the old plinth. And when I speak of plinth, I mean the razed portion of the facility. You can call it a platform, if you will, but it's essentially the foundation that raises the pool facility up. And the reason that we have a plinth in both the old facility and the new facility is it provides easy access to the substructure of all pools for the equipment, for the chemicals, for maintaining the pool as well . And so the old plinth, as I said, was one foot higher than the new plinth, the the most seaward portion of the facility. And the plinth is in the exact same location as the old facility. And I want to talk about beach nourishment and sand replacement. There have been discussions from the Coastal Commission related to sea level rise and the impact that this facility may result in related to sea level rise. The wave up study did look at sea level rise per the Coastal Commission's guidance documents and it assumed absolutely no mitigation measures at all when it looked at sea level rise. We believe that the Wave Brush study demonstrates that this facility will not be impacted by sea level rise without mitigation measures during this process. This is the diagram for the plinth. You can see the red outline on the sand is the old facility in dark red was the building and then in lighter red is actually the plinth that surrounded the facility, the platform that surrounded the building itself. The blue outline is the proposed facility and you can see that the southernmost boundaries of both of those boundaries actually align and they were in the same location. So we are the same distance away from mean sea level as the old facility was as well. Again, we are narrower. On the beach front than the old facility was and our plinth is one foot shorter than their proposed than the old facility. With that, I'm going to turn it over to our architects who are going to quickly walk through the proposed facility, design, touch on some of the programmatic features, and then turn it back over to Mr. Modica for a discussion about funding. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor and council members. My name is Brant Miller. I'm an architect that has worked on the project for the past three years. I'd like to take a couple of minutes, walk you through a little bit more detail the the plans and the site plan for the buildings itself. So what I'll start with, though, is an overall what we call go back one place is overall bird's eye view of the project. And what you can see is we're looking towards the ocean. You can see the beach in the background. Oh, my. Hold on. Let me get a pen that works here. It sort of make it that far. Okay. Not close enough. So what you have is looking here at what is Olympic Y currently. You've got the peer to the top, right, the peer parking lot on the right and the beach parking lot on the left. What you're looking at is the facility. You can see the outdoor pools and then you can see the covered entity on the right, which really housing the indoor pool and the supporting facilities for that pool itself. You have a front entry along the bottom, right, and you have a drop off on this upper left area. And what was referred to earlier as the plinth is this raised area that actually is at the level of the pool. And let me try actually one more laser pointer. Sorry. I think it's just the distance is too far. So as I walk through the site plan, you can see if I orient you. You have once again on the left, you have the pier parking lot on the right, the beach parking lot. You have the beach to the bottom, which is basically south for the project. You have an entrance across from Bennett Way that allows for the drop off zone here prior to entering the parking. If you're on this side of the facility, if you're to go from parking your car. And from parking your car, you'd be right. You would park here. You'd walk up through this facility, through the sidewalk. There are stairs and a ramp that would get you up to the upper plinth, which would be the main entry for the facility. This shape here is what we talked about as being the covered entity and the indoor activities, and this would be the plinth with the outdoor activities. So as I start to walk through the plan once again for orientation purposes, you have the beach to the south, you have the drop off here and then Bennett way up to the top, right? And so in more detail, you can see this entry sequence where you have the ramp and the stairs coming into the main entry where you'd have a reception area. This area is for the offices and meeting spaces of the facility. As you start to move down through the facility, you start to get into the locker rooms and really what we call the dry side of the facility versus coming out the back side, which is the west side of the facility. If you come through the locker rooms and you turn to your right, which is our left, you have on the interior, you have a 50 by 25 yard pool with the removable floor that we talked about earlier. And at the top, you have the dove well with a variety of platform options and then right at springboard options as a part of that diving well configuration. And so that really represents the indoor part of the larger pools as we start to move down through. We have the. I apologize. It's hard to move down through. We have an indoor teaching pool and a spa. And then the last small body of water we have on the interior is up here on the top, which is really a warm whirlpool for the divers themselves. So that really represents, on the ground level, the indoor portions of the facility. As you start to move to the outdoor. We have our 50 meter by 25 meter outdoor pool. And then the recreational pool that we talked about earlier, where programmatic will still determine exactly how that works as we move for the project. And I think from this plan, you can start to see once again the edge of the plinth that we talked about earlier. And so it's this area around here that really has the facility slightly up in the air from the surrounding area. And then over to the right is that cafe area that we had talked about. As we move up through the facility, you have the options of stairs off that main lobby below or an elevator that brings you up. And this is what we call the first level mezzanine. So the mezzanine is really an outdoor deck that overlooks the pool area with access either internally or exterior or externally from the pool deck itself, allowing for programs such as summer camps or other activities that you want to get off the main pool deck but still have your own area to do programs within. And within that it also has its own toilet rooms associated with it. As we start to move up through the facility, we're at the second floor now. So once again, you've either access this by coming up the stairs or the elevator. And this is really the main visitors part of the facility in which you access the 1250 seats that are for viewing of the the activities below. And so you would enter through a variety of different areas at the back. Come in and choose your seat. We're slowly steps down to the first row that still is above the pool deck itself. Also on this level is a concessions area for food and drink, etc. We also have the additional bathrooms and storage areas up on this floor as we move up through the facility. This is really the top floor, what we call the second level mezzanine and this is really what we call the roof deck. So above the concessions area that we just saw, we have an outdoor space which is to the right of this line, which once again allows for really beautiful views of the city and the ocean and of the pool below. And then to the left of this line is then the indoor viewing deck up at the second level mezzanine, which allows you to overlook now not only the seating area, but the diving well and the 50 meter pool itself. And so with that, I'll turn over to Michael Rotondi to walk us through the exterior design of the facility. City Council members. Thank you. And I'm Michael Rotondi. I'm working with HPD. I'm the design architect for the project. Well, you see, this particular image is the recreation pool. It hasn't been designed yet, but it's it's going to have all of the things that will attract basically everybody, adults and children, to want to be in there. The on that level, right there is a deck that overlooks everything. Okay. On the inside from the the spectator area, you're seeing the diving pool on the right. And then in the distance is the is the regular pool. And then on the outside of the building, one, one of the things that I think is important to to know about the project that besides trying to make things work in a practical way and then to move it into architecture, as we say, the esthetic into the poetic, what's really important, especially a project of this of this size in a location like this, in a city with such a wonderful history for not only swimming but for beach life, is to make a civic urban space. And I think that's really what the plinth allowed us to do. The first pool basically had had an eight foot high wall. The seven foot high plinth steps down to the beach and then all around this building, there are different ways that you can hang out here. Our swimmers will definitely come here. But I also believe in all of my experience of not only doing buildings but doing civic urban space that non swimmers are going to want to want to hang out here and basically watch everything that's happening on the beach, the bikes, the volleyball out to the to the horizon and perhaps even some of the ships passing by. Whoops. Is that the last one I. And then Olympic way, we were able to, by eliminating the road, bring a great lawn that was on the beach all the way around. And the places to sit outside, to look inside. And then a building that lights up below moonlight in the evenings. And one final comment is the creative process is one where there's many, many variables, and all those variables are to solve a problem in a very practical way and solve the technical problem. But I think more so, it's a come up with a workable, coherent and ultimately a beautiful project. And one final comment is all of the civic the focus groups that we had are, I think, really added to it, contributed quite a bit to the project, not only in terms of making the project better, but I think it also turned a creative process which tends to be coming from a more a smaller group into a civic event, which I think is really important. Thank you. So thank you, Michael and Brant, for walking us through the design. I'm the last speaker from staff. I know you've had a lot of information that we've been preventing presenting to you. So I do want to talk a little bit about funding and next steps and the staff recommendation. Tonight is not a decision about funding. The council doesn't have that in front of them. They're not making decisions about funding. But we believe it's important to give you as a city council an update about where we are on the funding. So the city approved in October 2014, $103.1 million project budget at that time. Well, was it about 99 or $100 a barrel? We had about $60 million in cash already set aside, and we were expected to fully fund the project at $99 million within one year of oil money coming in. The council, through the programmatic design, actually added about $4 million with a cost based on staff's recommendations. But we also offset it by taking $4 million with cuts in other areas in order to have a sustainable project while the council was making that action. Oil prices were actually dropping in that moment. So within the course of about four or five months, oil went from $100 a barrel to about $29 a barrel. What we do have set aside is still $61.5 million. So the $60 million was set aside previously. It was preserved during the Tidelands prioritization process as we looked at all of our needs. And then last year, the Council added an additional $1.5 million the city has spent to date, about 7.3 million of that amount. And 3.1 of it was on the demolition of the pool. So when we talk about the 103 million, but 3.1 of that was demolishing the old structure. And the balance of that amount. Up to 7.3 million has been to fund the project, design and air to get us to this point. We are developing strategies to address that. Revenue shortfall primarily will be oil. As oil rises, that will be a funding source. But we will also be recommending that the council look at private fundraising, able to have philanthropy assist with this project. It is unique and that's this project. And this poor has touched so many lives over the years that we believe that there are people that are going to want to give back, give back to the funding, to the aquatics community to let others have the same chances that they did. So we believe that's a very robust opportunity, up to $50 million that we'll be pursuing with the consultant to help us to see what a realistic amount is and what we can raise. We do know that construction cost escalation will affect the total cost. There is some escalation already budgeted in that 103, but additional escalation may be there as well, and that the costs really aren't certain until a design is ultimately approved by the city and the Coastal Commission. And at that time we'll be going back, looking at the design, looking at all the design elements and the cost escalation, and then we'll bid the project. So economic impact. I do want to point out that, as you said, the programmatic design also looked at some of the economic impact of this facility because it can draw regional and national events. We believe it can generate up to $30.6 million in economic activity and then every fourth year, up to 19.9 million. There are certain events that don't happen every year that the big ones that happen every four years. So we looked at hotel stays, food and lodging, and that the facility could generate up to $1.5 million in hotel bed tax or tot annually. And to put that in perspective, we would be looking at maybe about 10% of current overnight activity could be generated by this facility. So what are the meaning steps if the council votes to move forward tonight, are the city and the Coastal Commission both need to go through a coastal development process review and approval. The city goes first and then the Coastal Commission does their action for their jurisdiction. If the Coastal Commission makes any changes, that would come back to the City Council for acceptance of the coastal changes. If that if that occurs, we would then prepare construction documents, finalize the funding strategy, and the Council would see that again before giving us direction on the funding and also to better move forward once it moves forward. The construction time is relatively quick. It's about 18 months. So on March 2nd, the reason we're all here today is that the Planning Commission held a public hearing on the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center, and they voted unanimously to adopt a resolution together with findings and mitigation, monitoring and reporting program, and to certify year number 01. or dash one six and they approve the site plan review, conditional use permit standards variance and local coastal development permit entitlements. We did within the ten day local appeal period receive and that followed that meeting for qualifying appeals. And the reasons that those appeals were filed include that the project had inconsistencies with the California Coastal Act and local coastal program policy, that the project entitlement findings were not supported by facts. That inadequate project analysis occurred an the environmental impact report and improper public noticing for the Planning Commission hearing. And so our last slide is that as staff makes our recommendation to you, we would like to recommend that you receive the supporting documentation into the record, that you conclude the public hearing and consider the third party appeals from Jeff Miller and Melinda Cotton, Joe Weinstein and and control the Long Beach Area Peace Action Network and Anna Christiansen and Gordana Cager. And that you uphold the Planning Commission's decision to adopt a resolution certifying er01-16 approve that mitigation and monitoring and reporting program and the site plan review conditional use permit standards variance and look course for development permit entitlements for the construction operation of the Belmont Beach Aquatic Center. And then finally, with the recommendation that you allow staff to move this to the next stage, that we can work with the California Coastal Commission on their comments regarding the project. I believe we've handled and discussed those, but we we do take those very seriously. They are an important body in this decision making process. And we asked for the opportunity to work with them. And with that staff is concludes our staff report. Thank you for listening to a lot of information. Okay. Well, thank you very much. So we know that was a very extensive presentation, but I know we wanted to go through all the staff work and I want to thank, of course, staff for that. We do want to go into the appellants. So as a reminder, they are for appellate presentations. So and the Melinda Cotton presentation will have will be 18 minutes and the clerk will set the time ahead. What did I say? Because I was okay cause I'm looking at different people here and it's going to be 18 minutes. And and so the first appellate court, please come forward. President Clinton. Good evening. Mayor Garcia and council members and citizens of Long Beach who are here tonight and watching at home and especially all of the young people who were here earlier, a few remaining who want nothing more than a place to swim or dove. I'm Jeff Miller. I've lived in Long Beach for four years. I ask that you reject the Planning Commission's decision and uphold these appeals. Each of the other appellants will be speaking about various aspects of this proposed project. The city attorney suggested that the appellants consolidate their presentations in that spirit, and for the record, each appellant will present positions and evidence on behalf of all the appellants. Will the City Clerk please let each of us know when we have reached 15 minutes of our time? Here is tonight's Real Question. Is Long Beach the aquatic capital of America? What does it take to be the aquatic capital? Will City Hall provide and maintain adequate beach and tidelands facilities for Long Beach to be the aquatic capital of America? The Aquatic Capital of America Foundation lists these activities on their website, which I quote. Beach Volleyball. Yachting. Beach Tennis. Boat Racing. Congressional Cup. Beach Water Polo. Naples Island. Swim and stand up paddling. And these objectives, I'm quoting, again, promote Long Beach as a destination for visitors seeking to participate in the myriad of aquatic activities offered in our city, promote water safety and education, increase the number of aquatic facilities, unquote. This is a good list of objectives and I support them. I believe we can all find a way to work together to make this happen. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Long Beach make a success of this? It won't happen with this plan, however. There is so much wrong with the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center proposal that it must be put on hold, revisited and moved forward in a way that will be a success for Long Beach and be built before all of the young swimmers and divers who were in the audience are adults. The most obvious problem with the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center plan is its location on a beach subject to expected sea level rise, wave action and shoreline erosion. That was addressed in the letter from the Coastal Commission that was mentioned briefly. The letter received just days ago. Two or three points were noted in that letter, but this sentence was not read from that letter. Quote, Commission staff believes that the best practice is to avoid locating new development and hazardous areas subject to sea level rise and shoreline erosion. In the case of this project, our staff has previously recommended to the city that it consider relocating the facility to a site that will not be affected by sea level rise slash way of action for the expected life of the development, unquote. This is the primary reason why it is so expensive. Simple logic and reason leads to the obvious question Why build it on the beach? The letter also states the letter from the Coastal Commission also states other concerns about the location, such as the impact on coastal views. At 78 feet tall, this structure would be far higher than anything else in the area. It would tower over the trees. Despite claims in the city staff report and air, it would not be transparent. It would be visible and interfere with coastal and ocean views from every direction. From many blocks around. The base alone would be a seven foot tall block of concrete. A beach location is problematic also because of the impact on coastal access due to increased traffic. The commission staff recommends the city choose a different location and the Coastal Commission does matter. As pointed out, there will be a Coastal Commission hearing and the city must gain their approval of this or any project in the Tidelands area. Coastal Commission concerns the excessive cost and lack of additional Tidelands funding are all major factors that will likely prevent this facility from ever being built on the beach. And that excessive cost is all attributable to the poor choice of a beach location as currently proposed. The city must raise an additional $43 million beyond the $60 million of tidelands funds it plans to use. Why not build the pool at a suitable location where it would not require the expensive, deep foundation pilings and a seven foot tall concrete platform? Then it would likely cost far less than the projected $103 million. For example, the mayor has previously offered a downtown property for the George Lucas Museum, but that museum selected a different location. That property has also been offered as a venue for the 2024 Olympics. The Aquatic Center could be built at that same downtown site. In this scenario, there would likely be some tidelands money left over for the other currently unfunded needs at the beach. Even if there were sufficient tidelands funds to build at the Belmont Beach location, which there are not. It would be at the expense of the many neglected and delayed and unfunded beach area projects that are well documented that are dependent on the same part of Tidelands funds. These currently add up to $358 million. These projects are necessary to support the very items listed by the aquatic capital of America. These include rebuilding or renovating the Belmont Pier, building a lifeguard and Marine safety headquarters in the second District, replacing the Leeway Sailing Center, Marine Stadium repairs, water quality improvements and maintaining the beach, pedestrian and bike paths to name only a few of the specific items. Additionally, many millions of dollars of Thailand's funds are needed to repair the crumbling Naples seawalls. The increased operating and maintenance costs of this facility, designed with an elaborate mobile roof and expensive removable floor in the pool and a separate pool only for diving would be a huge strain on the city's budget and would greatly impact the ability of the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department to maintain the city's parks. The figure given by the city for the additional maintenance cost of the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center pools is $1.8 million annually. Back to the plan for the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center. How did we get to this point? Why are we headed down a dead end path with this project? The citizens of Long Beach never had sufficient opportunity to provide input on this. The city never asked us. The stakeholder committee that designed the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center had only one neighborhood representative. Most of the other members have specific interests in the private and commercial aquatic enterprises that want this facility built in only this location. That is another one of the reasons why the air is flawed. It gave no real consideration to other possible locations or sources of funding. Much of the public never even knew what was being planned, and they still don't know the details today. The public never had a realistic way to evaluate and comment on the design. There was insufficient representation of the location, size and height of the structure. For example, how many people understand this structure would have a 33 foot tall vertical elevator tower almost touching the bike and pedestrian paths. How many people know the Belmont Beach? An aquatic center would be nearly three times larger than the old pool building. How many people know it would be 18 feet taller? How many people know the plan to seat 4000 spectators there and parked their cars there? Beach parking is limited and already impacted. Where exactly could parking be provided? Even after the design process was completed and the public could evaluate the design and comment on it at the zoning hearing and the Planning Commission hearing, the city did not follow its own ordinance, which requires informing the public of the proposed variance from zoning height limits by erecting storey poles at the project site. Using story poles to demonstrate the height and footprint of a structure is a common practice throughout California. When the city was called out for this lapse, they still failed to comply with the intent of the law. Only one single pole was erected to represent the entire proposed structure of over 125,000 square feet. And that poles, 78 feet tall, did not have a marker or a flag to show the legal zoned height of 30 feet . Why were there no poles around the edges of the building site showing how much taller it would be above the 30 foot limit as the drawings that you saw in the air show, almost the entire perimeter of the building is taller than the legal limit. At the outset of the design process, we were told repeatedly the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center would be built entirely with tidelands funds. We know now that is not true. There has been mention of tapping into the city's measure funds, which are intended to be used for public safety and infrastructure. There is talk of using L.A. County parks funds, which are intended to be used for enhancing the city's parks. There is talk of using federal infrastructure funds. The new impacts on available parking places and increased traffic at the beach are recent conditions that require an updated air traffic study. For example, there's already greatly increased parking usage by the new Olympics Fitness Health Club next door to the site. They have a permitted occupancy of more than 500 people and no parking of their own. And the Ocean Boulevard Road diet, as you heard, has narrowed the street to one lane in each direction in the area of the project. In conclusion, the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center will not in itself make Long Beach the aquatic capital of America. It will not be feasible to hold events to accommodate the thousands of spectators planned by their beach and swimming and tidelands needs would be delayed or neglected. Parks throughout the city would not receive the funding needed. It is likely that the Coastal Commission will not approve this beach encroachment, as detailed in the May 11th letter to the city from their district director. Don't let this happen. Don't waste more time. Uphold these appeals and revisit the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center plan. Let's work together to make a plan that will make Long Beach an aquatic capital. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go to our second appellant, please. Hello. Do you want to do you need the the quicker to move the presentation? Well, yes. I guess we do. Okay. So that's backwards and forwards. Okay. Need to point it right at the screen up there. At point. Pointed at the screen when you want to advance the slide. Yeah. But screen pointed at that black screen. When you want to replace the black screen with the words on it. You're going. Do I go first? I don't need it at all. So just write. Good evening. Members of Council Mayor, fellow citizens of Long Beach. I am Joel Weinstein, president of Citizens About Responsible Planning or Carpe for short. KARP As a new organization, we're committed to promoting responsible planning in Long Beach and toward this mission. We have resources and 501c status so that we will be able to participate in local political campaigns and other relevant activities. Now, we definitely support upgrading the swimming and aquatics for our city, and we believe that responsible planning can achieve this. But we are appealing and we are supporting all arguments by the other appellants where we are appealing because compared with available alternatives, the approved project needlessly. I repeat that needlessly embodies serious negatives big extra risks thank to the site quake liquefaction, sea level rise flooding and wave action huge extra costs, extra access time, inconvenience and traffic congestion which will affect everybody, whether local residents trying to come in to swim or people visiting for the day or people in the hotels. This project really needlessly shortchanges everybody swimmers, aquatics participants, users of worthy and needed, but now underfunded tidelands facilities and other Long Beach taxpayers. And it seems to have come about because project planners put on nostalgia, inspired blinders to preselect an inferior cyc. You know, a replacement doesn't have to be physically at the same site. We're talking about a replacement and enhancement of function, not necessarily, you know, blindly following what looked like the right side of 50 years ago. This. The stakeholders selected were a stacked deck against basic recreational and instructional swimming, and the Planning Commission easily rejected considering impact of costs, even though their key duty is to protect facility users, the neighborhood and city taxpayers from eventually being stuck with a dysfunctional white elephant and the project air is legally defective. Now, please bear in mind that approval or disapproval of the air is of course, not the same thing as approving or disapproving the project. You can approve the air and reject or postpone the project. Conversely, you can approve the idea of the project and disapprove the air and fix it. But whatever you do, and no matter how many. Folks clamor. For or against a project, the air must be judged on legal adequacy of its information. Now, here is an Cantrell to tell you some of the details about that air. Good evening, Mayor and Council and Control. I'm another director of Carp. See if I can make this work. Karp is appealing the long March 2nd planning Commission approvals of the. Belmont Beach Aquatic Center, namely the ER Site Review Standards, conditional use permit and local coastal development permit. Our original concerns included inadequacies pertaining to story polls, height variances. Traffic studies, alternative. Locations. Geological, biological. Sea level rise and the study of e t f e plastic. We also agree with and support the issues of the other appellants. First, the air traffic studies must be redone and recirculated. This is a picture of the road diet. EIA or mitigation requires that during construction traffic be limited to one lane to a car to allow for construction vehicles. That means leaves no lane for motorists. There must be a new traffic study done, taking into consideration the current one lane effect on construction, public safety vehicles, motorists and bike users. The study seemed to assume all traffic would be coming from downtown. There were no studies done for traffic coming off the four or five freeway or from Second Street or ocean from the east. None of the traffic studies were done on the weekend, in the summer when the highest number of traffic goers a presence nor during any beach or pool events. The mitigation for events with more than 450 aspect haters is, quote, create a traffic mitigation plan, but no plan is given. It was suggested that shuttles might be used, but no mention of where the public would park to use these shuttles. Tonight it was stated that the striping is just paint. As I remember it cost $80,000 to put in the striping. Does that mean it's going to cost $160,000 for re striping. For a before and after events. We are also. Concerned about alternate locations. The Air considered three alternate locations. All were dismissed without environmental study for trivial reasons. The Queen Mary site was rejected because of a lease with a private operator. However, this operator is currently searching for recreational uses in this area. What better use than a world class aquatic center? And you can see we have an iconic. Structure already. In place, the Spruce Goose Dome. It certainly is large enough to hold multiple pools, spa's diving well and even a banquet room and sit down restaurant. In this same area is the Harry Bridges Memorial Park, which has frequently been used as a parking lot for large events. The Air States it can't be a pool location because it's parkland mitigation and must be used for outdoor recreation. However, the conceptual plan for the Queen Mary shows the park is slated to have an amphitheater for live concerts. Surely an outdoor swimming pool would serve more of the public, especially children, than an amphitheater or a parking lot. The third location is the elephant lot at the Long Beach Convention Center. The main objection to this site was that it was currently leased until 2030. However. I think he skipped. Oh, yes. This lease did not stop Mayor Garcia from offering this site to George Lucas for his Star Wars museum. When Lucas chose another site, the mayor was then quoted as saying, Long Beach is ready to host multiple events as part of the L.A. 2024 Olympic bid. Sailing, water polo, BMX racing and other great events will be hosted right here at our Waterfront Olympic Sports Park. And in the middle of this Olympic sports park is a swimming pool. The aquatic center could be built here in downtown with hotels, restaurants, freeways saved from sea level rise and better availability for a larger number of visitors and residents. And it would cost as much as $50 million less to build the facility, even on landfill, than on sand. Which brings us to another concern. The current location has seismic, geological and sea level dangers. In 2014, the council was told by staff that building on the beach was like building on a bowl of Jell-O as a side is on sand in a liquefaction and earthquake zone with rising sea levels. However, according to the staff information, given the Planning Commission on Geology and Soil quote, there are no geological hazards and the project is feasible. The EIA admits that eventual sea level rise could flood. The lower levels of the pool structure. But not to worry because there would be no people, only equipment there. The conclusion, quote. The proposed project. Would not be adversely impacted by sea level rise due to climate change. No mitigation is required, unquote. Here you see some of the damage done in Belmont Shore by the 1939 hurricane. I remember this clearly as saltwater killed our lawn at 101.5 Claremont. This was before Long Beach had a breakwater to protect the beaches. The air did no studies to compare sea level rise with or without the breakwater, which is another glaring inadequacy. The city has many pictures of the site plan and pool design showing an attractive plastic bubble. However, no study was done on the problems with the chosen bubble. E. T f. E. Plastic. And there are many. Even ETF e manufacturers do not recommend its use on or near the beach. Plastic can be damaged and corroded by blowing sand, sand, chlorine, solid air, port. And bird. Pollution as seen in this photo. Especially trained rock climbers must be hired for cleaning and repairing the roof. ETF e roofs are recommended for cold climates as they retain heat and can warm. Up large. Structures such as greenhouses in football stadiums in Southern California as a cover for heated pools. The heat will be unbearable for those not in the water and requires extreme air conditioning. Another problem in our climate is condensation. Air Scope, a manufacturer of ETF, EA says, quote, Locations which have cool nights and hot days. And a general high. Level of humidity are particularly susceptible, unquote. What has higher humidity than a heated pool? ETF The reflection confuses birds and they crash into structures such as happened at Viking Stadium headlined as the, quote, bird killing stadium. Birds are killed daily by flying into high rise buildings. Well, a 78 foot plastic structure on the beach in Long Beach have the same results. ETF. EA buildings can damage birds, but birds can also damage buildings. Another quote from airstrips. Birds loved to. Land on rooftops and peck at their food to break it up. The bigger the bird, the more powerful the pecking action. It is widely known that ATF roofs installed nearby or close to the sea suffer the worst of this. This is because. Seagulls use the roof as an ideal. Platform to peck at shellfish and the occasional stolen. Chip. Another manufactured tennis set states. We discovered that many etouffee roofs were damaged by birds. They create holes by pecking it with their beak. It's a very serious problem and a strong argument against the use of ETF EA for roofs. In rejecting the three alternate locations, one of the objections cited was Project Objective 12. There must be a view of the ocean from inside the facility. However, this. Facility will not be transparent. As you can see, this is what? The Etefa plastic looks like because of a California Energy Code requirement to block 91% of sunlight penetration. The ETF must be solar dot imprinted. Thus the view of the ocean inside the facility will be like looking through a cataract. So the ETF is formed into pillows, much like these used for packing. These pillows are each filled with air and require a machine to be kept in place. Inflating holes and too many pillows can cause the roof to collapse. And I will demonstrate with this Pelican Peak what happens to play to these pillows when they're picked by birds? This is the train station in Manchester, England. Here is one of the many holes in the Manchester ETF roof which eventually caused its collapse and injured two people in October of 2016. A six month study determined the holes were caused by gulls drawn by the smell of the McDonald's. Inside a plastic roof would be an extremely poor choice for a pool on the beach. With our many gulls. Here is the park at. Here is the current park at Belmont Pool. Karp would like to see it remain as parkland. Carp is not against swimming pools. In fact. This looks like. A wonderful swimming pool. We'd like to see a pool in every district. Carpio asks. You. To vote to uphold. Our appeal and deny the Planning Commission's approval of this very costly. Vulnerable. Pool. Please find a more appropriate and public serving location for the Aquatic Center. Thank you. Thank you. We will now have our third appeal. A third appellant. And I think I there's some extra time left maybe for the other appellants. I think we've got 15 minutes for each. Appellant And then your presentation received an additional 3 minutes. So I think it's 15 per. Appellant Well yeah. Okay. What? Oh, that's okay. Hey guys. There's no there's no commenting from, from the audience yelling please. So let's just continue. So let's have the time up and the third. Time go time. Anna Christiansen, Long Beach resident representing the Long Beach Area Peace Network and appellant for Long Beach Area Peace Network opposes the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center because it fails to provide the social and racial equity that the residents of Long Beach deserve and are entitled to by law. Additionally, both the Long Beach Peace Network and the US Swimming Foundation agree that the systemic lack of diversity in aquatics can only be overcome by providing equal access to facilities and programs that focus on public health, safety and recreation as well as competitive aquatics. Now let's hear from our history making Olympic champion. Gold gold. Medalist salmon. Manuel. Oh, so she's not here. We have to watch a video for these. Very. You can. You can meet my friends. My. Really great. Maybe from my. Parents wanted my older brothers and I to be safer around the water. She goes to a different set of goals is really important for me. Dreams really do become reality when you work hard. I have been inspired by so many other people to get to this point. Colin Jones I saw myself in them sometimes. I was questioning if I was in the right sport because I didn't see people that looked like myself. They really inspired me. She did. USA Swimming has definitely been an. Amazing resource for all of us. It has helped post-collegiate athletes get financial support to continue to. Realize their dreams as Olympians. The Rio Olympics, a mom became the first African-American woman to win an individual. It's just a testament to how far our sport has come. We're starting that trend to get more minorities into the sport who don't. Know how to swim. I think it's extremely amazing that the USA Swimming Foundation has a goal of teaching a million kids how to swim. It's the most rewarding. Thing to see someone get into the pool and learn how to float, kick on their back. They've achieved something so important, but also they're just having a fun time. You know, splash splashing. In the water. The numbers are extremely staggering. 70% of our. Latinos and 40% of Caucasians. History. Making history builds great. It's extremely humbling to be an inspiration to someone. Inspiration to give back. The next generation of kids who get into the sport and love. Foundation for saving lives and building champions. By the way, we are Parks and Rec is a partner in the Make a Splash program. Statistics show that Americans, especially children, are at risk. 100 million, 100 million Americans don't know how to swim. As Simmons said, the statistics are true. 70% of African-American children, 65% of Asian American and Native American children, 60% of Hispanic children and 40% of white children can't swim. Nine children drown every day and every year. 5000 children under age 14 are hospitalized due to near drowning. Drowning is the number one cause of death for children under five. And the number two cause of injury related death for children under 15. Minority youth are far more likely to drown than their white peers. Long Beach, the aquatics capital of America, has no public pools. In six of its nine council districts are three. Public pools must serve almost one half million residents to build a Belmont Beach, an aquatic center, a massive competitive aquatics facility with two Olympic pools, two recreational pools, two spires, a high dove in the affluent third district. When six districts with higher population density and more low income and minority children have no public pools at all. Not only violates the public trust, but also local, state and federal laws. There is a new sheriff in town and the BBC is under arrest. Resubmit amendments to the code to act. Include the legal definition of environmental justice as the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures and income. With respect to environmental laws, including the sea, air regulations and policies, the Coastal Act, therefore sequel, now explicitly prohibits discrimination and promotes equal access to the beach and coastal zone, as well as to any program or activity that is conducted, operated, administered or receives financial assistance from the state. The Coastal Commission's report on climate change and sea level rise acknowledges disproportionate impacts on people of color and low income communities. Civil rights and environmental justice concerns in the coastal zone include access to recreation, beaches, parks and the ocean, public health and wellbeing, public participation and decision making discrimination including unintended consequences based on income, wealth, race, ethnicity or culture. So move it or lose it. The BBC is out of compliance with the Coastal Act requirements for recreational facilities because it doesn't need to be built on the beach. On the proposed site. The BBC would deny public access, certainly to the sand beneath it, as well as risk. Further degrading our shrinking shoreline are shrinking by adding acting as a barrier. Not that the city wants to call it that, especially as the sea level rises. Those designing and approving the BBC either fail to consider or rejected alternative sites and designs that would be less discriminatory towards low income and minority residents, especially those living in north and west Long Beach. The stated purpose of the Belmont Beach, an aquatic center to serve existing users in the same location as the old pool, fails to address the city's history of racial and economic discrimination. The BBC also violates our city healthy communities policies, which states that neighborhoods with historic barriers to health, wellness and safety will be the first to have new recreational facilities. Guests who didn't get invited to dinner, low income and minority residents were not equal participants in the design and review process of the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center, as required by Sequoia and the Coastal Act. The 14 member Stakeholder Advisory Committee appointed by city manager Pat West and former third callus councilman Frank Colonna, was dominated by those involved with and benefiting from a competitive aquatics venue, remaining on the same site as the old Olympic pool. The the committee had no representatives from underserved communities of public or public health advocates such as our own building healthy communities. Long Beach. No community meetings were held outside of the Third District other than the ones at City Hall. So no local, no district community meetings, third district community meetings focused on architectural elements and limited discussion on alternative sites with respect to equal access. A history of discrimination has created a lack of equity today throughout much of the 20th century in Los Angeles County. And this is a hidden history of racially discriminatory measures. Limited access by people of. Color to beaches, housing, job, schools, playgrounds, parks, swimming pools, restaurants, transportation, and other public accommodations. Public beaches were basically off limits to people of color. Blacks could enjoy only the inkwell a half mile stretch of beach in Santa monica and a two block long resort of Bruce's beach in Manhattan Beach Public Pools limited access by people of color to a rare international or Mexican day, after which the pool would be drained. In 1907, white residents in Long Beach block the development of an area used by African-Americans for picnics and outings, calling it a colored Coney Island. In 1917, over a protest by the black community, the drowning, the I can't say it N-word game at the pike continued operating. The city attorney held that there was no legal method of permitting it unless it could be shown to be a health hazard. And the city council of that time also failed to oppose it, referring the matter to committee. In the 1940s, black residents and businesses in predominantly white areas were firebombed and vandalized. In the 1950s, people of color could still not own property. Where I live in the third district where the BBC is located. Today we reject such overt acts of discrimination. However, de facto segregation and economic disparities continue to divide Long Beach by race and class. So now it's showtime. Tonight, the Long Beach City Council, you or elected representatives can move Long Beach toward greater equity, diversity, unity and health by acknowledging the truth of the appeals before you. Will this Council certify the Environmental Impact Report? Approve the site plan review, conditional use permit standards variance and local. Coastal. Development for the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center. To do so would kick the can down the road to the Coastal Commission, leave the city liable for the negative impacts of this project, including delaying and denying other projects deserving of Tidelands and other public moneys and open the city to lawsuits? Or will the Council come to terms with the fact that, unfortunately, the Stakeholders Advisory Committee, our wonderful Development Services Staff and our esteemed Planning Commission have greenlighted a project. That is both. Legally and morally indefensible. The Long Beach Area Network says, Please put health equity and public safety first. With respect. I'm sorry. I was distracted by Mr. Parkin says put health equity and public safety first with respect to public aquatics facilities and beaches. As regards the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center project, Mr. Modica. Shrink it, split it, move it or forget about it and build community pools instead. Okay. So I just I just want to make one comment since I got 3 minutes here. You know, when they're talking about as Mr. Modica came to my community about, now we need more money. Where are we going to get this money? We're going to get it from people who love swimming in the pool. Well, where did the city already look for it? I attended those last budget meetings. I was out in Mr. Richardson's district when seniors asked if they could just get a field trip, you know, and then somehow our city manager came up with a half a million dollars left over, just leftover money. Those seniors didn't get any field trip last year, last year, but there was money left over. And so it was Mr. West that I believe that suggested that we put that extra half a million dollars in the pool savings account. Now, in a meeting this week, I was told by I won't mention names, but one of the staff members that they fought back because they needed it for senior meals for low income seniors. Now it's getting a little crazy and we want the Olympics, but they need that pier fixed. All right. And this so-called savings account, $4 million a year needs to be put in it just to keep it even. You know, in the length of this meeting, that's about a thousand bucks every day that we don't put 11,000 bucks into that pool account. It's a money pit. I know I'm not supposed to talk about money, but it's rude, I guess. But anyway, it's just reality. It's. It's really reality. And, you know, what's what's real. What brings me to this is my young friends vision, which said, don't end it. Just don't always talk about what you don't want. What do you want? I said, I don't want kids to drown and I do want kids to swim. I just believe in community pools. I believe in this community. I believe that we can we can do that for each other and for our children. Thank you. Thank you. And before we had the last appellant I just wanted. I'm talking to Mr. Mays. Just make sure we're doing the, the, the timing. And so there was about a little under or about 3 minutes left over of the appellant before and about two and a half of the appellant currently. And so Mr. Mayes also was informing me that if the appellants want, they can use those minutes however you want at the end of the presentation. Or if you want to extend that, that's fine as well. So in the appellate bank, I think currently we have about 5 minutes. Okay. All right. Put on a thank you for that, mayor. That was one of the issues that most of us were discussing the last couple of moments, which was our understanding was that we were able to share our time. So good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Gordana Cager. I'm one of the four appellants to the Planning Commission on March 2nd, 2017. You have my complete written comment. I've had to extract much of what I wanted to say this evening because of the time limitations. So let's start. Okay. Standards variance. A standards variance was approved by Planning Commission for this project. The Planning Commission's approval of the Standards Variance was not based on facts and fails to support the requirement under the Long Beach Municipal Code to approve a standards variance. This is terribly boring stuff and so I apologize. Code to 1.15.2890 defines standards variances. A standards variance can't be used to intensify the use of a lot. Sorry. There we go. Code to 1.25.306 is required findings and now we go. These findings must be based on fact and analyzed made in adopted before standards variance can be approved. Most important, the project must be found to comply with all four of these findings there behind you, not just one or two, but all of them. And here they are, condition number eight. The staff report argues that the project site is unique because it is split zoned plan development PD two maximum height 25 feet park zone maximum height is 30 feet. It goes on to give a history of the former Belmont Plaza pool and then describes all the areas, the buildings, the beach , parking lots, the paving all around the site. Then the report says the presence and location of these existing improvements act as site constraints that limit the ability to design a facility in compliance with height limitations. None of this uniqueness makes it impossible to design a 25 foot to 30 foot pool building surrounded by the existing buildings, the parking lots in the sand beach. The staff report fails to support the argument that split zoning and the site's surrounding structures and amenities or designation as a special use park can only be satisfied by this new pool project. This standards variance is not supported by fact and cannot be approved for condition B. The city is clearly not experiencing hardship or being deprived of their rights to use the property as a park or PD two zoned area. Other properties in the same zone are being used as a park are public beach, for example. The staff argument is based on the former use of the site, not on the use of other properties nearby or on other properties. With these zoning designations, there is no evidence that nearby improvements forced the approval of this structure on this site, and the city's inability to use this property in a manner as other properties impede to or park, and that the city is experiencing a hardship is not supported by fact. The standards variance cannot be approved and d in the coastal zone the variance will carry out the local coastal program. And in fact this project actually violates the city's local coastal program. And this is it style a our building should be in harmony with other existing styles in the area. This building is clearly designed to be iconic. It is an iconic building and by definition, not in harmony with other buildings. Height. No building can be over two storeys high or 25 feet above grade. This building is 78 feet high. The curved roofline is more than 25 feet high over the majority of the structure. Lot coverage. No building shall cover more than 50% of its site. Now, here's the math. Here's the plinth, the foundation of the structure. This pool complex sits on a seven foot high foundation. The plinth covers 130,034 square feet of the project site. The mass behind you. The project site is 5.8 acres or 252,648 square feet. Half of the project site is 126,292 square feet. And the project exceeds the maximum. On this site by over 3700 square feet. Last, there's a special design standard. There won't be any unobstructed views through this site toward the beach. The pool structure is built on a seven foot high plinth on the beach. That seven foot wall will obstruct views through the site toward the beach and the ocean. To sum up the standards, variance cannot be approved as three of the four findings of fact have not been met. The City Council cannot uphold this approval of a standards variance for this project. If you do your violating your own code, the local coastal development permit findings the staff. Report deliberately. Ignores critical elements of the LCP. From Mel Nutter's testimony on March 2nd, 2017 at Planning Commission. The city as the applicant is asking itself as the permitting agency to violate its own LCP rules. The proposed coastal development findings speak generally about coastal policies and LCP policies. The findings do not mention the requirement of its adopted LCP that the coastal development permit issues be found consistent with its implementing ordinances such as the standards variance just described. The standards for granting a variance in the city's coastal zone are included in its LCP. Therefore, a failure to apply those standards would violate the local coastal program requirements. The City Council must overturn the Planning Commission's approval of a coastal development permit for this project. Violations of the Coastal Act. There are coastal policies for this project which were never identified or analyzed in the air. This is a violation of secure, which mandates that the air identify and fully analyze important Coastal Act policies. For example, the proposed development violates 30253amb of the Coastal Act. This has to do with protective devices and policies against coastal armoring from that section behind you. New development shall do all of the following, and it goes on to explain. This pool is built on a seven foot high pedestal, the plinth foundation. This is a structural protective device specifically designed to address flooding from foreseeable sea level rise. The air fails to identify, much less analyze, the Coastal Act policies prohibiting protective devices. This is a violation of secure and a violation of the Coastal Act. Protecting use of the ocean. The beach are also important elements of the Coastal Act. The air is supposed to analyze potential impacts, evaluate them properly, and identify the negative impacts. Under section 30231. From the air esthetics. Important factors in determining whether a proposed project will block views includes height, mass and location relative to surrounding land uses. The air then lands this whopper the sea. The city has not adopted defined standards or methodologies for the assessment of esthetic impacts, and that's a false statement. The city sure does have a defined method to identify esthetic impacts and its municipal code. 21.20 1.302.5 B Building height variance applicants shall erect storey poles plural, which accurately represent the full extent of the proposed structure. The city chose to install a single storey pole 14 days prior to the March two, 2017, Planning Commission meeting to satisfy the city's public notice period. And after the close of public comment for the IIR, the pole only recorded the height of the new building 78 feet and the height of the former building 60 feet. All views of the former building and proposed building. These key views from the air were Photoshopped into one dimension images. And here's one example. Artificially. Reducing the visual impacts of the proposed building in these images. The E.R. ignored the public. Vista, which will be blocked from Belmont Plaza adjacent to the Belmont Brewing Company by the bubble building looking east by Southeast. So would this project have a substantial adverse effect on a scenic vista? The air tells us no. The curved, elliptical shape of the bubble and the change in the building placement on the site. Now north south, formerly east west. With the reduced structural mass from the bubbles, elliptical design would not result, quote, in a substantial adverse effect on scenic vistas. That is a subjective statement with no basis in fact provided in the air. Further, however, the proposed quote project design appears to have. Comparable mass. Scale and height to the former Belmont Pool complex. That's another subjective statement with no basis, in fact. Further quote The visual character of the project would not be substantially degraded with implementation of the proposed project. Another subjective statement would no basis, in fact. A letter from the firm of Chaton Brown and Carstens dated February seven, 2017, to the city further details the sequel violations resulting from the city's refusal to include information obtained from Story poll installation. The public was not given an adequate method to assess and comment on the impacts of this project on any scenic vistas under the city's own municipal code. The EMR should be recirculated after the installation of story polls that documents the full size, shape and mass of the new project. Allow the public to identify and comment on the impacts to scenic vistas as required under section 300231 of the Coastal Act. Now more on air. Global climate change. The project was analyzed in the air for impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts those emissions have on sea level rise. And there aren't any. The air suggests the project may in fact be vulnerable to the effects of sea level rise. The city commissioned a wave up study in October 2014 to analyze the site's vulnerability to rising sea levels. And the air offers this table. With projections from the study on the project site. Then the air gives us some good news. Everything above the pool's main deck is safe. That's because the main pool deck is elevated 17 feet above me. Mean sea level. The waves will only reach 8.2 feet in the year 2060 and 10.4 feet or greater in the year 2100. Here's the bad news. The lower level of the building, the pool equipment and the storage and the parking areas are expected to be below projected waterline. The air then makes these two amazing conclusions. Visitors to the project would not be subjected to the impacts of sea level rise, and therefore the proposed project would not be adversely impacted by sea level rise due to climate change. And how does this project square with the city's policies on sea level rise climate, climate adaptation and resiliency? It doesn't. The city's own Climate Resiliency Assessment Report in December 2015. Sea level rise is 1.5 feet. Flooding from a 100 year storm expands to cover almost the entire peninsula. All of Belmont Shore and Alamitos Bay. Table four from that same report. Adaptation strategies for New Developments. New developments. This is a new development. Mandatory setbacks, required warning notices for developers on the potential impacts of future sea level rise and smart growth. Now let's hear from the state of California. This is the state's Ocean Protection Council report dated April 2017. Rising seas in California. It's the state's guidance document provided to state and local agencies such as yourselves to incorporate sea level rise projections into planning, permitting and investment decisions. The April 2017 report cites recent advances in ice loss science and projections of sea level rise from the report's key findings. The rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is increasing. New science and evidence has highlighted the potential for extreme sea level rise. The April 2017 report shows a chance of sea levels rising higher than ten feet in 70 years. That's two times higher than the sea level rise projections identified in this air. And here are some images of what that might look like. On the site. These are provided by Cal State University, the Department of Geology students. The air must be recirculated to analyze the the latest sea level rise science projections released by the state of California. The IIR alternatives. Additionally, quote, funding for the proposed project is entirely sourced from Thailand's operating fund. That's a false statement. The project site alternatives were artificially excluded based on the proposed funding for this pool, with 103 million estimated construction budget and only 60 million budgeted from Tidelands. This project requires alternative public funding sources for over 43 million, and whereas that 43 million to come from. That money, wherever it may come from, is more than enough to build this project inland, away from unstable sand, away from the threat of sea level rise. So let's hire a consultant. Let's do the fundraising. And let's build this pool complex inland. 50 million is proposed from that fundraising effort. We can build this and build it exactly as designed in another part of town. The EIA was announced on April 11, 2016, asserting full funding of Thailand's funds. Assistant City Manager Tom Modica was quoted in the Press Telegram on April nine, 2016. 60 million and tidelands funds are secured. He noted the falling price of oil and that the city was working to identify other funding sources. The city failed to correct this false assertion about tidelands funding in the air. Even when they had the opportunity, the air must be recirculated with alternative sites identified outside of the coastal zone without consideration for funding sources. Thank you for your time this evening and I'm available to answer any questions. Thank you. Did. Did you want to use any of the remaining time that you have? Thank you. Nope. Okay. Okay. So we'll close the appellants and the four appellants have now spoken. They've not using any of the additional time. And so now we will come back and we're going to go ahead and go through public comment. But before we do that, I know that we have any sort of any staff rebuttal. Mr. Major. That's correct. Correct. Yes, Mayor. Okay. So we're going to look at the staff rebuttals and we'll go to public comment. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So we have just a few topics to provide some additional information on. We believe the E.R. covers a vast majority of the comments that you've heard. We believe the air is solid. The air provides a tremendous amount of information and addresses those concerns that were brought up. But I do want to bring a couple of points up. One, we have heard that potentially, if we were to pick up the building and to put it in an alternate location, that tremendous amount of savings could be had. We have had our engineers take a look at it, and that is simply not a true statement. We are looking at approximately 3 to 5% of the total cost is what would be saved by moving it to a different site in the as condition. That's approximately $4 million in savings. But I do want to give an example. If we were, for example, to not do it on this site and do it on, for example, the elephant lot, if that were an available site, which we've gone through the alternatives analysis on that. There are other costs that come with sites. For example, you heard Ms.. Burdick talk about the need for replacing parking. Since you would put that in a parking lot, you'd have to build a parking structure. So while you may save some cost, that $4 million on the beach site would be potentially things like not having to deep water that particular site or use corrosive protection from some of the elements or have the plinth at seven feet. You're still going to want a plinth because you want to be able to get under the building. So those costs are going to be transferrable. So there really isn't a tremendous amount of savings from moving it to another site. Again, 3 to 5% of total costs. One thing we've submitted a letter into the record, a a comment letter back to the Coastal Commission to provide some additional detail on sea level rise and and sand management or a sea level rise and wave up rush. So we do have our coastal expert here today. We have Russ Boudreau from Moffatt, a Nicole, who can answer questions if the council has any. But essentially, we found a very innovative solution that we'd like to discuss with the Coastal Commission. We currently have an active sand management approach where we are moving sand from one area to the other. This is unique in Long Beach, where most cities lose their sand to the ocean and they have to actually import new sand to put back on the beach. Long Beach doesn't lose sand. We essentially it shifts and it moves around on our beach. We believe there's a great opportunity to continue what we're doing with sand management to be able to meet the Coastal Commission's needs of having an active beach many years into the future in front of this facility through either additional beach nourishment or even just sand management. And we may be a beach in many years into the future that actually is still very, very robust, where other beaches are going to lose a tremendous amount of sand. And additionally, with sand management and sea level rise, we also have to look at the life of the facility. How long is this facility going to be along and how does that line up with the you know, with sea level rise? And of course, all of this is included in the EIA ETF. We have studied that material in depth. We've got our architects here. If you have additional questions, it does stand up in marine environments. We've seen it work very, very well and throughout the country in a lot of different areas. It is not so sensitive that a pelican is going to break it if it lands on it. But if you have additional questions, we have our architects here learn to swim programs that were talked about. We absolutely agree with that comment. They are vital. They are important. We do do those within the city of Long Beach. We would love to do more, of course. And this facility is that is one of the goals and functions of this facility is to have people learn how to swim and be active. There was a comment made that there are somehow barriers to access, that this pool would be discriminatory and not allow individuals into it. I just need to say very clearly that is absolutely not the case. This is a facility open to anybody and everybody. There are no barriers to entrance. The site is fully accessible. We have heard about this concept about putting other pools in areas in in Long Beach. It's a very a great idea. I think we would all be embracing the fact of having additional pools. It simply is a funding issue. There are no additional general fund that would be available to be able to do that type of infrastructure project. And legally, we are legally restricted from taking Tidelands dollars and using them outside of the title ones area. I will ask Mike Mayes to answer a quick question about the alternative location analysis so that you know what square requires a little alternative location analysis and how we've gone a little bit beyond that. Actually, in our in our our document and the MISMO deck has one or two things to add as well. Mayor and members of the city council. As Tom mentioned, there were some comments made about the alternatives discussion in the air in addition to what is contained in the executive summary within the ER that does discuss the alder alternatives. There's a full 36 pages in the environmental document, the air that discusses the alternatives. And as any pointed out in her presentation, not only does the Air discuss alternatives that were considered and initially rejected. It also discusses at some length alternatives sites and additions to also alternative sites that were discussed actual alternative configurations for the pool itself . You heard discussion about a pool without a diving. Well, a pool with the diving. Well, on the outside of the facility. There is no magic number in square law in regard to what how many alternatives that are studied. Typically, you will not see more than four, including the no project alternative, which was included in the sea air. So in our view, this you are more than adequately discusses a reasonable range of alternatives for the Council to consider both alternative sites and alternative configurations of the preferred project, which is the subject of the discussion tonight. So we're satisfied that the alternatives discussion is by. Sir. Mayor, members of the City Council, I'm going to add a few things to some of the comments that were made. One of the comments was the city never asked us. We never had any ability to discuss the design. Mr. Modica did discuss the public outreach meetings that had occurred. There certainly was a steering committee stakeholder excuse me, a stakeholder advisory committee. But in addition to that, there were numerous public meetings, three study sessions, an online design survey as well. So those were not limited to just the stakeholder advisory committee. There were also numerous opportunities at both the Planning Commission and the City Council to have discussions related to this project and the design. Also an ER document is a disclosure document. So by virtue of the fact that there is an air, there's also an opportunity for discussion about the design and all of the impacts of that design within the air document. Another comment was that we did not follow the story whole process and did not comply with the intent of the law. The applicant, the appellant in this case will. Recall. That the city staff was willing to install additional storage poles, but the Planning Commission ruled that one story a pole was more than adequate to to address the height of variance that was being requested by virtue of the intent of the storage pole ordinance. The story pole ordinance was put into place with the intent to focus on residential properties and that were in Belmont Shore, Belmont Heights, Naples and the Peninsula. This project, those projects typically do not have to go through a EMR requirement. And so the approach by virtue of installing a story pole that. Would allow the members of the public to. Understand what the potential impact of that residential project would be by the storage pole installation. In this case, a story pole was in addition to all of the sequel requirements and the disclosures. Of all the environmental. Impacts under SEQUA. As I stated just now, the Planning Commission. Ruled that. One storage pole was adequate and that is what staff complied with. There was also some discussions about maintenance of ETF plastics and that it is only appropriate in cold climates. We have reached out to various users of ETF and their facilities and we have spoken to Arctic in Anaheim, which is the Anaheim Regional Transportation Something Center. It's a transit center in Anaheim. That facility opened in 2014. They have had no bird issues and they have not yet had to clean that facility due to the nature of the ETF. We also recently spoke to a facility in Boca Raton, Florida, which is the Waldorf Astoria Boca Raton Resort, which has a large ETF structure and systems similar to what we're proposing. It is on the ocean. It has been there since 2007, and they have told us that they have absolutely no problems, nor have they had any issues being at a beach facility, nor did they ever have issues with birds puncturing the membranes or any challenges keeping the roof clean. Boca Raton, Florida, is not a cold weather climate at this point in time. Mr. Mayes addressed the alternative locations. And then I want to focus on protective devices, the definition of new development, and then standards, variances and lot coverage and coverage requirements for the newbuilding more than 50% of the site. That would be true in this location if this location were not in split zoning. And so there is a park zone that covers the southern half of the site and the park zone does not have a 50% lot coverage requirement. The lot coverage is determined by site plan review committee. So we are very comfortable with the findings that we've made related to the standards variances, including the requirements for hardship, harmony with other buildings and obstructed views. I would like. To point out that there are no designated, locally designated scenic vistas in the city. So as the diagram pointed out, the old facility blocked the view from the Belmont Brewing Company. And the new facility is in the same location as well. But that is not a scenic vista. Locally designated scenic vista. We also want. To talk about protective devices. We did include this, that this is not a protective device under the definition under the Coastal Act. This is a foundation. A protective device would be if you were required to construct a seawall in front of the pool facility to protect the facility. We are not having to develop any protective devices to protect it from sea level rise. Likewise, this is not the definition of new development. New development does not include improvements to any structure which do not change the intensity of its use, which do not increase. Either the floor area height or. Bulk of the structure by more than 10%, which do not block or impede public access and which do not result in a seaward encroachment by the structure. This new facility meets the criteria and is not considered a new, new development. Those are my comments to address some of the outstanding comments that were raised by some of the appellants. Mr. Monica, do you have anything else to add? Yes, Ms.. Burdick. One last thing. We heard about Tidelands and the source of funding. That is absolutely been the primary intent, is that this would be tidelands funded. Of course, we always look for additional funding sources and opportunities, especially when funding comes not in as anticipated. Oil is still an option to be able to fund this pool in the future. We obviously still have a process left to go before we are at the point of construction, but and we are looking for other types of sources, but the main, at least the majority of the of the funds, over 50% currently are tidelands and we expect that to continue. So again, this this really is a Tidelands primary funded facility. And with that, Mr. Mayor, we turn it back over to you. Thank you. Excuse. Thank you for this next portion of the hearing. We will do public comments and and then we will go to the council. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Bill Thomas. I am a resident in the Almeida's Heights area by the lagoon. I'm here to speak very much in favor of the project, although it may be tarred and feathered on the way out. From what I've heard so far, I fully understand what Tom and Amy said in their presentations. They could follow it. I had trouble following the rest of it, but I'd rather taken a different approach looking at history, more time, and any mentioned history in reference to the project. And so I'll use that to perhaps give another a picture. I came here in the mid-fifties and it was a navy town. I was a Navy pilot stationed at Los Alamos airbase, and I left in the early sixties and didn't come back for over 30 years till I retired. And that was 15 years ago. And I was amazed at how this time the city had changed in the positive in all areas. And when I was in high school, I had a fellow by the name of the forgetting, getting the name Jesse Owens, who came to my high school and talked about how the Olympics affected his life. And he affected my life, got me involved in track and field. I would assume that all these Olympians that we have in our area would be more than willing to go to every high school in the city at Long Beach and explain, well, why all the kids in all areas to come on down the beach and get into swimming? And I think that it's a very positive point that can be made. And the other point, as far as history is concerned, I was stationed at Los Alamitos, as I said, and so I bought a house and I made sure because it had per diem, because there weren't facilities at the at the air base . And I paid $8,000. And I so at the end of 59 for $16,000, and I came back 15 years later and they asked asking for 600 or $800,000 for that house. So I know prices have gone up and I have to realize we have to expect that. But I think we have a fantastic project going and just the idea of having a facility that will put Long Beach on the map. I have some friends back in the Chicago area where I went to high school and they even know about this project and what's going on and it's going to bring a lot of traffic here. And from my sales background, you can't build a whole bunch of pools around the city and expect to bring in income and traffic and keep the image of the aquatic capital. When I first came back, I'm over time. Yeah, I've got up there. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we've got a lot of speakers. I'm gonna just try to get the time here. And next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Ella Jorgensen, and I'm almost 14 years old and I've been swimming with rock and fish for a total of about four years. I currently use a temporary outdoor pool in place of the old Belmont Olympic pool. I understand there are many reasons on why the new pool plans should not be built. For example, time and money. You may be thinking I'm just a kid and I won't be able to understand whether or not this new pool is really worth it. If you're thinking that, it's fine. But many passionate swimmers like me would agree that the new poll does matter. To me, swimming is a sport that I can relieve my stress and frustration while having a great time. By working out in a pool, I can reach peace from daily life. I enjoy being with my team and letting loose of all our daily demands in school. My fellow rocket fishers come from different parts of Long Beach and nearby cities to meet at the barber pole nearly every day. These new poles will be roping communities, families and friends together. We can all agree that we wouldn't have it any other way. When you join rocket fish, you become part of a strong relationship for life. Rockfish is my second family and the bomber pulls my steak at home. I've had the privilege of swimming alongside other teams such as beach swim, water polo, Wilson, High School, water polo and every community water exercise classes that I know the new pools are important to them and our entire community as well. Memories are made at the Boba pool and will continue with the new pools. My mom grew up at the Olympic pool in the seventies. That pool was where she learned how to swim. That pool is where she realized her courage and took her very first jump off the high dove as a young girl. That old Olympic pool was where she took me as a toddler to learn to swim. Little did I know that that was the start of my passion for swim. I still remember the big Olympic rings on the side of the building and telling myself I will get there someday in that very same pool. It is important to me to encourage the community to live a fun, safe, healthy lifestyle. That is what my coach, Hank Weiss, has always taught us. That is why building this new pool center is so important to me and my team and the community. Thank you for your time and considering the new Belmont Pool Beach and Aquatic Center. Please deny the appeals and pass the air. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hello? Council. Mayor Staff. My name is Seamus Ennis, I. I'm a coastal engineer. I'm licensed by the state of California as a civil engineer, practicing coastal engineer since 1995. I represent the beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, and we support the appeal. And we wish that you don't approve the EIA because we think mainly the pool shouldn't be built on the beach. The Surfrider Foundation. Our mission is to protect the oceans, waves and beaches for recreation and for nature. By protecting beaches, what we envision is natural beaches unpaved, undeveloped with wildlife and people playing on them. In the last four years, we've lost over eight acres of our beach to development. This is through the the bike path and bathroom restoration. And with this project as proposed, we're going to lose another two and a half acres. So with you're familiar with the phrase death by a thousand cuts, as we go along this path, we're going to keep losing more and more acres of our beach. So there's a good opportunity for you to change direction and actually start what other coastal cities are doing, which is a concept called managed retreat, whereby instead of building on the beach, you get stuff out of the way because we're on the sea level. Rise is coming, flooding is coming. It's going to be very expensive. It's it behooves us to be prudent, mature adults and start planning for this and getting material out of the way instead of actually making the problem worse in the future. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Dr. Garcia and members of the council. I'm a long term member. My name is Pat Nielsen. I'm a long term member of the Long Beach Grunion Swim team. For many years now, we have been host to the Seven Pacific Masters Championship Swim meet at the Belmont Pool. This is a big event. 53 teams bring 600 swimmers and their families to a three day meet. These visitors sleep in our motels, eat in our restaurants and shop in our stores. They also remember Long Beach as a friendly city. As an example, a couple of months ago, many of our swimmers went to a swim meet in Vancouver. The Canadian swimmers made the remark. Please rebuild your Belmont. We miss it. 2012 was our last meet in Long Beach. In 2013, our pool was gone. We did not give up. We took our Long Beach mate to the end of the Aquatic Center and the City of Commerce. Two years later, that pool was being remodeled. We took our Long Beach meet to a lovely outdoor swim complex in La mirada. It was a risk a three day outdoor meet in December. But the gods were with us that weekend. The weather was about 80 degrees. Last year, we returned to the city of Commerce. The Belmont was host to many activities other than master swimming, water polo, high school league finals in Kiev. A few years ago, I had spinal surgery. I could hardly walk at the Belmont. A mechanized chair put me in the pool where I did the water exercise class. Sometimes I worked with other post surgery people. In the shallow end, we called ourselves The Walking Wounded. After a short time, I left the walker, the crab cane, and I was well, my Girl Scouts and my Cub Scouts did their badge work at the Belmont when I was working with Red Cross Small Craft Safety Program. The deep end is where we learned how to do an Eskimo roll in canoes. And what about the little child from the inner city who is lucky enough to have someone take him swimming? He probably can't put his head underwater, but he can jump, splash, kick and have feelings of joy. Long Beach has many special attractions the Queen Mary, the Aquarium, the Grand Prix. And of course, our wonderful university. The members. And we also had a wonderful indoor pool. We, the members of the swim community, trust you to make wise decisions and believe as we do. Thank you. The Belmont is a valuable asset to our city. Thank you. Thanks for listening, Pat Nielsen. Thank you, Pat. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. My name's Joe Gibbs. I live in Belmont Heights and I've worked as an environmental consultant for many years, including a focus on coastal zone management and related EHRs. I respectfully disagree with some of the rebuttal from your staff. First, describing this new building as a modification of an existing facility under the Coastal Act is is just wrong. That isn't how it works. The Isle now alternatives analysis is also inadequate. You're required by sequel to analyze a reasonable range of alternatives and the final superior alternatives has to meet the basic objectives of the project. The project proponents often write a list of objectives so prescriptive that only their proposed project will meet all the objectives. That's not the basic objectives. That's a wish list with no legal meaning. There's an implication that two of the basic objectives in this project should be fully funded by the title and funds and on the same site in the coastal zone. That fails for a couple of reasons. First, funding isn't a basic objective. Second, it's also not a basic or fundamental requirement that aquatic centers be in the coastal zone. The competitive swimming world is full of aquatic centers, far away from any coast. Nonetheless, the air can find that any site outside of the coastal zone would be financially unfeasible, but not the way you did it here. Financial feasibility can't be tied to an overly prescriptive objective. The feasibility conclusion would need to be supported by a review of alternative sites outside the coastal zone and findings that those sites would not be feasible. You can't just conclude alternatives are financially feasible without doing a financial feasibility analysis of alternatives. Here's the bottom line. You can't exclude alternative sites by writing overly prescriptive objectives, and you can't determine an alternative is a financially feasible one without doing the analysis. Finally, given some of the comments on the draft and the recent letter from Coastal Commission staff, the sea air can't be improved. I think your staff is missing the point of the letter. It's a comment on secure adequacy. You know, a recent quoting from a recent Supreme Court decision, the quote, banning ranch decision decided a couple of weeks ago. Quote, chic. The guidelines specifically call for consideration of related regulatory regimes like the Council Act when discussing project alternatives and air must describe a range of reasonable alternatives to the project or to a location that would feasibly attain most of the basic objectives but avoid substantially or substantially lessen that significant impacts. Coastal Act violation very much by definition significant impacts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. What we're gonna do is. I'm just. I'm going to let somebody that's up there go ahead and speak and go ahead and speak up there, and then we'll come back down here. Good evening. My name is Susan Miller. I have lived across from Belmont Pool since 1993. I was one of the 13 members of the pool advisory committee. The IIR is flawed and lacking in common sense. The parking lots currently flood as shown in these pictures. As the appellants have noted about responses to comments in the air. The lower level of the pool in the parking lots would be the low water line. However, these areas would be not open for public use. And how is a parking lot not public? The parking lot flood now. Sea level rise will impair parking further. No parking is a significant impact. Parking needs mitigation. The water table has changed. In the last 24 years I have lived across from the pool. More development has left Los less porous ground for water runoff absorption. The water rises to our front doors now. Flooding is a problem currently. The addition of massive concrete plinth pool with sea level rise makes this not sensible location through the Air Esthetics Session and the local coastal program include policies for retention of existing terminal and Bennett views. Visual impacts are part of the secure the cafe and restrooms located at the end of Bennett Avenue obstruct public view. The location of the cafe is under Coastal Commission jurisdiction. A seven storey bubble building pool in a neighborhood with a three story building height restriction is not compliant. There is a depiction of the $100 million plus pool as ill look with sea level rise. No parking lot, no access to the pool. My last slide shows the bird pack damage in an ETF material. The birds peck my clay tile roof every morning to drink condensation and break apart their food. The bird pecking has chipped out our clay tile so the ETF roof of the pool will suffer this damage to and at a greater degree. Also note in this slide, the Solar Dot imprint on the ETF material, the California Energy Code requires blocking 91% of all light passing through, thereby making the roof nearly opaque. Who attendees will not have a clear view of the oceans? The seven storey High Bowl pool bubble structure is not transparent, nor will it blend into a three storey high residential neighborhood. I also visited the Anaheim Arctic train station and it does have a leak. I have pictures and it has a duct tape patch on it. I ask you to uphold the appeals and deny the Planning Commission's approvals. Thank you very much. Speaker, please. My name is Rene Lawler. I'm a native of Long Beach and I'm also a swimmer. I spend an average of 5 hours a week in a local public pool, and I assist patients that have EMS on a person to person basis, allowing them the opportunity to participate in water aerobics exercise class. I do so with the support of the local National Multiple Sclerosis Society chapter. While I'm a swimmer and I support the idea of adding modern facilities, I also ask you to uphold the appellants and deny the approval for the project of this pool at this location. I wish to touch upon some social injustice issues and also to provide accurate information with respect to Tidelands, because there have been erroneous statements made in regard to Tidelands. There seems to be the idea that Tidelands is only subject to the coastal zone. However, the sovereign lands and the Tidelands includes submerged lands not only out to shore three nautical miles, but also lands that have been filled that are no longer underwater, but were at the time that they were created as sovereign lands, which basically means effective as of 1850, when we became a state in 1911, the city was granted sovereign title to Tidelands. But this also based on case law, means that there's trusteeship to handle and and address assets of public lands that are subject to tidelands that are upriver. So the IRA didn't adequately address all the land opportunities that are up land that could be more appropriate locations for a pool facility of this sort. The Public Trust Doctrine provides that these types of lands, if they're on, for instance, navigable waterways, which the U.S. EPA determined that the L.A. River is a navigable waterway, could be subject to Tidelands. The when you look at that fact and you look at the fact that the L.A. River was only channelized effective as of 1950. Flee Inn in Long Beach. The bulk of the river lands are outside the channelized canal, which means there are a number of locations upriver that should be considered. If you look at historic datum and dams and markers in reference to the high and low mean tide lines, there's also plenty of evidence that dates back to the time of sovereign lands that show that there is, at least up as far as the Dominguez Gap wetlands opportunity for lands to reconsider another location. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Hi. My name's Carelessly. I'm from the fifth District and I'm a new director in the Corp organization as well. I didn't do the the study that the rest of my folks have done here. I just came into that organization. But I did do a couple of commonsense things. I went to look and say, Who else has thought a pool on the beach is a good idea? Who's done it and what's the outcome? And I did find one very close up in Santa monica. They put in a a public pool. They didn't have enough money to do it. They really had a desire to do so. They went and got charitable funds and they put one in. There's isn't fancy. It doesn't have it's not indoor, it doesn't have dove pools and such, and it cost $30 million. But when I looked at the commentary that goes with that website, you know, it was supposed to be a public pool. And what the commentary was was that the public really doesn't use it. The reason being that it's $10 for access to that pool, and most people can't afford that. If they've got a family of four or five, that's $50 for one trip down to the pool. So you're not going to learn to swim there. In terms of that being a public pool that becomes lip service, then the pool that you've put in really is something for the privileged. So you and I can swim there, but that doesn't mean that this will service all of Long Beach. The other thing I looked. At was the the topic of risk. Having been in the business world for a lot of years, you look at how things are going to play out in terms of return on investment and in particular what are the risks. And this particular location is just fraught with risk. I mean, no no organization that is profitable would dream of investing in this pool because you can put a $130 million into it. And Mother Nature comes by and cracks it, you know, what are you going to do with that? So in terms of the location on this, I just can't see that it's logical to do this. And that has nothing to do with the law or anything else. It's just, where is your good business sense? Curt There's an organization, you know, we're supposed to be here, you know, for citizens about responsible planning. I personally think that's your job. I don't know why I'm doing it. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Yeah. Hi, I'm Marsha Olsavsky, mayor and city council and staff. I'm a longtime resident at Long Beach. Tonight, I'm representing the Long Beach Area Peace Network, and I'm on the steering committee and I totally support and the Christensen's testimony today. We're about peace and social justice. And we hold vigils we have tabling in Belmont Shore and Bixby Knolls. And we want you to oppose the NRA because of social justice issues. And I just had a couple of little comments. It would seem that the city staff and the Planning Commission doesn't really recognize global warming, which is kind of a it sounds very familiar to me, and it sounds like the president of the United States. So so it's sort of you know, it's I know Long Beach is a very liberal city and we have great liberal politicians . And but I don't know how we came up with no global warming. The other thing that I'm concerned about is that we do have a member on the Coastal Commission and I'm wondering if this all goes through whether Mr. Urunga will recuse himself from the Coastal Commission because he's famous for firing the executive director and also voting for developing the last wetlands in Orange County. So anyway, I just tend to throw these barbs out here because we have to think about the environment, we have to think about social justice. And I think it's just very important that you reject this environmental impact report. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Debbie McCormick. I'm coach of the McCormack Divers. I'm a member of the Long Beach Century Club and on the board of the aquatic capital of America. Now, to me, I'm just passionate about sports. I'm passionate about kids. I'm passionate about fitness. I'm so passionate about this. I've been here eight or nine times. I started. This four years ago going. I read it in the paper and said. You were going to rebuild a pool. I was devastated. I got this city hall packed with Olympians. Greg Louganis, Dr. Samueli was here six times, everybody. There's so. Much support. For this facility in everyone, in aquatics, not just diving, which is my passion, but swimming, water, pool. People need to learn how to swim. We need water safety. And just keep in mind that this pool benefit hundreds and thousands of women, children, kids from every area, every district. I coached kids in almost all of your districts. I've had every ethnic variety. I've had all of my kids that stay long enough have gotten college scholarships to USC, UCLA, Stanford, everywhere. And I think we do really, really good things for your children. I would love to coach your grandkids, even the people that are opposed to this pool come down. I'll teach your kids how to dove and get getting something different to do. If we get the 2024 games, I just think that it would be more impetus to get this pool. We could host possibly the Olympic diving trials and if nothing else, at the very least, we could use it as a training site for the Olympics. I think the design of the pool is unbelievable and I love what they've done. And please consider the majority of the aquatic community and everybody that I've talked to, we need this pool and it'll be so positive and it will make us the aquatic capital of America. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor. City Council members and staff. My name is Allison Gallagher. I'm here today on behalf of Assembly Member Patrick O'Donnell, who is in Sacramento. Mr. O'Donnell is a strong advocate of this project. The Belmont Pool is a place where our kids can learn and grow while learning competitive aquatics in a positive community environment. This pool is necessary to ensure our community supports our youth and remains on the global aquatic map. For decades, this location has been home to afterschool and weekend programs promising young athletes and the Olympic trials. The bond pool served as a source for revenue and attracted thousands to the area supporting local businesses. This proposed project will serve as a destination for aquatic athletes, enthusiasts and coaches seeking to train in a world class facility. We need not delay this project any further. The original pool earned Long Beach, the title of aquatic capital of America, and this new pool will make sure we keep that title. Assemblymember O'Donnell supports the Belmont Athletic Aquatic Facility and asks the council to deny the appeals. Further. He urges the council to come up with a funding strategy to ensure that the pool is completed in a very timely manner. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nick Speaker. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and city council members. My name is Tony Azevedo. I'm a five time Olympic water polo member, Long Beach resident and a Long Beach Wilson grad. I support the Belmont Plaza. You know, I learned to swim at the Belmont Plaza. I learned a dove at the Belmont Plaza, and I learned to play water polo at the Belmont Plaza. But it was the the events that the collegiate events, the international events where I got to meet my idols. And it was those idols that made me the person I am today. So this is about the youth. Please deny the appeals and let our future have the same opportunities. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Mr. Mayor. City Councilman Michael Kirkpatrick. Obviously, you know, you've taken a lot of time to hear from both supporters and detractors of the pool. I appreciate you taking the time to do so. I think you heard from your city staff who is in strong support of this pool and has done a lot of research on it. Thank you, city staff, for all the time and effort you put into this. You also got to hear an hour's worth of appeals. That's obviously a long time to hear a lot of negative energy. I hope that you're hearing a lot of positive things from those of us who are coming down the aisle. There are many, like myself here in line who are thrilled about this pool and very excited about where it's going. I've had said already, I'm a resident of District three. I'm here as part of the Rockfish swim team. I'm also a coach for the Rocketeers Swim Team. I coached Masters as well. I've been a lifelong swimmer. I've competed in the former Belmont Olympic pool. I love this site. I love the sport. I love this city. There's no question that we can dissect the E.R. and debate each point in excruciating detail. I know your staff has looked through all of this excruciating detail. Your staff, architects and builders in the future as to operating maintain the pool are also going to have a lot of work ahead them. So don't underestimate the work ahead of you. That said, there's no issue, a concern that was presented tonight that should sway you to oppose the pool and therefore encourage you to do what's on your agenda. Uphold the playing committee's decision. Adopt the resolution certifying the Environmental Impact Report. Approve a mitigating monitoring and reporting program, and approve the site plan review, conditional use permit, standard variance and local coastal developed permit entitlements for the construction operation. The Belmont Beach Aquatic Center. Thank you for the long title. There is a multiple. Multitude of users for this new pool. I know you've heard from a lot of them. You've got high schools, youth and adult swim teams, water polo teams, adult aerobics, recreational labs, swimming. Learn to swim programs. I'm at this pool. Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturdays. If you haven't come down to the pool and seen how busy this pool is, it is busy all the time. We are constrained on pool space. This new pool allow us to have a lot more space to do what we want to do. You've heard a lot of also talk about sea level rise, about parking and about the location and a lots of other things. I do hope I think sea level rise is real. I hope you do, too. I think there needs to be more thought put into that than just we don't build a pool because the sea levels may rise. I think there's a more holistic level of planning that should be thought about because if all the Belmont Shore floods, you got bigger ponds in the pool you just built is underwater. When it comes to location. I think your city staff has done a great job looking at alternative locations. I don't think you're going to find a better location. All Long Beach, and I appreciate the time and consideration you've done to put it where it is. Thanks again to city staff, to city council. Again, encourage you to to support this vote. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. And I'm going to be closing the speakers list. So if there's a whoever wants to get on the speakers list, now's the time. It's we have we still have probably an hour worth of speaking. If we keep going, I may limit down to 2 minutes midway through here. So talk to the attorney about that, but please continue. 3 minutes. Okay. So why the Belmont poll matters to me. By the way, my name is Shane Fowler, and thank you for having me here. From when I was about 4 to 11 years old, I felt defeated in life and as a human. I grew up in Wilmington and I got beat up for being white. We moved over to San Pedro when I was about 11, and I got beat up again and this time I fought back. But of course, I lost because I was a scrawny, scrawny little girl. But I had this passion in me. I don't know where it came from or. What it was, but I knew I. Had a passion in me. And I found somehow I was at a pool and I did a flip up, a diving board, and someone said, You need to go into diving. And I found this sport in it here in Long Beach, and it provided me with a home, with a family. And I wasn't hanging out at the local parks filled with drugs and doing what all my so-called friends were doing and were diving gave me, as I'm the first person in my family to go to college and the first person to dove in a Division one college, and the first person in my family to graduate. And I'm a successful business owner, all because what diving gave to me, it gave me work ethic and ethic. And if you want something and you believe in it, you go for it. This is what the Belmont Pool gave to me. And I honestly, I don't know where I would be if I didn't have this community or this pool. After I graduated college, I never look back. Most of my friends didn't graduate high school. They went and a lot of them went to prison. I honestly might be there with them if I didn't have this pool. 2013 the pool was destroyed and knocked down. That has been a long time. How many dreams have been? They haven't been accomplished because this pool hasn't been here. You guys, this is this isn't this is not a new pool. This is an existing pool. Pool was already there. This pool should be there because we have so there's so much passion in the sport of aquatics. Please don't let it die here. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Mayor. Just so you know, the speaker's list is closed. So the gentleman in the back. Is. Actually the gentleman. The back with the curly hair. There is the last speaker was already in line to your right. You were in line earlier. I'm not with Joe. Okay. Go ahead. Laurie Angel. I'm one of the directors of Carp citizens about. Responsible planning. I live on Platt Street in North Long Beach. We don't have too many pools around. I started swimming. When I was eight and got my Red Cross certification. I believe in swimming. I learned to body surf at a very young age and you're lucky. You have an entire ocean out there that most people won't even see. Most of the kids that live north of, say, PCH don't even have an opportunity to get down here, much less be in a significant pool. So I think it's nice that everybody wants for the aquatic center. I think that's a wonderful thing. But we do have some information here from. Mike Nelson, who's the facilities development director from USA Swimming, and he indicated that. Because cost is kind of an issue. For the location of this swimming pool, if this project was built at almost any other location. An extremely extravagant exterior was more normal. It would be in the 35 to $45 million range. Case in point, the new facility at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Was 32 million. And cost is a factor here. I know that you don't want to consider that. But part of it is. The city's insistence on. When they put an air. Together. Is they point and they do create a specification. Such that there is only one location that's a viable location when in fact this could be put in in in numerous locations. At a fraction of the cost. The 3 to 4% reduction in cost, I don't know where that's coming from. But we do have this from a facilities person that develops facilities. For. Swimming that indicates that it would be a significant savings if it was done elsewhere. So. I personally think that it's kind of critical and. Criminal actually to invest this much money to benefit so few people. I mean, there may be 5000 people in the city itself that will use this facility, which is less than. 1% of the population. And the amount of money. In budget that. It's going to take up just to. Maintain and operate the pool is going to be taking. Away from Parks and Rec, and that's another issue. So I think learning to swim is really important for people, but this. Is not accessible for most. You can say, well, just drive down. I mean, some people don't have cars, they don't have. The fare to take the the the. Blue line down. So why don't you. Put it in a place where more people can get to it? You have an entire ocean out there. So please allow the appeal. I think it's a reasonable thing to do. And deny the air thing. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Heather Lindros. I live in the second district. I came to support my sister and going to here with going out of the pool. I didn't really expect to speak to everyone, but after hearing anything, I felt like I should. There's a lot of concerns that I guess I have about the pool. My primary concern, I guess, is the diversity issue, its location, and and I get the nostalgia aspect of it. In the latter part of my youth, I swam competitively, I played water polo competitively. I swam at and competed at the Plaza. So I completely understand the nostalgia. But, I mean, I used to take the. Bus all the time, too, and to take the. Bus from North Long Beach down to Belmont Plaza. That can take over an hour, you know, and then you get there and then you have to pay to get in or I need to get the transit center. I mean, that can take about 30 minutes when you get to the transit center to get to Belmont Plaza. So I just feel like it's very I don't know, I don't feel like it serves all of Long Beach. I feel like it just serves this one section, the section of Long Beach that everyone thinks about, but no one thinks about the other part of Long Beach. And I feel like it's kind of painful because I feel like we're a very like, loving city and people say we're so diverse for whatever reason. I don't know why we don't think about that part of Long Beach as. You know. Worth those types of things. No one should sit on a bus. For an hour to access a pool in our city. I think it's a little bit. Ridiculous to me. So I would hope I mean, I'm for pool. I think pools are great. I swam, I competed, I get it. But I don't know if it necessarily should be where it is right now. And there's other aspects as well. But I mean, that's kind of my primary concern. I mean, I think everyone should have access to it. So I appreciate your time. I know it's been very long, so I hope you have a great evening. Thanks so much. Thank you. We're going to. Be for my. Thank you. Unless there's counsel. Objection. We're going to go down to 2 minutes. Okay. All right. Continue. 2 minutes. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Heidi. Shibley and I represent the Surfrider Foundation. And on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation Long Beach chapter, I'm expressing our opposition against the current plans for the Belmont Beach and Aquatic Center Development and our support for the pending appeals of the Environmental Impact Report and Coastal Development Permit. While we are not opposed to development of an aquatic center or a public pool in Long Beach, we are very much opposed to the site chosen for this project. The proposed Belmont Pool violates important Coastal Act policies, mainly prohibition of development and hazard zones and use of protective devices for new development. The proposed development includes a seven foot high pedestal plinth foundation. It is clear in the project documentation that this structural protective device is specifically designed to address flooding from foreseeable sea level rise. And the project itself was necessitated by geologic instability from known risks of seismic activity. Yet the er a discussion of foreseeable flooding from sea level rise fails to identify, much less thoroughly analyze the coastal policies prohibiting the proposed protected protective device. This failure in and of itself is cause for a reversing the Planning Commission certification of the air and issuance of the C DP. In conclusion, the CDP violates several Coastal Act policies because the structure will be built on land regulated by Coastal Act policies. The CDP is inadequate and must be vacated by the City Council. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next Speaker. Good evening, Counsel. And Mr. Mayor. My name is Terrence Anderson, and I am President. Of the Belmont Shore Residents Association. The Belmont Shore Residents Association's mission is to represent the residents of Belmont Shore on issues that may impact their quality of life in the neighborhood. To that end, the city's proposal to replace the old Belmont Pool, which frankly, many of the residents claim they miss, they enjoyed swimming there. It was their local pool in their minds. But the city's proposal to replace the Belmont Pool with the BBC has created a lot of discussion, and much of it has been negative. Chief among the primary concerns is the expected negative impact on parking and traffic in the area of the shore during aquatic events. At the new venue, with a capacity of up to 4250 potential spectators and hundreds of participants. Subsequent to the original EIA air being circulated for comment, significant changes have occurred in the direct vicinity in Belmont Shore. One of those changes was the Ocean Boulevard Road Diet. Where our road is has been turned from two lanes in both directions to one lane in both directions in order to slow up traffic. The second change is the opening of the Olympics Fitness Center at the site of the former Yankee doodles. And that new facility has a capacity of more than 500 people with zero dedicated parking for clients and staff. So therefore, the Belmont Shore Residents Association Board hereby requests that the EIA be revised with a new traffic and parking study analyzing the impacts of these noted changes, and then for it to be recirculated for comment before the city proceeds with any approval of this project. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is Mary Parcell. I'm a volunteer with the National Audubon Society through my local chapter that's called El Dorado Audubon. And the reason that I'm here is we wrote a letter earlier for the Planning Commission, which we circulated again for this. And we're concerned about birds, safety, building design and healthy communities. The Minnesota Vikings stadium is made out of the same material as what's proposed for this pool. And what happened is the the worse thing, even though they were that was warned, monitors, fine numbers of bird casualties. You saw the dead birds in the slide that was shown by one of the appellants. It's a sad thing, and I don't think you have the the studies. You need to really study this to figure this part out. This is not a good thing. Also very concerned about the loss of nesting nesting habitat in the mature trees that are in the park that's around that is in there right now. And there are many trees that have been lost in the last ten years, ten, 15. Trees at least. We have been monitoring the nesting for the last 15 years and we know that for the last 22 years the. Birds have been there. So where are you going to put them? Where are you going to put some trees? I've asked city staff this for the last two and a half years. I've asked anybody I could think of so that we could propose something and I don't see it. That's a question. So next stop and there are black crowned night herons and snowy egrets there, and they're in the big tree by the temporary pool. But you still lost park, land and trees, so putting in a little saplings isn't going to make it. And I just. I don't have a solution for you anyway, that those are my. Comments for El Dorado. A lot of fun. Thank you very. Much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Highway marches in was the second district. In the second district. I'll start this by saying that seems like you guys want a pool and you make it happen. You're being called to uphold the Planning Commission's decision to adopt a resolution certifying event in the air. 0-1601. Dash one six. How come you didn't adopt an earlier resolution that indicated that it would be unwise to build the new pool on that site because of the liquidation factor which was brought up by other people? Climate and climate change is happening. We know the Trump administration disregards climate change, but the truth is it is happening. As in earlier, about maybe seven years ago, we are stated in light of the fact that sea levels have rose and would contribute to the liquefaction of the waterfront sand where the pool was planned to be built. They advised not to go ahead with the project. City staff involved also agreed with that. However, that's apparently been destroyed along with sea life. Rising levels are contributing to sand ification. There will be more rains that will also contribute to qualification of the area as well. Now closed. The previous one was closed due to seismic safety issues. Why are you going to build when there are liquefaction issues? You need new air does nothing to address the liquefaction factor and you folks don't seem to want to agree with it. Side note Let those stakeholder businesses that want to have this built put up the extra money. You say over 50% comes from the Tidelands monies. That could mean only 51%, which put us on the thing for about 49%. Thank you, sir. 48. I don't know. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. America's city council members and especially a staff who's done so much wonderful work on this project. My name is Lucy Johnson and I'm a resident of the fifth District. First of all, I want to just ask you to deny these appeals. It's been very thoroughly vetted through the are all the questions that have been raised have been answered by staff this evening. And I think that. The count, the appeal is just simply don't want to listen. This was. Forgot my reading glasses. So sorry this has not been said is not a new facility being built on our beach. It is a replacement for the original facility there. My players Olympic pool, which set in exactly the same location for over 46 years with the seaside bathhouse, which was constructed about 1912 and is replacement the language plant. Thanks very much. The Long Beach plunge off the pike, which replaces the seaside bathhouse. There's been a large aquatic facility on our beach for over 100 years. Some of the issues about the seismic problems on the old facility were more due to deferred maintenance and also to what I've understand to be that the roof was never tied to the walls . So if you looked at some of the stuff that was posted a few years ago, it shows pictures of the deterioration of the foundation. I know some of you think that this is a District three project only, but I want to assure you there's truly a city, citywide, region wide and even nationwide and will bring huge benefits . Only one of our three municipal pools is the third District and District seven. Not only has one of the three municipal pools, but also one of the three school district pools that could be a high school that's open to the public too much each summer. Consider the District. Six as one of the three municipal pools districts. One, two, four and eight have no public pools, and five and nine have only the other two high school. Pools just for two months each summer. So please support us. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, my name is Barbara Queen. Thank you for taking this under consideration. I am encouraging you to support the ER findings and the project. I support my 5:30 a.m. crowd. He gets up in the morning, we go to the pool and there's a pretty long line of people who use this pool. I get on a bike. And and take our wonderful. New bike lanes down there. So I encourage you to keep that type of support for. For the local community going. So thank you so much. Next Speaker. Very good. As I said the last time I was here, I fully support this. I'm not a swimmer or a diver. I'm a voter and I look at this as a draw to bring down people from all over the city to be introduced to the full range of boating activity for windsurfing, rowing, sailing's stand up board, paddle board, the full nine yards. Not just sailing. Not just swimming and diving. A number of people have, in my view, inappropriately have played the race card. There's no question that the figures and I don't argue the figures of the relative numbers of the people that get are drowned. All right. But playing the race card is not the way to go. They say you can't have it here because it's a race. It's the people. We need to learn how to swim out here, but yet they have no problem. No problem putting it in the three locations in the downtown area, period. I'm a firm believer in the fact that we're going to have an earthquake. Sea level is going to rise, period. So let's call moving bands. We'll all move up to Signal Hill. All right. Close down, I believe to say the city staff has done a good job in taking the needed actions to mitigate and to prevent any damage period. And I urge this Council to support the recommendation of the Planning Commission that included the former city engineer who pointed out that the if this goes, if we have a pandemic all of downtown, then beach goes. Period. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and esteemed council members. My name is Liz Carlin. I'm a member of the Long Beach Grunion, which is the Gay and Lesbian Aquatics Masters Program here in the city of Los Ah, sorry, the city of Long Beach. I'm so used to L.A., where I live with 90 members, many of whom live in the second Council District as I do. Our team, our nonprofit board of directors, took a took a vote to support the staff recommendations and support the Belmont Project. We want to go on record. We're a part of the International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics Federation as well. And as such, we represent the city of Long Beach. When we travel as we are going to be going to Miami next month and next year when we're going to be going to Paris. Our other members are here in support of the Belmont complex. I want to thank you, the members, for your time. I want to thank staff for all the work, and I appreciate all the work you're doing. I ask for a yes vote. Thank you so much. Next speaker. My name is running. I'm with the fifth district. When I was a kid, I think I was about eight years old. I was one of the guys who got kicked out of the Belmont pool. I jumped off the high dove. You weren't allowed to do that. I came back and. I. You know, the police officers were really nice. I was really impressed with those guys because my parents weren't around. It's only like eight years old. And so I got to play around with the cars and stuff. And then when you let me go. I ran off the pier. You know, I. Did that a couple of times as a kid. And, you know, as I grew up, I would run from my house to Belmont Pool. And I didn't know you weren't allowed to jump off the Second Street Bridge. But I did. So it was like a 18 mile jaunt, you know? And so I would have told him, always get. Kicked out of the Belmont pool, you know. But I enjoyed it. I taught my father how to swim there, and he's from India. He doesn't know how to swim. So I was trying to give you guys some humor because you've been hearing all this other stuff. So as I grew up, I became a manager in a Fortune 500 company, and I did a lot of big projects. And one of the things that I used to say was I used to use the term Crystal Cathedral complex, where you build things too big and you try to have these goals like that, Mr. Tom Modica articulated. And I'm just hoping that we don't go off and do something a little bit too big, but I mean, it's a grand scale thing. So all I'm trying to say is that based on what I'm seeing from the people who have presented reports, I hope that that setting yourself up for a lawsuit, I hope that everything works out. But I'm kind of against it just because of what I've seen presented from the. The people that are against it. So that's about it. Don't jump off any bridges or anything like that. Thank you. Next speaker. Please. I already did that in college as well. So we have the same. Mr. Mayor, City Council member, staff. First of all, Mr. Good, I'll give you a compliment. I fell down there, and that was great. I don't. I don't swim. I don't dove. I just try to use common sense. And I would like a pool in every one of your districts. Everybody deserves a pool. Tonight, we have very few pools in this city of Long Beach, and I think it's important that residents experience the pleasure derived from visiting a pool. But the pool, the Belmont Building, that pool, that super pool in Belmont Heights is too expensive. It's too expensive for us to do that. And, you know, I didn't want to pull out the race card, but, you know, it is. It it is. People talk about social justice, that the minority of the minorities in our city are not going to be able to use that pool. They're not going to be able to get down there that if we want more minorities, this diversity to use pools, we need to put them where they can swim, where they can get to them. We're not doing that. The Tidelands money should be saved for more important coastal projects like the Belmont Pier. And there should be no suggestions of major aid money to be used for any shark short financial problems with the building areas, but spending it on the pool or anything else other than what it was intended for. You know, did I hear city staff say something about financing for this super pool will come from the increase in oil prices. Hallelujah. You know, if you do have that crystal ball in city hall and you know, when the oil prices are going to go up. Thank you, Joe. Please let us know. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Staff from Jessica. I thank you very much for all of the work that you've done. You've answered all of the repetitive, repetitive, repetitive questions that are denying this. What we need to. Do is deny the appeals. My kids took two busses to get to the Belmont Shore pool. To train. Five days a week. They didn't live in District two. Now, the kids who are part of McCormick divers have to train at the Martin Luther King pool, which is in the most diverse neighborhood. So people saying that people will not be able to use a pool because it's a Belmont don't understand what they're talking about. I lived in Australia for five years and the pools, there were a huge draw from the community. They had community days, they had community activities. They had some of the things that they were talking about where people came specifically to join the facilities there and to enjoy them even if they weren't taking swimming lessons. This already cost us a fortune. In 2000, when my son started diving, this was a $10 million project which. Got put off, and now it's $100 million project. The more we put it off, the more it will be. My brother is a contractor. He develops properties for Suffolk Construction. When I asked him about this, when the pool first closed in 2012. He said The weight of the water will be a problem anywhere in California. It's not the beach that's the problem. It's that you have earthquakes in California. So moving the pool is not going to help but keeping there. We've already lost $4 million from just diving trials on their own. We need to keep that here. We need to bring that money to Long Beach to pay for all those other things because all the people who come to visit will be spending money in our city. So please deny the appeals. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Mr. Mayor. City Council staff. My name's Richard Foster. I'm the president of the Aquatic Capital of America Foundation. I've also a 12 year president of United States water polo and four years with United States aquatic sports. We are the quarter capital of America. We took a hit when Belmont Plaza went down. You can talk to any swimmer, diver, synchronized swimmer or water polo player in the United States and say, I swam at Belmont or I played at Belmont. They know exactly where it is part of the city's identity. And we need this tremendous enhancement for the city. This new pool is going to be fantastic for recreational, competitive and just general wellness. I am an attorney, so I see arguments on both sides of issues all the time. And I got to tell you, I am just overwhelmed by the competence, the precision and the dedication of city staff on this project. I mean, they have taken care of, I think complied with federal and state laws. They just did a great job on this project. I'm overwhelmed by the architects and the designers of this facility in my positions in the quarkxpress. I've got to travel across the world and see facilities all over the world. I can tell you they have done they have designed a facility the city will be proud of. It will it will retain the city's identity not only in the country, but worldwide. I've heard the comments about racial equality and I can tell you in pools and the history, Mr. Christiansen is right. There have been problems over the years with racial profiling, with pools, but all aquatic sports, USA, swimming, USA diving, synchronized swimming, water pool . They have outreach programs for minorities. I think the city would just jump in and be part of that whole outreach program. As a start, I think we would like to see the temporary pool be installed in one of the other districts in the city. But we heartily urge you to deny the appeals and approve this E.R.. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And good evening, everyone. Thank you all for your hard work, especially city staff to an awesome job. My name is Hank Wise and I live and work in District three. I'm a lifelong swimmer and I swim across the Catalina Channel four times in January 2017. The quite a couple of America selected me as Waterman of the Year. I'm down at Belmont Plaza probably 300 days out of the year with with my adult team and with my youth team and the Drew's folks as it's all about recreation. I see it every single day. People from the community are down there every single day. And it's ludicrous when I hear claims like, Oh, there's only going to be so many people down here that use it. Everyone in the city will use it. You know, we're not building an airport in every district to, oh, it's super rich. We're going to build an airport over here now. This is a hub for the whole city. It's a hub for the nation. It's a hub for the world. This is Long Beach. People think of Long Beach and aquatics in the same breath. And we're fortunate enough to have this opportunity, a beautiful pool organized by organized by these wonderful architects and, you know, gone through all the steps and I hear all the appeals. And it kind of makes me a little angry, you know, because what they're trying to do is shut the door on thousands and thousands and thousands of excellent aquatic experiences. I swam for Stanford for for my four years. Right. Guess what? Packed tens every year high school championships when I was at Wilson every year. And that brings together so many people. And yet we have to go through all this to get this wonderful facility. It's worth it. Keep up the good work. It's a good fight. Let's go. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Ray, average eighth district. Well, I did not swim any channel, but I did have the opportunity to sit in the seats that you're sitting in, seated in today and have to make very tough decisions that affect our entire city. Just for a little more levity, I was thinking, okay, ask access to the pool for all. Is that like access like DC is saying access to health care for all. Only if you can afford it. Well, you know, we've heard that from from both sides that this is not supposed to be just for one specific group. But the reality is, is that we do have kids that live in various parts of our city, the sixth district, the seventh District, the eighth District, the ninth district, probably the first district that well, no, not the first district, sorry. Everything north of the four or five freeway that they've never even been to the beach. They don't have the money for bus fare to go to the beach, much less to pay to get into a swimming pool. I think that the $40 million that you still have to look for and I think it's probably going to be 40 and 60 million could better serve the entire city by building pools across the city for pools could be built similar to the one that's at the Belmont Pier, the temporary pill that cost 10 million. That could be made permanent for 2 million more. You could have five more pools, again, available across the city for the residents of Long Beach. How would your constituents react to that additional amenity providing swimming for all people of all ages? We've taken away so much from recreation in this city. I think it's time that we start looking at giving programs back. The one thing that hasn't been mentioned tonight is the newly approved Long Beach City College Olympic pool that can serve our professional swimming population perfectly and for the aquatic capital of America, who have lobbied for the high dove edition since I sat on the council. They can work to raise the additional funds to make that happen at Long Beach City College. Thank you. Okay. We have we have closed the hearing and we're going to hear from counsel now and have some deliberation. So there is a motion any second by Councilman Price and Councilman Austin. I'm going to start off with Councilwoman Price. Thank you. So just a couple of questions for staff and I'll start with the. Latest point that Ray raised, and that is regarding the Long Beach City College pool. If staff can comment on that. What has been our outreach and our efforts to collaborate with Long Beach City College? And is that a viable option in terms of a public resource for a city of this size? Thank you, Councilmember. Yes, we did reach out and talked to Long Beach City College. We wanted to explore if there was maybe some synergy, if they had money to build a pool and we were looking to build a pool as well, can we perhaps find a way to to work together? They were open to the concept, sat down and discussed with us, became very clear very quickly that our programing needs are both so immense that we would not be able to make that happen. They are essentially going to be programing their pool full time with their college athletic type programs and teaching programs. We had actually looked to see could they maybe come down into our site and we would work it into this. You know, is that a possibility to work it into the design or to have them use one of the pools? They found it to be not feasible because you'd have to add students then coming that far and going right back to class. So they are going to have the availability of on that site. We hope that that will be accessible also to the public as another benefit. But it would not work down at the Belmont site. Right. So my understanding is that they're building their pool with bond money that they will be expecting. And so. The the. Population that they're going to be servicing is their students first and foremost. And my understanding in my latest discussions with them is that hopefully they'll be an opportunity for public use at some point, but that has yet to be determined since their primary focus based on the bond is to service their students first. That's correct. Okay. So which would make sense to have a pool at the college? The other question I wanted to ask really is for staff in totality or collectively, is there anything that you heard discussed tonight by any of the appellants or any issues raised at public comment that caused you to have any questions regarding your own recommendations this evening? So anytime we make a recommendation, we make sure that we've studied every topic, that we look at all the different data. For example, when the Coastal Commission letter came in on Thursday, we did spend additional time looking back to see does our recommendation change and know anything that we've seen, all of the evidence that's been presented. Staff continues to recommend that we allow this to move forward to the next step. And although I don't want to go point by point on any of the comments made through by the appellants, it seemed to me that there were a series of very technical comments and arguments made to staff feel that your position and your analysis on each and every one of those technical comments is consistent with your recommendation. Yes, we do. Okay. So I want to start by thanking staff for their work on this project. This is a very technical project and necessitated extensive knowledge to design. And we are very fortunate in the city of Long Beach to have a very experienced and highly interested and and engaged staff working on this project. I want to thank our architect, Michael Rotondi, the design team, the coastal experts that our city has hired for the purposes of preparing for this air and responding to coastal comments. And the project manager, Dino, and all the consultants that have helped us through this project. We have a lot of people here tonight with different opinions and different considerations. I want to first thank all of the people from the Cortex community who came out to support the pool tonight. I know that they didn't get to speak, but I did note that earlier in our meeting we had about 60 children here holding up signs in support of the pool. No doubt some of them would have liked to speak, I'm sure, but it is a school night and we didn't get to public comment until well after the 7:00 hour. So I want to acknowledge those families who made an effort to get their children here. I want to also thank the appellants who are here. I appreciate the passion that you bring to the table on many issues. And I appreciate the education and the effort that you put into researching the issues and presenting your point of view in a respectful manner. I think that's very important, and I know some of you have taken time out to me to meet with me regarding issues that are important to you. You've asked me to meet with you to hear about issues that are important to you. And some of you even gave me the courtesy of letting me know what your thoughts were about this project before tonight. Because I think you wanted to share with me knowing where where my passions are in regards to this project. And I thank you for that. And because I think having that dialog and that respect in advance of the meeting really helps us get on the same page. And I think, although. There are a lot of really. Great points made, we're going to have to agree to disagree on some of the points that were made this evening in terms of how they apply to this particular project and this particular source of funding. I have a great deal of faith in our city staff. While we may not always agree with all of their recommendations on every project, I think that one thing we all agree on is that we have a team of experts working in our city departments and where they don't have sufficient expertize, they obtain expert guidance through the use of consultants. This is a highly technical project and it necessitated technical expertize at a very high level through every step of the project, including where we go from here. I've been involved in this project since 2014. By the time I was elected to council, the efforts to rebuild the pool were very much underway. I have my predecessor, Gary DeLong, my former colleagues, Patrick O'Donnell and Susan Lowenthal, and the many people who are here tonight to thank for advocating for this project and making a priority before I ever took office. Both Patrick O'Donnell and Sunil Lowenthal served on the council with me and continued to make this a priority after I was elected into office, which is the only reason we were able to set aside such a large sum of money to save for this project. Like I tell everyone, building an infrastructure project of this magnitude is not that different than a family saving money for a house. It's money that we've had to put aside. We've had to be very. Frugal with our. Spending in order to make sure that this huge project of this magnitude that is really a city project, as I'll talk about in a moment, comes to fruition. And it can only do so if we set money aside and save it. And it is true that at the time that this priority was put into place and the programmatic elements were voted on nine zero by this council. Oil was trading at 90 to $100 a barrel. So we do currently have a funding gap that we're working to address through non general fund dollars. I assure you the mayor and the city staff and I meet regularly to talk about funding alternatives and finding viable funding solutions that are not general fund dollars. I think it's important to note, although we're not talking specifically about funding tonight, that staff has considered alternative sites. They haven't just talked about it. They have researched alternative sites and evaluated the feasibility and the viability of the alternative sites. Even if we could get. A long term lessee to agree. To build a pool. When they've previously said they're not interested in a pool. And even if we could figure. Out how to mitigate a landfill and terminate a lease in order to. Build a pool, and even if we get around all those. Speculative even if's, the cost savings that we're looking at at an alternative site is 3 to 5%, and a project of this magnitude that's a negligible amount of money. Immediately upon taking office, I requested a meeting with the Coastal Commission staff. I met with them on August 1st, 2014, about two weeks after I had taken office. At that meeting, we talked preliminarily about the demolition of the old pool and making sure that we were not embarking upon a project that would be considered a nonstarter by their team. We also committed to working with them throughout this process to make sure that we settle on a project that everyone is satisfied with because of the process and the steps that are necessitated. Coastal has not yet had an opportunity to weigh in on the technical aspects of this specific project. They can only do that if we move to the next phase of this project. Staff has looked at Coastal Commission's comments and looks forward to working in collaboration with Coastal to address their concerns and address any recommendations that might be made through the process. Yes, sea level. Rise is in fact a major issue. It's a major issue that affects many communities in my district. And at the time that the pool is under water, we will have a lot of. Other very. Serious issues because we'll have the communities that. Live right there. That will also be underwater. So sea level rise is absolutely an issue that we are looking at and have accounted for in the air. Staff has looked at coastal conditions in order for this project to move forward and for the $7 million we have already spent on the demolition of the old structure and the design of the new structure, we need to move to the next phase of this project so that we can engage in a meaningful dialog with Coastal Commission staff on what the actual project will look like. And I'm fully open to any and all recommendations, mandates and guidelines that they provide to us. I. I'm personally very excited about this project. I feel optimistic about the project because in this city of Long Beach, we churn out more Olympians in the area of aquatics than any other city. Our youth. Learn how to swim in this community, and we support an environment where they can continue to. Pursue that sport through. Low cost access in some of our community pools will in all of our community pools. I would love to have a pool in every district. Absolutely. And I've shared that with Mr. Christiansen on multiple occasions. But that would be my personal priority. That may not be the priority of all of my council colleagues. Surely we all. Support each other's priorities in our communities. Districts in the city are given recreational facilities based on their own priorities, not as a requirement that every district have a pool. They may choose to spend the money on new parks, new community centers, new libraries, new educational institutions, new baseball fields, new facilities that are a priority for their community . A pool may not be a community priority for every community. And in fact, when we look at our infrastructure projects and priorities in every. District, I was the. Only council district that had a pool listed as a priority for my district. So while I would love and vote tomorrow. On general fund dollars to go towards a pool in every district, that would have to be a passion that's driven by the council member representing those districts. Not my personal passions. I love the video that Anna showed regarding the Olympian. I have not met her. When the video first started, I had hoped that it was going to be somehow related to Long Beach or this project, because I know that every Olympian I've met and every student athlete I've talked to will tell you that the facilities available in their cities are a source of pride for them. When other athletes come to compete or to participate in events in their city. We are the sixth. Largest city in the state of California. We call ourselves the aquatics capital of America. We have a rich. History of producing amazing student athletes, and we need a a city facility that represents the identity of the city as an as a location that churns out aquatics Olympians. We are a beautiful city. With a big vision in every district. We have big visions as a city. Our mayor has a big vision that takes us and elevates us to a different place to this region. The pool will represent Long Beach. It will be associated. With this city, not with a district. People who come here to attend events at the pool won't care or know whether they are in council district one two, three. Four, five. Six, seven, eight or nine. All they will know is that they are in the city of Long Beach and they are in a place that is a world renowned, iconic facility. That people will. Be talking about with a source of pride. So I am very excited about this and I. Look forward to. The next phase where we can work hand-in-hand, collaboratively and productively with the Coastal Commission to. Move this project. Forward in whatever way it comes back to us. I will support because I think that collaborative process will be important. So I urge my colleagues to support this project. But more importantly, I remind my colleagues that the vote tonight is really. About. The air. And if there's a deficiency in the air, I encourage my colleagues to seek counsel from city staff who have the expertize to speak to the specific issues that they may have of concern. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So I'm going I'm going to make a couple comments and then I'm going to go down to the speakers list for the council. So I just want to say a few things. And one, let me just begin by saying that I support this project and I know that there is and I would agree with Councilwoman Pryce. I think that obviously the appellants, I believe, love Long Beach and believe in social equity and are coming at this from a good place of wanting to access for the pool for everybody. So I appreciate that. But I will say also that I'm someone that went to the pool growing up as well. And so I've been to the pool my whole life. I did it when I was growing up. I did it in college. It's a special place for people that know Long Beach. And I went with all sorts of kids of every color of all socioeconomic backgrounds. I was a low income kid and I love that pool. And so I just take a little bit of pause when I hear that the pool is not going to be for everyone, because it was a place that I enjoy. And I think that a lot of kids from across the city will enjoy it. I also think that as a as a community, we should think big and iconic. And I want us to have the best pool in the country. So when I think about what we can build, if we're going to spend the kind of resources on this kind of project, we should ask. And the. Mand and expect the best pool in the entire United States and one of the best pools in the world, which is what this pool will be if we build it. In 1932, in 1984, and hopefully in 2024, this community will be host to an international gathering of athletes and aquatic athletes, as we know, through the Olympics. This pool has and this location has an incredible Olympic history. We have produce, like Councilman Price said, endless amounts of aquatic Olympians and hopefuls of the Olympics as well. And so while I understand the concerns of sea level rise, we I believe in climate change. It's real. Sea level rise is real. That is all happening. But I would agree that we are also not building a new structure on new beach. We're replacing a structure that already existed prior to us demolishing the old pool. A couple quick couple a couple of points I think are important. The issue of cost came up, but I think it's important to note that, yes, structures, particularly these types of structures today are expensive. There is no question about that. There's also no question that that I and I know the council, through our federal legislative committee or through our state legislative committee, will do everything that we can to get funds, additional funds to help support this process as well. If there are infrastructure dollars that are out there through the federal process, through the state process, through fundraising that hopefully we will engage with and as a community as well, we want to be involved in those. I know there's a price tag out there. We know that that price tag is not also set in stone and we know that the Coastal Commission itself will. There's no question it will change the project in some ways as well. There's a couple other factors I think are hard to. There's there's not there's no data around. But I think they're important to to bring up. While we don't have clear economic data, I think there's no question that the pool would be a huge economic driver for the city of Long Beach. So I think there's a stronger economic benefit, but more importantly, I think there's a historical and cultural benefit to having a site that produced so many Olympians once again continue to produce more athletes and scholar athletes and Olympians and community members learning how to swim in seniors, learning how to learning how to swim, and all those basic functions that community pools should do. So I support not just building a pool. I support building the best pool in the United States. In addition to that, I think there's the on the public access question and this is also sometimes I disagreed with folks when I was on the Coastal Commission, but I believe that bringing a pool to that location where there was already a pool will actually dramatically increase public access and crawling, not having anything on the site. So if we actually want to bring people to the coast and we actually want to bring people to our beach, then let's bring the thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people that are actually going to go to that location and come to the coast and enjoy it, because we actually have a facility that they will actually access. And I think while having a open space is absolutely lovely along the coast, I'm not sure personally at that of that that has the impact that providing public access to the beach , then having the pool would would have. And let me also say that I think it's a my my perspective as a as a as a former coastal commissioner. And having read the letter and talked to some of the folks at Coastal, including staff as at the commission. For those of us that are advocates for the pool and I'm what we're one of those hats we also have to be prepared and know that this is a process and the Coastal Commission at the end of the day is going to make some significant findings, whether it's changes, whether it's substantial changes, whether it's suggestions, but they're going to be a partner in the development of this pool. And and so what we have today, what we all while we a lot of us maybe not all, but or many of us may love what we have today. That will also change when Coastal weighs in and gives us their suggestions as well. And so we all have to be prepared for that partnership as we move forward as advocates for the pool. And so I do support moving forward today. I support the project as presented, as designed. I think personally, I think it's a beautiful design. I think it's iconic. I think that it it it puts the city on the map in a way that is that is moving the community forward. And I'm proud of our aquatic history. And I think that this pool only adds to it. And so I do support moving forward. I support working in partnership with the Coastal Commission and then from there coming back to the council with what will be at that point a final project with the support of the Coastal Commission. And so with that, I'm to turn this first over, Councilman Austin. Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. After Councilmember Price and your comments, I don't know if there's much more to be said of how I see declarative, but you're going to have to indulge me anyway. I would like to just just comment on the presentations all the way around. I think our staff did an excellent job. The design team, the architects have presented a pool that will be iconic, exciting and appealing in every way, no pun intended to to anybody that comes to this city. And for those who live here, this is. It was mentioned that, you know. This is a difficult decision. This is not a difficult decision for me. This is this is a project that I support. I was one of a few council members that are here who supported it initially. I think this is this is this is something that that we have a real opportunity to do. I think there's some confusion in terms of the funding vehicle for this this pool. I'm listening to the comments and the comments about access and equity. I'm encouraged hearing so many people out here talk about that. And that tells me that we are certainly headed in the right direction and we have a great mindset from our residents here in the city. But I think the term access has been a little bit misplaced access in terms of funding for that pool. You know, it would be great. I would love to have a pool, a community pool in my district. I actually do have some nonprofit pools, but I would love to have a pool and $10 million. I think we'd all like to take $100 million and divide by nine and figure out how to do something really nice. But Mr. City Attorney, does everyone have access to title insurance? Councilman Arsenault As was explained during the presentations, just those areas within the Tidelands, not uplands. And so I think that that is the real issue here in terms of the cost and the access. When we talk about access, it's access to the funding. And this is a rebuild of a pool that is has a lot of history and that will hopefully continue to to produce history here in the city. We're limited, and I trust me to talk to residents in District eight and Long Beach listening. If we had access to those funds to to do this type of project up north, we would certainly be be doing that and going after those funds. We are limited those those funds can only be be spent along the coast. We talk about access. I don't think City Hall is accessible to everybody in the city based on the diversity of the comments here tonight. I don't think City Hall is even accessible to everybody in the city. Our Animal Services Department is accessible to everybody in the city. Golf courses aren't accessible to everybody in the city. I mean, we have we and I will just say, in terms of priorities, we were here for a few hours just last week talking about housing needs. If if there is available space to build anything in our city, I think we're going to be prioritizing housing and some other things as opposed to two pools. And so this is a unique opportunity. I really respect the comments all the way around from parties on both sides of this issue. For and against. Some of the comments were very predictable, but I think this is a rare opportunity. I don't see any reason to to to deny the or I'm sorry, not support the air. And I look forward to doing so. And I agree with the mayor's comments. This is a first step or not. This is a step in a process. There will probably will be design changes and comments and challenges along the way. But I would also say that continuing to appeal this will also add cost to this this project. And so please keep that in mind moving forward as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Dillingham. Thank you, Mayor. This is a coastal act of 1976. This is the city's LCP, which was submitted in 1980. This is the final environmental impact report that we're looking at today. It's a lot of reading, a lot of study, and I'd rather commend staff for looking at each one in their development of the air and how they're going to proceed forward with with this. I wouldn't call it a project, but it's on the air and it's been referred to as a replacement. It's a rebuild by definition. Or the Coastal Act. It's a new project. It's not a replacement. It's not a rebuild. There was a project there that predated the Coastal Act that was built in the 1960s and where before the Coastal Act was put in place. So many of the current Coastal Act requirements don't don't apply. They simply don't apply. This is a new project that has to conform to what the Coastal Act currently says. So I'm having a difficult time with that because when we look at a project, we're talking about a project where we're looking about rebuilding and replacing and putting back what we had before is not the same because it's , it's, it's a project that is basically new to the coast. Based on the rules and regulations as they currently exist since 1976. The. What are the other things that we have to look at is that, you know, I'm going to have, as it was mentioned before. I'm going to have to to bite at this apple. I have it here as a city council member, and I want to have it again as a member of the Coastal Commission when it comes to to review there. And there's something that concerns me the most is that there's going to be there is going to be conditions, there's going to be changes that the Coastal Commission staff and probably the Commission itself is going to make regarding the EIR, regarding the project that is presented personally, it's a beautiful project. My guy that you know, you're talking about, about to pool two Olympic size pool, you're talking about a training pool, you're talking about a pool where the kids can enjoy and have fun and you don't. You're talking about a diving well where people can learn how to dove and take advantage of it and build their skills as swimmers and become that Olympic champion that we are so well known for and had a facility that would be top notch and state of the art and one that would be the envy of any city. The. The. Air that currently that has it right there is the fact that, you know, there are some issues in there that are non-conforming to the Coastal Act and some of the rules that are there. Example, the one that comes out real quick, it's the height. You know, the height is what, 19 feet over what the LCP says. So that's going to that's going to require another action. That's going to require that the city probably have to go and get a a LCP amendment that would raise the height along that shore. And that could be precedent setting, not only for Long Beach development along the shore, but in other another areas up and down the coast as well. Because when you raise it for one, you raise them for all. And that's going to be an issue. I'm sure that's going to be an issue and that will probably would not be allowed. I'm almost predicting that the height limit is going to have to be adjusted. It's going to have to come down. It's just too it's just too big and we're afraid it's too high. Maybe it's another issue. So when it comes down to where we're at right now, I mean, I'm really conflicted because I really want the city to build this pool. I really do. But when you're looking at the issues of sea level rise and the impacts of that, you're building these what's there to protect turn up was use a flint flipper splint or whatever we were. That was never the term before. So I don't know really all the other I'll admit my minority, the major minority on on that issue. But the bottom line is that it's going to be a retaining wall. It will eventually be a retaining wall when the sea level comes all the way up to that building. And, you know, parking lots are going to be underwater and the building will still be there. I'm just having a hard time. I think bottom line is that there is a project here. It's just not this project. And because of that, I don't think I can support the, the, the, the project as it is and I would have to a to support the appeal on this case. And I hope maybe it's the question here with with this, if the appeal were to be sustained after, I guess, or is it one or two, I'll need a clarification on that. But the does that basically stop this going forward as a project? Would we still do another project with another ESR that would be more amenable towards having a project there on the beach? Or is this is this like the the the end of of of a building, a pool there? And we would have to look at how to re reconfigure, use whatever the the talents funds that are already there for it. Councilman, you're I'll try to answer that. The hypothetical, if the appeals were sustained, that would effectively stop the pool from moving forward at this juncture. I would assume that if the appeals were sustained, it would be for a particular reason or reasons as articulated by one of the appellants, and that the council would give staff direction to go out and make additional studies, make additional findings, and bring back additional information for the Council's consideration. So it wouldn't necessarily stop the pool altogether, but it would certainly stop it tonight unless another step are taken. Well, like like I commented earlier, I think that there is a project here. It's just not this one. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to start just. By, you know, as a council member, I want to thank my council colleague, Susie. I know how hard it is to inherit a project and pick it up and give it your all. But you and your staff have been very available to discuss things and to talk through concerns and to have conversations about this. And I don't fault you or your constituents for going big. I think, you know, you have to have a big vision and started the big, big, big vision. But at the same time, you know, I do understand value engineering. You sometimes start with a big idea where you finally end might be a different place, but that's the process. And I'm going to try to go through this process here today. I want to thank city staff. It's clear you've done you know, you've done your study and you've done your diligence. It's clear to me how hard all of you have worked on this project and has received a full court press and attention from the highest levels in our city. Now, no question that the the concerns here, you did go through a process to vet. It's a beautiful design. It'll be a great addition to the neighborhood. I have a couple questions and a few concerns. So first, is this pool considered a citywide city serving asset like the civic center, the aquarium or the Long Beach Convention Center? Yes, it is. So has there been any outreach or community input meetings in northwest or central Long Beach? So we did have. The 16 various meetings that we talked about. We did not have any specific ones in those locations, but there have been opportunities for everyone who wants to be a part of it. But no, we did not have specific outreach opportunities in those areas. So I remember having specific outreach opportunities in those areas for other city serving assets like Long Beach Civic Center. Why didn't we make that choice here? Civic Center really was a unique project that we really did extra effort. We went even beyond what we normally did. I would say that under the Belmont here, we actually went beyond what we normally did as well, and we were following direction from counsel to create a stakeholder committee that really looked at those issues. And so when the council gave us direction to create that stakeholder commission committee, they gave us suggestions on how best to do that. And that was how that extra outreach opportunity happened at the time. So if the council says we're going, we want to do limited outreach, we don't take it upon ourselves to go do additional outreach. We just do what council directs. No. We as staff are responsible for making sure that we're reaching out, that we're having people do outreach and having that opportunity. We've been willing to speak at this about this project at a number of community meetings that we go to. We do listen to council when they create a specific kind of direction. On the stakeholder committee, we pay very much attention to that. But we do spend time looking for other opportunities where we can. At some point, it is a finite amount where where you where you decide this is the kind of outreach that we're going to do. So that's, you know, part of what we've done. I think it's safe to say that the outreach was very minimal and targeted to very specific groups. And this and the input does not reflect true opinions from residents who, you know, fairly venture outside of, you know, the typical neighborhood association meeting or things like that and other here's the town. So so my next question so I know so with respect to serving citywide, I know that the the existing Belmont pool that closed in 2013 was utilized by both Long Beach residents and residents outside the city. Do we have any data? Did we ever conduct an analysis to determine the levels of utilization from our residents in northwest or central Long Beach? We have some data about where people that utilize the facility are. I can ask Lori Gamez to see what she has available with her today. But we have taken a look, you know, in the past we do look at data that we do have for people that visit the facility is if Lori has anything to add, you could ask her to come up to the mic. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. My name is Lloyd Gomez. And I'm the recreation superintendent that oversees the aquatics programs within our city. The information that I have this evening is related to. The. Partnership program. That is funded through the 84 foundation that we conducted our facilities. That is one of the only. Programs that we. Actually track and capture zip codes. As well as ethnicity for participation. It's part of the grant reporting process. So I do have that information, but I don't have information regarding general use at the Belmont Pool related to the the groups that you're asking about. Okay. So outside of this and so, you know, what percentage of usage does this one program make up in terms of like overall usage of the facility? Is that a small fraction or is this the majority of the people who use the programs to use the use the pools through this program? The EL 84 program. Is a ten week summer program that takes place each summer. So the pool does operate year round. So it is a it's somewhat representative, but there is a ten week summer program that I have information from this evening. Okay. Well, I want to hear it. If it if it's a true sample of how it's used, I want to hear it. If it's not a true sample, I don't think it's helpful to the discussion. So if you feel it's a true sample sample, then I'll hear. I would. I guess it's a matter of how. Is it representative of the unit utilization of the citywide it. So Councilmember, what Lori is referring to is that for our summer program, which we offer the learn to swim at all. Pools except for the Belmont pool. We have those. Statistics we don't track. And our Belmont Pool or any of our other pools, ethnicity or zip code usage during the regular open swim time. And we can say, though, that during our summer programs that we are tracking and that's at our other pools, we serve approximately 86% minority at those pools. Okay. I didn't ask about race, but so so let me ask a better question then. Do we have specific partnerships with Jordan High School or Cabrini High School? Yes, we do. We have we offer programs. And I'm sorry, what your question. Elaborate on what those programs look like. Is it a seamless afterschool prep? What are these programs with Jordan and Cambria? The program, the programs that are offered at Jordan High School again are a summer program. And it's where we were based there during the time that the the high school is out of session. We offer. Recreation. Swim, swim lessons and water exercise there. In the last calendar year, from. May 16th up to 2016. To May. 16th of this year, we served 4191 participants at Jordan High School. We also have a program at Cabrillo High School that is conducted during the summertime. The same ten week period of time each year. And our numbers at that facility for the same period of time were 2848 participants. And those are those are tracked based on our participation. Both schools have L.A. 84 programs. The Cabrillo High School program is also supported by the Long Beach Unified School District and. The El 84 program. That's a program the City Partners with through CDBG funding, correct? Oh, no. That is the L.A. 84 is an endowment grant competitive grant program that comes from the 84 Olympics. It supports Summer Swim and they also support other sports. We participate in the Summer Swim program that includes learning to swim lessons, water polo, synchronized swimming and dove team. Okay, so I know that there's a program we support through CDBG and after school program with the high schools is then eligible. Can we put requirements since we provide that CDBG funding? Can we put requirements that those afterschool programs integrate some usage of the citywide pool? Vice Mayor Richardson We do support CDBG through CDBG. We do support afterschool programs to the tune of $379,000 a year. Those funds are given to the Parks and Rec Department, who then turns around and partners with Long Beach Unified School District. They're not related to necessarily high schools, I believe they're elementary and middle schools, and they are specifically for afterschool recreation programs in CDBG eligible areas. To answer your question, I believe you're asking, though. If the question is do we have the ability legally to place requirements on that funding, that they utilize this facility as a part of a seamless after school program? So I think that we may not legally be required to tell them how to spend the money, but we certainly have the ability to work with the school district to determine how those kids that participate in those programs could utilize this this facility in the future. Great. Thank you. Next, when the last city council in 2013 authorized the beginning of the design process, was the direction to design a replacement pool, or was the recommendation specific enough to warrant the design of a $100 million replacement pool? So I'll take a first step at that. Pardon me while I look at the actual motion. So the direction was to and and we're kind of, you know, some of us have changed on to this project. So I wasn't, you know, on this project at the time. Understandable. But from what we understand is that it was direction to move forward with a replacement of the facility. City staff brought forward a kind of a approach that looked at kind of what was feasible on, say, what was funding for from a funding perspective. The city council actually gave some specific direction to enhance that and enhance that model to really look at including, for example, an indoor diving. Well, that was a very specific motion. I can actually read the motion to you. It was to move forward with the following plan changes to integrate the necessary infrastructure into the design and cost estimates so as to maintain platform de living inside the facility. Excuse me, Mr. Good. You give me a second, please, so as to ensure a segregated area for platform diving and create a separate going round to ensure final indoor pool designs include a minimum of 30 meters of eight foot plastic water depth, if practical, and to evaluate the benefits of ten foot water depth. I'm going to paraphrase a little bit to request city staff to return to council with a plan to expedite the design, design and procurement and construction of a temporary pool to require city staff to return with the expedited design and procurement of a permanent pool with incentives for early completion and and some other direction about both the therapy pool and the moving pool for moving pool floor. So a lot of those enhancements were asked and directed by the Council at the time in February 2013 as we moved forward with the planning process. And I think it's important to tease that out. This $100 million plan was directed by city council in 2013. And, you know, given the majority of council members have changed. You know, I think it's important to note city council asked for $100 million pool. And I know that this hearing is specifically about planning, but not necessarily budgeting. Budgeting has come up. So I want to talk about that a little bit. So what is the fund balance? Entitlements. And how much do we have that we can spend on this project? So I answer that by going back to the prioritization. When the City Council did their prioritization back about two years ago, we had about $99 million at that time of cash for projects, and we asked the City Council to go through a very robust prioritization process to determine how to spend that money. And when the when we were done with that, based on staff's recommendations and council's direction, the pool kept the $60 million that it had. It didn't add any money. It didn't lose any money. And the rest of the $30 million was allocated to high priority projects. Some were defunded, some were added. And so that 99 million was really the amount we've drawn down some of that 99 million as we move forward with projects. But those are roughly, you know, what was what is available minus what we're spending right now. So what stops us from using the $60 million as currently budgeted and just building the pool with that and living within our means? So essentially the plan that we have designed it was based on the October 2014 vote by the Council. And you asked a good question about the 2013 direction, which kind of started us down this path. This Council actually, when we went in June back to the Council of 2014, directed the stakeholder committee. And then that's how the $100 million plan came up was through the stakeholder committee and voted on by the Council on October 14. The you know, at that point is when the council established the $103 million project plan as well. So that's what we've been designing to. That's what we have done the R2 and designed to if you know, one of the things that's important here is we're not making funding decisions but we are certifying er by certifying the er that is recommended by staff you are actually certifying at the highest level of project. There are alternatives within the project and the way secret works and Mr. Mays can explain this probably better than I can. You can actually, once you have a certified document, you can go down and you can look at lesser impacts, including a smaller amount of power, if that's what the council wants to do in the future. But if we so that's that would be our recommendation is to adopt the c iir. If at some point we do not have the funding, we obviously can't move forward with the project that isn't funded. Obviously, I get it. So it's safe to say, you know, we aimed high, there was a big vision or the last council aimed high. This was prior to the, you know, problems we've had with oil revenue. Correct. Those problems happened and what 2015. Corrected happened at the end of 2014 into 2015. So it wouldn't be unfair for the city council at some point to say we aimed for the circumstances are changed now we've aim for that. That is certainly the council's prerogative. Okay. I want to pivot from questions and thank you so much for answering those questions. And, you know, I bear with the public and everyone to listen, and I want to sort of have my time to sort of go through and do my own diligence here. So I think there's a big picture we need to consider. And in frankly, we need to think about the message that we're sending to our residents, all of our residents. I'm not great at being a critic. I'll admit. I typically try to be supportive of things and I try not to criticize without offering recommendations and solutions. So that's what I'm going to try to do now. So so we're considering so last week we considered a $10 million loan to the Aquarium Pacific. Today, we're considering a $100 million aquatics facility in one of the poorest neighborhoods of town. Some may attempt to diminish. That was a joke. Not personally, but it. Was a joke. Some may attempt to diminish these legitimate content concerns as a way to pit one neighborhood against the other. And I think it's the alternative, frankly, when we take on too much and, you know, and don't pay attention to to the rest, we we are in a position where as district representatives, we sort of have to represent you know, represent certain perspectives and interests. And I wish it hadn't been that way. I believe this should be a conversation about ensuring that every neighborhood feels more connected to our city and every neighborhood has an opportunity to to thrive. And so, frankly, I would love to see the next generation of Olympic Olympians, swimmers coming out of Long Beach. I don't necessarily agree that the solution is to build world class facilities that they can't access. And when I say access, let me be very clear about that. The best way for you to make investments in the neighborhood is to make investments into youth, is to invest directly into their neighborhoods, acknowledge the barriers that that they face. The location is pool is about as far away as you can make it from youth in our city. It's about as far from the majority of youth in our city as well as far as ways you can make it, how they're going to get there. I think these bikes, our bike network doesn't have it. It's not connected yet. Our Bikeshare program doesn't even go past what PCH. Definitely doesn't go north of the four or five. So we haven't built that. And I haven't heard a clear timeline as to when we're going to expand bike share to North Long Beach. Somebody under 18 years old doesn't even have access to bike share. You can't check it out unless unless you're kids can even access our bike share. It doesn't connect. Are we talking about busses? So we're going to say we're going to add another financial barrier to youth to access a city wide asset. That doesn't reconcile with me. And to be fair, I really you know, and I know the conversation came up about whether or not this is a priority for certain council districts, whether access to a pool is. And frankly, I haven't really advocated for creation of a pool in North Long Beach. And there's a clear reason why why it doesn't really register on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs for me. And North Long Beach. I may have to fight for basic things like spending over a decade to open a library or failing a failing 100 year old community center out in park or very, very limited open space. So if you sometimes give our residents a choice, it's not a it's not fair proposition to say, do you want to fight to add a pool when you have other hierarchy, different hierarchy of needs than certain other areas of town? And we need to be sensitive to that. For me, this is about making a real emphasis on equity for all of our residents. And like I mentioned earlier, I witnessed a full court press from staff on person as project law and along with other major projects. And it's good. I like to see a full court press. Our new civic center is a good value proposition for the city. Sparks Development and the downtown core provides local job opportunities. Significant steps were taken to make sure the whole city felt included in that process. Last week we did $10 million loan to the aquarium, the Pacific the aquarium. For the most part, people believe this is a citywide asset. I hope they host an annual night aquarium that's extended to every single council district. People participate in it. People are proud to have it. It's a good value proposition for our residents. This pool, in its current form and how we presented it, is not a good value proposition for our residents. And I'm going to explain why. And I'm going to add and I'm going to offer some recommendations. So so so first, I mentioned earlier, I'm not a great critic, so I want to make sure that I offer some very clear things in a spirit of fairness, because it would be unfair for me to criticize this project without offering some some some alternative ideas . Broadly, not just limited to the scope of this E.R.. So first. The name. So citywide assets, for example, our Long Beach Civic Center, our Long Beach Airport, our Long Beach Convention Attainment Center are named after our city. The new pools should be no exception. The new pool. It demonstrates congruence with other citywide assets and makes a clear distinction between a citywide serving asset and a neighborhood serving asset. You know, pools, parks, libraries are named with input from those local neighborhood residents and reflect the character of those neighborhoods. And I think that's important. We got the naming process all the time on local neighborhood facilities. The citywide though my pool was branded after a neighborhood and doesn't reference or include the whole city. And while it may be important, think about the value it adds by just inviting people to talk about just the name of it. You may still get what you're intended to get, but you include so many more people in a process they can see them themselves in their own city reflected in that. Secondly, we have to double down on our youth. So to me, this isn't a a no, but no, you can't have a pool. But I need this. This should be a yes and conversation. Yes and proposition. So, yes, we need a pool to replace Belmont. Yes, yes. The kids we saw here, the rocket fish kids and all the stakeholders deserve to continue having an impact on future Olympians. Yes, they deserve that. And yes, all of our youth, no matter what part of town you live in or your socioeconomic status, should have access to quality public recreational opportunities in safe spaces. It isn't a secret. I've been pretty clear. That the La mirada. Municipal. Pool. I love it. I love the La mirada pool called Splash. I've driven outside of the county, La mirada. Take my daughter there. It's a great municipal pool because literally it's fun. It's built for kids. It's different, it's exciting. 50% of the facility, 50% is dedicated just to youth. It'd be great at the city's municipal pool here in Long Beach. Got our local. Long Beach kids excited about aquatics. From any part of our town. Now, I. Know the outside area hasn't been fully designed yet, and I've had these conversations with both the councilmember as well as well city staff. I think since it hasn't been designed yet, there's a real opportunity to and it hasn't been budget yet either. We need to invest a more significant part of this plan in this budget. Into enhancing the youth areas it needs to meet or match lavorato splash area in my opinion, and we need to create a seamless after school program with Long Beach Unified that eliminates transportation barriers for youth and encourages every Long Beach Unified student to have access to this seamless facility. When I say access, it is not access to say, if you can get here, we'll let you in. That's not access. Access is this is built for you. We've taken the time to build a seamless build a seamless system to make sure you let you step off your campus, you get on that bus or whatever, and you're a. Part of a. Program, an actual enrichment program. Number three, make a real commitment to ensure that this private project doesn't compete for funding with major infrastructure projects outside of the Highlands area that are not eligible for funding. So you heard it a couple of times. So tonight we've heard a couple of times that we can seek philanthropy grants and other sources for this project. But let's be honest, the funding for those are really depend on, you know, if the city really works, the city staff place a focus on this. And we already know that the majority of our city does not have access to these funds and they really have a proven need. So let's leave the federal the state grants and all those things to areas that actually lack funding, have a real need and a lack of recreation opportunities. We should divide and conquer it. Isn't that the pool isn't a priority. It just means that it doesn't meet the same threshold of the need as a non coastal project. And I believe residents should be compassionate enough to understand that this is not pitting my neighborhood versus yours. We should be compassionate to understand both needs and place a priority on both our leaders and our residents should understand that. So number four, we've gotten very creative on how to finance infrastructure in our city. We use public private partnerships with the Civic Center, the finance for the Queen Mary, the Gerald Desmond Bridge, the Middle Harbor Project . We're very complex, required a full court press. Simply admitting that Tidelands funds are limited to the beachfront communities is no longer an adequate excuse for not taking on big infrastructure projects outside of the downtown, the port area and the Titans areas. A better value proposition for residents means taking steps to actually address big infrastructure that's accessible to our whole city. So that means leveraging new resources, new sources of revenue like measure a L.A. County Measure A are the resources to put together a plan that doesn't just address maintenance of parks and streets and roads and alleys and sidewalks , big infrastructure. Some of these projects, we're struggling $1,000,000 at a time to find 10 million, $50 million to fix something like a 100 year old community center. That means we're not being creative enough and not making and taking risks on our own residents to make those investments. So, you know, we need to make it we need to demonstrate that all our constituents are not second class citizens. Your quality, your life, your recreation opportunities are not a secondary thought. They're a priority. It's a both. And I know. But and that said, I do understand I'm open with this I understand the idea of starting with a big vision, right sizing, value engineering. By the end of the process, I think we'll have something that's more balanced, something everyone's going to be able to support. And I hope that we become a better body and more respectful of, you know, how we present things as we move forward. So I do want to see this project move forward. So I'm going to vote yes tonight, and I have no reservations about that. But I'm confident and I look forward to hearing the I look forward to hearing the Coastal Commission's comments when they further the project. I look forward to continuing to be a part of this conversation to make sure that what we present is more balanced and the value proposition for our residents is a bit better. And so those are my remarks. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have like we have Councilman Mongo. Well, everything that could possibly. Have been said has been said in one way or another. So I'm not. Sure where to leave us except that, well, there are things that each of my colleagues said that I feel I identify with. I also appreciate. The number of community members that reached out and gave. Insights and opinions in advance of today. Well written letters. I couldn't comment or email every single person back. Because there were so many that came in, but I. Appreciate the comments on both sides. To that point, I would like to say that we are still at the beginning steps, and I also am excited about being iconic. There are so many people from everywhere along the city that when I'm riding my bike or walking the duck pond in Eldorado Park, they seem to make it from downtown to the east side. And we on the east side and or the north side can all make it downtown as well. It's not convenient, but it's also not impossible. We talk about athletic opportunities and many know that my mom was a single mom and my brother took two busses to get to practice. Every day, and that's what kids do when. They're in high school. It teaches them strength and. Independence and diversity. And those opportunities come because. Things are far apart where we live. We are fortunate to live in a very big city. And if it means. You have to go a little bit. Further to be able. To have something that's world class. Then it's worth it. So I will be supporting the motion tonight. I appreciate the extensive amount of staff work. I know that with little notice, I had meetings with all sorts of staff on Friday to clarify and better. Understand. The letter that came in on Thursday. I also want to thank. The. Number of people who reached out on Friday and really wanted to meet with me this weekend. My schedule was so packed. I had meetings all the time and I just told people, Here's where I'll be. If you'd like to come to any of those places, I'm happy to have a dialog. And members that are here tonight took me up on that opportunity. Interesting places that. We were talking about the pool, but those were what we're on our schedule. And we appreciate every community member who was willing to. Make the drive to the Eastside, even though they don't live there. Because they wanted. To talk to a councilmember. About their concerns. And so I appreciate that. And so with that, I want to thank everyone for their input. I want to thank the staff for. Being diligent in their review. And I'm very comfortable with this and I am excited about our future. So thank you. Thank you. I'm going I have a couple more councilman with cued up. I do have Councilwoman Pierce is not here tonight. She did submit a letter that she wanted to read into the record. And so I'm going to turn this over to the clerk and to the clerk and read customer Pierce. She had a family emergency, which is why she's not here, but she wanted a letter. Thank you. Honorable mayor and fellow council members. I regret that external circumstances prevent me from attending tonight's meeting and having the opportunity to vote as the only other council member whose district has access to Thailand funds. I do not take this decision lightly. I have a number of serious concerns about the planning process up to this point. The PBA sees compliance with local and statewide Coastal Commission regulations and the project's future impacts on our environment. Given the information provided to me, it is clear that as a city we have not met the standards required under SEQUA to certify this IIR . As a result. Had I been able to be with you all tonight, I would be in support of the Appeals to the Planning Commission's decision. My concerns are as follows. One. To my knowledge, the ER did not identify and analyze compliance with Coastal Act policies such as protected devices as outlined in 30253 in the letter from the Coastal Commission. They stated that the structure itself could act as a seawall or protective device. This point should have been part of the analysis in the original ER document and given the opportunity to be circulated for discussion. To the current wave of brush study in 2014 does not account for the updated sea level rise projections, which were released last month. Furthermore, the study states that under a worst case scenario and 2100 conditions, much of the amount shore and the peninsula would be inundated as well, but does not discuss how the fixed structure could exacerbate this by permanently inundating our coastline. Three. Having reviewed the air, I do not believe enough evidence was provided to reject the elephant lot as a feasible alternative. I understand that there is a private lease that expires in 2034, an annual convention that takes place three days per year. However, a more in-depth analysis of this lot example parking mitigation efforts study of the highest and best use of the lot. Eminent domain should have been done before it was entirely ruled out, particularly considering the serious environmental concerns and extremely high costs associated with the beach location. In sum, I believe it is our responsibility to ensure that our public dollars are spent wisely for the collective good of Long Beach. I have concerns about building a $103 million Million pool facility on unstable sand in an area subject to SLR and erosion. When we could be building this project for significantly less money and an alternative location. Both the savings and tidelands dollars that will no longer be tied up as a result of the unfunded VBAC should go towards doing everything in our power to adapt to the very same sea level rise which threatens this facility. Respectfully submitted. Janine Pearce Council Member Janine Pearce Second District. Great. Next up is council member. Thank you. Thank you. And I, too, would like to thank everyone for speaking tonight and putting the time and energy into this. It's kind of typical. I'm throwing out my original notes because I think Councilmember Saranga brought up a fascinating point, and I'd like to follow up on that. But first, let me go over a technical issue that came up earlier. And I think staff said that we have someone here from Moffat and Nichols. So I would like just one point address that one of the appellants brought up, and that was in reference to the wave up study, and a study was performed. And the point is brought up that we had some new research done in April 2017, and I was just curious if you'd like to respond to that or if your study, you know, encompassed all those issues. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council and staff names. Russ Boudreau, coastal engineer with Mark and Nicole. I've been practicing coastal engineering here in Long Beach for over 30 years now, so the wave up study was completed in 2014. It it used the current guidance from the Coastal Commission and now there is relatively new guidance that just came out. It's not published in the up rush study, but I did take a look at it. And what it does is it provides more information in terms of instead of just saying a sea level rise scenario is, you know, low, likely or high, it actually adds probability to it. And I looked at that in the context of the upper study, and I'd be happy to share with the the council what, what you know, what the results of that are. Just to give you a little bit of background, if it may be of use about the sea level rise study are that the wave up study it looks at the present condition of the beach and then then runs a 100 year storm event and then we raise the sea level various scenarios. And it wasn't until the year 2100 high sea level scenario where the wave up rush reached the structure. So I want to make that clear so that five and a half foot sea level rise scenario has been covered in the new guidance and the probability of that occurring in year 2100, depending upon the sea level rise scenario of of greenhouse gas emissions ranges anywhere from one in 50 to less than one in 100 chance that that will happen by the year 2100. Okay. So I think you're saying that you're aware of the new research. And if there were some red flag, you could let us know that. That's correct. I did not see any red flag. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Now, I just wanted to go back to Councilmember your, I guess, point about this ultimately getting to the Coastal Commission and what would be the scenario if it were voted? Well, if we voted along with the appellants tonight. Now, Mr. Reyes, I think you stated that it would possibly come back from council in different iterations, that we would still we could come back with a different scenario. I think that's what I heard you say. Councilman Super. You'd have to give staff direction as to specific items that you felt were deficient within the ER so staff could conduct additional studies and then the air with that additional information could come back. If it turned out that the additional information that staff was asked to research created new, significant or discovered new significant impacts, which would not be anticipated. But if they did, it would be required to circulate the ER for a period of time and accept comments in response to comments in regard to the new significant information. Okay. Thank you. So I have another question for staff then that that is related. We've talked about the $7 million spent so far, 7 million and some change. And part of that was the demolition. But I believe the other moneys we spent exceed $4 million so far on this project. And if staff could respond, I don't think that information gleaned from the $4 million is transferable to another location. Could you respond on that? So that's correct. Of the 7.3 million we've spent, about 3.1 is for the demolition. And then the rest, the 4.2 balance roughly is what we spent to get us to this point. So it spent on the design. It spent on the air. So if we were to select, for example, another site, we would, of course, always try to salvage as much of the information that we've spent money on as possible. But at that point, you really are looking at a new design. You're going to have to restart your square. You're going to have to look and start again at the design. And of course, we'd have to see what the programmatic design was that the council wanted to have either a smaller facility or a different sized facility. So a lot of that investment would need to be start over again. Yes. Okay. So if that scenario played out, we still we could go through the same motions and not have a definitive direction from the Coastal Commission. So, for instance, this this the letter, the May 11th letter has been characterized as the strongest so far. I'm looking at the language and terms like best practices to me don't connote strong language. What? I don't want you to give your opinion, Mr. Murdoch, but we need something more definitive than that, wouldn't we, as a final ruling from the Coastal Commission? Correct. And that's part of the staff recommendation. I think it's very clear that we think Coastal will change the project, that they'll have conditions on the project, but we really don't know what those are until we get there. They've given us some indication, of course, of the issues, but we need to file our coastal development application permit application to get to coastal. So that's why staff is recommending the EO to be certified because it is the maximum project that gives us flexibility to look at smaller projects and work on those with the Coastal Commission and to start that process, if we were to today go back and maybe the Council gives a different direction, we still are missing that input from the Coastal Commission. We could be in the same situation down the road, you know, and have a go to coastal and have it still come back. So we'd like in there in the interest of efficiency to move this forward to the Coastal Commission so we can start having those discussions. Okay. Thank you. So that was the point I wanted to make with the councilmembers point that not being comfortable with moving this forward, in a sense, that's the only way to get that input from the Coastal Commission in a real sense. Also, I don't think any of us here would be for spending another $4 million and not knowing what that input is. So from that efficiency standpoint, I just want to bring that forward. Also, we haven't talked a lot about the we haven't talked at all about the narrow scope of the air. And we've talked about a lot of issues here that that don't apply. I noticed the story polls were mentioned, and that was part of a different appeal, was it not? Yes, sir, it was. There was a zoning administrator decision on this story polls because it required a local coastal development permit. That permit was that decision of the zoning administrator was appealed to the planning commission. The Planning Commission upheld the zoning administrator's decision. The story pole was installed. That was the end of that judiciary process. Okay. So we wouldn't be able to comment on that in this session, on this application. How does that work? I think legally you can comment on it. Okay. If you feel that that was deficient. But the Planning Commission basically gave its ruling that they felt that it was an appropriate use of the story pole at that particular location. And I think Tom mentioned the rationale. The Planning Commission was very clear that normally a story poll is used in a single family dwelling situation where the public doesn't have a lot of other information. And in this particular situation, with all the community outreach, the full environmental impact report, the renderings, the drawings that were available to the public, that a full configuration of storage poles was somewhat redundant and not necessarily the facts of that particular situation. Okay. Thank you. And under the same kind of heading in terms of the scope of the e.r. We've talked a lot about social justice issues here. Now, I understand, Mr. Mays, that we're allowed to talk about him, but it's just not within the scope of the C.A.R., is my understanding. Indirectly, I guess it could be considered part of it, part of the consideration. Any white counsel certainly can take that into consideration, but by and large, it's a land use decision and you're looking at whether or not this particular project will cause any significant effects on the environment, whether the city has looked at those effects, whether they've implemented mitigation measures that would be suitable to reduce them to a level of insignificance. And that's what this particular E.R. concludes, is that there are not any significant effects that cannot be mitigated. Okay. Thank you. I think that's all I have for now. I'll defer to another council member. Thank you. Next up, we have two final counsel comments and we'll go to a vote. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Okay, thank you. I want to thank everybody for being here. And it's been a really long night and I'm sure all of us are very, very exhausted and tired. But it has been a great discussion thus far. And I think staff are putting this together. I do have questions as well. So the first question I have, which may have been answered, but I just want to make sure I'm clear, is in the Coastal Commission letter, as they have defined this area as a hazardous area, I guess how are we reformulating the argument, if this were to pass, that this is not a hazardous area, but given sea level wave issues, break water, you know, all of that shoreline erosion, how are we building a better case? And in that sense. So in our response to the Coastal Commission letter. Councilwoman Gonzalez we did address why we believe. That our way of approach. Study was appropriate. Why we. Believe that under the Coastal Act this is not the definition of new development. And why we believe that this is. Also not a protective device under the Coastal Act. Because of that, we believe we are consistent with the Coastal Act and that we have analyzed the Coastal Act, including including hazards under our land use analysis and Section three of the Coastal Act in 16 different consistency findings. So we do believe that our secret document. Is. Wholly adequate in addressing those issues. And then if I can add, we're also looking at some something new that has come up, which is can we be talking to the Coastal Commission about an innovative approach, which is the sand management and looking at beach nourishment that's not in front of you in the air. It's not needed, it's not a mitigation measure, but it is something extra that we would like to have that conversation with coastal about sand management plan so that we can preserve that beach in front because that's really what they're saying in their letter, is how if this site is going to be have some way of approach, how are you going to preserve the beach in front of it so that there is public access? So why wouldn't we include that in the in this report? So as you mentioned, after doing all of the studies, we don't believe we believe that we're fully compliant, that we are within the Coastal Act, that we don't believe that we need that as a mitigation measure because of the way that we've addressed sea level rise. But it is something that we can certainly talk about as something new in it. And in addition to it, because it's currently an operating program that we're doing today. We just have no need for it at the Belmont Pool. That is a very stable beach. It is not moving the way that the other beaches are. Peninsula Beach loses a lot of sand. So we are constantly doing sand management there, but we don't see that activity right now at the Belmont site. Of course, as as the years go on, we would look to do that. And it's just something we've talked to them about. Okay. Thank you. And then I think there was some question as to the intensity of use. And so adding additional seating, would that add to the intensity of use? I mean, I think I feel like that would be yeah, increased seating. Of course, all of the additional recreation and sporting I know that has not only increased in costs, but certainly that would intensify the use of that. So I'll take the first crack at that and then you can jump in as well as Lori. The opera actually had more seating than what we're proposing, the old pool while it was bleacher seating. And it was it was a very strange configuration, actually had, I believe, several thousand seats, that 2500 seats that were available. We had 1250 permanent indoor seats and then 3000 exterior seats. That will be. Temporary. Okay. And then I. So in looking at the alternative locations, I feel that personally they do seem a little bit light. Do we have any financial analysis on any of the alternative options, specifically four and five, which seem to be less costly? I don't it doesn't seem like we have a price tag to that. So are we looking to include that? We do not have price tags associated with any of those alternatives at this time. We are at about 30%. Design, schematic design for the project. And we do not analyze cost as an environmental impact under SEQUA. So the idea of you certifying the air tonight does allow you to come back and give us further direction after we go to the Coastal Commission in vetting those issues out. If you and the Coastal Commission choose to reduce any of the programmatic requirements that the Council originally placed on the project. Okay. So the reason I bring that up is because it says in the air the following objective objectives have been established for the proposed project and would aid decision makers in the review of the proposed project and its associated environmental impacts. So number eight, although it doesn't specifically ask or state about the about the alternative options, it does include operate a pool. Facility facility. That would generate revenue to offset help offset the ongoing operations and maintenance costs. So I think costs should be considered. So as we look at that, what is what are the maintenance costs for? Correct. So you can place that as a legitimate project objective. But under the secret checklist, there is no analysis of cost or revenues under SICA. So a project. Objective. Is an objective that that project applicant places on itself. For. Determining what kind of project they want to. Proceed with. So but that does not require. Us, nor does it require, as a state law, require us to analyze revenue. For a. Project because not all projects generate revenue. And Councilmember, I think part of your question is have we looked at the operating costs and what would those be? Yes. So we did do that. That is one of the city council's financial policies is before you start and embark on a major capital project, you need to be also looking at what the operating costs of that maintenance and that in that facility is. So we did that analysis that we brought to the Council back in October 2014. Essentially, the old port had an expense of about $1.2 million a year and about 300,000 in revenue for a net cost of $900,000 that the city was providing in subsidy. The new pool has more expense. It's 3.2 million. It also generates more revenue at 1 million. For that, net costs is about 2.2. So all told, we would be looking at a facility that would have an additional $1.3 million in Tidelands needed to support it. That is mostly from water cost and from and from chemicals. And the treatment makes sure that it's a safe facility, but also staffing as well. So that is something it is a rough estimate. It is something we need to hone more. The more that we get further in schematic design, the more that we can we can hold that number. And that would be something the council would look at before moving forward. Okay. So we're saying 3.2 million is what your overall operational cost would be, correct? We tend to look at it in net cost. So the net cost would be 2.2 million. Uh, 2.2. Okay. Thank you for that. And then would we. Let me see here. One more question. Okay. So I guess the final question I would have would just be to the recreational activities that were the recreational additions. To me, they seem a bit like an afterthought and I don't know how we could better approach this, you know, if this are if this is to pass. How can we better approach the community with adding additional input? I don't even know if that's possible, adding additional information or additional ideas for the recreational component, because as it stands now, I mean, I'm looking at the PowerPoint from back in 2014 and it's over a third of the costs seem to are specifically with diving competitiveness and all that. But you know, we only have a very like 2.2 million is for the outdoor recreational pool. So it's pretty I don't I don't see that we're really focusing on the community recreational side. So what can we do? Is is it maybe something that we can provide to one of our commissions or youth commission? I don't know if that's even for additional purview. So you can certainly do some additional public outreach on the components of the recreational design at this point, the sizes of the pools and kind of where they're located. That's all been sort of set through the process. But there are certainly the types of equipment and the types of things that children would find exciting and useful and useful within the bounds of the ER. We could certainly welcome more input on that. Again, that, that is a pretty specific level of design that we haven't gotten to, but we would certainly welcome some input if that's what the Council would like to do. I would also like to add that the both of the large pools are actually used for recreational purposes and not to just focus on the one pool that is specifically designed for children. So there are other recreational programs that are occurring in the large pools, including older adult swim, learn to swim for all, all kids. So that smaller pool that is outside is specifically earmarked for younger recreation. But that does not mean that that is the only aspect of the pool where recreation occurs. So recreation is not just related to youth. It is related to older adults as well as as middle aged folks and younger as well. And a lot of the recreation comes from programing as well. So it's not necessarily something that is built into the facility, but the way that the Parks and Rec staff program, the facility and as Amy mentioned, by adding things like the moveable floor was a big addition to make sure that the inside is actually programable for youth and for children as well. Without it, it would not be it would be very deep water. And that's going to limit the number of kids programing, the therapy pool, which is the teaching pool and what you can do in the diving well as well. So there's because there's a number of activities there that would be youth oriented, too. Okay. So how do we I mean, foresee that like what percentage would be recreation and what percentage would be competitive? I've seen that with other pools. And what are we forecasting in that sense? Well, we actually see it as 100% recreational, first and foremost. So the building is designed to be a recreational facility. It then has the ability to do the competition through the deep water pools and also the competitive seats. One of the things we mentioned early on was that we if you see the facility, you've actually have a central intake and you can divide the facility into two for the event. Now, if there is a competitive event happening, so that that's for the actual competitive events. That being said, there's also going to be requests from, you know, competitive swimming or, you know, whether it's organized swim or whether it's water polo to use the facility. And that's where we really rely on our Parks and rec staff to balance that, to make sure that we have a balance at any given time. That recreational facility is recreation is prioritized and that there is recreational access. Having the dedicated outdoor recreational pool, that is one that will not have competitive swimming in it. It is you know, that that is something we knew that we've never had before. We've always had kind of recreational swim, having to compete with all the other uses of the pool. And so we do see a big enhancement in the current design for recreation swim. Okay, great. I think that answers all my questions. I will just say that I, you know, I absolutely support a pool somewhere in our city, I think. I don't know that it needs to be of this magnitude, but quite frankly, especially after there has been really no community outreach to other places in the city, there really hasn't . And there are absolutely other pools, but they're not of this magnitude. And we just do not have the outreach that we should have had. I think 16 meetings, most of which were city meetings, I don't believe is sufficient for a pool of this magnitude. So but I know that so many people have been involved with this for so many years. I absolutely understand that. I also look at the community stakeholders, and there were six competitive agencies, five residents who also had competitive agency that were working with competitive agencies and two business stakeholders. So, you know, I would hope that when we look at creating development in the future of this size, of course, of this capacity, and I hope that when we are able to to do this, that we're in really encompassing all of our our community, just like the Civic Center, as Vice Mayor Richardson alluded to. And so I, I may be voting no on this. I'm still thinking at this very moment as to what I want to do. But there's definitely I know a lot of need for this is just how are we implementing this and at what price tag and all of the environmental impacts I think need to be considered. There are a lot. And so that's that's what I'll leave with. But thank you. To. And finally, Councilman Ranga, we'll get to a vote. Thank you, Mayor. Just a point of history here. When the pool was taken down, the coast commission looked at at the line and they actually moved the coastal zone, passed it into what do you call that Olympic lane or Olympic with that street right there. So anyway, when I saw that, you know, I went to the commissioner said, wait a minute, there's supposed to be a pool there. You can't move the coastal zone that far without giving us an opportunity to look at the pool. So they moved it back to where it was before so that we could have a project there. So that's just a little point of clarification as to why we continue it, because if we had it, if the Coastal Commission staff recommendation of moving the coastal zone had stayed in place, we have no pool. Quite frankly. And you remember that time we talked about it? Yes, sir, very vividly. That's correct. So when it comes down to this project, I mean, I can see the the desire to move forward with the air so that the of commission and that's sort of like kicking it down the can kick the can down the road so that the Coastal Commission can review it. And Charles, what kind of project you get? You know, I have issues with that only because we're relying on a state regulatory agency to tell us what to build and how to build it. And, you know, I just have an issue with it. But I can also see where, you know, with this C.A.R., you want to shoot for the moon and hope you end up in Hawaii. But you know, we might end up in Gilligan's Island as far as I can see, because the changes that the commission might see will be so drastic that this council was going to say , there's no project here and we can't build this. And you're putting your faith at a commission that is going to say, you know, you have a project, but you have to put it this size. And is that going to be acceptable? Well, you have to be ready for that. And for those who are supporting the pool, you have to be ready for that, because that might be the recommendation to downsize it drastically, the way you say. Well, that's not that's no longer the the the iconic world class pool that we want. So you've got to be ready for that might happen. But in the end, what it's going to come down to is that the Coastal Commission is going to review our project and then send it back and I know there's going to be an appeal. I mean, there's somebody out there, there's a pilot, there's a pool today. There's going to be an appeal of not the project of the air. And when the air gets to court and the judge says, this idea that you submitted is insufficient because you didn't have that community engagement component in it, because it was insufficient because you didn't really go out into the community, into the other areas of Long Beach and get their input as to how this project should proceed. That EIA is going to be kicked out and you guess what? We're going to be revisiting it again. We're going to be back exactly to square one. So that's why I'm holding to the fact that we need to look at the sea air as an opportunity, but at the same time, it needs to change. I mean, it's insufficient. I'm not saying it's inadequate. It's just it's that is that is not sufficient enough. If we could, I would I would I would make a motion to send it back to staff how staff work continue to work with the Coastal Commission to I think would get something that's going to be feasible and be able to be workable . But if not, if we if that cannot be done because we're set with this current year, then so be it. And Mr. Mayor, if I'm able to provide some context that I think Councilmember Younger makes a good point about, the process is messy. And unfortunately, we don't know any better way to do it. What we're kind of stuck in is we have input from Coastal Commission staff, they from local staff, but they are not the decision makers just in the city of Long Beach. Our city staff are not decision makers. It is the council that is the decision maker. And so we're stuck a little bit in that they can give us some thoughts. They can't really accept our application and move forward until we have an air and have a culture development permit. And frankly, we don't know what the Coastal Commission as a body is going to do with that staff recommendation, especially since there is local staff and there is mid-level staff and there's high level staff that we've had various conversations on different aspects with each area. So that's what we're really asking. We completely realize that this is messy, but we won't know what we've got until we get to the commission. And that body gives us some direction to us to work, for us to work with. Okay. So we have my folks again. So let me go back through this limit first to the city attorney and then we'll go to Vice Mayor Richardson. Mayor. I just wanted to clarify the motion. I can do that at the end before we get ready to vote. Okay. Vice Mayor Richardson. Sure. I just want to have some some clarity. So I get it that this is a messy process. But should this move forward tonight, what happens if the planning commission, what are the possible scenarios that the Coastal Commission can can decide and how would we respond to those scenarios? So they sort of, for example, if they rejected it, what is what do we do if we if they say make these changes? How do we respond if they approve it? What is the next step? So essentially, if you were to certify the E.R., we would then both prepare a local coastal permit, which the zoning administrator in Long Beach would hear for the for the portion that's in the city of Long Beach jurisdiction. We would also do a coastal development application for Coastal Commission to review. There's some interesting relationship between those two of them. They can be appealed to each other, but essentially we need to go through a city process and get to coastal. The Coastal Commission has a number of options they could certainly adopted as is. At which point it still comes back to the council to move forward. They could, which they'll certainly do probably put in which we think they would put on conditions which then could come back to the City Council for concurrence. They could also have design changes which then we would need to go through in the air process depending on what level of design changes if they. We've tried to design this to be maximum flexibility in the air so that there's multiple alternatives to work with. But if they came up with something completely different, we would then come back to you as a body, get your direction on whether you concur with that or want to bring it back to Coastal. And then we would have to probably go through an E.R. as well. So there are ways to do it. And it just it does take some some flexibility. So in every one of those scenarios, it ends up right back here in front of city council. Absolutely. Okay. And, you know, and I've heard a lot and that's why I think, you know, well, I want to better understand we will have an opportunity to talk about some things that are not limited to the air. Yes. Right. I mean, we've got air issues, but I've heard things that are, you know, outside of that scope that I really want to talk about, engage in, like, you know, programing, the name, additional, you know, connections, transportation, equity, things like that that aren't appropriate. What would be the appropriate time to talk about air specific or comments to coastal and then separate issues that are still related to this this project of this pool, but not directly related to any air. So we would recommend that we first get to Coastal and have that that sense of where they're going with this project if they are going to have changes. I think that would be a good time to bring it back to Coastal. You'll be out of the air process by then. You'll be able to see. We'll be able to staff to say, here's what we're hearing from Coastal. You can bring up any of those other issues then if you'd like, or also before we enter into any contract or decide on the funding as we're deciding what level of support we're going to have for this financially, all those are financial issues as well and those should all get talked about. So a motion like, you know, related to, let's say, no more than $60 million, everything else has to be other sources or don't compete with non non titling sources or projects. That's not appropriate here tonight. That's something that's appropriate in the future. Is that correct? That's correct. Again, I think it's you may not need to make a motion. Right. That if we if coastal comes back with a significantly smaller project. So that's again, why we would think that coastal kind of direction would come first. And then you, as the funding body, can have some decision making authority on how how you address that. So I mean, I'm going to maintain my vote, but I think it's important we just clarify this, that this is going to continue to be a long process and it will come back to us and we will have an opportunity. I've heard some teams from multiple council members. One more thing, additional outreach. What point is the appropriate time to do it? I don't know that we would say. I mean, when would be the appropriate time to go do more outreach? I don't know. But it's now I think it might be once we understand what happens with coastal. But but you tell me what would be the appropriate time to do more outreach citywide? I would say that after the Coastal finds, the project would likely be the best part to do it again. The Coastal Commission. If anyone wants to get involved in this project and be at the Coastal Commission meeting, that would be an a very appropriate time to do it. If there's other issues not related to coastal, you know, doing things like how do we how do we add in some of the recreation features or just get ideas of what kids want or what types of programing, you know, would be interesting. We can certainly look at that at any time with our Parks and Rec department. Okay. So, you know, I'm going to maintain my maintain for my support for the project at this point. But I do want to just say, I hope that our comments are considered into the process of the plan, and I hope that it doesn't. A prescribed motion right now or any other time to say, look, there needs to be more outreach at some point. And, you know, we want to make sure we're good putting the better, you know, value proposition to residents outside of the Highlands area. And I want to see that stuff reflected in the upcoming budget. Do we need to make a motion before the next budget comes out? So I think we're hearing. The council loud and clear. I think it's more than one council member we've heard for the additional ideas of how do we get additional outreach. Staff will definitely put together a plan. So no, we don't see that as necessary for the motion tonight. We'll continue talking off line. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We have a motion in a second. Just to clarify, Mr. Mays, a vote of yes moves the project forward, supports that recommendation and denies the appeal. Is that correct? That's correct. And I just would like to add, Mayor. Yes, a yes vote does move this forward. It essentially denies the four appeals, upholds the Planning Commission's decision. And more importantly, the Council will be adopting the resolution that is in their packet, which essentially certifies that IIR and the other four entitlements that we've discussed tonight, the CPA , the site plan review, the standards variance, the other three, and it's all contained in that resolution that's attached to the package. So a yes vote passes that resolution. Okay. So I'm gonna call for the vote members to go and cast your vote on the project. Motion carries. Okay, great. Thank you. Motion carries. We are taking a one minute recess. Are you serious? Okay, hold on a second. There's. There's no calls from your. Ringo said he presses. He pressed the wrong button. He said he's a no creep. Okay. So the vote still passes and it's, I believe, 6262 is the vote and the nays were. Councilman Gonzales and Councilmember Arango, we'll take a one minute recess and then we go back to the next hearing. Thank you very much. That is Christian McBride Trio right here. Members of Watergate, Gay Jazz, Cherokee, the name of that tune recorded live at the Village Vanguard from 2015. And Chris McBride Trio, they are coming here to Southern California on Saturday, June 24th at Disney Hall. And Christian McBride is going to be headlining the K Jazz Summer Benefit Concert five years in a row. And we are selling out. Tickets are still available at the box office at Disney. Also make it a point to do what you know you need to do. You want to be a part of it. Jazz. Go to jazz and blues, dawg. And we have some very important seats in the House. But go to the website and find out if it's still available. You'll have the best seats in the House, and we thank you for supporting your members support. Okay. Jazz before Christian McBride, that was Dizzy Gillespie exactly like you. That's from the music of John Birks. Gillespie And it is just a CD you have to have that. Has the essence of bebop got into that set with Kenny Burrell on the Guitar Girl Talk from his solo CD from 1967. And we're going to get into the music of Oscar Peterson. But first, Vince Giraldi right after this. Okay. Jazz, 88.1. With the jazz membership card, you'll be part. Okay. We're calling the council meeting back to order. If I can have the roll call, please. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilmember Pierce, Councilwoman Price. Councilmember Supernanny. Here. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilman Andrew's. Council Member. Younger Councilman Austin. Vice Mayor Richardson. Mayor Garcia. I'm here and I have a motion and a kind of a consent calendar motion in a second. I need a motion and a second on consent calendar.