Recommendation to receive and file the 2019 Everyone In Economic Inclusion Implementation Plan, adopt recommendations, and request City Manager to work with the appropriate departments to report back with a timeline for implementation within 120 days for the five recommended policy areas: (1) Housing and Homeownership; (2) Small Business, Diverse Entrepreneurship; (3) Procurement; (4) Workforce and Youth Development; and (5) Connectedness (Economic Resilience); and Request City Manager provide on-going implementation plan updates every 6 months thereafter until a workplan and funding source for each of the policy goals has been approved by City Council.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. That concludes our public comment. I will move to item 32 of you, Mr. Richardson, Councilman, to please with either. Item 32 communication from Councilmember Richardson, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilwoman Mango Councilmember Urunga recommendation to receive and file the 2019 Everyone in Economic Inclusion Implementation Plan adopt recommendations and request City Manager to work with the appropriate departments to report back with a timeline for implementation within 120 days. Thank you, Congressman Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So tonight we are recognizing a year and a half of work carried out by Long Beach stakeholders and community members who set out to take a deeper dove into the question of how do we change the narrative of the tale of two cities here in the city of Long Beach? Two very different economic realities for the people who live in the city. We've set out on set on a process of learning, information gathering to ensure that we understand the challenges and opportunities that face our community. I know this this conversation began in 2017. And since then, you know, I joined the Economic Development Committee, Economic Development and Finance Committee. And I was, you know, very clear with Mayor Garcia that this is this is the deeper conversation I'd like to have in this post. And so tonight, we conclude that research and engagement process, as we submit to the Council five recommendations to advance economic opportunity and economic inclusion here in the city of Long Beach. So here's a little bit of context. We kicked off in 2017 for this deeper dove into economic inclusion, which is already referenced in our economic blueprint. We dedicated time to learning what economic inclusion is, and we explored strategies that help us expand on economic opportunities to communities that have traditionally been left left behind for generations. The first phase was dedicated to learning, and it had three steps. These slides are going to advance. Oh, we got it. Okay. So great. So. So the everyone listening tour engaged. So it began with learning and listening. So we began with a listening tour. We engaged 100 Long Beach residents from underrepresented communities and nine equity based focus groups to create 12 community solutions and to hear what the community really felt. It was a listening session, to hear what they felt about the economic reality in Long Beach. Then we hosted policy roundtables in partnership with L.A. LISC that facilitated a series of five roundtables addressing specific aspects, different aspects and ideas around economic inclusion. We commissioned a report from policy linking from USC program for Environmental and Regional Equity, the policy link, equitable, equitable growth profile. All of those things, you know, came to City Council in 2017 and over the course of the last year they took place in the data and the lessons we learned really. The city staff did a good job on that first step and it really set it set the stage and the framework for phase two, which was community led. This report summarizes this report, you know, conducted by my office, by a lot of the partners, by LISC, by Economic and Policy Impact Center, reflects that that next step of that process, it wouldn't have been possible without community partnership from Wells Fargo, who helped support the community outreach process with L.A., LISC and all of the community members who are here. So phase two really was focused on debt, on solutions, right? The first phase was listening and let's hear what the problem is. And the second phase is really solutions. So we began by convening a multidisciplinary work workgroup of Long Beach community partners known as the Implementation Committee. This was made up of of community partners, economic development commissioners, stakeholders. And at our first meeting, several community members expressed their readiness to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Over the course of three months, the economic I mean, the implementation committee helped us condense 20 separate recommendations and objectives down into five comprehensive recommendations. The committee examined each strategy considering the content, the current level of support from city staff, the needs and interest of the community, and our best practices in action around the country. And the five strategies are feasible, as some can be accomplished in the short term and some are very comprehensive. It may take up to five years to fully implement some of these these bigger ideas. Here are the five recommendations. Then we took it to the community. We took we took it on the road. We took the show on the road and hosted nine community conversations with Long Beach residents and business owners across the city. Partnering, partnering with Councilmembers Councilmember Garang on the West Side, the Economics Student Association at Cal State Long Beach, the Council of Business Associations. On the Small Business Conversation, we co-hosted the Conversations with Councilmembers Gonzales and Pearce in the downtown area. We partner with Central Cha. We partnered with the United Cambodian community, the LGBTQ Center and the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. So over the course of three months we engaged more than 300 community members in dialog centered on these five key strategies. Gathering input on each concept. The plan highlights the community feedback in each recommendation to ensure the strategy achieves the best intended outcome. So while these recommendations have been vetted by the community, the implementation plan presents the context, the timing, additional consideration as we hand this off to city staff. So here are the five recommendations that we landed on. So first and I'm going to I'm going to lift up each of these. So first is to establish a municipal small business council with dedicated staff to provide representation, advocacy and technical technical assistance to every small business in the city. It may sound like a big, big idea, but for a city our size, there is room to expand our business groups in our city, our business districts do very well, but they represent businesses. They advocate for businesses within a defined boundary. Our Chamber of Commerce is present and they're engaged. But there are cost burdens to be involved in the Small Business Council at the Chamber. What about any small business in the city that's not located within a business district and may not have $500 a year to join a business association? So during the Cambodian community conversation, an attendee expressed he discussed the obstacles he and his wife faced while while in the process of starting a business and and he was an immigrant and with English as a second language, he he recounted his difficulty in finding others within the industry to talk with or engage with, with with the different agencies that help navigate the processes of establishing a business. And there are a number of, you know, several mom and pops across our city located outside the boundaries of business districts who have no idea, who lack the navigation support to really access the resources that already exist for our city. And so establishing a municipal small business council allows for industry clusters, it allows for ethnic clusters. You know, an African-American business committee, Latino Business Committee, Cambodian Business Committee, all of this can be sort of facilitated through this first recommendation of I mean, of a municipal small business council. So our second recommendation, which is centered on procurement, is the recommendation is increase the percentage of that the City of Long Beach spends on local, small and diverse businesses by establishing a streamline certification process, integrated vendor database for Long Beach agencies and institutions, and a transparent supplier diversity goals. And so the idea here is that, you know, we over the course of these conversations, we learned that, you know, if you want to certify as an African American business and compete for bids, it's a different process from the city of Long Beach. Then when you jump over to Long Beach Transit or Long Beach City College or Long Beach Unified School District, at each step you may have a different process to certify as a small business minority owned businesses, so on and so forth. We even heard a story we might might hear tonight. I'm not sure about. You know, someone had to prove that they were were African American. And they actually to prove that they were African American, they needed to find their their military records of their father who said, you know, Negro on it in order to prove that they were African-American to receive those incentives. And so in a lot of cases, we have an opportunity to really look at these different agencies and align our strategies to make it simple, to simply opt in and say, I'm an African-American business or I'm LGBTQ business. In a lot of cases, it takes a lot of extension, extensive paperwork. It takes multiple attempts at certifying as small as a small business or a minority owned business. You know, and frankly, many people want to pursue government contracts, but they are just discouraged from the process. We've done a lot of work and we want to recognize a lot of work that we've done to add preferences for women owned businesses, veteran owned business, LGBT, LGBTQ businesses. And all of those are good, good efforts. But we should really be thinking about how do we comprehensively change the process and design it to really suit the businesses that we want to that we want to support. So imagine if we set goals within our purchasing purchasing thresholds to support local businesses. L.A. County just established a 25% threshold for local, local, small businesses and social, social enterprises. And so if we take a step back and really take a long view and say, let's comprehensively think about how we conduct procurement in the city of Long Beach, we can we can take this a long way. So the third recommendation is centered on workforce and youth development. And so the recommendation is develop a plan to expand and deploy workforce development services to every Long Beach teen center. So modernizing our teen centers is a great strategy that that was discussed at our economic at our implementation committee dialog. There's already great momentum for this idea that's been introduced by a number of council members, including Councilwoman Mongeau, as well as Vice Mayor Andrews. It's it's you know, it's already in conversations with Parks and Recreation and with and with our Workforce Development Agency. The conversation here is how do we make our workforce resources accessible to the people who need it most? Data tells us that our youth unemployment rate is three times the average unemployment rate within the city of Long Beach, each Long Beach Teen Center. And you see the map here is strategically located near a high school on a park ground and strategically located in north central west downtown east Long Beach. There's a teen center in every part of town. So if we take our workforce resources and we align them with the teen centers and have a strategy to address teen employment by anchoring and rethinking our teen centers, we can make a big difference here. And so this is you know, this recommendation had a lot of support and it seemed like a make sense, you know, short term idea that we can move forward on. Our next idea is really rooted in our need to expand the capacity to support small businesses and deliver services to neighborhoods who maybe have felt the need to compete with other neighborhoods to receive attention. And so this recommendation is to support the establishment of a community development corporation, to deploy programs and services that support the economic development and financial empowerment of north central west Long Beach and the small businesses citywide. And so the concept here is that CDC would essentially provide services that go beyond the traditional scope and scope of local government, such as financial literacy classes, credit building work workshops, expungement clinics, support and education around housing. And so those are some of the things that the CDC could do. So that is a recommendation here. And then our fifth recommendation is is really started centered on housing. So we we've had, you know, a lot of work around housing production in the city. We've done a lot of work around. We had a conversation earlier tonight about tenant protections. And really the committee felt the need to lift up the conversation. Really that's centered on home ownership because it is still the chief means of wealth building in our in our community. And so the recommendation is support community based organizations, efforts to become a HUD certified home buyer counseling education agency. And so here's the concept is that Long Beach, the length, the mortgage landscape is changing. The green lining report told us that seven of the of the top ten mortgage originators in the city were non-banks. Only three were banks of the top ten. And so these are your Quicken Loans and your new American funding. And these guys, they're not subject to CRT. A lot of them are a lot more flexible, and that's a good thing. But there's a trust gap. And some folks some folks may need a certified sort of source of education in their local community to know that they can trust these products. And so in in conversations with HUD and looking through HUD, there aren't very many HUD certified housing counselors in the city of Long Beach. I believe the closest one is is neighborhood housing services in the city of Compton. There's community interest in this. They provide advice on buying a home, renting the default process, process, foreclosure avoidance, reverse mortgages and more. And so, given what we know about our city, the changing landscape, it makes sense that we prepare and educate our communities for homeownership. We know there's a lot more we can do, like down payment assistance the city's already working on. But we can start now with a very small step in creating this HUD certified process. And so those are the five recommendations, as you know, that we're moving forward here. Some of them have already come to city council. Some of them already gained city council support. But we we wanted to culminate this process by bringing it forward. And I want to at this point, I want to say I want to acknowledge everyone who's participated in this process. There were really, you know, a number of organizations. And I would ask if you if you at any point participated in the everyone in process, if you could just stand so we can recognize you. So I thank you. You can you can go ahead and have a seat. Thank you. But I want to invite down representatives from four agencies have really been a pivotal to this everyone in process. So I'll love representatives from L.A., LISC, the The Economic Policy Impact Center, Wells Fargo and Long Beach Community Action Partnership. If you can come down, I know that there's we have a presentation for you and we and you have an announcement for us. So if you could make your way on down and I think we'll hear from LISC first, then I think it'll be CAPP and Wells Fargo and then we'll hear from Economic Policy Impact Center. Okay. They're coming down. Vice mayor and the council members on the dais this evening. I thank you so much, Councilman Richardson, for that presentation. So I am tonight with Rush in Turk and I'm the executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. We're a national economic development firm, and we have invested 25 million in L.A. County just in 2018 alone. I'm a local Long Beach resident, and I'm here to share with you some of the things that we do at LISC that we're so excited that we've been doing here in Long Beach and Long Beach. We're on the ground. LISC is in more places than any other community development organization. We have staff, expertize and relationships in more than 25 L.A. County communities. We listen, and I'm so proud. That list was asked by Councilman Richardson to co-chair the Everyone in initiative. This provided us a chance to engage with the many local leaders, neighbors and stakeholders that are here today to plan and to make policy recommendations that you have before you tonight. We innovate. We're we look at making we look at testing ideas on the ground and making sure that those ideas can be adapted nationally. We're proud to be testing out new models for local business ownership here in Long Beach through a succession planning process to create worker owned cooperatives. We were able to attract several hundred thousand dollars to make that happen. We see the big picture. LISC is all about comprehensive development. We tackle issues all at once. We work on housing, business, jobs, education, health, safety in the same place at the same time. And finally, we have an impact as a partner, not only with the city, the council here in the Economic Development Department, we have helped to launch Long Beach as a key VA city. And today to date, we have recruited more than 13 trustees that have supplied microloans up to $160,000 just here in the city of Long Beach. And LISC was helping to match those loans dollar for dollar. I urge the Council to support the policy recommendations that are before you. You can see that these are strategies that come from the ground, from the people of Long Beach. And we cannot have a thriving Long Beach if everyone is not part of our economic prosperity. We're proud to partner with all the community stakeholders that are here today as part of the Everyone in initiative. We want to thank the Citibank Foundation, Wells Fargo, the Economic Policy Institute, the city of Long Beach, and, of course, Councilmember Richardson. Thank you for your continued commitment to ensure that Long Beach is an equitable city for all of its residents. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Good evening. My name is Alyssa Gutierrez. I'm the executive director of the Economic and Policy Impact Center. We are an advocacy and think tank nonprofit, working to expand economic opportunity to disadvantaged communities through civic engagement, leadership, development and policy advocacy. First off, I'd like to thank Councilmember Richardson for your leadership on such an important issue. It takes bold leadership to not only listen to, but respond to the needs and concerns of our city's most vulnerable residents. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this work. From my involvement in the implementation committee meetings to leading the engagement of over 300 residents and business owners and community conversations, I witnessed firsthand the excitement and hunger for this work. It has been an absolute honor to be a part of it, and I look forward to continuing the movement toward creating a local economy that includes and benefits every Long Beach resident and business owner. Thank you, Mr. Gutierrez. All right. All right. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Senator elect Councilperson. It's an honor for me to stand here and say that I'm proud to be a part of everyone in. Because when you think about the objectives that were just mentioned and you think about the mission of the Long Beach Community Action Partnership, it's very much in alignment with what we do to serve this community. We're very proud to serve in a key role, and that will be fiscal sponsor in this initiative. And we're we're proud to serve in that capacity, first and foremost, because we have the fiscal integrity and leadership as an agency to be able to do so and certainly in a such an important role. Secondly, because we know that in doing so, the success of this initiative means the success of those that we serve. And it's very much in alignment with things such as workforce development, entrepreneurship, creative space that we do. So it's not a big stretch for us. It's a matter of getting to work and doing what we do best in service of something that will be best for this community. So in addition to working with you and the council district to make this happen and the council and at whole, we are also proud to work with Wells Fargo. So that's not going to be a stretch either, because they've been our banker since we grew from a $1.3 million agency to a $10 million agency. And we are proud to serve with them. They know us. We know them. So that's a seamless relationship as well. So thank you for the opportunity to serve and thank you for your leadership in making something as innovative as this happen in our community. And we're proud to be in the ninth District to work closely with you on it. Thank you, Derek. And and so if you could stand up there while while Linda gives her remarks there, you're an incredible partner on the fourth recommendation, which is establishing the Community Development Corporation. And Linda, the second phase, this community work couldn't have taken place without the support of Wells Fargo. And so we welcome you and your comments and whatever you have to say. Yes. Good evening, council members. My name is Linden Wynn and I am a part of Wells Fargo Foundation. I'm joined by my colleagues, Justine Gonzalez and Just Tirado. I would like to thank you, Councilmember Richardson, for including us in the conversation about everyone in we have been a part of the conversation since it pretty much started since 2017. From the community conversations to the roundtables and even to the summit and program planning, this initiative embodies what we at Wells Fargo really believe in equity and inclusion. Wells Fargo realizes that we are only as strong as our community, and that strength is really in that foundation of access to housing opportunities for small business growth, and having workforce development opportunities for our youth and for our adults. Thank you for including us, along with residents, community leaders, nonprofit organizations and public and elected officials. In this effort, as we all share in shifting that narrative and changing the statistics on economic inclusion and prosperity. On a personal note, I can really speak to that shifting narrative because my parents moved to Long Beach in 1990 as Southeast Asian immigrants really looking for access to opportunities and homeownership and to also have a thriving business. So and hearing that there is this conversation about how can we really be more inclusive? Really was more of a personal inclination. But for this opportunity to be here on behalf of Wells Fargo and to speak on behalf of this on a larger level and be an advocate has really been a tremendous honor. We have supported the summit as the title sponsor and also supported the planning phase, which really brought together a lot of collaboration and partnerships. And in this next phase, the third phase is really the implementation plan. And we were proud to say that we are already going to support with a $115,000 grant to the development of the Community Development Corporation, the very first in the city of Long Beach that is dedicated to this very deserving community. And we're proud to say that Long Beach, Kap, will be providing the leadership in that. So thank you for this opportunity and including us in this conversation. Let's hear it for Wells Fargo and lobbyist Katz for that amazing announcement. So I have I want to I want to come down and give you a presentation. But the last thing I will say is that this process was really led by a number of really dynamic individuals and a part of our city family and our partners . And so we'll be recognizing you. But I don't want to overlook really Ilana Grant right here on our team, our policy director, Alana Grant, Alana Grant, even Rebecca Calma, you know, a number of people were really involved, but really it's the people behind the scenes that helped interact with all of you. And so I want to come down and give you all some some certificates now. Is it? Is anyone going to speak? What is going to. Argue and wait until we. Yeah, we won't give it up. Okay, fine. All right. I just wanted to say. This is Councilwoman Gonzalez for. Another day, but I just wanted to say congratulations to each and every one of you, and I know how much hard work you put in. And a big kudos and thank you to my colleague of Councilmember Richardson. He does such an amazing job with economic inclusion. And I just thank you for leading on this effort for the rest of the city. Thank you. All right. So let's let's. So Long Beach mean the action partnership. Thank you. Thank you. Economic Policy Impact Center. A list of. Thank you. And to the A la list. Thank you for all of your your help and support and helping pull together those here for all of it. I'm in the middle. All right. Good job. Guys. Thank you so. I'm fine. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Richardson. Mrs. Price. Councilwoman Price, thank you. I want to thank Councilman Richardson for this presentation. It's great. I love this packet. I was looking through it and it has a lot of great information. And one of the recommendations that I really, really like, I mean, all the recommendations are great and I haven't been involved in the process, so I'm not in the weeds on any of them. But the one that I really liked that I was reading was the Workforce, the Youth Development one. I think it's so important for us to teach our young people early some job skills. I know that when we get interns in the office, a lot of them, when they're in high school, they need to learn organization. They need to learn, like you said, like the pamphlet says, customer service, you know, all those basic job training. So I think that's really, really important. And I'm happy that it was included here because I think that's a really big asset for our youth throughout the city. So I think this is great. I mean, it's it's wonderful to see that you had an idea and you developed it and you got engagement from the community and that it's to the point that it is today. Nicely done. Well, thank you. Thank you. Counsel women peers. Yes. I want to thank Councilmember Richardson for your work on the Everyone in plan. I know this has been long in coming and I especially want to thank all the community members. I know often our electeds, sometimes we ask you guys to participate in work groups or housing groups and we ask for your input. We ask you to be on commissions. And I know that this is one of those times that not only did you guys get invited to the table, but you really got to roll up your sleeves and add input that is presented in this presentation today. And I think that's really meaningful and powerful whenever we talk about how we make sure that everybody is included and that those ideas have some momentum behind them, because we can put ideas up here on this council all day long. But unless we have people on the ground that are willing to put dollars into that program and put sweat equity into that program, it's not going to see the fullest potential that that it could be. And so I think that is a great there is a lot of recommendations in here that we've had side conversations on. It's great to be able to now hopefully be able to have them come back one by one as and give them some more tofu, as I like to say, not not meet, but tofu to be able to help add them. The vegetarian, you know. And so just congratulations. I look forward to the next steps. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Councilman Mango. Thank you. I think that this is a great plan. I really appreciate that. A lot of the work that's been done wasn't left out. I know that it's important to start something and to to get the buy in from the community. And I can see that each of you added your input along the way. I know some of these things start out in the community and some of them started out at the dais, but until they're adopted and embraced by the community, they're just words. And so thank you for each one of you who really took the time to go to the listening sessions and to make these policies the best possible, because we do it the Long Beach way. So great work, everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And yes, thank you very much. I just want to give complete kudos to Councilman Rich Richardson, because the fact that usually when he gets his money and he had put into something, this young man, he never stops. And I think a lot of that has to do when you look out here in the audience and see individuals , when he said a two year plan, I mean, sometimes you can't get people to come together for a week. This is two years he put together and look at the output here. I just want to let every one of you guys know there will be something that comes from this that will make a difference. And the city of Long Beach and I want to thank you again, Councilman Richardson, because I know this is world work. When everyone is in and we talk about the village, you are the village. And I see that this will come to fruition. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, I think. I believe I saw you did public comment, correct? I think you have the call. No, not yet. But I don't think. Okay. Is there is your public comment on this item? Nope. Okay. So we have a we have a motion in a second. Members, please cast your votes. Motion carries a thank you and then that the second part. Item 32, please.