Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFP GO18-060 and award contracts to GridX, Inc., of Milpitas, CA; MRW & Associates, LLC, of Oakland, CA; and, ZGlobal, Inc., of Folsom, CA, for conducting a comprehensive Community Choice Aggregation Feasibility Study, in an aggregate amount of $300,000, with a contingency in the amount of $50,000, for a total aggregate amount not to exceed $350,000, for a period of one year, with the option to renew for three additional one-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; and authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary to enter into the contracts, including any necessary amendments.  (Citywide)
Okay. Thank you very much. So next, we're going to take item number 30 and then we will go to public comment and then the rest of the agenda. Item throws report from Energy Resources Recommendation to award three contracts for conducting a comprehensive community choice aggregation feasibility study for a total aggregated amount not to exceed 350,000 citywide. Okay. Can we have a brief staff report? And certainly our energy. Resources director, Bob Dow. Will give her a quick report. The item before you this evening seeks approval to award contracts for conducting an investigation into the feasibility of establishing an electrical power purchase, community choice aggregation or CCE program for the City of Long Beach. Under CC a program, the city will either form a new agency or join an existing agency to purchase and sell electrical power to all the people who live and or conduct business within Long Beach, the existing local utility. In our case, Southern California Edison or SCC, continues to provide the transmission, distribution and customer billing services for a fee paid by the customers. Typically, CCAS offer customers a wider range of renewable power options than those currently available from the local utility companies. Additionally, all the people who live and or conduct business within the newly formed CC would automatically be enrolled unless they proactively elect to opt out and return to their local utility company. In January of this year, the city issued an RFP seeking the services of qualified and experienced consultants to to access to assess the feasibility, size and general characteristics of implementing a potential seascape program for Long Beach. Five proposals were received in response to the RFP by the March 12th deadline. A seven member selection committee consisting of staff representing finance, harbor, water and energy resources departments, along with the Office of State of Sustainability, evaluated the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria specified in the RFP. After a thorough evaluation process and additional due diligence activities, including requests for clarifications, the selection committee selected three individual firms as the most qualified to complete portions of the requested services and when combined, will provide the entirety of the scope of the desired feasibility study. The companies selected were M RW Associates, LLC, Grit X, Inc and Global Zglobal, Inc. Each company possesses its own expertize in the unique areas required for the thorough and comprehensive analysis to be performed. The feasibility study is anticipated to take 4 to 6 months to complete, at which time staff will return and present the results to council. The aggregate amount for the three contracts required to conduct the feasibility study is $300,000. With a contingency in the amount of $50,000 for a total aggregate amount not to exceed $350,000. This concludes my report and I'm available for any questions. Thank you for that staff report. Councilmember Pearce. I yes, thank you very much. I want to thank staff for all their hard work on this. I want to highlight that we've had several community members engaged in this process for the last year, that this was something that was talked about in great detail at the Sustainability Commission and that I want to thank Connor lock out of my office who's been working really closely with the city manager's office and for bringing me Sprite. It's a good Sprite bringer and for working with Bob and his team. I know that this is a conversation we've been having for a very long time, but we haven't really had it at council. And I do want to highlight for my colleagues that like shorter meetings as we contemplated having a full PowerPoint presentation tonight, but we opted not to. So you're welcome. So one thing I want to highlight is that the model that the city has gone forward with is doing an RFP for three different companies is something that I fully support. I think that this is a complex issue that should not be rushed into. It is something that a lot of cities are already doing and have been leading the way. And so we really do need to take the time to make sure that we get all that information. But we also want to make sure that we get in queue, right? That we are not missing out on the opportunity to create good jobs, a stronger economy in our city, but also cleaning up our environment in a way that residents really have a choice and an option, which is something that in Long Beach we haven't really had. And so I'm not going to give the full presentation around why cars are the best model. I think that we're going to have a lot of community members that want to speak to that tonight. I did have some questions on timeline moving forward. I know that we had some questions around the end of the year. DEADLINE When do you think we're going to be able to get back some of the data that is required to meet that deadline? What could you be more specific or the deadline? Well, I think that we were looking at a deadline of the end of the year that we had talked about getting our load data, the 15 minute interval load data. How long do you think that's going to take through our process? The item here tonight seeks approval for the contracts. When the when the consultants get together, they would be able to provide that information to us as to if the data that we currently have received from Edison through our NDA is sufficient enough to move forward, or if they are going to if they really need that 15 minute interval data to conduct the analysis. Aha. That is the question that I was looking for. Thank you very much. That is the answer. I hope that my constituents in the audience could hear. I think we should go to public comment and then hear from our council colleagues if we have any other questions. If that's okay with the chair. That's fine. Council Member Richardson. Are you okay with that public comment, please? Very good. Quick as the address. I think this is a fantastic idea. As a matter of fact, you'll hear from this Templar of some new information that she brought to my attention. Recall, if you will, about a month or so ago, I suggested on the advice of Homer Simpson, one of my great sources of the concept of solar panels being put over the tennis court at Marina Vista Park, and then also capturing the energy of solar panels from the Peterson Rowing Center, as well as the as well as fire station 14 and the street lights leading up to that. But then I started thinking a little bit more. And after talking to Homer and listening to this gentleman. We're really talking about a billion, billion dollar. Proposition. Our revenue stream about $1,000,000,000 to the city of Long Beach. Because every neighborhood, every corner, every street. As lights. Buildings had to have lights. Edison is not giving that money away, that electricity away. Somebody is paying the bill? No, unfortunately, in our set up, we don't know. I've tried to get a financial the financial service people, they don't know. Who's paying the bills. But I think if we apply that. What I referenced before that one area like powering the electricity of fire station 14, the police, I mean, the lights and so forth, and extrapolate that through the entire city. We are really talking about a revenue stream that's got to be at least a billion. That's Beavis and Butthead. That is a lot of money. So other people will talk more cogently about it and with more, more detail. But the, the I yeah, that idea just popped into my head this past week and so for the last few days. Give it a lot of thought because it is $1,000,000,000. It's a billion. A billion. They're not giving up. Edison's not giving it away. So we can harness that. Thank you. So thank you for that public comment. And I see quite a few people lined up in the spirit of our conversation here this evening. You have up to 3 minutes, but you don't need to use all 3 minutes. Understood, councilman. My name is Sarah Jones. I'm a District nine resident. And I'm also a union electrician with IBEW 11 and also a journeyman. The vast majority of CCAS or more use more renewable energy. And are current utilities too. This means more projects and jobs and also cleaner air all in one package. We have had blackouts and Long Beach case will help address this. But the projects like battery storage and microgrids in order to stabilize our electric grid during the worst parts of summer. I seek and buy. Energy from this. As our project. Are a plant which is creating good union jobs. On average, the rates at municipal utilities are 20% cheaper than our investor owned utilities. What does that tell you guys? Southern California Edison care about Long Beach. Do they care about the air quality along the 710 corridor, which is happened to be where I live? Do they care about local jobs or are they only bringing in their own people? Why should a huge utility decide what programs like feed in tariffs, energy efficiency, electric vehicle incentives? We should have local control. I also worked on the Blue Line upgrade a few years back. As a Long Beach resident. And a Long Beach worker. Thank you. I mean, my Clemson I'm a District four resident resident. I am the energy program manager at the Cal State Chances office. One of the projects we're working on right now is a K for higher education. I think it's important to note that the keys are largely a solution that's actually kind of been solved, which is the integration of renewables into the electric grid. Edison's actually become one of the leading utilities in the country, having to install renewables and advanced battery technology. For example, we've seen the power content, the carbon content of Edison Power reduce by 50% by from 2009 sales. To just a mention, though, that the renewables have changed the utility game. The current kind of idea is that you dispatch the load to follow the demand, but because of the variability of renewables, you have to you have to reduce the use to address dispatch the demand of all follow the supply. A lawmaker can help facilitate that, but only if it's only if it's set up that way. One thing I think is important to note is that the state there are times when we have to export our power at a loss because there's so much solar on the grid that we can't use it. If we had a way to change the demand profile, then we'd be able to take advantage of that. One thing I think we shouldn't do is include whatever electricity operations in with the natural gas operations. The two are kind of at cross-purposes. And, you know, if you're trying to reduce emissions, that goal is not aligned with Long Beach gas. And I just want to mention how gas was recently found to be implementing or impeding the transition from natural gas to protected business. And we can't allow that to happen here. This could include a small charge to drive emission reductions through energy efficiency or by displacing natural gas through electrification. This would make Long Beach K a leader in the utilities. This program doesn't exist anywhere else. It's one to say the city can't just buy more renewable power and expect this to be make Long Beach a leader. I think there's a path forward with a K, but has to be intentional on reducing emissions, not just accounting for more renewables. Thank you. Thank you. Next up. Good evening. Counsel. My name is James Grant. I'm a member of IBEW Local 11. I'm mainly just want to say I'm here for support to say we should go ahead and move forward with this proposal and get this study going forward. Mainly just because. I support union workers. This gives us a lot of opportunities to move forward with providing good jobs, solid jobs, people that we can be proud of. I mean, when I go home every day, I worked here over on Ocean and Alamitos. I help build the current over there. When I go home and see with my friends and family and I can look at something now proudly built in my city, man, I feel good and I feel like we should get more support like that. This is an opportunity for us to do what we love. We like doing what we do, but we need those opportunities and this here agenda here with this. This change in the grid provides an opportunity for future bills. And I like to see a lot more apprentices coming in from the city so they can also go home and talk to your family and talk to their friends about something that they proudly build. This is one of those things that you look back on from years from now and be like, Man, I helped build that. And this is one of those opportunities that can provide that for the youth and also for the current workers. It sounds like this can really help lower bills for our community as well. Give us options, give people a little bit of that alleviates part of those bills. Mainly electricity is something that we need. But, you know, it's getting is getting high. It's getting expensive unless bureau is getting hot because, you know, global warming, global warming is real. I've been a member of IBEW since 2015. I want to give that opportunity to other folks and I think you should definitely vote for this. Have a good evening. Jane Tamplin 623 Rose Avenue District two Proud member IBEW. I'm here to speak about you support. For this, a feasibility study. I think we need to look at renewables. I think we need to look at newer types of energy. And here we are with a green port getting greener. I'd like to see our city following suit. I have concerns. I support the master plan. We're a growing city. I'm looking back a year ago when. Edison was blowing men. Man covers off the Volt, and I have a concern about our power supply. I would like to ask you to make sure included in this feasibility study is the battery power, our stored energy consideration that comes for our first responders and for some pardon my voice and for some of our private industries like hospitals where they have fallback. When they lose power, they go to generators which are not always reliable, unfortunately, but stored energy is in all times, and it is something that is directly fed from photovoltaic straight DC very savings involved. Excuse me. So for all the good reasons are more you're going to hear. I do ask for your support on this and I thank you for that. Thank you. Good evening. Counsel. My name is Robert Diaz. I'm a journeyman. Inside assignment for the IBEW Local 11. Two years ago, I purchased a home in Long Beach, where I reside with my wife Molly and my son Bronson. My son is a third grader. He goes to Bernie Elementary. CCAR would lower utility costs, which would help families like mine with the rising cost of living. Most importantly, it will create local jobs employing local workers. I would love the opportunity to build in my community, build in Long Beach. I'm very proud of what I do. And I. I'm very proud of what I do and and the feeling of accomplishment that I would receive building in my own community. Working closer to home would reduce travel time, lower emissions, and it would allow more time for working families to spend together. Thank you for your time. Good evening, council members. My name's Jennifer Noé. Not only am I a proud member of IBEW Local 11, but I am also a mother of two children that go to couple's junior high school. I hope we can get your support on this. Not only will it create jobs in our community, it will create a sense of community pride, and it will give our children clean air, which is very important not only to them, but everybody else on the planet. Thank you. Hello, council members. My name is Manny Solis. I'm a longtime IBEW member. I have 32 years in local 11 IBEW Los Angeles, and I have resided in Long Beach on Bourbon Street here in a and Stacy Mungo's district. I was accepted into the IBEW in 1987. And at that point in my early career as an apprentice, I was very fortunate to have worked on a few projects here in Long Beach and Terminal Island as well. But one I wanted to mention was the Surf Project, the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility, where they burn trash and and created power through a steam turbine when they heated up the the water and the piping. But that was one of the projects that I worked on. I'm very proud when I go by that project, even today, 32 years later. And also, I worked on projects like at the port where we did ship to shore power. We provided power for the container ships that come in, and then they were able to turn off their diesel engines, which limits the pollution. So we've done that for the city of Long Beach as well. And being in this trade has provided me many, many years of great service and giving back to the community through the IBEW and also that. I'm thankful that our city leaders, leaders such as yourself had a vision back then. And I would hope that you'd continue to have that same vision for renewables and for clean power. As I have progressed in my career now. Not only electrician, also high voltage cable slicer and an instrumentation technician. That was free education through the union. So we are providing free jobs and outstanding careers for many, many youths that are coming up. And with that, I just wanted to say that approving this CCI feasibility feasibility study would move this clean, clean energy forward. And also, I would like to ask you to approve. We're also likely to approve the implementation of the C c k in a dual path so that both of these. Both move forward and create clean air and clean power for all the residents, not only in Long Beach, in Los Angeles and on the West Coast. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening, council members. I'm Patricia Chen with Long Beach 350. Um, we support the staff recommendation and are pleased that the city is taking the first important step to implementing community choice aggregation. Um, it's probably one of the most important things that can be done within the city towards implementing the upcoming Climate Action Plan. Um, and it's particularly timely now that we have a U.N. report that tells us that we're in even worse trouble with the climate than we had previously thought. We do ask that you guide the development of CA in Long Beach in a direction that will result in the fastest possible transition to renewable energy and keep rates low for residents. Build a just transition with good green local union jobs. Um, for instance for gas and oil workers to move into as they move out of gas and oil extraction in Long Beach. And we'd like to see solar and electric incentives that are attractive and meaningful to residents of all walks of life. Thank you very much for your consideration. Thank you. And while we're here, I just want to make sure everybody lined up that wants to speak. And if not, please. Okay, I see you and I see a different guy. This lady in the front will be the last speaker. Perfect. Council members. My name is David Brzezinski of Unite and Energy Consulting, Efficiency Hero Consulting and member of the Long Beach Sustainable Business Network. With the conclusions of the recent U.N. report in mind, Long Beach has a societal and economic responsibility to investigate the feasibility of crime and to take steps between becoming a more sustainable city. That being said, we need to do it correctly. We must be intentional on the implementation and making this particular measure and this particular study. Extremely important for us to be able to become that city that we want to become. It will not work if we do not take due diligence in taking a study and learning how to become the most effective care possible. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate. Thank you. Hi there. I'm Gabrielle Weekes, resident of the second District. But I'm the chair of the Sierra Club for the region. So I represent somebody in every one of your districts. And we've heard from people from all the districts. Obviously, I'm here mostly as an environmentalist. If we had community choice aggregate, we would have less air pollution. And boy, we're at capacity with that. I've been following Community Choice for over a decade. They were doing it in the Midwest and Massachusetts, smaller states than us worked the bugs out. Obviously, you know, we've got quite a few of them going in California. The Marin County, one is so very, very popular. It's now selling energy to a lot of its neighbors. Lancaster came here and did a speech to the Sustainable City Commission over a year ago. Lancaster's is doing really well. They've signed on a bunch of other cities and now the county. Sheila Kuehl started one for Los Angeles County, and it's got a lot of cities in it. I can't remember how many, but a lot of the big cities. So everyone's doing it and it seems to be working well. No one's had any problems yet. Large cities like Culver City and Santa monica are in the county. One I hope we move forward. It's not just good for the environment and good for the workers. A lot of workers have talked about getting good paying jobs here. These are jobs that can't be outsourced to China or someplace. But the another thing that we haven't talked about is that when we provide job opportunities for our neighbors, it is a lot less money we have to spend on city services, parks, programs, babysitting the babysitting that happens in libraries a lot. If people are making a decent wage, they don't have to rely on you guys to provide all kinds of other services for them. So that's it's really a win win win economically for the environment. It's really going to help all of us. I'm pretty sure if you have any doubts, just look at Marin County, look at Culver City. They're loving it. And if you want to talk to me about it, I know I emailed you guys last September about it with our one page flier with some information. Some of that's changed a little bit. But if you want to have a conversation with me, feel free to get a hold of me, because in the last year, I've only learned to love it more. Thank you. Okay. Hello. My name is Dean Thorgy. I'm a Long Beach resident. Seventh District. I support signing the contract. I think it's going to confirm that the code be feasible. It's worked everywhere else. There's no reason why I shouldn't work here. A k if it's well managed, you have some money to work with. Mainly because we don't pay dividends to stockholders. That money is to use here for things and we could do a lot of good things with our money. We have to choose from some options. So here's my wish wishlist. Number one is to move as rapidly as possible to 100% renewable energy. The state has targeted 2045 when all the electricity in California has to be carbon free. That's pretty good, but we need to go a lot faster. As a couple of other speakers said, climate change is the big problem, right? It's getting worse and it's getting worse faster than was expected. The science, the climate scientists have told us that the world needs to get its greenhouse gas emissions down to net zero before 2050 . That's everything. Everything. Not just electricity, but everything else. And electricity is actually the easiest part. So we should move really fast on that. The second thing is that I think we should put a large piece as possible that makes sense into local generation to build things in the locality, to provide local businesses with contracts, and especially to target local employment, especially for people who really need those jobs. The third one is that connected with this is that we should have programs that help reduce air pollution in the neighborhoods with the worst air pollution. So that doesn't directly come from the electricity generation, but it comes from other things, like we can use it to use this as a support for more electric vehicles to get vehicles that use gasoline and diesel and natural gas off the road with EVs. Then you can use the EVs and the charging system as the battery system for storage. So we generate a lot in the afternoon. We charge the batteries and draw them at night so there's no waste. So it can be part of the electrical system of the car. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Council members Angelina Galette of I'm founder of the Renewables 100 Policy Institute. I chaired the World Council on Renewable Energy, and I'm also a member of the Long Beach Working Group for Community Choice. I'm here in support of this item, of course, and believe that this is the first step that allows Long Beach to empower the option of choice and enable the city to have a more local control and visibility into its energy future. The future that we all see in the energy business is highly digitized, decarbonized, decentralized and democratized. This initiative literally allows power to the people because renewables are very flexible, very modular, and they enable us to be building the community by community, sector by sector, focusing on the local needs with local control and what we need for our communities to achieve the goals of decarbonizing the future. CCI is another high risk at this time. They've existed for almost eight years. They have credit ratings. They have been able to be funded. They have access to funding. And they operate well and efficiently. They have a track record of providing reliable service, improving resiliency, investing in jobs and economic development, and ensuring community inclusion and control. A feasibility study and more importantly, an expedited implementation plan would allow Long Beach to have the option of exploring a CCI and indeed moving forward with the CCI. Being able to keep the deadlines that are imposed by regulations and statutes is important so that you have the option to transition as fast as possible to be able to take advantage of this opportunities. You can certainly work with local utilities, with the local city departments and with all stakeholders to shape the energy future of this great city. The 18 cases that have existed today have saved more than 100 million to their customers, and they have done it reliably and also with a remarkably low attrition rate of less than 3%. So people are incredibly happy with their case and they like to stay there because they have the option. Working with the utility hand-in-hand means it's a win win for everybody, including the utility, including the CCI, including the city and all stakeholders. Bottom line, while being low risk can provide benefits such as improving the environment, creating local jobs, investing in new technology, new development, improving resiliency and reliability of the system, creating economic development, and, most importantly, under local control. We heard about the Europe plan. We heard about the fears of the community, as would enable Long Beach to epitomize the saying Act locally, think globally while you create the best K that I'm sure even Council Member Rex Richardson could be proud of for Long Beach. Thank you. Good evening, council members. My name is Kobe Sky. I'm a second district resident and I'm very proud to chair the. Sustainable City Commission. I'm speaking in support of the item and I want to say that I was thrilled to see that the city staff. Was presenting a recommendation to. Move forward with a comprehensive study. And to move forward. With this item. I was a little crestfallen that it's a. One year. Item with three years optional to extend. I just want to say that Long Beach sometimes takes a while to develop good policies. It took us. Ten years of discussing before we finally banned Styrofoam. It took many years to discuss urban agriculture. Before we adopted a good policy. I think those policies certainly benefited from a lot of discussion. But Councilmember Pierce pointed out that there is an opportunity cost and so just urge you to move forward as quickly as possible on what is really a good policy that's going to benefit the city in so many important ways. It was two years ago that the county launched their CA. Since that time, over 70 cities. Have joined them. Including almost the entire county of Ventura. And the cities that have moved forward with CCS have seen reduced rates for their citizens and businesses with increased renewable. Energy portfolios, more local generation, more local jobs. There's so many benefits to it. So I just urge a yes vote and to encourage city. Staff to move forward as. Quickly as possible. Thank you so much. Good evening. My name is Dave Shukla. My address is on file and I am one of the founders and the operations director of the Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy. I'm here this evening to urge for your strong support for a feasibility study for a Long Beach Community Choice Aggregation program . These programs provide too many tangible benefits to communities and municipalities in California for our city, for Long Beach, to ignore the first and as we've heard many times, is the transition to a 100% carbon free, clean energy system meeting net zero goals, something that the investor owned utilities have steadfastly not achieved. But it is something that now that we have not only AB 32 and SB 100 on the books, Long Beach must have the ability to determine the viability of whether these programs are feasible and perhaps even beneficial. Second tangible benefit is expanding the development of local integration of distributed energy resources. Dealers are some of the most promising and innovative pieces of the transition to clean energy from demand reduction incentivized in place to new generation to battery storage throughout the city, to microgrids. These assets can not only be owned by their local CA programs, but they can provide more than just mitigate of measures to energy demand load and the resultant pollution, but also allow us to adapt to lock down climactic changes and provide greater reliability of grid service. And this should be really great news to all of us in Long Beach. Seeing as how we all have seen blackouts and common increasingly. The third benefit is economic development. These programs such as Marine Clean Energy, SBA, Clean Energy, have already broken ground on a number of projects in their localities that have strong economic fundamentals. From job training and apprenticeship programs to local hire to quality working conditions and high standards and output of work. As we heard about so eloquently from the gentlemen who worked on The Current. We can build jobs. Careers. Workforce development that you can't offshore. That we can build out from our existing high schools and community colleges. Job programs that like the the nursing program at City College. We can be really proud of for for the tangible benefits that they provide. The next benefit, obviously, is something I don't have time for. So please, I urge you to vote for this feasibility study and do so with all posthaste. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to address the Council on for our city as you all represent a wide array of constituents. My name is Tiffany Davey. My address is also on file and I'm the average director of the Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy. And we would like to express our support for the site of. Let's start with the first reason as this would provide the option for Long Beach to move towards 100% renewable energy, which would. Allow Long Beach as. Well as we've seen with other cities, to achieve their sustainability goals much faster. In light of the IPCC report, which has been mentioned many times before this evening on the global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, Long Beach does have the opportunity to create the pathways that will mitigate our solutions in the required 12 years of action. This item. This item also supports the United Nations SDG number seven, which stands for the Sustainable Development Goals. Item 7.1 ensures universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services. 7.2 by 2030. Increase sustainability and the share of. Renewable, renewable. Energy in the global energy mix. And 7.3, which by 2030 would double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency. I want to thank you and again, ask you to support this item. Thank you. Good evening. Council Staff Thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for your service. My name is Joe Sullivan. I work for IBEW Local 11 as well as the National Electrical Contractors Association. This represents about 350 electrical contractors in L.A. County that employ approximately 10,000 electricians. We are in support of moving forward with this feasibility study. We think when CCS are done right, they can create jobs more quickly than utilities do. And when they have the right structure and the right workforce standards and the right partners involved. Other CCS have achieved record clean energy levels. We're seeing other benefits, like creating jobs. Lancaster As you know, there are several businesses we're seeing with other CCS solar projects on brownfield sites in low economic areas. We're seeing EV programs of EV by gallons and free EV charging systems to improve air quality in areas. And we've seen cities that have goals of 100% renewable energy. And these are 20, 30 years goals. And they achieve them right away once the key is in place. They facilitate these goals and they can facilitate the port's cleaner action plan as long as as well as the city's goals. And what's important with these cases, they can help the community economically. When you create jobs, you force us to go out and hire apprentices and our apprenticeships. Amazing. It's a five year program with a remarkable education. It costs nothing for the students. It includes not even books, tools. After the fourth year, they have full family, medical, dental. They retire with dignity and a great retirement. And they earn family sustaining wages. And all this is taught at a net zero facility with a state of the art microgrid. So these cars are proven. We believe they can create good benefits. But not only do we want you to go forward with the implementation plan or the feasibility study, but we also encourage you to concurrently move forward with an implementation plan. You cannot get in the queue with the resource adequacy delay without an implementation plan. The CPC has passed a law that requires you to wait one year to start a CCAR in the clock doesn't start until the beginning of the year. So if you wait till after this year, the clock takes two years to launch your CCR. So the implementation plan needs to start concurrently. Okay. Thank you. Good evening for the council. In name is Sona Coffee. I'm a resident of. The fourth district. And I'm vice chair of the city's Sustainable City Commission. I'm also here to speak in support of this item and to thank you and the staff for bringing this item to the city. You've heard the infinite amount of opportunity and benefits. That a community choice aggregation. Program can bring to Long Beach. And there really are. It's a lot for the. City to take in. And it's important that this. Study is structured properly so that we. Can really. Incorporate all the benefits that we're looking for. Some things that were mentioned today, really looking at. The different structures of the amount. Of renewable energy we want to bring to Long Beach. So looking at the scenarios where 50%. 100% renewable energy. And making. Sure that those are part of. The study and that we get to assess the scenarios and the rates for that. Probably one of the most exciting things about CCAR is that you, as we as the city, will get to set our rates for electricity and pass those benefits on to the businesses and the residents in this community. And doing that in a way where. We're focusing on green energy. So we're trying to move towards 100% renewable to meet the state's goals, meet the city's goals that are reflected by what the community wants here and by the Community Action Plan that we'll. Be working on. One request I would have to make of City Council and we've heard this I think a couple of times is the timing. The data that the city has now would be enough to start the risk assessment piece of the study. That should take a couple of months if it would be possible for the staff and consultants to come back in the first quarter and three months to bring that to you. That won't be enough to do the implementation planning that Joe just mentioned from IBEW 11. The implementation planning requires that interval data that Councilmember Pierce was asking about. So if there's any way to fast track that request through Edison and get the data back as soon as possible so the city could meet the year end deadline, that would be key in terms of getting that implementation plan in place. If not, if that takes some time to get from Edison, at least putting in a structure for a timeline every three months, every quarter, something like that. So the council hears back on the progress of the study and that the community hears back from it as well. Would be great. Thank you. Okay. We appreciate all the public comment. I'll take it back behind a real council member, Pearce. Thank you. And I want to thank everybody that made public comments, everybody that's been a part of the process of the work group. I know that everyone that spoke today has been involved in this not just for this week, for this year, but for a very long time. And so I really want to thank you for educating me, my staff, and working with city staff along this process. And so I want to be clear, I hear the concern loud and clear to clarify with staff that we are concurrently doing the implementation plan along with the study, and that the implementation plan based on trying to get the data and some of our legal questions addressed, that that is a 4 to 6 month process. Is that clear? I mean, is that correct? I'd actually like to clarify that. So we would absolutely be trying to get that data from Edison. So we we are the single largest customer. We believe that we will be asking for that implementation data, the 15 minute data. However, we have done some research into this about whether or not we can file an implementation plan prior to the end of the year. In order to do that, you would have to pass an ordinance saying We are doing SCCA. So you would have to positively pass morning saying We're in, we're going to do it before you complete a feasibility study. That's not something that staff is comfortable recommending. We believe you need to be doing that feasibility study. That's why we're here tonight and then we will continue to try to. Get that data. We are hopeful we'll be able. To access it or we'll do as much of the feasibility study as we can. And our process is right now about a 4 to 6 month process. If we can go faster, will go faster. But we do believe you need to have a feasibility study before you make a decision on whether to take that next step and do the implementation plan. Could we request? I would like to request that this item comes back in four months with a review, even if all the data is not there, but that in four months we actually have a staff report on where the implementation in the study is. Sure, we can certainly do that. Okay. I know that. I think one of the challenges with this item has been that we've had a lot of dates, we've had a lot of information. There are a lot of aides out there, 18, that already exist. We've seen Lancaster that's done a great job with their work. And just trying to get us to have these conversations holistically with everybody at the table has been the goal. And so can you briefly talk about the process that the study is going to to implement for how they're not only gathering the data, but some of the things that they're going to be doing to include all the stakeholders. Certainly Pearce, like any study, it starts with gathering the data and then the next step would be doing the analysis. In this case, you have to look at a load analysis and that would look at Long Beach is very unique. These other cities that that have been mentioned are nowhere near as complex as Long Beach. I think there's approximately 140,000 Edison accounts in the city of approximately 150 of those control, over 50% of the load. So their participation and their opt out status would be critical to this study. And those things have to be looked at in very much in detail. There's been some recent regulatory changes that have impacted the PCR charge. Those also impact the feasibility study and next year there's going to be another direct access offering by the PUC whereby large industrial and commercial customers can elect to participate in those procure their own power, basically circumventing a PC or a city's choice. So we need to look at those very much in detail. So that would be part of the analysis. Once you've completed that portion, you would have a better understanding of your load. Then you have to look at forecasting the rates to compare. Would a pricing schedule be advantageous to what Edison's offering? There's a number of things that are changing in that arena as well. So all those need to be conducted first. Once you complete the analysis, you would draw some conclusions from that and make some recommendations. And we're hopeful to have that completed. We could do something hopefully very quickly in four months, but if it got more complex, it would certainly take a little additional time. Okay, great. So just no matter where we're out of in four months, we could get a report back at council. Not a two from four, but at council. That would be amazing. Keep us on track. I want to also highlight knowing that Long Beach is complex, knowing that it's different. I know that it's been brought up several times that here we have city and other cities don't have. SC You know, Lancaster has a different structure than us, but they've really worked with seemed to be clear with everyone is that this doesn't take SC out, but they deliver the energy that we opt on what percentage we want to be renewable? 100% renewable would be amazing of course, but that SC still has a role to play in this equation. And so I just wanted to to say that I urge my council colleagues to vote to move this forward. I think that this is the way that we can democratize power. This is the way we can ensure that we have job creation, not just for Long Beach residents, but we can have a conversation down the road about how do we prioritize who gets those jobs. You know, is it single families? Is that people that have been previously incarcerated? This is really an opportunity to lift all boats, to clean the energy, to clean our air, and to transform the city of Long Beach into practice of what so many of us have felt here for a very long time. And so I think it's the right thing to do, and we can continue to have community conversations about this in the next several months. But I'm really happy that we're finally at a place where we're agenda raising this and bringing all these consultants on board so that we can do it the right way. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Councilman Alston. So I think this ESEA conversation, I've followed it for a long time and though a lot of people have, I think it's a really interesting conversation and I won't elaborate too much, but I see some real potential opportunities here. More specifically to the benefit programs for our local residents as well as create local jobs. Now I want to say that I don't want us as long, long beach as the second largest city, not just in L.A. County, but in six Southern California counties. I don't want us to be absent from the regional conversation in our case. And I know that the county, Los Angeles, has been for a while talking about a countywide SICA or establishing some guidelines or some rules. I knew that there was a deadline before about a opt in and when they didn't get certain participation, I know that conversation had changed. And so I think being the large the large city that we are and our relationships with the county, we should communicate to the county that we are engaging in this discussion and see if whatever accommodations can be made for us to participate in the regional conversation. Because what happens is those cities who have opt in, opt in, they're going to be able to help create the write the rules for whatever happens at the you know, whatever happens at the county wide level. They're going to be able to help write those rules. And although we're not at the place where we have an ordinance passed tonight, I think they will want to know whether or not Long Beach is interested in engaging in this conversation. So I don't think it would be too too much to ask, you know, ask, you know, Tom or whoever to to reach out to Gary zero , the county or whoever is engaging and say, hey, look, we've taken this first step to engage in this study. Our council is very interested in this, but we haven't until we figure out these things, we don't know if we're going to be in or not, but we like to participate. And that might help inform our decision of whether or not we participate. So so first, Tom or Mr. West, is there is there any headaches with reaching out to the county and requesting that we be a part of those regional conversations? So we have been part of the regional conversations. We sent staff to just about all of the regional county meetings. So we're very much plugged in to what's going on at the county. And part of this study is my understanding is we would be looking not just do we do our own care, but could we participate in somebody else's. So yeah, we you know, we can certainly reiterate the discussion that we had tonight, but also we'd be looking at their model to see what what they do that might work for us. Great. And again, you know, I think this is very interesting, some real opportunities. You know, everything else we've done, we've aired on the side of local control. We've aired on the side of the American Army. Conclusion. We've, you know, we know that there are gaps in terms of like, you know, there's a lot of programs for low income solar individuals. And solar is very expensive. But what about those middle class working families who are getting 300, $400 light bills and they want to participate, too? And we can figure out, you know, we can figure out programs by utilizing this. So I think the opportunities are there. And I'm glad to hear that you're at the table for those regional conversations. I know that they want Long Beach to be a part of this conversation, but we should do our diligence. So those are my remarks. Again, I thought, I think this was healthy. And again, whatever we can do to make sure we don't miss any opportunities with the county, I think that's helpful. Thanks. Thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez. Yes. Thanks so much for everybody staying real late. We appreciate that very much. I know this has been a good conversation so far. And thank you, Bob, for being here and certainly doing the work behind the scenes and getting us to this point. So we appreciate this very much. I just want to reiterate, you know, there have been a lot of interest within our residents and not just people who are environmentalists by trade, but really people that just absolutely care about our city and want to diversify our energy portfolio. And having been a councilmember that experienced in 2016 the drama we went through with Edison, and not to say that that can happen anywhere else, but I think that we have an opportunity here to really look forward and see what the options are. And really, as I mentioned, put the power to the people. I really love that because that is very important. And I know a lot of our residents really want to have that choice for many, many reasons. And I do think, you know, the governor, Governor Brown, has mandated by 2045 to get to 100% renewable. But we can absolutely do that beforehand. And I know that's something that is attainable and this is moving forward in the right direction. We'll do that. A quick question. If we were to once once the feasibility comes back and if we were to create that the ordinance, are there any challenges with the implementation plan with the state ? Know you would follow the implementation plan with the CPC and it would basically put them on notice of your plan and expected load requirements and your methodology for preparing it so they could schedule that accordingly. Okay. And then is there any other, like issues with that at all? I mean, anything else that. Would keep us from doing that? No. Okay. And so what I would just close in saying is that, you know, the K what's nice is that in getting it, you know, move faster is that there are rules changing every day with energy and with state legislation. And so I would say the faster we can get this done and I know we're doing as much as we can, you've heard it from various people, the better in terms of being able to make our own decisions and do what's right for Long Beach. So thank you so much for indulging us and we appreciate it and I look forward to moving this forward. Great. So I'll just add my comments here and say that I'm going to support this item because I've been intrigued with the case for some time now. Many municipalities, local governments throughout the state are looking and going in is moving in this direction because it does provide an options for clean and renewable energy for for our communities and it creates good local jobs. And from from my standpoint, those are those two points alone should be merit this council being aggressive about moving in that direction and staff for that matter. And so I'm really encouraged by the fact that we are moving forward. We're going forward with a feasibility study tonight. I know under the staff report, it says timing, considerations. And I just want to be clear on that. It says to expeditiously complete the cay feasibility study for the city. And what is expeditious me. If you just one more time if you could just tell us what that means. So the current estimate, based on the scope, is about 4 to 6 months we've been asked to come back and four months, and we can certainly do that and we'll let you know where we are from from that point. So as Bob mentioned, it can be pretty complex. And if we need to do additional study, I will have the contract authority to do so. But our plan right now is 4 to 6 months. Okay. I know there is a lot of urgency and excitement from the public on this and certainly by some members of the council as well. But I think tonight by approving this this item, we will make a great first step in this direction. And so I'm supportive of doing that. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Great. Thank you. I just had two comments. One. One in reference to County versus Long Beach. I think we're a city of half a million. And when we talk about local control, we talk about job creation. The county level doesn't have as much detail to what kind of job creation we want to the type of level. So I think it's great that we're having this conversation about Long Beach and what that might look like because the county's kind of already done their process and we would be opting into that. So we we have that there. But it's important for us to identify what a Long Beach process would look like. And to I guess, my my question on the implementation plan, if we did an implementation plan and we did an ordinance, is there anything keeping us to that say we submitted that to the CPC? Is there anything saying that we couldn't three months later go through a process and say, you know what, a CCAR isn't right for us? Certainly you have that option. I believe it's the Palm Desert one just did the same thing where they filed their implementation plan with the APC and then recently withdrew that great. So that was the clarity I was looking for, that we could do an ordinance, we could do an implementation plan. If that takes 4 to 6 months, however long that hopefully sooner rather than later, but that even that doesn't tie our hands requiring us to move forward. And I just want to make sure that was stated clearly. So thank you, everybody, for your support and thank you. STAFF Let's vote. Members, please cast your votes. Motion carries a two. Right. Looks like we finally did something right tonight. So next up is a public comment for those who signed up early. We have Larry Goodhue, Christy Moore, Melly, Fernando Gallardo, Alex Armstrong and Latoya Marshall. Please line up. You have 3 minutes each.