Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and take the actions necessary to adopt the Fiscal Year 2022 budget as listed in Attachment A; Approve the revised Long Beach Recovery Act program allocations and approve the Fiscal Year 2021 departmental and fund budget appropriation adjustments for the Long Beach Recovery Act in accordance with existing City Council Policy; and Set September 7, 2021 as the hearing date for a continued budget hearing to take the necessary actions to adopt the Fiscal Year 2022 Master Fees and Charges Schedule and establish the rates and charges for water and sewer service. (Citywide)
David Sonata. And I'm speaking on behalf of the great eighth District, as well as partners of Parkes and the commission that I've been appointed to for Parks, Recreation and Marine. I wanted to come tonight to both thank you for the. Responsible decisions you've. Been making for our parks and with hopes that we continue to fund our parks, recreation, marine and Animal Care Department. We have learned quite a lot during this pandemic. Your department has stepped up to be a major part in the COVID situations that we've been addressing for the past year and a half. We hope that you consider. Part. Parks Recreation Marine. As part of your health, safety and quality of life here in the city. As we have stepped up, as did your police department and your fire department have during these troubled times. We hope that you will continue in budgeting in the years to come, especially in 2023. As we move forward, making these responsible decisions are is not easy. And we understand that it is a major task that you've you do each year in putting the budget together. Your time is concluded, sir. Thank you. Speaker. Good evening. It was my understanding I would have 3 minutes in my mistaken. With the number of speakers. The time has gone down to one and a half minutes. Okay. Well, Mayor, council members, I want to thank you for having me tonight. It's an honor to speak in front of you. I'm going to have to summarize this with the lack of time. But essentially it's a post I wrote on next door and I will email it to all of you. But there are four items I think we need to focus on with this budget. Number one is an increased police presence if the city of Long Beach is not willing to the city. Actually, everyone, please. Everyone gets a chance to give their comments. Thank you. If the city of Long Beach is not willing or not able to do anything about the homeless, we need an increased police presence so we feel safe in our community. I don't know about their districts, but in District five we would like more police. Number two, we need cleaner streets. I've spoken with the Public Works Department and we currently have 13 street sweeping employees. There's three that are going to be hired. They've been in the process for over almost a year. I don't know why it's taken so long, but we need not only those three, but we need an additional two to do the medians, the curbs of the medians, the left turn lanes. Right now it's in and by request only, which I think is ridiculous. They should be on a bi weekly or monthly schedule to have our medians swept. The city is turning. It's getting decrepit. It looks like a it doesn't look like what it used to be. Number three. I'm sorry. Your time has expired. All right. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to say one last thing. Please do your job as you were hired to do, or we will replace you with somebody who will. Time is up. Hello. My name is Kimberly. Chavira and I am the communications manager for the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. I am speaking today on behalf of the Library Foundation's Board of Directors and Supporters. Our nonprofit sole mission is to raise funds for programs, technology and enhancements in our city's 12 public libraries. This is possible thanks to the hundreds of donors across Long Beach who send donations every year of all sizes to invest in these resources. We would like to thank our city leaders for proposing additional funds for libraries this year. The proposed $174,000 from Measure US will strengthen the library's STEM programs for youth and mental health services for teens as they get back on track following a year of distance learning. The $300,000 from the Long Beach Recovery Act to eliminate overdue fines for one year removes a major barrier. To resources. Without any cuts to the library's budget. More than 22,000 community members will benefit from this as Long Beach continues to recover from all we have faced in the last year. More investments in the library structural budget are needed. The Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative Report Youth and Emerging Adult Strategic Plan, Digital Inclusion Roadmap and Theater's Report on Library Services. All call. For more open hours. At the 12. Public libraries. We urge you to provide the library with the funding necessary to be open more hours as provide more funding for the library's materials budget. Thank you. Next speaker is Victor Sanchez, Reverend Sandy Richards, Reverend Dr. Michael Eagle and Burdette and Clayton Hurd. And Karen resigned. Please light up. Honorable mayor, vice mayor and City Council. My name is Victor Sanchez with the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community as part of the People's Budget Coalition on behalf of the working families that we advocate for. We're asking that you adopt the people's budget. And we also ask that you reform the budget process to allow deeper participation from working class, marginalized communities who are most. Impacted by budget. Decisions. Apart from the demands our coalition has shared with you in legislative meetings or an email, I ask that you in particular invest in care, not cops. By shifting funding from the $262 million earmarked for police in the General Fund to some housing priorities. In particular, the establishment of a rental housing division fully funding the Long Beach Right to Council program and a deeper commitment to community land trust. I also ask that you support Vice Mayor Richardson's request for $125,000 to find an additional housing navigator position and increasing the Measure US fund to $1 million with the expectation that 80% of that increase go to participatory budgeting and the rest to administrative costs. Tonight's vote is about. Undoing the historic disinvestment that has persisted here in Long Beach. Let's support. anti-Blackness by. Voting for the people's budget, which has the power to create a safe and healthy Long Beach for all. Thank you. Reverend Sandy Richards. Next is Reverend Dr. Michael Eagle. After that. Hello. Reverend Richards had to leave, but she gave me her letters out. All right if I read it. Okay. Greetings to you, Mayor Garcia and council members. I am the Reverend Sandi Richards, and I am the lead pastor at Los Altos United Methodist Church. I'm also here as part of Clergy and Lady United for Economic Justice. We seek to have you address the funding inequities in our community. The Long Beach Police Department uses align shares of the city's resources, and we are asking that some of that share be repurposed for healing suffering communities. In order to lower crime in our city, we need to raise the bar on support for marginalized communities. We need to be an anti-racist city which requires sufficient financial resources to support the programs which will lead us in that direction. We need resources allocated to health opportunity, community building and justice. There's an old saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, rather than filling our civic toolkit with mostly hammers. We ask that to diversify the toolkit so that law enforcement is not the only justice available in Long Beach. Help the city to follow through with the structural changes that are needed in order to change things for the better for generations to come. Sincerely, Reverend Sandy Richards. Could it be mayor and council persons? And Reverend Dr. Michael W Eagle Path to Grant A.M.E. Church here. In the city of Long Beach, California. I didn't come to attack your budget process. Nor to berate your decision making. But I did want. To request that you show a little bit more sensitivity and caring and. Sharing to the people that you vowed to serve. People need to know. That somebody care at least is thinking about it and that's all that say. My name is Ann Burdette. I'm a member of Long Beach Clergy and Lady United for Economic Justice, advocating for workers, families and the people's budget with respect and compassion for all of us, including myself, who have lost loved ones to COVID, please permit me to offer a painful metaphor. The city of Long Beach, along with the rest of the country, is in the air. The diagnosis is the pandemic of homelessness, housing insecurity, health inequity and systemic racism. Imagine that one of the primary responses being offered to us in the city budget is policing. But there are preventive measures, measures that can be taken today. We can provide the social distancing of adequate housing. We can provide with masks a clean air and open spaces for all. We can vaccinate with education, job training and economic investment in communities that have endured generations of de-funding. Imagine that we can prevent our city from going to the air by putting community safety first. Real safety that is attainable by real that reallocating our tax dollars to policing. From policing to protection. Adopt the people's budget to save lives. Next speaker, Clayton Hurd. Then Kern resigned. Joanna Diaz. Rose Mae. Caitlin. Carla Alvarado. All right. Hello again. My name is Clayton Hurd, and I'm speaking out as a member of First Congregational Church of Long Beach and with Clue urging you to support the Long Beach people's budget. I want Long Beach to be known as a city that cares about its renters, and we can do that by fully funding and staffing our rental housing division and attendant right to council program. I want other cities to follow our lead by fully implementing a Language Access Policy and Injustice Fund available to residents regardless of their immigration status. Long Beach can be the most youth and senior friendly city in the country in the state of California, if we want it to be. The decisions you made tonight require courage and imagination. And to quote the Center for Story based Strategy to win, we must exercise political imagination and stretch the terms of what is deemed politically realistic in the present moment. Imagination builds power because it opens the space for crafting stories that make just futures possible. You all have an incredible opportunity to demonstrate what a truly compassionate city can do to invest in black communities, communities of color, and other marginalized communities in a meaningful way. Please support the Long Beach People's Budget and continue to invest in people, care and community. Thank you. Hi, I'm Rose McLachlan and I'm a resident of District seven and I'm here in support of the people's budget. Language access is extremely important to me, my family. I slowly emigrated to Long Beach, the West Side, as early as the eighties and as recently as this year I've always had to be a communicator and translator for my family. I've had I've had to help with catfish applications, SSI benefits, DMV improvements and even finding places where they can get vaccinated. My grandpa lived through World War Two and martial law in the Philippines and he unfortunately had to stop his education at third grade. It's important to consider that that experience represent the background of all of a lot of Filipinos that have chosen to immigrate here as a child. I felt good about being able to help my family, but it definitely was a lot of responsibility and pressure put onto me. I'm not completely fluent and Tagalog and my family isn't completely fluent in English, and because of that, there's a disconnect between what is communicated and things often get lost in translation. The information that I pass on to my family members, those details as they pass the information over to their friends and families. I wish that they were able to get that support directly with language access. My family wouldn't have to be as dependent on me. I'm not as available to them as I was before. This resource would open up their world and I'm sure it wouldn't reach just my family. But the whole community. The whole city. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Carla and I'm here to demand the adoption of the people's budget language. Residents deserve a safe and healthy community. We can no longer just wait for this to happen, so we are all here to demand it. I want to remind you, council people that you all work for us. You guys are all tasked with representing the interests of Long Beach residents, not the interests of multi-million corporations, not the interests of Long Beach police departments, but the interests of Long Beach constituents. Who gave you that can't be seen up there. So tell me. Why. Year after year, our demands for safer, healthy communities keep getting ignored. These past couple of months, my coworkers and I have walked the streets of Long Beach talking and listening to community members, and not once as a community member ever ask for more cops. Do you know what they do? Ask for resources, rental assistance, food assistance, mental health assistance. You guys are also out of touch with community members that you all truly think that community members want more policing when in reality they are demanding the opposite. Each and every one of you up there has a choice. Do you continue on with the racist system that leaves so many communities broken and hurting? Or do you finally use that privilege to advocate for care, not cops? You really want to eliminate cops? Then stop ignoring the root of the problem and defund the police. Invest in black and brown in indigenous communities. Just to be clear, budgets reflect, reflect priorities and you and your choice to adopt or ignore the polices the people's budget will make your priorities crystal clear. Mm hmm. Amazing. Good evening, everyone. My name is John Ideas, and I'm here on behalf of the People's Budget Coalition as well as the Language Access Coalition. We have a need to uplift the necessity. For improvement in the city budget adoption process as it currently stands. This process has been open and accessible to your constituents who need to be heard the most. We need to create a genuine culture and structure of language justice by hiring in-house interpreters. The current system of only having meetings in person without virtual meetings or telephonic comments is not accessible to your constituents for a. Variety of. Reasons. On behalf of the Peoples Budget Coalition, we strongly support Vice Mayor Richardson's request for 120 500,000 to fund the additional housing navigator position and not. The feasible. Feasibility study. In addition, the People's Budget Coalition also strongly supports the Invest in Youth Campaign's push to increase measure US youth funds to $1 million of the two $1 million of those $1 million. 80% of the funds should go directly to community for citywide participatory budgeting process. The remaining 20% should go to support the Office of Youth and Development. Administrative Costs and Youth Internship positions. We are steadfast and determined to continue advocating for the Long Beach that we love. Show us who you love and where your heart lies. We must continue to work together. And genuinely. Have a dialog to move past. The current process. Thank you. And the following speakers please lineup Karen Reside Rosella Reyes Father William Connor City. Ben and Vickie Aguilera. Karen Reside, a resident of District one and a member of a proud member of the Gray Panthers. And we are supporters of the people's budget. I'm going to address senior issues, talk about safety, and I thank everybody for we have a fabulous health department. My building didn't have any COVID deaths, other senior buildings dead. For that, I'm eternally grateful. But we talk about safety. We have 113,000 seniors right now. We have one public health nurse for all, 113,000 seniors and one social worker. And we're about to lose a half time position if this budget stands as is from the Healthy Aging Office, which is Cynthia. How so? And that means that plans won't go forward and asking for a rental coordinator. I don't know if any of you've ever been to this multi-service center. There's no sidewalk. Seniors. Most seniors to get there have to take the bus, whether they're homeless or not. And there's no sidewalk. And you have to walk along the road. It's a dirt road. And the trucks that are going into the port to line up to receive their loads. Go past usually in about 25, 30 miles an hour. I'm almost hit gotten hit almost every time I go over there. Mr. Assad, your time has expired. So please do the right thing for the people's budget. Hi. My name is Hazardous Waste. I'm the direct services coordinator for the Filipino Migrant Center, which is part of the People's Budget Coalition and the Language Activist Coalition. I'm also a District one resident and someone is on the ground every day helping provide services to Filipinos. I've seen how much the pandemic has impacted the people of Long Beach. People are still facing burning issues around food insecurity, housing and employment. It's been left up to us as Tagalog speaking community organizers to help identify these issues. And we need to see more accountability from the city of Long Beach to meet the needs of the people. I'm only able to relate to CNA members because they can understand and speak the language. If the city wants to provide for its residents, including the 13,000 foreign born Filipinos who came, who are mostly in working class families in the west side of Long Beach, and it needs to have paid staff within the city who know how to speak Tagalog in a way that everyday Filipino speak. The people need permanent, in-house interpretation and translation services in Tagalog and Spanish and Kami for residents doing city council and charter commission meetings without having to make an advance request. We also need funding for community based organizations like ours and many others here tonight doing the on the ground work everyday. The residents of Long Beach are one community and we did hear and understand each other in order to empower each other. And language access is a tool to do that. If the city truly believes in equity and won't just use it as a token gesture buzz word, then it's time to back it up with action and ensure that language access is accessible for All Long Beach. I am Father William Connor. I live in District three. I am pastor emeritus of St Joseph Catholic Church in East Long Beach. I also represent hundreds of faith leaders connected through the South Coast Interfaith Council and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. I am a past president of. I see. I see. I am here to ask Mayor Garcia and the City Council to invest more funding in community resources by adopting the people's budget for the next fiscal year. One major need, namely is housing. Housing is a basic right, human right. Please invest more deeply in community land trusts to create permanently affordable housing while allowing low income residents to build generational wealth as home owners. This is an opportunity, the people's budget, for our city to lead with our values of equity and care for the community instead of fear and score and scarcity. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, and good evening, council members. My name is City Ben and I am with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition and I'm here to express to the Long Beach City Council and everyone why we need to adopt the people's budget care, not cops. Why do we say colonoscopies? Because that's what the people need. That's what the community needs. That's what we need. Care, not cops. We say you're not cops to save families, to save life, to keep the community healthy, we need to invest in it. The Long Beach Police Department right now is on track to receive about 42% of the total general fund, which comes to $262 million. We need to to pretty much divert 25% of it and give it to programs that will keep the community healthy by investing. 25% won't come up to $65 million. That's barely dipping into the bucket. It will hurt the police department to lose 25% of the budget, but it would definitely help the community. There are so many programs to invest in. So let us defund the police department. Use it for the police department. I mean, use it for the people budget. Use it to reinvest in the communities, the marginalized community, the communities of color. Thank you for listening and I hope you will take steps to support the community. The Long Beach City needs you and needs your assistance. Thank you. Next speaker is Vicky O'Hara and then Karina Rodriguez. Jennifer Benitez, Camilla, Betto, Lopez and Gabriella. Please come forward. Hello. My name is Vicky Aguilera and I am the rapid response coordinator with the Long. Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition. Here as part of the People's Budget Long Beach Coalition. I've introduced myself before, but I'm doing so again because on the meeting on August 10th, I was not so sure if any of you were actually listening. I hope this time is different and that even if you don't listen to me, you at least listen to our community who has had to navigate transportation, language barriers, work schedules and childcare in order to give their public comments today. We demand. That you invest in care, not cops, by shifting. Funds from the $262. Million proposed for police and the general. Fund. To me, care, not cops, means safety. And we know that the police do not keep us safe. There's no training in the world that can prove that can reform violent policing, because policing in itself is violence. It is tied to the violences of white supremacy, the technologies that Long. Beach Police Department use against our communities, our violence. LAPD spends millions of dollars each year on invasive surveillance technologies, such as automated license plate recognition, cell phone surveillance and facial recognition technology. We now vpd our shared community members license plate data with ice. As recently as April of this year. We know facial recognition technologies are inherently racist. So I ask you, are these technologies really used to keep us safe or used to continue to criminalize black and brown communities? Policing cannot be reformed. Please stop calling for diversity, diversity and community inclusion until the system of violence does invest in the people's budget. Thank you. Karina Rodriguez, Jennifer Benitez, Camilla Battle Lopez and Gabriella. Please line up. I'm members of the council. My name is Karina, and I work with the I.R.S. and I'd like to express my. Disappointment in your. Behavior. During. The meeting on August 10th. There was very little eye contact or acknowledgment of people's experience. In fact. Some of you outright worshiped the police department. Some of you invalidated the experiences that people were telling you, people that you claim to represent. Let's blatantly call things out for what they are by you. Continuing to support and fund police with millions of dollars, you're supporting white supremacy and contributing to surveillance. Policing, brutal abuse and murder of people of color. You need to stop with the excuses. That crime is up. It's one of the oldest districts in the book to get people panicked and afraid of people of color. I ask you, where are the reports of violence and crimes perpetrated by police? It's no secret that there are white supremacist. Groups embedded within police departments everywhere, and your members of the council. Are supporting that. FBI policymakers in the legal system have historically criminalized, wrongfully accused, oppressed and killed. People of color. I know some of. You know. What I'm telling. You and still choose to do only what benefits you. Whether that's because you. Have higher political aspirations are white. Get money from police unions where a cop yourself gave it girl privilege or you were poor and made it out and forgot about truly dismantling the root causes that hurt people. And if any. Of this information is new to you, I. Suggest you take some time and educate yourself. Maybe start by adopting. The people's budget. Next speaker, please come forward. Jennifer Benitez. Camera. Bethel Lopez. Gabriela. The song. Oh, hello. My name is Jan and I'm with the Filipino Migrant Center and we're part of the language Axis Coalition. I want to ask the obvious question why? After a year of community advocating for the defunding of police and the reallocation of funds back into our communities where they belong. Is the City Council yet again proposing a disgustingly drastic increase? The police budget. Do our constant rallies and protests through our personal testimonies of police brutality and terrorism fall on deaf ears? We demand City Council fully implement the language access policy by providing quality interpretation and translation in Spanish, Tagalog and Carmen, and also provide an ongoing budget to organizations that serve these communities with the funds they need to be able to provide their services more easily and as a first gen child of immigrant working class parents. I know firsthand the labor we do for our non-English speaking families. We are. Legal aids, social workers, tech support, even city directories. Translating and interpreting on behalf of the city a service you should be providing. As taxpayers who fund your paychecks. By the way, we are demanding you pass the people's budget and defund the police. Good evening. My name is Camilla. I'm a resident of the sixth district. For the past few weeks, I've been coming to the city council meetings. I've listened to many reports. I've listened to the Health Department report on all the wonderful things they've been doing to help the community stay healthy and sheltered. Despite the shamefully underfunded budget they've been giving, been given, being forced to depend on uncertain grants. I listened to the report by Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion and how they provided needed resources to feed our community and attempt to support a robust economy here in Long Beach. I listened to the fire department report talk about their accomplishments and programs. I listened to the reports and the tangible things that were accomplished on behalf of the community here in Long Beach. I could clearly understand the value that was added to our community by these departments and programs. I saw that they provide care and needed resources to the community. Not so with the police department report. The LAPD has not shown their value, and especially not at the expense of their budget that consumes nearly half of the general fund. So this budget go round. I urge you to listen to the community. We have told you what we needed. We've told you every year with the people's budget. We told you last summer, during and after the uprisings, after George Floyd's murder. We told you through our many complaints against the complaints against and challenges to all EPD processes. So this year I asked the City Council to do something different. Listen and act accordingly. Support the programs that care for our community and make it better. Stop over funding APD at the expense of the community needs. Just because that's what you've always. Done and your time expired. We don't know how many more police on the street. We don't need to provide police more money for their violent tools. They do more harm than. Thank you. Your time has expired. Better luck as Gabriella, Kevin Yoga, James Soso and Susan Wise. Hello, everybody. Hello, council members. Mayor My name's not the current project director of library and also a. Resident of District eight. Thank you all for coming out and doing the cleanup. It was nice to see you there. The People's Budget Coalition strongly supports the Vice Mayor Richardson's request for 125,000 to fund one additional housing navigator position, which would be in addition to the three housing navigators funded. By the Long Beach Recovery Act. These additional funds enough should fund a new position and reversibility study. We also would like for the City Council to support more funding for the Right to Council program to ensure Long Beach families receive legal representation during the eviction process. We cannot continue to give so much money to the police department and other communities elective. We must not continue to ignore the call of the people, invest in cities and bring actual affordable housing rather than cutting through loopholes that cost the city housing and dollars that could be used to house people. And we want real change. We must not we must not invest in those that criminalize us, but those who really care about us. Community has called upon you to make the decisions and fund resources that make our communities better. We cannot continue to have a city that has a 17 year gap of life expectancy depending on where you live. Thank you. Hi. Councilmembers. I'm Kevin, a district one resident with another reason to defund our PD. I couldn't believe that the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan is unfunded in this budget. The budget documents say these plans are beyond the abilities of current city resources, but that's just an excuse hiding a political decision. We don't have a million for renewable energy, but we have 260 million for LAPD. I mean, it's ridiculous. And it's selling out our future. When are we going to fund the car? When are we going to stop drilling for oil? What are you waiting for? Do you think EPA is going to ask for less money next year? It's never going to be a convenient time. This budget is climate denialism. You say climate change is real, but then you deny that we can actually do anything about it. So we should start with funding the cap and ending fossil fuel extraction and making sure Long Beach residents have a habitable future and then recognize that LAPD's demands are beyond the ability of current city resources. The city needs to take climate change seriously, and that means defunding LAPD, stop selling out our future and invest in the people's budget. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. My name is James Fossum, a resident of the third district and speaking tonight on behalf of Long Beach Forward and asking you to support and adopt the people's budget. Specifically, we want to commend the vice mayor, Vice Mayor Rex Richardson for supporting a number of investments, including 1 million specifically out of measure US dollars for the Children and Youth Fund. And we're particularly excited to see a participatory budgeting project where we can really, truly go start to get at transforming the city budget. Well, we talk about not just numbers and dollars and cents, but actual engagement within this process, which all of us who have been coming here to all of these meetings, engaging in all of these processes, have been speaking to for a number a number of times. And one of the things that really stands out to me is that despite all of us coming from different backgrounds, from different experiences, there's a hard truth and we're all facing and that we cannot police our way out of this pandemic. It's a painful truth. And tonight we're asking you to face that truth with us by doing right by our communities. And speaking of hard truths, this pandemic and its impacts aren't going away anytime soon. And neither of the people who have been here organizing, educating all of us about the real direct needs going on in the community and the need to defund the police, provide care, not cops, and actually transform our city budget for good. If not this budget. The next. And the next. And the next. Please about the people's budget. Thank you. Next speaker is Susan Rice and then may Lynne Kenny, Alan Seagram's and Pamela Fields. Good evening. Vice Mayor Eisner said. I think the mayor has left the diocese for a moment. And good evening, city council members. My name is Susan Wise and I am here in my capacity as chair of the Ethics Commission, which was put into place by Charter Amendment almost three years ago. I urge you I'm here also and accompanied by Vice. Chair Margot Morales. We are here to urge your adoption of additional. Funding for the Ethics Commission in order to allow us to have. An ethics officer. I believe this recommendation was approved in the Budget Oversight Committee earlier this afternoon. Where I think it was looked at. Perhaps a little more, more closely. It is essential to the work of the commission. Which has now identified. Numerous. Issues that need to be worked. On in order to bring a culture of ethics to our. City. It's something that has been endorsed. By the voters, and I urge you to provide the leadership and the funding to make this a reality. The Commission will support it, and I. Think that. And appreciate it. And I believe. That all the voters will appreciate it as well in in the fact that this measure had overwhelming support from the voters when it was adopted. I'm happy to answer any questions that you. Have about the Ethics Commission or. Our need for additional funding in order to make this work. Important work possible. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, everyone. When I was Gaby Hernandez, and I'm the executive director for the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, a member organization of the People's Budget. And said, There's last time, but I don't think. You heard me. The police, you all are spending $780,000 and in a day. Can you please just reflect on that a little bit? It's 782,000 a day. That's almost a million a day. Please think about that rather. Than focusing. On the root causes of the issues. We're thinking about giving more money to policing. We are giving more money to policing. We increased the budget this. Year for them. You know what community needs. You heard it here. Resources. Access to housing. Access to health care. We're not getting. That. You're hearing this time and time again, people. What do we want? When do we want it? What do we want? Why do we want to know? Thank you. Cubs did not keep us safe. We've thought we said that multiple times. Please listen. Look at us. When we're speaking to you all, we ask for respect. And we need to defund the police now. And we need to adopt the people's budget. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Marlon. I'm a resident of District Four, a card carrying member of DSA Long Beach. And also I'm an educator. I just had my first classes this week in my new position as an assistant professor of Asian-American studies at Cal State Long Beach College. So I strongly urge you to adopt the people's budget. We have been funding education, health, housing and youth development for far too long. Instead of putting more money in the police budget, surely we should be investing in the supports that enable all of us to thrive, especially the black, brown and immigrant communities who are most impacted by the deep histories and realities of disinvestment. Like many other educators, if I have a student in my class who has checked out or something's going on or maybe even causing conflicts, my impulse, like many others, is to reach. Out and to ask. What's going on in their lives and in their communities. One of the supports that they need to. Thrive and to succeed. In my class and beyond, because we need because we know that the answer, as the great professor in the department said clear, is the antidote to violence. And that is what we need more of in our communities. We need more support so that all of us can grow in our full abundance and what we're capable of as humans. And we know as a researcher also that there's abundance of studies that shows that that works. So I urge you, adopt the people's budget. Good evening, City Council. My name is Kenny Allen and I am a resident of the Second District. I'm here tonight to ask that you adopt the people's budget. Take a moment to soak in the diversity of the groups coming to ask for your support tonight. Walking into the new City Hall, I was reminded by the multiple languages posted in shiny metal letters on the wall that every time a coalition this broad has come to you, eventually we win. In fact, after we win, you enjoy presenting our demands to the community as your leadership. Thinking back on our fights for language access, Claudia's law, funding for the arts and so many more. You may delay us, but you cannot defeat us. I know that you will ignore us tonight, but Long Beach is listening to us. The vision of a world without policing, surveillance and prisons is spreading like never before. Our movement is growing. How could it not? While we talk about health, wellness and housing. You take our taxpayer money and invest further in violence workers. You may attempt to delay the forces of change with your vote tonight. But to borrow from Victor Hugo, no force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come, a time beyond police has come. The question in front of you tonight is simple. Whose side are you on? Resident of District six mayor. Earlier in this meeting, you brought up the greater public good and put a lot of emphasis on that. I think the greater public good requires you to divest in policing and punishment to abolish it. Think about it, Councilman. Councilwoman Ciro, I'm coming to you to demand that you take a stand to not dilute your voice among the loud corporate interests of your colleagues. Because I know you see us, the people of your district, the people of the city are demanding the disinvest the divestment of funds for the Long Beach Police Department , a corrupt and literally deadly department of the city's government that has murdered 27 people since 2013 and received 941 civilian complaints of police misconduct since 2016. And this body wants to give the BPD more money instead of investing in our schools, community programs and affordable housing. Councilman, Councilwoman Sara, I understand that some of your colleagues would not choose to vote to divest in Long Beach PD because they are ex-police themselves. They are brainwashed to believe that policing and punishment keep our community safe. But I'm here to beg you to open your eyes and see that policing and punishment only keep us in chains . There is not one study that shows that policing reduces crime. Not one time has expired. Adopt the people's budget. I'm speaking on behalf of Pamela fils, the mother of Donte Jordan, murdered by Long Beach Police Department November 2013. My name is Audrina Redmond co-founded a Black Lives Matter Long Beach chapter. I am certainly here to ask will not ask. And I'm not begging. I'm demanding that you defund the police. I'm absolutely demanding that you defund the police. I'm absolutely asking that you do what we know you know how to do, which is to make a plan and execute that plan. When I moved to this town 27 years ago, downtown Long Beach did not look like it did. The city made a concerted effort to invest in downtown, to build housing where we now have what did I hear last week from the fire department is equivalent to the city of Hawaii Gardens now in downtown Long Beach. You did that. You did that just like you did that. You can make a plan to reallocate funds from the murderous Long Beach Police Department and put it back into community services, put it back into health care, put it back into afterschool programs where kids are not being gaslit by police. There's something wrong with them and the police are there to save them. You can do that. You can do that. What you have to do is put your creative hats on, put your commitment hats on, and and stand with all of these people in this room who are here and ready to stand with you when you're ready to be the leaders that we require you to be. Next speaker is Rosario Ellis. Roll out Juana Francisco and Jonathan Gray. Please come forward. Rosario a Alice roll out. Juana Francisco. Jonathan Gray. When I started this I number. So you think, okay, when I start, as we know, Rosario. Good afternoon. My name is Rosario. This important element of mi familia, your personal situation. If you see. Unfortunately, me and my family, we went through a very difficult situation. No, no, not available in the policy. And in another. Where I didn't have the support from the police or anyone. I mean, that was the only one that was signing off until. My daughter went through some sexual harassment, child abuse. And I saw them what they had to do. We had a death threat and we were. By ourselves. Put forward your list, Peter Bergen, Muslim, that all of a sudden we meant that. So please, I beg you, I ask you to put more money into mental health. What have we done with that? And if and then we'll see if we can solve our muchos ninos workaholic style. Now, when your S.O.S. estamos solos estamos pasando put on us, it doesn't modifica muchos ninos. So you can associate Angela. In the zip code. 90 807 where we are on our own. Our children need your help. Our children need to be looked after. We look at different way to look for them. But we need your help to look for our children. For the child? No, sister, you can look better. Your son could perform. Those were far more well, says I'm fond of your soccer concerns, but in Valencia lost one those my heart. For the child. He's helping us, but they need more funding. I know that you can help us better by funding a little more. Or you can work on the policy, on the laws that are too zealous a little. Today I am here with the Coalition for Immigrant Rights of Lumbee. What about what else happened in Brazil yesterday? They were. Wrong. And please accept. The people's budget. But it doesn't so important. They also forget, as you say, yours among the information that I still see Sacramento. What can we then also truth. And so. Thank you to the council members on the street 14 and Sergio Romero because he's the one that gave us information and resources to us. To filter out our thoughts here. And I know that you worked for Mr. Roberto. Garcia, and so when you read let me see. He saved my life and my children's life. Forever balances of West Los Ninos are somewhat also six on the frontier of coupon mutual mostly metal. Please revise your budget and pay attention to the fact that children that go through sexual abuse need more help and they need your help. Los Predators could pass almost what is known as a system of them in settlement that. Parents that go through these. We also need help mental health. Sisters provision in this total work on information. Let me see get up almost any sensible policy. If you prevent this kind of. Situation through commercials and information, we may not even need the police. For our balances of reservoirs though. So please balance your. Budget in mutual crisis. And thank you very much. For listening to. Hi. My name is Alice Frio and I'm a resident of District One. I'm here with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition to demand that the City of Long Beach adopt the people's budget. Specifically, I ask that you correct the Long Beach Police Department's budget by at least 25% and reinvest those funds into communities of color. In case you all forgot. Thousands of Long Beach residents rose up in protest last year to demand that the city take action to dismantle structural racism. As many Bipoc organizers have repeatedly argued, a key component to protecting black and brown lives is by defunding the police who disproportionately kill and invoke harm on them. Yet the discourse coming out of the mayor's office recently has been concentrated on beefing up the LAPD to respond to spikes in crime. It is giving me a real sense of deja vu to the failed tough on crime policies of the 1980s and 1990. It's now vintage jeans you can buy on retro row are cool. Vintage policies that exacerbate the racist prison industrial complex are not. Rather than adding an additional $16 million to the LAPD's budget, I urge that the city invest in community led crisis response, violence reduction and crime prevention strategies that are not related to police. I also demand that you use budget cuts to the VPD in order to fund initiatives such as affordable housing, youth programs and investment in mental health. Implementation of the language access policy along with the other points outlined in the people's budget. Thank you. When I knock. Good evening. Well, I mean, normally it's quite a Francisca. Hello. My name is one of. The third party, the Coliseum, the immigrants, the Lumbee. I am a part of the. Coalition of immigrants of language. If I keep a reminder to consider the language, I think very persuasive person. I am asking here to the City Council to accept the people's budget. It is impossible I la policia. To defund the police. Yes, I party the many that they are key in Long Beach. I am part of this community here in Long Beach UK. La Policia. No chemist. You got me in trouble. The police never investigates it. They never do their job properly. It is criminally sanctioned with so many that. They criminalize our community. Is imperative based on ask innocent criminals. And they always catch the wrong criminals. In bad weather. Mosby narrows in La Policia. Instead of giving more money to the police. There, they're there in that. If it is if one law as to pay for their their power. You must give all that funding to the people and budget. They're interested in their own admission that even though the little kid in. The money should be given to a division that deals with it, penance, right. Grasp of the culture of good channels if better kept warming, roaming dormant, passive paranoia and with recommended. Thanks for listening and I hope you make the step, the right step to help our community. We take it as you very much. And the last speaker is Jonathan Gray. Thank you Council for taking the time to listen to my thoughts about especially specifically measure us. My name is Jonathan Gray. I'm the Associate Executive Director of the Commune Development YMCA on 19th and Long Beach Boulevard at the Spark in Midtown. And thank you for those you that came to our groundbreaking back in July. And I'm here to talk specifically around the measure of U.S. funding, because I really was I really feel that more money needs to be allocated to CBOs nonprofits working with youth and not going to the city specifically. When I was at the Youth Development Forum held at Houghton Park last Monday with Mary's and Dana's and Councilmember Richardson and Vice Mayor Richardson excuse me, the youth made their voices heard, and to me, their voice is clear. They want investment in themselves. They want investment in. Programs that will benefit them and investment in their communities. And by moving money into the city budget in the city coffers to help the city and not help the communities, I can really cast a wider net of youth within our city I really feel is a disservice to the youth number one that spoke on Zoom or the dozens of youth that spoke at that forum. But it's really a disservice to all the 107,000 voters that voted in favor of measure. You are. So please take the time. Invest more money into CBOs, invest more money into our youth. Because if we want the youth of Long Beach to stay in Long Beach, they need that investment. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to go ahead and go into there's a series of items all related to the budget. So I want to go ahead and go through those if you're really briefly. And so I think as a the council knows there are a series of of votes that they're all different and relate to different parts of the budget and they're all starting in items. Item 22 And so it's 22, 22, one, 22, a two, 22, a three and so forth. And so I will each I will go through each item as we, as we go through. And different ones relate to different parts of the budget. So let me be let me begin through that process and each one needs a separate vote. And I know that the city attorney, if at any time that I need to take a different vote or skip one, just please let me know in the sequence. And then I know that towards the end, Mr. McKay, I know there's going to be a period of time where the staff will need to go and do some calculations, and then we'll have to reconvene or continue on the agenda and then reconvene the hearing. Is that correct me if you. Yes, potentially. So depending on how much changes are made, we'll need a little bit of time. It'll be if it's what's coming out of the Budget Oversight Committee, it'll be a little more truncated than that. Okay. Thank you. So let me let me go ahead and and start with the first item. The first item, which is a one. There is a motion in a second. It's just to receive and file and adopt the proposed recommendations as it relates to the mayor's message. Just as a reminder, this year's mayor's message did not have additional recommendations beyond the proposed budget. And so there are no changes there. There's a motion any second to that. To members, please cast your vote. Motion is here.