Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2020 Budget for the following Departments:  Police, Fire, and Parks, Recreation and Marine.
we get through these hearings, but we're going to get through those first. And so hearing item number one, of course, is our hearing on on fire and police tonight. And I believe we're also doing one other department. And so I'm going to and turn this over to Mr. Westminster Modica and the budget team. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council members tonight begins in earnest our budget hearings. So we're going to hear from three departments. They're going to make presentations on their budgets. We're going to hear first from the police department. Next, we're going to hear from the fire department. And then we're going to hear from the Parks Recreation and Marine Department. These are part of our continuum of public safety departments that help keep our communities safe. And with that, I'm turn it over to our chief, Robert Luna. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. The police department performs a variety of public safety services. Our core services are delivered through the work of five bureaus and 17 divisions. Our core services include 24 seven response to 911 emergencies and general calls for service. Investigating Misdemeanor and felony crimes. Homeland Security, including protecting major critical infrastructure such as the port, the airport and Metro Blue Line. Providing contract services to city partners such as. Long Beach Unified. Long Beach. City College. Long Beach Transit. The Civic Center and the Pike outlets. Our department also trains, equips and plans for response to natural. And man made disasters, including recent examples such as earthquakes and mass casualty shootings. I want to sincerely thank all of our employees and volunteers who do amazing work. Our department has many accomplishments to share. The men. The men and women of the Long Beach Police Department are committed to excellence. I am pleased to share that through their hard work, we responded to over 208,000 dispatch calls for service. We have a year to date average response time of 4.4 minutes to priority one calls for service and a 4.2% reduction in total Part one crime for 2019. In Fy19, the police department funded 50 public safety operations and event action plans through the Neighborhood Safe Streets Program. These funds have supported collision reduction, school traffic safety, property crime suppression, homeless outreach, fireworks enforcement, prohibited firearm operations just to name a few. And I really want to thank the mayor and all of you sitting at the city council for your support in this program. I am proud to share that. Out of 507 17 laboratories in the world, our Long Beach Police Department crime lab was the first internationally accredited forensic laboratory to meet the strict standards of the and see Askew Accreditation Board. Forensic analysis supports our ability to investigate crimes and is a vital law enforcement tool. Thank you to our crime lab employees for their amazing work this last year. The police department has made huge strides to implement smart policing methods throughout the department to make our processes more streamlined and efficient. We are nearing our first full year of stabilized body worn camera technology with 250 cameras deployed in the north and south patrol divisions. In December of 2018, the Department successfully implemented a mobile application to comply with Assembly Bill 953. This legislation requires all police officers to record their demographic perception of all individuals who are detained or stopped. The Department began collecting this data in January of 2019 and will officially submit data to California to the California Department of Justice in April of 2020. We are also in the procurement stage of acquiring a modern, modernized records management system, which is typically, typically called arms. Nearly every police department employee uses the arms system. Arms is a core technology that helps our department operate. We look forward to choosing a modern solution that streamlines our data entry, data storage and overall records management. Responding to homelessness and quality of life issues are top priorities for the police department. We have increased our original Quality of Life program from two officers. Currently deploying six quality of life officers today. Two are funded by measure MJ revenue. Two are funded by Measure eight and two by L.A. Metro. Additionally, through the use of prop funds, we are working to increase our Met team from six officers and six clinicians to eight officers and eight clinicians. The police department supports restorative justice efforts, including warrant clearance and expungement opportunities. Our department is held for workshops partnering with City Prosecutor Doug Halbert. In total, we have helped clear 167 warrants. Building community trust through relationships. Transparency and accessibility is a foundational principle supported by the Long Beach Police Department. Year to date, we have attended over 150 community meetings and trust dialogs over the past year. We have strengthened our working relationships with the Lee Human Relations Commission to discuss potential policy and procedural changes. The BPD management team also participated in eight trust dialogs led by the Long Beach Interfaith Community. Under this effort, we met with many diverse community groups to understand their perceptions of law enforcement and to share our policies and procedures related to hiring, equipment, accountability and training. Recently, we have taken proactive efforts to meet with our community groups to have open conversation on the Long Beach Police Department's stance on immigration enforcement in our city . Long Beach Police Department team has also chosen to prioritize wellness for both our community members and employees. We onboarded an employee wellness coordinator to help guide injured employees to a pathway of recovery, allowing them to return full duty more quickly. Thank you. And we want to thank the city attorney's office, human resources and financial management departments for helping us accomplish this effort. We are proud to share that. We have partnered with Counseling Team International to provide short term and emergency mental health services for our employees. We are optimistic that this partnership will allow our first responders to have long, successful, successful careers despite the trauma they see on a daily basis. The police department is also working on a collaborative partnership to on board a program that provides personal, immediate trauma informed care to members of our community who who have experienced traumatic situations. That's you. And that's why 20 the proposed police department budget totals $264 million. The total full time equivalent count is 1251 FTEs, which includes 851 sworn and 400 civilian employees. In addition, our operations are supported by over 250 volunteers. The Police Department's proposed Fy20 budget reflects many notable changes required within our department to comply with new state legislation and new programs. Roughly $870,000 is needed to support our body worn camera contract. This will increase the number of cameras from 250 to 875 cameras. These cameras will be deployed to nearly all sworn in the four geographical patrol divisions and two specialty sworn units and Investigations Bureau, as well as Field as well as the for the Field Support Division. While expansion is planned to include contract services groups such as the airport, port, Long Beach Transit and City College. Deployment to these operations may take a little bit of more time, a little bit more time. Cost sharing and infrastructure details need to be finalized before implementation. 850,000 is proposed to add nine civilian full time equivalent to support the full implementation of the body worn camera program. These positions will provide our department with basic resources to begin the initial compliance with Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748. Both bills require full release of documents, audio and video files within a timeline set by state law. The Justice Lab will be fully implemented and funded by the police department budget by converting to existing civilian positions to support this program. The Department proposes to add a public affairs officer to assist with strategic communications funded by the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group. And as I have mentioned earlier, add an administrative analyst to position to serve as a department's wellness coordinator. Funded by the Insurance Fund Group. Structurally measuring is is is a huge funding source for the police department. It has helped us maintain 86 sworn position positions and enhances police operations by supporting 21 additional police positions in FY 20 or the FY 20. Budget also includes one time measure funding for the Neighborhood Safe Streets program at 2.2 million, which is an increase from 1.9 million. Measure eight will allow us to continue to fund jail our jail, mental health, clinician services and one time costs for the body worn camera program. As the police department looks ahead into Fy20, there are also many challenges. Unfunded legislative mandates are a serious concern for all of us in the city. As you can see in this slide, the police department has been impacted by multiple state legislative mandates that place new and extra responsibilities on the department with no funding. Most of the legislation targets information sharing, which, while important, is very technical and cannot be done without a combination of new technology, staffing and vendor contracts to comply with these new laws. As highlighted on this slide, the police department is in the process or has already implemented a solution to comply with the laws that require us to report race based information and produce public records within an expedited timeframe, including audio and video data. Assembly Bill 953 Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748 alone have an estimated minimum financial impact of approximately $2.5 million annually, and we are still exploring the full cost that's going to impact our city. As I mentioned earlier, Assembly Bill 953 places additional workload on police officers required requiring that they enter multiple perceived data points for entry stop for every stop and detention that is conducted. On top of cell phone costs used to capture this data officer time spent on detention and stops have increased due to this additional task. This takes officers away from doing proactive community based police work. Senate Bill 1421 An Assembly Bill 748 have brought in the types of document, video and audio records that must be released under public record release laws. Specifically, Assembly Bill 748 requires that all police video and audio footage of critical incidents be released within 45 days of a public records request act. As previously previously mentioned in the FY 20 budget, we have requested additional civilian staffing to assist with the review, gathering redaction and data extraction of these files. I must emphasize that it is unknown whether these new resources will be sufficient to meet the new state law. For legislation where implementation is still pending. The police department is working with a variety of partners to understand how to comply with these new and potential laws. Senate Bill ten Cash bail reform is on the ballot in California as a vital referendum on November 3rd, 2020. Senate Bill 978. While Chapter has an effective date of January 1st, 2020, this provides the department some time to adjust to this new law. I would like to emphasize again that these new and proposed laws do not include any additional funding for local law enforcement agencies. However, despite these challenges we are optimistic for. F1 20. I am pleased to report that the police department has had no intentional officer involved shootings in the past 16 months. I want to repeat that I am pleased to report that our police department has had no intentional officer involved shootings in the last six months. I don't know if that's ever happened in our history. We accomplish this by improving our internal review of department operations. We have issued a variety of moderate force equipment options, such as 40 millimeter projectiles to our field officers. We have expanded our training and do more life scenario based training with the use of our simulator at our training facility. We also train officers to use de-escalation techniques whenever possible and using time, distance and cover when officers interact with suspects in high risk encounters. We are also appreciative of the support to convert existing resources into key management positions, such as the Assistant Chief and the Professional Standards Administrator to help navigate the police department through these legislative, legislatively challenging years. Our department is committed to promoting diversity among all levels of the department, and I am pleased to share that increasing diversity is reflected in our police recruit, hiring supervisory ranks and command staff. The Department. The department is also looking forward to the construction of a new training facility and public safety parking structure, which will help support our current operations. Lastly, city wide an investment in our technology, infrastructure and fleet has benefited our ability to serve our community well, providing a safe city for all people. This concludes my presentation and I'm going to be around to answer any and all questions at the end before I turn it over to my partner at the fire department. Thank you. I think we're going to be moving on to the fire department presentation. I'm going to hear all the presentations and we'll come back and do all the other questions. And just as an update also. As the rules were adopted. So because this is a hearing and hearing hearings, the limits that that were adopted as far as speaking time and questions from the body, I think are are do not apply on hearings because of their usually extensive and and they're sometimes legal in nature. And that's something that the city attorney and I have talked about as well. So. Fire Chief Javier Espino. This evening, I'll be providing a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's fiscal Year 20 proposed budget. Our presentation will highlight the services provided by the Fire Department. Some of our key accomplishments for the current fiscal year. Notable changes in the fiscal year 20 proposed budget and some of the major issues and opportunities that we foresee for the upcoming fiscal year. The Long Beach Fire Department delivers fire rescue, emergency medical services, marine safety responses, hazardous materials response and non-emergency response services to residents, businesses and visitors in the city of Long Beach. We provide a 24 hour operation in which all first responders must be prepared at all times. Additionally, we work to ensure the safety of the community and to prevent fires through proactive fire prevention and code enforcement programs. We also provide training and education that is essential to the delivery of our core fire and search and rescue services . I would now like to present some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for the current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, we've responded to over 72,000 fire, emergency medical services, marine safety and other emergency incidents. Since many incidents require multiple units to respond, these 72,000 incidents equate to more than 140,000 unit responses. Included in this number are over 51,000 medical calls and over 5700 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous materials responses, airport responses and other non fire responses. A major highlight of the current fiscal year is the expansion of the Homelessness, Education and response team to two units. Together, the two units completed over 2500 interactions comprised of 1800 proactive contacts and 700 dispatches to incidents involving persons experiencing homelessness. The heart units have improved the fire department's response capabilities and would not have been possible without Long Beach measure funding. Working in partnership with UCLA and supervisor Janice Hahn. We've recently incorporated a mobile stroke unit into the city's emergency response profile. This unit enables the potential to diagnose and treat stroke victims in the field, thereby increasing our ability to provide specialized lifesaving care to stroke victims before they even get to the hospital. Fiscal school year 2019 was and continues to be a very successful year for the Long Beach Fire Department. We realized great success with our Fire Recruit Academy. The Academy attained designation from the State Fire Marshal as a state accredited local academy, and the 2018 Academy graduated 22 new firefighters. Our Fire Prevention Bureau promoted community safety and economic growth by conducting over 8000 residential construction and business related fire safety inspections. Our training cadre has developed and is currently conducting the department's first ever Engineer Academy. The Academy is due to graduate candidates within two weeks and is anticipated to be highly successful. This year, our Long Beach fire ambassadors have impacted more than 4000 students throughout the Long Beach Unified School District by providing fire safety demonstrations and instruction. And finally, our Strike Team units received the Red Cross Hometown Heroes Award for their response to the Woolsey Fire. Their efforts positively impacted the residents of that area and were responsible for the protection of many residences and structures. The proposed fiscal year 20 budget for the fire department is $130.8 million. We comprise a total of 533.86 full time equivalent staff consisting of 405 sworn PhDs in the fire ranks. Another 25 full time year round marine safety first responders, over 180 seasonal lifeguards and 26 full time ambulance operators. Additionally, the fire department is supported by civilian staff in fire operations, support services, fire prevention and administration. 76% of our budget is in the general fund, which supports most departmental activities. The proposed fiscal year 20 general fund budget for the fire department is $99.2 million. The Long Beach Airport provides support in the amount of 5.9 million for fire and rescue services provided to the airport. And this is included in the fire department's general fund budget. Additionally, the Tidelands Fund supports marine safety activities as well as our fire operations in the Port of Long Beach, which include specialty programs of urban search and rescue, hazardous materials and marine firefighting. The Harbor Department provides cost reimbursement for the services provided in the port in the amount of $18.9 million, and that is included in the 26.6 million Tidelands Fund budget for fire. Proposition eight funds from the oil production tax continue to provide additional support for fire staffing in the amount of just over $1.5 million annually. The fire department, together with the Health Department, provides environmental protection services that are supported by the Cooper Fund. Krupa stands for Certified Unified Program Agency and through permit fees, provides funding for inspection services and business emergency plan reviews to ensure hazardous chemicals are handled, stored and transported in accordance with current state and local standards. Notable changes. The fire department's proposed fiscal year 20 budget includes several notable changes that I would like to highlight. First, Missouri has been a significant source of funding for the fire department, providing financial support in the amount of 6.3 million annually to maintain 35 sworn fire positions and providing an additional 3.8 million a year to restore 20 additional positions . The Marine Safety Bureau will receive structural funding to provide additional lifeguard staffing for the city's Bayshore Aquatic Playground facility. By all accounts, this has been a very successful program, and we look forward to supporting it on an ongoing basis. The proposed budget includes staffing adjustment to our cannabis inspection program to better align with current service level demands. The annual inspections for sanctioned businesses and enforcement activities related to illegal or unsanctioned businesses have not reached anticipated demands. Conversely, the clerical demands created by the medical marijuana program have exceeded our capacity to manage. We have responded to these findings by shifting staffing from inspections to the clerical staffing necessary to maintain a reasonable turnaround time for the inspection process. And finally, the proposed budget includes additional staffing to manage our electronic patient care reporting or PCR processes and emergency response data. Implementation of the p c. Our system has streamlined the patient reporting process, improve the efficiency of patient billing, and increased our collection percentages. Looking forward to fiscal year 20. The department has several significant challenges and opportunities. The Long Beach Fire Department is committed to serving the Long Beach community and wants their personnel to represent the city's diverse population. In recognition of this priority, the Long Beach Fire Department, in partnership with the city manager's office, undertook a study to proactively review their entire recruiting and selection process and identify best practices for strategically recruiting a more diverse pool of firefighter applicants. Our intent is to implement identified diversity, recruitment and hiring process strategies for entry level and promotional positions in our fire department. Consistent challenge is to improve response times and response capabilities and continue to meet the expectations of our community while expanding the quality and capability of our emergency medical services. Our addition of a second heart unit and the recent addition of the Mobile Stroke Unit will assist in meeting this challenge. The most basic service infrastructure of a city is its public safety functions. The city of Long Beach has been operating fire and lifeguard services for over 100 years. Although the workforce and equipment are evolving to meet the needs of the growing and changing population. Its buildings and structures have not kept pace. Because public safety facilities are utilized by and support our personnel and the public. 24 hours per day, seven days a week. Public safety facilities deteriorate more rapidly than a typical office or commercial building. In addition, since a service the needs of the city have changed, some buildings should be considered for redesign or relocation. Finally, a significant challenge and opportunity is to prepare the next generation of firefighters to step into positions of leadership. To that end, the fire department continues to mentor potential future leaders in the areas of supervisory skills and management development. These succession planning efforts are critical to our continued success in the years to come. The opportunities for our department are encouraging. Our desire to develop a strategic plan was based on the recognition of a need for clear, unified direction for our fire department. In this collaborative effort, our overall objective is to ensure that we create a safer community for our residents and visitors to the city. This document will serve as the roadmap that will provide focus and direction to ensure we fulfill our stated goals and define strategies. We will we will utilize PCR and other emergency response information in collaboration with other city departments to enhance data driven initiatives such as adult adult fall prevention and other high frequency utilizer programs. Recent changes in the state billing system for emergency medical services will allow us to leverage increased state funding to make long term investment in operational capability and service delivery. And finally, we continue to work to identify funding to enhance our citywide response capability by supporting the restoration of Engine 17. That concludes our presentation. Thank you for the opportunity to present an overview of the Fire Department's Fiscal Year 2020 proposed budget. Thank you. Thank you, fire chief. And we're going to move on to the next presentation, which I believe is for Parks, Recreation and Marine. Park Structure Recreation Marine Director Corrado Mowat. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present to you the proposed fiscal year 20 Parks, Recreation and Marine Department budget. The PRM Department is very wide in scope. 170 parks, six and a half miles of beaches, a marina, recreation programs and animal care services. The prime budget was developed by leveraging existing resources so that the strategic, modest enhancement goes a long way. This budget will allow your prime staff to continue passing forward their passion of bringing joy to all from infants to older adults and our companion dogs and cats. Your prime team does this knowing that it is strategically, that it strategically needs to be nimble in order to be effective in responding to the diverse needs of a diverse community. Our core services focus on parks, recreation, beaches, marinas and homeless dogs and cats. We aspire to develop and maintain a vibrant park and recreation system. The urban and diverse Long Beach population deserve a park and recreation system that is calibrated to the specific needs of neighborhoods with sensitivity to environmental friendly landscapes and environmentally sustainable maintenance methods. We aspire to keep our marinas well-managed and to maintain our beaches clean and safe for all to enjoy. The beaches are for our residents, no matter what part of town they live on. With your support, we develop a winning approach to take animal care services in a positive direction. That approach is Long Beach Compassion Saves, model the and commitment to our core services and mission is based on the knowledge that we deliver services that so seeds of joy and health and prevents urban discord and helps develop community unity and harmony. It is the upstream part of the local government business. Is an honor to share with you accomplishments delivered by your PRM team. We are now the 18th best park system in the country with a top notch marina, which is the largest public marina system in the country, a parks and recreation system that provides over 1.5 million participation . Days of recreation programing at our 27 community centers. Three pools, five teen centers, six senior centers, an aquatic facility and a nature center. Because of your support, we enhanced our senior programing by offering expanded programing and are boosting our volunteer program. By leveraging our needs, impact fees and Citi measure. In many ways, we have been able to make major improvements in our park system. PRM staff in partnership with the Public Works Department have worked intensely to upgrade playgrounds, community centers, sports courts and began efforts to improve our irrigation system. We made investments in water conservation by implementing a data driven irrigation controller program and improve the management of our ground maintenance services contracts with which permits us the opportunities to operate our vast park system in open space more efficiently and effectively. Our enhancements in our beach maintenance operations support beach and sand maintenance a cleaning device. Barbara the rake, as shown on this slide, was recently deployed on our beaches, which helps keep our beaches safe, clean and fun for many residents, for our many residents and visitors. Animal Care Services continues to improve the live release rates, reduce in pounds and supports spay and neuter efforts. The compassion saves implementation further, promotes our goal of having positive outcomes for all animals in our care. Currently, we have an overall save rate of 92%, 88% for cats and 96% for dogs and are heading towards ending the year with a very good with very good rates of saving animals. We provide local teams from our teen centers with new experience, opportunities and personnel development and personal development. We are partnering with Workforce Development to provide training for team participants to increase prospects of obtaining good jobs and are linking our participants with resources for job placement. We have also had great opportunities to partner with our local major sports teams with with our youth such as the L.A. Kings, L.A. Dodgers, and have a wonderful partnership with the school district that helps us offer free recreation swim to local youth. We have other partnerships, such as the one with musical Theater West and an overall partnership network with Partners of Parks. We developed Community Beach Week, which includes free events on the sand and in the water each day for children and adults. This is on top of the many beach related programs offered this summer, including last Friday's All-City Beach Day, where 2000 youth had great fun, fun and got to know and got to know youth from every corner of the city. For fiscal year 20. The PRM budget totals over $60 million across all funds, with nearly 35 million from the general fund, which represents a 7% slice of the city's general fund. Prime also has substantial tidelands funds used to support our operations in the marinas, beaches and waterways. This budget provides for 44 445.6 full time equivalent positions during our busy summer months, which we have one in which we have one and a half weeks left to go. Our staffing grows to well over 800 people. We employ hundreds of seasonal staff and are proud of our role as a workforce development engine. Notable changes expected in PRM with the adoption of the budget is the permanent addition of an animal care services adoption coordinator and support staff to develop to help drive, increase adoption rates and improve life outcomes for shelter animals. We are also excited about adding a prime volunteer program coordinator. The coordinator will recruit more volunteers, train them and deploy them in all the prime areas of need. Long Beach is very giving is very giving when it comes to volunteerism. And Prime is a great opportunity for wonderful community building volunteer work. We also are excited to receive one time funds to develop support and launch launch fundraising efforts for our Long Beach Animal Care Services. As we face the coming year, Primo will continue to face challenges. But with those challenges, opportunities can be explored, such as taking a creative approach to bringing in more grant funds for park projects. The key is leveraging funds such as park impact fees and telling unique stories that meet the needs of grant requirements so that we succeed in bringing more capital improvement progress. With the help of your leadership, the task force and dedicated back staff, animal care services will continue to deliver on performance with a compassion saves model. Leading the way we play. We plan to bring to you the bag strategic plan in the spring of 2020. We are passionate about exploring how to use nature to benefit the impact of our recreational programing. We call that approach restorative environmental programing. This is a strategic launch that focuses on clean water, sustainable park landscape, clean beaches and wetlands that align with the city's climate action and Adaptation Plan. We will continue to advance the development of the PRM strategic plan. The existing PRM strategic plan is six years old and things have changed substantially. We plan to bring to you the prime strategic plan in the summer of 2020. One of our challenges is how to sustain the Be Safe program. We do not have sufficient monies in the budget to support all of the B save sites. We will be exploring different avenues to increase our chances in maintaining this important summer evening recreational programing in key areas that benefit from this targeted prevention program. As you can see, the PRM team provides very diverse services. We what we do provides joy to a large, diverse community. Our parks and recreation system is considerable, with 170 public parks, six and a half miles of beaches, 27 community centers, dozens of athletic fields and playgrounds, 67 tennis courts, five municipal golf courses, three city pools, and over 3300 marina slips and animal care services. We have been recognized for our award winning programs, but the biggest satisfaction is the millions of positive contacts, PR and staff does each day of the year. Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council. Thank you for your continued investment in the Pride team. Your support helps us meet the needs of the community all across the city. Our dedicated employees and I thank you for your support. This concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much, Mr. Malloy. And let me there is a motion in a second, but let me start with Councilman Price. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to all of the department heads that presented this evening. I really appreciate all the presentations and the thoroughness and the overview of the changes. That's always the most helpful part of budget hearing nights. So. I have a question first for police, a couple of questions. So for Chief Luna. First of all, the stats regarding officer involved shootings are fantastic, and the efforts by the department to focus on that area should really be acknowledged and applauded, because I know that's an area that where my colleagues have a thank you. Yes. Let's let's applaud. Yes. That's an area where the police department has received a lot of feedback from this body. And so I'm glad to see that we are moving in a good direction there. And I'm really pleased that we're finally implementing a body worn camera program that's going to go throughout the department and outfit most of the officers. I think that's fantastic and I think it's great. Given where we are now, would you say that the full implementation would be about six months out? If this body approves this item in the budget the day it approves, it will. We have letters ready to be sent off to with the organization that we're going to contract with. And I would estimate with the delivery of the items that are needed, the infrastructure has already been built thanks to our team here. And I would estimate sometime in the beginning of 2020 that we would have the nearly 800 plus cameras deployed. And the reason I ask that is because I support this program a lot. I mean, more than I can convey in words. I think it's fantastic. I think it's great that we're doing it. My only hesitation with the dollar amounts that are proposed in the budget is that one. You know, I don't think we're going to be prepared to utilize all nine of these positions on the first day of the budget cycle. I think there's going to be some time before all nine will need to come online. And as Chief Espino was talking about rerouting some of the marijuana positions because of the actual need versus the anticipated need and that that that actuary having to result in shifting some of those positions. What I want to do is think about what do we what do we think we're actually going to need for the body worn camera program? And could we maybe not allocate all nine funds, all nine positions now, and come back in six months if the reality is that we need an additional person or two? And the reason I say that is because I'm just I'm just putting that out there because I think there's other priorities that council members might have in regards to city wide issues like gun safety, gun buyback, things like that that might be of more immediate relevance to us. And I'm wondering if these the body worn camera positions are of immediate need for the police department. You are asking an outstanding question, a question that I posed to our state attorney general in a meeting that we had with other police chiefs. And it was this situation that we're were encountering with unfunded mandates. I would love nothing more than to divert a lot of these moneys elsewhere where I absolutely believe they're needed in our community. But unfortunately, we're looking at a bill of we're estimating $2.5 million of unfunded mandates because of Senate Bill 1421 and 748. We have no option of skirting that at all. We are targeted by the media. They're getting frustrated with us because they're asking us for specific documentation that we to date are starting to release but are unable to because we don't have the people or the technology to do so. So yes, that is an option. But what ends up happening is I have to go into the department somewhere and look for bodies to comply with all the unfunded mandates that we already have. One way or another, I have to provide at least nine bodies, and I think we're being conservative in what we're asking for. I actually think it's going to be more and this is where I challenge us as a community when we're hearing about all these criminal justice reforms and social justice reforms, somebody needs to start asking who is paying for this? Because right now every citizen in the city is paying for these social justice changes that we're mandated to do. We don't have an option. We didn't get $0.01 from the state or anywhere else to comply with these, but yet we're under the gun, literally, to present these documents to the media, to the public and everyone who is asking for more way behind already. So I sound a little passionate about it, but I'm frustrated because this money can definitely go elsewhere and each of you have great ideas of where that should go. But I think we need to we need to regroup and start looking at our state elected officials and saying, hey, what the heck are we doing here? Councilmember to you is a very good question about timing. And can we knowing that that workload is coming, can we phase it in? The reality is, is we are experiencing that workload right now. So we are currently rotating in police officers who were able to pull from other areas, whether they're injured on duty or others into that job because that workload exists today. So this is actually one that we need to speed up rather than slow down and actually authorize them very soon in order to meet our deadlines. And I get that. And I completely I mean, Chief, given what I do every day, there was no money that came with Prop 47. So I'm very mindful of the realities of criminal justice reform, where we have unfunded mandates. The thing, though, Mr. Modica, is we have 200 something body cameras that are currently deployed, and yet we don't have allocated positions for those to do the redactions and the discovery. Right. We are going to be and right now we have zero positions. My question is, can we phase in the 0 to 9? Because if we had three bodies right now to help with redactions, praise and criminal discovery, that would alleviate the need of having to put officers into that position. The way I what I'm suggesting and nine may be a conservative estimate. But with the police agencies with whom I have worked, I have found that. The redaction requirements have not been as onerous as people once thought, especially if we're using software like evidence dot com. So there is an ability now it takes a lot of time to watch the video. Redaction of the videos is not that complicated. I'm just saying, maybe once we implement it at full, we realize, you know what, seven positions is great, but we won't know that. So if this if these positions are funded starting October the first and we know we're not going to have 800 cameras deployed until, let's say, March, then from October to March, we have nine positions that we're not really needing for this program. We may need them for other things, but we're not really needing them for this program that budget savings could fund. Let's say we take 200,000 of that and we find some sort of a program that is more of a bigger need that I know the chief is also very supportive of, like taking guns off the street so we can use that instead of taking that at the end of the year. Now, police department has a budget savings because even though they were funded on October the first, they didn't fill those positions until, let's say, March or April. Now that budget savings are going to get rolled back into the budget, which I have no problem with more money going to the police department. Let me be clear about that. But I'm just saying, why can't we use that budget saving what we know is going to be a budget savings for something that we might need now , like a prohibited possessors program, task force or you know something, I'm just putting it out there. I want to hear what my colleagues have to say, but I'm just putting it out there because I don't know. You know, when we do criminal discovery, a lot of the redactions are going to happen at the prosecuting agency. When we're doing press, the redactions are going to happen with our police department. When we're doing 1421 requests. The redactions are going to happen at our police department. So how much it burden is the crime? Is the prosecuting agency taking that might relieve us of the duty? I don't know. I'm just saying perhaps we'll know as we roll out the process more. Just something to think about. So the other question that I had that I wanted to ask about is, I know Commander O'Dowd is the Commander for East Division. He, by the way, he's doing a tremendous job for the record. He has done a lot of great work using Tidelands money with specific equipment on the beach to address camping tents, you know, illegal activities, syringes, things of that nature that we have had issues with on the beach. And and I think that was a great use of tidelands money. And I'm wondering if it if I'm interested in finding out what our options are in reallocating one time dollars from Tidelands for additional enforcement at the chief's discretion along the beach? Because the beach is an area where thankfully this year we did not have any junior guards step on syringes. But we want to make sure that we keep the beaches clean. Certainly so. As part of the budget in front of you, we haven't really gotten to this part in the cap yet, but there's about $2.6 million worth of Thailand's one time investments that we were recommending to put into certain projects. If this is a higher priority, we can certainly work to carve out maybe a little bit of extra funds and dedicate that. So we can certainly work through the Budget Oversight Committee if that's an area that you'd be interested in pursuing further. Yes. Thank you very much. And I want to thank the chief and, of course, our director of Parks Rec and Marine for the amazing efforts that have been taken to ensure that the beaches stay clean and free of debris. It's not just it's a beyond a beautification issue at this point. It's a public hazard issue. And so I thank you. With the equipment that we've purchased to both patrol the beach, enforce the law, and also to clean the sand, it's been fantastic. So thank you. The other question that I have, the final question that I had is actually for our PRM director. So thank you very much. She flew and I really appreciate all of your comments for the PRM Director for Director Mowat. I had a question about the budget item for replacement of trash containers. What is the anticipate it in the beach. I think we're using. Is this tidelands money that we're using for that? Yes. Okay. And what's the plan for that? Because let me just say that one area where I think there's an opportunity for improvement as a city is to have trash cans that match in parks and beaches. Like, I'm not sure how expensive it would be for us to have just trash cans that match. So I'm hoping that whatever trash cans we get for the beaches are somehow similar to the ones we might be able to put in the parks and and so on. Well, that's a good point. And that's something that we will strive to make sure that they match. Our these big bellies. I'm. No, they're not. Do they have covers? Yes, they do. Okay. We cannot invest in any more trash cans in the city that don't have covers. It's a huge, huge problem. Things blow out of the trash that go into the water. Terrible for the environment. Not to mention people who go through the trash cans looking for items. So I just want to make sure. Are they going to all be the same? Yes. Okay. And by the way, I see Corey shaking his head. Corey Forester, that guy should get an employee of the Month award. Pat, before you leave, can Corey get an award? He's amazing. He's wonderful. So thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Council member. Council member. Austin. Thank you so much. And, you know, many of my talking points were were actually. Cover with Councilmember Price's presentation or questions. And so I will be pretty brief here. This first question is actually for PD chief. The Neighborhood Safe Streets Initiative. Are we? We plan to put 2.2 proposals to put $2.2 million in one time funds toward this initiative. Can you elaborate on some of the programs and initiatives that were undertaken this year with the funding you received in FY 19? Yes, sir. We did everything from gang enforcement, prohibitive. Possessor, which has been mentioned up here, is we spent about $100,000 this year on prohibitive possessor enforcement. And that is something that I think is very effective when we're talking about gun challenges that we're facing, whether it's on our community regionally or the topic of conversation across the country . And I do want to thank you specifically, because you talked about trying to bring a program that would reduce gun violence in our community several years ago. And I know there's been talk about gun buyback. And you and I had had a conversation about switching those dollars to let's focus on individuals who shouldn't be who shouldn't have guns, people who have been convicted of domestic violence, people with mental illness. The list goes on and on. And our detectives, our officers have done an amazing job. And just to share a quick statistic with you about where some of that money has gone this year, so far, we estimate that 201 weapons were recovered as a result of our prohibitive possessor operation, along with 50 arrest and 13 search warrants. That's significant because those are people who could have caused a mass shooting potentially if our detectives and officers weren't staying on top of it. So thank you all really for allowing us to have that money that is going to a very effective program. And Councilmember, I did want to correct something from last week. So there was a question last week about was it the same amount we had done, 2.2 million in the past. Actually, last year, we had a little bit less in terms of funds. We were down to 1.9 million. And this year we're able to go back up to $2.2 million. So it is an increase over last year. Okay. Well, it I think that when we first funded the Prohibited Possessor Task Force, it was funded to the level of, I think, 250,000. That is, anybody would recall that was a few years ago. And so the to the fact that you're still using funds toward doing that, I do appreciate it. And it sounds like it's effective, particularly if we'd taken 200 guns off the streets in our city right now. Yeah, just for that operation, we've taken over 700 guns off the street thus far this year. Okay, well, I want to get to 1000 and or more. And and obviously, there are there are concerns in the community because shootings are being amplified throughout the city. We we need to do more. And I think there's an opportunity, unique opportunity with this this budget to to focus a little bit more. And so my comments regarding the Neighborhood Safe Streets funds, I'm glad that there is a portion of it going toward prohibited possessors. But, you know, I'd like to make sure that we are dedicating at least a certain amount in more than $100,000 of that toward that that effort, because obviously there's some still challenges that we're still facing . I agree with that. And thank you for your support in that area. And that that money, those moneys we're talking about from 1.9 to 2.2, you got to look at that money as each patrol commander gets a portion of that. So for us, from a community policing perspective, we are very visible and accessible in the community, just like each and every one of you are. We go to these meetings, people tell us what the issues are that could be traffic related. Going back to your original question, school traffic, it can be fireworks, it can be violence on the street, it can be auto burglaries, it can be people stealing packages from porches. It could be anything that the community's telling our commanders, this is a problem. And this money allows us the flexibility to put people where the problems are, whether whatever day of the week, time of the day, whatever that may be. That's the the great part about the money that all of you have approved in the past, and hopefully you will this coming year. Which if I'm confident that you will use these funds wisely, but understand that that this councilmember and I think you'll probably hear from others, are really, really concerned about guns and gun violence. And that that is I wouldn't like that to be a focus. Yes, sir. You've lit up my phone plenty of times. I'm fully aware of how you feel about gun violence and. Yes, sir. And and I think Councilmember Price spoke briefly about it. But the the the structural funding for the body worn camera implementation. Now, did you say March? There were you felt that you been able to be fully implemented? We would anticipate if it was approved and we are able to acquire the equipment. We believe that by the beginning of 2020, closer to January or February, we would have those cameras out in the field on the officers. Okay. So there was a pilot. Program in North Lawn Beach or the North Division last year? Correct. And as I recall, that the cameras and equipment were were provided at no cost to the city. What happens with that equipment, with this new program? Do we absorb that or. Or is that program, that equipment given back to the so under. That's an excellent question. I do want to highlight that the first year of this body worn camera project, the young lady sitting next to me from a financing perspective, an administrator, Jason Campbell, who's in the audience, did an outstanding job of reaching out. And we got this camera system or the equipment and storage for free for an entire year. And it was in South Division and north division are the others that have the cameras on them now. So with the additional cameras coming in, we would outfit the rest of the patrol bureau, including our field support division, and and that's what we're talking about doing. But right now, currently, every officer in North Division that contains your district, Councilman Richardson's district and part of Mr. your Angus district have body worn cameras now. Okay. So those cameras won't be replaced. They will not. Okay, well, they will. I'm sorry. I'm being corrected. They are going to be replaced. Okay. So we'll have one system? Yes, we will have one system. Okay. And and I know citywide there are citywide cameras installed under the COPS program. How are they maintained? And is there an assigned staff to handle the installation, maintenance and replacement of those cameras in the department? Yes. We currently have staff that manages the logistics of the 250 cameras. But but I do want to reemphasize excellent question that was asked earlier, that the bodies that we're talking about are not necessarily for body worn cameras. It is for the unfunded legislative mandates that we have to comply with with 1421 and 748. So when we're talking about these additional bodies, they are primarily coming in to manage the information that we're having to release, information we're having to redact. Well, I think in the summary in this big giant book that I think I hurt my back. Karen And today I think it mentioned it was going toward support in body worn camera operations and it didn't emphasize the rest of that. And so, yeah. It's the majority of the bodies that we're asking for are for the other unfunded mandates that were required. We're obligated by law to fulfill and we're already behind. We are constantly being critiqued specifically by our local media that we're not releasing information quick enough. And our response is, Hey, we're going to be in front of our political body. We're asking for more resources to comply with this, and that's why we're asking for those bodies and that money. So in my last question for you and thank you. The in the proposed budget actually concept templates, the possible reduction or cancelation of a contract with L.B. USD for Saros as negotiations are pending. So with this focus on school safety, is there something that the school district is discussing with the PD as a possibility? We are currently in negotiations with Mr. Steinhauser and their staff. And King, I guess sounds like negotiations. Can you give us an update, any status on where that's at? And we're currently negotiating at least one position to remain. We're trying to push for a second and and they're having some of the same budget challenges that we're all talking about tonight. So I don't want to say too much publicly. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I think there's still a lot of a lot of compromise to be reached on both sides. Duly noted. Thank you very much. I do have a question for the fire chief. You know. We're just say thank you for all the great work you do in your department. The men and women department keep our city safe and respond to some very extreme circumstances. Thank you. But my my question and this actually was mentioned at our community budget meeting for District eight last week. Can you please explain the current status of Fire Station nine and what the long term plans are and whether or not we are considering that in this fiscal year budget in any way? Okay. So at at the current time, we're out of station nine, Engine nine is at station 16, which is on the airport and rescue nine is at station 13, which is Adriatic and Willow. Pretty much they've been out for a number of months and we've met with public works, with health, with city management. And we've determined that we're at an all stop right now on any further work on Station nine. At this point in time, we're trying to identify different parcels of land that we could go to as a temporary quarters for engine nine. We would probably leave Rescue nine at Engine at Station 13. And then the long term goal is to eventually find some property and build a new station nine. How far is a station engine 13 from? From Station nine. Well. Mile, mile and a half, probably. Okay. And for miles or miles. Jerry And how does having a fire station nine out of place impact response times in a big city knows not Long Beach area. Having both of those units out of place has increased response times. They they do patrol during the day. They're out of the station. They've been making a good play of staying in the night area. Okay. Well, I would just say to you and to our city manager and staff, we have to to to rectify the situation quickly. No, it's not something that can be done instantaneously. But I'd like to see a plan in place as quickly as possible to make sure that we we're delivering the services to to the residents. And response times are important. Yes, sir. I do want. To highlight for those that aren't aware and the council is all plugged in, but we have had major infrastructure challenges at that facility. So that is one of our older fire facilities. And we were having, you know, safety issues and we investigated them and eventually got to the point because we've not been. Able to invest. The infrastructure dollars that we've needed to over many, many years that we had to shut it down. So we're now at that point where we are investigating the alternatives. But yes, we realize that that is a critical facility and we need to devise a plan and come back to you on that. Okay. Thank you all. Hold my questions for now. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And a number of my questions were answered. So if we could just have the director and both chiefs just come up and I don't think you're going to need your additional staff. I just have some general questions for you. I didn't want you all to have to sit down and get up and sit down and get up. Right. And I'll start with the fire chief since he's already sitting down. So, first of all, congratulations on all your accomplishments. And just one thing. And I know we'll have a conversation a bit later about some of your ideas around diversity, and I'm looking forward to that conversation later on. I noticed that you named as an accomplishment the heart team that you have to hart teams deployed. How are they deployed. Where are they are they anchored at a station or how are they deployed? They're not anchored at a station. They deploy from headquarters and they're on different schedules. The one Hart unit goes from Monday through Thursday, the other goes from Tuesday through Friday. And essentially they patrol and sometimes that occurs because of need. Well, we'll hear from the different council districts stating, can you please visit a certain area? And they will. I think predominantly most of their contacts are in the downtown area, but they do basically travel the entire city boundaries. Okay. And I'd be curious to know and we can, you know, continue this conversation offline. But I think it's appropriate to raise. If in the next fiscal year the plan is to open up bridge housing, a shelter, homeless shelter. I would love to see if this is going to create if we're going to have a new system on how is deployed, does it create new demands and is there a need for additional resources to the heart theme program? I'd love to see a good relationship between the heart team and the shelter, the bridge housing that that's proposed. Thank you. Just moving on down the line, Chief. Congratulations on your accomplishment in terms of what you raised up as. With respect to the officer involved shooting. So what would you attribute your success to? Fantastic people working for the Long Beach Police Department. And I say that honestly. One, paying attention to the environment we've been in for the last 5 to 6 years. And when I say that, it's not just watching something on on TV or a video, but I mean, actually visiting other police departments, looking at best practices where people have succeeded, where people have failed. What training is working? Our training staff has done amazing to really research best practices, bring them back. And at the end of the day, it's not just about standing in a classroom and teaching, but running people through life scenarios of of doing things over and over. And it's we've taken situations that have actually happened here and then translated them into scenarios. So we just go over them and over them again. There's I could sit up here for at least 30 minutes and talk about it, but it's our fantastic people absolutely willing to to look at what's going on around us, try different techniques . And at the end of the day, it's the numbers are working out for us right now. We have a fantastic police department. It's good. I'd like to you know, I think that's good. And the more we can sort of pinpoint what best practices we're doing so that we can continue to support those efforts if there's training, if it's the new training staff and although we've talked about your efforts to boost your training staff, those are the things I personally like to know so that I can know how to support you. Yes. To continue to have that level of support. By the way, you've done that partially. When all of you decided to support Measure three, we were able to put nine police officers out at our academy where they're able to do exactly what I just described. So you're already on the path there. Thanks. And I think doing the the shooter training, going out and understanding what goes into it, the training that many of us participated in, it certainly helped open my eyes to what all the sort of nuances that police officers have to deal with. Moving on to a different topic. So I know that so every summer, you know, having worked for the city for nine years, every summer, I know that there's typically a some sort of elevated levels of of violent activity. And we you know, a lot of times we come together and we talk about what we can do to prepare for it. You know, we've a lot of great programs come out of that, like be safe. And we've ramped up things like summer youth jobs. Nonprofits have stepped up like the YMCA Summer Youth Institute, located in different areas to sort of just get the whole community prepared for whatever happens every summer when, you know, youth get out of school and there's just a lot more activity. My question for you is, this year just seemed a bit more elevated than most years. And and is there a is there more is there a need for more resources during the summer months within our police department to make sure that we adequately are staffed up to respond? We constantly keep up. We're data driven. We're looking at data to see where the spikes are. There are 4 to 6 times during the year that crime, specifically violent crime, will go up. It's not always in the summer. A lot of it revolves around the school year, beginning of school and the school. Those are two of our are highlighted areas. So we make sure that a lot of the moneys we are talking about earlier that the previous 1.9 now hopefully to point to that money is instrumental because we do save it for those times where we believe there are going to be spikes. So we'll go out. If we look at two weeks, for example, and that's spiking up beforehand. We'll go out and do probation searches will do prohibitive weapons searches, will do all these things to try and prevent some of these things. But there's a lot of great programs going on in the city during the summer. I'm we talked about negotiations with Mr. Steinhauser. We are actually talking about a program for next summer. Like our partners at the fire department are doing this summer to take youth off the street, people who are interested in fire will now be interested in police and able to to really connect with the youth like we haven't in years from that perspective. Okay. And, you know, along that same line of discussion, you know, we used to have the Police Athletic League here in Long Beach. And I know there were, you know, budget decisions, but that was something within your department and it was a good interaction between law enforcement and the community. Has there been any conversation about taking a look at a new model of the Police Athletic League? We're constantly trying to research best practices. Police Athletic League Once Upon a Time was a very effective program. As you know, during the recession, we lost over 20% of our staffing, and that's one of the programs that went away. Our partners at Parks and Rec do an amazing job, so maybe the model looks through Parks and Rec with maybe. Us. Having a part in that. Those are constant challenges that we're looking at. We're talking about and figuring out a potential way of doing that. But as we talk about some of these reforms that are going on, and that's the unfortunate part, Councilman, a lot of our moneys are having to go to these unfunded mandates and not look at these creative programs that we should all be looking at. And I think we all need to take a hard look at that and discuss this at the state level to see what our priorities are or should be. I understand. And, you know, and they're connected to the decisions that we made as a as a council like the body camera program. I think it's positive and inevitable, the body camera program. But if we're going to do it, we need to comply with all the laws that that that align with it. So that's something that we know will have unknown costs and we should be prepared so that you don't have to come back to the council to fully fund the things that we request you to do. So I support that program and helping fund the program. The last thing I'll bring up with you is, is some of the, you know, something I brought up with the fire chief. So, again, we're having a conversation about the shelter, the bridge housing that we're working on doing in the next in the next year. I know that the police department in the last budget established a quality of life officer. What I'd like to see is for us to be proactive in thinking about what the relationship is between the community, police, the, the quality of life officer, the heart team, you know, our and we have some bike patrol and we have a neighborhood resource officer. I'd like to see some relationship of like a community policing team operating somehow around the shelter operation to make sure that the community really sees and feels that we're really all hands on deck and on this the shelter and and that public safety is a part of the continuum we put in together to make sure that the shelter plan works. So I really don't have a question for you on that. Maybe, maybe your thoughts. But that's something I love the conversation I love to have over the course of the next year. It's an excellent point. And I'd like to share just a quick story. The mayor and I traveled to South Carolina about a year ago where we spoke at the U.S. Conference of Mayors because Long Beach is seen as a leader in in handling the homelessness challenges. We definitely have some work to do, but a lot of what you're describing is already happening with the multidisciplinary team that our health department leads with our fire department, our police department, city attorney, city prosecutor. We're communicating and coordinating like no other city. And I'd like to invite you to one of those meetings and to see what goes on there and there. They discuss challenges and priorities, not only individuals, but locations. And I think the location you bring up is a great idea and that can be brought to this team. And I think you'd be very impressed with what the with the employees being part of that team do. Great. Fantastic. I'd like to take something like that model and sort of replicate it specifically for this, but we have time to talk about it. Thank you for responding my questions, chief. So moving on, the Parks and Recreation. So first of all, Harold Gerardo, first of all, thanks for being so easy to work with you and Steven Scott. You know, the Parks team is just the best folks to work with. I you know, my questions generally are about sort of where we're going. I love that you're working on a strategic plan. I believe in planning your work, work, your plan. I also think that every time we bring a budget, we should be able to point to what plans, where we're addressing or what gaps we're closing. We've had a lot of conversation about closing the open space gap. And, you know, and, you know, and I can reference my district where 1.1 acre, 1.2 acres of open space per 10,000 residents. Right. Which is is, you know, significant. It's it's low. And so we took the steps of establishing a plan, creating a plan uptown open space plan to help identify creative ways to expand open space. And I love to make sure that we're taking incremental steps as needed every year in helping to close that gap in every budget. And so my question for you, and it's okay if you don't know it, it's kind of on the spot. But over the course of the last year have. We applied for any grants or anything in alignment with that plan. I don't think you're I don't think it's on. Specific to the the the north Long Beach. Town obviously. No, there hasn't been any particular grants other than grants to supplement the existing projects like. But with regards to adding adding more space, the only planning that we've been thinking in is, is the possibility of joint use, because that is one way of increasing open space and identifying schools in certain areas that would be too expensive to to purchase land in that area. That's the discussion level that I've been having with staff. Sure. And just just a nudge, if you will. I would I would say when the community goes through a process and, you know, the councils sort of reinforce this, when the community goes to these planning processes, we get input and we we we we talk about how we can close gaps and achieve the things the community needs. I think it's important that we immediately follow up by identifying resources, grants and those things that help, you know, give a little momentum before the plans become stale. Mm hmm. Right. So I think this plan received American Planning Association Award. It was very well received. And so to not have submitted and I know there's been multiple rounds of grant applications for not have shown up to the game, you know I don't think is acceptable. So I think we over the course of the next year, we need to show up. We need to step up and submit some applications so that we can say with each budget, here's the steps we've taken to help close these gaps. Right. Balancing of providing a balanced budget is a good step, but it's not enough. We should be a city that can every year talk about our efforts to close the gap. And then the last thing I'll say is, I know we talked about investing in like a mobile spay and neuter sort of animal health van. And I know this thing is expensive, but just curious, have you had any conversations with, you know, partners of parks or other potential funders about this mobile spay and neuter? With staff. We've had discussions and hopefully leveraging the funds that you are being proposed in the budget with regards to raising money. Right now there isn't. It's the same thing with discussion with partners of Parks. As you know, there's a one time only money of $100,000 to help develop a momentum for fundraising for animal care services. And so those monies, as we bring in more private monies, we will be identifying the high priority areas. And as you know, the as I mentioned, the the El Bax strategic plan is coming back to you in in the spring. Sure. Right. Thank you so much. I think that satisfies my questions. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Yes. Hello, everyone. I want to first say how proud I am of every single department, every year that we come to this budget meeting. There are issues that are important to the council, to our community members, and we've really been able to see progress in all three of your departments. So I would just want to start by saying that it's an exciting budget to know that while we're on a tight budget, we're doing what we need to do to continue to move the city forward. And so for PD. I guess I'm trying to decide where to start. My first question would be, with the attrition rates that we're facing right now, do you feel like this budget is helping us kind of fill that gap? I know that we've had some discussion around some retirement in the department, so I'd just like to hear about the plan to kind of address that. Yes, ma'am. Very good question. I feel very comfortable about where we're at in regards to planning ahead recruiting, hiring and training. A new Academy class is a significant accomplishment. It takes a lot of work to get there. A lot of commitment from all of you to fund it. We estimate that a class cost approximately $6.5 million to get through. Currently, we just hired another class that's anticipated to start on August the 29th. It has 72 recruits that we were able to recruit and hire into this class. A very diverse class, by the way. And that'll help us stay ahead of of the anticipated higher than normal attrition that you're asking about. And we have been concerned about in planning this. And I believe we're well ahead of the curve. And one of the biggest reasons is your guys's commitment for the funding. It is a significant commitment and it's there. And thank you. Okay. I support the new the new class, so long as you can get Commander Lewis to stay on for another ten years. I don't know if he's here, but Commander Lewis is the man. Commander Lewis is there and he's here. He's awesome. Okay. And one of the reasons and this leads me to my next question, one of the reasons that he's awesome is because he's out of his car a lot. He's building relationships with our neighborhoods, with people that typically might not have a relationship with PD. And so I like to just echo the conversation around community policing. I know I brought it up last time and I know whenever we're short staffed, it's difficult to have our officers out of their cars. But I do know that we have some members of of the second District here today, that community policing is really important to them. So if you could maybe elaborate on when you guys decide to have officers out of cars, how much time do they get to do that? And then also talk about the bike program that we have. I know that we voted on that last year and it's just now seems to be kind of rolling out. So in regards to community policing, it's a foundation of the way we do work. It's the standard we expect that all of our patrol officers that are in the field for a portion of their shifts will get out of their cars and do what we call walk in talks. I don't have the statistics right here in front of me, but it depends on the day. There's days where they're going from called the call and it's a little more challenging. But we do ask them when they see kids playing in the street, in the park, get out, throw the football around. As a matter of fact, if if you follow our social media, we're finally getting officers to to take pictures of themselves. That was something they didn't want to do. And I can see why. It's it's it wasn't easy for them, but we are transitioning to a little bit more of a marketing mindset. And so we're doing that a lot. And the officers know it's part of who we are and it's part of building a partnership and trust with the community. So it's we ingrain it from the minute we hire people, through the time we train them to get out there and do it. So I appreciate the fact that citizens want to see more of them as opposed to the opposite, not wanting to see them at all. So we'll continue to to in our efforts to get people out there. In regards to the the bike unit that was funded. We're not quite there yet. The funding wasn't made available at the time, and we're still kind of trying to work through that. But what we're doing is we're augmenting it with the safe streets money that we've talked about. So, for example, if you're as you communicate, I know you are with Commander Lewis or Commander O'Dowd. If you tell them there's an area that needs a little bit more, maybe bicycle patrol or foot patrol, that may be something that they put in, then action plan together and put people out there to do just that. So in regards to the people in the money, we're we're actually, I think, doing a very good job of putting them on the front lines. It's great. And I do know that that both commanders are working at Bixby Park. I believe they're putting their bikes in this next week into our field office so that they can do patrol out of there. So just when that kind of gets into full swing, it would be good to have a report back around the areas that had bikes. And if we saw a reduction, I know we've got a lot of chop shops in my district and so making sure that that we're kind of looking at those numbers and saying, does it help? Do we need more so that we can have that conversation with the next budget in relation to. I mean, you guys already know it. I know that I've probably been the most outspoken around reducing some of our instances with with PD and our community members. And so the statistics that you shared at the beginning of your presentation, I am thrilled to hear and I'm thrilled to hear that the answer is, well, we have more training, we have more hours, I mean, more resources to be able to really invest in our officers. And I think that that's what I've always committed to our constituents, is that we would always have the resources available to our officers to make sure that we're doing training and that we're able to look at the data that we have. And so I want to take a moment just to echo Councilwoman Price's comments around whatever we have to do to get staff in there early on to be able to do the redaction and kind of try to do some of that unfunded mandate is important. Whether it's unfunded or not, it's important to our constituents. And it's something that we as a council have to prioritize as well alongside all those other police programs. And so it's something that I wholeheartedly support trying to figure out. And then last comment for Tidelands. Every budget year, I always say that I support spending more Tidelands funds on public safety on our beaches. I know we did a lot the two years prior. So as you take that conversation, Mr. Modica, to the Budget Committee, that's something that I do support as well. I just wanted to to go on record with that. And then just could you elaborate briefly on the gang unit? Because I do think that that we are seeing crime, that that really affects our neighborhood. And we know it happens more in the summertime. And I know that it's part of some of the funding that you're already doing. Is there a I mean, I know that we've kind of talked about how much spending we have on our gang unit. Is that enough? As like. Does this budget get you what you need with that? I know we don't have fluff in this budget, but it's something that I think is timely for us to talk about. So from a perspective of needing more, I don't think any department head would ever sit up here and say, We don't need more. I'm really proud of the city family, the employees for every department because we're working our tails off to make this city safe, to make the city function. But at the same time, I'm very cognizant of the fact that when I'm talking about gang enforcement, for an example, you have to have intervention and prevention. You have to have parks and libraries. Those are all functions we absolutely need to have in order to to get to where I think we all need to get to. I believe we have a very effective gang enforcement section. Yes. In years past, it was reduced as many specialized units in our department were. That just meant that we we do have to work a lot harder. We have to communicate and coordinate like we never have. And our gang enforcement section people are constantly passing on information or intelligence to our directed enforcement teams that are assigned to each patrol division, and they're responsible for the front line enforcement that's taking place. And there are times when they are busy or some of the the the questions that Councilman Richardson was asking about certain times of the year. We're trying to maximize our deployment. And that's where I'm telling you that the the the the neighborhood safe streets money is absolutely critical to what we do and how we do it because every time we get flare ups, that's essentially like putting more police officers in specific geographical areas at specific times where the data's telling us that we think this stuff's going to happen. And at the end of the day, it's about saving lives. It's about preventing these shootings from occurring. Thank you for that. And I know I think I said that was my last question, but the one thing we can talk about in the future, though, is that connection between jobs, our workforce development, our city prosecutor. When we have people that come in with low level situations, what are we doing with the prosecutor's office or with our workforce development to make sure we're connecting those people back to jobs? And that's really where we're going to see the biggest reduction in our crime, not just policing, but making sure that we're investing on that front. And so those are my questions for for you police chiefs. So thank you so much for all the work that you guys have done for our fire team. I have just two questions. It was great to hear of the progress of our Hart team. Obviously, it's something near and dear to my heart. And you guys are seeing a lot of the times in our district, so really appreciate the team and everything they do. Are we anywhere closer to being able to have? I think there's some changes that have to be made at the state level to be able to have the Hart team respond to 911 calls for homeless. Is that still an effort that Janice Hahn and others are working on? Do you know? We do have one of the heart units as a certified, and the other one is not at this point. Okay. So we do have one that's certified. Yes. And I thought that last year we had talked about adding a third heart team. Was that not part of that conversation last year? That has has been part of the conversation. But at this point, we're not looking at it in this budget. But it doesn't. Okay. And then one. Has to remind us, we used to have one heart team that we formed as a pilot. And then last year we added a second using measure. So that was the addition. Great. Thank you, Tom. Obviously, the downtown we've seen, you know, over 3000 new units in downtown. It's an area that's that's extremely important to me, particularly with all the high rises. Will you be able to share with us in the next time that we bring up the budget, the number of calls for station one and station to increase from last year to next year? I know that's a year out request, but it would be helpful to kind of look and see. I know that the increasing fire in our downtown is low on the list, but since we've added so many new residents, I think it would be helpful to make sure that we as a councilor are being mindful of that change. Sure, we'd be happy to give that to you. Thank you so much. And Parks and Rec. I am so thrilled to have you and the team really partner with us on a lot of our key areas. I know Bixby Park Parcel one has been key. I want to thank your team for the role that you've played there. Thank you for helping us in downtown try to figure out the cover around the park. Park. But I wanted to just give big applauds to you for really taking compassion saves to heart. It was great to open up the budget book and see the new positions that have been slotted, and I think I don't have too many questions. I just really wanted to say how much I appreciate that. I echo Councilmember Richardson's comments around Park Equity. We've spent I know you came in at the tail end of Park Equity conversation, but we spent a lot of time talking about resources. And as a second district resident with the seven year old, every single program my daughter's in is on the east side. And it is frustrating not to be able to have something that's close to have some of that park programing. So urging you to take that park equity conversation serious not only in greenspace, but in programing whenever you're doing your your strategic plan, because it is a real issue that we have and we have parks like Miracle on Fourth Street that don't have open programing that people aren't aware of. And it's not listed in our parks and rec books. So making sure that we are activating those spaces that that needed the most. So thank you all department heads and city manager. I'm very pleased with where this budget is at and look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues for asking all the questions I was going to ask. He stole my thunder. And then so basically the one the one question I was going to ask for both the public well, both the public safety heads is it's a recruiting and academies. Chief, you mentioned you have a Chief Luna. You mentioned you have a class currently in place with over, what, 72 recruits, I think you mentioned in the class. Yes, sir. When is that class expected to graduate? Six months from August the 29th. And doing the math in my head, I'm going to say about February of 2020. Is there going to be another class coming immediately after or what's the plan for the with a budget year with the academy where this year. Our goal was to hire to this last year for 2019 and budget permitting. The goal will be to hire two more in this coming year. So we're already recruiting for the next one, even though we're just starting one at the end of this month. And I realize that it's all peaks and valleys when it comes to attrition, promotions, people who don't complete the academy. So I know that that's a big part of the the process with personnel, and that's a challenge every year that you face as well with the Chief Espino, that you both have to deal with those issues in regards to that. Where are we with the idea? I know you're going to want more because we need more police officers to be hired to get us at least that a closer to a place where we want to be a police officer per thousand. Where are we at right now in terms of our representation of police officers to the population that we are at the 480,000, the last census? Where are we with that in terms of a deployment? Our current ratio stands in about 1.8 per thousand. And what's the national average, you know? You know what? It's all over the board. And we're consistent with departments on the West Coast, the average and maybe just a little bit beyond us or below us. And on the East Coast, it's it's closer to sometimes three per thousand, but their policing is very different than it is out here on the West Coast. Understood. In regards to the item that Councilmember Richardson mentioned in terms of the power program and I know we used to have there, and that also went away with all the budget cuts. Just to give you a heads up. I have been approached by a community group to look into reestablishing Pell. And so I'm looking forward to working with them as well as your department. You're represented that I'm going to be working with is obviously it's the Commander McGuire that I'll be working with and hopefully we can bring something forward that will be workable for not only the police department but for the community as well. I think it's a it's a program that was very successful and one that we should probably bring back. So I'm looking forward to having discussions that and of course, with our city manager and and the mayor to see if we could re-implement or reinstitute such a program. I think it's very successful. We know that they have the search and rescue, which is there, which is very helpful, as well as promoting future firefighters and future public servants. And I want to commend both of you for all the service that you've done for the city. Both of you have been with the city practically your whole careers, and it's been phenomenal. So the same question to Chief Espinal in regards to recruiting, and I know we're going to hear the presentation a little later, but in terms of academies, what do you have in mind for this this budget year in regards to hiring? Well, we currently have an academy that's ready to start on August 19th, and they should be graduating December of this year, mid-December. Right now, that number is right around 30 and I say right around 30 because we're in competition with everybody in the region for the same candidates and they're getting swooped up left and right. So hopefully we start this academy with right around 20, 30 candidates and we have 28 new firefighters by the end of the year. The follow up to that is we'll start recruiting. In November for the class that's scheduled for 2020. That class, by the time they go through the entire process again, they'll start up in August of next year and graduating by about mid-December, about the same number of candidates. How many recruits do your comedy class? Ideally 28, right. Is a starting point. Right now, I think we're right around 2830 and we have a week to go before we actually start. Would it be unheard of that we lost one or two in the next week or so? It's happened before. So just anticipating that. And Mr. Moy, I hope that we've spoken before, and I know you have a great grant writing team, great writing team, and I hope that we are able to continue to look at grant opportunities to enhance not only our parts base, but to make them much more enjoyable and and make them more able to be welcoming for people to come to the park and play. And those those playgrounds that you put out there recently have been very received. I hope that we can do more. I know you're working with Park with Public Works in some of those projects, so I hope that we are able to continue and put more out there. So those are the only the only two questions that I have for each one of you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just one thing. It's just got to be right now because I saw it right here in your budget. Chief Luda, I noticed that you were going down last year. You had a higher number of SS O's in your budget and this year you have about four less. Is there a reason for that? What's what's taking place with your. I'm looking at SS. So three. Last year, you had adopted NAFTA 101. And this year you have a budget at 97. That's for lessors. Are they being re reassigned or promoted or what's the what's the status of that? I believe there are two positions. I'll have to get back to you on the four. Does it sound familiar? I know there were two that are being shifted around and a lot of them the moneys that we have in order to fulfill some. I keep on repeating myself about these unfunded mandates, trying to figure out how to get stay with 1421 and 748, because those are things that or positions that we have to do to get the work done. So but I can get back to you. I'll follow up with you on the four. I think it's two. Okay. Well, it says four in a bunch of books. Okay. Just following up with that. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, excellent. Excellent presentations from all three of you. As always, we're really moving in the right direction, and I appreciate all your work. A couple of things I know that I sat with. I can only think of the joke right now, Mr. Emergency. Right now I can't think of Master of Disaster. Thank you. The Master of Disaster. Earlier, there was a notice that went out today, about $12 million available from at the state level for 911 modernization. I know that currently we would have to be a recipient from the state and I don't think we're eligible, but I'd love us to keep an eye on that. I think that that's something that's crucial in the next few months. And if if possible, if there's any legislation that we could look for to help modernize the way that the the legislation was written. It would be great. The state has 12 million coming our way, and I hear more to come as our 911 system is is important to the work that both of you do. Actually, all three of you, quite honestly, a little bit about unfunded mandates in my prior life. We used to package up the unfunded mandate costs on an annual basis and send them to the state. Is there a process for that? I can't think of the acronym right now. Yes, we still do that. So every single year we record it's financial liability, we record those and we send them to the state. And every year they don't pay. But every couple of years, probably every 5 to 6, we get lucky and there is a settlement and they end up cutting us a check. So it's really important that we track those and that we submit them every year. If you don't submit them, you don't get paid when they do actually pay their unfunded liabilities. Yeah, I want to say that I recently heard that a settlement from like 2009 came in. So they're very, very far behind. But I do appreciate that we're still doing that because it's crucial to the work that we're doing. Finally, there are. Governments. Across the states that have looked at getting sponsorships for their trash cans. Many of you may remember when there was a radio station called The Wave. And while we don't have waves at our beaches currently, the wave used to sponsor all the trash cans for the departments of beaches and harbors up and down the state. And so in exchange for the cost of the cans and the cost of emptying them and maintaining them and paying for the trash contract, every single trash can up and down the county coastline said 94.3 or whatever the radio station was. I'm sure one of you know the wave. And so thank you of 94.7, the wave. Another piece of advertisement for them. For there, there are many years of financial support. I'd be very interested in seeing the Parks and Rec program better utilize the Peps program that this Council adopted that does allow for sponsorships, as Councilmember Orange discussed . I think that it is important that the trash cans at the. Beach have lids. And I also find that it is crucial that the trash cans in our parks have lids. And I know that we've been working hand in hand with the Friends of Eldorado Park. East. I was confused sometimes on East and West on their desired park trashcan lid that we could put on the park trash cans so that our vermin population and our birds aren't diving into the trash cans, getting tangled up in wire and other such things. I'm also quite interested. In knowing a little bit more about our senior programs that we took a lot of effort. I know that the Parks and Rec Department really took a strong lead on that. Do you have any? Short update that you could provide on the initiative that we supported last year that came from Council Member Austin. Yes. So the the senior program at the expo, which is was 40,000 of the 100,001 time, only minutes is going very strong. It's three days a week and it's very, very popular. There's about 40 to 50, sometimes more participants. So it's very, very strong. And then the we're creating a mobile program to move around senior programing, and that's in the works and being developed with the the $20,000 a one time only. And then the 30,000 is to develop a robust volunteer program for our seniors and for people that want to provide volunteer services at the senior . And then the last 10,000 is we're working on just promotional material. So the the the moneys are going to very good use. And we appreciate that those resources. Well, I really appreciate the hard work that you put into that and the numerous stakeholders that you brought to the table. I know that it was Passion of Councilmember Austin, something that his staff really volunteered for and put his money where his mouth was in terms of the effort. And I think that for you to have led that so successfully, we're just really proud of the work that you did. I know you were new at the time, and I just think that that was fantastic. Another initiative that came out of budget oversight and the full council last year was the postings related to park utilization. Are you able to give a short update? I know you'll give me updates at our staff meetings. But the on the website, the the permits. Yes. So are daily posting of the athletic field sports permits is going very well. People from the public can see who has an actual permit for the sports organization. And we're very close to them now, putting the permits for park events. And that's the second part to our plan. Hopefully we'll be able to do that fairly soon. It's the same software as you know, and we're just developing the training to be able to do those reports and put it on the Web. And do we think that will be before the end of the fiscal year, before the end of the calendar year? I would say around the fall, it may be early October, but we will definitely we are able to do it. It's just a matter of training staff to do it on a regular basis to to to update that information. And hopefully that that plan would eventually be automated. That's something that was advocated by our friends of Wardlow Park. And I think that, again, the department has really embraced working with the friends groups and their initiatives. That was a park that was consistently used in violation of the city policy. And this allows for the community to be our eyes and ears and support us knowing and understanding when mass gatherings are happening, when additional potential public safety or other things are not scheduled because they were not permitted. And finally, I just want to give a big round of applause. And I know the mayor is very supportive of this as well. We are now accepting credit cards at Eldorado Park. I think that is just a huge, huge change and an ability for us to reduce the wait times for the number of individuals who used to have to make U-turns because they did not have cash. And I look forward to phasing in a more comprehensive. Documentation of the utilization of park users as they go into the park and what that looks like over time. So thank you very much for your hard work. I think that we are moving in the right direction. All three of you. Any other questions I had? My colleagues have already answered or asked. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Supernanny. Thank you to all three departments. Excellent reports and very comprehensive. I just have one question. And it involves body worn cameras. So it's either for PD staff or our chief Luna. Great response that that will get things implemented possibly the first month of 2020. I just like to approach the question from the opposite direction because I'm sure there are a lot of variables and in getting these things up and in place. So council does its job. Let's say we approved this in this budget and I think the first meeting in October would be October 1st. That falls on a Tuesday. If you were to get the go ahead that night, what's the soonest that a contract could be executed? I'm being told October. Okay. So if we approve this October four, sometime within that 30 days, that a contract would be executed? Yes. Okay. And in terms of the point that Councilwoman Pryce brought up about ramping up for personnel and whatnot, it just seems like you have a pretty short window there. That's my impression there, that if you're going to get this thing implemented and in place the first month of 2020, and this contract is, let's say, executed November 1st. That seems like a very short window to get everything going. So. So you're you're telling us that that's that's all doable and and no real issues there. I will never say there won't be any issues. We will do our best to get there. But again, I do want to clarify. I don't know if I've done a good enough job of communicating this this evening. And by the way, if I didn't say this, I do have through the city manager's office a24 from memo coming to all of you regarding our legal obligations with 1421 and 748. It is pretty complex and. Please remember that the the people in the moneys we're asking for today are to comply with the law that's already passed and we're already behind. So even if we started. Two weeks from now, we're already behind. So I need people. And one way or another, those people are going to have to do that job. I already have people doing it now. I don't have enough people. So what I'm asking all of you to do as your chief is I need the money and people to comply with the law. And it just doesn't involve body worn cameras. We tied it in together, but it's it's all the legal mandates that we have a legal obligation to fulfill. So at the end of the day, hypothetically, we don't approve the moneys. I'm going to find the employees somewhere in this police department to complete those task. And it's not going to be pretty. But at the end of the day, we have to get it done as a team. Okay. I appreciate that. I just wanted to give you that opportunity or I just want to make sure council is doing everything that we need to do to make this happen. So thank you for that extra explanation. That's it. Thank you. Council member Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. As minority. Fine. Thank you. You know the end. I thought I would wait it to the end because the fact that I knew how the questions would be asked, but not the ones that I want to ask you. And the biggest part about all of it is that with the chief fire and police. And Parks and Rec. Yeah, I just can't really commend you guys enough for the work that you do here in our city, especially with the fire and the police department. Because the fact that I feel like I live at the fire department, yeah, I'm 17, but station ten, you know, they're so quick and fast, I don't get a chance to sleep at night. That just goes to show you how busy they really are. And Chief, I'd like to commend you and your staff, because the fact that every incident that happened in my district, I get a call from one of either your commanders or one of your sergeants, and it's excellent. Only at the time when it's like four and 5:00 in the morning, I still get a report. And that's why I give everyone in my district my phone number. So if I do get a call from one of those individuals, I will have an update on it. So I really appreciate that. The only question I have to ask an individual and then in the patrol bill, I see that the traffic safety in the proactive role of traffic stops are listed as there, you know, as a key service service. And these officers based out of are these officers based out of, you know, our regular station, are these individuals who are solely responsible for these kinds of tasks like the motorcycle officers? Every uniformed police officer is responsible for traffic enforcement in the city. So if you if you're working a beat, say, in the area where you live and either, A, they observe a violation or they get complaints of a violation, somebody's running a stop sign, maybe driving too fast. Part of their job is to be proactive and make a traffic stop. They don't have to site all the time. It's their discretion. They cite or warn. We do have officers on motorcycles who primary function is traffic enforcement and there are out of our field support division, which is located on Lakewood Boulevard. But they have citywide responsibilities. And any time we get community concerns about traffic, whether it's coming from a community member or one of you, your officers, your staffs, they're the ones who get assigned to an area to enforce a speeding or maybe it's traffic around schools, specific traffic enforcement, and they can get around traffic a little bit easier. And they're the ones you don't want to see in your rearview mirror. Thank you, Jane. Also, I'd like the last question. How many more officers do we have working in the department? How are they assigned throughout the city? We have approximately I want to say it's 16 or 18 motor officers and there's we try to have coverage on multiple shifts. We get a lot of, for example, overtime or grants from the Office of Traffic Safety to specifically focus on people using cell phones, impaired driving, seatbelts and things of that nature. So they'll get assigned to the grants on overtime. But generally they are focused wherever the complaints are throughout the city. Thank you, because I haven't really had a great response when we're having our problems over on Magnolia and Pacific and they were there and they really have to tighten up a lot. So I want to thank you officers for that also. And that's enough. I don't need any more from you, Chief, on this. Thank you very much. Now for the fire captain, I'd like to I'm very happy to see that we have the Fire Corps, you know, program because under way, because it's really like, you know, to offer, you know, the help. And if there's any help that we can offer you, you know, and to recruit in, you know, at risk kids, you know, we'd be interested in being any part of that upcoming class. And I want to thank you for that. Also, you know, Chief, on that one and the like. I think it's a terrific program. It's a wonderful program. And thank you so much. And then regarding to the budget, looking at it, I learned that about the the limestone program targeting the city, the Latino community. And I am interested in my office having an outreach and in the material for this program, if it's possible. On that, and I don't really know much about it, but I'm seeing that that's in it. So how do you pronounce that? Yeah, you definitely go and get together with our community services. Thank you. Thank you. And the last I'd like with Parks and Rec, you know, in our recent community budget meeting, I heard in the ask for the continuing to be say program during the summer and the feasibility of establishing Mecca. This park is one of our sites. You know, I'd really like for us to look at this if possible. And I know that the meeting, the staff mentioned it, it costs about 25,000 would be safe season. So let's please keep this as a priority for my district cause I only saw that be save mentioned once in the budget book. So I'd really like for, you know, the Parks and Rec to really keep that as a priority, especially MacArthur's park there, because we have a lot of situations, you know, with homeless there right next to the park. So we could really keep some of those things possible. I really appreciate that. And last. And last. I know that lately in the budget hearing, we were heard from the Health and Human Services. But since both PD and parks are here, I think we need to work on an after hour and weekend homeless outreach program, especially around our parks. So I would like to meet with any of you and discuss this. You know, we get a chance to Y20 and that's the end of my report. Thank you very much asking. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. Everyone has spoken already, so I'm going to make comments. And then if there's additional comments, we'll go from there. A couple of couple items. The first is, I don't know that I that we had publicly said yet that we have the live release rate is at 92%. So I just want to congratulate you on that, Mr. Mouat. And if there's anyone here from the Animal Care Services team that that's actually really going in the right direction. And if we if our if our total number for our total live release number is at 92%, that is showing some significant improvement. And we've been improving every year. But I want to just congratulate you on that. I know that was kind of in a slide, but I wanted to point to that and thank you for your work. And let's give our animal care team a round of applause because they work really hard. In addition, I just want to echo a couple of comments. One is I'm also an esthetics person. I want to agree with Councilman Price on the trash cans any time we can. As you know, Mr. West, I always talk about stuff like this, but any time that we can ensure that everything looks, matches and looks the same and there's a quality to it, please, on those trash cans before we purchase a whole bunch, make sure they're quality and they look similar. I want to lift up something the vice mayor, Andrew said, which was I am also very interested in our homelessness efforts around weekends especially. I find that because we don't have the Multi-Service Center open on the weekend and because we don't have staff, obviously we have quality of life and our other folks out there doing the work in the fire department, but we don't have as much dedicated folks. Oh, they don't. I thought they were on weekends. Okay. So also quality of life and fire apparently are not a weakness, but I have found that we are doing as best we can during the week. But then on the weekends it becomes very apparent that a lot of folks out there need support and that there is not any sort of resources. And so and it also has an impact, quite frankly, on on the way we respond to needs and folks that are out in the community. And so I would just I would just concur that that's something that we should do. And I would hope that the council would look at that as an issue. The third is I notice that all everyone talked about measure in their presentations, and I just want to uplift that again and certainly think and talk about the impact that measure has had on the city. And it's had an impact on every department, but especially on police and fire. And then the last thing, Chief, I just wanted to I know there's been some discussions about violence and some of the councilman mentioned our needs for policing. And I want to just ask to ask you a couple of questions, and I think they're important as well. The first is on the officer involved shooting number. I, too, want to commend you and the department and the leadership. I think that you have you all and our rank and file have done extensive amount of of training and thinking about how we how we work on this. This is a very complex and difficult issue. And it's it's something that we want to make sure that all of our officers feel safe. And the fact that your you have implemented just some different different tactics and different ways of dealing with incidents. Incidents I think is very commendable to you. And I just want the whole team to know that it's it's very impressive. And it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be tragic incidents in the future. But I just want to commend you on that, Chief. And I also want to note something that was alluded to earlier. I think we know there's a lot in the in the in the media about about crime or violence. And I think every single crime that happens is very serious. And certainly every single homicide that happens in our city is very serious. And every homicide, like the one we had recently, impacts families and people and loved ones. Our homicide number rate this year up to now is is what number. And before I answer that, you're right. Every number I'm going to say is is something we look at very seriously. Each one gets investigated fully. As of today, we are at 19 compared to 19 last year, which I wish it was at zero. And we fight really hard to try and do everything we can to prevent all of them. I know and I know that sometimes I'll read that the homicides are dramatically up this year. There's a lot more than last year. And I think what you're saying is that there's at this point in the year, there's a same amount this year or was last year, is that correct? Yes, sir. And then I think that I know that obviously we know that the homicide rate in the last few years has been some of the lowest that we have recorded in the city's history. I know that every single one is a is a tragedy. A few years ago, we were averaging I think I know now we're averaging depending on the year, it could be 30, it could be a little more, could be some, some less. I know that we used to average 50, I think maybe 20 years ago when we were averaging 80. Before that we were averaging we've averaged over 100 as well. Has the overall crime rate decade to decade gone down over the last 40, 50 years? Drastically? There's no comparison. When I was a young homicide detective in 1992, we had well over 100 murders, and that was the average right around that time. So when when people ask me out in the community, it sounds like things are getting worse today. I've been here 34 years. And I'm going to tell you, we the city has changed drastically when it comes to violent crime. Is it safe to say the city's safer today than it was ten years ago? It's a lot safer. Today than it was. Absolutely. But the changes that it's social media, 24 hour news cycle, everybody knows everything that's happening on these devices. So they feel like there's more of it happening. And that's not to downgrade the seriousness of the events we're still responding to. And I know I also have looked at the media reports that you post online that are that are for public consumption. I think they're for public view. And I notice that that the media reports for for this year that if if the things stay on track, in the end they certainly could change. But that overall crime this year at the six month at the six month check in is lower than it was last year at the six month check in, is that correct? A little lower overall crime? That is correct. We we are as of the the end of June for the 3010 that we report to the FBI, we have a 4.2 reduction in overall part one crime. And I know that. And I know that in the last few years, we've been recording the lowest levels of part one crime that we've ever recorded in the history of the city of Long Beach. Is that is that true? That is well within range. We are much better today than we have been in the past. And I certainly think one of the things that's important, obviously, is looking at data and sometimes I say this to uplift the work that you're all doing, but all our partners across the city, whether it's in parks or in libraries or across the city, violence of any kind at any time is serious and is involves real families and real people, and they're incredibly tragic and heartbreaking. I think everyone feels that. I also I also want to just commend you that every every single one of those is is serious. But the fact that they continue to decrease and that we are experiencing right now lower levels of overall crime that we have in the last 40 , 50 years, I think is also important to note. And and I also want to be clear that when I when I read that, you know, homicides are shootings are up dramatically over over the last few years, I think the numbers and the data is the data. And and so I think that's important as well. So I just want to I just wanted to add that I think that you all are doing a fantastic job and I'm really proud of our police department. It's a tough environment to work in, but these numbers and your work show just some incredible progress. And I just want to thank every single member of the rank and file. And then and then lastly, I'll just say again to the finance staff, you guys have done a really great job. So thank you again for this presentation, Councilmember Pierce. And thank you. I want to talk about trashcans again. I left it off my list and it's one of my pet peeves. I believe correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Modica, didn't we in the last two years purchased some big bellies out of the Tidelands funds for our beaches? We did, yes. So we have a report that we'd like to give you. We've done additional big bellies. We also, I believe, put something like several hundred additional cat trash. Hands out on the beach. So we will get you those stats. It's important to celebrate what we've done and we know we need to do more. So and we agree things need to look consistent and tight. And and and the and the trashcan caps help as well. Yes. And I brought that up because of the conversation is can we match our trash cans? I don't know. I know there's an additional cost associated with emptying big bellies. But they keep our streets so much cleaner and our parks so much cleaner. And I feel like every budget I'm a broken cycle, a broken record with whatever we can do to get whether it's big belly or different trash can. The trash cans we have on Broadway are probably what I'm thinking are the trash cans that they want to put back on our beaches while they have a lid. You can put your hands in each side and they dump over while they have sand in the bottom. Every Sunday I drive down Broadway and there are empty trash cans. And so whatever we can do, it's just like my biggest pet peeve. Those trash cans make our streets look filthy. They're disgusting looking. They're not clean. And I know they're cheap to to empty. But what's the cost? Whenever we think about how much pollution we're putting back in and the cost to those businesses, when you go down a corridor, that's beautiful, except for their trash cans. I never thought trash cans would be my issue, but trash cans, whatever we can do to make sure they have solid lids. And then I had one question for Parks and Rec, our mobile adoption van, which I'm very happy to say I adopted Jojo out of. I know one of the challenges has been cost to try to get them to be more mobile and to be at places. Do we expect an updated plan on how to get the mobile adoption van actually out and being used more frequently? Yes. So that's that's very much part of the Elma strategic plan. And also, I'm excited because of the opportunity of now being given the tools to raise additional monies to be able to do these extra things that will make a big difference. Awesome. Thank you very much. And Councilmember, I actually do have some of those stats right here if you'd like them. Over the last probably six months or so, we've deployed about 100 of the blue barrels throughout our parks in the Tidelands, and we've done additions on 60 of the 95 gallon rollout receptacles along the beach bike path. We've done a number of other big bellies and just this step blows me away. We have a two person team that empties every day, 350 trash receptacles in the Tidelands area along our beaches. So we definitely have a crew that's doing that. We can continue to do more and we hear you loud and clear. And I think I speak for Councilmember Price and myself. We hate hate the blue barrel trash cans. We just we will take out a campaign against those trash cans if we have to. But also, I know that we've used resources in our Tidelands funds in the past. Whatever we can do is we're having the conversations around the Highlands to make sure that if we're talking about consistency, that we go towards the best. I know that the Mr. Beck had talked about. Maybe there's something in between those mushroom top ones, the blue barrel and the the expensive ones to empty. So I thought we were going to get a report back on that last year, I guess is really what I'm saying is that we haven't finished our trashcan conversation and I want more trash can conversation. We will certainly follow up on that. Councilman Monk. Councilman Mongo. That work now. Thank you. I really want to reinforce what the mayor said about statistics and misinformation about crime. Are we on a pathway or trajectory to start integrating the crime statistics in a more user friendly manner through our open data portal? Is that a better conversation for T.I. or is that a police conversation? We are putting it out through our website. But yeah, it's probably better answered by T.I.. Okay, I'll work on that. And then I don't know if you'd have this available today, but perhaps for your recall to the Budget Oversight Committee, if we were to add either through a position or through overtime, a quality of life team for our weekends, I'd be interested in knowing what that would cost and potentially some sources that we could pull it from , because I completely agree. The homeless population needs to be able to be served 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And if they become accustomed that we are not on duty on the weekends. That's when we have some of the challenges. I know I've also met with the city manager on this and I plan to meet with Park Public Works as well. But we have Muse with Caltrans to do maintenance on their property. We need a use immediately to do quality of life. Support and enforcement on. Both our waterways that are. County facilities. DWP has some land behind Steve Lee that we really need to be able to access. And furthermore, on the Caltrans properties, we cannot wait for their process, their postings there. It's just too long of a process and the residents cannot rely upon it. And so I'd be interested in a report back. Within, I don't know, 120 days on what our options are and or a draft. And I will also take my time to meet with the department heads city attorney public works to help form that because it's crucial. Well, thank you very much. That concludes questions for hearing out of number one. And we are going to try to comment on the budget if there's. I think we have folks lined up for coming on the budget, so please come forward cautiously. Robert Fox and Control, Gary Shelton, Ramon Vana and Carlos Avila. Please come forward. Mr. Mayor, before we hear from the public, we have a there's been some questions from council to hear from different departments. So here's the schedule. So next Tuesday, we plan to hear from public works and the capital improvement budget. Also development services. Then we had September 3rd. We can hear we've had our requests for health and civil service so we can have health and civil service instead of the harbor and the water department. And I think there was a request for ID. So on September 3rd, we can have health, civil service and technology. If that's all right with the city council. We'll work on the schedule. Thank you. Courteously, please. Right. Carelessly. A number of things to thank you for here. But with only 90 seconds, I'm going to skip those. You have you don't have 90 seconds. Oh, you. Don't? Okay. You have 3 minutes. All right. So in terms of the budget, I'd like to talk about the parks budget first. And I want to thank Corrado Mackay for being I'm very encouraged by his willingness to listen and consider alternatives. I've been really pleased with Stacie Mungo's program of Friends of Parks that has the promise for working together with the community. Each park is unique. One is an ecosystem with wildlife, and another can be a sports center. So the friends of those parks are all different, have different frameworks on them. My my greatest concern here in Eldorado Park is the fact that there has been a lack of maintenance for a number of years, the long term maintenance. I used to ride my bike around the lake in Area three in the 1980s, and that would be a death trap to do that today. If you go along that there's chunks of cement six and eight feet or six and eight inches high every few feet. It's broken. And we've talked about that and that it requires capital dollars and a lot of money. But we can't ignore that because that's an ADA compliance issue. And if you'd rather pay for a lawsuit, I mean, that's just where I don't want to go. You know, the first time somebody stumbles into that. So I'd really like someone to take a look at that. I appreciate the talk about trash cans. We have spent a year on trash cans and our friends at parks groups. And I can only tell you that I am concerned about the discussion about esthetics because we don't have toilets, funds where we are. We don't have the money to go out and buy all new trash cans. We have trash cans without bottoms in them, so we need trash can lids. And I don't care what the trash cans look like and I don't care what the lids look like, but those animals are being hurt. Every week I am given reports of animals that are taken to emergency and I see them in the park and it's heartrending to see their little foot cut off. And, you know, how do they get away from a coyote if they don't have a foot? So I'm really asking that instead of focusing on esthetics, we focus on getting trash can lids and I don't care what they look like. The third thing I'd say about the budget is coming from the private sector. In the budget meetings I've been in, there's always a discussion about reducing budget and headcount, and I don't hear any of that in the city ever. I always hear about adding headcount and adding budget making giving raises. So I'd like to see industrial engineering brought in. Thank you very much, Mr. Fox. Good evening, city council and mayor. It's working. It's on, Robert. I would like to speak on a few subjects. First one is for the police department. I hope we can include in this budget enforcement for E-Scooters. It's a new program that we have here in the city and we have not planned for any kind of enforcement mechanism on e-scooters. And we've had several accidents in the Broadway area, and we don't have any options there. We don't have anybody to call or any kind of monitoring whatsoever. So I do hope that we can set aside at least some portion of our police budget to address that relatively new addition to the mobility of Long Beach. Also bike enforcement. Since we have such a combination of things happening at this point in time, it's imperative that we have people that actually stop at stoplights or stop at stop signs. The resultant accidents are tragic for everyone, and that's going to take enforcement. That's not going to be done voluntarily. I would also, of course, like us to record any dispatch call. I know. That's really. Minutia. But if we don't record the minutia, we don't have a pattern of what happens. This was part of our problem on the Broadway corridor, was trying to figure out what actually our stats were. And so I applaud your great work and I hope that we can add on. I mean, that may take a staff person to record all dispatch calls. But particularly if we know we have a problem in a certain area, I think that becomes terribly important for us to make a decision. As for the fire department. I know you're into the idea of adult fall programs. Unfortunately, the addition of will anchors on the Broadway corridor have accelerated the falls of individuals, particularly the elderly. I myself happen to have two hip replacements, and I don't really want to fall. And I've already fallen once. And I think I have pretty good eyesight, even though I have to wear glasses to read. It occurs to me that we really need to take a really serious look about our infrastructure if in fact we want to preserve people's health and prevent the tripping falls that are happening. So I'd like us to look into that as a fire department and give a recommendation to the city manager as to how we might mitigate that. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Also, it seems to me we need to in some way notify the public that there is a $250 charge for any kind of emergency services, like an ambulance to them. I have so many of my people in the area complaining to me about they got a bill for $250 because the paramedics showed up. And I think that if we don't tell people about that, they get irritated afterwards. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Miss Cantrell. I was glad. Good evening. And Cantrell and I have just been reading a fascinating book by a retired librarian, Long Beach librarian Claudine BURNETT, called Prohibition Madness. And I found this interesting. Statistic about the police department. She says that when the town was about 18,000 people, there were 23 men on the police force. And then in 1933, which is the year I was born, there were. 200. Members on the police force. And this was for a population of 145,000 people. Today we have the number of sworn officers as being 1.6 per thousand. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, there was one for every 750 people. I am very concerned about the fact that you are not replacing the police that we lost in the last recession. We no longer, as you said tonight, have the Athletic League. We no longer have the. Field anti-gang unit. That go out in the field and see what's going on. We do not have visible patrol people. We don't have the car, the patrol cars in our neighborhoods that we used to have. And I think that this even though you say crime is down. People that are in the neighborhoods don't feel this way. So I would like you to use more of Measure A's money to hire more policemen. I think that this will be. A better use of the money than some of the other things that have been mentioned tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cantrell. Mr. Shelton. Hi, everybody. My name's Gary Shelton, and I'm going to try to draw a nexus between the budget that you're looking at tonight for public safety and Parks and Rec to a couple of other items that might not seem that obvious at first, but the first is that I would hope that you would ask the department heads to work to control overtime expenses. And the second is that I would hope that you folks would work to identify available funds for the city's housing trust fund. Now, I'll try to explain to you how I get to those two items from tonight's budget meeting. We do have public safety on the docket. We have a lot of homelessness. It was discussed tonight, even homeless dogs. But a lot of money goes to homelessness. I think one thing that we didn't hear and I think we would discover if we asked is that the fire department probably has more calls for service toward assistance to homeless people than the police department does. Just a wild guess. But I think that they're they're out there in the streets dealing with homeless people who have fallen or for whatever reason, need their assistance more often than the cops. If we were to start now and we have to start now somewhere, and why not now to create the housing that's necessary to put those people into housing where they really belong in, to services where they really belong for their own benefit. Then what we would look at would be reduced calls for service and reduced expenses and reduced workload on the public service people. Now we have to start somewhere. We might not get to that point this year, but we do have to start somewhere. So the reason I mentioned the housing trust fund is because that's one of the local sustainable sources of. It has a local sustainable source in the transit transit occupancy tax for up to $500,000 a year to come out of the general fund, which is earmarked. And a couple of years back and I've been here many times when we had the periodic budget reports expressing that there is funds available, but we lost money never going into the housing trust fund because it was always never available. The funds were not available. Now I would ask you folks to work to make sure that those funds are available every year. Okay. And the one year that came down here and it was so disappointing because the funds were clearly available, they had all been spent all $500,000 for police overtime. So if we reduce overtime, we can help create housing. If we create housing, we can host housing homeless people. We can reduce the calls for service to those homeless people. Now, I don't think that's a far shot, but we have to start somewhere. Okay. So it's up to you folks again to try to work to identify the available money in time that it can be put into the housing trust fund. And also to ask your department heads to work to control overtime. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shelton. Ramen Vesuvius. Have your oats close enough. Ramon? Yes, that's fine. Hey, I'm going to be quick. I see you guys are kind of. Falling asleep, so I'm not going to keep my. My talk to too long. I support all of these departments. I think all of you do, too. And here in District five, we're just noticing that it looks like things are just falling by the wayside. And so all I can say is that from the perspective of the residents, we've never seen the parks in worse shape. Right now, I applaud the. Mayor when he he said the same thing when we. Were running out of water for our parks. So I applaud you for. At least admitting that to some of the people you'd never seen them that that bad. Since we've gotten the since we've gotten some water back, our. A lot of our parks have improved. Right. So I can say that. At least one of the problems that we've had for about well, for a long time are the the piping for the for the reclaimed water that we have. It's all of their pipes are about their way past their their lifetime. And so it's a matter of time before they just burst. And all together, there's about $212 million worth of of, you know, an undone maintenance that needs to be done on these pipes just replaced altogether. So that's the main thing that I have. I'm going to, you know, put my my head to the grindstone and I'm going to look for some some grant funding. And I'm going to work with the parks like I was doing. With with Marine. And we're going to see if we can get get some money to to help the parks. And I've also secured I got some quite a bit of money that I have secured from private funding to help our parks. But it's going to take an effort from the city to to prove to me that they care about our parks. I haven't seen any evidence in a long time. The part that water was a good, good reason, a good. First start. But that was a very minor, minor effort. So I can secure money. I can help you, help you get what you want to go, but you have to at least. Meet me halfway. I have approached I've approached my council person, haven't heard anything. So all I'm saying is I'm bringing this to you, and if you want to ignore it, that's fine. We we all know that. The police, in the way that they are making the statistics every year seem to be changing. So and that's that's easy. That's publicly, you can see the way that they measure the crime statistics. So I'm just letting you know that. Have a great. Day and I'll see you out. Q Mr. Carlos of Ibis. Good evening. I want to address a couple of things. The first has to do with the police department recently. A few months ago, I ran into something called the police scorecard. Those are the statistics in the police scorecard are from 19 I'm sorry, from 2016 to 2017. And they don't really present Long Beach in very good light. Out of the 100 top or largest police departments in California, Long Beach ranks number 96. Now, I know that things have been changing. I know that Police Chief Luna presented some some really encouraging statistics, and I applaud that. But at the same time, I would like to see the chief's response to the police, the items addressed in the police scorecard. Now, I know that during the campaign for Measure A, there was a glossy flier that came out kind of putting the fear into us, telling us that that we really needed to get those 200 police officers reinstated. That hasn't happened yet there. I mean, it looks like we barely are able to keep up with attrition. And I know that all the overtime that the police are working must be pretty stressful and must be leading to some not not very good situations. Let's see. Parks in the western half of Long Beach where I live. We have a. A tiny amount of parks in relation to the site of Long Beach with Eldorado Park and with all the golf courses. The parks and the urban forests are really the lungs of the city. And in the west side of Long Beach, where I live, where we get the direct results from the four or five freeway, the 710 freeway, the refineries, the port, the incinerator, we really need more parks. Now, this was sort of interesting, the joint use of as a means to increase open space. That's a little bit of a stretch because it doesn't really increase open space. It allows use of school facilities as parks, but it's not increasing open space. Thank you. Thank you so much. That concludes the comments for our budget hearing. We will continue the budget hearing at the next council meeting and continue with the different presentations. So thank you all for participating in the budget that was hearing item number one before a hearing item. The second hearing on the agenda, I want to ask Mr. Patrick Lavin to come forward if he is if he is here. Ms.. Mr. Mayor, there's two people queued up on this one. I'm sorry. Is this for public comment? Responses are. Councilman Pearce? Yes. I just wanted to clarify two things. I know from talking to our commanders that PD did receive a grant to start enforcing the scooters and the bike program and that that enforcement is supposed to be starting sometime soon. Is that correct? So in the FY 20 budget, we are actually proposing that we add positions as we formalize the ordinance for the SCOOTER program. So there will be enforcement positions as well as administrative positions. Great. And then I also just wanted to clarify, we do record all of our dispatch calls in a911. Yes, we. Do. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to just refocus and thank you for bringing up the point about data. I think it's important we do look at data. You know, my conversation with my line of discussion with the police chief was really focused on those months where we get out of school and get back in school. And in fact, the data shows that we had a 50% increase in violent crimes in North Division, 18% in West Division during that period. That spike that we were talking about and when I said it seemed like it went up. I'm not saying across the whole city or smoothed out across the whole city or for the whole six months, talking about that period of time when kids get out of school where we all sort of brace. And we saw that. And so, you know, sometimes we we need to it's okay to talk big picture about the data, but our job is to really focus in. And so I really wanted I really wanted to have that. Where I wanted that conversation to go was, what can we do around those months to really boost our response or prepare for it? So thank you for bringing up the data. The other thing is the way we break out our data is not really reflective of the way people communicate in the public. Right? So when the public's on our reports, I'll say part one, part two, aggravated assault. But what you'll see in the press are the dramatic things. A shooting here, a shooting there. We don't really report in that same way in shooting. So we do need to probably think about how we sort of engage and talk about it in a way that actually responds to the needs of the community. So I want to just make sure, you know, I didn't want to be I want this to be misunderstood the way it was last week. I'm talking about a very specific thing. When we get out of school, when we get back into school, I think we should I'd love to sort of talk about that period of the year. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. With that, we've concluded our budget hearing. I'm Mr. Levin. On our end city council members, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and our organization. I'm Pat Lavin. I'm the IBEW journeyman lineman from IBEW 47. We represent 12,000 IBEW members throughout the state of California and Nevada, and we recently have filed an affiliation with the Association of Long Beach Employees. I want to take this opportunity to introduce us that through the hard work of my assistant business manager, Dick Reed, and the members of the association and the other members of our staff that worked on that. So we look forward to a long and productive relationship with the city of Long Beach, not only for our 477 new affiliated ALB members that are now part of IBEW 47, but also for about the 2000 members of the IBEW of our local union and other local unions from the Southland that live and work and also vote here in the city of Long Beach. Thank you for your time. She'll have an thank you and welcome. And we know we'll be we'll be talking. So thank you very much. And we are we're going back to our hearings. This is something we were discussing in closed session and we didn't get a chance to do it earlier. So I brought that comment forward. But that's related to some of our closed session discussion. Now we're going to hearing item number three. Second. It's the second hearing, but it's titled the hearing out of number three.