Recommendation to approve the Fiscal Year 2016 Action Plan and the Second Substantial Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2015 Action Plan for the expenditure of Community Development Block Grant, Home Investment Partnership Grant, and Emergency Solutions Grant Funds; and Authorize City Manager, or his designee, to execute all necessary documents with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to receive these funds, and execute agreements necessary to implement and comply with related federal regulations. (Citywide)
Report from Development Services. Recommendation to approve the fiscal year 2016 Action Plan and the second substantial amendment to the Fiscal Year 2015. Action Plan for the Expenditure of Community Development BLOCK Grant, Home Investment Partnership Grant and Emergency Solutions Grant Funds and execute all necessary documents with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to receive these funds citywide . Thank you. Can I get a motion, please? Oh, there's a motion and a second. Is there any public comment on this item? CNN. Let me start with Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank staff for their hard work on this. I took a moment to just look through this item a bit on CDBG and a few things really just stood out to me. So I just have a couple of questions. So. So first, I see that there's a significant amount of documentation here around public outreach or public engagement, citizen engagement around this. Is that a mandate? Is that mandatory for us to track or to conduct public input on how these funds are allocated for these for this these funds? Yes, sir, it is. Okay. Are there any, like goals or benchmarks for how much engagement we should actually have? We actually have to do a five year action plan, and then every five years we update that action plan. But annually, we have to demonstrate that we are meeting the goals of that five year action plan. So it's an annual review of a five year action plan. And what's before you tonight is the fourth annual review of our action plan. We are required to have extensive community outreach. We are required to have two hearings. Those hearings were held by the Long Beach Community Investment Corporation, and we are required to do significant public outreach and demonstrate that we have done that outreach. We do translate this into different languages. We publish notices in different newspapers of different languages, and we hold community meetings and send out E notifies. So we do do quite a bit of extensive outreach when we do the five year action plan. Our outreach basically goes on steroids. And we we actually have surveys and try to reach thousands of people in our community outreach. Thank you. So just based on that, it sounds like, you know, every five years there's significant outreach and there's a little bit of outreach for each of the updates. What really stood out to me when we say substantial outreach or intense levels of outreach was looking at Appendix A where it says the there was a public hearing meeting with no public comments. There was a meeting at MacArthur Park with no public comments, a Washington neighborhood meeting with no public comments. It'll be CIC with no public comments. And when I look at this, you know, it's a significant amount of money. And I think we do a good job of budgeting it. But I think the city council is really set to set a standard now for how we engage and how we move forward and budget budget money and actually get input. Like for as a as an example, we did a pilot project for participatory budgeting. I know a number of other districts did as well. And to compare what we were able to do in a few months around a much smaller amount of money, I think this is millions of dollars. And what we did was, you know, for $250,000 for engagement, you know, while actually applying rules and all the standards to it, I think this is this this just shows us that we can just do more. So so I want to thank you for the hard work that that's taking place with this over over the years. But I, you know, next year, I'd like to see us do something a little more significant as it relates to HUD funds. And and, you know, I'm sure Fed legend, the federal government has actually said that that they'd like to see a city take on a participatory budgeting process for for CDBG. That's something I'm interested in exploring. I just wanted to chime in and make that comment. Understood. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. I would just echo what Councilman Richardson said in terms of public outreach. I think that is a really good point. It's he he really led the way on council for the PB process. I know District three and District one followed suit and the community engagement that we received and we were dealing with $75,000 in three , but we had, you know, close to 800 votes in a very short period of time and lots of people being engaged in the process. So anything that we can do to to help promote public engagement and public outreach, I think that's really important. And I think Councilman Richardson raises a good point that, you know, with the new leadership on. Council. We have a very strong focus on making sure that the public is involved in everything that we do and that they're along for the ride. I know that's very, very important to me. And so if we can get that that spirit moving, not that that staff's not already doing that, but we can improve upon it and perhaps use some of the energy of the new council in terms of outreach and getting people involved in allocating funds. I think that would be a great direction to take. Thank you. I would suggest this is probably very appropriate for when we update the five year action plan. But when we're in the fifth year of a five year action plan next year, we're really trying to meet our goals and objectives of the first plan. So if I may suggest that that's something that we would look at definitely for when we implement the five year action plan. Next. I have Councilwoman Gonzales. I know you just answer that, but I would just have to concur with the colleagues. I think participatory budgeting really opened up our eyes as to what was possible and in reaching a different group. You know, we have Washington neighborhood had group in the first district. But a lot of those, you know, they're not as organized. So with the participatory budgeting, we were able to get a lot more residents that normally aren't part of the process. So I would just have to include that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Thank you. See no other public comments? You no other comment on public comment on the item? Mr. Mayor, may I just add one item at the request of our city attorney for the housing development company. The excuse. Me, the Long Beach Community Investment Company that recommended action for designating the city manager to execute all necessary documents. That does include the request to actually expend the funds per the action plan. Okay. Thank you. Please cast your votes. Motion carries eight zero 14. Report from Human Resources recommendation to purchase through an excess municipal liability insurance, airport liability insurance and aircraft liability and hull insurance for police helicopters. The total cost of all renewal premiums will not exceed $1,378,000 citywide.