Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Civic Innovation to create a Citywide Basic Needs Security initiative, known as “BAND Together Long Beach,” to enhance the coordination and delivery of food and housing security programs.
Great. Thank you. We have one final item that is part of this COVID 19 package, and then one will be moving on to the next set of items. This is the item ten, which is related to basic needs. And so, Madam Cook, can you read item ten? Communication from Councilmember Richardson, Councilwoman Zendejas, Vice Mayor Andrews, Councilmember, your UNGA recommendation to request city manager to work with Health and Human Services and the Office of Civic Innovation to create a citywide basic needs security initiative known as B and T and together Long Beach. Thank you. And I'll turn this over to Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to do a more full sort of presentation here, but obviously, you know, there's been a reprioritization of my focus. And this the proposal here is to acknowledge that right here in this moment, while we're facing three crises, the city has a role in providing and expanding for the provision of basic needs within our city. We know that in this moment we have more shelter capacity than we've ever had, which it's always been a touch, you know, touch and go discussion on where the shelters go. But in this moment, through this crisis, we have more shelter capacity we ever had. We've seen unprecedented levels of care and giving and food security, people coming together, uniting, figuring out how to just help people put food on the table. And in this moment, the city has a responsibility. And that responsibility is to leverage our tools and our resources to package these things in a way that it is easy to access in a way that is simple to access. Put a front door on all the things that are happening. The front door could mean a simple phone number. If you're hungry or you need shelter, call one phone number. A front door could mean a digital dashboard that highlights the capacity to meet food security and the level of hunger . Our capacity to meet shelter security with the level of need for shelter in a way that the broader community can be engaged, the philanthropy community can engage, the food security and housing security community can be engaged. And this is this is something that I think we're uniquely positioned to do. I know that mostly food security has been taken care of by, let's say, Wik or county or federal or state resources, Cal Fresh and all those things. Well, so our workforce dollars and we do that here in the city of Long Beach with Pacific Gateway, we take federal resources of state resources and we put a front door on it. So it's easy to walk in. You have a one stop job center where you can engage all these programs in one place. That's what we should be doing. Nothing is more important than ever given all that we're we're facing right now, that the the public sees and understands that their condition, the way that they access food, whether they get shelter, their head is is a top priority. I know that it has been, but we need to reaffirm that. We need to reaffirm that in the way we package and the way we discuss this. One thing I'll say is I came up with this name, you know, the basic needs band together or didn't have any brand and together it took VA from basic indi from need and said band together we can call this whatever we want to call it. That's not as important. What's important is making sure people can access these resources. We have the resources to coordinate and that we can continue to fund and support food security and shelter within our city. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is. In the house. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Richardson, for for this item and for allowing me to co-sponsor this item. As you know. I it's it's just been really difficult with COVID 19. And I'm very, very proud of the city leaders, our community leaders, our volunteers who have just come together and realized that food insecurity has been one of our biggest, biggest, most critical need in this city with COVID 19. And I think that it's very important to understand that a lot of people are are losing their jobs and and don't have a lot of resources, whether it's for they're trying to decide between food and rent and stuff. So I think something like this is very important. I'm really excited for this program and to see how we can make the program like this work. In times like this, when when the community comes together, I think great ideas come out of times like this. So moving forward, I'm really excited to see how this program is going to elevate our city even to a higher level. So thank you for letting me be part of this. Mr. Andrews. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much, ma'am. You know, I think that this is a great item. You know, I know the city has been pulled in many, many different directions. And I must give credit to every single legislative staff that has worked in each council office that was out in the trenches, like my staff, 11 old door to door and taking owners about their way and needs when the call back was about councilwoman. And I want to thank you also. And I started with, you know, and we started a great food relief fund that in Midtown went from 1000 and that matched 95 various donors in the organization. Now this department would have have is really available in various languages and for those who still grapple with the digital divide. And I want to thank you for all of. You know, the church has been a nonprofit organization, the community religious and stepped up to the plate during this crisis and had an amazing work and put in the rapid and the rapid response with the grant fund. They basically have support the Latino community. And I want to thank you very much for that. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you, vice mayor. Next up is Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I want to thank you, Councilman Richardson. I know we talked about this long before it became an agenda item and some of the things that the Fifth District just talked about for years. And we're really able to be operationalized during COVID. The fifth District is home to thousands of fruit plants, fruit trees that produce large quantities of fruit that often get spoiled or wasted. And one of the things that we were approached about several years ago was how do we as a city harness all of that food? We have community gardens on the east side that donate over £60,000 of edged apples and fruit a year to our homeless shelters. But during this crisis, we were able to work with our churches to do drop off food drives, encouraging those who had an abundance of fruit from their home trees to donate them at our local churches that were then packaged with people who didn't have fruit trees dropped off, necessities including but not limited to rice, pasta, soup and all of those things, and put together packages for hundreds of families across the city. I am in lockstep with hoping that we can continue these efforts beyond this time. Not only is it good for the community that we serve to have fresh fruits and vegetables available to them year round, but it's also really good for our community in terms of the depletion of rodents. When you don't have fruit on the ground for them to eat, you don't have rodents that are overfed, then you don't have coyotes and so on and so forth. So this has been something that's been really able to get a kick start during this crisis, but has been on the brink for many years. And so I'm glad that while we have the momentum, we look at this as a as an opportunity to hopefully institutionalize within a lot of our partners the ability to keep systems like this going long term. Thank you. Council Member Councilmember Councilmember Pearce, I don't know if you were queued up for the last item or did I call you or is this a new queue up for this one? Not good. Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that. Okay, then that concludes council comment, will. Before we do the roll call vote, I just want to add just very, just very grateful to all the council members that have been doing these drives. I've seen been seeing some of them out there, including the community community groups. The whether it's food. Finder or the the our labor and union partners, brothers and sisters that are out there putting these drives together. They've been amazing to see. And so just thank you to everyone involved in these food and these food drives. And I think focusing on food security and food access is really important. I just want to thank the council members that have this board in front of the council today. So with that, if we can do a roll call vote. District one. I. District two. District three. District three. District. High District for. I. District five. II. District six. I strict seven. I. District eight. I. District nine. All right. Motion carries. With you. Good question, Chris. That concludes all of the COVID related items. So I want to thank everybody for their for their patience on those. Obviously, COVID continues to be a serious crisis in our city. We're going to be transitioning now to the next set of items and will be starting with item 28, which is the framework or reconciliation item. And then on to the PCC item, which is item 26. And we also have the local emergency proclamation, which is item 29. And so those will all be reviewed within the next section of the meeting. And so. And Mr. Mayor, this. Is. Mr. Mayor. This is Tom. There is one other COVID item. If you wanted to take it now or do it later, it is the street sweeping item number 23. You know, since we're I think I think folks want to move to the next set of items. So why don't we just have that item? Is it just a report back? So we'll just put that item at the end of these next few items. That's fine. So why don't we go ahead and move to item 28, which is the framework for reconciliation item?