Recommendation to receive and file a status update on the implementation of the City's Language Access Policy, that includes multi-lingual signage in the new Civic Center, translation of Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Documents, a schedule for multi-lingual budget community meetings, the utilization of translation services at City departments, meetings and events, and the proposed FTE coordinator position.
Okay, fine. Can we move? We're going to move. Item number 23, 22. It's a pleasure that I don't know a 22. Item 22 is a communication from Council member Aranda Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilmember peers, council membership and a recommendation to receive and file a status update on the implementation of the city's language access policy. Thank you. Oh, yes. Thank you, vice Mayor, for accommodating this. We have a lot of people in the audience who I know wanted to speak on this and have children. So thank you for accommodating this request. Before we continue, can we have our staff report, please? Can you. Yes. Councilmember Kelly. Collopy and Katie are here to answer any questions we have regarding this and give a brief update. On the monorail. I didn't do that. I took the. Traffic. You know. Good evening, Honorable Vice Mayor and council member. It's my pleasure to share a language access policy update with you and the members of our community this evening. I'm turn you over to Katie Borders to share our progress to date and then I'll share a little bit more about moving forward. Okay. Thank you, Kelly. So the city of Long Beach is home to approximately half a million people and 46.6 of residents over the age of five speak a language other than English at home. Nearly 178,000 residents speak either English, Spanish or I'm sorry, Spanish, Khmer, Tagalog. Language access services allow these community members to receive essential city services, engage directly in the decision making process, and, most importantly, have their voices heard. The Language Access Policy establishes standards and procedures for providing language access in city services programs and resources in the top three languages spoken in Long Beach. The policy also provides for over the phone interpretation recorded outgoing messages for city phone lines, interpretation at public meetings and translation of city documents. It also includes coordination of a bilingual staff directory and training for bilingual staff so that they can provide interpretation and translation services as needed. The Language Access Coordinator is working to implement the policy consistently across all departments. To do this, she developed a language access policy or lap kit to train staff and promote language services and provides a 30 minute lap training that staff to staff that provides an overview of the policy services and how to use them. In fiscal year 2018, the lap coordinator conducted 13 staff trainings, directly reaching 385 employees. We invite any city staff to request lap trainings from us to ensure that all residents who speak a language other than English can easily access city services. She also maintains a bilingual staff directory of 722 city staff who receive bilingual skill pay when they provide translation or interpretation. The city staff who receive bilingual skill pay are required to review two training videos that address appropriate techniques and ethics, ethics for interpretation and translation, as well as the use of children as interpreters. The bilingual staff directory is updated every six months and is available on the city's intranet. In cases where interpretation is needed and a bilingual staff member is not immediately available, we also provide over the phone interpretation. Our vendor, the language line, provides 24/7 access to over 8000 professionally trained interpreters who speak more than 240 languages. In fiscal year 2018, language line provided the city with interpretation for 191 calls in nine different languages. When someone calls the city department, they can access assistance in their preferred language using our translated outgoing phone messages. Currently, there are 74 city phone lines that have menus translated in Spanish and Tagalog. The lab coordinator coordinates onsite interpretation for public meetings as well. In fiscal year 2018, Language Access provided the service at 98 public meetings for 19 different departments and city council offices. This reflects a 44% increase compared to fiscal year 2017. In addition to onsite interpretation, we also help ensure that city documents are translated in Spanish common Tagalog in fiscal year 18. The lap coordinator coordinated the translation of 190 documents for 17 city departments and council offices. This number remained consistent compared to last year. During the FOIA 19 budget process, we were directed to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the Language Access Program. The evaluation has been completed and the report is being drafted. It will be available in the next couple of months. The evaluation included a review of the implementation of the language access policies in other jurisdictions around the country, a project in partnership, which was a partner and project with the California State University Long Beach Linguistics Department, looked at 11 different city facilities. We held resident focus groups in Spanish in May, held key informant interviews with interpreters who frequently provide services and interpretation services for our program, and a satisfaction survey of city staff who have used the Language Access Program in the last year. The preliminary findings include that there's just an overall lack of awareness still or utilization of our services in the community. There's a lack of awareness and utilization of the language line. We did learn that 87% of those that have used the document translation are satisfied and 78% are satisfied with the turnaround time for those documents. This is closely related to communication regarding expected turnaround times with regard to interpretation. 100% of respondents were satisfied with the services are provided and 92% were satisfied with the interpreters, punctuality and professionalism. Because we often work with the same interpreters at the many community meetings where interpretation is provided. We conducted key informative interviews with them to better understand their observations and experiences in the community. We learned more about the importance of community interpreting as a specific skill that requires knowledge of context, background and community dynamics. One interpreter we spoke with spent time before every meeting, reviewing documents and key terms so that she prepared for the event. Often, the interpreters are asked to assist residents in understanding forms or navigating a challenge which they take away, which can take away from their ability to be interpreting for the broader context. Yet overall, the interpreters received positive feedback from the residents who are very grateful that they're there. The results of the comprehensive evaluation showed us that despite the work that we've invested and the great progress we've made so far, we know we can do better. We've already begun a plan for developing the following working with the Council District and the Budget Office to provide interpretation at the community budget meetings. Translating the Community Budget Book and partnering with the Budget Office to provide a multilingual community budget meeting. Partnering with the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications as part of their efforts to develop a disaster response plan for individual disabilities and functional needs. Offering quarterly trainings as well as flexible formats to help departments identify strategies to overcome specific language access challenges. Working more closely with community partners to increase awareness of our language access program among our residents. Increase in the pool of vendors to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of document, translation and interpretation. Currently we have the Language Access Program, has a coordinator who operates 28, who works for 27 hours a week, full time, that is structurally funded in $160,000 and one time funding, which is an increase from $80,000 last year. And so those services, many of these services are able to be provided through that increase. However, with the increase in the focus on training, access, outreach, and those will be coming to you in the future to increase the the position from part time to full time to be able to continue this move. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Craig Beck to talk about signage and facilities. Yeah. Good evening, counsel. You may recall in back in November of 2018, there was information provided this council regarding the new Civic Center project. And the project includes three primary buildings, the Port Administration Building, our new City Hall, and also the downtown library. We are employing new language access policies in all these buildings, including the translation of signage in the common areas. So in the lobby of the new City Hall and Port Building and library, as someone comes in, there is going to be a reception area that will be translated into four languages and also opportunity for translation services at all of the public counters. Lap cards will be available along with access to translation. I think what one of the things that we're really looking forward to is investment in new technology. So in the new council chambers, we will have a new translation services device that will allow us to have multiple channels on one set of headphones . So depending on what language you're seeking or if maybe you're hearing impaired, you'll have you'll be able to use the same device. And those translation services can happen in a different room. So they don't have to necessarily be in the auditorium themselves. We find that that that will help with the translation services. And we also looked into utilizing hearing induction loops. So we know a lot of people that are hearing impaired will wear hearing aids. And the induction loops that we're putting into our large assembly rooms, including the new chambers, will allow people to tune in and hear what's being either translated or just the presentation itself through these induction loops. So the new technology is a step forward. We believe that that the the flow and and access in the new city hall is going to be very intuitive and help people achieve services. So that concludes my report. I'm available to answer questions. Thank you. Continuing. Thank you. And I wanted to also thank my colleagues and results for the First District, Ginny Pearson second and Dallas, who not the fourth. And joining me in this discussion and in this overview, what's taking place with the language arts program at this point? I think it would be appropriate if my colleagues did not defer that. We go to the public comment and I will take it back here. Hi. Hi. So okay with you? Good. Okay. Please. If anyone like to speak honestly, won't you please come forward? Salute you. Okay. Good evening, counsel. My name is Mikhail for two, and I'm actually a student from. Casa in Long Beach. And I was I was assigned to investigate the. Accessibility of. LEP resources in other translation services here actually. In City Hall. And I was surprised to find. I was actually surprised to not see lack of translated signs for directory to location within the building, little to no translated documents to which language other than English speakers can access and most important, LPC resources. Not many citizens were aware of the sleep resources, which is very concerning. No, I know there isn't. Like there isn't much and not a lot of funds to expand on these services remedies. But that is why I'm here before you. So I am, as I am a student who grew up in the immigrant community, and I'm here to urge the city to invest more in the space, mainly immigrant communities that participate in their society. Some of the ways in which I think it's been mentioned already, but I would like to reinforce again. The ways how the. City can help is by increasing the distribution of vital documents, as this will make services and information much more easier to navigate. And access, in addition, needs to be implemented consistently across all city departments so our communities won't be discouraged with about accessing certain departments due to language barriers. And lastly, there needs to be more active outreach to residents who may not know about yep. Through there, through collaborations with community based organizations. With these recommendations, our communities would be would be able to navigate our city and. Participate without having worry about without. Any worry about language barriers. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Gabby Hernandez and I'm a resident of the First District. I'm also the program manager for the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, and we're a member of the Language Access Coalition. And I think all of you should have the fact that the coalition put together and I'm here to tell you a little bit about what we heard from community members in collaboration with the Office of Equity. We hosted a focus group with Spanish speaking community members where they share with us their experiences when accessing city services. Due to my limited time here, I will only share the highlights of this focus group. But to start with, on November 14, 2017, the City Council passed the motion asking for multilingual signage at the New City Civic Center and other new city buildings. Markups of the new Civic Center have incorrect translations, and there has been no report back. To the council. About the multilingual signage at other city buildings. Second, the quality of interpretation in translation by the city vendor is poor. Community members who have who we've spoken to have told us that translation is not properly done. They have had a hard time understanding the translated documents. In particular, one community member told us that the translation appears to be very direct. Literally like a literal translation of the English signs that don't make any sense in Spanish. Thirdly, and one of the most critical things that we heard in the focus group is that most community members were not even aware of this policy. It is. It wasn't until we told them about whether they knew that it existed. Many of them shared with us that they had no idea that there's a provided translation, a city council meetings, and they had no idea that you had to request it within 24 hours in advance. Lastly, lack of consistent implementation of the language access policy throughout the city departments is a huge problem for those community members who were aware of this policy and have tried to access city services in different city departments. They were shocked because some of the city staff were not even aware of the policy themselves. Additionally, language the language line has never been offered to them. So because of the stories, we're here to ask you to correct this problems in the following four ways. One, correct the Civic Center signage, translations and include multilingual signage at other city buildings. Higher higher. A competent vendor for interpretation and translation services. Third Award Stipends to community based organizations to conduct resident outreach. And lastly, direct each department to designated language liaison to work with the Office of Equity to implement this policy. We hope that you consider this recommendations and thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, council members. My name is Cyndi Dela Cruz Brown. I am a resident of the seventh District, a community organizer with Long Beach Forward and a member of the Long Beach Language Access Coalition. I want to review the last few recommendations that our Coalition has for you on how we can improve the language access policy. A policy that we deeply value and know our multilingual members value to. As someone who works with Long Beach residents, particularly parents who speak a language other than English. I hear about their struggles to understand their bills and housing notices. I hear their stories about giving up on navigating our city phone lines after being ping pong from person to person. I hear their frustration and discouragement. Like Gaby mentioned previously, the focus group showed us that even active members in our community who are engaged and trusted leaders have a difficult time navigating city services. One mom. Told us she has to wait for her children, her husband, to get home, to get every to get anything done at city hall due to the language. Barrier. There's just something about the voices that are being left out of the decision making process with city happenings. And we are missing an opportunity to address issues that most affect each family, neighborhood and district. In our hand out, you will see that our fifth recommendation is the complete translation of phone lines and voicemails. Since this is not complete across city departments. We also want to make sure that the city's single phone line is implemented appropriately. So we do not run into the same errors that recently occurred with the inaccurate translation of the New City Civic Center Science. Our sixth recommendation is to complete translation of vital documents such as city notices. Services, bills and so forth. Our seventh recommendation is to require staff training to be ongoing recommendations four and seven on the sheet you were handed. Both highlight the need for regular staff trainings to meaningfully implement the language access policy and to invest now in this infrastructure. So we give language access and language equity a fair chance. This means staff would receive training on the requirements of policy and of the policy, like how to work with residents with limited English proficiency and so on. And lastly, structurally funding the language access policy, which means having a line item per department for translation and interpretation services , hiring bilingual front desk staff, moving the current part time coordinator to full time to implement the policy. It makes it it makes it difficult for staff to implement the very various components of this policy if they're only part time employees. Implementation does take a long time. We are wasting time, resources and money by not implementing this policy. Well, we would like to continue our dialog and collaborative approach to support to supporting language access for a city that provides prides itself on its diversity. We also want to thank the Office of Equity Staff for their great work. Katie, Francesca, everyone in. The office who's doing the best that they can with what they have. And also the city. Clerk who is able to get translation to them. We hope you. Can keep in mind the foundational priorities presented to you from the Language Access. Coalition. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Good evening, counsel. My name is Juan Rosas. I am a product of Long Beach. I grew. Up in the west side of Long. Beach. I'm a graduate of Garfield Elementary. I went to Hughes, both Cabrillo and Poly High School. And I'm also a graduate of leadership, Long Beach. Youth Leadership. Long Beach, class of 2011. And I'm currently a graduate student at Cal State Long Beach, pursuing a degree in linguistic. Anthropology. As a student advocated for a. Collaboration between the Linguistics Department and the Office of Equity. And the fruit of. This collaboration. Was a student project examining the implementation of language access across 11 unique city sites. So I was. Responsible for synthesizing those reports. And summarizing some of those patterns. And to put it frankly, what the students saw was disheartening. This included inconsistent knowledge of language access policy within the staff at a single site which often led to contradictory information and advice, you know, from members of the same staff. That lack of knowledge also led to. Makeshift strategies that staff. Relied on, such as using Google Translate or even foreign language dictionaries. Over the. Language line. And multilingual signage was also something that was not that students just didn't report seeing when they did. It was mostly in Spanish and not available in Canadian Tagalog. And so the. Long of short of it is that I think if Long Beach, Long Beach needs to do. Better, if the city wants to tout its diversity. And wear it as a badge of. Honor, we need to recognize that behind that. Diversity there is a linguistically diverse population. And we need to meet their needs and I don't think we're doing a good. Enough job. Thank you. Thank you. It's speaker. Hi everyone. My name is Nathan Lauretta and I live in the second district of Long Beach. I believe in improving the quality of interpretation and translation will benefit me by ensuring that my family member's loved ones and community members will be able to navigate the Civic Center or any new buildings in Long Beach. In addition, conducting outreach to community members who have a limited English proficiency is vital because most residents don't know about the city's language access policy. Both my parents have limited English proficiency, and they are unaware of this policy, which is why there should be stipends to community based organizations to conduct resident outreach. We also need to complete vital document documentation translation for all departments and train staff on a regular basis because minors should not be interpreters. Growing up, I often found myself having to translate for my parents, although I had no idea what they were referring to. That is why I'm here to ask the City Council to implement the multilingual signage at the new Civic Center and in any other new city buildings. Thank you. And can to a. Good evening, council members. My name is Abbey over here. I am also a Long Beach resident, as well as a court certified interpreter that has. Been serving the community of Long Beach. For the past seven years. I'm very glad to hear of the improvements that have been made to the Language Access Plan. But I do believe that professional. Interpreter and translation. Services need to be available at all times, whether they're requested or not. This will ensure that. Limited English English proficiency. People. Well not have to jump through hoops in order to hear the information in a language they understand. They already have many burdens that they have to deal with. Some of them are parents. Some of them. Are working full time or a combination of all of these things. Meetings need to be readily accessible in order to increase civic. Engagement and. Vital information and updates need to be disseminated. To communities. That are already underserved and need to be informed. Of the things that are going on in the city. I urge councilmembers and the city. To make a greater commitment to the language access plan so and to allocate more money for this plan. I am glad to hear that the new civic center will be having interpreting booths. I think that will be a great increase, but I do urge you for a greater commitment. Thank you. Very much. Next speaker. Good evening, the. Honorable vice mayor and city council member. I'm also a product of Long Beach. I grew up in the 66 District and also our probably Jackrabbit Alumni O Cobb Beach. So again, my name is Ledeen, a program coordinator for M three educated men with meaningful messages at Saint Mary's Medical Center and also a a member of the Alliance Axis coalition working with youth. One of the. Challenges with youth or minors always countering, interpreting for their parents, knowing that they're not fluent and combined, put them in a tough situation for the youth I work with. I know I know several youth who who have been pulled out from school so they can interpret it for their parents at either getting housing assistance or paying bills . Sometimes there's no interpretation to provide at the moment. So one of our recommendation is it requires staff training to be ongoing. Staff need training and the requirements of the language access policy to either how to keep LP resident and how to keep with interpreters. There's a lot of work needs to be done and we're hoping to so. We can work together and to achieve the same goal. Our final act is structurally funding a language access policy to be able to have each department setting aside money for interpretation, interpretation and translation, and also moving in the current position part time coordinator to a full time position as well. Lastly, we want to thank the Office of Equity for their hard work and dedication. Thank you and. Thank you our contract. Next speaker, please. Okay. Good evening, City Hall Council members. My name is Wendy Klein. I'm a linguistic anthropologist. I'm a professor of linguistics and anthropology at Cal State Long Beach. And you heard from one of my students, Miguel, as well as Juan. About the. Project that one of my courses conducted. Last. Semester. I had 35 students in a course called Language and. Social Justice. And in small teams. I sent them out to investigate how the language access policies were operating around the city. And yes, it was. Let me. Say the. Results were mixed. In the places where there was some training. There was an awareness of what some residents would need in order to. Understand vital information. But in many of the locations, there wasn't any knowledge at all about. The language access policies. So I'm here to. Urge you to continue your support. Of language access policies, specifically in terms of the resources making. Resources available to. The Office of Equity so that there is full time. Staff available. I think that part of. What is critical to the. Success of language access programs as effective training of city personnel, strong translation and interpreter services, multilingual signage, voicemail messages and web page information research shows that the safety and well-being of urban communities depends in part on successful and. Far reaching language access programs and outreach to community. Members. So thank you for your. Time and please. Take all these recommendations seriously. Thank you very much. Trust me. Again. I want to thank you all for being out here tonight to share your thoughts and your views on what would be a very robust and successful language access program. I'm sure that our staff has listened and heard you. I certainly have. In regards to your feelings and your thoughts on the Language Access program, we have an opportunity here. Basically, we're going to be moving into a new city hall. We're looking at the implementation of the language access program across the city. So we have an opportunity to implement a lot of the ideas that are coming out here today. As you heard from our our director of Health and Human Services, Kate Colby, that report will be coming before the city council within the next few months. That will be much more comprehensive. I put this an agenda here tonight so that we will get an update as to what is taking place and what are some of the continuing challenges that we might have in the very near future. Before we move into to City Hall and of course, how we can also excuse me, expand the program as a whole. I think that one of the most important aspects of this whole program is, of course, having a full time employee for an FTE to handle the Language X program, which would take care of some of the other aspects that were raised here tonight, such as training or having liaisons in each department. I think having a full time employee to manage a language access program would be a very big step in doing that. And one of the things that I've shared with my colleagues, as well as with the city staff and the city manager , is that we need to look at how we can fund this institutionally, meaning that it's it's it's a part of doing business with the city in regards of having a full time employee and having language access as a ongoing program that is fully funded year in, year out, without having to look at one time funding or one time sources or grants to keep this going. So I think it's an important aspect of our doing business in Long Beach. I heard some positive comments out there in terms of, yes, we are a diverse city. We also are diverse not only in our cultures, but diverse and linguistically in terms of all the languages that that are here in Long Week and Long Beach, they might not be as. Large communities as they might be like in Los Angeles or other large cities. But nonetheless, we need to be prepared and we need to have and provide access to anyone who needs it and requires it. So I'm really pleased and happy of what's going to come in the future with our new civic center, our new state of the art library, our new civic center as a whole. With with the poor alone book as well. And the international trade that they're going to be in charge of here in the future here in the downtown. So with that, I want to thank Stafford for the update that we have here today. But again, like I say, we have an opportunity here to really expand this program, to make it a much more functional aspect of what we do in the city, making it part of our of our business in terms of the cost of doing business in Long Beach. And that's to make sure that all our residents have access to information. And there's nothing much more important than that is information and communication and making sure that everybody knows what's available to them and having the the opportunity to not only get that service, but to have access in how and how to get additional services as well. So with that, I'll pass it on to my to my colleagues. I know there's some of you lined up that would like to speak on this. And again, I want to thank my colleagues for supporting this this item. Thank you. Councilman Pearce. Thank you. Yes. I want to thank Councilmember Urunga for bringing this forward and for the community members to put together your fact sheet, your time, your efforts and really have been driving this. I know we talk about language access, every budget and every budget. I say how important I believe that it is for a city of half a million people to really have a robust language access plan. And I think that we've you know, when we started, because I was in the community never thinking about running for office when we started this campaign many years ago. And so just echoing where we are with this, with the request, I think there are four areas. One is the quality of interpretation. Two is structurally funding it. And really, that's the city manager's office fully adopting the language access plan in every single department, in every single way that we can. The outreach and the Civic Center. So I know that from talking to staff, we're on the same page with understanding that the translation that's been provided is not accurate, but staff in public works is working on that. So I'm grateful to hear that some check is done on our list on that, on the right steps for outreach . I wanted to ask, I know when we've done things, changes to our water bills or when election time comes and we have to do an informational piece, we've included something in our utility bill. What's that cost? And and wouldn't that be a great way to make sure that every resident knows for those utility bills? Because I believe they're translated or you can request for your utility bill in a different language. Is that true? That's my question, first of all. The information is translated, but I do not know what the cost is to do that. Okay. So if the information is translated, could we then earmark or, you know, run a query and say, okay, these are the 700 people that request their water bill in Tagalog. Therefore, let's send them a mail piece that tells them, here's the process for language access at the city or a little blurb in the corner of it just seems like that we already have a way to know that people need something in a different language, that if we use that as outreach. I can add a little bit on that. So we have the ability through our utility billing to do like a 1 to 2 line as part of the actual bill that costs almost nothing. And we can put a little bit of information in that bill itself. When you're talking about putting in inserts, it depends on whether or not it requires more postage or if it's just the copying. The copying can be between seven or $10,000 to be able to put a message out to everybody. But we could work on a one line or something like that that says, you know, need translation and then whatever, you know, website landing or something that we could do. I think that'd be a great way to put that out there. It's it's a relatively inexpensive way to to communicate something like that. Yes. Okay. Thank you for that. Getting to the quality of interpretation. I know that it's you know, in the community request, there's several different areas of quality, whether we're talking about the phone service or departments or we're talking about public works or how that is relayed. I know that there are court certified translators, and I'm just curious if that is included in our RFP whenever we work with translators. I believe the skill set that we include and in our typical vendors or that we receive from our vendors is more around community. Interpreting is a skill set rather than court interpreting. They're slightly different skill sets that require more knowledge about community. Some background research prior to the event. So I don't know that it's necessarily a part of our RF peer review process at this point to have court certified interpreters. And I know that there's. And that wasn't something that the community members asked for. But I know that that might help us get to a another layer when we're talking about technical issues. So I don't know if there's a grading scale in our RFP process or just some information that we could include. Are you also court certified so that we can make that assessment as needed? Our staff can make that assessment as needed. Might help across the board with our translation. Yeah. We'll be looking at our new on call request for qualifications and add the quality and experience and certifications of the vendors who applied to that on call list . Great. Thank you for that. And now, I mean, I think the biggest piece is the structural funding. I know after the last budget for council offices up here said we'll take it out of our divide by nine money if we need to, which I don't think is necessarily fair, as the entire city is a diverse city and there are people in every single district but that it shouldn't come out of our divide by nine money. But rather, again, I'm going to echo that statement around if it's like it services, you know, that we the department can use it or not use it as needed, but that if we have a liaison or there's somebody that is in that department that can do the translation, but it really has to be across the board so that we can really be a city that feels like we are communicating to every single one of our constituents, whether it's a language that few people speak or many. And so I would wanted to clarify Miss Colby's statement. You guys are returning in 30 days with a report on the structurally funded position. Did I hear that correctly from you? Well, the the report itself from the evaluation is coming. You know, we'll have that prepared in the next month or two to be able to come back. What we are finding is that the level of based on the based on the findings and the recommendations and the requests that we're hearing is that we have funding for the actual services where we don't have is. So, you know, if we're to do more training to build capacity in our communities, we need to have the capacity of an individual to go out and do the. Full time position. And those kind of things. So what so that that is what we're seeing moving forward. So the council did provide us with the extra 80,000 this year that does allow us to provide additional materials more, more translate those kinds of things. But to really to expand those funds, we can't fully utilize those funds unless we actually have the ability of of staffing to be able to to be able to provide those services. So I guess what I'm getting to is that item that's in front of us today is a report, right, as an update on implementation. I want to be able to take the vote that says we have a full time language access person, but you guys are going to bring us a report about how our services are being used. And then after that would be the time for us to say, okay, it looks like we need that person and to be able to him to do the work that we said we wanted to do. Yes. Okay. So I shouldn't get crazy and put an agenda item on for next Tuesday. Okay. So make sure. You have a report back soon. Okay. And I think, again, just to echo one more time, you know, being able to have every single department know that this is something that's a resource. And if the funding could come along those same ways, I think it would be really helpful. And I know that training and that making sure that staff and directors know. And so I would just ask that the city manager included in there, you know, weekly emails that we get at the end of the week that all the department heads understand the process and that you guys talk about it in your team meetings. So it's a great report. Thank you guys for all your hard work. I know that this has been many years coming and I feel like we're getting a step closer and we still have a little bit more work to do, but we're getting there. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes. Thank you as well for the report and thank you to the coalition. I know you've been are an informal, informal committee on this and we really appreciate the advice and the all of the points on here because we think they're very valuable. And I would like us, you know, when we bring the report back to ensure and I know a lot of this will be addressed, but to ensure that point by point, we are specifically including an answer to each of the questions as to why or may not why or why not, that we may or may not be able to. I can't speak tonight. I'm very tired. Sorry. Are you saying. So are you speaking specifically about the delay? Yes, the handout. So if we can just address each line by line, I know we will do that. But just specifically, so we're on the same page here. And I really see the language axis. I think we've talked about it enough, but certainly as a public safety issue, I know we talk about it in the First District quite a bit on even things like in terms of outreach, like Long Beach Transit. And I know that's a completely different body, but the see something, say something, you hear the police chief say it on over the intercom and just to be able to work with that jurisdiction or that agency as well, to be able to say , can we do it in Spanish, I think is another opportunity with various other agencies. I know we're working already and the Coalition does include faith based organizations, but I think that will also help with a lot of the outreach. We have a committee, iPad, net TV that offers information in Spanish and hopefully if we have something in Tagalog, we are doing the outreach to provide additional. Outlets for this plan, because I would hope that when it comes back that we can talk about the language access policy in a way that's branded. So people know exactly what we're talking about. So just some thoughts there. And then in terms of timing, I know, Kelly, you had mentioned timing about one or two months that will take us, would you say maybe end of March, just so we're clear on that time frame? Yes. Okay, great. And then I would just say, if and I know you've done this before for any reason, it lasts a little bit longer. I'm sure you'll receive a two from four. That will state why it's taking a little longer. Okay. Thank you. I think everything else was addressed. But I just want to thank again the coalition and everyone that's here. And thank you as well, both Katie and Kelly and all of you for for doing the work. And we appreciate you listening to the community. Thank you. Constance Juvenile. Thank you. I'd like to thank Councilmember Ranga for bringing the item forward and also for a great synopsis in your soliloquy there. You covered everything. But nonetheless, I'll dig deeper on this one. And also thanks to my council colleagues for signing on. Thanks to the Coalition for being here tonight and for meeting with me. I really appreciate that. And to all the speakers tonight, thank you. My question is for Director Collopy and I know this is just an update, an overview, but I'd like to discuss a little bit the FTE and how we get this position full time. You and I had a discussion last week and you explain to me how this process could be streamlined or the funding mechanism is sort of already in place. So I don't want to put words in your mouth. Could you explain what we discussed last week? So the current position is funded structurally at 27 hours per week. In addition to that, we've had an ongoing $80,000 per year. It's one year, it's one time funding, but it's been coming each year, and that has been for services. Specifically where there was an increase, the the council generously approved an additional $80,000 for this year for services within that $80,000, there is funding that could cover the full time, except that the position is currently not a full time position. But that is that is one time funding and is not structural funding. So the shift would be utilizing would be designating a portion of that funding as structural funding and then the remainder as the as one time fund. Okay. Thank you. I think that helps explain how this is going to be a unique situation that we could take advantage of. And I'll just wrap up by saying that my big desire is we talk about the subtleties of the language. The most used expression from my office is go forth, so make sure we get an accurate translation on that income. Mike, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sunil. Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And my my remarks will be brief. So I want to just acknowledge the change that I see here when this conversation started and it was before many of us joined this council and, you know, it was a big it was a lot of pressure, a big push to really create established language access policy . And then the community's really been relentless and smart and strategic about making sure is at the forefront of the council's agenda, to make sure that we continue to implement this policy. And then today I acknowledge the differences. Um, you know, the Office of Equity Equity, our health department, our language access coordinator, they're on, you know, they're not just reflecting with the community saying they're leading on a lot of this. So we see it's just a different dynamic. It's an inside, outside approach. And I'd love to see that be that mean. That's an indication that we're beginning to institutionalize this policy a bit more. And that's that should be recognized. And I think as we move into the new civic center, I really think it's important that this policy is on the ground, you know, is there as we move in and it's important and will continue to be carried out as we move forward. Councilman, you Ranga, thank you for continue to champion these issues. I'm obviously in support of of your motion here. And we'll continue to, you know, advocate for further adoption and implementation here. So good work, Councilman Ranga, and good work, Health Department team. And thank you to the community for your advocacy. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Richardson. I also myself, I think way back when I first came in office, we're talking about language access. And it's come a long ways. But the biggest point I really would like to look forward to is making sure it doesn't have to be a year by year, you know, elimination, where we have to worry about finding money to push this forward. That should be a no brainer. And so we'll be pushing real hard, you know, for this coming year to make sure that that money will be there. We don't have to go year by year to try to find it. So I want to thank you guys for being here and and thank you for bringing this forward. And I know we do a great job with this. Thank you guys for coming down and giving your support. Thank you again. Now we can move with the vote on this. No more questions. We can vote. Please cast your vote. Motion carries.