Recommendation to request an update from Parks, Recreation and Marine regarding the success of their 107th season and their fundraising efforts this year.
Thank you. Of course, it's every item with any public comment on the appointments. Casey. No public comment on the appointments members. Joaquin Castro votes motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Congratulations, everyone. Madam Clerk, we will now hear the municipal band item. Adam 13. Yes. Item 13, please. Communication from Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilmember Muranga and Councilman Austin. Recommendation to request an update from Parks, Recreation and Marine regarding the success of their 107th season and their fundraising efforts this year. Thank you. I'm going to first begin by turning this over to Councilman Price will open up the motion and we'll go from there. Thank you. Many of us are fortunate to have had the opportunity to hear the municipal band, and we know that they are a major part of the Long Beach history and the Long Beach culture. And this year, the friends of the municipal band group that formulated this year has been incredibly successful in reviving the energy for the municipal band and getting the group the neighborhoods very excited about what the municipal band does and all the great positive benefit that they bring to our community. I'm incredibly proud to support this organization and are very, very proud of their fundraising efforts this year. Now, they were able to raise a great deal of money in light of the fact that there was a different fundraising structure that started this year in terms of the support we had placed on them, the burden of raising $30,000 towards a sixth week. And they met that fundraising goal. And although fundraising effort overall wasn't as good as we would have liked it to be, I think the fact that we had two different fundraising operations going on and definitely not always coordinated may have contributed to some of that. And I'm hoping that moving forward, we take advantage of the momentum that this group has started and work very closely with our Parks Rec and Marine Department to continue to grow this really this piece of Long Beach history that's so vital to so many, so many of our communities. And I'm not sure if Parks Rec and Marine has a report. Okay. So I think they do. But as they make their way up and the friends group makes their way up, I also want to thank them for including a new district as the six week this year. I think that was an incredible addition. And although we hope that the audience participation continues to grow every year, I think the the ability or the willingness to accommodate and try different venues says a lot for for the band as we take a piece of Long Beach history into the future. So with that, if we have a report, I'd love to hear it. I'd like to introduce Marie Knight, the director of our Parks, Recreation and Marine Department, and her number two, Steven Scott, who will give a report. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the council. It's my pleasure to give an update on the 2016 Municipal Band concert season. The long running. Tradition of the band continued. This year with its 107th summer concert series for residents and visitors. Over the years, the length of the concert season has expanded and contracted from a maximum of ten weeks to a minimum of five weeks, as was the case for last year and the 2015 season. Four concerts are offered each week during the season, and each week of concerts cost approximately $60,000 or 15,000 per concert. In recent years. The funding from the concerts comes from three sources. Sponsorships, such as our Long Beach Gas and Oil Department, Environmental Services, Division of the Public Works Department and the Port of Long Beach. City budgeted funds in the Tidelands. Funds and donations received through the very popular Passing the Bucket, as well as other fundraising endeavors by our partners of Parks. And those are intended to make up the fundraising shortfall between expenses and the funds raised through the sponsorships and city funds. It is important to note that there are no general fund resources budgeted to structurally support the band's activities. Funding for a five week season was proposed for 2016, but a six week was added during the last year's budget process. The funding for that sixth week was to be provided via $30,000 in additional fundraising by the Friends of the Long Beach Municipal Band and remaining 30,000 from one time resources in the General Fund provided as a match. The pass the bucket receipts and other fundraising conducted by the Partners of Parks and Friends of the Municipal Band were still needed for the structural deficit of the program. The Friends were very successful in their fundraising for the six week and are here, I believe tonight to provide one of those nice big checks for $30,000. Accordingly, the six week program of four concerts per week was provided this summer, and the concerts were performed at the following locations . On. Tuesdays. They were at Bluff Park, Whaley Park and Drake Park. Wednesdays was Low Cerritos Park, Thursdays, Marine Stadium and Fridays. El Dorado West. With the addition of the six week, we were able to. Expand the program to a new location this year, which was Drake Park. And it's important. To note that new locations often need time to grow in popularity, which is usually assisted by word of mouth from the community. Fundraising efforts are still ongoing, and some final donations are still coming in this year. The funds that were raised was $147,000 through sponsorships from Long Beach gas and oil, port of Long Beach and the Environmental Services Division. $65,000 from Tidelands Operation Funds. Just under $60,000 for our Pass the Bucket and Partners of Parks efforts. And then the. Money that the Friends of the Municipal van is bringing tonight. There was an overall funding shortfall of just over $27,000, but we have already started discussions with the friends and how to make that different next year and do more robust fundraising and do some different things with Pass the Bucket to hopefully fill that gap. So we appreciate the services of our conductor, Larry Curtis, and his great team and the friends of the municipal band, the musicians for a great summer and the community for their support. And that ends my report. Well, thank you. Thanks again, Ms.. Knight, for the report. I may turn this back over first to Councilwoman Pryce and go from there. Thank you. And I believe the Friends of Municipal Band Group is here. And would you do you have anything to say or you'd like to talk a little bit? Okay. Hi there. My name is Laura Espino and. I'm here with two. Others of our five team of five from the. Friends of Long Beach Municipal Band. And we are happy to report, as you know, that we. Did raise the $30,000 that we were asked to provide. And I'm also very proud that we were able to raise that between. February and June of this year and were able to actually. Secure the funds before the season. Started. So we felt very confident in in what we did. We are here tonight with our big giant check for. You and also donated. To the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine in support of that six week. And we want to thank the city council, all of you, for your support in helping us also with with achieving the six week and. Partnering with us. And we also appreciate Mayor Garcia's proposal to continue the six week, hopefully for a next season as well. And so with that, I'd like to turn it over to Kay. Cofield, one of my colleagues. Good evening, friends of you of the municipal band. Also thanks the Long Beach Community Foundation for their support. By investing our funds with the Community Foundation, this partnership allowed us to promise our donors an efficient means to donate online and to receive prompt acknowledgment of their tax deductible donations. With the Community Foundation charging only one and one quarter percent in fees and paying interest annually on invested funds in their trust. This means that almost 100% of the funds donated support nothing but our municipal band. I'm Bill Thomas. I'd also like to add my thanks to all the donors and note that we got a slow start because of some confusion at the beginning. But from February, middle February to just before the band began, we managed to raise our $30,000. The majority of that was from new business donors that we. Were able to bring in. And we were also successful in bringing in quite a few new family and individual donors that, according to the records that were available to us, had not made any donation for quite some time. So I want to. Appreciate or thank the mayor for recommending support of additional 70,000 to include the sixth week and want to say that we appreciate everything that everybody has done from the city council to all the participants in. Assisting us in this. And we look forward and commit to. Continuing this. Process so that we can continue to support the band. Thank you. Bill, I think that was a little sneaky there at 60,000, not 70. I would have sworn I heard seven. And we'd love to take a picture and invite Marcel. Eppley. From the Community Foundation and our conductor, Larry Curtis, to come on down for a photo. Also. Oh, good. But. Thank you. Let me let me just say to to to Larry and of course, to the friends and to everyone involved. We have a we have a few folks are going to say a few things here from the council, and there's a lot of interest in support. I just wanted to let you all know that. And I think it's more for the community to know that Long Beach has a lot of arts groups. There's a lot of museums, a lot of organizations. But there are only two municipally funded organizations separate of the Arts Council that are actually performing groups that are actually performing or have some kind of art. It's the Beach Museum of Art, which is our municipal museum, and then it's the municipal band, which is our city band. Those are the two city arts organizations that are that are performing or doing shows within the city. And so a lot of you don't know that that the city has to. And of course, we also have the Arts Council, which is a little bit different of a role, but it's a big deal. The museum has been around for over 100 years. You guys provide incredible music and fun for a lot of people, and we're really proud to support all the work you guys do every year. So thank you to Larry and the team and the friends. Fantastic work. And so and I want to thank Councilman Price and the coauthors for bringing this forward as well. Councilman Price, did you have anything else, sir? No, thank you. Okay. Let me turn to the second of the motion, which was Councilman Mongo. Thank you. Many of you saw me out at Municipal Band this summer. It's a great asset in our community. I think that the structure of the program and their ability to bring costs down over the years has been significant in the city's ability to maintain the funds. It's definitely hard. When the city went through the downturn, the economy and to still have been able to fund arts is a remarkable thing for our city. And I think that their component of the 100 days of summer really are a city wide asset that we're able to advertise. I think that in our side of town for the first time, the council office worked hard to ensure that community members knew about 100 days of summer, and specifically the municipal band concerts. We used over $3,000 of district funds to send out a mailer to our residents to let them know about the municipal band and their playing in the community. Because when I knocked on doors throughout the district, many people didn't know about the amazing asset of concerts every Friday in Eldorado Park. And so this year I felt as though the community had grown, and I think that more were engaged in knowing of the opportunities. And I think that's a big part of the ability for the friends of the municipal band to continue to be successful. I want to thank the police department who stepped up the presence this summer at our concerts in the park. The larger our crowds go grow, the more important it is that we really protect public safety. I want to thank Marie for your diligent work with relation to growing a partnership directly with the Friends of the Municipal Band. I know that there's been changes through the years in that fundraising structure and whether it was through partners of Parks or the other organizations, I think that donors, knowing that 99.7 or 94, 98.75% of every donation goes directly to fund the municipal band is a big step in the right direction with all the accountability that we look at in our nonprofits these days and making sure admit as well. That being said, I appreciate that the friends are already working with Parks and Rec and looking at how to fill that $27,000 shortfall. I think it's important that we continue to work towards figuring out a long term strategy of filling that every year, because it's important that as we grow other types of concerts to fill in the gap, whether it's the community band or symphonic winds or other groups that come to us as a council and ask for funding, that we also realize that a lot of their ability to play in the parks is based on the generation of activity and support that starts with the launch of the municipal band there where where the crowds start. And then they continue that tradition throughout the summer, no matter who picks up those additional weeks. So thank you for what you do and thank you for the other arts programs that really get to take advantage of the work in publicity and marketing and partnership that you do. I know that my neighbor is 94 years old and she used to be a bucket collector for the municipal band and she still talks about that. And it's a good sense of pride for her. And she did it every single concert for years. And so I hope that we can get that structure back in place. She knew the people. She knew who to go to. She made sure that at the end of the summer they had a little receipt that said that they donated for their their tax I.D. purposes, even though they gave cash. And so I appreciate the work that's been done to really further that effort. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. I just wanted to thank the municipal band for being at Drake Park. I think that was such a although we were here at council, I remember a lot of our residents had just really been very thrilled to have the municipal band there. And it was just a different mood and it was just a. Beautiful night from what all the pictures showed me and from all of their emails and just contact with us. So thank you very much for all your work and we look forward to many wonderful events coming up. Councilmember Everingham. Thank you, Mayor. I do want to express my congratulations to them, this woman, for another wonderful season. I share Lost Eurydice Park with District eight, my colleague. And it was always a wonderful time to to see you on Wednesday nights playing at the concerts. But most importantly, it was a great night out for me and my wife to enjoy your music. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Superman. Thank you. I just have a question for staff, and it's kind of a follow up to what my colleague from the first District said. We have two concerts a year in Whaley Park. We're not getting any additional. And they are on Tuesday night. So one is a council meeting night and the other is our dark night. But that's when I hold my community meeting. It wasn't a problem this past year because my residents preferred going to the concert than my community meeting. But I would just like to ask staff if we can have an adjusted adjustment to that moving forward. Thank you. Councilmember Austin. Thank you. And I want to thank the friends. I want to thank Marcel and the the foundation for your your assistance in making this tradition ongoing. Obviously, in the Los Cerritos Park, we enjoy the municipal band. It signifies the fact that we are the summer season has has is upon us when when whenever two minute municipal band is playing on Wednesday nights, it draws several hundred or even probably a couple thousand people every every Wednesday night. And the community has in kind of supported that with additional concerts with the live bands. There's nothing that can replace our municipal band and the great professionalism and the sweet sounds that come from that. But also, I think more importantly, as my my colleague Ms.. Mongeau mentioned, when you knock on doors, people are connected to you that if they live in a in a community that actually is fortunate enough to have the municipal band in, and I know there are other areas of the city that don't have that. And I would like to see that happen so that everybody actually feels that that essence of Long Beach. And so, you know, there's a there's a song This is Summertime in the LBC, the middle. Also, the municipal band signifies summertime in LBC in a big way. And so thank you for all you doing. We'll continue to support you. Councilman Mongo to follow up to Councilmember Supernovas question. Marie, would you know what the collections are like from night to night? What our strongest nights are for the bucket collection and what hour are more weeknights are end? And does that correlate with crowd size? I mean, is it that so many people are watching council meetings on Tuesdays that they just can't make it to the municipal event? Yes, as you said earlier, I'm all about the data. And the data would suggest that more people are watching your meetings. On Tuesday nights. I'm just kidding. Actually, traditionally, our Tuesday night attendance. As well as our obviously then bucket collections are the lowest evening. Tuesday nights are about or the Wednesday Thursday concerts are running about three times the attendance as our Tuesday nights. Would there be a possibility if we are able to fund the six week through the Budget Oversight Committee as a recommendation to this full body? Instead of six weeks that four nights a week, which would be 24 concerts, we would be able to do three nights a week at eight, eight weeks that we would be able to go to a full eight weeks of a summer again. Is that a possibility that could be explored? It's certainly something we can explore. We can talk with the band to see how logistically that would work and we would have to work out. Somewhat of a schedule to bring back then to the council. Because when you take the Tuesday nights away, do we, Adam, at the end. Of the first six weeks at those locations. So we would come back with some options. So coming from the regiment of a high school where music is expensive and those kinds of things, one of the things we'd have to consider are of course working in so that the Drake Park, the Whaley Park, the Bluff Park would actually get a Friday night. And so there wouldn't be any additional music costs. It would just be really a shift so that the whole city would have the access and opportunity and then hopefully that would be able to fill the gap of that $27,000 shortfall. If there was significantly higher attendance, maybe that would be an option. But of course, again, this body can only think of things. And again, our two council members weren't able to attend those. But I hope that we can find a way where structurally the donations and the attendance. I think that the number one priority is that more people get to experience the municipal band. And so in no way would I ever expect all eight weeks of Friday nights to be in Eldorado Park. I don't I think that'll be very selfish, but that we would hope that the other side of town I know David mentioned to me sixth district still doesn't have a concert. What does that look like? And I think that that would be helpful. I know a week is a short turnaround, but we are going to talk about Parks and Rec at Budget Oversight next week and would love some input because I think that at least from the colleagues, the comments I've heard from my colleagues were very supportive of the mayor's recommendation to ensure that an additional 60,000 is put in that direction. Or, as Bill said, maybe we'll make a mistake and do 70,000. We'll see. We will come back with something for next week. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. And I would just say I agree wholeheartedly with those points. Looking forward to seeing ways that we can, you know, make sure that everyone can experience our official city municipal band. Councilman Andrews. Thank you, Mrs. Mongo, for speaking up on me. But maybe that 10,000 that we made a mistake on, we could probably use that, and we could get one in 63. So we're going to get it. It's coming. Thank you. I need 19. You got nine to put up. We'll discuss next week. I'm pretty sure we do. Okay. Take all my one time. Spending money for a concert in the park. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go ahead and take public comment on this item. Do we already have that? Let's take public comment on this item. Hi Karen. Reside. I'm speaking tonight as a resident of this city and someone who went to my first municipal band concert when they played on Sundays and Bixby Park, Bandshell when I was a child, my grandmother lived on first and Gaby Ohta. My family was a musical family. My dad, my uncles and my grandfather were in a municipal band in Chicago. I have great love for the municipal band. I've also volunteered at most of the concerts and a couple of things that haven't been mentioned. This is the oldest operating continuously band in the United States, and I know it's been under threat a number of times, and it warms my heart to see the support tonight for this institution within our city. That really is the cultural piece and the 107 years that they've been in operation. They've always service the community as a child. There was music everywhere and I just love going. It helped develop my love of music. The other thing that's really a benefit from the concerts that I've seen by attending so many is the community feeling that. It creates. And all the people that end up talking to each other and the connections that have been made. You just can't know how much that impacts our community. So thank you all for supporting the municipal band. Thank you. Next speaker, please. John Dietz. Good evening. Vice Mayor and council members want to thank you for the additional concerts that we got this year, the welcome addition. But above me on that, I want to thank the friendly municipal band Bill Thomas, whose acquaintance I only made a couple of years ago. But most importantly, Laura Espino, who has been at the concerts at Los Rios Park for just about as long as I can remember. She has really done yeoman's work in doing a lot of coordination there and fundraising, and I took direction for her this year with where I directed my personal donations because she did not want to see the partners of Parks collections diminished. In favor of the friends of the missile band, so I want the writing to check. The bigger one went to Partners of Parks, which made sense to me, but Laura said it was the right thing to do. And I don't think anybody in this room can thank Laura enough for what she's done for all those years. Thank you, Laura. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Carolyn Burns. I'd like to thank my fellow citizens, Kay Caufield and Bill Thomas and his wife Shirley, for being such adamant supporters of the municipal ban. I think music is really important, and I echo the words of a woman who just spoke with regards to the sense of community. There are so many bad things happening around us and around the entire United States with neighbors and violence. But I think this is an incredibly positive thing that we need to strongly foster and grow. The mention earlier of when going door to door knocking that people aren't aware of the municipal band and its activities. I think that this is an opportunity to grow that awareness and I know that one of the most potent tools in my neighborhood and I know the city utilizes it is next door. And this is a wonderful organ from which to project information about activities in the community. And I would strongly encourage the city to allow access for the people from the municipal band to announce their performances in advance and to make a written statement in their announcement that there is a contribution that is optional such that this contribution level can increase to continue to support the band. Thank you for all of your support. Thank you. Final speaker, please. Very good. One of the ideas I've always toyed around with and that what might help the financial situation but also bring the band to more people. And these next two or three years are going to be an excellent opportunity to try. This is put the band on a barge in the Marine Stadium, which we could pack on both sides with spectators. Now, because of the work that's being done around our waterfronts in various parts, we will have a number of those barges that I think we can negotiate with the owners to for the day of the park, day of the band, put that puppy, put the band on that puppy. And it can slowly move up and down the northern half of the stadium with people on both sides. Thank you. So let's go ahead and say no more no further public comment. Let's go ahead and ballot. And I mean. Yes. It's the same thing. Motion carries. Thank you. Let's go ahead and take our public comment for the night. I have eight speakers here speak. Steve Updike. Diana Liggins. John Dietz. Larry Goodhue. Linda montgomery, Malcolm Bennett. Keith Kennedy. Alex Belanger. And we'll begin with let's have the first three up.